Break open to their highest, and all the stars Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart.1 These lines are from the Iliad, which is also richer than the companion poem in glimpses of the animal world in its fierceness. To the calmer, more homely atmosphere of the Odyssey belongs naturally the landscape of cultivated spots flower and fruit, and cool streams, and simple sensuous happiness. Such are the gardens of King Alcinöus 2 Without the hall, near the gates, was a vast four-square garden, and a hedge ran round it from both ends. There great trees flourished, pears and pomegranates and apples of gorgeous fruit, and sweet figs and vigorous olives. Never dies or fails their fruitage, winter or summer, the year long; but ever and ever Zephyr breathing brings some to bud, some to ripeness. Pear grows old on pear, apple on apple, grapes on grapes, fig on fig. There also are two fountains, one spreading through the whole garth, whilst the other passes toward the lofty palace. This domestic scene, which also seems to answer to the character of Alcinous himself and his delightful family, contrasts curiously with the great natural landscape which we have seen 1 ὡς δ ̓ ὅτ ̓ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἄστρα φαεινὴν ἀμφὶ σελήνην φαίνετ ̓ ἀριπρεπέα, ὅτε τ ̓ ἔπλετο νήνεμος αἰθήρ, ἔκ τ ̓ ἔφανεν πᾶσαι σκοπιαὶ καὶ πρώονες ἄκροι καὶ νάπαι· οὐρανόθεν δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ὑπερράγη ἄσπετος αἰθήρ, πάντα δὲ εἴδεται ἄστρα· γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν. 2 ἔκτοσθεν δ ̓ αὐλῆς μέγας ὄρχατος ἄγχι θυράων ἐν δὲ δύω κρῆναι ἡ μέν τ ̓ ἀνὰ κῆπον ἅπαντα Il. viii, 555. Od. vii, 112. But Homer, was needed to complete the picture of the camp. as the Greeks said, was equal to everything. In the Odyssey, again, we have the magnificent boar-hunt of the youthful Odysseus,1 which in vigour and movement of life and clear definition anticipates Scott's similar scene in the Bride; whilst, as an example of the idyllic vein which runs through the poem, we may take the picture of the land of the Cyclopes— Where are meadows by the sea-downs, watery soft; and the vines never wither, and level there must the ploughland be.2 After the lapse of three thousand years these small landscapes seem as if they might have been written to-day. It is the same with the characters-if we consider them apart from the external circumstances-in the two epics. Homer is the most unaffected of all poets; and hence, more than any other, I know not whether even Shakespeare should be excepted, he has, in Wordsworth's useful saying, "his eye on his object." Hence also this modernness, this truth for all time. us the The (so-called) Homeric Hymn to Aphrodité has a curious passage, which with unusual fullness sets before mythology of the forest. The strange human sympathy shown here for nymph and tree, bound together in one life, has, or seems to have, a romantic, an almost Celtic, touch of sentiment. Together with the birth of [the mountain Nymphs] are born pine trees or tall oaks from the nourishing earth, fair, flourishing on the lofty mountains of the Immortals: and these, mortals never cut with iron. But when the fated death has reached them, first those fair trees dry up on the ground, and the bark perishes round them, and the sprays fall, and the soul [of the Nymph] at the same moment quits the sunlight.3 1 Od. xix, 428. 2 ἐν μὲν γὰρ λειμῶνες ἁλὸς πολιοῖο παρ ̓ ὄχθας 3 τῇσι δ ̓ ἅμ ̓ ἢ ἐλάται ἠὲ δρύες ὑψικάρηνοι Od. ix, 132. Another hymn shows us Pan in his wild career; perhaps nowhere else in Hellenic poetry are the aspects of hillcountry so freely painted. The Nymphs are following the god with dance and shout And he goes hither and thither through the thick bushes, now allured by the soft-flowing streams, now moving among the rocky steeps, as he climbs to the very highest summit to watch the flocks. Often he courses over the vast shining mountains and, again leaving the chase, he will drive the sheep into the cavern, pouring forth from his reeds a sweet melody; nor in songs could he be surpassed by that bird who, among the leaves of many-flowering spring, laments as she hurries out her sad sweet music. [And then Pan and the Nymphs are soon] in a soft meadow, where crocus and hyacinth, odorous and flourishing, are mixed everywhere with the grass. And they sing the blessed gods and great Olympus. . . .1 Hesiod's rude prosaic style and matter are not congenial to the poetic landscape. Yet with what grace are natural καλαί, τηλεθάουσαι, ἐν οὔρεσιν ὑψηλοῖσιν 1 φοιτᾷ δ' ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα διὰ ῥωπήια πυκνά, Ad Ven. 264. ἄγρης ἐξανιών, δονάκων ὕπο μοῦσαν ἀθύρων ἐν μαλακῷ λειμῶνι, τόθι κρόκος ἠδ ̓ ὑάκινθος εὐώδης θαλέθων καταμίσγεται ἄκριτα ποίην. ὑμνοῦσιν δὲ θεοὺς μάκαρας καὶ μακρὸν Ολυμπον. Ad Panem 8 (Matthiae). How the buoyant hexameters here put the leaping shepherd-god before our eyes ! It is assuredly the voice of no small poet which breathes through this lovely hymn. 2 features veiled or personified, as Humboldt points out,1 under mythical names, when he enumerates the Nereid sea-nymphs -Kymodoké and Kymatolegé-goddess-spirits of the bays which receive and calm the restless waves; Ferousa, she that carries the ship; Actaea, the nymph of the shore; Eulimené, she of the fair haven. In this way the whole sea aspect seems set before us in distinct images. And by such images it should be always remembered that the sense of the Divine in Nature expressed itself to the Hellenic mind. In this early time, or earlier, may also probably be placed those unhappily lost songs lamenting Linus or Daphnis or Adonis, with which the country folk deplored the fading of spring foliage and beauty under the southern sun heat; if, indeed, this was their only primitive meaning. 1 Cosmos, vol. ii, ch. i. 2 Theogony, 233. C CHAPTER III LANDSCAPE IN GREEK LYRICAL, IDYLLIC, AND LYRICAL poetry, whether in its first natural use as the expression of personal feeling, or in the solemn, national, and religious ode, has offered small space for landscape until modern days. Yet that "Tenth Muse, Sappho fair" (Fl. c. 500 B.C.), as Plato named her, shows her exquisite Aeolian art and tenderness, "very woman in everything, in certain little descriptive fragments, "more golden than gold," surviving still amongst the lamentable wreck of that consummate genius. Such is the garden vignette, where the rivulet murmurs cold among the apple-tree boughs, and sleep streams down on the trembling leaves.1 Or take another, unsurpassable in its utter simplicity: Set are moon and Pleiades, and it is midnight, and the hour is already passing, but I sleep alone.2 Last, the lovely bridal song, which I once tried to render thus 1 ἀμφὶ δὲ ψῦχρον κελάδει δι ̓ ἔσδων I have sometimes thought that we might render the words, "the rivulet murmurs through troughs of apple-tree branches." But the text here is sadly uncertain. 2 δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάννα καὶ Πληΐαδες, μέσαι δὲ |