Excursions in Art and Letters

by William Wetmore Story

II.

In the previous chapter we have critically considered the text of Pliny bearing upon the question whether the ancient Greeks and Romans were acquainted with the art of casting. Let us now proceed to some general considerations as to the probability that this art was known and practiced by them.

In the first place, the distinction between modeling and casting must be constantly kept in mind, and care must be taken not to confound the two totally different terms “mould” and “model.” That gypsum was used in modeling there can be no doubt, and it is quite possible that it may have been used to fill prepared moulds of stone, terra cotta, or other materials for the making of ectypa. There is indeed no proof of this; but as we know that moulds were made and cut in stone, into which clay was pressed, to be then withdrawn and baked for ectypa with which to adorn houses, so also it is possible that gypsum may have been used for this purpose. This, however, is merely a supposition, and the fact that none of them have ever been found in plaster renders it highly improbable. In these ectypa of clay, as well as in the impressions taken from them, there are no indications of anything like what we call a piece-mould, composed of many sections; and whenever there are under-cuttings in the ectypa, which could not be withdrawn from the mould and which would fasten them into it, these parts of the ectypa are invariably worked by hand. For instance, in the collection of Mr. Fol in Rome there are several terra cotta figures of low relief evidently stamped from a mould, which are appliqué, or fastened subsequently to the cista of which they form a part. The sutures under each figure are still visible, but they are all corrected and worked by hand after being withdrawn, and have evidently suffered in being removed from the mould. In the same collection there are several specimens of plaster reliefs, with such deep under-cuttings that they could not have been withdrawn from a single piece-mould; but all these under-cuttings are freely worked by hand, showing plainly that they were not in the stamp or mould; and it is also clear that they were afterwards worked over with fluid plaster, the edges and flats of which have not been rounded, but left as it was freely laid on by hand. It is probable that in these cases plaster was pressed into a mould in the same manner as clay, and afterwards worked up and finished. But the slightest examination will show clearly that if a mould was employed to give a general form to them, it certainly was not a piece-mould; and that they are not castings in the modern sense of the word, but only rude stamps.

These are the only specimens, however, so far as we are aware, of any such use of plaster for low-relief ornaments,—the ectypa which have been preserved to us being invariably of baked clay. If plaster had been used for this purpose, we should expect to find casts in the interior of houses or tombs, where they would be protected from the weather, and where they could be easily introduced into the walls and ceilings. But though elaborately ornamented designs in relief, worked in gypsum, are to be found still fresh and uninjured on the ancient tombs and baths, all of them were freely and rapidly modeled by hand while the gypsum was still fresh and plastic, and not a single specimen of cast plaster has been found. It is but a few years since the tombs in the Via Latina were opened, and in two of them the ceilings, divided into compartments, were covered with rich and fantastic designs of flowers, fruit, arabesques, groups of imaginary animals, sea-nymphs, and human figures; the designs varying in each compartment, and all modeled in the plaster with remarkable vivacity and spirit: not one of them was cast. So in the houses at Pompeii, not a vestige of a figure or ornament cast in plaster has ever been found,—nor a mould in plaster; and when one considers that, being completely protected, they would naturally have survived as well as other far more fragile and destructible objects which have been preserved, the evidence is almost absolute that they never could have existed there. If so, it is in the highest degree probable that they existed nowhere. It would seem plain, then, that even the first, simplest, and most natural processes of casting in gypsum were unknown to the ancients, for no other process is so easy and simple as to fill a flat mould with plaster and then remove it, provided there are no under-cuttings. In doing this, however, there is a slight practical difficulty if the mould is in one piece, as the least under-cutting would render it impossible to remove the cast without injury or breakage. Indeed, though there were no under-cutting, it would at least be very difficult to remove the plaster from a mould in one piece. Clay would be removed with far greater ease because of its pliancy, and any cracks or imperfections could be at once remedied; add to this that baked clay is one of the most enduring of materials, and we have the probable reasons why the ancients used it instead of gypsum. But whatever may have been their reasons, it is perfectly clear that they did use clay; and we have no evidence that they ever used plaster.

This use of gypsum to take impressions from flat moulds is suggested by Theophrastus, it would seem, in his treatise on mineralogy,[18] in which he says that plaster “seems better than other materials to receive impressions.” The term ἀπόμαγμα means nothing more than an impression, such as one makes in wax from a seal ring, and such as is common still in plaster; it is to this use that he seems to refer. He does not say, however, that gypsum was really put to this use; and if it were, it would advance us little in our inquiry, since any material which is soft will receive an impression, whether it be bread, pitch, clay, wax, or any similar substance.

But the step from this simple process of stamping in a shallow mould to casting from life or from the round is enormous. The difficulties are multiplied a hundred-fold. It is no longer a simple operation, but a nice and complicated one. The part to be cast must first be oiled or soaped, then covered with plaster of about the consistency of rich cream, then divided into sections while the material is still tender, so as to enable the mould to be withdrawn part by part without breakage, then allowed to set, then removed, oiled or soaped on the interior surface, the parts all properly replaced, fluid plaster poured into the mould,—and finally, after the cast is set, the mould must be carefully removed by a hammer and chisel. This is an elaborate process as applied to an arm or a hand, but when applied to a living face it is not only difficult but disagreeable, and unless due care be used it may be dangerous; and after all a cast from the face is hard, forced, and unnatural in its character and impression, however skillfully it may be done, and can only serve the sculptor as the basis of his work. Yet if the common interpretation of the passage in Pliny be accurate, this is the process which was invented and practiced by Lysistratus, and by means of which he made portraits. Credat Judæus! With all our knowledge and practice, we do not find this to answer in our own time.

But to cast from a statue in clay is still more difficult and complicated; there the extremest care and nicety are required in making the proper divisions, in extracting the clay and irons, recommitting the sections, and breaking off the outer shell of the mould. In fact, the modern process is so complicated that no one can see it without wondering how it ever came to be so thought out and perfected, or without being convinced that it must have been slowly arrived at by many steps and many failures.

That statues were modeled in plaster by the ancients there is no doubt. Pausanias mentions several;[19] and Spartianus[20] also speaks of “Three Victories” in plaster, with palms in their hands, erected at one of the games,—and says that on one of the days of the Circensian games when according to common custom they were erected, the central one on which the name of Severus was inscribed, and which bore a globe, was thrown down by a gust of wind from the podium, and that another bearing the name of Geta on it also fell and was shattered to pieces.

Firmicus[21] also relates that after Zagreus, son of Jupiter, was slain by the Titans, his body was cut to pieces and thrown into a cauldron, from which Minerva rescued the heart and carried it to Jupiter. He then gave it to Semele, who resuscitated Zagreus, and Jupiter afterwards preserved his likeness in plaster,—“Ex gypso plastico opere perfecit.”

Mr. Perkins cites all these instances, and says: “They authorize us to believe that the Greeks and Romans practiced casting in plaster.” But in saying this he altogether overlooks the very plain distinction between the two entirely different operations of casting and modeling. We know that they modeled in plaster; the only question is whether they cast in that material. The term for casting, as we have stated, was “fundere,” and is always used when real casting in brass or other metal is spoken of; but nowhere is the term “fundere” applied to any work in gypsum. “Ars fundendi æro” is constantly spoken of,—“ars fundendi gypso” never. Besides, the very phrase “ex gypso plastico opere perfecit” is at variance with casting. The words “plastico” and “opere” mean modeling, and nothing else.

But throughout this paper by Mr. Perkins these two completely distinct processes are constantly confounded with each other. It suffices for him to find a statement in an ancient writer that anything is made in plaster, or even an allusion to a plaster statue, and at once he jumps to the conclusion that the statue was necessarily cast, and not shapen or modeled.

“It remains for us now,” he says, “to establish by undeniable proof how little foundation there is for the opinion of those who pretend that the ancients did not make use of plaster for casting, supporting their opinion on the complete absence of statues and statuettes in plaster, or fragments of any kind found in excavations, when nevertheless thousands of objects of the frailest kind are found, such as stuccoes, vases, terra cotta, glass, wax heads, etc. If it be true that the inclemencies of weather and atmospheric agents could cause the disappearance of plaster saturated with humidity, or placed in conditions favorable to its destruction, it does not necessarily follow that these conditions always reproduce themselves. It suffices, to convince one’s self of this, to glance at the plates 67, 76, 85, in the magnificent work published at St. Petersburg on the antiquities of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. These plates represent plasters preserved in the Museum of the Hermitage, coming from a tomb on Mount Mithridates opened in 1832, and from another tomb at Kertch excavated in 1843. These plasters date back to the fourth century before our era.[22] Adorned with various colors and executed in relief, they were destined to be attached as ornaments to other objects, such as sarcophagi, pilasters, walls, etc.”

Well! what if they were? Is this any proof that they were cast? Mr. Perkins is easily satisfied, if he is assured of this fact by looking at engraved plates. Are they all of the same size? Are they identical, as they would be if they were cast from the same mould, or are they like all other plaster and stucco work of the ancients of which we are cognizant,—ornaments modeled by hand? or are they pressures from a flat, shallow mould, like the ectypa? If the latter, they are almost unique; and so far they prove that the artists who made them understood this first and simplest process of casting, or rather of stamping. But from plates it would be impossible to determine this fact, and Mr. Perkins gives us no reason to think they are unlike all the other ancient stucco work. He does not profess to have seen and examined them for himself; at all events, one fact is clear, that these, if they are in plaster, are painted plaster.

In the British Museum there exist some of these so-called casts in plaster from Cyrenaica and from Kertch. Undoubtedly they are nearer to being true casts than anything else which has as yet been discovered; but, after all, a careful examination of them will show that they are not casts in the legitimate sense of the word, but merely stamps for a mould, and fashioned in precisely the same way that was employed in making the hollow terra cottas. To make these, a very rude stamp was executed, with no under-cuttings of any kind, everything being filled up which could impede the removal of the clay, which was pressed into the stamp, then carefully extracted again and finished by hand. All the terra cotta reliefs called ectypa were made in this way, and some of the moulds still exist,—not one of them, however, in plaster. The same process was employed to make some of the figures of terra cotta in the round, by making a mould of two pieces divided in the middle, of a very generalized form, with no under-cuttings. Into each of these moulds a quantity of clay was squeezed; the two parts were then removed carefully, and joined together. A general form was thus obtained, and the artist proceeded to model and to finish it with more or less care. In this way not only ectypa were made in clay and afterwards baked, but also small flat ornaments which were afterwards appliqué, or fastened on to flat or round surfaces,—as on to cista. This is the process by which fragments of the figures from Cyrenaica and Kertch in the British Museum were made. The junction of the two halves is clear. The work is very rude; there are no under-cuttings; everything is filled up which would in the least impede the withdrawal of the material from the stamp. There is, for instance, an arm and hand, with the interstices of the fingers quite filled up. But what clearly proves that these figures were not cast, as distinguished from stamped, is the head. Here the hair being adorned with a wreath with under-cuttings, it could not be withdrawn from the stamp without destroying it, and it is entirely appliqué, or worked on to the head after it was removed. Had it been cast, there would have been no such difficulty. Nor, again, is it quite clear that the material of these figures is pure gypsum. It would rather seem to be a mixture of gypsum with white clay, or argilla, to give it flexibility, and enable it to be withdrawn from the mould. Indeed, it may here be observed that it is in every way probable that the gypsum used by the ancients in modeling and ornamental work was differently prepared from that which we now use, and was mixed with some material which prevented it from setting rapidly, and gave it strength, ductility, and plasticity. Otherwise it is difficult to see how such works as those in the tombs of the Via Latina, which no one can doubt are modeled by hand, could have been executed with at once so much finish and freedom. Gypsum, as we use it, would set too soon to enable us to work it in such a manner. In the tombs of the Via Latina which were lately discovered, it is worked as freely as if it were clay, and was plainly so prepared as to enable the artist to take his own time in modeling, without fear of its hardening—or, as we call it, setting—immediately.

This, then, is nothing new. It is not casting, and these figures are not casts. They are stamps, just like the ectypa of terra cotta. We know that κοροκόσμια or dolls were anciently made in this way of wax and gypsum, or of terra cotta; and these are κοροκόσμια.

To infer from the fact that the Greeks knew and practiced the art of pressing into shallow moulds of stone, without under-cuttings, either clay, pitch, wax, or plaster, that they also understood and practiced the art of making moulds and casts from life or from the round is utterly unwarrantable. Nothing is more simple than the one art, while the other is extremely complex. The one is merely like making an impression from a seal, which would naturally suggest itself to the first person who left the pressure of his foot in clay or mud; the other requires various processes of calculation and invention. In inventions it is not always or ordinarily the first step which costs, but the subsequent and calculated steps. Centuries often elapse between the first step and the second. A remarkable instance of this is to be found in the history of the invention of printing. The first steps to this wonderful art were taken by the ancient Romans; the very process by which we now print was known and practiced by them; but the application of it to the printing of books does not seem to have occurred to their minds. It cannot, however, but appear most extraordinary that the idea of printing should not have occurred to them when we consider the facts of the case. Pliny relates that Cato published a book containing portraits of distinguished persons of his time, of which there were many copies; and so far as we can conjecture, these copies were probably stamped on parchment or some such material, and afterwards colored. Putting this together with the fact that ancient bricks have been lately found in Rome with names and numbers stamped upon them by means of movable types, so that the numbers or letters could be arranged at will, we might absolutely state that the ancient Romans understood and practiced the art of printing. They certainly did print on their brick; they probably stamped the portraits of cuts in their books,—but so far as we know they never united the processes, and never stamped a book with movable types. Adopting Mr. Perkins’s method of argument, we might declare, however, that the mere fact that none of these printed books have ever come down to us was entirely inconclusive, since these books might have utterly perished; while we have the clearest proof that they did print with movable types on brick, and therefore it is plain that they invented printing. The step from one of these processes to the other does indeed seem so evident, so natural, almost so inevitable, that we are puzzled to imagine how they could ever have overlooked it. Yet there is little doubt that they did. But from the simple fact of stamping in clay or plaster to the complex process of making moulds and casts in the round requires not one step but many, and each one of them requires calculation and invention. Indeed, if the art were now to be lost, it would be easy to conceive that centuries might pass before it would be reinvented.

In the collection of Mr. Fol of Rome, of which we have heretofore spoken, there are some interesting fragments of ancient statuettes in the round, very carefully finished in plaster, being the leg and thigh of one, and the half-breast and a portion of the torso of another. These are as carefully finished as if they were in marble, but they are elaborately worked by hand in the plaster, and not cast. These are exceedingly interesting as showing the method of the ancients in working in plaster, and they clearly illustrate the process of Lysistratus as described by Pliny,—the only difference being that the surface is of gypsum and not of wax, or color. The interior or core of these fragments, which is solid, is of lime, or a coarse kind of gypsum, and over the surface of this core is spread a thin coating of fine gypsum, which has been elaborately worked and smoothed on while it was fluid. The touches and creases on the surface are those of a modeler’s hand and stick, and it differs in every way from a cast. It is therefore plain that the artist first made a core, or rough “imaginem” or “formam,” of coarse gypsum, and that he improved, emended, and finished the surface, not by means of “cera infusa in eam formam gypsi,” but of gypsum spread over it,—just as Lysistratus did. The language of Pliny is an exact description of this process.

Again, a strong negative indication that gypsum was not used for casting, or indeed to any extent in modeling, is to be found in the chapter by Pliny on gypsum. “Its use is,” he says, “to whitewash [or parget], and to make small figures to ornament houses, and for wreaths.” He also adds that it is a good medicine for pains in the stomach; but he entirely omits to mention that it was ever used for casting. Is it possible to believe that if it were so used he would not have alluded even to such a fact? Would it be conceivable that at the present day a chapter could be written on plaster of Paris, omitting its employment for the purpose of casting? After giving us this enumeration of the uses to which gypsum is applied, Pliny goes on to describe its nature, tell where it is found, and name the different kinds; and he concludes with no allusion to any other use than what he has previously stated.

Again, Pliny in the chapter on Lysistratus—which it must be remembered is devoted to modeling—mentions one fact which seems to be inconsistent with any knowledge at that time of casting. Arcesilaus, he says, modeled a drinking-cup or mixing-bowl in plaster, which he sold to Octavius, a Roman knight,[23] for a talent (£250). It is impossible to believe that such an enormous price would have been given for a mere plaster bowl. If the process of casting from it was then understood, Arcesilaus might have repeated it in cast a thousand times, and the original and the cast being in the same material, one would have been quite as good as the other, if retouched. Yet he seems only to have made one, and to have asked a talent for that. Again, Lucullus made a contract with this same artist to model for him in plaster a statue of Fabatus, for which he agreed to pay him no less than 60,000 sesterces, or £530.

It is worth noting, too, as a curious fact, that just at the very time when Lysistratus is supposed to have invented plaster-casting, the art of brass-casting began to decline in character and style, and soon after seems to have died out and been lost; at all events, Pliny tells us that soon after the 120th Olympiad the art perished,—“cessavit deinde ars.” And as Lysistratus lived only about twenty-five years previously, it would be singular to find one of these arts dying out just as the other was being developed.

Mr. Perkins also thinks it valuable to tell us that Canova was of opinion that the sculptors of antiquity made finished sketches, and then by means of proportional compasses enlarged them and took points on the marble; and he adds, “We should weigh these words of a great sculptor who devoted himself to the most minute researches on this subject, as well as to everything that had relation to the fine arts.”

We agree that we should weigh the words of this distinguished sculptor, though we were not aware before that he was a profound archæologist, or had made minute researches on this subject. But how in any way does this tend to prove that the ancient Greeks and Romans knew how to cast in plaster? We are equally unable to see the precise bearing on this question of the fact also stated by him, that the drill is supposed by some to have been invented by Callimachus, and by others to have been used long before; or that the pointing of a statue was probably known to the Greeks, and certainly to the Romans.

Yet in a certain way the opinion of Canova that the ancients made small sketches, and by proportional compasses transferred their proportions, measures, and general forms to their large works, has an argumentative relation to the subject different from what Mr. Perkins probably supposed. This opinion is undoubtedly well founded, and accepting it as such, what does it indicate? That the process of casting in plaster was known to the ancients? By no means. So far as it goes, it proves diametrically the opposite,—as Mr. Perkins might have seen, had he weighed the words of this great sculptor.

In fact, this leads us to one of the strongest arguments against the opinion apparently advocated by Mr. Perkins. Had the ancients known how to cast in plaster from the model, as they knew how to cast in bronze, this process of making small statuettes and enlarging therefrom would have been quite unnecessary. They would thus have escaped the incorrectness which is unavoidable in such a process, by at once making their models of full size, and completely finishing them in clay or other plastic material before transferring them to the marble. Their process probably was to make a small statuette in clay, and then bake it or dry it. But in transferring proportionally this small figure into a large one, an objection occurs. Defects scarcely perceptible in a small figure become gross defects when multiplied into a large one. Not only variations of one eighth of an inch more or less in small particulars in a figure a foot high would alter entirely the relative proportions of a figure eight feet high, but other inaccuracies inevitably occurring in enlarging by proportional compasses would increase these disproportions, so that the increased figure would be invariably untrue in its effect and in its measures. Now this is precisely what is apparent to any one who carefully studies the antique statues. Even in works showing the highest artistic knowledge and skill, the want of correspondence of measures and proportions between the two sides of the figure is very manifest; and the larger they are the more this is exhibited. Thus, to take one of the highest examples, in the Theseus we find astonishing knowledge and artistic skill in treatment, beside disagreements of measurement in corresponding parts, which are evidently the result of the defective mechanical process of enlargement. The legs are beautifully modeled, but of unequal length,—one being much longer in the thigh than the other. The same observation is true of the clavicle, and indeed throughout the statue. Now even an inferior artist would have seen and avoided these mistakes in modeling the statue full size, but the defect would be easily passed over by the eye in the small sketch, particularly if the statuette were merely a sketch, as was in all probability the usual case. It would be difficult to believe that an artist with the mastery shown in this statue would not have seen and corrected these mistakes, had the model of this figure been of the same size. This of course he perceived after the points were taken in the marble and the work was roughed out, but then it was too late to remedy them. This difficulty he and all other artists must constantly have felt. The question was how to avoid it. Nothing could have been more simple, if the modern process of casting in plaster from the clay model had been known to them. They would simply have modeled the statue in clay of its full size, cast it in plaster, and been sure of its exact proportions and measures.

Let us take one step further. Had they understood the modern process of casting in plaster from the clay or from a statue, they could from the cast have multiplied in marble the same statue any number of times, identically or with such minute differences as few eyes could perceive. The repliche in a modern sculptor’s studio are scarcely to be distinguished from each other, and there would have been no difficulty in doing the same thing in an ancient sculptor’s studio. What is the fact known? So far from this being the case, not only are there comparatively very few repliche even of the most famous statues, for which there would necessarily be a great demand, but even in the various repliche which we have there are not only no two which approach to identity either in attitude or in size, but one can scarcely say of any of them that the artist had more at best than a vivid recollection of the original or of some other replica, much less that he had it before him to copy even by eye. Often the attitude is changed, as well as the size and proportions; sometimes the action is reversed; and in all cases such differences exist as it is impossible that the clumsiest workman could have made with a cast of the original before him. Nor do we read or hear of any copies in our sense of copy; that is, exact reproduction of any of the great works of the great sculptors. Look, for instance, at the Venus of the Capitol and the Venus de Medici and the St. Petersburg Venus; they are all repliche of the renowned statue by Praxiteles, but beyond the general attitude there is no resemblance, not so much as any clever artist of to-day could make from mere recollection. Look again at the portrait busts; how many are there of Marcus Aurelius, Octavius Cæsar, and Lucius Verus!—and no two of them approaching identity. Of the thousands of statues which have been excavated, no two are exact copies from the same model. There is at best nothing more than a family resemblance among those which are most alike. Would this be possible, if the ancients knew and practiced the art of casting in plaster as we do? It would seem to be utterly impossible, or at least improbable to the highest degree.

Again, why should not the great artists themselves, or their scholars, have made repliche of their famous statues? Nothing would have been easier had there been any casts from them. They were greatly coveted, and the prices paid for the original works were enormous,—so enormous that the largest prices of our day shrink into insignificance beside them. For the famous nude Venus by Praxiteles, Athens, in her extreme desire to possess it, offered in exchange to pay the whole public debt of the state to which it belonged. This offer, however, was peremptorily refused. Yet what could have been more easy, had a cast of it been in existence, or had they known how to make one, than for Praxiteles or his scholars to have made an exact replica, fully equal to the original or even superior to it, with additional touches of the master’s hand? That this was never done, or hinted at, proves that, the statue once having passed out of the artist’s hands, he could repeat it from memory only by aid of his sketch; and this would not only have cost him as much labor as making a new statue, but would in no sense have been identical. Again, is it to be supposed that if Polyclitus had an absolute cast of his life-size statue of the Doryphoros which would have enabled him to repeat it with exactness, the original would have commanded such a price as one hundred talents, or £25,000? Or is it possible to suppose that Arcesilaus would have received a gold talent (£250) for a plaster bowl which could have been repeated by casting, for almost nothing? It was because it was modeled, and the modern process of casting in a piece-mould was unknown, that it commanded such a price. Here making a rude stamp without under-cuttings would not suffice. The finesse of the work could not be given, and the work would have been destroyed or greatly injured in the attempt.

If it be a fact that the Greeks and Romans knew this process, one would naturally expect to find at least some fragments of casts or moulds in plaster of their great works,—as for instance of their small and exquisite Corinthian bronzes, if not of their large figures. But, so far as we are aware, nothing of the kind has ever been found. The whole city of Pompeii in the height of its luxury was buried under a fall of ashes, which for many long centuries preserved the most refined, fragile, and delicate utensils and works of art; and it is but a few years since that we removed these ashes and explored its houses and rooms which had been untouched since that fatal calamity befell them of which Pliny gives us so vivid an account. It is on the statements of the younger Pliny himself that those rely who claim that the ancients knew and practiced casting in plaster. Long before his day, then, this art had been invented; and we should naturally expect to find some specimens of it in this city of luxury, among its pictures, its vases, its statues, and its glass. But in all Pompeii there has not been found a vestige of a casting in plaster. Its stuccoes still remain, the bas-reliefs worked in plaster on its walls are still uninjured, its paintings are still fresh, its vases unbroken, its household utensils perfect. Hermetically sealed up under that mound of ashes, there was nothing to injure a cast in any house, if it existed. But there is absolutely nothing of the kind. Yet this was a people devoted to art, and whose houses were filled with knick-knacks of every kind. We find the sculptor’s studio, but there is not a cast in it, nor is there the shop of a caster. It is plain, therefore, that there was not a cast in Pompeii.

But if anywhere there were casts from the round there were also piece-moulds from the round. Where are they? Has any person ever heard of one? Now a hollow cast is comparatively a fragile object; but a plaster mould, saturated as it must be with oil, is anything but a fragile object. Sheltered from the inclemencies of storm and rain, it would last for thousands of years, and would even resist a century of exposure to the weather of Italy. But not underground nor aboveground anywhere has such a thing been found. Whatever moulds have been found are fit only for mere stamping. They are extremely rude, without under-cuttings, and seem merely to give a general shape. They are not cast upon anything, but worked out by hand, and are not in plaster. They are all small; nothing ever has been found which is either a mould, or a cast from life, or from a statue, or from a vase or bowl, or any careful work of art.

An ancient manufactory of terra cotta has been lately discovered and unearthed at Arezzo in Tuscany, and a large number of moulds was found, taken apparently from vases executed originally on some hard metal, probably in silver. The figures on these moulds are of the most exquisite design and execution, and for beauty and delicacy of finish exceed anything which remains to us of Greek or Etruscan art. There are no under-cuttings, and the relief is so low and flat as to yield an impression scarcely, if at all, higher than a seal or intaglio. All these moulds, however, are in terra cotta. Not one is in plaster, though in this material they could have been executed more easily and exactly, and could have been reproduced in the original size. Of course, first taken, as they were, in soft clay, then baked, they of necessity shrank in size and were subject to warping and cracking, all which defects would have been avoided had they been made in plaster. All this would indicate that the use of plaster in making moulds was not practiced at that period, even in such a simple operation as this.

In face of this we must say we do not agree with Mr. Perkins when he thinks he “establishes by undeniable proof how little founded is the opinion of those who pretend that the ancients did not practice casting in plaster,—sustaining it by the complete absence of statues and statuettes of plaster or fragments of any kind in the excavations, when nevertheless thousands of objects are found of the most fragile nature;” and especially when the undeniable proof which he offers is the existence of some works and arabesque ornaments in plaster found at Kertch, and supposed to belong to the fourth century before the Christian era, and which apparently he has never seen. On the contrary, we should like to know how he explains the fact that no indubitable ancient moulds or castings have ever been found.

But Mr. Perkins does not seem to reason beyond his texts. He does not discuss the probabilities of the case; he does not undertake to account for, or to harmonize with his view, the great fact that nothing has been found of ancient art cast in plaster. Outside of what is written in books he does not venture. He does not even seem to have a clear opinion of his own. He says, “Sur ce point [casting in plaster] les textes nous laissent dans les ténèbres. Faut-il s’en étonner? Non! Les auteurs classiques trompent notre curiosité sur des choses d’un bien autre intent. Que nous disent-ils des vases peints, dont les musées de l’Europe regorgent? Rien,” etc. Well, if the texts leave us in darkness, are we then to know nothing and to think nothing? Are we not to exercise our minds, and if a doubtful text seems to indicate a fact utterly at variance with our reason and with the facts we know, are we to treat that text as a fetich, and bow down and worship it, because it is written in a book? Are we to endeavor to wrench everything into harmony with it? Or, if it will not agree with facts of which there is no doubt, are we not rather to sacrifice the text than our own reason? And especially, are we to pay such reverence to a doubtful text of Pliny, the most careless of writers, the least accurate of archæologists? As to the painted vases, no argument or ancient texts are needed; there is no question in respect to them; they existed in great numbers; but in respect to casting in plaster there is nothing but texts to depend upon. Nay more, there is only one passage in any ancient author, so far as I am aware, that seems to assert the existence of this process; and the question is as to the meaning of this very ambiguous passage. If it means what Mr. Perkins supposes, where are the moulds; where are the casts; where are the finished likenesses; where is there anything, in a word, to support the statements of Pliny, as thus interpreted? Does it not seem amazing that they should all have totally disappeared?

That the text of Pliny, on which all rests, does not mean what it is supposed to mean by Mr. Perkins, we have endeavored to show; but at all events, since it is admitted to be most obscure and scarcely intelligible, it would be better to throw the text overboard, if it is in conflict with all we know and is improbable in itself, particularly when we take into consideration the corrupt condition of the entire text of Pliny. Dr. Brunn, who is certainly an able and learned archæologist, does not hesitate to reject a portion of this very text, from the words “idem et de signis effigiem exprimere,” as an interpolation; and there can be no doubt in the mind of any one who carefully examines it that this entire passage is full of confusion of ideas and statements.

Mr. Perkins endeavors to strengthen his position, and also the text of Pliny as he understands it, by a citation from the “Tragic Jupiter” of Lucian, in which the statue of Hermes complains that he is spotted by the pitch with which the sculptors cover his limbs every day, “afin de les reproduire,” he gratuitously adds, with no authority in the text for such a statement; and apropos of this he tells us that one may “model with pitch mixed with marble dust or brick.” He adds: “It is what the Italians call ‘ciment,’ and they employ it for the most delicate parts of the mould. It is sufficient in order to keep it in a malleable state to set the piece on which one is working near the fire, or to soften it from time to time in a bath of hot water.” “Now this information,” he continues, “which we owe to one of the most eminent and learned artists of our age, is very precious, since it gives us the real meaning of the passage in Lucian.” This taken in connection with a passage in Apollodorus representing Dædalus making a statue to Hercules ἐν πίσσῃ or ἐν πίσῃ—the word is doubtful—induces Mr. Perkins “to conclude, first, that two centuries before the Christian era, pitch was used, mixed without doubt with other substances, to cast statues [mouler les statues]; second, that the passage in Lucian not only contains one of those railleries of which the Voltaire of antiquity was so prodigal, but leads us to suspect that it veils the indication of one of the processes of casting.” That is, first he inclines to the opinion that πίσσῃ (pitch) is a misprint for πίτυς (pine wood), and that the statue made by Dædalus was in wood; and then he immediately turns around, and thinks that it proves the existence of casting in plaster. It cannot mean both; and the probability would seem to be that he is wrong in both suppositions, and that Dædalus was only employed in painting his statue in resin or wax.

The seriousness of this passage is more remarkable than its accuracy. Who can the eminent and learned artist be who has given us this so precious information?—“ce renseignement tres-précieux,”—which is known to every humble caster in Europe,—though he is not quite correct in the composition of what he says the Italians call “ciment.” He must be a French artist who scorns the Italian language as being, in the words of another of his countrymen, “rien que de mauvais Français.” “Ciment” is not an Italian word, and “cimento” has a quite different significance,—that of attempt or essay. The Italian casters call this material “cera,” though it is not wax. But aside from this, let us consider this passage from Lucian to which Mr. Perkins, following other writers, refers us as showing that the process of casting in plaster was known to the ancient Greeks.

The Ζεὺς Τραγῳδός of Lucian is a satire on the divinities of Greece, and a council of them is called to deliberate on what should be done in consequence of an assault upon their nature and power by Damis. The gods are called upon, and a question arises as to the precedence they should have, whether it should be according to the material of which they are made,—of ivory, gold, bronze, stone, or clay,—or according to the excellence of their workmanship and the skill of the artist; but such confusion of claims is made that no precedence is finally allowed to any one, and the question as to the reasons and arguments of Damis and his opponent Timocles is discussed. While this is going on, a figure is seen approaching which is thus described:—

“But who is this who comes in such haste [ὁ χαλκοῦς, ὁ εὔγραμμος, ὁ εὐπερίγραφος, ὁ ἀρχαῖος τὴν ἀνάδεσιν τῆς κόμης], this bronze, this beautifully chased or engraved, beautifully outlined, the archaic in the arrangement of his hair [πίττης γοῦν ἀναπέπλησαι, ὁσημέραι ἐκματτόμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνδριαντοποιῶν]; he is clogged with pitch from seals or impressions being daily taken from it by the sculptors.”

Hermes, the bronze, then answers:—

“It happened lately that my breast and back were covered with pitch by the sculptors in bronze, and a ridiculous cuirass was thus formed on my body, and by imitative art received a complete seal from the brass.”[24]

This passage is supposed to indicate the process of casting in plaster. It is possible that it may indicate a preparation in pitch to cast in bronze, but certainly not in plaster, which is the sole question. It is not workers in plaster who are engaged on it, but workers in bronze; and what they were doing was plainly to take impressions of the intaglio chasing or engraving on the body of the figure. The description of the bronze is that it was archaic, and beautifully traced and engraved. It may have been a term engraved with verses, or figures, or inscriptions; and this is by no means improbable, as it represented Hermes, and as nothing but the breast and back was covered with pitch. At all events, the process was one which seems to have been carried on, not for once, but daily. It may have been the famous Hermes ἀγοραῖος, which was cast in the 34th Olympiad, and was a study for brass casters. Again, it may not have been a figure in the round, but merely a bas-relief, or intaglio; and this supposition would be entirely in accordance with the hieratic and archaic sculpture in brass, marble, and terra cotta. Many were executed thus in intaglio and engraved,—some of which still remain,—and others in relief. A list of such may be found in Müller’s “Ancient Art” (pp. 61–65). If the passage refers to making a mould for casting, it was for casting in bronze and not in plaster, though nothing is said about casting, but merely of taking impressions or seals. The words ἐκτυπούμενος and ἐκματτόμενος mean ex-pressions from a seal or stamp. Exactly what the sculptors were doing, however, to this statue covers the process of brass casters. Thus Lucian, speaking of a certain brass statue in the Agora, says: οἶσθα τὸν χαλκοῦν τὸν ἑσῶτα ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ, καὶ τὰ μὲν πιττῶν τὰ δὲ εὔων διετέλεσα,—“You know the brass statue standing in the forum, on which I was occupied pitching and drying,” or burning.

But there is nothing new in all this, and nothing which throws any light upon the subject in question. It was, as we well know, a common practice of the Greeks, in making their large statues, to build up a core of wood, brickwork, plaster, and other materials as a foundation or rough sketch. On the surface of this in their chryselephantine statues they veneered sheets of gold and ivory, sometimes covering the entire surface with these precious materials, and sometimes finishing portions of them with an exterior of plaster or clay, which was painted in imitation of life. This for instance was the case with the Dionysos in Kreusis, described by Pausanias, of which the whole figure was modeled in plaster and afterwards colored. It would also seem to have been a practice with the Greek artists to cover these roughly executed cores with a composition of resin and pitch which they indurated by fire; and afterwards to finish the surface in the same material. Such at least appears to be the process indicated by Lucian in the passage just quoted, in which he speaks of the statue he was engaged in pitching and drying; as well as by Apollodorus in a passage in which Dædalus is described as making a statue of Hercules in pitch (πίσσα). The term “pissa” in this last passage has by some translators been supposed to be a misprint for ἐν πίση, meaning that this statue was a ζόανον executed in pine wood like other Dædalian figures. As it stands in the original, certainly, it is πίσσα, and means pitch; and it is quite as probable that it is correct and means a sort of encaustic finish with resin and gum. However this may be, there is little doubt that in making their bronze statues the Greeks used a surface of wax and pitch, or some such material, which was plastic and would melt; and it is well known that they spread wax over their statues to give them a polished surface, and also finished their plaster walls with a covering of wax.

In making large statues, a skeleton framework of wood was often employed, called κίνναβος, or κάναβος, which was covered with solid material,—clay, plaster, brick, pitch, etc., all welded together to form a solid core over which the surface was finished in clay, plaster, pitch, ivory, or gold. In the “Somnium, seu Gallus” of Lucian, Gallus says, speaking of himself, “If he were king, he should be like one of the colossi of Phidias, Praxiteles, or Myron, which though externally like Neptune or Jupiter,—splendid with ivory and gold, bearing the trident or the thunderbolt,—yet if you look inside you will find them composed of beams and bolts and nails traversing them everywhere, and braces and ridges, and pitch and clay, and other ugly and misshapen things.”

It is a curious fact bearing generally on this subject that no allusion is ever made to such a person as a caster in plaster. Plutarch, enumerating the various trades and occupations to which the great public works of his time gave employment, speaks of operatives, modelers, brass-workers, stone-workers, gold and ivory workers, weavers, and engravers, but never mentions a caster. Philostratus also, enumerating the different classes of workmen in the plastic art, makes no mention of casters. Pliny never speaks of them. Indeed, their existence is never mentioned by any ancient writer.

All things considered, then, in conclusion, it seems impossible to believe that Pliny intended, in the passage relating to Lysistratus, to declare that he invented any method of casting in plaster, but rather that he intended to say that Lysistratus either modeled likenesses in wax over a core of gypsum, or, what is much more probable, that he colored his likenesses in imitation of life; and that his specialty was making accurate and literal likenesses in the round with color, thus uniting the two arts of the painter and the sculptor.

The process of casting in plaster, in our acceptation of the phrase, is of modern origin, and so far as we know was invented in the fifteenth century, a little before the time of Verrocchio (1432–1488), the master of Leonardo da Vinci. He was among the first who employed it, and may fairly be said to have introduced it. At all events, the first clear mention of this process of which we are aware is by Vasari in his life of Verrocchio; and he states that this sculptor and painter “cast hands, knees, feet, legs, even torsi, in order to copy them at his leisure; and that soon after casts began to be made from the faces of persons after death, so that one sees in every house in Florence, on mantel-pieces, doors, windows, and cornices, a great number of these portraits, which seem alive.” For some time after it seems to have been used chiefly for taking casts from dead faces,—or hands and feet,—and not to have been applied to casting from models of clay. The general practice of that period was to make a small model in clay, then to bake it, and from this model by proportional compasses to enlarge it and point it upon the marble. The process of casting from clay models seems not to have been practiced then, and so far as we know models of full size in clay were rarely if ever made, until rather a comparatively recent period.

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A CONVERSATION WITH MARCUS AURELIUS.

It was a dark and stormy night in December. Everybody in the house had long been in bed and asleep; but, deeply interested in the “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,” I had prolonged my reading until the small hours had begun to increase, and I heard the bells of the Capucin convent strike for two o’clock. I then laid down my book, and began to reflect upon it. The fire had nearly burned out, and, unwilling yet to go, I threw on to it a bundle of canne and a couple of sticks; again the fresh flame darted out, and gave a glow to the room. Outside, the storm was fierce and passionate. Gusts beat against the panes, shaking the old windows of the palace, and lashing them with wild rain. At intervals a sudden blue light flashed through the room, followed by a trampling roar of thunder overhead. The fierce libeccio howled like a wild beast around the house, as if in search of its prey, and then died away, disappointed and growling, and after a short interval again leaped with fresh fury against the windows and walls, as if maddened by their resistance. As I sat quietly gazing into the fire and musing on many shadows of thought that came and passed, my imagination went back into the far past, when Marcus Aurelius led his legions against the Quadi, the Marcomanni, and the Sarmati, and brought before me the weather-beaten tent in which he sat so many a bleak and bitter night, after the duty of the day was done, and all his men had retired to rest, writing in his private diary those noble meditations, which, though meant solely for his private eye, are one of the most precious heritages we have of ancient life and thought. I seemed to see him there in those bleak wilds of Pannonia, seated by night in his tent. At his side burns a flickering torch. Sentinels silently pace to and fro. The cold wind flirts and flaps the folds of the prætorium, and shakes the golden eagle above it. Far off is heard the howl of the wolf prowling through the shadowy forests that encompass the camp; or the silence is broken by the sharp shrill cry of some night bird flying overhead through the dark. Now and then comes the clink of armor from the tents of the cavalry, or the call of the watchword along the line, or the neighing of horses as the circuitores make their rounds. He is ill and worn with toil and care. He is alone; and there, under the shadow of night, beside his camp-table, he sits and meditates, and writes upon his waxen tablets those lofty sentences of admonition to duty and encouragement to virtue, those counselings of himself to heroic action, patient endurance of evil, and tranquillity of life, that breathe the highest spirit of morality and philosophy. Little did he think, in his lonely watches, that the words he was writing only for himself would still be cherished after long centuries had passed away, and would be pondered over by the descendants of nations which were then uncultured barbarians, as low in civilization as the Pannonians against whom he was encamped. Yet of all the books that ancient literature has left us, none is to be found containing the record of higher and purer thought, or more earnest and unselfish character. As I glanced up at the cast of the Capitoline bust of him which stood in the corner of my room, and saw the sweet melancholy of that gentle face, ere care and disappointment had come over it and ruled it with lines of age and anxiety, a strange longing came over me to see him and hear his voice, and a sad sense of that great void of time and space which separated us. Where is he now? What is he now? I asked myself. In what other distant world of thought and being is his spirit moving? Has it any remembrance of the past? Has it any knowledge of the present? Yet the hand that wrote is now but dust, which may be floating about the mausoleum where he was buried, near the Vatican, or perhaps lying in that library of the popes upon some stained manuscript of this very work it wrote, to be blown carelessly away by some studious abbé as he ranges the volume on its shelf among the other precious records of the past.

The hand is but dust, yet the thoughts that it recorded are fresh and living as ever. Since he passed from this world, how little progress have we made in philosophy and morality! Here in this little book are rules for the conduct of life which might shame almost any Christian. Here are meditations which go to the root of things, and explore the dim secret world which surrounds us, and return again, as all our explorations do, unsatisfied. All these centuries have passed, and we still ask the same questions and find no answer. Where he is now he knows the secret, or he is beyond the desire to know it. The mystery is solved for him which we are guessing, and his is either a larger, sweeter life, growing on and on—or everlasting rest. A stoic, he found comfort in his philosophy, as great perhaps as we Christians find in our faith. He believed in his gods as we believe in ours. How could they satisfy a mind like his? How could these impure and passionate existences, given to human follies and weaknesses, to low intrigues, to vulgar jealousies, to degraded loves, satisfy a nature so high, so self-denying, so earnest, so pure? Yet they were his gods; to them he sacrificed, in them he trusted, looking forward to a calm future with a serenity at least equal to ours, undisturbed by misgivings; believing in justice, and in unjust gods; believing in purity, and in impure gods.

“No!” said a mild voice, “I did not believe in impure and unjust gods.”

And looking up, I saw before me the calm face of the emperor and philosopher of whom I was thinking. There he stood before me as I knew him from his busts and statues, with his full brow and eyes, his sweet mouth, his curling hair, now a little grizzled with age, and a deep meditative look of tender earnestness upon his face.

I know not why I was not startled to see him there, but I was not. It seemed to me natural, as events seem in a dream. The realities, as we call those facts which are merely visionary and transitory, vanished; and the unrealities, as we call those of thought and being, usurped their place. Nothing seemed more fitting than that he should be there. To the mind all things are possible and simple, and there is no time or space in thought which annihilates them.

I arose to greet my guest with the reverence due to such a presence.

“Do not disturb yourself,” he said, smiling; “I will sit here, if you please;” and so speaking, he took the seat opposite me at the fire. “Sit you,” he continued, “and I will endeavor to answer some of the questions you were asking of yourself.”

“Had I known your presence I should hardly, perhaps, have dared to ask such questions, or at least in such a form,” I said.

“Why not ask them of me if you ask them of yourself?” he responded. “They were just and natural in themselves, and the forms of things are of little use to one who cares for the essence—just as the forms of the divinities I believed in are of no consequence compared to their essences. What we call thoughts are but too often mere formulas, which by dint of repetition we finally get to believe are in themselves truths, while they are in fact mere dead husks, having no life in them, and which by their very rigidity prevent life. No single statement, however plausible, can contain truth, which is infinite in form and in spirit. If we are to talk together, let us free ourselves, if we can, from formulas, since they only check growth in the spirit, and, so to speak, are mere inns at which we rest for a moment on account of our weariness and weakness. If we stay permanently in them we narrow our minds, dwarf our experience, and make no more progress. For what is truth but a continual progression towards the divine?”

“Yet would you say that formulas are of no use? that we should not sum up in them the best of our thought?”

“Undoubtedly they are useful. They are trunks in which we pack our goods; but as we acquire more goods, we must have larger and ever larger trunks. It is only dead formulas which kill, and the tendency of formulas is to die and thus to repress thought. Look at the nutshell that holds the precious germ of the future tree. It is a necessary prison of a moment; but as that germ quickens and spreads, the shell must give way, or death is the consequence. The infinite truth can be comprehended in no formula and no system. All attempts to do this have resulted in the same end—death. Every religious creed should be living, but every Church formalizes it into barren words and shapes, and erelong, Faith—that is, the living, aspiring principle—dies, wrapped up in its formal observances or rigid statements, and becomes like the dead mummies of the Egyptians—the form of life, not the reality.”

“Too true,” I answered, “all history proves it. Every real and thinking man feels it. As habits get the better of our bodies, so conventions and formulas get the better of our minds. But pray continue; I only listen; and pardon me for interrupting you.”

“What I say has direct relation to the questions you were asking when I entered. There is a grain, often many grains, of truth in every system of religion, but complete Truth in none. If we wait until we attain the perfect before adhering to one, we shall never arrive at any. Each age has its religious ideas, which are the aggregate of its moral perceptions influenced by its imaginative bias, and these are shapen into formulas or systems, which serve as inns, or churches, or temples of worship. These begin by representing the highest reach of the best thought of the age, but they soon degenerate into commonplaces, thought moving on beyond them, and of its very vitality of nature seeking beyond them. At these inns the common mass put up, and the host or priest controls them while they are there, and society organizes them, and so a certain good is attained. In what you call the ancient days, when I lived on the earth, I found a system already built and surrounded by strong bulwarks of power. To strike at that was to strike at the existence of society. A religious revolution is a social revolution; one cannot alter a faith without altering everything out of which it is moulded. To do that, more evil might result than good. Man’s nature is such that if you throw down the temple of his worship at once, assaulting its very foundations, you do not improve his faith; you but too often annihilate it, so implanted is it in old prejudices, in the forms stamped on the heart in youth, and in the habits of thought. It is only by gradual changes that any real good can be done—by enlarging and developing the principles of truth which already exist, and not by overthrowing the whole system at once.”

“But in the religious system to which you gave your adherence,” I exclaimed, “what was there grand and inspiring? What truth was there out of which you could hope to develop a true system? for certainly you could not believe in the divinities of your day.”

“Reverence to the gods that were,” he answered, “to a power above and beyond us; recognition of divine powers and attributes. This lay as the corner-stone of our worship, as it does of yours.”

“Almost,” I cried, “it seems to me worse to worship such gods as yours than to worship none at all. Their attributes were at best only human, their conduct was low and unworthy, their passions were sensual and debased. Any good man would be ashamed to do the acts calmly attributed to the divinities you worshiped. This, in itself, must have had a degrading influence on the nation. How could man be ashamed of any act allowed and attributed to the gods?”

“Your notions on this point are natural,” he calmly answered, “but they are completely mistaken. There is no doubt that in every system of religion the tendency is to humanize and, to a certain extent, degrade God. To attribute to Him our own passions is universal, with the mass. To deify man or to humanize God is the rule. You deify that beautiful character named Christ, and you humanize God by representing Him as inspired with anger and cruelty beyond anything in our system. You attribute to Him a scheme of the universe which is to me abhorrent. Will you excuse me if I state thus plainly how it strikes one who belonged to a different age and creed, and who therefore cannot enter into the deep-grained prejudices and ideas of your century and faith?”

“Speak boldly,” I said. “Do not fear to shock me. I am so deeply planted that I do not fear to be uprooted in my faith. And, besides, that is not truth which does not court assault, sure to be strengthened by it. If you can overthrow my faith, overthrow it.”

“That I should be most unwilling to do,” he answered. “No word would I say to produce such a result. In your faith there is a noble and beautiful truth, which sheds a soft lustre over life; and in my own day the pure and philosophic spirit of Jesus of Nazareth was recognized by me and reverenced. ’T is not of Him I would speak, but rather of the general scheme of the regulation of this world by God that I alluded to; and I yet pause, fearing to shock you by a simple statement of this creed.”

“I pray you do not hesitate; speak! I am ready and anxious to hear you.”

“It is only in answer to what you say of the acts and passions attributed by us to our divinities, as constituting a clear reason why we should not reverence them, that I speak. You attribute to your God omnipotence, omniscience, and infinite love. Yet in his omnipotence He made first a world, and then placed in it man and woman, whom He also made and pronounced good. In this, according to your belief, He was mistaken. The man and woman proved immediately not to be good; and He, omnipotent as He was, was foiled by another power named Satan, who upset at once his whole scheme. After infinite consideration and in pity for man, He could or did invent no better scheme of redeeming him than for Himself, or an emanation from Himself, to take the form of man, and to suffer death through his wickedness and at his hands. Thus man, by adding to the previous fault the crime of killing God on the earth, acquired a claim to be saved from the consequences of his first fault. A new crime affords a cause of pardon for a previous fault of disobedience. What was this first fault, which induced God to drive the first man and woman out of the Paradise He had made for them? Simply that they ate an apple when they were prohibited. Is any pagan legend more absurd than this? Then for the justice of God, on what principle of right can the subsequent crime and horror—without example—of killing God, or a person, as you say, of the Trinity, afford a reason for removing from man a penalty previously incurred? When one remembers that you assume God to be omniscient as well as omnipotent, and that He might have made any other scheme, by simply forgiving man, or obliging him to redeem himself by doing good and acting virtuously, instead of committing a crime and a horror, this belief becomes still more strange. Nor can you explain it yourself; you only say it is a mystery which is beyond your reason, but none the less true. Yet though it offends all sense of justice and right in my mind, you believe it and adhere to it as a corner-stone of your faith. Are you sure I do not offend you?”

“Pray go on,” I said. “When you have said it is a mystery, you have said all. Shall man, with his deficient reason, pretend to understand God? This is a truth revealed to us by his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who was himself in a human form; and when God reveals to us a mystery, shall we not believe it? Shall we measure Him by our feeble wits?”

“I do not mean to argue with you. This is furthest from my intention; though I might say this holds good of us in the ancient days, as well as with you now. I only wish, however, to show you that you believe what you acknowledge to be beyond reason—a mystery, as you call it. You believe this, and yet you despise the pagan for believing what his gods told him, simply because it was unreasonable or ridiculous.”

“The question,” I said, “is very different; but let it pass. Pray go on.”

“Your God is a God of infinite love, you say. Yet in the opinion of many of you, at least, this infinitely loving God, omnipotent, and having the power to make man as He chose,—omniscient, and knowing how to make him good and happy if He wished to,—has chosen in his love to make him weak and impotent, to endow him with passions which are temptations to evil, to afflict him with disease and pain, to render him susceptible to torments of every kind and sufferings beyond his power to avoid, however he strive to be good and virtuous and obedient; and then at the last, after a life of suffering and struggle here, either to save him and make him eternally happy, or, if He so elect, without any reason intelligible to you or any one, to plunge him into everlasting torment, from which he can never free himself. Now, I ask you in what respect is such a God better than Jupiter, who, even according to the lowest popular notions, whatever were his passions, was at least placable; who, whatever were his follies, was not a demon like this? And when one takes into consideration the fact that there is not a humane man living who would not be ashamed to do to his own child, however vicious, what he calmly attributes to this all-loving God, the belief in such a God seems all the more extraordinary.”

“It is a mystery,” I said, “that one like you, born in another age and tinctured with another creed, could not be expected to understand. It would be useless for me to attempt it, and certainly not now, when I so greatly prefer hearing you to speaking myself. My purpose is not now to defend my religion, but to listen to your defense of yours.”

“Well, then, allow us to have our mystery too. If you cannot explain all, neither could we; but neither with us nor with you was that a reason for not believing at all. It was the mystery itself, perhaps, that attracted us and attracts you. The love of the unintelligible is at the root of all systems of religion. If man is unintelligible to us, shall not God be? Man has always invested his gods with his own passions, and his gods are for the most part his own shadows cast out into infinite space, enlarged, gigantic, and mysterious. Man cannot, with the utmost exercise of his faculties, get out of himself any more than he can leap over his own shadow. He cannot comprehend (or inclose within himself) God, who comprehends and incloses him; and therefore he vaguely magnifies his own powers, and calls the result God. God the infinite Spirit made man; but man in every system of religion makes God. In our own reason He is the best that we can imagine—that is, our own selves purged of evil and extended. We cannot stretch beyond ourselves.”

“Ay, but your gods were not the best you could conceive. They were lower of nature than man himself in some particulars, and were guilty of acts that you yourself would reprove.”

“This is because you consider them purely in their mythical history, according to the notions of the common ignorant mass; not looking behind those acts which were purely typical, often simply allegorical, to the ideas which they represented and of which they were incarnations. You cannot believe that so low a system as this satisfied the spiritual needs of those august and refined souls who still shine like planets in the sky of thought. Do you suppose that Plato and Epictetus, that Zeno and Socrates, that Seneca and Cicero, with their expanded minds, accepted these low formulas of Divinity? As well might I suppose that the low superstitions of the Christian Church, in which the vulgar believe, represent the highest philosophy of the best thinkers. Yet for long centuries of superstition the Church has been accepted by you just as it stands, with its saints and their miracles, and its singular rites and ceremonies. Nor has any effort been made to cleanse the bark of St. Peter of the barnacles and rubbish which encumber and defile it. Religious faith easily degenerates into superstition in the common mind. And why has the superstition been accepted? Simply because it is so deeply ingrained into the belief of the unthinking mass, that there might be danger of destroying all faith by destroying the follies and accidents which had become imbedded in it. Not only for this; by means of these very superstitions men may be led and governed, and leaders will not surrender or overthrow means of power. Yet the best minds,” he continued, “did what they could in ancient days to purify and refine the popular faith, and sought even to elevate men’s notions of the gods by educating their sense of the beautiful, and by presenting to them images of the gods unstained by low passions and glorious in their forms.”

“But surely your idea of Jupiter or Zeus,” I answered, “was most unworthy when compared with that which we entertain of the infinite God, the source of all created things, the sole and supreme Creator. The Hebrews certainly attained a far loftier conception in their Jehovah than you in your Jupiter.”

“What matter names?” he replied; “Zeus, Jehovah, God, are all mere names, and the ideas they represented were only differenced by the temperaments and character of the various peoples who worshiped them.”

“But the Jehovah of the Jews was not merely the head ruler of many gods, but a single universal God, one and infinite!”

“No! I think not. The Jehovah of the Jews underwent many changes and developments with the growth of the Hebrew people; and in many of their writings He is represented as a passionate, vindictive, and even unreasonable and unjust God, whose passions were modified by human arguments. And, so far from being a universal God of all, He was specially the God of the Hebrews, and is so constantly represented in their Scriptures. He comes down upon earth and interferes personally in the doings of men, and talks with them, and discusses questions with them, and sometimes even takes their advice. In process of time this notion is modified, and assumes a nobler type; but He is never the Universal Father, nor the God whose essence is Love,—never, that is, until the coming of Christ, who first enunciated the idea that God is love,—rejoicing over the saving of man, far and above all human passions. ‘Vengeance is mine’ was the original idea of Jehovah; and He was feared and worshiped by the Jews as their peculiar God, whose chosen people they were. As for his unity, whatever may have been the popular superstitions of the Greeks and Romans, God is recognized by the greatest and purest minds as one and indivisible, the Father of all, who commands all, who creates all, who is invisible and omnipotent. Do you not remember the fragment of the Sibylline verses preserved by Lactantius,[25] S. Theophilus Antiochenus, and S. Justinus, where it is said that Zeus was one being alone, self-creating, from whom all things are made, who beholds all mortals, but whom no mortal can behold?—

Εἷς δ’ ἔστ’ αὐτογενής· ἑνὸς ἔκγονα πάντα τέτυκται,
Ἐν δ’ αὐτοῖς αὐτὸς περιγίγνεται· οὐδέ τις αὐτὸν
Εἰσοράᾳ θνητῶν, αὐτὸς δέ γε πάντας ὁρᾶται.

So, also, Pindar cries out:—

‘Τί Θεός;’ τί τὸ πᾶν.

So again, in the same spirit, the Appian hymn says of Zeus:—

Ἓν κράτος, εἷς δαίμων γένετο μέγας οὐρανὸν αἴθων
Ἓν δὲ τὰ πάντα τέτυκται· ἐν ᾧ τάδε πάντα κυκλεῖται.

And Euripides exclaims, ‘Where is the house, the fabric reared by man, that could contain the immensity of God?’

Ποῖος δ’ ἂν οἶκος, τεκτόνων πλασθεὶς ὑπὸ
Δέμας, τὸ Θεῖον περιβάλλοι τοίχων πτυχαῖς,

and adds that the true God needs no sacrifices on his altar. And Æschylus, in like manner, says:—

Ζεύς ἐστιν αἰθὴρ, Ζεὺς δὲ γῆ, Ζεὺς δ’ οὐρανὸς,
Ζεύς τοι τὰ πάντα, χὥτι τῶν δ’ ὑπέρτερον.

And Sophocles, also in similar lines, proclaims the unity and universality of God. And Theocritus, in his ‘Idylls,’ echoes the same sentiment. The same cast of thought, the same lofty idea of God, is found among the ancient Romans. Lucan exclaims in his ‘Pharsalia:’—

‘Jupiter est quod cumque vides, quo cumque moveris.’

Valerius Soranus makes him the one universal, omnipotent God, the Father and Mother of us all:—

‘Jupiter omnipotens, regum rerumque deumque
Progenitor genetrixque deum deus unus et omnes.’[26]

Can any statement be larger and more inclusive than this?[27] Such indeed was the true philosophic idea of Jupiter, as entertained by the best and most exalted in ancient days. You must go to the highest sources to learn what the highest notions of Deity are among any people, and not grope among the popular superstitions and myths. Then, again, what nobler expressions of our relation to an infinite and universal spirit of God are to be found than in Epictetus and Seneca? ‘God is near you, is with you, is within you,’ Seneca writes. ‘A sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and all our good. There is no good man without God.’ And again: ‘Even from a corner it is possible to spring up into heaven. Rise, therefore, and form thyself into a fashion worthy of God.’ And again: ‘It is no advantage that conscience is shut up within us. We lie open to God.’ And still again: ‘Do you wish to render the gods propitious? Be virtuous.’ One might cite such passages for hours from the writings of these men. Can you, then, think that our notions of God and duty were so low and so debased?

“Look, too, at our arts. Art and religion with us and the Greeks went hand in hand. If you seek the true spirit of religion among any people, you will always find it in the productions of their art. In sculpture, the most ideal of the plastic arts, you will see the real features of the gods. They are grand, calm, serene, dignified, and above the taint of human passion; claiming reverence and love in their beauty and perfection beyond the human. Here there is nothing mean or low. So godlike are they even in the poorer specimens of their noble figures that have come down to you, that you yourselves recognize in them ideal grace and power. Read the reflection of our faith in their forms and features, and you will find in it nothing vulgar, nothing degrading. The best personifications of your own divinities in art look poor beside them. God himself in your pictures is feeble compared with the divine Jupiter of Phidias; the Madonna weak and tame beside the august grandeur of his Athene. Christ in your art is pitiable beside the splendor of Apollo; so far from being the highest type of even man, he is almost the weakest, composed of pale negatives, and with nothing very positive and grand; while your saints are affected, cowardly, and cringing, compared with the heroic demigods of Greece. In art, at least, the ancient deities still live and command reverence from a serene world beyond change. Would you know what our faith was, look at the great works of art and at the best thoughts of the greatest minds we owned, and not at the corrupted text of popular superstition. These, indeed, were worthy of reverence. They lifted the thoughts and cleared the spirit, and filled it with a sense of beauty and of power. Who could look at that magnificent impersonation of Zeus at Olympia, by Phidias, so grand, so simple, so serene, with its golden robes and hair, its divine expression of power and sweetness, its immense proportions, its perfection of workmanship, and not feel that they were in the presence of an august, tremendous, and impassionate power?”

“Ah!” I exclaimed, “that truly I wish I could have seen—what majesty, what beauty, it must have had!”

“Ay!” he answered. “No one could see it and not be enlarged in spirit by it.”

“Was, then, the Athena of the Parthenon,” I asked, “equal in merit?”

“It was very different. It wanted the power and massive grandeur of the Zeus; but in its dignity and serenity it had a wondrous charm. It was the true type of wisdom, calm above doubt, and with a gentle severity of aspect, as if, undisturbed by the tormenting questions that vex humanity, it saw the eternal truth of things. When I compare with these wondrous statues your best representations of your divinities, I cannot but feel how vast a difference there is; and when in your temples one sees the prostrate figures of men and women clinging to vulgar and degraded images of saints, imploring aid and protection from them, and soliciting their interposition against the avenging hand of Deity, I cannot see that you are better than we.”

“But, after all, through this there is a belief in a pure and infinite Being beyond—a Being beyond all human passion; not imperfect and subject to wild caprices, and capable of abominable acts.”

“You see, we go back to the same question,” he replied. “You profess to worship a God above nature, and yet your prayers are to Christ, the man; to the saints, who were lower men and women; and you cling to these as mediators. Well; and we also believed in a spirit and power undefined and above all, whose nature we could not grasp, and who expressed himself in every living thing. Our gods were but anthropomorphic symbols of special powers and developments of an infinite and overruling power. They partly represent, in outward shape and form, philosophic ideas and human notions about the infinite God, and partly body forth the phenomena of nature, that hint at the great ultimate cause behind them, of which they are, so to speak, the outward garment, by which the Universal Deity is made visible to man. In our religion nature was but the veil which half hid the divine powers. Everywhere they peered out upon us, from grove and river, from night and morning, from lightning and storm, from all the elements and all the changes and mysteries of the living universe. It delighted us to feel their absolute, active presence among us—not far away from us, involved in utter obscurity, and beyond our comprehension. We saw the Great Cause in its second plane, close to us, in the growing of the flower, in the flowing of the stream, in the drifting of the cloud, in the rising and setting of the sun. Our gods (representing the great idea beyond, and doing its work) were anthropomorphic by necessity, just as yours are in art. The popular fables are but the mythical garb behind which lie great facts and truths. They are symbolical representations of the great processes of nature, of the laws of life and growth, of the changes of the seasons, of the strife of the elements. Apollo was the life-giving sun; Artemis, the mysterious moon; Ceres and Proserpine, the burial of the grain in the earth, and its reappearance and fructification. So, on another plane, Minerva was the philosophic mind of man; Venus, the impassioned embodiment of human love, as Eros was of spiritual affections; Bacchus, the serene and full enjoyment of nature. We but divided philosophically what you sum up in one final cause; but all our divisions looked back to that cause. In an imaginative people like the Greeks, there is also a natural tendency to mythical embodiment of facts in history as well as in nature; and in the early periods, when little was written down, traditions easily assumed the myth form. Ideas were reduced to visible shapes, and facts were etherealized into ideas and imaginatively transformed. The story of Diana and Endymion, of Cupid and Psyche, will always be true—not to the reason, but to the imagination. It expresses poetically a sentiment which cannot die. So, also, what matters it if Dædalus built a ship for Icarus, and Icarus was simply drowned? Sublimed into poetry, it became a myth, and Icarus flew on waxen wings across the sea. All poetry is thus allegorical. The wind will always have wings until it ceases to blow. These myths are simply poetic moulds of thought, in which vague sentiments, ideas, and facts are wrought together into an express shape. Think what your own literature or thought would be without the old Grecian poems. Let the reason reject them as it will, and drive them out into the cold, the imagination will run forth and bring them back again to warm and cherish them on its breast. Facts, as facts, are but dead husks. The spirit cannot live upon them. Besides, are not our myths enchanting? Could anything take their place? Can science, peering into all things, ever find the secrets of nature? After all its explorations, the final element of life, the motive and inspiring element that is the essence of all the organism it uses and without which all is mere material, mere machinery, flees utterly beyond its reach, and leaves it at last with only dust in its hands. Does not the little child that makes playmates of the flowers, and the brooks, and the sands, find God there better than any of us? The subtle divinity hides anywhere, entices everywhere, is just out of reach everywhere. We catch glimpses of it, breathe its odor, hear its dim voice, see the last flutter of its robe, pursue it endlessly, and never can seize it. The poet is poet because he loves this spirit in nature, and comes nearer it; but he cannot grasp it; and for all his pursuit he comes back laden at last with a secret he cannot quite tell, and shapes us a myth to express it as well as he may.”

“But surely,” I answered, “we should distinguish between mere poetry and fact—between science and fancy. So long as we admit the unreality of merely fanciful creations and explanations of facts, we may be pleased with them; but let us not be misled by them into a belief of their scientific truth.”

“Ah, ’tis the old story! The little child has a bit of wood, which to her, in the free play of her imagination, is a person with good and bad qualities, who acts well or ill, whom she loves or despises. She whips it; she caresses it; she scolds it; she sends it to school or to bed; she forgives it and fondles it. All is real to the child; more real, perhaps, than to the nurse who stands beside her and laughs at her, and says, ‘How silly! come away! it is only a stick!’ Which is right? The Greeks were the child, and you are the nurse. What is truth, which is always on our lips—truth of history, truth of science, truth of any kind? Who knows—history? Two persons standing together see the same occurrence; is it the same to both? Far from it. The literal friend is amazed to hear what the imaginative friend saw. Yet both may be right in their report, only one saw what the other had no senses to perceive. We only see and feel according to our natures. What we are modifies what we see. Out of the camomile flower the physician makes a decoction, and the poet a song. History is but a dried herbarium of withered facts, unless the imagination interpret them. I cannot but smile at what is called history; and of all history, that of our own Roman world seems the strangest, because, perhaps, I know it best.”

“Ah!” I broke in, “how one wishes you had written us familiar memoirs of your time, and given us some intimate insight into your life, your thoughts, your daily doings. We have so to grope about in the dark for any knowledge of you. And then, in the history of art, what dreadful blanks! I do not feel assured, except from your ‘Meditations,’ as we call them, and your letters, that we really know anything accurately about you. About the Thundering Legion, for instance,—what is the truth?”

“There,” he answered, “is an instance of the ease with which a fable is made, and how a simple fact may be tortured into an untruth merely to suit a purpose. When I was on my campaign against the Quadi, in the year 174, the incident to which you refer happened. The spring had been cold and late, and suddenly the heats of summer overtook us in the enemy’s country. After a long and difficult march on a very hot day, we suddenly came upon the enemy, who, descending from the mountains, attacked us, overcome with fatigue, in the plains. The battle went against us for some time, for my army suffered so from thirst and heat and exhaustion that they were unable to repel the attack, and were forced back. While they were in full retreat and confusion, suddenly the sky became clouded over, and a drenching shower poured upon us. My men, who were dying of thirst, stopped fighting, took off their helmets and reversed their shields to catch the rain, and while they were thus engaged the enemy renewed their assault with double fury. All seemed lost, when suddenly, as sometimes occurs among the mountains, a fierce wind swept down with terrible peals of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning; the rain changed into hail, which was blown and driven with such a fury into the faces of the enemy that they were confounded and confused, and began in their turn to fall back. My own men, having the storm only on their backs, refreshed by the rain they had drunken from their shields and helmets, and cooled by their bath, now anew attacked, and, pouring upon their foe with fury, cut them to pieces. Among my soldiers at this time there was an old legion, organized in the time of Augustus, named the Fulminata, from the fact that they bore on their shields a thunderbolt; upon this simple fact was founded the story, repeated by many early writers in the Christian Church, that this legion was composed of Christians only, that the storm was a miraculous interposition of their God in answer to their prayer, and that they then received the name of Fulminata, in commemoration of this miracle. This is the simple truth of the case. My men said that Jupiter Pluvius came to their aid, and they sacrificed to him in gratitude; and on the column afterwards dedicated to me by the Senate in commemoration of my services, you will see the sculptured figure of Jupiter Pluvius, from whose beard, arms, and head the water is streaming to refresh my soldiers, while his thunderbolts are flashing against the barbarians.”

As he spoke these words, a flash of lightning, so intense as to blind the lamps, gleamed through the room, followed by a startling peal of thunder, which seemed to shake not only the house but the sky above us.

He smiled and said, “We should have said in older time that Jupiter affirmed the truth of my statement; but you are above such puerilities, I suppose.”

“Certainly I should not say it was a sign from Jupiter. The thunder was on the left, and that was considered by you a good omen, was it not?

‘Et cœli genitor de parte serena
Intonuit lævum.’”

“This thunder on the left was considered a good omen. But what was it you said after you asked the question? You seemed to be making a quotation in a strange tongue—at least a tongue I never heard.”

“That was Latin,” I answered, blushing a little, “and from Virgil—Virgilius, perhaps I ought to say, or perhaps Maro.”

“Ah! Latin, was it?” he said. “I beg your pardon; I thought it might have been a charm to avert the Evil Eye that you were uttering.”

“As difficult to understand as the Eleusinian mysteries,” I said. “And, by the way, what were the Eleusinian mysteries?”

“They were mysteries! I can merely say to you that they concealed under formal rites the worship of the spirit of nature, as symbolized in Demeter and Persephone and Dionysos. In their purest and hidden meaning, they represented the transformation, purification, and resurrection of humanity in a new form and in another existence. But I am not at liberty to say more than this. The outward rites were for the multitude, the inner meaning for the highest and most developed minds. Were it permitted to me to explain them to you, I think you would not take so low a view of our religious philosophy as you now seem to have. What you hear and read of was merely the outward and mystical drama, with its lustrations and fasting, and cakes of sesame and honey, and processions—as symbolical in its way as your mass and baptism, and having as pure a significance.

“But,” he continued, “to revert to the questions which we were previously discussing. It seems to me that in certain respects your faith is not even so satisfactory as ours; for its tendency is to degrade the present in view of the future, and to debase humanity in its own view. With us life was not considered disgraceful, nor man a mean and contemptible creature. We did not systematically humiliate ourselves and cringe before the divine powers, but strove to stand erect, and not to forget that we were made by God after his own image. We did not affect that false humility which in the view of the ancient philosophers was contemptible—nay, even we thought that the pride of humility was of all the most despicable. We sought to keep ourselves just, obedient to our best instincts, temperate and simple, looking upon life as a noble gift of the gods, to be used for noble purposes. We believed, beside this, that virtue should be practiced for itself, and not through any hope of reward or any fear of punishment here or hereafter. To act up to our highest idea of what was right was our principle, not out of terror or in the hope of conciliating God, but because it was right; and to look calmly on death, not as an evil, but as a step onward to another existence. To desire nothing too much; to hold one’s self equal to any fate; to keep one’s self in harmony with nature and with one’s own nature; calmly to endure what is inevitable, steadily to abstain from all that is wrong; to remember that there is no such thing as misfortune to the brave and wise, but only phantasms that falsely assume these shapes to shake the mind; that when what we wish does not happen, we should wish what does happen; that God hath given us courage, magnanimity, and fortitude, so that we may stand up against invasions of evil and bear misfortune,—such were our principles, and they enabled us to live heroic lives, vindicating the nobility of human nature, and not despising it as base and lost; believing in the justice of God and not in his caprice and enmity to any of us, and having no ignoble fear of the future.”

“But are not these principles for the most part ours?” I answered. “Do we not believe that virtue is the grand duty of man? Do none of us seek to live heroic lives, and sacrifice ourselves to do good to the world and to our brothers?”

“Certainly, you lead heroic lives; but your great principle is humility—your great motive, reward or fear. You profess to look on this life as mean and miserable, and on yourselves as creatures of the dust; and you declare that you have no claim to be saved from eternal damnation by leading a just life, but only by a capricious election hereafter. You profess that your God is a God of love, and you attribute to Him enmity and injustice of which you yourself would be ashamed. You think you are to be saved because Christ died on the cross for you, and you are not sure of it even then. But with us every one deserved to be tried on his own merits, and to expiate his own errors and crimes.”

“It is supposed by some that you were half a Christian yourself. Is this so?”

“If you mean that I reverenced the life and doctrines of Christ, and saw in Him a pure man, I certainly did. But in my principles I was a Stoic purely, and it is only as a philosopher that I admired the character of Christ. You think the principles He preached were new; they were really as old as the world, almost. His life was blameless, and He sacrificed his life for his principles; and for this I reverence Him, but no further. His followers, however, were far less pure and self-denying, and they sought power and endeavored to overthrow the state.”

“Was it for this you persecuted them?” I said.

“I did not persecute them,” he answered. “As Christians they were perfectly free in Rome. All religions were free, and all admitted. No one was interfered with merely for his religious belief and worship, whether it were that of Isis, of Mithras, of Jehovah, or of any other deity. It was only when the Christians endeavored to attain to power and provoke disturbance in the state, to abuse authority and set at defiance the laws, that it became necessary—or at all events was considered necessary—to stop them. When they were not content with worshiping according to their own creed, but aggressively denounced the popular worship as damnable, and sought to cast public contempt on all gods but their own, they outraged the public sense as much as if any one now should denounce Christ as a vagabond, and seek by abuse to overthrow your church by all sorts of blasphemous language. Nor would it matter in the least in your own time that any person so outraging decency should be absolutely honest in his intentions, and assured in his own mind of the truth of his own doctrines. Suppose one step further,—that any set of men should not only undertake to turn Christ into ridicule publicly, but should also abuse the government and conspire to overthrow the monarchy. You would then have a case similar to that of the Christians in my day. At all events, it was believed that it was a settled plan with them to overthrow the empire, and it was for this that they were, as you call it, persecuted. For my own part, I was sorry for it, deeming in such matters it was better to take no measures so severe; but I personally had nothing to do with it. It was the fanatical zeal of the government, who, acting without my commands, took advantage of ancient laws to punish the Christians; and this your own Tertullian will prove to you. They undoubtedly supposed that the Christians were endeavoring to create a political and social revolution,—that they were in fact Communists, as you would now call them, intent upon overthrowing the state. I confess that there was a good deal of color given to such a judgment by the conduct of the Christians. But as for myself, as I said, I was opposed to any movement against them, believing them all to be honest of purpose, though perhaps somewhat excited and fanatical.”

“Why did you think that they were Communists?” I asked. “Had you any sufficient grounds for such a belief?”

“Surely; the most ample grounds in the very teachings of Christ himself. His system was essentially communistic, and nothing else. His followers and disciples were all Communists; they all lived in common, had a common purse, and no one was allowed to own anything. They were ordered by Christ not to labor, but to live from day to day, and take no heed of the future, and lay up nothing, but to sell all they had, and live like the ravens. Christ himself denounced riches constantly—not the wrong use of riches, but the mere possession of them; and said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of heaven,—not a bad rich man, observe, but any rich man. So, too, his story of Lazarus and Dives turns on the same point. It does not appear that Lazarus was good, but only that he was poor; nor does it appear that Dives was bad, but only that he was rich; and when Dives in Hades prays for a drop of water, he is told that he had the good things in his lifetime, and Lazarus the evil things, and that therefore he is now tormented, and Lazarus is comforted.”

“But, surely,” I answered, “it was intended to mean that Dives had not used his riches properly?”

“Nothing is said of the kind, or even intimated; for all that appears, Dives may have been a good man, and Lazarus not. The only apparent virtue of Lazarus is, that he was a beggar; the only fault of Dives, that he was rich. Do you not remember, also, the rich young man who desired to become one of Christ’s followers, and asked what he should do to be saved? Christ told him that doing the commandments, and being virtuous and honest, was not enough; but that he must sell all that he had, and give it to the poor, and then he could follow Him, and not otherwise; and the rich good man was very sorrowful, and went away. What does all this mean but Communism? Yes; the system He would carry out was community of goods, and He would permit no one to have possessions of his own. This struck at the roots of all established law and rights of property, and naturally made his sect feared and hated among certain classes in Rome.”

“I am astonished,” I said, “to find that you have so carefully studied the records of the teachings and doctrines of Christ.”

“Is it not the duty of any man,” he answered, “especially of one in a responsible position, carefully to consider the arguments and doctrines of all who are sincere and earnest in their convictions, and, however averse they may be from our preconceived opinions, to weigh them, as far as possible, calmly, and without prejudice, and see what they really are and what truth there may be in them? and was not this peculiarly incumbent on me in the case of so noble and spiritual a teacher as Christ? Was it not my duty to endeavor, as far as in me lay, first to recognize the great principles of his teaching, and then in their light to examine and weigh his very words as far as they are authentically reported to us by his followers? It is this fixed notion, from which we cannot easily free ourselves, that we in our own views alone can be right, that shuts up the mind and encrusts our faith with superstitions. We at our best are merely men, subject to errors, short-sighted, fixed in prejudices, and seeing but a part of anything. No system of religion ever embraced all truth; no system is without gleams of it; all recognize a higher power above us and beyond our comprehension; and nothing is more unbecoming than to scorn what we have not even striven to understand, or to shut our ears and our minds to any doctrine or faith which is earnestly, seriously propounded and accepted by others. Unfortunately, it is this narrow-mindedness and arrogance of opinion which has always impeded the growth and development of truth. There is nothing so bitter as religious controversy,—nothing which has so petrified our intelligence or has begotten such crimes and such persecutions. Therefore it was that I deemed it my duty to study and endeavor to understand the doctrine and belief of all sincere minds, whether of those who worshiped Jehovah or Zeus, Mithras or Christ, and not to reject them as wicked or erroneous simply because they were averse from the faith in which I had been educated. Will you excuse me if I say that what amazes me in regard to the Christian faith is, that while it is claimed that Christ is God, and therefore to be implicitly obeyed in all his commands, so little intelligence is shown in studying those commands, and such willful perversion in avoiding them even when they are plainly enunciated; and again, that while claiming that love and forgiveness are the very corner-stone of your faith, you Christians none the less not only accept war and battle as arbitraments of right, but in the name of your great founder,—nay, of your very God,—have endeavored at times to enforce those doctrines by the most hideous of crimes, and by wholesale slaughter of those who differed from you in minor particulars of faith; and still more, do constantly even now exhibit such narrow-minded adherence to mere words and texts, without consideration of the great principles which underlie them and in the light of which surely they are to be interpreted. You are all Christians now, in Rome. You profess absolute faith in the teaching of Christ. You profess to consider his life as the great exemplar for all men. Do you follow it? Do you, for instance, think it in accordance with his teaching or his example to devote your lives selfishly to the laying up of riches for your own individual luxuries, to clothe yourselves in purple and fine linen, to make broad your phylacteries, or to use vain repetitions in your prayers as the heathen do, standing in the synagogues and at the corners of the streets, and to play the part of Dives while Lazarus is starving at your gates? Are you any better than we heathens, as you call us, in all this? Do you think Christ would have done thus, or smiled approval on all you do in his name? Ah! you say, it would be impossible for us strictly to carry out this system of Christ. It is beautiful, but ideal, and for us, in the present state of the world, absolutely impracticable. But have you ever tried it? Have you ever even sought to try it, and to hold a common purse for the interest of all?”

I had to bow my head, and admit that in that high sense we are not Christians. “But,” I said, “to follow exactly all these commands, to carry out all these doctrines, even to imitate his example as set before us in his life, would be to revolutionize the world.”

“But does not the world need revolutionizing,” he said, “according to your own principles?”

“We do what we can, at least we endeavor to do so, as far as we are able.”

“Are you sure even of that?” he replied. “Are you sure it is not mammon that you really worship, and not Christ? But I will say no more. You are but mortal men as we were; and man is fallible and weak, and our knowledge is but half-knowledge at best, and our love and faith have but feeble wings to lift us above the earth on which we dwell. Look upon us, therefore, as you would be looked upon yourselves, and be not too stern on our shortcomings. We had our vices and faults and deficiencies as you have yours, but we had also our virtues, and were on the whole as high of purpose, as self-sacrificing, as pure even as you; but man neither then nor now has led an ideal life.

“But to return to what we were saying about our treatment of Christians. Let me add in my own justification that I for myself never had any hand in persecutions, either of Christians or of others, nor was I ever aware that they were persecuted. I knew that persons who happened to be Christians were punished for political offenses; and that was all, I think, that happened. Believe me, my soul was averse from all such things, nor would I ever allow even my enemies to be persecuted, much less those who merely differed from me on moral and philosophical theses. Nay, I may say they differed little from me even on these points, as you may well see if you read my letters on the subject of the proper treatment of one’s enemies, written to Lucius Verus, or if you will refer to that little diary of mine in Pannonia, wherein I was not so base as to lie to myself.”

“Indeed,” I cried; “that book is a precious record of the purest and highest morality.”

“’Tis a poor thing,” he answered, “but sincere. I strove to act up to my best principles; but life is difficult, and man is not wise, and our opinions are often incorrect. Still, I strove to act according to my nature; to do the things which were fit for me, and not to be diverted from them by fear of any blame; to keep the divine part in me tranquil and content; and to look upon death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, as neither good nor evil in themselves, but only in the way in which we receive them. For fame I sought not; for what is fame but a smoke that vanishes, a river that runs dry, a lamp that soon is extinguished—a tale of a day, and scarcely even so much? Therefore, it benefits us not deeply to consider it, but to pass on through the little space assigned to us conformably to nature, and in content, and to leave it at last grateful for what we have received, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature which produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. So, also, it is our duty not to defile the divinity in our breast, but to follow it tranquilly and obediently as a god, saying nothing contrary to truth, and doing nothing contrary to justice. For our opinions are but running streams, flowing in various ways; but truth and justice are ever the same, and permanent, and our opinions break about them as the waves round a rock, while they stand firm forever. For every accident of life there is a corresponding virtue to exercise; and if we consult the divine within us, we know what it is. As we cannot avoid the inevitable, we should accept it without murmuring; for we cannot struggle against the gods without injuring ourselves. For the good we do to others, we have our immediate reward; for the evil that others do to us, if we cease to think of it, there is no evil to us. It is by accepting an offense, and entertaining it in our thoughts, that we increase it, and render ourselves unhappy, and veil our reason, and disturb our senses. As for our life, it should be given to proper objects, or it will not be decent in itself; for a man is the same in quality as the object that engages his thoughts. Our whole nature takes the color of our thoughts and actions. We should also be careful to keep ourselves from rash and premature judgments about men and things; for often a seeming wrong done to us is a wrong only through our misapprehension, and arising from our fault. And so, making life as honest as possible and calmly doing our duty in the present, as the hour and the act require, and not too curiously considering the future beyond us, standing ever erect, and believing that the gods are just, we may make our passage through this life no dishonor to the Power that placed us here. Throughout the early portion of my life, my father, Antoninus Pius,—I call him my father, for he was ever dear to me, and was like a father,—taught me to be laborious and assiduous, to be serene and just, to be sober and kind, to be brave and without envy or vanity; and on his death-bed, when he felt the shadow coming over him, he ordered the captain of the guard to transfer to me the golden statuette of Fortune, and gave him his last watchword of ‘Equanimity.’ From that day to the day when, in my turn, I left the cares of empire and of life, I ever kept that watchword in my heart—equanimity; nor do I know a better one for any man.”

“Oh, tell me, for you know,” I cried, “what is there behind this dark veil which we call death? You have told me of your opinions and thoughts and principles of life, here; but of that life hereafter you have not said a word. What is it?”

There was a blank silence. I looked up—the chair was empty! That noble figure was no longer there.

“Fool that I was!” I cried; “why did I discuss with him these narrow questions belonging to life and history, and leave that stupendous question unasked which torments us all, and of which he could have given the solution?”

I rose from my chair, and after walking up and down the room several minutes, with the influence of him who had left me still filling my being as a refined and delicate odor, I went to the window, pushed wide the curtains, and looked out upon the night. The clouds were broken, and through a rift of deep, intense blue, the moon was looking out on the earth. Far away, the heavy and ragged storm was hovering over the mountains, sullen and black, and I recalled the words of St. Paul to the Romans:—

“When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves;” and “the doers of the law shall be justified.”

---

DISTORTIONS OF THE ENGLISH STAGE AS INSTANCED IN “MACBETH.”

Art is art because it is not nature, is the motto of the Idealisti; Art is but the imitation of nature, say the Naturalisti. The truth lies between the two. Art is neither nature alone, nor can it do without nature. No imitation, however accurate, for imitation’s sake makes a good work of art in any other than a mechanical sense. And every work of art in which the objects represented are inaccurately or imperfectly imitated is in so far deficient. But art works by suggestion as well as by imitation. Whatever is untrue to the imagination fails to produce its proper effect, however true it be to the fact. The most absolute realism will not answer the higher demand of the imagination for ideal truth. Art is not simply the reproduction of nature, but nature as modified and colored by the spirit of the artist. It is a crystallization out of nature of all elements and facts related by affinity to the idea intended to be embodied. These solely it should eliminate and draw to itself, leaving the rest as unessential. A literal adherence to all the accidents of nature is not only not necessary in art, but may even be fatal. The enumeration of all the leaves in a tree does not reproduce a tree to the imagination, while a whole landscape may be compressed into a single verse.

Between the ideal and the natural school there is a perpetual struggle. Under the purely ideal treatment art becomes vague and insipid; under the purely natural treatment it becomes literal and prosaic. The Pre-Raphaelites, in protesting against weak sentimentalism and vague generalization, and demanding an honest study of nature, have fallen into the error of exaggerating the importance of minute detail, and, by insisting too strongly on literal truth, have sometimes lost sight of that ideal truth which is of higher worth. But their work was needed, and it has been bravely done. They have roused the age out of that dull conventionalism in which it had fallen asleep. They have stimulated thought, revivified sentiment, and reasserted with word and deed the necessity of nature as a true basis of art.

As in the arts of painting and sculpture, so in the drama and on the stage a strong reaction is taking place against the stilted conventionalism and elaborate artifice of the last generation. Such plays as the “Nina Sforza” of Mr. Troughton, the “Legend of Florence” of Mr. Leigh Hunt, and the “Blot in the ‘Scutcheon” and “Colombe’s Birthday” of Mr. Browning, are vigorous protests against the feeble pretensions and artificial tragedies of the previous century. The poems and plays of Mr. Browning breathe a new life; and if as yet they have only found “fit audience though few,” they are stimulating the best thought of this age, and slowly infusing a new life and spirit into it.

But the traditions of the stage are very strong in England, and are not easily to be rooted out. The English public has become accustomed to certain traditional and conventional modes of acting, which interfere with the freedom of the actor, and cramp his genius within artificial forms. There is almost no attempt on the English stage to represent life as it really is. Tradition and convention stand in the stead of nature. From the moment an actor puts his foot on the stage he is taught to mouth and declaim. He studies rather to make telling points than to give a consistent whole to the character he represents. His utterance and action are false and “stagey.” In quiet scenes he is pompous and stilted; in tragic scenes, ranting and violent. He never forgets his audience, but, standing before the footlights, constantly addresses himself to them as if they were personages in the play. Habit at last becomes a second nature; his taste becomes corrupted, and he ceases to strive to be simple and natural. There is, in a word, no defect against which Hamlet warns the actor which is not a characteristic feature of English acting. It never “holds the mirror up to nature,” but is always “overdone,” without “temperance,” full of mouthing, strutting, bellowing, and noise. It “tears a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.” And “there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, having neither the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor Turk, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably;” and this needs to be reformed altogether.

These words of Shakespeare show that even in his time the inflated, pompous, and artificial style still in vogue on the English stage was a national characteristic. We have scarcely improved, since old traditions cling and hold the stage in mortmain. Reform moves slowly everywhere in England; but the two institutions which oppose to it the most obstinate resistance are the church and the theatre. In both of these tradition stands for nearly as much as revelation. Each adheres to its old forms, as if they contained its true essence; each believes that those forms once broken, the whole spirit would be lost; just as if they were phials which contained a precious liquid, and must be therefore preserved at all costs. The idea that the liquid can be quite as well, and perhaps better, kept in different phials has never occurred to them. They will die for the phial.

Still it is plain that a strong reaction against this bigoted admiration of traditional and conventional forms is now perceptible. The facilities of travel and intercourse with other nations have engendered new notions and modified old ones. It is impossible to compare the French and Italian stage with the English, and not perceive the vast inferiority of the latter. In the one we see nature, simplicity, and life; in the other, the galvanism of artificial convention. It cannot be denied that the recent acting of Hamlet by Fechter was to the English mind a daring and doubtful innovation. It was something so utterly different in spirit and style from that to which we have been accustomed that it created a sensation; and while it found many ardent admirers, it found quite as many vehement opposers. The public ranged themselves in two parties; the one insisting that the traditional and artificial school, as represented by Garrick, the elder Kean, and Cooke, was the only safe guide for the tragic actor; and the other arguing that as the true function of the stage was to hold up the mirror to nature, acting should be as much like life and as little like acting as possible. The former, at the head of which were the friends of Mr. Charles Kean, made a public demonstration in his behalf, and scouted these newfangled French notions of acting. Was it to be supposed that any school of acting could be superior to that created and established in England by the genius of such actors as Garrick, the elder Kean, and Cooke? Should foreigners presume to teach us how to interpret and represent plays which had been the study of the English people for centuries? To this it was opposed that, however mortifying to us, it was a fact that the Germans had led the way to a profounder and more metaphysical study of Shakespeare, and had taught us in many ways how to understand his plays, and that therefore there was no reason why foreigners might not teach us how to act them. The very fact that their eyes were not blinded, nor their tongues tied by traditional conventions, enabled them to study Shakespeare with more freedom and directness. There was no deep rut of ancient usage out of which they were forced to wrench themselves. And, besides, it was affirmed, and with truth, that the English stage is the jeer of the world, and needs thorough reform.

We have indeed made little progress in reforming the stage. Mr. Charles Kean has devoted his talents to improving the wardrobe and scenery, and has so far done good service; but in the essential matter of acting we are nearly where we were in the past century. While the background and dresses are reformed, and the bag-wig in which Garrick played Hamlet is thrown aside, we have carefully preserved all the old points, all the stage-tricks, and all the stilted intonations of the artificial school; and the consequence is, that the sole reality is in that which is the least essential. The attention is thus withdrawn from the actor to the scenery, and we have a spectacle instead of a tragedy. The background is real, but the actor is conventional; the blanket has usurped the prominent place, and Shakespeare has retired behind it. The bursts of genius with which Garrick startled the house, and made the audience forget his bag-wig, are wanting, but all his tricks are preserved; the corpse is still there, but the spirit he put into it is gone.

In comedy there is as little resemblance to real life as in tragedy; humor and wit are travestied by buffoonery and grimace. Instead of pictures of life as it is, we have grotesque daubs and caricatures, so exaggerated and farcical in their character as to “make the judicious grieve.” The actor and the audience react upon each other. The audience are generally uneducated, and for the most part agree with Partridge in his comment on “Hamlet:” “Give me the king for my money,” says he. The actors must bow to this low taste,—

“For they who live to please must please to live.”

But tradition has worse sins to answer for. It has not only ruined our national acting, but in some cases has overshadowed the drama itself, and perverted the meaning of some of the greatest plays of Shakespeare. Hamlet is not Hamlet on the English stage; he is the tall, imposing figure of John Kemble; dark, melodramatic, and dressed in black velvet. Strive as we will, we cannot imagine him as the light-haired Dane, easy and dreamy of temperament, “fat and scant of breath,” essentially metaphysical, hating physical action, and wanting energy to put his thoughts into deeds. The whole spirit of the acted Hamlet is southern; that of the real Hamlet is purely northern. We have indeed broken through an old tradition, according to which, incredible as it may seem, Shylock used to be acted as a comic character, though we are still far from a real understanding of his character. But of all the plays of Shakespeare none is so grossly misunderstood as “Macbeth.” Nor is this misapprehension confined to the stage; it prevails even among those who have zealously studied and admired Shakespeare. As John Kemble stands for Hamlet in our imaginations, so does Mrs. Siddons for Lady Macbeth. She has completely transformed this wonderful creation of Shakespeare’s, distorted its true features, and so stamped upon it her own individuality, that when we think of one we have the figure of the other in our minds. The Lady Macbeth of Mrs. Siddons is the only Lady Macbeth we know and believe in. She is the imperious, wicked, cruel wife of Macbeth, urging on her weak and kindhearted husband to abominable crimes solely to gratify her own ambitious and evil nature. She is without heart, tenderness, or remorse. Devilish in character, violent in purpose, she is the soul of the whole play; the plotter and instigator of all its horrors; a fiend-like creature, who, having a complete mastery over Macbeth, works him to madness by her taunts, and relentlessly drives him on against his will to the commission of his terrible crimes. We hate her, as we pity Macbeth. He is weak of purpose, amiable of disposition, “full of the milk of human kindness,” an unwilling instrument of all her evil designs, who, wanting force of will and strength of character, yields reluctantly to her infernal temptations.

Nothing could more clearly prove the great genius of Mrs. Siddons, than that she has been able so to stamp upon the public mind this amazing misconception, that, despite all the careful study which of late years has been given to Shakespeare, this notion of the character of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth should still prevail. Yet so deeply is it rooted, and so universal, that whoever attempts to eradicate it will find his task most difficult. But, believing it to be an utter distortion of the characters as Shakespeare drew them, and so at variance with the interior thought, conduct, and development of the play as not only entirely to obscure its real meaning, but to obliterate all its finest and most delicate features, we venture to enter upon this difficult task.

Macbeth and his wife, so far from being the characters above described, are their direct opposites. He is the villain, who can never satiate himself with crimes. She, having committed one crime, dies of remorse. She is essentially a woman—acts suddenly and violently, and then breaks down, and wastes her life and thoughts in bitter repentance. He is, on the contrary, essentially a man—who resolves slowly and with calculation, but once determined and entered upon a course of action, obstinately pursues it to the end, haunted by no remorse for his crimes, and agitated by no regrets and doubts, so long as his wicked plans do not miscarry. The spring of his nature is ambition;[28] and in working out his ends he is cruel, pitiless, and bloody. He is without a single good trait of character; and from the beginning to the end of the play, at every step, he develops deeper abysses of cruelty and inhumanity in his nature. When he is first presented to us, we, in common with Lady Macbeth, are completely unaware of his baseness. He is a thorough hypocrite, and deceives us, as he deceived her. We see that he has a grasping ambition, but we believe that he is amiable and weak of purpose, for so Lady Macbeth tells us; but as the play goes on, his character develops itself, and at last we find that he has neither heart nor tenderness for anybody or anything; that his will is unconquerable; that he is utterly without moral sense, is hopelessly selfish, and wickedly cruel. All he loves is power. His ambition is insatiable. It grows by what it feeds on. The more he has, the more he desires, and he is ready to commit every kind of horror for the sake of attaining his object. He is restrained by no scruples of honor, by no claims of friendship, by no sensitiveness of conscience. He murders his sovereign, from whom he has just received large gifts and honors in his own house; and then instantly compasses the death of his nearest friend and guest, Banquo. Not content with this, he then seeks the life of Macduff; and, enraged because he has fled, savagely and in cold blood puts the whole of his family to the sword. There is a steady growth of evil in his character from the beginning to the end, or rather a steady development of his evil nature.

Malcolm and Macduff, who at first were his friends and companions, afterwards, when they had learned to “know” him, call him “treacherous” and “devilish.” So far from agreeing in the character given of him by Lady Macbeth, they say,—

“Macduff. Not in the legions
Of horrid hell can come a devil more damned
In evil to top Macbeth.

Malcolm. I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin
That has a name.”

Yet even they admit that

“This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,
Was once thought honest.”

As he had deceived the world, so he deceived his wife. His bloody and treacherous nature was at first as unknown to her as to his friends. As they thought him “honest,” she thought him amiable and infirm of purpose, greatly ambitious, and one who would “wrongly win,” but yet kindly of nature. Fiery temptations had not as yet brought out the secret writing of his character. It was with Macbeth as it was with Nero: their real natures did not exhibit themselves at first; but when once they began to develop, their growth was rapid and terrible. And in each of them there was a vein of madness. Essentially a hypocrite, and secretive by nature, Macbeth had passed for only a brave and stern soldier when he first makes his appearance. Yet even in his fierce Norwegian fight we see a violent and bloody spirit. In the very beginning of the play, one of his soldiers describes him, in his encounter with Macdonald, as one who,—

“Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like Valour’s minion,
Carved out his passage till he faced the slave;
And ne’er shook hands nor bade farewell to him
Till he unseamed him from the nape to the chaps,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.”

This is rather a grim picture, and scarcely corresponds to the character usually assigned to Macbeth. Here is not only no infirmity of purpose, but a stern, unwavering resolution, carving its way through all difficulties and against all opposition. Thus far, however, all his deeds had been loyal and for a lawful purpose. Still within his heart burnt, as he himself says, “black and deep desires,” and only circumstances and opportunities were needed to show that he could be as fierce and bloody in crime as he had shown himself in doing a soldier’s duty. They were already urging him in the very first scene; but, secretive of nature, he kept them out of sight.

“Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires;
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.”

Thus he cries to himself as he speeds to his wife. The “murder,” which was but an hour before “fantastical,” has now become a fixed resolve.

A nature like this, secretive, false, deceitful, and wicked, which had thus far satisfied itself in a legitimate way, and, having no temptation in his own house, had never shown its real shape there, would naturally not have been understood by his wife. Glimpses she might have of what he was, but not a thorough understanding of him. Blinded by her personal attachment to him, and herself essentially his opposite in character, as we shall see, she would naturally have misinterpreted him. The secretive nature is always a puzzle to the frank nature. Accustomed to go straight to her object, whether good or bad, she was completely deceived by his hypocritical and sentimental pretenses, and supposed his nature to be “full of the milk of human kindness.” But time also opened her eyes, though, perhaps, never, even to the last, did she fully comprehend him. “What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily,” she would never have said after the murder of the king. But however this may be, that her view of his character is false is proved by the whole play. When did he ever show an iota of kindness? What crime did his conscience or the desire to act “holily” ever prevent his committing? When did he ever exhibit any want of bloody determination? Infirm of purpose? He was like a tiger in his purposes and in his deeds. The murder of Duncan did not satisfy him. The next morning, he kills the two chamberlains, in cold blood, to gratify his wanton cruelty. It was impossible that they should testify against him—they had been drugged, and he could have had no fear of them. Then immediately he plots the murder of Banquo and Fleance, and all the while hypocritically conceals his foul purposes even from his wife; and because Macduff “failed his presence at the tyrant’s feast,” he determines also to murder him. Foiled of this, he then cruelly and hideously puts to the sword his wife and little children. In all these murders, after the king’s, Lady Macbeth not only takes no part, but she is even kept in ignorance of them. She drive him to the commission of his crimes? She does not know of them till they are done. They are plotted and determined upon in secret by Macbeth alone, and carried into execution with a bloody directness and suddenness. He is “bloody, false, deceitful, sudden,”—essentially a hypocrite, false in his pretenses, secret in his plotting, loud in his showy talk, but sudden and bloody in his crimes and in his malice.

Thus far, however, we have seen but one side of Macbeth. The other side was its opposite. Bold, ambitious, and treacherous, he was also equally imaginative and superstitious. In action he feared no man. Brave as he was cruel, and ready to meet anything in the flesh, he was equally visionary of head, a victim of superstitious fears, and a mere coward before the unreal fancies evoked by his imagination. He has the Scottish second-sight, and visions and phantoms shake his soul. Show him twenty armed men who seek his life, he encounters them with a fierce joy. Show him a white sheet on a pole, and tell him it is a ghost, and he trembles abjectly. He conjures up for himself phantoms that “unfix his hair and make his seated heart knock at his ribs;” he is distracted with “horrible imaginings.” His excited imagination always plays him false and fills him with momentary and superstitious fears; but these fears never ultimately control his action. They are fumes of the head, and being purely visionary, they are also temporary. They come in moments of excitement, obscure for a time his judgment, and influence his ideas; but having regard solely to things unreal, they vanish with the necessity of action.

These superstitious fears have nothing to do with conscience or morals. He has no morals; there is no indication of a moral sense in any single word of the whole play. The only passage which faintly indicates a sense of right and wrong is when he urges to himself, as reasons why he should not kill Duncan, not only that the king is his kinsman, his king, and his guest, but that he has borne his faculties so meekly, that his virtues would plead like angels trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation of his taking-off. This, however, is mere talk, and has reference only to the indignation which his murder will excite, not to any sorrow Macbeth has for the crime. His sole doubt is lest he may not succeed; for, as he says,—

“If the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,—
We’d jump the life to come.”

The idea of being restrained from committing this murder by any religious or moral scruples is very far from his thought. Right or wrong, good or bad, have nothing to do with the question; and as for the “life to come,” that is mere folly.

But while his moral sense is dead, his imagination is nervously alive. It engenders visions that terrify him: after the murder is done, he thinks he hears phantom-voices crying, “Sleep no more! Glamis hath murdered sleep; and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more;” and these voices so work upon his superstitious fears, that he is afraid for the moment to return to the chamber, and carry the daggers back and smear the grooms with blood. He is, as Lady Macbeth says, “brainsickly,” and “fears a painted devil.” This is superstition, not remorse—a momentary imaginative fear, not a permanent feeling. In a few minutes he has changed his dress, and calmly makes speeches as if nothing had occurred,—nay, this cold-blooded hypocrite is ready within the hour to commit two new and wanton murders on the chamberlains, and boastfully to refer them to his loyal spirit and loving heart, inflamed by horror at the hideous murder of the king, which he has himself committed.

The same superstitious fear attacks him when he hears that Birnam Wood is moving to Dunsinane Hill; but it does not prevent this creature, so “full of the milk of human kindness,” from striking the messenger, calling him “liar and slave,” and threatening,—

“If thou speak’st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive
Till famine cling thee.”

So, too, when Macduff tells him that he was “not of woman born,” awed for a moment by his superstitious fears, he cries,—

“Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow’d my better part of man!
... I’ll not fight with thee.”

At times, under the influence of an over-excitable imagination acting upon a nature thoroughly superstitious, his intellect wavers, and he is subject to sudden aberrations of mind resembling insanity. They are, however, evanescent, and in a moment he recovers his poise, descending through a poetical phase into his real and settled character of cruelty and wickedness. In the dagger-scene, where he is alone, these three phases are perfectly marked. The visionary dagger “proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain” soon vanishes, then follows the poetic mania, and then the stern resolution of murder. In the banquet-scene, when the ghost of Banquo rises, the poetic interval is less marked, for Macbeth is under the restraint of the company and under the influence of his wife; but scarce has the company gone when his real character returns. He is again forming new resolutions of blood. His mind reverts to Macduff, whose life he threatens. He is bent “to know, by the worst means, the worst;” “strange things I have in head, that will to hand.”

This aberration of mind Macbeth has in common with Lear, Hamlet, and Othello. But in Macbeth alone does it take a superstitious shape. The trance of Othello is but a momentary condition, in which his goaded imagination, acting upon an irritated sense of honor, love, and jealousy, obliterates for an instant the real world. Hamlet’s aberration, when it is not feigned, as for the most part it is, is but the “sore distraction” of a mind upon which the burden of a great action is fixed, which he is bound either to accept or to reject, but in regard to which he hesitates, not because he lacks decision of character, but solely because he cannot satisfy himself that he has sure grounds for action, and that he is not deceived as to the facts which are the motive of his action; once satisfied as to the grounds for action, he is decisive and prompt, as is clearly shown in the manner in which he disposes of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz on board the vessel, and in the instant slaying of the king himself, when the evidence of his infamy is clear. But while he is yet undecided and struggling with himself to solve this sad problem of the king’s guilt, he rejects all ideas of love as futile and impertinent, and, more than that, doubts whether Ophelia herself is not, unconsciously to herself, made a tool of by the king and queen. Lear, again, is “heart-struck.” His madness comes from wounded pride and affection. The ingratitude and cruelty of his daughters shake his mind, and to his excited spirit the very elements become his “pernicious daughters:” “I never gave you kingdoms, called you children.” In all except Macbeth, the nature thus driven to madness is noble in itself, moral in its character, and warm in its affections. The aberrations of Macbeth are superstitious, and have nothing to do with the morals or the affections.

Macbeth’s imagination is, however, a ruling characteristic of his nature. His brain is always active; and when it does not evoke phantoms, it indulges in fanciful and poetic images. He is a poet, and turns everything into poetry. His utterance is generally excited and high-flown, rarely simple and real, and almost never expresses his true feelings and thoughts. His heart remains cold while his head is on fire. On all occasions his first impulse is to poetize a little; and having done this, he goes about his work without regard to what he has said. His sayings are one thing; his doings are quite another. Shakespeare makes him rant intentionally, as if to show that in such a character the imagination can and does work entirely independently of real feelings and passions. There is no serious character in all Shakespeare’s plays who constantly rants and swells in his speech like Macbeth; and this is plainly to show the complete unreality of all his imaginative bursts. In this he differs from every other person in this play. Yet when he is really in earnest, and has some plain business in hand, he can be direct enough in his speech, as throughout the second interview with the weird sisters, and in the scene with the two murderers whom he sends to kill Banquo and Fleance; or when, enraged at the escape of Fleance, he forgets to be a hypocrite, and his real nature clearly expresses itself in direct words, full of savage resolve. But on all other occasions, when he is not in earnest and intends to deceive, or when his brain is excited, he indulges in sentimental speeches, violent figures of speech, extravagant personifications, and artificial tropes and conceits. Even in the phantom-voices he imagines crying to him over Duncan’s body, he cannot help this peculiarity. He curiously hunts out conceits to express sleep. He “murders sleep, the innocent sleep; sleep, that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.” No wonder that Lady Macbeth, amazed, cries out, “What do you mean?” But he cannot help going on like a mad poet. His language is full of alliteration, fanciful juxtaposition of words, assonance, and jingle. At times, so strong is this habit, he makes poems to himself, and for the moment half believes in them. Only compare, in this connection, the natural, simple pathos of the scene where Macduff hears of the barbarous murder of his wife and children, with the language of Macbeth, when the death of Lady Macbeth is announced to him. Macduff “pulls his hat upon his brows,” and gives vent to his agony in the simplest and most direct words. Here the feeling is deep and sincere:—

“All my pretty ones?
Did you say, all?—O hell-kite!—All?
What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
At one fell swoop?

Mal. Dispute it like a man.

Macd. I shall do so;
But I must also feel it like a man:
I cannot but remember such things were,
And were most precious to me.—Did heaven look on,
And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,
They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,
Not for their own demerits, but for mine,
Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now!

* * * * *

O, I could play the woman with my eyes.”

But when Macbeth is told of the death of his wife, he makes a little poem, full of alliterations and conceits. It is an answer to the question, What is life like? What can we say about it now?

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Enter a Messenger.

Thou com’st to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.”

Has this any relation to true feeling? Do men of any feeling, whose hearts are touched, fall to improvising poems like this, filled with fanciful images, when great sorrows come upon them? This speech is full of “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” There is no accent from the heart in it. It is elaborate, poetic, cold-blooded. “Life is a candle,” “a poor player,” “a walking shadow,” “a tale told by an idiot.” We have his customary alliterations: “petty pace,” “dusty death,” “day to day;” his love of repeating the same word, “to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,” just as we have “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly;” and his “Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep,—sleep, that knits up,” etc.; “Sleep no more! Glamis hath murdered sleep; and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more.” He cannot forget himself enough to cease to be ingenious in his phrases. As a poem this speech is striking; as an expression of feeling it is perfectly empty. At the end of it he has quite forgotten the death of his wife; he is only employed in piling up figure after figure to personify life. What renders the unreality of this still more striking is the sudden change which comes over him upon the entrance of the messenger. In an instant he stops short in his poem, and his tone becomes at once decided and harsh; his wife’s death has passed utterly out of his mind. When the messenger tells him that Birnam Wood is beginning to move, with a sudden burst of rage he turns upon him, calls him liar and slave, and threatens to hang him alive till famine cling him, if his report prove to be incorrect. This is the real Macbeth. From this time forward he never alludes to Lady Macbeth; but, in a strange condition of superstitious fear and soldierly courage, he calls his men to arms, and goes out crying,—

“Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we’ll die with harness on our back.”

And this throughout is the character of Macbeth’s utterances. He is not like Tartuffe, a religious hypocrite; he is a poetical and sentimental hypocrite. His phrases and figures of speech have no root in his real life; they are only veneered upon them. “His words fly up, his thoughts remain below.” When he is poetical he is never in earnest. Sometimes his speeches are merely oratorical, and made from habit and for effect; sometimes they are hypocritical, and used to conceal his real intentions; and sometimes they are the expression of an inflamed and diseased imagination stimulated by superstition. But they are generally bombastic and swelling in tone, and are so intended to be. His habit of making speeches and inventing curious conceits is so strong, that he even “unpacks his heart with words” when alone, so as to leave himself free and direct to act. Thus, in one of his famous soliloquies, mark the unreal quality of all the pretended feeling, the mixture of immorality, bombast, and hypocrisy, the assonances and alliterations, the plays upon words, the extravagant figures, all showing the excitability of the brain and not of the heart:—

“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly. If th’ assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,—
We’d jump the life to come.”

Then, after some questions about killing his guest, his kinsman, his king, which would seem honest, but for what comes after and for the utter reckless immorality which has gone before these words, his imagination excites itself, and runs into a wild and extravagant figure which means nothing. Duncan’s virtues, he says,—

“Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against
The deep damnation of his taking-off.”

No sooner does he begin to swell and alliterate again than he goes wild:—

“And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.”

This is pure rant, and intended to be so. It is the product of an unrestrained imagination which exhausts itself in the utterance. But it neither comes from the heart nor acts upon the heart.

Again, in the soliloquy of the air-drawn dagger, the superstitious, visionary Macbeth, who always projects his fancies into figures and phantoms, after addressing this

“false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain,”

falls at once into poetic declamation about the night, and indulges himself in strange images and personifications. A man about to commit a murder who invents these conceits must be a poetical villain:—

“Now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings; and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.”

Can anything be more extraordinary and elaborate than this pressing of one conceit upon another? Wither’d murder has a sentinel, the wolf, who howls his watch, and who with stealthy pace strides with Tarquin’s ravishing strides like a ghost! Shakespeare makes no other character systematically talk like this.

But the fumes of the brain pass, and leave the stern, determined man of action:—

“Whiles I threat, he lives;
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.”

We have no such rant as this in Lady Macbeth. In the scenes of the murder, she does not befool herself with visions and poetry. She is practical, and her attention is given solely to the real facts about her. Contrast the simple language in which she speaks, while waiting for Macbeth, with his previous rhodomontade. Agitated, in great emotion, listening for sounds, doubting whether some mischance may not have befallen to prevent the murder, she speaks in short, broken sentences; but she does not liken her husband to Tarquin, and say now is the time when “witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate’s offerings,” nor employ this interval in making a poem full of conceits.

Macbeth goes in to the king, and commits the murder; no scruples of any kind prevent him. But when that is secure, he has a superstitious fit, and imagines phantom-voices, that talk as no phantoms ever did before. Still he is a coward in the presence of phantoms, and will not go back. The deed has been done, and ghosts alarm him.

But, as has been before observed, all this raving as usual passes by at once. In a half-hour he is as cold and calm as ever. The phantom-voices did not reach his conscience, and awakened no remorse. They were the children of superstition and imagination, and they vanished with cockcrow and daylight, leaving no trace behind in his memory. They have not altered his mood nor his plans.

We now come to consider Lady Macbeth’s character. At all points she was her husband’s opposite, or rather his complement. Where he was strong, she was weak; where he was weak, she was strong. He was poetical and visionary of nature; she was plain and practical. He was indirect, false, secretive; she, on the contrary, was vehement and impulsive. Between what she willed and what she did was a straight line. She was troubled by none of his superstitious fears or visions. Her imagination was feeble and inactive, her character was energetic; she saw only the object immediately before her, and she went to it with rapidity and directness of purpose. She was skillful in management and ready in contrivance, as women are apt to be; while Macbeth was wanting in both these qualities, as men generally are. For herself she seems to have had no ambition, and not personally to have coveted the position of queen. Her ambition is but the reflection of Macbeth’s, and her great crime was wrought in furtherance of his suggestions and promptings. Mistaking entirely his character at first, proud of his success for his sake, and rightly reading him so far as to see that his ambition, which was insatiable, grasped at the throne, she lent herself to the murder of Duncan, in the belief that a throne once obtained, Macbeth’s ambition would be satisfied. Her moral sense was inactive, and not sufficient to lead her to oppose his project. It was not, as we shall see, utterly wanting in her, as in Macbeth. She seems to have been warmly attached to Macbeth, and always, after the murder is committed, she endeavors to soothe and tranquillize him with gentle and affectionate words. But she could not understand his superstitious hesitations when once resolved on action. His poetry and his imaginative flights, as well as his visions, were to her incomprehensible, and she made the natural mistake of supposing him to be infirm of purpose. Her mind was one of management and detail. The determination and suggestion of the murder are his; the management and detail of it are hers. This is a master-stroke of Shakespeare’s, by which he at once distinguishes the masculine from the feminine nature. Man is quick to propose and suggest a plan in its general scope; woman is always superior in adjusting the details by which it may be carried into execution. Lady Macbeth’s nature was not wicked in itself; it was susceptible of deep feeling and remorse. But her moral sense was sluggish, while her impulses were sudden and vehement; and as such women generally are, she was irritably impatient of the postponement of any project already decided upon. She had a strong will, and gave expression to it in an exaggerated way:—

“I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.”

This is but a vehement, passionate, and exaggerated way of saying that if she had sworn to herself to do anything, however shocking, as deliberately and determinedly as Macbeth had to commit this murder, she would do it in spite of consequences, and not like him be “afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire.” She does not mean, nor did Shakespeare mean, that so hideous an act would be possible for her either to plan or to commit; but to prove her contempt of that condition of mind when “I dare not” waits upon “I would,” she seizes on the most horrible and repulsive act that she can imagine, and declares energetically that, shocking as that is, she would not hesitate to do even that, had she so sworn to do it as Macbeth had. Yet this wild and violent figure of speech is generally taken as the key of her whole character. It is nothing of the sort; for the very line preceding it proves that she had a tenderness of nature under all her energy, and a power of love as well as of will:—

“I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.”

Well, despite that tenderness and love, which you, Macbeth, know I have, I would have done what is so contrary to all my nature, had I so sworn as you. Throughout this scene her sole object is to urge upon Macbeth, as vehemently as she can, the folly of dallying and hesitating to carry out a project which he alone had conceived, suggested, and determined, merely for fear of consequences and lest it should do him injury in the eyes of the world. He never feels nor suggests any moral objection; he does not pretend to feel it. His sole fear is lest he may not succeed; he only doubts whether it would not be better to postpone the execution of his project until a more fitting time. His decisions are less rapid than hers. She must at once act on the first strength of her resolve. She is impetuous, and would spring upon her prey at once. He, knowing that his fell purpose will only strengthen with meditation, and doubting whether the time has come to secure his object, proposes to postpone its execution. But there is no time for this. There are but a few hours in which all must be accomplished, and he is not ready with the detail. But to this proposal of postponement she says “No.” She knows that he never will rest till it is accomplished. Neither time nor place adhered when you “broke this enterprise to me,” she says; and now, when both “have made themselves,” execute your design, and no longer let “I dare not wait upon I would.” To this he feebly opposes, “If we should fail,” failure being the only thing that troubles him. She then suggests the plan in detail by which the murder can be effected; and he cries out, in a burst of admiration and delight,—

“Bring forth men-children only,
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.”

Still, when the time approaches, Lady Macbeth needs all her courage, and she stimulates it with wine, lest it should break down:—

“That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.”

She preserves her courage, however, to the end, never loses her self-possession, and takes care that the plan is carried out fully in all its details. But that accomplished, she utterly breaks down. She has over-calculated her strength; she was not utterly wicked, and her remorses are terrible. From this time forward we have no such scenes between her and her husband; he performs all his other murders alone, without her connivance or knowledge.

And here the main feature of this play must be kept in mind. Lady Macbeth dies of remorse for this her crime; she cannot forget it; it haunts her in her sleep; the damned spot cannot be washed from her conscience or her hand. What a fearful cry of remorse and agony is that of hers in her dream!—

“Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand! Oh! oh! oh!”

There is no poetizing here, no sentimental and figurative personifications; it is the cry of a wounded heart and conscience. It is written too in prose, not in verse. It is real, and not fantastic like the rant and poetry of Macbeth. That terrible night remains with her, and haunts her and tears her like a demon, and at last she dies of it.

How is it with Macbeth? Does the memory of that night torture him? Never for a moment. He plots new murders. He has tasted blood, and cannot live without it. On, on he goes, deeper and deeper into blood, till he is slain; and never, to the last, one cry of conscience.

Yet it is thought that Lady Macbeth urged on this amiable man, so infirm of purpose, so filled with the milk of human kindness, and was the mainspring of his crimes. Suffice it to say, in answer to this view, that after Duncan is killed he keeps her in complete ignorance of all he does, and his murders are thenceforward more terrible and pitiless, and with no faint shadow of excuse or apology. This cold-hearted villain stops at nothing; even her death does not awaken a throb in his heart. Is it not preposterous to suppose that the so-called fiend of the play, she who instigates and drives an unwilling victim to crime, should die of remorse for that crime; while the amiable accomplice, far from sharing any such feeling, only plunges deeper into crime when she does not instigate him, and develops at every step an increasing brutality and savageness of nature?

No; it is not the tall, dark, commanding, and imperious figure of Mrs. Siddons, with threatening brow and inflated nostrils, that represents Lady Macbeth; she is not at all of such character or features. She is of rather a delicate organization, of medium height, her hair inclining to red, her temperament nervous and sanguine, with a florid complexion and little hands. So was Lucrezia Borgia; and so was Lady Macbeth. She was personally fair and attractive. Can any one imagine Macbeth calling a dark, towering, imperious woman like Mrs. Siddons his “dearest love,” “dear wife,” or his “dearest chuck”?

But it is commonly thought that the murder of Duncan was suggested by Lady Macbeth, and that her husband was urged into it against his will and contrary to his nature. Such a view is utterly in contradiction of the play itself. The suggestion is entirely Macbeth’s, and he has resolved upon it before he sees her. The witches are a projection of his own desires and superstitions. They meet him at the commencement of the play, prophesying, in response to his own desires, that he is thane of Cawdor, and shall be king hereafter; but they respond also to his fears, by adding that Banquo’s children shall be kings. Those are the very points upon which all his thoughts hinge—his ambition to be king, his fears lest the throne shall pass from his family. Hence his hate of Banquo and Fleance. From this time forward he thinks of nothing else. As he rides across the heath, he is self-involved, abstracted, silent, sullen, revolving in his mind how to compass his designs, which are nothing less than the murder of the king. He does not dream that the prophecies of the weird women will accomplish themselves without his assistance, for they are projections of his own thoughts. He instantly receives news that he is made thane of Cawdor, and scarcely gives a thought to this honor, scarcely expresses his satisfaction; when the news is announced he says,—

“Glamis, and thane of Cawdor:
The greatest is behind.—Thanks for your pains.”

And then immediately his mind reverts to the promise that Banquo’s children shall be kings:—

“Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to me
Promis’d no less to them?”

Then he falls again into gloomy silence, and talks to himself inwardly. What does he say and think? He resolves to murder the king:—

“This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I’m thane of Cawdor.
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings;
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smother’d in surmise; and nothing is
But what is not.”

Yes, already he dreams of murder. He sees not his way clear; he will trust to chance; but he dreams of murder. And full of these thoughts, he rushes to his wife to fill her mind with his project, to consult her as to how it can be carried into execution; for he cannot plan in detail; and though the thought crosses him, that

“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,
Without my stir,”

yet this is but a hope; for in the next scene he has determined to take the matter into his own hands and trust nothing to chance. As soon as he hears that Malcolm is made Prince of Cumberland and heir to the throne, he determines absolutely to kill the king:—

“The Prince of Cumberland!—That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires;
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.”

He has already written to Lady Macbeth; and his letter has but one thought and one theme,—the promise that he shall be king. Much as she fears his nature, she knows thoroughly his desires, and has faint glimpses of his real character; she knows that he means to be king, and sees that he would “wrongly win;” that his ambition is great, and that his mind is filled solely with one idea. But she fears that he is “too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way;” and when she hears that Duncan is coming to the castle, and that Macbeth is hurrying to see her before the king’s arrival, she doubts his plan no longer. For a moment she is aghast. “Thou’rt mad to say it,” she says to the messenger who announces the king’s approach; for she sees that he comes to his death:—

“The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.”

He has been lured here by Macbeth to compass his destruction; and in a moment Macbeth will be with her. Then, summoning up all her courage at once, she resolves to aid him in his ambitious and murderous design. She calls upon the “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts” to unsex her, to alter her nature, to make her cruel and remorseless, to let nothing intervene to shake her purpose; for she is not quite sure of herself. She knows what “compunctious visitings of nature” are, and she strengthens herself against them. She is not naturally cruel; and she cries out to the spirits to “stop up the access and passage to remorse” now open in her nature, to change her “milk for gall,” and to cover her with “the dunnest smoke of hell,” so that her

“keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold.”

In this tremendous apostrophe, in which she goads herself on to crime, the woman’s nature is plainly seen. Macbeth never prays to have his nature altered, to have any passages to remorse closed up; never fears “compunctious visitings of nature,” nor desires darkness to hide his knife, so that he may not see the wound he makes. But she knows she is a woman, and that she needs to be unsexed, and feels that she is doing violence to her own nature; still her will is strong, and she cries down her misgivings, and resolves to aid Macbeth in his design.

Macbeth meets her in this mood. There is no salutation or greeting on his part; he has but one idea,—Duncan is coming, and is to be murdered. His first words are,—

“My dearest love,
Duncan comes here to-night.”

Whereupon she asks, “And when goes hence?” “To-morrow,” he answers, and pauses; and adds, “as he purposes.” But in the look and in the pause Lady Macbeth has read his whole sold and intent. There is murder in that look; and she cries:—

“O, never
Shall sun that morrow see!
Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters.”

There is no explanation between them. He has conveyed all his intention by a look and a gesture, as she herself distinctly says. He has ridden headlong, as fast as horse could carry him, away from the king, full of this one idea; and the king has vainly “coursed him at the heels,” having the purpose, as he himself says, “to be his purveyor.” And his thoughts have spoken in his looks so unmistakably, that they are perfectly understood. If there be any doubt by whom the murder was suggested, it is made perfectly clear by what Lady Macbeth subsequently says to him in the next scene in which they are presented. When he begins to doubt whether the murder had not better be postponed, she says:—

“What beast was’t, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?”

It was not of my plotting, but of your own; “Nor time, nor place, did then adhere, and yet you would make both;” you desired it and still desire it, but are afraid of consequences. These words of hers would indeed seem to indicate that he had urged the crime upon her against her will at a previous interview not reported in the play, or perhaps by a letter; for she says distinctly, that when he broke the enterprise to her,—

“Nor time, nor place,
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves.”

It would plainly seem, therefore, that Macbeth had broken this enterprise to her, and urged it on her, even before the king had determined to come to his castle, and that he intended to make time and place. This would account completely for her opening speech, and for the fact that he does not make any explanation to her of his intentions other than by his look and intonation when they first meet; for certainly there is nothing in the play about the time and place of the murder except as herein indicated. It would also explain the surprise of Lady Macbeth when she hears that her husband is coming, and the king after him: “Thou’rt mad to say it,” she says; and “the raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.” The time and place had made themselves, then; and it is on hearing this that she suddenly changes from calm to vehement emotion, and makes that wonderful apostrophe to the spirits to unsex her. She sees that all has been resolved, and that she has need of her utmost resolution.

There is no warrant of any kind that, in the simple words, “And when goes hence,” she meant more than she said. It was the most natural question that she could possibly ask. Granting that she intended equally with him to commit the murder, what is more natural than that she should wish to know how long the king was to stay, so as to know how soon it was necessary to carry out the plan of murder, and what time there was in which to make all the arrangements? Not only Macbeth pauses after saying “To-morrow” (so, at least, is the punctuation in all editions), before adding “as he purposes,” but Lady Macbeth, in her answer, says that she sees in his face that he intends that “never shall sun that morrow see.” Yet, in the recitation of these parts on the stage, and as generally read, the meaning is given to Lady Macbeth’s simple words; and Macbeth is made perfectly innocently to answer without showing in his look any “strange matter.” But the king is coming close on his heels; there is no time to arrange details; and Macbeth goes away to receive him, saying, “We will speak further.”

The characters, as exhibited in the next scenes, have been already sufficiently discussed. He shows his superstitions, his visions, his poetry, and his hesitations; she, with the stern determination of a woman who has screwed her courage to the sticking-place, is agitated by no visions, but, feeling the necessity of immediate action, she occupies herself in the arrangements of details, and thus dulls her conscience.

After all the excitements which have agitated Macbeth—after his soliloquy, in which he says there is no spur to prick the sides of his intent, but only vaulting ambition; but if he were sure of success, he would jump the life to come—there comes a moment when he either has or pretends to have a hesitation about proceeding further in “this business.” He does not hesitate for conscience’ sake, but because, being ambitious, he now would like to wear the golden opinions he has won, “in their newest gloss,” and not cast them aside so soon, before he has had the satisfaction of being wondered at and admired a little longer. He had gained praise and high position, and his vanity was gratified. He naturally would pause before committing a hideous murder. But he never pretends that this feeling comes from any moral sense. His mind has been too long strained with one thought; and, as in all men of excitable brain, there comes a moment of reaction. He cannot see his way clear. He fears the effect of his crime. He does not see how it can be done so that he may avoid suspicion, and attain the object beyond the murder and for which he commits it, without running too great risks, and thus exposing himself to the vengeance of the king’s friends. He fears that his “bloody instructions” may “return to plague the inventor”—not hereafter, but “here.” But what most troubles him is, that he cannot see the practical way, cannot arrange the details so as to secure a chance of avoiding suspicion. Here his wife comes to his aid. She has thought out a plan and arranged the details. She sternly opposes his proposal to abandon his design, for she knows that his hesitation is only for a moment, and that nothing less than to be king can ever satisfy him. Better, then, do the deed at once. His only opposition after this is, “If we should fail?” But as soon as he sees the feasibility of her plan, all his scruples are gone; he is more than convinced, he is delighted, and enters upon it with a joy which he does not pretend to conceal.

During all these scenes, up to the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is laboring under an excitement of mind which sustains her in carrying out the design of her husband. The time is purposely made very short—only a few hours between the arrival of Duncan and his death—so that she may not break down. All is hurry and movement, and arrangement of detail. There is no time for reaction. The very necessity for immediate action serves as an irritant to the nerves, and strains all her thoughts and feelings to an unnatural pitch. Still, when the murder is on the point of being done, she keeps up her courage by drink; for the strain is almost too great. In this excited state her inflamed will has got completely the command of her; and to have it all over, and not caring about the dreadful design longer, she says that had Duncan “not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it.” But though she can talk of dashing out the brains of her babe while it was smiling in her face, she was not, even in this excitement, able to strike Duncan, because she thought he looked like her father. Her woman’s hand would have failed her had she attempted it. But all her powers are bound up in this one design. She has come to a violent determination, and this she will carry out, come what may. She thrusts aside all compunction of conscience, and makes such a noise by action in her brain, that its still small voice cannot be heard.

Macbeth, on the contrary, is of a colder and more brutal nature. His determination is sullen, and it lies like an immovable rock on which the flames of his imagination burn like momentary fires of straw, and over which his superstitious visions pass like clouds or fogs, and then clear away, leaving the rock unchanged. Just before he commits the murder, Banquo comes in and tells him that the king

“hath been in unusual pleasure, and
Sent forth great largess to your offices.
This diamond he greets your wife withal,
By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up
In measureless content.”

But this does not touch Macbeth, nor induce a moment’s hesitation. Banquo then speaks of the three weird sisters, and says, “To you they have show’d some truth;” and Macbeth answers falsely:—

“I think not of them;
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
We’d spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.”

Thus, cold and collected, he bids him “Good repose,” sends off the servant, and waits for the bell to ring, which is the sign that all is ready for him to murder Duncan. In this interval we have his three characteristic features brought out one after the other: the cloudy vision of the air-drawn dagger; then the straw-fire of his poetry about Hecate and withered murder’s sentinel, the wolf, and Tarquin’s ravishing strides; and, as these clear off, the stern, sullen resolution underneath—“Whiles I threat he lives;” “I go, and it is done.”

When the murder is done, the two are equally distinct in character,—she energetic and practical, he visionary and superstitious; and so they part.

Thus far, be it observed, Lady Macbeth has supposed her husband to be merely “infirm of purpose;” but the next scene is to open her eyes to a glimpse of his real character.

Macbeth has become perfectly calm and cold again in a few minutes, and makes his appearance immediately after the knocking. He is completely master of himself, offers to conduct Macduff to the king, and when Macduff says he knows it will be a “joyful trouble” to him, answers like a proverb, calmly, “The labor we delight in physics pain.” The king is then found dead, and the noise brings Lady Macbeth from her room. What a difference is now visible in the way in which she and he speak and act! When Macduff says, “Our royal master’s murdered!” she cries out, “Woe! alas! what, in our house?” and says not a word more. Macbeth, however, who is only afraid of shadows, but who, with the daylight, has no fear of looking at dead bodies, or adding one or two more with his sword, goes to the room of Duncan, and then reappears, without the faintest shadow of feeling, and makes a little hypocritical poem on the event:—

“Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There’s nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.”

“What is amiss?” says Donalbain. And Macbeth cries, “You are, and do not know’t. The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood is stopp’d; the very source of it is stopp’d.”

This is Macbeth’s rant and fustian. He has no feeling, and, as usual, he makes the pretense of poetry serve him. The head, the spring, the fountain, the source is stopped, is stopped.

And this stuff he recites coolly, although he has but a moment before wantonly killed the two grooms; nay, he does not mention it until afterwards, on their being spoken of by Lenox, when this hypocritical villain cries:—

“O, yet I do repent me of my fury,
That I did kill them.

Macd. Wherefore did you so?

Macb. Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
The expedition of my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason.—Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood;
And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature,
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep’d in the colors of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech’d with gore: who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make’s love known?”

During this amazing speech, in which he poetizes so elaborately, and with such curious artifice coldly paints the picture of the man and friend he had just murdered, Lady Macbeth has been looking and listening in silence. Suddenly, for the first time, she sees what her husband really is; she sees that he has neither heart nor conscience; for no man possessing either could have acted or talked as he has since the murder of Duncan. So far from having any feeling of shame or remorse, he, without provocation, wantonly, and with no sufficient object, has added two other murders to it; and, with a cold-blooded artificial hypocrisy, he paints in his stilted way the scene of Duncan’s death, and has command enough of himself to seek out elaborate and high-flown phrases. But Lady Macbeth, whose courage, stimulated by excitement, has carried her through the murder, now suddenly breaks down. This new revelation of her husband’s character, and the ghastly picture which he summons up before her of the scene of the murder, are too much for her. She swoons, loses all consciousness, and is carried out. In her violent excitement, while there was something practical to busy her mind and her body with, she could carry back the daggers and smear the grooms with blood; but she could not bear the vivid remembrance of it when there was nothing to do, and when the excitement was over: as women will go through extreme dangers, stand at the surgeon’s table during terrible operations, be great and strong in a great crisis, and then suddenly faint and fall when the work is over, unable to bear the remembrance of what they have gone through.

This swooning of Lady Macbeth is the crisis of her nature. From this time forward she is no more what she has appeared; we hear no more urging of Macbeth to strengthen his throne by other crimes; no more taunts by her that he is infirm of purpose; no more allusions to his amiable weaknesses of character. She has begun to know him and to fear him. She only endeavors to tranquilize him and content him with what he has got. But still she does not know him; for his nature, before hidden, like secret writing, comes out little by little before the fire of his heated ambition and superstitious fears.

At this swooning-point the two characters of Lady Macbeth and her husband cross each other. She has thus far only made the running for Macbeth, and he now takes up the race and passes her; she not only does not follow, but withdraws. Henceforth he rushes to his goal alone; alone he arranges the death of Banquo and Fleance.

When next they meet she is no longer the same person we have known; she feels the gnawing tooth of remorse; she is calmed and cowed by what she has done:—

“Nought’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
’Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.”

And as Macbeth enters she endeavors to tranquilize his mind. She has his confidence no longer; he avoids her, and keeps alone after the murder of the king. She, not yet aware of the abysses of his nature, and little imagining that he has been plotting the murder of Banquo, supposes that the secret of his perturbations, of the solitude he now seeks, and of his avoidance of her, is the remorse that he begins to feel, and says as he enters:—

“How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what’s done is done.”

His answer shows it is no remorse which is haunting him; his sorry fancies are new plots of murder:

“We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it;”

and we are still “in danger of her former tooth.”

“But let
The frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly: better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further!”

Here is one of those cases where he uses his poetry as a cloak to his real thoughts. Yet despite his hypocrisy, which takes in his wife, his real meaning is clear. He would rather die than to go on in this fear: rather be like Duncan, whom they have at all events “sent to peace,” and whom nothing can “touch further,” than on “the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.” What is this “fear”? what is this “torture of the mind”? Is it, as Lady Macbeth supposes, from remorse? Oh, no! he tells us himself what it is; it is solely because Banquo and Fleance are alive:—

“O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
Thou know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.”

This it is that tortures him, and this only.

“But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne,”

says she; meaning, as she has throughout this scene, solely to console him and draw his thoughts away. They may die; a thousand accidents may happen to them; you may outlive them; don’t torture yourself with vain fears. “There’s comfort yet,” he cries, “they are assailable;” and now, after his old fashion, he breaks into poetry:

“Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown
His cloister’d flight; ere, to black Hecate’s summons,
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.”

“What’s to be done?” she cries; for having completely misunderstood him through all the previous part of this interview, she completely fails to see what he now means. But he has no longer confidence in her; and so, with caressing words, and probably with some caressing act, he answers her:

“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed.”

How could she suspect his real meaning? This murdering hypocrite had just told her that Banquo was coming to the feast that night, and bade her be jovial, and said to her,—

“Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;
Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue.”

And this he proposes to her after having just left the murderers whom he has hired to waylay and kill Banquo, and entertaining no real doubt in his mind that Banquo will never reach the supper—certainly never reach it unless his plot miscarries. Well might she “marvel at his words.” What follows is full of poetry and wickedness; but it is plain that he was a mystery to her now, a riddle which she could not read.

The banquet-scene now comes, and Macbeth, believing that he has secured the death of Banquo and Fleance, is happy, until the murderers come in and tell him that Fleance has escaped. This upsets him:—

“Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air:
Now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.”

So he poetizes his condition, for superstitious fears always inflame his imagination; but he cannot regain his composure; his “fit” is on him, as it “hath been from his youth.” He conjures up the phantom of Banquo to threaten him and his throne, and this ghost shakes him with superstitious terror. Lady Macbeth, to whom it is invisible, rouses herself at this; and not only not comprehending these starts and flaws of fear, but having a contempt for him, endeavors to recall him to himself by sharp words; but it is useless, his fit will not leave him, and the company is dismissed in confusion. When the guests have gone, Lady Macbeth’s spirit and courage, which were momentary, have fled. She does not taunt him, but soothes him. He, as soon as he recovers himself, begins with Macduff, whom he also means to murder:—

“Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,
Which must be acted, ere they may be scann’d.”

To this she only says, not imagining his meaning,

“You lack the season of all natures, sleep.”

Henceforward Lady Macbeth disappears; we hear nothing of her save in the terrible sleep-walking scene; she is dying of remorse. But Macbeth goes to the weird sisters, to learn whether “Banquo’s issue shall ever reign in this kingdom.” They answer, “Seek to know no more:” and he cries out, “I will be satisfied; deny me this, and an eternal curse fall on you.” And when they show him the issue of Banquo, kings, he is enraged beyond control, and curses them. Henceforth for him no hesitations, no delays. He speaks directly enough now.

“From this moment
The firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand. And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise;
Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o’ th’ sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;
This deed I’ll do before this purpose cool:
But no more sights!”

And no more sights he has; but he is still haunted by fears. And when “the English power is near, led on by Malcolm, his uncle Siward, and the good Macduff,” burning for revenge, Macbeth’s spirit falters. He rushes into violent rages and then subsides into vague fears, and then endeavors to strengthen his heart by recalling the mysterious promises of the weird sisters that he shall not fall by the hand of any man of woman born, or before Birnam wood come to Dunsinane; but, do all he can, “he cannot buckle his distempered cause within the belt of rule,” though he declares,—

“The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
Shall never sag with doubt, nor shake with fear.”

Still he does fear; and in one of his dispirited moods, after blazing out at the messenger who tells him of the approach of Birnam wood,—

“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!
Where got’st thou that goose look?”

he says, finding that there are ten thousand men coming to attack him, and his followers are not stanch,—

“This push
Will chair me ever, or disseat me now.
I have liv’d long enough: my way of life
Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny.”

But in a moment he is himself again, and cries:—

“I’ll fight till from my bones the flesh be hack’d.
Give me my armor.”

In this mood the illness and death of the queen is nothing to him; he fights bravely to the end; though, superstitious to the last, his “better part of man” is cowed by the knowledge that Macduff “was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” and so not of woman born.

And so, by the sword of Macduff, perishes the worst villain, save Iago, that Shakespeare ever drew.

We have called the witches the projections of Macbeth’s evil thoughts, and suggested that they were only objective representations of his inward being. To this it may be objected that they were seen also by Banquo. But this may well be; for Banquo also seems to have had evil intentions, which are vaguely hinted at in the play. He constantly harps on the idea that his children are to be kings. Approaching the castle of Inverness at night, before the murder of the king, he says,—

“Hold, take my sword....
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers!
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!—Give me my sword.”

Meeting then Macbeth, he gives him the diamond sent by the king to Lady Macbeth; and after speaking of Duncan’s “measureless content,” he says,—

“I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:
To you they have show’d some truth.”

At which Macbeth proposes an interview, to

“Spend it in some words upon that business.”

To which he readily consents.

The “cursed thoughts,” then, are connected with his dreams about the weird sisters.

At his next appearance the same thoughts agitate him in Macbeth’s palace at Fores. His first words are—in soliloquy—

“Thou hast it now, king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promis’d; and, I fear,
Thou play’dst most foully for’t: yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity,
But that myself should be the root and father
Of many kings. If there come truth from them
(As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine),
Why, by the verities on thee made good,
May they not be my oracles as well,
And set me up in hope? But, hush! no more.”

When it is recollected that, after the scene on the heath with the soldiers, these are nearly all the words we have from Banquo, it seems to be pretty clearly indicated that his thoughts at least were not perfectly honest and what they should have been.

The weird sisters are but outward personifications of the evil thoughts conceived and fermenting in the brains of Banquo and Macbeth; both high in station, both generals in the king’s army, both friends, and both nourishing evil wishes. They are visible only to these two friends; and though they are represented as having an outer existence independent of them, they are, metaphysically speaking, but embodiments of the hidden thoughts and desires of Banquo and Macbeth; as such they are a new and terrible creation, differing from the vulgar flesh-and-blood witches of Middleton. They look not like the inhabitants of the earth; they vanish into thin air; wild, vague, mysterious, they come and go, like devilish thoughts that tempt us, and take shape before us, as if they had come from the other world. The devils that haunt us and tempt us come out of ourselves, like the weird sisters of Macbeth.

---

INDEX.

• Actors, in England, [234–239].
• Adam, figure of, by Michel Angelo, [26].
• Adriani, Giovanni Battista, letter of, to Vasari, [140].
• Æschines, statement by, regarding Miltiades, [129], note.
• Æschylus and Euripides, [30];
• quotation from, [206].
• Agasias the Ephesian, [109].
• Agathenor, [94].
• Ageledas, teacher of Polyclitus, [88].
• Agoracrites, [66], [67], [70];
• and Alcamenes, [71];
• and Phidias, [72];
• statue of Nemesis, at Rhamnus, by, [70], [91].
• Ajax, the antique, [6].
• Alberti, Leon Battista, [3], [8].
• Alcamenes, [55];
• the Venus of the Gardens, by, [68], [90];
• and Agoracritos, [71];
• and Phidias, [72], [96];
• high distinction of, as an artist, [90];
• works in the Temple of Zeus, [93].
• Alcimus Avitus, quotation from his De Origine Mundi, [127].
• Alexander, taming Bucephalus, statue of, at Rome, [77], [78];
• praises Apelles and Lysippus, [131].
• Alfieri, [8].
• Ammonius, [108].
• Anacreon, quotations from, [144].
• “Ancora imparo,” a motto used by Michel Angelo in old age, [13].
• Androsthenes, [88], [92].
• Angelo, Michel, [4–7];
• everything in Florence recalls, [8];
• his house, [8], [9];
• birth, [9];
• death, [10];
• early studies, [10];
• early efforts as a sculptor, [10];
• his Cupid and Bacchus, [10];
• his Pietà, [11], [20];
• colossal figure of David, [11], [20];
• Sistine Chapel, [11];
• the Moses, [11], [20];
• Medici Chapel, [11];
• Pauline Chapel, [11];
• the Last Judgment, [11];
• sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, and poet, [11], [43];
• erection of St. Peter’s, [11];
• his circumstances and characteristics, [12];
• always learning, [13];
• his later poetry, [13];
• his power as a sculptor, [13], [20], [39];
• his great works in the Medicean Chapel, [13–21];
• meaning of his statues of Day, Night, Aurora, and Crepuscule, [16–18];
• quatrain by, [17];
• influence of Savonarola and Dante on, [17];
• his works bad models for imitation [20];
• figure of Christ by, in the Church of the Minerva, [20];
• his struggles against ill-health and overwork, [20], [21];
• his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, [21–29];
• Bramante’s jealousy of, [21], [22], [24];
• Pope Julius II. strikes him with a cane, [25];
• his extraordinary rapidity in working, [25], [26];
• greater as a painter than as a sculptor, [26];
• of heroic spirit, [29];
• fragments of letters by, [30], [36];
• Rafaelle and, [30–33], [35];
• anecdote of, [32];
• personal characteristics of, [33], [34];
• and Vittoria Colonna, [34];
• extract from a sonnet by, [34];
• Dante the favorite poet of, [35];
• Savonarola the friend of, [35];
• originality of, [35];
• devotion to his family, [36];
• generosity of, [36], [37];
• violent temper of, [33], [37];
• patience of, [37];
• difficulties under which he labored, [37], [38];
• described by Vigenero, [38];
• the impatience of his genius, [39];
• appointed architect of St. Peter’s when sixty years old, [39];
• Palazzo Farnese, the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, and the Laurentian Library, designed by, [41];
• not responsible for St. Peter’s as it now stands, [42];
• poetry of, [42], [43];
• trained in all the arts, [43];
• the greatest monuments of his artistic power, [44];
• enduring kingdom of, [48];
• popular errors about, [49], [50], [69];
• compared with Phidias, [79], [80].
• Antenor, the first maker of iconic statues, [129].
• Antoninus Pius, [230].
• Apelles, and Alexander, [131];
• praised by Nicephorus Chumnus, [132];
• price paid for one of his portraits of Alexander, [132];
• portraits of Campaspe and Phryne by, [132];
• story about, by Pliny, [132].
• Aphrodite Urania, chryselephantine statue of, by Phidias, [53], [58].
• Apollo, the Temple of, at Phigaleia, [53].
• Apollodorus, [182].
• Apollonius, [109].
• Appian hymn, the, [206].
• Arcesilaus, sketches by, [135];
• price received by, for a drinking-cup, [170];
• for a statue of Fabatus, [170], [176].
• Aretino, [3], [8].
• Arezzo, discoveries at, [178].
• Arezzo, Guido di, [4].
• Argos, the Temple of Juno at, [53].
• Ariosto, [3];
• Dante and, [30];
• lively spirit of, [42].
• Aristotle, distinction drawn by, between Phidias and Polyclitus, [99–102].
• Arrian, cited, [66], [70].
• Art, deathblow of pagan, [1];
• Christianity and, [1];
• and religion, [2], [4], [208];
• the golden age of Italian, [4];
• spirit of Greek and Roman, [19];
• ancient works of, difficulty of determining authorship of, [69];
• the toreutic, [100];
• the productions of, always show the true spirit of religion among any people, [208];
• and nature, [232], [233].
• Artemisia and Mausolus, [132].
• Arts, all, aid each other, [43].
• Athena Areia, statue of, by Phidias, [53], [58];
• its height, [62];
• described, [65].
• Athena Lemnia, statue of, by Phidias, [62];
• beauty of, [65].
• Athena of the Parthenon, chryselephantine statue, by Phidias, [50–68], [82], [83], [97], [98], [111], [209], [210].
• Athena Promachos, the, cast from spoils taken at Marathon, [59];
• its height, [62], [64].
• Athenagoras, cited, [66], [70].
• Aulus Gellius, definition of “facies” by, [121].
• Aurelius, Marcus, the Meditations of, [190–193], [228];
• how the Meditations were written, [191];
• no book of ancient literature higher and purer, [192];
• his dust, [192];
• a conversation with, [193–230];
• Jesus of Nazareth reverenced by, [199];
• supposed ideas of God held by, [199–202];
• cannot understand modern pronunciation of Latin, [217];
• purely a Stoic, [220];
• did not persecute Christians, [220];
• letters of, on the proper treatment of one’s enemies, [228].
• Aurora, figure of, by Michel Angelo, [14–21].
• Ausonius, cited, [68].
• Baldi Chapel, the, [7].
• Bargello, the, [6].
• Bartolommeo, Fra, [31].
• Baruch, cited, [150].
• Batrachus, [107].
• Beethoven and Mozart, [30].
• Bembo, [4].
• Berlinghi, family of the, [10].
• Bibbiena, [3].
• Biblical history, in Michel Angelo’s frescoes, [28], [29].
• Boccaccio, [3].
• Boiardo, [3].
• Borgia, Lucrezia, [264].
• Bostick and Riley, translation of Pliny by, [135].
• Bramante, instigates Pope Julius II. to summon Michel Angelo to Rome, [21];
• jealous of Michel Angelo’s fame, [22];
• tries to induce the Pope to discharge Michel Angelo, [24].
• Brass-casting, decline of the art of, [170].
• Brick, printed on by the ancient Romans, [167].
• British Museum, so-called plaster casts in, [164], [165].
• Bronze statues, the method of the ancients in casting, [142].
• Browning, Robert, [233].
• Browning and Tennyson, [30].
• Brunelleschi, [5], [6], [8], [40];
• designs Church of San Lorenzo, [13].
• Brunn, Dr., cited, [59], [60];
• on Pliny’s Natural History, [120], [137–139].
• Bryaxis, [68].
• Buggiardini, [21].
• Buonomini, Michel Angelo’s father one of the twelve, [10].
• Byzantine tradition, [4].
• Callicrates, and the Parthenon, [51], [52].
• Callimachus, nicknamed, [130];
• drill supposed to have been invented by, [171].
• Cambronne, [74].
• Campaspe, portrait of, by Apelles, [132].
• Canossa, the Counts of, [10].
• Canova, opinion of, as to the use of proportional compasses by ancient sculptors, [171].
• Caprese, birthplace of Michel Angelo, [9].
• Carmine, Church of the, [7].
• Carpion and the Parthenon, [51].
• Carrara, Michel Angelo at, [37].
• Casting, from life or from the round, difficulties of, [159], [160];
• distinction between, and modeling, [155], [161].
• Casting in plaster, alleged practice of, among the Greeks and Romans, [115–189];
• introduced by Verrocchio, [188].
• Casts, plaster, not found in ancient houses or tombs, [157], [158], [176], [177].
• Cato, book published by, [167].
• Catulus, [67].
• Cellini, the Renaissance Perseus of, [6];
• accomplished in many arts, [43].
• Ceres, the Temple of, at Eleusis, [52], [53].
• Chalcosthenes, executed works in baked earth, [148].
• Changes, only gradual, do real good, [197].
• Christ, and Communism, [222], [223];
• example of, not always followed by Christians, [226].
• Christianity and Art, [1].
• Christians, not persecuted by Marcus Aurelius, but punished as Communists, [220–222];
• attitude of, toward the government, [221], [227];
• theory and practice of, [225], [226].
• Cicero, Demosthenes and, [30];
• on the meaning of vultus, [121];
• quoted, [125], [134], [141], [149], [152].
• Cimabue, [4].
• Clay, not a material for casting, [134];
• why used by the ancients instead of gypsum, [158], [159].
• Clemens Alexandrinus, cited, [68].
• Colonna, Vittoria, and Michel Angelo, [34].
• Columbus, [4].
• Communists, the early followers of Christ were, [222].
• Compasses, proportional, used by ancient sculptors, [171], [172].
• Condivi, doubtful assertion of, [25].
• Cooke, a safe guide for the tragic actor, [236].
• Copies, exact, not made by ancient sculptors, [174–176].
• Corœbus, begins the Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, [52].
• Creed, every religious, should be living, [196].
• Crepuscule, figure of, by Michel Angelo, [14–21].
• Ctesilaus, [67], [97];
• compared with Phidias, [96].
• Cydon, competition of, with Phidias, [97], [98].
• Cymon, [67].
• Cyrenaicn, the, fragments of figures from, [164], [165].
• Dædalus, statue to Hercules by, [182], [186].
• Dallaway, cited, [109].
• Damophilus, [117], [146].
• Daniel, Michel Angelo’s figure of, [27].
• Dante, [3], [5], [6], [8];
• his influence on Michel Angelo, [17];
• and Ariosto, [30];
• the favorite poet of Michel Angelo, [35].
• David, Michel Angelo’s statue of, [8], [11].
• Day, Michel Angelo’s colossal figure of, [14–21].
• Deity, figure of the, by Michel Angelo, [27].
• Delacroix and Ary Scheffer, [30].
• Delphi, group of statues at, [59], [60], [62], [64], [121].
• Demetrius, on the work of Phidias, [81];
• introduces the realistic school of portraiture, [130].
• Demosthenes and Cicero, [30].
• Devils, the, that haunt and tempt us, come out of ourselves, [286].
• D’Hancarville, cited, [109].
• Dibutades of Sicyon, [137–139].
• Diocletian, ruins of the Baths of, [41].
• Diodotos, [70].
• Dion Chrysostomos, on the style of Phidias, [81].
• Dionysius of Colophon, [132].
• Dionysius of Halicarnassus, on the art of Phidias, [81], [102];
• on the works of Polyclitus, [89].
• Dives and Lazarus, [223].
• Dolls, ancient, [166].
• Drama, reaction in the, against conventionalism, [233].
• Drill, the, supposed to have been invented by Callimachus, [171].
• Dryads, [1].
• Dust of the dead, [192].
• Duty, the, of considering adverse doctrines, [224], [225].
• Ectypa of baked clay, [156].
• Eleusinian mysteries, meaning of the, [217], [218].
• Eleusis, the Temple of Initiation at, [52];
• the Temple of Ceres at, [52].
• Elgin marbles, the, [49–114].
• Elis, work of Phidias at, [53], [54].
• Elpinice, portrait of, by Polygnotua, [132].
• Epicurus, the face of, carried about by the Romans, [150].
• Equanimity, the last watchword given by Antoninus Pius, [230].
• Erechtheum, the, [94].
• Esaias, Michel Angelo’s figure of, [27].
• Euphranor, [73].
• Euripides, Æschylus and, [30];
• on the immensity of God, [206].
• Ezekiel, Michel Angelo’s figure of, [27].
• Fables of the ancients, the mythical garb of great truths, [211], [212];
• true to the imagination, not to the reason, [212].
• Facts, but dead husks, [212].
• Faith, death of, [196];
• easily degenerates into superstition, [204];
• of the ancients compared with ours, [218–220].
• Fame, what is, [228].
• Fechter, as Hamlet, [236].
• Fedi, [6].
• Ficino, Marsilio, [3].
• Firmicus, story by, about Zagreus, [101].
• Florence, the city of the Renaissance, [5];
• ungrateful, [7];
• Dante and, [8].
• Fol, Mr., the collection of, in Rome, [156], [168].
• Forcellinus, cited, [120], [122], [123].
• Forms, of little consequence, compared to essences, [195].
• Formulas check growth in the spirit, [195];
• but are useful, as trunks in which we pack our goods, [195].
• Fornarina, the, [31], [34].
• Francis I. and Leonardo da Vinci, [74].
• Fresco-painting, source of the term, [25].
• Fronto, De differentiis Vocabulorum of, [122], note.
• Galatea, the, of Raffaelle, [32].
• Galileo, [4], [8].
• Garrick, [236–238].
• Germans, as students of Shakespeare, [237].
• Ghiberti, [6], [8], [43].
• Ghirlandajo, Michel Angelo’s early master, [10], [22].
• Giorgione, [4].
• Giotto, [4];
• the campanile of, [6];
• frescoes of, [7];
• accomplished in many arts, [43].
• Glycon, [109].
• God, tendency to humanize and degrade, [198];
• the justice of, [200];
• supposed ideas of, held by Marcus Aurelius, [199–202];
• man cannot comprehend, [203];
• yet man makes, [203];
• Christian and pagan conceptions of, compared, [199–208];
• representations of, in art, inferior to pagan works, [208].
• Gods, images of, in early Greece, with clothes and false hair, [152];
• the ancient, but anthropomorphic symbols, [210].
• Gonsalvi, Cardinal, and Michel Angelo, [13].
• Good, real, done only by gradual changes, [197].
• Gorgasus, [117], [146].
• Gorgias, [88].
• Greek and Roman art, the spirit of, [19].
• Greek sculptors not accustomed to put their names on statues, [107].
• Guarini, [3].
• Guelphs end Ghibellines, [3].
• Guicciardini, [8].
• Gypsum, not used by the ancients in casting, [157–159], [169];
• Pliny on, [169].
• Hamlet, the warnings of, needed by English actors, [234], [235];
• not Hamlet on the English stage, [238];
• mental aberration of, compared with that of Macbeth, [249], [250].
• Hegias, [88].
• Hermitage, Museum of the, [163].
• Hercules, statue of, by Dædalus, [182], [186].
• Hesychius, cited, [70], [103].
• History, who knows, [214];
• must be interpreted by imagination, [214].
• Homer, and Virgil, [30];
• relief in the British Museum, representing the deification of, [109].
• Honesty of intention, not enough, [221].
• Horace, quotation from, [126].
• Horse-Tamer, the, statue of, ascribed to Phidias, [67], [70–79].
• Hugo, Victor, and Lamartine, [30].
• Hunt, Leigh, [233].
• Iasos, [94].
• Iconic statues, first made by Antenor, [129].
• Ictinus, works of, [113].
• Idealisti, motto of the, [232].
• Images, draped with real stuffs by the Greeks and Romans, [152];
• false hair on, [152].
• Imagination in art, [232];
• may work independently of real feelings, [251].
• Inevitable, the, should be accepted without murmuring, [229].
• Isis, [221].
• Isocrates, quoted, [66].
• Italy, the land of the Renaissance, [5].
• Jehovah, the, of the Jews, development of, [205].
• Jeremiah, figure of, by Michel Angelo, [27].
• Jesus, reverenced by Marcus Aurelius, [199], [220].
• John of Bologna, the Rape of the Sabines by, [6].
• Julian, statement by, about Phidias, [84].
• Julius II., Pope, and Michel Angelo, [21–25];
• strikes Michel Angelo with a cane, [25].
• Juno, the Temple of, at Argos, [53].
• Jupiter, the true philosophic idea of, [204–207].
• Jupiter Pluvius, [216].
• Kalamis, [88];
• works of, [93];
• compared with Phidias, [96].
• Kallimachus, [88].
• Kallon, [88].
• Kean, Charles, [236], [237].
• Kean, the elder, [236].
• Kemble, John, as Hamlet, [238], [239].
• Kertch, excavations at, [163];
• so-called casts from, in the British Museum, [164], [165].
• Kleoitas, [88].
• Knight, Richard Payne, opinion of, on the Elgin marbles, [99].
• Kolotes, an assistant of Phidias, [55];
• statue of Athena attributed to, by Pliny, [66], [70], [91].
• Lacon, [88].
• Lactantius, [206].
• Lamartine, Victor Hugo and, [30].
• Lanzi, [8].
• Laocoön, the, [19].
• Latin, modern pronunciation of, unintelligible to Marcus Aurelius, [217].
• Laurentian Library, the, [42].
• Lazarus, and Dives, [223].
• Lear, the aberration of mind of, different from that of Macbeth, [249], [250].
• Leo X., Pope, [13], [14].
• Leochares, statues by, [130].
• Leonardo, [43];
• competition of, with Michel Angelo, [22];
• story about his death, [74].
• Libeccio, the howling, [190].
• Libon, [113].
• Lippi, [7].
• Loclos, [94].
• Lomazzo, statement by, about Leonardo’s death, [74].
• Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, [14].
• Lorenzo the Magnificent, [3];
• favors Michel Angelo, [10].
• Lucan, lofty idea of God expressed by, [207].
• Lucian, cited, [65], [67];
• his ideal image of the most beautiful woman, [96];
• comment by, on Demetrius, [130];
• the “Tragic Jupiter” of, citations from, [181–185];
• the “Somnium, seu Gallus,” of, quoted, [187].
• Lysias, cited, [101], note.
• Lysippus, statue of Opportunity by, [68];
• varies the canon of proportion, [73];
• gives a new impulse to the school of portraiture, [131];
• praised by Nicephorus Chumnus, [132].
• Lysistratus, and the art of casting in plaster, [116], [117], [139], [141], [143], [145];
• and the practice of portraiture, [131];
• probable use of color by, [154].
• Macbeth, the true character of, [239–285];
• not understood by Lady Macbeth till after the murder of Duncan, [241], [242], [244], [277];
• Shakespeare’s worst villain, save Iago, [284].
• Macbeth, Lady, the real, [230–241], [251–282].
• Macchiavelli, [3], [8].
• Maderno, Carlo, St. Peter’s injured by, [42].
• Madonna di San Sisto, the, [32].
• Mai, Cardinal, [122], note.
• Mammon, worshiped, [227].
• Man, inferior to woman in adjusting details, [259].
• Marathon, the use made of spoils taken from the Medes at, [59].
• Marbles, the Elgin and Phigaleian, work on, in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, [99], [110].
• Masaccio, [7].
• Mausolus, statue of, [131].
• Medicean Chapel, the, [9], [11];
• great works of Michel Angelo in, [13–21], [39].
• Medici, real mausoleum of the, [9];
• burial chapel of the, [44–48];
• coffins of the, neglected and robbed, [45–47];
• sad lesson of their fate, [48].
• Medici, Giuliano dei, mausoleum to, [14].
• Melzi, cited, [74].
• Metagenes, and the Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, [52].
• Metoscopi, a story about, [132].
• Middle Ages, the, [2].
• Middleton, the witches of, different from Shakespeare’s weird sisters, [285], [286].
• Miltiades, portrait statue of, at Delphi, [129].
• Minerva, Church of the, [20].
• Mini, Antonio, [21].
• Mini, Giovanni Battista, letter by, [21].
• Mirandola, Pico della, [3].
• Mithras, [221], [225].
• Mnesicles, [52].
• Molière and Racine, [30].
• Moses, statue of, by Michel Angelo, [39].
• Mount Mithridates, excavations at, [163].
• Mozart, Beethoven and, [30].
• Müller, cited, [59], [101], note, [185].
• Music, development of, [4].
• Myron, [88];
• great skill of, [89], [90];
• inscription on his Discobolos, [108].
• Mys, carving by, [64].
• Myths, enchanting, [212].
• Naiads, [1].
• Narrow-mindedness, development of truth impeded by, [225].
• Naturalisti, motto of the, [232].
• Nature and art, [232].
• Nemesis, statue of, at Rhamnus, [67], [70], [71];
• inscription on, [109].
• Nero, [77], [79];
• like Macbeth, [243].
• Nestocles, [88].
• Nicephorus Chumnus, Apelles and Lysippus praised by, [132].
• Nicias, statues colored by, [153].
• Night, Michel Angelo’s colossal figure of, [14–21].
• Odeum, the, [52], [53].
• Olympia, the Temple of Zeus at, [53], [54].
• Opinion, arrogance of, development of truth impeded by, [225].
• Opinions but running streams, [229].
• Orcagna, the Loggia of, [6].
• Oreads, [1].
• Orpheus, as the Good Shepherd, [1].
• Othello, the trance of, unlike Macbeth’s aberration of mind, [249], [250].
• Ovid, quoted, [122], [151].
• Pæonios, [55], [88];
• works of, [92], [93].
• Pagan religion and pagan art, [1].
• Painting, and sculpture, [1];
• substances used by the ancients in, [145].
• Palazzo Farnese, the, [41].
• Pan, [1].
• Pantarces, a victor in the Olympian games, [129].
• Parrhasius, [64];
• paints portrait of himself, [132].
• Parthenon, the, sculptures in, [49], [50], [52–55];
• builders of, [51], [52];
• built between 444 and 438 B. C., [54];
• the extant fragments of, not in the style of Phidias, [84–86];
• probably executed by various hands, [94].
• Pasiteles, [135].
• Pauline Chapel, the, [11].
• Pausanias, statements by, [59], [64–71], [75], [91];
• the marble statues ascribed to Phidias by, [105–107];
• on the invention of casting in bronze, [137].
• Pelichus, statue of, by Demetrius, [130].
• Pensiero, Il, [18].
• Pericles, appoints Phidias director of public works in Athens, [49], [51];
• directs the building of the Odeum, [52];
• said by Strabo to have been director of public works, [52];
• sole administrator of public affairs, [53];
• likeness of, by Phidias, [60], [129].
• Perkins, Charles C., his “Du Moulage en Plâtre chez les Anciens,” [115] ff.;
• confounds modeling and casting, [162].
• Perugino, [31].
• Peruzzi Chapel, the, [7].
• Petrarca, [3], [42];
• admired by Michel Angelo, [35].
• Petronius, cited, [90].
• Phædrus, quoted, [108].
• Phidias, [19];
• painter and architect, as well as sculptor, [43];
• and the Elgin marbles, [49–114];
• appointed director of public works by Pericles, [49];
• his chryselephantine statue of Athena, [50–68], [82], [83], [97], [98], [111];
• doubtful if he ever made statues in marble, [51], [98–113];
• testimony of Plutarch, [51], [52];
• of Strabo, [52];
• impossible for him to have done all the work that is attributed to him, [53–58], [63], [68];
• a slow and elaborate worker, [55];
• disadvantages of, [56], [57];
• date of his birth, [58–62];
• likeness of, by himself, [60], [129];
• works ascribed to, [62–68];
• incredible stories about, [71–73];
• peculiarly celebrated for his statues of Athena, [75];
• the Horse-Tamer, not the work of, [76–79];
• compared with Michel Angelo, [80];
• his style, [80], [81];
• elaboration of his great works, [81–84], [86];
• the Cellini of Athens, [84];
• introduces the art of making statues in ivory and gold, [87];
• estimation of, among his contemporaries, [96];
• Propertius and Quinctilian on, [98];
• appellation applied to, by Aristotle, [99–102];
• skill of, in the toreutic art, [101];
• marble statues ascribed to, by Pausanias, [105–107];
• prosecuted for impiety, [129].
• Phigaleia, the Temple of Apollo at, [53].
• Photias, [72].
• Phradmon, [67];
• competes with Phidias, [97].
• Phryne, portrait of, by Apelles, [132].
• Phyromachos, [94].
• Piece-moulds apparently not used by the ancient Greeks and Romans, [156], [157], [176], [178].
• Pindar, quotation from, [206].
• Pius VIII., monument of, by Tenerani, [61].
• Plaster, the art of casting in, among the Greeks and Romans, [115–189].
• Platæa, [53], [59].
• Plautus, quoted, [121], [135].
• Pliny, cited, [65–68], [70], [71], [76], [89], [90];
• story by, about Phidias, Polyclitus, Ctesilaus, Cydon, and Phradmon, [97], [98];
• statements by, about Phidias, [103], [104];
• quotation from his Natural History, [116];
• meaning of the quotation considered, [117] ff.;
• the Natural History characterized, [118], [119];
• stories by, about Apelles and Parrhasius, [132], [133];
• Bostick and Riley’s translation of, [135];
• his use of the term “cera,” [144];
• chapter on “Plastices,” in the Natural History, [146–150];
• chapter on the honor attached to portraits, [150], [151].
• Plutarch, statements by, about Pericles and Phidias, [51], [52], [56], [57];
• quoted, [66].
• Plyntheria, the colossal Athena’s gold drapery washed at, [152].
• Poliziano, Angelo, teacher of Michel Angelo, [3], [10].
• Polybius, referred to, [146], note.
• Polyclitus, [67];
• his canon of proportion, [73];
• his works, [88], [89];
• compared with Phidias, [96], [97], [101];
• price received by, for his Doryphoros, [176].
• Polygnotus, the “Rape of Cassandra” by, [132].
• Polyxines, [6].
• Pompeii, works of art found in, [177].
• Pomponius Mela, cited, [70].
• Popes, the, and Michel Angelo, [12].
• Portrait statues, erection of, in public, seldom allowed by the Greeks, [129].
• Portraiture, in its true sense, the beginning of, [130];
• development of, by Lysippus and Lysistratus, [131];
• earliest specimen of, by a great painter, [132];
• use of, by the Romans, [150].
• Possis, excellent work of, [148].
• Praxias, [88], [92], [94], [95].
• Praxiteles, statue of Alexander taming Bucephalus, ascribed to, [77], [78];
• praised by Lucian, [96];
• and Nicias, [153];
• price offered by Athens for the Venus of, [175].
• Pre-Raphaelites, error of the, [233].
• Printing, among the ancient Romans, [167].
• Propertius, quoted, [98].
• Propylæa, [53].
• Pulci, the three, [3].
• Pythagoras, [88].
• Quinctilian, quoted, [98], [125];
• criticises Demetrius, [130].
• Quincy, M. Quatremere de, on chryselephantine statues, [100].
• Quirinal Hill, statue of the Horse-Tamer on the, [67], [76].
• Racine, Molière and, [30].
• Raffaelle, [4], [8];
• and the Sistine Chapel, [24];
• and Michel Angelo, [30–33], [35];
• character and style of, [31];
• his finest work, [32];
• his early death, [32];
• characterized by contemporaries, [33];
• and the Fornarina, [31], [34];
• accomplished in many arts, [43].
• Ravenna, Dante’s grave at, [8].
• Reform, slow movement of, in England, [235].
• Rehoboam, group by Michel Angelo, [29].
• Religion, and art, hand in hand, [208];
• no system of, ever embraced all truth, [224].
• Religious controversy, nothing so bitter as, [225].
• Religious ideas, each age has its, [196].
• Renaissance, the, [3–5].
• Revolutionizing the world, [227].
• Rhamnus, statue of Nemesis at, [67], [70], [71].
• Rhœcus, cast in bronze, [136].
• Riches, denounced by Christ, [222].
• Riley and Bostick, translation of Pliny by, [135].
• Roman and Greek art, the spirit of, [19].
• Rousseau and Voltaire, [30].
• S. Justinus, [206].
• S. Theophilus Antiochenus, [206].
• Sallust, quoted, [152].
• San Gallo, Antonio, architect of St. Peter’s, [39].
• San Lorenzo, Church of, [9], [13].
• Santa Croce, Church of, [7], [8].
• Saurus, [107].
• Savonarola, [5];
• his influence on Michel Angelo, [17], [35].
• Scheffer, Ary, Delacroix and, [30].
• Scopas, [67];
• celebrated for heroic figures and demigods, [75];
• a worker in marble, [76].
• Sculpture, and idolatry, [1];
• considered more dignified than painting, by the Athenians, [133].
• Second-sight, Macbeth’s, [246].
• Secretive nature, the, always a puzzle to the frank nature, [244].
• Semele and Zagreus, [161].
• Seneca, quoted, [110];
• sentiments of, regarding God, [207], [208].
• Shakespeare, and Sir Philip Sidney, [30];
• testimony of, as to English actors, [235];
• interpreted by the Germans, [237];
• his meaning perverted on the English stage, [238], [240];
• no serious character of, rants like Macbeth, [251];
• a master-stroke of, [259];
• Iago and Macbeth his worst villains, [284];
• his weird sisters a new creation, [285].
• Sibylline verses, fragment of the, [206].
• Sibyls, representations of, by Michel Angelo, [27], [28].
• Siddons, Mrs., as Lady Macbeth, [239], [240], [264].
• Sidney, Sir Philip, Shakespeare and, [30].
• Sistine Chapel, the, [11];
• Michel Angelo’s frescoes in, [21–29], [44];
• opened to exhibit the frescoes in 1508 on All-Saints’ Day, [23].
• Sixtus V., [77].
• Smith, Philip, cited, [59], [61], [76].
• Socrates, [88].
• Solon, cited, [70].
• Sophocles, unity and universality of God proclaimed by, [200].
• Spartianus, statues modeled in plaster spoken of by, [160].
• St. Paul, quoted, [231].
• St. Peter’s, the Dome of, [5], [8], [11];
• Michel Angelo’s work upon, [39–42];
• the type of the universal church, [41];
• Michel Angelo not responsible for it as it now stands, [42];
• changes made in, by Carlo Maderno, [42].
• Sta. Maria degli Angeli, Church of, [41].
• Stage, tradition and convention on the English, [234–240].
• Statius, quoted, [144].
• Statues, ancient, singular defects in, [173].
• Strabo, statements by, about Pericles and Phidias, [52];
• opinion of, on the statue of Nemesis, at Rhamnus, [70];
• on the work of Polyclitus, [89], [96].
• Strozzi, Giovan’ Battista, quatrain by, [17].
• Suidas, [72].
• Sunium, [64].
• Tartuffe, Macbeth not like, [254].
• Tasso, [3], [42].
• Tenerani, [61].
• Tennyson, Browning and, [30].
• Terra cotta, an ancient manufactory of, [178].
• Tertullian, on the persecution of the Christians, [222].
• Themistius, a saying of, [56];
• cited, [80].
• Theocosmos, [67], [92];
• said to have been assisted by Phidias, [75].
• Theocritus, [206].
• Theodorus of Samos, cast in bronze, [136].
• Theophrastus, treatise on mineralogy by, [159].
• Thiersch, cited, [59], [61], [68].
• Thoughts, our whole nature colored by our, [229].
• Thrasymedes of Paros, [66], [70].
• Thundering Legion, the, true story of, [215], [216].
• Tintoretto, [4].
• Tiridates, King of Armenia, [77], [79].
• Titian, [4].
• Toreutic art, the, [100].
• Tradition, in English church and theatre, [235];
• Shakespeare’s meaning perverted by, [238], [240].
• Traditions about artists, unreliable, [74].
• Troughton, Mr., [233].
• Truth, infinite in form and spirit, [195];
• a continual progression towards the divine, [195];
• not all embraced in one system of religion, [224];
• the growth of, impeded by narrow-mindedness, [225].
• Tussaud, Madame, [154].
• Tzetzes the Grammarian, story told by, [72];
• an untrustworthy gossip, [73];
• on Phidias, [103].
• Urban VIII., [78].
• Urbino, Michel Angelo’s servant, [37].
• Valerius Maximus, quoted, [110], [111].
• Valerius Soranus, God represented by, as the Father and Mother of us all, [207].
• Valori, Bartolommeo, letter to, [21].
• Varro, quoted, as to the meaning of “cera,” [144].
• Vasari, Giorgio, doubtful assertion of, [25];
• on Raffaelle, [33];
• account by, of Verrocchio’s making casts, [188].
• Veronese, [4].
• Verrocchio, [43];
• casting in plaster introduced by, [188].
• Via Latina, tombs in the, [157].
• Vigenero, description of Michel Angelo by, [38].
• Villari, [3].
• Virgil, Homer and, [30];
• quoted, [122], [136].
• Visconti, quoted, [99], [100];
• his views examined, [100–104].
• Vitruvius, [145];
• description of process used in finishing walls by, [153].
• Voltaire, Rousseau and, [30].
• Walls, ancient process used in finishing, [153].
• Wardour Street, the portraits of, [152].
• Wax, the common vehicle of ancient painters, [144].
• “Weird Sisters,” the, but outward personifications of evil thoughts, [285].
• Welcker and Preller, cited, [59], [60].
• Wilkins, William, opinion of, on the Elgin marbles, [99].
• Wilson, Mr. Charles Heath, close examination of Michel Angelo’s frescoes by, [25].
• “Wisdom of Solomon,” the, cited, [150].
• Woman, superior to man in adjusting details, [259];
• unable to bear the remembrance of what she has gone through, [277].
• World, the, needs revolutionizing, [227].
• Xenocles of Cholargos, finishes the Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, [52].
• Xenophon, classes Polyclitus with Homer, Sophocles, and Zeuxis, as an artist, [89].
• Zacharias, figure of, by Michel Angelo, [27].
• Zagreus and Semele, [161].
• Zenobius, cited, [70].
• Zeus, chryselephantine statue of, by Phidias, [63], [59–63], [65], [81], [86], [98], [209];
• inscription on, [109].
• Zeus, the Temple of, at Olympia, [53].

FOOTNOTES

[1] Whether this inscription was placed there during the life of Phidias does not appear; but it is highly improbable, and not in harmony with the practice of the Greeks.

[2] Themistius, Orat. adeum qui postulaverat ut ex tempore sermonem haberet.

[3] τέκτονες, πλάσται, χαλκοτύποι, λιθουργοί, βαφεῖς, χρυσοῦ μαλακτῆρες καὶ ἐλέφαντος ζωγράφοι, ποικιλταῖ, τορευταῖ. This passage is generally cited as a statement by Plutarch that Phidias employed all these men; but in fact he is only urging, in justification of Pericles, and in answer to attacks made against him for expending such large sums of money in the public works, that these works gave employment to the enumerated classes of artists and mechanics.

[4] The date of the birth of Pericles is unknown, but he began to take part in public affairs in B. C. 469, when he could not probably have been less than twenty-one years of age. This would place his birth at 490. He died in 429; and this reckoning would make him only sixty-one at his death.

[5] A full transcript of these inscriptions will be found in Dr. Brunn’s Geschichte der griechischen Künstler, i. 249.

[6] See Lysias’s Frag., Περὶ τοῦ τύπου; also, Müller’s Ancient Art, 360, and King’s Antique Gems.

[7] “Non ex ebore tantum sciebat Phidias facere simulacrum, faciebat et ex ære. Si marmor illi, si adhuc viliorem materiam obtulisses, fecisset quale ex illa fieri optimum potuisset.”—Seneca, Epist. 86.

[8] Du Moulage en Plâtre chez les Anciens, par M. Charles C. Perkins, correspondant de l’Académie des Beaux Arts, etc. Paris, 1869.

[9] Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. xxxv. ch. xii.

[10] So also Fronto in his De differentiis Vocabulorum, published by Cardinal Mai from palimpsests, says: “Vultus proprie hominis—os omnium—facies plurium.”

[11] According to Æschines, in his oration against Ctesiphon, Miltiades desired that his name should be inscribed on this portrait statue, which was placed in the Pœcile; but the Athenians refused their permission.

[12] See Cicero ad Atticum, xii. 41.

[13] iii. 12, § 13; viii. 14, § 5.

[14] Geschichte der griechischen Künstler, vol. i. p. 403.

[15] vii. 3, ii 8. See, also, Pliny, xxv. 49.

[16] See, also, an account of these “imagines” in Polybius, vi. 53.

[17] Et quoniam animorum imagines non sunt, negliguntur etiam corporum. Aliter apud majores, in atriis hæc erant quæ spectarentur, non signa externorum artificum, nec æra aut marmora. Expressi cera vultus singulis disponebantur armariis ut essent imagines quæ comitarentur gentilicia funera.—Book 35, ch. 2.

[18] Διαφέρην δὲ δοκεῖ καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἀπομάγματα πολὺ τῶν ἀλλῶν.

[19] Lib. ix. ch. 23; Lib. i. ch. 40; Lib. viii. ch. 22.

[20] Spartian., Sev. Hadrian, 22.

[21] De Errore Profanarum Religionum. Vid. Lobeck aglaopham, p. 571.

[22] As Lysistratus and his brother lived about the 114th Olympiad (324 B. C.), if these works found at Kertch were plaster casts, it is plain that Lysistratus did not invent casting, since these were before his time; and if Pliny means to say that he did, he is evidently quite wrong.

[23] Pliny says “exemplar.”

[24] Ἐτύγχανον μὲν ἄρτι χαλκουργῶν ὕπο Πιττούμενος στέρνον τε καὶ μετάφρενον· Θώραξ δέ μοι γελοῖος ἀμφὶ σώματι Πλασθεῖς παρῃώρητο μιμήλῃ τέχνῃ Σφραγῖδα χαλκοῦ πᾶσαν ἐκτυπούμενος.

[25] See Divin. Inst., lib. i. c. 6.

[26] Val. Soranus, cited by St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, lib. vii. c. 9.

[27] See these passages and others cited in S. Justinus, Cohortat. ad Græc. et de Monarchia; Clement of Alexandria, Stromat., lib. v., et Admonitio ad Gentes; S. Cyrillus Alexandrinus, Contra Julianum, lib. i.; Athenagoras, Legat. pro Christian.; Theodoretus, Graec. Affectionum: Curat, lib. 7.

[28]

“I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition.”

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.