chariots, and the
whizzing of spears, and the glancing of swords, and the cleaving of
shields, and the piercing of breastplates, why not represent the
Greeks and Trojans like two savage tribes, tugging and tearing, and
kicking and biting, and gnashing, foaming, grinning, and gouging, in
all the poetry of martial nature, unencumbered with gross, prosaic,
artificial arms; an equal superfluity to the natural warrior and his
natural poet? Is there anything unpoetical in Ulysses striking the
horses of Rhesus with his bow (having forgotten his thong), or would
Mr. Bowles have had him kick them with his foot, or smack them with
his hand, as being more unsophisticated?

In Gray's "Elegy" is there an image more striking than his "shapeless
sculpture"? Of sculpture in general, it may be observed that it is
more poetical than nature itself, inasmuch as it represents and bodies
forth that ideal beauty and sublimity which is never to be found in
actual nature. This, at least, is the general opinion. But, always
excepting the Venus dei Medici, I differ from that opinion, at least
as far as regards female beauty; for the head of Lady Claremont (when
I first saw her nine years ago) seemed to possess all that sculpture
could require for its ideal. I recollect seeing something of the same
kind in the head of an Albanian girl, who was actually employed in
mending a road in the mountains, and in some Greek, and one or two
Italian faces. But of sublimity I have never seen anything in human
nature at all to approach the expression of sculpture, either in the
Apollo, in the Moses, or other of the sterner works of ancient or
modern art.

Let us examine a little further this "babble of green fields" and of
bare nature in general as superior to artificial imagery, for the
poetical purposes of the fine arts. In landscape painting the great
artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, but he invents
and composes one. Nature, in her natural aspect, does not furnish him
with such existing scenes as he requires. Everywhere he presents you
with some famous city, or celebrated scene from mountain or other
nature; it must be taken from some particular point of view, and with
such light, and shade, and distance, etc., as serve not only to
heighten its beauties, but to shadow its deformities. The poetry of
nature alone, exactly as she appears, is not sufficient to bear him
out. The very sky of his painting is not the portrait of the sky of
na