Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/36

Method and Plan pursued in this History. 15 dwellings at Hissarlik and Tiryns, must have greatly resembled those which modern travellers found settled in the islands of the Pacific ; the implements of both are nearly identical, and answer to a very similar social grade. At first sight it is hard to admit the possibility that the wild tribes of the iEgean had aught in common with the builders of the Parthenon ; but we must needs surrender to evidence. Barely forty years ago the history of the Hellenic race was wont to open with the unexplained marvel of the Homeric poems ; revelations and recent archaeological surprises have lengthened the background of that history by many hundred years, whose tale is not yet complete, but in whose vague and dim light we descry intermediary stages of activity, awakenings after seasons of rest more or less prolonged ; briefly, the whole series of advances parting primary barbarism from relative civilization, such as they are shadowed forth in the Iliad and Odyssey. Once this conviction is borne home to the historian, he feels it to be his duty to make out a list of such monuments as are specially distinctive of each of these onward stages ; but he is open to the following danger. If from over-conscientiousness he loiters among shapeless sketches, he exposes himself to the risk of wearying the reader. This is by no means the least difficulty of our self-imposed task. We must at one and the same time forget nothing important or characteristic, yet avoid long descrip- tions, and multiplicity of typical images, whose specimens are repeated with wearisome monotony, distinguished as they are by differences so slight as to be almost imperceptible. Our aim is to observe a ** golden mean." We would request those who have been good enough to follow us in our long journey, that they do not permit themselves to lose courage just as they near the end. We are quite as impatient as they may be to reach at last those monuments that were the outcome of a full-grown art, glorified by the divine light of beauty. But we beg them to remember this one fact : the untutored hand whose tentative efforts are about to pass under their eyes, is a Greek artificer's hand, the direct ancestor of those pre-eminent artists whom they admire. The whole question resolves itself into this : is their love for Greece great enough and deep enough to stand the test of accepting with reverence all that comes from her hand, finding nothing amiss as they listen, bent over her cradle, to the first babble of her genius.*^