Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/375

 On the Classical Authorities for Ancient Art. 365 am not merely alluding to the passage a passage which finds its clue in the Anti- Horn eric monument under Hadrian where he Speaks of himself as irovivpaypovrjO-as es to aK.pifieo-TO.Tov, i.e. as having gone thoroughly into the question of the date of Homer and Hesiod, any more than to that other passage where he says, irposKapai yap irkcov ti rj oi Xoiirol Trj 'O/iJ/pou iroii]o~i though to these I would give full weight : I am rather taking the general charac- ter of his expositions of the religious life and mythical lore of Hellas, and from them I have no hesitation in drawing the inference in question, an inference of which the importance will scarcely fail to be appreciated in an age which has given rise to those noble monuments which Welcker has erected on the field of Epic literature. But what avails all this discussion on the merits of Pausanias? of Pausanias Englishmen read little and understand less : nor is this true merely of the unlettered mass : it pains one to think that even at our Universities the irepiriyqo~i.s rrjs 'EXXciSos is to all intents and purposes a sealed book. And yet what a flood of light would be thrown on the life of Clas- sical Antiquity, on Religion, Art, History, by a course of lectures on Pausanias from the archaeological point of view ! These remarks have grown so much that I must pass abruptly from the domain of Greek literature to that of Roman. Bid adieu to it however I cannot, without animadverting on the ines- timable value of Plato's dialogues as an aesthetical interpreter of the spirit of Greek art as pourtrayed by Pheidias on the bosom of Repose. A recent, very popular, and not very diffident writer on art is lavish of flouts against the Idealism of Hellenic sculpture as a mere Idealism of form. I think that a comparison of the Socratic teaching on the principles of art as embodied in Plato, and the practice of Hellenic artists as embodied in Pheidias, would shew that sage and sculptor were fellow wayfarers on the dSos avu> (Polit. x. fin.), and would be the best cure for such very peculiar hallucinations, the best controul over such extraordinary powers of misapprehension, as this writer must have on the subject of Hellenic art. And now for Pliny. Every classical scholar must have hailed with delight the appearance of Sillig's long expected edition of this author, which is now nearly brought to a completion. So many nice points in the history of art hung trembling upon the adoption of this reading, the rejection of that, that it is a relief to 252