The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 70/130

"I will not offer you my hand," said he; "it is grimy with Cleopatra's

clay."

"No; I will not touch clay; it is earthy and human," answered Miriam.

"I have come to try whether there is any calm and coolness among

your marbles. My own art is too nervous, too passionate, too full of

agitation, for me to work at it whole days together, without intervals

of repose. So, what have you to show me?"

"Pray look at everything here," said Kenyon. "I love to have painters

see my work. Their judgment is unprejudiced, and more valuable than that

of the world generally, from the light which their own art throws on

mine. More valuable, too, than that of my brother sculptors, who never

judge me fairly,--nor I them, perhaps."

To gratify him, Miriam looked round at the specimens in marble or

plaster, of which there were several in the room, comprising originals

or casts of most of the designs that Kenyon had thus far produced. He

was still too young to have accumulated a large gallery of such things.

What he had to show were chiefly the attempts and experiments, in

various directions, of a beginner in art, acting as a stern tutor to

himself, and profiting more by his failures than by any successes of

which he was yet capable. Some of them, however, had great merit; and

in the pure, fine glow of the new marble, it may be, they dazzled the

judgment into awarding them higher praise than they deserved. Miriam

admired the statue of a beautiful youth, a pearlfisher; who had got

entangled in the weeds at the bottom of the sea, and lay dead among the

pearl-oysters, the rich shells, and the seaweeds, all of like value to

him now.

"The poor young man has perished among the prizes that he sought,"

remarked she. "But what a strange efficacy there is in death! If we

cannot all win pearls, it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just as

well. I like this statue, though it is too cold and stern in its moral

lesson; and, physically, the form has not settled itself into sufficient

repose."

In another style, there was a grand, calm head of Milton, not copied

from any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any of them,

because all known representations of the poet had been profoundly

studied, and solved in the artist's mind. The bust over the tomb in

Grey Friars Church, the original miniatures and pictures, wherever to

be found, had mingled each its special truth in this one work; wherein,

likewise, by long perusal and deep love of the Paradise Lost, the Comus,

the Lycidas, and L'Allegro, the sculptor had succeeded, even better than

he knew, in spiritualizing his marble with the poet's mighty genius. And

this was a great thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the

dry bones and dust of Milton were like those of any other dead man.