But It Is Agreed That The
Classics Are Respectable; Therefore We Are To Be Enthusiastic About
Them.
Also let us admit that Byron is to be held up as "our native
bard."
I am not so entire a heathen as to be insensible to the beauty of
those relics of Greek art, of which men much more learned and
enthusiastic have written such piles of descriptions. I thought I
could recognise the towering beauty of the prodigious columns of
the Temple of Jupiter; and admire the astonishing grace, severity,
elegance, completeness of the Parthenon. The little Temple of
Victory, with its fluted Corinthian shafts, blazed under the sun
almost as fresh as it must have appeared to the eyes of its
founders; I saw nothing more charming and brilliant, more graceful,
festive, and aristocratic than this sumptuous little building. The
Roman remains which lie in the town below look like the works of
barbarians beside these perfect structures. They jar strangely on
the eye, after it has been accustoming itself to perfect harmony
and proportions. If, as the schoolmaster tells us, the Greek
writing is as complete as the Greek art; if an ode of Pindar is as
glittering and pure as the Temple of Victory; or a discourse of
Plato as polished and calm as yonder mystical portico of the
Erechtheum: what treasures of the senses and delights of the
imagination have those lost to whom the Greek books are as good as
sealed!
And yet one meets with very dull first-class men.
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