LECTURE II.
IDOLATRY.
_November, 1870._
28. Beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as the art offiction in solid substance, we are now to consider what its subjectsshould be. What--having the gift of imagery--should we by preferenceendeavour to image? A question which is, indeed, subordinate to thedeeper one--why we should wish to image anything at all.
29. Some years ago, having been always desirous that the education ofwomen should begin in learning how to cook, I got leave, one day, for alittle girl of eleven years old to exchange, much to her satisfaction,her schoolroom for the kitchen. But as ill fortune would have it, therewas some pastry toward, and she was left unadvisedly in command of somedelicately rolled paste; whereof she made no pies, but an unlimitedquantity of cats and mice.
Now you may read the works of the gravest critics of art from end toend; but you will find, at last, they can give you no other true accountof the spirit of sculpture than that it is an irresistible humaninstinct for the making of cats and mice, and other imitable livingcreatures, in such permanent form that one may play with the images atleisure.
Play with them, or love them, or fear them, or worship them. The cat maybecome the goddess Pasht, and the mouse, in the hand of the sculpturedking, enforce his enduring words "[Greek: es eme tis oreon eusebesesto];" but the great mimetic instinct underlies all such purpose; andis zooplastic,--life-shaping,--alike in the reverent and the impious.
30. Is, I say, and has been, hitherto; none of us dare say that it willbe. I shall have to show you hereafter that the greater part of thetechnic energy of men, as yet, has indicated a kind of childhood; andthat the race becomes, if not more wise, at least more manly,[113] withevery gained century. I can fancy that all this sculpturing and paintingof ours may be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind ofdoll-making, and that the words of Sir Isaac Newton may be smiled at nomore: only it will not be for stars that we desert our stone dolls, butfor men. When the day comes, as come it must, in which we no more defaceand defile God's image in living clay, I am not sure that we shall anyof us care so much for the images made of Him, in burnt clay.
31. But, hitherto, the energy of growth in any people may be almostdirectly measured by their passion for imitative art; namely, forsculpture, or for the drama, which is living and speaking sculpture, or,as in Greece, for both; and in national as in actual childhood, it isnot merely the _making_, but the _making-believe_; not merely the actingfor the sake of the scene, but acting for the sake of acting, that isdelightful. And, of the two mimetic arts, the drama, being morepassionate, and involving conditions of greater excitement and luxury,is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating strength in thepeople; while fine sculpture, requiring always submission to severe law,is an unfailing proof of their being in early and active progress._There is no instance of fine sculpture being produced by a nationeither torpid, weak, or in decadence._ Their drama may gain in grace andwit; but their sculpture, in days of decline, is _always_ base.
32. If my little lady in the kitchen had been put in command of colours,as well as of dough, and if the paste would have taken the colours, wemay be sure her mice would have been painted brown, and her catstortoise-shell; and this, partly indeed for the added delight andprettiness of colour itself, but more for the sake of absoluterealization to her eyes and mind. Now all the early sculpture of themost accomplished nations has been thus coloured, rudely or finely; and,therefore, you see at once how necessary it is that we should keep theterm "graphic" for imitative art generally; since no separation can atfirst be made between carving and painting, with reference to the mentalpowers exerted in, or addressed by, them. In the earliest known art ofthe world, a reindeer hunt may be scratched in outline on the flat sideof a clean-picked bone, and a reindeer's head carved out of the end ofit; both these are flint-knife work, and, strictly speaking, sculpture:but the scratched outline is the beginning of drawing, and the carvedhead of sculpture proper. When the spaces enclosed by the scratchedoutline are filled with colour, the colouring soon becomes a principalmeans of effect; so that, in the engraving of an Egyptian-colourbas-relief (S. 101), Rosellini has been content to miss the outliningincisions altogether, and represent it as a painting only. Its properdefinition is, "painting accented by sculpture;" on the other hand, insolid coloured statues,--Dresden china figures, for example,--we havepretty sculpture accented by painting; the mental purpose in both kindsof art being to obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, andthe ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation isobtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to you in myfifth lecture, everything is seen by the eye as patches of colour, andof colour only; a fact which the Greeks knew well; so that when itbecomes a question in the dialogue of Minos, "[Greek: tini onti te opseihoratai ta hoomena]," the answer is "[Greek: aisthesei taute te dia tonophthalmon deloise hemin ta chromata]."--"What kind of power is thesight with which we see things? It is that sense which, through theeyes, can reveal _colours_ to us."
33. And now observe that while the graphic arts begin in the meremimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more perfect realization,to act under the influence of a stronger and higher instinct. They beginby scratching the reindeer, the most interesting object of sight. Butpresently, as the human creature rises in scale of intellect, itproceeds to scratch, not the most interesting object of sight only, butthe most interesting object of imagination; not the reindeer, but theMaker and Giver of the reindeer. And the second great condition for theadvance of the art of sculpture is that the race should possess, inaddition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or idolizing instinct;the desire to see as substantial the powers that are unseen, and bringnear those that are far off, and to possess and cherish those that arestrange. To make in some way tangible and visible the nature of thegods--to illustrate and explain it by symbols; to bring the immortalsout of the recesses of the clouds, and make them Penates; to bring backthe dead from darkness, and make them Lares.
34. Our conception of this tremendous and universal human passion hasbeen altogether narrowed by the current idea that Pagan religious artconsisted only, or chiefly, in giving personality to the gods. Thepersonality was never doubted; it was visibility, interpretation, andpossession that the hearts of men sought. Possession, first of all--thegetting hold of some hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on itsknees if it was pulled from its pedestal--and, afterwards, slowlyclearing manifestation; the exactly right expression is used in Lucian'sdream,--[Greek: Pheidias edeixe ton Dia]; "Showed[114] Zeus;" manifestedhim, nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, or created, as you have it,in Anacreon's ode to the Rose, of the birth of Athena herself--
[Greek: polemoklonon t' Athenen koruphes edeiknye Zeus.]
But I will translate the passage from Lucian to you at length--it is inevery way profitable.
35. "There came to me, in the healing[115] night, a divine dream, soclear that it missed nothing of the truth itself; yes, and still afterall this time, the shapes of what I saw remain in my sight, and thesound of what I heard dwells in my ears"--note the lovely sense of[Greek: enaulos]--the sound being as of a stream passing always by inthe same channel,--"so distinct was everything to me. Two women laidhold of my hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, thatI had like to have been pulled asunder; and they cried out against oneanother,--the one, that she was resolved to have me to herself, beingindeed her own, and the other that it was vain for her to claim whatbelonged to others;--and the one who first claimed me for her own waslike a hard worker, and had strength as a man's; and her hair was dusty,and her hand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight abouther, and the folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that shelooked just as my uncle used to look when he was filing stones: but theother was pleasant in features, and delicate in form, and orderly in herdress; and so in the end, they left it to me to decide, after hearingwhat they had to say, with which of them I would go; and first the hardfeatur
ed and masculine one spoke:--
IV
THE NATIVITY OF ATHENA.]
36. "'Dear child, I am the Art of Image-sculpture, which yesterday youbegan to learn; and I am as one of your own people, and of your house,for your grandfather,' (and she named my mother's father) 'was astone-cutter; and both your uncles had good name through me: and if youwill keep yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies thatcome from this creature,' (and she pointed to the other woman) 'and willfollow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be brought up as aman should be, and have strong shoulders; and, besides that, you shallbe kept well quit of all restless desires, and you shall never beobliged to go away into any foreign places, leaving your own country andthe people of your house; _neither shall all men praise you for yourtalk_.[116] And you must not despise this rude serviceableness of mybody, neither this meanness of my dusty dress; for, pushing on in theirstrength from such things as these, that great Phidias revealed Zeus,and Polyclitus wrought out Hera, and Myron was praised, and Praxitelesmarvelled at: therefore are these men worshipped with the gods.'"
37. There is a beautiful ambiguity in the use of the preposition withthe genitive in this last sentence. "Pushing on from these things" meansindeed, justly, that the sculptors rose from a mean state to a nobleone; but not as _leaving_ the mean state;--not as, from a hard life,attaining to a soft one,--but as being helped and strengthened by therough life to do what was greatest. Again, "worshipped with the gods"does not mean that they are thought of as in any sense equal to, or liketo, the gods, but as being on the side of the gods against what is baseand ungodly; and that the kind of worth which is in them is thereforeindeed worshipful, as having its source with the gods. Finally, observethat every one of the expressions, used of the four sculptors, isdefinitely the best that Lucian could have chosen. Phidias carved likeone who had seen Zeus, and had only to _reveal_ him; Polyclitus, inlabour of intellect, completed his sculpture by just law, and _wrought_out Hera; Myron was of all most _praised_, because he did best whatpleased the vulgar; and Praxiteles, the most _wondered at_ or admired,because he bestowed utmost exquisiteness of beauty.
38. I am sorry not to go on with the dream; the more refined lady, asyou may remember, is liberal or gentlemanly Education, and prevails atlast; so that Lucian becomes an author instead of a sculptor, I think tohis own regret, though to our present benefit. One more passage of his Imust refer you to, as illustrative of the point before us; thedescription of the temple of the Syrian Hieropolis, where he explainsthe absence of the images of the sun and moon. "In the temple itself,"he says, "on the left hand as one goes in, there is set first the throneof the sun; but no form of him is thereon, for of these two powersalone, the sun and the moon, they show no carved images. And I alsolearned why this is their law, for they say that it is permissible,indeed, to make of the other gods, graven images, since the forms ofthem are not visible to all men. But Helios and Selenaia are everywhereclear-bright, and all men behold them; what need is there therefore forsculptured work of these, who appear in the air?"
39. This, then, is the second instinct necessary to sculpture; thedesire for the manifestation, description, and companionship of unknownpowers; and for possession of a bodily substance--the "bronzeStrasbourg," which you can embrace, and hang immortelles on the headof--instead of an abstract idea. But if you get nothing more in thedepth of the national mind than these two feelings, the mimetic andidolizing instincts, there may be still no progress possible for thearts except in delicacy of manipulation and accumulative caprice ofdesign. You must have not only the idolizing instinct, but an [Greek:ethos] which chooses the right thing to idolize! Else, you will getstates of art like those in China or India, non-progressive, and ingreat part diseased and frightful, being wrought under the influence offoolish terror, or foolish admiration. So that a third condition,completing and confirming both the others, must exist in order to thedevelopment of the creative power.
40. This third condition is that the heart of the nation shall be set onthe discovery of just or equal law, and shall be from day to daydeveloping that law more perfectly. The Greek school of sculpture isformed during, and in consequence of, the national effort to discoverthe nature of justice; the Tuscan, during, and in consequence of, thenational effort to discover the nature of justification. I assert to youat present briefly, what will, I hope, be the subject of prolongedillustration hereafter.
41. Now when a nation with mimetic instinct and imaginative longing isalso thus occupied earnestly in the discovery of Ethic law, that effortgradually brings precision and truth into all its manual acts; and thephysical progress of sculpture as in the Greek, so in the Tuscan,school, consists in gradually _limiting_ what was before indefinite, in_verifying_ what was inaccurate, and in _humanizing_ what was monstrous.I might perhaps content you by showing these external phenomena, and bydwelling simply on the increasing desire of naturalness, which compels,in every successive decade of years, literally, in the sculpturedimages, the mimicked bones to come together, bone to his bone; and theflesh to come up upon them, until from a flattened and pinched handfulof clay, respecting which you may gravely question whether it wasintended for a human form at all;--by slow degrees, and added touch totouch, in increasing consciousness of the bodily truth,--at last theAphrodite of Melos stands before you, a perfect woman. But all thatsearch for physical accuracy is merely the external operation, in thearts, of the seeking for truth in the inner soul; it is impossiblewithout that higher effort, and the demonstration of it would be worsethan useless to you, unless I made you aware at the same time of itsspiritual cause.
42. Observe farther; the increasing truth in representation isco-relative with increasing beauty in the thing to be represented. Thepursuit of justice which regulates the imitative effort, regulates alsothe development of the race into dignity of person, as of mind; andtheir culminating art-skill attains the grasp of entire truth at themoment when the truth becomes most lovely. And then, ideal sculpture maygo on safely into portraiture. But I shall not touch on the subject ofportrait sculpture to-day; it introduces many questions of detail, andmust be a matter for subsequent consideration.
43. These then are the three great passions which are concerned in truesculpture. I cannot find better, or, at least, more easily remembered,names for them than "the Instincts of Mimicry, Idolatry, andDiscipline;" meaning, by the last, the desire of equity and wholesomerestraint, in all acts and works of life. Now of these, there is noquestion but that the love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the loveof Discipline is natural and right. But it looks a grave questionwhether the yearning for Idolatry, (the desire of companionship withimages,) is right. Whether, indeed, if such an instinct be essential togood sculpture, the art founded on it can possibly be "fine" art.
44. I must now beg for your close attention, because I have to point outdistinctions in modes of conception which will appear trivial to you,unless accurately understood; but of an importance in the history of artwhich cannot be overrated.
When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Strasbourg withimmortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious decorators, wouldsuppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost ofthe city, was actually there, sitting in the Place de la Concorde. Thefigure was delightful to them as a visible nucleus for their fondthoughts about Strasbourg; but never for a moment supposed to _be_Strasbourg.
Similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue purporting torepresent a river instead of a city,--the Rhine, or Garonne,suppose,--and have been touched with strong emotion in looking at it, ifthe real river were dear to them, and yet never think for an instantthat the statue _was_ the river.
And yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they might takedelight in the beautiful image of a god, because it gathered andperpetuated their thoughts about that god; and yet never suppose, nor becapable of being deceived by any arguments into supposing, that thestatue _was_ the god.
On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell
from the sky in the sight ofa savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it asidein some, to him, sacred place, and believe _the stone itself_ to be akind of god, and offer prayer and sacrifice to it.
In like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, such, forinstance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, he would be apt toregard in the same way; and very possibly also construct for himselffrightful idols of some kind, calculated to produce upon him a vagueimpression of their being alive; whose imaginary anger he mightdeprecate or avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving inthem any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature.
45. If you will now refer to Sec. 52-59 of my Introductory Lectures, youwill find this distinction between a resolute conception, recognized forsuch, and an involuntary apprehension of spiritual existence, alreadyinsisted on at some length. And you will see more and more clearly as weproceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded conception isnot idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one of the grandestand wholesomest functions of the human soul; and that the essence ofevil idolatry begins only in the idea or belief of a real presence ofany kind, in a thing in which there is no such presence.
46. I need not say that the harm of the idolatry must depend on thecertainty of the negative. If there be a real presence in a pillar ofcloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in a still small voice, it is no sinto bow down before these.
But, as matter of historical fact, the idea of such presence hasgenerally been both ignoble and false, and confined to nations ofinferior race, who are often condemned to remain for ages in conditionsof vile terror, destitute of thought. Nearly all Indian architecture andChinese design arise out of such a state: so also, though in a lessgross degree, Ninevite and Phoenician art, early Irish, andScandinavian; the latter, however, with vital elements of high intellectmingled in it from the first.
But the greatest races are never grossly subject to such terror, even intheir childhood, and the course of their minds is broadly divisible intothree distinct stages.
47. (I.) In their infancy they begin to imitate the real animals aboutthem, as my little girl made the cats and mice, but with an undercurrentof partial superstition--a sense that there must be more in thecreatures than they can see; also they catch up vividly any of thefancies of the baser nations round them, and repeat these more or lessapishly, yet rapidly naturalizing and beautifying them. They thenconnect all kinds of shapes together, compounding meanings out of theold chimeras, and inventing new ones with the speed of a runningwild-fire; but always getting more of man into their images, andadmitting less of monster or brute; their own characters, meanwhile,expanding and purging themselves, and shaking off the feverish fancy, asspringing flowers shake the earth off their stalks.
48. (II.) In the second stage, being now themselves perfect men andwomen, they reach the conception of true and great gods as existent inthe universe; and absolutely cease to think of them as in any wisepresent in statues or images; but they have now learned to make thesestatues beautifully human, and to surround them with attributes that mayconcentrate their thoughts of the gods. This is, in Greece, accuratelythe Pindaric time, just a little preceding the Phidian; the Phidian isalready dimmed with a faint shadow of infidelity; still, the OlympicZeus may be taken as a sufficiently central type of a statue which wasno more supposed to _be_ Zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks it wasmade of; but in which the most splendid powers of human art wereexhausted in representing a believed and honoured God to the happy andholy imagination of a sincerely religious people.
49. (III.) The third stage of national existence follows, in which, theimagination having now done its utmost, and being partly restrained bythe sanctities of tradition, which permit no farther change in theconceptions previously created, begins to be superseded by logicaldeduction and scientific investigation. At the same moment, the elderartists having done all that is possible in realizing the nationalconceptions of the Gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change thescheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anythingbetter in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the oldideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and morelimited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also, in thecourse of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, andbeing made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, foreminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation; whereasintellectual design can never be discerned but by the few. So that inthis third aera, we find every kind of imitative and vulgar dexteritymore and more cultivated; while design and imagination are every dayless cared for, and less possible.
50. Meanwhile, as I have just said, the leading minds in literature andscience become continually more logical and investigative; and, oncethat they are established in the habit of testing facts accurately, avery few years are enough to convince all the strongest thinkers thatthe old imaginative religion is untenable, and cannot any longer behonestly taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorantpersons. And at this point the fate of the people absolutely depends onthe degree of moral strength into which their hearts have been alreadytrained. If it be a strong, industrious, chaste, and honest race, thetaking its old gods, or at least the old forms of them, away from it,will indeed make it deeply sorrowful and amazed; but will in no whitshake its will, nor alter its practice. Exceptional persons, naturallydisposed to become drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who had beenpreviously restrained from indulging these dispositions by their fear ofGod, will, of course, break out into open vice, when that fear isremoved. But the heads of the families of the people, instructed in thepure habits and perfect delights of an honest life, and to whom thethought of a Father in heaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, willassuredly not seek relief from the discomfort of their orphanage bybecoming uncharitable and vile. Also the high leaders of their thoughtgather their whole strength together in the gloom; and at the firstentrance of this valley of the Shadow of Death, look their new enemyfull in the eyeless face of him, and subdue him, and his terror, undertheir feet. "Metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,... strepitumqueAcherontis avari." This is the condition of national soul expressed bythe art, and the words, of Holbein, Durer, Shakspeare, Pope, and Goethe.
51. But if the people, at the moment when the trial of darknessapproaches, be not confirmed in moral character, but are onlymaintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of a spectral religion; themoment the staff of their faith is broken, the character of the racefalls like a climbing plant cut from its hold: then all the earthliestvices attack it as it lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insanesin is developed, and half a century is sometimes enough to close, inhopeless shame, the career of the nation in literature, art, and war.
52. Notably, within the last hundred years, all religion has perishedfrom the practically active national mind of France and England. Nostatesman in the senate of either country would dare to use a sentenceout of their acceptedly divine Revelation, as having now a literalauthority over them for their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom fortheir contemplation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in theface of her former God; and proclaimed, with open challenge to Him, herresolved worship of His declared enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore,founded on religion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effeteand corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the historyof mankind: and it is possible to show you the condition of sculptureliving, and sculpture dead, in accurate opposition, by simply comparingthe nascent Pisan school in Italy with the existing school in England.
53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in your educationalseries, as a type of original Italian sculpture, the pulpit by NiccolaPisano in the Duomo of Siena. I would rather, had it been possible, havegiven the pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa; but thatpulpit is dispersed in fragments through the upper galleries of theDuomo, and the cloister of the Campo Santo; and the casts of itsfragments now put together at Kensington are too coarse to be of u
se toyou. You may partly judge, however, of the method of their execution bythe eagle's head, which I have sketched from the marble in the CampoSanto (Edu., No. 113), and the lioness with her cubs, (Edu., No. 103,more carefully studied at Siena); and I will get you other illustrationsin due time. Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of theCathedral of Pisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, and HolyField, with the main purpose of the principal building lately raised forthe people of London. In these days, we indeed desire no cathedrals; butwe have constructed an enormous and costly edifice, which, in claimingeducational influence over the whole London populace, and middle class,is verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century,--the CrystalPalace.
54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly discoveredstyle of architecture, greater than any hitherto known,--our bestpopular writers, in their enthusiasm, describing it as an edifice ofFairyland. You are nevertheless to observe that this novel production offairy enchantment is destitute of every kind of sculpture, except thebosses produced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the Duomo ofPisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its capitals,inlaid colour designs of its facade, embossed panels of its baptisteryfont, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, contained the germ of aschool of sculpture which was to maintain, through a subsequent periodof four hundred years, the greatest power yet reached by the arts of theworld in description of Form, and expression of Thought.
55. Now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the vastdiscrepancy in the character of these two buildings.
In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa, was a colossal image ofChrist, in coloured mosaic, bearing to the temple, as nearly aspossible, the relation which the statue of Athena bore to the Parthenon;and in the same manner, concentrating the imagination of the Pisan onthe attributes of the God in whom he believed.
In precisely the same position with respect to the nave of the building,but of larger size, as proportioned to the three or four times greaterscale of the whole, a colossal piece of sculpture was placed by Englishdesigners, at the extremity of the Crystal Palace, in preparation fortheir solemnities in honour of the birthday of Christ, in December, 1867or 1868.
That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a pantomime, sometwelve feet high from brow to chin, which face, being moved by themechanism which is our pride, every half minute opened its mouth fromear to ear, showed its teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of theseperiodical seasons of expression being increased and explained by theilluminated inscription underneath "Here we are again."
56. When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that the mind of theEnglish populace is to be addressed, in the principal Sacred Festival ofits year, by sculpture such as this, I need scarcely point out to youthat the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence bycollecting within this building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kindof art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it arecontinually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind ittogether) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the pastwork, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Christians,miscoloured, misplaced, and misinterpreted;[117] here thrust intounseemly corners, and there mortised together into mere confusion ofheterogeneous obstacle; pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable inweariness, until any kind of relief is sought from it in steamwheelbarrows or cheap toy-shops; and most of all in beer and meat, thecorks and the bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp dealflooring of the English Fairy Palace.
57. But you will probably think me unjust in assuming that a buildingprepared only for the amusement of the people can typically representthe architecture or sculpture of modern England. You may urge, that Iought rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which isexecuted in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upperclasses, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I could not nowcriticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because Ihave not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general.I will, however, in some points, tell you the facts by anticipation.
58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture; but portrait sculpture,which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, even when produced bymen of genius;--nor does it in the least require men of genius toproduce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest giftsof painting; but any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, cancarve a satisfactory bust.
59. Of our powers in historical sculpture, I am, without question, just,in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments we have erected to ourtwo greatest heroes by sea and land; namely, the Nelson Column, and thestatue of the Duke of Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, Ihope, think me severe,--certainly, whatever you may think me, I am usingonly the most temperate language, in saying of both these monuments,that they are absolutely devoid of high sculptural merit. But, considerhow much is involved in the fact thus dispassionately stated, respectingthe two monuments in the principal places of our capital, to our twogreatest heroes.
60. Remember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetualstudy and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand yearspast: especially, we have the best sculpture of Greece, for example ofbodily perfection; the best of Rome, for example of character inportraiture; the best of Florence, for example of romantic passion: wehave unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we havethe most perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human andcomparative; and, we have bribes for the reward of success, large, inthe proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared with those offeredto the artists of any other period. And with all these advantages, andthe stimulus also of fame carried instantly by the press to the remotestcorners of Europe, the best efforts we can make, on the grandest ofoccasions, result in work which it is impossible in any one particularto praise.
Now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the negation of thefaculty of sculpture this implies in the national mind! What measurescan be assigned to the gulf of incapacity, which can deliberatelyswallow up in the gorge of it the teaching and example of three thousandyears, and produce as the result of that instruction, what it iscourteous to call "nothing?"
61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive, on the evidence presentedby our historical sculpture. To complete the measure of ourselves, wemust endeavour to estimate the rank of the two opposite schools ofsculpture employed by us in the nominal service of religion, and in theactual service of vice.
I am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of Christ, nor ofany scene related in the New Testament, produced by us within the lastthree hundred years, which has possessed even superficial merit enoughto attract public attention.
Whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art which we learn,more or less apishly, from the French schools, and employ, but toogladly, in manufacturing articles for the amusement of the luxuriousclasses, must be ranked as one of the chief instruments used by joyfulfiends and angry fates, for the ruin of our civilization.
If, after I have set before you the nature and principles of truesculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you reconsider thesefacts,--(which you will then at once recognize as such),--you will findthat they absolutely justify my assertion that the state of sculpture inmodern England, as compared with that of the great Ancients, isliterally one of corrupt and dishonourable death, as opposed to brightand fameful life.
62. And now, will you bear with me, while I tell you finally why this isso?
The cause with which you are personally concerned is your own frivolity;though essentially this is not your fault, but that of the system ofyour early training. But the fact remains the same, that here, inOxford, you, a chosen body of English youth, in no wise care for thehistory of your country, for its present dangers, or its present duties.You still, like children of seven or eight years old, are interestedonly in bats, balls, and oars: nay, including with you the students ofGermany and Franc
e, it is certain that the general body of modernEuropean youth have their minds occupied more seriously by the sculptureand painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all thedivinest workmanship and passionate imagination of Greece, Rome, andMediaeval Christendom.
63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, and ofworse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms of deadlyIdolatry which are now all but universal in England.
The first of these is the worship of the Eidolon, or Phantasm of Wealth;worship of which you will find the nature partly examined in the 37thparagraph of my _Munera Pulveris_; but which is briefly to be defined asthe servile apprehension of an active power in Money, and the submissionto it as the God of our life.
64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly imaginativefaculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the Spirit, in what wechiefly accept as the ordinance and teaching of Deity; and theapprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading the Bookwhose primal commands we refuse to obey.
No feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more shamefulidolatry, than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the majorityof English religious persons, that the Word of God, by which the heavenswere of old, and the earth, standing out of the water and in thewater,--the Word of God which came to the prophets, and comes still forever to all who will hear it, (and to many who will forbear); and which,called Faithful and True, is to lead forth, in the judgment, the armiesof heaven,--that this "Word of God" may yet be bound at our pleasure inmorocco, and carried about in a young lady's pocket, with tasselledribands to mark the passages she most approves of.
65. Gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, and England islittle likely to give the unexampled spectacle, of a country successfulin the noble arts, yet in which the youths were frivolous, the maidensfalsely religious, the men, slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity.Not from all the marble of the hills of Luni will such a people evershape one statue that may stand nobly against the sky; not from all thetreasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they gather, fortheir own descendants, any inheritance but shame.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] Glance forward at once to Sec. 75, read it, and return to this.
[114] There is a primary and vulgar sense of "exhibited" in Lucian'smind; but the higher meaning is involved in it.
[115] In the Greek, "ambrosial." Recollect always that ambrosia, as foodof gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food isambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called "ambrosial"because it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the23rd Psalm, the stillness of waters.
[116] I have italicised this final promise of blessedness, given by thenoble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's 5th Latter-day pamphlet,throughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition.
[117] "Falsely represented," would be the better expression. In the castof the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliageof which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, isrepresented by a repetition of casts from one mould, of which the designitself is entirely conjectural.