[2] It ought not, however, to be disguised, that the history of art, deviating from its real object, has been swelled to a diffuse catalogue of individuals, who, being the nurslings of different schools, or picking something from the real establishers of art, have done little more than repeat or mimic rather than imitate, at second hand, what their masters or predecessors had found in nature, discriminated and applied to art in obedience to its dictates. Without depreciating the merits of that multitude who strenuously passed life in following others, it must be pronounced a task below history to allow them more than a transitory glance; neither novelty nor selection and combination of scattered materials, are entitled to serious attention from him who only investigates the real progress of art, if novelty is proved to have added nothing essential to the system, and selection to have only diluted energy, and by a popular amalgama to have been content with captivating the vulgar. Novelty, without enlarging the circle of fancy, may delight, but is nearer allied to whim than to invention; and an Eclectic system without equality of parts, as it originated in want of comprehension, totters on the brink of mediocrity, sinks art, or splits it into crafts decorated with the specious name of schools, whose members, authorized by prescript, emboldened by dexterity of hand, encouraged by ignorance, or heading a cabal, subsist on mere repetition, with few more legitimate claims to the honours of history than a rhapsodist to those of the poem which he recites. FIRST LECTURE. ANCIENT ART. Ταυτα μεν οὐν πλαστων και γραφεων και ποιητων παιδες ἐργασονται. ὁ δε πασιν ἐπανθει τουτοις, ἡ χαρις, μαλλον δε ἁπασαι ἁμα, ὁποσαι χαριτες, και ὁποσοι ἐρωτες περίχορευοντες. τις ἀν μιμησασθαι δυναιτο; ΛΟΥΚΙΑΝΟΥ Σαμ. εἰκονες. ARGUMENT. Introduction. Greece the legitimate parent of the Art.--Summary of the local and political causes. Conjectures on the mechanic process of the Art. Period of preparation--Polygnotus--essential style--Apollodorus--characteristic style. Period of establishment--Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Timanthes. Period of refinement--Eupompus Apelles, Aristides, Euphranor. FIRST LECTURE.