gloom of Hamlet or Macbeth-between Claude and Rembrandt in landscape-the Sicilian Bellini and the Teutonic Beethoven. In the choral lyrics, however, it is that the Athenian playwrights generally place their references to Nature. Such is the famous passage in the Oedipus at Kolonus of Sophocles, when the aged king, victim of such fearful calamities, is approaching his place of final rest by the sacred grove, at the Gleaming Kolonus rock, where the thrilling nightingale most loves to sing under the green coverts, remaining constant to the dark brown ivy, and the inviolable foliage of the god; the wood with its thousand fruits and leaves sun-proof untouchable of any gale.1 With what obvious beauty is Nature here brought in as the contrast-the relief-to the human heart! It is the same approach to modern feeling which we have already found in the lyrical Ibykus. Even when set forth in the inevitable baldness of prose, this may take us back to the severe style of Athens in the fifth century. Another Sophoclean landscape I will also add, in Dean Plumptre's graceful version. After the epic way it presents a comparison with the calamitous woes of the House of Labdacus As when a wave, where Thracian blasts blow strong Up surges from the depth beneath the sea, And from the deep abyss Rolls the black wind-vex'd sand; And every jutting peak that drives it back But such outbursts are only too rare: Euripides and Aristophanes, so far as I have noted, rarely going beyond somewhat common phrases, or turning at once to mythological conventionality. Yet the first Chorus in the Clouds of Aristophanes has given him the opportunity for a very noble landscape, sung by the Clouds themselves in person, before they rise in view of the spectators— Ever-flowing Clouds, let us lift on high our own bright dewy form [φύσιν] from our father the deep-resounding Ocean, to the tree-crested tops of high mountains, that we may view the farshining peaks and holy earth nourishing her fruits, and the roaring of divine rivers and the deep murmuring cry of the sea: for the unwearied Eye of the aether is flashing with its brilliant rays.2 After which the Clouds (as Mr. Ruskin has noted) are described with equal truth and beauty, as seen by Socrates on the hillside: "Coming softly, through the hollows and "the thickets, trailing aslant in multitudes." 1 ὅμοιον ὥστε ποντίαις οἶδμα δυσπνόοις ὅταν "3 66 In the beautiful preface to Mr. Mackail's Anthology, when reaching the Alexandrian period-say from 300 B.C. onwardshe notes: "In revulsion from the immense accumulation of "material wealth in this period, a certain refined simplicity was then the ideal of the best minds, as it was afterwards in "the early Roman Empire, as it is in our own day. The "charm of the country was, perhaps for the first time, fully "realised; the life of gardens became a passion, and hardly "less so the life of the opener air, of the hill and meadow, of "the shepherd and hunter, the farmer and fisherman. . . . Sick "of cities, the imagination turned to an Arcadia that thence"forth was to fill all poetry with the music of its names,' Ladon, Erymanthus, Cylléné. What seems conscious sensibility to nature, in short, now reveals itself: delight in the landscape for its own sake, yet without rejection of its divine impersonating indwellers: God, as it were, may I say? walking with man in the lovely paradise prepared for him. This more modern chord we hear first and perhaps most exquisitely in the bucolic Idylls of Theocritus. These "little "Epics" are indeed primarily concerned with man and woman, an aim which they unite with landscape in its wider sense, including, that is, the life of the country folk. Yet, though his Idylls, in the phrase of the lovely festival song (Thalysia), breathe of summer, of fruit and flowers and other country sights, yet hardly any pure descriptive passages appear. One such we find in the Idyll just named, painting the scene where the rustic feast is held: how they Reclined on low couches of the odorous rush, rejoicing, and on fresh-cut vine leaves; and above their heads waved elm and poplar, and the holy stream close by went murmuring as it ran down from the cave of the Nymphs. And meanwhile on the shady boughs the noisy husky Cicadas were busy chirping, and far off in thick thorn-bushes the thrush murmured, crested lark and goldfinch sang, turtle-dove moaned, the tawny bees flew round about the fountains: all things breathed of summer, all of the sweet-scented fruiting time.1 : As, however, has been observed, the lingering sentiment of this beautiful picture is rather Latin than Greek and so perhaps the old Sicilian blood, allied to the Italian, may have made itself felt in certain earlier poems which Theocritus possibly had before him. But I offer such racial hints with diffidence and doubt. Or lastly, take this fragment paraphrased from the Cyclops' song to his Love Another music then we hear, A cry from the Sicilian dell, “ Here 'mid sweet grapes and laurel dwell ; “Slips by from wood-girt Aetna's dome "Snow-cold the stream and clear : "Hither to me, come, Galataea, come !" 1 Let me add a mountain woodside scene, and a pretty simile, from the gracious poet, so loved of Vergil and of Tennyson. Castor and Pollux, voyaging in the good ship Argo, have come ashore and are wandering on the Bebrycian hills And they found an ever-flowing spring brimming with pure water under a smooth cliff; the lisping pebbles below seemed crystal or silver. High, near them, grew pines and white poplars and plane trees, and the cypress leafy to its summit; and odorous ἔν τε νεοτμάτοισι γεγαθότες οἰναρέῃσι. πολλαὶ δ ̓ ἁμὶν ὕπερθε κατὰ κρατὸς δονέοντο ι ἀλλ' ἀφίκου τύ ποθ ̓ ἁμέ, καὶ ἑξεῖς οὐδὲν ἔλασσον· Id. vii, 132. Id. xi, 40. flowers, many as when Spring is ending break forth in the meadows,-where the hairy bees love to haunt.1 Like as the swallow swiftly flies back to gather fresh morsels for her little ones in the nest.2 -Such, and swifter, says Theocritus, flies the maid returning to her lover. I turn now to that miscellaneous gathering, the great Greek Anthology; those blossoms of all kinds in form and scent and colour plucked and bound in garlands through not far from two thousand years—say 700 B.C. to 1000 A.D.—a truly wonderful example of national poetic continuity. Here, as before, Man largely predominates over Nature. Yet the spiritual quality in her -her unity, however unconsciously-is maintained through the frequent mythological references. Only by moments, glimpses such as we catch from the railway window, is the landscape visible. But the vast number of these beautiful miniature poems gives opportunity for endless natural hints, which, as we have just seen in Theocritus, are most frequent at and after the Alexandrian epoch. Indeed, in the Anthology, we see Hellenism in its most charming phase; it is a phase of life, to quote a striking remark from Mommsen, "with the purity and beauty which it presents in the quiet "homestead, after which history happily does not inquire any more than it inquires after history."3 And as this collection is comparatively little known, I will venture upon a few specimens which may show the general manner, though perhaps even more than in case of the great poets, will translation 1 εὗρον δ ̓ ἀέναον κρήνην ὑπὸ λισσάδι πέτρη 2 μάστακα δοῖσα τέκνοισιν ὑπωροφίοισι χελιδών Id. xx, 37. Id. xiv, 39. 3 Provinces of the Roman Empire, chap. vii. |