_Capitol Museum, Rome_]
After this description the writer goes on to analyze the nature of the
Faun. "The being here represented," he says, "is endowed with no
principle of virtue, and would be incapable of comprehending such; but
he would be true and honest by dint of his simplicity. We should expect
from him no sacrifice or effort for an abstract cause; there is not an
atom of martyr's stuff in all that softened marble; but he has a
capacity for strong and warm attachment, and might act devotedly through
its impulse, and even die for it at need. It is possible, too, that the
Faun might be educated through the medium of his emotions, so that the
coarser animal portion of his nature might eventually be thrown into the
background, though never utterly expelled."
The original statue, of which the marble of the Capitol is a copy, was
the work of the sculptor Praxiteles. As Hawthorne says: "Only a sculptor
of the finest imagination, the most delicate taste, the sweetest
feeling, and the rarest artistic skill--in a word, a sculptor and a poet
too--could have ... succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and frisky
thing in marble." We are presently to see again in the head of Hermes
that Praxiteles was indeed a remarkable sculptor. The Faun, however, is
the more difficult subject of the two, for it was puzzling to think what
expression would be proper to a being partly human, but without a soul.
It is said that Praxiteles himself considered the Faun one of his two
best works. It had been impossible for his friends to get an expression
of opinion from him in regard to his statues, until one day a trick was
devised to betray him. He was told that his studio was on fire, when he
exclaimed that his labor was all lost if the Faun and the Eros were
destroyed.
The Faun originally stood in the street of the Tripods at Athens, but
what has now become of it we do not know. The statue in our illustration
is one of the most celebrated copies. Many travellers make a special
pilgrimage to see it, and seeing it recall the words of Hawthorne,
describing the spell it casts upon the spectator. "All the pleasantness
of sylvan life, all the genial and happy characteristics of creatures
that dwell in woods and fields, will seem to be mingled and kneaded into
one substance, along with the kindred qualities in the human soul.
Trees, grass, flowers, woodland streamlets, cattle, deer, and
unsophisticated man--the essence of all these was compressed long ago,
and still exists, within that discolored marble surface of the Faun of
Praxiteles."