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toii3 character; yet still, being so accon)paJiicd, and 

 being placed, if not in the usual situation, at least 

 in the usual line, would not; as I conceive, have 

 that appearance, of stupid blindness, which a Po- 

 lypheme in painting, (before his adventure with 

 Ulysses) always presents. 



That appearance I take to arise, not solely from 

 a position of the eye, so different and so distant 

 from its usual situation, but, also because the 

 painters have marked the sockets of the two eyes; 

 probably from finding that when the whole space 

 between the brow and the cheek was filled up, the 

 face lost its form, and became a shapeless knnp : 

 yet, on the other hand, when the sockets of the 

 eyes are ever so slightly indicated, it is impossible 

 not to look there for tlie organs of sight ; and not 

 finding them there, the idea of blindness is una- 

 voidably impressed. Now, 1 believe, that if a 

 single eye were placed immediately above the nose, 

 and under the brow, and no indication were made 

 of other sockets, that single eye would give the 

 idea of vision. Then the one, continued, shaggy 

 eyebrow, so strongly and distinctly expressed by 

 Theocritus, which seems to favour the idea of an 

 eye in the centre, would, above all things, give a 

 dark and savage look to the giant cannibal :* for the 

 mere junction of the eyebrows, is said to have 

 given un air sinistre to Marshal Turenne ; a man 



^ What I have endeavoured to explain in words, Mr. West, the 

 President of the Rqyal Academy has most happily and forcihly ex- 

 pressed by a few touches of his pencil. His higlily poetical and cha- 

 racteristic sketch is in my possession. 



