s Nemean Lion lies in wait for him somewhere. The
slothful man says, There is a lion in the path. He says well. The quiet
unslothful man says the same, and knows it too. But they differ in their
further reading of the text. The slothful man says, I shall be slain,
and the unslothful, IT shall be. It is the first ugly and strong enemy
that rises against us, all future victory depending on victory over that.
Kill it; and through all the rest of your life, what was once dreadful is
your armor, and you are clothed with that conquest for every other, and
helmed with its crest of fortitude for evermore.

Alas, we have most of us to walk bare-headed; but that is the meaning of
the story of Nemea,--worth laying to heart and thinking of sometimes,
when you see a dish garnished with parsley, which was the crown at the
Nemean games.

174. How far, then, have we got in our list of the merits of Greek art
now?

Sound knowledge.
Simple aims.
Mastered craft.
Vivid invention.
Strong common sense.
And eternally true and wise meaning.

Are these not enough? Here is one more, then, which will find favor, I
should think, with the British Lion. Greek art is never frightened at
anything; it is always cool.

175. It differs essentially from all other art, past or present, in this
incapability of being frightened. Half the power and imagination of
every other school depend on a certain feverish terror mingling with
their sense of beauty,--the feeling that a child has in a dark room, or
a sick person in seeing ugly dreams. But the Greeks never have ugly
dreams. They cannot draw anything ugly when they try. Sometimes they
put themselves to their wits'-end to draw an ugly thing,--the Medusa's
head, for instance,--but they can't do it, not they, because nothing
frightens them. They widen the mouth, and grind the teeth, and puff the
cheeks, and set the eyes a goggling; and the thing is only ridiculous
after all, not the least dreadful, for there is no dread in their hearts.
Pensiveness; amazement; often deepest grief and desolateness. All these;
but terror never. Everlasting calm in the presence of all fate; and joy
such as they could win, not indeed in a perfect beauty, but in beauty at
perfect rest! A kind of art this, surely, to be looked at, and thought
upon sometimes with profit, even in these latter days.

176. To be looked at sometimes. Not continually, and never as a model
f