| “Ah! judge her gently who so deeply loved! Her who, in reason’s spite, yet without crime, Was in a trance of passion thus removed; Delivered from the galling yoke of time, And these frail elements,—to gather flowers Of blissful quiet ’mid unfading bowers!” |
In the later editions thus altered, and, to my taste, spoiled:—
| “By no weak pity might the Gods be moved; She who thus perish’d not without the crime Of lovers that in Reason’s spite have loved, Was doomed to wander in a grosser clime Apart from happy ghosts, that gather flowers Of blissful quiet ’mid unfading bowers.” |
Altered, probably, because Virgil has introduced the shade of Laodamia among the criminal and unhappy lovers,—an instance of extraordinary bad taste in the Roman poet; whatever may have been her faults, she surely deserved to be placed in better company than Phædra and Pasiphäe. Wordsworth’s intuitive feeling and taste were true in the first instance, and he might have trusted to them. In my own copy of Wordsworth I have been careful to mark the original reading in justice to the original Laodamia.
HIPPOLYTUS. NEOPTOLEMUS.
I have never met with a statue, ancient or modern, of Hippolytus; the finest possible ideal of a Greek youth, touched with some individual characteristics which are peculiarly fitted for sculpture. He is a hunter, not a warrior; a tamer of horses, not a combatant with spear and shield. He should have the slight, agile build of a young Apollo, but nothing of the God’s effeminacy; on the contrary, there should be an infusion of the severe beauty of his Amazonian mother, with that sedateness and modesty which should express the votary and companion of Diana; while, as the fated victim of Venus, whom he had contemned, and of his stepmother Phædra, whom he had repulsed, there should be a kind of melancholy in his averted features. A hound and implements of the chase would be the proper accessories, and the figure should be undraped, or nearly so.
A sculptor who should be tempted to undertake this fine, and, as I think, untried subject—at least as a single figure—must begin by putting Racine out of his mind, whose “Seigneur Hippolyte” makes sentimental love to the “Princesse Aricie,” and must penetrate his fancy with the conception of Euripides.
I find in Schlegel’s “Essais littéraires,” a few lines which will assist the fancy of the artist, in representing the person and character of Hippolytus.
“Quant à l’Hippolyte d’Euripide il a une teinte si divine que pour le sentir dignement il faut, pour ainsi dire, être initié dans les mystères de la beauté, avoir respiré l’air de la Grèce. Rappelez vous ce que l’antiquité nous a transmis de plus accompli parmi les images d’une jeunesse héroïque, les Dioscures de Monte-Cavallo, le Méléagre et l’Apollon du Vatican. Le caractère d’Hippolyte occupe dans la poësie à peu près la même place que ces statues dans la sculpture.” “On peut remarquer dans plusieurs beautés idéales de l’antique que les anciens voulant créer une image perfectionnée de la nature humaine ont fondu les nuances du caractère d’un sexe avec celui de l’autre; que Junon, Pallas, Diane, out une majesté, une sévérité mâle; qu’ Apollon, Mercure, Bacchus, au contraire, ont quelque chose de la grace et de la douceur des femmes. De même nous voyons dans la beauté héroïque et vierge d’Hippolyte l’image de sa mère l’Amazone et le reflet de Diane dans un mortel.”