CHAPTER VI.

My hypothesis, that the artists have imitated the poet, is not pushed far enough to be any disparagement to the former. Nay, through this imitation, their wisdom is shown in the most favourable light. They follow the poet, without suffering themselves to be misled by him even in the merest trifles. They were indeed furnished with their design, but, since this design had to be transferred from one art to another, they found ample opportunity for the exercise of original thought. And the original ideas, displayed in their deviations from their model, are a proof that they excelled in their own art as much as the poet in his.

I will now invert my hypothesis, and assume that the poet has copied the artists. There are scholars who maintain that this is the truth(16); but I cannot discover that they have any historical grounds for such a belief. They probably looked upon the group as so supremely beautiful that they could not persuade themselves it belonged to the late period, to which it is usually ascribed; it must, they thought, have belonged to the age when art was in its fullest bloom, since that alone seemed worthy of it.

It has been shown that, excellent as Virgil's description is, there are several features in it, of which the artist could make no use. This conclusion limits the general principle, "that a good poetical picture will necessarily produce an equally good material painting; and that a poet's description is only so far good, as the artist can follow it in all its details." This limitation we shall be inclined to assume, even before we see it confirmed by examples, if we simply consider the wide sphere of poetry, the boundless field of our imagination, and the spirituality of its images; a great and various throng of which can be placed in the closest juxtaposition, without concealing or disfiguring each other, which perhaps would be the effect that the object itself, or its natural representative signs, would produce in the narrow limits of space and time.

But if the less cannot contain the greater, still it can be contained in it. I mean, although each trait, of which the descriptive poet avails himself, need not necessarily have as good effect upon canvass, or in marble; yet ought not every detail, from which the artist reaps advantage, to produce the same result in the work of the poet? Indisputably! for that, which is beautiful in a work of art, is beautiful, not to our eyes, but to our imagination, affected through their Thus, as the same image may be raised afresh in our imagination, either through a conventional or natural representation, so the same plea

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sure, though not the same degree of it, must, on each occasion, be again excited.

But admitting this, I must acknowledge that, to me, the supposition that Virgil imitated the artists, appears far more incomprehensible than its converse. If the artists have copied the poet, I can account and answer for all their deviations from him; they were compelled to deviate, for the very details, which would have offended against harmony in them, found harmonious expression in the other. But there is no cause for the deviation of the poet. If, in each and every point, he had faithfully followed the group, he would still have transmitted to us a most excellent picture(17). I well understand how his imagination, working before itself, could lead him to this or that particular; but I cannot conceive any reason why his judgment should feel itself compelled to change the beautiful details, which were already before his eyes, for others. I think too, that if Virgil had had the group of Laocoon for a model, he would hardly have been able to put such restraint upon himself, as to have left, as it were, to mere conjecture, the entanglement of all three bodies in a single knot; It would have struck his eyes too vividly, he would have experienced from it an effect too excellent not to have brought it more prominently forward in his description.

I admitted that then was not the moment for developing this idea of entanglement; but the ad

dition of a single word might easily, we may conceive, have distinctly expressed this idea, without removing it from that background, in which the poet was obliged to leave it. The trait, which the artist could express without this word, would not have been left unrepresented by the poet, had he already seen it put forward in the sculpture of the former.

The artist had the most urgent reasons for not allowing the suffering of Laocoon to break forth into a cry; but if the poet had had before him in a work of art so moving an union of pain and beauty, there was nothing to oblige him to pass by, without an allusion, the manly bearing, and high-souled patience which this union suggests, and induce him to shock us at once with the horrible shriek of his Laocoon. Richardson says, "Virgil's Laocoon was obliged to shriek, because it was the poet's aim not so much to excite compassion for him, as alarm and horror among the Trojans." I will allow it, although Richardson does not appear to have reflected that the poet does not give this narrative in his own person, but represents Æneas as relating it, and that too in the presence of Dido, upon whose sympathy he could not work too strongly. However, it is not the shriek which surprises me, but the absence of all that gradation in introducing it, to which the poet must have been led, had he, as we are assuming, had the work of art for his model. Richardson adds(18), "The story of Laocoon is only

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intended as a prelude to the pathetic description of the final destruction of the city; the poet, therefore, abstained from making it more interesting, that our attention, which this last horrible night fully demands, might not be previously engrossed by the misfortune of a single citizen." But that is being willing to look at the whole scene from the picturesque point of view, from which it cannot possibly be viewed. The misfortune of Laocoon, and the destruction of the city, are not, with the poet, connected pictures. The two form no whole, that our eyes either can, or ought to, take in both at a glance; in which case only, would there be a fear that our mind should dwell more upon Laocoon than upon the burning town. The description of the one follows upon that of the other, and however affecting the first may be, I do not see what disparagement it can bring upon its successor; unless it be allowed that, in itself, the second is not sufficiently pathetic.

The poet would have had less reason still for altering the folds of the serpents, which, in the work of art, occupy the hands and entangle the feet of their victims. This arrangement is most pleasing to the eyes; and the image of it, which is left upon the imagination, most lively; indeed it is so expressive and clear, that the representation of it by words is but little weaker than its material representation.