Antique

“ Those who truly love antiquity, love, not the things, but the men of old; since a relic in the present is much what it was in the past, a mere thing. And so if it is not to things, but rather to men, that devotion is due, then even I may aspire to be some day an antique. Who shall say that centuries hence an antiquarian of the day may not look up to me as I have looked up to my predecessors? ”

“ Productions of the highest class of antique art attract our admiration on account of their ideal beauty, and the combination of imaginative conception with perfect mechanical skill which they display: medieval antiquities, deficient, very frequently, in their artificial workmanship as in elegance of design, arrest our notice because they bear an impress of reality ”

“ Many of our great antiquaries (who are not the most skilled in designing) frequently grant the preference to the ancients, rather from prejudice than judgment. That striking peculiarity which to them appears so marvellous in the works of antiquity, is often a mere chimera: for most of the antique figures and statues are totally void of expression, and we can only fancy their characters. ”

“ It could gain nothing from the art of the Middle Ages, alternately strong in brutal reality, and languid in mystic inanity; the men of the Renaissance could, if they influenced it at all, influence the antique only for evil; they belonged to an inferior artistic civilization, and if we conscientiously seek for the spiritual improvements brought by them into antique types, we shall see that they consist in spoiling their perfect proportions; in making necks longer and muscles more prominent; in rendering more or less flaccid, or meagre or coarse, the grand and delicate forms of antique art. ”

“ The lovers of the fine arts may derive much benefit from the study of the antique in this particular branch of workmanship. What is there more pleasant than the contemplation of the work of the artists of antiquity; and to behold, shut up, as it were, within the narrow compass of a small gem, all the majesty of a vast design and a most elaborate performance? During the flourishing periods of the Greeks countless statues were carved by numerous artists ”

“ Some “antique gems” are afraid of their antiquity: others are worldly-wise enough to know it is that which gives them their value: while a rare few shine resplendent in that gracious acceptance of the course of nature, which takes captive “Old Father Time,” and converts the awful conqueror into the loyalest henchman. I at least feel no shame of my plus half-century of years. ”

“ She attempted to develope what has been well called the sentimentality of the antique, a style much admired in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the grace and charm of her work are undeniable; her colouring, though often crude, is warm and fresh, and she excelled in house decoration of the ornamental type in vogue in her day. ”

“ Nor was this all; the influence of the civilization of the Renaissance, of a civilization directly issued from the Middle Ages, was entirely at variance with the influence of antique civilization through the medium of ancient art; the Middle Ages and Antiquity, Christianity and Paganism, were even more opposed to each other than could be the statue and the easel picture, the fresco and the bas-relief. ”

“ I have spent much time in the study of comparative anthropology; of the manners, ideas, customs, implements, and sacred objects of uncivilised and peasant peoples. Mr. “---” may not have done so, whoever he is. Again, as “practised people” often vary widely in their estimates of antique objects, or objects professing to be antique, I cannot agree with Mr. Read that “the antiquities” are “as readable as print,”—if by “antiquities” he means antiquities in general. ”

“ Hence the ancients greatly prized both the art and the artist, which thus attained the summit of highest excellence; very sure proof of which may be found in the antique marble and bronze statues that yet are seen. ”

“ But as there is really little interest except for the archeologist in digging so far into the past for an art that has left us but traditions and museum fragments, let us skim but lightly the surface of this time, only picking up the glistening facts that attract the mind’s eye, so that [Pg 17] we may quickly reach the enchanted land of more recent times which yet appear antique to the modern. ”

“ This inversion of the natural order of things would be inexplicable, were we not all of us persuaded more or less consciously that old things must necessarily be more beautiful than modern ones. For this reason we are willing that what we make, the modern, shall be subordinated and serve as a tool to the antique. ”

“ Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural. ”

“ Many wonderful stories are told by classic writers concerning these old myths, and innumerable relics of antique art which embody the conceptions of the times are extant in our museums, by which we may judge to what a large extent such ideas influenced the common life and formed the beliefs of ancient peoples. ”

“ forhe has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world,--and the glories of a modern one,--his Apollo and Transfiguration. ”

“ This meditation on the phenomena of his own sensations leads him often into interesting reflections of a psychological kind. He analyses his own feelings with constant eagerness, as he analyses the character of his enemies. A good specimen is the essay 'On Antiquity' in the 'Plain Speaker,' which begins with some striking remarks on the apparently arbitrary mode in which some objects and periods seem older to us than others, in defiance of chronology. The monuments of the Middle Ages seem more antique than the Greek statues and temples with their immortal youth. ”

“ The antiquities of the old world, buried for so many ages in midnight oblivion, had remained through a long course of centuries, the standing enigma of Time. With the help even of some imperfect records from the archives of ancient history, and the aid of what seemed to be a fair line of tradition, the origin and purpose of many of them, and the hidden meaning of their hieroglyphical embellishments, had continued to be an inexplicable mystery quite down to our own times. ”

“ At the same time the antiquarian may here occupy himself with the examination of the rude relics of antiquity, which lie scattered on all sides—nothing is more pleasing than that sacred enthusiasm which is kindled in the mind by the contemplation of the faded monuments of past ages, and surely no spot was ever more congenial to such sensations. ”

“ How fascinating is Antiquity!—in what a golden haze the ancients lived their lives! We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting time Posterity's great poets will sing immortal songs, and its archæologists will reverently uncover the foundations of our palaces and temples. ”

“ If the antiquary digs from among the ruins of Herculaneum a piece of ancient money, a vase, or a statue, we rejoice with him, in finding the mode of life, the manners and arts of an ancient people, placed before our eyes: If he finds an old record, illustrative of the history of his country, however limited in extent that country may be, we are grateful to him for the particle of knowledge he has added to our store ”

“ The budding of new art, the survival of old religion, at isolated centres of provincial life, where varieties of human character also were keen, abundant, asserted in correspondingly effective incident— this is what irresistible fancy superinduces on historic details, themselves meagre enough. The sentiment of antiquity is indeed a characteristic of all cultivated people, even in what may seem the freshest ages, and not exclusively a humour of our later world. ”

“ Unless the forms of ancient art had been safely embodied in a hundred modest crafts, how could they have undergone the imperceptible and secure metamorphosis from Egyptian to Hellenic, from Greek to Græco-Roman, and thence, from Byzantine, have passed, as one great half, into Italian mediæval art? ”

“ Our ancients had to explore the remains of these far earlier days by the same faint glimmerings of legend and tradition as ourselves ... and to us, whose early youth is spent among the immortal lays, whose living substance is called up by even the pictured resemblance of these massive piles—monuments, as we would fain believe, of the days of Achilles and the Atridæ, and the old time before them—to us every rugged stone seems vocal with some old heroic legend. ”

“ Before however proceeding to inspect these great monuments of Grecian art and civilization, which rank amongst the most venerable as well as the most beautiful relics of antiquity, it is only meet that we should carry with us into their ruined halls a few grains of historical knowledge, whereby our sense of reality and our appreciation of their greatness and splendour may be increased. ”

“ In describing the various arts which marked the nations of antiquity, we cannot but feel that in a material point of view the ancient civilization in its important features was as splendid as our own. In the decoration of houses, in social entertainments, in cookery, the Romans were our equals. The mosaics, the signet rings, cameos, bracelets, bronzes, vases, couches, banqueting-tables, lamps, colored glass, potteries, all attest great elegance and beauty. The tables of thuga root and Delian bronze were as expensive as modern sideboards ”

“ In those departments of the mechanics which are in any way connected with the fine arts, the ancients appear to have attained perfection. To them belongs the invention of all that embellishes life, of all the graceful forms of imitative art, varied with such exquisite taste, such boundless fertility of fancy, that nothing is left to us but to refine upon their ideas, and copy their creations. ”

“ The grand air of it all was in one's very nostrils and seemed to come from sources too numerous and too complex to name. It was antiquity in solution, with every brown, mild figure, every note of the old speech, every tilt of the great flask, every shadow cast by every classic fragment, adding its touch to the impression. What was the secret of the surprising amenity?--to the essence of which one got no nearer than simply by feeling afresh the old story of the deep interfusion of the present with the past. ”

“ NO. XL.—HERCULANEUM.
"It is characteristic of the noblest natures and the finest imaginations," says an elegant writer [262] , "to love to explore the vestiges of antiquity, and to dwell in times that are no more. The first is the domain of the imaginative affections alone; we can carry none of our baser passions with us thither. The antiquary is often spoken of as being of a peculiar construction of intellect, which makes him think and feel differently from other people. ”

“ There are Byzantine and mediaeval representations, too,— reproductions of ancient apartments, decorations, statues from tombs, monuments, religious and funereal,—that gave me new ideas of what antiquity has been. It takes down one's overweening opinion of the present time, to see how many kinds of beauty and magnificence have heretofore existed, and are now quite passed away and forgotten; and to find that we, who suppose that, in all matters of taste, our age is the very flower-season of the time,—that we are poor and meagre as to many things in which they were rich. ”

“ If we cast our eyes over the numerous remains of antiquity, we shall perceive, that besides the immediate representations of the gods, and the holy instruments of their worship, the elegant forms and agreeable fictions consecrated by the imagination of the Greeks, were introduced as the richest ornaments of the houses, the dress, and the furniture of the Pagans. 47 Even the arts of music and painting, of eloquence and poetry, flowed from the same impure origin. ”

“ Antiquity has a charm of its own, and to smarten it up would only damage it. One day I was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic, illustrative of the command to “multiply and replenish the earth.” ”

“ The people here, even the lowest and meanest among them seem to have imbibed a profound respect for antiquity and antiquities, which sometimes produces a comic effect. I am often amused by the exultation with which they point out a bit of old stone, or piece of brick wall, or shapeless fragment of some nameless statue, and tell you it is antico, molto, antico, and the half contemptuous tone in which they praise the most beautiful modern production, é moderna—ma pure non é cativà! ”

“ Monuments and ruins have been disinterred in the ancient seats of human power, in the oriental world, and inscriptions deciphered, which give vitality to ancient history. Ethnology has arisen to hold up the light of her resplendent lamp, amid these ruins, to guide the footsteps of letters, science and piety. ”

“ And yet this innate tendency to magnify and extend into the dim, illimitable regions of antiquity whatever of human effort is deemed most worthy, is a source of difficulty to the conscientious student. Amid the wild growth of myth and marvel the antiquary or archæologist warily treads his way to surer ground, and out of scattered fragments of a by-gone age constructs anew an old order of existence, or opens a vista to the mind’s eye through which glimpses may be gained of the habits and inner life of our remote ancestors. ”

“ In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we notice Gothic architecture, the rise of universities, the scholastic philosophy, and a general interest in metaphysical inquiries. The fourteenth century witnessed chivalric heroism, courts of love, tournaments, and amorous poetry. In the fifteenth century we see the revival of classical literature and Grecian art. ”