The
quick, susceptible enthusiast, betraying his temperament even in
appearance, by his olive complexion, his deep-seated, piercing
eyes, his rapid movements, apprehended the subtlest principles of
the Hellenic manner, not through the understanding, but by
instinct or touch. A German biographer of Winckelmann has
compared him to Columbus. That is not the aptest of comparisons;
but it reminds one of [194] a passage in which Edgar Quinet
describes the great discoverer's famous voyage. His science was
often at fault; but he had a way of estimating at once the slightest
indication of land, in a floating weed or passing bird; he seemed
actually to come nearer to nature than other men. And that world
in which others had moved with so much embarrassment, seems
to call out in Winckelmann new senses fitted to deal with it. He
is in touch with it; it penetrates him, and becomes part of his
temperament. He remodels his writings with constant renewal of
insight; he catches the thread of a whole sequence of laws in
some hollowing of the hand, or dividing of the hair; he seems to
realise that fancy of the reminiscence of a forgotten knowledge
hidden for a time in the mind itself; as if the mind of one, lover
and philosopher at once in some phase of pre-existence--philosophesas
pote met' erotos.+--fallen into a new cycle, were beginning its
intellectual career over again, yet with a certain power of
anticipating its results.
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