Fig. 16.
The sportive fauns and the lush-eyed satyrs of the woods have indeed learnt the mystery of these pipes and make merry under the vine-leaves. I have in my mind’s eye now a curly-headed satyr handling the pipes, and I wish that I knew the charm to bring before you the saucy curious look with which he is regarding them. All that modern exigencies allow me I give here, just the hands and the pipes. Notice the expectant thumb; what is it he is contemplating? What is he about to do? He intends to press the bulb of the pipe, but evidently something is wrong, and I am so anxious to know what it can be. Then there is a short line on the top of the furthest pipe; it was a puzzle to me years ago, and the satyr and I we are still puzzling over it. Each pipe has but one bulb, and I think very probably these simple creatures of nature would be unable to manage more. Four oval holes are given to each pipe, the artist has so marked them, and the firing that the vase underwent in the kiln retains them with indelible truth. When I see on wall paintings that finger holes are marked I am doubtful, because it may be the work of an overwise restorer, and so of copies of the wall-paintings on the tombs; and, indeed, I am sorry to know that modern painters and engravers are not trustworthy in details, but palm off home made suppositions about the proper finish of musical instruments, the nature of which they do not comprehend. They are ignorant even of any necessity for comprehending such simple things.
I was looking over a valuable book on sculpture yesterday, in which highly finished delineations were given of the friezes of the Parthenon; in one engraving four flute players were represented each playing a single pipe. I was dazed; wondered if my memory had played me tricks. So I went and looked at the marbles, and sure enough I was right; the sculptor had carved two hands and two pipes in the natural way of the double pipes! At that period I should not expect to see the single pipe, and I do not remember on any Etruscan vase a player on one pipe only. Neither should one expect to see the bulb form represented here because the straight form suits best the sculptor’s art; and in marble vases, also, the double pipes are quite plain as may be seen on a beautiful vase in the entrance hall of the British Museum. Read Keat’s poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and then go and look on this marble picture of
The happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new.
Or if you are denied that delight, read those five stanzas of a poem that will be immortal as the memory of our race, and will outlast the marble beauty it realizes; read it in quietness, and then, in Keat’s sweet words,
With eyes, shut softly up alive,
the scene will grow within you, as that pale singer heard it, singing
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;