Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/219

Rh blithe and steady poise above these discouragements in a clear and sunny stratum of the air!

Into this stage of Greek achievement Winckelmann did not enter. Supreme as he is where his true interest lay, his insight into the typical unity and repose of the sculpturesque seems to have involved limitation in another direction. His conception of art excludes that bolder type of it which deals confidently and serenely with life, conflict, evil. Living in a world of exquisite but abstract and colourless form, he could hardly have conceived of the subtle and penetrative, but somewhat grotesque art of the modern world. What would he have thought of Gilliatt, or of the bleeding mouth of Fantine in that first part of 'Les Miserables,' penetrated as it is with a sense of beauty as lively and transparent as that of a Greek? There is even a sort of preparation for the romantic temper within the limits of the Greek ideal itself, which Winckelmann failed to see. For Greek religion has not merely its mournful mysteries of Adonis, of Hyacinthus, of Ceres, but it is conscious also of the fall of earlier divine dynasties. Hyperion gives way to Apollo, Oceanus to Poseidon. Around the feet of that tranquil Olympian family still crowd the weary shadows of an earlier, more formless, divine world. Even their still minds are troubled with thoughts of a limit to duration, of inevitable