It may seem anomalous at first sight, and we can well conceive it to be objected to our argument, that it is impossible, that while architecture, sculpture, painting, and music, should have been comparatively neglected, that literature, in all its branches, should be so highly esteemed among us. Milton, and more especially Shakspeare, have never lost one tittle of their value; nay, even at this moment, there are three rival editions of Shakspeare's works in the course of publication. Many volumes of poetry put in their claim to immortality every year. Novel after novel appears each to elbow its predecessor out of the public mind, and be in its turn forgotten. It is easy to imagine, that to many it may appear a paradox in the history of the human race, that a people should exist, endowed by nature with a high degree of poetic feeling, having, as Mr Hallam observes, produced more eminent original poets than any other nation can boast, and attaching a high value to literary talent of every description, but, nevertheless, whose attainments in the fine arts during a thousand years of national existence, should never have passed mediocrity. This apparent inconsistency, however, lies only on the surface. The language of true poetry is understood by all; it strikes home: however rude the thoughts, however uncultivated the understanding, the heart can feel; and it is to the heart the poet speaks; and even in the rudest ages of mankind his power was acknowledged. Voltaire has remarked, that "amusement is one of the wants of man".
Novels are taken up to amuse the vacant hour—in this consists their use. They are read without effort—the mind lies fallow as they are perused, and no study is required, no cultivation of any taste is necessary, to place this amusement within reach. With music and the fine arts, this is not so. The taste for these pursuits requires cultivation; and in order to estimate and appreciate them correctly, the judgment must be formed by a process of education, far different from that which enables all who read to value our poets and authors in the various departments of literature.
On examining the records of mankind, it will be found that this has been the ordinary succession of events in the history of civilization; and that poetry and oratory, the more independent efforts of the human mind, appear in the earlier stages of society, and that by them man is first distinguished as an intellectual and rational creature.
Of Egyptian literature, we know nothing. The destruction of the library of the Ptolemies may be the principal cause of our ignorance. The gigantic remains of this people, and the manner in which they worked in a stone which no modern tool will touch, show that among them the useful arts were considerably advanced. We have, however, abundant evidence of the small degree of proficiency in the fine arts. Their sculptors are characterized by Flaxman as "mere beginners," or "laborious mechanics;" their works as "lifeless forms, menial vehicles of an idea." When Egyptian art ended, then Grecian art began. It appears, however, to have made but little progress down to the time of Homer; and Dædalus and his disciple Eudæus are, we believe, the only artists of that early period whose fame has survived. These sculptors worked in wood, and by their proficiency we may form a pretty accurate idea of the state of art in Greece when Homer wrote. The works of Dædalus are described by Pausanias as rude and uncomely in aspect. In his Grecian tour, Pausanias twice makes mention of a statue of Hercules by Dædalus, from which circumstance it would appear to have been held in high estimation. On this statue Flaxman observes—"In the British Museum, as well as in other collections in Europe, are several small bronzes of a naked Hercules, whose right arm, holding a club, is raised to strike; whilst the left is extended, bearing a lion's skin as a shield. From the style of extreme antiquity in these statues—from the rude attempt at bold action, which was the peculiarity of Dædalus—the general adoption of this action in the early ages—the traits of savage nature in the face and figure, expressed with little knowledge, but strong feeling—by the narrow loins, turgid muscles of the breast, thighs, and calves of the legs, will all find reason to believe they are copied from the above-mentioned statue." Greece, it must be owned, possessed musicians long anterior to Homer: Chiron the Centaur, regarded by the ancients as one of the inventors of medicine, botany, and chirurgery, who, when eighty-eight years of age, formed the constellations for the use of the Argonauts; Linus, the preceptor of Hercules, who added a string to the lyre, and is said to be the inventor of rhythm and melody; Orpheus, who also extended the scale of the lyre, and was the inventor and propagator of many arts and doctrines among the Greeks; and Musæus, the priest of Ceres, are all remembered as musicians, as well as poets, historians, and philosophers; characters which, in those days, were all combined in the same individuals. The ancients, indeed, appear to have used the term music in a much more extended sense than has been attached to it in modern times, and to have applied it to all the arts and sciences. But even if the ancient meaning of the term were identical with its modern signification, there may be good reason to suppose that their fame as musicians would principally survive. The memory of these first preceptors of mankind was long preserved as the general benefactors of their species. But while the other arts they taught advanced, it does not appear that music made any progress. Thus, they came chiefly to be remembered for that talent in which posterity had produced no equals. As poets they were once celebrated; but, eclipsed by the glory and splendour of the great historian of Troy, their poetical productions were forgotten; whilst, as musicians, unrivalled through many centuries, their skill was long remembered as the most excellent the world had ever known. The arts of sculpture and painting appear to have remained even more stationary than music. For, while about the middle or latter end of the seventh century, B.C., the names of Archilochus and Terpander adorn the page of musical history, followed by many others, including Alcæus, Sappho, and Simonides, down to Pindar and his rival Corinna, the former of whom, according to the chronology of Dr Blair, died in 435 B.C. aged 86, it is evident, says Flaxman, "that sculpture was 800 years, from Dædalus to the time immediately preceding Phidias, in attaining a tolerable resemblance of the human form." It appears, therefore, that the greatest epic poem ever written had been read, appreciated, and admired, for nearly five centuries before the arts arrived at perfection. Then, indeed, there burst a flood of glory over ancient Greece, and names never to be forgotten were borne upon the tide. Contemporary with Pindar and Corinna were Phidias, Alcamenes, and many other sculptors, together with poets, philosophers, warriors, and statesmen; men whose names will rise superior to the lapse of time, and whose fame, like the rocky barriers of the ocean, on which the elements in vain expend their fury, will be of equal duration with the world itself.
Ancient Rome was indebted to others for all of the liberal arts and sciences she possessed. In the earlier periods of her existence, and before Greece had become known in Rome, Etruria was the instructress of her sons. When Greece had been subdued, and rendered a tributary province of the all-conquering city, her polished people, nevertheless, exercised an intellectual sovereignty over their masters. In the streets of Athens a singular spectacle was exhibited; there might be seen the conqueror learning of the vanquished; Romans, of exalted rank and unbounded power, had become the disciples of Grecian philosophers. Nevertheless, when Rome possessed orators and poets, each of whom has raised
"Monumentum ære perennius,"
in that the golden age of her existence, it does not appear, says Dr Burney, that "except Vitruvius, the Romans had one architect, sculptor, painter, or musician; those who have been celebrated in the arts of Rome having been Asiatics or European Greeks, who came to exercise such arts among the Latins, as the Latins had not among themselves. This custom was continued under the successors of Augustus; and those Romans who were prevented, by more important concerns, from going into Greece, combined, in a manner, to bring Greece to Rome, by receiving into their service the most able professors of Greece and Asia in all the arts." Vitruvius, in the chapter on music inserted in his treatise on architecture, complains that "the science of music, in itself obscure, is particularly so to such as understand not the Greek language." This observation shows the low state of music at Rome at that time; indeed Vitruvius is said to be the first who has treated of music in the Latin tongue.
Modern Europe also furnishes another illustration and example of the truth of our proposition. When the mists of ignorance and superstition which had for centuries enveloped the world, had begun to clear away, and when Europe first attempted to throw off the errors of the Dark Ages, the arts were dead, and the only music known was that cultivated by the monks and clergy, as necessary to their profession, and the songs of the Troubadours. "The fame of the Troubadours," remarks Mr Hallam, "depends less on their positive excellence than on the darkness of preceding ages, the temporary sensation they excited, and their permanent influence on the state of European poetry." The intrinsic merit of the music of this period may be collected from the following observation of Dr Burney:—"However barbarous and wretched the melody and harmony of the secular songs of this period may have been, they were in both respects superior to the music of the church." The Troubadours flourished from the middle of the twelfth century till the latter end of the fourteenth century, when their dissolute and licentious habits caused them to be universally banished and proscribed. During the barbarism of these times, not only had the arts themselves been lost, but even the principles on which they rest had been forgotten. Italy, indeed, possessed many ancient marbles, but they seemed to have lost their value; and it was not till the thirteenth century that any attempt to imitate these remains of antiquity was made. Nicola Pisano, about the year 1231, taking for his model an ancient sarcophagus at Pisa, which contained the remains of Beatrice, mother of the Countess Matilda, sculptured an urn—a feat in those days so extraordinary, as to have conferred upon him the title of Nicolas of the Urn. This artist, in the words of Lanzi, "was the first to see and follow light." He was, however, more ambitious than successful, and was followed by his sons and others, in whose hands the art seems to have no very rapid progress. The art of painting, in which there were no models in existence, was later in manifesting any improvement. It was not till after the year 1250 that, according to Vasari, some Greek painters were invited to Florence by the rulers of the city, for the express purpose of restoring the art to Florence, where it was rather wholly lost than degenerated. Cimabue, the reviver of painting, received instruction from the Greeks. He died in 1300. Fierce as the age in which he lived, says Lanzi, his Madonnas were without beauty, and his angels, even in the same picture, were all in the same attitude. To Cimabue succeeded his pupil, the famous Giotto, who died in 1337. With him the ruggedness of his master's manner was softened down, and considerable advances made towards a better style. He was honourably received at many of the principal towns and cities of Italy, and may, perhaps, be considered as the real founder of their several schools; at all events, painters every where were long the imitators of Giotto. His faults partook also of the character of the age, and among other defects, the dry hardness of his works has given rise to an opinion, that he partly formed his style upon the works of the Pisani. Giotto and his school, indeed, conducted the art through infancy, but it still exhibited many signs of childhood, especially in chiara-oscuro, and even more so in perspective. Figures sometimes appeared as if sliding from the canvass—buildings had not the true point of view, and foreshortening was only rudely attempted. Stefano Fiorentino, a grandson of Giotto, was the first and only one of the school who endeavoured to grapple with this last difficulty, which he may be said to have perceived rather than overcome; his contemporaries, for the most part, evaded it, and concealed their deficiency as they could. Such is the summary of the merits of this school of art given by Lanzi, who dates the commencement of the first epoch of modern painting from the death of Giotto. In further illustration of the low state of art in the early part of the fourteenth century, it may be observed, that Lanzi also describes a great work of Masaccio, who flourished in the succeeding century, as "beautiful for those times;" and that it was not till the year 1410 that oil-painting was invented or improved by Van-Eyck.
From this sketch of the history of the arts of music, sculpture, and painting during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, will be seen their state and condition, when the great work of the immortal Dante took his country by surprise. The Divina Comedia was written about the year 1300. Its illustrious author, the creator of the national poetry of his country, died in 1321, leaving behind him Petrarch, who was crowned in the Capitol in 1341, and Boccaccio, who—though, as Byron said of Scott, he spoiled his poetry by writing better prose—was nevertheless a poet of no mean merit, and the probable inventor of the ottava rima. Two centuries after the last of these parents of modern literature had nearly elapsed, ere he who has been styled the Dante of the arts, Michael Angelo, and his contemporaries, among whom were Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, appeared upon the stage. Thus language, the first great want of man, the necessary instrument of reason, by which its possessor is distinguished from the rest of creation, the vehicle of human thoughts, the means by which man's wants, desires, griefs, and joys, are communicated and made known, would seem to form the earliest object of his attention. He enriches and improves it, till it is rendered capable of expressing all the workings of his reason. This done, genius and invention are applied to other pursuits; and in many instances it may be, that the poet and the artist were but the creatures of the age which produced them. Had he lived at a later period, Homer, the great sire of song, might perhaps have shone the Phidias or the Zeuxis of his day; or, had his birth been anticipated two hundred years, the genius of "the Dante of the arts" might possibly have been displayed in works like those which have immortalized Dante Alighieri. It is, therefore, no inconsistency in the character of a people amongst whom poetry is passionately admired, and books of all kinds eagerly devoured, that the arts should be generally uncared-for and unknown. When another century has passed away, their history may tell another tale, and the powers of mind hitherto employed principally upon the physical sciences, may have achieved like triumphs in the liberal arts. That this may be the case, the past history of other nations affords every reason to hope. What man has done, man may, and doubtless will, do again.
In the earlier ages of the world, music, in its rudest, simplest form, is said to have stopped the flow of rivers, to have tamed wild beasts, and to have raised the walls of cities; allegories which at least show the prodigious influence the art possessed over the inhabitants of infant Greece. In the course of time, love of the art was a national characteristic of this people; and music became a specific in the hand of the physician, a fundamental principle of public education, and the medium of instruction in religion, morals, and the laws. The lyre may be said to have ruled Greece, the glorious and the free, with the same despotic sway with which the iron hand of tyranny has in our own day governed her. Discord, and civil commotions arose among the Lacedæmonians; Terpander came, and with his lyre at once appeased the angry multitude. Among the Athenians it was forbidden, under pain of death, to propose the conquest of the isle of Salamis; but the songs of Solon raised a tumult amongst the people; they rose, compelled the repeal of the obnoxious decree, and Salamis straightway fell. Was it found necessary to civilize a wild and extensive province? Music was employed for this desirable object; and Arcadia, before the habitation of a fierce and savage people, became famed as the abode of happiness and peace. Plutarch places the masters of tragedy—to which the modern opera bears a great resemblance—on a level with the greatest captains: nor did the people fail in gratitude to their benefactors; they held their memory in veneration. The lyre of Orpheus was transplanted to the skies, there to shine for countless ages; and divine honours were paid to the name of Sappho.