Half the power and imagination of
every other school depend on a certain feverish terror mingling with
their sense of beauty,--the feeling that a child has in a dark room, or
a sick person in seeing ugly dreams. But the Greeks never have ugly
dreams. They cannot draw anything ugly when they try. Sometimes they
put themselves to their wits'-end to draw an ugly thing,--the Medusa's
head, for instance,--but they can't do it, not they, because nothing
frightens them. They widen the mouth, and grind the teeth, and puff the
cheeks, and set the eyes a goggling; and the thing is only ridiculous
after all, not the least dreadful, for there is no dread in their hearts.
Pensiveness; amazement; often deepest grief and desolateness. All these;
but terror never. Everlasting calm in the presence of all fate; and joy
such as they could win, not indeed in a perfect beauty, but in beauty at
perfect rest! A kind of art this, surely, to be looked at, and thought
upon sometimes with profit, even in these latter days.
176. To be looked at sometimes. Not continually, and never as a model
for imitation.
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