THE QUEEN OF THE AIR.* Ir the subject of this
work were that which the title-page announces, we should firobably have been able to welcome in it, if not any contribution of serious value to the understanding of mythology, at any rate a series of brilliant and fanciful variations on the themes of ancient myths which might enable the modern student to derive fresh enjoyment from them. The three divisions or essays composing Mr. Ruskin's book are entitled "Athena in the Heavens," "Athena in the Earth," and "Athena in the Heart ;" the first concerning the meaning and office of Athena in Greek mythology; the second, partly concerning Athena, but mostly other more or less kindred topics ; and the last wholly concerning divers other topics which have nothing to do with Athena, and very little with one another.
Mr. Ruskin himself calls his work "desultory memoranda" at the very opening of his preface ; but no term can adequately express the range of subjects over which he has confidently careered within the bounds of these two hundred pages. Vital force, final causes, war, industrial legislation, the relations of law and liberty, of morals and asstheties, the distinctive excellence of Greek art—on all these points and more we have some discussion and abundant assertion, embodying, indeed, here and there strik- ing thoughts, and affording detached points of suspension for tapestry-work of gorgeous rhetoric, but developing no settled plan and leaving no permanent impression.
Taking the first part separately, we find it enjoyable enough on its own merits. After some preliminary remarks on the Greek myths of cloud and storm generally, and an exposition of the legend of Hermes, which is to our mind the best thing in the book, Mr. Raskin proceeds to work out the conception of Athena as representing the air in its various agencies. "Athena is, first, simply . . . . the breeze of the mountain and the sea ; and wher- ever she comes, there is purification and health and power. The sea-beach round this isle of ours is the frieze of our Parthenon ; every wave that breaks on it thunders with Athena's voice ; nay, whenever you throw your window wide open in the morning, you let in Athena, as wisdom and fresh air at the same instant." The detailed illustrations of the life-giving and other powers of the air as exemplified in the attributes of Athena are beautiful, though apt to become overstrained. Mr. Ruskin's fancy seems to have been thoroughly captivated by the meteoric school of inter- pretation, and we find that he takes no notice whatever of the happy suggestion put forward by Max Miller, who identifies Athena with the dawn springing from the East, the forehead of the sky, and thus both explains her name and makes the strange legend of her birth significant and beautiful. This would have been a field eminently suitable to the display of Mr. Ruskin's peculiar mastery of language, and it is strange that he has altogether missed it. He hastens, however, to give an explicit answer which he supposes to be required of him, to the question "what real belief the Greek had in these creations of his own spirit." This answer, though given as with authority, decidedly fails to satisfy us. The intensely local and political character of the ancient Greek worship is ignored, and it is • The Queen of the Air: being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm. Bs,
John Raskin, LL.D. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. 1869.
assumed that the religious sentiment was no less general, and exerted no less force than at present. The distinction drawn be- tween the creed of the upper classes in general and that of poets and artists is purely fanciful. Mr. Ruskin seems to forget that every educated Greek received a poetic and artistic training. And he is so determined to uphold the absolute sincerity of the poets in all .they say about the gods as to commit himself to this startling proposition, that "Horace is just as true and simple in his religion as Wordsworth." And then we are told how earnestly he dedi- cates his pine to Diana, and so forth. If we do not appreciate this, it is because verse-writing at school has made it impossible for us to understand any of the honest classic poets. To be sure, we do remember that at our school, besides writing verses, we read certain Satires and Epistles commonly ascribed to Horace; that we were led to suppose (no doubt, without reason) that his per- sonal character and beliefs were more likely to be found in those works than in the Odes ; and that from them we gathered an opinion that he was a tolerably consistent Epicurean. Perhaps Mr. Ruskin is prepared to show that this opinion is a vulgar error ; but if not, he might as well say that an educated Budd- hist has a true, simple, and earnest reverence for all the Brainnavis deities.
In the next chapter, the author, like the wisest of men long ago, has found the ways of the eagle and of the serpent among the things which are too wonderful for him, and the thread of his discourse becomes tortuous and confused accordingly. It is lost for the time in a mystic rapture as he contemplates the divine hieroglyphs of the bird, the clothed power of the air, and the serpent, the clothed power of the dust. When, after a digression on the final causes and the inner meaning of the different orders of vegetables, he emerges from this cloud, we get some more intelligible observations on the manner in which light and shade struck the sense of the Greeks. Mr. Ruskin thinks the impression was so strongly felt as to overpower that of colour :— "I cannot find that they take pleasure in colour for its own sake ; it may be in something more than colour, or better; but it is not in the hue itself. . . Her [Athena's] lEgis was dark blue, because the Greeks thought of this tint more as shade than colour, and while they used various materials in ornamentation with real enjoyment of the blue tint, it was yet in their minds as distinctly representative of darkness as scarlet was of light, and, therefore, anything dark, but especially the colour of heavy thunder-cloud, was described by the same term."
This is ingenious, and a real help towards understanding the strange scantiness of the Greek vocabulary in names of colours. An eloquent passage, too long for an extract, sums up the facts of nature represented in the myth of Athena, and so ends the second chapter. We could wish that it had ended the volume.
The remaining part is not, in our opinion, calculated to improve Mr. Ruskin's position as a thinker or a writer. If the heading prefixed to it stood, by the change of a few words, as "Various Notes relating to the Conceptions of Mr. Ruskin as a Director of Imagination and Will," it would give but a faint idea of what he has attempted. Among other things, Mr. Ruskin's peculiar theory of the foundation of art and morals in war reappears—we were about to say in this connection, but by this time there has ceased to be any connection—having gained in extravagance whatever it may have lost in novelty. The practical corollary is a gloomy one. It is necessary to the virtue of war that it should be waged by personal strength, not by money or machinery. By governing the steam of kettles instead of the foam of the sea-wave and of the horse, we in England have brought ourselves into danger of being exterminated by gunpowder and poison, or at best living on sufferance, while our coals last, by small pedlars' business and ironmongery. Does Mr. Ruskin want us to break up our steamships, and cast away our rifles, and return to coracles and ffint-headed arrows ? We suppose not, yet it is difficult to see what else all this declamation can mean.
But there are stranger things yet to come. Mr. Ruskin, most unfortunately for himself and his readers, suddenly remembers that Athena presided over industry, and straightway we are plunged into political economy. Those who are acquainted with Mr. Ruskin's political economy will thank us for not following him.
more closely ; and those who are not so must be left to face it for themselves, for it is a monster not to be believed in on second- hand testimony. The result of many pages of rambling discourse, great part of which, if it did not appear under a renowned name, we should be tempted to call nonsense, is a scheme of organization of work by a kind of crude and involuntary socialism, to be administered (apparently) by an anti-Malthusian despot ; com- pulsory employment is to be found for idle hands, and in order to make it go a long way, we are carefully to avoid economizing their force ; and, moreover, as we gather, we are to apply com- pulsion to employers also, on the supposition that they can make more work than there is by engaging more workmen. "AU heavy goods not requiring speed in transit to be carried (under preventive duty on transit by railroad) by canal boats, employing men for draught ; and the merchant shipping service extended by sea." Such are the terms of one of the suggested heads of the plan ; the others are to the like effect, more or less flimsily dis- guised, of trying to make wealth out of nothing, and confiscating the toil of the industrious for the benefit of the improvident.
This is a very depressing prospect for the economical statesman- ship of the future, but we hope our descendants may retain the very moderate amount of sagacity necessary to prevent them from realiz- ing it. The next thirty pages are filled with vehement denunciation of the modern love of freedom. These notes, "On the opposition of modesty and liberty and the unescapable law of wise restraint," republished from the Art Journal, are thus introduced :— " I am sorry that they are written obscurely; and it may be thought affectedly ; but the fact is, I have always had three different ways of writing ; one, with the single view of making myself understood, in which I necessarily omit a great deal of what comes into my head ; another, in which I say what I think ought to be said, in what I suppose to be the best words I can find for it (which is in reality an affected style, be it good or bad); and my third way of writing is to say all that comes into my head for my own pleasure, in the first words that come, retouching them afterwards into (approximate) grammar. These notes for the Art Journal were so written ; and I like them myself, of course, but ask the reader's pardon for their confusedness."
The extraordinary candour of this avowal may itself seem to some readers not wholly unaffected. It is indeed strange if an art critic of Mr. Ruskin's eminence can allow his exalted opinion of the value of measure and order to remain on record in a form which he really feels to be wanting in those very qualities. We do not ourselves find these pages very much less clear or leas coherent than the rest of the book, but the author's own account of them, if we accept it literally, certainly disarms all immediate criticism. No doubt Mr. Ruskin is aware that what he considers rough notes of thought expressed in approximate grammar may satisfy a considerable part of his readers quite as well as more finished work, and perhaps he is entitled to treat them as deserv- ing nothing better at his hands, if he can do so without shocking his own sense of artistic fitness. But we fear this "third way of writing" may become a dangerous precedent. Certainly over- elaboration is not the besetting sin of English writers at present, least of all in matters of art, and Mr. Ruskin incurs grave responsi- bility by thus lending his sanction, even though qualified by an express apology, to the slovenly and hasty kind of composition of which we have too much already. Yet here, too, we find flashes of fine descriptive metaphor, such as this on the right and 'wrong use of liberty (p. 167) :—
" Yonder torrent, crystal-clear and arrow-swift, with its spray leaping into the air like white troops of fawns, is free enough. Lost presently, amidst bankless, boundless marsh—soaking in slow shallowness, as it will, hither and thither, listless, among the poisonous reeds and unre- sisting slime—it is free also. We may choose which liberty we like,— the restraint of voiceful rock,—or the dumb and edgeleas shore of darkened sand."
But these are broken lights penetrating a chaotic and noxious vapour, in which Mr. Ruskin strives to hide himself from unwel- come truth, reviling in his fury the deliberate judgments of modern reason as "follies unfathomable, unspeakable, unendurable to look in the full face of."
It is, indeed, natural that the clear light of thought should overpower Mr. Ruskin's fireworks, and, under the circum- stances, he does well to join that band of wise men we read of in the Water-Babies, whose wisdom consisted in crying, "Oh, don't tell us !" and running away. After all this, we turn with relief to the comparatively simple and straightforward ad- dress to a class of art students, which is a sort of appendix to the book. We are inclined to rebel against the assertion that Greek faces are not particularly beautiful, and that there is not a single instance of a very beautiful head left by the highest school of Greek art, and to doubt whether the Venus of Melos represents a less perfect ideal than ours. But here Mr. Ruskin is on his proper ground, and we are bound, at any rate, to listen to him with attention. Our task would have been a pleasanter one if we could have done so throughout.
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