All art,
more or less, is a species of symbolism; and the Hellenic,
notwithstanding its more universal method of typification, was fully
as symbolic as the Egyptian; and hence its language is not only dead,
but forgotten, and is now past recovery: and, if it were not, what
purpose would be served by its republication? For, for whom does the
artist work? The inevitable answer is, "For his nation!" His statue,
or picture, poem, or music, must be made up and out of them; they are
at once his exemplars, his audience, and his worshippers; and he is
their mirror in which they behold themselves as they are: he breathes
them vitally as an atmosphere, and they breathe him. Zeus, Athene,
Heracles, Prometheus, Agamemnon, Orestes, the House of Oedipus,
Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, and Antigone, spoke something to the
Hellenic nations; woke their piety, pity, or horror,--thrilled,
soothed, or delighted them; but they have no charm for our ears; for
us, they are literally disembodied ghosts, and voiceless as
shapeless. But not so are Christ, and the holy Apostles and saints,
and the Blessed Virgin; and not so is Hamlet, or Richard the Third,
or Macbeth, or Shylock, or the House of Lear, Ophelia, Desdemona,
Grisildis, or Una, or Genevieve. No: _they_ all speak and move real
and palpable before our eyes, and are felt deep down in the heart's
core of every thinking soul among us:--they all grapple to us with
holds that only life will loose.
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