Juvenal's picture of the Egerian grot affords another illus tration : In vallem Egeriae descendimus et speluncas So Ovid's Valley and Cave of Diana y : Vallis erat, piceis et acuta densa cupressu, Of grey-blue foliage climb, and mark their course Smiles with a varied grace, while flowering shrubs, Juvenalis Satirae, Sat. iii. 17. Thence slowly winding down the vale, we view Nymph of the Spring! more honour'd hadst thou been, Thy bubbling fount had circumscribed alone, Ovid, Met. lib. iii. 155. GIFFORD'S Juvenal, Sat. iii. 27. 'Down in a vale with pine and cy; ress c'ad, Refresh'd with gentle winds, and brown with shade, A spacious grotto, all around o'ergrown With hoary moss, and arch'd with pumice stone; And trickling swell into the lake below. Est prope purpureos colles florentis Hymetti Tot generum frondes, herbaque summa tremunt.' I pass by the pictures to be found in the pastoral epics of Theocritus and in the Greek Tragedians, such as the picture of Colonos b in Sophocles, and those in the Ion and the Bacchae d of Euripides, Aelian's vale of Tempe e, with the detailed description of natural scenery, in which he uses the remarkable expressions, diaypaywμev kai diandáσwμev, depingamus atque effingamus: 'Let us paint and let us mould.' For the Greeks f, though they did not cultivate according to our modern ideas, as a distinct branch of æsthetics, the art of describing natural scenery, though they had not the counterpart of our word Nature had everywhere so play'd her part, ADDISON, in Garth's Ovid, p. 357. a Ovid, Arte Amandi, lib. iii. 687-694. Near, where his purple head Hymettus shews While thro' the boughs, soft winds of Zephyr pass, b Oed. Col. 668, etc. d Bacchae, 1045. DRYDEN, in Garth's Ovid. • Ion, 82. e i. 191. See the first and second chapters of the second volume of Humboldt's Kosmos. picturesque,' and were less occupied with describing the phænomena of inanimate nature than the actions and passions of men b, were not, as has been vulgarly supposed, wanting in sensibility to the charms of nature. It is true that the Christian, dwelling on the greatness and goodness of the Creator, who has made all nature beauty to the eye and music to the ear,' delighted in those descriptions of that beauty which are to be found in the works of the early Greek Fathers. The sensibility to natural beauty was of later growth among the Latins than the Greeks, and scarcely appeared before the poets and writers of the Augustan age. Virgil and Lucretius and Ovid have been cited. Ovid abounds in passages of picturesque description; and though such passages are rare in the prose writers of Rome as of Greece, many are to be found in the letters of Cicero. It is hardly necessary to mention Pliny i; The feelings of satisfaction which result from the joint energy of the understanding and phantasy, are principally those of beauty and sublimity; and the judgments which pronounce an object to be sublime, beautiful, &c., are called by a metaphorical expression Judgments of Taste. These have also been styled Esthetical Judgments; and the term aesthetical has now, especially among the philosophers of Germany, nearly superseded the term taste. Both terms are unsatisfactory. The gratification we feel in the beautiful, the sublime, the picturesque, &c., is purely contemplative, that is, the feeling of pleasure which we then experience, arises solely from the consideration of the object and altogether apart from any desire of, or satisfaction in, its possession.' SIR W. HAMILTON, Lectures on Metaphysics. Lect. XLVI. Compare Sir J. Reynolds, vol. ii. 78, end of 13th Discourse. h Socrates tells Phaedrus that the country and trees do not teach him anything, and that as a lover of knowledge he prefers men and cities, Συγγίνωσκε δέ μοι, ὦ ἄριστε· φιλομαθὴς γάρ εἰμι. τὰ μὲν οὖν χωρία, καὶ τὰ δένδρα οὐδὲν μ' ἐθέλει διδάσκειν, οἱ δ' ἐν τῷ ἄστει ἄνθρωποι. (Platonis Opera, ed. Stalbaum, vol. iv. p. 20, D. Phaedrus). The banished Duke in As You Like It' had another philosophy : : 'And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.' i Lib. viii. Epist. ix. Act ii. sc. I. e but I do not think his description of the Clitumnus could be transferred to canvass, although it must be admitted that when he describes, with great minuteness of detail, the picturesque features of his villa at Tusci, he sums it up, as it were, in one sentence, saying it gives you the pleasure of a well painted landscape j. How wonderfully Poetry, Music, and Painting, are all blended together, and all present to us, in this one description of a midsummer night in these lines: And bring your music forth into the air. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold *'. No painting could describe the Dover cliff like Edgar1, though in this marvellous passage the power of delineating natural beauty is less remarkable than the power of describing the height so as to make the brain of the reader dizzy. Not less power does Imogen, enquiring after her husband's departure, exhibit of painting in words the vanishing point of distance. In all these instances, especially the two last, the poet reaps the full advantage of his successive description over the moment of the painter. One more example. The encampment of the hosts before the day of battle may be fraught with circumstances of which the painter may avail himself: but could he paint what follows?— From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night, Magnam capies voluptatem si hunc regionis situm ex monte prospexeris. Neque enim terras tibi, sed formam aliquam, ad eximiam pulchritudinem pictam videberis cernere; ea varietate ea descriptione quocumque inciderint oculi, reficiuntur.' Lib. v. Ep. vi. 13. kMerchant of Venice,' Act v. sc. I. See p. 338. That the fixt sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch : Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation m' The picturesque descriptions in the Paradise Lost are familiar to the reader of Milton; in them, indeed, many principles of modern landscape, in which art imitates, cultivates, and improves nature, are to be found. The subject is a very large one, and the temptation to enter more at length upon it must be resisted". The English writers in prose offer many illustrations of the position for which I am contending, but I will confine myself to an extract from the prose of that great painter in prose and poetry, Sir Walter Scott. His novels abound in passages of the highest picturesque merit. Often what appears as a single picture in his description, cannot be represented on canvass otherwise than by a series of paintings, and then with a loss of effect. Take for example the following extract from the first chapter of Ivanhoe:' 'The sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy glades of that forest which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad short-stemmed oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their broad gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward: in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun in others they receded from each other, forming those m Henry the Fifth.' Act iv. Chorus. n I abstain from noticing the pictures in Italian Poetry and the Lusiad of Camoens, so much esteemed by Humboldt, Kosmos, 2. 1. |