"'Tis midnight; on the mountains brown
The cold, round moon looks deeply down;"
and, by the way, Byron's best piece of evening color farther certifies the hues of Dante's twilight,—it
"Dies like the dolphin, when it gasps away—
The last still loveliest; till 'tis gone, and all is grey."
§ 12. Let not, however, the reader confuse the use of brown, as an expression of a natural tint, with its use as a means of getting other tints. Brown is often an admirable ground, just because it is the only tint which is not to be in the finished picture, and because it is the best basis of many silver greys and purples, utterly opposite to it in their nature. But there is infinite difference between laying a brown ground as a representation of shadow,—and as a base for light; and also an infinite difference between using brown shadows, associated with colored lights—always the characteristic of false schools of color—and using brown as a warm neutral tint for general study. I shall have to pursue this subject farther hereafter, in noticing how brown is used by great colorists in their studies, not as color, but as the pleasantest negation of color, possessing more transparency than black, and having more pleasant and sunlike warmth. Hence Turner, in his early studies, used blue for distant neutral tint, and brown for foreground neutral tint; while, as he advanced in color science, he gradually introduced, in the place of brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself, founded, apparently, on Indian red and vermilion, and passing into various tones of russet and orange.[82] But, in the meantime, we must go back to Dante and his mountains.
§ 13. We find, then, that his general type of rock color was meant, whether pale or dark, to be a colorless grey—the most melancholy hue which he supposed to exist in Nature (hence the synonym for it, subsisting even till late times, in mediæval appellatives of dress, "sad-colored")—with some rusty stain from iron; or perhaps the "color ferrigno" of the Inferno does not involve even so much of orange, but ought to be translated "iron grey."
This being his idea of the color of rocks, we have next to observe his conception of their substance. And I believe it will be found that the character on which he fixes first in them is frangibility—breakableness to bits, as opposed to wood, which can be sawn or rent, but not shattered with a hammer, and to metal, which is tough and malleable.
Thus, at the top of the abyss of the seventh circle, appointed for the "violent," or souls who had done evil by force, we are told, first, that the edge of it was composed of "great broken stones in a circle;" then, that the place was "Alpine;" and, becoming hereupon attentive, in order to hear what an Alpine place is like, we find that it was "like the place beyond Trent, where the rock, either by earthquake, or failure of support, has broken down to the plain, so that it gives any one at the top some means of getting down to the bottom." This is not a very elevated or enthusiastic description of an Alpine scene; and it is far from mended by the following verses, in which we are told that Dante "began to go down by this great unloading of stones," and that they moved often under his feet by reason of the new weight. The fact is that Dante, by many expressions throughout the poem, shows himself to have been a notably bad climber; and being fond of sitting in the sun, looking at his fair Baptistery, or walking in a dignified manner on flat pavement in a long robe, it puts him seriously out of his way when he has to take to his hands and knees, or look to his feet; so that the first strong impression made upon him by any Alpine scene whatever, is, clearly, that it is bad walking. When he is in a fright and hurry, and has a very steep place to go down, Virgil has to carry him altogether, and is obliged to encourage him, again and again, when they have a steep slope to go up,—the first ascent of the purgatorial mountain. The similes by which he illustrates the steepness of that ascent are all taken from the Riviera of Genoa, now traversed by a good carriage road under the name of the Corniche; but as this road did not exist in Dante's time, and the steep precipices and promontories were then probably traversed by footpaths, which, as they necessarily passed in many places over crumbling and slippery limestone, were doubtless not a little dangerous, and as in the manner they commanded the bays of sea below, and lay exposed to the full blaze of the south-eastern sun, they corresponded precisely to the situation of the path by which he ascends above the purgatorial sea, the image could not possibly have been taken from a better source for the fully conveying his idea to the reader: nor, by the way, is there reason to discredit, in this place, his powers of climbing; for, with his usual accuracy, he has taken the angle of the path for us, saying it was considerably more than forty-five. Now a continuous mountain slope of forty-five degrees is already quite unsafe either for ascent or descent, except by zigzag paths; and a greater slope than this could not be climbed, straightforward, but by help of crevices or jags in the rock, and great physical exertion besides.
§ 14. Throughout these passages, however, Dante's thoughts are clearly fixed altogether on the question of mere accessibility or inaccessibility. He does not show the smallest interest in the rocks, except as things to be conquered; and his description of their appearance is utterly meagre, involving no other epithets than "erto" (steep or upright), Inf. xix. 131., Purg. iii. 48. &c.; "sconcio" (monstrous), Inf. xix. 131.; "stagliata" (cut), Inf. xvii. 134.; "maligno" (malignant), Inf. vii. 108; "duro" (hard), xx. 25.; with "large" and "broken" (rotto) in various places. No idea of roundness, massiveness, or pleasant form of any kind appears for a moment to enter his mind; and the different names which are given to the rocks in various places seem merely to refer to variations in size: thus a "rocco" is a part of a "scoglio," Inf. xx. 25. and xxvi. 27.; a "scheggio" (xxi. 69. and xxvi. 17.) is a less fragment yet; a "petrone," or "sasso," is a large stone or boulder (Purg. iv. 101. 104.), and "pietra," a less stone,—both of these last terms, especially "sasso," being used for any large mountainous mass, as in Purg. xxi. 106.; and the vagueness of the word "monte" itself, like that of the French "montagne," applicable either to a hill on a post-road requiring the drag to be put on,—or to the Mont Blanc, marks a peculiar carelessness in both nations, at the time of the formation of their languages, as to the sublimity of the higher hills; so that the effect produced on an English ear by the word "mountain," signifying always a mass of a certain large size, cannot be conveyed either in French or Italian.
§ 15. In all these modes of regarding rocks we find (rocks being in themselves, as we shall see presently, by no means monstrous or frightful things) exactly that inaccuracy in the mediæval mind which we had been led to expect, in its bearings on things contrary to the spirit of that symmetrical and perfect humanity which had formed its ideal; and it is very curious to observe how closely in the terms he uses, and the feelings they indicate, Dante here agrees with Homer. For the word stagliata (cut) corresponds very nearly to a favorite term of Homer's respecting rocks "sculptured," used by him also of ships' sides; and the frescoes and illuminations of the Middle Ages enable us to ascertain exactly what this idea of "cut" rock was.
§ 16. In Plate 10. I have assembled some examples, which will give the reader a sufficient knowledge of mediæval rock-drawing, by men whose names are known. They are chiefly taken from engravings, with which the reader has it in his power to compare them,[83] and if, therefore, any injustice is done to the original paintings the fault is not mine; but the general impression conveyed is quite accurate, and it would not have been worth while, where work is so deficient in first conception, to lose time in insuring accuracy of facsimile. Some of the crags may be taller here, or broader there, than in the original paintings; but the character of the work is perfectly preserved, and that is all with which we are at present concerned.