Yet, the eyes of Achilles are not in reality darkened in this case, any more than the figure of Hector is actually enveloped in a cloud in the other; but the artifices are in both instances employed by the poet simply to indicate that extreme suddenness of disappearance, to which we apply the term vanishing.

But the Homeric cloud has not only been appropriated by the painter in those cases in which Homer himself has employed, or would have employed it, namely, in the sudden disappearance or vanishing of bodies, but in every instance in which the spectator beholds in the picture what is supposed to be concealed either from the whole or a part of the actors. Minerva was visible to Achilles alone, when she restrained him from giving offence to Agamemnon by his impetuosity, and Caylus says he knows no other mode of expressing this effect than by introducing a cloud between her and the other members of the council. This is totally at variance with the spirit of the poet. Invisibility is the natural condition of his divinities; no blinding of eyes, no interruption of the rays of

light was required to prevent them from being seen, * but an effulgence and an elevation of countenance above that which belongs to mortal men, was necessary to distinguish them when they were intended to be visible. It is therefore no sufficient excuse to tell us that the cloud of the painter is not a natural, but an arbitrary sign, since this arbitrary sign possesses not that definite distinctness which ought, as such, to belong to it; for the artist employs it indiscriminately, both to render the visible invisible, and, vice versá, to exhibit the latter to the sight.

*See Note 38, end of volume.

THIRTEENTH SECTION.

The poetical Pictures of Homer far surpass all the Attempts of the Artist to embody them; while those Passages, on the Contrary, in which but little Description is introduced, frequently present admirable Subjects for Painting.

If the works of Homer had been entirely lost, and if we possessed no traces of his Iliad and Odyssey, but such a series of pictures as Caylus has drawn from them, should we, I would ask, have formed from these pictures, though they were even executed by the most perfect master of his art, the same idea which we now have,— I will not say of the whole of the poet's qualifications,—but simply of his pictorial talents ?

Let us try the effect of some of the best subjects. Suppose we take the picture of the plague as an example.* What does the canvass

Iliad, A. v. 44—53. Tableaux tirés de l'Iliade, p. 70.

present to our eyes? The corpses of the victims, the burning funeral piles, the dying performing the last sad offices for the dead, and the irritated god discharging his arrows from the midst of a cloud. In attempting to make a restoration of Homer from this picture, what should we suppose him to have said ?" Hereupon Apollo became furious in his wrath, and shot his darts into the midst of the Grecian army. Many of the Greeks were killed, and their dead bodies were afterwards burnt by their friends." Now, let us turn to Homer himself:

The fav'ring power attends,

And from Olympus' lofty tops descends.

Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound;
Fierce as he moved, his silver shafts resound.
Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread,
And gloomy darkness roll'd around his head.
The fleet in view, he twang'd his deadly bow,
And hissing fly the feather'd fates below.
On mules and dogs th' infection first began,
And last the vengeful arrows fix'd in man.
For nine long nights, through all the dusky air,
The pyres thick-flaming shot a dismal glare."

The poet is here as far above the artist as reality is above painting. Apollo, armed with

his bow and quiver, descends, enraged, from the summit of Olympus. His movement is not only seen, but heard. At each step he takes, the arrows rattle on the shoulders of the wrathful god. He goes forth like mysterious night. Now we behold him seated over against the ships; and drawing his silver bow, which rings with a fearful sound, he discharges his first arrow at the mules and dogs. He next attacks the men themselves with his poisonous darts; till at length, as the work of destruction proceeds, the funeral piles are seen in every direction blazing around. It is quite impossible to render adequately into another idiom the musical picture which is conveyed in the words of the poet. Equally impossible would it be to form any conception of this quality from an inspection of the material picture, though it is in reality the least important advantage possessed over it by the poetic description. Its great superiority lies in this, that the poet leads us through a whole gallery of paintings before he arrives at that which alone is represented by the material picture.