tive of human dignity. Thus grief is
noble or the reverse, according to the dignity and worthiness of the
object lamented, and the grandeur of the mind enduring it. The sorrow of
mortified vanity or avarice is simply disgusting, even that of bereaved
affection may be base if selfish and unrestrained. All grief that
convulses the features is ignoble, because it is commonly shallow and
certainly temporary, as in children, though in the shock and shiver of a
strong man's features under sudden and violent grief there may be
something of sublime. The grief of Guercino's Hagar, in the Brera
gallery at Milan, is partly despicable, partly disgusting, partly
ridiculous; it is not the grief of the injured Egyptian, driven forth
into the desert with the destiny of a nation in her heart, but of a
servant of all work, turned away for stealing tea and sugar. Common
painters forget that passion is not absolutely and in itself great or
violent, but only in proportion to the weakness of the mind it has to
deal with; and that in exaggerating its outward signs, they are not
exalting the passion, but evaporating the hero.[44] They think too much
of passions as always the same in their nature, forgetting that the love
of Achilles is different from the love of Paris, and of Alcestis from
that of Laodamia. The use and value of passion is not as a subject in
contemplation in itself, but as it breaks up the fountains of the great
deep of the human mind, or displays its mightiness and ribbed majesty,
as mountains are seen in their stability best among the coil of clouds;
whence, in fine, I think it is to be held that all passion which attains
overwhelming power, so that it is not as resisting, but as conquered,
that the creature is contemplated, is unfit for high art, and
destructive of the ideal character of the countenance: and in this
respect, I cannot but hold Raffaelle to have erred in his endeavor to
express passion of such acuteness in the human face; as in the fragment
of the Massacre of the Innocents in our own gallery, (wherein, repainted
though it be, I suppose the purpose of the master is yet to be
understood,) for if such subjects are to be represented at all, their
entire expression may be given without degrading the face, as we shall
presently see done with unspeakable power by Tintoret,[45] and I think
that all subjects of the kind, all human misery, slaughter, famine,
plague, peril, and crime, are better in the main avoided, as of