42 EVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES 



concede that the same law is operative. The grave manner 

 of the archaic sculptors, earnestly intent upon the expression 

 of the mythus, culminates (for us at least) in the heroes of 

 the .^Eginetan pediment. Pheidias represents the middle 

 period of accomplished maturity. , The subject selected for 

 treatment by Pheidias is still penetrated with religious 

 thought and feeling ; but it is clear that the artist aims 

 also at free aesthetical effect, exerting pbwers which have 

 rarely been granted to any mortal, and expending unrivalled 

 technical skill upon the revelation of elevated beauty. With 

 Scopas and Praxiteles the type begins to soften. The former, 

 if he be the author of the Niobids, displayed remarkable 

 dramatic power, but a notable effeminacy of style ; while the 

 latter concentrated his attention mainly on the perfecting of 

 single figures, exquisitely graceful the Faun, the Eros, the 

 Hermes, the Aphrodite, the Apollo Sauroktonos, known to 

 us partly in originals, but mostly through copies. In this 

 third period a lack of true virility, a decay of serious intention, 

 and a seeking after novel effects may be discerned ; qualities 

 which, in the succeeding age of the art, were replaced 

 by realism, approximating to brutality in many instances. 

 Powerful as were the sculptors of the school of Pergamus, 

 we recognise that in them the representative Greek art 

 had already abandoned the sphere of representative Greek 

 virtues. 



From Rome we can expect no enforcement of the principle 

 I am attempting to establish ; for Roman art, whether literary 

 or otherwise, was essentially a hybrid ; and, as I may attempt 

 in another place to demonstrate, hybrids do not obey the 

 same laws of evolutionary progress as the specific art-growths 

 of a single race and a continuous era. Yet all products of 

 the Grasco-Roman period have their own particular interest. 

 In Poetry, the indigenous genius of the Latin race, as might 

 have been expected, asserted itself with most effect ; for 

 poetry is the direct expression of character. Satire and 

 didactic verse obtained a new and separate value. But the 



