The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 44, June, 1861. Various
Lines of Grace and Beauty, in their highest, intellectual, human significance, may be concentrated and expressed in one; not a precise and exact line, like a formula of mathematics, to which the neophyte can refer for deductions of Grace to suit any premises or conditions. This, of course, is contrary to the spirit of beautiful design; and the ingenious Hay,—who maintains that his "composite ellipse" is capable of universal application in the arts of ornamental composition, and that by its use any desirable lines in mouldings or vases can be mechanically produced, especially Greek lines, falls into the grave error of endeavoring to materialize and fix that animula vagula, blandula, that coy and evasive spirit of Art, which is its peculiar characteristic, and gives to its works inspiration, harmony, and poetic sentiment. Ideal Beauty can be hatched from no geometrical eggs. But the line which I refer to, as the expression of most subtile Grace, pretends to be merely a type of that large language of forms with which the most refined intellects of antiquity uttered their Love, and their joyful worship of Aphrodite. This line, of course, is Greek.
[Illustration]
The three great distinctive eras of Art, in a purely psychological sense, have been the Egyptian, the Grecian, and the Romanesque,—including in the latter term both Roman Art itself and all subsequent Art, whether derived directly or indirectly from Rome, as the Byzantine, the Moresque, the Mediaeval, and the Renaissance. Selecting the most characteristic works to which these great eras respectively gave birth, it is not difficult, by comparison, to ascertain the master-spirit, or type, to which each of these three families may be reduced. If we place these types side by side, the result will be as in the diagram, presenting to the eye, at one view, the concentration of three civilizations, DESTINY, LOVE, and LIFE;—Destiny, finding utterance in the stern and inflexible simplicity of the tombs and obelisks of Egypt; Love, expressing itself in the statuesque and thoughtful grace of Grecian temples, statues, and urns; Life, in the sensuous and impulsive change, evident in all the developments of Art, since Greece became Achaia, a province of the Roman Empire. Here we behold the perpetual youth, the immortal genius of Hellas, tempering the solid repose of Egypt with the passion of Life. This intermediate Beauty is the essence of the age of Pericles; and in it "the capable eye" may discover the pose of the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles, of the Jupiter Olympius of Phidias, and the other lost wonders of ancient chisels, and, more directly, the tender severity of Doric capitals, and the secret grace of the shafts of the Parthenon.
You remember Pliny's account of the visit of Apelles to the great painter Protogenes, at Rhodes;—how, not finding him at home, Apelles inscribed a line upon a board, assuring the slave that this line would signify to the master who had been to see him. Whatever the line was, Protogenes, we hear, recognized in it the hand of the greatest limner of Greece. It was the signature of that Ideal, known to the antique world by its wider developments in the famous pictures of the Venus Anadyomene, and Alexander with the Thunderbolt, hung in the temple of Diana at Ephesus.
The gravity with which this apparently trifling anecdote is given us from antiquity evidently proves that it was one of the household tales of old Greece. It did not seem absurd in those times, when Art was recognized as a great Unity, an elaborate system of infinite language founded on the simplest elements of Life, and in its grandest and widest flowings bearing ever in its bosom, like a great river, the memory of the little weeping Naiad far up among the mountains with her "impoverished urn." And so every great national Art, growing up naturally out of the necessities of an earnest people, expressing the grand motives of their Life, as that of the Greeks and the Egyptians and the mediaeval nations of Europe, is founded on the simplest laws. So long as these laws are obeyed in simplicity and Love, Art is good and true; so long as it remembers the purity and earnestness of its childhood, the strength that is ordained out of the mouth of babes is present in all its expressions; but when it spreads itself abroad in the fens and marshes of humanity, it has lost the purity of its aim, the singleness and unity of its action,—it becomes stagnant, and sleeps in the Death of Idleness.
Therefore I believe in the expressiveness of single lines as symbols of the grandest phases of human Life. And when one studies Greek Art, the whole motive of it seems so childlike and so simple that the impulse to seek for that little Naiad which is the fountain and source of it all is irresistible. Look at the line I have traced, and see if there is not a curious humanity about it. It is impossible to produce it with a wanton flourish of the pencil, as I have done in that wavy, licentious curve, which Hogarth, in his quaint "Analysis of Beauty," assumes as the line of true Grace; nor yet are its infinite motions governed by any cold mathematical laws. In it is the earnest and deliberate labor of Love. There are thought and tenderness in every instant of it; but this thought is grave and almost solemn, and this tenderness is chastened and purified by wise reserve. Measure it by time, and you will find it no momentary delight, no voluptuous excess which comes and goes in a breath; but there is a whole cycle of deep human feeling in it. It is the serene joy of a nation, and not the passionate impulse of a man. Observe, from beginning to end, its intention is to give expression by the serpentine line to that sentiment of beautiful Life which was the worship of the Greeks; but they did not toss it off, like a wine-cup at a feast. They prolonged it through all the varied emotions of a lifetime with exquisite art, making it the path of their education in childhood and of their wider experience as men. All the impulses of humanity they bent to a kindly parallelism with it. This is that famous principle of Variety in Unity which St. Augustine and hosts of other philosophers considered the true Ideal of Beauty. Start with this line from the top upon its journeying: look at the hesitation of it, ere it launches into action; how it cherishes its resources, and gathers up its strength!– with a confidence in its beautiful Destiny, and yet a chaste shrinking from the full enjoyment of it, how inevitably, but how purely, it yields itself up to the sudden curve! It does not embrace this curve with a sensuous sweep, nor does it, like Sappho, throw itself with quick passion into the tide. It enters with maidenly and dignified reserve into its new Life; and then how is this new Life spent? As you glance at it, it seems almost ascetic, and reminds you of the rigid fatalism of Egypt. Its grace is almost strangled, as those other serpents were in the grasp of the child Hercules. But if you watch it attentively, you will find it ever changing, though with subtilest refinement, ever human, and true to the great laws of emotion. There is no straight line here,—no Death in Life,—but the severity and composure of intellectual meditation,—meditation, moving with serious pleasure along the grooves of happy change,—
"As all the motions of its
Were governed by a strain
Of music, audible to it alone!"
As the eye is cheated out of its rectitude, following this grave delight, and seems to dilate and grow dreamy in the cool shade of imaginative cloisters and groves, the wanton joyousness of Life, with its long waving lily-stems and the luscious pending of vines, comes with dim recollections into the mind, but modified by a certain habitual chastity of thought. Follow the line still farther, and you will find it grateful to the sight, neither fatiguing with excess of monotony nor cloying the appetite with change. And when the round hour is full and the end comes, this end is met by a Fate, which does not clip with the shears of Atropos and leave an aching void, but fulfils itself in gentleness and peace. The line bends quietly and unconsciously towards the beautiful consummation, and then dies, because its work is done.
This is the way the Greeks made that Line which represents to "the capable eye" the true Attic civilization. And when we examine the innumerable lines of Grecian architecture, we find that they never for an instant lost sight of this Ideal. The fine humanity of it was everywhere present, and mingled not only with such grand and heroic lines as those of the sloping pediments and long-drawn entablatures of the Parthenon and Theseion, bending them into curves so subtilely modulated that our coarse perceptions did not perceive the variations from the dead straight lines till the careful admeasurements of Penrose and Cockerel and their confrères of France assured us of the fact,—not only did it make these enormous harp-strings vibrate with deep human soul-music, but there is not an abstract line in moulding, column, or vase, belonging to old Greece or the islands of the Aegean or Ionia or the colonies of Italy, which does not have the same intensity of meaning, the same statuesque Life of thought. Besides, I very much doubt if the same line, in all its parts and proportions, is ever repeated twice,—certainly not with any emphasis; and this is following out the great law of our existence, which varies