122 REALISM AND IDEALISM 



combined with the loftiest heroic style in the fragments of 

 the Parthenon, these had for him authentic inspiration ; they ' 

 delivered him from what was specious and misleading in the 

 Idealism of his epoch : they confirmed him in his own 

 instinctive belief that genuine grandeur was not only com- 

 patible with the most painstaking imitation of the model, , 

 but that such devotion to the truth of nature formed an 

 indispensable condition of masterly creative work. Here was 

 an apocalypse of the right method for all art and in all 

 ages. Here was a demonstration of the indissoluble and 

 organic link between the sublimest Idealism and the humblest 

 Realism. 



There is so much of a curious sort of pathos, combined 

 with so much of passionate and sudden enthusiasm, in 

 Haydon's narrative, that I venture to reproduce a large 

 portion of it textually. It should not be forgotten that to 

 this man, in no small measure, English people owe the 

 presence in their midst of these Parthenon sculptures, and all 

 that flows therefrom for better or for worse : 



1 To Park Lane then we went, and after passing through the hall 

 and thence into an open yard, entered a damp, dirty pen-house, where 

 lay the marbles ranged within sight and reach. 



' The first thing I fixed my eyes on was the wrist of a figure in one of 

 the female groups, in which were visible, though in a feminine form, the 

 radius and ulna. I was astonished, for I had never seen them hinted at 

 in any female wrist in the antique. I darted my eye to the elbow, and 

 saw the outer condyle visibly affecting the shape as in nature. I saw that 

 the arm was in repose and the soft parts in relaxation. That combina- 

 tion of nature and idea which I had felt was so much wanting for high 

 art was here displayed to midday conviction. My heart beat ! If I had 

 seen nothing else, I had beheld enough to keep me to nature for the rest 

 of my life. But when I turned to the Theseus and saw that every form 

 was altered by action or repose when I saw that the two sides of his 

 back varied, one side stretched from the shoulder-blade being pulled 

 forward, and the other side compressed from the shoulder-blade being 

 pushed close to the spine as he rested on his elbow, with the belly flat 

 because the bowels fell into the pelvis as he sat and when, turning to 

 the Ilissus, I saw the belly protruded from the figure lying on its side 

 and again when in the figure of the fighting Metope I saw the muscle 

 shown under the arm-pit in that instantaneous action of darting out, 

 and left out in the other arm -pits because not wanted when I saw, in 



