beings, which, in addition to their general character, profess other qualities and feelings, which stand out in darker or lighter relief, according to the circumstances of the moment. In the eyes of the sculptor Venus is only "love." He must, therefore, attribute to her all the modest, bashful beauty, all the graceful charm, which are the attractions in a beloved object; and which, therefore, we include in our abstract idea of love. If there is the least deviation from this ideal, we can no longer recognise her form. Beauty, but clothed with majesty rather than bashfulness, becomes at once, not a Venus, but a Juno. Charms, but charms commanding, and rather manly than graceful, give us, instead of a Venus, a Minerva. An irritated Venus, a Venus impelled by revenge and fury, is a positive contradiction to the sculptor; for love, as such, is never angry or revengeful. To the poet, on the contrary, Venus is indeed "love," but she is also the goddess of love, who, in addition to this character, has her peculiar personality, and consequently must be just as capable of the impulses of aversion, as she is of those of affection. What wonder, then, if he paints her as inflamed with indignation and fury, especially when it is an affront offered to love itself, that has kindled these feelings in her? It is quite true, that in groups, the artist, as well as the poet, can introduce Venus, or any other divinity, as, in addition to her peculiar character, a real and acting being. But, in that case, their armour. actions must, at least, be in conformity with their character, even though not the immediate consequences of it. Venus bestows on her son divine This action the artist can represent as well as the poet. Here, there is nothing to prevent him from giving Venus all the charm and beauty, which are her attributes as the goddess of love; nay rather, in his work, she will be by these very attributes the more easily recognised. But when Venus wishes to take vengeance upon her contemners, the people of Lemnos, "with wild dilated form, with “flushed cheeks, dishevelled hair, and torch in hand, "she wraps a sable robe around her, and, in a 'storm, descends upon a gloomy cloud;" this is no moment for the artist, since, at this moment, there is no feature, by which he could render her capable of being recognised. It is a moment for the poet, because he only has the privilege of combining with it another, in which the goddess is wholly Venus, so nearly and so closely, that she is never lost sight of in the fury. This Flaccus does 66 Neque enim alma videri Jam tumet; aut tereti crinem subnectitur auro, Sidereos diffusa sinus. Eadem effera et ingens Et maculis suffecta genas; pinumque sonantem Virginibus Stygiis, nigramque simillima pallam. g F 5Argonaut. Lib, ii. 102. Statius does the same Illa Paphon veterem centumque altaria linquens, But it may be said, the poet alone possesses the power of painting with negative traits, and, by mixing the negative and positive together, of uniting two appearances in one. No longer is she the graceful Venus; no longer are her locks bound with golden clasps; no azure robes are floating round her; her girdle is laid aside; she is armed with other torches, and larger arrows than her own; furies, like herself, bear her company. But there is no reason, because the artist is compelled to abstain from the exercise of this power, that the poet should do the same. If painting must needs be the sister of poetry, let her not be a jealous sister; and let not the younger forbid the elder every ornament that does not sit well upon herself. h Thebaid. Lib. v. 61. CHAPTER IX. IF we wish to compare the painter and poet together in single instances, we must first inquire, whether they both enjoyed entire freedom, whether, uninfluenced by any external pressure, they could labour at producing the highest effect of their respective arts. Such an external influence was often exercised by religion over the ancient artist. His work, destined for worship and devotion, could not always be as perfect as if the pleasure of the beholders had been his sole aim. The gods were overburdened with allegorical emblems by superstition, and the most beautiful of them were not everywhere worshipped as such. Bacchus, in his temple at Lemnos, out of which the pious Hypsipyle, in the form of the god(23), rescued her father, was represented with horns, and so, without doubt, he appeared in all his temples; for these horns were allegorical, and one of the emblematic components of his being. But the unfettered artist, who executed his Bacchus for no temple, omitted this emblem; and if we, among the extant statues of this god, find none in which he is represented with horns(24), it is perhaps a proof that none of the consecrated images, under which he was actually worshipped, are remaining. Besides, it is exceedingly probable that upon these latter, principally, fell the fury of the pious iconoclasts of the first centuries of christianity; by whom here and there a work of art, if polluted by no adoration, was sometimes spared. As, however, among the excavated antiques, pieces of both kinds are to be found, it were to be wished that the title of works of art was confined to those alone, in which the artist had the power of really shewing himself to be such, in which beauty was his primary and ultimate object. None of the others, in which unmistakeable traces testify to an obligatory conformity to the service of religion, deserve this name, because, in their case, art did not labour on its own account, but was a mere helpmate to religion, which, in the material representation that it allotted to it for execution, looked rather to significance than to beauty. Yet, for all that, I do not mean to maintain that it has not frequently either embodied all this significance in the beautiful, or, at least, out of indulgence to the art and the fine taste of the age, retained so much beauty that the latter seems to hold an undoubted rule. But no such distinction is drawn, and, in consequence, connoisseurs and antiquarians are constantly coming into collision, because they do not |