FIRST LECTURE.

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of what belonged to the genus and what to the clafs,framed at laft that ideal form, which in his opinion,conftituted the fupreme degree of human beauty, or inother words, embodied pofiibility, by uniting the va-rious but homogeneous powers fcattered among many, inone objedt, to one end. Such a fyftem, if it originatedin genius, was the confiderate refult of tafte refined bythe unremitting perfeverance with which he obferved,confulted, compared, feledted the congenial butfcattered forms of nature. Our ideas are the offspringof our fenfes, we are not more able to create the formof a being, we have not feen, without retrofpedt to onewe know, than we are able to create a new fenfe. Hewhofe fancy has conceived an idea of the moft beautifulform mull have compofed it from adtual exigence, andhe alone can comprehend what one degree of beauty .wants to become equal to another, and at laft fuperla-tive. He w r ho thinks the pretty handfome, will thinkthe handfome a beauty, and fancy he has met an idealform in a merely handfome one, whilft he who has com-pared beauty with beauty, will at laft improve formupon form to a perfedt image; this was the method ofZeuxis , and this he learnt from Homer, whofe mode ofideal compofition, according to Quintilian , he confi-dered as his model. Each individual of Homer formsa clafs, expreffes and is cireumfcribed by one quality of

d 2 heroic