_Charmoleos_, a Megarian youth, a single kiss of whom was valued at two talents[166], was, no doubt, beautiful enough to serve for a model of _Apollo_: Him, _Alcibiades_, _Charmides_, and _Adimanthus_[167], the artists could see and study to their wish for several hours every day: and can you imagine those trifling opportunities proposed to the Parisian artists, equivalents for the loss of advantages like these? But granting that, pray, what is there to be seen more in a swimmer than in any other person? The extremities of the body you may see every where. As for that author[168], who pretends to find in France beauties superior to those of _Alcibiades_, I cannot help doubting his ability to maintain what he asserts. What has been said hitherto might also answer the objection drawn from the judgment of our academies, concerning those parts of the body which ought to be drawn rather more angular than we find them in the antiques. The Greeks, and their artists, were happy in the enjoyment of figures endowed with youthful harmony; for, we have no reason to doubt their exactness in copying nature, if we only consider the angular smartness with which they drew the wrist-bones. _Agasias_’s celebrated _Gladiator_, in the _Borghese_, has none of the modern angles, nor the bony prominences authorised by our artists: all his angular parts are those we meet with in the other Greek statues. And this statue, which was perhaps one of those that were erected, in the very places where the games were held, to the memory of the several victors, may be supposed an exact copy of nature. The artist was bound to represent any victor in the very attitude, and instantaneous motion, in which he overcame his antagonist, and the _Amphictyones_ were the judges of his performance[169]. Many authors having written on this, and the following point of the treatise, I have contented myself with giving a few remarks of my own. Superficial arguments, in matters of this kind, can neither suit the deeper views of our times, nor lead to general conclusions. Nevertheless we do not want authors whose premature decisions often get the better of their judgment, and that not in matters concerning the art alone. Pray, what decisions of an author may be depended upon, who, when designing to write on the arts in general, shews himself so ignorant of their very elements, as to ascribe to _Thucydides_, whose concise and energetick style was not without difficulties, even for _Tully_[170], the character of simplicity?[171] Another of that tribe, seems as little acquainted with _Diodorus Siculus_, when he describes him as hunting after elegance[172]. Nor want we blockheads enough who admire, in the ancient performances, such trifles as are below any reasonable man’s attention. “The rope, says a travelling scribler, which ties together Dirce and the ox, is to connoisseurs the most beautiful object of the whole groupe of the Toro Farnese[173].”