Elgin Theseus, we may obtain a general idea of the effect of the influence, as shown by its absence in one, and presence in the other, of two works which, as far as artistical merit is concerned, are in some measure parallel; not that I believe, even in this respect, the Laocoon is justifiably comparable with the Theseus. I suppose that no group has exercised so pernicious an influence on art as this; a subject ill chosen, meanly conceived and unnaturally treated, recommended to imitation by subtleties of execution and accumulation of technical knowledge.1

'I would also have the reader compare with the meagre lines and contemptible tortures of the Laocoon, the awfulness and quietness of M. Angelo's treatment of a subject in most respects similar (the plague of the Fiery Serpents), but of which the choice was justified both by the place which the event holds in the typical system he had to arrange, and by the grandeur of the plague itself, in its multitudinous grasp, and its mystical salvation; sources of sublimity entirely absent in the death of the Dardan priest. It is good to see how his gigantic intellect reaches after repose, and truthfully finds it, in the falling hand of the near figure, and in the deathful decline of that whose hands are held up even in their venomed coldness to the cross; and though irrelevant to our present purpose, it is well also to note how the grandeur of this treatment results, not merely from choice, but from a greater knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth. For whatever knowledge of the human frame there may be in the Laocoon, there is certainly none of the habits of serpents. The fixing of the snake's head in the side of the principal figure is as false to nature, as it is poor in composition of line. A large serpent never wants to bite; it wants to hold; it seizes therefore always where it can hold best, by the extremities, or throat; it seizes once and for ever; and that before it coils; following up the seizure with a cast of its body round the victim, as invisibly swift as the twist of a whip lash round any hard object it may strike: and then it holds fast, never moving the jaws or the body; if the prey has any power of struggling left, it throws round another coil, without quitting the hold with the jaws: if Laocoon had had to do with real serpents, instead of pieces of tape with heads to them, he would have been held still, and not allowed to throw his arms or legs about. It is most instructive to observe the accuracy of Michael Angelo, in the rendering of these circumstances; the binding of the arms to the body, and the knotting of the whole mass of agony together, until we hear the crashing of the bones beneath the grisly sliding of the engine folds. Note also the expression in all the figures of another circumstance; the torpor and cold numbness of the limbs induced by the serpent venom, which, though justifiably overlooked by the sculptor of the Laocoon, as well as by Virgil, in consideration of the rapidity of the death by crushing, adds infinitely to the power of the Florentine's conception, and would have been better hinted by Virgil, than that sickening distribution of venom on the garlands. In fact, Virgil has missed both of truth and impressiveness every way-the "morsu depacitur" is unnatural butchery-the" perfusus veneno" gratuitous foulness-the "clamores horrendos," impossible degradation; compare carefully the remarks on this statue in Sir Charles Bell's Essay on Expression, (third edition, p. 192) where he has most wisely and incontrovertibly deprived the statue of all claim to expression of energy and fortitude of mind and shown its common and coarse intent of mere bodily exertion and agony; while he has confirmed Payne Knight's just condemnation of the passage in Virgil. Observe, VOL. II.

K

altar tombs.

§ 7. And in In Christian art, it would be well to compare the feeling of the finer among the altar tombs of the middle ages, with any monumental works after Michael Angelo; perhaps more especially with works of Roubilliac or Canova.

In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance door of the north transept, there is a monument by Jacopo della Quercia to Ilaria di Caretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi. I name it not as more beautiful or perfect than other examples of the same period; but as furnishing an instance of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rudeness of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid imitation of life, sleep, or death, of which the fashion has taken place in modern times.1 with a hound at her feet; head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow, in which, let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive imitation of pressure. It is understood as a pillow, but not mistaken for one. The hair is bound in a flat braid over the fair brow, the sweet and arched eyes are closed, the tenderness of the loving lips is set and quiet;

She is lying on a simple couch not on the side, but with the

however, that no fault is to be found with the uniting of the poisonous and crushing powers in the serpents; this is, both in Virgil and Michael Angelo, a healthy operation of the imagination, since though those two powers are not, I believe, united in any known serpent, yet in the essence or idea of serpent they are; nor is there anything contradictory in them or incapable of perfect unity. But in Virgil it is unhealthy operation of the imagination, which destroys the verity both of the venom and the crushing, by attributing impossible concomitants to both: by supposing in the poison an impossible quantity uselessly directed, and leaving the victim capability of crying out, under the action of the coils.

If the reader wishes to see the opposite view of the subject, let him compare Winckelmann; and Schiller, Letters on Aesthetic Culture.

1 Whenever, in monumental work, the sculptor reaches a deceptive appearance of life or death, or of concomitant details, he has gone too far. The statue should be felt to be a statue, not look like a dead or sleeping body; it should not convey the impression of a corpse, nor of sick and outwearied flesh, but it should be the marble image of death or weariness. So the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines; not shroud, not bed-clothes, not actual armour nor brocade; not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattrass, but the mere type and suggestion of these: and the ruder, often the nobler. Not that they are to be unnatural; such lines as are given should be true, and clear of the hardness and mannered rigidity of the strictly Gothic types; but lines so few and grand as to appeal to the imagination only, and always to stop short of realization. A monument by a modern Italian sculptor has been lately placed in one of the side chapels of Santa Croce, forcible as portraiture, and delicately finished, but looking as if the person had been restless all night, and the artist admitted to a faithful study of the disturbed bed-clothes in the morning.

The hands are

laid at length The feet are

there is that about them which forbids breath; something which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image of both. not lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the arms are upon the body, and the hands cross as they fall. hidden by the drapery, and the forms of the limbs concealed, but not their tenderness.

If any of us, after staying for a time beside this tomb, could see, through his tears, one of the vain and unkind encumbrances of the grave, which, in these hollow and heartless days, feigned sorrow builds to foolish pride, he would, I believe, receive such a lesson of love as no coldness could refuse, no fatuity forget, and no insolence disobey.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF SYMMETRY, OR THE TYPE OF DIVINE JUSTICE.

§ 1. Symmetry, WE shall not be long detained by the consideration of this, the fourth what, and how constituent of beauty, as its nature is universally felt and understood. ganic nature. In all perfectly beautiful objects, there is found the opposition of one

found in or

part to another, and a reciprocal balance, in animals commonly between opposite sides (note the disagreeableness occasioned by the exception in flat fish, having the eyes on one side of the head), while in vegetables the opposition is less distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves and sprays on each side of the boughs; and in dead matter less perfect still, often amounting only to a certain tendency towards a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. In things in which perfect symmetry is from their nature impossible or improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before they can be beheld with § 2. How nepleasure. Hence the necessity of what artists require as opposing cessary in art. lines or masses in composition, the propriety of which, as well as their value, depends chiefly on their inartificial and natural invention. Absolute equality is not required, still less absolute similarity. A mass of subdued colour may be balanced by a point of a powerful one, and a long and latent line overpowered by a short and conspicuous one. The only error against which it is necessary to guard the reader with respect to symmetry, is the confounding it with proportion, though it seems strange that the two terms could ever have been used as synonymous. Symmetry is the opposition of equal quantities to each other. Proportion the connection of unequal quantities with each other. The property of a tree on sending out equal boughs on opposite

sides is symmetrical. Its sending out shorter and smaller towards the top, proportional. In the human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry; its division upwards, proportion.

able. Various
instances.

Whether the agreeableness of symmetry be in any way referable to § 3. To what its agreeableits expression of the Aristotelian loórns, that is to say of abstract ness is referjustice, I leave the reader to determine: I only assert respecting it, that it is necessary to the dignity of every form, and that by the removal of it we shall render the other elements of beauty comparatively ineffectual: though, on the other hand, it is to be observed that it is rather a mode of arrangement of qualities than a quality itself; and hence symmetry has little power over the mind, unless all the other constituents of beauty be found together with it. A form may be symmetrical and ugly, as many Elizabethan ornaments, and yet not so ugly as it would have been if unsymmetrical, but bettered always by increasing degrees of symmetry; as in star figures, wherein there is a circular symmetry of many like members, whence their frequent use for the plan and ground of ornamental designs; so also it is observable that foliage in which the leaves are concentrically grouped, as in the chestnuts, and many shrubs-rhododendrons, for instance (whence the perfect beauty of the Alpine rose)-is far nobler in its effects than any other, so that the sweet chestnut most fondly and frequently occurs in the landscape of Tintoret and Titian, beside which all other landscape grandeur vanishes and even in the meanest things the rule holds, as in the kaleidoscope, wherein agreeableness is given to forms altogether accidental merely by their repetition and reciprocal opposition; which orderly balance and arrangement are essential to the perfect operation of the more earnest and solemn qualities of the Beautiful, as being heavenly in their nature, and contrary to the violence and disorganization of sin; so that the seeking of them and submission to them, are characteristic of minds that have been subjected to high moral discipline, and constant in all the great religious painters, to the degree of being an offence and a scorn to men of less tuned and tranquil feeling. Equal ranks of saints are placed on each side of § 4. Especially in religious art. the picture; if there be a kneeling figure on one side, there is a corresponding one on the other; the attendant angels beneath and above are arranged in like order: and the balance is preserved even in actions necessitating variety of grouping, as always by Giotto;