us justified by the plan which the poet adopts. He is supposed to be addressing himself to a painter, who is executing a picture under his directions. "It is thus," he says, "you must paint me her hair, thus her forehead, and thus her eyes, her mouth, her neck and bosom, her waist and hands!"—What the artist can execute only by means of a successive arrangement, the poet can, of course, describe to him only in a similar manner. His aim is not, by means of these oral directions to the painter, to make acknowledge and feel all the beauty of the beloved object; he perceives himself the insufficiency of a verbal description, and for that very reason calls in to his aid the expression of art. So highly are the illusive charms of painting exalted by the poet, that the whole song seems more like a poem in praise of art than of his mistress; till at length, in the enthusiasm of his admiration, he sees not the image which has been formed under his directions, but the living object of his affection herself; In like manner, in his delineation of Bathyllus, the praise of the beautiful youth is so interwoven with that of the work of art that it might seem doubtful which of them the song is intended to celebrate. He selects the most beautiful parts from various figures; he borrows the neck from Adonis, the hands from Mercury, the thigh from Pollux, and the breast from Bacchus, until he at length beholds his Bathyllus endowed by the artist with the form of an Apollo :— In like manner Lucian knew no other mode of conveying an idea of the beauty of Panthea, but by a reference to the most beautiful female statues of the ancient artists. * What is this but an acknowledgment that language is, of itself, powerless on such an occasion ;—that poetry is inexpressive, and eloquence is mute, if art be not in some measure made to serve as their interpreter ? 'Eixoris, sect. 3, t. ii. TWENTY-FIRST SECTION. Continuation of the Subject.—Though the Poet cannot delineate Beauty in Detail, he possesses other Means of impressing bis Readers with the Idea of Beauty. But it must not be supposed that I would deprive poetry altogether of the power of exciting the idea of corporeal beauty. My object has been simply to point out the mistake of supposing that that object can be attained by any detailed delineation of it, which must necessarily fall short of the effect produced by the painter. I am still willing to allow that, by pursuing a different course, the poet may not only equal, but even surpass the impression of beauty conveyed by art. Even Homer, who has so carefully abstained from all detailed delineation of corporeal beauty —who scarcely deigns to inform us, in passing, that Helen had white arms* and beautiful hair, † —even he has nevertheless conveyed to us an idea of her beauty which far surpasses all that art could accomplish of a similar kind. Look at the passage in which Helen appears before the assembled elders of the people of Troy. When the venerable old men beheld her, they said to one another, No wonder, such celestial charms What could convey to our imagination a more exalted idea of beauty than the fact, that frigid old age acknowledged it to be a sufficient excuse for a war which had been the occasion of so much blood and so much sorrow? Thus we see that what Homer was not able to describe by a detail of its component parts, he has rendered palpable to us by its effect. Ye, then, who would aspire to the character of poets, imitate his practice;—paint to us the Iliad, T. v. 121. |