DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0065
‘MODERN PAINTERS’—THIRD VOLUME. 53
plation of terrible things, or from the confusion of the
imagination by the presence of truths which it cannot
wholly grasp ” ; in the last case it is “ altogether noble.”
“How is it to be distinguished, from the false and
vicious grotesque which results from idleness instead of
noble rest; from malice, instead of the solemn contem-
plation of the necessary evil; and from general degra-
dation of the human spirit, instead of its subjection, or
confusion, by thoughts too high for it ? ”
Ruskin admits that “ the vague and foolish incon-
sistencies of undisciplined dream ” might be mistaken
for “ the compelled inconsistencies of thought ”; and
he teaches us the difference in one of the best, most
unmistakable, most imaginative, and most conclusive
of all the lessons in his books—that of the two griffins.
The drawings of the Roman griffin, from the temple of
Antoninus and Faustina, and of the Lombard griffin,
from the Cathedral of Verona, are by his own hand.
The “classical” griffin has technical mastery of com-
position, collocation, combination—-the secondary quali-
ties in no little beauty, but Ruskin takes the man who
wrought it through the experiment and piecemeal of his
work as but now he took a bad draughtsman through
his tree—with exquisite dramatic sense of the man’s
mind and action, most wittily, with a wit of the very
fingers. He shows how the lion and the eagle, put
together, have been missed in the winged creature with
its trivial eye, and its foot on the top of a flower. Let
the reader remember that this griffin was famous, and
plation of terrible things, or from the confusion of the
imagination by the presence of truths which it cannot
wholly grasp ” ; in the last case it is “ altogether noble.”
“How is it to be distinguished, from the false and
vicious grotesque which results from idleness instead of
noble rest; from malice, instead of the solemn contem-
plation of the necessary evil; and from general degra-
dation of the human spirit, instead of its subjection, or
confusion, by thoughts too high for it ? ”
Ruskin admits that “ the vague and foolish incon-
sistencies of undisciplined dream ” might be mistaken
for “ the compelled inconsistencies of thought ”; and
he teaches us the difference in one of the best, most
unmistakable, most imaginative, and most conclusive
of all the lessons in his books—that of the two griffins.
The drawings of the Roman griffin, from the temple of
Antoninus and Faustina, and of the Lombard griffin,
from the Cathedral of Verona, are by his own hand.
The “classical” griffin has technical mastery of com-
position, collocation, combination—-the secondary quali-
ties in no little beauty, but Ruskin takes the man who
wrought it through the experiment and piecemeal of his
work as but now he took a bad draughtsman through
his tree—with exquisite dramatic sense of the man’s
mind and action, most wittily, with a wit of the very
fingers. He shows how the lion and the eagle, put
together, have been missed in the winged creature with
its trivial eye, and its foot on the top of a flower. Let
the reader remember that this griffin was famous, and