Note 146 — HOGARTH ILLUSTRATED. (continued 3)
Reading edition
"There are strong prejudices in favour of straight lines, as constituting true beauty in the human form, where they never should appear. A middling connoisseur thinks no profile has beauty without a very straight nose; and if the forehead be continued straight with it, he thinks it is still more sublime. The common notion that a person should be straight as an arrow, and perfectly erect, is of this kind. If a dancing-master were to see his scholar in the easy and gracefully turned attitude of the Antinous, he would cry shame on him, and tell him he looked as crooked as a ram's horn, and bid him hold up his head as he himself did."—Preface to the Analysis of Beauty, p. 8.