• MR. A. S. MURRAY'S HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE.--Vourto II.. •
IN his previous volume, Mr. Murray described the progress of Greek sculpture, from the earliest times onward to the age of Phidias. In the volume before us he describes its development in that memorable age, and its decline to the days of Pasiteles, whose school he regards "as in effect the last throb of that artistic pulsation which had beat with all the fulness of life in Phidias, had become quickened in Praxiteles and. Scopas, and had increased feverishly at Pergamus." He declinea to follow the common practice, and linger among the crowd of Graeco- Roman sculptures, while admitting that one cannot do so with- out deriving from them some pleasant sensations. But he doubts if there is enough gained thereby to compensate for a prolongation of the narrative at a point where it must inevitably drag. It may be thought, perhaps, that, even as it is, Mr. Murray's narrative does drag occasionally. But this will not be imputed. as a fault to Mr. Murray, if we duly consider the point of view from which he writes. He evidently and wisely regards Greek sculpture as a most dangerous sub- ject to " gush " about. Yet a doubt will insinuate itself as to whether he has not been righteous over-much in his self- restraint ; and ordinary readers will, no doubt, prefer the exuberant vivacity of Mr. Perry's, to the sober solidity of Mr. Murray's, work. We had the pleasure of warmly re- commending the former's History of Greek and Roman Sculpture to those for whom it was written. We can recommend the latter's History of Greek Sculpture quite as warmly to all who like a work of the kind which Germans call " gediegen." But books which merit that laudatory epithet are, as a rule, more instructive than interesting. Mr. Murray's praiseworthy and trustworthy volumes are not among the rare exceptions which confirm that rule. His history is a solid, cautions, and sober piece of work, and when we reflect how often and how dis- mally rhetoric of the finest has come to grief over.the subject which Mr. Murray treats, we cannot doubt that he has chosen the better part. He has certainly chosen a part which leaves his "harmless, necessary" critic as small a chance of showing that he is not entitled to the first of the playful epithets, as of showing that he is entitled to the second. All that we shall do, therefore, will be to mention a few of the points on which there exists, in Mr. Murray's own words, "a not ground- less diversity of opinion," and on which we take, with all due deference, a view at variance with his own; and to quote a passage or two as specimens of the author's temperate, but far from cold or unappreciative criticisms.
As Boetticher now stands alone, or all but alone, in contend- ing that the procession represented on the frieze of the Parthenon is not the Panathenaic procession, it may seem rash and pre- sumptuous to express an opinion in favotu of what Mr. Murray emphatically calls the least tenable part of that isolated critic's theory,—his contention, namely, that the seated figures on the east frieze are not those of gods, but of magistrates and religious officials. Now, we feel very strongly the force of Mr. Murray's arguments in favour of the celebrated frieze not being a realistic panorama of the scene which it represents, but an ideal work of sculpture which had grown up out of an older frieze of the • Hekatompedos. But against his view that these seated
figures must be divine, and not human, becanne there would be no reason otherwise for their being assigned to the distant back- ground, we have this to say. These gods, though they are figured in their "common type," according to Mr. Murray, are robed beyond all question like ordinary Athenians at an assembly. Now, that "common type" does not keep Mr. Murray from seeing Pan where so many other critics have seen Ares; nor does it keep him from saying that there is no special reason • A History of Greek Sculpture. By A. S. Murray. VoL II. With Illustra- tiona. London: John Murray. 1883.
why two figures commonly taken for Demeter and Dionysus should not as well be Apollo and Artemis. Is it quite so certain, then, that the ordinary Athenian dress which, ex hypothesi, drapes the forms of gods so dimly distinguished by a "common type," may not rather drape the forms of ordinary. Athenians themselves. We are ignorant as to how far the "distant back- ground" in which they are placed may not be a decisively fatal objection to Boetticher's theory, but may suggest, mean- while, the possibility of this "distant background "being an echo or reminiscence of the earlier frieze, and not amenable, there- fore, to the laws which would. obtain with regard te "distant backgrounds" in the days of Pericles. Again, Mr. Murray says of the best-known of the figures of Victory on the Balustrade of the Temple of Athena Nike, the figure posed momentarily in the act of adjusting her sandal that,—" Whether this is so or not, her right foot is raised and within a hair's. breadth of throwing her off her balance, and her right hand is stretched down to it. The action can hardly be other than one that has occurred in the course of her movement for- ward. It has all the character of an interruption to her movement. Not only would her balance fail in another in- stant, but her body is thrown round considerably, as if on the verge of staggering. To display the charms of form and drapery, it is an admirable attitude. ' Yet, with all our admira- tion for the figure, it is necessary to bear in mind that a sculptor, though he is bound to seize only an instant of time in the action which he represents, is not, on the other hand, free to accommo- date his wants by reducing the whole action to instantaneous- ness, unless he is prepared to have his work judged solely by its charms and graces of form." This is well said, but are we making a comparison which does not run on all-fours, as the saying is, when we suggest that the loveliest of all statues, the Venus of Milo, is open to the same objection ? We venture to make this suggestion, because, in writing of the much-debated attitude of that peerless masterpiece, Mr. Murray says that, whatever "the action of the hands may have been, it is clear that they had been exercised with considerable force, since the upper part of the figure is bent not only sidewards, but forward also, and since the motive of raising the left foot to prevent the drapery front slipping down altogether, could not be satisfactorily accounted for unless the hands, which should have steadied the drapery, had been occupied in an action of importance." We have assuredly no theory of our own to propose concerning that action, but that, left foot here or left foot there, the drapery would fall as instantaneously, as the poised. Victory would topple over, we make no question. We infer, perhaps errone- ously, that Mr. Murray does not think that it would, and must leave the reader to form his own opinion.
As a specimen of Mr. Murray's style, we shall quote his de- scription of the marble head of Alexander the Great, which was first published by hicaself in the ninth edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica. • He has been dwelling on the animation of face and attitude for which the works of Lysippus seemed famed, "as distinguished from the accumulation of vitality in every limb and muscle, which men like Myron had before imparted to their statues." "For talent of this kind," he says, "portraiture offered admirable facilities, and it is, therefore, not strange to find Alexander the Great adopting, and, so to speak, stamping, Lysippus as the great master of his time, in this direction. We can judge reasonably of his success, from a marble head of the great Macedonian, found at Alexandria, and now in the British Museum, with its singularly fine blending of the ideal and the real, of limitless mortal power combined with ordinary passions, and of features ideally beautiful, united in one person with features nearly deformed. No doubt it must be classed as a copy, since there is no evidence of Lysippus having ever worked in marble. Yet it may reasonably be presumed to be a reproduc- tion from a work of Lysippus. It is thoroughly Greek, and of a, date not long after Alexander. The vivid animation of the face is what would be expected; we welcome, however, above all, the artistic style in which the whole work is carried out, showing, as it does, that the sculptor was a man who retained some of the older and best traditions of his craft, adapting, but not abandon- ing them."
That Mr. Murray is an excellent scholar we may infer from his explanation sf Pliny's statement, that the three artists who produced. between them the Laocoon group, executed it "de consilii sententia." We wonder, therefore, at hie, to us, un- intelligible assertion that the task accomplished by Myron and Polycletus resembled, in many respects, the task accomplished by the great Athenian dramatists about the same period. We presume their "more remote past of great exuberance of language and wealth of poetical material" refers to Homer, but where in their "immediate past" did Aeschylus and Sophocles find that "highest finish and perfection of detail in poetry" which Mr. Murray speaks of?
We do not wonder, for the names of those who go astray in this matter is legion, at Mr. Murray's eccentric spelling of Greek proper names. Nor can we waste a line on this rampant heresy, which none of its professors seem forward to justify. We shall civilly ask Mr. Murray his reason for retaining " Sophocles" and discarding "Pericles," and call his attention to the admirable remarks of M. de Seeley on Carthaginian orthography :—" If Hannibal, Hasdrabal, and Amilcar were obscure personages, it would be needful to call them by their true names, which are given in Punic inscriptions, Hannibaal," Azroubaal,' and Ahmilcar ' or Abmilcar,' the Latin A in Amikar answering to two different names, one of which signifies brother (ah), the other, servant (abd), of Melkart." The words which we have italicised go to the root of the matter; and if Mr. Murray likes to write " Isigonos " and " Stratonikos," and incorrectly on any theory, " Phyromachos," he may safely do so. But we are not yet prepared to surrender " Phidias " to him, or" Scopes," or 4' Lysippus ;" and as a parting shot on this subject, would ask him why he Latinises instead of trans- literating the Greek substantive zA?idovxos.
We should have much to say, if space permitted, on Mr. Murray's treatment of" Idealism " in his opening chapter. His trumpet sounds, or we think it does, an uncertain note, and small blame to it on that account. But without taking for more than it is worth Byron's trenchant assertion that he had seen "much finer women ripe and, real, than all the nonsense of their stone ideal," we have no sympathy with those who hold that "the highest ideal of beauty was sculptured in our mind by the deity when he brought us into the world." We confidently rely on the lex parcimonife to defend us from Plato's " true, real, existent table, which alone exists in Nature, and may be pre- sumed to be made by the Gods." And, giving to the word" idea" its Platonic connotation, we gratefully say ditto to Aristotle's deliberate verdict,--xezipiroca, aX
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