| 3150
called the circle beautiful: but it has no features:
it is expressionless. No curve can be very
beautiful, because the thought it embodies is
too meagre. But as curves go, bicyclic
quartics are as a matter of fact pleasing; and I think the
reason is that they have something of the
perfect regularity of the circle, with a
continuity of a kind which developes
special features. Hogarth's line of beauty
[ ] is the simplest case of a special feature,
a singularity, as it is called by geometers,
which the law of the continuity itself
engenders, without destroying the continuity.
All this may seem to be very foreign | 3150
called the circle beautiful: but it has no features:
it is expressionless. No curve can be very
beautiful, because the thought it embodies is
too meagre. But as curves go, bicyalic
quartics are as a matter of fact pleasing; and I think the
reason is that they have something of the
perfect regularity of the circle, with a
continuity of a kind which developes
special features. Hogarth's line of beauty
[ ] is the simplest case of a special feature,
a singularity, as it is called by geometers,
which the law of the continuity itself
engenders, without destroying the continuity.
All this may seem to be very foreign |