with meaning. "Nothing," says Lessing; | describes what he has seen; taking for his "can possess this important qualification but example Virgil's description of the shield of that which leaves free scope to the imagina- Æneas, where the poet is also the inventor tion. The sight and the fancy must be per- of the imagery described upon the shield. mitted reciprocally to add to each other's Lessing argues that it would have been a enjoyment. There is not, however, any one degradation for the poet to have taken a moment less favorable for this purpose, in hint from the marble group of Laocoon. the object of art, than that of its highest He might, however, show as great an origistate of excitement." Transient situations nality and power in describing the series of and appearances, our author argues, are to events which led to the catastrophe of Laobe avoided. The portrait of a man laugh-coon, though his first hint of them may ing disgusts upon a second view. Falling have been given by the marble group, as bodies cannot be represented. Ajax dis- the statuary himself, who, from some ancient tracted, after having murdered the sheep and story or tradition, executed the work in oxen, which he mistook for men, leans marble. It is not originality, which is degloomily upon his sword, meditating self-manded of the artist or the poet,--and this destruction. That is the moment for the sculptor or the painter; and if an excess of passion is represented, it must be at instants of amazement and stupefaction, or at the pause or point of hesitation, on the eve of some terrible catastrophe. Thus we see the poet and the artist occupy the entire range of representation, and fill out the circle, one representing motion, and the other rest. Passing over several chapters in which our author discusses questions that are interesting rather to the classical critic and the antiquary than to the artist, we come upon the seventh division of his subject, in which he distinguishes two kinds of imitation, that of the genuine artist, and that of the servile copyist. The artist imitates the poet, and the poet the artist; but with different degrees of propriety. When Virgil gives us a description of the shield of Eneas, he imitates in a certain sense the sculptor of the shield; but it was a true imitation only when he had seen such a shield, and when he described what he had seen. "If, on the other hand, Virgil had taken the marble group of the Laocoon for his model," says Lessing, "he would have produced an imitation of the second kind; he would have copied the subject only, and his description would not have been taken from any particular attitude chosen by the sculptor, nor would he describe it as one would draw it, piece by piece, and limb by limb. He would take the group as the suggestor of a series of actions leading to the catastrophe represented in the particular attitude selected by the statuary." Our author is careful to give a superior credit to the more ori kind of imitation, in which the poet we say of ourselves, and not after Lessing,— but the power of producing a combined effect of pleasure and elevation, by whatever means that effect may be produced. "The Count de Caylus recommends the artist to make himself thoroughly acquainted with Homer, that greatest of all pic orial poets-that faithful follower of nature. The Count assures the artists that their execution will be more perfect in proportion to their intimacy with the minutest details of the poet's description." The "The effect of the system here recommended," continues Lessing, in his 11th section, “would be, to unite the two kinds of imitation, which I have already distinguished from each other. painter would not only have to imitate that which the poet had imitated before him, but he would also be required to do so with the identical lineaments which the other had employed;-he would be required to make use of his prototype not only in his character of narrator, but in that of roet likewise. "But how does it happen that this second kind of imitation, which is so derogatory to the poet, is not equally so to the artist? If such a series of pictures as that which the Count de Caylus gives from Homer, had been in existence before the poet wrote; and if we knew that he had drawn his story from those materials, would not our admiration of him be infinitely diminished? How then does it happen, that we withhold none of our approbation from the artist, even when he does nothing more than embody the poet's words in forms and colors?" To this question Lessing replies, that in the works of the painter or statuary, the execution seems more difficult than the invention; while, with the poet, invention is the test. In offering this explanation, Lessing departs from his own principle; or rather, he loses sight of it, and neglects it. By his own showing, the merit of the painter or sculptor is never the merit of the poet, in any case. Neither is invention more credit able in the poet, than in the statuary or painter. And, if we be not wrong in the conjecture, invention, so much prized by the moderns, was not in the least esteemed by the artists and poets of antiquity; their works being founded entirely upon tradition and history; a common stock, from which all alike drew their materials. the sculptor's deficiency in the one to the same extent that we require his excellence in the other. the artist to have imitated nature through the medium of the poet's imitation than without it. The painter who has delineated a beautiful landscape after the description of a Thomson, has performed a higher task than he who has copied it directly from nature." "In some instances, it is even a greater merit in Were the principles of our critic, indicated in the above remarks, to pass into literature as critical canons, we conceive a great and serious injury would be inflicted upon the In every work, the spirit and circumstance of the plot, or situation, was given by tradition; and it was the duty of the poet to develop and characterize it-impersonate it, if we may be allowed the ex-arts. It may be a much more difficult task pression, by the actions of the figures; while the statuary and painter restricted themselves to certain groups and tableaux, depicting points of rest and expectation. Consequently, there is no need of giving precedence to one art over the other, for the universe is both at rest and in motion in an equal degree, and the eternal rest is surely as sublime, to our imagination, as the eternal motion. In composing pictures from Homer, or in executing groups in bas-relief, the artist does not adopt even the minutest trace of that which is the peculiar subject matter of poetry, nor is it possible for him to do so, in the nature of things, unless by caricature. He adopts only the dry bones of tradition, the history itself, which Homer may have got, and probably did get, as did Shakspeare, from his predecessors, improving on them, it may be, and adding new features, but not using larger liberties with tradition itself than the statuary or the painter may use with the same. The arts are therefore free of each other, and make no serious encroachments upon each other's limits. Lessing argues, that should the poet take his descriptions from groups of statuary or from paintings, his merit would be infinitely less. "Had Virgil," says he, "delineated the fate of Laocoon and his sons from the sculpture, he would most difficult of attainment, and would have been entitled only to that which is of comparatively smaller importance; for the first creation of such a work in the imagination, is a far higher effort of genius than its description in words: but had the artist, on the contrary, borrowed his subject from the poet, our admiration of him would scarcely have been diminished, though the merit of the conception would not have been his own; for to impart expression to the marble is infinitely more difficult than to give expression in words; and in comparing the relative value of expression and execution, we are always disposed to excuse have forfeited the merit which we consider the to paint a landscape after Thomson, but the difficulty of art does not in the remotest degree enhance its merit. Whether easily or with difficulty produced, is nothing to the point; works of art are not for the artist, but for others, and were we inclined to interpose between the artist and his work, we should rather say, the more easily it is done the better. "The painter of nature," says our author," has the original before his eyes; the painter after Thomson must exert his imagination :" but, in truth, there is no such thing in art as a pure imitation of nature; the entire work, from the composition of the colors to the last degree of sublimity in expression, is a production of talent and imagination. The artist has, indeed, nature before him, but the spiritual significance of nature he has only in his own mind; and it is not every natural scene, every appearance on the face of nature, that has significance; nor, to some minds, has any scene any significance. If he paints after Thomson he does not take the colors of his stones and trees, (their most effective element,) nor their individual shapes, from Thomson. These he must take from nature, which is common to himself and to the poet. The poet may have expressed the spiritual significance of the scene, but by the canon which Lessing has himself established, he does so by the changes which pass over the landscape, the aesthetic succession of the changes forming a natural drama or story; as, for instance, that of the rise and progress of a thunder-storm, of which nature retains the tradition, for the use both of the painter and the poet. We repeat, then, that the duty of the painter is to represent moments of rest, (suggesting motions and changes,) and that, too, by Lessing's own established principle— a principle which marks a satisfactory limit between pictorial and poetical art. We firmly believe that while Invention is held to be the chief merit of an artistwhile the attainment of what is called Originality is held up to the youthful poet or painter-we shall never produce great works of art. Let Art itself be its own merit, and let its subjects be taken, as they come, either from nature or from history indifferently; and he who can best select and execute the subject, he is the greatest artist. How absurd would seem the efforts of that painter, who should endeavor to invent a new form of human face! Novelty in art is a contradiction in terms, for the soul of art is representation. Let us consider in what manner a great artist would choose to immortalize himself. Surely by the representation of a moral theme, and by no means of any extemporized fable. Were he a sculptor, his figure would be a Moses, a Cromwell, a Calhoun. He would turn to history both for story and sentiment; and chiefly to the oldest traditions, and the most sacred histories. Were he a poet, his choice would be of no idle scene, pregnant with no consequences that which he represented would be significant either of the great laws which govern human nature in al! conditions, or of the destiny of a nation, or perhaps, as in Milton's epic, of all mankind. He would endeavor to characterize the most powerful traits of humanity, in order, simply, to express the grandeur of his own spirit, (for the artist is ambitious, and seeks admission to the society of the great of all ages;) and he would, therefore, by a necessary sympathy, feel himself attracted only to the characters and actions of heroes and sages. If, like Milton, he chose to invent, his invention would be merely a combination,-an assemblage of known images, to express a series of established principles; and in this invention he would only imitate nature, and, as Milton has done, reproduce tradition in new actions, and describe what has already been described-battles, single conflicts, stratagems, statesmanship, and the interior strug gles of the greater passions. He would never inquire whether or no he were original, but only whether he were true to nature in her highest passages, and correct and artistic in the combination of the forms and actions taken to illustrate his moral theme. In the fifteenth section of his work, Les sing has marked the essential difference between the poet and the artist. Without adhering closely to the text, let us endeavor to develop the idea of which it contains the germ, and the germ only; for Lessing, although the originator, did not prove himself the master of criticism, and humbler spirits, following in his steps, may possibly add something to the work which he began. "Time is the sphere of the poet-space that of the painter." More correctly, the statuary and the painter make use of visible fixed forms to represent passions and moral emotions,-visible fixed forms, which are significant in themselves, as the human face is, in itself, significant of what passes in the mind and heart. The poet, on the other hand, makes use of sounds, the measures of time and motion. The face and form of man is the property of the painter; his speech, the most significant and powerful of his actions, belongs to the poet. It is important, however, not to mistake written language, or phonetics, for an essential in the poet's art; since poetry may be composed without the aid of letters, and intrusted merely to the memory. The labor of the painter and statuary is mechanical, and their work requires no comment; its meaning, like that of nature, being at once apparent to all mankind. The work of the poet is limited to the language in which he writes; a medium variously colored, imperfect, and artificial in the highest degree. The poet cannot make us see a thing which we have not seen; he can only represent the motions and actions of things which we have seen; which gives a hint of the mode in which poems should be illustrated; that is to say, by pictures representing points of rest in the progress of the story, and giving us portraits of the personages in groups preparatory to, or concluding an action, as Shakspeare has been illustrated by the more recent limners. Because language can express and suggest every action, sentiment, and feeling, poetry can do the same; but as language proper always expresses by its nature a movement in the mind, while colors and lines express only fixed images in the same, poetry is the vehicle for expressing passions, actions, and variable emotions, while painting and statuary can only represent, in strictness, what is permanent and perpetual, or rather, what is complete in itself, and that cesses and the universal admiration which attends their works, we are forced to concede them the highest praise of criticism, which is that they knew, first, how to choose the highest subjects that could be executed in marble; and second, that they carried their execution to a degree unsurpassed by those who have come after them. In illustrating the difference between the artist and the poet, Lessing gives us a beautiful example in the picture of Pandarus, from the Fourth Book of the Iliad, which picture, he says, is one of the most finished and most "Each moment is delineated, from the grasping of the bow to the flight of the arrow; and these moments are all so closely connected, and yet so distinct one from another, were we unacquainted with the use of the bow, we might learn it from this picture alone. We see Paudarus drawing forth his bow; he fastens it on the string, opens his quiver, and chooses a new and well-feathered draws back the string with the channelled end of arrow. He adjusts the arrow to the string, and the arrow, till they come in contact with his breast, while the iron end of the arrow approaches the bow. The large rounded bow now strikes asunder with a mighty noise, the string vibrates with a ringing sound, off springs the arrow, and flies swiftly to its mark." excites no desire that it does not satisfy. Strictly artistic groups of statuary should then require no label or explanation to make them agreeable and instructive. A sleeping infant, in marble, requires no text nor comment to enhance its value. A blind beggar led by a child stands for the natural symbol of certain truly divine sentiments--innocence, humility, submission to the will of God, and dutifulness. And surely, if the statuary has expressed all these in his group, it needs no label nor explanation, no quotation from Marmontel, to enhance its value. If in any particular the ancients have ex-illusive in the whole poem: celled us, it is in this, that their artists represented sublime and constant emotions, such as are in themselves complete. The statue of Niobe weeping over her children represents the instant access of a grief, which at once annihilates and replaces all other emotions, which pervades the whole mind and the whole body, which is actionless through despair, and, therefore, representable in the marble. A grief without remedy, and therefore without irritation; for it is the incompleteness of sorrow, the tincture of a lingering hope, that inspires it and leads to vehement action. In general the art of the This series of actions would require a statuary leads him to prefer a sublime or extremely pathetic subject, and for the very dozen different statues, set in order, for their reason assigned the quiet vision of the representation. Homer paints them in a enthusiast, whose open eyes behold only paragraph. He does not describe the bow, nor the arrow, nor the person of the archerspiritual things, and whose body sleeps in these he leaves to imagination, aided by exapathy while the spirit is exalted, is representable in the marble. The countenance of perience; but he gives us the series of actions the sage or grave philosopher is more beau- performed by these, tending all to the actifuiful in marble than in life, perhaps for complishment of the work which he has in the very reason that the spirit of mere wis- hand-the destruction of Troy, or rather of dom partakes more of acquiescence and sub-its hero, Hector; or, if we go still farther, mission than of action. The famous statue of the glory of Greece, in the persons of its the Listening Slave, so called, but by Win-kings. kelman otherwise designated, represents another species of rest, that of cunning and expectation. The Dying Gladiator, the Apollo Belvidere, the Hercules in Apotheosis, the Medician Venus, the very Caryatides-statues in the places of pillars-serve to illustrate the art of antiquity, and to show the superiority of judgment of the statuaries of Greece over those of later days. They knew the limits of their art, what it could and what it could not express, and they seldom attempted anything beyond those limits. Their bas-reliefs encroach a little upon the province of painting, but not essentially upon that of poetry. From their eminent suc "The painter can only employ," says Lessing, one single moment of the action, and he must therefore select as far as possible that which is at once expressive of the past and pregnant with the future. In like manner the poet, in his consecutive imitations, can employ but one single attribute of bodies, and must, therefore, select that which awakens the most sensible image of the body, under that particular aspect which he has chosen to represent. On this principle is founded the rule of unity in the pictorial or descriptive epithets of the poet, and of parsimony in his delineations of bodily objects.” We see that the unity of poetry is a unity of progress toward a certain end, the rise, the culmination, and the catastrophe of a single passion in a single individual, re pencil. flected in the inferior members of the group which the painter could follow with his that move with him. And this rule of unity holds throughout the entire range of poetic art, from the point of the epigram, and the single thought of the sonnet, even to the sublime passion of the ode, and the glory and the majestic ambition of the epic, in which the entire force of human character, in one or in a few persons, is concentrated for a series of years upon the attainment of a single purpose. But this rule of unity, as it appears in the trunk and larger proportions, so carries itself into the minutest leaves, the very if's and and's of a vitally organized poem. Every word should have a vital connection with every other in the entire work, and every word should express, or assist in expressing, an act which is a part of the entire action, the whole, together and apart, having a defined and certain aim; and thus all disputes about the unities are set at naught by the very nature and necessity of art. "Such principles as I have expressed," says Lessing, "will alone enable us to define and explain the grandeur of Homer's style, as well as to estimate as it deserves the opposite practice of so many modern poets, who vainly seek to compete with the painter on a point on which they must of necessity be surpassed by him. I find that Homer paints nothing but progressive actions, and each body, each individual thing which he introduces, he delineates only on account of the part it bears in these actions, and even then in general with but a single trait. Is it then surprising that the painter can find little or nothing to do where Homer has employed his powers of delineation, and that the only field he can find to work on is where the story brings together a number of beautiful bodies in fine positions, and within a space advantageous to art, however slight the poet's delineation of all these circumstances may be!" "He contrives, by numberless artifices, to place this single object in a series of successive movements, each of which exhibits it under a different aspect, and in the last of which the painter must wait to see it before he can fully exhibit what has been described by the poet. For instance, if Homer wishes to delineate the car of Juno, he makes Hebe put it together, bit by bit, before our eyes; we see the wheels, the axles, the seat of the car, the braces and the reins, not so much in actual der the hands of Hebe: the wheels are the only combination, as in the progress of combination, unpart on which Homer bestows more than one trait, delineating the eight brazen spokes, the golden circles, the bands of brass, and the silver naves, each separately and particularly. One would almost be inclined to think that the poet had chosen to dwell so much longer on the wheels than the other parts, out of deference to the more important service required from them in reality." «Bright Hebe waits; by Hebe ever young, The whirling wheels are to the chariot hung. On the bright axle turns the bidden wheel Of sounding brass; the polished axle steel. Eight brazen spokes in radiant order flame, The circles gold, of uncorrupted frame, Such as the heavens produce; and round the gold Two brazen rings of work divine were rolled. The bossy naves of solid silver shone; Braces of gold suspend the moving throue: The car, behind, an arching figure bore; The bending concave form'd an arch before. Silver the beam, th' extended yoke was gold, And golden reins th' immortal coursers hold." Lessing's second illustration is a description from Homer of the king, Agamemnon, putting on his dress. We see him draw on the soft tunic, throw the broad mantle around him, fasten his elegant sandals, gird on his sword, and lastly, seize the regal sceptre. Another poet would have deline ated the dress and left us without the action. We should have had a tailor's card of Aga Lessing proceeds to illustrate this great discovery, which, if a new school of construc-memnon. Around him next the royal mantle threw. tive art shall ever arise in this country, must « First on his limbs a slender vest he drew, be taken as its corner-stone, and in defiance of that abominable miscellaneousness and confusion of purpose which characterize the modern school, by certain well chosen examples from Homer. Thus Homer characterizes the ship by a single trait-the black Again, in describing the sceptre of the ship, or, the hollow ship; but of the em-king he supposes that we have already seen barkation, the sailing, and the landing, he it. Instead of a description he gives us its draws a highly finished picture, because they history. First, it is the work of Vulcan, it are actions, or rather a single action, whose glitters in the hands of Jove, it marks the successions belong to poetry. If it becomes necessary for Homer to fix our view longer than usual on a single object, even then it will be found that no picture is presented dignity of Mercury, it is the baton of Pelops, the staff of Atreus, and, finally, the ruling sceptre of the king of Argos. This makes the sceptre, if we may so speak, respectable in |