Uranus and Gaea. Three older Muses (Mneme, Melete, Aoide) were sometimes distinguished, whose worship was said to have been introduced by the Aloidae on Mt Helicon (Pausanias ix. 29). It is probable that three was the original number of the Muses, which was increased to nine owing to their arrangement in three groups of three in the sacred choruses. Round the altar of Zeus they sing of the origin of the world, of gods and men, of the glorious deeds of Zeus; they also honour the great heroes; and celebrate the marriages of Cadmus and Peleus, and the death of Achilles. As goddesses of song they protect those who recognize their superiority, but punish the arrogant—such as Thamyris, the Thracian bard, who for having boasted himself their equal was deprived of sight and the power of song. From their connexion with Apollo and their original nature as inspiring nymphs of springs they also possess the gift of prophecy. They are closely related to Dionysus, to whose festivals dramatic poetry owed its origin and development. The worship of the Muses had two chief seats—on the northern slope of Mt Olympus in Pieria, and on the slope of Mt Helicon near Ascra and Thespiae in Boeotia. Their favourite haunts were the springs of Castalia, Aganippe and Hippocrene. From Boeotia their cult gradually spread over Greece. As the goddesses who presided over the nine principal departments of letters, their names and attributes were: Calliope, epic poetry (wax tablet and pencil); Euterpe, lyric poetry (the double flute); Erato, erotic poetry (a small lyre); Melpomene, tragedy (tragic mask and ivy wreath); Thalīa, comedy (comic mask and ivy wreath); Polyhymnia (or Polymnia), sacred hymns (veiled, and in an attitude of thought); Terpsichore, choral song and the dance (the lyre); Clio, history (a scroll); Urania, astronomy (a celestial globe). To these Arethusa was added as the muse of pastoral poetry. The Roman poets identified the Greek Muses with the Italian Camenae (or Casmenae), prophetic nymphs of springs and goddesses of birth, who possessed a grove near the Porta Capena at Rome. One of the most famous of these was Egeria, the counsellor of King Numa.
See H. Deiters, Ueber die Verehrung der Musen bei den Griechen (1868); P. Decharme, Les Muses (1869); J. H. Krause, Die Musen (1871); F. Rödiger, Die Musen (1875); O. Navarre in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités, and O. Bie in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie, the latter chiefly for representations of the Muses in art.
MUSET, COLIN (fl. 1200), French trouvère, was poet and
musician, and made his living by wandering from castle to castle
singing his own songs. These are not confined to the praise of
the conventional love that formed the usual topic of the trouvères,
but contain many details of a singer’s life. Colin shows naïve
gratitude for presents in kind from his patrons, and recommends
a poet repulsed by a cruel mistress to find consolation in the
bons morceaux qu’on mange devant un grand feu. One of his
patrons was Agnès de Bar, duchess of Lorraine (d. 1226).
See Hist. litt. de la France, xxiii. 547–553; also a thesis, De Nicolas Museto (1893), by J. Bédier.
MUSEUMS OF ART.[1] The later 19th century was remarkable for the growth and development of museums, both in Great
Britain and abroad. This growth, as Professor Stanley Jevons
predicted, synchronizes with the advancement of education.
Public museums are now universally required; old institutions
have been greatly improved, and many new ones have been
founded. The British parliament has passed statutes conferring
upon local authorities the power to levy rates for library and
museum purposes, while on the continent of Europe the collection
and exhibition of objects of antiquity and art has become a
recognized duty of the state and municipality alike.
A sketch of the history of museums in general is given below, under Museums of Science. The modern museum of art differs essentially from its earlier prototypes. The aimless collection of curiosities and bric-à-brac, brought together without method or system, was the feature of certain famous collections in bygone days, of which the Tradescant Museum, formed in the 17th century, was a good example. This museum was a miscellany without didactic value; it contributed nothing to the advancement of art; its arrangement was unscientific, and the public gained little or no advantage from its existence. The modern museum, on the other hand, should be organized for the public good, and should be, a fruitful source of amusement and instruction to the whole community. Even when Dr Waagen described the collections of England, about 1840, private individuals figured chiefly among the owners of art treasures. Nowadays in making a record of this nature the collections belonging to the. public would attract most attention. This fact is becoming more obvious every year. Not only are acquisitions of great value constantly made, but the principles of museum administration and development are being more closely defined. What Sir William Flower, an eminent authority, called the “new museum idea” (Essays on Museums, p. 37) is pervading the treatment of all the chief museums of the world. Briefly stated, the new principle of museum development—first enunciated in 1870, but now beginning to receive general support—is that the first aim of public collections shall be education, and their second recreation. To be of teaching value, museum arrangement and classification must be carefully studied. Acquisitions must be added to their proper sections; random purchase of “curios” must be avoided. Attention must be given to the proper display and cataloguing of the exhibits, to their housing and preservation, to the lighting, comfort and ventilation of the galleries. Furthermore, facilities must be allowed to those who wish to make special study of the objects on view. “A museum is like a living organism: it requires continual and tender care; it must grow, or it will perish” (Flower, p. 13).
Great progress has been made in the classification of objects, a highly important branch of museum work. There are three possible systems—namely, by date, by material and by nationality. It has been found possible to combine the systems to some extent; for instance, in the ivory department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Classification. South Kensington, London, where the broad classification is by material, the objects being further subdivided according to their age, and in a minor degree according to their nationality. But as yet there is no general preference of one system to another. Moreover, the principles of classification are not easily laid down; e.g. musical instruments: should they be included in art exhibits or in the ethnographical section to which they also pertain? Broadly speaking, objects must be classified according to the quality (apart from their nature) for which they are most remarkable. Thus a musket or bass viol of the 16th century, inlaid with ivory and highly decorated, would be properly included in the art section, whereas a common flute or weapon, noteworthy for nothing but its interest as an instrument of music or destruction, would be suitably classified as ethnographic. In England, at any rate, there is no uniformity of practice in this respect, and though it is to be hoped that the ruling desire to classify according to strict scientific rules may not become too prevalent, it would nevertheless be a distinct advantage if, in one or more of the British museums, some attempt were made to illustrate the growth of domestic arts and crafts according to classification by date. Examples of this classification in Munich, Amsterdam, Basel, Zürich and elsewhere afford excellent lessons of history and art, a series of rooms being fitted up to show in chronological order the home life of our ancestors. In the National Museum of Bavaria (Munich) there is a superb suite of rooms illustrating the progress of art from Merovingian times down to the 19th century. Thus classification, though studied, must not check the elasticity of art museums; it should not be allowed to interfere with the mobility of the exhibits—that is to say, it should always be possible to withdraw specimens for the closer inspection of students, and also to send examples on loan to other museums and schools of art—an invaluable system long in vogue at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and one which should be still more widely adopted. An axiom of museum law
- ↑ Under the term “museum” (Gr. μουσεῖον, temple of the muses) we accept the ordinary distinction, by which it covers a collection of all sorts of art objects, while an art gallery (q.v.) confines itself practically to pictures.
