You are little better than a heretic in these matters. But I will admit thus much—that the classical and mythological sculpture of our modern artists, is to the ancient marbles, what Racine's tragedies are to those of Sophocles; that we are so far condemned to the "repetition wearisome of forms," from which the ancient spirit has evaporated; but that is not the fault of the subjects, but of the manner of treating them, for never can the beautiful mythology of ancient Greece, which has woven itself into our earliest dreams of poetry, become a "creed out-worn." Its forms, and its symbols, and its imagery, have mingled with every branch of art, and become a universal language. It is the deification of the material world; and therefore, that art, which in its perfection may be called the apotheosis of form, finds there its proper region and element.
MEDON.
You do not suppose that, with all my Gothic tastes, I am such a Goth as not to feel the truth of what you say? But I am an enemy to the exclusive in every thing; and—pardon me—your worship of the Elgin marbles and the Niobe, is, I think, a little too exclusive. All I ask is, that modern sculpture should be allowed, like painting and poetry, to have its romantic, as well as its classical school.
ALDA.
It has been otherwise decided.
MEDON.
But it has not been otherwise proved. There has been much theoretical eloquence and criticism expended on the subject, but I deny that the experiment has been fairly and practically brought before us. I know very well you are ready with a thousand instances of attempt and failure, but may we not seek the cause in the mistaken application of certain classical, or, I should say, pedantic ideas on the subject? If I ask for Milton's Satan, standing like a tower in his spiritual might, his thunder-scarred brow wreathed with the diadem of hell, why am I to be presented with an Athlete, or an Achilles? Why would Canova give us for the head of Dante's Beatrice that of a muse, or an Aspasia? and for Petrarch's Laura, a mere tête de nymphe? I contend that to apply the forms suggested by the modern poetry demands a different spirit from that of classic art. How to apply or modify the example bequeathed to us by the great masters of old, Flaxman has shown us in his Dante. And why should we not have in sculpture a Lear as well as a Laocoon? a Constance as well as a Niobe? a Gismunda as well as a Cleopatra?——
ALDA.
Or a Tam o'Shanter as well as a laughing Faun?