--_The Truth of Masks_.
THE ART OF ARCHAEOLOGY
Indeed archaeology is only really delightful when transfused into some
form of art. I have no desire to underrate the services of laborious
scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lempriere's Dictionary is
of far more value to us than Professor Max Muller's treatment of the same
mythology as a disease of language. Better _Endymion_ than any theory,
however sound, or, as in the present instance, unsound, of an epidemic
among adjectives! And who does not feel that the chief glory of
Piranesi's book on Vases is that it gave Keats the suggestion for his
'Ode on a Grecian Urn'? Art, and art only, can make archaeology
beautiful; and the theatric art can use it most directly and most
vividly, for it can combine in one exquisite presentation the illusion of
actual life with the wonder of the unreal world. But the sixteenth
century was not merely the age of Vitruvius; it was the age of Vecellio
also. Every nation seems suddenly to have become interested in the dress
of its neighbours.
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