The artists repository and drawing magazine: exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branches (2.1788)

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diftorted by fear. An antique artift would have
made her lefs afraid, that me might have been more
beautiful. In expreffing terror, pain, and other
impreffions, there is a point where the beauty of the
fin eft countenance ends, and deformity begins. I
am indebted to Mr. Locke for this obfervation. In
fome converfations I had with him at Cologny, on
the iubjecT: of fculpture, that gentleman remarked,
that it was in the fkilful and temperate exertion of
her powers in this nobleft province of the art, ex~
frejjion, that ancient fculpture fo much excelled the
modern. She knew its limits, and had afcertained
them with precifion. As far as eXpreffion would
go hand in hand with grace and beauty, in fubjecls
intended to excite fympathy, me indulged her chifel;
but where agony threatened to induce diftortion,
and obliterate beauty, fhe wifely fet bounds to imi-
tation, remembering, that though it may be moral
to pity uglinefs in diftrefs, it is more natural to pitj
beauty in the fame fituation ; and that her bufinefs
was not to give the ftrongeft reprefentation of na-
ture, but the reprefentation which would intereft us
moft. That ingenious gentleman, I remember,
obferved at the fame time, that the Greek artifts
have been accufed of having facrificed character too
much to technical proportion. He continued to
obferve, that what is ufually called character in
a face, is probably excefs in fome of its parts, and
particularly of thofe which are under the influence
of the mind, the leading paffion of which marks
fome feature for its own. A perfectly fymmetrical
face bears no mark of the influence of either the
paffions or the underftanding, and reminds you of

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