THE NEREID'S GUARD.
§ 1. The work of Turner, in its first period, is said in my account of
his drawings at the National Gallery to be distinguished by "boldness of
handling, generally gloomy tendency of mind, subdued color, and
perpetual reference to precedent in composition." I must refer the
reader to those two catalogues[1] for a more special account of his
early modes of technical study. Here we are concerned only with the
expression of that gloomy tendency of mind, whose causes we are now
better able to understand.
§ 2. It was prevented from overpowering him by his labor. This,
continual, and as tranquil in its course as a ploughman's in the field,
by demanding an admirable humility and patience, averted the tragic
passion of youth. Full of stern sorrow and fixed purpose, the boy set
himself to his labor silently and meekly, like a workman's child on its
first day at the cotton-mill. Without haste, but without
relaxation,--accepting all modes and means of progress, however painful
or humiliating, he took the burden on his shoulder and began his march.
There was nothing so little, but that he noticed it; nothing so great
but he began preparations to cope with it. For some time his work is,
apparently, feelingless, so patient and mechanical are the first essays.
It gains gradually in power and grasp; there is no perceptible _aim_ at
freedom, or at fineness, but the force insensibly becomes swifter, and
the touch finer. The color is always dark or subdued.
[Illustration: 78. Quivi Trovammo.]
§ 3. Of the first forty subjects which he exhibited at the Royal
Academy, thirty-one are architectural, and of these twenty-one are of
elaborate Gothic architecture (Peterborough cathedral, Lincoln
cathedral, Malmesbury abbey, Tintern abbey, &c.). I look upon the
discipline given to his hand by these formal drawings as of the highest
importance. His mind was also gradually led by them into a calmer
pensiveness.[2] Education amidst country possessing architectural
remains of some noble kind, I believe to be wholly essential to the
progress of a landscape artist. The first verses he ever attached to a
picture were in 1798. They are from Paradise Lost, and refer to a
picture of Morning, on the Coniston Fells:--
"Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise
From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paints your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honor to the world's great Author rise."
By glancing over the verses, which in following years[3] he quotes from
Milton, Thompson, and Mallet, it may be seen at once how his mind was
set, so far as natural scenes were concerned, on rendering atmospheric
effect;--and so far as emotion was to be expressed, how consistently it
was melancholy.
He paints, first of heroic or meditative subjects, the Fifth Plague of
Egypt; next, the Tenth Plague of Egypt. His first tribute to the memory
of Nelson is the "Battle of the Nile," 1799. I presume an unimportant
picture, as his power was not then availably developed. His first
classical subject is Narcissus and Echo, in 1805:--
"So melts the youth and languishes away,
His beauty withers, and his limbs decay."
The year following he summons his whole strength, and paints what we
might suppose would be a happier subject, the Garden of the Hesperides.
This being the most important picture of the first period, I will
analyze it completely.
§ 4. The fable of the Hesperides had, it seems to me, in the Greek mind
two distinct meanings; the first referring to natural phenomena, and the
second to moral. The natural meaning of it I believe to have been
this:--
The Garden of the Hesperides was supposed to exist in the westernmost
part of the Cyrenaica; it was generally the expression for the beauty
and luxuriant vegetation of the coast of Africa in that district. The
centre of the Cyrenaica "is occupied by a moderately elevated
table-land, whose edge runs parallel to the coast, to which it sinks
down in a succession of terraces, clothed with verdure, intersected by
mountain streams running through ravines filled with the richest
vegetation; well watered by frequent rains, exposed to the cool sea
breeze from the north, and sheltered by the mass of the mountain from
the sands and hot winds of the Sahara."[4]
The Greek colony of Cyrene itself was founded ten miles from the
sea-shore, "in a spot backed by the mountains on the south, and thus
sheltered from the fiery blasts of the desert; while at the height of
about 1800 feet an inexhaustible spring bursts forth amidst luxuriant
vegetation, and pours its waters down to the Mediterranean through a
most beautiful ravine."
The nymphs of the west, or Hesperides, are therefore, I believe, as
natural types, the representatives of the soft western winds and
sunshine, which were in this district most favorable to vegetation. In
this sense they are called daughters of Atlas and Hesperis, the western
winds being cooled by the snow of Atlas. The dragon, on the contrary, is
the representative of the Sahara wind, or Simoom, which blew over the
garden from among the hills on the south, and forbade all advance of
cultivation beyond their ridge. Whether this was the physical meaning of
the tradition in the Greek mind or not, there can be no doubt of its
being Turner's first interpretation of it. A glance at the picture may
determine this: a clear fountain being made the principal object in the
foreground,--a bright and strong torrent in the distance,--while the
dragon, wrapped in flame and whirlwind, watches from the top of the
cliff.
§ 5. But, both in the Greek mind and Turner's, this natural meaning of
the legend was a completely subordinate one. The moral significance of
it lay far deeper. In the second, but principal sense, the Hesperides
were not daughters of Atlas, nor connected with the winds of the west,
but with its splendor. They are properly the nymphs of the sunset, and
are the daughters of night, having many brothers and sisters, of whom I
shall take Hesiod's account.
§ 6. "And the Night begat Doom, and short-withering Fate, and Death.
"And begat Sleep, and the company of Dreams, and Censure, and Sorrow.
"And the Hesperides, who keep the golden fruit beyond the mighty Sea.
"And the Destinies, and the Spirits of merciless punishment.
"And Jealousy, and Deceit, and Wanton Love; and Old Age, that fades
away; and Strife, whose will endures."
§ 7. We have not, I think, hitherto quite understood the Greek feeling
about those nymphs and their golden apples, coming as a light in the
midst of cloud; between Censure, and Sorrow,--and the Destinies. We must
look to the precise meaning of Hesiod's words, in order to get the force
of the passage.
"The Night begat Doom;" that is to say, the doom of unforeseen
accident--doom essentially of darkness.
"And short-withering Fate." Ill translated. I cannot do it better. It
means especially the sudden fate which brings untimely end to all
purpose, and cuts off youth and its promise; called, therefore (the
epithet hardly ever leaving it), "black Fate."
"And Death." This is the universal, inevitable death, opposed to the
interfering, untimely death. These three are named as the elder
children. Hesiod pauses, and repeats the word "begat" before going on to
number the others.
"And begat Sleep, and the company of Dreams."
"And _Censure_." "Momus," the Spirit of Blame--the spirit which desires
to blame rather than to praise; false, base, unhelpful, unholy
judgment;--ignorant and blind, child of the Night.
"And Sorrow." Accurately, sorrow of mourning; the sorrow of the night,
when no man can work; of the night that falls when what was the light of
the eyes is taken from us; lamenting, sightless sorrow, without
hope,--child of Night.
"And the Hesperides." We will come back to these.
"And the Destinies, and the Spirits of Merciless Punishment." These are
the great Fates which have rule over conduct; the first fate spoken of
(short-withering) is that which has rule over occurrence. These great
Fates are Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Their three powers are--Clotho's
over the clue, the thread, or connecting energy,--that is, the conduct
of life; Lachesis' over the lot--that is to say, the chance which warps,
entangles, or bends the course of life. Atropos, inflexible, cuts the
thread for ever.
"And Jealousy," especially the jealousy of Fortune, in balancing all
good by evil. The Greeks had a peculiar dread of this form of fate.
"And Deceit, and sensual Love. And Old Age that fades, and Strife that
endures;" that is to say, old age, which, growing not in wisdom, is
marked only by its failing power--by the gradual gaining of darkness on
the faculties, and helplessness on the frame, such age is the forerunner
of true death--the child of Night. "And Strife," the last and the
mightiest, the nearest to man of the Night-children--blind leader of the
blind.
§ 8. Understanding thus whose sisters they are, let us consider of the
Hesperides themselves--spoken of commonly as the "Singing Nymphs." They
are four.
Their names are Æglé,--Brightness; Erytheia,--Blushing; Hestia,--the
(spirit of the) Hearth; Arethusa,--the Ministering.
O English reader! hast thou ever heard of these fair and true daughters
of Sunset, beyond the mighty sea?
And was it not well to trust to such keepers the guarding of the golden
fruit which the earth gave to Juno at her marriage? Not fruit only:
fruit on the tree, given by the earth, the great mother, to Juno (female
power), at her marriage with Jupiter, or _ruling_ manly power
(distinguished from the tried and _agonizing_ strength of Hercules). I
call Juno, briefly, female power. She is, especially, the goddess
presiding over marriage, regarding the woman as the mistress of a
household. Vesta (the goddess of the hearth[5]), with Ceres, and Venus,
are variously dominant over marriage, as the fulfilment of love; but
Juno is pre-eminently the housewives' goddess. She, therefore,
represents, in her character, whatever good or evil may result from
female ambition, or desire of power: and, as to a housewife, the earth
presents its golden fruit to her, which she gives to two kinds of
guardians. The wealth of the earth, as the source of household peace and
plenty, is watched by the singing nymphs--the Hesperides. But, as the
source of household sorrow and desolation, it is watched by the Dragon.
We must, therefore, see who the Dragon was, and what kind of dragon.
§ 9. The reader will, perhaps, remember that we traced, in an earlier
chapter, the birth of the Gorgons, through Phorcys and Ceto, from
Nereus. The youngest child of Phorcys and Ceto is the Dragon of the
Hesperides; but this latest descent is not, as in Northern traditions, a
sign of fortunateness: on the contrary, the children of Nereus receive
gradually more and more terror and power, as they are later born, till
this last of the Nereids unites horror and power at their utmost.
Observe the gradual change. Nereus himself is said to have been
perfectly _true_ and _gentle_.
This is Hesiod's account of him:--
"And Pontus begat Nereus, simple and true, the oldest of children; but
they call him the aged man, in that he is errorless and kind; neither
forgets he what is right; but knows all just and gentle counsel."
§ 10. Now the children of Nereus, like the Hesperides themselves, bear a
twofold typical character; one physical, the other moral. In his
physical symbolism, Nereus himself is the calm and gentle sea, from
which rise, in gradual increase of terror, the clouds and storms. In his
moral character, Nereus is the type of the deep, pure, rightly-tempered
human mind, from which, in gradual degeneracy, spring the troubling
passions.
Keeping this double meaning in view, observe the whole line of descent
to the Hesperides' Dragon. Nereus, by the earth, begets (1) Thaumas (the
wonderful), physically, the father of the Rainbow; morally, the type of
the enchantments and dangers of imagination. His grandchildren, besides
the Rainbow, are the Harpies. 2. Phorcys (Orcus?), physically, the
treachery or devouring spirit of the sea; morally, covetousness or
malignity of heart. 3. Ceto, physically, the deep places of the sea;
morally, secretness of heart, called "fair-cheeked," because tranquil in
outward aspect. 4. Eurybia (wide strength), physically, the flowing,
especially the tidal power of the sea (she, by one of the sons of
Heaven, becomes the mother of three great Titans, one of whom, Astræus,
and the Dawn, are the parents of the four Winds); morally, the healthy
passion of the heart. Thus far the children of Nereus.
§ 11. Next, Phorcys and Ceto, in their physical characters (the grasping
or devouring of the sea, reaching out over the land and its depth),
beget the Clouds and Storms--namely, first, the Graiæ, or soft
rain-clouds; then the Gorgons, or storm-clouds; and youngest and last,
the Hesperides' Dragon--Volcanic or earth-storm, associated, in
conception, with the Simoom and fiery African winds.
But, in its moral significance, the descent is this. Covetousness, or
malignity (Phorcys), and Secretness (Ceto), beget, first, the darkening
passions, whose hair is always gray; then the stormy and merciless
passions, brazen-winged (the Gorgons), of whom the dominant, Medusa, is
ice-cold, turning all who look on her to stone. And, lastly, the
consuming (poisonous and volcanic) passions--the "flame-backed dragon,"
uniting the powers of poison, and instant destruction. Now, the reader
may have heard, perhaps, in other books of Genesis than Hesiod's, of a
dragon being busy about a tree which bore apples, and of crushing the
head of that dragon; but seeing how, in the Greek mind, this serpent was
descended from the sea, he may, perhaps, be surprised to remember
another verse, bearing also on the matter:--"Thou brakest the heads of
the dragons in the waters;" and yet more surprised, going on with the
Septuagint version, to find where he is being led: "Thou brakest the
head of the dragon, and gavest him to be meat to the Ethiopian people.
Thou didst tear asunder the strong fountains and the storm-torrents;
thou didst dry up the rivers of Etham, [Greek: pêgas kai cheimarrhous],
the Pegasus fountains--Etham on the edge of the wilderness."
§ 12. Returning then to Hesiod, we find he tells us of the Dragon
himself:--"He, in the secret places of the desert land, kept the
all-golden apples in his great knots" (coils of rope, or extremities of
anything). With which compare Euripides' report of him:--"And Hercules
came to the Hesperian dome, to the singing maidens, plucking the apple
fruit from the golden petals; slaying the flame-backed dragon, who
twined round and round, kept guard in unapproachable spires" (spirals or
whirls, as of a whirlwind-vortex).
Farther, we hear from other scattered syllables of tradition, that this
dragon was sleepless, and that he was able to take various tones of
human voice.
And we find a later tradition than Hesiod's calling him a child of
Typhon and Echidna. Now Typhon is volcanic storm, generally the evil
spirit of tumult.
Echidna (the adder) is a descendant of Medusa. She is a daughter of
Chrysaor (the lightning), by Calliröe (the fair flowing), a daughter of
Ocean;--that is to say, she joins the intense fatality of the lightning
with perfect gentleness. In form she is half-maiden, half-serpent;
therefore she is the spirit of all the fatalest evil, veiled in
gentleness: or, in one word, treachery;--having dominion over many
gentle things;--and chiefly over a kiss, given, indeed, in another
garden than that of the Hesperides, yet in relation to keeping of
treasure also.
§ 13. Having got this farther clue, let us look who it is whom Dante
makes the typical Spirit of Treachery. The eighth or lowest pit of hell
is given to its keeping; at the edge of which pit, Virgil casts a _rope_
down for a signal; instantly there rises, as from the sea, "as one
returns who hath been down to loose some anchor," "the fell monster with
the deadly sting, who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls, and
firm embattled spears; and with his filth taints all the world."
Think for an instant of another place:--"Sharp stones are under him, he
laugheth at the shaking of a spear." We must yet keep to Dante,
however. Echidna, remember, is half-maiden, half-serpent;--hear what
Dante's Fraud is like:--
"Forthwith that image vile of Fraud appear'd,
His head and upper part exposed on land,
But laid not on the shore his bestial train.
His face the semblance of a just man's wore,
So kind and gracious was its outward cheer;
The rest was serpent all: two shaggy claws
Reach'd to the armpits; and the back and breast,
And either side, were painted o'er with nodes
And orbits. Colors variegated more
Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state
With interchangeable embroidery wove,
Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom.
As oft-times a light skiff moor'd to the shore,
Stands part in water, part upon the land;
Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,
The beaver settles, watching for his prey;
So on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock,
Sat perch'd the fiend of evil. In the void
Glancing, his tail upturn'd, its venomous fork
With sting like scorpion's arm'd."
§ 14. You observe throughout this description the leaning on the
character of the _Sea_ Dragon; a little farther on, his way of flying is
told us:--
"As a small vessel backing out from land,
Her station quits; so thence the monster loos'd,
And, when he felt himself at large, turn'd round
There, where the breast had been, his fork'd tail.
Thus, like an eel, outstretch'd at length he steer'd,
Gathering the air up with retractile claws."
And lastly, his name is told us: Geryon. Whereupon, looking back at
Hesiod, we find that Geryon is Echidna's brother. Man-serpent,
therefore, in Dante, as Echidna is woman-serpent.
We find next that Geryon lived in the island of Erytheia, (blushing),
only another kind of blushing than that of the Hesperid Erytheia. But it
is on, also, a western island, and Geryon kept red oxen on it (said to
be near the red setting sun); and Hercules kills him, as he does the
Hesperian dragon: but in order to be able to reach him, a golden boat is
given to Hercules by the Sun, to cross the sea in.
§ 15. We will return to this part of the legend presently, having enough
of it now collected to get at the complete idea of the Hesperian dragon,
who is, in fine, the "Pluto il gran nemico" of Dante; the demon of all
evil passions connected with covetousness; that is to say, essentially
of fraud, rage, and gloom. Regarded as the demon of Fraud, he is said to
be descended from the viper Echidna, full of deadly cunning, in whirl on
whirl; as the demon of consuming Rage, from Phorcys; as the demon of
Gloom, from Ceto;--in his watching and melancholy, he is sleepless
(compare the Micyllus dialogue of Lucian); breathing whirlwind and fire,
he is the destroyer, descended from Typhon as well as Phorcys; having,
moreover, with all these, the irresistible strength of his ancestral
sea.
§ 16. Now, look at him, as Turner has drawn him (p. 298). I cannot
reduce the creature to this scale without losing half his power; his
length, especially, seems to diminish more than it should in proportion
to his bulk. In the picture he is far in the distance, cresting the
mountain; and may be, perhaps, three-quarters of a mile long. The actual
length on the canvas is a foot and eight inches; so that it may be
judged how much he loses by the reduction, not to speak of my imperfect
etching,[6] and of the loss which, however well he might have been
engraved, he would still have sustained, in the impossibility of
expressing the lurid color of his armor, alternate bronze and blue.
§ 17. Still, the main points of him are discernible enough; and among
all the wonderful things that Turner did in his day, I think this nearly
the most wonderful. How far he had really found out for himself the
collateral bearings of the Hesperid tradition I know not; but that he
had got the main clue of it, and knew who the Dragon was, there can be
no doubt; the strange thing is, that his conception of it throughout,
down to the minutest detail, fits every one of the circumstances of the
Greek traditions. There is, first, the Dragon's descent from Medusa and
Typhon, indicated in the serpent-clouds floating from his head (compare
my sketch of the Medusa-cloud, Plate 71); then note the grovelling and
ponderous body, ending in a serpent, of which we do not see the end. He
drags the weight of it forward by his claws, not being able to lift
himself from the ground ("Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell");
then the grip of the claws themselves as if they would clutch (rather
than tear) the rock itself into pieces; but chiefly, the designing of
the body. Remember, one of the essential characters of the creature, as
descended from Medusa, is its coldness and petrifying power; this, in
the demon of covetousness, must exist to the utmost; breathing fire, he
is yet himself of ice. Now, if I were merely to draw this dragon as
white, instead of dark, and take his claws away, his body would become a
representation of a greater glacier, so nearly perfect, that I know no
published engraving of glacier breaking over a rocky brow so like the
truth as this dragon's shoulders would be, if they were thrown out in
light; there being only this difference, that they have the form, but
not the fragility of the ice; they are at once ice and iron. "His bones
are like solid pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron; by his
neesings a light doth shine."
§ 18. The strange unity of vertebrated action, and of a true bony
contour, infinitely varied in every vertebra, with this glacial
outline;--together with the adoption of the head of the Ganges
crocodile, the fish-eater, to show his sea descent (and this in the year
1806, when hardly a single fossil saurian skeleton existed within
Turner's reach), renders the whole conception one of the most curious
exertions of the imaginative intellect with which I am acquainted in the
arts.
§ 19. Thus far, then, of the dragon; next, we have to examine the
conception of the Goddess of Discord. We must return for a moment to the
tradition about Geryon. I cannot yet decipher the meaning of his oxen,
said to be fed together with those of Hades; nor of the journey of
Hercules, in which, after slaying Geryon, he returns through Europe like
a border forager, driving these herds, and led into farther battle in
protection or recovery of them. But it seems to me the main drift of the
legend cannot be mistaken; viz., that Geryon is the evil spirit of
wealth, as arising from commerce; hence, placed as a guardian of isles
in the most distant sea, and reached in a golden boat; while the
Hesperian dragon is the evil spirit of wealth, as possessed in
households; and associated, therefore, with the true household
guardians, or singing nymphs. Hercules (manly labor), slaying both
Geryon and Ladon, presents oxen and apples to Juno, who is their proper
mistress; but the Goddess of Discord, contriving that one portion of
this household wealth shall be ill bestowed by Paris, he, according to
Coleridge's interpretation, choosing pleasure instead of wisdom or
power;--there issue from this evil choice the catastrophe of the Trojan
war, and the wanderings of Ulysses, which are essentially, both in the
Iliad and Odyssey, the troubling of household peace; terminating with
the restoration of this peace by repentance and patience; Helen and
Penelope seen at last sitting upon their household thrones, in the
Hesperian light of age.
§ 20. We have, therefore, to regard Discord, in the Hesperides garden,
eminently as the disturber of households, assuming a different aspect
from Homer's wild and fierce discord of war. They are, nevertheless, one
and the same power; for she changes her aspect at will. I cannot get at
the root of her name, Eris. It seems to me as if it ought to have one in
common with Erinnys (Fury); but it means always contention, emulation,
or competition, either in mind or in words;--the final work of Eris is
essentially "division," and she is herself always double-minded; shouts
two ways at once (in Iliad, xi. 6), and wears a mantle rent in half
(Æneid, viii. 702). Homer makes her loud-voiced, and insatiably
covetous. This last attribute is, with him, the source of her usual
title. She is little when she first is seen, then rises till her head
touches heaven. By Virgil she is called mad; and her hair is of
serpents, bound with bloody garlands.
§ 21. This is the conception first adopted by Turner, but combined with
another which he found in Spenser; only note that there is some
confusion in the minds of English poets between Eris (Discord) and Até
(Error), who is a daughter of Discord, according to Hesiod. She is
properly--mischievous error, tender-footed; for she does not walk on the
earth, but on heads of men (Iliad, xix. 92); _i.e._ not on the solid
ground, but on human vain thoughts; therefore, her hair is glittering
(Iliad, xix. 126). I think she is mainly the confusion of mind coming of
pride, as Eris comes of covetousness; therefore, Homer makes her a
daughter of Jove. Spenser, under the name of Até, describes Eris. I have
referred to his account of her in my notice of the Discord on the Ducal
palace of Venice (remember the inscription there, _Discordia sum,
discordans_). But the stanzas from which Turner derived his conception
of her are these--
"Als, as she double spake, so heard she double,
With matchlesse eares deformed and distort,
Fild with false rumors and seditious trouble,
Bred in assemblies of the vulgar sort,
That still are led with every light report:
And as her eares, so eke her feet were odde,
And much unlike; th' one long, the other short,
And both misplast; that, when th' one forward yode,
The other backe retired and contrárie trode.
"Likewise unequall were her handës twaine;
That one did reach, the other pusht away;
That one did make the other mard againe,
And sought to bring all things unto decay;
Whereby great riches, gathered manie a day,
She in short space did often bring to nought,
An their possessours often did dismay:
For all her studie was, and all her thought
How she might overthrow the thing that Concord wrought.
"So much her malice did her might surpas,
That even th' Almightie selfe she did maligne,
Because to man so mercifull He was,
And unto all His creatures so benigne,
Sith she herself was of his grace indigne:
For all this worlds faire workmanship she tride
Unto his last confusion to bring,
And that great golden chaine quite to divide,
With which it blessed Concord hath together tide."
All these circumstances of decrepitude and distortion Turner has
followed, through hand and limb, with patient care: he has added one
final touch of his own. The nymph who brings the apples to the goddess,
offers her one in each hand; and Eris, of the divided mind, cannot
choose.
§ 22. One farther circumstance must be noted, in order to complete our
understanding of the picture,--the gloom extending, not to the dragon
only, but also to the fountain and the tree of golden fruit. The reason
of this gloom may be found in two other passages of the authors from
which Turner had taken his conception of Eris--Virgil and Spenser. For
though the Hesperides in their own character, as the nymphs of domestic
joy, are entirely bright (and the garden always bright around them), yet
seen or remembered in sorrow, or in the presence of discord, they deepen
distress. Their entirely happy character is given by Euripides:--"The
fruit-planted shore of the Hesperides,--songstresses,--where the ruler
of the purple lake allows not any more to the sailor his way, assigning
the boundary of Heaven, which Atlas holds; where the ambrosial fountains
flow, and the fruitful and divine land increases the happiness of the
gods."
But to the thoughts of Dido, in her despair, they recur under another
aspect; she remembers their priestess as a great enchantress; who _feeds
the dragon_ and preserves the boughs of the tree; sprinkling moist honey
and drowsy poppy; who also has power over ghosts; "and the earth shakes
and the forests stoop from the hills at her bidding."
§ 23. This passage Turner must have known well, from his continual
interest in Carthage: but his diminution of the splendor of the old
Greek garden was certainly caused chiefly by Spenser's describing the
Hesperides fruit as growing first in the garden of Mammon:--
"There mournfull cypresse grew in greatest store;
And trees of bitter gall; and heben sad;
Dead sleeping poppy; and black hellebore;
Cold coloquintida; and tetra mad
Mortal samnitis; and cicuta bad,
With which th' uniust Atheniens made to dy
Wise Socrates, who, thereof quaffing glad,
Pourd out his life and last philosophy.
* * * * *
"The gardin of Prosèrpina this hight:
And in the midst thereof a silver seat,
With a thick arber goodly over dight,
In which she often usd from open heat
Herselfe to shroud, and pleasures to entreat:
Next thereunto did grow a goodly tree,
With braunches broad dispredd and body great,
Clothed with leaves, that none the wood mote see,
And loaden all with fruit as thick as it might bee.
"Their fruit were golden apples glistring bright,
That goodly was their glory to behold;
On earth like never grew, ne living wight
Like ever saw, but they from hence were sold;
For those, which Hercules with conquest bold
Got from great Atlas daughters, hence began.
* * * * *
"Here eke that famous golden apple grew,
The which emongst the gods false Até threw."
There are two collateral evidences in the picture of Turner's mind
having been partly influenced by this passage. The excessive darkness of
the stream,--though one of the Cyrene fountains--to remind us of
Cocytus; and the breaking of the bough of the tree by the weight of its
apples--not healthily, but as a diseased tree would break.
§ 24. Such then is our English painter's first great religious picture;
and exponent of our English faith. A sad-colored work, not executed in
Angelico's white and gold; nor in Perugino's crimson and azure; but in a
sulphurous hue, as relating to a paradise of smoke. That power, it
appears, on the hill-top, is our British Madonna; whom, reverently, the
English devotional painter must paint, thus enthroned, with nimbus about
the gracious head. Our Madonna,--or our Jupiter on Olympus,--or, perhaps
more accurately still, our unknown god, sea-born, with the cliffs, not
of Cyrene, but of England, for his altar; and no chance of any Mars'
Hill proclamation concerning him, "whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship."
§ 25. This is no irony. The fact is verily so. The greatest man of our
England, in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the strength
and hope of his youth, perceives this to be the thing he has to tell us
of utmost moment, connected with the spiritual world. In each city and
country of past time, the master-minds had to declare the chief worship
which lay at the nation's heart; to define it; adorn it; show the range
and authority of it. Thus in Athens, we have the triumph of Pallas; and
in Venice the assumption of the Virgin; here, in England, is our great
spiritual fact for ever interpreted to us--the Assumption of the Dragon.
No St. George any more to be heard of; no more dragon-slaying possible:
this child, born on St. George's Day, can only make manifest the Dragon,
not slay him, sea-serpent as he is; whom the English Andromeda, not
fearing, takes for her lord. The fairy English Queen once thought to
command the waves, but it is the sea-dragon now who commands her
valleys; of old the Angel of the Sea ministered to them, but now the
Serpent of the Sea; where once flowed their clear springs now spreads
the black Cocytus pool; and the fair blooming of the Hesperid meadows
fades into ashes beneath the Nereid's Guard.
Yes, Albert of Nuremberg; the time has at last come. Another nation has
arisen in the strength of its Black anger; and another hand has
portrayed the spirit of its toil. Crowned with fire, and with the wings
of the bat.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Notes on the Turner Collection at Marlborough House. 1857.
Catalogue of the Sketches of J. M. V. Turner exhibited at Marlborough
House. 1858.
[2] The regret I expressed in the third volume at Turner's not having
been educated under the influence of Gothic art was, therefore,
mistaken; I had not then had access to his earlier studies. He _was_
educated under the influence of Gothic architecture; but, in more
advanced life, his mind was warped and weakened by classical
architecture. Why he left the one for the other, or how far good
influences were mingled with evil in the result of the change, I have
not yet been able to determine.
[3] They may be referred to with ease in Boone's Catalogue of
Turner's Pictures, 1857.
[4] Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Art.
"Cyrenaica."
[5] Her name is also that of the Hesperid nymph; but I give the
Hesperid her Greek form of name, to distinguish her from the goddess.
The Hesperid Arethusa has the same subordinate relation to Ceres; and
Erytheia, to Venus. Æglé signifies especially the spirit of
brightness or cheerfulness including even the subordinate idea of
household neatness or cleanliness.
[6] It is merely a sketch on the steel, like the illustrations before
given of composition; but it marks the points needing note. Perhaps
some day I may be able to engrave it of the full size.