Modern Painters Volume III Part 17

-- 43. Accordingly, the Greek sense of color seems to have been so comparatively dim and uncertain, that it is almost impossible to ascertain what the real idea was which they attached to any word alluding to hue: and above all, color, though pleasant to their eyes, as to those of all human beings, seems never to have been impressive to their feelings. They liked purple, on the whole, the best; but there was no sense of cheerfulness or pleasantness in one color, and gloom in another, such as the mediaevals had.

For instance, when Achilles goes, in great anger and sorrow, to complain to Thetis of the scorn done him by Agamemnon, the sea appears to him "wine-colored." One might think this meant that the sea looked dark and reddish-purple to him, in a kind of sympathy with his anger.

But we turn to the pa.s.sage of Sophocles, which has been above quoted--a pa.s.sage peculiarly intended to express peace and rest--and we find that the birds sing among "wine-colored" ivy. The uncertainty of conception of the hue itself, and entire absence of expressive character in the word, could hardly be more clearly manifested.

-- 44. Again: I said the Greek liked purple, as a general source of enjoyment, better than any other color. So he did, and so all healthy persons who have eye for color, and are unprejudiced about it, do; and will to the end of time, for a reason presently to be noted. But so far was this instinctive preference for purple from giving, in the Greek mind, any consistently cheerful or sacred a.s.sociation to the color, that Homer constantly calls death "purple death."

-- 45. Again: in the pa.s.sage of Sophocles, so often spoken of, I said there was some difficulty respecting a word often translated "thickets." I believe, myself, it means glades; literally, "going places" in the woods,--that is to say, places where, either naturally or by force, the trees separate, so as to give some accessible avenue. Now, Sophocles tells us the birds sang in these "_green_ going places;" and we take up the expression gratefully, thinking the old Greek perceived and enjoyed, as we do, the sweet fall of the eminently _green_ light through the leaves when they are a little thinner than in the heart of the wood. But we turn to the tragedy of Ajax, and are much shaken in our conclusion about the meaning of the word, when we are told that the body of Ajax is to lie unburied, and be eaten by sea-birds on the "_green_ sand." The formation, geologically distinguished by that t.i.tle, was certainly not known to Sophocles; and the only conclusion which, it seems to me, we can come to under the circ.u.mstances,--a.s.suming Ariel's[75] authority as to the color of pretty sand, and the ancient mariner's (or, rather, his hearer's[76]) as to the color of ugly sand, to be conclusive,--is that Sophocles really did not know green from yellow or brown.

-- 46. Now, without going out of the terrestrial paradise, in which Dante last left us, we shall be able at once to compare with this Greek incert.i.tude the precision of the mediaeval eye for color. Some three arrowflights further up into the wood we come to a tall tree, which is at first barren, but, after some little time, visibly opens into flowers, of a color "less than that of roses, but more than that of violets."

It certainly would not be possible, in words, to come nearer to the _definition_ of the exact hue which Dante meant--that of the apple-blossom. Had he employed any simple color-phrase, as a "pale pink," or "violet-pink," or any other such combined expression, he still could not have completely got at the delicacy of the hue; he might perhaps have indicated its kind, but not its tenderness; but by taking the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, and then enfeebling this with the violet grey, he gets, as closely as language can carry him, to the complete rendering of the vision, though it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfect beauty ineffable; and rightly so felt, for of all lovely things which grace the spring time in our fair temperate zone, I am not sure but this blossoming of the apple-tree is the fairest. At all events, I find it a.s.sociated in my mind with four other kinds of color, certainly princ.i.p.al among the gifts of the northern earth, namely:

1st. Bell gentians growing close together, mixed with lilies of the valley, on the Jura pastures.

2nd. Alpine roses with dew upon them, under low rays of morning sunshine, touching the tops of the flowers.

3rd. Bell heather in ma.s.s, in full light, at sunset.

4th. White narcissus (red-centred) in ma.s.s, on the Vevay pastures, in sunshine, after rain.

And I know not where in the group to place the wreaths of apple-blossoms, in the Vevay orchards, with the far-off blue of the lake of Geneva seen between the flowers.

A Greek, however, would have regarded this blossom simply with the eyes of a Devonshire farmer, as bearing on the probable price of cider, and would have called it red, cerulean, purple, white, hyacinthine, or generally "aglaos," agreeable, as happened to suit his verse.

-- 47. Again: we have seen how fond the Greek was of composing his paradises of rather damp gra.s.s; but that in this fondness for gra.s.s there was always an undercurrent of consideration for his horses; and the characters in it which pleased him most were its depth and freshness; not its color. Now, if we remember carefully the general expressions, respecting gra.s.s, used in modern literature, I think nearly the commonest that occurs to us will be that of "enamelled"

turf or sward. This phrase is usually employed by our pseudo-poets, like all their other phrases, without knowing what it means, because it has been used by other writers before them, and because they do not know what else to say of gra.s.s. If we were to ask them what enamel was, they could not tell us; and if we asked why gra.s.s was like enamel, they could not tell us. The expression _has_ a meaning, however, and one peculiarly characteristic of mediaeval and modern temper.

-- 48. The first instance I know of its right use, though very probably it had been so employed before, is in Dante. The righteous spirits of the pre-Christian ages are seen by him, though in the Inferno, yet in a place open, luminous, and high, walking upon the "green enamel."

I am very sure that Dante did not use this phrase as we use it. He knew well what enamel was; and his readers, in order to understand him thoroughly, must remember what it is,--a vitreous paste, dissolved in water, mixed with metallic oxides, to give it the opacity and the color required, spread in a moist state on metal, and afterwards hardened by fire, so as never to change. And Dante means, in using this metaphor of the gra.s.s of the Inferno, to mark that it is laid as a tempering and cooling substance over the dark, metallic, gloomy ground; but yet so hardened by the fire, that it is not any more fresh or living gra.s.s, but a smooth, silent, lifeless bed of eternal green. And we know how _hard_ Dante's idea of it was; because afterwards, in what is perhaps the most awful pa.s.sage of the whole Inferno, when the three furies rise at the top of the burning tower, and catching sight of Dante, and not being able to get at him, shriek wildly for the Gorgon to come up too, that they may turn him into stone,--the word _stone_ is not hard enough for them. Stone might crumble away after it was made, or something with life might grow upon it; no, it shall not be stone; they will make enamel of him; nothing can grow out of that; it is dead for ever.[77]

"Venga Medusa, si lo farem di _Smalto_."

-- 49. Now, almost in the opening of the Purgatory, as there at the entrance of the Inferno, we find a company of great ones resting in a gra.s.sy place. But the idea of the gra.s.s now is very different. The word now used is not "enamel," but "herb," and instead of being merely green, it is covered with flowers of many colors. With the usual mediaeval accuracy, Dante insists on telling us precisely what these colors were, and how bright; which he does by naming the actual pigments used in illumination,--"Gold, and fine silver, and cochineal, and white lead, and Indian wood, serene and lucid, and fresh emerald, just broken, would have been excelled, as less is by greater, by the flowers and gra.s.s of the place." It is evident that the "emerald" here means the emerald green of the illuminators; for a fresh emerald is no brighter than one which is not fresh, and Dante was not one to throw away his words thus. Observe, then, we have here the idea of the growth, life, and variegation of the "green herb," as opposed to the smalto of the Inferno; but the colors of the variegation are ill.u.s.trated and defined by the reference to actual pigments; and, observe, because the other colors are rather bright, the blue ground (Indian wood, indigo?) is sober; lucid, but serene; and presently two angels enter, who are dressed in green drapery, but of a paler green than the gra.s.s, which Dante marks, by telling us that it was "the green of leaves just budded."

-- 50. In all this, I wish the reader to observe two things: first, the general carefulness of the poet in defining color, distinguishing it precisely as a painter would (opposed to the Greek carelessness about it); and, secondly, his regarding the gra.s.s for its greenness and variegation, rather than, as a Greek would have done, for its depth and freshness. This greenness or brightness, and variegation, are taken up by later and modern poets, as the things intended to be chiefly expressed by the word "enamelled;" and, gradually, the term is taken to indicate any kind of bright and interchangeable coloring; there being always this much of propriety about it, when used of greensward, that such sward is indeed, like enamel, a coat of bright color on a comparatively dark ground; and is thus a sort of natural jewelry and painter's work, different from loose and large vegetation.

The word is often awkwardly and falsely used, by the later poets, of all kinds of growth and color; as by Milton of the flowers of Paradise showing themselves over its wall; but it retains, nevertheless, through all its jaded inanity, some half-unconscious vestige of the old sense, even to the present day.

-- 51. There are, it seems to me, several important deductions to be made from these facts. The Greek, we have seen, delighted in the gra.s.s for its usefulness; the mediaeval, as also we moderns, for its color and beauty. But both dwell on it as the _first_ element of the lovely landscape; we saw its use in Homer, we see also that Dante thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen enough comforted in Hades by having even the _image_ of green gra.s.s put beneath their feet; the happy resting-place in Purgatory has no other delight than its gra.s.s and flowers; and, finally, in the terrestrial paradise, the feet of Matilda pause where the Lethe stream first bends the blades of gra.s.s. Consider a little what a depth there is in this great instinct of the human race. Gather a single blade of gra.s.s, and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point,--not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine,--there be any by man so deeply loved, by G.o.d so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green. It seems to me not to have been without a peculiar significance, that our Lord, when about to work the miracle which, of all that He showed, appears to have been felt by the mult.i.tude as the most impressive,--the miracle of the loaves,--commanded the people to sit down by companies "upon the green gra.s.s." He was about to feed them with the princ.i.p.al produce of earth and the sea, the simplest representations of the food of mankind. He gave them the seed of the herb; He bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which was as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its perfect fruit, for their sustenance; thus, in this single order and act, when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the Creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and sustenance of man, to the simplest and most despised of all the leafy families of the earth. And well does it fulfil its mission. Consider what we owe merely to the meadow gra.s.s, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and peaceful spears. The fields! Follow but forth for a little time the thoughts of all that we ought to recognise in those words. All spring and summer is in them,--the walks by silent, scented paths,--the rests in noon-day heat,--the joy of herds and flocks,--the power of all shepherd life and meditation,--the life of sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows, where else it would have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust,--pastures beside the pacing brooks,--soft banks and knolls of lowly hills,--thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea,--crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices: all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, Shakspere's peculiar joy, would open on us more and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in the spring time, among the meadows that slope from the sh.o.r.es of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the gra.s.s grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom,--paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness,--look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, "He maketh gra.s.s to grow upon the mountains."

-- 52. There are also several lessons symbolically connected with this subject, which we must not allow to escape us. Observe, the peculiar characters of the gra.s.s, which adapt it especially for the service of man, are its apparent _humility_, and _cheerfulness_. Its humility, in that it seems created only for lowest service,--appointed to be trodden on, and fed upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult under all kinds of violence and suffering. You roll it, and it is stronger the next day; you mow it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if it were grateful; you tread upon it, and it only sends up richer perfume. Spring comes, and it rejoices with all the earth,--glowing with variegated flame of flowers,--waving in soft depth of fruitful strength. Winter comes, and though it will not mock its fellow plants by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn colorless or leafless as they. It is always green; and is only the brighter and gayer for the h.o.a.r-frost.

-- 53. Now, these two characters--of humility, and joy under trial--are exactly those which most definitely distinguish the Christian from the Pagan spirit. Whatever virtue the pagan possessed was rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. It began in the elevation of his own nature; it ended but in the "verde smalto"--the hopeless green--of the Elysian fields. But the Christian virtue is rooted in self-debas.e.m.e.nt, and strengthened under suffering by gladness of hope. And remembering this, it is curious to observe how utterly without gladness the Greek heart appears to be in watching the flowering gra.s.s, and what strange discords of expression arise sometimes in consequence. There is one, recurring once or twice in Homer, which has always pained me. He says, "the Greek army was on the fields, as thick as flowers in the spring." It might be so; but flowers in spring time are not the image by which Dante would have numbered soldiers on their path of battle. Dante could not have thought of the flowering of the gra.s.s but as a.s.sociated with happiness. There is a still deeper significance in the pa.s.sage quoted, a little while ago, from Homer, describing Ulysses casting himself down on the _rushes_ and the corn-giving land at the river sh.o.r.e,--the rushes and corn being to him only good for rest and sustenance,--when we compare it with that in which Dante tells us he was ordered to descend to the sh.o.r.e of the lake as he entered Purgatory, to gather a _rush_, and gird himself with it, it being to him the emblem not only of rest, but of humility under chastis.e.m.e.nt, the rush (or reed) being the only plant which can grow there;--"no plant which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live on that sh.o.r.e, because it does not yield to the chastis.e.m.e.nt of its waves."

It cannot but strike the reader singularly how deep and harmonious a significance runs through all these words of Dante--how every syllable of them, the more we penetrate it, becomes a seed of farther thought! For, follow up this image of the girding with the reed, under trial, and see to whose feet it will lead us. As the gra.s.s of the earth, thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place where our Lord commanded the mult.i.tude to sit down by companies upon the green gra.s.s; so the gra.s.s of the waters, thought of as sustaining itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to the place where a stem of it was put into our Lord's hand for his sceptre; and in the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting truth of the Christian ages--that all glory was to be begun in suffering, and all power in humility.

a.s.sembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of all, from Isaiah xl. 6., we find, the gra.s.s and flowers are types, in their pa.s.sing, of the pa.s.sing of human life, and, in their excellence, of the excellence of human life; and this in a twofold way; first, by their Beneficence, and then, by their endurance:--the gra.s.s of the earth, in giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and the gra.s.s of the waters, in giving its freshness for our rest, and in its bending before the wave.[78] But understood in the broad human and Divine sense, the "_herb_ yielding seed" (as opposed to the fruit-tree yielding fruit) includes a third family of plants, and fulfils a third office to the human race. It includes the great family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_ offices of giving food, raiment, and rest. Follow out this fulfilment; consider the a.s.sociation of the linen garment and the linen embroidery, with the priestly office, and the furniture of the tabernacle: and consider how the rush has been, in all time, the first natural carpet thrown under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth by the three families of plants; not arbitrarily or fancifully a.s.sociated with them, but in all the three cases marked for us by Scriptural words:

1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the gra.s.s for food and beauty.--"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin."

2nd. Humility; in the gra.s.s for rest.--"A bruised reed shall He not break."

3rd. Love; in the gra.s.s for clothing (because of its swift kindling),--"The smoking flax shall He not quench."

And then, finally, observe the confirmation of these last two images in, I suppose, the most important prophecy, relating to the future state of the Christian Church, which occurs in the Old Testament, namely, that contained in the closing chapters of Ezekiel. The measures of the Temple of G.o.d are to be taken; and because it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever can be taken, the angel has "a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a measuring _reed_." The use of the line was to measure the land, and of the reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of the church, or its labors, are to be measured by _humility_, and its territory or land, by _love_.

The limits of the Church have, indeed, in later days, been measured, to the world's sorrow, by another kind of flaxen line, burning with the fire of unholy zeal, not with that of Christian charity; and perhaps the best lesson which we can finally take to ourselves, in leaving these sweet fields of the mediaeval landscape, is the memory that, in spite of all the fettered habits of thought of his age, this great Dante, this inspired exponent of what lay deepest at the heart of the early Church, placed his terrestrial paradise where there had ceased to be fence or division, and where the gra.s.s of the earth was bowed down, in unity of direction, only by the soft waves that bore with them the forgetfulness of evil.

[71] The peculiar dislike felt by the mediaevals for the _sea_, is so interesting a subject of inquiry, that I have reserved it for separate discussion in another work, in present preparation, "Harbors of England."

[72] Married to Philip, younger son of the King of Navarre, in 1352. She died in 1394.

[73] "Three times the length of a human body."--Purg. x. 24.

[74] Purg. xii. 102.

[75] "Come unto these _yellow_ sands."

[76] "And thou art long, and lank, and _brown_, As is the ribbed sea sand."

[77] Compare parallel pa.s.sage, making Dante hard or changeless in good Purg. viii. 114.

[78] So also in Isa. x.x.xv. 7., the prevalence of righteousness and peace over all evil is thus foretold:

"In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be _gra.s.s_, with _reeds_ and _rushes_."

CHAPTER XV.

OF MEDIaeVAL LANDSCAPE:--SECONDLY, THE ROCKS.

-- 1. I closed the last chapter, not because our subject was exhausted, but to give the reader breathing time, and because I supposed he would hardly care to turn back suddenly from the subjects of thought last suggested, to the less pregnant matters of inquiry connected with mediaeval landscape. Nor was the pause mistimed even as respects the order of our subjects; for hitherto we have been arrested chiefly by the beauty of the pastures and fields, and have followed the mediaeval mind in its fond regard of leaf and flower. But now we have some hard hill-climbing to do; and the remainder of our investigation must be carried on, for the most part, on hands and knees, so that it is not ill done of us first to take breath.

-- 2. It will be remembered that in the last chapter, -- 14., we supposed it probable that there would be considerable inaccuracies in the mediaeval mode of regarding nature. Hitherto, however, we have found none; but, on the contrary, intense accuracy, precision, and affection. The reason of this is, that all floral and foliaged beauty might be perfectly represented, as far as its form went, in the sculpture and ornamental painting of the period; hence the attention of men was thoroughly awakened to that beauty. But as mountains and clouds and large features of natural scenery could not be accurately represented, we must be prepared to find them not so carefully contemplated,--more carefully, indeed, than by the Greeks, but still in no wise as the things themselves deserve.

-- 3. It was besides noticed that mountains, though regarded with reverence by the mediaeval, were also the subjects of a certain dislike and dread. And we have seen already that in fact the place of the soul's purification, though a mountain, is yet by Dante subdued, whenever there is any pleasantness to be found upon it, from all mountainous character into gra.s.sy recesses, or slopes to rushy sh.o.r.e; and, in his general conception of it, resembles much more a castle mound, surrounded by terraced walks,--in the manner, for instance, of one of Turner's favorite scenes, the bank under Richmond Castle (Yorkshire); or, still more, one of the hill slopes divided by terraces, above the Rhine, in which the picturesqueness of the ground has been reduced to the form best calculated for the growing of costly wine, than any scene to which we moderns should naturally attach the term "Mountainous." On the other hand, although the Inferno is just as accurately measured and divided as the Purgatory, it is nevertheless cleft into rocky chasms which possess something of true mountain nature--nature which we moderns of the north should most of us seek with delight, but which, to the great Florentine, appeared adapted only for the punishment of lost spirits, and which, on the mind of nearly all his countrymen, would to this day produce a very closely correspondent effect; so that their graceful language, dying away on the north side of the Alps, gives its departing accents to proclaim its detestation of hardness and ruggedness; and is heard for the last time, as it bestows on the n.o.blest defile in all the Grisons, if not in all the Alpine chain, the name of the "_evil_ way"--"la Via Mala."

-- 4. This "evil way," though much deeper and more sublime, corresponds closely in general character to Dante's "Evil-pits,"

just as the banks of Richmond do to his mountain of Purgatory; and it is notable that Turner has been led to ill.u.s.trate, with his whole strength, the character of both; having founded, as it seems to me, his early dreams of mountain form altogether on the sweet banks of the Yorkshire streams, and rooted his hardier thoughts of it in the rugged clefts of the Via Mala.

-- 5. Nor of the Via Mala only: a correspondent defile on the St.

Gothard,--so terrible in one part of it, that it can, indeed, suggest no ideas but those of horror to minds either of northern or southern temper, and whose wild bridge, cast from rock to rock over a chasm as utterly hopeless and escapeless as any into which Dante gazed from the arches of Malebolge, has been, therefore, ascribed both by northern and southern lips to the master-building of the great spirit of evil--supplied to Turner the element of his most terrible thoughts in mountain vision, even to the close of his life.

The n.o.blest plate in the series of the Liber Studiorum,[79] one engraved by his own hand, is of that bridge; the last mountain journey he ever took was up the defile; and a rocky bank and arch, in the last mountain drawing which he ever executed with his perfect power, are remembrances of the path by which he had traversed in his youth this Malebolge of the St. Gothard.

-- 6. It is therefore with peculiar interest, as bearing on our own proper subject, that we must examine Dante's conception of the rocks of the eighth circle. And first, as to general tone of color: from what we have seen of the love of the mediaeval for bright and variegated color, we might guess that his chief cause of dislike to rocks would be, in Italy, their comparative colorlessness. With hardly an exception, the range of the Apennines is composed of a stone of which some special account is given hereafter in the chapters on Materials of Mountains, and of which one peculiarity, there noticed, is its monotony of hue. Our slates and granites are often of very lovely colors; but the Apennine limestone is so grey and toneless, that I know not any mountain district so utterly melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded.

Now, as far as I can discover from the internal evidence in his poem, nearly all Dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this ground. He had journeyed once or twice among the Alps, indeed, but seems to have been impressed chiefly by the road from Garda to Trent, and that along the Corniche, both of which are either upon those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any color till it is polished. It is not ascertainable that he had ever seen rocky scenery of the finely colored kind, aided by the Alpine mosses: I do not know the fall at Forli (Inferno, xvi. 99.), but every other scene to which he alludes is among these Apennine limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous mountain size, he names Tabernicch and Pietra-pana,--the one clearly chosen only for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order to make a sound as of cracking ice, with the two sequent rhymes of the stanza,--and the other is an Apennine near Lucca.