We are willing to impute the transcendent, or if the epithet be preferred, the truly romantic nonsense of the last sentence, to the translator; but we may conjecture from the context, and from the other parts of his work, what was the drift of the author. M. Schlegel means to say (as he does affirm elsewhere) that this difference between ancient and modern genius, which is thus illustrated by sculpture and painting, or the plastic and the picturesque, pervades all the departments of literature and art, without exception. In music, for instance, the ancients are said to have preferred melody, the moderns, harmony-in architecture, compare the Parthenon or the Pantheon with Westminster Abbey, or the Church of St. Stephen at Vienna-even the sculpture of the moderns, according to the opinion of Hemsterhusius, is too much like painting, as the painting of the ancients was probably too much like sculpture. Now, in the first place, we deny the fact that the taste of the moderns is different from that of the Greeks in these particulars. As for the drama, we have no tragedies but Shakspeare's and if we had, his incomparable genius has settled that part of the controversy irreversibly, so far as popular opinion is concerned. But do not all scholars, without exception, admire and delight in the Greek tragedy? As for music, we suspect that melody is as much preferred now to harmony, as it ever was at Athens; but if it were not, it would be for time to decide, whether the taste of the day were not a transitory and false one. We know too little of the state of that art among the Greeks, to enable us to draw any sure inferences from it. Besides, the proper comparison would be not between melody and harmony, but between romantic melody or harmony, and classical melody or harmony, since both existed at each of the two great periods, and there can be no fair comparison but between things of the same kind, So with architecture. A Gothic cathedral has its beauties-it has its own peculiar proportions-it has fitness to the solemn purpose for which it was designed-it has gorgeous ornament, imposing massiveness, striking altitude,immense extent--its longdrawn aisle and fretted vault--its storied windows-the choir, the altar, the crucifixes, the confessional of the penitent, the stones of the pavement worn by the knees of pilgrims and crusaders, the air of venerable antiquity and religious gloom pervading the whole interior-a thousand interesting associations of the past and of the future, of history and the church, conspire to make it one of the most impressive objects that can be presented to the imagination of man. The origin of the style was in a dark age; but it has taken root, nor is it at all probable that, so long as Christianity shall endure, the modern world will ever be brought to think as meanly of these huge piles, as a Greek architect (if one were suddenly revived) possibly might. Still, there are very few builders of the present age who do not prefer the orders of Greece-and even if they did not, how would that prove that future ages would not? "Time will show," as Byron says, which taste is the more natural and reasonable and time only, and the voice of the majority, can shew it conclusively. Meanwhile, let us descend to details: suppose a particular object proposed to be painted or described in the strict sense of those words? Are there two ways of doing that perfectly, and yet as different from each other as the styles in question are supposed to be? A portrait, for instance,-is a classical likeness, a different thing from a romantic, and yet both good likenesses of the same thing? Suppose the object described to be twilight. If the pictures were confined to the sensible phenomena, it is obvious there could not be any variety in them, as any one who doubts what is so obvious to reason, may convince himself by comparing parallel passages in the ancient and modern classies-e.g. Milton's lines, "now came still evening on, and twilight gray"-Virgil's beautiful verses on midnight, in the fourth Eneid, Homer's on moon-light in the eighth Iliad. The exquisite sketches of these objects executed by the great masters just mentioned, are all in precisely the same style, and if they were in the same language, might easily be ascribed to the same age of poetry. To be sure, if without, or besides describing the object, some striking association of ideas be suggested, that may make a very material difference, because such things are essentially accidental and mutable. For instance, Dante's famous lines on the evening, describe it, not as the period of the day when nature exhibits such or such phenomena, which must always be the same while her everlasting order shall be maintained, but by certain casual circumstances which may or may not accompany that hour-the vesper bell, tolling the knell of the dying day, the lonely traveller looking back with a heart oppressed with fond regrets, to the home which he has just leftvery touching circumstances no doubt, to those who have a home or have lived in Catholic countries, but still extraneous, and it may be, transitory circumstances. The same thing may be affirmed of any other particular object, either in the moral or the material world. A picture of conjugal love, for instance, as in Hector and Andromache-of maternal despair, as in Shakspeare's Blanche---of filial devotedness, as in the Antigone. We do not comprehend how it is possible to exhibit such objects in more than one style that shall be perfect and that the natural, the universal, the unchangeable-quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. And what is clearly true of the details, we take to be equally true of the combinations. The spirit may vary, the associations, the colouring or complexion; but substantially, there can be but one form of ideal beauty, with which human nature, that never changes, will rest forever satisfied. We will borrow an illustration, on this subject, from the learned Michaelis. If any two systems of religion and poetry differ in their spirit, in the associations with which they surround the objects of their adoration and praise, and the effect they produce upon the mind of the votary, it is the Jewish and the Pagan-the one dwelling forever in its prophetic raptures, upon the sublime unity of the Godhead, filling immensity, whose invisible glory it was the guiltiest audacity to degrade by attempting to represent it in any sensible image; the other crowding all space with a mob of thirty thousand deities of every rank and shape. The sacred poetry of the Hebrey's, besides, is the great fountain of modern inspiration, strictly so called. Yet differing as widely as it is possible in the very element of thought and character from which Schlegel deJuces such important results, there is no essential difference in the forms of Hebrew and Classical poetry. The illustration we shall borrow from the learned author referred to, is the following. He remarks that as the Heathen assigned to Jupiter a chariot and horses of thunder, so the Hebrews have a similar fable, and the Cherubim are expressly the horses of Jehovah's chariot. He is frequently described as sitting upon the Cherubim. He thunders so that the earth shakes-or as Horace might have expressed it, 66 Jehovah per cælum tonantes Egit equos, volucremque currum; The same observation holds, in the strictest manner true, of Milton and Dante, the two most sublime poets of modern times, the most Christian in spirit, and the most classical and severe in style. After all, this classification of styles may be only a more artificial and scholastic way of confessing, that those irregular works of modern genius which are designated as romantic, par * On Lowth's Hebrew Poetry-Lect. ix. excellence, in fact, deviate very materially from the Greek standard. Of this no one who has studied criticism in the works of the ancients, can have any doubt at all. Three things were considered as essential to all excellence in a composition of genius, perfect unity of purpose, simplicity of style, and ease of execution-and it is in these things that the literature and art of Greece, exhibit their matchless perfection. Other nations have produced works indicating as rare and fertile invention, as much depth of thought, as much vigour of conception, as much intensity of feeling-but no body of literature or of art can be compared to the antique for the severe reason, the close, unsparing logic of its criticism. Unity of design, especially, which is more immediately connected with the subject in hand, they rigorously exacted. They considered a work of art always as a whole-a sort of organized body-to the very structure of which certain parts and proportions, and none others, were essential, and in which the least violation of this fitness and harmony, was a deformity, more or less uncouth and monstrous. The details were sacrificed without mercy to the general effect. In an oration, for instance, they looked to the end which the speaker had in view, and whatever was not calculated to further that, however brilliant and impressive in itself, was rejected without reserve. The notion of Pythagoras, that the sublime order of the universe was maintained by the secret power of proportion, by the magic of mathematical relations, probably sprung out of this truly Greek idea of the perfection of art, applied by analogy to the works of creation.t This unity of thought, this harmony in composition, this ȧváyxŋ Aoyoy papin, as Plato calls it, a sort of necessary connexion, like that of cause and effect, between the parts, every thing being in its right place, following logically from what goes before it, leading inevitably to what comes after it, pervades all * Plato, Phæd. p. 264. c. Socrates says, ofua, &c. závra Móyov WσTEP (Wov συνεςάναι, σῶμά τι ἔχοντα αὐτὸν αὐτοῦ ὡσε μήτε ἀκέφαλον, &c. “I think you ought to say that every composition is, as it were, an animal having a body of its own so that it should be neither without a head or feet, but should have its various parts, suitable to one another, and composing one perfect whole.” μέoà σε ἔχειν καὶ ἄκρα, πρέποντα ἀλλήλοις καὶ τῷ ὅλῳ γεγραμμένα. + There is a remarkable passage in Cicero, (de Finib. 1. 3. c. 22) in which this idea is brought out very vividly and precisely-Quid, enim, aut in rerum natura, quâ nihil est aptius, nihil descriptius, aut in operibus manu factis, tam compositum tamque compactum et coagmentatum inveniri potest. Quid posterius priori non convenit? Quid sequitur quod non respondeat superiori? Quid non sic aliud exalis neclitur, ut non, si unam literam moveris, labent omnia? &c. We should have translated this, if we could have ventured to take that liberty with what is so perfect in itself, and so strikingly illustrates our text. (3) Ubi. sup. VOL. VII.---NO. 13. 4 the monuments of genius which that wonderful race has left behind it. Their superiority in this exquisite logic of literature and the arts-a logic not a jot less exact and elegant than the demonstrations of their own unrivalled geometry-is, we fear, a lamentable truth, nor will it help us much to call our deformities, peculiarities, and to dignify what is only not art with the specious title of the 'romantic.' to This severe study of unity naturally led, it seems to us, the two other prominent excellencies of Greek style, simplicity and ease or grace. Their genius was most enthusiastic-their sensibilities were acute and even lively to excess. Let any one read those passages of their best authors wherein they treat of poetry, and he will not fail to be struck with the force of their expressions. They speak of it as a heavenly inspiration, a divine fury, the revelry and intoxication of the soul--they compare it to the madness of the Pythoness, the rage of the bachanal, the convulsive improvisations of the Corybantes awakened by the peculiar μλos of their God.* But their taste was as refined as their temperament was ardent, and hence the severity of the restraints which they laid upon their own genius. They seem to have been conscious of their tendency to exceed, rather than be wanting, in energy and warmth, and to overstep the modesty of nature by indulging her impulses too freely. They studied perpetually how to speak the language of soberness and truth. The smallest appearance of effort or exaggeration was particularly disagreeable to them, as leading to the vice they most avoided. The intense love of beauty which possessed them, the influence of a happy climate and still happier organization, the native inspiration of genius, were common advantages, and those were enough, they thought, to insure all the power necessary, (with sufficient discipline) to attain to a high degree of excellence. The artist was supposed to possess this qualification as of course. His aim, therefore, was not to shew that he possessed it, by an affected or ostentatious and unseasonable display of it, but to manage it with a wise economy, to turn it to the greatest account in creating, in whatever might be his province, some perfect form of beauty. His study of the ideal led him to think, as we have shown, of the composition of a whole; for details, however brilliant, were still mere fragments, and as such were unworthy of his ambition. Any body could accomplish them, and abundance always creates fastidiousness. But to do all that can be done by the greatest effort of genius, yet to be free from all the faults into which genius, when it exerts * See the truly Dithyrambic effusion of Socrates in Plato's Io. |