A great medley of heterogeneous ideas is noticeable among other writers on Æsthetic during the same period. In 1746 appeared a little volume by Abbé Batteux bearing the attractive title of _The Fine Arts reduced to a Single Principle,_ in which the author attempted a unification of all the different rules laid down by the writers of treatises. All such rules (says Batteux) are branches emerging from one trunk; he who possesses the simple principle will be able to deduce the rules one by one without entangling himself in their mass, which can but involve him in endless coils. The author had passed in review the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace and that of Boileau, and the works of Rollin, Dacier, le Bossu and d'Aubignac; but had found real help only in Aristotle's principle of imitation, which he thought could be easily and strikingly applied to poetry, painting, music and the art of gesture. But suddenly the Aristotelian principle of imitation yields place to a wholly new rendering, namely the "imitation of natural _beauty._" The business of art is to "select the most beautiful parts of nature in order to frame them into an exquisite whole which shall be more beautiful than nature's self, without ceasing to be natural." Now, what may this greater perfection, this beautiful nature, be? On one occasion Batteux identifies it with truth: but "with the truth which may be; with beauty-truth, which is represented as though it really existed with all the perfections it could possibly receive," recalling one example from the ancients in the Helen of Zeuxis, and one from the moderns in the _Misanthrope_ of Molière. In another place he explains that beautiful nature, _"tum ipsius (obiecti) naturæ, tum nostræ convenit," i.e._ that it has the closest connexion with our own perfection, our advantage and our interest, and is, at the same time, perfect in itself. The aim of imitation is "to please, to move, to soften, in one word, to delight"; so beautiful nature must be interesting and furnished with unity, variety, symmetry and proportion. Embarrassed by the question of artistic imitation of things naturally ugly or objectionable, Batteux falls back on saying, as Castelvetro had said before him, that displeasing objects please when imitated, since imitation, being always imperfect, in comparison with the reality, cannot excite the horror and disgust aroused by the latter. From pleasure he deduces the other aim of utility: if the aim of poetry be to give pleasure, and "pleasure by moving the passions, then in order to give a perfect and enduring pleasure it ought to rouse such passions only as it is well to excite, not those inimical to goodness."[1] [Sidenote: _The English: W. Hogarth._]