ascribed less to the fertile imagination and refined perceptions of the
ancient Greek, than to the dry and formal precepts which were invented
centuries after their erection. Little was said of the magnificent
sculpture which filled the metopes of the temple of the Minerva; but the
exact height and breadth of the triglyphs between them were considered of
the greatest importance. The exquisite drapery of caryatids and
canephorae, no English artist, a hundred years ago, thought fit to
imitate; but the cornices which they supposed were measured inch by inch
with the utmost nicety. Ingenious devices were invented for enabling the
artificer to reproduce, by a series of complicated curves, the profile of
a Doric capital, which probably owed its form to the steady hand and
uncontrolled taste of the designer. To put faith in many of the theories
propounded by architectural authorities in the last century, would be to
believe that some of the grandest monuments which the world has ever seen
raised, owe their chief beauty to an accurate knowledge of arithmetic.
The diameter of the column was divided into modules: the modules were
divided into minutes; the minutes into fractions of themselves. A
certain height was allotted to the shaft, another to the entablature. . .
Sometimes the learned discussed how far apart the columns of a portico
might be."[29]

This kind of mensuration reminds one of the disputes between French
critics as to whether the unity of time meant thirty hours, or
twenty-four, or twelve, or the actual time that it took to act the play;
or of the geometric method of the "Saturday papers" in the _Spectator_.
Addison tries "Paradise Lost" by Aristotle's rules for the composition of
an epic. Is it the narrative of a single great action? Does it begin
_in medias res_, as is proper, or _ab ovo Ledae_, as Horace has said that
an epic ought not? Does it bring in the introductory matter by way of
episode, after the approved recipe of Homer and Vergil? Has it