Chapter X: The Nereid's Guard

§ 1. The work of Turner, in its first period, is said in my account of his drawings at the National Gallery to be distinguished by "boldness of handling, generally gloomy tendency of mind, subdued color, and perpetual reference to precedent in composition." I must refer the reader to those two catalogues[1] for a more special account of his early modes of technical study. Here we are concerned only with the expression of that gloomy tendency of mind, whose causes we are now better able to understand.

§ 2. It was prevented from overpowering him by his labor. This, continual, and as tranquil in its course as a ploughman's in the field, by demanding an admirable humility and patience, averted the tragic passion of youth. Full of stern sorrow and fixed purpose, the boy set himself to his labor silently and meekly, like a workman's child on its first day at the cotton-mill. Without haste, but without relaxation,--accepting all modes and means of progress, however painful or humiliating, he took the burden on his shoulder and began his march. There was nothing so little, but that he noticed it; nothing so great but he began preparations to cope with it. For some time his work is, apparently, feelingless, so patient and mechanical are the first essays. It gains gradually in power and grasp; there is no perceptible _aim_ at freedom, or at fineness, but the force insensibly becomes swifter, and the touch finer. The color is always dark or subdued.

§ 3. Of the first forty subjects which he exhibited at the Royal Academy, thirty-one are architectural, and of these twenty-one are of elaborate Gothic architecture (Peterborough cathedral, Lincoln cathedral, Malmesbury abbey, Tintern abbey, &c.). I look upon the discipline given to his hand by these formal drawings as of the highest importance. His mind was also gradually led by them into a calmer pensiveness.[2] Education amidst country possessing architectural remains of some noble kind, I believe to be wholly essential to the progress of a landscape artist. The first verses he ever attached to a picture were in 1798. They are from Paradise Lost, and refer to a picture of Morning, on the Coniston Fells:--

"Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise
From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paints your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honor to the world's great Author rise."

By glancing over the verses, which in following years[3] he quotes from Milton, Thompson, and Mallet, it may be seen at once how his mind was set, so far as natural scenes were concerned, on rendering atmospheric effect;--and so far as emotion was to be expressed, how consistently it was melancholy.

He paints, first of heroic or meditative subjects, the Fifth Plague of Egypt; next, the Tenth Plague of Egypt. His first tribute to the memory of Nelson is the "Battle of the Nile," 1799. I presume an unimportant picture, as his power was not then availably developed. His first classical subject is Narcissus and Echo, in 1805:--

"So melts the youth and languishes away,
His beauty withers, and his limbs decay."

The year following he summons his whole strength, and paints what we might suppose would be a happier subject, the Garden of the Hesperides. This being the most important picture of the first period, I will analyze it completely.

§ 4. The fable of the Hesperides had, it seems to me, in the Greek mind two distinct meanings; the first referring to natural phenomena, and the second to moral. The natural meaning of it I believe to have been this:--

The Garden of the Hesperides was supposed to exist in the westernmost part of the Cyrenaica; it was generally the expression for the beauty and luxuriant vegetation of the coast of Africa in that district. The centre of the Cyrenaica "is occupied by a moderately elevated table-land, whose edge runs parallel to the coast, to which it sinks down in a succession of terraces, clothed with verdure, intersected by mountain streams running through ravines filled with the richest vegetation; well watered by frequent rains, exposed to the cool sea breeze from the north, and sheltered by the mass of the mountain from the sands and hot winds of the Sahara."[4]

The Greek colony of Cyrene itself was founded ten miles from the sea-shore, "in a spot backed by the mountains on the south, and thus sheltered from the fiery blasts of the desert; while at the height of about 1800 feet an inexhaustible spring bursts forth amidst luxuriant vegetation, and pours its waters down to the Mediterranean through a most beautiful ravine."

The nymphs of the west, or Hesperides, are therefore, I believe, as natural types, the representatives of the soft western winds and sunshine, which were in this district most favorable to vegetation. In this sense they are called daughters of Atlas and Hesperis, the western winds being cooled by the snow of Atlas. The dragon, on the contrary, is the representative of the Sahara wind, or Simoom, which blew over the garden from among the hills on the south, and forbade all advance of cultivation beyond their ridge. Whether this was the physical meaning of the tradition in the Greek mind or not, there can be no doubt of its being Turner's first interpretation of it. A glance at the picture may determine this: a clear fountain being made the principal object in the foreground,--a bright and strong torrent in the distance,--while the dragon, wrapped in flame and whirlwind, watches from the top of the cliff.

§ 5. But, both in the Greek mind and Turner's, this natural meaning of the legend was a completely subordinate one. The moral significance of it lay far deeper. In the second, but principal sense, the Hesperides were not daughters of Atlas, nor connected with the winds of the west, but with its splendor. They are properly the nymphs of the sunset, and are the daughters of night, having many brothers and sisters, of whom I shall take Hesiod's account.

§ 6. "And the Night begat Doom, and short-withering Fate, and Death.

"And begat Sleep, and the company of Dreams, and Censure, and Sorrow.

"And the Hesperides, who keep the golden fruit beyond the mighty Sea.

"And the Destinies, and the Spirits of merciless punishment.

"And Jealousy, and Deceit, and Wanton Love; and Old Age, that fades away; and Strife, whose will endures."

§ 7. We have not, I think, hitherto quite understood the Greek feeling about those nymphs and their golden apples, coming as a light in the midst of cloud; between Censure, and Sorrow,--and the Destinies. We must look to the precise meaning of Hesiod's words, in order to get the force of the passage.

"The Night begat Doom;" that is to say, the doom of unforeseen accident--doom essentially of darkness.

"And short-withering Fate." Ill translated. I cannot do it better. It means especially the sudden fate which brings untimely end to all purpose, and cuts off youth and its promise; called, therefore (the epithet hardly ever leaving it), "black Fate."

"And Death." This is the universal, inevitable death, opposed to the interfering, untimely death. These three are named as the elder children. Hesiod pauses, and repeats the word "begat" before going on to number the others.

"And begat Sleep, and the company of Dreams."

"And _Censure_." "Momus," the Spirit of Blame--the spirit which desires to blame rather than to praise; false, base, unhelpful, unholy judgment;--ignorant and blind, child of the Night.

"And Sorrow." Accurately, sorrow of mourning; the sorrow of the night, when no man can work; of the night that falls when what was the light of the eyes is taken from us; lamenting, sightless sorrow, without hope,--child of Night.

"And the Hesperides." We will come back to these.

"And the Destinies, and the Spirits of Merciless Punishment." These are the great Fates which have rule over conduct; the first fate spoken of (short-withering) is that which has rule over occurrence. These great Fates are Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Their three powers are--Clotho's over the clue, the thread, or connecting energy,--that is, the conduct of life; Lachesis' over the lot--that is to say, the chance which warps, entangles, or bends the course of life. Atropos, inflexible, cuts the thread for ever.

"And Jealousy," especially the jealousy of Fortune, in balancing all good by evil. The Greeks had a peculiar dread of this form of fate.

"And Deceit, and sensual Love. And Old Age that fades, and Strife that endures;" that is to say, old age, which, growing not in wisdom, is marked only by its failing power--by the gradual gaining of darkness on the faculties, and helplessness on the frame, such age is the forerunner of true death--the child of Night. "And Strife," the last and the mightiest, the nearest to man of the Night-children--blind leader of the blind.

§ 8. Understanding thus whose sisters they are, let us consider of the Hesperides themselves--spoken of commonly as the "Singing Nymphs." They are four.

Their names are Æglé,--Brightness; Erytheia,--Blushing; Hestia,--the (spirit of the) Hearth; Arethusa,--the Ministering.

O English reader! hast thou ever heard of these fair and true daughters of Sunset, beyond the mighty sea?

And was it not well to trust to such keepers the guarding of the golden fruit which the earth gave to Juno at her marriage? Not fruit only: fruit on the tree, given by the earth, the great mother, to Juno (female power), at her marriage with Jupiter, or _ruling_ manly power (distinguished from the tried and _agonizing_ strength of Hercules). I call Juno, briefly, female power. She is, especially, the goddess presiding over marriage, regarding the woman as the mistress of a household. Vesta (the goddess of the hearth[5]), with Ceres, and Venus, are variously dominant over marriage, as the fulfilment of love; but Juno is pre-eminently the housewives' goddess. She, therefore, represents, in her character, whatever good or evil may result from female ambition, or desire of power: and, as to a housewife, the earth presents its golden fruit to her, which she gives to two kinds of guardians. The wealth of the earth, as the source of household peace and plenty, is watched by the singing nymphs--the Hesperides. But, as the source of household sorrow and desolation, it is watched by the Dragon.

We must, therefore, see who the Dragon was, and what kind of dragon.

§ 9. The reader will, perhaps, remember that we traced, in an earlier chapter, the birth of the Gorgons, through Phorcys and Ceto, from Nereus. The youngest child of Phorcys and Ceto is the Dragon of the Hesperides; but this latest descent is not, as in Northern traditions, a sign of fortunateness: on the contrary, the children of Nereus receive gradually more and more terror and power, as they are later born, till this last of the Nereids unites horror and power at their utmost. Observe the gradual change. Nereus himself is said to have been perfectly _true_ and _gentle_.

This is Hesiod's account of him:--

"And Pontus begat Nereus, simple and true, the oldest of children; but they call him the aged man, in that he is errorless and kind; neither forgets he what is right; but knows all just and gentle counsel."

§ 10. Now the children of Nereus, like the Hesperides themselves, bear a twofold typical character; one physical, the other moral. In his physical symbolism, Nereus himself is the calm and gentle sea, from which rise, in gradual increase of terror, the clouds and storms. In his moral character, Nereus is the type of the deep, pure, rightly-tempered human mind, from which, in gradual degeneracy, spring the troubling passions.

Keeping this double meaning in view, observe the whole line of descent to the Hesperides' Dragon. Nereus, by the earth, begets (1) Thaumas (the wonderful), physically, the father of the Rainbow; morally, the type of the enchantments and dangers of imagination. His grandchildren, besides the Rainbow, are the Harpies. 2. Phorcys (Orcus?), physically, the treachery or devouring spirit of the sea; morally, covetousness or malignity of heart. 3. Ceto, physically, the deep places of the sea; morally, secretness of heart, called "fair-cheeked," because tranquil in outward aspect. 4. Eurybia (wide strength), physically, the flowing, especially the tidal power of the sea (she, by one of the sons of Heaven, becomes the mother of three great Titans, one of whom, Astræus, and the Dawn, are the parents of the four Winds); morally, the healthy passion of the heart. Thus far the children of Nereus.

§ 11. Next, Phorcys and Ceto, in their physical characters (the grasping or devouring of the sea, reaching out over the land and its depth), beget the Clouds and Storms--namely, first, the Graiæ, or soft rain-clouds; then the Gorgons, or storm-clouds; and youngest and last, the Hesperides' Dragon--Volcanic or earth-storm, associated, in conception, with the Simoom and fiery African winds.

But, in its moral significance, the descent is this. Covetousness, or malignity (Phorcys), and Secretness (Ceto), beget, first, the darkening passions, whose hair is always gray; then the stormy and merciless passions, brazen-winged (the Gorgons), of whom the dominant, Medusa, is ice-cold, turning all who look on her to stone. And, lastly, the consuming (poisonous and volcanic) passions--the "flame-backed dragon," uniting the powers of poison, and instant destruction. Now, the reader may have heard, perhaps, in other books of Genesis than Hesiod's, of a dragon being busy about a tree which bore apples, and of crushing the head of that dragon; but seeing how, in the Greek mind, this serpent was descended from the sea, he may, perhaps, be surprised to remember another verse, bearing also on the matter:--"Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters;" and yet more surprised, going on with the Septuagint version, to find where he is being led: "Thou brakest the head of the dragon, and gavest him to be meat to the Ethiopian people. Thou didst tear asunder the strong fountains and the storm-torrents; thou didst dry up the rivers of Etham, [Greek: pêgas kai cheimarrhous], the Pegasus fountains--Etham on the edge of the wilderness."

§ 12. Returning then to Hesiod, we find he tells us of the Dragon himself:--"He, in the secret places of the desert land, kept the all-golden apples in his great knots" (coils of rope, or extremities of anything). With which compare Euripides' report of him:--"And Hercules came to the Hesperian dome, to the singing maidens, plucking the apple fruit from the golden petals; slaying the flame-backed dragon, who twined round and round, kept guard in unapproachable spires" (spirals or whirls, as of a whirlwind-vortex).

Farther, we hear from other scattered syllables of tradition, that this dragon was sleepless, and that he was able to take various tones of human voice.

And we find a later tradition than Hesiod's calling him a child of Typhon and Echidna. Now Typhon is volcanic storm, generally the evil spirit of tumult.

Echidna (the adder) is a descendant of Medusa. She is a daughter of Chrysaor (the lightning), by Calliröe (the fair flowing), a daughter of Ocean;--that is to say, she joins the intense fatality of the lightning with perfect gentleness. In form she is half-maiden, half-serpent; therefore she is the spirit of all the fatalest evil, veiled in gentleness: or, in one word, treachery;--having dominion over many gentle things;--and chiefly over a kiss, given, indeed, in another garden than that of the Hesperides, yet in relation to keeping of treasure also.

§ 13. Having got this farther clue, let us look who it is whom Dante makes the typical Spirit of Treachery. The eighth or lowest pit of hell is given to its keeping; at the edge of which pit, Virgil casts a _rope_ down for a signal; instantly there rises, as from the sea, "as one returns who hath been down to loose some anchor," "the fell monster with the deadly sting, who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls, and firm embattled spears; and with his filth taints all the world."

Think for an instant of another place:--"Sharp stones are under him, he laugheth at the shaking of a spear." We must yet keep to Dante, however. Echidna, remember, is half-maiden, half-serpent;--hear what Dante's Fraud is like:--

"Forthwith that image vile of Fraud appear'd,
His head and upper part exposed on land,
But laid not on the shore his bestial train.
His face the semblance of a just man's wore,
So kind and gracious was its outward cheer;
The rest was serpent all: two shaggy claws
Reach'd to the armpits; and the back and breast,
And either side, were painted o'er with nodes
And orbits. Colors variegated more
Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state
With interchangeable embroidery wove,
Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom.
As oft-times a light skiff moor'd to the shore,
Stands part in water, part upon the land;
Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,
The beaver settles, watching for his prey;
So on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock,
Sat perch'd the fiend of evil. In the void
Glancing, his tail upturn'd, its venomous fork
With sting like scorpion's arm'd."

§ 14. You observe throughout this description the leaning on the character of the _Sea_ Dragon; a little farther on, his way of flying is told us:--

"As a small vessel backing out from land,
Her station quits; so thence the monster loos'd,
And, when he felt himself at large, turn'd round
There, where the breast had been, his fork'd tail.
Thus, like an eel, outstretch'd at length he steer'd,
Gathering the air up with retractile claws."

And lastly, his name is told us: Geryon. Whereupon, looking back at Hesiod, we find that Geryon is Echidna's brother. Man-serpent, therefore, in Dante, as Echidna is woman-serpent.

We find next that Geryon lived in the island of Erytheia, (blushing), only another kind of blushing than that of the Hesperid Erytheia. But it is on, also, a western island, and Geryon kept red oxen on it (said to be near the red setting sun); and Hercules kills him, as he does the Hesperian dragon: but in order to be able to reach him, a golden boat is given to Hercules by the Sun, to cross the sea in.

§ 15. We will return to this part of the legend presently, having enough of it now collected to get at the complete idea of the Hesperian dragon, who is, in fine, the "Pluto il gran nemico" of Dante; the demon of all evil passions connected with covetousness; that is to say, essentially of fraud, rage, and gloom. Regarded as the demon of Fraud, he is said to be descended from the viper Echidna, full of deadly cunning, in whirl on whirl; as the demon of consuming Rage, from Phorcys; as the demon of Gloom, from Ceto;--in his watching and melancholy, he is sleepless (compare the Micyllus dialogue of Lucian); breathing whirlwind and fire, he is the destroyer, descended from Typhon as well as Phorcys; having, moreover, with all these, the irresistible strength of his ancestral sea.

§ 16. Now, look at him, as Turner has drawn him (p. 298). I cannot reduce the creature to this scale without losing half his power; his length, especially, seems to diminish more than it should in proportion to his bulk. In the picture he is far in the distance, cresting the mountain; and may be, perhaps, three-quarters of a mile long. The actual length on the canvas is a foot and eight inches; so that it may be judged how much he loses by the reduction, not to speak of my imperfect etching,[6] and of the loss which, however well he might have been engraved, he would still have sustained, in the impossibility of expressing the lurid color of his armor, alternate bronze and blue.

§ 17. Still, the main points of him are discernible enough; and among all the wonderful things that Turner did in his day, I think this nearly the most wonderful. How far he had really found out for himself the collateral bearings of the Hesperid tradition I know not; but that he had got the main clue of it, and knew who the Dragon was, there can be no doubt; the strange thing is, that his conception of it throughout, down to the minutest detail, fits every one of the circumstances of the Greek traditions. There is, first, the Dragon's descent from Medusa and Typhon, indicated in the serpent-clouds floating from his head (compare my sketch of the Medusa-cloud, Plate 71); then note the grovelling and ponderous body, ending in a serpent, of which we do not see the end. He drags the weight of it forward by his claws, not being able to lift himself from the ground ("Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell"); then the grip of the claws themselves as if they would clutch (rather than tear) the rock itself into pieces; but chiefly, the designing of the body. Remember, one of the essential characters of the creature, as descended from Medusa, is its coldness and petrifying power; this, in the demon of covetousness, must exist to the utmost; breathing fire, he is yet himself of ice. Now, if I were merely to draw this dragon as white, instead of dark, and take his claws away, his body would become a representation of a greater glacier, so nearly perfect, that I know no published engraving of glacier breaking over a rocky brow so like the truth as this dragon's shoulders would be, if they were thrown out in light; there being only this difference, that they have the form, but not the fragility of the ice; they are at once ice and iron. "His bones are like solid pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron; by his neesings a light doth shine."

§ 18. The strange unity of vertebrated action, and of a true bony contour, infinitely varied in every vertebra, with this glacial outline;--together with the adoption of the head of the Ganges crocodile, the fish-eater, to show his sea descent (and this in the year 1806, when hardly a single fossil saurian skeleton existed within Turner's reach), renders the whole conception one of the most curious exertions of the imaginative intellect with which I am acquainted in the arts.

§ 19. Thus far, then, of the dragon; next, we have to examine the conception of the Goddess of Discord. We must return for a moment to the tradition about Geryon. I cannot yet decipher the meaning of his oxen, said to be fed together with those of Hades; nor of the journey of Hercules, in which, after slaying Geryon, he returns through Europe like a border forager, driving these herds, and led into farther battle in protection or recovery of them. But it seems to me the main drift of the legend cannot be mistaken; viz., that Geryon is the evil spirit of wealth, as arising from commerce; hence, placed as a guardian of isles in the most distant sea, and reached in a golden boat; while the Hesperian dragon is the evil spirit of wealth, as possessed in households; and associated, therefore, with the true household guardians, or singing nymphs. Hercules (manly labor), slaying both Geryon and Ladon, presents oxen and apples to Juno, who is their proper mistress; but the Goddess of Discord, contriving that one portion of this household wealth shall be ill bestowed by Paris, he, according to Coleridge's interpretation, choosing pleasure instead of wisdom or power;--there issue from this evil choice the catastrophe of the Trojan war, and the wanderings of Ulysses, which are essentially, both in the Iliad and Odyssey, the troubling of household peace; terminating with the restoration of this peace by repentance and patience; Helen and Penelope seen at last sitting upon their household thrones, in the Hesperian light of age.

§ 20. We have, therefore, to regard Discord, in the Hesperides garden, eminently as the disturber of households, assuming a different aspect from Homer's wild and fierce discord of war. They are, nevertheless, one and the same power; for she changes her aspect at will. I cannot get at the root of her name, Eris. It seems to me as if it ought to have one in common with Erinnys (Fury); but it means always contention, emulation, or competition, either in mind or in words;--the final work of Eris is essentially "division," and she is herself always double-minded; shouts two ways at once (in Iliad, xi. 6), and wears a mantle rent in half (Æneid, viii. 702). Homer makes her loud-voiced, and insatiably covetous. This last attribute is, with him, the source of her usual title. She is little when she first is seen, then rises till her head touches heaven. By Virgil she is called mad; and her hair is of serpents, bound with bloody garlands.

§ 21. This is the conception first adopted by Turner, but combined with another which he found in Spenser; only note that there is some confusion in the minds of English poets between Eris (Discord) and Até (Error), who is a daughter of Discord, according to Hesiod. She is properly--mischievous error, tender-footed; for she does not walk on the earth, but on heads of men (Iliad, xix. 92); _i.e._ not on the solid ground, but on human vain thoughts; therefore, her hair is glittering (Iliad, xix. 126). I think she is mainly the confusion of mind coming of pride, as Eris comes of covetousness; therefore, Homer makes her a daughter of Jove. Spenser, under the name of Até, describes Eris. I have referred to his account of her in my notice of the Discord on the Ducal palace of Venice (remember the inscription there, _Discordia sum, discordans_). But the stanzas from which Turner derived his conception of her are these--

"Als, as she double spake, so heard she double,
With matchlesse eares deformed and distort,
Fild with false rumors and seditious trouble,
Bred in assemblies of the vulgar sort,
That still are led with every light report:
And as her eares, so eke her feet were odde,
And much unlike; th' one long, the other short,
And both misplast; that, when th' one forward yode,
The other backe retired and contrárie trode.

"Likewise unequall were her handës twaine;
That one did reach, the other pusht away;
That one did make the other mard againe,
And sought to bring all things unto decay;
Whereby great riches, gathered manie a day,
She in short space did often bring to nought,
An their possessours often did dismay:
For all her studie was, and all her thought
How she might overthrow the thing that Concord wrought.

"So much her malice did her might surpas,
That even th' Almightie selfe she did maligne,
Because to man so mercifull He was,
And unto all His creatures so benigne,
Sith she herself was of his grace indigne:
For all this worlds faire workmanship she tride
Unto his last confusion to bring,
And that great golden chaine quite to divide,
With which it blessed Concord hath together tide."

All these circumstances of decrepitude and distortion Turner has followed, through hand and limb, with patient care: he has added one final touch of his own. The nymph who brings the apples to the goddess, offers her one in each hand; and Eris, of the divided mind, cannot choose.

§ 22. One farther circumstance must be noted, in order to complete our understanding of the picture,--the gloom extending, not to the dragon only, but also to the fountain and the tree of golden fruit. The reason of this gloom may be found in two other passages of the authors from which Turner had taken his conception of Eris--Virgil and Spenser. For though the Hesperides in their own character, as the nymphs of domestic joy, are entirely bright (and the garden always bright around them), yet seen or remembered in sorrow, or in the presence of discord, they deepen distress. Their entirely happy character is given by Euripides:--"The fruit-planted shore of the Hesperides,--songstresses,--where the ruler of the purple lake allows not any more to the sailor his way, assigning the boundary of Heaven, which Atlas holds; where the ambrosial fountains flow, and the fruitful and divine land increases the happiness of the gods."

But to the thoughts of Dido, in her despair, they recur under another aspect; she remembers their priestess as a great enchantress; who _feeds the dragon_ and preserves the boughs of the tree; sprinkling moist honey and drowsy poppy; who also has power over ghosts; "and the earth shakes and the forests stoop from the hills at her bidding."

§ 23. This passage Turner must have known well, from his continual interest in Carthage: but his diminution of the splendor of the old Greek garden was certainly caused chiefly by Spenser's describing the Hesperides fruit as growing first in the garden of Mammon:--

"There mournfull cypresse grew in greatest store;
And trees of bitter gall; and heben sad;
Dead sleeping poppy; and black hellebore;
Cold coloquintida; and tetra mad
Mortal samnitis; and cicuta bad,
With which th' uniust Atheniens made to dy
Wise Socrates, who, thereof quaffing glad,
Pourd out his life and last philosophy.

* * * * *

"The gardin of Prosèrpina this hight:
And in the midst thereof a silver seat,
With a thick arber goodly over dight,
In which she often usd from open heat
Herselfe to shroud, and pleasures to entreat:
Next thereunto did grow a goodly tree,
With braunches broad dispredd and body great,
Clothed with leaves, that none the wood mote see,
And loaden all with fruit as thick as it might bee.

"Their fruit were golden apples glistring bright,
That goodly was their glory to behold;
On earth like never grew, ne living wight
Like ever saw, but they from hence were sold;
For those, which Hercules with conquest bold
Got from great Atlas daughters, hence began.

* * * * *

"Here eke that famous golden apple grew,
The which emongst the gods false Até threw."

There are two collateral evidences in the picture of Turner's mind having been partly influenced by this passage. The excessive darkness of the stream,--though one of the Cyrene fountains--to remind us of Cocytus; and the breaking of the bough of the tree by the weight of its apples--not healthily, but as a diseased tree would break.

§ 24. Such then is our English painter's first great religious picture; and exponent of our English faith. A sad-colored work, not executed in Angelico's white and gold; nor in Perugino's crimson and azure; but in a sulphurous hue, as relating to a paradise of smoke. That power, it appears, on the hill-top, is our British Madonna; whom, reverently, the English devotional painter must paint, thus enthroned, with nimbus about the gracious head. Our Madonna,--or our Jupiter on Olympus,--or, perhaps more accurately still, our unknown god, sea-born, with the cliffs, not of Cyrene, but of England, for his altar; and no chance of any Mars' Hill proclamation concerning him, "whom therefore ye ignorantly worship."

§ 25. This is no irony. The fact is verily so. The greatest man of our England, in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the strength and hope of his youth, perceives this to be the thing he has to tell us of utmost moment, connected with the spiritual world. In each city and country of past time, the master-minds had to declare the chief worship which lay at the nation's heart; to define it; adorn it; show the range and authority of it. Thus in Athens, we have the triumph of Pallas; and in Venice the assumption of the Virgin; here, in England, is our great spiritual fact for ever interpreted to us--the Assumption of the Dragon. No St. George any more to be heard of; no more dragon-slaying possible: this child, born on St. George's Day, can only make manifest the Dragon, not slay him, sea-serpent as he is; whom the English Andromeda, not fearing, takes for her lord. The fairy English Queen once thought to command the waves, but it is the sea-dragon now who commands her valleys; of old the Angel of the Sea ministered to them, but now the Serpent of the Sea; where once flowed their clear springs now spreads the black Cocytus pool; and the fair blooming of the Hesperid meadows fades into ashes beneath the Nereid's Guard.

Yes, Albert of Nuremberg; the time has at last come. Another nation has arisen in the strength of its Black anger; and another hand has portrayed the spirit of its toil. Crowned with fire, and with the wings of the bat.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Notes on the Turner Collection at Marlborough House. 1857.
Catalogue of the Sketches of J. M. V. Turner exhibited at Marlborough
House. 1858.

[2] The regret I expressed in the third volume at Turner's not having
been educated under the influence of Gothic art was, therefore,
mistaken; I had not then had access to his earlier studies. He _was_
educated under the influence of Gothic architecture; but, in more
advanced life, his mind was warped and weakened by classical
architecture. Why he left the one for the other, or how far good
influences were mingled with evil in the result of the change, I have
not yet been able to determine.

[3] They may be referred to with ease in Boone's Catalogue of
Turner's Pictures, 1857.

[4] Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Art.
"Cyrenaica."

[5] Her name is also that of the Hesperid nymph; but I give the
Hesperid her Greek form of name, to distinguish her from the goddess.
The Hesperid Arethusa has the same subordinate relation to Ceres; and
Erytheia, to Venus. Æglé signifies especially the spirit of
brightness or cheerfulness including even the subordinate idea of
household neatness or cleanliness.

[6] It is merely a sketch on the steel, like the illustrations before
given of composition; but it marks the points needing note. Perhaps
some day I may be able to engrave it of the full size.