the hues, of human passion, idealised by strong emotion-a mood which easily falls into exaggerated figures, or what Mr. Ruskin may imply by "the pathetic fallacy." Here we may also note how, at least in the English work X of this century, a remarkable element pervades the landscape of the poets. Whether in regard to distances or to nearer objects, a greater truth, a finer and close accuracy is constantly given. In this, the latest of our styles, we may trace the influence of facts made known by science; the geological elements which have shaped the mountain; the intimate structure of the flower; or, more important, the lessons of thorough methodical investigation which physical science has impressed, not only on poetry, but upon every branch of human study. We may perhaps now suggest the deepest point of view in our poetical treatment of the landscape, nay, the very basis of the deepest accents of song, in the phrase used by a writer to whom I have already been indebted: "the recognition of "mind by mind";1 of the unity between the wonders of the world without with the wonders of the world within; the perception of Divine purpose; the organic "pre-established 'harmony" (to take the old formula) between our sensations of charm and the scene before us; the beauty of the world, which in itself as another deeply feeling writer 2 has observed-Nature, as it were, does not need for use, or to gain her own aims, coming forward, almost as a living personality--the Alma Venus of Lucretius-to meet and vitalise the sense of beauty implanted in man. These phrases, indeed, only attempt imperfectly to set forth what we can rather feel than express, but what, indeed, it is the privilege of Poetry herself, in her highest moods, to awaken in the sympathetic soul. Yet, like all that belongs to the spiritual side of human nature, these thoughts come only by glimpses-seen, and hardly seen;-like fairy treasures they vanish when touched by the "dead hand" of definition. A noble passage from S. Augustine's Confessions may sum up this subject in better words than mine. Nature, he argues, leads him up to God by her beauty— 1 Duke of Argyll, The Unity of Nature (1888). 2 J. B. Mozley, University Sermons. 3 B. X, vi. "What is this? I asked the earth, and it answered me, I 66 am not He; and all that is therein confessed the same. I "asked the sea and the depths, and the creeping things with life, and they answered, We are not thy God, seek thou above 66 us. I asked the breezy gales, and the airy universe, and all "its denizens replied, Anaximenes is mistaken, I am not God. "I asked heaven, sun, moon, stars: Neither are we, say they, "the God whom thou seekest. And I said unto all things "which stand about the gateways of my flesh (ie. are acces"sible to the senses), Ye have told me of my God, that ye are "not He; tell me something of Him. And they cried out with a loud voice, He made us.” CHAPTER II LANDSCAPE IN THE GREEK EPIC THESE many moods in which poets have tried to translate Nature must obviously bring with them a great and delightful variety in treatment. Throughout, however, the governing rule, which, consciously or not, has been almost always followed, may be expressed in the noteworthy phrase used by Beethoven as the motto of his great Pastoral Symphony, “Mehr Ausdruck "der Empfindung als Malerei": It is not so much painting, as the rendering of inner sentiment. With this as a kind of text, to be before the mind always, let us approach our only too vast theme, following within the domain of each language a rough chronological order, and beginning with the Greek and the Roman poets-those who, after all and above all, in the region of their art, Are yet a master light of all our seeing— guides and models now for near two thousand years, unsurpassed, and seldom equalled. Epic poetry properly deals with the acts and passions of man. Hence in the verse of that still greatest of all poets, Homer, or whoever left us Iliad and Odyssey, natural description as such is always purely incidental to the narrative, introduced most often in the form of comparison. But Homer's vast range of simile thus brings in wild beasts and birds, beside the landscape, scattered everywhere in profusion; and he has painted all with a picturesque vigour, as famous Let us now as in its own ancient day for its life and truth. take some of these glimpses at random. When Odysseus, yet unknown, relates some tale of adventure to Penelopé—— As the snow which the south-east wind has melted, when softened by Zephyr, thaws on the mountain-heights, and as it melts, the rivers fill while they flow 1-even thus flowed her tears. Or, when Circe had undone the spell wherewith she bound the companions of Odysseus, and he returns to them, we have this farmyard picture-how lively, how fresh, how modern !2 As when young heifers in the fold-yard all frisk together about the drove of cows when they return home satiated with pasture; nor any longer do the pens restrain them, but with vehement lowing they run round the mothers; so they Homer was not only familiar with the sea, but loved it with a love somewhat unusual in poets. Hence the comparison following, when Diomede encourages the Achaeans to battle. But as when on a loud-resounding beach, as Zephyr moves them, wave on wave of ocean rushes-cresting itself first out at sea, but next as it breaks on the land roaring loudly; and curves round the headlands as it goes, in a peak, and spews forth the sea-foam 3 ; so the Danaan ranks Needs not here point out the perfect truth of the painting. Everywhere, indeed, Homer's astonishingly close observation of Nature allows him to give almost tangible reality by the slightest touches to imaginary scenes; as when, before Odysseus lands on Phaeacia, Nausicaa, wellnigh the sweetest girl whom poetry has painted, with her maids, is spreading the household linen on the beach Even where the sea, in beating on the coast, washed the pebbles clear.1 Two more of the great poet's inimitable flashes which in five words set before the eye other sea-aspects may follow. A whole landscape in itself seems to be painted in the two simple lines which speak of the distance between Achilles and his own country —Many things lie between us, the shadowy mountains and the resounding sea; 2 the great ocean darkening, as he elsewhere says, with a noiseless, foamless swell before it breaks.3 Turning now to such longer landscape as the epic occasionally allows, let Tennyson's accurate art give us the famous night-scene by the Trojan camp; the fires are blazing around As when in heaven the stars about the moon |