3. And though all the theologians and poets of his time would have expected, if not demanded, that his next assertion, after that of the Creation of Man, should be of the Fall of Man, he asserts nothing of the kind. He knows nothing of what man was. What he is, he knows best of living men at that hour, and proceeds to say. The next sculpture is of Eve spinning and Adam hewing the ground into clods. Not digging: you cannot, usually, dig but in ground already dug. The native earth you must hew.
They are not clothed in skins. What would have been the use of Eve spinning if she could not weave? They wear, each, one simple piece of drapery, Adam's knotted behind him, Eve's fastened around her neck with a rude brooch.
Above them are an oak and an apple-tree. Into the apple-tree a little bear is trying to climb.
The meaning of which entire myth is, as I read it, that men and women must both eat their bread with toil. That the first duty of man is to feed his family, and the first duty of the woman to clothe it. That the trees of the field are given us for strength and for delight, and that the wild beasts of the field must have their share with us. [Footnote: The oak and apple boughs are placed, with the same meaning, by Sandro Botticelli, in the lap of Zipporah. The figure of the bear is again represented by Jacopo della Quercia, on the north door of the Cathedral of Florence. I am not sure of its complete meaning.]
4. The fourth sculpture, forming the centre-piece of the series on the west side, is nomad pastoral life.
Jabal, the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle, lifts the curtain of his tent to look out upon his flock. His dog watches it.
5. Jubal, the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.
That is to say, stringed and wind instruments;—the lyre and reed. The first arts (with the Jew and Greek) of the shepherd David, and shepherd Apollo.
Giotto has given him the long level trumpet, afterwards adopted so grandly in the sculptures of La Robbia and Donatello. It is, I think, intended to be of wood, as now the long Swiss horn, and a long and shorter tube are bound together.
6. Tubal Cain, the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.