endeavor to reduce this proportion to finite rules, for it is as various
as musical melody, and the laws to which it is subject are of the same
general kind, so that the determination of right or wrong proportion is
as much a matter of feeling and experience as the appreciation of good
musical composition; not but that there is a science of both, and
principles which may not be infringed, but that within these limits the
liberty of invention is infinite, and the degrees of excellence infinite
also, whence the curious error of Burke in imagining that because he
could not fix upon some one given proportion of lines as better than any
other, therefore proportion had no value nor influence at all, which is
the same as to conclude that there is no such thing as melody in music,
because there are melodies more than one.

Sec. 14. Error of Burke in this matter.

The argument of Burke on this subject is summed up in the following
words:--"Examine the head of a beautiful horse, find what proportion
that bears to his body and to his limbs, and what relations these have
to each other, and when you have settled these proportions, as a
standard of beauty, then take a dog or cat, or any other animal, and
examine how far the same proportions between their heads and their
necks, between those and the body, and so on, are found to hold; I think
we may safely say, that they differ in every species, yet that there are
individuals found in a great many species, so differing, that have a
very striking beauty. Now if it be allowed that very different, and even
contrary forms and dispositions, are consistent with beauty, it amounts,
I believe, to a concession, that no certain measures operating from a
natural principle are necessary to produce it, at least so far as the
brute species is concerned."

In this argument there are three very palpable fallacies: the first is
the rough application of measurement to the heads, necks, and limbs,
without observing the subtile differences of proportion and position of
parts in the members themselves, for it would be strange if the
different adjustment of the ears and brow in the dog and horse, did not
require a harmonizing difference of adjustment in the head and neck. The
second fallacy is that above specified, the supposition that proportion
cannot be beautiful if susceptible of variation, whereas the whole
meaning of the term has reference to the adjustment and functional
correspondence of infini