Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

104 WOTTON REINFEEDing mannerism in Art. Art do I call it ? Let me notprofane the namie ! Poetry is a making, a creation,'added he, and the ' first rising up of a poem in thehead of the poet is as inexplicable, by materialformulas, as the first rising up of nature out of chaos.'*I have often recollected the story of Phidias,'said Wotton, when ' in his exile he had retired toElis, and, to punish his countrymen, had resolved tomake a Jupiter still grander than their Minerva. Thethought he meant to express was present to him, allthe strength and the repose, the kingly omnipotenceof the Olympian ; but no visible form would it assume,no feature to body itself forth; and the statuarywandered for days and weeks in the pain of an inwardidea which would cast itself out in no external symbol.Once he was loitering at sunset among the groves, hisheart sick in its baffled vehemence ; his head full, yetdark and formless ; when, at the opening of some avenue,a procession of maidens, returning from the fountainwith their pitchers on their heads, suddenly upliftedthe evening hymn to Jove; and, in a moment, theartist's head was overflowed with light, and the figureof his Jupiter started forth in all its lineaments beforehis mind, and stood there visible and admirable tohimself, as afterwards, transferred to marble, it wasfor many ages to the world.'*Yes,' said Dalbrook, a strange wind ' will sometimesrend asunder the cloud-curtains from the soul,and the fair creation, perfected in secret, lies un-