rs is full. I do not know whether the thing is
old, though it was certainly knocked about and indecipherable, but at
least it was certainly in the style and tradition of the early Middle
Ages. It seemed to represent men bending themselves (not to say twisting
themselves) to certain primary employments. Some seemed to be
sailors tugging at ropes; others, I think, were reaping; others were
energetically pouring something into something else. This is entirely
characteristic of the pictures and carvings of the early thirteenth
century, perhaps the most purely vigorous time in all history. The great
Greeks preferred to carve their gods and heroes doing nothing. Splendid
and philosophic as their composure is there is always about it something
that marks the master of many slaves. But if there was one thing
the early mediaevals liked it was representing people doing
something--hunting or hawking, or rowing boats, or treading grapes, or
making shoes, or cooking something in a pot. "Quicquid agunt homines,
votum, timor, ira voluptas." (I quote from memory.) The Middle Ages
is full of that spirit in all its monuments and manuscripts. Chaucer
retains it in his jolly insistence on everybody's type of trade and
toil. It was the earliest and youngest resurrection of Europe, the time
when social order was strengthening, but had not yet become oppressive;
the time when religious faiths were strong, but had not yet been
exasperated. For this reason the whole effect of Greek and Gothic
carving is different. The figures in the Elgin marbles, though often
reining their steeds for an instant in the air, seem frozen for ever at
that perfect instant. But a mass of mediaeval carving seems actually
a sort of bustle or hubbub in stone. Sometimes one cannot help feeling
that the groups actually move and mix, and the whole front of a great
cathedral has the hum of a huge hive.

.....

But about these particular figures there was a peculiarity of which I
could not be sure. Those of them that had any heads had very curious
heads, and it seemed to me that they had their mouths open. Whether or
no this really meant anything or was an accident of nascent art I do not
know; but in the course of wondering I recalled to my mind the fact that
singing was connected with many of the tasks there suggested, that there
were songs for reapers and songs for sailors hauling ropes. I was
still thinking about this small problem when I walked along the pier
at Oste