342 ST. MARK’S REST

But the quaintest thing of all is St. George’s own attitude in baptizing. He has taken a good platterful of water to pour on the Sultan’s head. The font of inlaid bronze below is quite flat, and the splash is likely to be spreading. St. George-carefullest of saints, it seems, in the smallest matters-is holding his mantle back well out of the way. I suppose, really and truly, the instinctive action would have been this, pouring at the same time so that the splash might be towards himself, and not over the Sultan.

With its head close to St. George’s foot, you see a sharp-eared white dog, with a red collar round his neck. Not a greyhound, by any means; but an awkward animal; stupid-looking, and not much like a saint’s dog. Nor is it in the least interested in the baptism, which a saint’s dog would certainly have been.¹ The mumbling parrot, and he-what can they have to do with the proceedings? A very comic picture!

171. But this next,-for a piece of sacred art, what can we say of it?²

St. Tryphonius and the Basilisk-was ever so simple a saint, ever so absurd a beast? as if the absurdity of all heraldic beasts that ever were, had been hatched into one perfect absurdity-prancing there on the steps of the throne, self-satisfied;-this the beast whose glance is mortal! And little St. Tryphonius, with nothing remarkable about him more than is in every good little boy, for all I can see.

And the worst of it is that I don’t happen to know anything about St. Tryphonius, whom I mix up a little with Trophonius,³ and his cave; also I am not very clear about the difference between basilisks and cockatrices; and on the whole find myself reduced, in this picture, to admiring the carpets with the crosses on them hung out of the

¹ [The Arundel Society’s notice, issued with a chromo-lithograph of this picture, says: “A kneeling attendant bears the royal turban, keeping his foot on the leash of a hound, which belongs, by the way, to the King, and not to the Saint.”]

² [The lower subject on Plate LXI.]

³ [Of St. Tryphonius, martyred in A.D. 250, the legend is that by his fervent prayers he obtained grace to calm the fury of a basilisk which was devastating Albania. For Trophonius, the architect of Apollo’s temple at Delphi, who was swallowed up alive in the earth, and gave oracles in a cave, see Pausanias, ix. 37.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]