ADDRESSES ON DECORATIVE COLOUR 507

character of all in colour-the works of Salvator Rosa, which were nothing more than mere drabs and browns.

42. The second highly important consideration in connection with this art, was that to which he had alluded on a previous occasion¹-viz., the vast powers of grotesque which it afforded. This power of the grotesque was one which ought not to be overlooked by people of this country, for most undoubtedly the faculty belonged peculiarly to the northern nations. Carlyle, to whom he (the lecturer) owed more than to any other living writer,² in his Hero Worship thus referred to the exercise of this power. “It is strange,” said he, “after our beautiful Apollo statues, and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse gods ‘brewing ale,’ to hold their feast with Ægir, the Sea-Jötun, sending out Thor to get the cauldron for them in the Jotun country; Thor, after many adventures, clapping the pot on his head like a huge hat, and walking off with it,-quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels! A kind of vacant hugeness, large, awkward gianthood, characterises that Norse system; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless with large uncertain strides. Consider only their primary mythus of the creation! The gods, having got their giant Ymer slain,-a giant made by ‘warm wind,’ and much confused work, out of the conflict of Frost and Fire-determined on constructing a world with him. His blood made the Sea, his flesh was the Land, the Rocks his bones“-good geology that!-”of his eyebrows they formed Asgard, their God’s dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of Immensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds. What a hyper-Brobdignagian business! Untamed thought, great, giant-like, enormous, to be turned in due time into the compact greatness, not giant-like, but god-like, and stronger than gianthood, of the Shakespeares, the Goethes! Spiritually, as well as bodily, these men are our progenitors.”³

43. The works of Albert Dürer, and the great German artist, to whom allusion had been made in the previous lectures,⁴ were also full of this power of the grotesque. The plates of “Death the Avenger,” and “Death the Friend,” were the most remarkable modern instances of the grotesque in its peculiar moral power he knew. In the one Death appears suddenly as a masquer [among the gay throng] in a masked ball at Paris; and, although the subject was similar to that which had been previously treated by Dr. Young, he did not think that the German artist was indebted to Dr. Young for the idea. Dr. Young was remarkable for this power.

“ ’Twas in a circle of the gay I stood.

Death would have enter’d; nature pushed him back.”

Now mark the grotesque,-

“Supported by a doctor of renown,

His point he gain’d. Then artfully dismissed

¹ [See above, § 23, p. 495.]

² [This was Ruskin’s first public admission of Carlyle as his “master.” In the third volume of Modern Painters, written a few months later, Ruskin names Carlyle as the author to whom he is most of all indebted, and speaks of “Carlyle’s stronger thinking colouring mine continually” (Appendix iii.). For the numerous later references, see General Index.]

³ [Carlyle’s Hero-Worship, in the lecture on “The Hero as Divinity.”]

⁴ [Rethel: see above, p. 489. n.]

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