on Indian
temples have their legs separate enough; but they are infinitely more
dead than the rude figures at Branchidae sitting with their hands on
their knees. And, briefly, the work of Daedalus is the giving of
deceptive life, as that of Prometheus the giving of real life; and I can
put the relation of Greek to all other art, in this function, before
you, in easily compared and remembered examples.

203. Here, on the right, in Plate XX., is an Indian bull, colossal, and
elaborately carved, which you may take as a sufficient type of the bad
art of all the earth. False in form, dead in heart, and loaded with
wealth, externally. We will not ask the date of this; it may rest in the
eternal obscurity of evil art, everywhere, and forever. Now, beside this
colossal bull, here is a bit of Daedalus-work, enlarged from a coin not
bigger than a shilling: look at the two together, and you ought to know,
henceforward, what Greek art means, to the end of your days.

204. In this aspect of it, then, I say it is the simplest and nakedest
of lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or rather another pole,
for the opposition is diametric. As the simplest, so also it is the most
complex of human art. I told you in my Fifth Lecture, showing you the
spotty picture of Velasquez, that an essential Greek character is a
liking for things that are dappled. And you cannot but have noticed how
often and how prevalently the idea which gave its name to the Porch of
Polygnotus, "[Greek: stoa poikile]," occurs to the Greeks as connected
with the finest art. Thus, when the luxurious city is opposed to the
simple and healthful one, in the second book of Plato's Polity, you find
that, next to perfumes, pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it
"[Greek: poikilia]," which observe, both in that place and again in the
third book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but the
idea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and
sound--the "ravishing division to the lute," as in Pindar's "[Greek:
poikiloi hymnoi]"--runs through the compass of all Greek
art-description; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles, you
were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, for
instance, to Plate IV. here,) your impression of it would be, instead of
breadth and simplicity, one of universal spottiness and checkeredness,
"[Greek: en angeou Herkesin pampoikilois];" and of the artist's
delighting in nothing so m