She dreamt to-night she saw my statua, Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day. Decius. This dream is all amiss interpreted: Your statue spouting blood in many pipes, Cæsar. And this way have you well expounded it. Decius. I have, when you have heard what I can say: And know it now: the senate have concluded To give this day a crown to mighty Cæsar. If you shall send them word you will not come, Their minds may change. Besides, it were a mock, Apt to be render'd, for some one to say, " Break up the senate till another time, When Cæsar's wife shall meet with better dreams.' If Cæsar hide himself, shall they not whisper, 'Lo, Cæsar is afraid'?" SHAKESPEARE: Julius Cæsar. 8. Write a brief, using the material on plagiarism given on pages 21-25. Give ample refutation of points against your side of the question. 9. Read carefully, then analyze and make a brief of the following excerpt: — "On the opposite page, Plate I, I have put, beside each other, a piece of true grotesque, from the Lombard-Gothic, and of false grotesque from classical (Roman) architecture. They are both griffins; the one on the left carries on his back one of the main pillars of the porch in the cathedral of Verona; the one on the right is on the frieze of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina at Rome, much celebrated by Renaissance and bad modern architects. "In some respects, however, this classical griffin deserves its reputation. It is exceedingly fine in lines of composition, and, I believe (I have not examined the original closely), very exquisite in execution. For these reasons, it is all the better for our purpose. I do not want to compare the worst false grotesque with the best true, but rather, on the contrary, the best false with the simplest true, in order to see how the delicately wrought lie fails in the presence of the rough truth; for rough truth in the present case it is, the Lombard sculpture being altogether untoward and imperfect in execution. 666 Well, but,' the reader says, 'what do you mean by calling either of them true? There never were such beasts in the world as either of these?' "No, never: but the difference is, that the Lombard workman did really see a griffin in his imagination, and carved it from the life, meaning to declare to all ages that he had verily seen with his immortal eyes such a griffin as that; but the classical workman never saw a griffin at all, nor anything else; but put the whole thing together by line and rule. "How do you know that?'" 66 Very easily. Look at the two, and think over them. You know a griffin is a beast composed of lion and eagle. The classical workman set himself to fit these together in the most ornamental way possible. He accordingly carves a sufficiently satisfactory lion's body, then attaches very gracefully cut wings to the sides: then, because he cannot get the eagle's head on the broad lion's shoulders, fits the two together by something like a horse's neck (some griffins being wholly composed of a horse and eagle), then, finding the horse's neck look weak and unformidable, he strengthens it by a series of bosses like vertebræ, in front, and by a series of spiny cusps, instead of a mane, on the ridge; next, not to lose the whole leonine character about the neck, he gives a remnant of the lion's beard, turned into a sort of griffin's whisker, and nicely curled and pointed; then an eye, probably meant to look grand and abstracted, and therefore neither lion's nor eagle's; and finally, an eagle's beak, very sufficiently studied from a real one. The whole head being, it seems to him, still somewhat wanting in weight and power, he brings forward the right wing behind. it, so as to inclose it with a broad line. . . . The whole griffin, thus gracefully composed, being, nevertheless, when all is done, a very composed griffin, is set to very quiet work, and raising his left foot, to balance his right wing, sets it on the tendril of a flower so lightly as not even to bend it down, though, in order to reach it, his left leg is made half as long again as his right. "We may be pretty sure, if the carver had ever seen a griffin, he would have reported of him as doing something else than that with his feet. Let us see what the Lombardic workman saw him doing. "Remember, first, the griffin, though part lion and part eagle, has the united power of both. He is not merely a bit of lion and a bit of eagle, but whole lion, incorporate with whole eagle. So when we really see one, we may be quite sure we shall not find him wanting in anything necessary to the might either of beast or bird. "Well, among things essential to the might of a lion, perhaps, on the whole, the most essential are his teeth. He could get on pretty well even without his claws, usually striking his prey down with a blow, woundless; but he could by no means get on without his teeth. Accordingly, we see that the real or Lombardic griffin has the carnivorous teeth bare to the root, and the peculiar hanging of the jaw at the back, which marks the flexible and gaping mouth of the devouring tribes. "Again: among things essential to the might of an eagle, next to his wings (which are of course prominent in both examples) are his claws. It is no use his being able to tear anything with his beak, if he can not first hold it in his claws; he has comparatively no leonine power of striking with his feet, but a magnificent power of grip with them. Accordingly, we see that the real griffin, while his feet are heavy enough to strike like a lion's, has them also extended far enough to give them the eagle's grip with the back claw; and has, moreover, some of the birdlike wrinkled skin over the whole foot, marking this binding power the more; and that he has besides verily got something to hold with his feet, other than a flower, of which more presently. "Now observe, the Lombardic workman did not do all this because he had thought it out, as you and I are doing together; he never thought a bit about it. He simply saw the beast; saw it as plainly as you see the writing on this page, and of course could not be wrong in anything he told us of it. |