?7W '4. I A \\ -4'' ,tilA / I W 4+ *JKj(s for %ly &' I / /u< ^ THE FALLEN GOD: AND OTHER ESSA N LITERATURE AND AR 8Y JOSEPH SPENCER KEN- NARD. PUBLISHED BY GEORGE W. JACOBS AND COMPANY, PHILA- DELPHIA. ANNO DOMINI MCMI 1o ornoutE 5dl nl pteano's pulpit in tbe 2>uomo of Siena THE FALLEN GOD: AND OTHER ESSAYS IN LITERATURE AND ART : BY JOSEPH SPENCER KEN- NARD. PUBLISHED BY GEORGE W. JACOBS AND COMPANY, PHILA- DELPHIA. ANNO DOMINI MCMI Of "The Fallen God n twelve hundred copies have been printed from type, of which this is No. Copyright, J90J by George \7. Jacobs & Co. Works by Joseph Spencer Kennard, A.M., Ph*D., D.GL. ENTRO UN CERCHIO DI FERRO (In Italian). A study in psychology. CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN ROMANCE. A study of one hundred years of Italian fiction. (Vol. I in early issue.) ALASKA LEGENDS AND TOTEMS, as reflecting the origin, religion and customs of Alaska Indians. WHEN THE PRINTER'S ART WAS YOUNG. Early printers ; early colophons. THE FRIAR IN FICTION. A review of six centuries of the fictional friar, as presented by the great writers of Europe. ( Vol. I in early issue.) THE FALLEN GOD, and other essays in literature, music and art. THE FANFARA OF THE BERSIGLIARY. And other stories of Italy. STUDI-DANTESCHI (In Italian). Studies in the Divine Comedy of Dante. MEMMO} ONE OF THE PE9PLE. A novel of Italian Socialism and of the Florentine bread riots. PSYCHIC POWER IN PREACHING byj. Spencer Kennard, D.D. Edited, with memoir by his son, Joseph Spencer Kennard. TABLE OF THE CONTENTS. The Fallen God pages 9 Sincerity in Art 53 Unity in Art 83 Two Fictional Friars \\ \ Music as a Sensuous and Spiritual Pleasure 13 J Edmondo de Amicts J47 Niccola Pisano 179 Avignon 20 J - ffatber, Comrade and ffrfend: tEo sour memory tbese pages are dedicated by vour son THE FALLEN GOD How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Day-Star [Lucifer], Son of the Morning ! Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, To the uttermost part of the pit. [THE FALLEN GOD f f j* f f f PART THE FIRST /* /* <# /* /* /* HE LEGEND OF THEl FALLEN GOD, A COMMON CHARAC- TER IN ALL RE- CORDED MYTHS, IS PROBABLY BASED ON THE PHENOME- NON OF THE FALL- |ING METEOR/* HE-I 'PHAESTOS, THE (ELEMENTAL FIRE GOD OF THE GREEKS, WAS HURLED FROM HEAVEN BY HIS FATHER, ZEUS. > A SIMILAR STORY CREPT INTO THE CHRISTIAN MYTHOLOGY, AND THE FATHERS TO ACCOUNT FOR IT, THOUGH JUSTIFIED UNDOUBTEDLY BY THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE, TWISTED A TEXT OF THE HEBREW PROPHET TO THEIR REQUIRED MEANING. > THE STORY DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE TAKEN SO STRONG A HOLD UPON THE LATIN PEOPLES AND UPON THE BLUE- EYED CHILDREN OF THE NORTHERN WILDS, PERHAPS BECAUSE THE PHE- NOMENON UPON WHICH IT WAS BASED WAS ACCOUNTED FOR BY THE m * 8 l & n P a an m yth that was never thoroughly eradicated ' from the imagination of the common people* In England, years before the Restoration, there was a mystery played at Chester which enacted the fall of Lucifer. For Piers Plowman he is as real as the lordly bishops whom he typifies. In a deep dale this symbolist saw a dungeon, called the Castle of Care* 44 Therein woneth a wight, that wrong is i-hote Fader of f alsness, he founded it himselven, Adam and Eve he egged to do ill Counseilede Cayne to cullen his brother Judas he japede, with the jewes silver ********* He was an archangel of hevene, on of Codes knights He was loveliest of sight, after our Lord, Till he brake buxomness thorow boast of himself Then fell he with his felawes, and fendes becomen, Out of heaven into hell hobleden fast Summe in the eir, summe in the earth and summe in hell deepe But Lucifer lowest, ligeth of them all. Here, however, Lucifer and Satan are not blended, though they are thoroughly in agreement. Satan even flatters Lucifer with the clever way in which Nat in forme of a feonde, but in form of an adre he enticed Eve to eat of the forbidden tree. For it is Lucifer who is wily. Satan is the strong one* He is the spirit who urges war, the barring of the gates, and a strange light upon Milton, whom we know 12 was well acquainted with the greatest middle Eng- b fallen lish satire eggs on Astrot to manufacture gun- powder and cannon to lette the Lord of light, Ere we thorow brightness be blent* But the dukes of the dim-place must needs give way. and Piers Plowman also tells us of that rescue of the Patriarchs from hell which forms a convincing episode of the fourth canto of the Inferno. This catholic tradition was overwhelmed by the new heaven and earth created for English litera- ture by the pagan dramatists of the Elizabethan renaissance. The Christian Devil and his attendant Vice found little consideration at the hands of Shaks- peare and his brethren. Marlowe, the self-acknow- ledged scoffer, used him. it is true. but he never troubled to analyze him. or to embody him in any horrible personification. Mephistopheles is the sym- bolization of German scholarly scepticism; and it is not strange that the whole German literature, born of the Elizabethan drama, offers no deep analysis of spiritual good and evil. Even Goethe, original and vast as he undoubtedly is, clung very closely to the mocking Mario we,and his intellect is so untouched by the fiery zeal which burns in the soul of Aeschylus, Milton and Dante, that it is not irksome to him to introduce the Author of all evil in a jesting colloquy with the Spring of all good. With the Elizabethan both the Hebrew and the classical myths are J3 obliterated; and though Achilles, Hector and the Hellenic gods and goddesses gleam through double translations, their features are blurred, their char- acters modernized, and but for their names, so Englished as to be almost beyond recognition. Under this mountain, from three convergent sources flowed the stream by which sat the muse of Milton* The religious continent of the imaginings of the poet of Paradise Lost was, however, no longer catholic. It was localized. It was puritan. It was untouched, unsoiled, by the grosser devil which in the medieval mysteries ran howling about the mouth of hell* With him the Jehovah of the Hebrews became the All-father; the Devil of the medieval mysteries an evil power of the first magni- tude, while the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome were allowed no higher sphere than that of attendant spirits to the supreme ill. But Milton's Satan is not the Christian Lucifer, Shelley says of him with perfect truth : ' This character engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs and excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure/ In other words, the sympathy of the reader is with Satan. He is very human, not at all horrific. The sublime pageantry which surrounds him only adds zest to the pity for his magnificent sufferings. How inexpressibly human and touching is the passage, 14 To speak ^be ffallen Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn, Tears such as angels weep burst forth. Compare these tears with those of Lucifer in the last canto of the Inferno With six eyes did he weep and down three chins Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel. Is it possible that these two beings are the same or akin ? The answer would seem to be, My Master pleased to show me The creature who once had the beauteous semblance ; and shortly afterwards Were, he as fair once as he now is foul And lifted up his brow against his Maker. Here Dante gives us two distinct references to the legend upon which the great spirit of the Para- dise Lost is built. But the second reference is uttered as an hypothesis there is almost a doubt of the truth for though Milton's soul has taken hold of the tradition, has cast out the coarser features and beautified the whole, the fire of his imagination trans- muting it ; yet Dante's genius working in the same way has produced a heavier metal. The starting place of both poets is the earth. Milton's soul in the Paradise Lost rises and finds Satan next to God. Dante's genius goes down into the bowels of the earth and in the uttermost abyss discovers Dis. 15 Cbe jfaiien *j* ne consideration of a more modern poet may * perhaps help us to understand the action of the imaginative fire of a great poet's intellect* It is commonly considered as creative* It is not so. The imagination of the multitude creates. The intellect of the poet transmutes. Such an imagination was Shelley's. His mind was instinct with the legends of the Trojan Epos, his spirit was fed on the heroic and dramatic poetry of Greece and Rome. To his imagination there were no bounds set by the supreme sanction of religion, though he was in another sense supremely religious. Such a soul, if it worked like Milton's, upward, should transmute devils into gods ; if its action was like Dante's, downward, it should deify some influence, perhaps some element. Now in the Prometheus Unbound, Shelley bor- rows the machinery of Aeschylus. He transfers the Apollo wholly from the Greek to the English almost without change. His furies, however, are more ele- mental than those of Aeschylus. There is no sugges- tion of their conversion into Eumenides. Prome- theus here is God suffering for man; Jupiter is the essence of Evil, and behind the whole broods the shade of the Demogorgon which reminds us very strongly of the Fata of Dante's master, Virgil. Religion may be called the continent of imagin- ings. It was religion which bound Milton to the Jehovah of the Hebrews. The religious awe in the 16 soul of Aeschylus led him to make Apollo a mere regulator of the furies, and eventually in the Eu- menides, forced him to convert even them into bene- factors of the race they had tormented* He, too, undertook the unthankful task which Milton pro- posed to himself To assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. The failure or success of both we discuss later. 'Shelley proposes to himself no such labor* In his first drama or goat song, as he calls it, so emulative of the Hellenic spirit is he the religious continent i of his imaginings is his worship of the great litera- ture and genius of the Hellenic peoples. He does not wander essentially from the example set him by Aeschylus. In the Christian mythology, however, his spirit has no confining limits. It is, perhaps, unfor- itunate that when he treats of the Christian Deity ! and his antagonist Lucifer, he forsakes the drama for the Spencerian stanza and canto. But he says enough for our purpose Two Powers o'er mortal things dominion hold Ruling the world with a divided lot, Immortal, all-pervading, manifold, Twin Genii, equal Gods, O'er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone, A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star Mingling their beams in combat as he stood, \1 jfallen All thoughts within his mind waged mutual war, In dreadful sympathy when to the flood That fair Star fell, he turned and shed his brother's blood* Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit of evil, One Power of many shapes which none may know, One Shape of many names ; the Fiend did revel In victory, reigning o'er a world of woe, For the new race of man went to and fro, Famished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild, Hating good for his immortal foe, He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild, To a dire Snake, with man and beast unreconciled. Andj[the great Spirit of Good did creep among The nations of mankind, and every tongue Cursed, and blasphemed him as he passed ; for none Knew good from evil, though their names were hung In mockery o'er the fane where many a groan, As King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own. As Shelley has taken this transmuted Lucifer from Milton's Satan ; deified him a little more ; as he has borrowed the gods and furies of the Prome- theus Unbound only slightly changed from the stage of Aeschylus, so Aeschylus himself has borrowed his gods and goddesses from the Heaven, Earth and the Shades of Homer. But though these in the Iliad and Odyssey have passed through the transmuting fire of Homer's imagination, they have not there emerged thoroughly purified. Not only are they anthropomorphic, not more or less than deified 18 men, but their original, elemental character con- tinually appears. Zeus, the All-father, is still the sky, Neptune has no being apart from the ocean ; while Hephaestos, as we have seen, was cast out of heaven by his father, Zeus, and as the god of fire, has become a good-natured,harmless fellow, the friend of man and the prototype of the Prometheus* Not only is this so, but the most solitary and grandest figure in the literature of Ancient Greece calls attention to it, emphasizes it, and is so fiercely indignant of it, that we feel this very indignation responsible for much of the grandeur of his creation. There has been faction and betrayal among the gods. A new dynasty has seized on Olympus. Zeus, the All-father, even he had a father, who is now where? And a son shall come to him, as Aeschylus knows. And yet cry the Erinyes, ' My ancient honours remain to me though possessing a station beneath the earth and sunless darkness/ ' Even Mercury, the courier of Jove, is a mere menial, to Prometheus and Aeschylus the overseer of the tyrant. oAA* claropw yap rovSe TOV Aios rpo^iv, 2 TOV TOV TVpaWOV TOV Vt'oV SlttKOVOV But yonder I behold the scout of Zeus, Of this new potentate the servitor ; And the Erinyes themselves despise him with i Eumenides, 371-374. 2 Protnethem, 962-963. 19 tTbe fallen a \\ the rancour of aged servants overlorded by a young parvenu* CTTCI Ka07r7raei fte irpca/Svnv veos* Since young you ride down me in years. The creator of all these gods was the brooding imagination of prehistoric man. Such deities were born of the wind and the sea, in the sky and the clouds, in the storm, and in the memory of inunda- tion and cataclysm. Thus, the primitive intellect, with its tendency to personification, knows one of the impulses as Ormuzd, the other as Ahriman. The Greek intellect, thrown upon itself, takes refuge in the conception of Moira, ruling even the gods, a hybrid of good and its opposite. When we say that the Greek intellect personi- fied the forces of nature and worshiped personifica- ) tions as gods, we state absolute truth. But few things are so misleading as absolute truth. The Greek thinker became intelligible to himself and to others only in so far as he availed himself of the prevailing mode of thought. Otherwise, he was unintelligible. Whatever his private opinion may have been on the subject of the myths and the cos- mogonies, he found them a convenient basis of thought. Hence we see the physical experience and the intellectual experience of the Greeks accumulat- ing in harmony for centuries, with no peril to the state religion. The multitude could have dwelt in 20 their world and the philosophers could have dwelt in their world forever without the develop- ment of conflict, but for one circumstance. That circumstance was the accumulation of spiritual experience. Of spiritual experience, in our sense, the Greeks were, of course, destitute, but that they were vouchsafed a quality of it, we can detect almost as far back as Homer* It culminated in Socrates* This spiritual experience, such as it was, lagged far behind the physical experience, and farther still behind the intellectual. Aeschylus struggled with it, but the Greek mode of thought was inadequate to its expression. He made himself intelligible to his contemporaries, but the audiences for whom Eurip- ides wrote would have found the Prometheus Vinctus a riddle. This seems to be the clue to the obscurity of Aeschylus* He is conscious of a mighty force at work, destined one day to hurl the gods from their thrones. But he has * that within which passeth show/ and he cannot render intel- ligible the message whose purport fills him with gloom. The Greeks gazed in awe, and we may conjecture that they felt uncomfortable. Certainly they took refuge in a more congenial atmos- phere. Aeschylus became the theologian of antiquity, and Euripides became the successful playwright. At first, as we have said, these gods were only personified elements ; but passed through the minds 21 jfaileH o f the priestly poets. Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, and ' among the Latins, Virgil, who appear as the record- ing memories of past times, they become gods like men, and then men like gods. Meanwhile, the demand from below for the mere elemental gods must be satisfied : the gods of tempestual destruction, the gods of the trouble of the soul. Of this demand are born Harpies, the Erinyes of Aeschylus, the Fates of Virgil, the Furies of Shelley perhaps even the Hounds of Hell, which in the Paradise Lost are the incestuous offspring of Sin and Death. It would be interesting to follow to his elemental origin the Mercury whom we find regulating the Furies in the Prometheus Unbound of Shelley* Unfortunately, concerning him there is much mys- tery. It is certain that he is the Apollo of Aeschylus, who is the Phoibos Apollo of Homer* But even the name has given rise to discussion as to its origin. It is interesting, however, to note here that the Puri- tan, John Bunyan, uses the word in the sense of destroyer. Apollyon is the name of his great adversary. This should assure us that the dimmed glory of Milton's fallen archangel borrows some of its light from the winged messenger of the older gods, who yet to Aeschylus are parvenus. Though he has lost the bond which bound him to the ele- ment, it is at least probable that in the prehomeric days he was the personification of the pestilence, the 22 desert, or the storm a horrible vision startling the minds of men* He is always the Minister of Ven- geance. Wolves followed him. He carries in his hand the arrows of destruction; and even in the Iliad, Achilles still calls him * the most pernicious of all the gods/ The Erinyes of Aeschylus are the ministers of blood vengeance* The black Night is their mother. Their office* given perfect from the gods, is to track forever the steps of the murderer of his fellow, to suck the blood from his limbs, to bear him alive below. In their station beneath the earth in sunless darkness they are called Evils. And what form are they given? Old women? No. Gorgon? No. They are wingless to behold, black and altogether abominable ; out of their eyes they distill a horrible rheum. And their dress is not worthy to be worn either at the shrines of the gods or in the dwellings of men. 1 Awful these, indeed, and yet, these have an office not easily set aside. These retain their ancient honours* though possessing a station beneath the earth in sunless darkness. The religious sanction which bounded the im- aginations of Aeschylus and Milton to endeavor to justify the ways of God to men, that rule of the Anarch, Custom, through which Shelley breaks with such startling cries, lays heavier upon Dante I Eumenides, 48-6 1 . 23 Ube ffaiien than on all. With him, however, there is no attempt * at justification. It it sufficient for him that these things are so. He is catholic. The continent of his imaginings has no leak ; the walls are thin only where he lightly touches upon the fabled deities and false of his master, Virgil. Dante is too much of a Latin, too much a Roman, to relegate, as Milton does, the whole family of the pagan gods to the nethermost abyss. The rigid faith in him forces him downward ; his leader is the great Roman poet ; and if for no other reason than this, he must leave the false Olympians behind him. Yet there is no doubt that because of this lightness of touch he feels the rigor of the religious bond much tighter. The fact that the gods of Virgil are false, makes him so much the more merciless in his dealing with the damned, and adds another circle to the infernal realm. The last canto of the Inferno is a climax to a gradual procession downward. In this descent, how- ever, the genius of Dante has worked on the same principle as we have seen that of Aeschylus work- ing, that of Milton, that of Shelley. But the order is reversed. In this poem we find the infernal deities of Greece and Rome Minos, Plutos, the Furies, the Minotaur and the Harpies ruling dif- ferent circles of the shades. When the eighth circle is reached, the mansion in Hell called Malebolge, 24 the list of the infernal deities is exhausted. This place is so awful that in all the poet's wide reading there is no devil damned black enough to rule. Before the ninth circle is passed, however, we meet the giants, Nimrod, Ephialtes and Anteus, titanic men, whose names appear on the dim horizon of history. The transmuting fire of the poet's imag- ination begins to work. Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord, sprung from the knowledge or creative imagination of the Hebrews. He was responsible and is punished for the tower of Babel, and the division of human speech ere the continents were subdivided. Ephialtes was the Hellenic child of the earth. These and Briareus stand at the boundary of the eighth circle and the ninth. In Hell they are the landmarks between the speakable and the unspeak- able, as in time they divided the recorded from that which has not been written. For we are not at the bottom yet. There is yet to be seen the abyss which swallows up Judas and Lucifer. In this lowest region of all, whence then can Dante derive his imagery ? On what material will the transmuting fire, the demiurgic genius of the poet work ? The most fearful descriptions in the Aeneid are of Charon : 25 jfallcn Portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina servat (5oO. Terribili squalore Charon ; cui plurima mento Canities inculta jacet, stant lumina flamma Sordidus ex humeris nodo dependet amictus ; c4eneid e VI,298. A grim ferryman guards [servat] these floods and rivers, Charon of frightful slovenliness ; on whose chin a load of hair neglected sprouts. His eyes flame. His vestment filthy hangs from his shoulders by a knot. And of Cerberus haec ingens, latratu regna trifauci Personat adverse recubans immanis in antro. And of immense Cerberus [who] with three-throated bark makes this kingdom to resound stretched enormously along the cave* Cui vates, horrere videns jam colla colubris. To whom when the priestess saw his neck to bristle with horrid snakes. Deeper horrors are not described, and the Latin [ poet confesses like the Greek dramatist his inability ; I rand dedicates in these lines the further work, the (/ further labor, to one who should come after him, one * mightier than he : Non mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum, Ferrea vox, omnes scelerum comprendere formas, Omnia poenarum percurrere nomina possim. "Were there to me a hundred tongues, a hundred! mouths, A voice of iron, it were not possible to me to comprehend all their crimes, or to enumerate all their punishments. So he can no longer borrow from his teacher, Virgil. As deep as this the older poet never ven- tured. This terrible vision cannot therefore be seen through Virgil. He [Virgil] from before me moved and made me stay, Saying : Behold Dis and behold the place Where thou with fortitude most arm thyself. We have learned how the wolf-leading, man- destroying personification of the pestilence became in Homer, Phoibos Apollo; how this light-bearing god became the regulator of the ministers of ven- geance in the Eumenides; how Milton's Satan borrows some of his light from that same Apollo, and finally, how the demiurgic fire of Shelley's imagination makes of this Satan the benefactor of man and the light of the world. By a similar pro- cess working in the inverse order, the genius of Dante has produced the morning-star, Lucifer, the creature who had once the beauteous semblance. The materials were ready at his hand, he was born among them; they were of him and he of them. The very name gives us the cue : Dis, that is Dives, riches, Plutus, Orcus! In Romanesque folklore Orcus, is a black, hairy, man-eating mon- ster. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word sa-ir, translated ' devils,' is literally 4 hairy-ones.' The Etruscan god of Death was a savage old man with wings and a hammer. 27 ^ be **? n ^d t ^ lus Dante describes him in the thirty- * fourth canto : Underneath each came forth two mighty wings Such as befitting were so great a bird ; And later : At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching A sinner in the manner of a brake ; And later still : And when the wings were open wide apart, He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides. The hugeness and horror are lost in quotation. But what of it ? The worst of it is indescribable. How frozen I became and powerless, then, Ask it not, reader, for I cannot write it, Because all language would be insufficient. The whole canto is of hint ; the imagination of the reader is left to do the rest. It is a climax. As Virgil steps aside and says to Dante : Ecco Dite ! So Dante moves out of the way and says to the reader : Behold the King of Hell! Pausanius, a Graeco-Roman writer of the sec- ond century, with whose Descriptio Graeciae Dante was j probably well acquainted in his third book describes at length the gods and sacrifices of the ancient Achaeans. In one place they sacrifice ' in a manner that may not be spoken/ In another, he saw the images of gods, which he regarded as the 28 oldest deities of Greece. One was the three-eyed se * allen Zeus, and another the three-headed Artemis. And ' so Dante Oh, what a marvel it appeared to me When I beheld three faces on his head ! Let us note here a fact heretofore we believe unnoted that Dante is fully conscious of the utter degeneracy of the language he uses. He knows, land none better than he, that a people is as its speech is. For this reason he chooses Virgil as his master; Virgil, whose epic epitomises the glory of the coun- try and times of Dante's forefathers. For this reason he has chosen to write in the tongue of his time, conscious that the day of the Latin is passed, and that the new Roman must speak a new Latin. Hence comes the cry with which he enters the city of Dis : S' io avessi le rime ed aspre e chiocce, Ne da lingua che chiami mamma e babbo. It is not a child's tongue that can describe the foundation of the universe. It is not a language about to be born from the putrefaction of the imperial tongue of Rome that he would choose were the choice his. Upon what times was he fallen for such a song! One epithet of Greek, one old Roman adjective, would express what his Italian brethren coined a line to carry. In these days the very word horrendus has lost its bristling meaning, and even Virgil ascribes it indifferently to Charon and to the serpent-hairy neck of Cerberus. i See Inf. c. 32, II. J-9. 29 THE FALLEN GOD PART THE SECOND LUCIFER IN DANTE'S INFERNO TI'S ow 'AvayKi/s eoriv oi Motpat rpL/jiopffroi fJ.vy/M>vfs T* Prometheus, 523, 524. Who then is helmsman of Necessity? The triform Fates and the remembering Furies. N connection with this horrible vision fcucifer in r TV * t j t. t i- -j Dante's fnferno. of Dis it would be interesting to consider the fearful triform god of the Hindoos and other Asiatic peoples. But we have here only time to hint at it. The grov- elling imagination of degenerate multi- tudes has carved the eidolon of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva from the legends and fables of their Buddhist priests. But Buddhism stands in the same relation to the original Brahmanism, as Italian stands to Latin, or Protestantism to Catholicism; and the basis of Brahmanism, its sacred literature, is the Veda, And what of the Veda ? It is a collection of hymns older than the oldest Greek, older than Sans- crit ; it is the fountain-head of the litera- ture of the Aryan peoples. Here Zeus the All-father, in Latin Jupiter, is Dyans ; the all-embracing god of light is Varuna, the Greek oo-pavo's, and related to him Mitra, the bright sun of day. Another name for the same conception is Aditi, the infinite. His opposite is Diti, the bound, of whom there is no conception except the personification of Night decay, destruction and death; signifying also the place of destruction Nir-riti, the Abyss and the Mother of 33 Sbe fallen Hell. 1 Was it for these deities that the soul of Aes- ' chylus hungered when he pictured the man-loving Titan bound down by the might of the new servants of the gods to the thunder-beaten crags of the Asian desert? For these and more. Into the heart of Prometheus there has crept a greater conception that of Love ; not the mere brutality of passion such as the new ruler of the gods had for lo. Not this, but in strong contrast to this. Aeschylus repudiates the heroism of slaughter and the apotheosis of incestuous amours of gods and men. For this he suffers, and his cry goes up: Oh, divine Aether, and ye swift-winged breezes, ye fountains of rivers, and ye uncounted laughters of the waves of the deep; Oh, earth, thou mother of all, and ye all-beholding circle of the sun, I call you to behold me, what I a god suffer at the hands of the gods. 2 For Aeschylus is conscious that in his awful mythology there is something lacking. The rulers of the minds of men are changing. Better the god- like Aether and the uncounted laughters of the waves of the deep ; better to worship, better to call upon the great, glorious Earth, the mother of all, gods and men ; better return to the deities of the pre- homeric days than take these. And why? The whole drama of Prometheus is the answer to this i See Max Miiller, Origin of Religion, 131. 2 Prometheus, 88-93. 34 query. Love is nobler than bloodshed ; the philan- luctfer in ... ,, ., t ,, Dante's Inferno, thropist is greater than the soldier. Herein is the greatness of Aeschylus ; he has conceived Love, love suffering for others ; has typi- fied it, expressed it under bodily and visible form. But this greatness is limited ; with love there is a coequal, Justice. Aeschylus has also conceived justice, but herein he is lacking that he has not expressed it in like figure as he has philanthropy. In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, outward shape, power and being are given only to the spirit of vengeance roused against a matricide. Yet here the difference between the power of Aeschylus and that of the earlier mythmakers is plainly shown. This embodiment is primarily of the inner, not of the outer nature, and there is, morever, a distinct artistic knowledge of and delight in such embodi- ment. This knowledge and delight is expressed over and again. It is put into the mouths of the Erinyes themselves: TIS OVV TttS' OV\ oeT(U re Ko.1 ScSotKcp /3poTdv, fpjQV K\VQ)V Oe&fWV TOV fWtpOKpaVTOV K 6tS>V 8oOevT(L reXcov ; Eumenides, 367. Who then of mortals dreads not and fears not these. Hearing: our office confirmed by fate, given perfect from the gods. But the keynote of the Eumenides is that to 35 which we have given an outline, and which is expressed in the verse in which Athena refers to the Erinyes : These possess an office not easily set aside. 1 This office is to satisfy the demand for justice, the human cry for a right recompense for evil. That he failed to express, to symbolize, to personify this, Aeschylus himself confesses in the very drama in which he endeavored to do so. For though perhaps not in execution, yet in conception, the Eumenides falls far short of the noble Prometheus ; even while the lat- ter proves that but for an accident Aeschylus would have embodied this very demand. The Eumenides are the ministers of blood-vengeance, as we have seen. In the drama they track a mother-slayer to his doom. We have considered the excellence, the faithfulness, of their embodiment in the Erinyes. But the transformation of these into Eumenides of name and word is in itself a confession of failure. There is an evil beyond these, which Aeschylus does not attempt to portray an evil which demands a more fearful personification than any fury Aeschylus could conceive. yap fv ftpordifTi KCLV Oeols TOV Trpoa-rpOTTaLOv /A^VIS, ci TrpoSoi crec Diet* balance la Mctotre* is the measure of Milton failure. Milton is the Puritan Homer. There is no com- parison of him with Aeschylus, and in no one sense is he the continuation of Aeschylus, any more than the vast pile of a mediaeval cathedral is a continua- tion of the simplicity of an Ionic pillar* Let us here recapitulate. The crowning poet of Ancient Greece is Aeschylus ; in this, that he has given life and palpable being to the idea of Love in Prometheus, and through the hint and shortcoming of the Eumenides, he left it as a legacy to his suc- cessors, to as well typify and adequately portray the horrible vision of inexorable justice claiming and punishing the most abominable of all sin betrayal. In other words, the spiritual successor of Aeschylus must embody in a form living for all time the vision of this sin working its own punishment. All the ancients, summed up in Dante's master, Virgil, left this work untouched ; Shelley, repudiating punish- 40 ment, and overcome by the intensity of his love, did fcuctfec in f .< < , , , T < Dante's Inferno, not even know that such a task remained* John Milton knew of the task and emulated it. But the puritan, the pure philosophical desire in him to Justify the ways of God to men, led him after a false light. We have seen with what power. Sin and death the offspring of the arch [traitor, and the hellhounds, who are their offspring, mutually torment themselves. Satan himself is not smirched; the deceiver of mankind still holds his glory and his star ; still weeps Tears such as angels weep. Nor will the puritan and philosophic doubt in Milton's soul allow him to bind mere men such as * Judas, Cain and Wentworth, in a punishment which cherubim endure. For in Satan, Milton has drawn us a princely sinner, a Lucifer of the intellect with slightly tarnished glory. Instead of loathsomeness, there is that in him which speaks home to the 'noblest of our attributes and leaves a thrill of sym- pathy. High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat. The Satanology of the Rabbis contributed little to conception of The Fallen God. Largely derived, 41 as Doctor Kohut has shown, from Parseeism, it * makes no mention of a Kingdom of Satan. In the Talmud the power of evil is not contrasted with that of good, nor is Satan represented as the enemy of God. Rabbinism viewed the * great enemy* only as the envious and malicious opponent of man, the spiritual element was eliminated. Instead of a pow- erful principle of evil we have only a clumsy, often a stupid hater. This holds equally true in regard to the threefold aspect under which Rabbinism presents the devil: as Satan or Sammael / as the Yetsenhaka or evil impulse in man personified; and as the Angel of *Death. In other words, as the Accuser; Tempter and Punisher* But there is nothing here which had not been told and better told by Aeschylus. Dante, and Dante alone, is the true successor of Aeschylus ; a greater than Aeschylus. He alone has in some measure attained to and completed what Aeschylus assayed. His conception of Lucifer is the supreme intellectual conception of the Fallen God. Nothing in ancient or modern literature has, or perhaps ever will, equal it. With him Lucifer is as repulsive as Milton's Satan is fascinating* All glory is alien to him ; all things 'of sin are a part of and have their source in him. All the multitudinous aspects of his being are varying reverberations and revelations of a single thing Evil, pure and infinite. He is All-evil ; the author of all the sin mankind endures* Every allusion to the former state of T -r * A t_ T r -t j j t.f j 2>ante'8 Inferno. Lucifer, is in the Inferno, veiled and oblique ; and in the last canto, the unfathomable spiritual loathsome- ness is so strongly insisted upon, that it would be physically repulsive, did not Dante, by consummate art, transmute the realism with an intensely imag- inative symbolism. The one faint gleam of apparent ideality left to Lucifer is his name ; but, in fact, even that is only darkness visible, ironic emblem of what once he was Ecco Dite ! il punto Dell ' Universe, in su che Dite sie.dc. Then, too, with his hugeness of person, which is made a measurable loathsomeness, and with all his acts, whose vileness is infinite, there goes, para- doxically, infinite imbecility. Though his influence beats through hell and into the world, and gives to the realms of sin all their being, his motions have all the futility of perfect machinery with no other function than to express utter lack of function, when there should be supreme function. Only in this case of Lucifer, this dead activity in place of glorious activity is not mechanical, but spiritual. Such is the death-in-life Lucifer (that is, Evil), all-fulfilled of self, has brought upon himself. This conception that, although Lucifer is strangely living, he is also strangely dead, is strengthened by Farinata's reply to Dante's question 43 ^o the kind of knowledge the damned possess. Noi veggiam, come quei c' ha mala luce, Le cose, disse, che ne son lontano : Cotanto ancor ne splende il sommo Duce. Quando s* appressano, o son, tutto vano Nostro intelletto ; e,s f altri nol ci apporta, Nulla sapem di vostro stato umano. Per6 comprender puoi, che tutta morta Fia nostra conoscenza da quel punto, Che del future fia chiusa la porta. Inferno c. 34, 100-108. We see, like those who have imperfect sight, The things, he said, that distant are from us ; So much still shines on us the Sovereign Ruler. When they draw near, or are, is wholly vain Our intellect, and if none brings it to us, Not anything know we of your human state. Hence thou canst understand, that wholly dead Will be our knowledge from the moment when The portal of the future shall be closed* Even these few faint beams from God's far-off radiance will at the day of doom be withdrawn. Then the living death will forever settle down upon the dolorous realm. A consideration of several passages from the last canto of the Inferno will serve either as concrete illustrations or as refutations of what has just been written ; revealing at the same time the marvellous variety in the severe unity of Dante's conception of Lucifer and Evil. 44 Dante and Virgil have entered the Judecca, the fcuctter in fourth and last division of the ninth circle, which contains those who were traitors to beneficent lords* Here. V ombre tuttc eran coperte, E trasparen come festuca in vetro. Altre sono a giacere ; altre stanno erte, Quella col capo, e quella colle piante ; Altra, com'arco, il capo a'piedi inverte. Inferno, c. 34, 11-15. . . . . where the shades were wholly covered, and showed through like a straw in glass. Some are lying: t some stand erect, this on his head, and that on his soles ; another like a bow inverts his face to his feet. A world of meaning lurks in the opening verse of this canto as spoken by Virgil in the depths of hell. Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni. The banners of the King- of Hell advance. These words must, with the reminiscences they arouse, pierce the heart of the three traitors Judas, Brutus and Cassius. They hint of the far-off pageants of the church militant and triumphant, making by contrast present horrors more horrible ; and their apparent solemn utterance of praise is, at the closing word, inverted to a grim and almost sacred mockery of evil in the heart of the empire. Then follows a passage, full in its music, and suited in its imagery to the gloomy majesty of Luci- fer when seen from afar. 45 jf alien Come, qoando ona grossa nebbia spira, O qoando l f emisperio nostro annotta, Par da longi on molin che 1 vento gira ; Vedcr mi parve on tal dificio allotta. Inferno, c. 34, 4-7. As a mill that the wind turns seems from afar when a thick fog breathes, or when oor hemis- phere grows dark with night, soch a stroctore then it seemed to me I saw. This soon changes, with terrible irony, to a revela- tion of Lucifer as he really is when seen close. (See verses 28 to 69 ; Lo imperador' to a'bem 'beduto)* Thus the banners have become the vast bat- like wings of Lucifer, which in their swift rise and fall seem to advance, all the more because the poets are rapidly moving toward them. All the toil of scholars has not made clear the meaning of the three faces. Says Longfellow : ' The Ottimo and Ben- venuto both interpret the three faces as symbolizing Ignorance, Hatred and Impotence* Others interpret them as signifying the three-quarters of the then known world, Europe, Asia and Africa/ Miss Rosetti says the faces are 'a symbol of Lucifer's dominion over all reprobates from the three parts of the world, the complexions being respectively of Europe, Asia and Africa/ Blanc (quoted by Ver- non) ' thinks that Dante has certainly intended to present Satan with his three faces as a direct anti- type of the Holy Trinity/ May not the last two 46 conjectures both be right; at least partially? Since Xuciter in r\ ft et. i r j r j f * r 2>arte'6 f nfetno. Dante, like Shakspeare, is fond of a reduplication ot meaning, often even in a single word. To the objection to this view, that these three bestial faces are the direct antitype of God in his three-fold unity, to wit, that it too greatly dignifies Lucifer, it may be replied that Dante may once again be employing his figure in direct irony against sin, and that Lucifer's form may be a grim and tormenting parody of the antitype he desired to be when he presumed to attempt to rival him, who in His infinity and incom- prehensibleness can have no antitype. Then even to Lucifer himself, his physical being would be a bit- ter mockery. At any rate, even though Lucifer is the complete antitype of God, Dante deliberately suppresses all mention of the fact. This in itself may be the finest irony. Brutus, Cassius, Judas Iscariot ! These are the three arch sinners whom Satan's teeth are champ- ing* The first is the betrayer of his king; the second is the betrayer of his friend and king ; the third is the betrayer of his friend, his king and his God. We now come to the difficult passage, describ- ing the real ascent, but apparent descent of the poets as they climb over Lucifer. (See verses 70-93}. 'This point is the centre of the universe; when Virgil had turned upon the haunch of Lucifer, the 47 fallen passage had been made from one hemisphere of the ' earth the inhabited and known hemisphere to the other, where no living men dwell, and where the only land is the mountain of Purgatory/ (Norton). The symbolic meaning of this description is, as it seems; that Dante typifies the human soul, journeying through the snares of evil toward salva- tion ; that is, toward the love of God. Hell is the realm of sin, and Purgatory that of absolving penance, whereto true repentance is the portal. Fig- uratively, then, the moment Dante turns round upon the exact centre of Lucifer, the focus of evil, the world and the universe, and begins the climb toward Purgatory, toward atonement, a spiritual crisis has been passed. A bewildering change comes upon the physical universe, corresponding to that which comes upon the soul when its new life is begun. By the soul's new vision all things, old and familiar, are made so strangely new, with altered or inverted importance, that at first its perplexity is greater than its enlightenment. The monotonous beating of Lucifer's wings, the ceaseless champing of his teeth, his impotence to utter a word or to make other than mechanical motions, the desolation of a land of ice and life- congealing winds, the intense darkness of the vast cavern below the earth's surface, in which the soli- tary voices of Dante and Virgil sound alien, hoarse 48 and hollow. all these things present a picture more ^Lucifer in if 1. fi. j j 'i j t-r Xante's Inferno, terrible than mere solitude and silence, and a life more dead than death* Yet so austere and restrained is Dante's imag- ination, and so intense the underplay and overplay of spiritual meaning, direct or indirect, that although the grotesque hideousness of evil is fully revealed, the revelation is noble ; nor do we ever, as some- times in reading Shakspeare, feel as though we were too close to the borders of madness, prompted by visions. That lawless and uncertain thought Imagine howling. Now the painful upward journey begins ; light from the better world dawns faintly ; and spiritual death and all that make for death, are left behind in their * deep backward and abysm/ Salimmo su, ei primo ed io secondo, Tanto ch' io vidi delle cose belle, Che porta il ciel, per un pertugio tondo : E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. Inferno, c. 34, end. We mounted up, he first and I second, till through a round opening I saw of those beau- teous things which heaven bears, and thence we came forth to see again the stars. In the life of every man two beings struggle vehemently for mastery the Flesh and the Spirit. , The function of the Intellect, during the struggle,'is 49 fallen strangely impartial. It accomplishes no more than ' to afford man a more or less adequate comprehension of the internal conflict. Crowning itself pontifex maximus, the intellect proclaims its divine right and infallibility as judge in the domains of faith and morals, and from man's intellectual impartiality in the confrontation of good and evil, is born Lucifer. The Greek intellect was impotent in the presence of evil ; whereas the meanest hireling may and does, when he will, overcome satan. For, like every vital thing, the conception of Lucifer the fallen god, source of all evil, himself All-evil, has and is having its organic development. The Greek mind, conceived of personifications of guilt, of the stings of guilty conscience; personifications even of Evil itself. But its evil was destitute of spiritual signifi- cance. This element of spirituality is the informing principle which imparts to Dante's Lucifer his im- portance, his significance, his reality. How far it is possible to go in this development of the conception of the fallen god is indicated by Henry Mills Alden when, in view of the 'restoration of all things/ he says : 4 Lucifer is light-bearer, the morning star, and whatever disguises he may take in falling, there can be no new dawn that shall not witness his rising in his original brightness/ 50 SINCERITY IN ART NASMUCH as sincerity is commonly apprehended as the opposite of feigning, it seems like a contradiction to speak of sincerity in re- lation to a work of art; art being essentially imita- tion, or feigning, as Plato defined it, and after him, Aristotle. The Othello, pacing the stage, his heart gnawed by the venom-pangs of jealousy as he lends ear to lago's villain slander, is not the Moor, but Edwin Booth, Henry Irving, or some other actor whom we have admired in other characters ; yet are we affected by the feigned distress. As we follow the events of his tragic history, we are even moved to tears for the sorrows of the Moor, and express our admiration by applauding the actor who feigns these passions. Why do we applaud the actor ? Because he is 55 Sincerity in a sincere artist. 'Ah, but it has been a feigning all ' the time ! ' Truly so, but the feigning is in accord- ance with the artist's nature and aptitudes, with his capacity for feeling and for expression ; therefore he is, as an artist, sincere. Were that same artist to assume the part of Rip Van Winkle, probably we should long for our Joseph Jefferson. The actor is permitted to assume the garb, the looks, the manner, the passion and personality of a stage character, but it is not permitted him to be false either to his own self or to his hearers, by counterfeiting any character or personality, that is foreign to his own proper tem- perament or his own histrionic powers. All this is palpably true of the art of theatrical representation ; it is not less true of all the arts. A few examples will show that sincerity is a prime essential in works of sculpture and painting. Consider the Artemis of the Naples museum. Is this figure genuinely archaic, sculptured when Grecian or Italo-Grecian art was still in its infancy ? Or must it be referred to a later period and regarded as a studied counterpart of obsolete antique forms a Brumagem archaic goddess ? With its soulless placidity of countenance, with the stiff regularity of the minute pleats of the robe, which even the hasty stride of the figure cannot dis- arrange, the Artemis might well pass as a genuine specimen of archaic art. 56 But if our attention rests on that step which we Sincerity in *ja <- have purposely described as 4 hasty/ and if we note the graceful gesture of the arms, so fittingly accom- rpanying the movement of the whole body, we are forced to refer the statue to a more recent period. Genuine archaic statues are wholly actionless; instance the celebrated funeral stela in the Athens museum. It bears a bas-relief figure of an armed man, known as cMarathonomachos, fighter at Mara- thon. Here the sculptor, though he makes the legs divaricate a little, to show that the warrior was marching, nevertheless fails utterly to suggest the idea of motion, that being beyond the capacity of archaic Grecian sculpture. How and wherefore it came to pass that artists, probably Greek artists, were led to fashion such statues as the Artemis, is a question easily answered when we consider that in Italy, in the last period of the Roman Commonwealth, there were whole popu- lations that held fast to the ancient order and clung to primitive beliefs. These scrupled to pay adora- tion, or to offer prayer or sacrifice to the graceful statues of gods introduced from conquered Corinth and Athens. The beauty of those figures scandal- ized the naif religious sentiment of these conserva- tives ; they demanded figures of gods such as their forefathers had worshiped. The sculptor, in com- pliance with the taste of his patron, was then obliged 57 Sincerity in to resort to the trick which many a Florentine work- 74 vf * man practices nowadays when he fashions chests and cabinets in thirteenth century styles. But even as the modern wood-carver never can attain the quaint elegance of the earlier artists, so those ancient Italo-Grecian sculptors could not entirely forego their acquired proficiency, nor so completely unlearn, for the nonce, the canons of art as ascertained in their own day, as to render the true spirit of archaism. They produced only pieces of seeming-ancient work- manship, which artistically were not sincere. Passing from Roman and Grecian art, to the I art of the beginning of the nineteenth century, we may instance the works of Antonio Canova. Canova lived in the palmy days of restored classicism. This revival was due to the French Revolution, when France (tried to persuade herself that her Commonwealth was a counterpart of the republics of Rome and Athens, and that Bonaparte was Caesar or Alexander come again. In those days ladies affected Grecian cos- tumes and coiffures; pottery aped the forms of [ancient paterae and amphorae; articles of house I furniture were assimilated to ancient classic forms, and the psuedo-antique dominated public and private life. Living in a society eager to persuade itself that Grecian and pagan ideals were again to reign, Canova adopted the fashion, and modeled Grecian 58 m or pagan deities. Consider his * Venus Rising From Sincerity in the Bath' in the Galleria Pitti at Florence; and, to Brt * appreciate correctly its artistic value, it is necessary to remember how the Grecians were wont to repre- sent their Aphrodite. In the age of Phidias, Aphrodite was indeed the goddess both of love and of beauty; such she appears in the Venus of Milo, a stately figure, divinely fair. To Phidian grandeur succeeded Praxitelean loveli- ness, which in his disciples and imitators soon degen- erated into excessive softness and mannerism. This we see in the Apolline of the Uffizi. We find in the Galleria degli Uffizi a good imitation of Praxiteles, the Venus of Medici. In this statue Venus has lost much of her primitive stateliness ; she has become more human ; she is still hominum divomque voluptas Alma Ventis ; Joy of men and gods, benignant Venus. Lucretius. but she is no more empress of earth, and sea, and sky, terrum naturam sola gubernans, Thou alone all nature ruiest. fo. imparting fruitfulness to all the denizens of air, sea and land. She is now simply the goddess of love, of human love, gentle and bewitching, but still a divine being. Considered from this point of view, the Medicean Venus is sincere. To the mind of Canova, living in the Napoleonic 59 Sincerity in era ^ now could Venus appear as a goddess ? The ' pagan spirit pervading every branch of art and learning with which the sculptor was in contact, might somewhat weaken, but could not entirely eclipse modern feeling. Under these circumstances the practice of art meant perpetual effort, and not even Canova's skill could conceal the evidences of painful endeavor to seem to be what he was not. With all his genius, Canova has utterly failed to give us a Venus ; instead, he gives us a very charming lady of early nineteenth century, a dame d'honneur of Josephine or Marie Louise, wearing the Grecian headdress which fashion had made obligatory ; but not a Grecian goddess. The Venus of Canova is, therefore, not a sincere work of art. It is due to Canova to concede that the fault was not, properly speaking, his, but that of the world in which he lived. We have a splendid proof of his genuine artistic genius in the mausoleum of Pope Clement XIIL, in the Vatican basilica. Clement (Rezzonico), an old man, is kneeling on a cushion and in prayer. Though he is draped in the pontifical mantle, it is not as Pope that he prays, nor yet is he praying for the whole world ; with palms joined, he prays as a man earnestly and devoutly for himself. The conception is grand and in harmony with the idea of a sepulchre that bourne where all human distinctions of rank and power are forever 60 annulled, Canova might have searched never so Sinceritslin 1*1 l*f diligently among Grecian or Roman models, he could not have found anything like this modern and Christian inspiration ; it sprang spontaneously from his own soul, and the work is a beautiful and sincere masterpiece. Another example is found in the works of Pietro Vannucci, better known as Pietro Perugino. In Umbria, during the fifteenth century, we find, beginning with that painter of Fabriano, so well named Gentile, a flourishing school, an uninterrupted sequence of artists individually little known to fame, but gentle all, and inspired with a religious mysti- cism. The mood may be traced to the influence of the aspects of nature round about, the quiet grandeur of the surrounding hills and shady valleys; or it may have been fostered by reminiscences of St. Francis of Assisi's preaching, which, in the saint's own epoch, called into being a great school of mys- tical lyrics. Whatever may have been the cause, it is certain that a spirit of mysticism, if not very deep, at least very genuine, inspired the Umbrian school of the second half of the century in which Pietro Perugino began to paint. Was Perugino's nature really inclined toward mysticism ? It would be worth while to study the man in his personal appearance, ' in those features which bear witness to the heart ' ; and this is easily 61 Sincerity in one , ' m that portrait of him by himseli, now in the T * Sala del Cambio in Perugia. In that rounded, com- monplace visage is no suggestion of ideality. In those firm-set lips and those frowning brows, deeply furrowed by anxious worldly thoughts, we read the character of a misen Vasari thus delineates the character of the man: I ' The terror of poverty being always present to his mind, he would for the love of gain do many things which he would never have done were he not so poor In his hankering after money, he cared neither for cold, nor hunger, nor hard work, nor weariness, if only he might hope to live some day in affluence and well-earned repose/ A covetous man he certainly was ; and Vasari i tells even worse things about this artist. But we [cannot believe Perugino to have been the atheist Vasari would make him appear ; yet we may safely conclude that his religious professions were not sincere* Let us turn to his works, and study the panel representing the Madonna and Saints, found in the Tribuna degli Uffizi, at Florence. Sitting in front of a double-vaulted portico, an architectural back- ground often employed by Perugino, the Madonna holds the Bambino in her lap. On the curved pedestal we read: Petrus Perusinus pinxit an. MCCCCLXXXXIII. 62 The Madonna is as graceful and pretty a woman as Sincerity in Perugino was able to put on canvas ; but she is one of those creatures whom nature has gifted with fair, sweet features, rather than with deep and genuine ideality. In a word, a woman such as Leonardo da Vinci, painter of the feeling and the mind, the deepest thinker among all the Italian artists, would never have given to the world as the Madonna. Perugino has idealized his Madonna by giving her finely-arched brows, languorous eyes half veiled by drooping lids, a straight nose, wreathed mouth, delicate, beautiful face. Expression, there is none, or only an expression of sweet vacuity, betokening sluggish intellect and absence of will. No interior struggle will ever spoil the composure of those suave faultless contours. The Mother holds her Babe with artless grace, but seems not to care much for Him or for St. Sebastian, who, by a hardy anach- ronism, is pictured standing, pierced with arrows, at her right hand. She would feel pity for him if she were the true Madonna ; but, there's the rub. She is not the Madonna, but only a contadina model earning her wages ; and when she sits there com- posedly, with somebody's baby in her lap, she per- forms her whole duty, and nothing more is required or expected of her. We find no fault with the Bambino ; he is a nice chubby-faced child. . On the left is St. John the Baptist, wearing a 63 Sincerity in mantle over his tunic of goat skin ; a fair youth, * slender and well-shaped, as Perugino's young men usually are* Another bold anachronism, for if the Bambino is a yearling babe, John must be precisely eighteen months old. The face of John expresses placid composure, verging on stupidity, but the features are decidedly good. While the gaze of the Bambino is fixed upon him, what is the Forerunner doing ? There is neither spiritual expression in his face nor spiritual significance in his gesture. There is in this youth nothing of the Precursor; he might stand for an errand boy returning from the market. Instead of a group possessing a deeply mystic signification, we have here simply a collec- tion of good-looking, but vulgar people. St. Sebastian, with two arrows sticking in his body, cannot, even in this august presence, be unmindful of his pains, so the artist cleverly com- bines in the action of this figure the expression of physical suffering and all-subduing faith. The upturned and foreshortened head of Sebastian, con- sidered apart and for itself, might be pronounced a masterpiece, were it not that in it we recognize one of Perugino's hackneyed and stale fetches, not always employed to express St. Sebastian's martyr- pains. Perugino's compositions beguile us into an admiration which they do not merit. In each the 64 figures are well painted, and considered individually, Sinceritg in are admirable, though somewhat trite from repetition; moreover, the grouping is always graceful. Still this is not high art ; it is clever workmanship, artisan- ship, but it is of the same grade as the mechanic handicrafts; the painter's studio is only a factory for production of religious paintings. So much for Perugino's mystical spirit* Yet was he a true artist ; not because he was a skilled draughtsman and master of all the resources of the palette, but because he had a fine sense of the beautiful, and wonderful skill in grouping his figures; and because all these, his skills, were ministered to by a knowledge of technique that has seldom been surpassed, if ever. But Perugino is more, even than all this would of itself imply. At his best, he is a great painter. Consider the Deposizione in the Gal- leria Pitti, Florence. In the center is the body of Jesus, resting on a stone, and sustained on the left hand by Joseph of Arimathaea, who, kneeling on one knee, faces the beholder; near Joseph is St. John and a woman with joined palms raised. On the right, Nicodemus holds the edge of the shroud. Behind the Christ are three figures kneeling ; the Virgin in the middle of this group supports one of her Son's arms, while Magdalene, at her side, upholds the head, and the third woman prays. Another woman, standing 65 behind the Madonna and earnestly gazing on the body of the Saviour, stretches forth her arms, with extended palms, in an attitude full of pity. In the background on the right are three men, one of whom holds on his palm and is showing to the others the nails that have pierced the members of the Crucified. So much for general description of the painting; let us now proceed to its esthetical analysis. We admire this composition because it represents a scene full of life and reality. The minds, if not the gaze, of all the persons in the picture converge on the Saviour. The Madonna, John and the women are looking at him. Joseph and the men forming the group on the right are thinking of him. Thus, and only thus, can the composition of a picture be made synthetical, since it is not enough for two persons to be photographed close to each other or even arm in arm ; if both are merely looking at the photographer, they will never form a scene nor even a group. The material bond is of small importance when we fail to realize, the corresponding expression, the ideal connection, which in this picture is so evident. The better to appre- ciate this masterpiece, observe how diversely, but always how sincerely, the feeling of pity is expressed by the several figures. Passionate in the Madonna ; sorrrowful, yet tinged with feminine gentleness in the Magdalene; blended with manly firmness in 66 Joseph ; subdued in Nicodemus, who is busied with Sincerity in cares for the entombment ; anxious in John and the woman close to him ; mixed with painful wonder in the woman standing behind the Madonna; and piously submissive in the woman kneeling with hands folded* Turning now to the group of three men on the right, we see one of them pointing out to the others two of the nails he holds on his palm* One of the listeners raises his clinched hands close to his face with a gesture of mingled pity and grief ; while the other man looks on with sorrowful astonishment. A brief explanation will show the importance of this group. One of the first requisites for a work of paint- ing or sculpture is definiteness and clearness of meaning ; we cannot admire when the composition is unintelligible to us* This clearness is easier to obtain in literary works, because the spoken or written word traverses a series of moments resulting in one event ; while the Fine Arts give us only one of those moments. Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi. Benozzo. Gozzili, and other clever artists of the fifteenth century, resorted to a childishly, simple device to make clear the meaning of their compositions; in the same picture they give two or three successive phases of one act. In the Tributo della Moneta, a fresco 67 Sincerity in painted by Masaccio in the Church del Carmine, in ' Florence, we see in the centre the Apostles sur- rounding the Saviour, who, being asked by the Cen- turion to pay the tribute money, sends Peter ' to cast an hook and take up the fish that first cometh up/ for in the fish's mouth the money would be found* The Apostles are filled with wonder and amaze- ment. On the left hand is shown Peter at the sea- shore, stooping over the fish and taking the coin out of its mouth; on the right is Peter paying the money to the Centurion. This device may admit of excuse in the case of Masaccio (born J402, died J428), a clever and prom- ising artist, who had not time in so short a life to give the full measure of his power ; but the same leniency is not to be extended to Perugino, who had the advantage of living longer and in a more enlightened epoch* The technique of painting had greatly advanced in the year J495, when Perugino painted this Deposizione. In putting this picture on canvas, it was essen- tial that Perugino should select some one principal moment in the tragedy. This central group does not, in fact, fix that supreme moment on canvas and upon the attention of the beholder. If, however, the painter, without violating the harmony and integrity of his concept, can introduce into the same some- thing which will suggest some prior or succeeding 68 moment in the same drama, thus synthesizing the Sincerity whole event, he has added to the value of his telling of the story. Perugino has attempted to attain this in the epi- sode of the man pointing to the nails. It has been objected that 'it was an indecency to gloat over (those Crucifixion nails at such a time, and it is an ' anachronism to have men of the year A. D. 33, treasuring as sacred relics those spikes. That sort of thing did not come in till long centuries after/ Answer may be made that such a treasuring of the nails as relics would not have been an anachronism in the thought of the age for which Perugino painted. Moreover, there is nothing in the picture to indicate gloating over the nails, nor a thought of treasuring them as relics. Rather does the thought seem to be, ' See, here are the cruel spikes with which they pierced the Holy One/ The background of the Deposizione is occupied by a valley in the shadow, gloomy as befitted the sadness of the scene in the first plane, and the fact that it was already eventide when Joseph of Arimathaea obtained leave to remove the body of Jesus from the cross. In the distance, the vale expands into a light- some, sunny landscape. This sunny landscape on the far-off horizon is not necessarily an insincerity or contradiction of the evangelists' account of the Crucifixion. That Perugino intended to indicate 69 Sincerity in fa^ ^h e sun was down, is evident from the shadow ' of darkness in the valley* But he is mindful that though a Deposizione should represent the body of a man destined for the grave, the painter should at the same time make us see in it the germ of the near and supernatural resurrection of a God. This far- distant glory, a * light that never was on land or sea/ is not actual. It but symbolizes the blissful after- math of redemption, resurrection and endless joy succeeding the passion of death. In this picture everything has its architectonic reason, every incident is charged with purpose, and the artist who could conceive and realize such an ideal must have been truly great ; nothing equal to this ever again came from the hand of Perugino. Consider further, the * Portrait of a Lady/ painted by Andrea del Sarto, in the Uffizi gallery at Florence. What could be more genial? What splendid blacks, and whites, and grays in his * Dis- pute About the Trinity/ in the Pitti gallery. But go to the Church of the Annunziata, and, in the frescoes of the Story of Saint Benizzi and the Adoration of the Magi, observe the draperies on the figures. Then go to the Chiostro dello Scalzo and observe how, in the scene of 4 Zacharias in the Temple/ the bystanders dare not move for fear of disturbing their robes. Then, too, what a sad spectacle is his 'Assumption/ Instead of raising the soul of the 70 beholder toward heaven, as does Titian's 'Assump- Sincerity " tion/ Andrea only speaks of tailor's stuffs. By sac- rificing significance to pose and tissues, he has become insincere. Many painters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried their skill in the treatment of the Last Supper. Several examples of different schools and different epochs may be selected to exemplify what is meant by Sincerity in Art. In the little refectory of the Convento di San Marco is still to be seen a fresco by Ghirlandaio, representing the Last Supper or Cenacolo. A skilled draughtsman and a clever painter was Ghirlandaio, and he well knew how to group his figures and compose a picture ; but his prosaic temperament and his joyous humor scarcely qualified him for a flight of fantasy or for profound meditation. There was in him but little of the poet. On getting his order for a Cenacolo, the honest Florentine set at work with all the placid industry which characterized him. The Apostles he shows, sitting at three sides of a table, are good folk, every one ; even Judas, who is distinguished from the rest only by absence of the nimbus round his head, and by the place which he occupies all alone on the fourth side of the table, opposite to John, who reclines his head on the Lord's shoulder. Ghirlandaio, in 5 simplicity of his nafbe realism, has scattered over Sincerity in the table some ripe cherries, and represents a group ' of honest men partaking of a frugal meal ; but he has not painted the Last Supper. Though he is said to have been a very truthful man, and though he never tries to cheat us into believing him any- thing but what he really is, we are constrained to say that though he has good color, good portraits, the obvious everywhere, nevertheless as an artist he is not sincere, not faithful, that is, in the treatment of his subject, for he never suggests the significant. Even more deficient was the painter probably of Perugino's school who has left us the Cenacolo in the ancient Monastery of Foligno in Florence. Here Judas is better rendered, because with some betokening of his depraved nature ; but the figures of the other Apostles are worse than in Ghirlandaio's picture. Only one of them, sitting beside the Lord and grasping a knife, has something like a flash of pride or wrath in his eye ; two others, on John's left, are meant to scowl at Judas, but they are not so incensed as to forget to eat their dinner ; another is pouring out wine; while still others are chatting quietly about their private concerns ; finally, one who is doing nothing, seems to be waiting patiently for permission to rise from the board. This Cenacolo is generally admired, and con- sidered superior to Ghirlandaio's. All the figures in it are distinguished by that beauty of feature and 72 form which passed from Perugino to Raphael, To Sincerity this last master this fresco has sometimes been attributed, erroneously, though nowadays no one believes Sanzio to have painted this graceful but meaningless and insincere Cenacolo* Turn now to the ample canvas which Paolo Veronese finished, in J572, and now found in the Academia Belle Arti in Venice, How could this gifted artist, this boisterous reveler, this lover of pomp and magnificence, this painter who succeeded by his magic in dazzling the observer so utterly that all his blunders in drawing and all his anachronisms fail to offend how could he understand the Lord's Last Supper? For him the Cenacolo is a sumptuous ban- quet in a noble palace, under three gorgeously orna- mented arches, across which we enjoy the view of a splendid city with pompous monuments. Jesus is a young and fashionable Venetian nobleman ; the Apostles are gaudy patricians ; and as if this were not enough, Veronese has filled his picture with a number of people coming and going, ascending and descending the grand flight of stairs soldiers, a Moor, several turbaned Turks, a cup-bearer in gay livery, a buffoon in motley attire, a dwarf standing in front of a little girl ; lastly, a cat and two dogs crouching under the table* Altogether, this is decidedly beautiful to look at ; the painting ranks 73 Sincerity in high among the masterpieces of the Veronese, and * may in a certain sense be considered sincere, the painter having honestly rendered what he really felt. The question still remains, whether he really felt this subject as it ought to have been felt* And the answer clearly is, No ; and hence the decision must be against the artistic sincerity of the painting. If we turn from the sumptuous Venetian ban- quet back to humbler scenes and more pious artists, the difference will be startling. In all that is spiritual, truth comes from God, or from those spirits who have been the friends of God. Of such was that simple-minded, god-fearing Dominican friar Giovanni da Fiesole, who adorned the walls of his convent of St. Mark, in Flor- ence, with many a devout painting, one of them a Cenacolo. No banquet is this, but a simple repast in a room of bare walls with a rude table, round which some of the Apostles reverently stand, while others, with even greater reverence, kneel and receive from the Lord's hand the blessed bread, and hearken to the sacra- mental words, * Take, eat. This is my body/ The pious Dominican, adhering strictly to the text of St. Luke, gives to the scene all its mystic significance ; it is the institution of the Eucharist. The art- technique is plainly inferior to that in Veronese's picture, painted some 130 years later; moreover, the 74 Cenacolo t- :onsiderc . ico's be** ' rks ; but it glowi * > such sacraments mu idim it superk ere religious feeling And md rendering 'ted with b ronardo da \ Angel- ity art. the refectory c Grazia* Neither as people, n7r as the arist, dikl Leonardo momentous d.r*n *a in Msions are s*br^ in :.^:. undertook, towai a painting of the L convent of Santa M an everyday meal oi mystic institution >; conceive his sui which deep feeling the hearts of all 4 Jesus, sorrowing treason that is to BwH* na.otfiiwo*! srJ of you which eateth with am shall bet His gestures are most aft e left ha n$&* expanded, the palm upward, tl>* :hn$ the board, the muscles tan* the Cact at a thing that is to b* with *gMii!*) ; the right hand, also wrt t-xpandel it^i wHb wrist and thucub t board, the pdbn kowafd the tabk ar from the *puker' the otHer jln|pi touch the board, t>ut a? slightly rxaw^ . last Supper XeonarOo fca VM Cenacolo is not considered to be one of Fra Angel- Sincertts in ico's best works ; but it glows with such certainty of purpose, such sacramental earnestness, that we must proclaim it superior to its more brilliant rival in sincere religious feeling and perfect fitness of inspiration and rendering. Gifted with higher genius and larger imagina- tion, Leonardo da Vinci, that prince of Italian paint- ers, undertook, toward the year J497, to adorn with a painting of the Last Supper the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazia* Neither as an everyday meal of quiet, good people, nor as the mystic institution of the Eucharist, did Leonardo conceive his subject, but as a momentous drama in which deep feeling and fiery passions are stirred in the hearts of all the actors. Jesus, sorrowing but resigned, foretells the treason that is to be : ' Verily say I unto you, one of you which eateth with me shall betray me/ His gestures are most apt. The left hand, with fingers expanded, the palm upward, the finger- tips touching the board, the muscles relaxed, states the fact as a thing that is to be received with submission ; the right hand, also with fingers expanded, rests with wrist and thumb upon the board, the palm toward the table and hence away from the speaker's face; the other fingers do not touch the board, but are slightly raised ; this attitude 75 Sincerity in o f the right hand, by its averted palm, expresses ' the aversion of the Saviour for the treason, but it is an aversion which is mingled with pity for the traitor, else the muscles of that hand would be tense. The action of the painting shows the instant effect of the Saviour's words* Turning from the Central Figure toward the left that is, to the right of the Lord we have first, John, the beloved dis- ciple, quite overcome with painful emotion; all muscles relaxed, his figure drooping, his head falling to the right, as in a half-swoon, his two hands joined resting on the board with fingers interlaced ; a pic- ture of utter dejection* Next to John is the traitor, dwarfish, ill-favored of visage, with beetling brows, thick black hair* The announcement has given him a shock and caused him to recoil as far as his proximity to his neighbor, Simon Peter, allows. With his right hand he grasps tightly the money-bag; with his left, he touches the folded hands of the beloved dis- ciple* What means that reaching out to John ? Has the Iscariot a velleity of repentance ? The expres- sion of that hand is no more than a velleity ; per- haps the action is simply reflex and unconscious ; there is no muscle in it, no will* But the right hand that clutches the purse ! Next after Judas we see Peter. Peter leans 76 over toward the beloved disciple, and in doing so Sincerity in crowds the form of Judas against the table-edge. Peter has a weighty question to ask, and wants it answered n&w; so he doesn't mind if he is rude to the little ill-favored Iscariot. He brings his strong, resolute visage alongside the ear of the grief-stricken John, and, summoning him to attention by a prod with the forefinger of his left hand, while the right grasps a knife, he asks in a whisper whether any name has been mentioned; the knife is pointed away from any probable object of Peter's suspicions. Item, Peter chooses to keep to himself the secret of the knife ; ' but do, John, learn the name of the traitor/ Next to Peter is his brother Andrew; the expression of his visage, the gesture of his uplifted hands with palms averse and fingers outstretched, tell of his horror on hearing of the perfidy. So far, the action of all the figures, except Andrew's and John's, express a two-fold emotion or state of mind, but in John and Andrew one emotion only* Andrew's next neighbor, James the Younger, while his gaze is fixed intently on the Lord, stretches out, behind Andrew, his left arm and rests the hand on the shoulder of Peter ; but he is thinking not of Peter, but of what the Lord may say next. That hand on Peter's shoulder simply rests there ; it is not calling Peter away from his questioning of John ; it does not clutch Peter's sleeve ; it does not press on 77 Sincerity in Peter's shoulder. James will have a question to ask * of Peter as soon as the whispered conversation with John is over* Last on that side of the board is Bartholomew, a noble figure of a man ; he stands at the table-end, leaning on it with both hands, and listening eagerly to catch any further word the Lord may utter. Returning now to the centre, the figure next to the Lord is James the Elder. His action and face expression, or rather facial inexpression, betray amazement, not horror, as in Andrew, whose hands uplifted to one level with palms averse, speak of detestation of the villainy. But James the Elder, is simply amazed, dumbfounded ; he knows not what to think of it all. The gestures of his two hands are at odds ; so are his thoughts. He is not horror- stricken, else the palms of his hands would be turned outward as though to ward off the horror, and the two hands would be held at one level, as aimed at one object of detestation. James presents a fine contrast to Peter. See the painfully anxious face of Thomas, next neighbor to James the Elder, behind whose back he bends over toward the Lord; his face as pale as a corpse's, his features sharpened by the fear that maybe he, he himself, is the one that will betray his Lord* Do not the hairs of his head stand erect ? Poor Thomas's emotion is, doubtless. 78 the most poignant of all; he, perhaps, is predestinated Sincerity in to be the one to commit the sin that shall be forgiven neither in this world nor in the next* Can we mis- interpret the significance of those worn features and of that uplifted forefinger ; does not the action of this figure ask more eloquently than would words : 'Is it I, Lord?' Philip has risen to his feet, and with hands 'pressed to his heart, protests his fidelity to the Master unto death. Matthew, standing also, with face and figure .turned toward Simeon, who sits at the table-end, is assuring Simeon that those very words, 'One of you shall betray me/ were spoken by the Lord ; that there is no mistake about it* This is finely expressed by the gesture of Matthew : ' Didst thou not hear ? ' But Simeon, with both hands held forth, palms ; upward, arms bent at elbow, maintains that the thing cannot be so ; 4 it is plainly impossible/ Between these two sits Thaddeus. Thaddeus has no doubt about the terrible announcement. Simeon says, ' impossible, you misunderstood/ ' No misunderstanding/ says Matthew; 'the Lord spake these very words, One of you shall betray me.' ' Yes, yes/ chimes in Thaddeus, as he brings down upon the palm of his left hand the outspread right with thumb directed toward some one sitting at board with them. 'And I know who the traitor is ; I'll 79 Sincerity in na me no name, but it is the fellow back there, our ' bursar/ Great as is the difference between this and Beato Angelico's masterpiece, yet in sincerity they are equal. The genial painter, as well as the humble Dominican, has truthfully painted in strict accordance with his feeling for the subject. Each has painted the scene as it appealed to his own nature. Devout and mystical the one, powerful and passionate the other. Each has been faithful to his sense for the significant, and being natural, he has been sincere; each a spirit of flame, not only illumined but luminous, shines by his own light ; each, by being true to himself, has been true to his art. The conclusion is evident: whoever purposes to ape another artist, and to imitate a Raphael or a Rembrandt, a Velasquez or a Millet, or to pattern after a certain * School ' of Art and to be classed as an Impressionist, or as one of the Preraphaelites, or of the Paris, or Munich, or Glasgow schools, will be insincere in his art. None of the great painters were imitators ; or, if sometimes they were, just so far did they fall below their own greatness, their own sincerity. Beauty is multiform ; each artist should select the expression which best befits his temperament and his artistic powers, since that art alone can be sincere 80 which is the reflection of the artist s inmost self, his Sincerity in art. soul. The more the artist depends for style upon his own individuality, the more he depends for inspiration upon the genius of his own age ; so much the more widely will he differ from those who have only become models, because they excelled in painting the significant in their own environment and as revealed in their own personality* Those who are born with visions should paint visions, but luminously ; those who are born robust should paint robustly, but temperately ; 'let those who would soar keep their wings, the others their feet;* each mindful that no one can see except by his own lamp; and, though the goal may not always be reached, it may at least always be striven for* UNITY IN ART AN is essentially con- structive, instrumentally analytic* The difference between the constructive and the analytic is the dif- ference between regarding a thing from the totality- aspect, the constituent ele- ments of the thing existing only as parts, and receiving meaning only through the whole; and the way of regarding a thing as a group of elements, the total existing to be analyzed, the element only being real. These opposing points of view are the opposing attitudes of the artist and the scientist. By Artist, meaning the poet and novelest, as well as the painter and sculptor, since all of these contribute to the receptive and appreciative personality, all deal with 85 in phenomena in a creative way, aiming to give totality- Srt. , , impressions. The work of the artist is twofold. It is aesthetic, it is also ethical* His aesthetic aim is to set the thing or event before the beholder in such a way that the effect which is produced upon himself shall be passed over to the observer. It is, briefly, to convey the total unitary impression, fraught with his own personality, and make it significant for the observer. The same is true of the ethical activity ; its aim is so to present the thing or event, that it shall be effective in directing or transforming the activity of the subject to whom it is addressed. Not truth but power is at the heart of the artist's effort. Truth must be there, but it is the truth of impression, not truth of description. The office of the artist is to make an ideal order of existences or values, in the service of which he dissolves the continuity of actual experience, and selects from its elements those which are parts of the ideal order and which will be factors in the production of his desired impression. To this end he employs Perspective and Unity. By Per- spective meaning, the emphasis of the significant and suppression of insignificant elements* What is intended by Unity is more difficult of definition, both because the thing itself is so ele- mental and spiritual and because of the confusion so 86 often made between the unity ' and the unities of art a composition. * The master of those who know ' was not too great a name for the putative author of the doctrine of 'the unities/ Though in truth Aristotle was chiefly concerned with that internal unity which he claims for Tragedy in common with every other work of art. 1 Whereof this unity consists, and wherein it differs from 'the unities/ may be more clearly understood by a brief consideration of what has been termed the * English pseudo-classic period of poetry/ The pseudo-classic period of English poetry has been called the age of the supremacy of Alexander Pope, but it began before Pope was born. Dryden, for example, in the prologue of his tragi-comedy, Secret Love f professed allegiance to those ancient law-givers of the poetic art, Aristotle, Horace, Quin- tilian, Longinus and their modern Gallic interpreter, Boileau, when he claims for his work the merit of having been composed according to the exactest rules, with strict regard for 'the unities/ Pope, in the Essay on Criticism (J7U), makes a like profession of reverence for the ancient mas- ters, though when he names Boileau, he, incon- sistently reproaches French writers for their servility in submitting to Boileau's authority, while at the I Arirt. On Poetry, VIII., 4. 87 in same time he calls his own countrymen uncivilized because they will not wear the yoke ; on the other hand, those English poets who accept the Greco- Roman-Gallic precepts, are ' restoring wit's funda- mental law/ Pope's Essay on Criticism did not confirm the vogue of pseudo-classicism in England and give it a reign of nearly a hundred years. It was the example he set of rendering in scintillating verse the very thought of his own age the thought that is, and the mind of England, as revealed to him in political cabals, literary cliques, frivolous society, and the varied circle of pseudo-philosophers. For him, the poet's mission is to trick out nature in finery and to polish into brilliants the commonplaces of universal morality, the current religion and the received philosophy of life : True wit is nature to advantage dressed ; What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed* Admirable, no doubt, Pope is, for he has made poetical the most humdrum sentiments, the most commonplace passions, but they are poor souls and poor wits whom he can content; for it is a low ideal which this poet proposes to himself. Plato classes such artists in speech with pastry cooks. Pope's brilliant antithetic couplets made less artificial poetry seem dull, and the elder poets of nature were for a hundred years neglected and the poetic contem- plation of nature repressed ; not extinguished, how- ever, either in poet or people, as was proved in J 730 ^ ntt B in by the success of Thomson's Seasons, with its manly sentiment and its native vigor. Pope himself, in the Essay on Criticism, much as he prizes the Aristotelian laws of poetic composi- tion, recognizes the supremacy of nature over all magisterial precepts. Nature is, he writes : At once the source, and end, and test of art ; and of this aphorism he had unexpected proof. Gay's Shepherds' Week was written at the instance of Pope to throw ridicule on the Pastorals of Ambrose Philips, by introducing scenes from actual pastoral and peasant life in England. Though ludi- crous, the scenes were felt to be true to nature and life, and were received with great favor. If ludi- crous effect is wanted, we need not seek beyond Pope's own Pastorals, where on the banks of * fair Thames ' Sicilian muses sing and the swains and shepherd-lasses wear the homely English names, Strephon and Daphnis ! This is reductio ad absur- dum of classicism. But why should an English poet be required to poetize by Grecian or by Gallic rule? ' There is such a thing as reason without syllogisms/ pleaded George Farquhar; * knowledge without Aristotle, and there are languages besides Greek and Latin. . . To different towns there are different ways ..... We (English) have the most unreasonable medley 89 in O f humors of any nation on earth We shall find a Wildair in one corner and a Morose in another ; hence the rules of English comedy do not lie in the compass of Aristotle or his followers, but in the pit, boxes and galleries/ And herein lay the fundamental difference between French and English literary art. Boileau and his successors in France, until the most recent times, addressed a court circle, an academic clique, or at most a single capital* All literary judgment, all literary taste, emanated from Paris. The English poet and dramatist addressed the whole people. As long as the taste for poetry in England was determined by the polite circle which admired Pope's exquisitely turned verses and his sparkling epigrammatic style, the native muse un- adorned passed for a rustic wench, and unsophisti- cated nature seemed mere barbarism. In Pope's time Shakspeare was as distasteful to his country- men as to the French, for whom, as represented by Voltaire, * Shakspeare was a buffoon/ And it is an interesting coincidence that Pope's Rape of the Lock, his masterpiece, is for the French critic and historian of English literature, Hippolyte Taine, a piece of ' harsh, scornful, indelicate buffoonery/ In the pseudo-classic age, poetry was indeed an art it was artificial, and for it Nature was an arti- ficial thing. Her face was rouged to make her pre- 90 scntablc in polite society ; in its presence Nature, ^nits in naked, was ashamed, so their poets showed them 'Nature to advantage dressed/ Its conception of Nature and of Man was not drawn from nature or from man, but from literary tradition. The Gradus ad Parnassum, and the store of poetic phrases and figures, were no small part of the poet's inspiration. As Coleridge happily characterizes some of the most ambitious efforts of Pope, 4 the thoughts are prose thoughts translated into the language of poetry/ The poets of the pseudo-classic period describe nature with great richness of imagery, but their imagery comes not from nature, being simply a compound of hearsays derived from the poets of classic times* Wordsworth says of Pope's version of the celebrated moonlight scene in the Eiad, that ' a blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might easily depict those appearances with more truth/ For Wordsworth, it is matter of wonder how an enthusiastic admirer of Pope's Iliad, reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlit sky, could fail to notice their absurdity. The universe which these poets-by-rule evolved was doubtless very well ordered* In it ' the unities ' were sacredly observed ; but it was petty compared with Shakspeare's universe, which was God's. No one is especially anxious about the preservation of 'the 91 in unities ' in God's universe, and, like it, Shakspeare's * appears a mighty maze, but is not without a plan. Truly, for the poet, there is a sublime unity in nature ; and his profound sense of this unity and of his own kinship with nature, gives him a passionate sympathy with the whole creation. He is conscious of a presence in nature that * disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts ' A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things* The poet's vision is, therefore, a feeling, a sym- pathy, as well as an intuition ; the heart has part in it equally with the mind, and his work speaks both to the mind and the heart of those whom he addresses. It gains admission to mind and heart primarily through sense-impression of a pleasurable kind. The poet, painter, sculptor, or musician, in order that he may produce such impressions, must himself be in the highest degree sensitive ; his mind * a mansion for all lovely forms ' ; his memory ' a dwelling-place for all sweet sounds and harmonies.' Without such native sensibility, he may, indeed, by a tour de force, produce a work of art in music, though he be congenitally deaf ; but after all, it will be artifice, not art. It is because all art has its spring in fine sensibility that the artist is held to be by nature an epicurean, a virtuoso of pleasurable 92 ideas and sentiments* Certainly he needs must be inttfi in a man exquisitely alive to all the joys of sense, whether tranquil or intoxicating. Such must be the sensibility of the artist or poet that, as Sully-Prud- homme finely says, * certain colors, certain lines, certain sounds shall affect him like caresses or like wounds.' The poet must, with Wordsworth, have felt the ' aching joys ' and the * dizzy raptures ' of the contemplation of nature. The reason why sensory experiences thus impress themselves upon the mind of the poet is, that for him they are vocal and emblematic. He does not delight in these excitations of sensibility merely for their own sake ; on the contrary, like a true epicurean, he enjoys them only so far as they respond to his inmost emotional and mental states* The flaming of the sunset, foretelling the approach of night, speaks to him of heroic struggles ending in disappointment ; the swiftness of the mountain tor- rent gives him a sense of exaltation ; a leaden sky depresses his spirit ; that is, the outer world of time and space speaks to him in symbols expressive of man's invisible world, which outreaches space and time; while he contemplates nature, he hears ofttimes The still, sad music of humanity. In thus interpreting as symbols the phenomena of nature, the poetic and artistic temperament simply intensifies into a passion a gift which is universal ; 93 in f or even ^ the lowest grade, men are sufficiently * endowed with the poetic faculty to discern in physi- cal things intimations of things spiritual, and analo- gies with things and states of the soul of man. Everybody is poet enough to call a mood * gloomy/ or ' cold/ or ' bleak/ or ' sunny * ; an outburst of anger * fiery/ Were it not for this gift, speech would be impossible ; it would be more difficult to carry on the simplest conversation without metaphor or metonymy than to discourse in words all one- syllabled ; we cannot express modes or states of the soul otherwise than in terms of sense-impression* ' You have a heart of stone/ cries yokel Hans ; 4 and you a pumpkin for a head/ responds his milk- maid inamorata. In divining the analogy of sen- sory experiences and affections of the soul, these rustic swains do for the nonce exercise, the poetic faculty. Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me ; And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea, sings a dying seer; but we need no study to see that the * sunset ' is no literal sunset, nor the * evening star ' a real star, nor the ' call ' a vocal call, nor the ' sea ' a sea ; these are all sense-impressions elabo- rated in the poet's mind into symbols of things entirely spiritual. 94 This faculty, we have said, is possessed by all, 5? nit B in but it is possessed in a high degree only by the artist. To Wordsworth, in the time of his hale, manly I vigor, nature was * all-in-all '; the sounding cataract haunted him Mike a passion' ; the imposing spectacle of creation was to him An appetite ; a feeling and a love That had no need of a remoter charm By thought supplied. But as physical strength declined, he notes in him- self an exaltation, a purification of sensibility, and he often is conscious of a presence that pervades all things. He is still a lover of nature for herself, but he is more, .perceiving in All the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half create ' A r .j. J.L t? /- i. 3F ra CrfBtofeto. not the Fnar; in Fra Cnstofero it is the Friar. Cristo- fero is not made for action ; he is discreetly set aside while the action of the story proceeds. The most important things happen while he is away some- where in the South, sent there to please the lordling, who wants to be rid of the officious friar. Here we feel the weakness of Manzoni; it is as if in these stirring events he did not know what to do with the saintly Cristofero ; so he locks him up in a closet, or, what is the same thing, in a convent; and there keeps him till the time comes for him to reappear, when he is brought forward again. Toward the end, we find him attending the sick with character- istic devotion and the love for his fellow men. Here, surrounded by distress and pain and amid the saddest spectacle that human misery can present scenes which Manzoni describes with a power un- equalled perhaps by any of his younger rivals Cris- tofero looms grand as the spirit of compassion over this ocean of suffering. Renzo has been wandering through the lazaretto in search of Lucia, dreading yet longing to find her there, when he espies Fra Cristofero, and hastens to address him. The friar is partaking of such frugal repast as the place affords, still peering about and lis- tening for the first call from one of the many sufferers around him. He is here, not by order of his superiors, 125 Gwo fictional fc u t a j his own entreaty, to be permitted to serve the * sore stricken Milanese. He is now exhausted by his heavy task ; death's seal is stamped on his pallid features ; but his heart is unchanged, his holy zeal unquenched. After the first inquiries Renzo mutters curses against the author of all his misery* * Miserable man/ exclaims Fra Cristofero, in a voice full and sonorous as in former days ; and the drooping head is raised erect while the eyes flash fire and his breast heaves with emotion long unwonted ; 4 Look, miserable man ! Behold all around us who punishes ! Who judges ? What do you know of vengeance, what of justice ? Begone ! You have betrayed all my hopes/ Renzo is a good fellow, and it is not very difficult to persuade him that he must forgive his enemy ; but Cristofero is bent on obtaining a complete triumph over Renzo's rancour, as well as over his own ; and suddenly bending his head very low, in slow deep tones he adds : ' Do you know why I wear this garb ?' Renzo hesitates. 'You know it well/ repeated the old man* 'I do/ answered Renzo. 4 1 too have hated. I who resented a hasty word of yours. I killed the man I hated* I too have hated with all my soul; and the man I hated, that man I slew/ ' Yes, a tyrant ; one of those ' 4 Hush!' interrupted the friar; 'Think you J26 that if there were any good reason for it. I should * riar laurence, . t * .. . 1.. > At. -r i t j i. , ffra Crtetofeto, not have found it in thirty years ? Ah, if I could but instil into your heart the sentiment I have ever since had and still have, for the man I hated ! If I could ! I ? But God can I Listen, Renzo/ The sequel is beautifully worked out, but it must be read in its entirety if we would appreciate the character of the saintly friar. Cristofero rises to heights that human frailty dares not essay. His soul has gone forward toward full-orbed splendor, and radiates a charm so exquisite, a sweetness so winning, an energy so puissant, an essence intangible, evanescent, spiritual, that he seems to breathe a more ethereal atmosphere than this of earth. The friar rises even above the petty rules of religious scruples, when, with the authority given him by his order, he declares Lucia released from her vow. In Friar Laurence we feel the touch of our com- mon humanity, in him it is the man, the human- hearted man that we love ; but in Fra Cristofero we recognize sainthood. We understand and sympa- thize with Friar Laurence ; we look up to and strive to imitate Fra Cristofero* Both Shakspeare and Manzoni have given each to his friar an appropriate exit. As the story per- mits Friar Laurence to go in peace and the Prince is justified in saying, * we still have known thee for a J27 fictional holy man* ; so too with Lucia we learn * with more 5 * sorrow than surprise that he died of the plague/ This is the beauty and also the weakness of such a character ; it is above nature. But yet, if a human soul has been able to think it ; if other human souls have understood and for one moment at least comprehended the beauty and purity of this splendid unreality ; can we not hope that some hidden flame of pure love is still living unseen, unfelt, in our hearts, ready to leap and flash forth at the call of some kindred spirit above ? Our modern romanciers are always ready to show us what demons of hellish passion lurk in the best of us ; let us be thankful to those, like Manzoni, who show us the possibilities of our ardoyante et dtberse human nature. 128 THE HEARING OF MUSIC AS A SENSUOUS AND A SPIRITUAL PLEASURE [THE HEARING OF MUSIC AS A SENSUOUS AND U SPIRITUAL PLEASURE & & f & f & (DEEP-TONED BELL has for years pealed daily and hourly from, a stone steeple; in a garrison near a suspension bridge military bands, have for years sounded their bla- tant martial music. One day it is 1 found that strands of the steel cable) which sustains the bridge are bro- ken, that the steeple is in danger of disintegration. And science, when asked the cause, points to the military band and to the bell. I may not understand how sound can accomplish the Destruction of a bridge that bears without hurt the measured 1 tramp of a marching regiment, or how the same cause can threaten wreck to a steeple which might withstand a cannon- shot. Sounds, however long continued, have not that effect upon me. I find pleasure in the lively band music, and in the deep tone of the bell. What is sound that it should have these differing results ? Steel rope and steeple have heard no sound. If they* could speak they would ask me what I mean by 'hear* and 'sound/ They might perhaps tell me how this suc- cession of more or less energetic vibrations this motion repeated day after day, effects their gradual disintegration, buti of sound they could give no idea, for them it is naught; these vibrations are nothing but physical tremors, in the absence an organ of hearing and a brain. The same succession of vibrations, the same motion, which reaches the iron rope, reaches me also ; and I, having-^ hat the^ope has not, an organ of hearing and a brain, ai Sbe Hestbetfc an& conscious of sound. But how ? Let us begin our Spiritual in flfcusfc. . < ., , .< r j inquiry by considering the phenomenon of sound in detail* The phenomenon of sound, considered object- ively, is perceived to be a simple physical phenome- non of motion, a regular and more or less rapid suc- cession of undulations or waves. The vibrations of the body in which the sound has its origin are borne, through the medium of the air, to my external ear, thence to the middle ear or tympanum, and thence to the internal ear or labyrinth, in which is the termi- nal of the auditory nerve, which extends to the brain. The statement is simple; but as the sound-waves make their journey, the phenomenon is transformed; it is no more a purely physical phenomenon, it has become physiological, though it still remains a phe- nomenon of motion. The vibrations are now con- veyed through the highly specialized nervous cellular tissue. Still, they are only motion, and it is as waves, that is, as motion, that they, by means of the auditory nerve, reach the particular organ of the brain with which that nerve communicates* There a further change occurs. In my brain the phenome- non is again transformed. It was physiological ; it becomes psychological, and I hear. In hearing I perceive sound, not motion. Yet I may perceive both if I choose; I may touch a violin-string and feel the tingling, quivering sensation 134 of its vibrations, at the same time that my ear trans- Cbe Bestbetic anz> mits a perception of the sound of that string. But Spit would the vibrations of that string mean sound to the sensoria of all animated creatures? Science seems to tell us that certain insects have no perception of sound except as a sequence of shakes. And there are grounds for believing that some animals perceive as sound, vibrations which are either too rapid or too slow to be perceived as such by man : just as the ultra-violet and ultra-red rays of the solar spectrum are not seen by the human eye, though they are clearly evidenced by actinography. Vibrations slower than forty per second, and more rapid than thirty-eight thousand per second are heard with difficulty by man, and do not convey a true tone-sensation. Man's perception of such slow vibrations is perception of motion rather than of sound. But do all vibrations, do all aerial waves produce sound ? That is one of the unsolved problems of science* What effects this mysterious transformation? The spiritist tells me that it is effected in the pass- age of the phenomenon from the brain to the spirit ; the positivist explains that it is merely a function of the brain. Let us leave them to their conjectures and pass on to our argument* The aerial waves, transformed, have reached my brain. I hear, and with the hearing comes a further sensation a sensation, perhaps, of pleasure* J35 tfbe Bestbetfc ano The sensation of pleasure which any given Spiritual in jflfcusic. , , .* cause arouses in me may be one or the other ot two things, a sensuous pleasure or a spiritual ' pleasure. The sensuous pleasure depends immediately upon the cause which has produced it, which has been apprehended by the inner self and received as an agreeable or a disagreeable feeling. If the sensations are those of taste, smell or touch, no scientific dis- tinction can be made between the agreeable and the disagreeable. What is good to me may be distaste- ful to my neighbor* No gourmet can by scientific rule prove to me the goodness of a taste I djislike. I abhor the scent of magnolia, yet many people think it agreeable. One acquaintance is disagreeably affected by the touch of very smooth surfaces, another by the touch of rough ones. Who is right ? None can decide. We are wrapped in a subjectivism from which no science can free us. For each indi- vidual those sensations are good which are in har- mony with the feeling produced by the activity of his whole organism ; and in judging the sensuous pleas- ures of taste, smell and touch we can perhaps find no better rule than this ' Good is not what is good, but what is pleasing/ May we apply this rule to the pleasures con- nected with the two remaining senses, sight and hearing ? Leaving the former out of consideration, and coming directly to our subject, the sense of J36 hearing; the answer to the question will depend on ^ bc Aesthetic I.*., i , .,r. j. ,. ,. i Spiritual in fl&ustc our ability to make a scientific distinction between sensations of hearing; to establish a criterion by f which to determine what sounds should give pleasure and what should not* Consider the most elementary principles of musical sound, and see whether science points out to us one sound rather than another as of a nature to cause pleasure. Physical science fixes with exactness every musical tone by determining experimentally the num- 'ber of vibrations of which it is the result. Thus every tone-is, in a sense, a number. On considering those numbers with relation to each other it is per- ceived that certain of them stand to the others in an arithmetical ratio more or less near, that is, are more or less nearly related, while certain of them are totally unrelated. The notes, therefore, represented by those numbers the notes produced by vibrations of the rapidity fixed by those numbers ought to be related more or less nearly, or totally unrelated, according as the numbers are related or unrelated* And a combination of tones most nearly related ought to give most pleasure. The related tones are by this process found to be, generally speaking, the octave, third and fifth, together with the note taken as a basis for calcula- tion. A combination of these notes ought therefore to afford pleasure to the ear ; and the sensations of a 137 ttbe Bestbetfc anD hearer should range from the maximum of pleasure Spiritual in .fl&usic. , < < . r rf , < . . r produced by the full chord the maximum of conso- nance, the combination of tones most closely related to the disagreeable sensation produced by a dis- sonance, a combination of unrelated tones. We thus find some reason for liking certain combinations and for disliking others ; and this rea- son holds equally, whether the hearer's sensations are or are not what this rule indicates they should be. For instance, one may determine experimentally cer- tain related notes which, sounded together, should cause him pleasure ; but his actual sensation may be utterly at variance with what he perceives he ought to feel. He should like a combination of related tones, he should dislike those unrelated ; but a pure harmony may be to him nothing but noise, and he may be equally unaffected by a discord. Again, the pleasure of a hearer varies with the quality of the tone ; and tone-quality depends upon the addition of harmonics, related notes which are called^into being by the sounding of the funda- mental note, and which blend with it. To the num- ber and relative strength of these harmonics tone- quality is due, and we should expect to find most pleasure in hearing that tone richest in harmonics, that tone evoking the greatest number of related tones. But while such should be the sensation of a hearer, he may be in fact indifferent to a tone which 138 this rule shows to be beautiful, and may receive a ^ be Scstbetic anfr sensation of pleasure on hearing a vulgar, strident, s " idtual blatant or throaty tone from instrument or voice. When we pass from the single note or chord to notes sounded consecutively, a further condition con- fronts us. Notes may be sounded one after the other irregularly, at haphazard, or there may be a mathe- matical symmetry by which each ha* its value of duration with relation to every other that precedes, accompanies, or follows it. They may thus be grouped into bars or parts of bars, into phrases, or successions of bars, into movements or portions of movements, successions of phrases, and so on. And a symmetrical grouping ought to give more pleasure to the hearer than any mere chance arrangement. Yet he may be unresponsive to symmetry and unable even to keep time to a march played by a brass band* We know that no intellectual process can give this idea of pitch, this discrimination of tone-quali- ties, or this sense of rhythm. Yet these faculties certainly the first and last are essential to every lis- tener who would perceive the beauty of what he hears. The sensation of sound is not to be ruled by subjectivism like that of smell. It is only when affected by sensations produced in us through the medium of hearing or of sight that we use the term beauty. We cannot call beautiful those things which Hestbettc anD seem beautiful to us, unless they obey a rule out- sidc rf ^ Qur p^^^ of ^^ is controlled not merely by subjective appreciation, differing from individual to individual, but by fixed and objective law, ' I never could understand/ said Richard Cobden to D'Azeglio, during a concert given in Florence in honor of the great economist, ' I never could under- stand what sort of pleasure people find in all this noisy thumping and grating/ And clearly it was impossible for him to understand. Like many other clever men he associated no psychical activity with the simple sensation of hearing. We find accordingly that a perception of pitch relative pitch, that is, or the ability to determine whether notes are played or sung in tune, and a sense of rhythm, or time, are and must be the inheri- tance of every one who would listen to music and judge its beauty* Here we are lifted above mere sensation, since these things cannot be apprehended by sensation alone, but must be perceived by one of those elements of thought which Emanuel Kant calls pure* As these faculties, if possessed, have been, in substance, always possessed, as no element of experi- ence is mingled with our original possession of them, and as when originally entirely lacking they cannot be acquired, they may be considered to be what Kant denominated pure intuitions* HO We are now on the borders of the realm of ^ be aesthetic an& ___ . f f ... Spiritual in flfcusfc. music. We will only glance within. When a musical composition is heard as a com- position, as something more than a combination or succession of notes produced in rhythm, there are blended with the primitive sensation, and with the intuitive element, both of which we have considered, countless new psychical elements, differing from indi- vidual to individual. The higher the percipient ele- ment of aesthetical enjoyment in the hearer, that is, the greater the activity of his thought, the greater this resultant pleasure ; but it is always an aestheti- cal pleasure, never entirely sensuous, if he possesses the essential intuitive qualities. Does your neigh- bor tap his foot in a futile effort at time when the band plays 'Yankee Doodle/ and does he slumber through a symphony? Then perhaps he prefers corned beef and cabbage on a deal table to a dinner with Lucullus. Yet we are still only part way on our road to complete spiritual enjoyment of music. Our primi- tive sensation, acted upon and transformed, first by our intuitive faculties, and still further by our psychi- cal elements, has resulted in perceptions. The per- ceptions, thus aroused are, by the mental activity, transformed and remodelled into concepts, and these concepts may in a thousand ways be united or HI Sbe aestbettc an& opposed by the endless working of the power of Spiritual in Ausic. ratiocination* And herein lies the point. The hearer will not find spiritual beauty in music unless he himself possesses those intuitive qualities and those psychical elements which enable him to perceive it, and unless he rises above the merely sensuous impression* And he will not find it except as he finds the expression of a con- cept ; as such alone can beauty spiritual exist* Fine arts can claim that name only as they give 'expression to a concept. Not every art is equally apt to express a definite idea, as painting, sculpture and poetry can. It is not given to all of them to , express all sorts of ideas. Architecture is more vague in meaning than poetry ; but are we to say that it has no meaning, that its beauty cannot be expressed in concept ? Con- sider for instance the gorgeous church of the Annun- (ziata in Florence. For all its gorgeousness it lacks 'that concept of a temple which the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, notwithstanding its bareness, embodies. Is not the meaning of music more definite than that of architecture ? And must not music disclose its spiritual beauty by the expression of concept ? In the mind of the creator of the music the con- cept arises, and through the expression which he 142 gives it, through the performance it receives, and ^ be Beetbettc an& tAt- j r^t. i. -i- j *t Spiritual in flfcustc. through the mind of the hearer, it is imparted exactly or approximately, the cause and the effect of the noblest psychical activities of composer, performer and listener* When the concept is thus expressed and thus perceived, the hearing of music is something more than a sensation; it is truly and really an aesthet- ical, a spiritual, pleasure* J43 EDMONDO DE AMICIS ^ EDMONDO DE AMICIS <* <* f <* HEN a man has written books, which, of all books written in his own language, are the most widely read ; when he sees them trans- lated into other languages and praised all over the world ; when the profits earned by this work of fWf ri' iVM his pen far transcend the most san- l SC\vKL| guine hopes of any other writer in P^l/jBiyk is country; when critics have SgfegM/1 been hymning dulcet strains of mild praise, and readers of all classes, gentle and simple, old and young alike, have been faithfully buying the whole long series of his vol- umes as they issued from the presses; does he not seem justly en- titled to rank as a great master of his profession and a genuine artist? Yet we doubt if Edmondo de Amicis is a great master in literature or even a genuine literary artist. His power of arresting the attention and arousing the interest of the reader is conceded. His quickness of perception and his exquisite moral sensibility, responsive to all noble emotions is admitted. He can picture a landscape better than any other living prose writer of Italy ; as a stylist he is inferior only to a few of his Italian ' contemporaries; and he has the knack of making something out of nothing of winding off page after page of pleasant reading upon the most trifling matters. Turning his pages, one easily grows into a liking for the author; pleased with his buoyant hopefulness, convinced of his genuine sincerity ; yet all the time conscious that something is wanting to our perfect satisfaction, something which none but the really great writer can impart. Wherein lies the fault ? A careful examination of the work of De Amicis will reveal why, liking it so well, nevertheless it does not satisfy. The year of revolutions, J848, was critical for Italy ; her divided populations aspired to freedom and national unity ; it was a time when high hopes were entertained of a complete Italian renaissance politi- cal, religious, social, moral, intellectual. Milan threw off the yoke of the Hapsburgs ; Carlo Alberto cast the weight of his sword into the balance in favor of the popular aspirations ; a Pope stood forth as sign and proof of the Church's sympathy with the na- tional sentiment; young Italy dreamt dreams and entertained confident hopes that were not to be real- ized, but while the generous illusion lasted, the skies seemed to promise an eternal Springtide, a new birth and a rejuvenescence of the race which once 148 had been the world's master. Into this moral atmos- ne0ila,Deamtcis' phere was DeAmicis born; and the warmth and enthusiasm of that day-spring of liberty in Italy wrapped his infant soul and stamped it with the character of perennial youthfulness and antique Roman simplicity. His birthplace, Oneglia, has little fame in his- tory. It was founded early in the tenth century and till the end of the thirteenth belonged to the bishopric of Albenga ; then for near three hundred years it was a dependency of the Duchy of Genoa, and then the Dorias sold it to Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, in J576 ; in the fortunes of war thereafter it changed 'masters repeatedly, as Savoyard or Spanish or Genoese or French arms or craft prevailed. It is a snug little town of 7000 or 8000 inhabitants, cozily ensconced amid the hills bordering its bay in the Ligurian sea. Its chief architectural monument is a noble church edifice, San Giovanni Battista, designed by Gaetano Amoretti. The olive plantations of Oneglia and the adjoining town and district of Porto Maurizio yield the finest oil exported from Italy. It is a picturesque 'region, bright with a variegated wealth of flowers, but with a soil that yields scant returns to the labor of the husbandman. Such is Oneglia, famous of old as the birthplace of the great Genoese admiral Andrea Doria and in our time of the genial, kindly novelist Edmondo de Amicis. 149 afamicto! Edmondo was intended by his parents for a * soldier, and his education was completed at the mili- tary school of Modena. Such a special training means, the world over, short measure of classical or literary study, and his scholarly attainments at gradu- ation were neither more nor less than those of the average military cadet. As an officer in the army he first saw active service in the battle of Custozza, and with the na- tional army tasted the bitterness of defeat on that dis- astrous day when no degree of personal courage could compensate for inefficient leadership. The campaign which followed opened with the most bril- liant prospects, but a series of reverses ensued, which gave weight to the dark insinuations whispered against the leaders in this ill-managed war. De Amicis had shared in the high hopes entertained of the spirit and efficiency of the army and he shared also in its reverses; but no shame of unmerited de- feat, through the incompetency or the treachery of the commanders, could shake his confidence in the soundness of the national cause or abate his loyalty to his king; indeed his attachment to the military profession grew with the disgraces which had befallen the army. From J867 to J870 he was in the garrison at Florence, and employed his leisure hours in writing short stories for the periodical ' Italia Militare', of 150 which later he became editor. His 'Novelle' and * te Stories his 'Bozzetti Militari* appeared first in that journal and were instantly received with public favor* They were then published in volumes; and as the editions were speedily exhausted, he recognized in that fact a sort of call to a literary career, and soon he resigned his commission. He has told us, in his naive, artless manner, of his hesitation before taking this step. He had scru- ples of hault courage, thinking that 'none but master- minds have the right to renounce the active life, and to presume that, by giving forth their thoughts in writing, they may pay the debt every man owes to society/ He modestly considered, however, that even very humble and simple souls have wants and aspirations which none but a congenial spirit can understand; and he believed that he might give utter- ance to their unspoken sentiments, and direct upon their grievances the current of human sympathy. From that moment the history of his books is the history of his life. He goes abroad and gives us the journal of his travels in the volumes * Spain/, ' Morocco ', 'The Netherlands', 'London', and ' Paris'. At every return home he finds his fame and popularity ever greater ; so he feels encouraged to attempt new work, as in 'Cuore', 'Alle Porte d'ltalia', and 'Gli Amici'. His 'Sull Oceano', a lively record of a voyage to America, reveals 151 the author s sympathy for socialistic doctrines. Be Bmicig. T ., . r\ A t_ j -i_ In this voyage De Amicis had an opportunity to observe the condition of emigrants, and his interest in their fortunes is awakened. At home, he studies the life-problems of schoolmasters and schoolmis- tresses, and the results of his observation are found in the works 'Fra Scuola e Casa' and in 'II Romanzo d* un Maestro'. Since he first entered on the literary career his social and political views have undergone a change, which has been differently judged by the supporters of opposing schools of political doctrine ; but no one has ever challenged his absolute sincerity. His Italianist patriotism and his more or less cosmopolite socialism are but two aspects of his generous, hopeful nature; he has no rancor for the class which he regards as the oppressors of the mass of the popula- tion ; but he believes that their rule is coming to an end, and that a new era of peace and justice is coming. He labors for redress of wrongs, without invoking vengeance upon the doers of wrong. He has thus been consistent with himself throughout, whether he glorifies militarism or lauds the blessings of peace, whether he exalts the royal throne or pleads the cause of the lowly millions ; he never veers with the wind of opportunism, but is always responsive to the cry of the distressed. 152 In a parliamentary crisis he was induced to 1>e stand for election to the Chamber of Deputies as a representative for Turin ; but on being elected he was unwilling to bear the responsibility and resigned the deputyship. Indeed, in disposition and temperament he is ill-fitted to be a wrestler in the parliamentary arena. It is a fast popular belief among the Italians that some persons are born lucky, others unlucky. It were doubtless nearer the truth to say that in the struggle for life a man is generally victor or van- quished according to the measure of his pluck, per- severance and good sense. If success is a matter of good luck, then De Amicis is to be reckoned a lucky man. But the secret of his constant good fortune lies, possibly, in the fact that he has never aimed too high, never undertaken to do that which he was not fitted by nature to do ; good luck is sometimes only another name for good sense. From the outset of his literary career he has been conscious of his power and of his limitations. At first he wisely confined himself to the only sub- ject with which he was conversant military life. Meanwhile he did his utmost to compensate for his initial deficiency, his want of a solid classical educa- tion, so necessary to a man who would write pure and elegant Italian. To an extended course of mis- cellaneous reading he added a careful study [of J53 Fanfani's Vocabolario, and bent all his efforts to the acquisition of a refined literary style. His long residence in Florence was of decisive moment in fitting him for eminent rank in Italian letters* Like his greater countryman, Manzoni, he was aware that a Lombard * must needs wash his garments in Arno's wave/ The rude dialects spoken in the north of Italy, or worse, the idiom of barracks and camps, receive scant toleration in Italian literature; and De Amicis was practically under the necessity of learning literary Italian, a new language. A comparison of his earliest with his latest writings will show how much he had to learn and to unlearn. Yet, despite their provincial dialecticism, his first writings, the ' Novelle ' and the * Bozzetti Militari ' were hailed with delight all over the land. The chord of patriotism was still vibrant in every Italian heart, and with it De Amicis' strain was fully accordant. Diplomacy did more than arms to bring about the happy consummation Italian independence. But the end having been secured somehow, anyhow, and the people being now liberated from foreign bondage and united under a popular monarch, the army, which had, though indisciplined and ill-led, striven valorously to achieve independence, was, for the many, an object of patriotic pride ; and the praises lavished on the soldiers who had laid down their 154 lives in their country's cause, were grateful to their 2)e Bmtcts j I , i companions in arms and their countrymen, and were not too scrupulously weighed. In truth, the heroes of those battles as portrayed by De Amicis were mostly of a kind which does not stand criticism unscathed. His soft-hearted officers and thick-brained devoted soldiers, are not real flesh and bones, to be turned round and viewed from every side and studied like living, throbbing human- ity ; they are of such unsubstantial stuff as dreams are made of, images reflected by a mirror, rather than men. Our author's writings at this period present an indifferently accurate portraiture of the outside, but of the soul, spirit, character within, not a glimpse. The fault was hardly detected by his countrymen, because the same slurring of psycho- logical analysis is usual in modern Italian literature. Liveliness of conception and keenness of apprecia- tion of the beautiful in nature we find in these Southern artists ; but that very gift disqualifies them for minute observation of the hidden springs of action. Psychological analysis has seldom proved attractive to these life-enjoying, pleasure-seeking Italians. In examining the more recent productions of Italian painters and sculptors, we are struck by the absence of any suggestive or deep-lying inten- tion. They are clever artists, skilled artisans. They understand the harmony of colors and the purity of 155 B&monDo lines. Their benches and chisels are in their hands Be m c s. pjj ant too i s to produce the effects conceived in the artists' minds. Their works please the eye and the fancy; they excite admiration; but they do not make us think. The beautiful masterpiece has not been meditated deeply enough, and hence does not tempt us to search into its innermost meaning, and to trace its genesis back to the primal idea in the artist's mind. And this is true of Italian artistic expression, alike in painting and sculpture, music and literature. In the works of De Amicis we find this want of spiritual or psychological depth, yet rare skill of artisanship withal. As critics have pointed out, his effeminate officers are always ready, on the slightest provocation, to shed a tear or utter sentimental bathos; but at the same time we are required to believe that in the stress of battle they are veritable lion-hearts always. Unacquainted as we are with the intimate life of young officers, we will grant that De Amicis relates correctly the doings and sayings of his young officer heroes; we only ask that he shall help us to recognize their doings and sayings; we wish to have the impression removed from our mind that these figures of young officers are only puppets. When Kipling's Mulvaney and his comrades sit around a fire, discussing their own and their officers' affairs, we get such intimate acquaintance with those J56 I I rude, honest, prejudiced hearts that we easily read ,., , J . , .* . .. < their motives and interpret their actions; but when JDe Amicis, in the 'Figlio del Reggimento', shows us a group of lusty young officers fondling and pet- ting a little street urchin, stroking his unkempt locks r and gushing over him with long speeches of motherly I tenderness, our feeling is rather one of disgust than of sympathy; one cannot regard such a scene as true to nature and fact. 'Carmela', the prettiest of these short tales of the 'Vita Militare', is the melancholy story of a v peasant girl, heartbroken and demented in conse- r (fence of an unhappy love affair with an officer. She [lives in a dreary islet inhabited only by some scores of convicts and a small military guard. This rustic i Ophelia's chief delusion consists in mistaking for her false lover every officer who succeeds him. How a youthful lieutenant is moved to pity for the unhappy girl; how pity changes to love; and how he con- trives to cure her of her insanity by re-enacting, in every particular, the scene of her first lover's depart- ure. All this is told with ingenuity. As we read, we grow curious to learn how this novel experiment will result; but all the time we are conscious that these far-fetched emotions, these extravagant moral feelings, this unreal world of sentimentality, has no point of contact with our own moral world; and that the actors in the scene are shadowy creations of 157 4 Xa Wta JBilttare' BDmonOo the author s mind, not human creatures. Their 2)eBmici0. ., . . sorrows or their joys are not our sorrows or our joys. The scenery, the landscape, the figures, we clearly distinguish; but the souls animating these puppets are for us enigmatical* Even if the story be founded on fact, it is presented in such guise that to us it appears as a creation of fancy. If we use the word Poet in its primary signifi- cance of creator, De Amicis will have no claim to that title; but if by Poet we mean one highly gifted with imagination and fancy, De Amicis has about the same right to the appellation as, say, Coppee or Felicia Hemans. While he possesses in liberal measure the imagi- nation and the fancy of the poet, Nature has denied him the primum mobile of all poetic genius, restless, passionate desire of realizing an ideal. De Amicis is blessed with a healthy, joyous, one is tempted to say, a bovine contentment. He lacks the stimulus of a passionate desire for higher and highest things; it never occurs to him that he must 'look before and after and pine for what is not/ To his eyes come no visions of a supernal, an ideal world. Poets have been great only when they have agonized; painters and sculptors have created immortal masterpieces, when, comparing their dream of the Beautiful with their surroundings, they have blended harmoniously the outer and the inner vision. This power of 158 conceiving an ideal, actuated by an impulse to express 2>eBmfcfg' Xfmtta- it in words, lines, colors or musical sounds, will make a great writer out of a plowman, will frame the divinest of musicians out of a deaf man, and will fashion a world-famous preacher out of an uncouth fanatic. Dante is the greatest of Italian poets, because none agonized as he did to give expression to ideas from the supernal world of the spirit. Now, De Amicis has never been tempted to meddle with spiritual problems ; the heights and the depths of poetic and philosophic contemplation are ignored by him ; he is concerned only with the interests of the passing day, and he amuses the pass- ing generation ; his works are for present consump- tion ; none of them is * a possession for ever/ For him, religious belief, as is often the case with his countrymen, is a matter of no importance. He does not care to make profession of atheism ; he just pays a pretty compliment or two to Providence in his earliest writings, and there an end. Had De Amicis been born a few years earlier, he might, fired with patriotic enthusiasm, have sung with Berchet, if not with higher-soaring Niccolini, the golden vision of Italian liberty. That dream is now realized, and, like many other realized dreams, has lost much of its dreamland brilliance. Italy has been freed from the Austrian yoke and from the oppression of native tyrants, and no longer requires 159 B&monDo the services of her sons on the field of battle ; the ' task set to the present generation is to educate this newly united people and to contrive means of mak- ing the nation better morally, socially and economic- ally. De Amicis has given his best endeavors toward forwarding these ends; the dominant note of all his writings is the sentiment of Italian nationality. The other affections predominating in his soul are an exquisite, almost feminine, tenderness for his mother, and an accurate perception and appreci- ation of the many shades of friendship. These, he has, in his several works, rendered with appropriate delicacy and clearness; these feelings are not dramatic ; they grow to full blossom and fade away without ever provoking passionate struggle. We may be interested in the description of such senti- ments, but we are neither stirred in our own souls nor brought into communion with the soul of the writer. Even socialism becomes with him a bland aspiration for the amelioration of society, unmixed with any idea of warring against unfavorable envi- ronment, M. De Amicis is peculiarly lucky, or wise, in this: he knows his power and his weak- ness. He never tests the strength of his wing by attempting a soaring flight, but is satisfied with warbling his dainty sonnets and clearly modulated epistles of simple sweetness* 160 Among the poetical works of De Amicis, the best ^ be Sonnet0 of ft- j.t j L t- j * i *te Hmfcis. oi his sonnets are those inspired by the ardent patriot- ism of his early years, Come vorret morire . . . (how I wish to die) being the most popular. The idea is indeed trite, but it is expressed with grace and in a manly spirit. In the two sonnets entitled La ,. Grandenata (the hailstorm), the poet with a few simple but effective touches realizes for the memory and imagination of any one who has lived in north- ern Italy the phenomena of one of those brief, angry and ruinous storms not infrequent in that region. De Amicis* filial tenderness is delicately ex- pressed in a sonnet beginning with praise of his mother's beauty and ending with the wish that he might, by himself growing old in an instant, see his mother young once more, at the price of his self- sacrifice. If delicacy of feeling and exquisite poetic form were all that we require in a poet, then De Amicis musf be accounted a genuine poet; but the poet's bays are not so easily won* He possesses neither that knowledge of the heart of humanity which was the heritage of Shakspeare, nor does he perceive the soul of nature as does Wordsworth; neither has his spirit travailed with personal sorrow as did that of Leopardi when he wrote Le Remembranze, nor has he been maddened by the black vision of some national wrong as was Niccolini when he summed U p the misery of Italy in his 'Arnaldo da Brescia'* To return to the prose works of De Amicis, and in particular to his stories of military life, we readily see why these fail to awaken our interest; we do not take his military characters au serieux. We cannot bring ourselves to believe that those officers and troopers of a generation ago were, every man and boy of them, in all circumstances absolute stoics, counterparts of Socrates at Delium. Did De Amicis never hear of officers committing suicide rather than obey commands they knew to be cruel and dishonor- able? But our author's military characters know nothing of the conflict between conscience and neces- sity, between duty and possibility; these impossible automations, having received the word of command, always on the instant proceed to execute it, as blindly obedient as the subject of a mesmerizer* In 'Camilla' one of his 'Novelle' he shows us a young conscript who resorts to mutilation to escape from duty in the army. This poor wretch is painted in the darkest colors ; the author takes such pains to bring public odium upon this worst kind of malingerers that he effectually quells any feeling of compassion one might have for the unhappy wretch* No extenuating circumstance is allowed to have any weight in excusation, no mercy is shown for the cul- prit. Dostoiesky can have sympathy with the vulgar murderer; but De Amicis would deny all the offices 162 of humanity to the offender against the military 2>c 7 ot Gravel, laws. The records of travel * Morocco', 'Spain', * Holland ', and 'Souvenirs of Paris and London' are the most valuable of the works of De Amicis* In these his talents find free scope, and his limitations and his temperamental defects are less obvious. He looks around him with the keen glance and quick perception of all Italian artists, and describes his impressions in a charming, lively style. He is a delightful raconteur, himself deeply interested in all the strange and novel experiences of travel in foreign lands, and awakening an interest no less lively in his readers. As we turn these entertaining pages over one is continually reminded of raconteurs of like gifts, encountered in many^an out-of-the-way corner of Italy; genial natures, ,who will talk for the sake of talking, will laugh at their own jokes, smile at their own conceits/and altogether amuse themselves so heartily that tney seldom fail to amuse their hearers. De Amicis never takes a short cut through any subject or narrative; he never hurries along the main road, but follows every promising by-path, lingering wherever the vista invites, describing minutely not only the things he sees, but the dreams they recall and the wishes he has cherished. Before entering a town he usually describes it as it is painted BOmon&o m fog fancy; then he will give us first impressions. 2>e Smfcis. i i .1 . t ^t.- A and lastly a minute account of everything* As a fair specimen of this manner, let us open the volume ' Holland' and read his description of Broek* Ever since his arrival in Holland he had been, in fancy, planning and building this curious village. He had been inquiring everywhere about it. noting not only the answers he got, but also the looks, smiles or shrugs that accompanied them; and when at last he is come to the much-talked-of locality he peers through the screen of forest with eager, playful impatience, and this is what he sees : 'After half an hour's walk, although no sign of Broek appeared beyond the top of a tall steeple, I began to see here and there signs which an- nounced the neighborhood of a village. As I went on I saw rustic houses with their windows ornamented with net curtains and ribbons, with little movable mirrors, and toys hung up ; their doors and window-frames painted in bright colors, and finally, strangest of all, trees with their trunks colored bright blue from the root to the first branches* 'Laughing to myself at this last oddity, I looked about and discovered a boy lying on the grass. 'Broek?' inquired I. 'Broek/ he responded, laugh- ing. 'Imagine a city made for the show-window of a Nuremburg toy-shop, a village constructed by a 164 ballet-master after the drawing on a Chinese fan, a *** Deacrfptfon group of houses made for the scenes of a puppet- theatre, the fancy of an Oriental drunk with opium, something which makes you think of Japan, India, Tartary, and Switzerland all at once, with a touch of Pompadour rococo, and something of the con- structions in sugar that one sees in a confectioner's window ; a mixture of the barbaric, the pretty, the presumptuous, the ingenious, and the silly, which, | while it offends good taste, provokes at the same time a good-natured laugh; imagine, in short, the most childish extravagance to which the name of village can be given, and you will have a faint idea of Broek. 'All the houses are surrounded by small gardens, separated from the streets by sky-blue pailing, each in the form of a balustrade, with wooden apples and oranges on the top of the pales. The houses, for most part built of wood, and all of one story only, and very small, are rose-colored, black, gray, purple, blue and grass-green; every door painted and gilded, and surmounted with all sorts of bas-reliefs represent- ' ing flowers and figures, in the midst of which can be read the name and profession of the proprietor. 'The gardens are not less odd than the houses. They seem made for dwarfs. The paths are scarcely wide enough for the feet, the arbors can contain two very small persons standing close together, the box- wood borders would not reach the knee of a child of 165 BOmon&o f our years. Around houses and gardens stand trees ' cut in shape of fans, plumes, discs, etc., with their trunks painted white and blue, and here and there appears a little wooden house for a domestic animal, painted, gilded, and carved like a house in a puppet- show. 'One expects every moment to see the doors fly open and a population of automatons come forth with cymbals and tambourines in their hands, like the figures on hand-organs. Fifty paces carry you around a house, over a bridge, through a garden, and back to your starting point. 'After having walked about for a while without meeting any one, I began to wish for a view of the inside of one of these houses. Whilst I looked about in search of some hospitable soul, I heard some one call 'Monsieur! Would you wish to see a private house?' She was a poor widow, she told me, and had only one room ; but what a room ! The floor was covered with clean matting ; the furniture shone like ebony, all the little points of metal here and there looked like silver. The fire-place was a real temple, lined with colored tiles, and as clean and polished as if it had never seen a fire. She showed me the utensils for cleaning the room enough to set up a shop; brooms, brushes, cloths, scrapers, dust-pans, pokers, shovels, feather brushes, aqua- fortis, Spanish white for window-panes, Venetian 166 red for the knives, coal-dust for the copper vessels, r ft- i.t_ ' it. t i r t_t- scrtptton of JBroeh. 'emery tor polishing the iron things, brick tor rubbing the pavements, and sticks for poking out micro- scopic straws that get in the cracks of the floors* 'In former times/ she said, 'the mania for cleanliness arrived at such a pass that the women of Broek neglected their religious duties for it. The pastor of the village, after having tried all means of persuasion to end the scandal, took another way. I He preached a sermon in which he said that every [woman who faithfully fulfilled her duties toward God in this earthly life, would find in the other world a house full of furniture, utensils, and trifles various and precious, in which undisturbed by other occupa- tion, she could sweep, wash, and polish for all eternity, without ever coming to an end. The image of this sublime recompense, the thought of this immense felicity, infused such ardor and piety into the women of Broek, that from that moment they were assiduous at religious exercises, and never had need of further admonition/ De Amicis tells us that further along in this village is preserved a miniature representative of one of the houses and gardens as they appeared in ancient Broek, ' preserved by the proprietor as an historical monument of past folly. Here are bridges a palm long, grottos and cascades of miniature pro- portions, small rustic chapels, Greek temples, Chinese E&mon&o kiosks, Indian pagodas, painted statues ; tiny fig- . .., u j r j tl j t.- u u ures with gilded feet and hands, which bounce out of flower-baskets ; automata of life size that smoke and spin ; doors which open with a spring and dis- play a company of puppets seated at a table ; little basins with swans and geese in zinc ; paths paved with a mosaic of shells, and with a fine porcelain vase in the middle; trees cut into a representation of the human figure; bushes of box carved into the shapes of bell towers, chapels, ships, chimeras ; pea- cocks with spread tails, and children with arms stretched out ; paths, arbors, hedges, flowers, plants, all contorted, tormented, twisted, and bastardized. And such in former times were all the houses and gardens of Brock/ Thus does De Amicis in his travels muse, talk- ing to himself, laughing aloud, very much like an overgrown schoolboy, which, after all, he is ; and somehow this familiar prattle i& right^elcome ; we take a strong liking to this ingenuous traveller and we willingly follow whither he leads. As we wander with him in Spain, assisting at a bull-fight, correada de toros; seeing through his eyes we miss no episode of the gala spectacle. When we follow him to Morocco, so life-like is his picture of the brilliant and gorgeous fantasies of the Moor- ish capital that one is inclined to regard De Amicis as at his best when painting gay pageants and 168 festivals ; but when we turn to the homely, sober 5)e descriptions of neat, toy-like Dutch houses, and the e Bmicte. . ., . :< . ing in their sports, sharing their amusements, striv- ing with them to form ourselves to a manly character* We know them all by name, and, as it were, per- sonally; Garrione, the sturdy protector of the little ones; De Rossi, the boy of gentle birth, whose superior breeding is recognized, not envied by his comrades; the funny Garoffi, a born shopkeeper, keen for profitable trade. We pity the crippled boy, son of a convict. We share their troubles and their simple joys. .Though fiery patriotism may ofttimes be lack- ing in world- worn men, and the world-wise sceptic may smile at their heroic feats, we are sure that many a gallant hero of eleven has glowed with admiration for the brave little drummer or the daring Lombard boy whose stories are told with a simplicity more impressive than De Amicis' usual florid style. Yet when we consider how difficult it is for grown people to understand children's minds, and how general the failure to produce in English, books designed to promote the healthy, moral, social and mental development of boys; we naturally hesitate to admit all the claims made on behalf of 'Cuore'. In Italy 'Cuore' certainly enjoys unparalleled success, and the book or its 'system* is believed to be a step toward the solution of one of the problems of true education education for moral and social ends. 172 A man of De Amicis' magnetism and geniality i c . i i . . as a "Realist. is sure to have many mends, even chance acquaint- ances are apt to be demonstrative. Though ephem- leral, the attachments are pleasant to remember. When time has snapped the slender tie, there still remains the fragrant perfume of memory, mellowed by easy oblivion of any former bitterness. In swarms these phantoms of old friendships haunt the mind of De Amicis; day by day as they pass he fixes the pleasant vision and notes down his emotions until he has accumulated material for those two bulky volumes 'Gli Amici'. Naturally we do not find that analysis of friend- ship which Montaigne has given us in a few preg- nant sentences. The faculty of exploring the human soul is denied to De Amicis; whenever he has undertaken to write a pathetic tale it has been a fail- ure. Heroes like Albert and heroines like Camilla in the volume 'Novelle ' are second-rate mouthpieces of persecuted innocence and bombastic sentimen- tality* Under the influence of Zola he has in 'Un Dramma Nella Scuola ' tried his hand at a realistic rendering of passionate grief in a girlish heart. Anyone must remember the masterful pages in which Zola shows how a sensitive and refined little girl breaks her heart and dies of grief for her mother's fault. The same subject tempted De Amicis, and he 173 B&mon&o tells us how a schoolgirl is tortured by her mother's ' shameful life and how after having been rudely told how matters stand she becomes ill and dies. Whilst Zola in a few masterful strokes sheds such vivid light on little Pauline's feelings that we learn to understand her slightest word, nay, her every look as when she recoils under the doctor's physical examination; we utterly fail to penetrate into the heart of De Amicis' heroine. The whole manage- ment of the plot is clumsy; a crowd of useless characters encumber the scene, adding nothing to the realization of the psychic moment, diverting our attention from the principal figure which grows hazy and loses all individuality. The ideas crossing that dying girl's mind are enumerated at length by the author, and we are not called to behold the soul-struggle which alone must be interesting in its cruel effects. We read a tale, we neither see nor feel a human heart. The success of his * Travels ' indicated to De Amicis wherein lies his power, and he wisely aban- doned the field of sentimental fiction and confined himself to that branch of literary art in which he is unrivaled description of social types and exposition of actual social conditions. 'Sull' Oceano' is the best example of this tal- ent. Confident in his own original power as observer and artist, and encouraged by the unvarying 174 success of all his books of travel, he boldly dis- *>* penses with the historical allusions and the lumber of geographical description, with which those earlier writings were filled, and in this volume is simply a painter of every changing scene. The book is not unlike an album of photographs of classes and groups of passengers tourists, merchants, emi- grants taken on shipboard in a voyage to America. The first-class passengers are described with fine satirical humor ; the miserable emigrants with sym- pathy deepening into compassion, and at times rising into indignation over the miseries which com- pel them to quit their native land, and to seek new homes over sea. Passages of broad humor are happily intermingled with deeply affecting scenes; and such is the author's lightness of touch and his exquisite sensibility that we are never shocked by any jarring note. On this voyage his eyes were opened to new problems of society. Henceforth these problems are chiefly to engage his attention, and he will devote all his energies to social reform, and will labor to bring about the social revolution. The two volumes which succeeded 'Sull' Oceano', vis: 'Fra Scuola e Casa* and 'II Ro- manzo d' un Maestro ' are a study of the social and economic conditions of schoolmasters and school- mistresses in Italy. 175 J n these works De Amicis does not presume to ... .t i. . . ., <. investigate the historic causes of the present condi- tions ; he simply shows what they are, without offer- ing any project of redress, enough for him that he paints the situation faithfully, so as to call public attention to evils that cry out loudly for a remedy* The plot of the 'II Romanzo d* un Maestro ' is loosely developed; it is little more than a slender thread connecting together a number of scenes in school life. The perusal of this book has a sadden- ing effect; even the buoyant spirits of De Amicis sink as he contemplates the hard and cheerless lot of Italian teachers. A man rising from such a study must become a pessimist and abandon hope and effort, or he must become an earnest advocate of reform. And it is in Socialism that De Amicis puts his trust for the cure of this and all other ills of society. He has accepted the doctrine of the socialists, it is true ; but he is of too mild and gentle a nature to harbor feelings of rancor against the oppressor while he broods over the wrongs of the oppressed* In his youth he was the enthusiast of patriotism; he is now an ardent socialist ; whether as patriot or as socialist, he acts from passionate feeling, sym- pathy, rather than from calm reason. He is a socialist for the same reason that he was a nation- alist and a patriot; because to-day socialism is in 176 the moral atmosphere about him, as patriotism was 2>eamfcte j . .1 T. A . t tr r TL T . as a Socialist. then ; and in the political life of Italy no party inter- ests, save those of socialism, can have any strong attraction for a man of the moral constitution of De Amicis. In these latter days his voice is often raised and his pen is ever busy in appeals to the working classes to unite against what he terms 4 the common enemy ' Capitalism ; but De Amicis is not, will not, cannot be a leader; like Doctor Faustus, he has seen the good and the evil of the world of man and of the spiritual world; like Faust, he dreams a beauteous dream of peace and righteousness. 177 ISriCCOLA PISANO, THE FATHER OF MODERN ITALIAN SCULPTURE LY AS h cl was in h-opcitss in th* It gave *om* taint signs of lingering vto in the bas-reliefs of certain TO and 90 remained for six centuries. In all artistk expertncss was lost ' 4tti carving marble was forgotten. Difomo of Pisa is seen, affixed to a w*3, ijpiHHtliiig the * Descent from the GX*H) * ;. voafc ot Bei^edetto Antelani and WM ^ rears J 178 and 1 198 ; it &i tint wt possess of the reawakening d ait* Its most striking It Alwrt IB i, which suggest the rude lit TTbe " Hfcoratton ot tbe magi " of UMsano'e pulpit in Shiomo at Siena S EARLY as the reign of Constantine, Roman sculpture was in hopeless decadence; in the sixth century it gave some faint signs of lingering vitality in the bas-reliefs of certain Christian sarcophagi; it then became involved in the ' universal and unil- lumined night ', and so remained for six centuries. In that period all artistic expertness was lost ; all skill in hewing and carving marble was forgotten. In the Duomo of Pisa is seen, affixed to a wall, a bas-relief representing the * Descent from the Cross* ; it is the work of Benedetto Antelani and was executed between the years H78 and U98 ; it is the earliest evidence we possess of the reawakening of this long-dormant art* Its most striking feature is the ugliness of its figures, which suggest the rude m flfccoia pisano. W ooden dramatis personae of a puppet show rather than the venerated forms of the saintly men and women, the angels and the Saviour, which constitute the group. Nevertheless, we view with more toler- ance this crude composition when we reflect that the figures in Antelani's 'Descent from the Cross' do not by any means bear the palm of ugliness among the productions of Italian sculpture in his time. And indeed Antelani's bas-relief, though crude in conception and rough in execution, is a distinct advance beyond all similar works of earlier dates ; for in those earlier works the figures are not only false in delineation in fact, more like monsters than normal human creatures but also they are invari- ably carved in rows, all in one attitude, as though cast in one mould; there is no individuality, no character, no action, no movement, any more than in a row of hairdresser's blocks. Therefore, in spite of all his shortcomings, it is greatly to Antelani's credit that at least he could so far disregard conventions as to attempt the representation of a dramatic scene. But though in Antelani's work indications of progress are not wanting, it is all too evident that the art of carving marble with a chisel was still in a very primitive state. On the other hand, in strik- ing contrast with sculpture in marble, the art of moulding and casting in bronze, in which the later 182 Byzantines attained a high degree of perfection, was, tote s f | . under the tuition of Byzantine masters, making a Xogt Hrt . rapid progress at this time in Italy. 1 But though the Byzantines could teach the Italians to cast bronze and to carve ivory, they could not instruct them in the art of carving marble with hammer and chisel, for that was an art unknown in Constantinople. Hence, the early Italian sculptors, those worthy of the name, had no aid either from teachers or from tradition, in the art of representing the human form in marble ; they had to work out their own ideals, to discover the principles of art expression for them- selves, and to formulate its precepts. At first they [chose to hide their deficiencies by attempting only what was easy, as the carving of roses and foliage i on the cornices or framework with which they sur- rounded their crude essays in bas-relief ; occasionally they blended decoration in mosaic with this carved ornamentation. Such was the condition of sculpture in Italy at the advent of Niccola Pisano and the renaissance of i. Of this noble workmanship there remain three celebrated examples. I. The bronze door of San Zeno in Verona, the most ancient portion of which dates back to the eleventh century* 2. The rear door of the Duomo of Piza, called Porta di San Raniere, which is ascribed to Bonanno ; its probable date, 1 1 80. There is good reason to believe this Bonanno to be the same architect who, assisted by Gugiielmo d' Innspruck , had already begun the erection of the celebrated Campanile. When three tiers of columns had been erected, the building, because of the uneven settling of the foundations, was seen to lean to one side ; and this inclination the architects who undertook the completion of the tower deemed it advisable to continue for the upper five tiers. 3. The bronze gates of the Duomo of Troja, wrought by Oderisino of Benevento. In beauty of design and excellence of workmanship, this door excels that of Pisa as Pisa's door surpasses that of Verona. The superior skill shown by Oderisino is a proof of the powerful influence exerted in Southern Italy by the Constantinopolitan Greeks, an influence which was not only far stronger there than in Northern Italy, but also lasted a century longer. in Garble 183 fifccola pteano. the art which was, rather more than two hundred years later, to recall the glories of the ancient Grecian schools. Of the life and studies of Pisano there is no authentic record; his birth is referred to the year 1206, and he died in (278 ; his birthplace is in doubt, the quasi-surname, adopted by himself, Pisanus (of Pisa) indicating the scene of his artistic labors rather than his native place. It is doubtful if he had any master ; but the influence of the remains of ancient Roman sculpture is evident in all his works, even the earliest. It would be foreign to our subject to dwell at length upon the work of Niccola as an architect, that is worthy of a separate study. The Castel Capuano and the Castel dell' Uovo at Naples ; the Basilica of St. Anthony at Padua ; the Church of the Santa Trinita at Florence, and the Church of San Dom- enico at Arezzo have been attributed to him. The altorilievo of the 'Deposition from the Cross', still to be seen in the lunette of one of the side doors of the Duomo of San Martino at Lucca, and the statuettes on the outside of the Misericordia Vecchia at Florence, are also reputed to be his work; but it is not certain that he executed them, nor is their precise date known. It is in the Battisterio of Pisa, a beautiful Romanic temple, that we find the first intimations of Pisano's 184 genius as a sculptor* The Battisterio was com- "Rtccoia Pteano's menced in U52 by the architect Diotisalvi. On entering this exquisitely beautiful building, the object which first commands attention is the gorgeous baptismal font in the middle ; but another work of art, and one far more worthy of study, though too often it is left unnoticed, because of the imposing grandeur of the font, is the pulpit erected by Niccola Pisano. Throughout Italy, and especially in Tuscany, are seen many carved pulpits of marble of date anterior to Pisano's pulpit at Pisa ; but these are all built after one conventional model without a touch of original genius ; they are invariably rectangular in form, at the back built into the wall of the church, and in front supported by brackets or by columns. Nicola showed the originality and the bold- ness of his genius as an architect, for here was a problem for the architect rather than for the sculptor, by erecting an hexagonal pulpit, entirely isolated, and supported wholly by nine columns, six at the angles, two at the back, supporting the stairs, and one in the middle* Of the columns, two rest upon the backs of lions and one on the back of a lioness, giving suck to her cubs* At the feet of the lions crouch smaller animals, seeking protection. To develop the symbolism of these figures and group- ings would involve a closer and larger study of this J85 flfccola pteano* wor k of Pisano's than can be given to it in the present essay. 1 The central column is set upon a group of men and animals. The six incorrect Corinthian capitals, which crown the columns of the six angles, support rounded arches, each of which is divided, after the ogival style, into three smaller, rounded arches. From the corner capitals, between the arches, rise pillars faced with caryatid-like statues, which serve as supports to the cornice. The triangular spaces between these caryatid pillars and the arches are adorned with bas-reliefs of the evangelists and of doctors of the church. Above the cornice rises the parapet of the pulpit, at each angle of which are three columns. At one of the six spaces between these triple columns is the stair ; the faces or com- partments of the parapet in the other five spaces are beautifully carved in bas-relief. In the angle called cornu evangelii, or the gospel corner, the columns are cut somewhat shorter than in the other angles of the parapet, and support an eagle which holds in its talons a rabbit, and on its outspread wings sustains a reading-desk or lectern. Not all of the architectural ideas realized by Pisano in this work are original with him ; he may I. The lion is the accepted symbol of sacerdotal wisdom and watchfulness ; he always in traditional story accompanies the wise Solomon. Christ, of whom the Jewish King was a type or figure, is represented as attended by twelve lions the twelve apostles. In 'the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine, Christ is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Kreuser, Vol. I., p. J 89. flMsano's pulpit in .TSaptistcrg at Pisa K of Ptsano's than can be given to it in the $waent essay. 1 The central column is set upon a group of men and animals. The six incorrect Corinthian capitals, which crown the columns of the six angles, support rounded arches, each of which it 4Mded, after the ogival style, into three smaller, r^^unded arches. From the corner capitals, between to arches, rise pillars faced with caryatid-like st*Nm which serve as supports to the cornice. The triangular spaces between these caryatid pillars and the **db*s are adorned with bas-reliefs of the evangelist* and of doctors of the church. Above the cornice rises the parapet of the pulpit, at each angle of which are three columns. At one of the six spaces between these triple JttMirifr a^ortfeeidfcair ; the faces or com- partments of t the parapet in the other five spaces are it fl Iwflf jj^jMWjqBlBt.m. T beautifully carved in bas-reuei. in the angle called comtt evangeiii, or the gospel corner, the columns are cut somewhat shorter than in the other angles of the parapet, and support an eagle which holds in its talons a rabbit, and on its outspread wings sustains a reading-desk or lectern. Not all of the architectural ideas realized by Pisano in this work are original with him ; he may . The lion U the accepted symbol of aacerdoul wisdom and watchfulness ; he always in traditional story accompanies the wise Solomon. Christ, of whom the Jewish King: was a type or figure, is represented as attended by twelve lions the twelve apostles. In 'the ApocaJvpse of St. John the Divine, Christ U called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. KMMMI, VcLI.,j>. 189. not have borrowed them from the remains of Greco- *Nccoia Pteano n '!'!.' j t_ putptt at pteu Roman art existing in his country ; and we have no reason to suppose that he had any knowledge of ancient art derived from literature; but in the beau- tiful bronze door of the Duomo of Modena (about H20), in the church door of San Zeno in Verona (about \ J40), and again in the door of the Duomo of Ferrara, of the same date, he might have seen columns resting on the backs of lions. So, too, the pulpit of a church at Barga (J200), and that of San Bartolomeo in Pistoia (about J250), presented the figure of an eagle, and had at the angles pillars faced with statues. But herein is no disparagement of his originality. An artist does not create the elements of which his art consists. His genius is shown in his mastery of those elements, in the skill with which he manipu- lates and orders them, in his power to pronounce the creative fiat which makes them things of life. Pisano showed his independence of convention and demonstrated his architectural genius by raising his pulpit above the floor of the Battisterio with no other support but its own columns ; and by adapting from the ogival style the division of the one rounded arch into three smaller ones ; thus is given to this work a peculiar and original character which dis- tinguishes it sharply from all works of French and German architecture. 187 ttfccola pfsano. w c w {fl now gi ve some account of the bas-reliefs which decorate the five panels of the parapet ; and first of the ' Nativity*. The most notable figure in this group is that of the Madonna, who is semi- recumbent on a couch. Near her, swaddled and in a cradle, is the Bambino, sleeping, while beyond is the Angelic Host, a shepherd and his dog. Plainly the sculptor does not yet recognize the limitations of his art, and attempts in one composition to represent two distinct moments of the story of the Virgin and her Son. Thus, while to the left of the Madonna we see the Babe sleeping and cradled, on her right is the same Babe attended by two women, one of whom holds him upright in a basin and washes him, while the other pours in water from a pitcher; the figure of the Babe is the most exquisite piece of modeling in the whole composition; unfortunately the head of this figure, as well as the arm of the woman holding him, is lost. To the right of this woman sits St. Joseph, an ill-modeled, stiff, uncouth figure, with a disproportionately large visage. On the left of the woman pouring water is seen a part of the shepherd's flock sheep and goats, coming to the front from under the bed of the Virgin. The three sheep strike the modern critic as tediously identical; the three goats are effectually individualized in action and attitude. Taking this bas-relief as a whole, it must be said that in diversity of form, feature and attitude, 188 * works of medieval sculp- p^ JJ*f*J? pw * tradition Qi the achoob r^vious ItaKar. at&ftft cession of 6fttre*,it*m and wQmt*j> Hill fterenceof k ;*tf&&i kt tj cent compartment, cootaliaiHf fifee b*s-rtBct of *h* ' Crucifixion', the Christ h be "Wattvftp" iano*5 pulpit in JSaptlgte it far surpasses all previous works of medieval sculp- Cbe *itivitfi of rt> , j . t . . f i . t r tbe pisa pulptt. ture. Pisano had, at least in part, shaken himself free from the tradition of the schools ; for in the bas- reliefs of previous Italian artists the composition was simply a procession of figures, men and women, with as little difference of features, action or expression as in Egyptian sculpture. In Pisano's ' Nativity ' there is a wonderful advance upon this poverty of inven- tion, though the force and originality of the artist's ideas are disabled by lack of technical skill and power of expression ; he still needs also, as we have seen, a clear perception of the true province of his art and its limitations* A serious fault of this work, in the estimation of us moderns, with our studious regard for 'the truth of history* and * local color', is that the figures are never Jewish, but always distinctly and typically Roman, ever grand and dignified. Pisano's pulpit at Siena, which we shall examine later, has the same defect, though in a less degree. Take for instance, in the work before us, the figure of the Madonna ; it renders the familiar con- ception of the Roman empress or the Roman ma- tron. The female figure behind the Madonna, and pointing her out to the angel, is just as thoroughly Roman; as is also the angel himsetf. In the adja- cent compartment, containing the bas-relief of the 4 Crucifixion', the Christ has the thews of a Hercules; 189 fltccola pteano. an( J again the two women who support the swoon- ing Virgin are truly Roman in feature and in mas- siveness. The same Romanesque stateliness is seen in the bas-relief representing the 'Adorazione dei Magi'; indeed the Madonna in this compartment is neither more nor less than a copy of a Phaedra carved on one of the ancient sarcophagi in the Campo Santo of Pisa, It is evident, therefore, that from whomsoever Niccola learned the rudiments of his art, and the use of hammer and chisel, his real masters were the specimens of decadent Roman sculpture existent in Pisa in his time, and which are now preserved in the beautiful Campo Santo, the most interesting museum of ancient art in the world, and of modern art also, as far as sculpture is concerned* It was from the ancient Roman school that Pisano derived that stateliness and forcefulness which, when thor- oughly attempered, constituted one of the chief excel- lences of his style. In the bas-relief of the pulpit in Pisa, we recognize the work of a genius ; but his art is still in its infancy, and its technique is still to be developed. In this, one of his earliest essays, Niccola made a great advance beyond his predecessors; but an examination of the pulpit in Siena, executed by him some six or eight years afterward ( (268), shows a re- markable development alike in technical skill and in 190 ^ THfc pulpit WAS * -ui orna J***^ tan rigliUni . ; a^, *j* *|f octagonal in So dhltectural .enced eye at one* p* later date than t!-. in 1500 by < thr anturies later than this addition, the columns of the -ith the main work, ts with Niccob its bas-rdieis erence ctw relie and tbfe discord Bt, deal* 'Na but littk i-^iw. ^ tw iqf j B ti<}fni0ano. being rendered with fine effect. The figure of Moses bearing the tables of the law, which bounds this compartment on the left, is far less successful ; the expression of the great lawgiver's countenance lacks force and dignity. The 'Giudizio Finale* is worthy of admiration. The Blessed and the Damned are shown separated by the sentence of Christ the Judge, the blessed on his right, the damned on his left hand. Christ's tribunal, with figures eagle, ox, lion, and man at its four corners, is erected near the middle of the background, and Christ the Judge separates the good from the wicked, the good being arrayed in orderly lines before him and to his right, the wicked on his left, without order and convulsed with terror and despair. The ratio of the good and the wicked in this bas-relief is not without significance ; the saved are to the lost in the proportion of three to two. This subject, as well as the 'Adorazione dei Magi', is also treated in the pulpit at Pisa. While engaged on the Siena pulpit, Pisano undertook, at the request of the people of Bologna, to carve for them a shrine to hold the relics of San Domenico. What part he had in the execution of this work cannot be definitely ascertained ; he may have simply sketched the dominant motif, and left the development of it and the execution of the design to one of his pupils, the Dominican friar Guglielmo; J94 certain it is that Fra Guglielmo had some share in Pteano'a Sbrtne ot the work ; but it is highly probable that the more ~ important parts were carved by Pisano and the rest by his pupil. The larger sides of this rectangular shrine are decorated with two bas-reliefs each, the shorter with one only* In the left-hand compartment of the front or facade, a miracle is represented San Domenico recalling to life a youth that was killed by a fall from his horse. In the right-hand compartment the scene is the trial by fire of Manichean and orthodox books; the fire is consuming the books of the heretics, while those offered by San Domenico for the ordeal remain unscathed by the flames. The first of these bas- reliefs is the more beautiful because of the spirited rendering of the sympathetic emotions of the people who crowd around the fallen youth. This note of tenderness has given cause for doubt as to whether the work is really Pisano's, his chief characteristic being, as we have seen, severe, stately grandeur. But it must be remembered that this stateliness belongs most markedly to the master's early manner, and that by the time of the carving of the shrine he had to a great extent emancipated himself from the dominion of decadent Roman classicism. The beauty of the composition is in itself a strong argument in favor of Pisano as its author, and the note of tenderness which pervades the work 195 fliccola KMeano. may well be taken as an index of the artist's evolution. The Fountain of Perugia, a masterpiece of architecture as well as of sculpture, was executed by Pisano, then nearly seventy years of age, with the assistance of his son Giovanni and the same Arnolfo di Cambio, 1 who had been his collaborator at Siena. It is most probable that the plan of the fountain was drawn by the aged artist, who had already at Pisa and Siena given such splendid proofs of his genius and practical skill in architecture, especially for small monuments intended to be adorned with sculpture. Four steps lead up to a great polygonal crater or basin; at the angles are groups of spiral columns. Each side is divided by a small pillar in the middle into two compartments. Within this basin is a series of columns rising from its bottom; these sustain another basin, also polygonal, but of smaller dimensions. The angles of this basin are adorned with statuettes. From the bottom of this second basin rises a column supporting a bronze basin, in the middle of which are three nymphs standing shoulder to shoulder and partly back to back, and supporting three griffins; the griffins uphold a tube from which issues a jet of water. All the bronze work of this monument was cast in 1277 by the maestro Rosso, a brassfounder of Perugia. i. It is to the glory of Arnolfo that he was the architect who traced the first plan and directed the construction of the beautiful church of Santa Maria dci Fiori in Florence. 196 The panels or compartments of the two greater Reason for Dispro* basins are adorned with bas-reliefs, and most of the p scenes represented are secular. Only the statuettes at the angles of the second great basin are reputed to be the work of Niccola. These figures, praise- worthy though they are, are plainly too short and too stout, and show an incorrectness of proportion much more marked than do the other figures. This incorrectness of proportion is doubtless due to the fact that Niccola, notwithstanding his technical skill, was still in ignorance of many useful expedients that were not unknown to more ancient artists, and which by the moderns are rightly considered indis- pensable. One of these is that of modeling the figure in clay, then having it cast in plaster, and from the cast copying the figure in marble. By employing this method and bearing in mind the proportions prescribed by the block of marble and the place which the statue is to occupy, the artist has every opportunity to reduce or to enlarge his model before commencing on the marble. Niccola and his contemporaries labored at a great disadvantage in having to begin work directly on the block of stone or marble that came to their hand. With hammer and chisel the head was first roughly shaped; if its vertical dimension was too great, the sculptor had perforce to shorten some other part of the figure ; hence oftentimes incorrect proportion. 197 Hiccou Pteano. But if under Niccola Pisano the art of sculpture did not reach its apogee, some important steps were made in the right direction* Stiff stateliness yielded little by little to the gracefulness of human faces and figures copied from life. The progress made by Pisano through study of living models may be traced in the statuettes which adorn the fountain of Perugia; more marked still does it appear when we compare the figures of the fountain with those of the Pisan pulpit. The fountain of Perugia was certainly Pisano's last work; there is even doubt whether it was yet finished in J278 when he died. Pisano's name has an eminent place in the history of art. He it was that opened men's eyes to the degeneracy of Byzantine art, and that directed them to the true school, the antique, and to the only fount of inspiration, Nature* As Cim- abue and his pupil Giotto were the her- alds of the renaissance in paint- ing, so was Niccola Pisano the father of modern Italian sculpture. AVIGNON CHILD of the Midi son of Provence, surely thy dwelling place is the Promised Land. How ex- quisite is this view, the Rhone and its banks below. Here is a boat ferrying itself across, for the solitary occupant is asleep in the stern. The great rudder is turned so as to keep the craft aslant i the stream; through its prow passes a wire stretched to either bank, and the river's current striking the boat's side pushes it towards Villeneuve 1 on the opposite bank. Surely we have been asleep and awakened in the I fourteenth century ! From that solitary tower watch is keeping upon the troops of warrior popes in their little Avignon kingdom. From that castle and its citadel we shall see issuing gaily caparisoned steeds and floating banners and beautiful ladies. For this is Provence, and only a dozen miles away at Tarascon, King Rene of Anjou holds sway. Per- ' chance, that patron of minstrelsy, whose lofty old ^ castle is barely discerned in the distant purple haze and shimmering sunlight, will to-day offer prize to him who shall most sweetly sing his mistress' beauty and his heart's passion. We turn our backs on the Cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms and its monument of Pope John XII. In other towns are to be found old churches and monuments, but where else the Durance, winding a silver thread, and embroidering so vast expanse of spring-time green ? Beyond lie the Alps, mantled in snow, and in the foreground these old towers and their citadel asleep in purple mist and lap of legends old. But having come here as a pilgrim of Love, and thinking on Francesco Petrarca and his Laura de Noves, a gentle sadness casts its shadow over the scene's joy. It is only a little way to the Rue Joseph Vernet. In the rear of the garden at the back of the Musee Calvet is the monument erected many years ago by Mr* Charles Kensall to the memory of Petrarch's Laura. Her tomb was formerly in the Eglise des Cordeliers, but was destroyed during the Revolution. Though this is Southern France and Northern Italy the home of love, and its people the children of the old Minstrelsingers and Troubadours, and the langue Provenceal, the language of love; yet do these very children destroy the tomb of Laura, and neglect the monument erected by a stranger from the cold and sunless north-land. One might think they knew nothing of true love, for on the train when leaving Avignon, I remarked to an Italian, that it was the home of Laura, he replied 4 Oh, yes, Laura, the mistress of Petrarch ! But he was careless to let her have so many children. ' I told him that Petrarch was twenty-two years of age, and she but in her nineteenth year, when in J326, 204 in the Church of the Nunnery of Saint Claire the ^be Hvienon passionate and poetic young Italian first beheld her p e trarcb. beauty; and though he never touched her lips, prob- ably not even her hands, and though! during his eight years in Avignon he never received the slightest token of her regard, yet whether there or when writing these touching sonnets at the Fountain of Vausluse, or in his weary years of wandering up and down the world, always his heart was dedicate to her. The poor man smiled in pity on my northern cre- dulity, and lifting his hands and shrugging his shoulders, replied, ' A pretty story, but impossible. Petrarch was not a saint, but a man and an Italian. I tell you she was his mistress/ We forget this un- worthy worlding at the remembrance of poor Laura dying at the age of forty, tired of bearing children, and of an unhappy marriage, and glad of the tomb, for it brought rest. And poor Petrarch, to live] [on after her for nearly thirty years, faithful to her mem- ory, and enriching the world by those touching lines to his heart's idol. That mistress from whom he had not even known one kiss. Ah me ! not for these poor lovers was it given to mingle their lives. In one attempered stream, or side by side, So near that scarce a foot-pace may divide, Their separate paths, and this maybe is best ; Or maybe in each other lost, In calm or tempest tost, One broad full river, they roll on to the sea* 205 Sbe mvignon of And yet why poor Petrarch ? It was his loving pope. , < ... ... ,. - ., heart and poetic imagination which created the mis- tress to whom he sang. Laura was simply a per- sonage, a mortal whom he clothed with all the bright imagery of his fancy and the tender poetry of his heart. The creature whom he loved was of his own creation, immortal, spiritual, and therefore free from human failings. It was of her he wrote, the Laura of the Kingdom of Love. Had he in fact embraced the Laura of Avignon, the wife of Hughes de Sade, the mother of many children, the house- ( hold drudge, the Laura of flesh and blood, of fail- ings and failures, perchance vain and without poetry, spirituality or imagination, there would have been a rift within the lute, the music would have turned to discord, and we should have missed those sonnets ^ which touch the heart, and sing themselves within [the soul of every true lover. But there is an Avignon other than the Avignon of Petrarch, though the towers are the same, and the town is the same, and is encircled with the same walls, and the same Rhone flows peacefully at the foot of the Rocker des Domes. That lofty, gloomy pile, with huge towers and walls thirteen feet thick and a hundred feet high, is the Papal Palace, erected by Clement V. and his successors. This is the Avignon of the Popes. In that Tour de Trouillas Rienzi was imprisoned at the same time that Petrarch was 206 dining an honored guest in the palace hall* That great 4 laAuie fcu square tower rising above all the rest Le Glactere, was the prison of the Holy Inquisition* A thousand years have passed since those cruel tortures, and, looking back through the eyes of Alfonse Daudet, we forget the scenes of sadness in the brighter light on these old towers. It is impos- sible long to have gloomy thoughts and for long to dwell on sad pictures when all the world is bathed in this warm air and golden sunshine, and we know qui n'a pas vu Abignon du temps des Tapes, n'a rien to*. We enter into its gaiety, its life, its anima- tion. The succession of fetes, the processions from morning till night, the flowers and draperies from windows and balconies on the arrival of the cardi- nals and the gorgeously attired soldiers of the Pope. He who has lived in Provence knows the gaiety, and the chatter, and the gossip, and the roar, and the bells, and the tambourines, and the striking of the clocks, and the shoutings to the mules and to the donkeys. And 'La Mule du Pape: ' can we not see the good Boniface? Oh, the tears that fell in Avig- non when he died ! Behold the blessed father upon his mule, going out to his little vineyard, planted by himself among the myrtles of Chateau Neuf. How piously he passes the hours in little drinks, sip and sip, of the old wine, until the bottles are empty, and the dying of the day reminds him of his return 207 to Avignon. Is it a wonder that after his love for the wine of Chateau Neuf he should love beyond all the world his black mule, sure of foot and of glisten- ing coat, which so safely carried the worthy saint. On the animal's back securely he sits and sleeps the gentle sleep of a good man after his ardent labors of the day with his bottles. To-day one would not find in Avignon the descendants of the miserable Tistd Vedene, for he was kicked into a thousand pieces by the Coups de sabot of the much injured beast. But of the mule's'descendants there are many, and of equally long memories, in this quaint old town of sunshine and shadow, of joy and sadness, Avig- non court of the popes and home of Laura ! 208 OiA u I UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY > JU-* V