ADDRESSES ON DECORATIVE COLOUR 505

over a dying soldier’s eyes, as he faints with his wound, and death comes to him as “purple death.” The words are weak as given by Pope:-

“Down sinks the priest, the purple hand of death

Closed his dim eyes, and fate suppressed his breath.”

But there were other passages where this purple was referred to, which proved that it could have had nothing of the scarlet about it-as in a description of the sea. When dark brown clouds pass over the blue Mediterranean, they give a dark, leaden-like purple to the waters as they lie motionless. Homer thus describes the sea when in this state:-

“As when old Ocean’s silent surface sleeps,

The waves just heaving on the purple deeps,

While yet the expected tempest hangs on high,

Weighs down the clouds, and blackens all the sky.”

There could be no question but that the purple here referred to was a dark leaden colour. The same epithet of “purple” has been applied by Homer to the face of oxen, and they certainly had not scarlet faces; but they had a peculiar russet passing into blue, which could frequently be seen in their dark foreheads. When Achilles went to the sea to seek his mother Thetis, Homer says that the sea appeared to him of this dark strange bloody purple. The ideal of blood among the Greeks was that of a dark, rich colour. Homer said of Menelaus, when wounded by Pandarus, that his blood distilled down his thigh, as when a Tyrian girl stained the ivory. Reverting to the strange manner in which in nature the purple gradated into scarlet, without touching the crimson, Mr. Ruskin urged upon the student of illumination the propriety of not using the sacred colour, crimson, the symbol of life, without extreme caution.

39. Passing from that colour itself, the lecturer next called attention to the necessity of a careful study of the abstract lines which were to inclose it, instancing the noble and graceful curves which were to be met with in many of the illuminated letters of the thirteenth century. As instances of such, he exhibited an enlarged drawing of a small letter from one of the missals, the curves in which were of the most graceful character, and could only be drawn by the most skilful hand. Having pointed out the grace and beauty of the original, Mr. Ruskin produced, amid the laughter of his audience, the same graceful design vulgarised by the use of combined mathematical curves, and showed, by adding a few strokes, that this vulgarisation was, in fact, the form of an Ionic capital. Mr. Ruskin intimated that he had placed in the adjoining room, under the care of Mr. Allen,¹ to whom he confessed himself deeply indebted for the very valuable assistance he had rendered him, several examples of this class of curves, taken from MSS., which they might glance at now and then; and expressed his readiness to attend at the Museum upon stated days, to look over any examples which might be brought to him, in order as far as he was able to help the student forward in his work.

40. It was grievous to think how large an amount of power was lying

¹ [Not Mr. George Allen, but a Mr. Allen then employed at the Museum.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]