CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 239

§ 15. Again, the distinction will be found to exist, not only between forms and shades as subjects of choice, but between essential and inessential forms. One of the chief distinctions between the dramatic and picturesque schools of sculpture is found in the treatment of the hair. By the artists of the time of Pericles* it was considered as an excrescence, indicated by few and rude lines, and subordinated, in every particular, to the principality of the features and person. How completely this was an artistical, not a national idea, it is unnecessary to prove. We need but remember the employment of the Lace-dæmonians, reported by the Persian spy on the evening before the battle of Thermopylæ,¹ or glance at any Homeric description of ideal form, to see how purely sculpturesque was the law which reduced the markings of the hair, lest, under the necessary disadvantages of material, they should interfere with the distinctness of the personal forms. On the contrary, in later sculpture,² the hair receives almost the principal care of the workman; and, while the features and limbs are clumsily and bluntly executed, the hair is curled and twisted, cut into bold and shadowy projections, and arranged in masses elaborately

* This subordination was first remarked to me by a friend, to whose profound knowledge of Greek art I owe many obligations: Mr. C. Newton, now Consul at Mitylene.3

¹ [Herodotus, vii. 208. The Persian spy saw, among the Lacedæmonians, “some of the men practising athletic exercises and some combing their long hair.” Which things he reported to the King: “for they have a custom which is as follows;-whenever they are about to put their lives in peril, then they attend to the arrangement of their hair.”]

² [For “in later sculpture” the MS. has “in Roman work, and in greater degree as that extreme of contrariety is approached,” and again in § 16, for “the debased sculptor’s choice” the MS. has “the Roman choice.”]

³ [Note 16 at the end of the book in eds. 1 and 2; omitted in later editions. In ed. 1 the note reads :-

“This subordination was first remarked to me by a friend, whose profound knowledge of Greek art will not, I trust, be reserved always for the advantage of his friends only: Mr. C. Newton, of the British Museum.”

For Ruskin’s friendship for Sir Charles Thomas Newton, D. C. L., LL. D., K. C. B., see Præterita, ii. ch. viii. § 155. Newton entered the Museum in 1840 as assistant in the department of antiquities, and Ruskin often visited him there (see Vol. IV., Introduction, p. xx., and see Stones of Venice, vol. i., Appendix 21). In 1851 Newton was appointed Vice-Consul at Mitylene, and he remained in the East for ten years, carrying on his famous excavations. In ed. 2 Ruskin’s note was, therefore, altered as shown above. From 1861 to 1885 he was Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Museum. In 1861 he married the distinguished painter, Ann Mary, daughter of Joseph Severn and sister of Mr. Arthur Severn; her portrait, painted by herself, is in the National Portrait Gallery.]

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