[1] ‘Records of the Past,’ vi. 124.
[2] See Cooper’s ‘Serpent-Myths of Ancient Egypt,’ figs. 109 and 112. Serapis as a human-headed serpent is shown in the same essay (from Sharpe), fig. 119.
Chapter III.
The Serpent.
The beauty of the Serpent—Emerson on ideal forms—Michelet’s thoughts on the viper’s head—Unique characters of the Serpent—The monkey’s horror of Snakes—The Serpent protected by superstition—Human defencelessness against its subtle powers—Dubufe’s picture of the Fall of Man.
In the accompanying picture, a medal of the ancient city of Tyre, two of the most beautiful forms of nature are brought together,—the Serpent and the Egg. Mr. D. R. Hay has shown the endless extent to which the oval arches have been reproduced in the ceramic arts of antiquity; and the same sense of symmetry which made the Greek vase a combination of Eggs prevails in the charm which the same graceful outline possesses wherever suggested,—as in curves of the swan, crescent of the moon, the elongated shell,—on which Aphrodite may well be poised, since the same contours find their consummate expression in the flowing lines attaining their repose in the perfect form of woman. The Serpent—model of the ‘line of grace and beauty’—has had an even larger fascination for the eye of the artist and the poet. It is the one active form in nature which cannot be ungraceful, and to estimate the extent of its use in decoration is impossible, because all undulating and coiling lines are necessarily serpent forms. But in addition to the perfections of this form—which fulfil all the ascent of forms in Swedenborg’s mystical morphology, circular, spiral, perpetual-circular, vortical, celestial—the Serpent bears on it, as it were, gems of the underworld that seem to find their counterpart in galaxies.
Fig. 23.—Serpent and Egg (Tyre).