the: laocoon group LAOKOON Vatican, Rome THE UNIVERSITY PRINTS BOSTON LAOCOON. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/laocoonessayuponOOIess_O Laocoon. &ji <£ssap upon t&e Limits of Painting anti Poetrp. WITH REMARKS ILLUSTRATIVE OF VARIOUS POINTS IN THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT ART. BY GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING. TRANSLATED BY ELLEN FROTHINGHAM. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1910. Entered according to Act at Congress, in the year 187s, by ROBERTS BROTHERS, In the office of the Librarian ol Congress, at Washington. University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. — ♦ — A translation of the Laocoon was given to the English public by E. C. Beasley, one of the tutors of Leamington College, in 1853. Very few copies found their way to America, and the book is now difficult to obtain. The desire of the present translator has been to make a version which could be easily read by persons ignorant of any language save English. To this end an attempt was made to banish all foreign languages from the text, and substitute for the original quotations their equiv- alents, as near as possible, in English. This method was found, however, on trial, to be incom- patible with the closeness of Lessing’s criti- cism, depending, as that in many cases does, on the shade of meaning of the original word. For the sake of consistency, therefore, Lessing’s method has been adhered to in every instance ; the words of the author cited being retained in vi translator's preface. the text, and a translation given in a foot-note wherever the meaning was not sufficiently indi- cated by the context. The same course has been pursued with the modern as with the ancient languages. Dryden’s translation of Virgil has been used throughout, and Bryant’s of Homer in every case but one, where a quotation from the ^Eneid and the Odyssey stood in close connection. In this single instance Pope’s version was pre- ferred; his style being more in harmony with that of Dryden, and his want of literalness being here not objectionable. Such notes as were not necessary to the understanding of the text have been transferred to the end of the book. The translator would here acknowledge the valuable assistance received from Mr. W. T. Brigham in the rendering of quotations from the classics. Ellen Frothingham. Boston, June, 1873. PREFACE. The first who compared painting with poetry was a man of fine feeling, who was conscious of a similar effect produced on himself by both arts. Both, he perceived, represent absent things as present, give us the appearance as the real- ity. Both produce illusion, and the illusion of both is pleasing. A second sought to analyze the nature of this pleasure, and found its source to be in both cases the same. Beauty, our first idea of which is derived from corporeal objects, has universal laws which admit of wide application. They may be extended to actions and thoughts as well as to forms. A third, pondering upon the value and dis- tribution of these laws, found that some obtained more in painting, others in poetry: that in regard to the latter, therefore, poetry can come vm PREFACE. to the aid of painting ; in regard to the former, painting to the aid of poetry, by illustration and example. The first was the amateur; the second, the philosopher ; the third* the critic. The first two could not well make a false use of their feeling or their conclusions, whereas with the critic all depends on the right applica- tion of his principles in particular cases. And, since there are fifty ingenious critics to one of penetration, it would be a wonder if the appli- cation were, in every case, made with the cau- tion indispensable to an exact adjustment of the scales between the two arts. If Apelles and Protogenes, in their lost works on painting, fixed and illustrated its rules from the already established laws of poetry, we may be sure they did so with the same moderation and exactness with which Aristotle, Cicero, Hor- ace, and Quintilian, in their still existing writ- ings, apply the principles and experiences of painting to eloquence and poetry. It is the prerogative of the ancients in nothing either to exceed or fall short. But we moderns have in many cases thought to surpass the ancients by transforming their pleasure-paths into highways, though at the risk PREFACE. LX of reducing the shorter and safer highways to such paths as lead through deserts. The dazzling antithesis of the Greek Voltaire, that painting is dumb poetry, and poetry speak- ing painting, stood in no text-book. It was one of those conceits, occurring frequently in Simon- ides, the inexactness and falsity of which we feel constrained to overlook for the sake of the evident truth they contain. The ancients, however, did not overlook them. They confined the saying of Simonides to the effect produced by the two arts, not failing to lay stress upon the fact that, notwithstand- ing the perfect similarity of their effects, the arts themselves differ both in the objects and in the methods of their imitation, vXy xul zgonoig [U[irj 62 G)g. But, as if no such difference existed, many modern critics have drawn the crudest conclu- sions possible from this agreement between painting and poetry. At one time they confine poetry within the narrower limits of painting, and at another allow painting to fill the whole wide sphere of poetry. Whatever is right in one must be permitted to the other ; whatever pleases or displeases in one is necessarily pleas- ing or displeasing in the other. Full of this X PREFACE. idea they, with great assurance, give utterance to the shallowest judgments, whenever they find that poet and painter have treated the same subject in a different way. Such variations they take to be faults, and charge them on painter or poet, according as their taste more inclines to the one art or the other. This fault-finding criticism has partially mis- led the virtuosos themselves. In poetry, a fond- ness for description, and in painting, a fancy for allegory, has arisen from the desire to make the one a speaking picture without really knowing what it can and ought to paint, and the other a dumb poem, without having considered in how far painting can express universal ideas without abandoning its proper sphere and degenerating into an arbitrary method of writing. To combat that false taste and those ill- grounded criticisms is the chief object of the following chapters. Their origin was accidental, and in their growth they have rather followed the course of my reading than been systemati- cally developed from general principles. They are, therefore, not so much a book as irregular collectanea for one. Yet I flatter myself that, even in this form, they will not be wholly without value. We PREFACE. XI Germans suffer from no lack of systematic books. No nation in the world surpasses us in the fac- ulty of deducing from a couple of definitions whatever conclusions we please, in most fair and logical order. Baumgarten acknowledged that he was in- debted to Gesner’s dictionary for a large propor- tion of the examples in his “./Esthetics.” If my reasoning be less close than that of Baum- garten, my examples will, at least, savor more of the fountain. Since I made the Laocoon my point of depart- ure, and return to it more than once in the course of my essay, I wished him to have a share in the title-page. Other slight digressions on various points in the history of ancient art, contribute less to the general design of my work, and have been retained only because I never can hope to find a better place for them. Further, I would state that, under the name of painting, I include the plastic arts generally ; as, under that of poetry, I may have allowed myself sometimes to embrace those other arts, whose imitation is progressive. LAO CO ON. ♦ L The chief and universal characteristic of the Greek masterpieces in painting and sculpture consists, according to Winkelmann, in a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, both of attitude and expression. “ As the depths of the sea,” he says , 1 “ remain al- ways at rest, however the surface may be agitated, so the expression in the figures of the Greeks re- veals in the midst of passion a great and steadfast soul.” “ Such a soul is depicted in the countenance of the Laocoon, under sufferings the most intense. Nor is it depicted in the countenance only: the agony betrayed in every nerve and muscle, — we almost fancy we could detect it in the painful con- traction of the abdomen alone, without looking at the face and other parts of the body, — this agony, I say, is yet expressed with no violence in the face and attitude. He raises no terrible cry, as Virgil sings of his Laocoon. This would not be possi- ble, from the opening of the mouth, which denotes 1 Von der Nachahmung der griechischen Vferke in del Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, p. 21, 22. 1 2 LAOCOON. rather an anxious and oppressed sigh, as descrilied by Sadolet. Bodily anguish and moral greatness are diffused in equal measure through the whole structure of the figure ; being, as it were, balanced against each other. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like the Philoctetes of Sophocles. His sufferings pierce us to the soul, but we are tempted to envy the great man his power of endurance.” “To express so noble a soul far outruns the constructive art of natural beauty. The artist must have felt within himself the mental greatness which he has impressed upon his marble. Greece united in one person artist and philosopher, and had more than one Metrodorus. Wisdom joined hands with art and inspired its figures with more than ordinary souls.” The remark which lies at the root of this criti- cism — that suffering is not expressed in the coun- tenance of Laocoon with the intensity which its violence would lead us to expect — is perfectly just. That this very point, where a shallow observer would judge the artist to have fallen short of nature and not to have attained the true pathos of suffer- ing, furnishes the clearest proof of his wisdom, is also unquestionable. But in the reason which Wink- elmann assigns for this wisdom, and the universality of the rule which he deduces from it, I venture to differ from him. His depreciatory allusion to Virgil was, I confess, the first thing that aroused my doubts, and the second was his comparison of Laocoon with Philoc* LAOCOON. 3 tetes. Using these as my starting-points, I shall proceed to write down my thoughts in the order in which they have occurred to me. “ Laocoon suffers like the Philoctetes of Sopho- cles.” How does Philoctetes suffer ? Strange that his sufferings have left such different impressions upon our minds. The complaints, the screams, the wild imprecations with which his pain filled the camp, interrupting the sacrifices and all offices of religion, resounded not less terribly through the desert island to which they had been the cause of his banishment. Nor did the poet hesitate to make the theatre ring with the imitation of these tones of rage, pain, and despair. The third act of this play has been regarded as much shorter than the others. A proof, say the critics , 1 that the ancients attached little importance to the equal length of the acts. I agree with their conclusion, but should choose some other example in support of it. The cries of pain, the moans, the broken exclamations, a, a/ qpev / arraraT/ ot> juoj, fioi/ the TtaTtal , nancd! filling whole lines, of which this act is made up, would naturally require to be prolonged in the delivery and interrupted by more frequent pauses than a connected discourse. In the representation, therefore, this third act must have occupied about as much time as the others. It seems shorter on paper to the reader than it did to the spectator in the theatre. A cry is the natural expression of bodily pain, 1 Brumoy The&t. des Grecs, T. ii. p. 89. 4 LAOCOON. Homer’s wounded heroes not infrequently fall with a cry to the ground. Venus screams aloud 1 at a scratch, not as being the tender goddess of love, but because suffering nature will have its rights. Even the iron Mars, on feeling the lance of Dio- medes, bellows as frightfully as if ten thousand rag- ing warriors were roaring at once, and fills both armies with terror . 2 High as Homer exalts his heroes in other respects above human nature, they yet remain true to it in their sensitiveness to pain and injuries and in the expression of their feelings by cries or tears or revilings. Judged by their deeds they are creatures of a higher order ; in their feelings they are genuine human beings. We finer Europeans of a wiser posterity have, I know, more control over our lips and eyes. Cour- tesy and decency forbid cries and tears. We have exchanged the active bravery of the first rude ages for a passive courage. Yet even our ancestors were greater in the latter than the former. But our ances- tors were barbarians. To stifle all signs of pain, to meet the stroke of death with unaverted eye, to die laughing under the adder’s sting, to weep neither over our own sins nor at the loss of the dearest of friends, are traits of the old northern heroism . 8 The law given by Palnatoko to the Jomsburghers was to fear nothing, nor even to name the word fear. 1 Iliad v. 343. *H 6 h fteya laxovaa, 2 Iliad v. 859. 3 Th. Bartholinus. De Causis contemptae a Danis adhae Gentilibus Mortis, cap. x. LAOCOON. 5 Not so the Greek. lie felt and feared. He expressed his pain and his grief. He was ashamed of no human weakness, yet allowed none to hold him back from the pursuit of honor or the perform- ance of a duty. Principle wrought in him what savageness and hardness developed in the barba- rian. Greek heroism was like the spark hidden in the pebble, which sleeps till roused by some out- ward force, and takes from the stone neither clear- ness nor coldness. The heroism of the barbarian was a bright, devouring flame, ever raging, and blackening, if not consuming, every other good quality. When Homer makes the Trojans advance to battle with wild cries, while the Greeks march in reso- lute silence, the commentators very justly observe that the poet means by this distinction to charac- terize the one as an army of barbarians, the other of civilized men. I am surprised they have not per- ceived a similar characteristic difference in another passage . 1 The opposing armies have agreed upon an armis- tice, and are occupied, not without hot tears on both sides (daxQva with the burning of their dead. But Priam forbids his Trojans to weep (ovd’ s’tcc xlaiuv IlytafAog psyag), “and for this rea- son,” says Madame Dacier ; “ he feared they might become too tender-hearted, and return with less spirit to the morrow’s fight.” Good; but I would ask why Priam alone should apprehend this. Why 1 Iliad vii. 42 l 6 LAOCOON. does not Agamemnon issue the same command to his Greeks ? The poet has a deeper meaning. He would show us that only the civilized Greek can weep and yet be brave, while the uncivilized Trojan, to be brave, must stifle all humanity. I am in no wise ashamed to weep (NefisGGwpocl ys psv ovdsv xlaieiv), he elsewhere 1 makes the prudent son of wise Nestor say. It is worthy of notice that, among the few trage- dies which have come down to us from antiquity, there should be two in which bodily pain constitutes not the least part of the hero’s misfortunes. Besides Philoctetes we have the dying Hercules, whom also Sophocles represents as wailing, moaning, weeping, and screaming. Thanks to our well-mannered neigh- bors, those masters of propriety, a whimpering Phil- octetes or a screaming Hercules would now be ridiculous and not tolerated upon the stage. One of their latest poets , 2 indeed, has ventured upon a Philoctetes, but he seems not to have dared to show him in his true character. Among the lost works of Sophocles was a Laoc- oon. If fate had but spared it to us ! From the slight references to the piece in some of the old grammarians, we cannot determine how the poet treated his subject. Of one thing I am convinced, — that he would not have made his Laocoon more of a Stoic than Philoctetes and Hercules. Every thing stoical is untheatrical. Our sympathy is always proportionate with the suffering expressed by the 1 Odyssey iv. 195. 2 Chateaubrun. LAOCOON. 7 object of our interest. If we behold him bearing his misery with magnanimity, our admiration is excited ; but admiration is a cold sentiment, wherein barren wonder excludes not only every warmer emo- tion, but all vivid personal conception of the suf- fering. I come now to my conclusion. If it be true that a cry, as an expression of bodily pain, is not incon- sistent with nobility of soul, especially according to the views of the ancient Greeks, then the desire to represent such a soul cannot be the reason why the artist has refused to imitate this cry in his marble. He must have had some other reason for deviating in this respect from his rival, the poet, who expresses it with deliberate intention. s LAOCOON. II. Be it truth or fable that Love made the first attempt in the imitative arts, thus much is certain : that she never tired of guiding the hand of the great masters of antiquity. For although painting, as the art which reproduces objects upon flat surfaces, is now practised in the broadest sense of that definition, yet the wise Greek set much narrower bounds to it. He confined it strictly to the imitation of beauty. The Greek artist represented nothing that was not beautiful. Even the vulgarly beautiful, the beauty of inferior types, he copied only incidentally for practice or recreation. The perfection of the sub- ject must charm in his work. He was too great to require the beholders to be satisfied with the mere barren pleasure arising from a successful like- ness or from consideration of the artist’s skill. Noth- ing in his art was dearer to him or seemed to him more noble than the ends of art. “ Who would want to paint you when no one wants to look at you ? ” says an old epigrammatist 1 to a mis- shapen man. Many a modern artist would say, “No matter how misshapen you are, I will paint you. Though people may not like to look at you, they will be glad to look at my picture ; not as a portrait 1 See Appendix, note i. LAOCOON. 9 ot you, but as a proof of my skill in making so close a copy of such a monster.” The fondness for making a display with mere manual dexterity, ennobled by no worth in the sub- ject, is too natural not to have produced among the Greeks a Pauson and a Pyreicus. They had such painters, but meted out to them strict justice. Pau- son, who confined himself to the beauties of ordi- nary nature, and whose depraved taste liked best to represent the imperfections and deformities of humanity, 1 lived in the most abandoned poverty; 2 * and Pyreicus, who painted barbers’ rooms, dirty workshops, donkeys, and kitchen herbs, with all the diligence of a Dutch painter, as if such things were rare or attractive in nature, acquired the surname of Rhyparographer, 8 the dirt-painter. The rich voluptu- aries, indeed, paid for his works their weight in gold, as if by this fictitious valuation to atone for their in- significance. Even the magistrates considered this subject a matter worthy their attention, and confined the artist by force within his proper sphere. The law of the Thebans commanding him to make his copies more beautiful than the originals, and never under pain of punishment less so, is well known. This was no law against bunglers, as has been supposed by critics generally, and even by Junius himself, 4 1 See Appendix, note 2. 2 Aristophanes, Plut. v. 602 et Acharnens. v. 854. * Plinius, lib. xxx. sect. 37. * De Pictura vet. lib. ii. cap. iv, sect. 1. 10 LA0C00N. but was aimed against the Greek Ghezzi, and con- demned the unworthy artifice of obtaining a likeness by exaggerating the deformities of the model. It was, in fact, a law against caricature. From this same conception of the beautiful came the law of the Olympic judges. Every conqueror in the Olympic games received a statue, but a portrait- statue was erected only to him who had been thrice victor . 1 Too many indifferent portraits were not allowed among works of art. For although a por- trait admits of being idealized, yet the likeness should predominate. It is the ideal of a particular person, not the ideal of humanity. We laugh when we read that the very arts among the ancients were subject to the control of civil law ; but we have no right to laugh. Laws should un- questionably usurp no sway over science, for the object of science is truth. Truth is a necessity of the soul, and to put any restraint upon the gratifica- tion of this essential want is tyranny. The object of art, on the contrary, is pleasure, and pleasure is not indispensable. What kind and what degree of pleasure shall be permitted may justly depend on the law-giver. The plastic arts especially, besides the inevitable influence which they exercise on the character of a nation, have power to work one effect which demands the careful attention of the law. Beautiful statues fashioned from beautiful men reacted upon their creators, and the state was indebted for its beautiful 1 Plinius, lib. xxxiv. sect. 9 . LAOCOON. II men to beautiful statues. With us the susceptible imagination of the mother seems to express itself only in monsters. From this point of view I think I detect a truth in certain old stories which have been rejected as fables. The mothers of Aristomenes, of Aristodamas, of Alexander the Great, Scipio, Augustus, and Gal- erius, each dreamed during pregnancy that she was visited by a serpent. The serpent was an emblem of divinity . 1 Without it Bacchus, Apollo, Mercury, and Hercules were seldom represented in their beautiful pictures and statues. These honorable women had been feasting their eyes upon the god during the day, and the bewildering dream suggested to them the image of the snake. Thus I vindicate the dream, and show up the explanation given by the pride of their sons and by unblushing flattery. For there must have been some reason for the adulterous fancy always taking the form of a serpent. But I am wandering from my purpose, which was simply to prove that among the ancients beauty was the supreme law of the imitative arts. This being established, it follows necessarily that whatever else these arts may aim at must give way completely if incompatible with beauty, and, if compatible, must at least be secondary to it. I will confine myself wholly to expression. There are passions and degrees of passion whose expres- sion produces the most hideous contortions of the face, and throws the whole body into such unnatural 1 See Appendix, note 3. 12 LAOCOON. positions as to destroy all the beautiful lines that mark it when in a state of greater repose. These passions the old artists either refrained altogether from representing, or softened into emotions which were capable of being expressed with some degree of beauty. Rage and despair disfigured none of their works. I venture to maintain that they never represented a fury . 1 Wrath they tempered into severity. In poetry we have the wrathful Jupiter, who hurls the thunderbolt ; in art he is simply the austere. Anguish was softened into sadness. Where that was impossible, and where the representation of in- tense grief would belittle as well as disfigure, how did Timanthes manage ? There is a well-known picture by him of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, wherein he gives to the countenance of every spectator a fitting degree of sadness, but veils the face of the father, on which should have been depicted the most intense suffering. This has been the subject of many petty criticisms. “ The artist,” says one , 2 “had so exhausted himself in representations of sadness that he despaired of depicting the father’s face worthily.” “ He hereby confessed,” says an- other , 8 “ that the bitterness of extreme grief cannot 1 See Appendix, note 4. 2 Plinius, lib. xxxv. sect. 35. Cum mcestos pinxisset omnes, praecipue patruum, et tristitiae omnem imaginem consump- sisset, patris ipsius vultum velavit, quem digne non poterat ostendere. 3 Valerius Maximus, lib. viii. cap. 2. Summi in aero rig acerbitatem arte expriini non posse confessus est. LAOCOON. 13 be expressed by art.” I, for my pa/t, see in this no proof of incapacity in the artist or his art. In pro- portion to the intensity of feeling, the expression of the features is intensified, and nothing is easier than to express extremes. But Timanthes knew the limits which the graces have imposed upon his art He knew that the grief befitting Agamemnon, as father, produces contortions which are essentially ugly. He carried expression as far as was consist- ent with beauty and dignity. Ugliness he would gladly have passed over, or have softened, but since his subject admitted of neither, there was nothing left him but to veil it. What he might not paint he left to be imagined. That concealment was in short a sacrifice to beauty ; an example to show, not how expression can be carried beyond the limits of art, but how it should be subjected to the first law of art, the law of beauty. Apply this to the Laocoon and we have the cause we were seeking. The master was striving to attain the greatest beauty under the given conditions of bodily pain. Pain, in its disfiguring extreme, was not compatible with beauty, and must therefore be softened. Screams must be reduced to sighs, not because screams would betray weakness, but because they would deform the countenance to a repulsive degree. Imagine Laocoon’s mouth open, and judge. Let him scream, and see. It was, before, a figure to inspire compassion in its beauty and suffering. Now it is ugly, abhorrent, and we gladly avert our eyes from a painful spectacle, destitute of the beauty 14 LAOCOON. which alone could turn our pain into the sweet feel- ing of pity for the suffering object. The simple opening of the mouth, apart from the violent and repulsive contortions it causes in the other parts of the face, is a blot on a painting and a cavity in a statue productive of the worst possible effect. Montfaucon showed little taste when he pronounced the bearded face of an old man with wide open mouth, to be a Jupiter delivering an oracle . 1 Cannot a god foretell the future without screaming ? Would a more becoming posture of the lips cast suspicion upon his prophecies ? Valerius cannot make me believe that Ajax was painted screaming in the above-mentioned picture of Timan- thes . 2 3 Far inferior masters, after the decline of art, do not in a single instance make the wildest bar- barian open his mouth to scream, even though in mortal terror of his enemy’s sword . 8 This softening of the extremity of bodily suffering into a lesser degree of pain is apparent in the works of many of the old artists. Hercules, writhing in his poisoned robe, from the hand of an unknown master, was not the Hercules of Sophocles, who made the Locrian rocks and the Eubcean promontory ring with his horrid cries. He was gloomy rather than wild . 4 The Philoctetes of Pythagoras Leontinus seemed to communicate his pain to the beholder, 1 Antiquit. expl. T. i. p. 50. * See Appendix, note 5. 3 Bellorii Admiranda, Tab. 11, 12. * Plinius, lib. xxxiv. sect. 19. LAOKOON (Head set straight for purposes of comparison) Vatican, Rome The university prints BOSTON LAOCOON. 15 an effect which would have been destroyed by the slightest disfigurement of the features. It may be asked how I know that this master made a statue of Philoctetes. From a passage in Pliny, which ought not to have waited for my emendation, so evident is the alteration or mutilation it has under gone . 1 1 See Appendix, note & 16 LAOCOON. III. But, as already observed, the realm of art has in modern times been greatly enlarged. Its imitations are allowed to extend over all visible nature, of which beauty constitutes but a small part. Truth and expression are taken as its first law. As nature always sacrifices beauty to higher ends, so should the artist subordinate it to his general purpose, and not pursue it further than truth and expression allow. Enough that truth and expression convert what is unsightly in nature into a beauty of art. Allowing this idea to pass unchallenged at pres- ent for whatever it is worth, are there not other independent considerations which should set bounds to expression, and prevent the artist from choosing for his imitation the culminating point of any action? The single moment of time to which art must con- fine itself, will lead us, I think, to such considera- tions. Since the artist can use but a single moment of ever-changing nature, and the painter must fur- ther confine his study of this one moment to a single point of view, while their works are made not simply to be looked at, but to be contemplated long and often, evidently the most fruitful moment and the most fruitful aspect of that moment must be chosea Now that only is fruitful which allows free play to LAOCOON. 17 the imagination. The more we see the more we must be able to imagine ; and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see. But no moment in the whole course of an action is so disadvantageous in this respect as that of its culmination. There is nothing beyond, and to present the uttermost to the eye is to bind the wings of Fancy, and compel her, since she cannot soar beyond the impression made on the senses, to employ herself with feebler images, shun- ning as her limit the visible fulness already expressed. When, for instance, Laocoon sighs, imagination can hear him cry ; but if he cry, imagination can neither mount a step higher, nor fall a step lower, without seeing him in a more endurable, and therefore less interesting, condition. We hear him merely groan- ing, or we see him already dead. Again, since this single moment receives from art an unchanging duration, it should express nothing essentially transitory. All phenomena, whose nature it is suddenly to break out and as suddenly to dis- appear, which can remain as they are but for a moment ; all such phenomena, whether agreeable or otherwise, acquire through the perpetuity conferred upon them by art such an unnatural appearance, that the impression they produce becomes weaker with every fresh observation, till the whole subject at last wearies or disgusts us. La Mettrie, who had himself painted and engraved as a second Democ- ritus, laughs only the first time we look at him. Looked at again, the philosopher becomes a buffoon, and his laugh a grimace. So it is with a cry. Paint 2 i8 LAOCOON. which is so violent as to extort a scream, either soon abates or it must destroy the sufferer. Again, if a man of firmness and endurance cry, he does not do so unceasingly, and only this apparent continuity in art makes the cry degenerate into womanish weak- ness or childish impatience. This, at least, the sculptor of the Laocoon had to guard against, even had a cry not been an offence against beauty, and were suffering without beauty a legitimate sub- ject of art. Among the old painters Timomachus seems to have been the one most fond of choosing extremes for his subject. His raving Ajax and infanticide Medea were famous. But from the descriptions we have of them it is clear that he had rare skill in selecting that point which leads the observer to imagine the crisis without actually showing it, and in uniting with this an appearance not so essentially transitory as to become offensive through the con- tinuity conferred by art. He did not paint Medea at the moment of her actually murdering her chil- dren, but just before, when motherly love is still struggling with jealousy. We anticipate the result and tremble at the idea of soon seeing Medea in her unmitigated ferocity, our imagination far outstripping any thing the painter could have shown us of that terrible moment. For that reason her prolonged indecision, so far from displeasing us, makes us wish it had been continued in reality. We wish this con- flict of passions had never been decided or had lasted at least till time and reflection had weakened LAOCOON. 19 her fury and secured the victory to the maternal sentiments. This wisdom on the part of Timom- achus won for him great and frequent praise, and raised him far above another artist unknown, who was foolish enough to paint Medea at the height of her madness, thus giving to this transient access of passion a duration that outrages nature. The poet 1 censures him for this, and says very justly, apostro- phizing the picture, “ Art thou then for ever thirsting for the blood of thy children? Is there always a new Jason and a new Creusa to inflame thy rage? To the devil with the very picture of thee ! ” he adds angrily. Of Timomachus’ treatment of the raving Ajax, we can judge by what Philostratus tells us . 2 Ajax was not represented at the moment when, raging among the herds, he captures and slays goats and oxen, mistaking them for men. The master showed him sitting weary after these crazy deeds of heroism, and meditating self-destruction. That was really the raving Ajax, not because he is raving at the moment, but because we see that he has been raving, and with what violence his present reaction of shame and despair vividly portrays. We see the force of the tempest in the wrecks and corpses with which it has strewn the beach. 1 Philippus, Anthol. lib. iv. cap. 9, ep. 10. ’ A tei yap diipag (3pe