LECTURES : MR. PlILSZKY AND MR. HAMM
Two new courses of lectures have begun—both of the critical clap?, but otherwise essentially different ; the first artistic, the second literaz At Willis's Rooms, Mr. Pulszky is reviewing, in eight sittnisba#4 " Archaeology and History of Ancient Art." His series comniencest Saturday last, with " Egyptian Art and its History" ; his treatmint of which evidenced copious mastery of the subject, and a clear straightfor- ward method, that loses, nothing of its perspicuity and conversational toe from Mr. Pulezky's lips by being conveyed in an acquired lan-
guage.
The lecturer traced the general character of Egyptian art, as the type of fixed rule, to the influence of local circumstances,—the monotonous scenery of desert, mountains, and Nile, and the unvarying climate. The understanding was cultivated to the depression of the imagination ; the life was marked by sameness ; and there was no room for eccentricity. The art was of a severe hieratic style—not utterly stationary, but of the same types from first to last. Here followed a sketch of the vicissitudes of Egyptian history ; the rise or fall of art being shown to have kept pace with that of the national life. The pyramids, the most ancient of the buildings extant, belong to the fourth dynasty, about 2500, or, as Bunsen maintains, 3200 B.C. Only one statue, that of Bethmes in the British Museum, is known of the same period ; between which and the twelfth dynasty Egypt reached her highest point in sculpture. In architecture, the massiveness is not only msthetie but material : an Arab village is now founded atop of the temple of Luxor. The positions adopted for sculpture were severely limited : we have thirty-five centuries of the same attitudes. Nevertheless, some modifications in the tendency are to be recognized : elegance belongs to the twelfth dynasty, grandeur to the revival under the eighteenth and nineteenth. Even in small works, the idea of colossal size was preserved by the chariness of detail. Art had its phases under the new empire and under the Greek Ptolemies. Under the Romans it declined; and its extinction dates shortly beyond the reign of Hadrian.
After referring to the Egyptian reliefs, which are what the French term en creux, and to the painting, which shows some idea of the pleasing com- bination of colours, Mr. Pulszky summed up. The architecture of Egypt is grand, her sculpture severe and monotonous ; her reliefs are subordinate to architecture, and sometimes of the nature of hieroglyphics ; her paint- ing is merely in the earliest stage ; but it was the dawn of the art as it now exists.
The second lecture, delivered on Wednesday, was devoted to "the Monuments of Nineveh, Babylon, and Persepolis." The national charac- ter, in which the nomade shepherd life precluded the foundation of large cities or permanent rule, and in which the king was everything, the people nothing, was again appealed to in elucidation of the tone of their art. All tended to despotism in Assyria. The king was the high-priest, and. the temple his palace ; while in Egypt the palace yielded in import- ance to the temple. The Assyrians perverted the Egyptian ideas which they constantly adopted. The outline was less correctly drawn, and more loaded with details. The great height of the buildings, and not their massiveness, was relied upon for architectural effect. The lecturer turned after this to the subject of the system and credibility of the inter- pretations of cuneiform writing, and observed, after citing an apt ex- ample, that lying is the inherent vice of despotic courts.
It occurs to us that two statements made by Mr. Pulszky in the course of his interesting and instructive lectures are open to question. The first, that the Egyptians were the only people the archaism of whose art took the particular form of representing a full-faced eye in a profile posi- tion; whereas we think examples of this will be found in the sculpture of the Assyrians, and even of the early Greeks. The second, that no figures of women are found on the Nineveh marbles ; a statement in which his more critical opinion clashes, we fancy, with at least the popu- lar assumption.
Satirical literature, from the time of the Romans to our own days, is the theme on which Mr. Hannay addresses his audience at the Institution in Edwards Street, Portman Square ; the course of six lectures having begun on Wednesday, with Horace and Juvenal. Point, brilliant fancy, and a thoroughly literary tone in both matter and manner, were the character- istics.
All sorts and conditions of men, from the king to the hangman, in turn exercise the satiric faculty ; which assimilates now to the lightning, now to the nettle or broom, to the war-rocket in which the wood is apt to pre- ponderate, and even to the scintillations struck from flint by the hoof of an ass. Mr. Hannay follows Casaubon in holding to an indigenous origin among the Romans for satire—both the word and the thing; and we are founded in this respect on the Romans ; whom we must not regard as merely a military nation with a peculiar conformation of nose. Horace, the first professed Latin satirist of whom more than fragments exist, was worldly, self-conscious, rather too fond of good dinners, and the mun- ditim of Pyrrha's hair. He was quite a Conservative, and could laugh at a Stoic, with his notion that the virtuous cobler is the supreme of men. Was he a poet intrinsically ? It would appear that he did not write his carmine from an impulse of nature ; they derive from the Greek. Not to speak disrespectfully, Horace was a miraculous Italian image-boy. Profundity of sentiment is the true test of a poet. Horace was on rather good terms with the society he satirizes, but was perfectly free from cant. He would with the utmost complacency have dined with the Nasidenus whom he ridicules. For all this, he may be conjectured to have been a homely little man in the main. Juvenal lived in a monstrous period ; a period that looms through history with a tropical glare and miasma, worthy of qualities in its satirist much high- er than wit. Earnestness and heartiness of scorn belong to Juvenal : he was a brawny fighting-man, the champion of old Rome. Horace was scarcely ever angry ; he saw the ludicrous side of things, and made so- ciety his standard : Juvenal is always looking for something or somebody to lash ; as he says of himself; he laughs and hates. He is more pictorial ; has flashes of fancy, gleams of poetic pathos, wit, manliness, and energy. The qualities of Swift, Hogarth, and Gray, would go towards making a Juvenal ; those of Addison, Chesterfield, Wortley Montague, Campbell, and Washington Irving, towards a Horace. The second was a man of the world, philosophy, and moderation ; the first a fiery reformer, whose words are the genuine utterance of emotion. Horace's " nil admirari" doctrine implied that he could look at the stars with no vulgar dread, at common life with no contempt ; and was as lofty a principle, perhaps, as a man of the world can get out of nature. The tone of our existing society is more Horatian than consonant with that of our own Elizabethan ancestors. Juvenal had a deeper laugh than Horace- 40Inething of a prophetic wail, more touching than any polite smile : he CaZa moral superiority. When the time for a base system to fall insecel, the handwriting of both these men is on the wall. r - ,
Previous page
