Part 33

Various explanations have been given for the Greek failure to appreciate beauty in nature. Ruskin’s theory is most often quoted, that the Greeks were _so familiar_ with beautiful scenes that they could not appreciate them. In the first place he forgot that it was not always the bright tourist-season in Greece; they had their dark and wintry times. In the second place, I have lived all my life in the southern part of Australia, which has much the same climate as Greece, and I do not think there are any greater lovers of nature than the Australians.

Is not the love of nature, as it came later,[75] also _higher_ than love of the human form (omitting that facial expression which is an index of the soul)? Our ideals of human beauty appear to be purely _relative_ and depend on our surroundings, while the same beauty in nature appeals to the most diverse nations. Take for example the Japanese and Dutch artists who both loved nature much as we do—yet they admired very different types of the human figure. I understand that the Japanese, originally at least, regarded with positive disgust our tall English beauties.

The beauty the Greeks saw in one object only, the human body, they reproduced in statues which have never been equalled in grace and charm, and are the admiration of the world. Their pure white marble statues and temples seem to be always present in our minds and to transfigure our conceptions of the Greeks. We unconsciously picture them as a race of glorious men and beautiful women moving in a city of marble.[76] We find ourselves forgetting what we know of their character and habits—and also forgetting the fact that both statues and temples were _painted_.

With the disappearance of colour through the effect of time, the flesh effect has disappeared from their statues, and the chaste white marble gives an idealized and spiritual conception of the utmost purity. As stated before, this would be a conception quite alien to the Greek mind, which saw no beauty in physical purity. If, when we stand in admiring awe before that calm, majestic and exceedingly graceful and beautiful Venus of Milo, we imagine her as the Greeks saw her, how different is the picture! To begin with, the Greeks had little sense of colour, as is seen from their limited colour-vocabulary. For example, one word _porphureos_ was used for dark-purple, red, rose, sea-blue, violet, and other shades even to a shimmery white. Their colours were harsh, glaring, and put together in shockingly bad taste (from our point of view). In temples and sculpture reds and blues were the main colours used. In the Venus of Milo we must, therefore, picture the hair painted red or red-brown, the lips a hard red, eyebrows black, the eyes red or red-brown with black pupils, the dress with borders and patterns of crude reds and greens or reds and blues. As regards the flesh surfaces, we know they were wax-polished, but there is no literary record or actual trace of any tinting or colouring. The effect of the white marble would have been so horrible to us against the living eyes and face, that Mr. Kaines Smith (being one of our enthusiasts) suggests that the artist “might quite well” have used some colouring matter for the nude parts of the figure! We must further picture the statue standing in a temple, which must of course also have been painted. The structure would have its borders generally of harsh reds and blues, and the decorative sculpture of the pediments, metopes and friezes would be painted in most inconceivable colours. Thus in the metope relief of the slaying of the Hydra at Olympia, the hydra is blue, the background red, and the hair, lips, and eyes of Hercules are coloured. I might go on to the Elgin marbles, the greatest sculptures that we possess in the world, and show them gorgeous in bronze and colour. (Armour, horse-trappings, etc., were attached to the marble in bronze or other metal.) The two masterpieces of Pheidias, forty and sixty feet high respectively, which have not survived to us, were much more admired by the Greeks than the sculptures of the Parthenon. These were in barbaric ivory and gold, with the same living eyes, red lips, and so on. The fact is that the Greek, “builded better than he knew.” He unintentionally produced objects whose _spiritual_ beauty he was incapable of appreciating and, therefore, he gave them a grosser form that appealed to his own primitive sensual nature.

(Apart from this the Greek sculptor was very limited by the paucity of his subjects. How tiresome are the never-ending Centaurs and Amazons!)[77]

As regards Greek architecture, its ornament is a question of sculpture, its structure is the result of intellect combined with a certain amount of design due to their artistic sense of proportion. The Greeks did great service to humanity in working out the principles of building—but, thereafter, there was no scope for originality. Apart from its sculptural ornament, nothing more monotonous could well be imagined than a series of Greek temples, all of the same type and subject to definite, rigid rules of measurement.[78]

Finally there are two matters I am bound to refer to in connection with these rough notes. First, in merely enumerating the salient features of a nation’s character, one gives no picture whatever of the _life_ they led. The Greek _men_ led a highly intellectual, artistic, and on the whole a very gay life. If we look around us to-day, we shall find among ourselves Greeks, intellectual men who are moral sceptics, who simply do not understand that moral motives exist, who do no act in their lives from a sense of principle, and who live a purely material life (unless perhaps some great crisis, the arrival of the angel of Death or some other overwhelming event, awakens them to a sense of higher things). We can see something like a parallel to the Greeks in the gay, immoral, artistic French aristocracy who lived in the midst of a starving peasantry before the Revolution—or in George Eliot’s fascinating renaissance story in _Romola_ of the young Greek Tito Melema. A man may be cruel, faithless and immoral, and yet live a gay artistic and intellectual life—but it is not such a life as would have appealed to Myers or to ourselves. Secondly, a clear knowledge of the truth about the Greek character does in no way detract from the miracle of their literature or of their art. It _adds_ to the wonder of it all. (If one may with the utmost reverence make another comparison, how can we fully appreciate the wonder and beauty of Christ’s teaching, if we forget the conditions of the time?) To find most beautiful poetry, fine literature, deep philosophic thought, amazing grace and charm in art emanating from this primitive race is purely astounding in itself. And it needs to be borne in mind that even the men who took part in Plato’s _Symposium_ lived in a different atmosphere from our own, and had a very different conception of the physical universe and the moral law. But this should _add_ to our admiration, our _veneration_, for a Plato who could rise to so great a sublimity of thought in spite of such semi-barbarous conditions and surroundings. These men also looked upon the world with younger and fresher eyes. We are two thousand three hundred years older than they are. They knew very little of the past history of the world and had only an insignificant fraction of our scientific knowledge. If any religious doubts had begun to arise in their minds, they still could not possibly have rid themselves of the belief instilled into them since childhood—and they lived among Nymphs and Fauns, and saw a god in every star and under every wave. Never had they heard or dreamt of any Love of God, or Love of Man. It is only the enthusiast who, by picturing the Greeks as a modern moral nation, detracts from our real interest in them and robs their literature of its fascination. If knowledge of the true Greek character were to destroy all our enjoyment in their art and literature, even then truth must prevail “though the heavens fall”; but the fact is far otherwise. The fuller our knowledge the more we shall enjoy the greatness and beauty of their art and poetry and the more absorbing will be our interest in their literature.

FOOTNOTES

[1] From Richard Hodgson’s Christmas Card, 1904, the Christmas before his death.

[2] To the readers of the Adelaide edition (which was issued only in Australia) I should explain why the book is now so much enlarged. The first issue was prepared hastily and without sufficient care. (The proceeds were to go to the Australian Repatriation Fund, and the book was hurriedly put together and printed to be ready for a Repatriation Day which was announced but actually was never held.) It was my first experience in publishing, and I did not realize the care and consideration required in issuing a book even of this character. Hence (1) part of my manuscript was entirely overlooked; (2) I failed to see that many quotations would be improved by adding their context; (3) I did not go properly through the great mass of Hodgson’s correspondence; and (4) I, wrongly, as I now think, excluded many quotations because I thought certain subjects were unsuitable for the book. Besides extending the scope of the collection by including those subjects I now have no longer restricted myself to the seventy-eighty period. The notes also add materially to the size of this volume.

[3] See Tennyson’s “Princess”:—

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail That brings our friends up from the underworld

[4] I occasionally thought I had hit on something new, but usually discovered that I had been anticipated—and then deeply sympathized with St. Jerome’s old tutor, Donatus. It will be remembered that Jerome, in his commentary on “There is no new thing under the sun,” tells us that Donatus used to say, Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt, “Confound the fellows who anticipated us!”

[5] The flippancy is at times amusing, as when he says: “The account of the whale swallowing Jonah, though the whale may have been large enough to do so, borders greatly on the marvellous; but it would have approached nearer to the just idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.”

[6] Altered from “That,” which may be a misprint. “Thou” gives the same meaning and runs more smoothly.

[7] Compare “I never nursed a dear gazelle” (p. 181).

[8] See Milton’s imitation of a fugue. _Par. Lost XI._

[9] “I take the risk,” or “Mine the risk.”

[10] The above is a concrete illustration of Browning’s meaning in the preceding quotation, but a far wider illustration is seen in the terrible cruelties inflicted on the one side by the Inquisition and on the other by the Protestants. This was again due to the introduction of _intellectualism_, which distorted the Religion of Love into a Religion of Hate.

[11] Cf. Coleridge, p. 313.

[12] The girls are bathing.

[13] The information in this note comes partly from _Notes and Queries_.

[14] See p. 40.

[15] It is unfortunate that this word is often used in the sense of something unreal as mere idle fancy instead of an _active creative_ faculty, see pp. 357, 358.

[16] In 1843 Mrs. Browning’s fine appeal, “The Cry of the Children.” appeared in “Blackwood,” but I presume had little effect. So also Hood’s “Song of the Shirt,” “Bridge of Sighs,” and “Song of the Labourer,” were written about the same time, but could have made little real impression.

[17] The family name is now apparently pronounced as it is spelt (see “An English Pronouncing Dictionary,” by Daniel Jones, and the “Century” and “Webster”). Such a change must often happen. I have cousins named Colclough, who in Australia became so tired of correcting people that they finally resigned themselves to the loss of the old pronunciation “Cokely” and accepted the less euphonious “Colclo.”

[18] Was a phrase of Cowper’s in Bentham’s mind? The latter wrote to Christopher Rowley, “We are strange creatures, my little friend; everything that we do is in reality important, though half that we do seems to be push-pin.”

[19] “Squyer” is a dissyllable. The final _e_ at the end of a line is always sounded like _a_ in “China.” “Lokkes,” “sleves” and “faire” are also dissyllables, because _e_, _ed_, _en_, _es_ are sounded as syllables, except before vowels and certain words beginning with _h_.

[20] Micah vi. 8.

[21] One certainly protests. There is a great mass of medical and other evidence to the contrary. Sir William Osler made notes of about 500 cases, and says, “To the great majority their death, like their birth, was a sleep and a forgetting.”

[22] The “Summit,” completion or end.

[23] The eyes, smile, etc., referred to in the intermediate verses.

[24] No doubt one reason would be that given by the Australian black woman for leaving her baby in the bush, “him too much cry.” The Greeks had numerous slaves, and were fond of comfort; and their houses were, of course, small and cramped compared with our own.

[25] Black care, Horace, Od. 3, 1, 40.

[26] Water-clocks, used like an hour-glass.

[27] When “Balder the Beautiful” was published in the _Contemporary_ (March-May, 1877), Buchanan had the following note, which he has not repeated in his collected works: “Balder (in this poem) is the divine spirit of earthly beauty and joy, and the only one of the gods who loves and pities men. Sick of the darkness of heaven, he returns to the earth which fostered him, and of which he is beloved, and now for the first time he becomes conscious of that Shadow of Death, which darkens the lot of all mortal things.”

[28] Quoted in E. Clodd’s _Story of Creation_.

[29] Italics mine.

[30] See, for instance, Kipling’s beautiful poem “A Dedication”

The depth and dream of my desire, The bitter paths wherein I stray, Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire, Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.

[31] Milton’s sonnet, “To the Lady Margaret Ley.”

[32] “They say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him” (John xx. 13). The sermon is on the subject of the growth of religious ideas.

[33] This standing by itself may give a somewhat wrong impression of Menzies’ thought. As a matter of fact, the text of the sermon is: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John x. 10).

[34] So we speak of a “sea of heads”, “sea of faces,” “sea of sand,” “sea of clouds,” “sea of vegetation,” etc.

[35] See sub-note at the end of this note.

[36] We can, however, agree that the language of all three poets, Shelley, Sappho, and Simonides, is exquisitely beautiful. Professor Naylor points out that it is a characteristic of the early Greek poets to compress a description into a series of epithets full of expression, without connecting words—compare Tennyson (“The Passing of Arthur”).

But it lies Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea.

[37] As Professor Darnley Naylor’s name appears at times in this book it is necessary to mention that _he is so qualified_ and, therefore, is not one of the gentlemen referred to.

I may mention here that Mr. Livingstone deserves censure for not giving us an index to his valuable book. This neglect, being greatly provocative of profanity, is an _offence against morality_. Much loss of time and irritation have been caused to me in looking up passages I remembered in his book—and I have at times given up the search in despair.

[38] See interesting remarks on Matthew Arnold and Addison in Herbert Spencer’s “Study of Sociology,” Note 20 to Ch. 10. Professor Naylor also in the preface to his _Latin and English Idiom_, points out that _verbally accurate_ translation of the Classics tends to _ruin_ the English of a student.

[39] For example: Miss Jane Harrison (_Mythology of Ancient Athens_) says “all sweetness and love” come to mortals from the “holy” Charites who “were in the fullest sense ‘givers of all grace.’” (That is to say, these deities have the attributes of _God_, who is, of course, the sole giver of all grace! Compare with this Professor Gilbert Murray on the god Dionysus, p. 374.)

[40] Unshriven, without having received the sacrament.

[41] Crucifix.

[42] Homer tells us that Apollo and Poseidon “built” the walls of Troy; the legend that Apollo moved stones into their places by music is of a later date. See Ovid, _Heroid_, 16, 181; Propertius 3, 9, 39. See also Tennyson’s “Oenone.”

[43] “Physician, heal thyself,” Luke iv, 23. Also, although it is not very apropos, see the following from Nicharchus in the Greek Anthology (G. B. Grundy’s translation):—

MEDICAL ATTENDANCE

Yesterday the Zeus of stone from the doctor had a call: Though he’s Zeus, and though he’s stone, yet to-day’s his funeral.

[44] This probably came from Erasmus. Compare:—

“Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.”

[45] Lincoln is alleged to have said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

[46] Showing that Sterne’s “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb” (_Sentimental Journey_) was his rendering of an older saying.

[47] “Kubla Khan.”

[48] An aromatic herb with yellow flowers.

[49] See p. XVIII.

[50] Curiously enough, they do not recognize this, but rather pride themselves upon being shrewd, commonsense, practical business-men, “a nation of shopkeepers”—although their entire history shows the contrary. That history is epitomized in such an expression as “England the Unready,” or, in the King’s appeal, “Wake up, England!” That they are idealists and dreamers can be shown by numberless facts. For example, what have they supported in the sacred name of Liberty? The laissez-faire doctrine, that law is an infringement of freedom, and, therefore, that cruelty, abuses, and absurdities must not be interfered with; the theory that England should be the home of freedom, and, therefore, that the scum of Europe shall infect the nation; the “Palladium of English Liberty,” Trial by Jury, which means the appointment of inexperienced, irresponsible, and easily-biassed judges; the economic policy, which, because it is falsely labelled Free Trade, becomes a fetish against which no practical objection must be urged and no lesson learned from the experience of other countries. On the other hand, our experience in the present war is a proof that the imaginative faculties are more powerful than mere intellect: for, when the Englishman bends his energies to the business of war, he soon surpasses the German for all his fifty years’ preparation. See p. 39.

[51] “What is life, what gladness without the golden Aphrodite? May death be mine when these joys no longer please me!”

[52] In the notes on the Greeks in this book it was necessary to keep to one State and a particular period. Greece consisted of a number of States of which Attica was one, with Athens as its centre. It comprised only seven hundred square miles, and, allowing for its colonies, would be about half the size of Lancashire. Its great and brilliant period corresponded roughly with the middle half of the Fifth Century B.C. A large proportion of the finest Greek art and literature was produced by this tiny state in that short period. This is the miracle of antiquity. It is to Attica during this period that my remarks mainly refer.

The reader will not be able to follow this note properly, unless he has read the other notes on the same subject (see Index of Subjects).

[53] The second is not by Praxilla. It is to be found in Athenaeus (XV. 695), and is _written in the masculine_. Most curiously the same mistake is made in the _Parnasse des Dames_, an 18th Century French book in which Myers would not have been interested.

[54] One at least of the Sappho enthusiasts still survives. See Professor T. G. Tucker’s _Sappho_.

[55] “_The Greek Genius and its meaning to us._”

[56] It should be remembered, however, that this is largely the history of Prussia also.

[57] See Mr. Livingstone’s book.

[58] But see p. 374 as to Dionysiac sect.

[59] See an interesting passage in Plato’s Republic, I, 330. See also p. 173 as to Herodotus.

[60] This should be taken into account in interpreting the plays of Euripides, who was probably a sceptic. The case of Aristophanes was different—he was known to be orthodox and almost any licence was permitted on the Comic Stage.

[61] Perhaps these woodcutters would not have entirely appreciated what Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson (_The Greek View of Life_) says of the Greek divinities. He tells us that the Greek originally felt “bewilderment and terror in the presence of the powers of nature,” but his religion developed “till at last from the womb of the dark enigma that haunted him in the beginning _there emerged into the charmed light of a world of ideal grace a pantheon of fair and concrete personalities_.” (The italics are mine). The classical enthusiast always pictures the Greeks as _living in fairyland_: actually the gods and lesser divinities were to them for the most part objects of awe and dread. In this “world of ideal grace” there would be, for example, the horrible Furies who dwelt in their grotto in Athens!

[62] I think it correct to say this, although there were political reasons also for prosecuting Socrates and, if he had shown less contempt for his judges, he might have been acquitted.

[63] I do not know how far unnatural vice extended among other peoples; but the statement in Plato’s “Symposium” that the Ionians and most of the barbarians held it in evil repute is strongly condemnatory of the Greeks.

[64] See how this idea pervades the whole of the famous Funeral Speech of Pericles, and how he defines what is “the good life” of a citizen.

[65] See Theoc. VII, 57, and what the Scholiast says. As to the subject generally see the references given by Mr. Rogers in _The Birds of Aristophanes_.

[66] _Modern Painters_, IV, XIII, 17.

[67] A few days after writing the above I was walking along the sea-beach with friends, and we came to a man and boy who were drawing in a net. It was a beautifully clear day, and no seagull or other bird could be seen anywhere. I pointed this out to my friends, and said, “You’ll see the patrol-bird arrive presently.” In a few minutes a gull appeared from nowhere, flew round the net, and then, as though the business was unimportant, flew away. The net when drawn in was empty! This is how the bird probably appeared to the Greeks. When the net brought in a haul, and the birds clamoured round it for their share, how very reasonable would this again appear to the Greeks.

[68] See also as to the so-called “purification rites” in the mysteries, p. 374.

[69] _The same pious Athenians who so enjoyed the Bacchae!_

[70] It is necessary to emphasize this, lest the reader should think that these illustrations are exceptional and the result of prolonged research. Actually I had no memoranda or other material when I began the many notes to this book, and those notes were all completed in ten months. For this note I simply took two books, Professor Murray’s and Mr. Zimmern’s, to illustrate my thesis. I might have chosen far more “enthusiastic” works than Mr. Zimmern’s excellent book.