pencil's honours, as the first colourist of his age, and the man who opened the gates of art which the Heracleot Zeuxis entered.[11] From the essential style of Polygnotus and the specific discrimination of Apollodorus, Zeuxis, by comparison of what belonged to the genus and what to the class, framed at last that ideal form, which in his opinion, constituted the supreme degree of human beauty, or in other words, embodied possibility, by uniting the various but homogeneous powers scattered among many, in one object, to one end. Such a system, if it originated in genius, was the considerate result of taste refined by the unremitting perseverance with which he observed, consulted, compared, selected the congenial but scattered forms of nature. Our ideas are the offspring of our senses, we are not more able to create the form of a being, we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence, and he alone can comprehend what one degree of beauty wants to become equal to another, and at last superlative. He who thinks the pretty handsome, will think the handsome a beauty, and fancy he has met an ideal form in a merely handsome one, whilst he who has compared beauty with beauty, will at last improve form upon form to a perfect image; this was the method of Zeuxis, and this he learnt from Homer, whose mode of ideal composition, according to Quintilian, he considered as his model. Each individual of Homer forms a class, expresses and is circumscribed by one quality of heroic power; Achilles alone unites their various but congenial energies. The grace of Nireus, the dignity of Agamemnon, the impetuosity of Hector, the magnitude, the steady prowess of the great, the velocity of the lesser Ajax, the perseverance of Ulysses, the intrepidity of Diomede, are emanations of energy that reunite in one splendid centre fixed in Achilles. This standard of the unison of homogeneous powers exhibited in _successive action_ by the poet, the painter, invigorated no doubt by the contemplation of the works of Phidias, transferred to his own art and substantiated by _form_, when he selected the congenial beauties of Croton to compose a perfect female. Like Phidias too, he appears to have been less pathetic than sublime, and even in his female forms more ample and august than elegant or captivating: his principle was epic, and this Aristotle either considered not or did not comprehend, when he refuses him the expression of character in action and feature: Jupiter on his throne encircled by the celestial synod, and Helen, the arbitress of Troy, contained probably the principal elements of his style; but he could trace the mother's agitation in Alcmena, and in Penelope the pangs of wedded love.