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There was old Priam, in spectacles, with his crown and robes, Laocooen, in white, with a white wool beard and wig, Ulysses, in a long, yellow beard and mantle, and Aeneas, with a bald head, in a blue, long-tailed coat, and tall dickey, looking like the traditional Englishman in the circus who comes to hire the horse. The Grecians were encamped at a short distance.
At this, one man interposed, Laocooen, a priest of Poseidon. "Take heed, citizens," said he. "Beware of all that comes from the Greeks. Have you fought them for ten years without learning their devices? This is some piece of treachery." But there was another outcry in the crowd, and at that moment certain of the Trojans dragged forward a wretched man who wore the garments of a Greek.
He remained in Breslau the better part of five years, studying life in new phases, gathering a library, which, as commonly happens, he afterwards sold at great loss, and writing his Minna and his Laocooen. He accompanied Tauentzien to the siege of Schweidnitz, where Frederick was present in person.
We speak now of those more rememberable passages where his highest individuality reveals itself in what may truly be called a passion of thought. In the "Laocooen" there is daylight of the serenest temper, and never was there a better example of the discourse of reason, though even that is also a fragment.
The whole city was at feast when the enemy rose in its midst, and the warning of Laocooen was fulfilled. Priam and his warriors fell by the sword, and their kingdom was plundered of all its fair possessions, women and children and treasure. Last of all, the city itself was burned to its very foundations.
His fingers are larger, his neck is larger. There is a curious earthy look to this shuffling one seldom to be seen about men in streets. He is a huge creature with great thighs and Laocooen sinews and he towers a head above his brothers in front of the employment office. He is of a different mold from the men in the street.
It is to this we owe the Dramaturgie, next to the Laocooen the most valuable of his works. But Lessing though it is plain that he made his hand as light as he could, and wrapped his lash in velvet soon found that actors had no more taste for truth than authors.
Decapitate Laocooen, and his knotted muscles will still express the same dreadful suffering and resistance. None knew this better than the ancient sculptors; and hence it was that we find many of their statues of distinguished men wholly or partly undraped.
Rearing their crests, the sea-serpents crossed the shore, swift, shining, terrible as a risen water-flood that descends upon a helpless little town. Straight through the crowd they swept, and seized the priest Laocooen where he stood, with his two sons, and wrapped them all round and round in fearful coils. There was no chance of escape.
'I don't fear you, he said to himself as he strode away. His next step was to inquire for a plaster-shop, where he bought the Laocooen and other casts, and then, having unpacked his Albinus, he was hard at work before nine next morning drawing from the round, and breathing aspirations for High Art, and defiance to all opposition.
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