Boundaries of legendary probability or common
sense; every trace of divinity and manly strength has been boiled out of
him. So young and earthly fair, he looks, rather, like some pretty boy
dressed up for a game with toy sword and helmet - one wants to have a
romp with him. No warrior this! C'est beau, mais ce n'est pas la
guerre.
The gods, they say, are ever young, and a certain sensuous and fleshly
note is essential to those of Italy if they are to retain the love of
their worshippers. Granted. We do not need a scarred and hirsute
veteran; but we need, at least, a personage capable of wielding the
sword, a figure something like this: -
His starry helm unbuckled show'd his prime In manhood where youth ended;
by his side As in a glist'ring zodiac hung the sword, Satan's dire
dread, and in his hand the spear. . . .
There! That is an archangel of the right kind.
And the great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, has
suffered a similar transformation. He is shrunk into a poor little
reptile, the merest worm, hardly worth crushing.
But how should a sublime conception like the apocalyptic hero appeal to
the common herd? These formidable shapes emerge from the dusk, offspring
of momentous epochs; they stand aloof at first, but presently their
luminous grandeur is dulled, their haughty contour sullied and
obliterated by attrition. They are dragged down to the level of their
lowest adorers, for the whole flock adapts its pace to that of the
weakest lamb. No self-respecting deity will endure this treatment - to be
popularized and made intelligible to a crowd. Divinity comprehended of
the masses ceases to be efficacious; the Egyptians and Brahmans
understood that. It is not giving gods a chance to interpret them in an
incongruous and unsportsmanlike fashion. But the vulgar have no idea of
propriety or fair play; they cannot keep at the proper distance; they
are for ever taking liberties. And, in the end, the proudest god is
forced to yield.
We see this same fatality in the very word Cherub. How different an
image does this plump and futile infant evoke to the stately Minister of
the Lord, girt with a sword of flame! We see it in the Italian Madonna
of whom, whatever her mental acquirements may have been, a certain
gravity of demeanour is to be presupposed, and who, none the less, grows
more childishly smirking every day; in her Son who - hereabouts at
least - has doffed all the serious attributes of manhood and dwindled
into something not much better than a doll. It was the same in days of
old. Apollo (whom Saint Michael has supplanted), and Eros, and
Aphrodite - they all go through a process of saccharine deterioration.
Our fairest creatures, once they have passed their meridian vigour, are
liable to be assailed and undermined by an insidious diabetic tendency.
