CHAPTER III.OF THE GREEK NOSE.

Class II.—The Greek, or straight Nose, is perfectly straight; any deviation from a right line must be strictly noticed. If the deviation tend to convexity, it approaches the Roman, and the character is improved by an accession of energy; on the other hand, when the deviation is towards concavity, it partakes of the Celestial, and the character is weakened. It should be fine, and well chiselled, but not sharp.

It indicates Refinement of character; love for the Fine Arts, andBelles-Lettres; astuteness, craft, and a preference for indirect rather than direct action. Its owner is not without some energy in pursuit of that which is agreeable to his tastes; but, unlike the owner of the Roman Nose, he cannot exert himself inoppositionto his tastes. When associated with the Roman Nose, and distended slightly at the end by the Cogitative, it indicates the most useful and intellectual of characters, and is the highest and most beautiful form which the organ can assume.

This Nose, like the Roman, takes its name from the people of whom it was most characteristic—physicallyand mentally. On these two parallel facts (with others of a like kind) much stress maybe justly laid, although they are old and trite. But this very triteness is the proof of their truth. It proves that the hypothesis which attributes certain mental characteristics, well known to belong to the Romans, to the Roman Nose,—and so of the Greeks to the Greek Nose, and of the Jews to the Jewish Nose,—is founded in nature; and, so far from being a fanciful invention, is a fact long recognized, and as old as the creation of the human proboscis.

Requesting the reader to bear in mind the form of the Greek Nose and its indications, we would remark how exactly the latter correspond with the character of the ancient Greeks as a nation. It is unnecessary to expatiate on their high excellence in art, their lofty philosophy, their acute reasoning, or their poetical inspiration—these are known to every school-boy. Their craftiness, their political falsehood, and shrewd deceitfulness, were celebrated in ancient days as now, and “Græcia mendax,” “Danaûm insidiæ,” were epithets as true and as commonly applied in the time of Augustus, as at the present hour by modern travellers. “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!” exclaims the cautious Priest of Troy, referring to the well-known character of the treacherous enemy. And what a contrast to anything recorded in Roman warfare does the Trojan War itself exhibit! The Romans would have battered down the walls with their furious engines; the wily Greeks invent a stratagem by which the enemy pull down their own walls. If we may credit Homer—and, if not for the facts, we may for his fine portraitures of Grecian character—there was a vast deal more talking than fighting during the ten years’ siege. There was plenty of themorale, but very little of thephysique, as a Frenchman would say. In truth, the contrast between the Romans and the Greeks was as great in the latter as in the former.

The Greeks were no nation of hardy warriors, thoughthey were always quarrelling among themselves in petty battles which have won an undeserved celebrity by the talents of their historians. Were it not for the writings of Thucydides, the Peloponnesian War would rank no higher than the border skirmishes of the Scots and Northumbrians, or the expeditions of the Sioux and Pawnees. A simple geographical fact is sufficient to prove this against all the moral power of the most glowing and eloquent historian. Greece is about one-fourth less than Scotland, and its recorded population was about the same. Is it possible that, in such a corner, a war of seven-and-twenty years’ duration could have been more than a series of skirmishes and predatory expeditions? More than that must, in a much briefer space, have annihilated the whole population. More than that, and at the end of twenty-seven years the States of Greece must have been in the condition of the celebrated Kilkenny cats, which fought till only the tip of the tail of one of them was left. The battles of Marathon, Thermopylæ, &c., against foreign foes, rank higher, because they were fought and won under a high intellectual inspiration, entirely consistent with Class II.—the love of country. But with these battles the war ended; the Greeks did not, as the Romans would have done, follow up the defeat of the enemy with a counter-incursion into his country and an attempt at foreign conquest. He was driven from their territory; their hearths were secure; their gods replaced on their pedestals; their temples re-purified, and that satisfiedtheirambition. The Greeks made no foreign conquests; boasted no extended empire. The wars of Alexander seem the only exception; but of that Monarch himself we have already treated, and of his battles it may be said, that they were not fought by Peloponnesian Greeks (of whom we are now speaking) but by Macedonians and Asiatic mercenaries; who were, in all probability—though it would demand a volume on ethnography to prove it—a wholly different race.

But, if we were only prepared to substantiate our hypothesis by these general facts of national characteristics, it would be very unsatisfactory; as it is obvious that nothingcould be easier than to manufacture and support a theory by moulding it to a single general fact. It is by the multiplicity of isolatedindividualcases that the hypothesis must stand or fall. And we are happily in a position again to adduce these in its favour.

The following persons will, on an examination of their portraits, be found to have possessed Greek Noses:—

Petrarch.Milton (in youth).Spenser.Boccacio.Canova.Raffaelle.Claude.Rubens.Murillo.Titian.Addison.Voltaire.Byron.Shelley.

Petrarch.

Milton (in youth).

Spenser.

Boccacio.

Canova.

Raffaelle.

Claude.

Rubens.

Murillo.

Titian.

Addison.

Voltaire.

Byron.

Shelley.

RAFFAELLE.

It will be perceived that this list (which, like all the others, might be very much extended) contains the names of poets and artists of the highestbeautyand elegance,though not of the most intense and deepestthought. Beauty is their highest excellence, their chief praise. Exquisite melody, ætherial fancies, felicitous expression, a fine perception of the Beautiful, as distinguished from the Sublime, whether on paper or canvass, (for it is only the difference in themécanique, or vehicle of expression, which constitutes the difference between the Artist and the Poet), are their best attributes. Addison and Voltaire are the only two of the above instances who never excelled in Poetry or Art, though both assiduously courted the former Muse. Nevertheless Addison is an illustrious instance in our behalf. Is not thebeauty, the correctness, the euphony of his style still an object of emulation? Has it not for above a century been the model of good writing? And yet it is too true that nothing equally permanent can be found, which is at the same time so weak and tame in thought, so shallow in reasoning, or so lax in argument. In fact, it owes all its permanency to its euphony, its musical harmony and exactness of expression.

ADDISON.

The absence of a noticeable development of the Cogitative (Class III.) accounts for the deficiency of higher qualities in these disciples of the Beautiful. For this reason the Greek nose is more interesting in its compound form, Sub-classIIIIIthe “Greco-Cogitative,” than in its simple form.

Of the above instances, Voltaire is the most decidedly deficient in the Cogitative, which is always essential to indicate a capacity for the deep, close and serious thought requisite to constitute a truly great and philosophic mind. The angle at which his nose stood from his face was quite 45°, and therefore much too great to exhibit faithfully the higher characteristics of the Greek. It was, moreover, exceedingly deficient in the broadening property of Class III; and we presume that no one will assert that Voltaire possessed “a truly great and philosophic mind.” Surely no man, who ever wrote so much, and on such varied subjects, ever devoted less time to close intense thought. He did not even stop to examine his facts; but, having a brilliant wit and “the pen of a ready writer,” he rapidly evolved some fanciful theory, or started some fallacious argument from such unauthenticated data as he happened to be possessed of. All this was indicated by his sharp Greek Nose; for it was acuteness, not depth; readiness, not thought; careless, unprincipled wit, not study; attractive style, not sound matter, which earned him his short-lived fame. Hence, Voltaire, though striving all his life to gain the title of philosopher, never succeeded even in the most unphilosophic age and country since the revival of learning, and is now, we believe, wholly excluded from the dignity. It has been truly and wittily said of Voltaire, that “hehalfknew everything, ‘from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,’ and he wrote of them all, and laughed at them all.”

It will be noticed that the foregoing list contains the name of “Milton,in youth.” It is inserted thus, because his portrait, takenætat.XXIII, shows that his Nose was not then developed into the Cogitative form which it assumed in later years, when troublous times and anxious cares caused him to reflect profoundly on events around him. Then it expanded at the base and became, like the Noses of all the great men of those stirring times, largely compounded with the Cogitative; under the compounds of which class it will again, at a later period of his life, appear. From this corresponding change in feature with change incharacter, we might, if we thought proper, demand the same proof for our system which the phrenologists demand for theirs, from the gradual alteration in the skull of the boy Bidder; and though (as our system is, we conceive, better based than theirs) it is unnecessary to lay as much stress upon a single fact as they are compelled to do, yet we think it right not to let this proof pass wholly without observation.

Having already treated at some length of the Romano-Greek Nose (Sub-classIII.), it is unnecessary to enlarge here upon its close ally the Greco-RomanIII. Of course they are somewhat similar in appearance and character; only as in every compound form, one simple one will generally prevail—Nature, like a bad cook, not always mixing her ingredients in due proportions—it is necessary to distinguish them into different sub-classes.

A noticeable predominance of one form will at once indicate to which sub-class a Nose belongs, and the character will be found to be affected accordingly. Thus a Romano-Greek Nose indicates a more energetic and less refined character than a Greco-Roman. But these are the minutiæ of the science, with which it is not advisable at present to embarrass the reader.

BYRON.

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