LAOCOON Motto by Lessinq. IIAovT. TTOT. A^. Kara II. rj Kara 2. evS. Motto by Translator. "Macaulay told me that the reading of this little book formed an epoch in his mental history, and that he learned more from it than he had ever learned elsewhere." Lewes, Life of Goethe, p. 57. LAOCOON BY GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING TRANSLATED WITH PREFACE AND NOTES BY THE LATE Rt. Hon. Sir ROBERT PHILLIMORE, Bart. LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, bread street hill, e.g., and bungay, suffolk. TO Zbc *K(0bt Ibonourable 0lat)0tone /Db.lP* IN MEMORY OF LONG FRIENDSHIP AND A COMMON LOVE OF HOMER THESE PAGES « ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THE WRITER. V Note.— This edition is reprinted, with the kind consent of Sir Walter Phillimore, Bart., from the edition published by- Messrs Macmillan in 1874. A few misprints have been <',orrected, and the notes have been transposed to the end of the volume. The publishers take this opportunity of express- ing their sincere thanks to the family of the late Sir Robert Phillimore for permission to include his work in their New Universal Library. CONTENTS PAGE Translator's Preface 1 Introduction 55 Chapter I 59 II 64 III 70 I^^ ••••••••• /4 V . . 85 YI 92 VII . .98 VIII 102 IX . . . 107 X Ill XI 114 XII . 119 XIII 124 XIV 127 XV 129 XVI 131 vm Chapter XVII XVIII XIX XX . XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX Notes Appendix Index CONTENTS PREFACE Section I 1. Birth and Education of Lessingi; 2. State of German Literature when Lessing began his career as author ; 3. Lessing's Works generally; 4. Winkelmann. Lessing's Laocoon ; 5. Ancient Versions of the story of Laocoon ; 6. Notice of some of the prin- cipal Modern Authors referred to by Lessing ; 7. Notice of Modern Authors not referred to by Lessing, but who wrote, before the publication of the Laocoon^ on Poetry and Painting. 1. The territory which once formed the ancient German margraviate of Lusatia was divided into Upper and Lower Lusatia. It lay between the Elbe and the Oder, situated to the north of Bohemia, to the south of Brandenburg, and to the west of Silesia. The race which dwelt on the northern de- clivities of the Giant mountains (Riesen Gebirge), which separate Silesia from Bohemia, were men of robust and vigorous minds ; and early in the seventeenth century intellectual life began to develop itself simultaneously in Upper Lusatia and Silesia. In one of the six towns of Upper Lusatia, of which Gorlitz was the intellectual centre, Johann Gottfried Lessing and his wife, Justine Salome, whose maiden name was Feller, dwelt. He was the Lutheran pastor of Kamenz ; and of these parents, on the 22nd of January, 1729, Johann 1 The principal authorities to which I have had recourse for the materials of this sketch are : G. E. Lessing's Lehen und Werke^ vol. i, by Danzel ; vol. ii, by Gurauer: Leipzig, 1849. G. E. Lessing's Sein Leben und Seine Werke, von A. Stahr : Berlin, 1859. Goedeke's GrundHss zur Geschichte der Deutschen Dichtung, 1, 611, § 221. Ger- vinus's Geschichte der Poetischen National - Liter atur, 4, 318 : Leipzig, 1843. German Classics, by Dr Buchheim, vol. iii. Clarendon Press Series: Oxford, 1873. Gostwick and Harrison's Outlines of German Literature, 201. B 2 LAOCOON Gotthold Ephraim, commonly called Gotthold Ephraim Leasing, the writer of the Laocoon, was born. He died at Brunswick in 1781. Logical powers of a high order, an intense love of study, which he derived from his father's ex- ample and teaching, restless incessant eagerness of inquiry into every subject unchecked by any reverence for authority, keen susceptibilities, con- stant literary and polemical controversy, unsettled religious opinions, very straitened circumstances, unquiet habits, a craving for excitement which sometimes led him to the gaming table, a passion for that kind of society — in which the stream of life ran rapidly, though turbidly — and domestic sorrow, combined to chequer the fifty -two years of his very distinguished and very unhappy life. His public education, begun at Meissen in the year 1741, was continued at the Universitj'' of Leipzig in 1746, where he renounced the studies and career of a Theologian, which his father had wished him to follow. He went to Berlin in 1748. He resided for some time at Leipzig, and in 1760 became a member of the Academy there. He sup- ported himself by translating foreign works, and taught himself French, Italian, and Spanish. He resided at Breslau 1760-1764, where he was official secretary to General Tauenzien. He was at Berlin from 1765 to 1767. He lived at Hamburg, where he became a journalist, during 1767-1769. He was appointed by the Duke of Brunswick Privy Coun- cillor and Librarian of a great Library at Wolfen- buttel ; there he took up his abode in May 1770. Li this library he discovered, and afterwards published, a treatise of Berengarius^ supposed to be lost, respecting the Holy Eucharist. In 1775 he accom- panied Prince Leopold of Brunswick in his journey to Italy. He married, in April, 1776, a widow, Eva Konig, who died in 1778. He appears to have felt her loss very deeply. 1 Gurauer, 2, 11 ; Goedeke, 611, 612, 663. PREFACE 3 2. German literature is one of the youngest^ of the European family. At the time when Lessing began to write it was in a very meagre condition. Leibnitz and Wolff had indeed, in their different paths, attained deserved literary honours. The former had been dead nearly half a century, and wrote his great works in a foreign language. The latter was too ponderous and too scholastic to be popular. Neither left any abiding marks upon their native language or literature 2. Gottsched and his school had done their utmost to lower the national taste to the level of a base imitation of French literature ; and the efforts of the Swiss, Breitinger and Bodmer, from whom works of considerable merit appeared simultane- ously at Zurich in 1740, and upon whom the dawn of a better day had slione, had not sufficient power to stem the tide. Haller, Hagedorn, Kastners, Rabe- ner, Liscow, keeping aloof from the contest between Gottsched and the Swiss, contributed something, but not much, to the improv^ement of German literature. Klopstock, indeed, vindicated the higher claims of poetry to be the fruit of genius — unat- tainable by the intellect alone or mere learned industry — and to be far above the frozen mediocrity and petty conventional decencies, within which Gottsched, in his absence of all the susceptibility of genius, his blind admiration for the French imita- tion of classical antiquity, would have confined it. But it was reserved for Lessing thoroughly to awaken the sleeping German mind, and imbue it witli a true philosophy, which included the romantic as well as the classical school within the domain of poetry ; from which Gottsched's narrow and unin- spired mind would have excluded Shakspere, Milton, Ariosto, and Tasso. * Lessing schrieb deutsch says 1 'Die deutsche Literatur ist eine der jiingsten unter der Europa- ischen Schlegel, Kritische SchrifteUy i, 1. 2 Danzel, 1, 118 ; De Quincey, vol. xii, 232 ; Gervinus, 4, 63 ; Goedeke, 660-1. 4 LAOCOON Gervinus. He was himself ' unaffectirt deutsch ' ; and because he was a genuine German, and not a French or Englishman travestied, he drank at the pure fountains of classical lore, unalloyed by their passage through a foreign channel \ 3. Of the many literary productions of Lessing, very few are now familiarly known out of, perhaps even in, Germany. Three at least of his plays are still read. Mimia Von Barnhelm^, finished in 1765, but first published in its corrected form in 1776, praised by Goethe as the most genuine production of the Seven Years' War, and the most perfect expression of German nationality, and as having been a peace- maker between Prussia and Saxony, is still a great favourite of the German stage ; and the very pretty and interesting recent edition by Dr Buchheim^, with English notes, a critical analysis, and a sketch of Lessing's life, is likely to restore its popularity to the libraries at least of England. Nathan der Weise. His greatest dramatic, and, as some think, his most philosophical work, founded on the Third Novella of Boccaccio*, still lives on account of its intrinsic merit. It was no doubt a consequence of Lessing's friendship with the Jew Mendelssohn. It has been supposed to have been the most effective sermon of the day on the Duty of Toleration in matters of Religion, and to have generated a much-needed and beneficial change in the social status and estimation of the Jews in Germany. The English reader may be interested in comparing with it the affecting legend which ends J. Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, and Miss Edge worth's novel of Harrington. The tragedy of Emilia Galotti was founded on the story of Virginius, 1 iv, 319, 2 Minna von Barnhelm, oder das Soldatengliick, Goedeke, 615, 3 Published in the Oxford Clarendon Press Series, 1873. 4 Novella Terza. Melchisedeck giudeb con una Novella di tre anelle cessa un gran pericolo daX Saladino apparecchiatogli. PREFACE 5 but the scene of the drama is in Italy, and the time is modern. If ever man deserved the epithet, in which the Germans delight, of * Polyhistor \ Lessing deserved it ; and it has been often bestowed upon him by his countrymen. The ordinary, indeed the educated, reader of the Laocoon is astonished at the way in which Lessing takes for granted his acquaintance with recondite subjects. Of course everybody knows, he seems to think, about the ^politische verse ' of Constantinus Manasses, about Skanopoeia, the Ghezzi, and Crocylegmus. I have ventured to write some notes upon these and other references. It was at Berlin that Lessing contracted habits of intimate and lasting friendship with Mendelssohn and Nicolai. Here, in conjunction with his friends, he wrote literary trifles for newspapers, and made translations for booksellers ; and here also he laid the foundation of the Letters on Modem Literature ^ This was the first publication of the time in which a liberal, unfettered and comprehensive spirit, aided by a critical faculty of high order, examined into the claims and merits of the ancients, and did justice to the literature of England. In the admir- able criticisms of these letters the shadow of liis Laocoon, though the substance did not appear till long afterwards, was cast before. 4. We are now brought to the threshold of the work on which the literary renown of Lessing is mainly and deservedly built. It is the work of which the following pages contain a translation, his famous Laocoon, which tirst saw the light in 1766. Lessing, besides the notes which he appended to the first and completed part, had prepared many notes for a second and third part. They are unfortunately only notes : but not a few of them are pregnant with suggestion, and I have not shrunk from the 1 Briefe die neueste Literatur betreffend. The papers subscribed F 11 and Q are by Lessing, the others for the most part by Abbt, Mendelssohn, and Resewitz; Goedeke, 615. 6 LAOCOON labour of translating the latter as well as the former. Winkelmann ^ had remarked in his essays on the Imitation of the Ancients in Fainting and Statuary that the principal characteristics of Greek sculpture were simplicity and quiet grandeur. The study of the Laocoon led Winkelmann to this conclusion ; observing that natural beauty underlaid the beau- tiful forms of Greek art, he thought somewhat perhaps in the spirit of a French writer of tragedy, that greatness of soul was intended to overcome all expression of pain in Laocoon. Lessing seems to have felt a reverence for Winkelmann^, which he felt for no other authority. This was partly because he was not unaffected by the general enthusiasm in Germany for him at this period. Lessing criticises his dogmas with studious gentleness and unusual forbearance. The authority of Winkelmann upon art is still considerable, though much diminished. Fuseli was a violent hater, and his opinions as to contempo- raries must always be read with a recollection of this fact. But I am not aware that he had any animosity to the memory of Winkelmann. His opinion of him, in a sketch of Lessing's life, is not uninteresting. Fuseli says : ' About the middle of the last century the German critics, established at Rome, began to claim the 1 Assassinated at Trieste, on his way home from Italy, where he had been since 1758. 2 Gedanken ueher die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke, in der Malerey und Bildhauerkunst. Leipzig, 1756. 3 Winkelmann writes to a friend, who sent him extracts from the Laocoon, that he had bought the book before he left Dresden, and adds : — ' Lessing von dem ich leider nichts gesehen hatte schreibt, wie man geschrieben zu haben wiinschen mochte'. He would have written to him if he had not heard he was coming to Rome. * Es verdient derselbe also, wo man sei vertheidigen kann, eine wlirdige Antwort. Wie es riihmlich ist von wiirdigen Leuten gelobt zu werden so kann esauch riihmlich werden ihrer Benrtheilung wiirdig geachtet zu seyn'. The report at Leipzig that Winkelmann was furious against Laocoon must have been false. See G. E. Lessing's Leben, etc., heraus- gegeben von R. C. Lessing. PREFACE 7 exclusive privilege of teaching the art (of painting), and to form a complete system of antique style. The verdicts of Mengs and Winkelmann became the oracles of Antiquaries, Dilettanti, and artists from the Pyrenees to the utmost north of Europe, have been detailed, and are not without their influence here. Winkelmann was the parasite of the fragments that fell from the conversation or the tablets of Mengs, a deep scholar, and better fitted to comment on a classic than to give lessons on art and style, he reasoned himself into frigid reveries and Platonic dreams on beauty. As far as the taste or the instructions of his tutor directed him, he is right, whenever they are, and between his own learning and the tuition of the other, his history of art delivers a specious system and a prodigious number of useful observations. He has not, however, in liis regulation of epochs, discrim- inated styles and masters with the precision, attention, and acumen, which, from the advantages of his situation and habits, might have been ex- pected ; and disappoints us as often by meagreness, neglect, and confusion, as he offends by laboured and inflated rhapsodies on the most celebrated monuments of Art. To him Germany owes the shackles of lier artists, and the narrow limits of their aim ; from him they have learnt to substitute the means for the end, and by a hopeless chase after what they call beauty, to lose what alone can make beauty interesting — expression and mind. The works of Mengs himself are no doubt full of the most useful information, deep observation, and often consummate criticism. He has traced and distinguished the principles of the moderns from those of the ancients; and in his comparative view of the design, colour, composition, and expression of Raffaello, Correggio, and Tiziano, with luminous perspicuity and deep precision, pointed out the prerogative or inferiority of each. As an artist he is an instance of what perseverance, study, expe- 8 LAOCOON rience, and encouragement can achieve to supply the place of genius ' ^ I have mentioned the extraordinary reverence of Lessing for Winkelmann ; but Lessing, nourished upon Homer and Sophocles, could not bring himself to accept the dictum of Winkelmann about Laocoon. Lessing, on the contrary, maintains that the Greeks would have considered the scream of bodily anguish quite compatible with greatness of soul — a pro- position which in Germany was fruitful in results as to the theory of tragedy, and which overcame the angry and resolute opposition of Herder, and won the approbation of Schiller and indeed of Goethe. The first and highest law of ancient art Lessing maintained was the production of Beauty ; this Art therefore avoided all caricature, all ex- tremes of passion which bordered on what was hideous. The true and proper end of art is that which she ever works out for herself without the aid of any other art. Tliat end is, in Plastic Art, corporeal beauty, to be found only in men, and in them only by virtue of an ideal Winkelmann ^ had said, ' In the anguish and suffering of the Laocoon, which is shown in every muscle and nerve, we see the tried spirit of a great man, who wrestles with torment and seeks to sup- press and confine within itself the outbreak of sensibility. He does not burst forth into a loud cry as Virgil describes him to us, but only sad and still sighs come from him, etc ' This comparison stimulated the critical faculty of Lessing, and together with a perusal of the works 1 Introduction to Fuseli's Life and Writings, vol. ii, p. 13. 2 See Ch. XX, infra, and compare Sir Joshua Reynolds's Works, vol. ii, 73, 13th Discourse. 3 For references by Winkelmann to the Laocoon, see i, 31, 65, 216, 251, 255, 382 ; ii, 203-206, 208, 20P, 228 ; iii, 84, 320 ; iv, 61, 105, 148, 160, 173, 267, 370, 372, 381, 388, 418, 419; v, 49, 105, 119, 159, 221, 250, 417 ; vi, 1, 101, 131, 263 ; vii, 97, 98, 187, 269, 291. Ed. Dresden, 1817. 4 Kunst der Zeichnung unier den Griechen, 4 Kap. § 34 ; 7 Band, p. 98, ed. 1817. PREFACE 9 of Spence and Caylus, led to his profound examin- ation of the then generally accepted thesis which had been current even before the time of Plutarch and Pliny ; namely, that Poetry was a speaking Picture, and Painting a dumb Poem. I will here cite at length the passage in Plutarch which refers to this adage and also contains the motto which Lessing adopted, though he did not quite understand it, for his Laocoon : Tovro rh tpyov Ev(f)pdua)p typaxpe^ koI TrdpcffTiv 6pav iv cIkoui rrjs fiaxv^ '^o cvyypafx^xa koI t7)u aPTcpeiaiv clAktis koI dvfjLOv Kol -nuev/xaTos ye/xovaau. a\\' ovk Uv olfxaL rriv ^cvypd- (pov Kpiaiu TrpoadeirjTc irphs rbv arpaTT)yhv^ ov8' ai'd(Txoi(jd€ Twv iTpOTiixu)vro}V rhv irivaKa rov rpoiraioVf koI rh /JLi/xTjfia ttJs aKTjBeias. Tr\T]v 6 '2,L/jLcopiB7]s, r^v ^coypacpiav, ttoItj- G IV (T icoTT (c a au TT p 0 (T ay 0 p € V (0 V, T^v 5e wolrjaiy, ^ooy pacpiav \a\ov a av. h.s yap ol ^wypd', has produced a series of images as if they were painted in a picture'. 'VAt] kol Tpon-oi? iMLfxriaeti}^ £ia(|>epou Excurs. v, vi, ad lib. ii Virgil. PREFACE 11 versions, and above all Leschis, 'quern utique Quintus expressisse visus est Cardinal Sadolet's comparatively modern poem on the Laocoon is, as will be seen, given at length by Lessing, who highly esteemed it, in a note to one of the sections of this work ^ Lessing made use of the fable of Laocoon as fur- nishing the occasion for expressing certain principles of criticism discriminating between the arts of Poetry and Painting. He did not intend — as he more than once, I tliink, says — to write a philo- sophical treatise, modo et forma , on art. One of his biographers has observed that the pursuit of Truth was more agreeable to him than the capture of the object of his pursuit. He delighted in the chase itself and the opportunities which it afforded for the exercise of his vigorous sense, great erudition, and masculine understanding. 6. I have written in the Appendix a few concise historical notes to each Chapter, illustrative of the authors mentioned by Lessing, and have added a few additional references. To many readers the inform- ation thus supplied will probably be unnecessary, but there are some, to whom I hope it will not be disagreeable, and to both classes it may be perhaps convenient. There are, however, two or three authors whom Lessing, for purposes of explanation or censure, very frequently mentions : and there are others whom one is surprised that he does not mention. I will say a word on both these topics. As to the former, the first author in date is Dryden. With Dryden's Parallel of Poetry and Painting (an essay prefixed in 1695 to Du Fresnoy's Latin poem De Arte Graphica) Lessing seems to have been well acquainted. The essay, though it bears marks of his unrivalled style, has not contributed much to the fame of Dryden. It was truly observed, that 1 See Ch. VI, Note 3, infra. 12 LAOCOON ' wanting a competent knowledge of painting, he suffered himself to be misled by an unskilful guide As to the general subject, Dryden relied greatly on the authority of Bellori,to whom Lessing also refers^. Dryden says in one place ^ 'that the principal end of Painting is to please, of Poetry to instruct ' ; and in another place ^, ' that one main end of Poetry and Painting is to please . . ' The imitation of Nature is, therefore, justly constituted as the general, indeed the only, rule of pleasing both in Poetry and Paint- ing ' Then he refers to Aristotle's opinion, which is considered fully hereafter in the notes to the Laocoon. The poem of Du Fresnoy was translated into English verse by Mason in 1782, and was published, with valuable notes, by Sir Joshua Eeynolds, and is to be found in the last edition of his Works. Du Fresnoy begins with a fragment from Horace's Ars Poetica, 'Ut Pictura Poesis erit'^. Mason cites in a note the adage of Simonides from Plutarch, and says 'There is a Latin line somewhere to the same purpose, but I know not whether ancient or modern, "Poesis est Pictura loquens, mutum Pictura Poema " '. Francis Junius was born at Heidelberg in or about 1589. A man of vast classical erudition, and a great traveller, a friend of Grotius, Salmasius, Yossius (his brother-in-law), and Archbishop Usher. In 1620 he came to England, and was received into the household of the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. Here he wrote his folio volume, De Fictura Veterum, on the Art of Painting among the Ancients, which was first published in Holland. He died at Windsor in 1678, and in his eighty-eighth or eighty-ninth year. He was buried at Windsor; and the University of Oxford, to whom he bequeathed his manuscript and books out of gratitude, caused a Latin inscription to be placed over his tomb. In it he is described as 1 Works, iv, 311, ed, Malone. 2 gee Ch. II, Note 17, infra. 3 Works, iv, 318. 4 ib. 322 & v, 361. PREFACE 13 pene nonagenarius^ and as one * qui per omnem aeta- tem sine querela aut injuria cujusquam musis tan- tum et sibi vacavit The edition which I have used was published at Rotterdam 1694. Lessing blames Spence for relying on the accuracy of Junius's cita- tions without verification. They were often very incorrect ^. Joseph Spence 2 was for ten years Professor of Poetry at Oxford. He spent five years on the Continent, chiefly at Florence and Rome. He published Dialogues in ten books, in royal folio, in 1747. His work was entitled, P oly metis ; or, an Inquiry concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Foets and the Remains of the Ancient Artists, being an attempt to illustrate them mutually from one another ^. ' When you look on the old pictures ' (Spence says, p. 3) ' or sculptures, you look on the works of men who thought much in the same train with the old poets. There was generally the greatest union in their designs ; and when they are engaged on the same subject they must be the best explainers of one another. As we lie so far north from this last great seat of Empire, we are placed out of the reach of consulting these finer remains of antiquity so much and so frequently as one could wish. The only way of supplying this defect to any degree among us is by copies, prints, and drawings ' . (P. 285) : * I think, therefore, there can be no room to doubt that some of the best comments we could have on the ancient poets, might be drawn from the works of the artists who were their contemporaries ; and whose remains often present to our eyes the very things which the others have delivered down to us only in words 1 See Ch. XXIX, infra. 2 See Ch. VII, Note 2. 3 It contains forty-one plates, seventeen * ornamental pieces at the close of the Dialogues', three figures (disposed in the manner of an ancient relievo) in the frontispiece : the Goddess of Painting, the God of Poetry, and the Genius of Sculpture, from antiques. 14 LAOCOON This author is continually referred to in the Laocoon. He and Caylus are the subject of some of Lessing's severest and justest criticisms. Jonathan Richardson published Works on Painting in 1725. Discourses on 1. The Theory of Painting ; 2. Essay on the Art of Criticism, so far as it relates to Painting ; 3. The Science of a Connoisseur. A new edition of the Works was prepared by liis son, and dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, in 1773. In 1728 there was published in Amsterdam, in three volumes, Traite de la Peinture et de la Sculpture^ and this is the work to which Lessing constantly refers. ' It is ' (Pilkington remarks, in his Dictionary of Painters) ' a curious circumstance that a man who could write so well upon the art should so ill apply to his own practice the rules he gave to others. Full of theory, profound in reflections, and possessed of a numerous collection of drawings, he appears not to have possessed the smallest invention as applic- able to the Painter's art, and drew nothing well below the head ' ^. Hogarth (born 1698, died 1764) published The Analysis of Beauty, written with a vieiv of fixing the fiuctnating ideas of Taste, in 1753. The object of the work was to show that the curve was the natural line of beauty. But Hogarth had no classical know- ledge, and indeed was, generally speaking, very uneducated. In his chap, iii, * Of Simplicity or Distinctness he says * The authors ' (for there were three concerned in the work) 'of as fine a group of figures in sculpture as ever was made either by ancients or moderns ' (I mean Laocoon and his two sons) * chose to be guilty of making the sons half the father's size, though they have every mark of being designed for men, rather than not bring their composition within the boundary of a pyramid '. Lessing does not refer to this passage, and very possibly it escaped his notice. Sir J. Reynolds 1 See Ch, XI, Note 1, infra. PEEFACE 15 says^: *It naturally occurs to oppose the sensible conduct of Gainsborough, in this respect, to that of our late excellent Hogarth, who, with all his extra- ordinary talents, was not blessed with this knowledge of his own deficiency ; or of the bounds which were set to the extent of his own powers. After this admirable artist had spent the greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful attention to the ridicule of life ; after he had invented a new species of dramatic painting, in which probably he will never be equalled, and had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate the domestic and familiar scenes of common life, which were generally, and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil, he very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him ; he was indeed so entirely unacquainted with the principles of this style, that he was not even aware that any artificial preparation was at all necessary. It is to be regretted that any part of the life of such a genius should be fruitlessly employed. Let his failure teach us not to indulge ourselves in the vain imagination, that by a momentary resolution we can give either dexterity to the hand, or a new habit to the mind \ 7. And now let me say a word as to authors whom Lessing does not mention, but with whom he was acquainted. The Abbe Du Bos wrote his Reflexions ci'itiqi(£s sur la Foesie et la Feinture in 1719. In this work he includes, as will be presently noticed, several ingenious chapters on music, and the relation of that art to poetry and painting. He died at Paris in 1742. His work was very highly esteemed by Voltaire ; and perhaps the tone and spirit of it bore a closer affinity to the Laocoon than the work of any 1 Vol. ii, Disc. 14. 88. t 16 LAOCOON other predecessor of Lessing. His style is per- spicuous and agreeable ; his criticisms generally luminous. Lessing was well acquainted with him, and certainly made use of him ^. It is strange that no reference should be made to him in the Laocooth, It is true that Lessing differed from him as to the principle of his comparison of poetry and painting, Du Bos adopting for his motto ' Ut Pictura Poesis But Du Bos laid down many of the sound principles which Lessing relied upon. Above all he held that Poetry could attain to the sublime, which Painting could not reach, because she was limited to the representation of one moment of a continuing action. Daniel Webb published, among other works, An Enquiry into the Beauties of Fainting^ and into the Merits of the most celebrated Painters^ ancient and modern^ in 1760^; and Observations on the Corre- spondences between Poetry and Music, in 1769^; and Bemarks on the Beauties of Poetry , in 1762*. He sought to establish the position that poetry was an union of powers of music and painting. He considered Shakspere to be as great a painter as Titian. Effective colouring ought in his opinion to be the great object of the painter. Webb is said to have derived all his information on sesthetical subjects from Mengs, with whom he lived on terms of intimacy for some years. If this were so, he never acknowledged the obligation. In his turn, however, * suos patitur manes for I cannot find that Lessing ever refers to Webb, though his obligation, if any, was certainly much lighter : yet sometimes there is a remarkable correspondence in their ideas. Lessing was infinitely his superior, however, in every literary respect. Harris (born 1709, died 1780) first published his treatises. Concerning Art, Music, Painting, and Poetry, in 1765, a year before the publication of the Laocoon. 1 Guraner, ii, 15, 2 Ed. London, 1787. 3 1769. ^ 4 lb. 1762. PREFACE 17 These treatises have great merit ; they are not referred to by Lessing, who, but for his extraordinary erudition, might be presumed not to have been acquainted with them. I have introduced several extracts from them in the notes ^. Section II 1. EfTect of the Laocoon in Germany ; 2. On the Continent of Europe. 1. The effect of the Laocoon in Germany was marvel- lous ; while on the Continent of Europe it was very great. It is hardly too much to say that what Adam Smith did, in the domain of Political Economy, by his Wealth of Nations, Lessing did, in the domain of Art and Criticism, by this memorable treatise. It created a new era in aesthetic ^ culture and litera- ture. It has leavened not only the teaching and the practice of Professors of Art and practical Artists, but, like other great works, it has purified the taste, and informed the mind of many, wlio have benefited by the streams flowing in various cliannels from a fountain head which tliey have never visited. After the publication of the Laocoon a different atmosphere, so to speak, of aesthetic taste and criti- 1 See Oh. IT, Note 18, and Ch. VI, Note 2, infra. 2 English, this t xpression, feeling, like all others of a psycho- logical application, was primarily of a })Urely physical relation, being originally employed to denote the sensations we experience through the sense of touch, and in this meaning it still continues to he em- ployed. From this, its original relation to matter and the corporeal sensibility, it came, by a very natural analogy, to express our con- scious states of mind in general, but particularly in relation to the (jualities of pleasure and pain, by which they are ohara' terised. i^uch is the fortune of the tern) in English; and precisely similar is tliat of the cognate term, Gefiihl, in German. The same, at least a similar, liistory might be given of the Greek term alo-^Tjo-t?, and of the Latin sensus, sensatio, with their immediate and mediate derivatives in the different Romaic dialects of modern Europe, — the Italian, Spanish, French, and English dialects '. Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Meta- physics, Lecture xli. See also Lecture xlvi. C 18 LAOCOON cism prevailed, and was insensibly imbibed by pos- terity, first in Germany, then on the Continent, and lastly in England. The similarity and harmony of the two arts, Poetry and Painting, had been frequently and copiously discussed ; but Lessing reversed the medal, and investigated the inherent dissimilarity, and show^ed that this dissimilarity was founded upon laws peculiar to each art, and which often com- pelled the one to tread a different path from the other. Lessing perceived the important relation of the category of time to painting and the plastic art generally ; he saw that the artist had only a moment in which to tell his tale, and he maintained that the right choice of this moment was everything (a remark which he often repeated) ; that it should be one which was most fruitful or pregnant with suggestion, which allowed the freest scope to the imagination of the spectator, who the more he looked at what was represented, the more he ought to exercise thought. Therefore plastic art ought not to exhibit the last and extremest thing, which left no room for the working of the imagination. Lessing held that the artist ought not to express what was absolutely momentary and transitory, and the ancient artist never did this. It has been observed that the idea in Lessing's mind was right, but perhaps not quite correctly formulated in lan- guage, inasmuch as what is to be avoided by the artist is not whatever is absolutely momentary, but that of which the inspection could only be tolerated for a moment, because it introduced what was hideous. The painter employs figures and colours in space^ the poet articulate sounds in time. Lessing having considered the laws of painting or plastic art generally, then considered those of poetry j his main position is that the law respecting the category of time, applicable to painting, was inapplicable to poetry. PEEFACE 19 It was competent to the poet, by previous recital, to prepare the mind of his audience for an effect, or by subsequent recital to soften the consequences of the elfect : and in the Laocoon of the poet who could employ successive action in aid of his mental pic- tures, there was a much wider scope of representation than in the Laocoon of the artist. Virgil might represent his Laocoon clothed, because in poetry clothing is no clothing, conceal- ing nothing. The artist could not even venture to bind the fillet of the priest on the brow of the Laocoon, because he would have concealed the brow, which is the seat of expression. The best poetical picture therefore possesses fea- tures of which the artist can make no use ; but the converse is not true. Every trait of the artist's work may be made use of by the poet, and Lessing thought it far more probable that the artist had present to his mind the Laocoon of the poet, than that the poet had present to his mind the Laocoon of the artist. Lessing is led by the development of his theory on this subject to condemn Count Caylus and the French essayists on art, who would compel the painter to adopt and paint the pictures in Homer, and the Englisli writers, especially Spence, who thought that the ancient poets could be ex- plained by ancient works of art, such as statues and models, without exercising any discrimination between the different nature of the two arts, or ob- serving tlie far wider scope and province of poetry. Finally, Lessing arrives at the goal which he had proposed to himself, and establishes the supremacy of poetry over all other arts. At the same time he revives the old precepts of Horace, and denies alto- gether to poetry the domain of pure description. 'A flower', he says, *by a Dutch painter recalls all tliat word painting of it can effect. Homer does not describe the shield of Achilles when made, but he paints the action of the divine maker of it, and thus places the whole before our eyes. The trans- 20 LAOCOON cendent beauty of Helen is painted, by Homer, not by descriptive detail, but in the effect which it produced on the aged counsellors of Troy^ That Lessing carried the doctrine, that poetry had nothing to do with description, too far, in his eagerness to destroy the passion for descriptive poetry which prevailed in his youth, and which an extravagant admiration of Thomson's Seasoiis had done much to foster, is a proposition which 1 think tlie reader of the second volume of Humboldt's Kosmos will not dispute. I purpose to return to this subject a little further on, but I may observe, how often it happens that a few words of description animate the painter's picture, awakening the imagination to the exquisite taste and beauty of a performance wliich, of itself, would have commanded admiration only for the merits of imitation and execution. For instance, it is not difficult to imagine the picture of an old man- of-war towed by a steam-tug up a river. The exe- cution of such a subject may deserve great praise and give great satisfaction to the beholder. But add to the representation the statement that it is 'Tlie lighting Temeraire towed to her last berth', and a series of the most stirring events of our national history fills our imagination, while the contrast between the ancient and modern powers of navigation is also, but, not alone, forcibly pre- sented to the mind. In the following lines the picture of a painting seems to transcend the painting itself : 2 Servant. Dost thou love pictures ? we will fetch thee straight Adonis, painted by a running brook, And Cytherea, all in sedges hid, • That seem to move and wanton with her breath, Even as the waving sedges play with wind. Lord. We'll show thee lo as she was a maid, And how she was beguiled and surprised, As lively painted as the deed was done. PREFACE 21 3 Servant, Or Daphne, roaming through a thorny wood, Scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds, And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep : So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn i. Goethe ^ wrote his essay * upon Laocoon' in 1797, in the Propylaen^. At the close of this essay he considers the relation of the subject to poetry. ' It is a great injustice', he argues, 'against Virgil and poetry to compare the most carefully executed masterpiece of sculpture with the episodic treat- ment of the same subject in the Aeneid. The unfor- tunate tempest-tossed Aeneas had to tell the whole story of the taking of Troy, and to excuse the in- credible folly of introducing the wooden horse into the city. ' The history of the Laocoon \ he says, * is a kind of rhetorical argument, which admits of varied ex- aggeration. Hence the picture of the enormous serpents advancing from the sea and fastening upon the children of Laocoon who had injured the liorse. The people fly — no one dares any more to be a patriot, and the hearer, aghast at the horrors, finds the introduction of the horse not unnatural. In Virgil the history of the Laocoon is only a means to a higher end, and it is still a very moot question whether the event be^^e^' se a poetical incident '. This work of Goethe is of rather a feeble character. The mind of Lessing was of a more robust and manly texture than the mind of Goethe. Mr Lewes observes that * Instruction in the theory of art he (Goethe) gained from Oeser, from Winkelmann, and from Laocoon, the incompar- able little book which Lessing at this period care- 1 Taming of the Shrew, Induction, scene ii. 2 Werke, 38, B. 49. 3 Goedeke, 824. The Propylaen meant the vestibule of the Tenij)!© of Knowledge or Truth. See Einleitung in die Pro. Goethe s Werke, B. 38, 1. It is remarkable that in this essuy he does not refer to Lessing's work, to which he was much beholden, and with which he was well acquainted. 22 LAOCOON lessly flung upon the world. Its efibct upon Goetlie can only be appreciated by those who in early life have met with this work and risen from it with minds widened, strengthened, inspired Frederick SchlegeP, in his work on Lessing, remarked with justice Hhat the mere erudition of Germans was undeniable, what was wanted for the foundation of their literature was the substratum of a learned, vigorous and yet popular spirit of criticism, continued on the model which Lessing had furnished — a free spirit of investigation strug- gling to attain just ideas of art, vigorous in logic, but quick in sympathy, and extending to the whole domain of literature'. 2. Whether the literary rank and position of Lessing in Germany was ever equal to that of Dr Johnson in England — whether a parallel can be instituted between Lessing and Shaftesbury, the author of the Characteristics, are propositions whicli, in spite of the considerable authority of Mr De Quincey in favour of them, are to my mind very doubtful. The effect produced by the Laocoon upon the European Continent out of Germany, though great, was by no means equal to its merits. Europe generally seems to have taken less interest in it than in his other works. Vanderbourg appears — I have never seen the work — to have published a French translation in 1780. But it had no influence on the criticism then prevalent in France. Another French translation appeared in 1802, which is more generally known. Lessing had prepared a French preface, and intended to have translated the whole work into that language. It is perhaps fortunate that he did not execute his intention. His power of writing French, if we may judge from the preface which he translated into this language, was much less than he appears himself to have been aware of. 1 Life of Goethe, p. 57. 2 Lessing' s Geist aus seinen Schriften, oder dessen Gedanken und Meinungen zusammengestellt und erlauterL Leipz. 1804. PREFACE 23 Section III 1. Influence of the Laocoon in England ; 2. Writers and Lecturers ou Poetry and Painting. Lord Macaulay ; 3. English Translations of the Laocoon. 1. Lord Bacon, in his Advancement of Learning ^ had said\ 'The parts of Human Learning have reference to three parts of man's Understanding, which is the seat of learning : History to liis Memory, Poesy to his Imagination, and Philosophy to his Reason'^. Gurauer remarks that in conse- quence of this division the English school of thought naturally considered Fancy ' as the common factor ' of poetry and painting, and it was from this kind of psychological treatment of the arts that the true principle of ancient art, namely, objective imita- tion, that is, tlie reality of the object, was exchanged for the subjective principle of fiction. False Idealism took the place of Nature and Truth, and prepared the way for the confusion of poetry and painting in England, which prevailed when the Laocoon was written. The confusion does appear to have existed, but, not long after the publication of the Laocoon, it was in a great measure dispelled by high authority, as will be seen in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first of which was delivered in 1769. The influence of the Laocoon in England was much later and slower than on the Continent. The German language was little studied during the last century in this country. 2. There is a peculiar kind of English literature in which we should expect to find early mention of the aesthetic principles laid down in the Laocoon. I mean the Discourses of the Presidents, and tlie Lectures of Professors of Painting, in our Royal 1 Book vi. 2 ii, 14. 24 LAOCOON Academy ; a literature, let me observe, in passing, very interesting and instructive, and too much neglected in the present age. Not improbably Johnson and Burke contributed to the lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds ; but in any event the educa- tion of an English gentleman is incomplete with- out a knowledge of them. The first Discourse of Sir Joshua was delivered in 1769, the last in 1790. In no Discourse, in no letter or essay, by Sir Joshua is there any reference, I believe, to Lessing. Nevertheless, the reader of the Laocoon will often be struck by the resemblance of the canons in that work to those laid down by Sir Joshua. I have referred in the notes to some of them. The reader may not dislike to read in this place some of the passages which bear this character. *A painter* (writes Sir Joshua in 1771) 'must com- pensate the natural deficiencies of art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit ' ^. ' The true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind . . . 'I believe it may be considered as a general rule that no art can be grafted with success on another art For though all profess the same origin, and to proceed from the same stock, yet each has its own peculiar modes, both of imitating Nature and of deviating from it, each for the accomplishment of its own particular purpose ' ^. * I fear we (painters) have but very scanty means of exciting those powers over the imagination which make so very considerable a part of poetry. It is a doubt with me whether we should even make the attempt. The chief, if not the only, occasion which the painter has for this artifice, is when the subject is improper to be more fully represented either for the sake of decency, or to avoid what would be disagreeable to be seen ; and this is not to raise or to increase the passions, which is the reason 1 WorkSf i, 348, 4th Discourse. 2 gee p. 304 of this work. 3 Works, ii, 73, 13th Discourse. PREFACE 25 that is given for this practice, but, on the contrary, to diminish their effect ' ^. ' Invention in painting does not imply the invention of the subject, for that is commonly supplied by the poet or historian. With respect to the choice, no subject can be proper that is not generally interesting. It ought to be either some eminent instance of heroic action, or heroic suffering. There must be something either in the action, or in the object, in which men are universally concerned, and which powerfully strikes upon the public sympathy ' 2. * It is not the eye, it is the mind which the painter of genius desires to address ; nor will he waste a moment upon those smaller objects which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart. This is the ambition which I wish to excite in your minds ; and the object I have had in my view throughout this discourse is that one great idea which gives to painting its true dignity, which entitles it to the name of a liberal art, and ranks it as a sister of poetry * ^. * Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keep- ing that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. ' The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on till attention is totally engaged. What is done by painting nnist be done at one blow ; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have ' This was written in 1778. In one respect Sir Josliua differed materially from Lessing : he did not disapprove of allegorical painting ^. 1 Works i, 460, 8th Discourse. 2 ib., 845, 4th Discourse. 3 lb., 340, 3rd Discourse. 4 ib., 439, 8th Discourse. 5 Ib., i, 420-1, 7th Discourse. Compare Fuseli's Life, ii, 197. See p. 112 of this work, where the following note would liave been better placed : * Premettiaino, che di tre fatte esser posson gli Em- blemi : poich6 alcuni sono, che dichiarano la natura, e la cagion delle cose : e questi .si chiamano Fisici. Altri sono, che raccltiudono qiialche azione, o favolosa o vera, che sia: e questi si dicono Istorici, se r azione fu vera ; 0 Mithilogici, se 1' azione fu falsa. Altri final- 26 LAOCOON It was in 1807 that John Opie read his lectures to the Royal Academy. He does not mention Lessing, but he makes the following observations on the arts of Poetry and Painting : ' Here, however, it will be proper to remark, that, though from the acknowledged similarity in the principles and effects of these two arts, the one has been called mute poesy J and the other speaking picture, such is still the very great diversity in their modes and means of exerting their powers, that the study of one can, at best, be considered as a general only, and, not at all, as a technical help to invention in the other : the roads they take, though parallel, lie as entirely apart, and unconnected, as the senses of hearing and seeing, the different gates by which they enter the mind. The one operates in time, the other in space ; the medium of the one is sound, of the other colour ; and the force of the one is successive and cumula- tive, of the other collected and instantaneous. Hence the poet, in his treatment of a story, is enabled to bespeak the reader's favour by a graceful introduction, describing his characters, relating what has already happened, and showing their present situation ; and thus preparing him for what is to come, to lead him on step by step with increasing delight, to the full climax of passion and interest ; whilst the painter, on the contrary, deprived of all such auxiliary aid, is obligated to depend on the effect of a single moment. That indeed is the critical moment in which all the most striking and beautiful circumstances that can be imagined are concentrated, big with suspense, interest, passion, terror, and action ; in short, the moment of explosion, which illuminates and brings at once into view the past, present, and future, and which, when well rendered, is often more than equivalent to all the successive energies of the past. * This contrariety in their means, in some degree, separates and limits their fields of operation ; and (though there are many subjects equally adapted to both arts) calls, in general, for a different principle in the choice of mente a' costumi s' aspettano ; e si chiamano Ethici, o Morali Il <3uADRio, Delia StoHa e Ragione d' ogni Poesia, Lib. ii, Dist. iii, vol. iii, c. ix, part, v, p. 413. PEEFACE 27 them. The most striking beauties, as presented to one sense, being frequently wholly untranslatable into the language of another, it necessarily results that many interesting passages in history and poetry are incapable of affording more than a bald and insipid representation on canvass ' ^. In 1813, Dr Copleston published at Oxford his Praelectiones Academicae^ in which the philosophy of poetry is treated with the acumen, the grace of style, and admirable Latinity which were among the accomplisliments of the distinguished writer. The whole treatise was divided into four parts : De Imitatione, De Affectibus^ De Phantasia, DeJudicio. In the first part he examined the propriety of call- ing poetry an imitative art ; and, likeLessing, took Homer for his example and authority, speaking of his ingenii plusquam Prometheus ardo)\ by which he had penetrated into the whole domain of nature. The lectures contain a comparison of Poetry with Painting — an enquiry, among other matters, into the proper functions of each, with respect to de- scription, embellished and supported by many citations from the classics. No reference is to be found to Lessing, and I think the Laocoon was unknown to him. Henry Fuseli, or Fuessli, a native of Switzerland, came to England at an eai'ly age, and, encouraged by Sir Joshua, devoted himself to painting in tliis country. He died at the age of eighty-seven, in the year 1 825. In 1803 he was elected Professor of Paint- ing to the Royal Academy, an office of which he dis- charged tlie duties for twenty years. During this period he published his Lectures, which have obtained considerable rei3utation. His English is not idio- 1 Opie's Lectures on Painting (published 1600). Lecture II, read at the Royal Academy, Feb. 23, 1807, pp. 61-3. '-2 'Atqueut omittam nuncdicerede variis scribendi formis, quales sunt Epica Lyrica Dramatica aut de styli varietate, de ipsa re ac materia videamns, quantum inter partes sit discrimen quae sensibus nostris oblectamentum pariunt. Quod ne in infinitum excurratnus Unius Homeri Jirmandiim est exemplo ', etc. Prael. 2, p. 17. 28 LAOCOON matic or pure, and is often turgid, but not without force and fire. Of German he was a complete master — one consequence of which was that, first of English Professors of Painting, he did full justice by name to Lessing's Laocoon, upon the principles of which his third lecture * on Invention ' is in great measure founded. It opens with a reference to Simonides and Plutarch, and observes ' that as Poetry and Painting resemble each other in their uniform address to the senses, for the impression they mean to make on our fancy, and by that on our mind, so they differ as essentially in their materials and in their modes of application, which are regulated by the diversity of the organs which they address, ear and eye. Successive action communicated by sound and tune are the medium of poetry : form displayed in space and momentaneous energy are the elements of painting ' ^. Professor Phillips succeeded to the chair of Fuseli in 1824, and in one of his very eloquent lectures shows himself to have been imbued with the principles of the Laocoon, though he does not refer to the work, and probably knew them only through the medium of Fuseli's Lecture on hivention. * It is scarcely possible ', Phillips says, ' to consider the quality and the object of invention, as employed by the painter, without reference to its influence in poetry. There is an unity of object in the minds of the poet and the painter, which gives a near degree of affinity to the arts they profess when employed upon the illustration of history or the productions of fancy ; they difier only in their varied means. One spirit actuates them, one power directs them to the same end ; their course only is differ- ent, as are the agents through whose means they act upon the different organs of our senses, the eye, and the ear. ' The greatest and most important effort required of invention in either of those arts, is the selection of that which best relates, adorns, and elevates the subject chosen ; or the separation of that which is essential, 1 Fuseli, WorlcSf vol. iii, pp. 133-4 ; ed. Knowles, 1831. PREFACE 29 which gives vitality to it from the ordinary matter accompanying all mundane things. ' Under what regulation the painter or the poet may select from among those visions of his imagination which are calculated to elevate, or to give to his subject the air of ideal character, or of refinement demanded by his fancy, remains a matter of taste ; but one thing is clear, the basis of his means for the fulfilment of his desire must be sought for on earth, and he must elevate the matter as he may ; with constant reference to nature. A character understood by human beings must be main- tained in the vision ; and, however small the portions, it will be the leading principle in the mind of the reader of the poem, or the observer of the picture. ' Though both the poet and the painter are confined in their compositions to this principle of reference to nature, the poet is infinitely the most unrestrained of the two. The instrument he employs, and the organ he addresses, require far less of materiality than is demanded of the painter ; and numberless are the instances in which the privilege has been successfully indulged ' ^. During the last half century a knowledge of German has become very general in this country. Mr Lewes ^ says ' Macaulay told me that the read- ing of this little book (the Laocoon) formed an epoch in his mental history, and that he learned more from it than he had ever learned elsewhere \ 3. The Laocoon was translated into English by Mr Ross in 1836. Mr De Quincey's eloquent paraphrase of a part of the Laocoon will l^e found in the twelfth volume of his works. Mr Beasley's translation appeared in 1859, and one by an American lady, Miss Frothingliam, aj^peared first in Boston, and afterwards in London, during this year ^. That there are still in this country many edu- cated persons capable of appreciating the Laocoon, but reluctant to take the trouble of reading it in German, I am satisfied. Not long ago I suggested 1 Phillips's Lectures on Painting (ISS3), pp. 194-196. 2 Life of Goethe, p. 57. ^ 1874. 30 LAOCOON the perusal of a German book to a highly educated man, adding, ' I suppose you read German ? \ He said, ' Yes, but I prefer reading a translation It may, indeed, be not unreasonably asked why another English translation should appear ? To which the answer must be, however unsatisfactory, that I had nearly finished this translation before I could obtain a copy of Mr Beasley's work, and quite finished it before the American translation reached me : and it seemed to me that a translation with a preface and notes, and which w^as not confined to the first part of the Laocoon, but included the frag- ments of the unfinished parts, which have not yet, I believe, been translated into English, might still be acceptable to the public, and conduce in a humble degree to a better acquaintance with Lessing's great work. I hope I have not incurred the censure of Don Quixote, and shown, as he says bad translators are apt to do, the wrong side of the tapestry ^ Section IV 1. Poetry in its relation to the Drama, Hamhurgische Dramaturgie; 2. Poetry in its relation to Music. 1. Lessing might have been satisfied that he had laid down sound sesthetical principles on the re- spective boundaries of Poetry and Painting when he published his essay on the Laocoon ; but he knew that he had not exhausted even this subject, while he had left almost untouched others inti- mately connected with it. First, poetry in the form of the drama required a fuller consideration, both generally and as compared with painting ; 1 Don Quixote, t. iv, cap. cxv, 330 ; ed. Madrid, 1777. The German edition of the Laocoon which I have used was published at Berlin, 1839. PREFACE 31 secondly, these arts had not been treated in their relation to, and in comparison with, the science of sound and the art of music ^. The defect as to the former subject was in a great measure supplied by a very remarkable, though now much forgotten^ publication. The first number of the Hamhargische Dramaturgie appeared on the 1st of May 1767^. It reached 104 numbers,, and the last appeared, I believe, on the 19th of April 1768. The work consisted of weekly Papers^ on the drama and dramatic literature published at Hamburg. The title was taken from an Italian work entitled Dramaturgia^ written at the begin- ning of the 16th century by Leo Allatius or Leoni Alacci. In these vigorous essays Lessing let loose all his wrath against the French dramatists and the French stage ^. If tragedy was the highest form of dramatic poetry, by that standard the French, he maintained, had no theatre. He treated with merciless severity the pretensions of Voltaire, then the unworthy idol of Europe, to be an his- torian, or a dramatic poet ; and he maintained that the principle upon which Corneille wrote tragedy was thoroughly rotten and false He threw over with might and main the French worship of the three unities of place, time, and action, and con- lined, with a vehemence which went perhaps beyond its mark, the drama within the unity of action ^, He dwelt on the extraordinary merits and genius of Shakespere. But he did more. 'The Laocooiv is the work ' (says Gervinus) ^ ' which by one blow 1 'Dryden's Musical Pictures.' 2 Goedeke, Grundriss 2. Gesch. d. deutschen Dichtung, 2. 615. 16. 3 Stahr's Lessing, 324, Kap. 5. 4 Stahr, 388. 5 It is remarkable that neither Manzoni, in his admirable letter to Monsieur Chauvet, 'Sur I'nnit^ de temps et de lieu dans la Tragedie', nor Goethe in his approving reviews of Manzoni's CarmagnoLa and Adelchiy should refer to Lessing's Dramaturgie; Manzoni's proposi- tion being that unity of action was alone necessary (Opere, Sfc. di Manzoni, p. 95, Paris, 1843). Goethe, Werke, 38. 253. 305. Goetlie speaks, however, of the principle as well known in Germany. 6 Gesch. der deutschen Lit. 4. 399. 32 LAOCOON set us free from the yoke of French bondage, and which called forth the energy, the life, and the depth of our national literature. It was the polar star of the future poets of Germany At present we are only concerned with these essays in their relation to the Laocoon. 'If you wish', observes Gurauer \ 'to find a parallel in the former works of Lessing to the Dramaturgies both with respect to the form and the depths of the discussions, the Laocoon presents itself to you for this purpose. As the laws of the plastic arts and of poetry, especially of epic poetry, were in the Laocoon the object of his inquiry, so in the Drama- turgie are the laws of dramatic poetry, especially of tragedy \ The transition from the one to the other was natural. In the same way as there is no formal proposition of the schools laid down as the basis of the Laocoon^ from which laws and ideas arose in a complete symmetrical system, inasmuch as they arose from the consideration of a single work of art, and wandered into various paths in order to arrive at general results; so the Drama- turgic was not intended to be a teacher's book on a dramatic system ; but certain pieces, not always the best, considered together, were examined and used for the purpose of throwing light upon certain contested or obscure questions without arriving at a complete resolution of them. But they were to be considered only as thoughts, the chief value of which was to stimulate the reader to think for himself. Nevertheless, the course taken by the critic was different in the two works. * In the Laocoon his principal object was to discover the law of the plastic arts— first as compared with Poetry by speculative abstractions, chiefly taken from Homer and the principal works of antiquity. This was not the object of the DramMicrgie. Lessing was of opinion that the codex dramaticus was not to seek, but was found ; it 1 P. iro. PREFACE 33 existed in the Poetics of Aristotle. Lessing had no rever- ence for merely great names or consecrated authorities. " If that were all he said ^, " I would make short work of Aristotle " ; but it is because his canons and propositions as to the drama exactly agreed with those of Lessing ; because, after studjdng the drama for many years, he was convinced that you could not take a step in an opposite direction from the rules of Aristotle's Poetics without taking a step in the opposite direction to perfection. Pointing with his finger, as it were, to Shakespere, Lessing laid down in his Dramaturgie canons for the German drama, even as in his Laocoon he had furnished canons for the theory and practice of art and poetry. Laocoon sufficed for the latter ; Homer and Milton, Sophocles and Shakespere, for the former '. 2. Now as to the second point, namely, the relation of Music to Poetry. Herder, who trembled unneces- sarily for the fate of all lyrical and epic poetry, as undermined by the principles of the iaocomi^, wrote upon this work his first important criticism ; and complained of the want in it of a comparison and juxtaposition of Music and Poetry. He did not know that Lessing intended to deal fully with this theme — which he afterwards touched upon in his Dramatiircjie — in the second part of liis Laocoon^ for which we have only a few notes, and 'with a depth and comprehensiveness', says one of his biographers ^, ' which Herder never imagined It appears, from an anecdote related by Gurauer, that Lessing was not able to endure a musical per- formance of any length, especially of sonatas^ and that, after a certain time, he was obliged to rush out into the air in order to breathe freely. How far, if at all, this curious physical fact in his consti- tution might have influenced his opinion on the subject we cannot tell, but there are many reasons for lamenting that Lessing never completed his 1 lb. 171. 2 Gurauer, ii, 76. 3 Stahr, ii, 347. See also Gurauer, ii, 3l7 ; i, 12, 67, and see pp. 316- 20 of this work. 34 LAOCOON LaoGoon ; and especially we must regret that we are deprived of a treatise by him on the relation of music to poetry and the plastic arts. He well knew that an investigation of the com- mon bond which united them all was one of the most interesting subjects of philosophy, both with respect to its moral results and to the mutual working and influence of each art upon the other. He knew too, and perhaps this was his peculiar merit, that the subject ought to be considered not merely as a cold abstraction, but in its relation to daily actual life ; the finest needs of which had called the arts into existence, and made them one of the noblest vocations of man. He knew that from a keen perception and critical observance of their mutual affinities had been derived the doctrine both of the beautiful and the ideal, which had animated the unrivalled creations of the great philosophers, poets, and artists of Greece, and led to a recognition of a divine origin in the inspirations of Homer and Pindar. He knew how important a part in the education and elevation of man the art of music had played, not only in the wide signification which it obtained among the ancients, but in the much narrower and more restricted signification of modern times ; and though he could hardly have anticipated the posi- tion which it has assumed in the present system of education, he would scarcely have approved of the statement that * music, as distinguished from the various rude attempts of the past, is only about 400 years old ' ^ The great Italian work by Doni ^, written about the beginning of the seventeenth century, has been said, by competent authority, to have sounded the depths of ancient Greek music, both theoretical and practical, vocal and instrumental, and to have brought to light and compared every classical 1 Music and Morals, by Rev. H. R. Haweis, 9. 2 Tiraboschi, StoHa della Lett. Ital. vol. viii, pp. Ivi. Ivii. PREFACE 35 authority upon the subject. Nevertheless it is probable that a treatise by Lessing on the science of sound and the art of music would have given us another occasion for admiring his immense erudi- tion, the vigour of his criticism, and the clearness of his conclusions, while he brought to our know- ledge, in his own way and after his own fashion, what Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Quintilian, Aristides Quintilian, and St Augustine, had said upon the subject ; and not only with respect to antiquity, but with regard to modern times, he would have known how ' to clear the whole matter with good distinctions and decisions' ^ We should have had the advantage of his great critical faculty in the investigation and apprecia- tion of the theories of modern writers, so far as they had then been developed. He would have passed in review before us opinions of Doni, Martini, Webb, Harris, Du Bos, upon the once much vexed question as to whether and to wliat extent music is to be considered as an imitative art ; he would have dwelt upon the distinction between the power of music to affect the mind by direct and by indirect imitation, and especially with reference to the difference in this respect between vocal and instru- mental music. We should have had his opinion upon the propositions of Webb'^, which were prob- ably suggested by Mengs, that while painting and sculpture produce their effect simply as imitative arts, music has the double character of an art of impression as well as of imitation, that the passions are to be traced by their internal movement, or external signs, tha^ the musician first catches the movement of the passions as they spring from the soul, the painter waits till they take the form of action, the poet possesses the advantages of both and embraces in his imitations the movement and the effect. And then what illustrations he would 1 Bacon, Of Church Controversies, 2 On Pottry and MusiCf p. 28. 36 LAOCOON have drawn from Sliakspere, whom he so thoroughly appreciated, and who is pre-eminently the poet of music. There is one portion of this subject on which we should have listened with especial interest to his remarks, namely, the origin and progress of those theatrical representations in which the charms of music and poetry were intended to be combined. He who knew Milton so well might have taken for the text of his lectures on this subject And ever against eating cares, Lap rne in solt Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out. With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harnr^ony. What would he have said upon this ^ marriage ' of Music and Poetry as shown in the gorgeous repre- sentations which arose out of the prodigious magni- licence of the Medici feasts at Florence, towards the^ end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seven- teenth century, and which offered to Italy Hhe first apparition of a new art ^. This music, founded upon a careful study of the treatises of Greek music brought into Italy after the capture of Constanti- nople, faithfully noted the accent, the quantity, without symmetrical rhythm or regular measure, and was in fact a declamation rendered more pathetic by appreciable sounds and vocal charms ; this 'canto recitativo', 'chant recitatif eventually losing its adjective, became, as a substantive, the ' recitative ' of the then new Italian opera \ It would have been interesting to hear his opinion on the probable future effect of this class of musical 1 Ginguene, pt. 6, ch. xxvi. 2 Delia Storia e della Ragione d* ogni Poesia, etc., di F. S. Quadrio, vol. V, p. 427, lib. iii, Dist. iv, cap. 1. Dove dell' Origine e deW Anti- ehitd dei Musicali Drammi si parla ; ed. Milano, 1744. PREFACE 37 representation on poetry. Would he have fore- stalled the opinion of great modern critics ? Would he have foreseen that this music would end in de- basing poetry, and, having been her handmaid, would become her tyrannical mistress ^ ; and that 'the poet would be hampered by the composer and the composer by the poet ? '2. That poetry and music were both great arts, but greater alone than in company? Or would he have pronounced their iinion happy and natural, their separation unhappy and unnatural? Would he have agreed with Du Bos that music was invented to give increased force to poetry ? ^ Then, as to the imitative character of music, would he have said, with Harris*, that the genuine charm of music, and the wonders which it works, are due, not to its powers of imitation, which lie within a narrow range and are of little comparative efficacy, but to its power of raising the affections ; and that the ideas of the poet make the most sensible impressions when the affections to which he appeals have been already excited by music? It is then that he pectus inaniter angit, Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet, Ut magus 5 It seems to me most probable that he would have 1 Hallam, ii, 153. 2 Haweis, 28. 3 ' II nous reste 4 parler de la Musiqiie, comme du troisi6me des moyens que les hommes ont inventes pour donner une uouvelle force d la Poesie, et pour la mettre en etat de faire sur nous une plus grande impression. Ainsl que le Peintre imite les traits et les couleurs de la nature, de m^me le Musicien imite les tons, les accens, les soupirs, les inflexions de voix, enfin tons ces sons, k I'aide desquels la nature mSme exprime ses sentimens et ses passions. Tons ces sons, comme nous I'avons dej^ expose ont une force merveilleuse pour nous emouvoir, parcequ'ils sont les signes des passions, institues i>ar la nature dont ils ont requ leur 6nergie ; au lieu que les mots articul6s ne sont que des signes arbitraires des passions. Les mots artieules ne tirent leur signification et leur valeur que de I'institution des hommes, qui n'ont pu leur donner coui s que dans un certain pays '. Du Bos, Rejiexions critiques sur la Poesie et sur la Peinture, vol. i, pp. 406, 467. 4 Discourse on Music, Painting, and Poetry, pp. 99, 100. 5 Hor. Ep. 1. 1. 2. 38 LAOCOON anticipated the more modern judgments on the question whether music, by certain sounds alone, moves the passions or affects the general mental disposition, without presenting any distinct image to the mind and without the aid of words ; and that it was only in the ancient sense of music, including within its wide scope a recitative in language, and in connection with the drama, that music could properly be called an imitative art ^. Because, though music might imitate natural sounds of the inanimate world, such as the Hail- stone Chorus, the imitations of the wind, the thunder, and the sea, by Handel, or sounds of the animate world, such as the songs of birds, accord- ing to Lucretius^, or of the human kind, like sounds of joy and grief and anguish ; yet these are imita- tions of so secondary and subordinate a kind, when compared with the great power of music in other respects, as not to justify the application of the term imitative to the art in generaP. It was early in the nineteenth century that Mr Twining became acquainted, through a French translation, with the Drainaturgie of Lessing, and, in his own admirable translation of, and dissertation upon, Aristotle's poetry. Twining remarks upon the many ^excellent and uncommon things' which Lessing's work contained, regretting that he had not written a regular commentary upon Aristotle's works*. I think Lessing would have approved of his admirer's observation upon the present subject. ' With respect to modern writers Twining says, * at least, there seems to be a manifest impropriety in de- nominating music an imitative art, while they confine the 1 For a very ingenious and learned disquisition on the sense in which Aristotle in his Poetics used fjLLix-^(TL<;, and the difference on this subject between him and Plato, the reader is referred to a little tract, J)e Mt/ix7jatV6T' apiirpeirea, ore t' ^TrAero wfiuefios ald^p, "E/c r* i(pav€v iracraL (TKOiriaX, koX irpcvoves &Kpoiy Kai vdirai' ovpai/SOeu 5' &p' vTreppdyr] ^.(nrcTos al6^p, HdvTa 5e t' ctderai darpw yeyrjde 84 re * Tlie feelings of satisfaction which result from the joint energy of the understanding and phantasy, are principally those of beauty and sublimity; and the judgments which pronounce an object to be sublime, beautiful, &c., are called by a metaphorical expression Judg- ments of Taste. These have also been styled Aisthetical Judgments; and the term oestlietical has now, especially among the philosophers of Germany, nearly superseded the term taste. Both terms are unsatis- factory. The gratification we feel in the beautiful, the sublime, the picturesque, &c., is purely contemplative, that is, the feeling of pleasure which we then experience, arises solely from the considera- tion of the object and altogether apart from any desire of, or satisfac- tion in, its possession'. Sir W. Hamilton, Zecfwres on Metapliysics: Lect. XLVI. Compare Sir J. Reynolds, vol. ii, 78, end of 13th Discourse. 48 LAOCOON than the actions and passions of men^, were not, as has been vulgarly supposed, wanting in sensibility to the charms of nature. It is true that the Christian, dwelling on the greatness and goodness of the Creator, who has made ' all nature beauty to the eye and music to the ear \ delighted in those descriptions of that beauty which are to be found in the works of the early Greek Fathers. The sensibility to natural beauty was of later growth among the Latins than the Greeks, and scarcely appeared before the poets and writers of the Augustan age. Virgil and Lucretius and Ovid have been cited. Ovid abounds in passages of picturesque description ; and though such passages are rare in the prose writers of Rome as of Greece, many are to be found in the letters of Cicero. It is hardly necessary to mention Pliny ; but I do not think his description of the Clitumnus could be transferred to canvass, although it must be admitted that when he describes, with great minuteness of detail, the picturesque features of his villa at Tusci, he sums it up, as it were, in one sentence, saying it gives you the pleasure of a well painted landscape^. How wonderfully Poetry, Music, and Painting, are all blended together, and all present to us, in this one description of a midsummer night in these lines : 1 Socrates tells Phaedrus that the country and trees do not teach him anything, and that as a lover of knowledge he prefers men and cities, 2vy7iV aptcrre' ^tAofia^Tj? yap ei/utt. ra fxev ovv Xtopta, *cat TO. 6eV5pa ovSev }x kQikei fitSacr/ceti/, oi 6' kv tw acrrei avOpoiiTrot. (Platonis Opera, ed. Stalbanm, vol. iv, p. 20, D. Phaedrus.) The banished Duke in As You Like It had another philosophy : And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. — Act ii, sc. 1. 2 Lib. viii, Epist. ix. 3 ' Magnam capies voluptatem si hunc regionis situm ex monte pro- spexeris. Neque enim terras tibi, sed formam aliquam, ad eximiam pulchritudinem pictam videberis cernere ; ea varietate ea descriptione quocumque inciderint oculi, reficiuutur '. Lib. v, Ep. vi, 13. PEEFACE 49 And bring your music forth into the air. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears ; soft stillness and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica : Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold i. No painting could describe the Dover cliff like Edgar ^, though in this marvellous passage the power of delineating natural beauty is less remark- able than the power of describing the height so as to make the brain of the reader dizzy. Not less power does Imogen, enquiring after her husband's departure, exhibit of painting in words the vanish- ing point of distance. In all these instances, especi- ally the two last, the poet reaps the full advantage of his successive description over the moment of the painter. One more example. The encampment of the hosts before the day of battle may be fraught with circumstances of which the painter may avail himself : but could he paint what follows ? From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night, The hum of either army stilly sounds ; That the fixt sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch : Fire answers fire ; and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umbered face ; Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the Night's dull ear ; and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up. Give dreadful note of preparations. The picturesque descriptions in the Paradise Lost are familiar to the reader of Milton ; in them, indeed, many principles of modern landscape, in which art imitates, cultivates, and improves nature, are to be found. The subject is a very large one, and the temptation to enter more at length upon it must be resisted ^ The English writers in prose offer many 1 Merchant of VenicCy act v, sc. 1. 2 See p. 324. 3 Henry the Fifths act iv : Chorus. 4 I abstain from noticing the pictures in Italian Poetry and the Lusiad of Camoens, so much esteemed by Humboldt, Kosmos, 2, 1. E 50 LAOCOON illustrations of the position for which I am con- tending, but I will confine myself to an extract from the prose of that great painter in prose and poetry, Sir Walter Scott. His novels abound in passages of the highest picturesque merit. Often what appears as a single picture in his description, cannot be represented on canvass otherwise than by a series of paintings, and then with a loss of effect. Take for example the following extract from the first chapter of Ivanhoe : The sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy glades of that forest which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad short-stemmed oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their broad gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward : in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various desciiptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun : in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweep- ing vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of sylvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that par- tially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and then they illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they made their way. A considerable open space, in the midst of this glade, seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites of Druid ical superstition ; for on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. Seven stood upright ; the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably by the zeal of some convert to Christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the hill. One large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and in stopping the course of a small brook, which glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence, gave, by its opposition, a feeble voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet. The human PEEFACE 51 figures which completed this landscape were in number two ^. One more example from the opening of a chapter in The Heart of Midlothian : If I were to chuse a spot from which the rising or setting sun could be seen to the greatest possible advantage, it would be that wild walk winding around the foot of the high belt of semi-circular rocks called Salisbury Craigs, and marking the verge of the steep descent, which slopes down into the glen, on the South-eastern side of the city of Edinburgh. The prospect in its general outline commands a close-built high-piled city, stretching itself out beneath in a form which to a romantic imagination may be sup- posed to represent that of a dragon ; now a noble arm of the sea, with its rocks, isles, distant shores, and boundary of mountains : and now a fair and fertile champaign country, varied with hill, dale, and rock, and skirted by the varied and picturesque ridge of the Pentland Moun- tains. But as the path gently circles round the base of the clifife, the prospect, composed as it is of these enchant- ing and sublime objects, changes at every step, and presents them blended with or divided from each other in every possible variety which can gratify the eye and the imagin- ation. When a piece of scenery so beautiful yet so varied, so exciting by its intricacy and yet so sublime, is lighted up by the tints of morning and evening, and displays all that variety of shadowy depth exchanged with partial brilliancy, which gives character even to the tamest of landscapes, the effect approaches nearer to enchantment. In these extracts the descriptive power of the painter is, I think, surpassed. But there are many other passages where the author is the rival of the painter, such as the approach to the Baron of Bradwardine's TullyVeolan^, the return of Morton-^ to Scotland by the winding descent whicli led to Bothwell Castle and the Clyde, the spot in which Rob Koy, the morning after his escape, spreads the morning banquet for Osbaldistone 1 1 Chap, i, p. 6. 3 Old Mortality, 3. 108. 2 Waverley, i, 74. 4 Rob Hoy, 3. 2S0. 52 LAOCOON My conclusion is, even from these scanty pre- misses — but they^ might be very greatly increased — that Lessing is mistaken in saying the poet, whether he write in poetry or prose, ought not to paint or describe natural scenery ^ ; that, on the contrary, the poet may often rival and sometimes surpass the painter even in this department of art. 3. It remains only to draw the reader's attention to Lessing's estimate of his own powers : Lessing, Gervimis says^, was not deceived about himself. You may desiderate certain gifts in him : but the use which he made of those he had is an everlasting example to us He knew that he was a cold thinker, that he had none of that enthuiasm which he called the clk/ult]^ the crown and blossom of the fine arts, the want of which in a poet it would be a sin to suspect. He makes this confession at the close of his Dramaturgies and resolves to devote his intellect to science and criticism. Nevertheless, adds Gervinus, let no man of mere sesthetical pur- suits, or historian of literature venture, out of the wisdom of his own conceit, to decide hastily against Lessing ; let him be judged by his own never to be forgotten words : * I am' — such is his explanation — 'neither an actor nor a poet. People have often done me the honour of calling me the latter : but only because they do not know what I really am. It is by no means an inference to be drawn from a few dramatic essays which I have attempted. Not every one who takes a brush in his hand and lays on colours is a painter. The earliest of these essays were written in those years in which one mistook joyousness and levity for genius. For whatever is tolerable in the later essays I am well convinced I am entirely and alone indebted to criticism. I do not feel the living spring within me which works its way up by its own strength, which by its own strength shoots out into such rich, fresh, pure rays. I am obliged to squeeze everything out 1 See pp. 141, 143, 292. 2 Gesch. der deutschen JDichtung, 4. 348. PREFACE 53 of myself by pressure and conduit pipes. 1 should have been so poor, so cold, so shortsighted, if I had not learnt in some measure to borrow modestly from the treasures of others, to warm myself at a stranger's fire, and to strengthen my vision by the glasses of art. I have there- fore always been ashamed and vexed when I have heard or read anything which found fault with criticism. It ought to stimulate genius, and I flatter myself that I have gained something from it which comes very near to genius. I am a lame man who cannot possibly be edified by a satire upon crutches. But of course I am aware that crutches may help the lame to move, though they cannot make him run and so it is with criticism LAOCOON INTEODUCTION The first person who compared Painting and Poetry with each other was a man of fine feeling, who perceived that both these arts produced upon him a similar effect. Both, he felt, placed before us things absent as present, appearance as reality. Both deceived, and the deceit of both was pleasing. A second person sought to penetrate into the inner nature of this pleasure, and discovered that in both it flowed from one and the same source. The beautiful, the notion of which we first derive from corporeal objects, has general rules applicable to various things ; to actions, to thoughts, as well as to forms. A third person, who reflected upon the value and upon the dis- tribution of these general rules, remarked that some of them had prevailed more in Painting and others more in Poetry, and that with respect to the latter rules, Poetry could be aided by the illustrations and examples supplied by Painting ; with respect to the former rules. Painting could be aided by the illustrations and examples supplied by Poetry. The first was an amateur; the second was a philosopher; the third was a critic. It was not easy for the two first to make a wrong use either of their feeling or of their reasoning. On the other hand, the principal force of the remarks of the critic depends upon the correctness of their application to the particular case, and it would be astonishing, inasmuch as for one really acute, you 66 LAOCOON will find fifty merely witty critics, if this application had always been made with all the caution requisite to hold the scales equal between the two Arts. Apelles and Protogenes, in their lost writings upon Painting, confirmed and illustrated the rules relating to it by the rules of Poetry, which had been already established; so that we may be assured that in them the same moderation and accuracy prevailed, which at the present day we see in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, and Quintilian, when they apply the principles and experience of Painting to Eloquence and to Poetry. It is the privilege of the Ancients in no one thing to do too much or too little. But we moderns have often believed that in many of our works we have surpassed them, because we have changed their little byways of pleasure into highways, even at the risk of being led by these shorter and safer highways into paths which end in a wilderness. The dazzling antithesis of the Greek Voltaire, that Painting is dumb Poetry, and Poetry eloquent Painting, is not to be found in any rudimental work. It was a smart saying, like many others of Simonides, the true side of which is so brilliant that we think it necessary to overlook the want of precision and the falseness which accompany it. But the Ancients did not overlook this ; for while they confirmed the dictum of Simonides as to the effect produced by both Arts, they did not forget to inculcate that, notwithstanding the perfect simi- larity of this effect, these Arts differed, as well in the object as in the manner of their imitations Kal rpSiroLS fiifi'fiaecos) ^. Nevertheless, many of our most modern critics, as if they were ignorant of any such distinction, have said the crudest things in the world upon the harmony of Painting and Poetry. At one time they compress Poetry within the narrow limits of Painting : at another time they INTRODUCTION 57 make Painting fill the whole wide sphere of Poetry. Whatever is the right of the one must be conceded to the other. Whatever is in the one pleasing, or unpleasing, must necessarily please or displease in the other ; and full of this idea, they pronounce in the most confident tone the most superficial judg- ments, when, criticising the works of the Poet and the Painter upon the same subject, they consider the difierence of treatment to be a fault, which fault they ascribe to the one or the other accordingly as they happen to have more taste for Poetry or tor Painting. This spurious criticism has partially corrupted even the Virtuosos themselves. It has generated a mania for pictorial description in Poetry, and for allegorical style in Painting ; while it was sought to render the former a speaking Picture, without really knowing what could and ought to be painted ; and the latter a mute poem ; not having considered how far general ideas are susceptible of exj^ression without departing from their proper end, and without falling into a purely arbitrary style of phraseology. To oppose this false taste, and to counteract these unfounded opinions, is the principal object of the following observations. They have arisen casually, and have grown to their present size rather in consequence of the course of my reading than through any methodical development of general principles. They are rather irregular collectanea for a book, than a book. Yet, I flatter myself that, even as such, they will not be wholly despised. We Germans have no lack of systematic treatises. We know, as well as any nation in the world, how, out of some granted definition, to arrange all that we want to arrange in the very best order. Baumgarten acknowledged that he was indebted to Gesner's Dictionary for the greater portion of his examples in his treatise on Aesthetics. If my 58 LAOCOON raisonnement is not as conclusive as Baumgarten's, at least my examples will savour more of the fountain head. As I set out from Laocoon, and often return to him, I have thought it right to give him a share in the title of the work. As to other little digressions upon several points, of the ancient history of the Arts, they contribute little to my main object, and they are only allowed to remain here because I cannot hope to find a better place for them elsewhere. I should also mention that under the name of Painting I include generally the plastic Arts ; and I do not deny that under the name of Poetry I may also have had some regard to the other Arts which have the characteristic of progressive imitation. CHAPTER I WiNKELMANN Considers that the characteristics of general excellence, which are to be found in the masterpieces of Greek painting and sculpture, consist of a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur as well in their attitude as in their expression. As the depths of the sea, he saj-s^, always remain at rest, let the surface rage as it will, even so does the ex- pression in the Greek figures show through all suffering a great and calm soul. This soul is pourtrayed in the countenance of Laocoon, and not in the countenance alone, notwithstanding the intense severity of his suffering. The pain which discovers itself in all the muscles and sinews of the body, and which from these only, without considering the face and other parts, we seem to perceive in the agonised expression of the belly alone ; this pain, I say, expresses itself nevertheless without any torture in the face or in the general position. He utters no horrible scream as Virgil's verse makes his Laocoon utter : the opening of his mouth does not show this : it is rather a subdued groan of anguish, as Sadolet^ describes it. Pain of body and greatness of soul are distributed with equal strength throughout the whole figure and in equal proportions. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers like the Philoctetes of Sophocles : his misery touches our very souls ; but we desire to be able to bear suffering as this great man bears it. The expression of so great a soul goes far beyond a representation of natural beauty. The Artist must have felt in himself the strength of the soul which he has impressed upon his marble. Greece had artists and philosophers blended in one person, and more than one Metrodorus^. Philosophy gave her hand to Art, and breathed into the forms of it no common soul, etc. The observation which lies at the foundation of this theory, namely, that pain does not show itself 59 60 LAOCOON in the countenance of Laocoon with that furious vehemence, which from the intensity of it we should expect, is perfectly true. It is also indisputable that in this respect where a man of half knowledge would pronounce that the Artist had not attained to nature and had not reached the true pathos of suffering : in this very respect, I say, the wisdom of the observation is most clearly manifest. It is only as to the fundamental reason on which Winkelmann founds this wise observation, and as to the generality of the rule which he extracts from this fundamental reason that I venture to differ from him. I confess that the unfavourable side glance v/hich he casts upon Virgil startled me at first, and in the next place the comparison with Philoctetes. From this I will take my point of departure, and write down my thoughts in the order in which they have been developed. ' Laocoon suffers like the Philoctetes of Sophocles How does he suffer ? It is strange that his suffer- ings have left so different an impression upon us. The lamentations, the screams, the wild curses with which his pain filled the camp, and disturbed all the sacrifices, all the holy acts, resounded no less dreadfully in the desert island, and were the cause of his being banished to it. What tones of dejection, misery, and despair, with the imitation of which the Poet caused the theatre to resound. The third Act of this piece has been discovered to be much shorter than the others ; a plain proof, say the critics^, that the Ancients troubled themselves very little about the equal length of the Acts ^. That I too believe ; but I should prefer to found my belief upon another example. The piteous exclamations, the moaning, the broken off ^ h Arjce xp^fJ'^^ou KaXhv C^yhv, iv 5e \4iradua Kd\' i^a\€ Xpvo-6i' 2 . . . Does Homer wish to show us how Agamemnon was clad *? Then the king must put on his whole cloth- ing piece by piece before our eyes — the soft under- garment, the great mantle, the beautiful sandals, the sword — and then he is ready, and grasps the sceptre. We see the raiment in which the poet paints the act of his being clothed ; another would have painted the clothes in detail down to the smallest fringe, and we shall have seen nothing of the action of putting on the raiment. KaXhv, vr^ydreoV irepl Se /jLcya fidWero (papos' Hoffffl 5* ifirh XiirapoLtTLV i^Tjaaro Ka\a TreStAa. 'AfjKpl 5' 6.p' iaiioKTLV fid\€TO ^is ancestral and immortal, as in another place one like it is described only as xp^^^'^^^^ '^xolcti ireirap/uLevoy^ garnished with golden bosses, when I say we are to have a more complete and more accurate picture of this mighty sceptre, what is it that Homer does? Does he paint for us, besides the golden bosses, the wood of which it is made, and the carved head ? Yes, it would have been so in a description of heraldic art, in order that in future time it might CHAPTER XYI 135 be possible to make one exactly like it. And I am certain that many a modern poet would have given such an heraldic description, with the simple and honest notion that he himself was really painting because a painter could imitate him. But did Homer trouble himself with considering how far he should leave the painter behind him ? Instead of a description he gives us the history of the sceptre : first we see it as worked by Vulcan ; next it glitters in the hand of Jupiter ; then it proclaims the dignity of Mercury ; then it becomes the commander-staff of the warrior Pelops ; and then it is the pastoral- staff of the peaceful Atreus. '2,Krj'irrpov <^X^^i '^^ f^^^ "HcpaLcrros Koifie T^vyjjiV, '^HcpaicTTOs fJLev 8cok€ Ait KpcovicovL 6.vaKTi' Avrap dpa Zeus dcoK€ 8iaKT6p(p 'Apy€i(f)6vTT)' ^Epfieias &va^ SooKev Tl4\oin tt AtjIitttt^ * Avrap 6 avrc Tl4\o\l/ dwK 'ATpei*, troLfi^vi KacaV ^Arpevs 5e dyqcTKcov ^\nrev iroKvapvi Qveffrr}' Avrap 6 avre Qvear^ ' Ay afxefxpovi AetTre |€, or eV 5e irolrjfrc, or eV 5' irldeL, or eV 56 ^^o^Kl^ \€ ^Aficpiyvrjtis^. Where these introductory words do not occur we have no right to suppose a separate picture ; on the other hand, all that these words enclose must be considered as a separate picture, to which nothing is wanting save the arbitrary concentration on a particular epoch of time, which the poet was in no way bound to indicate. Rather if he had indicated it, if he had holden vigorously to it, if he had abstained from introducing the smallest trait which could not have been combined with it in the actual execution of the picture — in a word, if he had done what his censors desired : they, it is true, would have had nothing to reproach him with, but in reality no man of taste would have found anything to admire in him. Pope not only approves of the division and the designs of Boivin, but thinks that he (Pope) is entitled to particular merit in pointing out that each of these sub-divided pictures is indicated by Homer in accordance with the strictest rules of ordinary modern painting. Contrast, perspective, the three unities, all are observed in the most care- ful manner ; and although he well knew that in the opinion of trustworthy witnesses, painting at the time of the Trojan war was yet in its cradle, there- fore either Homer must by virtue of his god-like genius not have paid regard to the paintings of an earlier date or of his own time, but rather have divined the future achievements of painting ; or Pope must have thought that those witnesses them- selves were not sufficiently trustworthy to outweigh the palpable evidence afforded by the language which, so to speak, the shield of the artist itself expressed. Let who will adopt the first position, the second at least will convince nobody who knows anything more of the history of the art than the mere data which the chronicler supplies. For such 156 LAOCOON a person will believe that Painting in Homer's time was still in its childhood, not only because a Pliny or a like author says so, but especially because, having regard to the works of art which the ancients mention, he concludes that for many hun- dred years after this epoch Painting had made little progress. For instance, the pictures of a Poly- gnotus would not approach to the test to which Pope thinks the pictures of the Homeric shield should be subjected. The two great pictures of this master at Delphi, of which Pausanias^ has left us so circumstantial a description, were clearly with- out perspective. This part of the art must be altogether denied to the ancients, and the proofs which Pope adduces to show that Homer possessed the idea of perspective only prove that Pope himself had a very imperfect conception of it^^. That he was not a stranger (Pope says) to aerial fer- spective appears in his expressly marking the distance of object from object. He tells us, for instance, that the two spies lay a little remote from the other figures ; and that the oak under which was spread the banquet of the reapers, stood apart. What he says of the valley sprinkled all over with cottages and flocks, appears to be a description of a large country in perspective ; and indeed a general argument for this may be drawn from the number of figures on the shield, which could not be all expressed in their full magnitude ; and this is therefore a sort of proof that the art of lessening them according to perspective was known at that time. (Pope, Works, v, 138.) Merely to observe the law of optical experience that a thing in the distance appears smaller than one close at hand is far from putting the picture in perspective. Perspective requires a single point of sight, a defined natural horizon, and this was want- ing in the old pictures. The ground plan in the pictures of Polygnotus was not horizontal, but the background was so much raised that the figures CHAPTER XIX 157 which ought to appear to stand one behind another, appeared to stand one above the other. And if this disposition of separate figures and their groups was general, as we may conclude from the old bas-reliefs, where the hindmost figures always stand higher than the foremost, and look over them : then it is natural to suppose the same in the description of Homer and not unnecessarily to separate those of his figures, which he allows to be combined in one picture. The double scene of the city at peace through whose streets moves the joyous procession of a nuptial fe^st, while in the market-place an important law suit is being tried, does not neces- sarily require a double picture ; and Homer might well consider it as a single one, while he put before us the whole city from so raised a point of sight, that he thereby opened a clear view simultaneously both of the streets and of the market-place. I am of opinion that the true perspective was introduced into pictures accidentally, through the medium of scene-painting ; and although that was already in perfection, it could not have been so easy to apply the rules of it to a flat surface, since even in the later pictures discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum, we find so many and such various faults of perspective as we should now hardly pardon in a beginner But I spare myself the trouble of collecting my scattered remarks upon this single point, of which I am justified in expect- ing the most complete treatment in the history of Art, which Herr Winkelmann has promised to give us^^. CHAPTER XX It is better that I should return to my path : if one who takes a walk for his pleasure can be said to have a path. What I liave said generally with respect to corporeal objects, is so much the more applicable to beautiful corporeal objects. Corporeal beauty is the result of the harmonious action of various parts which can be taken in at a glance. It require.^ therefore that these parts should lie near each other ; and therefore things whose parts lie near each other are the proper object of painting : this art and this alone can imitate corporeal beauty. The poet who can only describe the elements of beauty, one after the other, abstains altogether from painting corporeal beauty as beauty. He feels that these elements arranged in succession cannot possibly produce the effect which they have when arranged in juxta-position or as co-existing ; that the con- centrating glance, which, after their enumeration, we wish to tlirow back upon them, in order to observe them all at once, does not secure to us an harmonious whole : that it passes the imagination of man to represent to liimself what effect this mouth and this nose and these eyes taken together produce, unless we can recollect a similar com- position of such parts in nature or in art. And here also Homer is the model of all models. He says : Niseus was beautiful ; Achilles was yet more beautiful ; Helen possessed a divine beauty • but he never allows himself to enter into a more detailed description of these beauties. Nevertheless the whole poem is built upon the beauty of Helen. How greatly a modern poet would have luxuriated in the description of it ! Constantine Manasses 158 CHAPTER XX 159 desired to adorn his bald chronicle with a picture of Helen : I must thank him for the attempt. For I really do not think I could otherwise have found an example which so clearly demonstrated how foolish it is to attempt to do that which Homer has wisely left unattempted. When I read in him ^ : '^Hv 7] yvv^ TrepiKaWrjs, evo(ppvSj evxpovaTari^y 'Evndpeios evTipdaoynos, fiownis, X'^^^^XP^^^t 'E\iKofi\4(papos, ajSpa, xaptrcoi' yefiov IxKcros Aru/coj8poxiw»/ rpvcp^poLj KaWos &vriKpvs (fJL-nvovv^ T5 Trp6(T(joTTov Kard\€VKOU, 7} Trapeia poboxpovs, Th TTpSacoTTov iTrixapif rh 0\4€pov 5' l^ffct) yevcioVj Hepl \vy8ip(p rpaxv^V XoipiTes ireroiUTo Traaai, * Let all the graces hover over her soft chin and her marble neck \ How did he intend this ? in the most literal meaning ? It was incapable of execu- tion by the painter. The painter could give the chin its finest round — its most beautiful dimple amoris digitulo impressum (for the ^(rco appears to me to indicate a dimple), he could give tlie most beau- tiful carnation to the neck : but he could go no further. The movement of this beautiful neck, the play of the muscles, by which the dimple became more or less visible, the special grace was beyond the reach of his power. The poet used the most 168 LAOCOON forcible expressions of his art to make beauty visible to us, in order that the painter might make use of the most forcible expression of his art. A new illustration of our former remark that the poet, even when he speaks of works of Art, is not on that account obliged to confine himself within the boundaries of Art. CHAPTER XXII Zeuxis ^ painted a Helen, and had the courage to write underneath it the famous lines of Homer, in which the enraptured old men confess their emo- tion. Never have Painting and Poetry been in such equal competition. The victory remains undecided, both deserve to be crowned. For as the wise poet shows only in its effect that beauty which he felt himself unable to paint in detail ; so does the not less wise painter show us beauty only by its details, and holds it unbecoming his art to have recourse to any other expedient. His picture consists only of the single figure of Helen, which was naked. For it is probable that this was the Helen which he painted for Crotona'-^. Let us, for the sake of the curiosity of the fact, compare with this picture that which Caylus pre- scribes to young painters, founding his advice on these lines of Homer Helen, covered with a white veil, appears in the midst of several old men, among whom is Priam distinguished by marks of royal dignity. The artist must take especial pains to make apparent the triumph of beauty in the greedy looks and in all the outward expressions of be- wildered astonishment upon the faces of these frigid old men. The scene is above one of the gates of the city. The background is lost, either in the open sky or against the loftier buildings of the cit}^ ; the former is the bolder achievement, but one is as suitable as the other. Let us suppose that this picture was executed by the greatest painter of our time, and put in compe- tition with the work of Zeuxis. Which would indi- cate the real triumph of beauty ? The latter which 169 170 LAOCOON I feel myself 1 or the former in which I am to extract it from the grimaces of the excited greybeards? turpe senilis amor — a greedy look makes the most honoured face ridiculous, and a greybeard who manifests the desires of youth is so far an object of disgust. The Homeric old men are not liable to this reproach : for the emotion which they feel is a momentary spark which their wisdom immediately stifles. It suffices to do honour to Helen without disgracing them. They avow their feeling and immediately add *AA.Aa Koi &5, rolf) Trep tov(T\ iu vijuffl veiaOca^ M»j5' 7\fjuv rcKeeffCL t oiriaffoi) Tryjina Xlvoito * Without this resolution they would be old fools : they would be what they must appear to be in the picture of Caylus. And what is the object upon which they direct their greedy looks ? ^. Upon a disguised veiled figure. Is that Helen 1 It is to me inconceivable how Caylus could leave her the veil. It is true that Homer expressly gives it to her *npixar 6a\dfjLOio* but in order that she may pass through the streets : and even if Homer had described the wonderment of the old men before she had lifted up or taken ofiF her veil, it was not the first time that they had seen her : their avowal therefore did not necessarily arise from their momentary glimpse at this time, but they might often have felt what they then, for the first time, confessed they felt. This could find no place in the picture. If in it I see enraptured old men, I see also the cause of their rapture : and I am greatly surprised to see, as I have said, no more than a disguised veiled figure on which they had fixed their passionate gaze. What is there of Helen in this? Her white veil and something of the out- line of her fair proportions, so far as they could be CHAPTER XXII 171 visible, through the folds of the garment. Perhaps, however, it was not the intention of the Count that her face should be covered, and he speaks of the veil merely as a portion of her attire. If this be so (his language is scarcely capable of such a construction, Helene couverte d\in voile hlanc) then I have a new subject for my astonishment : he gives the artists most careful instructions as to the expression upon the faces of the Elders : and says not a word on the beauty of the face of Helen. That modest beauty, that eye moist and glittering with the tear of repentance, as she draws near with fear. How is this ? Is the highest beauty so familiar to our artists that they do not need to be at all reminded of it ? or is expression more than beauty ? And are we accustomed to see in pictures, as on the stage, the ugliest actress play the part of an enchanting princess if her prince only expresses a sufficiently warm love for her? In truth : the picture of Caylus bears the same relation to the picture of Zeuxis that pantomime bears to the most sublime poetry. Homer was certainly more diligently read in ancient times than he now is^. Nevertheless we do not find a great many pictures mentioned, which the ancient painters took from him ^. What they appear to have most industriously availed them- selves of, were the indications which the poet gives of certain peculiarities of corporeal beauty ; these they painted and were well convinced, that, with regard to these objects alone, it was permitted to them to compete with Homer. Besides Helen, Zeuxis painted also Penelope ; and the Diana of Apelles was the Homeric Diana, accompanied by her nymphs. I will take this opportunity of ob- serving that the passage in Pliny which describes the latter, requires correction^. But it does not appear to have been agreeable to the taste of the old artists to paint actions taken from Homer — merely because they furnished rich composition, 172 LAOCOON advantageous contrasts, and happy effects of light, and this could not have been agreeable to their taste so long at least as art confined itself within the narrow limits which its highest end required. They nourished themselves by way of compensation on the spirit of the poet ; they filled their imagina- tion with his most sublime traits ; the fire of his enthusiasm inflamed theirs ; they saw and felt as he did : and so their works became copies of the Homeric poem, not in the relation of a portrait to the original, but in the relation of a son to a father ; resembling, yet different. The resemblance often lies in a single trait ; all the otlier features have nothing in common between them but a general harmony with the resembling feature as well as with the otliers. It remains to observe, that all the masterpieces of Homer were older than any masterpiece of art ; for Homer liad looked at nature with the eye of a painter, long before Phidias or Apelles. So it is not to be wondered at that these artists found many very valuable observations, before they had time to make them for themselves in nature, made by Homer, where they eagerly seized upon them, in order tlirough Homer to imitate nature. Phidias confessed that the lines ^ *H, Koi Kvav€r)(Tiv eV opova iis breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionably. The dogs bark at me as I halt by tliem : Why I (in this weak piping time of peace) Have no delight to pass away the time, i Unless to see my shadow in the sun, And descant on my own deformity ; And, therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain. Here I hear a devil and see a devil — in the form which the devil alone should have. CHAPTER XXIV This is the use which the poet makes of personal ugliness ; what use can the painter make of it ? Painting, considered as an imitative art, can ex- press ugliness ; painting, considered as a fine art, will not express it. In the former category, all visible objects are within its province ; in the latter category it includes only those visible objects which awaken agreeable sensations* But do not disagree- able sensations please us in imitation? Not all. A discerning critic has already remarked this on the subject of disgust : The representations of fear, he says, of sadness, horror, compassion, etc., can only excite our aversion in so far as we suppose them to be caused by an evil which is real. These may be resolved into agreeable sensations by the recollection that they are illusions produced by art. But the contrary sensation of disgust ensues upon the mere representation of it to the soul, by virtue of a law of the imagination, whether the object is considered to be real or not. What does it matter to the offended imagination that there is exhibited to it, in whatever degree of excel- lence, the imitative art ? The aversion did not arise from the presumption that the evil was real, but from the mere representation itself, and this is real. The sensations of disgust come always from nature, never from the imitation^. The same may be said of the ugliness of forms. This ugliness affronts our sight, runs counter to our taste for order and harmony, and excites aversion, without regard to the actual existence of the object * See passages from Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric at the end of this chapter. R. P. 179 180 LAOCOON in which we perceive it. We do not like to see Thersites in reality or in a picture ; and if we less dislike his picture, that is not because the ugliness of his form ceases to be ugliness in the picture, but because we have the power to abstract ourselves from this ugliness, and to please ourselves exclu- sively with the art of the painter. But even this gratification is marred every moment by reflecting on the bad application which is made of art, and this reflection will seldom fail to bring with it a low estimation of the artist. Aristotle^ assigns another cause why things which we see with repugnance in their own nature, give satisfaction in their representation, when most ac- curate : the reason is the universal curiosity of man. We are sensible of enjoyment when either we can learn from the copy rl eKaarov, what each thing is ; or when we can conclude from it '6ti ovtos iKeivos^ that it is this or that object. But no conclusion can be drawn in favour of the imitation of ugliness. The satisfaction which springs from the gratification of our desire is momentary, and is only accidentally incident to the object which gratifies us ; the dis- satisfaction, on the other hand, which accompanies the aspect of ugliness is permanent, and is essential to the object which awakens it. How can the former balance the latter? Still less can the small amusement which the observation of similarity affords us, overcome the disagreeable effect of ugli- ness. The closer I compare the hateful imitation with the hateful original, the more I expose myself to this effect, so that the pleasure of comparison soon vanishes, and leaves me nothing but the dis- agreeable impression of double ugliness. To judge by the examples which Aristotle gives, he appears as if he had not himself meant to consider the ugliness of form as belonging to the category of disagreeable objects which give pleasure in the imitation. These examples are savage beasts and corpses. Savage beasts excite horror even when CHAPTER XXIV 181 tliey are not ugly, and it is this horror, not their ugliness, wfiich in imitation becomes lost in a feeling of satisfaction. So also witli corpses.^ It is the sharper feeling of sympathy, the terrifying thought of our own future annihilation, which in nature makes a corpse to be a revolting object. In the imitation, however, this sympathy loses, from a perception of the deceit, its painfulness, and, as to the fatal recollection, the addition of flattering cir- cumstances either entirely withdraws us from it, or is so inseparably connected with it, that it appears to us rather as an attractive than a terrifying object. As therefore the ugliness of forms on ac- count of the sensation it excites is disagreeable, and yet does not belong to that class of disagreeable sensations which in imitation are changed into those that are agreeable, and cannot of itself be the object of painting as a fine art ; it remains to be seen whether it cannot, as in poetry, be made useful as an ingredient to strengthen other sensations. Can painting, in order to produce the ridiculous and the terrible, make use of ugly forms ? I will not venture to answer this question with a direct negative. It is indisputable that impotent ugliness may become ridiculous in painting; espe- cially if an affectation of grace and dignity be united with it. It is equally incontestable that ugliness with the power to injure excites in painting, as well as in nature, horror, and that this ridicule and this horror, which in themselves are mixed sensations, obtain in imitation an increased power, the former of attractiveness, the latter of otfensiveness. I must, however, remember that nevertheless painting and poetry are not exactly in the same condition. In poetry, as I have remarked, tlie ugli- ness of form loses almost entirely its disagreeable effect, because it changes its co-existing into succes- sive parts. Considered in this way, it ceases almost to be ugliness, and may be intimately united with other phenomena in order to produce a new and 182 LAOCOON special effect. In painting, on the contrary, ugli- ness has all its forces collected together, and has nearly as strong an effect as in nature herself. Impotent ugliness, therefore, cannot long remain ridiculous ; the disagreeable sensation gets the upper hand, and that which in the first moment was ludicrous in the sequel becomes simply horrible. And it is the same with ugliness which has the power to injure, the horror gradually disappears, and the deformity remains alone and unchangeable. All this being considered. Count Caylus was per- fectly right in omitting the episode of Thersites from the gallery of his Homeric pictures. But are we therefore right in wishing that it was absent from Homer itself? I am sorry to find that a learned man, otherwise of a very correct and fine taste, is of this opinion^. I reserve for another place a fuller discussion of this subject^. CHAPTER XXV The second distinction which the above-mentioned critic finds between disgust and other unpleasant emotions of the soul, is manifested in the displeasure which the ugliness of form excites in us. Other unpleasing passions, he says, are able, not only in imitation, but even in nature herself, to flatter our natural disposition. This is because they never excite simple displeasure, but always mingle the bitterness of it with voluptuousness. Our Fear is rarely altogether with- out Hope ; Terror quickens all our faculties to avoid the danger ; Anger is combined with the desire for Vengeance ; Sorrow with the pleasant recollection of former Happi- ness ; ^ Sympathy is inextricably interwoven with the tender feelings of Love and Affection. The soul is at liberty to dwell at one time on the pleasing, at another on the displeasing elements of an aff'ection, and to compound for itself a medley of what is pleasing and displeasing, which is more charming than the purely unmixed emotion of pleasure. Everybody who has paid any attention to himself must have often observed this. And how other- wise does it happen that to the Angry man his Anger, to the Sorrowing man his Sorrow, is more acceptable than all the joyous images with which we endeavour to tran- quillise him ? But it is altogether a diff'erent case with disgust, and the emotions connected with it. The soul does not recognise in them any perceptible admiration of what is pleasing. What is displeasing gets the upper hand, and therefore there is no situation conceivable in Nature or in Imitative Art, in which the natural dis- position does not recoil with aversion from a representation of this kind. Quite true. But as the critic himself admits that other emotions are allied witli that of disgust, and 183 184 LAOCOON which excite, as it does, aversion, what can be more closely allied to it than the perception of ugliness of form *? This is also in Nature without the least admixture of Pleasure ; and as it is equally incapable of it in imitation, there is no imaginable situation in which the natural disposition does not turn away with aversion from the representation of it. Yet tliis aversion, if, at least, I have analysed my feelings with sufficient accuracy, is altogetlier of the nature of disgust. The sensation which is inspired by ugliness of form is disgust, only in a less degree. It is true that this is at variance with another observation of the critic, according to which he believes that only the obtusest sense, taste, smell, and touch, are exposed to disgust. *The two former' he says, ' on account of an excessive sweetness, and the latter on account of too great softness of bodies which do not sufficiently withstand the excitable fibres. These objects become intolerable to the sight, but only by reason of the association of ideas, because it reminds us of the aversion which they create in the taste, smell, or touch. For, to speak accurately, there is no object of disgust to the sight.' Nevertheless I think it would be easy to mention some. A brand in the face, a hare-lip, a broken nose with projecting nostrils, an entire want of eyebrows, are ugliness which do not offend the smell, touch, or taste. Yet it is certain that we are conscious of a feeling which approaches much more nearly to disgust than that which is caused by other deformities of the body, such as a crooked foot or a humped back. The more delicate our temperament is, the more are we susceptible of those physical symptoms which precede the act of vomiting. It is true that these sensations soon disappear, and probably no vomiting takes place, the cause of which will be found to be, that they are objects of sight, which take in with them and in them a number of other circumstances, and in consequence of the agreeable images which they produce, the earlier CHAPTER XXV 185 disagreeable images are so weakened and obscured that they have no decided influence over the body. The obtuser senses, on the contrary — the taste, the smell, the touch — when they are affected by dis- gusting objects, take no cognizance of other circum- stances. The object of aversion, therefore, operates alone and in its full strength, and must necessarily be accompanied by a more violent sensation. To the imitative arts the disgusting bears the same relation as the ugly. Indeed, as the disagree- able operation of the former is stronger, it can still less than the ugly become a subject either for Paint- ing or for Poetry. Nevertheless, as it is capable of being softened in verbal expression, I may assert witli confidence that the poet may use the disgust- ing features at least as an ingredient for those mixed sensations to which ugliness lends so great an assistance. The disgusting can increase the ridiculous : in other words, the representation of moral worth, of dignity, put in contrast with the disgusting, become ridiculous. Many examples of this are to be found in Aristophanes. I remember the lizard which interrupted the astronomical speculations of the good Socrates 2 MA0. Updoriv 54 ye yvwfx'qv jxeyaXriv acpripfdrj 'Ttt' acKaKa^MTOv. 2TP. Tlua rpSTrou ; KaTenre yuot. MA0. ZrjTovvTOS avrov rrjs (TcKt^vtjs ras obovs Kal TCLS irepKpopas, €?t' 6.uco k^xv^^'^os 'Atto rrjs 6pu(pr]S vvKTcop yaXedoTrjs Kar^x^^^^' 2TP. "Ho-^r^f yaXewTT) Karax^cravTi ^ooKparous. If you take away the disgusting character of what falls into his mouth, the ridiculous disappears at once. The drollest traits of this kind are to be found in the Hottentot narrative Tquassouw and Knonmquaiha, in the Connoisseur^^ an English weekly paper which is ascribed to Lord Chesterfield. We know how filthy the Hottentots are, and liow much there is which they esteem as delicate and holy 186 LAOCOON which only excites in us disgust and horror : a squashed nose, flabby breasts hanging down to the navel, the whole body anointed with a varnish of goat's fat, the locks clotted with grease, the feet and arms entwined with fresh entrails : conceive this to be the object of an ardent, reverential, tender love : let us imagine these details expressed in the noble language of earnest admiration, and abstain from laughing. The disgusting appears to ally itself yet more closely with the terrible. What we call the horrible (Grasliche) is nothing more than a disgust with terror. In the picture of sorrow drawn by Hesiod*, the trait rrjs e/c fxhu pivSiv jxv^ai p4ov displeases Lon- ginus^, not so much, as it seems to me, because it is a disgusting trait, as because it is nothing but a disgusting trait. For he does not seem to wish to blame the long nails stretching out beyond the fingers {ixaKpoX 5' owx^s x^'-p^fJ'^^^ vitTjcav). Yet long nails are not less disgusting than a running nose. But the long nails ^ are at the same time terrible, for with them the cheeks are torn so that blood runs from them to the earth. On the other hand, a running nose is nothing but a running nose ; and I only advise sorrow to shut her mouth. Let any one read in Sophocles the descrip- tion of the desert cave of the wretched Philoctetes : no trace of provisions to support life or of ordinary appliances are to be seen, except a trodden heap of dry leaves, a shapeless wooden cup, some imple- ments for the fire — the whole wealth of the diseased, deserted man ! How does the poet fill up this sad and fearful picture ? With the addition of a trait of disgust. ' Ha ! ' says Neoptolemus, shrinking with horror, * here are torn pieces of rag put out to dry full of blood and matter \ CHAPTER XXV 187 OA. N£. NE. OA. NE. OA. NE. *OpW KCVTJP otKTJfflP avdpcvTTCOU 5lX«. Oi>5' tlvdou oIkottoi^s iffTL ris rpocpii; STetTrT-]^ ye (pvWas ais ivavXi^ovri ry. Ta 5' olW^ tp7)fjiay Kovhev effd' virSareyov ; Avr6^v\6v y (Kircc/xa, (pXavpovpyov rivhs Tex^hfJ-CLT ai'dphsy koI irvpeT djuov raSe. Keivov rh dTjcravptfffxa (rrj/uLaiueis rdSe. 'loi;, iov' Kol ravrd 7' &Wa QaKireraL 'Pa/cr; ^apeias tov uoariKeias irXea'^. So, in Homer, Hector dragged along his face covered with blood and dust, his hair matted together. Squalentem barbam et concretos sanguine crines ^ (as Virgil says) is an object of disgust, but all the more on that account a more horrible and affecting object. Who can think of the punishment of Mar- syas in Ovid without a feeling of disgust 1 ^ Clamanti cutis est summos derepta per artus ; Nec quidquam, nisi vulnus, erat : cruor uncl)s. Philoc. 296. R. P. 10 Iliad, H. 421. " Odyss. A. 195. 12 Chateaubrun, Jean-Baptiste Vivier de Chateaubrun, born at Angouleme in 1686 ; his tragedy of Mahomet Second was acted in 1714, and was well received ; but he pro- duced no other play till 1754, Les Troyennes, which was successful in 1755. Eleven years before the appearance of the Laocoon, he produced PMloctete, which was acted seven times. He died at the age of 89, in Paris. R. P. CHAPTER II 1 Antiochus, Antholog, lib. ii, cap. 4. Hardouin on Pliny, lib. xxxv, sect. 36, p. m. 698, ascribes this Epigram to a certain Pison. But among all the Greek epigram- matists there is no one of that name. Hardouin, Jean, a French Jesuit of extraordinary erudition, antiquary, chronologist, naturalist, commentator, among other works he was the author of Chronologic Repliquee par les Medailles ; he was very fond of paradoxes, and in an epitaph com- posed for him was styled Hominum paradoxotatos. Born 1646, died 1729. R. P. 2 * Namque subtexi par est minoris pictura celebres in penicillo e quibus fuit Pyreicus : arte paucis proferendus : NOTES 213 proposito nescio an destruxerit se : quoniam humilia quidem secutus humilitatis summam adeptus est gloriam. Tonstrinas sutrinasque pinxit et asellos et opsonia ac similia : ob hoc cognominatur Rhyparographos, in iis consummatae voluptatis. Quippe ea pluris veniere quam maximae multorum Plin. , Hist. Nat. , xxxv, cap. x. R. P. ^ Therefore pictures, according to Aristotle's Precept, should not be shown to young persons, in order to keep their imagination, as much as possible, pure from all pictures of what is ugly. [Pol. , 1, viii, c. 5. ) Herr Boden wished to read Pausanias' instead of Pauson, because it was known that the former had painted unchaste pictures {De Umhra Poetica, Comm. I, xiii.), as if one had first to learn from this philosophical legislator that youth should be removed from such lascivious provocations. He had only to compare the well-known passage in the Poetics (cap. ii. ) in order to withdraw his conjecture. There are commentators (e. g. Kiihn, upon Aelian Var. , Hist. , 1. iv, c. 3), who think that the distinction which Aristotle makes between Polygnotus, Dionysius, and Pauson was founded on this supposed fact that Polygnotus painted gods and heroes, Dionysius men, and Pauson animals. They all painted the human figure, and that Pauson once painted a horse does not prove that he was a painter of animals as Herr Boden imagines. The degrees of the beautiful which they gave to their human figures decided their work, and it was solely on this account that Diony- sius only painted men, and obtained before all others the appellation of * the man painter because he was too servile a follower of nature, and never could raise himself to that ideal, below which to have painted gods and heroes would have been an offence against religion. The passage in the Poetics of Aristotle, 2, § 2, is uxnrep ol ypa(p€75' TloKvyucoTos fxep yap KpeiTTOvs, Haifffwu 5e x^^pouj, Aioi^vcrios Se 6/xoiovs. R. P. ^ Aristoph., Pluty 602 ; AcJiarn., 854. ^ Plinius, 1. XXX, s. 37. ^ Be Picturd Vet. , 1. 2, c. 4, § 1. See preface for some account of Junius. R. P. I venture to doubt whether this word has been under- 214 LAOCOON stood. The explanation is as follows : Count Ghezzi (Pietro Leone) was, as his father and grandfather had been, a painter and engraver of the Roman School ; taught by his father (Giuseppe), who died at Rome 1721, and who was the son of another Ghezzi (Sebastiano). P. L. Ghezzi excelled in caricature ; he is said to have com- posed no less than 400, of cardinals, princes, ambassadors, and remarkable persons. He was born in 1674 ; died in 1755, at Rome. R. P. ^ Plin. , Hist, Nat., xxxiv, s. 4: * Olympica : ubi om- nium qui vicissent statuas dicari mos erat, eorum vero qui ter ibi superavissent ex membris ipsorum similitudine expressa quas iconicas vocant R. P. ^ It is a mistake to consider a serpent as the sign of a medical Deity only; Justinus Martyr {Apolog., ii, 55, ed. Sylburg) says expressly, irapa iravrl ruv vo^iCofxhwv Trap' vfxiv Oeoov, 6(pLS avjx^oXou jxiya koX fJLvcrriipiov avaypd- vn on account of such a copy. I read therefore instead, ' claudi- cantem, Philoctetem ', or, at least, I contend that the latter word has been expelled by the former like-sounding word, and we must read the two together, ' claudicantem Philoctetem '. Sophocles makes him (Tti^ou kut' avayKav epneiv, and his lameness must be caused by his walking with little confidence on his wounded foot. ' A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his Art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit', Sir J. Reynolds, Fourth Discourse, vol. i, 348. ' What is done by painting must be done at one blow : curiosity has received at once all the satis- faction it can have', id.. Eighth Discourse, p. 439. 218 LAOCOON ' These important moments then (Fuseli says) which ex- hibit the united exertion of form and character in a single object or in participation with collateral beings, at once, and which with equal rapidity and pregnancy give us a glimpse of the past, and lead our eye to what follows, furnish the true materials of those technic powers which select direct the objects of imitation to their centre', Fuseli, Life, etc., Lecture iii, pp. 135-6. * For of necessity (Harris says) every picture is a jpunctum temporis or instant ', Discoitrse on Music, Painting, and Poetry, p. 63. Sir Joshua wrote after Harris, and before the publication of the Laocoon. R. P. The references to the books and sections in Pliny are not always correct. I have made them so. R. P. CHAPTER III ^ According to Mr. De Quincey's paraphrase, * essen- tially evanescent on which words he has a long note, the earlier part of which is as follows : 'Essentially evanescent The reader (he says) must lay especial stress on the word essentially, because else Lessing will be chargeable with a capital error. For it is in the A'^ery antagonism between the transitory reality and the non -transitory image of it, reproduced by painting or sculpture, that one main attraction of those arts is concealed. The shows of Nature, which we feel and know to be moving, unstable, and transitory, are by these arts arrested in a single moment of their passage, and frozen as it weie into a motionless immortality. This truth has been admirably drawn into light, and finely illustrated, by Mr Wordsworth, in a Sonnet on the Art of Land- scape-Painting ; in which he insists upon it, as the great secret of its power, that it bestows upon One brief moment, caught from fleeting time, The approjtriate calm of blest Eternity. Now, in this there might seem at first glance to be some opposition between Mr Wordsworth and Lessing ; but all the illustrations of the Sonnet show that there is not. For the case is this : In the succession of parts which make up any appearance in nature, either these parts simply repeat each other (as in the case of a man walking, a river flowing, etc.), or they unfold themselves through a cycle, in which each step effaces the preceding (as in the case of a gun exploding, where the flash is swallowed up by the smoke effaced by its own dispersion, etc.). Now, the illustrations in Mr Wordsworth's poem are all of the former class ; as the party of travellers just entering the wood, but not permitted, by the good considerate painter, absolutely to enter the wood, where they must be eternally hidden from us ; so NOTES 219 again with regard to the little boat, if allowed to unmoor and go out a fishing, it might be lying hid for hours under the restless glory of the sun, but now we all see it "for ever anchored in its rocky bed", and so on ; where the continuous self-repeating nature of the impression, together with its indefinite duration, predispose the mind to contem- plate it under a form of unity, one mode of which exists in the eternal Now of the painter and the sculptor. But in successions of the other class, where the parts are not fluent, as in a line, but angular, as it were, to each other, not homogeneous but heterogeneous, not con- tinuous but abrupt, the evanescence is essential ; both because each part really has, in general, but a momentary existence, and still more because, all the parts being unlike, each is imperfect as a represent- ative image of the whole process ; whereas, in trains wliich repeat each other, the whole exists virtually in each part, and therefore reciprocally each part will be a perfect expression of the whole. Now, whatever is essentially imperfect, and waiting, as it were, for its complement, is thereby essentially evanescent, as it is only by vanishing that it makes room for this complement. Whilst objecting, therefore, to appear- ances essentially evanescent, as subjects for the artist, Lessing is by implication suggesting the same class from which Mr Wordsworth has drawn his illustrations '. De Quincey's Works, vol. xii, p. 253, note. 2 Philippus, Anthol., lib. xv, cap. 9, ep. 10: Atei yap 5t\//as ^pcc^eccv arovov avrirvirov ^apv^poor airoKXaviT' 6t€j/ alfjLaT7jp6u. Lessing discusses various translations of these lines, and contends that the comma should be placed after KaKoyei- rova, and taken away from iyxoopoou, and the meaning would be, notwithstanding these later translations to the contrary, not * an evil neighbour', but *a neighbour to his woe' ; as KaKSfiavris does not mean *an evil prophet', but ' a prophet of evil ' ; KaKorexvos, not ' a bad clumsy workman but * a worker of bad things '. Referring to one of the Latin translations Lessing says, ' If this translation be right, then the Chorus says the strongest thing that can ever be said in praise of human society ; the wretched one has no man near him, he knows of no friendly neighbour'. Thomson had perhaps this passage before his eyes, when he makes Melisander^, left by some ruffians in a desert island, say : Cast on the wildest of the Cyclad isles, Where never human foot had marked the shore ; These ruffians left me, yet believe me. Areas, Such is the rooted love we bear mankind ; All ruffians as they were I never heard A sound so dismal as their parting oars. To him also the society of the ruffians was preferable to 1 Agamemnon, Act ii. Lessing took this reference to Thomson from Franklin's translation of Philoctetes. See Franklin's note to p. 134. K. P. NOTES 221 none. A grand and excellent meaning ! were it only cer- tain that Sophocles had really so expressed himself. But I must reluctantly confess that I find in him nothing of the kind. As Lessing's amendment of the punctuation, and consequently of the meaning, has been adopted in all subsequent good editions of Sophocles, it is unnecessary to continue the translation of this very learned note, except to add that he approves of Franklin's translation. R. P. ^ Mercure de France, Avril 1755, p. 177. Lessing's Laocoon was published in 1766. R. P. ^ In that part of the account given by Thucydides of the Athenian expedition to Sicily, in which he narrates the last naval action before the mouth of the harbour of Syracuse, and describes the diversity of passions with which both armies beheld the action. ' During this doubtful conflict on the water', he says, ' the army on the shore of both sides had their struggle and contention of mind ' : then the misery of those who saw their side worsted is described ; and then he says, * others that looked on some part where the fight was equal, because the contention continued so as they could make no judgment as to it, moving their bodies in their extreme fear in sym- pathy with their thmights, passed their time as ill as the worst of them Hobbes. 6.W01 5e koI irphs avrLira\6v ri rrjs vav/xaxicis aTridSi/reSy 5ia to aKpircos ^vvex^s tt]S afxiXXT^s, Ka\ rots (Tw/jLaaiv a.vro'is Xaa tt) SJ^t; it € p 18 e co s ^vvair ov eif OUT € s, iu rois x^^^'^^'^^'^^ diT^you. vii, 71. R. P. ^ Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, part I, sect, ii, pp. 50, 51. In a subsequent part of the same essay, the writer says. In some of the Greek tragedies there is an attempt to excite com- passion by the representation of the agonies of bodily pain. Philoctetes cries out and faints from the extremity of his suffering. Hippolytus and Hercules are both introduced as expiring under the severest tor- tures, Avhich it seems even the fortitude of Hercules "was incapable of supporting. In all these cases, however, it is not the pain which interests us, but some other circumstance. It is not the sore foot, but the solitude of Philoctetes which affects us and diffuses over that charming tragedy that romantic wildness whicli is so agreeable to tlie imagination. The agonies of Hercules and Hippolytus are interesting only because we foresee that death is to be the consequence. If those- heroes were to recover, we should think the representation of their 222 LAOCOON sufferings perfectly ridiculous. What a tragedy would that be of which the distress consisted in a colic ! Yet no pain is more exquisite. These attempts to excite compassion by the representation of bodily pain may be regarded as among the greatest breaches of decorum of which the Greek theatre has set the example. lb. part I, sect, ii, pp. 53, 64. R. P. ^ The passage to which Lessing refers, but does not fully cite, is as follows : Sed videsne poetae quid mali afferant ! Lamentantes inducunt for- tissimos viros : molliunt animos nostros ita deinde dulces ut non legantur modo sed etiam ediscantur sic ad malam domesticam discipli- nam, vitamque umbratilem et delicatam cum accesserunt etiam poetae, nervos omnis virtutis elidunt, recte igitur 4 Platone educantur ex ea civitate quam finxit ille cum mores optimos et optimum. Reipublicis statum exquireret. Tuac, lib. 1, 2, 11. R. P. ^ 1 suppose Lessing refers to Ctesias of Ephesus, an epic poet, who wrote the Uepa-hLs. His age is unknown, but he is mentioned by Plutarch, De Fluv., 18. R. P. Aristotle illustrates a proposition in his Ethics by reference to this conduct of Neoptolemus. He says : ' Again, if constancy makes you abiding in every opinion, it may be bad, as if it be in a false opinion ; and if incon- stancy makes you shifting from every opinion, there will be a good inconstancy ; as with the Neoptolemus of Sophocles in the Philoctetes ; for he is to be commended, in that he abided not in those resolutions to which he was persuaded by Ulysses, being angered at the cheat which had been practised on him'. Aristot. E.N.^ vii, 2 : *^Ti €t ndarj dS^rj ifXfxeperiKhy iroie^ 7) iyKpareia, (}>av\7j, oiov €i KoX ry \l/€vdcT koI €t Trdaris dS^rjs 7] aKpaaia, iarai ns cnroudaia aKpacria' olov 6 '2,o(poK\€ov5 NeoTrroAe^oy 4u ^iKoK' rr]TT)' iiraiverhs yapy ovk c/n/jLevoou oTs iireiffdTj vTrh rod 'OSuctreas, dia rh XviretaQaL xpev^Sficvos. R. P. ^ Act. ii, sc. 3: — *De mes deguisemens que penserait Sophie?' says the son of Achilles. If this were not a fact, it would appear incredible ; it would be thought a preposterous caricature of French Classical tragedy. R. P. ^ Track. V. 1088, 9 ; otrris So(TT€ iraptpepos ^e^pvxa KXaiwv. Garrick was still in all his glory when the Laocoon w^as written ; he left the stage ten years later, 1776 ; died in June, 1779. This homage of Lessing is remarkable. R. P. The word used by Lessing is generally mistranslated NOTES 223 as * acting or 'la mimique ' ; but the paraphrase of De Quincey, 'subsidiary aids in its mechanic apparatus', conveys the true meaning of the word, which, I think, has in every edition of Lessing a slight misprint. It stands SkaiJopoeie ; it should be Skariopoeie, from the Greek 2/c77vo7rotta, ' tabernaculorum constructio ' ; see Stephen's Thesaurus on the word, citing Polyb. 6-28, 3. It is well known that the Greeks took great pains with the mechanical apparatus which was to introduce a Deity on the stage and perform other offices. 0ebs airh ^Tjxaj/^s €TrL