Of the Ancient Practice of Painting
If my readers have followed me with any attention up to this point, they will not be surprised to hear that life is somewhat dull in Flatland. I do not, of course, mean that there are not battles, conspiracies, tumults, factions, and all those other phenomena which are supposed to make history interesting; nor would I deny that the strange mixture of the problems of life and the problems of mathematics, continually inducing conjecture and giving the opportunity of immediate verification, imparts to our existence a zest which you in Spaceland can hardly comprehend. I speak now from the aesthetic and artistic point of view when I say that life with us is dull; aesthetically and artistically, very dull indeed.
How can it be otherwise, when all oneās prospect, all oneās landscapes, historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness and obscurity?
It was not always thus. Colour, if tradition speaks the truth, once for the space of half a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient splendour over the lives of our ancestors in the remotest ages. Some private individualā āa Pentagon whose name is variously reportedā āhaving casually discovered the constituents of the simpler colours and a rudimentary method of painting, is said to have begun decorating first his house, then his slaves, then his father, his sons, and grandsons, lastly himself. The convenience as well as the beauty of the results commended themselves to all. Wherever Chromatistesā āfor by that name the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling himā āturned his variegated frame, there he at once excited attention, and attracted respect. No one now needed to āfeelā him; no one mistook his front for his back; all his movements were readily ascertained by his neighbours without the slightest strain on their powers of calculation; no one jostled him, or failed to make way for him; his voice was saved the labour of that exhausting utterance by which we colourless Squares and Pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality when we move amid a crowd of ignorant Isosceles.