the enthusiasm nor the penetration of Winckelmann, nor the philosophical nor critical power of Lessing, but he surpassed them both in accuracy and method. Johann Friedrich Christ, the professor of history and poetry at Leipsic after 1754, urged his students not to confine their attention merely to the ancient languages, but to include ancient art, and consequently he may be regarded as the immediate forerunner of Winckelmann in archeology, as Gesner was of Wolf in philology. It is significant of the condition of classical study in Germany in Winckelmann's day that its leading exponents-with the exception of Reiske-were such men as the uncritical Latinists Gesner, Ernesti and Heyne. Many greater German philologists, like Ruhnken and Wyttenbach, had sought the more congenial atmosphere of the Netherlands for their life-work, while others, like Reiske, had been compelled to go there for instruction. Joseph Scaliger, on leaving France at the end of the sixteenth century, had called Holland "the only corner of Europe"; classical scholarship there, which had extended from Erasmus to Grotius, was again flourishing in Winckelmann's time under the influence of the great Hellenist Hemsterhuis, who had founded the only real school of Greek learning which had existed in Europe since the days of Scaliger and Casaubon.

In the last half of the eighteenth century these prejudices in favor of Latin studies over Greek were destined to be overthrown largely by the work of one man-Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Through his influence the older custom of looking upon the relics of antiquity on Italian soil as those exclusively of Roman civilization had to yield to the true origin of these things in Greece. In his first book, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, which appeared in 1755 just as

2 The German title of this work is: Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerey und Bildhauerkunst. 2d ed., 1756.

he was leaving Dresden for Rome, Winckelmann for the first time clearly disclosed the distinction between a Greek original of sculpture and painting and a Roman copy. In the next thirteen years down to his death his researches were destined to revolutionize the esthetic taste of Europe. His notion that there was an independent Greek art, from which Roman art was derived, was, strange as it may seem to us, a revelation to his contemporaries, who had uncritically accepted the interpretations of art works which had been based on the early enthusiasm for Roman history and literature. He showed that the realistic Italian sculpture of the day, which was more interested in anatomical accuracy than in the expression of the beautiful, copied merely the decadent phase of Greek art and that all such dramatic effects were directly opposed to the simplicity and repose of even Roman imitations of Greek works. With the disclosure that Roman art was derivative there was involved a new conception of the general origin of everything else in Roman civilization; for if Roman sculpture, painting and architecture were Greek, it followed that Roman literature and culture in general largely depended upon Greek. The change in viewpoint was to be fundamental and permanent; an entirely new inspiration was to come to Europe—an inspiration only comparable with that of the Renaissance itself. The taste of the succeeding period became Hellenic rather than Roman. Everything Greek-art, literature, history-began to be studied. The resulting intensity and expansion of interest in things Greek we now call the Greek Revival, whose waning we are unfortunately fated to see in our own time. This revival, beginning even in the lifetime of Winckelmann, came to full fruition after his death in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and was destined to become the most prominent spiritual feature of later European history. Lessing, by the publication of his famous essay

Laocoon in 1766-a work chiefly inspired by Winckelmann's ideas and studies-helped the nascent movement by critically establishing the superiority of Homer and thereby lowering the prevailing literary taste inaugurated by the French critics. Goethe's transcendent genius raised it into the higher realm of poetry. But the foundation of it all is to be sought in Winckelmann. He can rightly be called not only the founder of a science-for the principles which he laid down for antiquarian investigation have been followed since with ever increasing results-but also the greatest connoisseur and teacher of the Beautiful. His influence was be no means confined to the world of scholarship. The manifestations of the revival were manifold and far-reaching. The new inspiration entered not only into the more spiritual structure of culture-into the fine arts-but also into politics and every-day life. Here I can only most briefly and generally indicate a few of the more prominent manifestations which resulted from the stimulus of his work.

I have already spoken of the immediate effect of Winckelmann's influence on Lessing and Goethe. It was no less marked on all the Augustan writers of Germany, who owed their greatness to Winckelmann's disclosure of the Greek spirit. The new humanism soon, however, passed the boundaries of Germany and influenced all European letters. Travel to Greek lands began and a long line of English, German, French, Italian, Dutch and Scandinavian scholars studied the monuments on their native soil and wrote glowing accounts of their experiences, which immeasurably enlarged the horizon of scholarship. The new impulse was phenomenal in its influence on architecture, sculpture and painting. The simplicity of form of Greek porticoes and temples caused them everywhere to be copied; the theatrical and sentimental in sculpture yielded to Greek canons of restraint and dignity; Greek simpicity was taken

over into painting. In architecture Schinkel von Klenze and Semper appeared in Germany; Vignon, Hittorff and Chalgrin in France; Soane, Inwood and Wilkins in England, and the architects of many famous Greek buildings in the older cities of the United States. In sculpture the Italian Canova and the Danish Thorwaldsen were followed by the German Dannecker and the English Gibson; in painting the French David, the contemporary of the Revolution and Napoleon, was the best exponent of the new style. Though in all forms of art the imitation of Greek subjects and forms proved ephemeral, the standards of taste taken from Greek art will always remain authoritative. Only after the first quarter of the nineteenth century did the imitation of Greek forms in all the branches of art yield to more independent styles, like the great Gothic revival in architecture, which reached its zenith about 1850, when practically every church built in Europe and America was Gothic. In music the subjects of the operas of Gluck reflected the new spirit. Even in dress and furniture the same spirit was revealed: the short-waisted dress of the Revolutionary period, known as the Directoire in Europe and that of Martha Washington in our country, was merely an effort to recover Greek simplicity: furniture, even clocks, imitated Greek designs. In politics it is hard to overestimate the effect of the revival. The Revolutions in both America and France were certainly largely influenced by the account of republican institutions in Plutarch's Lives, the most popular book of the day, while the Greek War of Independence in the last century was due in great part to the sympathy of European scholars and statesmen and men like Byron, who were directly influenced by the sentiments awakened by the second Renaissance of Greek studies.

To have furnished the inspiration and the stimulus for such a change in the spiritual history of the world is indeed

an achievement of the highest order. As Walter Pater3 has said, the highest that can be said of any critical effort is that "it has given a new sense, that it has laid open. a new organ"; and this honor he pays to Winckelmann. Hegel, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Art, has also paid a tribute to the humble German scholar in these words: "Winckelmann, by his contemplation of the ideal works of the ancients received a sort of inspiration, through which he opened a new sense for the study of art. He is to be regarded as one of those who, in the sphere of art, have known how to initiate a new organ for the human spirit." Winckelmann was a man to whom art was both religion and fatherland; when he wrote he thought not of Germany alone nor of his own time, but of all Europe and posterity. When one reflects on what he accomplished and the honor which he brought to his native land, one should not be surprised that his memory has been so highly esteemed in the past by his countrymen as to have amounted almost to Winckelmannolatry, a sort of cult in which he was regarded as a spiritual superman, the patron saint of archeology and art criticism. A more reasonable appreciation of his merits is the custom now long obtaining in Rome and in many of the universities of Germany of repeatedly commemorating his natal day-December ninth-by the publication of contributions to the science which he founded.

It is interesting to know something of the personality and life story of the man who wrought so great a change in men's outlook. Voltaire would hear nothing of the biographies of great writers, for he maintained that the life of a quiet scholar lay open in his works. This is largely true of the authors of scientific works, where facts and methods are the paramount interest and the personality of the writers is secondary. But it is certainly not true

See his essay on "Winckelmann," in his Studies in the Art and Poetry of the Renaissance, 1873. I have followed his translation of the passage from Hegel.