Part 14

In this picture of Necessity drawn by Horace, perhaps the richest in attributes of any to be found in the old poets, the nails, the clamps, and the liquid lead, whether regarded as means of confinement or implements of punishment, still belong to the class of poetical, rather than allegorical, attributes. But, even so, they are too crowded; and the passage is one of the least effective in Horace. Sanadon says: “J’ose dire que ce tableau, pris dans le détail, serait plus beau sur la toile que dans une ode héroïque. Je ne puis souffrir cet attirail patibulaire de clous, de coins, de crocs, et de plomb fondu. J’ai cru en devoir décharger la traduction, en substituant les idées générales aux idées singulières. C’est dommage que le poëte ait eu besoin de ce correctif.” Sanadon’s sentiment was fine and true, but he does not give the right ground for it. The objection is not that these attributes are the paraphernalia of the gallows, for he had but to interpret them in their other sense to make them the firmest supports of architecture. Their fault is in being addressed to the eye and not to the ear. For all impressions meant for the eye, but presented to us through the ear, are received with effort, and produce no great degree of vividness. These lines of Horace remind me of a couple of oversights on the part of Spence, which give us no very good idea of the exactitude with which he has studied the passages he cites from the old poets. He is speaking of the image under which the Romans represented faith or honesty. (Dial. x.) “The Romans,” he says, “called her ‘Fides;’ and, when they called her ‘Sola Fides,’ seem to mean the same as we do by the words ‘downright honesty.’ She is represented with an erect, open air, and with nothing but a thin robe on, so fine that one might see through it. Horace therefore calls her ‘thin-dressed’ in one of his odes, and ‘transparent’ in another.” In these few lines are not less than three gross errors. First, it is false that “sola” was a distinct epithet applied to the goddess Fides. In the two passages from Livy, which he adduces as proof (lib. i. sect. 21, lib. ii. sect. 3), the word has only its usual signification,—the exclusion of all else. In one place, indeed, the “soli” has been questioned by the critics, who think it must have crept into the text through an error in writing, occasioned by the word next to it, which is “solenne.” In the other passage cited, the author is not speaking of fidelity at all, but of innocence, Innocentia. Secondly, Horace, in one of his odes (the thirty-fifth of the first book, mentioned above), is said to have applied to Fides the epithet thin-dressed:

Te spes, et albo rara fides colit Velata panno.

“Rarus,” it is true, can also mean thin; but here it means only rare, seldom appearing, and is applied to Fidelity herself, not to her clothing. Spence would have been right, had the poet said, “Fides raro velata panno.” Thirdly, Horace is said to have elsewhere called faith or honesty transparent, in the sense in which friends protest to one another, “I wish you could read my heart.” This meaning is said to be found in the line of the eighteenth ode of the First Book:

Arcanique Fides prodiga, pellucidior vitro.

How can a critic allow himself to be thus misled by a word? Is a faith, “arcani prodiga,” lavish of secrets, faithfulness? is it not rather faithlessness? And it is of faithlessness, in fact, that Horace says, “She is transparent as glass, because she betrays to every eye the secrets entrusted to her.”

Note 29, p. 71.

Apollo delivers the washed and embalmed body of Sarpedon to Death and Sleep, that they may bring him to his native country. (Iliad, xvi. 681, 682.)

πέμπε δέ μιν πομποῖσιν ἅμα κραιπνοῖσι φέρεσθαι, Ὕπνῳ καὶ Θανάτῳ διδυμάοσιν.

Caylus recommends this idea to the painter, but adds: “It is a pity that Homer has given us no account of the attributes under which Sleep was represented in his day. We recognize the god only by his act, and we crown him with poppies. These ideas are modern. The first is of service, but cannot be employed in the present case, where even the flowers would be out of keeping in connection with the figure of Death.” (Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, de l’Odyssée d’Homère, et de l’Enéide de Virgile, avec des observations générales sur le costume, à Paris, 1757–58.) That is requiring of Homer ornamentations of that petty kind most at variance with the nobility of his style. The most ingenious attributes he could have bestowed on Sleep would not have characterized him so perfectly, nor have brought so vivid a picture of him before us, as the single touch which makes him the twin brother of Death. Let the artist seek to express this, and he may dispense with all attributes. The old artists did, in fact, make Sleep and Death resemble each other, like twin-brothers. On a chest of cedar, in the Temple of Juno at Elis, they both lay as boys in the arms of Night. One was white, the other black; one slept, the other only seemed to sleep; the feet of both were crossed. For so I should prefer to translate the words of Pausanias (Eliac. cap. xviii. p. 422, edit. Kuhn), ἀμφοτέρους διεστραμμένους τοὺς πόδας, rather than by “crooked feet,” as Gedoyn does, “les pieds contrefaits.” What would be the meaning of crooked feet? To lie with crossed feet is customary with sleepers. Sleep is thus represented by Maffei. (Raccol. Pl. 151.) Modern artists have entirely abandoned this resemblance between Sleep and Death, which we find among the ancients, and always represent Death as a skeleton, or at best a skeleton covered with skin. Caylus should have been careful to tell the artists whether they had better follow the custom of the ancients or the moderns in this respect. He seems to declare in favor of the modern view, since he regards Death as a figure that would not harmonize well with a flower-crowned companion. Has he further considered how inappropriate this modern idea would be in a Homeric picture? How could its loathsome character have failed to shock him? I cannot bring myself to believe that the little metal figure in the ducal gallery at Florence, representing a skeleton sitting on the ground, with one arm on an urn of ashes (Spence’s Polymetis, tab. xli.), is a veritable antique. It cannot possibly represent Death, because the ancients represented him very differently. Even their poets never thought of him under this repulsive shape.

Note 30, p. 76.

Richardson cites this work as an illustration of the rule that the attention of the spectator should be diverted by nothing, however admirable, from the chief figure. “Protogenes,” he says, “had introduced into his famous picture of Ialysus a partridge, painted with so much skill that it seemed alive, and was admired by all Greece. But, because it attracted all eyes to itself, to the detriment of the whole piece, he effaced it.” (Traité de la Peinture, T. i. p. 46.) Richardson is mistaken; this partridge was not in the Ialysus, but in another picture of Protogenes called the Idle Satyr, or Satyr in Repose, Σάτυρος ἀναπαυόμενος. I should hardly have mentioned this error, which arose from a misunderstanding of a passage in Pliny, had not the same mistake been made by Meursius. (Rhodi. lib. i. cap. 14.) “In eadem tabula, scilicet in qua Ialysus, Satyrus erat, quem dicebant _Anapauomenon_, tibeas tenens.”

Something of the same kind occurs in Winkelmann. (Von der Nachahm. der Gr. W. in der Mal. und Bildh. p. 56.) Strabo is the only authority for this partridge story, and he expressly discriminates between the Ialysus and the Satyr leaning against a pillar on which sat the partridge. (Lib. xiv.) Meursius, Richardson, and Winkelmann misunderstood the passage in Pliny (lib. xxxv. sect. 36), from not perceiving that he was speaking of two different pictures: the one which saved the city, because Demetrius would not assault the place where it stood; and another, which Protogenes painted during the siege. The one was Ialysus, the other the Satyr.

Note 31, p. 79.

This invisible battle of the gods has been imitated by Quintus Calaber in his Twelfth Book, with the evident design of improving on his model. The grammarian seems to have held it unbecoming in a god to be thrown to the ground by a stone. He therefore makes the gods hurl at one another huge masses of rock, torn up from Mount Ida, which, however, are shattered against the limbs of the immortals and fly like sand about them.

... οἱ δὲ κολώνας χερσὶν ἀποῤῥήξαντες ἀπ’ οὔρεος Ἰδαίοιο βάλλον ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους· αἳ δὲ ψαμάθοισιν ὁμοῖαι ῥεῖα διεσκίδναντο θεῶν περὶ δ’ ἄσχετα γυῖα ῥηγνύμενα διὰ τυτθά....

A conceit which destroys the effect by marring our idea of the size of the gods, and throwing contempt on their weapons. If gods throw stones at one another, the stones must be able to hurt them, or they are like silly boys pelting each other with earth. So old Homer remains still the wiser, and all the fault-finding of cold criticism, and the attempts of men of inferior genius to vie with him, serve but to set forth his wisdom in clearer light. I do not deny that Quintus’s imitation has excellent and original points; but they are less in harmony with the modest greatness of Homer than calculated to do honor to the stormy fire of a more modern poet. That the cry of the gods, which rang to the heights of heaven and the depths of hell, should not be heard by mortals, seems to me a most expressive touch. The cry was too mighty to be grasped by the imperfect organs of human hearing.

Note 32, p. 80.

No one who has read Homer once through, ever so hastily, will differ from this statement as far as regards strength and speed; but he will not perhaps at once recall examples where the poet attaches superhuman size to his gods. I would therefore refer him, in addition to the description of Mars just quoted, whose body covered seven hides, to the helmet of Minerva, κυνέην ἑκατὸν πολίων πρυλέεσσ’ ἀραρυῖαν (Iliad, v. 744), under which could be concealed as many warriors as a hundred cities could bring into the field; to the stride of Neptune (Iliad, xiii. 20); and especially to the lines from the description of the shield, where Mars and Minerva lead the troops of the beleaguered city. (Iliad, xviii. 516–519.)

ἦρχε δ’ ἄρά σφιν Ἄρης καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη, ἄμφω χρυσείω, χρύσεια δὲ εἵματα ἕσθην, καλὼ καὶ μεγάλω σὺν τεύχεσιν, ὥς τε θεώ περ, ἀμφὶς ἀριζήλω· λαοὶ δ’ ὑπ’ ὑπολίζονες ἦσαν.

... While the youths Marched on, with Mars and Pallas at their head, Both wrought in gold, with golden garments on, Stately and large in form, and over all Conspicuous in bright armor, as became The gods; the rest were of an humbler size.—BRYANT.

Judging from the explanations they feel called upon to give of the great helmet of Minerva, Homer’s commentators, old as well as new, seem not always sufficiently to have borne in mind this wonderful size of the gods. (See the notes on the above-quoted passage in the edition of Clarke and Ernesti.) But we lose much in majesty by thinking of the Homeric deities as of ordinary size, as we are accustomed to see them on canvas in the company of mortals. Although painting is unable to represent these superhuman dimensions, sculpture to a certain extent may, and I am convinced that the old masters borrowed from Homer their conception of the gods in general as well as the colossal size which they not infrequently gave them. (Herodot. lib. ii. p. 130, edit. Wessel.) Further remarks upon the use of the colossal, its excellent effect in sculpture and its want of effect in painting, I reserve for another place.

NOTE 33, p. 82.

Homer, I acknowledge, sometimes veils his deities in a cloud, but only when they are not to be seen by other deities. In the fourteenth book of the Iliad, for instance, where Juno and Sleep, ἠέρα ἐσσαμένω, betake themselves to Mount Ida, the crafty goddess’s chief care was not to be discovered by Venus, whose girdle she had borrowed under pretence of a very different journey. In the same book the love-drunken Jupiter is obliged to surround himself and his spouse with a golden cloud to overcome her chaste reluctance.

πῶς κ’ ἔοι, εἴ τις νῶϊ θεῶν αἰειγενετάων εὕδοντ’ ἀθρήσειε....

She did not fear to be seen by men, but by the gods. And although Homer makes Jupiter say a few lines further on,—

Ἥρη, μήτε θεῶν τόγε δείδιθι μήτε τιν’ ἀνδρῶν ὄψεσθαι· τοῖόν τοι ἐγὼ νέφος ἀμφικαλύψω, χρύσεον.

“Fear thou not that any god or man will look upon us,” that does not prove that the cloud was needed to conceal them from the eyes of mortals, but that in this cloud they would be as invisible to the gods as they always were to men. So, when Minerva puts on the helmet of Pluto (Iliad, v. 485), which has the same effect of concealment that a cloud would have, it is not that she may be concealed from the Trojans, who either see her not at all or under the form of Sthenelus, but simply that she may not be recognized by Mars.

NOTE 34, p. 87.

Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, Avert. p. 5. “On est toujours convenu, que plus un poëme fournissait d’images et d’actions, plus il avait de supériorité en poésie. Cette réflexion m’avait conduit à penser que le calcul des différens tableaux, qu’ offrent les poëmes, pouvait servir à comparer le mérite respectif des poëmes et des poëtes. Le nombre et le genre des tableaux que présentent ces grands ouvrages, auraient été une espèce de pierre de touche, ou, plutôt, une balance certaine du mérite de ces poëmes et du génie de leurs auteurs.”

NOTE 35, p. 88.

What we call poetic pictures, the ancients, as we learn from Longinus, called “phantasiæ;” and what we call illusion in such pictures, they named “enargia.” It was therefore said by some one, as Plutarch tells us (Erot. T. ii. edit. Henr. Steph. p. 1351), that poetic “phantasiæ” were, on account of their “enargia,” waking dreams: Αἱ ποιητικαὶ φαντασίαι διὰ τὴν ἐνάργειαν ἐγρηγορότων ἐνύπνια εἰσίν. I could wish that our modern books upon poetry had used this nomenclature, and avoided the word picture altogether. We should thus have been spared a multitude of doubtful rules, whose chief foundation is the coincidence of an arbitrary term. No one would then have thought of confining poetic conceptions within the limits of a material picture. But the moment these conceptions were called a poetic picture, the foundation for the error was laid.

NOTE 36, p. 89.

Iliad, iv. 105.

αὐτίκ’ ἐσύλα τόξον ἐΰξοον καὶ τὸ μὲν εὖ κατέθηκε τανυσσάμενος, ποτὶ γαίῃ ἀγκλίνας·... αὐτὰρ ὁ σύλα πῶμα φαρέτρης, ἐκ δ’ ἕλετ’ ἰὸν ἀβλῆτα πτερόεντα, μελαινέων ἕρμ’ ὀδυνάων· αἶψα δ’ ἐπὶ νευρῇ κατεκόσμει πικρὸν ὀϊστὸν, ἕλκε δ’ ὁμοῦ γλυφίδας τε λαβὼν καὶ νεῦρα βόεια· νευρὴν μὲν μαζῷ πέλασεν, τόξον δὲ σίδηρον. αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ κυκλοτερὲς μέγα τόξον ἔτεινεν, λίγξε βιὸς, νευρὴ δὲ μέγ’ ἴαχεν ἆλτο δ’ ὀϊστὸς ὀξυβελὴς, καθ’ ὅμιλον ἐπιπτέσθαι μενεαίνων.

To bend that bow the warrior lowered it And pressed an end against the earth.... Then the Lycian drew aside The cover from his quiver, taking out A well-fledged arrow that had never flown,— A cause of future sorrows. On the string He laid that fatal arrow.... Grasping the bowstring and the arrow’s notch He drew them back and forced the string to meet His breast, the arrow-head to meet the bow, Till the bow formed a circle. Then it twanged; The cord gave out a shrilly sound; the shaft Leaped forth in eager haste to reach the host.—BRYANT.

NOTE 37, p. 108.

Prologue to the Satires, 340.

That not in Fancy’s maze he wandered long, But stooped to Truth and moralized his song.

Ibid. 148.

... Who could take offence While pure description held the place of sense?

Warburton’s remark on this last line may have the force of an explanation by the poet himself. “He uses _pure_ equivocally, to signify either chaste or empty; and has given in this line what he esteemed the true character of descriptive poetry, as it is called,—a composition, in his opinion, as absurd as a feast made up of sauces. The use of a picturesque imagination is to brighten and adorn good sense: so that to employ it only in description, is like children’s delighting in a prism for the sake of its gaudy colors, which, when frugally managed and artfully disposed, might be made to represent and illustrate the noblest objects in nature.”

Both poet and commentator seem to have regarded the matter rather from a moral than an artistic point of view. But so much the better that this style of poetry seems equally worthless from whichever point it be viewed.

NOTE 38, p. 108.

Poétique Française, T. ii. p. 501. “J’écrivais ces réflexions avant que les essais des Allemands dans ce genre (l’Eglogue) fussent connus parmi nous. Ils ont exécuté ce que j’avais conçu; et s’ils parviennent à donner plus au moral et moins au détail des peintures physiques, ils excelleront dans ce genre, plus riche, plus vaste, plus fécond, et infiniment plus naturel et plus moral que celui de la galanterie champêtre.”

NOTE 39, p. 115.

I see that Servius attempts to excuse Virgil on other grounds, for the difference between the two shields has not escaped his notice. “Sane interest inter hunc et Homeri clypeum; illic enim singula dum fiunt narrantur; hic vero perfecto opere nascuntur; nam et hic arma prius accipit Æneas, quam spectaret; ibi postquam omnia narrata sunt, sic a Thetide deferuntur ad Achillem.” There is a marked difference between this and the shield of Homer: for there events are narrated one by one as they are done, here they are known by the finished work; here the arms are received by Æneas before being seen, there, after all has been told, they are carried by Thetis to Achilles. (Ad. v. 625, lib. viii. Æneid.) Why? “For this reason,” says Servius: “because, on the shield of Æneas, were represented not only the few events referred to by the poet, but,—

... genus omne futuræ Stirpis ab Ascanio, pugnataque in ordine bella,

“All the description of his future race from Ascanius, and the battles, in the order in which they should occur.” It would have been impossible for the poet, in the same short space of time occupied by Vulcan in his work, to mention by name the long line of descendants, and to tell of all their battles in the order of their occurrence. That seems to be the meaning of Servius’s somewhat obscure words: “Opportune ergo Virgilius, quia non videtur simul et narrationis celeritas potuisse connecti, et opus tam velociter expedire, ut ad verbum posset occurrere.” Since Virgil could bring forward but a small part of “the unnarratable text of the shield,” and not even that little while Vulcan was at work, he was obliged to reserve it till the whole was finished. For Virgil’s sake, I hope that this argument of Servius is baseless. My excuse is much more creditable to him. What need was there of putting the whole of Roman history on a shield? With few pictures Homer made his shield an epitome of all that was happening in the world. It would almost seem that Virgil, despairing of surpassing the Greek in the design and execution of his pictures, was determined to exceed him at least in their number, and that would have been the height of childishness.

NOTE 40, p. 118.

“Scuto ejus, in quo Amazonum prœlium cælavit intumescente ambitu parmæ; ejusdem concava parte deorum et gigantum, dimicationem.”

“Her shield, on the convex side of which he sculptured a battle of the Amazons, and on the concave side the contest of the gods and giants.” (Plinius, lib. xxxvi. sect. 4.)

NOTE 41, p. 122.

The first begins at line 483 and goes to line 489; the second extends from 490 to 509; the third, from 510 to 540; the fourth, from 541 to 549; the fifth, from 550 to 560; the sixth, from 561 to 572; the seventh, from 573 to 586; the eighth, from 587 to 589; the ninth, from 590 to 605; and the tenth, from 606 to 608. The third picture alone is not so introduced; but that it is one by itself is evident from the words introducing the second,—ἐν δὲ δύω ποίησε πόλεις,—as also from the nature of the subject.

NOTE 42, p. 123.

Iliad, vol. v. obs. p. 61. In this passage Pope makes an entirely false use of the expression “aerial perspective,” which, in fact, has nothing to do with the diminishing of the size according to the increased distance, but refers only to the change of color occasioned by the air or other medium through which the object is seen. A man capable of this blunder may justly be supposed ignorant of the whole subject.

NOTE 43, p. 128.

Constantinus Manasses Compend. Chron. p. 20 (edit. Venet). Madame Dacier was well pleased with this portrait of Manasses, except for its tautology. “De Helenæ pulchritudine omnium optime Constantinus Manasses; nisi in eo tautologiam reprehendas.” (Ad Dictyn Cretensem, lib. i. cap. 3, p. 5.) She also quotes, according to Mezeriac (Comment. sur les Epîtres d’Ovide, T. i. p. 361), the descriptions given by Dares Phrygius, and Cedrenus, of the beauty of Helen. In the first there is one trait which sounds rather strange. Dares says that Helen had a mole between her eyebrows: “notam inter duo supercilia habentem.” But that could not have been a beauty. I wish the Frenchwoman had given her opinion. I, for my part, regard the word “nota” as a corruption, and think that Dares meant to speak of what the Greeks called μεσόφρυον, and the Latins, “glabella.” He means to say that Helen’s eyebrows did not meet, but that there was a little space between them. The taste of the ancients was divided on this point. Some considered this space between the eyebrows beauty, others not. (Junius de Pictura Vet. lib. iii. cap. 9, p. 245.) Anacreon took a middle course. The eyebrows of his beloved maiden were neither perceptibly separated, nor were they fully grown together: they tapered off delicately at a certain point. He says to the artist who is to paint her (Od. 28):—

τὸ μεσόφρυον δὲ μή μοι διάκοπτε, μήτε μίσγε, ἐχέτω δ’ ὅπως ἐκείνη τὸ λεληθότως σύνοφρυν βλεφάρων ἴτυν κελαινήν.

This is Pauer’s reading, but the meaning is the same in other versions, and has been rightly given by Henr. Stephano:—

Supercilii nigrantes Discrimina nec arcus, Confundito nec illos: Sed junge sic ut anceps Divortium relinquas, Quale esse cernis ipsi.

But if my interpretation of Dares’ meaning be the true one, what should we read instead of “notam?” Perhaps “moram.” For certainly “mora” may mean not only the interval of time before something happens, but also the impediment, the space between one thing and another.

Ego inquieta montium jaceam mora,

is the wish of the raving Hercules in Seneca, which Gronovius very well explains thus: “Optat se medium jacere inter duas Symplegades, illarum velut moram, impedimentum, obicem; qui eas moretur, vetet aut satis arcte conjungi, aut rursus distrahi.” The same poet uses “laceratorum moræ” in the sense of “juncturæ.” (Schrœderus ad. v. 762. Thyest.)

NOTE 44, p. 131.

Dialogo della Pittura, intitolata l’Aretino: Firenze 1735, p. 178. “Se vogliono i Pittori senza fatica trovare un perfetto esempio di bella Donna, legiano quelle Stanze dell’ Ariosto, nelle quali egli discrive mirabilmente le belezze della Fata Alcina; e vedranno parimente, quanto i buoni Poeti siano ancora essi Pittori.”

NOTE 45, p. 131.