In all classifications of this kind a narrow-minded pedantry is to be avoided; canons, of whatever sort, hinder the natural growth of art. Still worse than strict canons is ignorance. Without a correct and thorough knowledge of Greek literature, no man can aspire to an exalted position in poetry and science; and without a correct and thorough study of Greek art, no man can become an artist. We do not recommend a slavish imitation of the Greeks, but a thorough understanding of their slow development, through the phases of unconscious reproduction and systematically conscious creation, to the philosophical appreciation of beauty, which enabled them to reflect in their works of art the eternal types of Nature in an idealised form. The same gradual development which we remarked in their architecture also took place in Greek keramic art. The oldest pottery was coarse, the material generally taken from the most recent formation of the soil, the Cainozoic period. These older specimens are very much alike amongst all the Aryan nations. The forms are undecided, and made by the hand; the ornaments, as in pre-historic times, consisted of points, zigzags, spirals and knobs. At a very early period, however, the Greeks as Pelasgians, Achaians, Danaians and Argeians, possessed more defined outlines, and a more perfect symmetry, even in their very coarsest pottery. In the oldest, so-called Tyrrhenian, vases we have already a decided plastic improvement. The ornamentation takes its patterns from metallotechnic, and we recognise Asiatic influences in the winged horses and lions, stamped in the clay as flat ornaments. The Greek taste improved; leaves and flowers were treated with a delicate, idealising conventionalism; the vine, ivy, anthimion, and masks and festoons, were used for decorative purposes, and gave to the well-shaped vessel a high artistic value. This was the most successful period of pottery for Greece. Samos appears to have been the principal place for its manufacture. The use of the wheel was long dispensed with; the Greeks trusting more to the delicacy of their touch than to the technical accuracy of a machine. In Asia the wheel had long been known, and it had exercised rather a detrimental than an improving influence on pottery, as the forms, settled by religious prejudices, or venerable custom, did not change, but remained stationary. As soon as the Greeks adopted the wheel--it must have been in use before Homer, for he speaks of it--their better-trained minds brought a new spirit into the handicraft of the potter, which was then turned into real art. Korœbos, of Athens, a mythic person, is said to have elevated keramic art to high perfection. Dibutades is said to have been the first modeller in clay, and Talos, his nephew, is mentioned as the inventor of the potter’s wheel in Hellas. With reference to the process of colouring we have two distinct classes of Greek pottery:--