[6] See the last results of modern enlightenment on this subject in Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins’s directions for the scientific representation of Dogs, illustrated by the charming drawings of that great artist;—especially compare the learned outlines of head and paw in Plate II., and the delineation of head without Psyche in Plate III., with the ignorant efforts of Velasquez in such extremities and features in our fourth photograph. Perhaps Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins will have the goodness, in his next edition, to show us how Velasquez ought to have expressed the Scapholinear, Cuneiform, Pisiform, Trapezium, Trapezoid, Magnum, and Unciform bones in those miserably drawn fore-paws. [↑]
[7] Being somewhat interested in Croydon, as readers of past Fors know, and in Museums also, I give large print to these proposals. [↑]
[8] I have no doubt of the mingled active sense of τίμιος in this sentence, necessary by the context; while also the phrase would be a mere flat truism, if the word were used only in its ordinary passive meaning. [↑]
[9] To see clearly that whatever our fates may have been, the heaviest calamity of them—and, in a sort, the only real calamity—is our own causing, is the true humility which indeed we profess with our lips, when our heart is far from it. [↑]
[10] Pleasures which the Word of God, or of the earthly Lawgiver speaking in His Name, does not allow, nor praise; for all right pleasures it praises, and forbids sadness as a grievous sin. [↑]
[11] This parenthesis is in Plato’s mind, visibly, though not in his words. [↑]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER LXXI.
Venice, 4th October, 1876.
I am able at last to give you some of the long-promised opinions of Carpaccio on practical subjects; not that, except ironically, I ever call them ‘opinions.’ There are certain men who know the truths necessary to human life; they do not ‘opine’ them; and nobody’s ‘opinions,’ on any subject, are of any consequence opposed to them. Hesiod is one of these, Plato another, Dante another, Carpaccio is another. He speaks little, and among the inspired painters may be thought of as one of the lesser prophets; but his brief book is of extreme value.