MR. WOOLNER'S PYGMALION.*

Ma. WOOLNER has understood the true poetry in the legend of Pygmalion better than most of his predecessors, either Greek or English. He sees that the physical magic in the story—the actual bringing to life of the statue, and the marriage with the maker of it—is a degenerated form of its true meaning, which is simply that it is love which gives life to the artist's work, and that nothing less than love will make it truly live. This is a theme well fitted for a great sculptor who is also no mean poet, and it is worked out in a volume of very vigorous and often very beautiful blank verse. Now and again, the rhythm seems to us a little heavy, and there are passages lacking in fire where we expect fire most ; nevertheless, the story and the delineation of character are bright and impressive, and there are many pages of noble poetry in the book. The effect of the whole is one of dignity, strength, and serenity. Pygmalion, the great artist who becomes also a great king, is great in his art partly because he is so great as a man,—because he can restrain himself so well, as well as express himself so well ; and, again, he is great as a man partly also because he is so great in his art, because he can discern so clearly what is in men, what are their deficiencies, and what their capacities for action and for suffering. It is clear that a part of Mr. Woolner's purpose has been to vindicate the true artist's character from the common aspersion that the excellence of the artistic nature leans to the side of sensitive weakness. On the contrary, Mr. Woolner's poem seems to maintain that without the utmost fortitude and • Pygmalion. By Thomas Woolner. London ; Macmillan and Co.

self-restraint, the artist can never reach the full insight that his art requires, and that the very qualities which are most needful to make his art supreme, are qualities which are equally useful for the purposes of government, and for inspiring the loyalty and confidence of his fellow-men. For example, before Mr. Woolner begins his delineation of Pygmalion's art, he gives us this fine glimpse of the nature of the artist :—

"It was Pygmalion's wont to rise at dawn, Reach the lone shore and plunge into the sea, And after joyful buffet with the waves Begin his labours with the singing day. At times he wandered far along the sands And drank the radiant beams as from the waves They flashed in light and laughter to his feet ; Wondering how man with each a heritage In splendours manifold, his own each day For ever, passed that span 'twixt birth and death In hate, and wild-beast clatchings after gain Through wild-beast slaughters ; giving scantily To love, and loveliness, and kindly acts !

Or he would range the forest solitudes To meditate by what new feats of art That ever-present beauty haunting him Could be in substance bound and manifest ; And how the life that beamed in all he saw Could be made beam to others as to him.

These lapses from close labour nerved his will, Which, quickening half-born dreams and thoughts obscure To living truths, gave him the strength be craved Whereby to animate the forms he wrought With nature's varied movement ; pause and play Of impulse : complex outwardly in strain And laxity alert. Armed with this power The damp impressible clay glanced into light Along the tendons' length ; hardened to bone ; And tightened straightway into comely shape Beneath his certain touch. Hard marble changed, In softened shadows rounding tenderly To firm elastic life : and what anon Was but as chaos beamed a new delight More lasting than all beauty born of man."

Note, that Mr. Woolner reckons the nervous will of a strong man as among the first gifts of the artist. It is by. will that he quickens his "half-born dreams and thoughts obscure to living truths ;" and without this strong, unseen will, the sculptor would never discern its signs in the "pause and play of im- pulse, complex outwardly in strain and laxity alert." It is, the reader will find, this strength of will which makes Pygmalion a great king, and Mr. Woolner, by many a fine touch, teaches us that it was as essential to the supreme artist as even to the great king. Let us now take Mr. Woolner's delineation of one of the works of Pygmalion, the representation of the birth of Aphrodite from the sea :— " CYTHEREA.

"Uprisen from the sea when Cytherea, Shining in primal beauty, paled the day, The wondering waters hushed. They yearned in sighs That shook the world : tumultuously heaved To a great throne of azure laced with light

And canopied in foam to grace their Queen.

Shrieking for joy came Oceanides, And swift Nereides rushed from afar Or clove the waters by. Came eager-eyed Even shy Naiades from inland streams, With wild cries headlong darting thro' the waves ; And Dryads from the shore stretched their born arms.

While hoarsely sounding heard was Triton's shell ; Shoutings uncouth ; sudden, bewildered sounds; And the innumerable splashing feet Of monsters gambolling around their God, Forth shining on a seahorse, fierce, and finned.

Some bestrode fishes glinting dusky gold, Or angry crimson, or chill silver bright ; Others jerked fast on their own scaly tails ; And seabirds, screaming upwards either side, Wove a vast arch above the Queen of Love, Who, gazing on this multitudinous Homaging to her beauty, laughed : She laughed The soft delicious laughter that makes mad ; Low warblings in the throat that clench man's life Tighter than prison bars. Then swayed a breath Of odorous rose and scented myrtle mixed, That toyed the golden radiance round her brows To wavy flames. When lo ! sweet murmurings Spread sudden silence on that gathered host ! And, as sped arrows to their mark ; as bees Drop promptly on the honey'd flower, as one Shone the three daughters of Earynome, Aglaia, and Thalia; each an arm In reverence taking fondled tenderly ; Then pressed their blushing cheeks against her breasts : And loved Euphrosyne, scarcely less fair Than Cytherea's self, lay her white length Kissing the sacred feet.

Such honour paid The powers of Nature to the power of Love, Creation's longed-for Wonder sprang to life !

Now, as a man lifts up a little child, Placing it down where he would have it walk, The wave of mighty azure forward driven By magic impulse sheer in downward slope Fell, then drawn backward sank, and was no more; Leaving the Goddess on her Cyprian coast. And when her feet first touched the trembling sand, She fired awakened Earth's remotest veins To strange ethereal ecstacies ; as birds Brighten to clamour by the fires of morn.

Thus to Pygmalion beamed the wondrous Birth ; And this in pare immortal marble he Laboured to show ; bound by those roles of Art The Wise had found inexorably fixed."

One cannot, however, quite understand how the colours in this fine picture were displayed on one of those "four great walls of marble pure and white," unless, like the late Mr. Gibson, Pygmalion did not scruple to tint his pure white marble, when he wished to produce effects which only colour can give.

The subject of the great statue for which Pygmalion so earnestly, and for some time so vainly, implores the heavenly fire of living beauty, is Hebe offering the cup of nectar to Zeus. This would seem to modern ears a light conception. But Pygmalion, taking it in the ancient Greek spirit, did not so mean it. He means the subject to embody all the awe and reverence of true religions service :—

" They found him mounted higher than the ground

Working at Cytherea's smile. His floor Was overspread with mat, the Matron's slaves Wove of green rushes, soft of pith, that he Be spared unnecessary noise, even noise Of his own footsteps, in those rarer moods When thought is striving to complete itself.

Pausing, the Matron and Ianthe watched Admiringly, the chisel's dainty play Soften the valley 'twixt the cheek and mouth, Sweeten the laughter rippling thro' the lips, And fine the chin to rarer witchery.

They might have waited long, for he was lost In Aphrodite's laugh and loveliness, As they were well-nigh lost regarding him.

But prudently the Mother curbed her joy At her son's handcraft; and solicitous That her main errand proved not profitless, Signed to Iauthe, who poured out the wine, And asked, Will you drink wine, my Lord ?

He turned, Gazing as one awakened from a dream, Eyes on the maiden fixed. Descending, then He to his Mother bending reverently, Kissed her loved hands.

Iauthe, drink will I! Without libation would I drain a cup That should Silenus shame commanded by One so imperiously meek ! But now You looked as a great Hebe meet to fill His goblet for high Zeus sitting enthroned !

Moved in the pure white blossom of her cheeks A tinge of rose : taking the cup she placed It down ; then brought him bread and fruit.

He cried, 0 Mother, give me your assent and I Will carve Ianthe as she stood erewhile Pouring the wine, a Hebe, child of Zeus And Hera, pouring nectar for the God! In her deep eyes there shone an upward awe As though she gazed at Zeus gazing at her.

The matron smiled, and said, if Hebe he Must carve, Eos the tender was most fit ; Being of lighter form, and what would seem To men the figure of immortal youth.

Eos were well, my Mother, were I bound To make her fill the cup for Heracles, Or her own brother Ares. But I mean To make her serving Zeus her Father, who. Throwing his thunders makes Olympus shake ; Ianthe's gaze alone for him is fit."

It is in this work that Pygmalion comes to a stand-still for want of the breath of true inspiration. And it is his consciousness of failure which takes him to the Temple of Aphrodite, to pray

for the fire he lacks :—

" Striven have I, 0 Goddess, to create

Babe's similitude as She might stand Pilling His cup for Zeus. I made her young; Fair in her countenance; well-shaped in limb; And lightly poised in force of mute reserve. But spark divine, the throbbing touch of pulse, To touch all other pulses as Her own, She lacks, and looks as one who had not woke.

My utmost being done, having so failed By mortal effort, I to Thee appeal, 0 Aphrodite, in Thy love of man To yield the secret, that my handicraft May truly show the awe my spirit feels : Send from Olympus Life !"

The answer of Aphrodite to his prayer, though parts of it are fine, is not, as a whole, quite up to Mr. Woolner's mark.

Especially the last two lines are lacking in weight and signific- ance. But the noble sentence in which Aphrodite explains what it is in Pygmalion which has gained for him her favour, gives a glimpse into the true source of a great artist's greatest power that we cannot forbear quoting :—

"The prayers and sacrifices loved of Gods Are man's delight in giving up delights, And checked impulses of the yielding will."

That is very far from the ordinary conception of the character which Aphrodite would have required of her worshippers ; in- deed, it is the nobler view of Aphrodite embodied in this poem which gives it its character; and Mr. Woolner would have done better to weed Aphrodite's own address to Pygmalion of those references to the more ignoble view of her which is so inextri- cably blended in Greek literature with the other and the higher aspect of her divinity. The part of the poem in which Pygmalion learns the existence of a true passion in his own heart, and that it is fully returned by Ianthe, is, as it ought to be, the most beautiful in the whole. But we pass it by, as less concerned with the meaning and, purpose of the poem than that which depicts how love quickened his artist hand, and filled him with the true inspiration of the sculptor: —

"Now with a certainty untroubled wrought

Pygmalion on his Hebe. Great his joy To raise the wonder in her brows. To make The shadows dark within her upward eyes : In those fine nostrils breathing purity.

Pressing the month to longer droop of curves Above the prow of her imperial chin.

These now in his fierce energy were but As trifles. Chisel edge could scarcely touch Ere the obstruction vanished as a cloud.

Yea, yea, he cried, the bowl divine should be More firmly pressed; for risk there must be none Of waste in shaking the Olympian cup!

More tightly bound the joints; the dimpling be Less spacious and less widened forth.

Aglaia, she was right ; throughout the lengths Of the grand limbs perfection closer yet Must I effect, are they afford the grace Of Hebe or Ianthe. The long sway Will suavely come in lightening her waist Both on the outward curve and inner line.

This knee! In fineness dare I venture more ?

The heartshape of the cap : ! just a shade !

Yes ! Even a daughter and a Goddess feels Something of tremulous in face of Zeus ; Therefore this foot more pressure must admit, As witnessing ethereal power that warms And animates the whole immortal form Of God obedient to the Thunderer's will."

Only a sculptor who was also a poet could. have written these fine lines, and with them the interpretation of the legend, though not the story, of Pygmalion, is completed. Mr. Woolner himself is bent on further showing what qualities there are in the dis- cerning and. imperious sagacity of the true sculptor which fit him for actual rule amongst men,—how ready he must be in action, how keen in his insight into what is false and what is true in human nature, how minute in his scientific adjustment of means to ends, how wary in making allowance for the un- certainty of human things, how sincere in his repudiation of ambition and his preference for the life of true worship. All these qualities of the artist belong, Mr. Woolner is desirous to show, to the true king of men, who, if he be not prompt and decisive, will never inspire the confidence of a leader; if he does not see behind the countenance to the mental and moral quali- ties within, will never know whom to choose and. for what duty to choose them ; if he does not fairly calculate the relation between means and. ends, can never undertake a really great enterprise with any chance of success ; and who finally, if he does not really despise ambition, will never have the true dis- interestedness which qualifies best for the highest places of command.

In the remainder of the poem, Mr. Woolner shows us how the very self-restraint, insight, alacrity, courage, sincerity, and simplicity of purpose, which had made Pygmalion so great a

sculptor, fitted him also to be a true king ; and in the telling passage describing how the invading forces of Egypt were driven back by Pygmalion's strategy, he shows that he can make poetry tell the tale of battle as well as he has made it paint the inspiring magic of love. The poem, as a whole, is a charming one. Here and there, we think, it flags a little. But it is full of fascination, and contains many scenes which only a great artist could have painted. Moreover, the serenity pecu- liar to sculpture, as distinguished from painting, pervades the whole.