The seventh lamp, which goes as naturally with idealism as care and
patience go with naturalism, is joy, _joie de vivre_. Keats has
expressed the Greek sense of art in an immortal line, 'A thing of beauty
is a joy for ever'. It was the overflowing gladness which lies at the
root of creation and evolution which took eternal form in the painting
and sculpture of the Greeks and inspired all their works. The same
irrepressible joy which gives colour to the flowers, sweetness to the
fruit, song to the birds, and sexual desire to mankind reached here one
of its most perfect manifestations. The life of the Greeks was by no
means one of unmixed happiness. Each city was not unfrequently at war
with its neighbours; and the penalty of complete defeat was sometimes
the razing of its walls, the slaughter of its men, and the enslavement
of its women. Disease, even plague, constantly ravaged the land; and the
resources of modern surgery and modern anaesthetics were not present to
curb their ravages. The life of the majority in country huts, and still
more in the slums of the cities, most of all in the mines, was rougher
and more sordid than is the case in the modern world, in countries in
their normal state. And the people had not even that hope of a blessed
hereafter which sustained the people of the Middle Ages. Yet under all
these clouds, their spirit was hopeful and aspiring. And their art
reflects ever the brighter side of things. Surely they were wise and
right. We seek out works of art not to foster pessimism but to inspire
optimism, not to show us the world of nature on its repulsive side, but
to reveal to us how much underlying beauty is to be found in it. ''Tis
life not death for which we pant, More life and fuller that we want.'
At the same time, Greek art in some forms was extremely serious and
keenly alive to the darker side of existence. The Greeks invented
tragedy, the poetical reflection of the severity of fate. Would any
modern audience be found, which would be prepared to sit for a whole
summer day listening eagerly to the grand expression by such poets as
Aeschylus and Sophocles of the power of Nemesis, the instability of all
prosperity, the misfortunes which hunt those who have the ill luck to
displease the gods? Surely not. And not in Greek tragedy only, but in
elegiac poetry and in epigram, we find perfect reflections of our most
gloomy moods. But for such expressions of sorrow and despair the Greeks
felt that sculpture, and even painting, were not suitable vehicles. They
belong to moods, and are not suitable for illustration in the market
place and the temple. The roads which led to Greek cities were
frequently bordered with monumental tombs. If in the reliefs and
inscriptions of these tombs there had been any telling echo of the
sorrow and regret of bereaved survivors, every one would have entered
the cities in a black mood. As it is, as every one who has been in the
museums of Athens knows, the sepulchral artists carefully avoided
anything which might harrow the feelings. They represented the dead at
their best, engaged in victorious warfare, or in athletic sports or in
the happy family circle. A gentle air of melancholy could not be
avoided; but there was nothing to shock, nothing to oppress the spirits.
The deceased represented seemed still to share the occupations and
pleasures of the living, not to be shut off from the world of happiness.
Milton has expressed, in his magnificent prose, the profound joy of the
world of the Renaissance at the recovery of the Bible, and free liberty
of reading it, after it had been shut away from the laity by the
organized Church. Equally intense, and more exuberant, was the delight
of scholars and artists, when the asceticism and pessimism of the Middle
Ages, which had given birth to such bodies as the Carmelite monks and
the mendicant friars, gave way before the revival of Greek literature
and art. The world seemed suddenly to have renewed its youth. No doubt
the sudden expansion led to foul excesses; but it was yet a great
landmark in human progress.