. Earthwork out of Tuscany. , as the case may be, withall that that implies—colour, value, propor-tion, all the convincing incidents of form—is simply the mode of all arts, the thingwith which Arts substance must be inter-penetrated, until the two form a whole,lovely, golden, irresistible, and inevitable asNatures pieces are. This substance, 1 havesaid, is the spirit of natural fact. And somythology is Art at its simplest and barest(where the bodily medium is neither word,nor texture of stone, nor dye), the parentart from which all the others were, so tospeak, begotten by mans need. Thusmuch o
. Earthwork out of Tuscany. , as the case may be, withall that that implies—colour, value, propor-tion, all the convincing incidents of form—is simply the mode of all arts, the thingwith which Arts substance must be inter-penetrated, until the two form a whole,lovely, golden, irresistible, and inevitable asNatures pieces are. This substance, 1 havesaid, is the spirit of natural fact. And somythology is Art at its simplest and barest(where the bodily medium is neither word,nor texture of stone, nor dye), the parentart from which all the others were, so tospeak, begotten by mans need. Thusmuch of explanation, I am sorry to say, isnecessary, before we turn to our mytho-poet of Florence, to see what he made outof the story of Judith. First of all, though, what has the storyof Judith to do with mythology ? It is alegend, one of the finest of Semitic legends;and between legend and myth there is asgreat a gulf as between Jew and Greek. 1believe there are no myths proper to Israel—1 do not see how such magnificent. THE PERSEUS OF THE LOGGIA THE SOUL OF A FACT egoists could contract to the necessary stateof awe—and I do not know that there are anylegends proper to Greece which are divorcedfrom real myths. For where a myth is theincarnation of the spirit of natural fact, alegend is the embellishment of an historicalevent : a very different thing. A naturalfact is permanent and elemental, an histor-ical event is transient and superficial. Takeone instance out of a score. The rainbowlinks heaven and earth. Iris then, to themyth-making Greek, was Joves messenger,intermediary between God and Man. Thatis to incarnate a constant, natural afterwards, making her daughter ofThaumas, incarnated a fact, psychological,but none the less constant, none the lessnatural. But to say, as the legend-lovingJew said, that Noah floated his ark over adrowning world and secured for his poster-ity a standing covenant with God, whothen and once for all set his bow in theheavens ; th
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