| INTRODUCTORY AND CRITICAL
bestridden by the monstrous Gaul, theirs is the arbitration of life or
death; and behold / the arena whitens with their leaping arms and fills
with their breath, all demanding his destruction. What painter, what
playwright, ever imagined such a situation, as these purest creatures,
immaculate as ermines, bloodthirsty as tigers, throng the picture with
their consenting harmony of vindictiveness ? When was ever such a pencil
of light concentrated on one of the moments that paint an epoch? It is
not the correctness or incorrectness of the archaeology that affects me in
this painting. Gerome now says that the archaeology of the "Ave
Caesar" is defective, and that of the "Pollice Verso" much improved
It is neither for better or worse antiquarianism that I appreciate the
pictures; if they were as ignorant as a pair of Rembrandts, the great
brain which found such a theme as either would still seem to me
astonishing, one of the rarest of human intelligences. In similar preeminence of invention the painter deals with the "Death of Caesar."
How the architecture focuses with the scheme, fills it out, gives it emphasis and order! What painter ever invented such a combination, in
which tessellated floors, and colonnades hung with the galley prows of
the pirates, seem to assist the drama, and to surge and cluster with the
groups? In the "Caesar," as in the "Ney," the device of leaving a
dead body alone with the spectator in extremes/ foreground, and separated
by a void space from the other personages of the scene, is used with
bewildering effect, the impression being helped by the inexorable reality
with which the bodies are designed At another time he determines to
elucidate the Greek temper, throwing over every consideration for that of
beauty, as no other historical temper ever did He might select Helen
and the Elders, but that is an old story-; he takes the majestic Areopagus,
forgetting Eumendean justice and hoary order before the bosom of
Phryne / In the "Nile Prisoner" he shows some proud Mameluke
carried to Mohammed All for a sentence of injustice, with a smiling
Spahi playing the mandolin in his ear, like a musical insect that sings
and stings. In the "Egyptian Recruits," the free men of the desert
render themselves up to military slavery, patient and sad, with the
liberties of the desert around them. In "Dante" he has revealed the
curse of human loneliness of the man who had seen hell. In fifty at
least of his more deliberate inventions—and, I repeat, I would judge no
producer by his ephemerae—this great inventor, in whose mind Heaven
has placed the power of tragedy, has created a tableau of consum-
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