Higgins: Doolittle, you're either an honest man or a rogue. Doolittle: A little of both, Guv'nor. Like the rest of us, a little of both. -- Shaw, "Pygmalion"
"Matelote is homely!" he cried: "Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimaera. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian's mistress, and she is a good girl. I guarantee that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she's an old warrior. Look at her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband. A hussar indeed! She will fight too. These two alone will strike terror to the heart of the banlieue. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me. Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen! Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild's fortune! How much good he would do! Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover."
She said: the tears ran gushing from her eyes, And stopp'd her speech. Her sister thus replies: "O dearer than the vital air I breathe, Will you to grief your blooming years bequeath, Condemn'd to waste in woes your lonely life, Without the joys of mother or of wife? Think you these tears, this pompous train of woe, Are known or valued by the ghosts below? I grant that, while your sorrows yet were green, It well became a woman, and a queen, The vows of Tyrian princes to neglect, To scorn Hyarbas, and his love reject, With all the Libyan lords of mighty name; But will you fight against a pleasing flame! This little spot of land, which Heav'n bestows, On ev'ry side is hemm'd with warlike foes; Gaetulian cities here are spread around, And fierce Numidians there your frontiers bound; Here lies a barren waste of thirsty land, And there the Syrtes raise the moving sand; Barcaean troops besiege the narrow shore, And from the sea Pygmalion threatens more. Propitious Heav'n, and gracious Juno, lead This wand'ring navy to your needful aid: How will your empire spread, your city rise, From such a union, and with such allies? Implore the favor of the pow'rs above, And leave the conduct of the rest to love. Continue still your hospitable way, And still invent occasions of their stay, Till storms and winter winds shall cease to threat, And planks and oars repair their shatter'd fleet."
Then swiftly to the fatal place she pass'd, And mounts the fun'ral pile with furious haste; Unsheathes the sword the Trojan left behind (Not for so dire an enterprise design'd). But when she view'd the garments loosely spread, Which once he wore, and saw the conscious bed, She paus'd, and with a sigh the robes embrac'd; Then on the couch her trembling body cast, Repress'd the ready tears, and spoke her last: "Dear pledges of my love, while Heav'n so pleas'd, Receive a soul, of mortal anguish eas'd: My fatal course is finish'd; and I go, A glorious name, among the ghosts below. A lofty city by my hands is rais'd, Pygmalion punish'd, and my lord appeas'd. What could my fortune have afforded more, Had the false Trojan never touch'd my shore!" Then kiss'd the couch; and, "Must I die," she said, "And unreveng'd? 'T is doubly to be dead! Yet ev'n this death with pleasure I receive: On any terms, 't is better than to live. These flames, from far, may the false Trojan view; These boding omens his base flight pursue!"
DIDO, or ELISSA, the reputed founder of Carthage (q.v.), in Africa, daughter of the Tyrian king Metten (Mutto, Methres, Belus), wife of Acerbas (more correctly Sicharbas; Sychaeus in Virgil), a priest of Hercules. Her husband having been slain by her brother Pygmalion, Dido fled to Cyprus, and thence to the coast of Africa, where she purchased from a local chieftain Iarbas a piece of land on which she built Carthage. The city soon began to prosper and Iarbas sought Dido's hand in marriage, threatening her with war in case of refusal. To escape from him, Dido constructed a funeral pile, on which she stabbed herself before the people (Justin xviii. 4-7). Virgil, in defiance of the usually accepted chronology, makes Dido a contemporary of Aeneas, with whom she fell in love after his landing in Africa, and attributes her suicide to her abandonment by him at the command of Jupiter (_Aeneid_, iv.). Dido was worshipped at Carthage as a divinity under the name of Caelestis, the Roman counterpart of Tanit, the tutelary goddess of Carthage. According to Timaeus, the oldest authority for the story, her name was Theiosso, in Phoenician Helissa, and she was called Dido from her wanderings, Dido being the Phoenician equivalent of [Greek: planêtis] (_Etymologicum Magnum_, s.v.); some modern scholars, however, translate the name by "beloved." Timaeus makes no mention of Aeneas, who seems to have been introduced by Naevius in his _Bellum Poenicum_, followed by Ennius in his _Annales_. Entry: DIDO
In 1864 he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and exhibited, among other works, "The Merciful Knight," the first picture which fully revealed his ripened personality as an artist. The next six years saw a series of fine water-colours at the same gallery; but in 1870, owing to a misunderstanding, Burne-Jones resigned his membership of the society. He was re-elected in 1886. During the next seven years, 1870-1877, only two works of the painter's were exhibited. These were two water-colours, shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1873, one of them being the beautiful "Love among the Ruins," destroyed twenty years later by a cleaner who supposed it to be an oil painting, but afterwards reproduced in oils by the painter. This silent period was, however, one of unremitting production. Hitherto Burne-Jones had worked almost entirely in water-colours. He now began a number of large pictures in oils, working at them in turn, and having always several on hand. The "Briar Rose" series, "Laus Veneris," the "Golden Stairs," the "Pygmalion" series, and "The Mirror of Venus" are among the works planned and completed, or carried far towards completion, during these years. At last, in May 1877, the day of recognition came, with the opening of the first exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, when the "Days of Creation," the "Beguiling of Merlin," and the "Mirror of Venus" were all shown. Burne-Jones followed up the signal success of these pictures with "Laus Veneris," the "Chant d'Amour," "Pan and Psyche," and other works, exhibited in 1878. Most of these pictures are painted in gay and brilliant colours. A change is noticeable next year, 1879, in the "Annunciation" and in the four pictures called "Pygmalion and the Image"; the former of these, one of the simplest and most perfect of the artist's works, is subdued and sober; in the latter a scheme of soft and delicate tints was attempted, not with entire success. A similar temperance of colours marks the "Golden Stairs," first exhibited in 1880. In 1884, following the almost sombre "Wheel of Fortune" of the preceding year, appeared "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," in which Burne-Jones once more indulged his love of gorgeous colour, refined by the period of self-restraint. This masterpiece is now in the National collection. He next turned to two important sets of pictures, "The Briar Rose" and "The Story of Perseus," though these were not completed for some years to come. In 1886, having been elected A.R.A. the previous year, he exhibited (for the only time) at the Royal Academy "The Depths of the Sea," a mermaid carrying down with her a youth whom she has unconsciously drowned in the impetuosity of her love. This picture adds to the habitual haunting charm a tragic irony of conception and a felicity of execution which give it a place apart among Burne-Jones's works. He resigned his Associateship in 1893. One of the "Perseus" series was exhibited in 1887, two more in 1888, with "The Brazen Tower," inspired by the same legend. In 1890 the four pictures of "The Briar Rose" were exhibited by themselves, and won the widest admiration. The huge tempera picture, "The Star of Bethlehem," painted for the corporation of Birmingham, was exhibited in 1891. A long illness for some time checked the painter's activity, which, when resumed, was much occupied with decorative schemes. An exhibition of his work was held at the New Gallery in the winter of 1892-1893. To this period belong several of his comparatively few portraits. In 1894 Burne-Jones was made a baronet. Ill-health again interrupted the progress of his works, chief among which was the vast "Arthur in Avalon." In 1898 he had an attack of influenza, and had apparently recovered, when he was again taken suddenly ill, and died on the 17th of June. In the following winter a second exhibition of his works was held at the New Gallery, and an exhibition of his drawings (including some of the charmingly humorous sketches made for children) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Entry: BURNE
(1) _Foundation to 550 B.C._--From an extremely remote period Phoenician sailors had visited the African coast and had had commercial relations with the Libyan tribes who inhabited the district which forms the modern Tunis. In the 16th century B.C. the Sidonians already had trading stations on the coast; with the object of competing with the Tyrian colony at Utica they established a trading station called Cambe or Caccabe on the very site afterwards occupied by Carthage. Near Borj-Jedid unmistakable traces of this early settlement have been found, though nothing is known of its history. According to the classical tradition Carthage was founded about 850 B.C. by Tyrian emigrants led by Elissa or Elissar, the daughter of the Tyrian king Mutton I., fleeing from the tyranny of her brother Pygmalion. According to the story, Elissa subsequently received the name of Dido, i.e. "the fugitive." Cambe welcomed the new arrivals, who bought from the mixed Libyo-Phoenician peoples of the neighbourhood, tributaries of the Libyan king Japon, a piece of land on which to build a "new city," _Kart-hadshat_, the Greek and Roman forms of the name. The story goes that Dido, having obtained "as much land as could be contained by the skin of an ox," proceeded to cut the skin of a slain ox into strips narrow enough to extend round the whole of the hill, which afterwards from this episode gained the name of _Byrsa_. This last detail obviously arose from a mere play on words by which [Greek: Bursa] "hide," "skin," is confused with the Phoenician _bosra, borsa_, "citadel," "fortress." In memory of its Tyrian origin, Carthage paid an annual tribute to the temple of Melkarth at Tyr, and under the Roman empire coins were struck showing Dido fleeing in a galley, or presiding over the building of Byrsa. On the Vatican _Virgil_ there is a representation in miniature of workmen shaping marble blocks and columns for Dido's palace. Entry: 1
GIRODET DE ROUSSY, ANNE LOUIS (1767-1824), French painter, better known as Girodet-Trioson, was born at Montargis on the 5th of January 1767. He lost his parents in early youth, and the care of his fortune and education fell to the lot of his guardian, M. Trioson, "médecin de mesdames," by whom he was in later life adopted. After some preliminary studies under a painter named Luquin, Girodet entered the school of David, and at the age of twenty-two he successfully competed for the Prix de Rome. At Rome he executed his "Hippocrate refusant les présents d'Artaxerxès" and "Endymion dormant" (Louvre), a work which was hailed with acclamation at the Salon of 1792. The peculiarities which mark Girodet's position as the herald of the romantic movement are already evident in his "Endymion." The firm-set forms, the grey cold colour, the hardness of the execution are proper to one trained in the school of David, but these characteristics harmonize ill with the literary, sentimental and picturesque suggestions which the painter has sought to render. The same incongruity marks Girodet's "Danaë" and his "Quatre Saisons," executed for the king of Spain (repeated for Compiègne), and shows itself to a ludicrous extent in his "Fingal" (St Petersburg, Leuchtenberg collection), executed for Napoleon I. in 1802. This work unites the defects of the classic and romantic schools, for Girodet's imagination ardently and exclusively pursued the ideas excited by varied reading both of classic and of modern literature, and the impressions which he received from the external world afforded him little stimulus or check; he consequently retained the mannerisms of his master's practice whilst rejecting all restraint on choice of subject. The credit lost by "Fingal" Girodet regained in 1806, when he exhibited "Scène de Déluge" (Louvre), to which (in competition with the "Sabines" of David) was awarded the decennial prize. This success was followed up in 1808 by the production of the "Reddition de Vienne" and "Atala au Tombeau"--a work which went far to deserve its immense popularity, by a happy choice of subject, and remarkable freedom from the theatricality of Girodet's usual manner, which, however, soon came to the front again in his "Révolte de Caire" (1810). His powers now began to fail, and his habit of working at night and other excesses told upon his constitution; in the Salon of 1812 he exhibited only a "Tête de Vierge"; in 1819 "Pygmalion et Galatée" showed a still further decline of strength; and in 1824--the year in which he produced his portraits of Cathelineau and Bonchamps--Girodet died on the 9th of December. Entry: GIRODET
As an essayist Hazlitt is even more effective than as a critic. Being enabled to select his own subjects, he escapes dependence upon others either for his matter or his illustrations, and presents himself by turns as a metaphysician, a moralist, a humorist, a painter of manners and characteristics, but always, whatever his ostensible theme, deriving the essence of his commentary from himself. This combination of intense subjectivity with strict adherence to his subject is one of Hazlitt's most distinctive and creditable traits. Intellectual truthfulness is a passion with him. He steeps his topic in the hues of his own individuality, but never uses it as a means of self-display. The first reception of his admirable essays was by no means in accordance with their deserts. Hazlitt's political sympathies and antipathies were vehement, and he had taken the unfashionable side. _The Quarterly Review_ attacked him with deliberate malignity, stopped the sale of his writings for a time and blighted his credit with publishers. Hazlitt retaliated by his _Letter to William Gifford_ (1819), accusing the editor of deliberate misrepresentation. In downright abuse and hard-hitting, Hazlitt proved himself more than a match even for Gifford. By the writers in _Blackwood's Magazine_ Hazlitt was also scurrilously treated.[1] He had become estranged from his early friends, the Lake poets, by what he uncharitably but not unnaturally regarded as their political apostasy; and he had no scruples about recording his often very unfavourable opinions of his contemporaries. He displayed, moreover, an exasperating facility in grounding his criticisms on facts that his victims were unable to deny. His inequalities of temper separated him for a time even from Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb, and on the whole the period of his most brilliant literary success was that when he was most soured and broken. Domestic troubles supervened; he had gone to live in Southampton Buildings in September 1819, and his marriage, long little more than nominal, was dissolved in consequence of the infatuated passion he had conceived for his landlord's daughter, Sarah Walker, a most ordinary person in the eyes of every one else. It is impossible to regard Hazlitt as a responsible agent while he continued subject to this influence. His own record of the transaction, published by himself under the title of _Liber Amoris, or the New Pygmalion_ (1823), is an unpleasant but remarkable psychological document. It consists of conversations between Hazlitt and Sarah Walker, drawn up in the spring of 1822, of a correspondence between Hazlitt and his friend P. G. Patmore between March and July, and an account of the rupture of his relations with Sarah. The business-like dissolution of his marriage under the law of Scotland is related with amazing naïveté by the family biographer. Rid of his wife and cured of his mistress, he shortly afterwards astonished his friends by marrying a widow. "All I know," says his grandson, "is that Mrs Bridgewater became Mrs Hazlitt." They travelled on the continent for a year and then parted finally. Hazlitt's study of the Italian masters during this tour, described in a series of letters contributed to the _Morning Chronicle_, had a deep effect upon him, and perhaps conduced to that intimacy with the cynical old painter Northcote which, shortly after his return, engendered a curious but eminently readable volume of _The Conversations of James Northcote, R.A._ (1830). The respective shares of author and artist are not always easy to determine. During the recent agitations of his life he had been writing essays, collected in 1826 under the title of _The Plain Speaker: opinions on Books, Men and Things_ (1826). _The Spirit of the Age; or Contemporary Portraits_ (1825), a series of criticisms on the leading intellectual characters of the day, is in point of style perhaps the most splendid and copious of his compositions. It is eager and animated to impetuosity, though without any trace of carelessness or disorder. He now undertook a work which was to have crowned his literary reputation, but which can hardly be said to have even enhanced it--_The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_ (4 vols., 1828-1830). The undertaking was at best premature, and was inevitably disfigured by partiality to Napoleon as the representative of the popular cause, excusable in a Liberal politician writing in the days of the Holy Alliance. Owing to the failure of his publishers Hazlitt received no recompense for this laborious work. Pecuniary anxieties and disappointments may have contributed to hasten his death, which took place on the 18th of September 1830. Charles Lamb was with him to the last. Entry: HAZLITT