Laocoon

would mean that the old Roman soldier was accustomed to wear the image of the impartial god in the presence of his enemy, who, in spite of the impartiality, was soon to perish. A very subtle idea, making the victories of the old Romans depend more upon their own bravery than on the friendly aid of their founder. Nevertheless, “non liquet.”

Note 18, p. 51.

“Till I got acquainted with these Auræ (or sylphs),” says Spence (Polymetis, dial. xiii.), “I found myself always at a loss in reading the known story of Cephalus and Procris in Ovid. I could never imagine how Cephalus crying out, ‘Aura venias’ (though in ever so languishing a manner), could give anybody a suspicion of his being false to Procris. As I had been always used to think that Aura signified only the air in general, or a gentle breeze in particular, I thought Procris’s jealousy less founded than the most extravagant jealousies generally are. But when I had once found that Aura might signify a very handsome young woman as well as the air, the case was entirely altered, and the story seemed to go on in a very reasonable manner.” I will not take back in the note the approval bestowed in the text on this discovery, on which Spence so plumes himself. But I cannot refrain from remarking that, even without it, the passage was very natural and intelligible. We only needed to know that Aura occurs frequently among the ancients as a woman’s name. According to Nonnus, for instance (Dionys. lib. xlviii.), the nymph of Diana was thus named, who, for claiming to possess a more manly beauty than the goddess herself, was, as a punishment for her presumption, exposed in her sleep to the embraces of Bacchus.

Note 19, p. 52.

Juvenalis Satyr. viii. v. 52–55.

“But thou art nothing if not a descendant of Cecrops; in body most like a Hermes; forsooth the only thing in which you surpass that, is that your head is a living image, while the Hermes is marble.” If Spence had embraced the old Greek writers in his work, a fable of Æsop might perhaps—and yet perhaps not—have occurred to him, which throws still clearer light upon this passage in Juvenal. “Mercury,” Æsop tells us, “wishing to know in what repute he stood among men, concealed his divinity, and entered a sculptor’s studio. Here he beheld a statue of Jupiter, and asked its value. ‘A drachm,’ was the answer. Mercury smiled. ‘And this Juno?’ he asked again. ‘About the same.’ The god meanwhile had caught sight of his own image, and thought to himself,—‘I, as the messenger of the gods, from whom come all gains, must be much more highly prized by men.’ ‘And this god,’ he asked, pointing to his own image, ‘how dear might that be?’ ‘That?’ replied the artist, ‘buy the other two, and I will throw that in.’” Mercury went away sadly crestfallen. But the artist did not recognize him, and could therefore have had no intention of wounding his self-love. The reason for his setting so small a value on the statue must have lain in its workmanship. The less degree of reverence due to the god whom it represented could have had nothing to do with the matter, for the artist values his works according to the skill, industry, and labor bestowed upon them, not according to the rank and dignity of the persons represented. If a statue of Mercury cost less than one of Jupiter or Juno, it was because less skill, industry, and labor had been expended upon it. And such was the case here. The statues of Jupiter and Juno were full-length figures, while that of Mercury was a miserable square post, with only the head and shoulders of the god upon it. What wonder, then, that it might be thrown in without extra charge? Mercury overlooked this circumstance, from having in mind only his own fancied superiority, and his humiliation was therefore as natural as it was merited. We look in vain among the commentators, translators, and imitators of Æsop’s fables for any trace of this explanation. I could mention the names of many, were it worth the trouble, who have understood the story literally; that is, have not understood it at all. On the supposition that the workmanship of all the statues was of the same degree of excellence, there is an absurdity in the fable which these scholars have either failed to perceive or have very much exaggerated. Another point which, perhaps, might be taken exception to in the fable, is the price the sculptor sets upon his Jupiter. No potter can make a puppet for a drachm. The drachm here must stand in general for something very insignificant. (Fab. Æsop, 90.)

Note 20, p. 53.

Cretius de R. N. lib. v. 736–747.

Spring advances and Venus and winged Zephyrus, the herald of Venus, precedes, whose path mother Flora fills with wondrous flowers and odors. Then follow in order dry Heat and his companion dusty Ceres, and the Etesian blasts of the Northwind. Then Autumn approaches, and Evian Bacchus. Then other tempests and winds, deep-thundering Volturnus and Auster (south and south-east winds), mighty with lightnings. At length, the solstice brings snow, and slothful numbness returns; Winter follows, and cold with chattering teeth.

Spence regards this passage as one of the most beautiful in the whole poem, and it is certainly one on which the fame of Lucretius as a poet chiefly rests. But, surely, to say that the whole description was probably taken from a procession of statues representing the seasons as gods, is to detract very much from his merit, if not to destroy it altogether. And what reason have we for the supposition? This, says the Englishman: “Such processions of their deities in general were as common among the Romans of old, as those in honor of the saints are in the same country to this day. All the expressions used by Lucretius here come in very aptly, if applied to a procession.”

Excellent reasons! Against the last, particularly, we might make many objections. The very epithets applied to the various personified abstractions,—“Calor aridus,” “Ceres pulverulenta,” “Volturnus altitonans,” “fulmine pollens Auster,” “Algus dentibus crepitans,”—show that they received their characteristics from the poet and not from the artist. He would certainly have treated them very differently. Spence seems to have derived his idea of a procession from Abraham Preigern, who, in his remarks on this passage, says, “Ordo est quasi Pompæ cujusdam. Ver et Venus, Zephyrus et Flora,” &c. But Spence should have been content to stop there. To say that the poet makes his seasons move as in a procession, is all very well; but to say that he learned their sequences from a procession, is nonsense.

Valerius Flaccus, lib. ii. Argonaut, v. 265–273.

“The maid clothes her father with the garlands, the locks and the garments of Bacchus, and places him in the centre of the chariot; around him the brazen drums and the boxes filled with nameless terror; herself, looking back, binds his hair and limbs with ivy and strikes windy blows with the vine-wreathed spear; veiled like the father she holds the green reins; the horns project under the white turban, and the sacred goblet tells of Bacchus.”

The word “tumeant,” in the last line but one, would seem to imply that the horns were not so small as Spence fancies.

Note 22, p. 62.

The so-called Bacchus in the garden of the Medicis at Rome (Montfaucon Suppl. aux Ant. T. 1, p. 254) has little horns growing from the brow. But for this very reason some critics suppose it to be a faun. And indeed such natural horns are an insult to the human countenance, and can only be becoming in beings supposed to occupy a middle station between men and beasts. The attitude also and the longing looks the figure casts upward at the grapes, belong more properly to a follower of the god than to the god himself. I am reminded here of what Clemens Alexandrinus says of Alexander the Great. (Protrept. p. 48, edit. Pott.) Ἐβούλετο δὲ καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος Ἄμμωνος υἱὸς εἶναι δοκεῖν, καὶ κερασφόρος ἀναπλάττεσθαι πρὸς τῶν ἀγαλματοποιῶν, τὸ καλὸν ἀνθρώπου ὑβρίσαι σπεύδων κέρατι. It was Alexander’s express desire to be represented in his statue with horns. He was well content with the insult thus done to human beauty, if only a divine origin might be imputed to him.

Note 23, p. 64.

When I maintained in a former chapter that the old artists had never made a fury, it had not escaped me that the furies had more than one temple, which certainly would not have been left devoid of their statues. Pausanias found some of wood in their temple at Cerynea, not large nor in any way remarkable. It would seem that the art, which had no opportunity of displaying itself on them, sought to make amends on the images of the priestesses which stood in the hall of the temple, as they were of stone and of very beautiful workmanship. (Pausanias Achaic. cap. xxv. p. 587, edit. Kuhn.) Neither had I forgotten that heads of them were supposed to have been found on an abraxas, made known by Chiffletius, and on a lamp by Licetus. (Dissertat. sur les Furies par Bannier; Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscript. T. v. 48.) Neither was I unacquainted with the Etruscan vase of Gorius (Tabl. 151. Musei Etrusci) whereon are Orestes and Pylades attacked by furies. But I was speaking of works of art, under which head I consider none of these to come. If the latter deserve more than the others to be included under the name, it would in one aspect rather confirm my theory than contradict it. For, little as the Etruscan artists aimed at beauty in most cases, they yet seem to have characterized the furies more by their dress and attributes than by any terrible aspect of countenance. These figures thrust their torches at Orestes and Pylades, with such a tranquil expression of face that they almost seem to be terrifying them in sport. The horror they inspire in Orestes and Pylades appears from the fear of the two men, not at all from the shape of the furies themselves.

They are, therefore, at once furies and no furies. They perform the office of furies, but without that appearance of violence and rage which we are accustomed to associate with the name. They have not that brow which, as Catullus says, “expirantis præportat pectoris iras.” Winkelmann thought lately that he had discovered, upon a cornelian in the cabinet of Stoss, a fury, running, with streaming hair and garments, and a dagger in her hand. (Library of the Fine Arts, vol. v.) Von Hagedorn at once counselled all the artists to turn this discovery to account, and represent furies thus in their pictures. (Betrachtungen über die Malerei, p. 222.) But Winkelmann himself presently threw doubt on his discovery, because he did not find that the ancients ever armed the furies with daggers instead of torches. (Descript. des Pierres Gravées, p. 84.) He must then consider the figures on the coins of the cities of Lyrba and Massaura, which Spanheim calls furies (Les Césars de Julien, p. 44), to be not such but a Hecate triformis. Else here would be exactly such a fury, with a dagger in each hand, and strangely enough also with flowing hair, while in the other figures the hair is covered with a veil. But granting Winkelmann’s first supposition to have been correct, the same would apply to this engraved stone as to the Etruscan vase, unless owing to the fineness of the work the features were indistinguishable. Besides, all engraved stones, from their use as seals, belong rather to symbolism; and the figures on them are more often a conceit of the owner than the voluntary work of the artist.

Note 24, p. 64.

Fast. lib. vi. 295–98.

“I long foolishly thought there were images of Vesta; then I found that none existed beneath the arching dome. An ever-burning fire is hidden in that temple. Image there is none either of Vesta or of fire.”

Ovid is speaking only of the worship of Vesta at Rome, and of the temple erected to her there by Numa, of whom he just before says:

“The work of that peaceful king who feared the gods more than any other offspring of the Sabine land.”

Note 25, p. 65.

Fast. lib. iii. v. 45, 46.

Spence should thus have compared the different parts of Ovid together. The poet is speaking of different times; here of the state of things before Numa, there of the state of things after him. Statues of her were worshipped in Italy as they were in Troy, whence Æneas brought her rites with him.

says Virgil of the ghost of Hector, after he had warned Æneas to fly. “He bears in his hands from the innermost shrine garlands, and mighty Vesta and the eternal fire.” Here the eternal fire is expressly distinguished from Vesta herself and from her statue. Spence cannot have consulted the Roman poets with much care, since he allowed such a passage as this to escape him.

Note 26, p. 65.

Plinius, lib. xxxvi. sect. 4. “Scopas fecit.—Vestam sedentem laudatam in Servilianis hortis.” Lipsius must have had this passage in mind when he wrote (de Vesta cap. 3): “Plinius Vestem sedentem effingi solitam ostendit, a stabilitate.” But what Pliny says of a single work by Scopas he ought not to have taken for a generally accepted characteristic. In fact, he observes that on coins Vesta was as often represented standing as sitting. This, however, was no correction of Pliny, but only of his own mistaken conception.

Georg. Codinus de Originib. Constant. Τὴν γῆν λέγουσιν Ἑστίαν, καὶ πλάττουσιν αὐτὴν γυναῖκα, τύμπανον βαστάζουσαν, ἐπειδὴ τοὺς ἀνέμους ἡ γῆ ὑφ’ ἑαυτὴν συγκλείει. Suidas, following him, or both following some older authority, says the same thing under the word Ἑστία. “Under the name of Vesta the Earth is represented by a woman bearing a drum, in which she is supposed to hold the winds confined.” The reason is somewhat puerile. It would have sounded better to say that she carried a drum, because the ancients thought her figure bore some resemblance to one, σχῆμα αὐτῆς τυμπανοειδὲς εἶναι. (Plutarchus de placitis Philos. cap. 10, id. de facie in orbe Lunæ.) Perhaps, after all, Codinus was mistaken in the figure or the name or both. Possibly he did not know what better name to give to what he saw Vesta holding, than a drum. Or he might have heard it called tympanum, and the only thing the word suggested to him was the instrument known to us as a kettle-drum. But “tympana” were also a kind of wheel.

Very similar to such a wheel appears to me the object borne by Fabretti’s Vesta (ad Tabulam Iliadis, p. 334) which that scholar takes to be a hand-mill.

Note 28, p. 70.

Lib. i. Od. 35.

In this picture of Necessity drawn by Horace, perhaps the richest in attributes of any to be found in the old poets, the nails, the clamps, and the liquid lead, whether regarded as means of confinement or implements of punishment, still belong to the class of poetical, rather than allegorical, attributes. But, even so, they are too crowded; and the passage is one of the least effective in Horace. Sanadon says: “J’ose dire que ce tableau, pris dans le détail, serait plus beau sur la toile que dans une ode héroïque. Je ne puis souffrir cet attirail patibulaire de clous, de coins, de crocs, et de plomb fondu. J’ai cru en devoir décharger la traduction, en substituant les idées générales aux idées singulières. C’est dommage que le poëte ait eu besoin de ce correctif.” Sanadon’s sentiment was fine and true, but he does not give the right ground for it. The objection is not that these attributes are the paraphernalia of the gallows, for he had but to interpret them in their other sense to make them the firmest supports of architecture. Their fault is in being addressed to the eye and not to the ear. For all impressions meant for the eye, but presented to us through the ear, are received with effort, and produce no great degree of vividness. These lines of Horace remind me of a couple of oversights on the part of Spence, which give us no very good idea of the exactitude with which he has studied the passages he cites from the old poets. He is speaking of the image under which the Romans represented faith or honesty. (Dial. x.) “The Romans,” he says, “called her ‘Fides;’ and, when they called her ‘Sola Fides,’ seem to mean the same as we do by the words ‘downright honesty.’ She is represented with an erect, open air, and with nothing but a thin robe on, so fine that one might see through it. Horace therefore calls her ‘thin-dressed’ in one of his odes, and ‘transparent’ in another.” In these few lines are not less than three gross errors. First, it is false that “sola” was a distinct epithet applied to the goddess Fides. In the two passages from Livy, which he adduces as proof (lib. i. sect. 21, lib. ii. sect. 3), the word has only its usual signification,—the exclusion of all else. In one place, indeed, the “soli” has been questioned by the critics, who think it must have crept into the text through an error in writing, occasioned by the word next to it, which is “solenne.” In the other passage cited, the author is not speaking of fidelity at all, but of innocence, Innocentia. Secondly, Horace, in one of his odes (the thirty-fifth of the first book, mentioned above), is said to have applied to Fides the epithet thin-dressed:

“Rarus,” it is true, can also mean thin; but here it means only rare, seldom appearing, and is applied to Fidelity herself, not to her clothing. Spence would have been right, had the poet said, “Fides raro velata panno.” Thirdly, Horace is said to have elsewhere called faith or honesty transparent, in the sense in which friends protest to one another, “I wish you could read my heart.” This meaning is said to be found in the line of the eighteenth ode of the First Book:

How can a critic allow himself to be thus misled by a word? Is a faith, “arcani prodiga,” lavish of secrets, faithfulness? is it not rather faithlessness? And it is of faithlessness, in fact, that Horace says, “She is transparent as glass, because she betrays to every eye the secrets entrusted to her.”

Note 29, p. 71.

Apollo delivers the washed and embalmed body of Sarpedon to Death and Sleep, that they may bring him to his native country. (Iliad, xvi. 681, 682.)

Caylus recommends this idea to the painter, but adds: “It is a pity that Homer has given us no account of the attributes under which Sleep was represented in his day. We recognize the god only by his act, and we crown him with poppies. These ideas are modern. The first is of service, but cannot be employed in the present case, where even the flowers would be out of keeping in connection with the figure of Death.” (Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, de l’Odyssée d’Homère, et de l’Enéide de Virgile, avec des observations générales sur le costume, à Paris, 1757–58.) That is requiring of Homer ornamentations of that petty kind most at variance with the nobility of his style. The most ingenious attributes he could have bestowed on Sleep would not have characterized him so perfectly, nor have brought so vivid a picture of him before us, as the single touch which makes him the twin brother of Death. Let the artist seek to express this, and he may dispense with all attributes. The old artists did, in fact, make Sleep and Death resemble each other, like twin-brothers. On a chest of cedar, in the Temple of Juno at Elis, they both lay as boys in the arms of Night. One was white, the other black; one slept, the other only seemed to sleep; the feet of both were crossed. For so I should prefer to translate the words of Pausanias (Eliac. cap. xviii. p. 422, edit. Kuhn), ἀμφοτέρους διεστραμμένους τοὺς πόδας, rather than by “crooked feet,” as Gedoyn does, “les pieds contrefaits.” What would be the meaning of crooked feet? To lie with crossed feet is customary with sleepers. Sleep is thus represented by Maffei. (Raccol. Pl. 151.) Modern artists have entirely abandoned this resemblance between Sleep and Death, which we find among the ancients, and always represent Death as a skeleton, or at best a skeleton covered with skin. Caylus should have been careful to tell the artists whether they had better follow the custom of the ancients or the moderns in this respect. He seems to declare in favor of the modern view, since he regards Death as a figure that would not harmonize well with a flower-crowned companion. Has he further considered how inappropriate this modern idea would be in a Homeric picture? How could its loathsome character have failed to shock him? I cannot bring myself to believe that the little metal figure in the ducal gallery at Florence, representing a skeleton sitting on the ground, with one arm on an urn of ashes (Spence’s Polymetis, tab. xli.), is a veritable antique. It cannot possibly represent Death, because the ancients represented him very differently. Even their poets never thought of him under this repulsive shape.

Note 30, p. 76.

Richardson cites this work as an illustration of the rule that the attention of the spectator should be diverted by nothing, however admirable, from the chief figure. “Protogenes,” he says, “had introduced into his famous picture of Ialysus a partridge, painted with so much skill that it seemed alive, and was admired by all Greece. But, because it attracted all eyes to itself, to the detriment of the whole piece, he effaced it.” (Traité de la Peinture, T. i. p. 46.) Richardson is mistaken; this partridge was not in the Ialysus, but in another picture of Protogenes called the Idle Satyr, or Satyr in Repose, Σάτυρος ἀναπαυόμενος. I should hardly have mentioned this error, which arose from a misunderstanding of a passage in Pliny, had not the same mistake been made by Meursius. (Rhodi. lib. i. cap. 14.) “In eadem tabula, scilicet in qua Ialysus, Satyrus erat, quem dicebant Anapauomenon, tibeas tenens.”

Something of the same kind occurs in Winkelmann. (Von der Nachahm. der Gr. W. in der Mal. und Bildh. p. 56.) Strabo is the only authority for this partridge story, and he expressly discriminates between the Ialysus and the Satyr leaning against a pillar on which sat the partridge. (Lib. xiv.) Meursius, Richardson, and Winkelmann misunderstood the passage in Pliny (lib. xxxv. sect. 36), from not perceiving that he was speaking of two different pictures: the one which saved the city, because Demetrius would not assault the place where it stood; and another, which Protogenes painted during the siege. The one was Ialysus, the other the Satyr.

Note 31, p. 79.

This invisible battle of the gods has been imitated by Quintus Calaber in his Twelfth Book, with the evident design of improving on his model. The grammarian seems to have held it unbecoming in a god to be thrown to the ground by a stone. He therefore makes the gods hurl at one another huge masses of rock, torn up from Mount Ida, which, however, are shattered against the limbs of the immortals and fly like sand about them.

A conceit which destroys the effect by marring our idea of the size of the gods, and throwing contempt on their weapons. If gods throw stones at one another, the stones must be able to hurt them, or they are like silly boys pelting each other with earth. So old Homer remains still the wiser, and all the fault-finding of cold criticism, and the attempts of men of inferior genius to vie with him, serve but to set forth his wisdom in clearer light. I do not deny that Quintus’s imitation has excellent and original points; but they are less in harmony with the modest greatness of Homer than calculated to do honor to the stormy fire of a more modern poet. That the cry of the gods, which rang to the heights of heaven and the depths of hell, should not be heard by mortals, seems to me a most expressive touch. The cry was too mighty to be grasped by the imperfect organs of human hearing.

Note 32, p. 80.

No one who has read Homer once through, ever so hastily, will differ from this statement as far as regards strength and speed; but he will not perhaps at once recall examples where the poet attaches superhuman size to his gods. I would therefore refer him, in addition to the description of Mars just quoted, whose body covered seven hides, to the helmet of Minerva, κυνέην ἑκατὸν πολίων πρυλέεσσ’ ἀραρυῖαν (Iliad, v. 744), under which could be concealed as many warriors as a hundred cities could bring into the field; to the stride of Neptune (Iliad, xiii. 20); and especially to the lines from the description of the shield, where Mars and Minerva lead the troops of the beleaguered city. (Iliad, xviii. 516–519.)

Judging from the explanations they feel called upon to give of the great helmet of Minerva, Homer’s commentators, old as well as new, seem not always sufficiently to have borne in mind this wonderful size of the gods. (See the notes on the above-quoted passage in the edition of Clarke and Ernesti.) But we lose much in majesty by thinking of the Homeric deities as of ordinary size, as we are accustomed to see them on canvas in the company of mortals. Although painting is unable to represent these superhuman dimensions, sculpture to a certain extent may, and I am convinced that the old masters borrowed from Homer their conception of the gods in general as well as the colossal size which they not infrequently gave them. (Herodot. lib. ii. p. 130, edit. Wessel.) Further remarks upon the use of the colossal, its excellent effect in sculpture and its want of effect in painting, I reserve for another place.

Note 33, p. 82.

Homer, I acknowledge, sometimes veils his deities in a cloud, but only when they are not to be seen by other deities. In the fourteenth book of the Iliad, for instance, where Juno and Sleep, ἠέρα ἐσσαμένω, betake themselves to Mount Ida, the crafty goddess’s chief care was not to be discovered by Venus, whose girdle she had borrowed under pretence of a very different journey. In the same book the love-drunken Jupiter is obliged to surround himself and his spouse with a golden cloud to overcome her chaste reluctance.

She did not fear to be seen by men, but by the gods. And although Homer makes Jupiter say a few lines further on,—

“Fear thou not that any god or man will look upon us,” that does not prove that the cloud was needed to conceal them from the eyes of mortals, but that in this cloud they would be as invisible to the gods as they always were to men. So, when Minerva puts on the helmet of Pluto (Iliad, v. 485), which has the same effect of concealment that a cloud would have, it is not that she may be concealed from the Trojans, who either see her not at all or under the form of Sthenelus, but simply that she may not be recognized by Mars.

Note 34, p. 87.

Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, Avert. p. 5. “On est toujours convenu, que plus un poëme fournissait d’images et d’actions, plus il avait de supériorité en poésie. Cette réflexion m’avait conduit à penser que le calcul des différens tableaux, qu’ offrent les poëmes, pouvait servir à comparer le mérite respectif des poëmes et des poëtes. Le nombre et le genre des tableaux que présentent ces grands ouvrages, auraient été une espèce de pierre de touche, ou, plutôt, une balance certaine du mérite de ces poëmes et du génie de leurs auteurs.”

Note 35, p. 88.

What we call poetic pictures, the ancients, as we learn from Longinus, called “phantasiæ;” and what we call illusion in such pictures, they named “enargia.” It was therefore said by some one, as Plutarch tells us (Erot. T. ii. edit. Henr. Steph. p. 1351), that poetic “phantasiæ” were, on account of their “enargia,” waking dreams: Αἱ ποιητικαὶ φαντασίαι διὰ τὴν ἐνάργειαν ἐγρηγορότων ἐνύπνια εἰσίν. I could wish that our modern books upon poetry had used this nomenclature, and avoided the word picture altogether. We should thus have been spared a multitude of doubtful rules, whose chief foundation is the coincidence of an arbitrary term. No one would then have thought of confining poetic conceptions within the limits of a material picture. But the moment these conceptions were called a poetic picture, the foundation for the error was laid.

Iliad, iv. 105.

Note 37, p. 108.

Prologue to the Satires, 340.

Ibid. 148.

Warburton’s remark on this last line may have the force of an explanation by the poet himself. “He uses pure equivocally, to signify either chaste or empty; and has given in this line what he esteemed the true character of descriptive poetry, as it is called,—a composition, in his opinion, as absurd as a feast made up of sauces. The use of a picturesque imagination is to brighten and adorn good sense: so that to employ it only in description, is like children’s delighting in a prism for the sake of its gaudy colors, which, when frugally managed and artfully disposed, might be made to represent and illustrate the noblest objects in nature.”

Both poet and commentator seem to have regarded the matter rather from a moral than an artistic point of view. But so much the better that this style of poetry seems equally worthless from whichever point it be viewed.

Note 38, p. 108.

Poétique Française, T. ii. p. 501. “J’écrivais ces réflexions avant que les essais des Allemands dans ce genre (l’Eglogue) fussent connus parmi nous. Ils ont exécuté ce que j’avais conçu; et s’ils parviennent à donner plus au moral et moins au détail des peintures physiques, ils excelleront dans ce genre, plus riche, plus vaste, plus fécond, et infiniment plus naturel et plus moral que celui de la galanterie champêtre.”

Note 39, p. 115.

I see that Servius attempts to excuse Virgil on other grounds, for the difference between the two shields has not escaped his notice. “Sane interest inter hunc et Homeri clypeum; illic enim singula dum fiunt narrantur; hic vero perfecto opere nascuntur; nam et hic arma prius accipit Æneas, quam spectaret; ibi postquam omnia narrata sunt, sic a Thetide deferuntur ad Achillem.” There is a marked difference between this and the shield of Homer: for there events are narrated one by one as they are done, here they are known by the finished work; here the arms are received by Æneas before being seen, there, after all has been told, they are carried by Thetis to Achilles. (Ad. v. 625, lib. viii. Æneid.) Why? “For this reason,” says Servius: “because, on the shield of Æneas, were represented not only the few events referred to by the poet, but,—