Parallel
_them_ with post-Raffaelle artists? If you think you can, you have
dared a labour of which the fruit shall be to you as Dead Sea apples,
golden and sweet to the eye, but, in the mouth, ashes and bitterness.
And the Phidian era was a youthful one--the highest and purest period
of Hellenic art: after that time they added no more gods or heroes,
but took for models instead--the Alcibiadeses and Phyrnes, and made
Bacchuses and Aphrodites; not as Phidias would have--clothed with the
greatness of thought, or girded with valour, or veiled with modesty;
but dissolved with the voluptuousness of the bath, naked, wanton, and
shameless.
_Sophon._ You hear, Kosmon, that Christian prefers ripe youth to ripe
manhood: and he is right. Early summer is nobler than early autumn;
the head is wiser than the hand. You take the hand to mean too much:
you should not judge by quantity, or luxuriance, or dexterity, but by
quality, chastity, and fidelity. And colour and tone are only a fair
setting to thought and virtue. Perhaps it is the fate, or rather the
duty, of mortals to make a sacrifice for all things, withheld as well
as given. Hand sometimes succumbs to head, and head in its turn
succumbs to hand; the first is the lot of youth, the last of manhood.
The question is--which of the two we can best afford to do without.
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