191. In my first lecture of this course, you remember that I showed
you the Lion of St. Mark's with Niccola Pisano's, calling the one
an evangelical-preacher lion, and the other a real, and naturally
affectionate, lioness.
And the one I showed you as Byzantine, the other as Gothic.
So that I thus called the Greek art pious, and the Gothic profane.
Whereas in nearly all our ordinary modes of thought, and in all my own
general references to either art, we assume Greek or classic work to be
profane, and Gothic, pious, or religious.
192. Very short reflection, if steady and clear, will both show you how
confused our ideas are usually on this subject, and how definite they
may within certain limits become.
First of all, don't confuse piety with Christianity. There are pious
Greeks and impious Greeks; pious Turks and impious Turks; pious
Christians and impious Christians; pious modern infidels and impious
modern infidels. In case you do not quite know what piety really means,
we will try to know better in next lecture; for the present, understand
that I mean distinctly to call Greek art, in the true sense of the word,
pious, and Gothic, as opposed to it, profane.
193. But when I oppose these two words, Gothic and Greek, don't run away
with the notion that I necessarily mean to oppose _Christian_ and Greek.
You must not confuse Gothic blood in a man's veins, with Christian
feeling in a man's breast. There are unconverted and converted Goths;
unconverted and converted Greeks. The Greek and Gothic temper is equally
opposed, where the name of Christ has never been uttered by either, or
when every other name is equally detested by both.
I want you to-day to examine with me that essential difference between
Greek and Gothic temper, irrespective of creed, to which I have referred
in my preface to the last edition of the "Stones of Venice," saying that
the Byzantines gave law to Norman license. And I must therefore ask your
patience while I clear your minds from some too prevalent errors as to
the meaning of those two words, law and license.
194. There is perhaps no more curious proof of the disorder which
impatient and impertinent science is introducing into classical thought
and language, than the title chosen by the Duke of Argyll for his
interesting study of Natural History--'The Reign of Law.' Law cannot
reign. If a natural law, it admits no disobedience, and has nothing to
put right. If a human one, it can compel no obedience, and has no power
to prevent wrong. A king only can reign;--a person, that is to say, who,
conscious of natural law, enforces human law so far as it is just.
195. Kinghood is equally necessary in Greek dynasty, and in Gothic.
Theseus is every inch a king, as well as Edward III. But the laws which
they have to enforce on their own and their companions' humanity are
opposed to each other as much as their dispositions are.
The function of a Greek king was to enforce labour.
That of a Gothic king, to restrain rage.
The laws of Greece determine the wise methods of labour; and the laws of
France determine the wise restraints of passion.
For the sins of Greece are in Indolence, and its pleasures; and the sins
of France are in fury, and its pleasures.
196. You are now again surprised, probably, at hearing me oppose France
typically to Greece. More strictly, I might oppose only a part of
France,--Normandy. But it is better to say, France, [1] as embracing the
seat of the established Norman power in the Island of our Lady; and the
province in which it was crowned,--Champagne.
[Footnote 1: "Normandie, la franche." "France, la solue;" (chanson de
Roland). One of my good pupils referred me to this ancient and glorious
French song.]
France is everlastingly, by birth, name, and nature, the country of the
Franks, or free persons; and the first source of European frankness,
or franchise. The Latin for franchise is libertas. But the modern or
Cockney-English word liberty,--Mr. John Stuart Mill's,--is not
the equivalent of libertas; and the modern or Cockney-French word
liberté,--M. Victor Hugo's,--is not the equivalent of franchise.
197. The Latin for franchise, I have said, is libertas; the Greek is
[Greek: *eleupheria*]. In the thoughts of all three nations, the idea
is precisely the same, and the word used for the idea by each nation
therefore accurately translates the word of the other: [Greek:
*eleupheria*]--libertas--franchise--reciprocally translate each other.
Leonidas is characteristically [Greek: *eleupheros*] among Greeks;
Publicola, characteristically liber, among Romans; Edward III. and the
Black Prince, characteristically frank among French. And that common
idea, which the words express, as all the careful scholars among you
will know, is, with all the three nations, mainly of deliverance from
the slavery of passion. To be [Greek: *eleupheros*], liber, or franc,
is first to have learned how to rule our own passions; and then, certain
that our own conduct is right, to persist in that conduct against
all resistance, whether of counter-opinion, counter pain, or
counter-pleasure. To be defiant alike of the mob's thought, of the
adversary's threat, and the harlot's temptation,--this is in the meaning
of every great nation to be free; and the one condition upon which that
freedom can be obtained is pronounced to you in a single verse of the
119th Psalm, "I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts."
198. Thy precepts:--Law, observe, being dominant over the Gothic as over
the Greek king, but a quite different law. Edward III. feeling no anger
against the Sieur de Ribaumont, and crowning him with his own pearl
chaplet, is obeying the law of love, _restraining_ anger; but Theseus,
slaying the Minotaur, is obeying the law of justice, and _enforcing_
anger.
The one is acting under the law of the charity, [Greek: *charis*] or
grace of God; the other under the law of His judgment. The two together
fulfil His [Greek: *krisis*] and [Greek: *agapae*].
199. Therefore the Greek dynasties are finally expressed in the
kinghoods of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, who judge infallibly, and
divide arithmetically. But the dynasty of the Gothic king is in equity
and compassion, and his arithmetic is in largesse,
"Whose moste joy was, I wis,
When that she gave, and said, Have this."
So that, to put it in shortest terms of all, Greek law is of Stasy, and
Gothic of Ecstasy; there is no limit to the freedom of the Gothic hand
or heart, and the children are most in the delight and the glory of
liberty when they most seek their Father's precepts.
200. The two lines I have just quoted are, as you probably remember,
from Chaucer's translation of the French Romance of the Rose, out
of which I before quoted to you the description of the virtue
of Debonnaireté. Now that Debonnaireté of the Painted Chamber of
Westminster is the typical figure used by the French sculptors and
painters for 'franchise,' frankness, or Frenchness; but in the Painted
Chamber, Debonnaireté, high breeding, 'out of goodnestedness,' or
gentleness, is used, as an English king's English, of the Norman
franchise. Here, then, is our own royalty,--let us call it Englishness,
the grace of our proper kinghood;--and here is French royalty, the grace
of French kinghood--Frenchness, rudely but sufficiently drawn by M.
Didron from the porch of Chartres. She has the crown of fleur-de-lys,
and William the Norman's shield.
201. Now this grace of high birth, the grace of his or her Most Gracious
Majesty, has her name at Chartres written beside her, in Latin. Had it
been in Greek, it would have been [Greek: *elevtheria*]. Being in Latin,
what do you think it must be necessarily?--Of course, Libertas. Now M.
Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,--full of sense and
intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,--one of a nation for
whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely vanished,--he
is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him. He looks at
the word libertas through his spectacles;--can't understand, being a
thoroughly good antiquary, [1] how such a virtue, or privilege, could
honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century;--rubs his
spectacles; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter;
stamps it, to make surer still;--and at last, though in a greatly
bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of
'La Liberte' in the twelfth century. "C'est bien la liberte!" "On lit
parfaitement libertas."
[Footnote 1: Historical antiquary; not art-antiquary I must limitedly
say, however. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal
Palace of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of
sculpture.]
202. Not so, my good M. Didron!--a very different personage, this;
of whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are indeed so
plainly, 'Libertas, at non liberalitas,' liberalitas being the Latin for
largesse, not for franchise.
This, then, is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in
their passionate or vital nature; in the _animal_ and _inbred_ part
of them;--Classic and romantic, Static and exstatic. But now, what
opposition is there between their divine natures? Between Theseus
and Edward III., as warriors, we now know the difference; but between
Theseus and Edward III, as theologians; as dreaming and discerning
creatures, as didactic kings,--engraving letters with the point of the
sword, instead of thrusting men through with it,--changing the club into
the ferula, and becoming schoolmasters as well as kings; what is, thus,
the difference between them?
Theologians I called them. Philologians would be a better word,--lovers
of the [Greek: *Logos*], or Word, by which the heavens and earth were
made. What logos, _about_ this Logos, have they learned, or can they
teach?
203. I showed you, in my first lecture, the Byzantine Greek lion, as
descended by true unblemished line from the Nemean Greek; but with this
difference: Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of
his skin; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist
of him.
Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence?
This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the
wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death?
There is another change going on at the same time,--body perhaps
subjecting itself to spirit.
I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple
enough. Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and
sufficient,--a religion of lion-killers, minotaur-killers, very
curious and rude; Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us
now,--partly always so, even to them.
204. Well; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its
manliness,--becomes Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate
and feeble, it inherits all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of
its mystery; and it is converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is
it altogether degraded, even by the diminution of its animal energy.
Certain spiritual phenomena are possible to the weak, which are hidden
from the strong;--nay, the monk may, in his order of being, possess
strength denied to the warrior. Is it altogether, think you, by
blundering, or by disproportion in intellect or in body, that Theseus
becomes St. Athanase? For that is the kind of change which takes place,
from the days of the great King of Athens, to those of the great Bishop
of Alexandria, in the thought and theology, or, summarily, in the spirit
of the Greek.
Now we have learned indeed the difference between the Gothic knight and
the Greek knight; but what will be the difference between the Gothic
saint and Greek saint?
Franchise of body against constancy of body.
Franchise of thought, then, against constancy of thought.
Edward III. against Theseus.
And the Frank of Assisi against St. Athanase.
205. Utter franchise, utter gentleness in theological thought. Instead
of, 'This is the faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he
cannot be saved,' 'This is the love, which if a bird or an insect keep
faithfully, _it_ shall be saved.'
Gentlemen, you have at present arrived at a phase of natural science in
which, rejecting alike the theology of the Byzantine, and the affection
of the Frank, you can only contemplate a bird as flying under the reign
of law, and a cricket as singing under the compulsion of caloric.
I do not know whether you yet feel that the position of your boat on
the river also depends entirely on the reign of law, or whether, as your
churches and concert-rooms are privileged in the possession of organs
blown by steam, you are learning yourselves to sing by gas, and expect
the Dies Irae to the announced by a steam-trumpet. But I can very
positively assure you that, in my poor domain of imitative art, not all
the mechanical or gaseous forces of the world, nor all the laws of
the universe, will enable you either to see a colour, or draw a line,
without that singular force anciently called the soul, which it was the
function of the Greek to discipline in the duty of the servants of God,
and of the Goth to lead into the liberty of His children.
206. But in one respect I wish you were more conscious of the existence
of law than you appear to be. The difference which I have pointed out
to you as existing between these great nations, exists also between two
orders of intelligence among men, of which the one is usually called
Classic, the other Romantic. Without entering into any of the fine
distinctions between these two sects, this broad one is to be observed
as constant: that the writers and painters of the Classic school set
down nothing but what is known to be true, and set it down in the
perfectest manner possible in their way, and are thenceforward
authorities from whom there is no appeal. Romantic writers and painters,
on the contrary, express themselves under the impulse of passions which
may indeed lead them to the discovery of new truths, or to the more
delightful arrangement or presentment of things already known: but
their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains imperfect, and without
authority. It is not possible, of course, to separate these two orders
of men trenchantly: a classic writer may sometimes, whatever his
care, admit an error, and a romantic one may reach perfection through
enthusiasm. But, practically, you may separate the two for your study
and your education; and, during your youth, the business of us your
masters is to enforce on you the reading, for school work, only of
classical books: and to see that your minds are both informed of
the indisputable facts they contain, and accustomed to act with the
infallible accuracy of which they set the example.
207. I have not time to make the calculation, but I suppose that the
daily literature by which we now are principally nourished, is so large
in issue that though St. John's "even the world itself could not
contain the books which should be written" may be still hyperbole, it
is nevertheless literally true that the world might be _wrapped_ in the
books which are written; and that the sheets of paper covered with type
on any given subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects
of the Claimant,) issued in the form of English morning papers during a
single year, would be enough literally to pack the world in.
208. Now I will read you fifty-two lines of a classical author, which,
once well read and understood, contain more truth than has been told you
all this year by this whole globe's compass of print.
Fifty-two lines, of which you will recognize some as hackneyed, and see
little to admire in others. But it is not possible to put the statements
they contain into better English, nor to invalidate one syllable of the
statements they contain. [1]
[Footnote 1: 'The Deserted Village,' line 251 to 302.]
209. Even those, and there may be many here, who would dispute the truth
of the passage, will admit its exquisite distinctness and construction.
If it be untrue, that is merely because I have not been taught by
my modern education to recognize a classical author; but whatever my
mistakes, or yours, may be, there _are_ certain truths long known to
all rational men, and indisputable. You may add to them, but you cannot
diminish them. And it is the business of a University to determine what
books of this kind exist, and to enforce the understanding of them.
210. The classical and romantic arts which we have now under examination
therefore consist,--the first, in that which represented, under whatever
symbols, truths respecting the history of men, which it is proper
that all should know; while the second owes its interest to passionate
impulse or incident. This distinction holds in all ages, but the
distinction between the franchise of Northern, and the constancy of
Byzantine, art, depends partly on the unsystematic play of emotion in
the one, and the appointed sequence of known fact or determined judgment
in the other.
You will find in the beginning of M. Didron's book, already quoted,
an admirable analysis of what may be called the classic sequence of
Christian theology, as written in the sculpture of the Cathedral of
Chartres. You will find in the treatment of the façade of Orvieto the
beginning of the development of passionate romance,--the one being grave
sermon writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so that
the one requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive; the
one is always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with an
impression.
211. And here I get at a result concerning Greek art, which is very
sweeping and wide indeed. That it is all parable, but Gothic, as
distinct from it, literal. So absolutely does this hold, that it reaches
down to our modern school of landscape. You know I have always told you
Turner belonged to the Greek school. Precisely as the stream of blood
coming from under the throne of judgment in the Byzantine mosaic of
Torcello is a sign of condemnation, his scarlet clouds are used by
Turner as a sign of death; and just as on an Egyptian tomb the genius
of death lays the sun down behind the horizon, so in his Cephalus and
Procris, the last rays of the sun withdraw from the forest as the nymph
expires.
And yet, observe, both the classic and romantic teaching may be equally
earnest, only different in manner. But from classic art, unless you
understand it, you may get nothing; from romantic art, even if you don't
understand it, you get at least delight.
212. I cannot show the difference more completely or fortunately than
by comparing Sir Walter Scott's type of libertas, with the franchise of
Chartres Cathedral, or Debonnaireté of the Painted Chamber.
At Chartres, and Westminster, the high birth is shown by the crown; the
strong bright life by the flowing hair; the fortitude by the conqueror's
shield; and the truth by the bright openness of the face:
"She was not brown, nor dull of hue,
But white as snowe, fallen newe."
All these are symbols, which, if you cannot read, the image is to you
only an uninteresting stiff figure. But Sir Walter's Franchise, Diana
Vernon, interests you at once in personal aspect and character. She is
no symbol to you; but if you acquaint yourself with her perfectly,
you find her utter frankness, governed by a superb self-command; her
spotless truth, refined by tenderness; her fiery enthusiasm, subdued by
dignity; and her fearless liberty, incapable of doing wrong, joining to
fulfil to you, in sight and presence, what the Greek could only teach by
signs.
213. I have before noticed--though I am not sure that you have yet
believed my statement of it--the significance of Sir Walter's as
of Shakspeare's names; Diana 'Vernon, semper viret,' gives you the
conditions of purity and youthful strength or spring which imply the
highest state of libertas. By corruption of the idea of purity, you get
the modern heroines of London Journal--or perhaps we may more fitly call
it 'Cockney-daily'--literature. You have one of them in perfection, for
instance, in Mr. Charles Reade's 'Griffith Gaunt'--"Lithe, and vigorous,
and one with her great white gelding;" and liable to be entirely changed
in her mind about the destinies of her life by a quarter of an hour's
conversation with a gentleman unexpectedly handsome; the hero also being
a person who looks at people whom he dislikes, with eyes "like a dog's
in the dark;" and both hero and heroine having souls and intellects also
precisely corresponding to those of a dog's in the dark, which is indeed
the essential picture of the practical English national mind at this
moment,--happy if it remains doggish,--Circe not usually being content
with changing people into dogs only. For the Diana Vernon of the Greek
is Artemis Laphria, who is friendly to the dog; not to the swine. Do you
see, by the way, how perfectly the image is carried out by Sir Walter
in putting his Diana on the border country? "Yonder blue hill is in
Scotland," she says to her cousin,--not in the least thinking less of
him for having been concerned, it may be, in one of Bob Roy's forays.
And so gradually you get the idea of Norman franchise carried out in the
free-rider or free-booter; not safe from degradation on that side
also; but by no means of swinish temper, or foraging, as at present the
British speculative public, only with the snout.
214. Finally, in the most soft and domestic form of virtue, you have
Wordsworth's ideal:
"Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty."
The distinction between these northern types of feminine virtue, and the
figures of Alcestis, Antigone, or Iphigenia, lies deep in the spirit of
the art of either country, and is carried out into its most unimportant
details. We shall find in the central art of Florence at once the
thoughtfulness of Greece and the gladness of England, associated under
images of monastic severity peculiar to herself.
And what Diana Vernon is to a French ballerine dancing the Cancan, the
'libertas' of Chartres and Westminster is to the 'liberty' of M. Victor
Hugo and Mr. John Stuart Mill.