Homer, as Cicero tells us[193], has transformed man into God: which is to say; he not only exceeded truth, but, to raise his fiction, preferred even the impossible, if probable, to the barely possible[194]. In this Aristotle fixes the very essence of poetry, and tells us that the pictures of Zeuxis had that characteristick. The possibility and truth, which Longinus requires of the painter, as opposites to absurdity in poetry, are not contradictory to this rule.
This heighth the history-painter cannot reach, only by a contour above common nature, or a noble expression of the passions: for these are requisite in a good portrait-painter, who is able to execute them without diminishing the likeness of his model. They are but imitation, only prudently managed. The heads of Vandyke are charged with too exact an observation of nature; an exactness that would be faulty in a history-piece.
Truth, lovely as it is in itself, charms more, penetrates deeper, when invested with fiction: fable, in its strictest sense, is the delight of childhood; allegory that of riper years. And the old opinion, that poetry was of earlier date than prose, as unanimously attested by the annals of different people, makes it evident, that even in the most barbarous times, truth was preferred, when appearing in this dress.
Our understanding, moreover, labours under the fault of bestowing its attention chiefly on things, whose beauties are not to be perceived at first sight, and of inadvertently slighting others, because clear as day: images of this kind, like a ship on the waves, leave but momentary traces in our memory. Hence the ideas of our childhood are the most permanent, because every common occurrence then seems extraordinary. Thus, if nature herself instructs us, that she is not to be moved by common things, let art, as the Orator, ad Herennium, advises us, follow her dictates.
Every idea increases in strength, if accompanied by another or more ideas, as in comparisons; and the more still as they differ in kind: for ideas, too analogous to each other, do not strike: as for instance, a white skin compared to snow. Hence the power of discovering a similarity, in the most different things, is what we commonly call wit; Aristotle, “unexpected ideas”: and these he requires in an orator[195]. The more you are surprized by a picture, the more you are affected; and both those effects are to be obtained by allegory, like to fruit hid beneath leaves and branches, which when found surprizes the more agreeably, the less it was thought of. The smallest composition is susceptible of the sublimest powers of art: all depends upon the idea.
Necessity first taught the artists to use allegory. No doubt, they began with the representation of single objects of one class: but as they improved, they attempted to express what was common to many particulars; i. e. general ideas. All the qualities of single objects afford such ideas: but to become general, and at the same time sensible, they cannot preserve the particular shape of such or such an object, but must be submitted to another shape, essential to that object, but a general one.
The Egyptians were the first, who went in search of images of that kind. Such were their hieroglyphicks. All the deities of antiquity, especially those of Greece, nay, their very names, were originally Egyptian[196]. Their personal theology was quite allegorical; and so is ours. But the symbols of these inventors, partly preserved by the Greeks, were often so mysteriously arbitrary, as to make it altogether impossible to find out their meaning, even by the help of those authors that are still extant; and such a discovery was looked upon as a nefarious profanation[197]. Thus sacredly mysterious was the pomegranate[198] in the hand of the Samian Juno: and to divulge the Eleusinian rites, was thought worse than the robbery of a temple[199].
The relation of the sign to the thing signified, was in some measure founded on the known or pretended qualities of the latter. The Egyptian Horsemarten was of that kind; an image of the sun, because his species was said to have no female, and to live six months under and six above ground[200]. In like manner the cat, being supposed to bring forth a number of kittens equal to that of the days in a month, became the symbol of Isis, or the moon[201].
The Greeks, on the contrary, endowed with more wit, and undoubtedly with more sensibility, made use of no signs but such as had a true relation to the thing signified, or were most agreeable to the senses: all their deities they invested with human forms[202]. Wings, among the Egyptians, were the symbol of eager and effectual services; a symbol conformable to their nature, and continued by the Greeks: and if the Attick Victoria had none, it was meant to signify, that she had chosen Athens for her abode[203]. A goose, among the Egyptians, was the symbol of a cautious leader; in consequence of which the prows of their ships were formed like geese[204]. This the Greeks preserved also, and the ancient Rostrum resembled the neck of a goose[205].
Of all the figures, whose relation to their intended meaning is somewhat obscure, the Sphinx perhaps alone was continued by the Greeks. Placed in the front of a temple, it was, among the Greeks, almost as instructive, as it was significant among the Egyptians[206]. The Greek Sphinx was winged[207], its head bare, without that stole which it wears on some Attick coins[208].