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Pratinas, the contemporary of Aeschylus, did not long attempt to vie with his mighty rival in his own line . Recurring to the old satyr-chorus, he reduced its unmeasured buffooneries into a regular and systematic form; he preserved the mythological tale, and converted it into an artistical burlesque.
The power of the Gospel was indeed the main and primary cause; but the church must have the credit of appropriating what was most prized in the intellectual centres of antiquity, and giving to it a new direction. Christian oratory is also an interesting subject to present in merely its artistical relations. Its vast influence no one can question.
The building itself, from the stone window-seats to the old-fashioned tower through which you entered, proclaimed its antiquity. In the vaulted entrance-hall stood two immense presses: the quantity of wood which formed them, and the artistical carving, testified to their great age. Above the door were fastened a couple of antlers.
Letters pour in every day, conveying marks of sympathy; directing the attention of the Snob of England to races of Snobs yet undescribed. 'Where are your Theatrical Snobs; your Commercial Snobs; your Medical and Chirurgical Snobs; your Official Snobs; your Legal Snobs; your Artistical Snobs; your Musical Snobs; your Sporting Snobs? write my esteemed correspondents.
Would such a fact as this cause your sadness? Then be sad. For there is a palace, to which the courts of the most sumptuous kings are but a frivolous patch, and, though it is always waiting for them, not one of its owners ever enters there with any genuine sense of its grandeur and glory. I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse.
We will take the liberty of comparing M. Dumas with one of these artistical cuisiniers, possessing in the highest degree the talent of making much out of little, by the skill with which it is prepared, and the piquant nature of the condiments applied.
I should have said all that I have said above, of artistical apostasy, if Giotto had been now living in Florence, and if art were still doing all that it did once for Rome. But the grossness of the error becomes incomprehensible as well as unpardonable, when we look to what level of degradation the human intellect has sunk at this instant in Italy.
He was an unconscious genius, and worked, like Homer, without a knowledge of artistical laws. He was proud and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. He wrote seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal, among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of Shakespeare. He died in Sicily in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
Forgetful of the time when she had shown herself incapable of any deep response, he had persisted in connecting all his dreams of artistical success with Annie's image; she was the visible shape in which the spiritual power that he worshipped, and on whose altar he hoped to lay a not unworthy offering, was made manifest to him.
Let it be admitted that there is not a little of artistical decoration, and a great deal of optical illusion, in the matter; still there is some truth, some great truth, that lay in comparative neglect till Schlegel brought it into prominency. This is genuine literary merit; it is that sort of discovery, so to speak, which makes criticism original.
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