Turnus

“ The fatal day is come, and with the first gleam of light Turnus leaps from his couch and prepares himself for battle. Every tone and gesture of the turbulent Rutulian betray wild exaltation of spirits. [474] “Come,” he cries, seizing a ponderous lance, which quivered like a reed in his powerful grasp, “come, good spear, that hast never failed me yet! To-day thou shalt drink deep of a coward’s blood, and the curled darling of Venus shall stain his scented locks in the dust of Latium.” ”

“ Which when Turnus perceived, he cried to Faunus, saying, “O Faunus, if I have kept holy for thee that which the men of Troy have profaned, hold fast this spear.” And the god heard him; nor could Æneas draw it forth. But while he strove, Juturna, taking again the form of Metiscus, ran and gave to Turnus his sword. And Venus, perceiving it, wrenched forth the spear from the stump. So the two stood again face to face.
Then spake Jupiter to Juno, where she sat in a cloud watching the battle, “How long wilt thou fight against fate? What purpose hast thou now in thy heart? ”

“ Juturna, fearful from Juno's words of the fate of Turnus, assumed the guise of Metiscus, his charioteer, and drove her brother over the field far from the angry Aeneas, who, weary of waiting for Turnus, turned towards Latium. The frightened people rushed hither and thither, and the queen, seeing the approaching foe, the roofs in flames, and no troops of Turnus in sight, supposed the Rutulian dead, and hanged herself.
In the mean time, Turnus, remote from the fight, reproached his sister. "Think'st thou not I recognized thee? Thy deceit is in vain. Is to die so wretched a thing? ”

“ When Turnus sees that the War-god’s enmity has
broken the spirit of Latium, that men are beginning to
claim his promise, and make him the mark of their eyes,
he bursts at once into fury unappeasable, and swells his
pride to the height. As in Punic land, when the hunters 5
have wounded him deep in the breast, the lion at last rouses
himself to fight, tosses with fierce joy his mane from his
neck, snaps fearlessly the brigand’s spear in the wound,
and roars from his gory mouth: even so, Turnus once
kindled, his vehemence grows each moment. ”

“ Then Turnus commanded that of the chiefs some should set the battle in array, and some should fortify the gates, and some should follow after himself. And men dug trenches before the gates, and gathered store of stones and stakes; and the women and children stood upon the walls. But the queen and the chiefest of the matrons went to the temple of Pallas, and with them was the virgin Lavinia, from whom all these sorrows sprang, casting down her beautiful eyes to the ground. ”

“ Of Turnus, and on him alone exclaim:
"Let him who lords it o'er th' Ausonian land
Engage the Trojan hero hand to hand:
His is the gain; our lot is but to serve;
'T is just, the sway he seeks, he should deserve."
This Drances aggravates; and adds, with spite:
"His foe expects, and dares him to the fight."
Nor Turnus wants a party, to support
His cause and credit in the Latian court.
His former acts secure his present fame,
And the queen shades him with her mighty name. ”

“ Æneas came on, brandishing his massy spear, and crying: “Now at last thou art delivered into [485] my hands, unless thou canst fly up to heaven or dig thee a burrow in the earth.” “Thy words have no terrors for me,” replied Turnus, “but much I fear that Heaven is against me.” And without more words he looked round him, and saw a huge ancient stone, set up long ago as a boundary mark. Stooping he caught up the ponderous mass, which scarce twelve men could lift, as men are in our times ”

“ Loud cries and roaring sounds rebellow thro’ the wood:
Such was the combat in the listed ground;
So clash their swords, and so their shields resound.
Jove sets the beam; in either scale he lays
The champions’ fate, and each exactly weighs.
On this side, life and lucky chance ascends;
Loaded with death, that other scale descends.
Rais’d on the stretch, young Turnus aims a blow
Full on the helm of his unguarded foe:
Shrill shouts and clamours ring on either side,
As hopes and fears their panting hearts divide. ”

“ Soon as Turnus sees Æneas retiring from the battle,
and the Trojan leaders in confusion, he glows with swift
access of hope, calls for horses and armour, bounds like a
conqueror into the chariot, and takes the reins in hand.
Many a heroic frame he slaughters as he whirls along, many 10
he tumbles and leaves to live or die, crushes whole ranks
by the onset of his car, or plucks forth spears and hurls
them at the fliers. ”

“ They take th' alarm:
Some tremble, some are bold; all in confusion arm.
Th' impetuous youth press forward to the field;
They clash the sword, and clatter on the shield:
The fearful matrons raise a screaming cry;
Old feeble men with fainter groans reply;
A jarring sound results, and mingles in the sky,
Like that of swans remurm'ring to the floods,
Or birds of diff'ring kinds in hollow woods.
Turnus th' occasion takes, and cries aloud:
"Talk on, ye quaint haranguers of the crowd:
Declaim in praise of peace, when danger calls,
And the fierce foes in arms approach the walls." ”

“ But the thing pleased not the Latins; for before, indeed, they judged that the battle would not be equal between two; and now were they the more assured, seeing them when they came together, and that Turnus walked with eyes cast to the ground, and was pale and wan. Wherefore there arose a murmuring among the people, which when Juturna perceived, she took upon herself the likeness of Camertus, who was a prince and a great warrior among them, and passed through the host saying, “Are ye not ashamed, men of Italy, that one man should do battle for you all? For count these men ”

“ In war is no safety; peace we all implore of thee, O Turnus, and the one pledge that makes peace inviolable. I the first, I whom thou picturest thine enemy, as I care not if I am, see, I bow at thy feet. Pity thine allies; relent, and retire before thy conqueror. Enough have we seen of rout and death, and desolation over our broad lands. Or if glory stir thee, if such strength kindle in thy breast, and if a palace so delight thee for thy dower, be bold, and advance stout-hearted upon the foe. ”

“ He stands upon an eminence, from which he looks back over the universe of God, and forward over the generations of men. Let every work of his hand be a history of the one, and a lesson to the other. Let each exertion of his mighty mind be both hymn and prophecy; adoration to the Deity, revelation to mankind.'
That is Ruskin at his finest: here is Turner at his—well, as Turner. ”

“ Yet it is a picture of which one becomes fond. Who can but be entranced by the distance, Turner's sign mark, the open gate that lures us away from the troubled foreground of the world.
I turn from the sanity of "Crossing the Brook" to the right wall, and straightway I am elated, it is always so, at the sight of one of the magnificent dreams that the old Wizard forced oil [Pg 47] paint and brushes to portray. In the centre of the wall hangs "Ulysses and Polyphemus."
The furnace doors are open, from them stream a fury of glow, and in the fire are the dazzling shapes of Turnerian romance. ”

“ A CRITIC IS CRITICAL, AND A PAINTER IS ENTHUSIASTIC
'Waft me to sunny Baiæ's shore' wrote Turner in the Fallacies of Hope, one of the simple lines, a line that it was quite permissible to print in the catalogue of the Academy of 1823 against his much discussed, much criticised, and much loved 'Bay of Baiæ.' The picture indeed wafts us to Baiæ, one of the most beautiful spots in Italy, and we are content with its beauty if we neglect the pines, their heavy shadows, and the figures of Apollo and the Cumæan Sibyl posing in the shade. ”

“ Turner, to whom the world of men and women was a place to escape from, brooded on scenes that open a pathway to tired eyes leading away somewhere west of the sun and east of the moon; he loved distances, lakes that feel their way round hills to infinity, and sunsets that are a world in themselves. ”

“ Turner lived outside the world—in his dreamland. When the buoyancy of youth had passed; when 'dad' was dead, he grew more morose, more untidy and more exclusive, but his dream did not change. No! it became more mystical, more subtle, more unrealisable to his ageing eyes. Was he not in dreamland on that Varnishing Day of the Royal Academy of 1846 when George Parrott made a humorous sketch of him. There were four varnishing days in those halcyon times, and it was Turner's habit to send in his pictures merely laid in with white and grey, and to finish them on the walls. ”

“ Landscape might be classically beautiful according to Claude, classically sublime according to Salvator, homely and mildly sunny according to Cuyp, conventionally maritime according to Vandevelde. Turner as a youth was not the man to break tradition. The cunning tradesman in him preferred the well-beaten path. It was his destiny to compete against the popular idols in turn, to sweep past them to Nature herself, and so onwards and upwards to the sun, the source of all light and colour. ”

“ I am fond of standing by a bright Turner in the Academy, to listen to the unintentional compliments of the crowd,—‘What a glaring thing!’ ‘I declare I can’t look at it!’ ‘Don’t it hurt your eyes?’—expressed as if they were in the constant habit of looking the sun full in the face with the most perfect comfort and entire facility of vision. It is curious after hearing people malign some of Turner’s noble passages of light to pass to some really ungrammatical and false pictures of the old masters in which we have color given without light. ”

“ This is his joy—to touch a young heart to ecstasy, ay! even by a second-rate picture, and to keep in that young heart a vision that the world and time can never destroy, and that a visit to the place cannot dispel. To that boy Turner's 'Orvieto' meant Italy: since he has become a man he has wandered through Italy again and again from end to end, but even now if he wishes to recall Italy, to be kindled by the thought of that word meaning so much to Englishmen, he still turns to Turner's picture. For him it cannot fade: it cannot change. ”

“ One of the drawings rises before me as I write, a late one done a few years before his death, that exquisite 'Study on the Rhine,' body colour on grey paper, in the collection of Sir Edward Durning-Lawrence. I have no words to describe this wonder of misty blue and gold, with the moon riding in a sky charged with the mystery of essential colour. We are all, like Ruskin, extravagant at times in speaking and writing of the finest work of Turner. ”

“ Of our many gifted, enthusiastic, and eloquent men, few have been more favored by nature than Henry M. Turner. A native of South Carolina, he seems to have the genius and fire of the Calhouns and McDuffies, without possessing a drop of their blood. Mr. Turner is a good-sized, fine-looking, brown-skinned man, of forty years of age, with a splendid voice, fluent in speech, pleasing in gestures, and powerful in his delivery. It is said that at the tender age of twelve, he had a dream in which he saw multitudes of men coming to him to be taught. ”

“ I have told you truly what Turner was. You have often heard what to most people he appeared to be. Imagine what it was for a man to live seventy years in this hard world, with the kindest heart, and the noblest intellect of his time, and never to meet with a single word or ray of sympathy, until he felt himself sinking into the grave. ”

“ The other picture of this year was that glowing and characteristic Turner, with the sun nearly in the centre of the picture, where Claude was wont to place it, now called 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour,' but formerly catalogued as 'The Sun Rising in a Mist,' one of the first of his large pictures of light and atmosphere. Some of his gold he outspreads for us, but he is still under the domination of the crowded, littered foreground. ”

“ Think of it—sixty-three, and wilder, more revolutionary, more indifferent to convention than a hot-headed youth of twenty-three. 'He paints white sails or buildings up against a sunset, which is a thing impossible.' He disregards drawing and form, and squeezes features 'together into one corner of a face, slanting diagonally across it like handwriting' ... True.
But the magician conquered, not through these wildnesses, but in spite of them. Even when most extravagant, there is enough of the essential Turner to make the picture great. ”

“ That poor "Buttermere Lake" is still the only picture by Turner that you have ever seen. And now that you are far from here, walking and digging in Sparta, and sailing in insecure little crafts to the Islands, I hold it a duty to write you in detachments this interminable letter explaining as well as I can what I mean by the Flame of Turner. Your sister will read the letters to you, ill-starred student, who, at the beginning of your art career, must not use your eyes for twelve months on penalty of blindness. ”

“ Turner did this with scientific accuracy, not because he was himself learned in science, but because of his genius for seeing into the heart of things and seizing their essential form and character, and that is what is meant by saying “Turner’s landscape is ideal,” and that is why he is the great impressionist he is. His pictures are of scenes not as any one might gather, but as representations of how he himself saw them. He at all times painted his impressions. ”