CHAPTER XV. _Of the FACE_. 1. _In the highest taste, and the reverse_. 2. _As to character and expression_. 3. _Of the manner in which the lines of the Face alter from infancy upwards, and shew the different Ages_, 122 CHAPTER XVI. _Of ATTITUDE_, 135 CHAPTER XVII. _Of ACTION_. 1. _A new method of acquiring an easy and graceful movement of the hand and arms_. 2. _Of the head, &c._ 3. _Of dancing, particularly the minuet_. 4. _Of country-dancing, and, lastly, of stage-action_. 138 _Prints Publish'd by_ W. HOGARTH. FIGURES _referr'd to in the_ BOOK. ERRATA. [Transcriber's note: Hogarth's corrections are now incorporated within the text.] INTRODUCTION. I now offer to the public a short essay, accompanied with two explanatory prints, in which I shall endeavour to shew what the principles are in nature, by which we are directed to call the forms of some bodies beautiful, others ugly; some graceful, and others the reverse; by considering more minutely than has hitherto been done, the nature of those lines, and their different combinations, which serve to raise in the mind the ideas of all the variety of forms imaginable. At first, perhaps, the whole design, as well as the prints, may seem rather intended to trifle and confound, than to entertain and inform: but I am persuaded that when the examples in nature, referr'd to in this essay, are duly consider'd and examined upon the principles laid down in it, it will be thought worthy of a careful and attentive perusal: and the prints themselves too will, I make no doubt, be examined as attentively, when it is found, that almost every figure in them (how odly soever they may seem to be group'd together) is referr'd to singly in the essay, in order to assist the reader's imagination, when the original examples in art, or nature, are not themselves before him.