" That it has
given a new sense, that it has laid open a new organ, is the highest that
can be said of any critical effort. It is interesting then to ask what
kind of man it was who thus laid open a new organ. Under what conditions
was that effected?
Johann Joachim Winckelmann was born at Stendal, in Brandenburg, in the
year 1717. The child of a poor tradesman, he passed through many
struggles in early youth, the memory of which ever remained in him as a
fitful cause of dejection. In 1763, in the full emancipation of his
spirit, looking over the beautiful Roman prospect, he writes--"One gets
spoiled here; but God owed me this; in my youth I suffered too much."
Destined to assert and interpret the charm of the Hellenic spirit, he
served first a painful apprenticeship in the tarnished intellectual world
of Germany in the earlier half of the eighteenth century. Passing out of
that into the happy light of the antique, he had a sense of exhilaration
almost physical. We find him as a child in the dusky precincts of a
German school, hungrily feeding on a few colourless books.
Pages:
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240