4 i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



or in sculpture, and their poetry contains no example of 

 that elaborate word-painting which calls up a scene in its 

 objective harmony and full sensuous beauty. It would 

 be wrong to conjecture as the reason of this deficiency the 

 want of a quick eye for outward things. On the contrary, 

 the very richness of the Hebrew tongue in appropriate 

 names for sensible objects is sufficient proof that every 

 thing in nature that has a human interest, everything that 

 touches directly on the life of man, and addresses itself to 

 his emotions and his heart, is laid hold of with the keenest 

 appreciation and the subtlest sympathy. But in truth 

 nature is too full of meaning, and speaks too strongly to 

 the heart of the Israelite, to suffer him calmly to analyse 

 and reproduce its individual traits. To him the unity 

 and harmony of an outer scene or a train of thought is 

 always a unity of passion and feeling. He does not there 

 fore depict nature in the just balance and organic relation 

 of its parts, but seizes one and another isolated feature 

 and absorbs them into the stream of an all-transmuting 

 emotion. Hence the few instances of plastic art which are 

 recounted in the Old Testament are all symbolic. It is 

 most characteristic that we have no description of the 

 cherubim which would enable an artist to reconstruct 

 them. The symbolic parts of which they were composed 

 are enumerated with care ; but we have no hint of an 

 attempt to give to the figure built up from these hetero 

 geneous symbols anything of objective symmetry and 

 beauty. Beyond doubt no such attempt was made. 1 



The same want of plastic power characterises the de 

 lineations of Hebrew poetry. The descriptions of Homer 

 or of Sophocles at once suggest pictorial treatment ; 



1 If the reader desires to realise this more fully, let him turn to the 

 description of the heavenly procession in Canto 29 of the &quot; Purgatorio,&quot; 

 and contrast the thoroughly plastic character of the picture with the 

 corresponding passages of Ezekiel and of the Apocalypse. But it is 

 obvious that the figures of the cherubim had defeated Dante s power of 

 constructive imagination. He is compelled to refer his reader to 

 Ezekiel. &quot; E quai li troverai nelle sue carte, Tali eran quivi.&quot; 



