literature, speak every where of the classics as having notoriously, and
by the general confession of polished nations, carried the functions of
poetry and eloquence to that sort of faultless beauty which probably does
_really_ exist in the Greek sculpture. There are few things perfect
in this world of frailty. Even lightning is sometimes a failure: Niagara
has horrible faults; and Mont Blanc might be improved by a century of
chiselling from judicious artists. Such are the works of blind elements,
which (poor things!) cannot improve by experience. As to man who
_does_, the sculpture of the Greeks in their marbles and sometimes in
their gems, seems the only act of _his_ workmanship which has hit the
bull's eye in the target at which we are all aiming. Not so, with
permission from Messrs. Boileau and Addison, the Greek literature. The
faults in this are often conspicuous; nor are they likely to be hidden for
the coming century, as they have been for the three last. The idolatry
will be shaken: as _idols_, some of the classic models are destined
to totter: and I foresee, without gifts of prophecy, that many laborers
will soon be in this field--many idoloclasts, who will expose the signs of
disease, which zealots had interpreted as power; and of weakness, which is
not the less real because scholars had fancied it health, nor the less
injurious to the total effect because it was inevitable under the
accidents of the Grecian position.

Meantime, I repeat, that to disparage any thing whatever, or to turn the
eye upon blemishes, is no part of my present purpose. Nor could it be:
since the one sole section of the Greek literature, as to which I profess
myself an enthusiast, happens to be the tragic drama; and here, only, I
myself am liable to be challenged as an idolater. As regards the Antigone
in particular, so profoundly do I feel the impassioned beauty of her
situation in connection with her character, that long ago, in a work of my
own (yet unpublished), having occasion (by way of overture introducing one