OF MEDIAEVAL LANDSCAPE:--FIRST, THE FIELDS.
Sec. 1. IN our examination of the spirit of classical landscape, we
were obliged to confine ourselves to what is left to us in written
description. Some interesting results might indeed have been
obtained by examining the Egyptian and Ninevite landscape sculpture,
but in nowise conclusive enough to be worth the pains of the
inquiry; for the landscape of sculpture is necessarily confined in
range, and usually inexpressive of the complete feelings of the
workman, being introduced rather to explain the place and
circumstances of events, than for its own sake. In the Middle Ages,
however, the case is widely different. We have written landscape,
sculptured landscape, and painted landscape, all bearing united
testimony to the tone of the national mind in almost every
remarkable locality of Europe.
Sec. 2. That testimony, taken in its breadth, is very curiously
conclusive. It marks the mediaeval mind as agreeing altogether with
the ancients, in holding that flat land, brooks, and groves of
aspens, compose the pleasant places of the earth, and that rocks and
mountains are, for inhabitation, altogether to be reprobated and
detested; but as disagreeing with the classical mind totally in this
other most important respect, that the pleasant flat land is never a
ploughed field, nor a rich lotus meadow good for pasture, but
_garden_ ground covered with flowers, and divided by fragrant
hedges, with a castle in the middle of it. The aspens are delighted
in, not because they are good for "coach-making men" to make
cart-wheels of, but because they are shady and graceful; and the
fruit-trees, covered with delicious fruit, especially apple and
orange, occupy still more important positions in the scenery.
Singing-birds--not "sea-crows," but nightingales[71]--perch on every
bough; and the ideal occupation of mankind is not to cultivate
either the garden or the meadow, but to gather roses and eat oranges
in the one, and ride out hawking over the other.
Finally, mountain scenery, though considered as disagreeable for
general inhabitation, is always introduced as being proper to
meditate in, or to encourage communion with higher beings; and in
the ideal landscape of daily life, mountains are considered
agreeable things enough, so that they be far enough away.
In this great change there are three vital points to be noticed.
[Sidenote: Sec. 3. Three essential characters: 1. Pride in idleness.]
The first, the disdain of agricultural pursuits by the nobility; a
fatal change, and one gradually bringing about the ruin of that
nobility. It is expressed in the mediaeval landscape by the eminently
pleasurable and horticultural character of everything; by the
fences, hedges, castle walls, and masses of useless, but lovely
flowers, especially roses. The knights and ladies are represented
always as singing, or making love, in these pleasant places. The
idea of setting an old knight, like Laertes (whatever his state of
fallen fortune), "with thick gloves on to keep his hands from the
thorns," to prune a row of vines, would have been regarded as the
most monstrous violation of the decencies of life; and a senator,
once detected in the home employments of Cincinnatus, could, I
suppose, thenceforward hardly have appeared in society.
[Sidenote: Sec. 4. 2. Poetical observance of nature.]
The second vital point is the evidence of a more sentimental
enjoyment of external nature. A Greek, wishing really to enjoy
himself, shut himself into a beautiful atrium, with an excellent
dinner, and a society of philosophical or musical friends. But a
mediaeval knight went into his pleasance, to gather roses and hear
the birds sing; or rode out hunting or hawking. His evening feast,
though riotous enough sometimes, was not the height of his day's
enjoyment; and if the attractions of the world are to be shown
typically to him, as opposed to the horrors of death, they are never
represented by a full feast in a chamber, but by a delicate dessert
in an orange grove, with musicians under the trees; or a ride on a
May morning, hawk on fist.
This change is evidently a healthy, and a very interesting one.
[Sidenote: Sec. 5. 3. Disturbed conscience.]
The third vital point is the marked sense that this hawking and
apple-eating are not altogether right; that there is something else
to be done in the world than that; and that the mountains, as
opposed to the pleasant garden-ground, are places where that other
something may best be learned;--which is evidently a piece of
infinite and new respect for the mountains, and another healthy
change in the tone of the human heart.
Let us glance at the signs and various results of these changes, one
by one.
[Sidenote: Sec. 6. Derivative characters: 1. Love of flowers.]
The two first named, evil and good as they are, are very closely
connected. The more poetical delight in external nature proceeds
just from the fact that it is no longer looked upon with the eye of
the farmer; and in proportion as the herbs and flowers cease to be
regarded as useful, they are felt to be charming. Leeks are not now
the most important objects in the garden, but lilies and roses; the
herbage which a Greek would have looked at only with a view to the
number of horses it would feed, is regarded by the mediaeval knight
as a green carpet for fair feet to dance upon, and the beauty of its
softness and color is proportionally felt by him; while the brook,
which the Greek rejoiced to dismiss into a reservoir under the
palace threshold, would be, by the mediaeval, distributed into
pleasant pools, or forced into fountains; and regarded alternately
as a mirror for fair faces, and a witchery to ensnare the sunbeams
and the rainbow.
[Sidenote: Sec. 7. 2. Less definite gratitude to God.]
And this change of feeling involves two others, very important. When
the flowers and grass were regarded as means of life, and therefore
(as the thoughtful laborer of the soil must always regard them) with
the reverence due to those gifts of God which were most necessary to
his existence; although their own beauty was less felt, their
proceeding from the Divine hand was more seriously acknowledged, and
the herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree yielding fruit, though in
themselves less admired, were yet solemnly connected in the heart
with the reverence of Ceres, Pomona, or Pan. But when the sense of
these necessary uses was more or less lost, among the upper classes,
by the delegation of the art of husbandry to the hands of the
peasant, the flower and fruit, whose bloom or richness thus became
a mere source of pleasure, were regarded with less solemn sense of
the Divine gift in them; and were converted rather into toys than
treasures, chance gifts for gaiety, rather than promised rewards of
labor; so that while the Greek could hardly have trodden the formal
furrow, or plucked the clusters from the trellised vine, without
reverent thoughts of the deities of field and leaf, who gave the
seed to fructify, and the bloom to darken, the mediaeval knight
plucked the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, or strewed the
idle rose on the turf at her feet, with little sense of anything in
the nature that gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary
exuberance; while also the Jewish sacrificial system being now done
away, as well as the Pagan mythology, and, with it, the whole
conception of meat offering or firstfruits offering, the chiefest
seriousness of all the thoughts connected with the gifts of nature
faded from the minds of the classes of men concerned with art and
literature; while the peasant, reduced to serf level, was incapable
of imaginative thought, owing to his want of general cultivation.
But on the other hand, exactly in proportion as the idea of definite
spiritual presence in material nature was lost, the mysterious sense
of _unaccountable_ life in the things themselves would be increased,
and the mind would instantly be laid open to all those currents of
fallacious, but pensive and pathetic sympathy, which we have seen to
be characteristic of modern times.
[Sidenote: Sec. 3. Gloom caused by enforced solitude.]
Farther: a singular difference would necessarily result from the far
greater loneliness of baronial life, deprived as it was of all
interest in agricultural pursuits. The palace of a Greek leader in
early times might have gardens, fields, and farms around it, but was
sure to be near some busy city or sea-port: in later times, the city
itself became the principal dwelling-place, and the country was
visited only to see how the farm went on, or traversed in a line of
march. Far other was the life of the mediaeval baron, nested on his
solitary jut of crag; entering into cities only occasionally for some
grave political or warrior's purpose, and, for the most part, passing
the years of his life in lion-like isolation; the village inhabited by
his retainers straggling indeed about the slopes of the rocks at his
feet, but his own dwelling standing gloomily apart, between them and
the uncompanionable clouds, commanding, from sunset to sunrise, the
flowing flame of some calm unvoyaged river, and the endless undulation
of the untraversable hills. How different must the thoughts about
nature have been, of the noble who lived among the bright marble
porticos of the Greek groups of temple or palace,--in the midst of a
plain covered with corn and olives, and by the shore of a sparkling
and freighted sea,--from those of the master of some mountain
promontory in the green recesses of Northern Europe, watching night by
night, from amongst his heaps of storm-broken stone, rounded into
towers, the lightning of the lonely sea flash round the sands of
Harlech, or the mists changing their shapes forever, among the
changeless pines, that fringe the crests of Jura.
[Sidenote: Sec. 9. And frequent pilgrimage.]
Nor was it without similar effect on the minds of men that their
journeyings and pilgrimages became more frequent than those of the
Greek, the extent of ground traversed in the course of them larger,
and the mode of travel more companionless. To the Greek, a voyage to
Egypt, or the Hellespont, was the subject of lasting fame and fable,
and the forests of the Danube and the rocks of Sicily closed for him
the gates of the intelligible world. What parts of that narrow world
he crossed were crossed with fleets or armies; the camp always
populous on the plain, and the ships drawn in cautious symmetry around
the shore. But to the mediaeval knight, from Scottish moor to Syrian
sand, the world was one great exercise ground, or field of adventure;
the staunch pacing of his charger penetrated the pathlessness of
outmost forest, and sustained the sultriness of the most secret
desert. Frequently alone,--or, if accompanied, for the most part only
by retainers of lower rank, incapable of entering into complete
sympathy with any of his thoughts,--he must have been compelled often
to enter into dim companionship with the silent nature around him, and
must assuredly sometimes have talked to the wayside flowers of his
love, and to the fading clouds of his ambition.
[Sidenote: 4. Dread of mountains.]
Sec. 10. But, on the other hand, the idea of retirement from the world
for the sake of self-mortification, of combat with demons, or
communion with angels, and with their King,--authoritatively
commended as it was to all men by the continual practice of Christ
Himself,--gave to all mountain solitude at once a sanctity and a
terror, in the mediaeval mind, which were altogether different from
anything that it had possessed in the un-Christian periods. On the
one side, there was an idea of sanctity attached to rocky
wilderness, because it had always been among hills that the Deity
had manifested himself most intimately to men, and to the hills that
His saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for especial
communion with Him, and to prepare for death. Men acquainted with
the history of Moses, alone at Horeb, or with Israel at Sinai,--of
Elijah by the brook Cherith, and in the Horeb cave; of the deaths of
Moses and Aaron on Hor and Nebo; of the preparation of Jephthah's
daughter for her death among the Judea Mountains; of the continual
retirement of Christ Himself to the mountains for prayer, His
temptation in the desert of the Dead Sea, His sermon on the hills of
Capernaum, His transfiguration on the crest of Tabor, and his
evening and morning walks over Olivet for the four or five days
preceding His crucifixion,--were not likely to look with irreverent
or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded their golden
horizon, or drew upon them the mysterious clouds out of the height
of the darker heaven. But with this impression of their greater
sanctity was involved also that of a peculiar terror. In all
this,--their haunting by the memories of prophets, the presences of
angels, and the everlasting thoughts and words of the Redeemer,--the
mountain ranges seemed separated from the active world, and only to
be fitly approached by hearts which were condemnatory of it. Just in
so much as it appeared necessary for the noblest men to retire to
the hill-recesses before their missions could be accomplished or
their spirits perfected, in so far did the daily world seem by
comparison to be pronounced profane and dangerous; and to those who
loved that world, and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful
with perpetual rebuke, and necessarily contemplated with a kind of
pain and fear, such as a man engrossed by vanity feels at being by
some accident forced to hear a startling sermon, or to assist at a
funeral service. Every association of this kind was deepened by the
practice and the precept of the time; and thousands of hearts,
which might otherwise have felt that there was loveliness in the
wild landscape, shrank from it in dread, because they knew that the
monk retired to it for penance, and the hermit for contemplation.
The horror which the Greek had felt for hills only when they were
uninhabitable and barren, attached itself now to many of the
sweetest spots of earth; the feeling was conquered by political
interests, but never by admiration; military ambition seized the
frontier rock, or maintained itself in the unassailable pass; but it
was only for their punishment, or in their despair, that men
consented to tread the crocused slopes of the Chartreuse, or the
soft glades and dewy pastures of Vallombrosa.
Sec. 11. In all these modifications of temper and principle there
appears much which tends to passionate, affectionate, or awe-struck
observance of the features of natural scenery, closely resembling,
in all but this superstitious dread of mountains, our feelings at
the present day. But _one_ character which the mediaevals had in
common with the ancients, and that exactly the most eminent
character in both, opposed itself steadily to all the feelings we
have hitherto been examining,--the admiration, namely, and constant
watchfulness, of human beauty. Exercised in nearly the same manner
as the Greeks, from their youth upwards, their countenances were
cast even in a higher mould; for, although somewhat less regular in
feature, and affected by minglings of Northern bluntness and
stolidity of general expression, together with greater thinness of
lip and shaggy formlessness of brow, these less sculpturesque
features were, nevertheless, touched with a seriousness and
refinement proceeding first from the modes of thought inculcated by
the Christian religion, and secondly from their more romantic and
various life. Hence a degree of personal beauty, both male and
female, was attained in the Middle Ages, with which classical
periods could show nothing for a moment comparable; and this beauty
was set forth by the most perfect splendor, united with grace, in
dress, which the human race have hitherto invented. The strength of
their art-genius was directed in great part to this object; and
their best workmen and most brilliant fanciers were employed in
wreathing the mail or embroidering the robe. The exquisite arts of
enamelling and chasing metal enabled them to make the armor as
radiant and delicate as the plumage of a tropical bird; and the most
various and vivid imaginations were displayed in the alternations of
color, and fiery freaks of form, on shield and crest; so that of all
the beautiful things which the eyes of men could fall upon, in the
world about them, the most beautiful must have been a young knight
riding out in morning sunshine, and in faithful hope.
"His broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls, as on he rode.
All in the blue, unclouded weather,
Thick jewelled shone the saddle leather;
The helmet and the helmet feather
Burned like one burning flame together;
And the gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden galaxy."
[Sidenote: Sec. 12. 5. care for human beauty.]
Now, the effect of this superb presence of human beauty on men in
general was, exactly as it had been in Greek times, first, to turn
their thoughts and glances in great part away from all other beauty
but that, and to make the grass of the field take to them always more
or less the aspect of a carpet to dance upon, a lawn to tilt upon, or
a serviceable crop of hay; and, secondly, in what attention they paid
to this lower nature, to make them dwell exclusively on what was
graceful, symmetrical, and bright in color. All that was rugged,
rough, dark, wild, unterminated, they rejected at once, as the domain
of "salvage men" and monstrous giants: all that they admired was
tender, bright, balanced, enclosed, symmetrical--only symmetrical in
the noble and free sense: for what we moderns call "symmetry," or
"balance," differs as much from mediaeval symmetry as the poise of a
grocer's scales, or the balance of an Egyptian mummy with its hands
tied to its sides, does from the balance of a knight on his horse,
striking with the battle-axe, at the gallop; the mummy's balance
looking wonderfully perfect, and yet sure to be one-sided if you weigh
the dust of it,--the knight's balance swaying and changing like the
wind, and yet as true and accurate as the laws of life.
[Sidenote: Sec. 13. 6. Symmetrical government of design.]
And this love of symmetry was still farther enhanced by the peculiar
duties required of art at the time; for, in order to fit a flower or
leaf for inlaying in armor, or showing clearly in glass, it was
absolutely necessary to take away its complexity, and reduce it to
the condition of a disciplined and orderly pattern; and this the
more, because, for all military purposes, the device, whatever it
was, had to be distinctly intelligible at extreme distance. That it
should be a good imitation of nature, when seen near, was of no
moment; but it was of highest moment that when first the knight's
banner flashed in the sun at the turn of the mountain road, or rose,
torn and bloody, through the drift of the battle dust, it should
still be discernible what the bearing was.
"At length, the freshening western blast
Aside the shroud of battle cast;
And first the ridge of mingled spears
Above the brightening cloud appears;
And in the smoke the pennons flew,
As in the storm the white sea-mew;
Then marked they, dashing broad and far
The broken billows of the war.
Wide raged the battle on the plain;
Spears shook, and falchions flashed amain,
Fell England's arrow-flight like rain;
Crests rose, and stooped, and rose again,
Wild and disorderly.
Amidst the scene of tumult, high,
_They saw Lord Marmion's falcon fly,
And stainless Tunstall's banner white,
And Edmund Howard's lion bright._"
It was needed, not merely that they should see it was a falcon, but
Lord Marmion's falcon; not only a lion, but the Howard's lion.
Hence, to the one imperative end of _intelligibility_, every minor
resemblance to nature was sacrificed, and above all, the _curved_,
which are chiefly the confusing lines; so that the straight,
elongated back, doubly elongated tail, projected and separate claws,
and other rectilinear unnaturalnesses of form, became the means by
which the leopard was, in midst of the mist and storm of battle,
distinguished from the dog, or the lion from the wolf; the most
admirable fierceness and vitality being, in spite of these
necessary changes (so often shallowly sneered at by the modern
workman), obtained by the old designer.
Farther, it was necessary to the brilliant harmony of color, and
clear setting forth of everything, that all confusing shadows, all
dim and doubtful lines should be rejected: hence at once an utter
denial of natural appearances by the great body of workmen; and a
calm rest in a practice of representation which would make either
boar or lion blue, scarlet, or golden, according to the device of
the knight, or the need of such and such a color in that place of
the pattern; and which wholly denied that any substance ever cast a
shadow, or was affected by any kind of obscurity.
[Sidenote: Sec. 14. 7. Therefore, inaccurate rendering of nature.]
All this was in its way, and for its end, absolutely right, admirable,
and delightful; and those who despise it, laugh at it, or derive no
pleasure from it, are utterly ignorant of the highest principles of
art, and are mere tyros and beginners in the practice of color. But,
admirable though it might be, one necessary result of it was a farther
withdrawal of the observation of men from the refined and subtle
beauty of nature; so that the workman who first was led to think
_lightly_ of natural beauty, as being subservient to human, was next
led to think _inaccurately_ of natural beauty, because he had
continually to alter and simplify it for his practical purposes.
Sec. 15. Now, assembling all these different sources of the peculiar
mediaeval feeling towards nature in one view, we have:
1st. Love of the garden instead of love of the farm, leading
to a sentimental contemplation of nature, instead of a
practical and agricultural one. (Sec.Sec. 3. 4. 6.)
2nd. Loss of sense of actual Divine presence, leading to
fancies of fallacious animation, in herbs, flowers, clouds,
&c. (Sec. 7.)
3rd. Perpetual, and more or less undisturbed, companionship
with wild nature. (Sec.Sec. 8. 9.)
4th. Apprehension of demoniacal and angelic presence among
mountains, leading to a reverent dread of them. (Sec. 10.)
5th. Principalness of delight in human beauty, leading to
comparative contempt of natural objects. (Sec. 11.)
6th. Consequent love of order, light, intelligibility, and
symmetry, leading to dislike of the wildness, darkness, and
mystery of nature. (Sec. 12.)
7th. Inaccuracy of observance of nature, induced by the
habitual practice of change on its forms. (Sec. 13.)
From these mingled elements, we should necessarily expect to find
resulting, as the characteristic of mediaeval landscape art, compared
with Greek, a far higher sentiment about it, and affection for it,
more or less subdued by still greater respect for the loveliness of
man, and therefore subordinated entirely to human interests; mingled
with curious traces of terror, piety, or superstition, and cramped
by various formalisms,--some wise and necessary, some feeble, and
some exhibiting needless ignorance and inaccuracy.
Under these lights, let us examine the facts.
Sec. 16. The landscape of the Middle Ages is represented in a central
manner by the illuminations of the MSS. of Romances, executed about
the middle of the fifteenth century. On one side of these stands the
earlier landscape work, more or less treated as simple decoration;
on the other, the later landscape work, becoming more or less
affected with modern ideas and modes of imitation.
These central fifteenth century landscapes are almost invariably
composed of a grove or two of tall trees, a winding river, and a
castle, or a garden: the peculiar feature of both these last being
_trimness_; the artist always dwelling especially on the fences;
wreathing the espaliers indeed prettily with sweet-briar, and
putting pots of orange-trees on the tops of the walls, but taking
great care that there shall be no loose bricks in the one, nor
broken stakes in the other,--the trouble and ceaseless warfare of
the times having rendered security one of the first elements of
pleasantness, and making it impossible for any artist to conceive
Paradise but as surrounded by a moat, or to distinguish the road to
it better than by its narrow wicket gate, and watchful porter.
Sec. 17. One of these landscapes is thus described by Macaulay: "We
have an exact square, enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel,
and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the centre;
rectangular beds of flowers; a long canal neatly bricked and railed
in; the tree of knowledge, clipped like one of the limes behind the
Tuileries, standing in the centre of the grand alley; the snake
turned round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on the left,
and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them."
All this is perfectly true; and seems in the description very
curiously foolish. The only curious folly, however, in the matter is
the exquisite _naivete_ of the historian, in supposing that the
quaint landscape indicates in the understanding of the painter so
marvellous an inferiority to his own; whereas, it is altogether his
own wit that is at fault, in not comprehending that nations, whose
youth had been decimated among the sands and serpents of Syria, knew
probably nearly as much about Eastern scenery as youths trained in
the schools of the modern Royal Academy; and that this curious
symmetry was entirely symbolic, only more or less modified by the
various instincts which I have traced above. Mr. Macaulay is
evidently quite unaware that the serpent with the human head, and
body twisted round the tree, was the universally accepted symbol of
the evil angel, from the dawn of art up to Michael Angelo; that the
greatest sacred artists invariably place the man on the one side of
the tree, the woman on the other, in order to denote the enthroned
and balanced dominion about to fall by temptation; that the beasts
are ranged (when they _are_ so, though this is much more seldom the
case,) in a circle round them, expressly to mark that they were then
not wild, but obedient, intelligent, and orderly beasts; and that
the four rivers are trenched and enclosed on the four sides, to mark
that the waters which now wander in waste, and destroy in fury, had
then for their principal office to "water the garden" of God. The
description is, however, sufficiently apposite and interesting, as
bearing upon what I have noted respecting the eminent _fence_-loving
spirit of the mediaevals.
Sec. 18. Together with this peculiar formality, we find an infinite
delight in drawing pleasant flowers, always articulating and outlining
them completely; the sky is always blue, having only a few delicate
white clouds in it, and in the distance are blue mountains, very far
away, if the landscape is to be simply delightful; but brought near,
and divided into quaint overhanging rocks, if it is intended to be
meditative, or a place of saintly seclusion. But the whole of it
always,--flowers, castles, brooks, clouds, and rocks,--subordinate to
the human figures in the foreground, and painted for no other end than
that of explaining their adventures and occupations.
[Illustration: 7. Botany of 13th Century. (Apple-tree and Cyclamen)]
Sec. 19. Before the idea of landscape had been thus far developed, the
representations of it had been purely typical; the objects which had
to be shown in order to explain the scene of the event, being firmly
outlined, usually on a pure golden or chequered color background,
not on sky. The change from the golden background, (characteristic
of the finest thirteenth century work) and the colored chequer
(which in like manner belongs to the finest fourteenth) to the blue
sky, gradated to the horizon, takes place early in the fifteenth
century, and is the _crisis_ of change in the spirit of mediaeval
art. Strictly speaking, we might divide the art of Christian times
into two great masses--Symbolic and Imitative;--the symbolic,
reaching from the earliest periods down to the close of the
fourteenth century, and the imitative from that close to the present
time; and, then, the most important circumstance indicative of the
culminating point, or turn of tide, would be this of the change from
chequered background to sky background. The uppermost figure in
Plate 7. opposite, representing the tree of knowledge, taken from a
somewhat late thirteenth century Hebrew manuscript (Additional
11,639) in the British Museum, will at once illustrate Mr.
Macaulay's "serpent turned round the tree," and the mode of
introducing the chequer background, will enable the reader better to
understand the peculiar feeling of the period, which no more
intended the formal walls or streams for an imitative representation
of the Garden of Eden, than these chequers for an imitation of sky.
Sec. 20. The moment the sky is introduced (and it is curious how
perfectly it is done _at once_, many manuscripts presenting, in
alternate pages, chequered backgrounds, and deep blue skies
exquisitely gradated to the horizon)--the moment, I say, the sky is
introduced, the spirit of art becomes for evermore changed, and
thenceforward it gradually proposes imitation more and more as an
end, until it reaches the Turnerian landscape. This broad division
into two schools would therefore be the most true and accurate we
could employ, but not the most convenient. For the great mediaeval
art lies in a cluster about the culminating point, including
symbolism on one side, and imitation on the other, and extending
like a radiant cloud upon the mountain peak of ages, partly down
both sides of it, from the year 1200 to 1500; the brightest part of
the cloud leaning a little backwards, and poising itself between
1250 and 1350. And therefore the most convenient arrangement is into
Romanesque and barbaric art, up to 1200,--mediaeval art, 1200 to
1500,--and modern art, from 1500 downwards. But it is only in the
earlier or symbolic mediaeval art, reaching up to the close of the
fourteenth century, that the peculiar modification of natural forms
for decorative purposes is seen in its perfection, with all its
beauty, and all its necessary shortcomings; the minds of men being
accurately balanced between that honor for the superior human form
which they shared with the Greek ages, and the sentimental love of
nature which was peculiar to their own. The expression of the two
feelings will be found to vary according to the material and place
of the art; in painting, the conventional forms are more adopted, in
order to obtain definition, and brilliancy of color, while in
sculpture the life of nature is often rendered with a love and
faithfulness which put modern art to shame. And in this earnest
contemplation of the natural facts, united with an endeavor to
simplify, for clear expression, the results of that contemplation,
the ornamental artists arrived at two abstract conclusions about
form, which are highly curious and interesting.
Sec. 21. They saw, first, that a leaf might always be considered as a
sudden expansion of the stem that bore it; an uncontrollable
expression of delight, on the part of the twig, that spring had come,
shown in a fountain-like expatiation of its tender green heart into
the air. They saw that in this violent proclamation of its delight and
liberty, whereas the twig had, until that moment, a disposition only
to grow quietly forwards, it expressed its satisfaction and extreme
pleasure in sunshine by springing out to right and left. Let _a b_,
Fig. 1. Plate 8., be the twig growing forward in the direction from
_a_ to _b_. It reaches the point _b_, and then--spring coming,--not
being able to contain itself, it bursts out in every direction, even
springing backwards at first for joy; but as this backward
direction is contrary to its own proper fate and nature, it cannot go
on so long, and the length of each rib into which it separates is
proportioned accurately to the degree in which the proceedings of that
rib are in harmony with the natural destiny of the plant. Thus the rib
_c_, entirely contradictory, by the direction of his life and energy,
of the general intentions to the tree, is but a short-lived rib; _d_,
not quite so opposite to his fate, lives longer; _e_, accommodating
himself still more to the spirit of progress, attains a greater length
still; and the largest rib of all is the one who has not yielded at
all to the erratic disposition of the others when spring came, but,
feeling quite as happy about the spring as they did, nevertheless took
no holiday, minded his business, and grew straightforward.
[Illustration: 8. The Growth of Leaves.]
Sec. 22. Fig. 6. in the same plate, which shows the disposition of the
ribs in the leaf of an American Plane, exemplifies the principle
very accurately; it is indeed more notably seen in this than in most
leaves, because the ribs at the base have evidently had a little
fraternal quarrel about their spring holiday; and the more
gaily-minded ones, getting together into trios on each side, have
rather pooh-poohed and laughed at the seventh brother in the middle,
who wanted to go on regularly, and attend to his work. Nevertheless,
though thus starting quite by himself in life, this seventh brother,
quietly pushing on in the right direction, lives longest, and makes
the largest fortune, and the triple partnerships on the right and
left meet with a very minor prosperity.
Sec. 23. Now if we inclose Fig. 1. in Plate 8. with two curves passing
through the extremities of the ribs, we get Fig. 2., the central type
of all leaves. Only this type is modified of course in a thousand ways
by the life of the plant. If it be marsh or aquatic, instead of
springing out in twigs, it is almost certain to expand in soft
currents, as the liberated stream does at its mouth into the ocean,
Fig. 3. (Alisma Plantago); if it be meant for one of the crowned and
lovely trees of the earth, it will separate into stars, and each ray
of the leaf will form a ray of light in the crown, Fig. 5.
(Horsechestnut); and if it be a commonplace tree, rather prudent and
practical than imaginative, it will not expand all at once, but throw
out the ribs every now and then along the central rib, like a
merchant taking his occasional and restricted holiday, Fig. 4. (Elm).
Sec. 24. Now in the bud, where all these proceedings on the leaf's part
are first imagined, the young leaf is generally (always?) doubled up in
embryo, so as to present the profile of the half-leaves, as Fig. 7.,
only in exquisite complexity of arrangement; Fig. 9., for instance, is
the profile of the leaf-bud of a rose. Hence the general arrangement of
line represented by Fig. 8. (in which the lower line is slightly curved
to express the bending life in the spine) is everlastingly typical of
the expanding powers of joyful vegetative youth; and it is of all
simple forms the most exquisitely delightful to the human mind. It
presents itself in a thousand different proportions and variations in
the buds and profiles of leaves; those being always the loveliest in
which, either by accidental perspective of position, or inherent
character in the tree, it is most frequently presented to the eye. The
branch of bramble, for instance, Fig. 10. at the bottom of Plate 8.,
owes its chief beauty to the perpetual recurrence of this typical form;
and we shall find presently the enormous importance of it, even in
mountain ranges, though, in these, _falling_ force takes the place of
_vital_ force.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
Sec. 25. This abstract conclusion the great thirteenth century artists
were the first to arrive at; and whereas, before their time,
ornament had been constantly refined into intricate and
subdivided symmetries, they were content with this simple form as
the termination of its most important features. Fig. 3., which is a
scroll out of a Psalter executed in the latter half of the
thirteenth century, is a sufficient example of a practice at that
time absolutely universal.
[Illustration: 9. Botany of the 14th Century. From the Prayer-book of
Yolande of Navarre.]
Sec. 26. The second great discovery of the Middle Ages in floral
ornament, was that, in order completely to express the law of
subordination among the leaf-ribs, two ribs were necessary, _and no
more_, on each side of the leaf, forming a series of three with the
central one, because proportion is between three terms at least.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
That is to say, when they had only three ribs altogether, as _a_,
Fig. 4., no _law_ of relation was discernible between the ribs, or
the leaflets they bore; but by the addition of a third on each
side as at _b_, proportion instantly was expressible, whether
arithmetical or geometrical, or of any other kind. Hence the
adoption of forms more or less approximating to that at _c_ (young
ivy), or _d_ (wild geranium), as the favorite elements of their
floral ornament, those leaves being in their disposition of masses,
the simplest which can express a perfect law of proportion, just as
the outline Fig. 7. Plate 8. is the simplest which can express a
perfect law of growth.
Plate 9. opposite gives, in rude outline, the arrangement of the
border of one of the pages of a missal in my own possession, executed
for the Countess Yolande of Flanders,[72] in the latter half of the
fourteenth century, and furnishing, in exhaustless variety, the most
graceful examples I have ever seen of the favorite decoration at the
period, commonly now known as the "Ivy leaf" pattern.
Sec. 27. In thus reducing these two everlasting laws of beauty to their
simplest possible exponents, the mediaeval workmen were the first to
discern and establish the principles of decorative art to the end of
time, nor of decorative art merely, but of mass arrangement in
general. For the members of any great composition, arranged about a
centre, are always reducible to the law of the ivy leaf, the best
cathedral entrances having five porches corresponding in
proportional purpose to its five lobes (three being an imperfect,
and seven a superfluous number); while the loveliest groups of lines
attainable in any pictorial composition are always based on the
section of the leaf-bud, Fig. 7. Plate 8., or on the relation of its
ribs to the convex curve enclosing them.
Sec. 28. These discoveries of ultimate truth are, I believe, never made
philosophically, but instinctively; so that wherever we find a high
abstract result of the kind, we may be almost sure it has been the
work of the penetrative imagination, acting under the influence of
strong affection. Accordingly, when we enter on our botanical
inquiries, I shall have occasion to show with what tender and loving
fidelity to nature the masters of the thirteenth century always
traced the leading lines of their decorations, either in
missal-painting or sculpture, and how totally in this respect their
methods of subduing, for the sake of distinctness, the natural forms
they loved so dearly, differ from the iron formalisms to which the
Greeks, careless of all that was not completely divine or completely
human, reduced the thorn of the acanthus, and softness of the lily.
Nevertheless, in all this perfect and loving decorative art, we have
hardly any careful references to other landscape features than herbs
and flowers; mountains, water, and clouds are introduced so rudely,
that the representations of them can never be received for anything
else than letters or signs. Thus the _sign_ of clouds, in the
thirteenth century, is an undulating band, usually in painting, of
blue edged with white, in sculpture, wrought so as to resemble very
nearly the folds of a curtain closely tied, and understood for
clouds only by its position, as surrounding angels or saints in
heaven, opening to souls ascending at the Last Judgment, or forming
canopies over the Saviour or the Virgin. Water is represented by
zigzag lines, nearly resembling those employed for clouds, but
distinguished, in sculpture, by having fish in it; in painting, both
by fish and a more continuous blue or green color. And when these
unvaried symbols are associated under the influence of that love of
firm fence, moat, and every other means of definition which we have
seen to be one of the prevailing characteristics of the mediaeval
mind, it is not possible for us to conceive, through the rigidity of
the signs employed, what were the real feelings of the workman or
spectator about the natural landscape. We see that the thing carved
or painted is not intended in any wise to imitate the truth, or
convey to us the feelings which the workman had in contemplating the
truth. He has got a way of talking about it so definite and cold,
and tells us with his chisel so calmly that the knight had a castle
to attack, or the saint a river to cross dryshod, without making the
smallest effort to describe pictorially either castle or river, that
we are left wholly at fault as to the nature of the emotion with
which he contemplated the real objects. But that emotion, as the
intermediate step between the feelings of the Grecian and the
Modern, it must be our aim to ascertain as clearly as possible; and,
therefore, finding it not at this period completely expressed in
visible art, we must, as we did with the Greeks, take up the written
landscape instead, and examine this mediaeval sentiment as we find it
embodied in the poem of Dante.
Sec. 29. The thing that must first strike us in this respect, as we
turn our thoughts to the poem, is, unquestionably, the _formality_
of its landscape.
Milton's effort, in all that he tells us of his Inferno, is to make
it indefinite; Dante's, to make it _definite_. Both, indeed,
describe it as entered through gates; but, within the gate, all is
wild and fenceless with Milton, having indeed its four rivers,--the
last vestige of the mediaeval tradition,--but rivers which flow
through a waste of mountain and moorland, and by "many a frozen,
many a fiery Alp." But Dante's Inferno is accurately separated into
circles drawn with well-pointed compasses; mapped and properly
surveyed in every direction, trenched in a thoroughly good style of
engineering from depth to depth, and divided in the "_accurate_
middle" (dritto mezzo) of its deepest abyss, into a concentric
series of ten moats and embankments, like those about a castle, with
bridges from each embankment to the next; precisely in the manner of
those bridges over Hiddekel and Euphrates, which Mr. Macaulay thinks
so innocently designed, apparently not aware that he is also
laughing at Dante. These larger fosses are of rock, and the bridges
also; but as he goes further into detail, Dante tells us of various
minor fosses and embankments, in which he anxiously points out to us
not only the formality, but the neatness and perfectness, of the
stonework. For instance, in describing the river Phlegethon, he
tells us that it was "paved with stone at the bottom, and at the
sides, and _over the edges of the sides_," just as the water is at
the baths of Bulicame; and for fear we should think this embankment
at all _larger_ than it really was, Dante adds, carefully, that it
was made just like the embankments of Ghent or Bruges against the
sea, or those in Lombardy which bank the Brenta, only "not so high,
nor so wide," as any of these. And besides the trenches, we have two
well-built castles; one like Ecbatana, with seven circuits of wall
(and surrounded by a fair stream), wherein the great poets and sages
of antiquity live; and another, a great fortified city with walls of
iron, red-hot, and a deep fosse round it, and full of "grave
citizens,"--the city of Dis.
Sec. 30. Now, whether this be in what we moderns call "good taste," or
not, I do not mean just now to inquire--Dante having nothing to do
with taste, but with the facts of what he had seen; only, so far as
the imaginative faculty of the two poets is concerned, note that
Milton's vagueness is not the sign of imagination, but of its
absence, so far as it is significative in the matter. For it does
not follow, because Milton did not map out his Inferno as Dante did,
that he _could_ not have done so if he had chosen; only, it was the
easier and less imaginative process to leave it vague than to
define it. Imagination is always the seeing and asserting faculty;
that which obscures or conceals may be judgment, or feeling, but not
invention. The invention, whether good or bad, is in the accurate
engineering, not in the fog and uncertainty.
Sec. 31. When we pass with Dante from the Inferno to Purgatory, we have
indeed more light and air, but no more liberty; being now confined
on various ledges cut into a mountain side, with a precipice on one
hand and a vertical wall on the other; and, lest here also we should
make any mistake about magnitudes, we are told that the ledges were
eighteen feet wide,[73] and that the ascent from one to the other
was by steps, made like those which go up from Florence to the
church of San Minieto.[74]
Lastly, though in the Paradise there is perfect freedom and infinity
of space, though for trenches we have planets, and for cornices
constellations, yet there is more cadence, procession, and order
among the redeemed souls than any others; they fly, so as to
describe letters and sentences in the air, and rest in circles, like
rainbows, or determinate figures, as of a cross and an eagle; in
which certain of the more glorified natures are so arranged as to
form the eye of the bird, while those most highly blessed are
arranged with their white crowds in leaflets, so as to form the
image of a white rose in the midst of heaven.
Sec. 32. Thus, throughout the poem, I conceive that the first striking
character of its scenery is intense definition; precisely the
reflection of that definiteness which we have already traced in
pictorial art. But the second point which seems noteworthy is, that
the flat ground and embanked trenches are reserved for the Inferno;
and that the entire territory of the Purgatory is a mountain, thus
marking the sense of that purifying and perfecting influence in
mountains which we saw the mediaeval mind was so ready to suggest.
The same general idea is indicated at the very commencement of the
poem, in which Dante is overwhelmed by fear and sorrow in passing
through a dark forest, but revives on seeing the sun touch the top
of a hill, afterwards called by Virgil "the pleasant mount--the
cause and source of all delight."
Sec. 33. While, however, we find this greater honor paid to mountains, I
think we may perceive a much greater dread and dislike of woods. We
saw that Homer seemed to attach a pleasant idea, for the most part, to
forests; regarding them as sources of wealth and places of shelter;
and we find constantly an idea of sacredness attached to them, as
being haunted especially by the gods; so that even the wood which
surrounds the house of Circe is spoken of as a sacred thicket, or
rather, as a sacred glade, or labyrinth of glades (of the particular
word used I shall have more to say presently); and so the wood is
sought as a kindly shelter by Ulysses, in spite of its wild beasts;
and evidently regarded with great affection by Sophocles, for, in a
passage which is always regarded by readers of Greek tragedy with
peculiar pleasure, the aged and blind Oedipus, brought to rest in "the
sweetest resting-place" in all the neighborhood of Athens, has the
spot described to him as haunted perpetually by nightingales, which
sing "in the green glades and in the dark ivy, and in the
thousand-fruited, sunless, and windless thickets of the god"
(Bacchus); the idea of the complete shelter from wind and sun being
here, as with Ulysses, the uppermost one. After this come the usual
staples of landscape,--narcissus, crocus, plenty of rain, olive trees;
and last, and the greatest boast of all,--"it is a good country for
horses, and conveniently by the sea;" but the prominence and
pleasantness of the thick wood in the thoughts of the writer are very
notable; whereas to Dante the idea of a forest is exceedingly
repulsive, so that, as just noticed, in the opening of his poem, he
cannot express a general despair about life more strongly than by
saying he was lost in a wood so savage and terrible, that "even to
think or speak of it is distress,--it was so bitter,--it was something
next door to death;" and one of the saddest scenes in all the Inferno
is in a forest, of which the trees are haunted by lost souls; while
(with only one exception,) whenever the country is to be beautiful, we
find ourselves coming out into open air and open meadows.
It is quite true that this is partly a characteristic, not merely of
Dante, or of mediaeval writers, but of _southern_ writers; for the
simple reason that the forest, being with them higher upon the
hills, and more out of the way than in the north was generally a
type of lonely and savage places; while in England, the
"greenwood," coming up to the very walls of the towns, it was
possible to be "merry in the good greenwood," in a sense which an
Italian could not have understood. Hence Chaucer, Spenser, and
Shakspere send their favorites perpetually to the woods for pleasure
or meditation; and trust their tender Canace, or Rosalind, or
Helena, or Silvia, or Belphoebe, where Dante would have sent no one
but a condemned spirit. Nevertheless, there is always traceable in
the mediaeval mind a dread of thick foliage, which was not present to
that of a Greek; so that, even in the north, we have our sorrowful
"children in the wood," and black huntsmen of the Hartz forests, and
such other wood terrors; the principal reason for the difference
being that a Greek, being by no means given to travelling, regarded
his woods as so much valuable property; and if he ever went into
them for pleasure expected to meet one or two gods in the course of
his walk, but no banditti; while a mediaeval, much more of a solitary
traveller, and expecting to meet with no gods in the thickets, but
only with thieves, or a hostile ambush, or a bear, besides a great
deal of troublesome ground for his horse, and a very serious chance,
next to a certainty, of losing his way, naturally kept in the open
ground as long as he could, and regarded the forests, in general,
with anything but an eye of favor.
Sec. 34. These, I think, are the principal points which must strike us,
when we first broadly think of the poem as compared with classical
work. Let us now go a little more into detail.
As Homer gave us an ideal landscape, which even a god might have been
pleased to behold, so Dante gives us, fortunately, an ideal landscape,
which is specially intended for the terrestrial paradise. And it will
doubtless be with some surprise, after our reflections above on the
general tone of Dante's feelings, that we find ourselves here first
entering a _forest_, and that even a _thick_ forest. But there is a
peculiar meaning in this. With any other poet than Dante, it might
have been regarded as a wanton inconsistency. Not so with him: by
glancing back to the two lines which explain the nature of Paradise,
we shall see what he means by it. Virgil tells him, as he enters it,
"Henceforward, take thine own pleasure for guide; thou art beyond the
steep ways, and beyond all Art;"--meaning, that the perfectly purified
and noble human creature, having no pleasure but in right, is past
all effort, and past all _rule_. Art has no existence for such a
being. Hence, the first aim of Dante, in his landscape imagery, is to
show evidence of this perfect liberty, and of the purity and
sinlessness of the new nature, converting pathless ways into happy
ones. So that all those fences and formalisms which had been needed
for him in imperfection, are removed in this paradise; and even the
pathlessness of the wood, the most dreadful thing possible to him in
his days of sin and shortcoming, is now a joy to him in his days of
purity. And as the fencelessness and thicket of sin led to the
fettered and fearful order of eternal punishment, so the fencelessness
and thicket of the free virtue lead to the loving and constellated
order of eternal happiness.
Sec. 35. This forest, then, is very like that of Colonos in several
respects--in its peace and sweetness, and number of birds; it
differs from it only in letting a light breeze through it, being
therefore somewhat thinner than the Greek wood; the tender lines
which tell of the voices of the birds mingling with the wind, and of
the leaves all turning one way before it, have been more or less
copied by every poet since Dante's time. They are, so far as I know,
the sweetest passage of wood description which exists in literature.
Before, however, Dante has gone far in this wood,--that is to say,
only so far as to have lost sight of the place where he entered it,
or rather, I suppose, of the light under the boughs of the outside
trees, and it must have been a very thin wood indeed if he did not
do this in some quarter of a mile's walk,--he comes to a little
river, three paces over, which bends the blades of grass to the
left, with a meadow on the other side of it; and in this meadow
"A lady, graced with solitude, who went
Singing, and setting flower by flower apart,
By which the path she walked on was besprent.
'Ah, lady beautiful, that basking art
In beams of love, if I may trust thy face,
Which useth to bear witness of the heart,
Let liking come on thee,' said I, 'to trace
Thy path a little closer to the shore,
Where I may reap the hearing of thy lays.
Thou mindest me, how Proserpine of yore
Appeared in such a place, what time her mother
Lost her, and she the spring, for evermore.'
As, pointing downwards and to one another
Her feet, a lady bendeth in the dance,
And barely setteth one before the other,
Thus, on the scarlet and the saffron glance
Of flowers, with motion maidenlike she bent
(Her modest eyelids drooping and askance);
And there she gave my wishes their content,
Approaching, so that her sweet melodies
Arrived upon mine ear with what they meant.
When first she came amongst the blades, that rise,
Already wetted, from the goodly river,
She graced me by the lifting of her eyes." (CAYLEY.)
Sec. 36. I have given this passage at length, because, for our
purposes, it is by much the most important, not only in Dante, but
in the whole circle of poetry. This lady, observe, stands on the
opposite side of the little stream, which, presently, she explains
to Dante is Lethe, having power to cause forgetfulness of all evil,
and she stands just among the bent blades of grass at its edge. She
is first seen gathering flower from flower, then "passing
continually the multitudinous flowers through her hands," smiling at
the same time so brightly, that her first address to Dante is to
prevent him from wondering at her, saying, "if he will remember the
verse of the ninety-second Psalm, beginning. 'Delectasti,' he will
know why she is so happy."
And turning to the verse of the Psalm, we find it written, "Thou,
Lord, hast made me glad _through Thy works_. I will triumph _in the
works of Thy hands_;" or, in the very words in which Dante would
read it,--
"Quia delectasti me, Domine, in factura tua,
Et in operibus manuum Tuarum exultabo."
Sec. 37. Now we could not for an instant have had any difficulty in
understanding this, but that, some way farther on in the poem, this
lady is called Matilda, and it is with reason supposed by the
commentators to be the great Countess Matilda of the eleventh
century; notable equally for her ceaseless activity, her brilliant
political genius, her perfect piety, and her deep reverence for the
see of Rome. This Countess Matilda is therefore Dante's guide in
the terrestrial paradise, as Beatrice is afterwards in the
celestial; each of them having a spiritual and symbolic character in
their glorified state, yet retaining their definite personality.
The question is, then, what is the symbolic character of the
Countess Matilda, as the guiding spirit of the terrestrial paradise?
Before Dante had entered this paradise he had rested on a step of
shelving rock, and as he watched the stars he slept, and dreamed,
and thus tells us what he saw:--
"A lady, young and beautiful, I dreamed,
Was passing o'er a lea; and, as she came,
Methought I saw her ever and anon
Bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang:
'Know ye, whoever of my name would ask,
That I am Leah; for my brow to weave
A garland, these fair hands unwearied ply;
To please me at the crystal mirror, here
I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she
Before her glass abides the livelong day,
Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less
Than I with this delightful task. Her joy
In contemplation, as in labor mine.'"
This vision of Rachel and Leah has been always, and with
unquestionable truth, received as a type of the Active and
Contemplative life, and as an introduction to the two divisions of the
paradise which Dante is about to enter. Therefore the unwearied spirit
of the Countess Matilda is understood to represent the Active life,
which forms the felicity of Earth; and the spirit of Beatrice the
Contemplative life, which forms the felicity of Heaven. This
interpretation appears at first straightforward and certain; but it
has missed count of exactly the most important fact in the two
passages which we have to explain. Observe: Leah gathers the flowers
to decorate _herself_, and delights in _Her Own_ Labor. Rachel sits
silent, contemplating herself, and delights in _Her Own_ Image. These
are the types of the Unglorified Active and Contemplative powers of
Man. But Beatrice and Matilda are the same powers, Glorified. And how
are they Glorified? Leah took delight in her own labor; but
Matilda--"in operibus _manuum Tuarum_"--_in God's labor_: Rachel in
the sight of her own face; Beatrice in the sight of _God's face_.
Sec. 38. And thus, when afterwards Dante sees Beatrice on her throne, and
prays her that, when he himself shall die, she would receive him with
kindness, Beatrice merely looks down for an instant, and answers with
a single smile, then "towards the eternal fountain turns."
Therefore it is evident that Dante distinguishes in both cases, not
between earth and heaven, but between perfect and imperfect happiness,
whether in earth or heaven. The active life which has only the service
of man for its end, and therefore gathers flowers, with Leah, for its
own decoration, is indeed happy, but not perfectly so; it has only the
happiness of the dream, belonging essentially to the dream of human
life, and passing away with it. But the active life which labors for
the more and more discovery of God's work, is perfectly happy, and is
the life of the terrestrial paradise, being a true foretaste of
heaven, and beginning in earth, as heaven's vestibule. So also the
contemplative life which is concerned with human feeling and thought
and beauty--the life which is in earthly poetry and imagery of noble
earthly emotion--is happy, but it is the happiness of the dream; the
contemplative life which has God's person and love in Christ for its
object, has the happiness of eternity. But because this higher
happiness is also begun here on earth, Beatrice descends to earth; and
when revealed to Dante first, he sees the image of the twofold
personality of Christ reflected in her _eyes_; as the flowers, which
are, to the mediaeval heart, the chief work of God, are for ever
passing through Matilda's _hands_.
Sec. 39. Now, therefore, we see that Dante, as the great prophetic
exponent of the heart of the Middle Ages, has, by the lips of the
spirit of Matilda, declared the mediaeval faith,--that all perfect
active life was "the expression of man's delight _in God's work_;"
and that all their political and warlike energy, as fully shown in
the mortal life of Matilda, was yet inferior and impure,--the energy
of the dream,--compared with that which on the opposite bank of
Lethe stood "choosing flower from flower." And what joy and peace
there were in this work is marked by Matilda's being the person who
draws Dante through the stream of Lethe, so as to make him forget
all sin, and all sorrow: throwing her arms round him, she plunges
his head under the waves of it; then draws him through, crying to
him, "_hold me, hold me_" (tiemmi, tiemmi), and so presents him,
thus bathed, free from all painful memory, at the feet of the spirit
of the more heavenly contemplation.
Sec. 40. The reader will, I think, now see, with sufficient
distinctness, why I called this passage the most important, for our
present purposes, in the whole circle of poetry. For it contains the
first great confession of the discovery by the human race (I mean as
a matter of experience, not of revelation), that their happiness was
not in themselves, and that their labor was not to have their own
service as its chief end. It embodies in a few syllables the
_sealing_ difference between the Greek and the mediaeval, in that the
former sought the flower and herb for his own uses, the latter for
God's honor; the former, primarily and on principle, contemplated
his own beauty and the workings of his own mind, and the latter,
primarily and on principle, contemplated Christ's beauty and the
workings of the mind of Christ.
Sec. 41. I will not at present follow up this subject any farther; it
being enough that we have thus got to the root of it, and have a
great declaration of the central mediaeval purpose, whereto we may
return for solution of all future questions. I would only,
therefore, desire the reader now to compare the Stones of Venice,
vol. i. chap. xx. Sec.Sec. 15. 16.; the Seven Lamps of Architecture, chap.
iv. Sec. 3.; and the second volume of this work, Chap. II. Sec.Sec. 9. 10.,
and Chap. III. Sec. 10.; that he may, in these several places, observe
how gradually our conclusions are knitting themselves together as we
are able to determine more and more of the successive questions that
come before us: and, finally, to compare the two interesting
passages in Wordsworth, which, without any memory of Dante,
nevertheless, as if by some special ordaining, describe in matters
of modern life exactly the soothing or felicitous powers of the two
active spirits of Dante--Leah and Matilda, Excursion, book v. line
608. to 625., and book vi. line 102. to 214.
Sec. 42. Having thus received from Dante this great lesson, as to the
spirit in which mediaeval landscape is to be understood, what else we
have to note respecting it, as seen in his poem, will be
comparatively straightforward and easy. And first, we have to
observe the place occupied in his mind by _color_. It has already
been shown, in the Stones of Venice, vol. ii. chap. v. Sec.Sec. 30--34,
that color is the most _sacred_ element of all visible things.
Hence, as the mediaeval mind contemplated them first for their
sacredness, we should, beforehand, expect that the first thing it
would seize would be the color; and that we should find its
expressions and renderings of color infinitely more loving and
accurate than among the Greeks.
Sec. 43. Accordingly, the Greek sense of color seems to have been so
comparatively dim and uncertain, that it is almost impossible to
ascertain what the real idea was which they attached to any word
alluding to hue: and above all, color, though pleasant to their
eyes, as to those of all human beings, seems never to have been
impressive to their feelings. They liked purple, on the whole, the
best; but there was no sense of cheerfulness or pleasantness in one
color, and gloom in another, such as the mediaevals had.
For instance, when Achilles goes, in great anger and sorrow, to
complain to Thetis of the scorn done him by Agamemnon, the sea appears
to him "wine-colored." One might think this meant that the sea looked
dark and reddish-purple to him, in a kind of sympathy with his anger.
But we turn to the passage of Sophocles, which has been above
quoted--a passage peculiarly intended to express peace and rest--and
we find that the birds sing among "wine-colored" ivy. The uncertainty
of conception of the hue itself, and entire absence of expressive
character in the word, could hardly be more clearly manifested.
Sec. 44. Again: I said the Greek liked purple, as a general source of
enjoyment, better than any other color. So he did, and so all healthy
persons who have eye for color, and are unprejudiced about it, do; and
will to the end of time, for a reason presently to be noted. But so
far was this instinctive preference for purple from giving, in the
Greek mind, any consistently cheerful or sacred association to the
color, that Homer constantly calls death "purple death."
Sec. 45. Again: in the passage of Sophocles, so often spoken of, I said
there was some difficulty respecting a word often translated
"thickets." I believe, myself, it means glades; literally, "going
places" in the woods,--that is to say, places where, either naturally
or by force, the trees separate, so as to give some accessible
avenue. Now, Sophocles tells us the birds sang in these "_green_ going
places;" and we take up the expression gratefully, thinking the old
Greek perceived and enjoyed, as we do, the sweet fall of the eminently
_green_ light through the leaves when they are a little thinner than
in the heart of the wood. But we turn to the tragedy of Ajax, and are
much shaken in our conclusion about the meaning of the word, when we
are told that the body of Ajax is to lie unburied, and be eaten by
sea-birds on the "_green_ sand." The formation, geologically
distinguished by that title, was certainly not known to Sophocles; and
the only conclusion which, it seems to me, we can come to under the
circumstances,--assuming Ariel's[75] authority as to the color of
pretty sand, and the ancient mariner's (or, rather, his hearer's[76])
as to the color of ugly sand, to be conclusive,--is that Sophocles
really did not know green from yellow or brown.
Sec. 46. Now, without going out of the terrestrial paradise, in which
Dante last left us, we shall be able at once to compare with this
Greek incertitude the precision of the mediaeval eye for color. Some
three arrowflights further up into the wood we come to a tall tree,
which is at first barren, but, after some little time, visibly opens
into flowers, of a color "less than that of roses, but more than
that of violets."
It certainly would not be possible, in words, to come nearer to the
_definition_ of the exact hue which Dante meant--that of the
apple-blossom. Had he employed any simple color-phrase, as a "pale
pink," or "violet-pink," or any other such combined expression, he
still could not have completely got at the delicacy of the hue; he
might perhaps have indicated its kind, but not its tenderness; but
by taking the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, and then
enfeebling this with the violet grey, he gets, as closely as
language can carry him, to the complete rendering of the vision,
though it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfect beauty
ineffable; and rightly so felt, for of all lovely things which grace
the spring time in our fair temperate zone, I am not sure but this
blossoming of the apple-tree is the fairest. At all events, I find
it associated in my mind with four other kinds of color, certainly
principal among the gifts of the northern earth, namely:
1st. Bell gentians growing close together, mixed with lilies
of the valley, on the Jura pastures.
2nd. Alpine roses with dew upon them, under low rays of
morning sunshine, touching the tops of the flowers.
3rd. Bell heather in mass, in full light, at sunset.
4th. White narcissus (red-centred) in mass, on the Vevay
pastures, in sunshine, after rain.
And I know not where in the group to place the wreaths of
apple-blossoms, in the Vevay orchards, with the far-off blue of the
lake of Geneva seen between the flowers.
A Greek, however, would have regarded this blossom simply with the
eyes of a Devonshire farmer, as bearing on the probable price of
cider, and would have called it red, cerulean, purple, white,
hyacinthine, or generally "aglaos," agreeable, as happened to suit
his verse.
Sec. 47. Again: we have seen how fond the Greek was of composing his
paradises of rather damp grass; but that in this fondness for grass
there was always an undercurrent of consideration for his horses; and
the characters in it which pleased him most were its depth and
freshness; not its color. Now, if we remember carefully the general
expressions, respecting grass, used in modern literature, I think
nearly the commonest that occurs to us will be that of "enamelled"
turf or sward. This phrase is usually employed by our pseudo-poets,
like all their other phrases, without knowing what it means, because
it has been used by other writers before them, and because they do not
know what else to say of grass. If we were to ask them what enamel
was, they could not tell us; and if we asked why grass was like
enamel, they could not tell us. The expression _has_ a meaning,
however, and one peculiarly characteristic of mediaeval and modern
temper.
Sec. 48. The first instance I know of its right use, though very
probably it had been so employed before, is in Dante. The righteous
spirits of the pre-Christian ages are seen by him, though in the
Inferno, yet in a place open, luminous, and high, walking upon the
"green enamel."
I am very sure that Dante did not use this phrase as we use it. He
knew well what enamel was; and his readers, in order to understand
him thoroughly, must remember what it is,--a vitreous paste,
dissolved in water, mixed with metallic oxides, to give it the
opacity and the color required, spread in a moist state on metal,
and afterwards hardened by fire, so as never to change. And Dante
means, in using this metaphor of the grass of the Inferno, to mark
that it is laid as a tempering and cooling substance over the dark,
metallic, gloomy ground; but yet so hardened by the fire, that it is
not any more fresh or living grass, but a smooth, silent, lifeless
bed of eternal green. And we know how _hard_ Dante's idea of it was;
because afterwards, in what is perhaps the most awful passage of the
whole Inferno, when the three furies rise at the top of the burning
tower, and catching sight of Dante, and not being able to get at
him, shriek wildly for the Gorgon to come up too, that they may turn
him into stone,--the word _stone_ is not hard enough for them. Stone
might crumble away after it was made, or something with life might
grow upon it; no, it shall not be stone; they will make enamel of
him; nothing can grow out of that; it is dead for ever.[77]
"Venga Medusa, si lo farem di _Smalto_."
Sec. 49. Now, almost in the opening of the Purgatory, as there at the
entrance of the Inferno, we find a company of great ones resting in
a grassy place. But the idea of the grass now is very different. The
word now used is not "enamel," but "herb," and instead of being
merely green, it is covered with flowers of many colors. With the
usual mediaeval accuracy, Dante insists on telling us precisely what
these colors were, and how bright; which he does by naming the
actual pigments used in illumination,--"Gold, and fine silver, and
cochineal, and white lead, and Indian wood, serene and lucid, and
fresh emerald, just broken, would have been excelled, as less is by
greater, by the flowers and grass of the place." It is evident that
the "emerald" here means the emerald green of the illuminators; for
a fresh emerald is no brighter than one which is not fresh, and
Dante was not one to throw away his words thus. Observe, then, we
have here the idea of the growth, life, and variegation of the
"green herb," as opposed to the smalto of the Inferno; but the
colors of the variegation are illustrated and defined by the
reference to actual pigments; and, observe, because the other colors
are rather bright, the blue ground (Indian wood, indigo?) is sober;
lucid, but serene; and presently two angels enter, who are dressed
in green drapery, but of a paler green than the grass, which Dante
marks, by telling us that it was "the green of leaves just budded."
Sec. 50. In all this, I wish the reader to observe two things: first, the
general carefulness of the poet in defining color, distinguishing it
precisely as a painter would (opposed to the Greek carelessness about
it); and, secondly, his regarding the grass for its greenness and
variegation, rather than, as a Greek would have done, for its depth
and freshness. This greenness or brightness, and variegation, are
taken up by later and modern poets, as the things intended to be
chiefly expressed by the word "enamelled;" and, gradually, the term is
taken to indicate any kind of bright and interchangeable coloring;
there being always this much of propriety about it, when used of
greensward, that such sward is indeed, like enamel, a coat of bright
color on a comparatively dark ground; and is thus a sort of natural
jewelry and painter's work, different from loose and large vegetation.
The word is often awkwardly and falsely used, by the later poets, of
all kinds of growth and color; as by Milton of the flowers of Paradise
showing themselves over its wall; but it retains, nevertheless,
through all its jaded inanity, some half-unconscious vestige of the
old sense, even to the present day.
Sec. 51. There are, it seems to me, several important deductions to be
made from these facts. The Greek, we have seen, delighted in the
grass for its usefulness; the mediaeval, as also we moderns, for its
color and beauty. But both dwell on it as the _first_ element of the
lovely landscape; we saw its use in Homer, we see also that Dante
thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen enough comforted in
Hades by having even the _image_ of green grass put beneath their
feet; the happy resting-place in Purgatory has no other delight than
its grass and flowers; and, finally, in the terrestrial paradise,
the feet of Matilda pause where the Lethe stream first bends the
blades of grass. Consider a little what a depth there is in this
great instinct of the human race. Gather a single blade of grass,
and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of
fluted green. Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or
beauty. A very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a
few delicate long lines meeting in a point,--not a perfect point
neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or
apparently much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as
it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast
into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and
flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet,
think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that
beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to
the eyes and good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and
oak, scented citron, burdened vine,--there be any by man so deeply
loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble
green. It seems to me not to have been without a peculiar
significance, that our Lord, when about to work the miracle which,
of all that He showed, appears to have been felt by the multitude as
the most impressive,--the miracle of the loaves,--commanded the
people to sit down by companies "upon the green grass." He was about
to feed them with the principal produce of earth and the sea, the
simplest representations of the food of mankind. He gave them the
seed of the herb; He bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which
was as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its
perfect fruit, for their sustenance; thus, in this single order and
act, when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the
Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and sustenance of
man, to the simplest and most despised of all the leafy families of
the earth. And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe
merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by
that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless,
and peaceful spears. The fields! Follow but forth for a little time
the thoughts of all that we ought to recognise in those words. All
spring and summer is in them,--the walks by silent, scented
paths,--the rests in noon-day heat,--the joy of herds and
flocks,--the power of all shepherd life and meditation,--the life of
sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and falling in
soft blue shadows, where else it would have struck upon the dark
mould, or scorching dust,--pastures beside the pacing brooks,--soft
banks and knolls of lowly hills,--thymy slopes of down overlooked by
the blue line of lifted sea,--crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or
smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet,
and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices: all these
are summed in those simple words; and these are not all. We may not
measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own
land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that
meadow sweetness, Shakspere's peculiar joy, would open on us more
and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in the spring time,
among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to
the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller
gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and
as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all
veiled and dim with blossom,--paths that for ever droop and rise
over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation,
steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new mown heaps,
filling all the air with fainter sweetness,--look up towards the
higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently
into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may,
perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th
Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains."
Sec. 52. There are also several lessons symbolically connected with this
subject, which we must not allow to escape us. Observe, the peculiar
characters of the grass, which adapt it especially for the service of
man, are its apparent _humility_, and _cheerfulness_. Its humility, in
that it seems created only for lowest service,--appointed to be
trodden on, and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult
under all kinds of violence and suffering. You roll it, and it is
stronger the next day; you mow it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if
it were grateful; you tread upon it, and it only sends up richer
perfume. Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the earth,--glowing
with variegated flame of flowers,--waving in soft depth of fruitful
strength. Winter comes, and though it will not mock its fellow plants
by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn colorless or
leafless as they. It is always green; and is only the brighter and
gayer for the hoar-frost.
Sec. 53. Now, these two characters--of humility, and joy under
trial--are exactly those which most definitely distinguish the
Christian from the Pagan spirit. Whatever virtue the pagan possessed
was rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. It began in the
elevation of his own nature; it ended but in the "verde smalto"--the
hopeless green--of the Elysian fields. But the Christian virtue is
rooted in self-debasement, and strengthened under suffering by
gladness of hope. And remembering this, it is curious to observe how
utterly without gladness the Greek heart appears to be in watching
the flowering grass, and what strange discords of expression arise
sometimes in consequence. There is one, recurring once or twice in
Homer, which has always pained me. He says, "the Greek army was on
the fields, as thick as flowers in the spring." It might be so; but
flowers in spring time are not the image by which Dante would have
numbered soldiers on their path of battle. Dante could not have
thought of the flowering of the grass but as associated with
happiness. There is a still deeper significance in the passage
quoted, a little while ago, from Homer, describing Ulysses casting
himself down on the _rushes_ and the corn-giving land at the river
shore,--the rushes and corn being to him only good for rest and
sustenance,--when we compare it with that in which Dante tells us he
was ordered to descend to the shore of the lake as he entered
Purgatory, to gather a _rush_, and gird himself with it, it being to
him the emblem not only of rest, but of humility under chastisement,
the rush (or reed) being the only plant which can grow there;--"no
plant which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live on that
shore, because it does not yield to the chastisement of its waves."
It cannot but strike the reader singularly how deep and harmonious a
significance runs through all these words of Dante--how every
syllable of them, the more we penetrate it, becomes a seed of
farther thought! For, follow up this image of the girding with the
reed, under trial, and see to whose feet it will lead us. As the
grass of the earth, thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us
to the place where our Lord commanded the multitude to sit down by
companies upon the green grass; so the grass of the waters, thought
of as sustaining itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to
the place where a stem of it was put into our Lord's hand for his
sceptre; and in the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was
foreshown the everlasting truth of the Christian ages--that all
glory was to be begun in suffering, and all power in humility.
Assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of
all, from Isaiah xl. 6., we find, the grass and flowers are types,
in their passing, of the passing of human life, and, in their
excellence, of the excellence of human life; and this in a twofold
way; first, by their Beneficence, and then, by their endurance:--the
grass of the earth, in giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty
under tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and the grass of the
waters, in giving its freshness for our rest, and in its bending
before the wave.[78] But understood in the broad human and Divine
sense, the "_herb_ yielding seed" (as opposed to the fruit-tree
yielding fruit) includes a third family of plants, and fulfils a
third office to the human race. It includes the great family of the
lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_ offices of giving
food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment; consider the
association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery, with the
priestly office, and the furniture of the tabernacle: and consider
how the rush has been, in all time, the first natural carpet thrown
under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely
set forth by the three families of plants; not arbitrarily or
fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked
for us by Scriptural words:
1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and
beauty.--"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil
not, neither do they spin."
2nd. Humility; in the grass for rest.--"A bruised reed shall He not
break."
3rd. Love; in the grass for clothing (because of its swift
kindling),--"The smoking flax shall He not quench."
And then, finally, observe the confirmation of these last two images
in, I suppose, the most important prophecy, relating to the future
state of the Christian Church, which occurs in the Old Testament,
namely, that contained in the closing chapters of Ezekiel. The
measures of the Temple of God are to be taken; and because it is
only by charity and humility that those measures ever can be taken,
the angel has "a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a measuring
_reed_." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of the
reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of
the church, or its labors, are to be measured by _humility_, and its
territory or land, by _love_.
The limits of the Church have, indeed, in later days, been measured,
to the world's sorrow, by another kind of flaxen line, burning with
the fire of unholy zeal, not with that of Christian charity; and
perhaps the best lesson which we can finally take to ourselves, in
leaving these sweet fields of the mediaeval landscape, is the memory
that, in spite of all the fettered habits of thought of his age,
this great Dante, this inspired exponent of what lay deepest at the
heart of the early Church, placed his terrestrial paradise where
there had ceased to be fence or division, and where the grass of the
earth was bowed down, in unity of direction, only by the soft waves
that bore with them the forgetfulness of evil.
[71] The peculiar dislike felt by the mediaevals for the _sea_, is
so interesting a subject of inquiry, that I have reserved it
for separate discussion in another work, in present
preparation, "Harbors of England."
[72] Married to Philip, younger son of the King of Navarre, in
1352. She died in 1394.
[73] "Three times the length of a human body."--Purg. x. 24.
[74] Purg. xii. 102.
[75] "Come unto these _yellow_ sands."
[76] "And thou art long, and lank, and _brown_,
As is the ribbed sea sand."
[77] Compare parallel passage, making Dante hard or changeless in
good Purg. viii. 114.
[78] So also in Isa. xxxv. 7., the prevalence of righteousness and
peace over all evil is thus foretold:
"In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be
_grass_, with _reeds_ and _rushes_."