ON THE ELGIN MARBLES
Two papers from The London Magazine, February and May 1822. The second article began with the paragraph at the foot of p. [331]. On p. [344], l. 9 from foot, the following sentence in the Magazine is inserted after the words ‘The Ilissus or River-god’:—‘(of which we have given a print in a former number).’ The frontispiece to the February number was an engraving of the Ilissus by J. Shury.
In 1816 Hazlitt contributed two ‘Literary Notices’ to The Examiner (June 16 and 30), on the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Elgin Marbles.—Murray. The second of these two ‘notices’ formed the basis of the London Magazine article. Certain paragraphs not given in the later London Magazine form (the text adopted here) are given below. The first of The Examiner ‘notices’ will be found in the Appendix to the present volume.
The Examiner article, June 30, begins with the quotation from Cowley and then adds, before the paragraph beginning ‘The true lesson,’ etc., the following: ‘According to the account of Pliny, it does not appear certain that Phidias ever worked in marble. He mentions indeed a marble Venus at Rome, conjectured to be his; and another at Athens, without the walls, done by his scholar Alcamenes, to which Phidias was said to have put the last hand. His chief works, according to this historian, were the Olympian Jupiter, and the Minerva in the Parthenon, both in ivory: he executed other known works in brass. The words of Pliny, in speaking of Phidias, are remarkable:—[“That the name of Phidias is illustrious ... magnificence even in small things.”—Natural History, Book xxxvi.].
‘It appears, by the above description, that Phidias did not make choice of the colossal height of this statue with a view to make size a substitute for grandeur; but in order that he might be able, among other things, to finish, fill up, and enrich every part as much as possible. Size assists grandeur in genuine art only by enabling the Artist to give a more perfect developement to the parts of which the whole is composed. A miniature is inferior to a full-sized picture, not because it does not give the large and general outline, but because it does not give the smaller varieties and finer elements of nature. As a proof of this (if the thing were not self-evident), the copy of a good portrait will always make a highly-finished miniature, but the copy of a good miniature, if enlarged to the size of life, will make but a very vapid portrait. Some of our own Artists, who are fond of painting large figures, either misunderstand or misapply this principle. They make the whole figure gigantic, not that they may have room for nature, but for the motion of their brush, regarding the quantity of canvas they have to cover as an excuse for the slovenly and hasty manner in which they cover it; and thus in fact leave their pictures nothing at last but monstrous miniatures.
‘We should hardly have ventured to mention this figure of five and thirty feet high, which might give an inordinate expansion to the ideas of our contemporaries, but that the labour and pains bestowed upon every part of it,—the thirty Gods carved on the pedestal, the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithæ on the sandals, would at once make their magnificent projects shrink into a nutshell, or bring them within the compass of reason.—We had another inducement for extracting Pliny’s account of the Minerva of Phidias, which was, to check any inclination on the part of our students to infer from the Elgin Marbles, that the perfection of ancient Grecian art consisted in the imperfect state in which its earliest remains have come down to us; or to think that fragments are better than whole works, that the trunk is more valuable without the head, and that the grandeur of the antique consists in the ruin and decay into which it has fallen through time.’
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[326]. Who to the life. Cowley, To the Royal Society.
To learn her manner.
‘Acknowledges with joy
His manner, and with rapture tastes His style.’
Cowper, The Task, III. 227–8.
[327]. Alternate action and repose. Cf.
‘And bid alternate passions fall and rise.’
Pope, Essay on Criticism, 375.
[328]. After ‘is to us a mystery,’ add, from The Examiner: ‘Further, we are ready (for the benefit of the Fine Arts in this kingdom) to produce two casts from actual nature, which if they do not furnish practical proof of all that we have here advanced, we are willing to forfeit all that we are worth—a theory’ [see p. [331], present volume]. The article then ends with the ten principles and the following note: ‘We shall conclude with expressing a hope, that the Elgin Marbles may not be made another national stop-gap between nature and art.
‘In answer to some objections to what was said in a former article on the comparative propriety of removing these statues, we beg leave to put one question. It appears from the Report of the Committee, that the French Government were, in the year 1811, anxious to purchase the collection of Lord Elgin, who was then a prisoner in France. We ask then, supposing this to have been done, what would have become of it? Would not the Theseus and the Neptune have been solemnly sent back, like malefactors, “to the place from whence they came?”—Yes, to be sure.—The Rev. Dr. Philip Hunt, in the service of Lord Elgin, declares, in his evidence before the Committee, that no objection was made nor regret expressed by the inhabitants at the removal of the Marbles. In the notes to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,[[69]] we find the following extract of a letter from Dr. Clarke to Lord Byron:—“When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and in moving it, great part of the superstructure, with one of triglyphs, was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from His mouth, dropped a tear, and in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, ‘Telos! I was present.’”—It appears that Dr. Philip Hunt was not.’
330. Image and superscription. S. Matthew xxii. 20.
[332]. So from the ground [root]. Paradise Lost, v. 481.
Laborious foolery. See ante, note to p. [121].
[333]. Fair varieties. ‘And all the fair variety of things.’ Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination, I.
Mr. Westall. Richard Westall (1765–1836), chiefly remembered by his book-illustrations.
Angelica Kauffman. Maria Anna Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807), a Swiss painter, chiefly of female characters.
[334]. Torrigiano. Pietro Torrigiano (1472–1528), Italian sculptor. The bronze tombs of Henry VII. and Queen Elizabeth at Westminster are his. He was imprisoned for heresy and died of hunger.
[335]. Gay creatures of the element. Comus, 299.
[336]. Mr. Martin. John Martin, landscape and historical painter (1789–1854), one of the founders of the Society of British Artists.
[338]. Sir Joshua tells us ... the Idler. Nos. 76 and 82. Cf. vol. VI. Table Talk, p. 131 and note.
Note. Sedet in æternumque sedebit. Virgil, Æneid, VI. 617–18.
[339]. Villainous low. The Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1.
[340]. To o’erstep the modesty of nature. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.
All we hate. Pope, Moral Essays, II. 52.
[342]. Thrills in each nerve.
Cf. ‘A sudden horror chill
Ran through each nerve, and thrilled in ev’ry vein.’
Addison, Milton’s Style Imitated, 123–4.
[347]. Mr. Kean. Edmund Kean (1787–1833).
Mr. Kemble. John Philip Kemble (1757–1823).