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conception in representing not myth but fact, and in gathering its groups from the artist's own experience. This is shown in early Egyptian and Assyrian art, in the recent specimens from Mycenæ, and in short all round the circle of primitive design. Mythological subjects come later, when the artist has learned to idealise and reflect. In the Homeric shield there is no myth; not even a mythical personage, save in the battle-scene where Ares and Athênê appear just as they appear on the field in the Iliad. And we have their attendant ministers, Strife, Uproar, and deadly Fate, blending in the mêlée, precisely as Terror, Fear, and Strife set the battle in array on the eve of the actual conflict between Greeks and Trojans.2 Take the Hesiodic shield, and we find still, it is true, the purely human groups of mirth and peril, labour and repose, the marriage feast and the besieged city. But then there comes in the group of Perseus with the Gorgon's head and other similar impersonations which had sprung into a religious belief since Homer sang.3 Take the chest of Cypselus, probably dating from some time in the seventh century B.C., and there we find the tale of Troy in Homer and the Cyclics has itself become a myth. With scenes from that tale, including the Odyssey, with one in particular from this very episode of the shield, Thetis bringing the divine weapons to Achilles, or with legends like that of Perseus and the Gorgon, Jason and the Argonauts, its surface is all but completely covered. The only trace of human interest is found in an historic battle-piece, which Pausanias, who describes the chest minutely, records, while criticising the local tradition as to its precise subject (Pausan. V. xviii. 2).

This shield shows traces of the influence of both the principal Homeric shields, that of Achilles and that of Agamemnon, as well as of the forms on the marvellous belt of Herakles referred to above-the last, in the zone of fierce animals which seem to intervene between the human and the mythological subjects. Thus the Homeric shield carries a purely human 1 For some part of the argument introduced here the writer is indebted to Prof. H. Brunn, Kunst bei Homer, p. 18 foll.

2 Il. iv. 439-41 :

ὦρσε δὲ τοὺς μὲν "Αρης, τοὺς δὲ γλαυκῶπις Αθήνη,
Δεῖμος δ' ἠδὲ Φόβος καὶ Ερις ἄμυτον μεμαυῖα,
"Αρεος ανδροφόνοιο κασιγνήτη ἑτάρη τε.

3 The scutum Herculis, which we call Hesiodic in compliance with a doubtful tradition, is full of interpolations which encrust the original design; but, for the purpose of the above argument, they leave the idea of that design unclouded.

4 Comp. Hesiod, Scut. Herc. 168–77, with Od. xi. 610-2.

419 and creaturely interest. Its scenes are in turn peaceful, festive, litigious, warlike, agricultural, bucolic, choreutic. The poet has caught the artist in the infancy of art, studying in all simplicity the familiar thing before his eyes, and with beautifully unconscious consistency he makes Helen at her loom in Troy reproduce the combats waged around her. The illustration of myth has not emerged upon his mind. In the Hesiodic shield the field is largely charged with adventitious myth. On the chest it is wholly taken up by this latter, save in one last link which keeps the artist from breaking with the actual. Turn to the great historical masterpieces of later art, and myth is everywhere and man, so to speak, nowhere. Take the Phidian throne of Zeus at Olympia, and, save for the introduction of the Olympic games, which the genius loci required, it is a blaze of mythology from pinnacle to footstool. Take the earlier throne of Apollo at Amyclæ, and there, save for the self-interested intrusion of a portrait-panel of the artist himself and his comrades, we pass without human relief from Graces and Hours to Tritons and Dioscuri, thence to Typhöeus, Echidna, and the rest of the mythic host. Take the Parthenon as Pheidias left it; it is a panheroon of Attic myth and legend from end to end. Turn next to the Euripidean shield ascribed to Achilles, and we have a description, perhaps in outline only, not in detail.1 'On it,' says the poet, 'were wrought such devices as follow: Perseus with winged sandals holding the decapitated form of the Gorgon; together with Hermes, messenger of Zeus.' The sun appears in the centre, as in Homer, but he appears on winged steeds.' The groups of stars, 'Pleiads and Hyads,' are also mentioned as in the Iliad. Here then the later poet holds on by this last link to Homer; but still with a difference, and that difference mythological, while the body of the device is mythological wholly, of which Perseus and Hermes are perhaps intended to be specimens merely. The entire human and social character of the Homeric shield is clean wiped out. On the helmet the poet places 'sphinxes,'—a monster unknown to Homer, who gives the legend of Edipus in outline, but, significantly, with no mention of the sphinx. On the corslet he adds a 'fire-breathing lioness,' probably intending the Chimæra,' which is mentioned in Homer in the legend of Bellerophon as a monster destroyed by him, but nowhere appears on accoutrements in the heroic poet. There could be no clearer testimony alike to the development of myth since Homer's

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1 Eurip. Electr. 455 foll.

2

2 Il. vi. 179-81; cf. xvi. 328.

day and to the extent to which it had taken possession of the artistic field. And yet we are asked to believe that 'our Homer' crept into the world and stealthily developed our present Iliad and Odyssey, somewhere about the time of Euripides! It is impossible to elicit from the internal evidence of design a more complete proof of the primitive character of the age of the designer than that which we trace in the Homeric shield.

We have shown above how Homer's love of animals, and the extent to which he takes them into partnership with humanity, point to an early stage of feeling, and how it exactly fills the gap left by his deficiency as regards that emotional play of human feature and attitude which is the surest index of mind; how the one supplements the other, and how both are accounted for-to borrow a term of modern art-history-by the 'Præ-Raffaëlite' condition of contemporary art. We turn from his expression of nature to that of art, and we find the same nursery condition of the mind-the child playing at imitating the scenes that go on around it. To place the Homeric Poems, as some would do, as late as the age of Pheidias, involves an inversion of the characteristics of culture and of the laws of artistic conception; to say nothing at present of literary development, of the course of geographical and general knowledge, of the growth and progress of myth. Our space leaves us no room even to state the grounds on which that anachronism assumes to found itself, much less to pursue further its refutation.

In conclusion, all scholars owe Dr. Schliemann and his wife, who has so enthusiastically seconded him, a debt of gratitude. He has dug down to the realien which underlie their paper studies. He has devoted a life's energy and a life's fortune to the task, and is, we believe, prepared so to devote them still. The dream of his boyhood came to him through the 'gates of horn.' We think that our Academic bodies might have shown the usual recognition of labours, to them so invaluable, by the honorary degree. It was murmured in such circles that the impediment was some notion of seeming committed to his theories. The Vice-Chancellor, proctors, and doctors, it was whispered, were afraid of finding themselves 'owl-headed' or 'cow-headed.' Surely the scruple was needless. It was possible to recognise the sagacity, perseverance, and devotion of the greatest man in his own line, successful himself and the cause of success in others, and leave theory an open question still. The still progressing excavations at Olympia may be regarded as a direct corollary of Dr. Schliemann's success at

Hissarlik. The suggestion of Mommsen, to exhume Olympia, had lain, we believe, for years before the German Government. On seeing what the great pioneer had done, they took heart for the work. A private individual had dug up dead Troy and was digging up dead Greece. They saw that 'spades were trumps' and fell to it with a will, and it will now probably not stand still until thoroughly done.

ART. VI.

HOW CAN CATHEDRALS BEST FURTHER THE CULTURE OF CHURCH MUSIC?

1. Reports of Church Congresses. (Papers on Church Music.) 2. Transition Period of Musical History. By J. HULLAH. (London, 1878.)

3. Choral Service of the Church. By Dr. JEBB. (London, 1843.)

AT a time like the present, when the very word 'institution' is assumed to be a term of evil omen, or at least would appear to be defined as 'a body whose right to exist is challenged,' the subject of Cathedral institutions cannot fail to be much before the public. They have active enemies and they have enthusiastic friends. On the one hand, there are those who consider them, as they have been hitherto worked, a weak point in the Church system; on the other, there are those who foresee what strongholds of faith, and in many ways also promoters of art, they might be if all their resources of influence were in every direction properly and freely developed. Taken as a whole, the subject is not only one of great difficulty, but of large scope, touching as it necessarily must on a great variety of questions, political, ecclesiastical, and artistic, and branching out into that chief of all cruces in practical administration--the question of patronage. On the first two of these aspects of the subject much has been written and said, and opinions, at all events among Churchmen, are beginning to be tolerably well formed; but on the third, namely, that of the benefit that cathedrals might be to art, comparatively little has been written. It is a field of thought open to much useful discussion, and practical suggestions would no doubt be welcomed by those who have the welfare of cathedrals at heart. VOL. VII. NO. XIV.

F F

But of those arts which bring, or should bring, their best efforts as offerings at our venerable and beautiful shrines--the works of the builder, the painter, the sculptor, and the musician -it is only on the last that we have now to speak.

The musical influence of a cathedral over the town and neighbourhood in which it is placed might be thought a trifling matter compared with its moral and religious influence; but on consideration it will be found that the two cannot well be separated. Happily for the onward and upward progress of humanity, art and religion are ever mutually attracted to each other; for, in seeking to find means of expressing its higher and nobler aspirations, art naturally has recourse to those pure channels and limitless regions which religion only is able to unfold and exhibit. The converse of this may also be asserted-namely, that when, in a period of low ideals of morality, religion has been despoiled of her true functions and high calling, art has sometimes absorbed and purified religion until the two have been welded into one existence. It is easy to say that all this has become a mere truism; but in fact, the true influence of music has received little attention from those who talk and think about the effects of art education, although many of the finest minds in the country have had much to say about the scope of the sister arts.

To lay it down as a maxim that no truly high form of public worship can exist without the use of music, would formerly, perhaps, have been looked upon as the outburst of an unpractical enthusiast. In these days it might not be deemed so absurd; indeed, it might even be largely acquiesced in. Certain schools of religious thought have made a long and desperate struggle to eliminate from public worship all that is emotional or sensuous, in short, all that is included in the term 'esthetical'; but whatever may have thus far been their success with regard to painting and sculpture, against music their attacks have failed utterly. Daily evidence proves that humanity has no intention of renouncing in its worship that nobler and sweeter speech called music. You may get people to give up piecemeal all outward forms of the beautiful, until they are willing to worship in a barn or at a street corner; but they will sing. If music is the only art with the beauty of which they are acquainted, you cannot persuade them to leave it in the church porch during service, like an overcoat or a wet umbrella. If this demand of music to be admitted into our Church services be allowed, it is to our cathedrals that we naturally turn first for an example of its best use. But no sooner is the duty of cathedrals in this

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