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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Development of the Feeling for Nature in
+the Middle Ages and Modern Times, by Alfred Biese
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and
+Modern Times
+
+Author: Alfred Biese
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2004  [eBook #13814]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR
+NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Leonard Johnson, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
+AND MODERN TIMES
+
+by
+
+ALFRED BIESE
+
+Director of the K. K. Gymnasium at Neuwied
+
+Authorized translation from the German
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE
+
+
+The encouraging reception of my "Development of the Feeling for
+Nature among the Greeks and Romans" gradually decided me, after some
+years, to carry the subject on to modern tunes. Enticing as it was, I
+did not shut my eyes to the great difficulties of a task whose
+dimensions have daunted many a savant since the days of Humboldt's
+clever, terse sketches of the feeling for Nature in different times
+and peoples. But the subject, once approached, would not let me go.
+Its solution seemed only possible from the side of historical
+development, not from that of _a priori_ synthesis. The almost
+inexhaustible amount of material, especially towards modern times,
+has often obliged me to limit myself to typical forerunners of the
+various epochs, although, at the same time, I have tried not to lose
+the thread of general development. By the addition of the chief
+phases of landscape, painting, and garden craft, I have aimed at
+giving completeness to the historical picture; but I hold that
+literature, especially poetry, as the most intimate medium of a
+nation's feelings, is the chief source of information in an enquiry
+which may form a contribution, not only to the history of taste, but
+also to the comparative history of literature. At a time too when the
+natural sciences are so highly developed, and the cult of Nature is
+so widespread, a book of this kind may perhaps claim the interest of
+that wide circle of educated readers to whom the modern delight in
+Nature on its many sides makes appeal. And this the more, since books
+are rare which seek to embrace the whole mental development of the
+Middle Ages and modern times, and are, at the same time, intended for
+and intelligible to all people of cultivation.
+
+The book has been a work of love, and I hope it will be read with
+pleasure, not only by those whose special domain it touches, but by
+all who care for the eternal beauties of Nature. To those who know my
+earlier papers in the _Preussische Jahrbücher_, the _Zeitschrift für
+Vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte_, and the _Litteraturbeilage des
+Hamburgischen Correspondents_, I trust this fuller and more connected
+treatment of the theme will prove welcome.
+
+ALFRED BIESE.
+
+
+
+
+Published Translations of the following Authors have been used:
+
+SANSCRIT.--Jones, Wilson, Arnold, anonymous translator in a
+publication of the Society for Resuscitation of Ancient Literature.
+
+LATIN AND GREEK.--Lightfoot, Jowett, Farrar, Lodge, Dalrymple, Bigg,
+Pilkington, Hodgkin, De Montalembert, Gary, Lok, Murray, Gibb, a
+translator in Bonn's Classics.
+
+ITALIAN.--Gary, Longfellow, Cayley, Robinson, Kelly, Bent, Hoole,
+Roscoe, Leigh Hunt, Lofft, Astley, Oliphant.
+
+GERMAN.--Horton and Bell, Middlemore, Lytton, Swanwick, Dwight,
+Boylau, Bowling, Bell, Aytoun, Martin, Oxenford, Morrison, M'Cullum,
+Winkworth, Howorth, Taylor, Nind, Brooks, Lloyd, Frothingham, Ewing,
+Noel, Austin, Carlyle, Storr, Weston, Phillips.
+
+SPANISH.--Markham, Major, Bowring, Hasell, M'Carthy, French.
+
+FRENCH.--Anonymous translator of Rousseau.
+
+PORTUGUESE.--Aubertin.
+
+The Translator's thanks are also due to the author for a few
+alterations in and additions to the text, and to Miss Edgehill, Miss
+Tomlinson, and Dr B. Scheifers for translations from Greek and Latin,
+Italian, and Middle German respectively.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Nature in her ever-constant, ever-changing phases is indispensable to
+man, his whole existence depends upon her, and she influences him in
+manifold ways, in mind as well as body.
+
+The physical character of a country is reflected in its inhabitants;
+the one factor of climate alone gives a very different outlook to
+northerner and southerner. But whereas primitive man, to whom the
+darkness of night meant anxiety, either feared Nature or worshipped
+her with awe, civilised man tries to lift her veil, and through
+science and art to understand her inner and outer beauty--the
+scientist in her laws, the man of religion in her relation to his
+Creator, the artist in reproducing the impressions she makes upon
+him.
+
+Probably it has always been common to healthy minds to take some
+pleasure in her; but it needs no slight culture of heart and mind to
+grasp her meaning and make it clear to others. Her book lies open
+before us, but the interpretations have been many and dissimilar. A
+fine statue or a richly-coloured picture appeals to all, but only
+knowledge can appreciate it at its true value and discover the full
+meaning of the artist. And as with Art, so with Nature.
+
+For Nature is the greatest artist, though dumb until man, with his
+inexplicable power of putting himself in her place, transferring to
+her his bodily and mental self, gives her speech.
+
+Goethe said 'man never understands how anthropomorphic he is.' No
+study, however comprehensive, enables him to overstep human limits,
+or conceive a concrete being, even the highest, from a wholly
+impersonal point of view. His own self always remains an encumbering
+factor. In a real sense he only understands himself, and his measure
+for all things is man. To understand the world outside him, he must
+needs ascribe his own attributes to it, must lend his own being to
+find it again.
+
+This unexplained faculty, or rather inherent necessity, which implies
+at once a power and a limit, extends to persons as well as things.
+The significant word sympathy expresses it. To feel a friend's grief
+is to put oneself in his place, think from his standpoint and in his
+mood--that is, suffer with him. The fear and sympathy which condition
+the action of tragedy depend upon the same mental process; one's own
+point of view is shifted to that of another, and when the two are in
+harmony, and only then, the claim of beauty is satisfied, and
+æsthetic pleasure results.
+
+By the well-known expression of Greek philosophy, 'like is only
+understood by like,' the Pythagoreans meant that the mathematically
+trained mind is the organ by which the mathematically constructed
+cosmos is understood. The expression may also serve as an æsthetic
+aphorism. The charm of the simplest lyrical song depends upon the
+hearer's power to put himself in the mood or situation described by
+the poet, on an interplay between subject and object.
+
+Everything in mental life depends upon this faculty. We observe,
+ponder, feel, because a kindred vibration in the object sets our own
+fibres in motion.
+
+'You resemble the mind which you understand.'
+
+It is a magic bridge from our own mind, making access possible to a
+work of art, an electric current conveying the artist's ideas into
+our souls.
+
+We know how a drama or a song can thrill us when our feeling vibrates
+with it; and that thrill, Faust tells us, is the best part of man.
+
+If inventive work in whatever art or science gives the purest kind of
+pleasure, Nature herself seeming to work through the artist, rousing
+those impulses which come to him as revelations, there is pleasure
+also in the passive reception of beauty, especially when we are not
+content to remain passive, but trace out and rethink the artist's
+thoughts, remaking his work.
+
+'To invent for oneself is beautiful; but to recognise gladly and
+treasure up the happy inventions of others is that less thine?' said
+Goethe in his _Jahreszeiten_; and in the _Aphorisms_, confirming what
+has just been said: 'We know of no world except in relation to man,
+we desire no art but that which is the expression of this relation.'
+And, further, 'Look into yourselves and you will find everything, and
+rejoice if outside yourselves, as you may say, lies a Nature which
+says yea and amen to all that you have found there.'
+
+Certainly Nature only bestows on man in proportion to his own inner
+wealth. As Rückert says, 'the charm of a landscape lies in this, that
+it seems to reflect back that part of one's inner life, of mind,
+mood, and feeling, which we have given it.' And Ebers, 'Lay down your
+best of heart and mind before eternal Nature; she will repay you a
+thousandfold, with full hands.'
+
+And Vischer remarks, 'Nature at her greatest is not so great that she
+can work without man's mind.' Every landscape can be beautiful and
+stimulating if human feeling colours it, and it will be most so to
+him who brings the richest endowment of heart and mind to bear:
+Nature only discloses her whole self to a whole man.
+
+But it is under the poet's wand above all, that, like the marble at
+Pygmalion's breast, she grows warm and breathes and answers to his
+charm; as in that symbolic saga, the listening woods and waters and
+the creatures followed Orpheus with his lute. Scientific knowledge,
+optical, acoustical, meteorological, geological, only widens and
+deepens love for her and increases and refines the sense of her
+beauty. In short, deep feeling for Nature always proves considerable
+culture of heart and mind.
+
+There is a constant analogy between the growth of this feeling and
+that of general culture.
+
+As each nation and time has its own mode of thought, which is
+constantly changing, so each period has its 'landscape eye.' The same
+rule applies to individuals. Nature, as Jean Paul said, is made
+intelligible to man in being for ever made flesh. We cannot look at
+her impersonally, we must needs give her form and soul, in order to
+grasp and describe her.
+
+Vischer says[1] 'it is simply by an act of comparison that we think
+we see our own life in inanimate objects.' We say that Nature's
+clearness is like clearness of mind, that her darkness and gloom are
+like a dark and gloomy mood; then, omitting 'like,' we go on to
+ascribe our qualities directly to her, and say, this neighbourhood,
+this air, this general tone of colour, is cheerful, melancholy, and
+so forth. Here we are prompted by an undeveloped dormant
+consciousness which really only compares, while it seems to take one
+thing for another. In this way we come to say that a rock projects
+boldly, that fire rages furiously over a building, that a summer
+evening with flocks going home at sunset is peaceful and idyllic;
+that autumn, dripping with rain, its willows sighing in the wind, is
+elegiac and melancholy and so forth.
+
+Perhaps Nature would not prove to be this ready symbol of man's inner
+life were there no secret rapport between the two. It is as if, in
+some mysterious way, we meet in her another mind, which speaks a
+language we know, wakening a foretaste of kinship; and whether the
+soul she expresses is one we have lent her, or her own which we have
+divined, the relationship is still one of give and take.
+
+Let us take a rapid survey of the course of this feeling in
+antiquity. Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness
+for Nature, and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings
+between man and plants and animals.
+
+They are found in the loftiest flights of religious enthusiasm in the
+Vedas, where, be it only in reference to the splendour of dawn or the
+'golden-handed sun,' Nature is always assumed to be closely connected
+with man's inner and outer life. Later on, as Brahminism appeared,
+deepening the contemplative side of Hindoo character, and the drama
+and historical plays came in, generalities gave way to definite
+localizing, and in the Epics ornate descriptions of actual landscape
+took independent place. Nature's sympathy with human joys and griefs
+was taken for granted, and she played a part of her own in drama.
+
+In the _Mahâbhârata_, when Damajanti is wandering in search of her
+lost Nala and sees the great mountain top, she asks it for her
+prince.
+
+    Oh mountain lord!
+  Far seen and celebrated hill, that cleav'st
+  The blue o' the sky, refuge of living things,
+  Most noble eminence, I worship thee!...
+  O Mount, whose double ridge stamps on the sky
+  Yon line, by five-score splendid pinnacles
+  Indented; tell me, in this gloomy wood
+  Hast thou seen Nala? Nala, wise and bold!
+  Ah mountain! why consolest thou me not,
+  Answering one word to sorrowful, distressed,
+  Lonely, lost Damajanti?
+
+And when she comes to the tree Asoka, she implores:
+
+  Ah, lovely tree! that wavest here
+  Thy crown of countless shining clustering blooms
+  As thou wert woodland king! Asoka tree!
+  Tree called the sorrow-ender, heart's-ease tree!
+  Be what thy name saith; end my sorrow now,
+  Saying, ah, bright Asoka, thou hast seen
+  My Prince, my dauntless Nala--seen that lord
+  Whom Damajanti loves and his foes fear.
+
+In Maghas' epic, _The Death of Sisupala_, plants and animals lead the
+same voluptuous life as the 'deep-bosomed, wide-hipped' girls with
+the ardent men.
+
+'The mountain Raivataka touches the ether with a thousand heads,
+earth with a thousand feet, the sun and moon are his eyes. When the
+birds are tired and tremble with delight from the caresses of their
+mates, he grants them shade from lotos leaves. Who in the world is
+not astonished when he has climbed, to see the prince of mountains
+who overshadows the ether and far-reaching regions of earth, standing
+there with his great projecting crags, while the moon's sickle
+trembles on his summit?'
+
+In Kalidasa's _Urwasi_, the deserted King who is searching for his
+wife asks the peacock:
+
+    Oh tell,
+  If, free on the wing as you soar,
+  You have seen the loved nymph I deplore--
+  You will know her, the fairest of damsels fair,
+  By her large soft eye and her graceful air;
+  Bird of the dark blue throat and eye of jet,
+  Oh tell me, have you seen the lovely face
+  Of my fair bride--lost in this dreary wilderness?
+
+and the mountain:
+
+  Say mountain, whose expansive slope confines
+  The forest verge, oh, tell me hast thou seen
+  A nymph as beauteous as the bride of love
+  Mounting with slender frame thy steep ascent,
+  Or wearied, resting in thy crowning woods?
+
+As he sits by the side of the stream, he asks whence comes its charm:
+
+  Whilst gazing on the stream, whose new swollen waters
+  Yet turbid flow, what strange imaginings
+  Possess my soul and fill it with delight.
+  The rippling wave is like her aching brow;
+  The fluttering line of storks, her timid tongue;
+  The foaming spray, her white loose floating vest;
+  And this meandering course the current tracks
+  Her undulating gait.
+
+Then he sees a creeper without flowers, and a strange attraction
+impels him to embrace it, for its likeness to his lost love:
+
+  Vine of the wilderness, behold
+  A lone heartbroken wretch in me,
+  Who dreams in his embrace to fold
+  His love, as wild he clings to thee.
+
+Thereupon the creeper transforms itself into Urwasi.
+
+In Kalidasa's _Sakuntala_, too, when the pretty girls are watering
+the flowers in the garden, Sakuntala says: 'It is not only in
+obedience to our father that I thus employ myself. I really feel the
+affection of a sister for these young plants.' Taking it for granted
+that the mango tree has the same feeling for herself, she cries: 'Yon
+Amra tree, my friends, points with the fingers of its leaves, which
+the gale gently agitates, and seems inclined to whisper some secret';
+and with maiden shyness, attributing her own thoughts about love to
+the plants, one of her comrades says: 'See, my Sakuntala, how yon
+fresh Mallica which you have surnamed Vanadosini or Delight of the
+Grove, has chosen the sweet Amra for her bridegroom....'
+
+'How charming is the season, when the nuptials even of plants are
+thus publicly celebrated!'--and elsewhere:
+
+'Here is a plant, Sakuntala, which you have forgotten.' Sakuntala:
+'Then I shall forget myself.'
+
+Birds,[2] clouds, and waves are messengers of love; all Nature
+grieves at the separation of lovers. When Sakuntala is leaving her
+forest, one of her friends says: 'Mark the affliction of the forest
+itself when the time of your departure approaches!
+
+'The female antelope browses no more on the collected Cusa grass, and
+the pea-hen ceases to dance on the lawn; the very plants of the
+grove, whose pale leaves fall on the ground, lose their strength and
+their beauty.'
+
+The poems of India, especially those devoted to descriptions of
+Nature, abound in such bold, picturesque personifications, which are
+touching, despite their extravagance, through their intense sympathy
+with Nature. They shew the Hindoo attitude toward Nature in general,
+as well as his boundless fancy. I select one example from 'The
+Gathering of the Seasons' in Kalidasa's _Ritusanhare_: a description
+of the Rains.
+
+'Pouring rain in torrents at the request of the thirst-stricken
+Chatakas, and emitting slow mutterings pleasing to the ears, clouds,
+bent down by the weight of their watery contents, are slowly moving
+on....
+
+'The rivers being filled up with the muddy water of the rivers, their
+force is increased. Therefore, felling down the trees on both the
+banks, they, like unchaste women, are going quickly towards the
+ocean....
+
+'The heat of the forest has been removed by the sprinkling of new
+water, and the Ketaka flowers have blossomed. On the branches of
+trees being shaken by the wind, it appears that the entire forest is
+dancing in delight. On the blossoming of Ketaka flowers it appears
+that the forest is smiling. Thinking, "he is our refuge when we are
+bent down by the weight of water, the clouds are enlivening with
+torrents the mount Vindhya assailed with fierce heat (of the
+summer)."'
+
+Charming pictures and comparisons are numerous, though they have the
+exaggeration common to oriental imagination, 'Love was the cause of
+my distemper, and love has healed it; as a summer's day, grown black
+with clouds, relieves all animals from the heat which itself had
+caused.'
+
+'Should you be removed to the ends of the world, you will be fixed in
+this heart, as the shade of a lofty tree remains with it even when
+the day is departed.'
+
+'The tree of my hope which had risen so luxuriantly is broken down.'
+
+'Removed from the bosom of my father, like a young sandal tree rent
+from the hill of Malaja, how shall I exist in a strange soil?'
+
+This familiar intercourse with Nature stood far as the poles asunder
+from the monotheistic attitude of the Hebrew. The individual, it is
+true, was nothing in comparison with Brahma, the All-One; but the
+divine pervaded and sanctified all things, and so gave them a certain
+value; whilst before Jehovah, throned above the world, the whole
+universe was but dust and ashes. The Hindoo, wrapt in the
+contemplation of Nature, described her at great length and for her
+own sake, the Hebrew only for the sake of his Creator. She had no
+independent significance for him; he looked at her only 'sub specie
+eterni Dei,' in the mirror of the eternal God. Hence he took interest
+in her phases only as revelations of his God, noting one after
+another only to group them synthetically under the idea of Godhead.
+Hence too, despite his profound inwardness--'The heart is deceitful
+above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?'
+(_Jeremiah_)--human individuality was only expressed in its relation
+to Jehovah.
+
+'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his
+handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth
+knowledge.'--_Psalm_ 19.
+
+'Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar,
+and the fulness thereof.
+
+'Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the
+trees of the wood rejoice.'--_Psalm_ 96.
+
+'Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful
+together.'--_Psalm_ 98.
+
+'The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their
+voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier
+than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the
+sea.'--_Psalm_ 93.
+
+'The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains
+skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.'--_Psalm_ 114.
+
+'The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid:
+the depths also were troubled.'--_Psalm_ 77.
+
+All these lofty personifications of inanimate Nature only
+characterise her in her relation to another, and that not man but
+God. Nothing had significance by itself, Nature was but a book in
+which to read of Jehovah; and for this reason the Hebrew could not be
+wrapt in her, could not seek her for her own sake, she was only a
+revelation of the Deity.
+
+'Lord, how great are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all:
+the earth is full of thy goodness.'
+
+Yet there is a fiery glow of enthusiasm in the songs in praise of
+Jehovah's wonders in creation.
+
+'0 Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and
+majesty.
+
+'Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest
+out the heavens like a curtain.
+
+'Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters; who maketh the
+clouds his chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind.
+
+'Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire; who
+laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for
+ever.
+
+'Thou coveredst the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above
+the mountains.
+
+'At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted
+away.
+
+'They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the
+place which thou hast founded for them.
+
+'Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn
+not again to cover the earth.
+
+'He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills.
+
+'They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench
+their thirst.
+
+'By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which
+sing among the branches ...
+
+'He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the
+service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth.
+
+'And wine that maketh glad the heart of man ...
+
+'The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which
+he hath planted.
+
+'Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees
+are her house.
+
+'The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for
+the conies.
+
+'He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.
+
+'Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the
+forest do creep forth.
+
+'The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.
+
+'The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down
+in their dens.
+
+'Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening....
+
+'This great and wide sea, wherein are creeping things innumerable,
+both small and great beasts....
+
+'He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; he toucheth the hills,
+and they smoke.
+
+'I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to
+my God as long as I have my being.'--_Psalm_ 104.
+
+And what a lofty point of view is shewn by the overpowering words
+which Job puts into the mouth of Jehovah; 'Where wast thou when I
+laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast
+understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof if thou knowest, or
+who hath stretched the line upon it?
+
+'Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the
+corner stone thereof?
+
+'When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
+shouted for joy?...
+
+'Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the
+dayspring to know his place?
+
+'That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked
+might be shaken out of it?...
+
+'Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked
+in the search of the deep?...
+
+'Declare, if thou knowest it all!...
+
+'Where is the way where light dwelleth, and as for darkness, where is
+the place thereof?' etc.
+
+Compare with this _Isaiah_ xl. verse 12, etc.
+
+Metaphors too, though poetic and fine, are not individualized.
+
+'Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts: all thy
+waves and thy billows are gone over me.'--_Psalm_ 42.
+
+'Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in
+deep mire, where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters,
+where the floods overflow me.'--_Psalm_ 69.
+
+There are many pictures from the animal world; and these are more
+elaborate in Job than elsewhere (see _Job_ xl. and xli.).
+Personifications, as we have seen, are many, but Nature is only
+called upon to sympathise with man in isolated cases, as, for
+instance, in 2 _Samuel_ i.:
+
+'Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be
+rain upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the
+mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as if he had not been
+anointed with oil.'
+
+The Cosmos unfolded itself to the Hebrew[3] as one great whole, and
+the glance fixed upon a distant horizon missed the nearer lying
+detail of phenomena. His imagination ranged the universe with the
+wings of the wind, and took vivid note of air, sky, sea, and land,
+but only, so to speak, in passing; it never rested there, but hurried
+past the boundaries of earth to Jehovah's throne, and from that
+height looked down upon creation.
+
+The attitude of the Greek was very different. Standing firmly rooted
+in the world of sense, his open mind and his marvellous eye for
+beauty appreciated the glorious external world around him down to its
+finest detail. His was the race of the beautiful, the first in
+history to train all its powers into harmony to produce a culture of
+beauty equal in form and contents, and his unique achievement in art
+and science enriched all after times with lasting standards of the
+great and beautiful.
+
+The influence of classic literature upon the Middle Ages and modern
+times has not only endured, but has gone on increasing with the
+centuries; so that we must know the position reached by Greece and
+Rome as to feeling for Nature, in order to discover whether the line
+of advance in the Middle Ages led directly forward or began by a
+backward movement--a zigzag.
+
+The terms ancient and modern, naive and sentimental, classic and
+romantic, have been shibboleths of culture from Jean Paul, Schiller,
+and Hegel, to Vischer. Jean Paul, in his _Vorschule zur Aesthetik_,
+compares the ideally simple Greek poetry, with its objectivity,
+serenity, and moral grace, with the musical poetry of the romantic
+period, and speaks of one as the sunlight that pervades our waking
+hours, the other as the moonlight that gleams fitfully on our
+dreaming ones. Schiller's epoch-making essay _On Naive and
+Sentimental Poetry_, with its rough division into the classic-naive
+depending on a harmony between nature and mind, and the
+modern-sentimental depending on a longing for a lost paradise, is
+constantly quoted to shew that the Greeks took no pleasure in Nature.
+This is misleading. Schiller's Greek was very limited; in the very
+year (1795) in which the essay appeared in _The Hours_, he was asking
+Humboldt's advice as to learning Greek, with special reference to
+Homer and Xenophon.
+
+To him Homer was the Greek _par excellence_, and who would not agree
+with him to-day?
+
+As in Greek mythology, that naive poem of Nature, the product of the
+artistic impulse of the race to stamp its impressions in a beautiful
+and harmonious form, so in the clear-cut comparisons in Homer, the
+feeling for Nature is profound; but the Homeric hero had no personal
+relations with her, no conscious leaning towards her; the
+descriptions only served to frame human action, in time or space.
+
+But that cheerful, unreflecting youth of mankind, that naive Homeric
+time, was short in spite of Schiller, who, in the very essay referred
+to, included Euripides, Virgil, and Horace among the sentimental, and
+Shakespeare among the naive, poets--a fact often overlooked.
+
+In line with the general development of culture, Greek feeling for
+Nature passed through various stages. These can be clearly traced
+from objective similes and naive, homely comparisons to poetic
+personifications, and so on to more extended descriptions, in which
+scenery was brought into harmony or contrast with man's inner life;
+until finally, in Hellenism, Nature was treated for her own sake, and
+man reduced to the position of supernumerary both in poetry and
+also--so approaching the modern--in landscape-painting.
+
+Greece had her sentimental epoch; she did not, as we have said, long
+remain naive. From Sophist days a steady process of decomposition
+went on--in other words, a movement towards what we call modern, a
+movement which to the classic mind led backward; but from the wider
+standpoint of general development meant advance. For the path of
+culture is always the same in the nations; it leads first upward and
+then downward, and all ripening knowledge, while it enriches the
+mind, brings with it some unforeseen loss. Mankind pays heavily for
+each new gain; it paid for increased subjectivity and inwardness by a
+loss in public spirit and patriotism which, once the most valued of
+national possessions, fell away before the increasing individuality,
+the germ of the modern spirit. For what is the modern spirit but
+limitless individuality?
+
+The greater the knowledge of self, the richer the inner life. Man
+becomes his own chief problem--he begins to watch the lightest
+flutter of his own feelings, to grasp and reflect upon them, to look
+upon himself in fact as in a mirror; and it is in this doubling of
+the ego, so to speak, that sentimentality in the modern sense
+consists. It leads to love of solitude, the fittest state for the
+growth of a conscious love of Nature, for, as Rousseau said 'all
+noble passions are formed in solitude,' 'tis there that one
+recognizes one's own heart as 'the rarest and most valuable of all
+possessions.' 'Oh, what a fatal gift of Heaven is a feeling heart!'
+and elsewhere he said: 'Hearts that are warmed by a divine fire find
+a pure delight in their own feelings which is independent of fate and
+of the whole world.' Euripides, too, loved solitude, and avoided the
+noise of town life by retiring to a grotto at Salamis which he had
+arranged for himself with a view of the sea; for which reason, his
+biographer tells us, most of his similes are drawn from the sea. He,
+rather than Petrarch or Rousseau, was the father of sentimentality.
+His morbidly sensitive Hippolytos cries 'Alas! would it were possible
+that I should see myself standing face to face, in which case I
+should have wept for the sorrows that we suffer'; and in the chorus
+of _The Suppliants_ we have: 'This insatiate joy of mourning leads me
+on like as the liquid drop flowing from the sun-trodden rock, ever
+increasing of groans.' In Euripides we have the first loosening of
+that ingenuous bond between Nature and the human spirit, as the
+Sophists laid the axe to the root of the old Hellenic ideas and
+beliefs. Subjectivity had already gained in strength from the birth
+of the lyric, that most individual of all expressions of feeling; and
+since the lyric cannot dispense with the external world, classic song
+now shewed the tender subjective feeling for Nature which we see in
+Sappho, Pindar, and Simonides. Yet Euripides (and Aristophanes, whose
+painful mad laugh, as Doysen says, expresses the same distraction and
+despair as the deep melancholy of Euripides) only paved the way for
+that sentimental, idyllic feeling for Nature which dwelt on her quiet
+charms for their own sake, as in Theocritus, and, like the modern,
+rose to greater intensity in the presence of the amorous passion, as
+we see in Kallimachos and the Anthology. It was the outcome of
+Hellenism, of which sentimental introspection, the freeing of the ego
+from the bonds of race and position, and the discovery of the
+individual in all directions of human existence, were marks. And this
+feeling developing from Homer to Longos, from unreflecting to
+conscious and then to sentimental pleasure in Nature, was expressed
+not only in poetry but in painting, although the latter never fully
+mastered technique.
+
+The common thoughtless statement, so often supported by quotations
+from Schiller, Gervinus, and others, that Greek antiquity was not
+alive to the beauty of Nature and her responsiveness to human moods,
+and neither painted scenery nor felt the melancholy poetic charm of
+ruins and tombs, is therefore a perversion of the truth; but it must
+be conceded that the feeling which existed then was but the germ of
+our modern one. It was fettered by the specific national beliefs
+concerning the world and deities, by the undeveloped state of the
+natural sciences, which, except botany, still lay in swaddling-clothes,
+by the new influence of Christendom, and by that strict feeling for
+style which, very much to its advantage, imposed a moderation that
+would have excluded much of our senseless modern rhapsody.
+
+It was not unnatural that Schiller, in distaste for the weak riot of
+feeling and the passion for describing Nature which obtained in his
+day, was led to overpraise the Homeric naïvete and overblame the
+sentimentality which he wrongly identified with it.
+
+In all that is called art, the Romans were pupils of the Greek, and
+their achievements in the region of beauty cannot be compared with
+his. But they advanced the course of general culture, and their
+feeling--always more subjective, abstract, self-conscious, and
+reflective--has a comparatively familiar, because modern, ring in the
+great poets.
+
+The preference for the practical and social-economic is traceable in
+their feeling for Nature. Their mythology also lay too much within
+the bounds of the intelligible; shewed itself too much in forms and
+ceremonies, in a cult; but it had not lost the sense of awe--it still
+heard the voices of mysterious powers in the depths of the forest.
+
+The dramatists wove effective metaphors and descriptions of Nature
+into their plays.
+
+Lucretius laid the foundations of a knowledge of her which refined
+both his enjoyment and his descriptions; and the elegiac sentimental
+style, which we see developed in Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Virgil,
+and Horace, first came to light in the great lyrist Catullus. In
+Imperial times feeling for Nature grew with the growth of culture in
+general; men turned to her in times of bad cheer, and found comfort
+in the great sky spaces, the constant stars, and forests that
+trembled with awe of the divine Numen.
+
+It was so with Seneca, a pantheist through and through. Pliny the
+younger was quite modern in his choice of rural solitudes, and his
+appreciation of the views from his villa. With Hadrian and Apuleius
+the Roman rococo literature began; Apuleius was astonishingly modern,
+and Ausonius was almost German in the depth and tenderness of his
+feeling for Nature. Garden-culture and landscape-painting shewed the
+same movement towards the sympathetic and elegiac-sentimental.
+
+Those who deny the Roman feeling for Nature might learn better from a
+glance at the ruins of their villas. As H. Nissen says in his
+_Italische Landeskunde_:
+
+'It was more than mere fashion which drew the Roman to the sea-side,
+and attracted so strongly all those great figures, from the elder
+Scipio Africanus and his noble daughter, Cornelia, down to Augustus
+and Tiberius and their successors, whenever their powers flagged in
+the Forum. There were soft breezes to cool the brow, colour and
+outline to refresh the eye, and wide views that appealed to a race
+born to extensive lordship.
+
+'In passing along the desolate, fever-stricken coasts of Latium and
+Campania to-day, one comes upon many traces of former splendour, and
+one is reminded that the pleasure which the old Romans took in the
+sea-side was spoilt for those who came after them by the havoc of the
+time.'
+
+In many points, Roman feeling for Nature was more developed than
+Greek. For instance, the Romans appreciated landscape as a whole, and
+distance, light and shade in wood and water, reflections, the charms
+of hunting and rowing, day-dreams on a mountain side, and so forth.
+
+That antiquity and the Middle Ages had any taste for romantic scenery
+has been energetically denied; but we can find a trace of it. The
+landscape which the Roman admired was level, graceful, and gentle; he
+certainly did not see any beauty in the Alps. Livy's 'Foeditas
+Alpinum' and the dreadful descriptions of Ammian, with others, are
+the much-quoted vouchers for this. Nor is it surprising; for modern
+appreciation, still in its youth, is really due to increased
+knowledge about Nature, to a change of feeling, and to the
+conveniences of modern travelling, unknown 2000 years ago.
+
+The dangers and hardships of those days must have put enjoyment out
+of the question; and only served to heighten the unfavourable
+contrast between the wildness of the mountain regions and the
+cultivation of Italy.
+
+Lucretius looked at wild scenery with horror, but later on it became
+a favourite subject for description; and Seneca notes, as shewing a
+morbid state of mind, in his essay on tranquillity of mind, that
+travelling not only attracts men to delightful places, but that some
+even exclaim: 'Let us go now into Campania; now that delicate soil
+delighteth us, let us visit the wood countries, let us visit the
+forest of Calabria, and let us seek some pleasure amidst the deserts,
+in such sort as these wandering eyes of ours may be relieved in
+beholding, at our pleasure, the strange solitude of these savage
+places.'
+
+We have thus briefly surveyed on the one hand, in theory, the
+conditions under which a conscious feeling for Nature develops, and
+the forms in which it expresses itself; and, on the other, the course
+this feeling has followed in antiquity among the Hindoos, Hebrews,
+Greeks, and Romans. The movement toward the modern, toward the
+subjective and individual, lies clear to view. We will now trace its
+gradual development along lines which are always strictly analogous
+to those of culture in general, through the Middle Ages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND GERMANISM
+
+
+When the heathen world had outlived its faculties, and its creative
+power had failed, it sank into the ocean of the past--a sphinx, with
+her riddle guessed,--and mediæval civilization arose, founded upon
+Christianity and Germanism. There are times in the world's history
+when change seems to be abrupt, the old to be swept away and all
+things made new at a stroke, as if by the world-consuming fire of the
+old Saga. But, in reality, all change is gradual; the old is for ever
+failing and passing out of sight, to be taken up as a ferment into
+the ever emerging new, which changes and remodels as it will. It was
+so with Christianity. It is easy to imagine that it arose suddenly,
+like a phoenix, from the ashes of heathendom; but, although dependent
+at heart upon the sublime personality of its Founder, it was none the
+less a product of its age, and a result of gradual development--a
+river with sources partly in Judea, partly in Hellas. And mediæval
+Christianity never denied the traces of its double origin.
+
+Upon this syncretic soil its literature sprang up, moulded as to
+matter upon Old Testament and specifically Christian models, as to
+form upon the great writers of antiquity; but matter and form are
+only separable in the abstract, and the Middle Ages are woven through
+and through with both Greco-Roman and Jewish elements.
+
+But these elements were unfavourable to the development of feeling
+for Nature; Judaism admitted no delight in her for her own sake, and
+Christianity intensified the Judaic opposition between God and the
+world, Creator and created.
+
+'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; if any
+man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him': by which
+John meant, raise your eyes to your Heavenly Father, throned above
+the clouds.
+
+Christianity in its stringent form was transcendental, despising the
+world and renouncing its pleasures. It held that Creation, through
+the entrance of sin, had become a caricature, and that earthly
+existence had only the very limited value of a thoroughfare to the
+eternal Kingdom.
+
+While joy in existence characterized the Hellenic world until its
+downfall, and the Greek took life serenely, delighting in its smooth
+flow; with Christianity, as Jean Paul put it, 'all the present of
+earth vanished into the future of Heaven, and the Kingdom of the
+Infinite arose upon the ruins of the finite.'
+
+The beauty of earth was looked upon as an enchantment of the devil;
+and sin, the worm in the fruit, lurked in its alluring forms.
+
+Classic mythology created a world of its own, dimly veiled by the
+visible one; every phase of Nature shewed the presence or action of
+deities with whom man had intimate relations; every form of life,
+animated by them, held something familiar to him, even sacred--his
+landscape was absorbed by the gods.
+
+To Judaism and Christianity, Nature was a fallen angel, separated as
+far as possible from her God. They only recognized one world--that of
+spirit; and one sphere of the spiritual, religion--the relation
+between God and man. Material things were a delusion of Satan's; the
+heaven on which their eyes were fixed was a very distant one.
+
+The Hellenic belief in deities was pandemonistic and cosmic;
+Christianity, in its original tendency, anti-cosmic and hostile to
+Nature. And Nature, like the world at large, only existed for it in
+relation to its Creator, and was no longer 'the great mother of all
+things,' but merely an instrument in the hands of Providence.
+
+The Greek looked at phenomena in detail, in their inexhaustible
+variety, rarely at things as a whole; the Christian considered Nature
+as a work of God, full of wonderful order, in which detail had only
+the importance of a link in a chain.
+
+As Lotze says, 'The creative artistic impulse could be of no use to a
+conception of life in which nothing retained independent
+significance, but everything referred to or symbolized something
+else.' But yet, the idea of individuality, of the importance of the
+ego, gained ground as never before through this introspection and
+merging of material in spiritual, this giving spirit the exclusive
+sway; and Christianity, while it broke down the barriers of nation,
+race, and position, and widened the cleft between Nature and spirit,
+discovered at the same time the worth of the individual.
+
+And this individuality was one of the chief steps towards an
+artistic, that is, individual point of view about Nature, for it was
+not possible to consider her freely and for her own sake alone, until
+the unlimited independence of mind had been recognized.
+
+But the full development of Christianity was only reached when it
+blended with the Germanic spirit, with the German Gemüth (for which
+no other language has a word), and intensified, by so doing, the
+innately subjective temperament of the race.
+
+The northern climate gives pause for the development of the inner
+life; its long bleak winter, with the heavy atmosphere and slow
+coming of spring, wake a craving for light and warmth, and throw man
+back on himself. This inward inclination, which made itself felt very
+early in the German race, by bringing out the contemplative and
+independent sides of his character, and so disinclining him for
+combined action with his fellows, forwarded the growth of the
+over-ripe seeds of classic culture and vital Christianity.
+
+The Romanic nations, with their brilliant, sharply-defined landscape
+and serene skies, always retained something of the objective delight
+in life which belonged to antiquity; they never felt that mysterious
+impulse towards dreams and enthusiastic longing which the Northerner
+draws from his lowering skies and dark woods, his mists on level and
+height, the grey in grey of his atmosphere, and his ever varying
+landscape. A raw climate drives man indoors in mind as well as body,
+and prompts that craving for spring and delight in its coming which
+have been the chief notes in northern feeling for Nature from
+earliest times.
+
+Vischer has shewn in his _Aesthetik_, that German feeling was early
+influenced by the different forms of plant life around it. Rigid
+pine, delicate birch, stalwart oak, each had its effect; and the
+wildness and roughness of land, sea, and animal life in the North
+combined with the cold of the climate to create the taste for
+domestic comfort, for fireside dreams, and thought-weaving by the
+hearth.
+
+Nature schooled the race to hard work and scanty pleasure, and yet
+its relationship to her was deep and heartfelt from the first.
+Devoutly religious, it gazed at her with mingled love and fear; and
+the deposit of its ideas about her was its mythology.
+
+Its gods dwelt in mountain tops, holes in the rocks, and rivers, and
+especially in dark forests and in the leafy boughs of sacred trees;
+and the howling of wind, the rustle of leaves, the soughing in the
+tree tops, were sounds of their presence. The worship of woods lasted
+far into Christian times, especially among the Saxons and
+Frisians.[1]
+
+Wodan was the all-powerful father of gods and men--the highest god,
+who, as among all the Aryan nations, represented Heaven. Light was
+his shining helmet, clouds were the dark cap he put on when he spread
+rain over the earth, or crashed through the air as a wild hunter with
+his raging pack. His son Donar shewed himself in thunder and
+lightning, as he rode with swinging axe on his goat-spanned car.
+Mountains were sacred to both, as plants to Ziu. Freyr and Freya were
+goddesses of fertility, love, and spring; a ram was sacred to them,
+whose golden fleece illuminated night as well as day, and who drew
+their car with a horse's speed.[2] As with Freya, an image of the
+goddess Nerthus was drawn through the land in spring, to announce
+peace and fertility to mortals.
+
+The suggestive myth of Baldur, god of light and spring, killed by
+blind Hödur, was the expression of general grief at the passing of
+beauty.
+
+The _Edda_ has a touching picture of the sorrow of Nature, of her
+trees and plants, when the one beloved of all living things fell,
+pierced by an arrow. Holda was first the mild and gracious goddess,
+then a divine being, encompassing the earth. She might be seen in
+morning hours by her favourite haunts of lake and spring, a beautiful
+white woman, who bathed and vanished. When snow fell, she was making
+her bed, and the feathers flew. Agriculture and domestic order were
+under her care.
+
+Ostara was goddess of bright dawn, of rising light, and awakening
+spring, as Hel of subterranean night, the darkness of the underworld.
+Frigg, wife of the highest god, knew the story of existence, and
+protected marriage. She was the Northern Juno or Hera.
+
+Ravines and hollows in the mountains were the dwelling-places of the
+dwarfs (Erdmännlein), sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly to
+man; now peaceful and helpful, now impish spirits of mischief in
+cloud caps and grey coats, thievish and jolly.
+
+They were visible by moonlight, dancing in the fields; and when their
+track was found in the dew,[3] a good harvest was expected. Popular
+belief took the floating autumn cobwebs for the work of elves and
+fairies. The spirits of mountain and wood were related to the
+water-spirits, nixies who sat combing their long hair in the sun, or
+stretched up lovely arms out of the water. The elves belonged to the
+more spiritual side of Nature, the giants to the grosser. Rocks and
+stones were the weapons of the giants; they removed mountains and
+hills, and boulders were pebbles shaken out of their shoes.
+
+Among animals the horse was sacred to many deities, and gods and
+goddesses readily transformed themselves into birds. Two ravens,
+Hugin and Munin, whose names signify thought and memory, were Odin's
+constant companions. The gift of prophecy was ascribed to the cuckoo,
+as its monotonous voice heralded the spring:
+
+  Kukuk vam haven, wo lange sail ik leven?
+
+There were many legends of men and snakes who exchanged shapes, and
+whom it was unlucky to kill.[4]
+
+The sun and moon, too, were familiar figures in legends.
+
+Their movement across the sky was a flight from two pursuing wolves,
+of which one, the Fenris wolf, was fated one day to catch and devour
+the moon. The German, like the Greek, dreaded nothing more than the
+eclipse of sun or moon, and connected it with the destruction of all
+things and the end of the world. In the moon spots he saw a human
+form carrying a hare or a stick or an axe on his shoulder.
+
+The Solstices impressed him most of all, with their almost constant
+day in summer, almost constant night in winter. Sun, moon, and stars
+were the eyes of heaven; there was a pious custom to greet the stars
+before going to bed. Still earlier, they were sparks of fire from
+Muspilli, to light the gods home. Night, day, and the sun had their
+cars--night and day with one horse, the sun with two: sunrise brought
+sounds sweeter than the song of birds or strings; the rising sun, it
+was said, rings for joy, murmuring daybreak laughs.[5]
+
+Day brought joy, night sorrow; the first was good and friendly, the
+second bad and hostile. The birds greeted daytime and summer with
+songs of delight, but grieved in silence through night and winter:
+the first swallow and stork were hailed as spring's messengers. May
+with greening woods led in beloved summer, frost and snow the winter.
+
+So myth, fable, and legend were interlaced in confusion; who can
+separate the threads?
+
+At any rate, the point of view which they indicate remained the
+common one even far into the Middle Ages, and shewed simple familiar
+intercourse with Nature. Even legal formulæ were full of pictures
+from Nature. In the customary oath to render a contract binding, the
+promise is to hold, so it runs, 'so long as the sun shines and rivers
+flow, so long as the wind blows and birds sing, so far off as earth
+is green and fir trees grow, so far as the vault of heaven reaches.'
+As Schnaase says,[6] though with some exaggeration, such formulæ, in
+their summary survey of earth and sky, often give a complete
+landscape poem in a few words. He points out that in northern, as
+opposed to classic mythology, Nature was considered, not in the
+cursory Hebrew way, that hurried over or missed detail, but as a
+whole, and in her relation to man's inner life.
+
+'The collective picture of heaven and earth, of cloud movement, of
+the mute life of plants--that side of Nature which had almost escaped
+the eye of antiquity--occupied the Northerner most of all.
+
+'The _Edda_ even represents all Nature together in one colossal
+form--the form of the giant Ymir, whom the sons of Boer slew, in
+order to make the mountains from his bones, the earth from his flesh,
+the skies from his skull.'
+
+A still grander mythical synthesis was the representation of the
+whole world under the form of the sacred ash tree Yggdrasil. This was
+the world tree which united heaven, earth, and hell. Its branches
+stretched across the world and reached up to the skies, and its roots
+spread in different directions--one toward the race of Asa in heaven,
+another toward the Hrimthursen, the third toward the underworld; and
+on both roots and branches creatures lived and played--eagle,
+squirrel, stag, and snake; while by the murmuring Urdhar stream,
+which rippled over one root, the Nones sat in judgment with the race
+of Asa.
+
+Not less significant was the conception of the end of the world, the
+twilight of the gods (Götterdämmerung), according to which all the
+wicked powers broke loose and fought against the gods; the sun and
+moon were devoured by wolves, the stars fell and earth quaked, the
+monster world-serpent Joermungande, in giant rage, reared himself out
+of the water and came to land: Loki led the Hrimthursen and the
+retinue of hell, and Surt, with his shining hair, rode away from the
+flaming earth across Bifröst, the rainbow, which broke beneath him.
+
+After the world conflagration a new and better earth arose, with
+rejuvenated gods.[7]
+
+German mediæval poetry, as a whole, epic and lyric, was interwoven
+with a hazy network of suggestive myth and legend; and moral
+elements, which in mythology were hidden by the prominence of Nature,
+stood out clear to view in the fate and character of the heroes. The
+germ of many of our fairy tales is a bit of purest poetry of
+Nature--a genuine Nature myth transferred to human affairs, which lay
+nearer to the child-like popular mind, and were therefore more
+readily understood by it.
+
+So, for instance, from the Maiden of the Shield, Sigrdrifa, who was
+pierced by Odin's sleep thorn, and who originally represented the
+earth, frozen in winter, kissed awake by the sun-god, came Brunhild,
+whose mail Siegfried's sword penetrated as the sun rays penetrate the
+frost, and lastly the King's daughter, who pricked herself with the
+fateful spindle, and sank into deep sleep. And as Sigrdrifa was
+surrounded by walls of flame, so now we have a thorny hedge of wild
+briar round the beautiful maiden (hence named Dornröschen) when the
+lucky prince comes to waken her with a kiss.[8]
+
+Not all fairy tales have preserved the myth into Christian times in
+so poetic and transparent a form as this. Its poetic germ arose from
+hidden depths of myth and legend, and, like heathen superstitions in
+the first centuries of Christianity, found its most fruitful soil
+among the people. It has often been disguised beyond recognition by
+legends, and by the worship of the Madonna and saints, but it has
+never been destroyed, and it keeps its magic to the present day.
+
+We see then that the inborn German feeling for Nature, conditioned by
+climate and landscape, and pronounced in his mythology, found both an
+obstacle and a support in Christianity--an obstacle in its
+transcendentalism, and a support in its inwardness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE THEOLOGICAL CHRISTIAN AND THE SYMPATHETIC
+HEATHEN FEELING OF THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES A.D.
+
+
+The Middle Ages employed its best intellectual power in solving the
+problems of man's relation to God and the Redeemer, his moral
+vocation, and his claim to the Kingdom of the blessed. Mind and heart
+were almost entirely engrossed by the dogmas of the new faith, such
+as the incarnation, original sin, and free-will, and by doubts which
+the Old Testament had raised and not solved. Life was looked upon as
+a test-place, a thoroughfare to the heavenly Kingdom; earth, with its
+beauty and its appeal to the senses, as a temptress.
+
+To flee the world and to lack artistic feeling were therefore marks
+of the period. We have no trace of scientific knowledge applied to
+Nature, and she was treated with increasing contempt, as the
+influence of antiquity died out. In spite of this, the attitude of
+the Apostolic Fathers was very far from hostile. Their fundamental
+idea was the Psalmist's 'Lord, how great are Thy works; in wisdom
+hast Thou made them all!' and yet they turned to Nature--at any rate,
+the noblest Grecians among them--not only for proof of divine wisdom
+and goodness, but with a degree of personal inclination, an
+enthusiasm, to which antiquity was a stranger.
+
+Clement of Rome wrote to the Corinthians:
+
+'Let us note how free from anger He is towards all His creatures. The
+heavens are moved by His direction and obey Him in peace. Day and
+night accomplish the course assigned to them by Him, without
+hindrance one to another. The sun and the moon and the dancing stars,
+according to His appointment, circle in harmony within the bounds
+assigned to them, without any swerving aside. The earth, bearing
+fruit in fulfilment of His will at her proper seasons, putteth forth
+the food that supplieth abundantly both men and beasts and all living
+things which are thereupon, making no dissension, neither altering
+anything which He hath decreed. Moreover, the inscrutable depths of
+the abysses and unutterable statutes of the nether regions are
+constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea,
+gathered together by His workmanship into its reservoirs, passeth not
+the barriers wherewith it is surrounded; but even as He ordered it,
+so it doeth. For He said, "so far shalt thou come, and thy waves
+shall be broken within thee." The ocean which is impassable for men,
+and the worlds beyond it, are directed by the same ordinances of the
+Master. The seasons of spring and summer and autumn and winter give
+way in succession one to another in peace. The winds in their several
+quarters at their proper seasons fulfil their ministry without
+disturbance, and the overflowing fountains, created for enjoyment and
+health, without fail give their breasts which sustain the life for
+men. Yea, the smallest of living things come together in concord and
+peace.'[1]
+
+The three great Cappadocians, the most representative of the Greek
+Fathers and leaders of the fourth century, wrote about the scenery
+round them in a tone of sentimentality not less astonishing, in view
+of the prejudice which denies all feeling for Nature to the Middle
+Ages, than their broad humanity and free handling of dogma.
+
+It was no ascetic renouncing the world and solitude[2]; but rather a
+sensitive man, thoughtful and dreamy at once, who wrote as follows
+(Basil the Great to Gregory Nazianzen):
+
+    It is a lofty mountain overshadowed with a deep wood, irrigated
+    on the north by cold and transparent streams. At its foot is
+    spread a low plain, enriched perpetually with the streams from
+    the mountains. The wood, a virgin forest of trees of various
+    kinds and foliage which grows around it, almost serves it as a
+    rampart; so that even the Isle of Calypso, which Homer evidently
+    admired as a paragon of loveliness, is nothing in comparison with
+    this. For indeed it is very nearly an island, from its being
+    enclosed on all sides with rocky boundaries. On two sides of it
+    are deep and precipitous ravines, and on another side the river
+    flowing from the steep is itself a continuous and almost
+    impassable barrier. The mountain range, with its moon-shaped
+    windings, walls off the accessible parts of the plain. There is
+    but one entrance, of which we are the masters. My hut is built on
+    another point, which uplifts a lofty pinnacle on the summit, so
+    that this plain is outspread before the gaze, and from the height
+    I can catch a glimpse of the river flowing round, which to my
+    fancy affords no less delight than the view of the Strymore as
+    you look from Amphipolis. For the Strymore broadens into lakes
+    with its more tranquil stream, and is so sluggish as almost to
+    forfeit the character of a river. The Iris, on the other hand,
+    flowing with a swifter course than any river I know, for a short
+    space billows along the adjacent rock, and then, plunging over
+    it, rolls into a deep whirlpool, affording a most delightful view
+    to me and to every spectator, and abundantly supplying the needs
+    of the inhabitants, for it nurtures an incredible number of
+    fishes in its eddies.
+
+    Why need I tell you of the sweet exhalations from the earth or
+    the breezes from the river? Other persons might admire the
+    multitude of the flowers, or of the lyric birds, but I have no
+    time to attend to them. But my highest eulogy of the spot is,
+    that, prolific as it is of all kinds of fruits from its happy
+    situation, it bears for me the sweetest of all fruits,
+    tranquillity; not only because it is free from the noises of
+    cities, but because it is not traversed by a single visitor
+    except the hunters, who occasionally join us. For, besides its
+    other advantages, it also produces animals--not bears and wolves,
+    like yours--heaven forbid! But it feeds herds of stags, and of
+    wild goats and hares, and creatures of that kind. Do you not then
+    observe what a narrow risk I ran, fool that I was, to change such
+    a spot for Tiberine, the depth of the habitable world? I am now
+    hastening to it, pardon me. For even Alcmæon, when he discovered
+    the Echinades, no longer endured his wanderings.[3]
+
+This highly-cultured prince of the Church clearly valued the place
+quite as much for its repose, its idyllic solitude, for what we
+moderns would call its romantic surroundings, sylvan and rugged at
+once, as for its fertility and practical uses. But it is too much to
+say, with Humboldt[4]:
+
+    In this simple description of scenery and forest life, feelings
+    are expressed which are more intimately in unison with those of
+    modern tunes, than anything which has been transmitted to us from
+    Greek or Roman antiquity. From the lonely Alpine hut to which
+    Basil withdrew, the eye wanders over the humid and leafy roof of
+    the forest below.... The poetic and mythical allusion at the
+    close of the letter falls on the Christian ear like an echo from
+    another and earlier world.
+
+The Hellenic poets of the Anthology, and the younger Pliny in
+Imperial days, held the same tone, elegiac and idyllic[5]; as
+Villemain says, 'These pleasant pictures, these poetic allusions, do
+not shew the austerity of the cloister.'[6] The specifically
+Christian and monastic was hidden by the purely human.
+
+Other writings of Basil's express still more strongly the mild
+dejection which longs for solitude. For instance, when Gregory had
+been dwelling upon the emptiness of all earthly things, he said in
+reply, that peace of soul must be man's chief aim, and could only be
+attained by separation from the world, by solitude; 'for the
+contemplation of Nature abates the fever of the soul, and banishes
+all insincerity and presumption.' Therefore he loved the quiet corner
+where he was undisturbed by human intercourse.
+
+He drew melancholy comparisons from Nature: men were compared to
+wandering clouds that dissolve into nothing, to wavering shadows, and
+shipwrecked beings, etc.
+
+His homilies on the Hexameron, too, shew thought of Nature. There is
+a fine sense for the play of colour on the sea here: 'A pleasant
+sight is the glistening sea when a settled calm doth hold it; but
+pleasant too it is to behold its surface ruffled by gentle breezes,
+and its colour now purple, now white, now dark; when it dasheth not
+with violence against the neighbouring coast, but holdeth it in
+tranquil embrace.'[7]
+
+There is enthusiastic admiration for Nature mixed with his profound
+religious feeling in the whole description of the stars, the seasons,
+etc. The expression of Ptolymäos, that when he gazed at the stars he
+felt himself raised to the table of Zeus, is weak in comparison with
+Basil's words, 'If, on a clear night, you have fixed your gaze upon
+the beauty of the stars, and then suddenly turned to thoughts of the
+artist of the universe, whoever he be, who has adorned the sky so
+wonderfully with these undying flowers, and has so planned it that
+the beauty of the spectacle is not less than its conformity to
+law....if the finite and perishable world is so beautiful, what must
+the infinite and invisible be?'[8]
+
+For him, as for modern minds, starlight brought thoughts of eternity:
+'If the greatness of the sky is beyond human comprehension, what
+mind, what understanding could fathom eternal things?'
+
+Gregory Nazianzen's feeling for Nature was intensely melancholy. His
+poem _On Human Nature_ says:
+
+    For yesterday, worn out with my grief alone, I sat apart in a
+    shady grove, gnawing my heart out. For somehow I love this remedy
+    in time of grief, to talk with mine own heart in silence. And the
+    breezes whispered to the note of the songster birds, and from the
+    branches brought to me sweet slumber, though my heart was
+    well-nigh broken. And the cicadas, friends of the sun, chirped
+    with the shrill note that issues from their breasts, and filled
+    the whole grove with sound. A cold spring hard by bedewed my feet
+    as it flowed gently through the glen; but I was held in the
+    strong grip of grief, nor did I seek aught of these things, for
+    the mind, when it is burdened with sorrow, is not fain to take
+    part in pleasure.
+
+The classic writers had also contrasted Nature with mind, as, for
+example, Ibykos in his famous _Spring Song_[9]; but not with
+Gregory's brooding melancholy and self-tormenting introspection. The
+poem goes on to compare him to a cloud that wanders hither and
+thither in darkness, without even a visible outline of that for which
+he longed; without peace:
+
+    I am a stream of troubled water: ever onward I move, nor hath any
+    part of me rest; thou wilt not a second time pass over that
+    stream thou didst before pass over, nor wilt thou see a second
+    time the man thou sawest before.
+
+In his dreamy enthusiasm he likes nothing better than solitude:
+'Happy he who leads a lonely life, happy he who with the mighty force
+of a pure mind seeth the glory of the lights of heaven.'
+
+The same tone constantly recurs in his writings. Human life is but
+dust, blown by the wind; a stormy voyage, faded grass; kingdoms and
+powers are waves of the sea, which suck under and drown; a charming
+girl is a rose with thorns, etc.
+
+Gregory of Nyssa again praises the order and splendour of Nature and
+her Creator in Old Testament style: 'Seeing the harmony of the whole,
+of wonders in heaven and in earth, and how the elements of things,
+though mutually opposed, are all by Nature welded together, and make
+for one aim through a certain indefinable intercommunion.'
+
+With the pathos of Job he cries:
+
+      Who has spread out the ground at my feet?
+      Who has made the sky firm over me as a dome?
+      Who carries the sun as a torch before me?
+      Who sends springs into the ravines?
+      Who prepares the path of the waters?
+
+    And who gives my spirit the wing for that high flight in which I
+    leave earth behind and hasten through the wide ocean of air, know
+    the beauty of the ether, and lift myself to the stars and observe
+    all their splendour, and, not staying there, but passing beyond
+    the limits of mutable things, comprehend unchangeable Nature--the
+    immutable Power which is based upon itself, and leads and
+    supports all that exists?
+
+This, with its markedly poetic swing, is surprisingly like the
+passage in Plato's _Phædo_, where Socrates says: 'If any man could
+arrive at the exterior limit or take the wings of a bird and come to
+the top, then, like a fish who puts his head out of the water and
+sees this world, he would see a world beyond; and if the nature of
+man could sustain the sight, he would acknowledge that this other
+world was the place of the true heaven and the true light and the
+true earth.' But even the thought, that the order and splendour of
+Nature witnessed to the eternal powers which had created her, was not
+strange to the Greek, as Aristotle proves in the remarks which Cicero
+preserved to us in his treatise _On the Nature of the Gods_.
+
+Well then did Aristotle observe: 'If there were men whose habitations
+had been always underground, in great and commodious houses, adorned
+with statues and pictures, finished with everything which they who
+are reputed happy abound with, and if, without stirring from thence,
+they should be informed of a certain divine power and majesty, and
+after some time the earth should open, and they should quit their
+dark abode to come to us, where they should immediately behold the
+earth, the seas, the heavens, should consider the vast extent of the
+clouds and force of the winds, should see the sun, and observe his
+grandeur and beauty, and also his generative power, inasmuch as day
+is occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky, and when
+night has obscured the earth, they should contemplate the heavens
+bespangled and adorned with stars, the surprising variety of the moon
+in her increase and wane, the rising and setting of all the stars and
+the inviolable regularity of all their courses; when,' says he, 'they
+should see these things, they would undoubtedly conclude that there
+are gods, and that these are their mighty works.'
+
+Thus unconsciously the Greek Fathers of the Church took over the
+thoughts of the great classic philosophers, only substituting a unity
+for a plurality of godhead. To soar upon the wings of bird, wind, or
+cloud, a _motif_ which we find here in Gregory of Nyssa, and which
+reached its finest expression in Ganymede and the evening scene in
+Faust, had reached a very modern degree of development in
+antiquity.[10]
+
+Gregory of Nyssa was still more sentimental and plaintive than Basil
+and Gregory Nazianzen:
+
+    When I see every ledge of rock, every valley and plain, covered
+    with new-born verdure, the varied beauty of the trees, and the
+    lilies at my feet decked by Nature with the double charms of
+    perfume and of colour, when in the distance I see the ocean,
+    towards which the clouds are onward borne, my spirit is
+    overpowered by a sadness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When in
+    autumn the fruits have passed away, the leaves have fallen, and
+    the branches of the trees, dried and shrivelled, are robbed of
+    their leafy adornments, we are instinctively led, amid the
+    everlasting and regular change in Nature, to feel the harmony of
+    the wondrous powers pervading all things. He who contemplates
+    them with the eye of the soul, feels the littleness of man amid
+    the greatness of the universe.
+
+Are not these thoughts, which Humboldt rightly strings together,
+highly significant and modern? Especially in view of the opinion
+which Du Bois Reymond, for example, expresses: 'In antiquity,
+mediæval times, and in later literature up to the last century, one
+seeks in vain for the expression of what we call a feeling for
+Nature.'[11]
+
+Might not Werther have written them? They have all his sentimental
+melancholy, coupled with that 'delight of sorrow' which owes its name
+(Wonne der Wehmuth) to Goethe, although its meaning was known to
+Euripides.
+
+Yet it was only in rare cases, such as Seneca and Aristotle, that
+classic writers combined such appreciation of Nature's individual
+traits with that lofty view of the universe which elevates and
+humbles at once.
+
+Gregory shewed the blending of Christian with classic feeling; and
+the deepening of the inner life through the new faith is quite as
+clear in patristic writings as their close relationship to the
+classic.
+
+But the thinkers and poets of the Middle Ages did not always see
+Nature under the brilliant light of Hellenic influence; there were
+wide spaces of time in which monkish asceticism held sway, and she
+was treated with most unscientific contempt. For the development of
+feeling did not proceed in one unswerving line, but was subject to
+backward movements. The rosy afterglow of the classic world was upon
+these Greek Fathers; but at the same time they suffered from the
+sorrowfulness of the new religion, which held so many sad and
+pessimistic elements.
+
+The classic spirit seemed to shudder before the eternity of the
+individual, before the unfathomable depths which opened up for
+mankind with this religion of the soul, which can find no rest in
+itself, no peace in the world, unless it be at one with God in
+self-forgetting devotion and surrender.
+
+Solitude, to which all the deeper minds at this time paid homage,
+became the mother of new and great thoughts, and of a view of the
+world little behind the modern in sentimentality.
+
+What Villemain says of the quotation from Gregory Nazianzen just
+given, applies with equal force to the others:
+
+    No doubt there is a singular charm in this mixture of abstract
+    thoughts and emotions, this contrast between the beauties of
+    Nature and the unrest of a heart tormented by the enigma of
+    existence and seeking to find rest in faith.... It was not the
+    poetry of Homer, it was another poetry.... It was in the new form
+    of contemplative poetry, in this sadness of man about himself, in
+    these impulses towards God and the future, in this idealism so
+    little known by the poets of antiquity, that the Christian
+    imagination could compete without disadvantage. It was there that
+    that poetry arose which modern satiety seeks for, the poetry of
+    reverie and reflection, which penetrates man's heart and
+    deciphers his most intimate thoughts and vaguest wishes.
+
+Contempt for art was a characteristic of the Fathers of the Church,
+and to that end they extolled Nature; man's handiwork, however
+dazzling, was but vanity in their eyes, whereas Nature was the
+handiwork of the Creator. Culture and Nature were purposely set in
+opposition to each other.[12] St Chrysostom wrote:
+
+    If the aspect of the colonnades of sumptuous buildings would lead
+    thy spirit astray, look upwards to the vault of heaven, and
+    around thee on the open fields, in which herds graze by the
+    water's side. Who does not despise all the creations of art, when
+    in the stillness of his soul he watches with admiration the
+    rising of the sun, as it pours its golden light over the face of
+    the earth; when resting on the thick grass beside the murmuring
+    spring, or beneath the sombre shade of a thick and leafy tree,
+    the eye rests on the far receding and hazy distance?
+
+The visible to them was but a mirror of the invisible; as Paul says
+(13th of the 1st Corinthians): 'Here we see in a glass darkly,' and
+Goethe: 'Everything transitory is but a similitude.'
+
+    God (says St Chrysostom again) has placed man in the world as in
+    a royal palace gleaming with gold and precious stones; but the
+    wonderful thing about this palace is, that it is not made of
+    stone, but of far costlier material; he has not lighted up a
+    golden candelabra, but given lights their fixed course in the
+    roof of the palace, where they are not only useful to us, but an
+    object of great delight.[13]
+
+The Roman secular writers of the first Christian centuries had not
+this depth of thought and sadness; but from them too we have notable
+descriptions of Nature in which personal pleasure and sympathy are
+evident motives as well as religious feeling.
+
+In the little _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, a writing full of genuine
+human feeling of the time of Commodus, the mixture of the heathen
+culture and opinions of antiquity with the Christian way of thinking
+has a very modern ring. The scenery is finely sketched.
+
+    The heats of summer being over, autumn began to be temperate ...
+    we (two friends, a heathen and a Christian) agreed to go to the
+    delightful city of Ostia.... As, at break of day, we were
+    proceeding along the banks of the Tiber towards the sea, that the
+    soft breeze might invigorate our limbs, and that we might enjoy
+    the pleasure of feeling the beach gently subside under our
+    footsteps, Cæcilius observed an image of Serapis, and having
+    raised his hands to his lips, after the wont of the superstitious
+    vulgar, he kissed it.... Then Octavius said: 'It is not the part
+    of a good man, brother Marcus, thus to leave an intimate
+    companion and friend amidst blind popular ignorance, and to
+    suffer him, in such open daylight, to stumble against stones,'
+    etc.... Discoursing after this sort, we traversed the space
+    between Ostia and the sea, and arrived at the open coast. There
+    the gentle surges had smoothed the outermost sands like a
+    pleasure walk, and as the sea, although the winds blow not, is
+    ever unquiet, it came forward to the shore, not hoary and
+    foaming, but with waves gently swelling and curled. On this
+    occasion we were agreeably amused by the varieties of its
+    appearance, for, as we stood on the margin and dipped the soles
+    of our feet in the water, the wave alternately struck at us, and
+    then receding, and sliding away, seemed to swallow up itself. We
+    saw some boys eagerly engaged in the game of throwing shells in
+    the sea.... Cæcilius said: 'All things ebb into the fountain from
+    which they spring, and return back to their original without
+    contriver, author, or supreme arbiter ... showers fall, winds
+    blow, thunder bellows, and lightnings flash ... but they have no
+    aim.' Octavius answers: 'Behold the heaven itself, how wide it is
+    stretched out, and with what rapidity its revolutions are
+    performed, whether in the night when studded with stars, or in
+    the daytime when the sun ranges over it, and then you will learn
+    with what a wonderful and divine hand the balance is held by the
+    Supreme Moderator of all things; see how the circuit made by the
+    sun produces the year, and how the moon, in her increase, wanes
+    and changes, drives the months around.... Observe the sea, it is
+    bound by a law that the shore imposes; the variety of trees, how
+    each of them is enlivened from the bowels of the earth! Behold
+    the ocean, it ebbs and flows alternately. Look at the springs,
+    they trickle with a perpetual flow; at rivers, they hold on their
+    course in quick and continued motion. Why should I speak of the
+    ridges of mountains, aptly disposed? of the gentle slope of
+    hills, or of plains widely extended?... In this mansion of the
+    world, when you fully consider the heaven and the earth, and that
+    providence, order, and government visible in them, assure
+    yourself that there is indeed a Lord and Parent of the whole ...
+    do not enquire for the name of God--God is his name.... If I
+    should call Him Father, you would imagine Him earthly; if King,
+    carnal; and if Lord, mortal. Remove all epithets, and then you
+    will be sensible of His glory....'
+
+How like Faust's confession of faith to Gretchen:
+
+  Him who dare name
+  And yet proclaim,
+  Yes! I believe...
+  The All-embracer,
+  All-sustainer,
+  Doth he not embrace, sustain,
+  Thee, me, Himself?
+  Lifts not the Heaven its dome above?
+  Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us rise?...
+  And beaming tenderly with looks of love
+  Climb not the everlasting stars on high?...
+  Fill thence thy heart, how large so e'er it be,
+  And in the feeling when thou'rt wholly blest,
+  Then call it what thou wilt--Bliss! Heart! Love! God!
+  I have no name for it--'tis feeling all
+  Name is but sound and smoke
+  Shrouding the glow of Heaven.
+
+Such statements of belief were not rare in the Apologists; but Nature
+at this time was losing independent importance in men's minds, like
+life itself, which after Cyprian was counted as nothing but a fight
+with the devil.[14]
+
+There is deep reverence for Nature in the lyrics, the hymns of the
+first centuries A.D., as a work of God and an emblem of moral ideas.
+Ebert observes[15]
+
+    In comparison with the old Roman, one can easily see the
+    peculiarities and perfect originality of these Christian lyrics.
+    I do not mean merely in that dominance of the soul life in which
+    man appeared to be quite merged, and which makes them such
+    profound expressions of feeling; but in man's relationship to
+    Nature, which, one might say, supplies the colour to the
+    painter's brush.[16] Nature appears here in the service of ideal
+    moral powers and robbed of her independence;[17] the servant of
+    her Creator, whose direct command she obeys. She is his
+    instrument for man's welfare, and also at times, under the
+    temporary mastery of the devil, for his destruction. Thus Nature
+    easily symbolizes the moral world.
+
+'Bountiful Giver of light, through whose calm brightness, when the
+time of night is past and gone, the daylight is suffused abroad,
+Thou, the world's true morning star, clearer than the full glorious
+sun, Thou very dayspring, very light in all its fulness, that dost
+illumine the innermost recesses of the heart,' sings St Hilary in his
+Morning Hymn; and in another hymn, declaring himself unworthy to lift
+his sinful eyes to the clear stars, he urges all the creatures, and
+heaven, earth, sea and river, hill and wood, rose, lily, and star to
+weep with him and lament the sinfulness of man.
+
+In the Morning Hymn of St Ambrose dawn is used symbolically; dark
+night pales, the light of the world is born again, and the new birth
+of the soul raises to new energy; Christ is called the true sun, the
+source of light; 'let modesty be as the dawn, faith as the noonday,
+let the mind know no twilight.'
+
+And Prudentius sings in a Morning Hymn [18]: 'Night and mist and
+darkness fade, light dawns, the globe brightens, Christ is coming!'
+and again: 'The herald bird of dawn announces day, Christ the awaker
+calls us to life.' And in the ninth hymn: 'Let flowing rivers, waves,
+the seashore's thundering, showers, heat, snow, frost, forest and
+breeze, night, day, praise Thee throughout the ages.'[19]
+
+He speaks of Christ as the sun that never sets, never is obscured by
+clouds, the flower of David, of the root of Jesse; of the eternal
+Fatherland where the whole ground is fragrant with beds of purple
+roses, violets, and crocuses, and slender twigs drop balsam.
+
+St Jerome united Christian genius, as Ebert says, with classic
+culture to such a degree that his writings, especially his letters,
+often shew a distinctly modern tone,[20] and go to prove that
+asceticism so deepened and intensified character that even literary
+style took individual stamp.[21] But the most perfect representative,
+the most modern man, of his day was Augustine.
+
+As Rousseau's _Confessions_ revealed the revolutionary genius of the
+eighteenth century, Augustine's opened out a powerful character,
+fully conscious of its own importance, striving with the problems of
+the time, and throwing search-lights into every corner of its own
+passionate heart. He had attained, after much struggling, to a
+glowing faith, and he described the process in characteristic and
+drastic similes from Nature, which are scarcely suitable for
+translation. He said on one occasion:
+
+    For I burned at times in my youth to satiate myself with deeds of
+    hell, and dared to run wild in many a dark love passage.... In
+    the time of my youth I took my fill passionately among the wild
+    beasts, and I dared to roam the woods and pursue my vagrant loves
+    beneath the shade; and my beauty consumed away and I was
+    loathsome in Thy sight, pleasing myself and desiring to please
+    the eyes of men.... The seething waves of my youth flowed up to
+    the shores of matrimony....
+
+Comfortless at the death of his friend:
+
+    I burned, I sighed, I wept, I was distraught, for I bore within
+    me a soul rent and bloodstained, that would no longer brook my
+    carrying; yet I found no place where I could lay it down, neither
+    in pleasant groves nor in sport was it at rest. All things, even
+    the light itself, were filled with shuddering.
+
+Augustine, like Rousseau, understood 'que c'est un fatal présent du
+ciel qu'une ame sensible.'
+
+He looked upon his own heart as a sick child, and sought healing for
+it in Nature and solitude, though in vain.
+
+The pantheistic belief of the Manicheans that all things, fire, air,
+water, etc., were alive, that figs wept when they were picked and the
+mother tree shed milky tears for the loss of them, that everything in
+heaven and earth was a part of godhead, gave him no comfort; it was
+rather the personal God of the Psalms whom he saw in the ordering of
+Nature.
+
+The cosmological element in theism has never been more beautifully
+expressed than in his words:
+
+    I asked the earth, and she said: 'I am not He,' and all things
+    that are in her did confess the same. I asked the sea and the
+    depths and creeping things, and they answered: 'We are not thy
+    God, seek higher.' I asked the blowing breezes, and the whole
+    expanse of air with its inhabitants made answer: 'Anaxagoras was
+    at fault, I am not God.' I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, the
+    stars, and with a loud voice did they exclaim: 'He made us.' My
+    question was the enquiry of my spirit, their answer was the
+    beauty of their form.
+
+In another place:
+
+    Not with uncertain but with sure consciousness, Lord, I love
+    Thee. But behold, sea and sky and all things in them from all
+    sides tell me that I must love Thee, nor do they cease to give
+    all men this message, so that they are without excuse. Sky and
+    earth speak to the deaf Thy praises: when I love Thee, I love not
+    beauty of form, nor radiancy of light; but when I love my God, I
+    love the light, the voice, the sweetness, the food, the embrace
+    of my innermost soul. That is what I love when I love my God.
+
+Augustine's interest in Nature was thus religious. At the same time,
+the soothing influence of quiet woods was not unknown to him.
+
+The likeness and unlikeness between the Christian and heathen points
+of view are very clear in the correspondence between Ausonius, the
+poet of the Moselle, and Paulinus, Bishop of Nola; and the deep
+friendship expressed in it raises their dilettante verses to the
+level of true poetry.
+
+Ausonius, thoroughly heathen as he was, carries us far forward into
+Christian-Germanic times by his sentimentality and his artistic
+descriptions of the scenery of the Moselle.[22]
+
+It is characteristic of the decline of heathendom, that the lack of
+original national material to serve as inspiration, as the Æneas Saga
+had once served, led the best men of the time to muse on Nature, and
+describe scenery and travels. Nothing in classic Roman poetry attests
+such an acute grasp of Nature's little secret charms as the small
+poem about the sunny banks of the Moselle, vine-clad and crowned by
+villas, and reflected in the crystal water below. It seemed as if the
+Roman, with the German climate, had imbibed the German love of
+Nature; as if its scenery had bewitched him like the German maiden
+whom he compared to roses and lilies in his song.
+
+Many parts of his poetical epistles are in the same tone, and we
+learn incidentally from them that a lengthy preamble about weather
+and place belonged to letter-writing even then.[23]
+
+Feeling for Nature and love of his friend are interwoven into a truly
+poetic appeal in No. 64, in which Ausonius complains that Paulinus
+does not answer his letters:
+
+    Rocks give answer to the speech of man, and his words striking
+    against the caves resound, and from the groves cometh the echo of
+    his voice. The cliffs of the coast cry out, the rivers murmur,
+    the hedge hums with the bees that feed upon it, the reedy banks
+    have their own harmonious notes, the foliage of the pine talks in
+    trembling whispers to the winds: what time the light south-east
+    falls on the pointed leaves, songs of Dindymus give answer in the
+    Gargaric grove. Nature has made nothing dumb; the birds of the
+    air and the beasts of the earth are not silent, the snake has its
+    hiss, the fishes of the sea as they breathe give forth their
+    note.... Have the Basque mountains and the snowy haunts of the
+    Pyrenees taken away thy urbanity?... May he, who advises thee to
+    keep silence, never enjoy the singing of sweet songs nor the
+    voices of Nature ... sad and in need may he live in desolate
+    regions, and wander silent in the rounded heights of the Alpine
+    range.
+
+The sounds of Nature are detailed with great delicacy in this appeal,
+and we see that the Alps are referred to as desolate regions.
+
+In another letter (25) he reminded his friend of their mutual love,
+their home at Burdigala, his country-house with its vine-slopes,
+fields, woods, etc., and went on:
+
+    Yet without thee no year advanceth with grateful change of
+    season; the rainy spring passeth without flower, the dog-star
+    burns with blazing heat, Pomona bringeth not the changing scents
+    of autumn, Aquarius pours forth his waters and saddens winter.
+    Pontius, dear heart, seest thou what thou hast done?
+
+Closing in the same tender strain with a picture of his hope
+fulfilled:
+
+    Now he leaves the snowy towns of the Iberians, now he holds the
+    fields of the Tarbellians, now passeth he beneath the halls of
+    Ebromagus, now he is gliding down the stream, and now he knocketh
+    at thy door! Can we believe it? Or do they who love, fashion
+    themselves dreams?
+
+The greater inwardness of feeling here, as contrasted with classic
+times, is undeniable; the tone verges on the sentimentality of the
+correspondences between 'beautiful souls' in the eighteenth century.
+
+Paulinus was touchingly devoted to his former teacher Ausonius, and
+in every way a man of fine and tender feeling. He gave himself with
+zeal to Christianity, and became an ascetic and bishop.
+
+It was a bitter grief to him that his Ausonius remained a heathen
+when he himself had sworn allegiance to Christ and said adieu to
+Apollo. There is a fine urbanity and humanity in his writings, but he
+did not, like Ausonius, love Nature for her own sake. The one took
+the Christian ascetic point of view, the other the classic heathen,
+with sympathy and sentiment in addition.
+
+Paulinus recognized the difference, and contrasted their ideas of
+solitude. 'They are not crazed, nor is it their savage fierceness
+that makes men choose to live in lonely spots; rather, turning their
+eyes to the lofty stars, they contemplate God, and set the leisure
+that is free from empty cares, to fathom the depths of truth they
+love.'
+
+In answer to his friend's praise of home, he praised Spain, in which
+he was living, and many copious descriptions of time and place run
+through his other writings[24]; but while he yielded nothing to
+Ausonius in the matter of friendship, 'sooner shall life disappear
+from my body than thy image from my heart,' he was without his quiet
+musing delight in Nature. For her the heathen had the clearer eye and
+warmer heart; the Christian bishop only acknowledged her existence in
+relation to his Creator, declaring with pride that no power had been
+given to us over the elements, nor to them over us, and that not from
+the stars but from our own hearts come the hindrances to virtue.
+
+Lives of the saints and paraphrases of the story of creation were the
+principal themes of the Christian poets of the fourth and fifth
+centuries. In some of these the hermit was extolled with a dash of
+Robinson Crusoe romance, and the descriptions of natural phenomena in
+connection with Genesis often showed a feeling for the beauty of
+Nature in poetic language. Dracontius drew a detailed picture of
+Paradise with much self-satisfaction.
+
+    Then in flight the joyous feathered throng passed through the
+    heavens, beating the air with sounding wings, various notes do
+    they pour forth in soothing harmony, and, methinks, together
+    praise for that they were accounted worthy to be created.[26]
+
+For the charming legend of Paradise was to many Christian minds of
+this time what the long-lost bliss of Elysium and the Golden Age had
+been to the Hellenic poets and the Roman elegist--the theme of much
+vivid imagery and highly-coloured word-painting.
+
+    Eternal spring softens the air, a healing flame floods the world
+    with light, all the elements glow in healing warmth; as the
+    shades of night fade, day rises.... Then the feathered flocks fly
+    joyfully through the air, beating it with their wings in the rush
+    of their passage, and with flattering satisfaction their voices
+    are heard, and I think they praise God that they were found
+    worthy to be created; some shine in snowy white, some in purple,
+    some in saffron, some in yellow gold; others have white feathers
+    round the eyes, while neck and breast are of the bright tint of
+    the hyacinth ... and upon the branches, the birds are moved to
+    and fro with them by the wind.
+
+This shews careful observation of detail; but, for the most part,
+such idyllic feeling was checked by lofty religious thoughts.
+
+'Man,' he cries, 'should rule over Nature, over all that it contains,
+over all earth offers in fruit, flowers, and verdure that tree and
+vine, sea and spring, can give.' He summons all creation to praise
+the Creator--stars and seasons, hail-storm and lightning, earth, sea,
+river and spring, cloud and night, plants, animals, and light; and he
+describes the flood in bold flights of fancy.
+
+In the three books of Avitus[27] we have 'a complete poem of the lost
+Paradise, far removed from a mere paraphrase or versification of the
+Bible,'[28] which shews artistic leanings and sympathetic feeling
+here and there. As Catullus[29] pictures the stars looking down upon
+the quiet love of mortals by night, and Theocritus[30] makes the
+cypresses their only witnesses, the Christian poet surrounds the
+marriage of our first parents with the sympathy of Nature:
+
+    And angel voices joined in harmony and sang to the chaste and
+    pure; Paradise was their wedding-chamber, earth their dowry, and
+    the stars of heaven rejoiced with gladsome radiance.... The
+    kindness of heaven maintains eternal spring there; the tumultuous
+    south wind does not penetrate, the clouds forsake an air which is
+    always pure.... The soil has no need of rains to refresh it, and
+    the plants prosper by virtue of their own dew. The earth is
+    always verdant, and its surface animated by a sweet warmth
+    resplendent with beauty. Herbs never abandon the hills, the trees
+    never lose their leaves, etc.
+
+And when Adam and Eve leave it, they find all the rest of the
+beautiful world ugly and narrow in comparison. 'Day is dark to their
+eyes, and under the clear sun they complain that the light has
+disappeared.'
+
+It was the reflection of their own condition in Nature. Among heathen
+writers who were influenced, without being entirely swayed, by
+Christian teaching, and imitated the rhetorical Roman style in
+describing Nature, Apollonius Sidonius takes a prominent place. In
+spite of many empty phrases and a stilted style, difficult to
+understand as well as to translate, his poems, and still more his
+letters, give many interesting pictures of the culture of his part of
+the fifth century. In Carm. 2 he draws a highly--coloured picture of
+the home of Pontius Leontas,[31] a fine country property, and paints
+the charms of the villa with all the art of his rhetoric and some
+real appreciation. The meeting of the two rivers, the Garonne and the
+Dordogne, in the introduction is poetically rendered, and he goes on
+to describe the cool hall and grottos, state-rooms, pillars--above
+all, the splendid view: 'There on the top of the fortress I sit down
+and lean back and gaze at the mountains covered by olives, so dear to
+the Muse and the goats. I shall wander in their shade, and believe
+that coward Daphne grants me her love.' He delighted in unspoilt
+Nature, and describes:
+
+    My fountain, which, as it flows from the mountain-side, is
+    overshadowed by a many-covered grotto with its wide circle. It
+    needs not Art; Nature has given it grace. That no artist's hand
+    has touched it is its charm; it is no masterpiece of skill, no
+    hammer with resounding blow will adorn the rocks, nor marble fill
+    up the place where the tufa is worn away.
+
+He lays stress upon the contrast between culture and Nature, town
+luxury and country solitude, in his second letter to Domidius, and
+describes the beauties of his own modest estate with sentimental
+delight:
+
+    You reproach me for loitering in the country; I might complain
+    with more reason that you stay in the town when the earth shines
+    in the light of spring, the ice is melting from the Alps, and the
+    soil is marked by the dry fissures of tortuous furrows ... the
+    stones in the stream, and the mud on the banks are dried up ...
+    here neither nude statues, comic actors, nor Hippodrome are to be
+    found ... the noise of the waters is so great that it drowns
+    conversation. From the dining-room, if you have time to spare at
+    meals, you can occupy it with the delight of looking at the
+    scenery, and watch the fishing ... here you can find a hidden
+    recess, cool even in summer heat, a place to sleep in. Here what
+    joy it is to listen to the cicadas chirping at noonday, and to
+    the frogs croaking when the twilight is coming on, and to the
+    swans and geese giving note at the early hours of the night, and
+    at midnight to the cocks crowing together, and to the boding
+    crows with three-fold note greeting the ruddy torch of the rising
+    dawn; and in the half light of the morning to hear the
+    nightingale warbling in the bushes, and the swallow twittering
+    among the beams.... Between whiles, the shepherds play in their
+    rustic fashion. Not far off is a wood where the branches of two
+    huge limes interlace, though their trunks are apart (in their
+    shade we play ball), and a lake that rises to such fury in a
+    storm that the trees that border it are wetted by the spray.
+
+In another letter to Domidius he described a visit to the
+country-seat of two of his friends:
+
+    We were torn from one pleasure to another--games, feastings,
+    chatting, rowing, bathing, fishing.
+
+As a true adherent even as a bishop of classic culture and humanity,
+Sidonius is thus an interesting figure in these wild times, with his
+Pliny-like enthusiasm for country rather than city, and his
+susceptibility to woodland and pastoral life.
+
+The limit of extravagance in the bombastic rhetoric of the period was
+reached in the travels of Ennodius,[32] who was scarcely more than a
+fantastic prattler. The purest, noblest, and most important figure of
+the sixth century was undoubtedly Boetius; but it is Cassiodorus, a
+statesman of the first rank under Theodoric, who in his _Variorium
+libris_ gives the most interesting view of the attitude of his day
+towards Nature. He revelled in her and in describing her. After
+praising Baja for its beauty[33] and Lactarius for its healthiness,
+he said of Scyllacium:
+
+    The city of Scyllacium hangs upon the hills like a cluster of
+    grapes, not that it may pride itself upon their difficult ascent,
+    but that it may voluptuously gaze on verdant plains and the blue
+    back of the sea. The city beholds the rising sun from its very
+    cradle, when the day that is about to be born sends forward no
+    heralding Aurora; but as soon as it begins to rise, the quivering
+    brightness displays its torch. It beholds Phoebus in his joy; it
+    is bathed in the brightness of that luminary so that it might be
+    thought to be itself the native land of the sun, the claims of
+    Rhodes to that honour being outdone.... It enjoys a translucent
+    air, but withal so temperate, that its winters are sunny and its
+    summers cool, and life passes there without sorrow, since hostile
+    seasons are feared by none. Hence, too, man himself is here freer
+    of soul than elsewhere, for this temperateness of the climate
+    prevails in all things.... Assuredly for the body to imbibe muddy
+    waters is a different thing from sucking in the transparency of a
+    sweet fountain. Even so the vigour of the mind is repressed when
+    it is clogged by a heavy atmosphere. Nature itself hath made us
+    subject to these influences.... clouds make us feel sad, and
+    again a bright day fills us with joy.... At the foot of the
+    Moscian Mount we hollowed out the bowels of the rock, and
+    tastefully introduced therein the eddying waves of Nereus. Here a
+    troop of fishes sporting in free captivity refreshes all minds
+    with delight, and charms all eyes with admiration. They run
+    greedily to the hand of man, and, before they become his food,
+    seek dainties from him.
+
+He described the town as rich in vineyards and olive woods,
+cornfields and villas.
+
+He awarded the palm of beauty to Como and its lake, and although he
+wrote in the clumsy language of a decaying literature, this
+sixth-century sketch still strikes us as surprisingly complete and
+artistic in feeling:
+
+    Como, with its precipitous mountains and its vast expanse of
+    lake, seems placed there for the defence of the Province of
+    Liguria; and yet again, it is so beautiful, that one would think
+    it was created for pleasure only.
+
+    To the south lies a fertile plain with easy roads for the
+    transport of provisions; on the north, a lake sixty miles long
+    abounding in fish, soothing the mind with delicious
+    recreation.... Rightly is it called Como, because it is adorned
+    with such gifts. The lake lies in a shell-like valley with white
+    margins. Above rises a diadem of lofty mountains, their slopes
+    studded with bright villas; a girdle of olives below, vineyards
+    above, while a crest of thick chestnut woods adorns the very
+    summit of the hills. Streams of snowy clearness dash from the
+    hill-sides into the lake. On the eastern side these unite to form
+    the river Addua, so called because it contains the added volume
+    of two streams.... So delightful a region makes men delicate and
+    averse to labour.... Therefore the inhabitants deserve special
+    consideration, and for this reason we wish them to enjoy
+    perpetually the royal bounty.
+
+This shews, beyond dispute, that the taste for the beauty of Nature,
+even at that wild time, was not dead, and that the writer's attitude
+was not mainly utilitarian. He noted the fertility of the land in
+wine and grain, and of the sea in fish, but he laid far greater
+stress upon its charms and their influence upon the inhabitants.
+
+On _a priori_ grounds (so misleading in questions of this kind) one
+would scarcely expect the most disturbed period in the history of the
+European people to have produced a Venantius Fortunatus, the greatest
+and most celebrated poet of the sixth century. His whole personality,
+as well as his poetry, shewed the blending of heathenism and
+Christianity, of Germanism and Romanism, and it is only now and then
+among the Roman elegists and later epic poets that we meet a feeling
+for Nature which can be compared to his. Like all the poets of this
+late period, his verse lacks form, is rugged and pompous, moving upon
+the stilts of classic reminiscences, and coining monstrous new
+expressions for itself; but its feeling is always sincere. It was the
+last gleam of a setting sun of literature that fell upon this one
+beneficent figure. He was born in the district of Treviso near
+Venice, and crossed the Alps a little before the great Lombard
+invasion, while the Merovingians, following in the steps of Chlodwig,
+were outdoing each other in bloodshed and cruelty. In the midst of
+this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the poets by virtue
+of his talent and purity of character. His poems are often disfigured
+by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but his keen eye for
+men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for Nature shews not
+only in dealing with scenery, but in linking it with the inner life.
+
+The lover's wish in _On Virginity_,[34] one of his longer poems,
+suggests the Volkslieder:
+
+    O that I too might go, if my hurrying foot could poise amid the
+    lights of heaven and hold on its starry course. But now, without
+    thee, night comes drearily with its dark wings, and the day
+    itself and the glittering sunshine is darkness to me. Lily,
+    narcissus, violet, rose, nard, amomum, bring me no joy--nay, no
+    flower delights my heart. That I may see thee, I pass hovering
+    through each cloud, and my love teaches my wandering eyes to
+    pierce the mist, and lo! in dread fear I ask the stormy winds
+    what they have to tell me of my lord. Before thy feet I long to
+    wash the pavement, and with my hair to sweep thy temples.
+    Whatever it be, I will bear it; all hard things are sweet; if
+    only I see thee, this penalty is my joy. But be thou mindful, for
+    thy vows do I yearn; I have thee in my heart, have me in thy
+    heart too.
+
+This is more tender in feeling than any poem by Catullus or Tibullus.
+We can only explain it by two facts--the deepening of the inner life
+through Christianity (we almost hear Christ's words about the 'great
+sinner'), and the intimate friendship which Fortunatus enjoyed with a
+German lady, who may justly be called the noblest and purest figure
+of her time in Franconia.
+
+This was Radegunde, the unhappy daughter of a Thuringian king, who
+first saw her father's kingdom lost, and then, fleeing from the
+cruelty of her husband, the bloodstained Chlotaire, took the veil in
+Poitiers and founded a convent, of which she made Agnes, a noble
+Franconian lady, the abbess. When Fortunatus visited the place, these
+ladies became his devoted friends, and he remained there as a priest
+until the death of Radegunde. His poems to them, which were often
+letters and notes written off-hand, are full of affection and
+gratitude (he was, by the way, a gourmet, and the ladies made
+allowance for this weakness in dainty gifts), and form an enduring
+witness of a pure and most touching friendship. They contain many
+pretty sketches of Nature and delicate offerings of flowers. In one
+he said: 'If the season brought white lilies or blossomed in red
+roses, I would send them to you, but now you must be content with
+purple violets for a greeting'; and in another, because gold and
+purple are not allowable, he sends her flowers, that she may have
+'her gold in crocuses, her purple in violets, and they may adorn her
+hair with even greater delight than she draws from their fragrance.'
+Once, when following pious custom, she had withdrawn into her cell,
+his 'straying thoughts go in search of her':
+
+    How quickly dost thou hide the light from mine eyes! for without
+    thee I am o'erweighted by the clouds that bear me down, and
+    though thou flee and hide thyself here but for a few short days,
+    that month is longer than the whole hurrying year. Prithee, let
+    the joys of Easter bring thee back in safety, and so may a
+    two-fold light return to us at once.
+
+And when she comes out, he cries:
+
+    Thou hadst robbed me of my happiness; now it returns to me with
+    thee, thou makest me doubly celebrate this solemn festival....
+    Though the seedlings are only just beginning to shoot up from the
+    furrows, yet I to-day will reap my harvest in seeing thee once
+    more. To-day do I gather in the fruit and lay the peaceful
+    sheaves together. Though the field is bare, nor decked with ears
+    of corn, yet all, through thy return, is radiant fulness.
+
+The comparison is tedious and spun out; but the idea is poetic. We
+find it in the classics: for instance, in Theocritus, when he praises
+Nais, whose beauty draws even Nature under her sway, and whose coming
+makes spring everywhere:
+
+    Where has my light hidden herself from my straying eyes? When I
+    see not thee, I am ne'er satisfied. Though the heavens be bright,
+    though the clouds have fled, yet for me is the day sunless, if it
+    hide thee from me.
+
+The most touching evidence of this friendship is the poem _On the
+Downfall of Thuringia_.
+
+'One must,' says Leo,[35] 'refer the chief excellence of the poem to
+the lady who tells the tale, must grant that the irresistible power
+of the description, the spectacle of the freshly open wounds, the
+sympathy in the consuming sorrow of a friend, gave unwonted power of
+the wing to this low-flying pen.' Radegunde is thinking of her only
+remaining relative, Amalafried:
+
+    When the wind murmurs, I listen if it bring me some news, but of
+    all my kindred not even a shadow presents itself to me.... And
+    thou, Amalafried, gentle son of my father's brother, does no
+    anxiety for me consume thy heart? Hast thou forgotten what
+    Radegunde was to thee in thy earliest years, and how much thou
+    lovedst me, and how thou heldst the place of the father, mother,
+    brother, and sister whom I had lost? An hour absent from thee
+    seemed to me eternal; now ages pass, and I never hear a word from
+    thee. A whole world now lies betwixt those who loved each other
+    and who of old were never separate. If others, for pity alone,
+    cross the Alps to seek their lost slaves, wherefore am I
+    forgotten?--I who am bound to thee by blood? Where art thou? I
+    ask the wind as it sighs, the clouds as they pass--at least some
+    bird might bring me news of thee. If the holy enclosure of this
+    monastery did not restrain me, thou shouldst see me suddenly
+    appear beside thee. I could cross the stormy seas in winter if it
+    were necessary. The tempest that alarms the sailors should cause
+    no fear to me who love thee. If my vessel were dashed to pieces
+    by the tempest, I should cling to a plank to reach thee, and if I
+    could find nothing to cling to, I should go to thee swimming,
+    exhausted. If I could but see thee once more, I should deny all
+    the perils of the journey....
+
+There is little about Nature in this beautiful avowal of love and
+longing, but the whole colouring of the mood forms a background of
+feeling for his longer descriptions. His very long and tedious poem
+about the bridal journey of Gelesiuntha, the Spanish princess, who
+married King Chilperic, shews deep and touching feeling in parts. She
+left her Toledo home with a heavy heart, crossing the Pyrenees, where
+'the mountains shining with snow reach to the stars, and their sharp
+peaks project over the rain clouds.' In the same vein as Ausonius,
+when he urged Paulinus to write to him, she begs her sister for news:
+
+    By thy name full oft I call thee, Gelesiuntha, sister mine: with
+    this name fountains, woods, rivers, and fields resound. Art thou
+    silent, Gelesiuntha? Answer as to thy sister stones and
+    mountains, groves and waters and sky, answer in language mute.
+
+In troubled thought and care she asked the very breezes, but of her
+sister's safety all were silent.
+
+Fortunatus, like Ausonius, not only looked at Nature with sympathy,
+but was a master in description of scenery. His lengthy descriptions
+of spring are mostly only decorative work, but here and there we find
+a really poetic idea. For example:
+
+At the first spring, when earth has doffed her frost,
+the field is clothed with variegated grass; the mountains
+stretch their leafy heads towards the sky, the
+shady tree renews its verdant foliage, the lovely vine
+is swelling with budding branches, giving promise that
+a weight of grapes shall hang from its prolific stems.
+While all joys return, the earth is dead and dull.
+
+And:
+
+    The soft violets paint the field with their own purple, the
+    meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh
+    shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring
+    up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and
+    the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent,
+    with imprisoned song, are now recalled to their song.
+
+He describes the cold winter, and a hot summer's day, when
+
+    Even in the forests no shade was to be found, and the traveller
+    almost fainted on the burning roads, longing for shade and cool
+    drinks. At last the rustle of a crystal stream is heard, he
+    hurries to it with delight, he lies down and lays his limbs in
+    the soft kisses of the grass.
+
+His poems about beautiful and noteworthy places include some on the
+Garonne and Gers (Egircius):
+
+    So dried up by heat that it is neither river nor land, and the
+    grumbling croak of the frog, sole ruler of the realm from which
+    the fish are banished, is heard in the lonely swamp; but when the
+    rain pours down, the flood swells, and what was a lake suddenly
+    becomes a sea.
+
+He has many verses of this sort, written with little wit but great
+satisfaction.
+
+More attractive are descriptions of the Rhine and Moselle, recalling
+Ausonius, and due to love partly of Nature, partly of verbal
+scene-painting. The best and most famous of these is on his journey
+by the Moselle from Metz to Andernach on the Rhine. Here he shews a
+keen eye and fine taste for wide views and high mountains, as well as
+for the minutiæ of scenery, with artistic treatment. He also blends
+his own thoughts and feelings with his impressions of Nature, making
+it clear that he values her not merely for decoration, but for her
+own sake.
+
+He has been called the last Roman poet; in reality, he belonged not
+only to the period which directly succeeded his own, when the Roman
+world already lay in ruins, but to the fully-developed Middle
+Ages--the time when Christianity and Germanism had mated with Roman
+minds.
+
+In his best pieces, such as his famous elegy, he caught the classic
+tone to perfection, feeling himself in vital union with the great of
+bygone centuries; but in thought and feeling he was really modern and
+under the influence of the Christian Germanic spirit with all its
+depth and intensity. His touching friendship with Radegunde is, as it
+were, a symbol of the blending of the two elements out of which the
+modern sprang. It was the stimulating influence of the noble Germanic
+princess, herself Christian in soul, which fanned the dying sparks of
+classic poetry into a flame.
+
+Fortunatus stood upon a borderland. Literature was retreating further
+and further from the classic models, and culture was declining to its
+fall. In Gaul, as in Spain and Italy, the shadows of coming night
+were broadening over literary activity, thought, and feeling.
+
+It is a characteristic fact in Roman literature, that not only its
+great lights, but the lesser ones who followed them, were
+enthusiastically imitated. Latin poetry of the Middle Ages lived upon
+recollections of the past, or tried to raise itself again by its
+help; even so late a comer as Fortunatus became in his turn an object
+of marvel, and was copied by poets who never reached his level.
+
+It is not surprising that feeling for Nature shewed a corresponding
+shallowness and lassitude.
+
+Not only bucolic but didactic writing was modelled upon the classic.
+Isodorus and Beda, in their works with identical titles 'concerning
+the existence of things,' relied on Roman models no less than Alcuin,
+who had formed himself on the pattern of Augustine's time in his
+_Conflict between Winter and Spring_, as well as in many single
+verses, directly inspired by Virgil.[36]
+
+His _Farewell to his Cell_ caught the idyllic tone very neatly:
+
+  Beloved cell, retirement's sweet abode!
+  Farewell, a last farewell, thy poet bids thee!
+  Beloved cell, by smiling woods embraced,
+  Whose branches, shaken by the genial breeze,
+  To meditation oft my mind disposed.
+  Around thee too, their health-reviving herbs
+  In verdure gay the fertile meadows spread;
+  And murmuring near, by flowery banks confined,
+  Through fragrant meads the crystal streamlets glide,
+  Wherein his nets the joyful fisher casts,
+  And fragrant with the apple bending bough,
+  With rose and lily joined, the gardens smile;
+  While jubilant, along thy verdant glades
+  At dawn his melody each songster pours,
+  And to his God attunes the notes of praise.
+
+These heartfelt effusions express a feeling which certainly inspired
+many monks when they turned from their gloomy cells to the gardens
+and woods beyond--a feeling compounded of renunciation of the world
+with idyllic comfort in their surroundings. If their fundamental
+feeling was worship and praise of the Creator, their constant outdoor
+work, which, during the first centuries, was strenuous cultivation of
+the soil, must have roused a deep appreciation of Nature in the
+nobler minds among them. Their choice of sites for monasteries and
+hermitages fully bears out this view.[37]
+
+_The Conflict between Spring and Winter_, with its classic
+suggestions, is penetrated by a truly German love of spring.[38] It
+described the time when the cuckoo sings high in the branches, grass
+clothes earth with many tints, and the nightingale sings untiringly
+in the red-gold butcher's broom, captivating us with her changing
+melodies.
+
+Among the savants whom Charlemagne gathered round him was Angilbert.
+Virgil was his model, but the influence of the lighter fluency of
+Fortunatus was visible, as in so many of his contemporaries. With a
+vivid and artistic pen he described the wood and park of Aachen and
+the Kaiser's brilliant hunt[39]; the great forest grove, the grassy
+meadows with brooks and all sorts of birds flitting about, the
+thicket stocked with many kinds of game.
+
+At the same time, his writing betrayed the conventional tone of
+courts in its praise of his great secular lord, and a 'thoughtful
+romantic inclination' for the eternal feminine, for the beautiful
+women with splendid ornaments, and necks shining like milk or snow or
+glowing like a rose, who, as Ebert puts it, 'lay far from the
+asceticism of the poetry of the saints.'
+
+Naso Muadorinus in his pastorals took Calpurnius and Nemesianus for
+his models, just as they had taken Virgil, and Virgil Theocritus.
+Muadorinus imitated the latter in his pastorals.
+
+In an alternate song of his between an old man and a boy, the old man
+draws an artistic contrast between the shady coolness of the wood and
+the mid-day glow of the sun, while the boy praises Him whose songs
+the creatures follow as once they followed Orpheus with his lute; and
+at the end, Charlemagne, who was extolled at the beginning as a
+second Cæsar, is exalted to heaven as the founder of a new Golden
+Age.
+
+In the Carolingian Renaissance of the Augustine epoch of literature,
+Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, takes first place. At any rate, he
+described in a very superior way, and, like Fortunatus, with some
+humour, the draining of the Larte at Le Mans, Feb. 820; also, in a
+light and lively strain, the Battle of the Birds, and, with the same
+strong colouring, Paradise.
+
+The idyll of the cloister garden, so often treated, became famous in
+the much-read _Hortulus_ of Wahlafried.[40]
+
+Despite classical flourishes from Virgil and Columella, and
+pharmaceutical handling of plants, there is a good deal of thoughtful
+observation of Nature in these 444 hexameters.
+
+They contain descriptions of seasons, of recipes, flowers and
+vegetables, of the gardener's pleasure in digging his fields in
+spring, clearing them of nettles, and levelling the ground thrown up
+by the moles, in protecting his seedlings from rain and sun, and,
+later on, in his gay beds of deciduous plants.
+
+There is a touch here and there which is not unpoetic--for instance:
+
+    A bright green patch of dark blue rue paints this shady grove; it
+    has short leaves and throws out short umbels, and passes the
+    breath of the wind and the rays of the sun right down to the end
+    of the stalk, and at a gentle touch gives forth a heavy scent.
+
+and:
+
+    With what verse, with what song, can the dry thinness of my
+    meagre muse rightly extol the shining lily, whose whiteness is as
+    the whiteness of gleaming snow, whose sweet scent is as the scent
+    of Sabian woods?
+
+He closes pleasantly too, adjuring Grimald to read the book under the
+shade of the peach tree, while his school-fellows play round and pick
+the great delicate fruit which they can barely grasp with one hand.
+In the poem to the layman Ruodbern (100 hexameters) he described the
+dangers of Alpine travelling, both from weather and other foes. In
+those days the difficulties of the road excluded all interest in
+mountain beauty. There is a tender and expressive poem in Sapphic
+metre, in which, homesick and cold in winter, he sang his longing for
+beautiful Reichenau. But even he, like most of his predecessors and
+all his followers, wielded his pen with labour, expression often
+failing to keep pace with thought.
+
+It only remains to mention Wandalbert, a monk of the monastery at
+Prün, who, in a postscript to the _Conclusio des Martyrologium_,
+gives a charming account of a landowner's life in field, garden, and
+hunt.
+
+In the cloister, then, idyllic comfort, delighting in Nature and a
+quiet country life, was quite as much at home as scholarship and
+classical study. But we shall look there in vain for any trace of the
+sentimental, the profoundly melancholy attitude of the Fathers of the
+Church, Basil and Gregory, or for Augustine's deep faith and devout
+admiration of the works of creation: even the tone of Ausonius and
+Fortunatus, in their charming descriptions of scenery, was now a
+thing of the past. Feeling for Nature--sentimental, sympathetic,
+cosmic, and dogmatic--had dwindled down to mere pleasure in
+cultivating flowers in the garden, to the level Aachen landscape and
+such like; and the power to describe the impression made by scenery
+was, like the impression itself, lame and weary.
+
+It was the night of the decline breaking over Latin literature.
+
+And how did it stand with German literature up to the eleventh
+century? A German Kingdom had existed from the treaties of Verdun and
+Mersen (842), but during this period traces of German poetry are few,
+outweighed by Latin.
+
+The two great Messianic poems, _Heliand_ and _Krist_, stand out
+alone. In the _Heliand_ the storm on the lake of Gennesaret is
+vividly painted:
+
+    Then began the power of the storm; in the whirlwind the waves
+    rose, night descended, the sea broke with uproar, wind and water
+    battled together; yet, obedient to the command and to the
+    controlling word, the water stilled itself and flowed serenely.
+
+In _Krist_ there is a certain distinction in the description of the
+Ascension, as the rising figures soar past the constellations of
+stars, which disappear beneath their feet; for the rest, the symbolic
+so supplants the direct meaning, that in place of an epic we have a
+moralizing sermon. But there are traces of delight in the beauty of
+the outer world, in the sunshine, and sympathy is attributed to
+Nature:
+
+  She grew very angry at such deeds.
+
+The poem _Muspilli_ (the world fire) shews the old northern feeling
+for Nature; still more the few existing words of the _Wessobrunner
+Prayer_:
+
+  This I heard as the greatest marvel among men,
+  That once there was no earth nor heaven above,
+  The bright stars gave no light, the sun shone not,
+  Nor the moon, nor the glorious sea.
+
+How plainly 'the bright stars' and the 'glorious sea' shew joy in the
+beauty of the world!
+
+In the oldest Scandinavian poems the inflexible character of the
+Northerner and the northern landscape is reflected; the descriptions
+are short and scanty; it is not mountain, rock, and sea which count
+as beautiful, but pleasant, and, above all, fruitful scenery. The
+imagery is bold: (Kenninger) the wind is the wolf of wood or sail,
+the sea the pathway of the whale, the bath of the diving bird, etc.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon was especially distinguished by his forcible images
+and epithets. In Rynerwulf we have 'night falls like a helmet, dark
+brown covers the mountains.' 'The sky is the fortress of the storm,
+the sun the torch of the world, the jewel of splendour.' 'Fire is
+eager, wild, blind, and raging; the sea is the gray sea, and the
+sparkling splendid sea; waves are graves of the dead,' etc.
+
+Vivid feeling for Nature is not among the characteristic features of
+either Scandinavian or old German poetry.
+
+It is naive and objective throughout, and seldom weighty or forcible.
+
+The Waltharius shews the influence of Virgil's language, in
+highly-coloured and sympathetic descriptions like those of the Latin
+poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance.
+
+Animal saga probably first arose just before the twelfth century, and
+their home was probably Franconia.
+
+Like the genial notices of plant life in the Latin poems of the
+Carlovingian period, the animal poems shewed interest in the animal
+world--the interest of a child who ponders individual differences and
+peculiarities, the virtues and failings so closely allied to its own.
+It was a naive 'hand-and-glove' footing between man and the
+creatures, which attributed all his wishes and weaknesses to them,
+wiped out all differences between them with perfect impartiality, and
+gave the characteristics of each animal with exactness and poetry.
+
+The soil for the cultivation of poetry about animals was prepared by
+the symbolic and allegorical way of looking at Nature which held sway
+all through the Middle Ages.
+
+The material was used as a symbolic language for the immaterial, the
+world of sense conceived of as a great picture-book of the truths of
+salvation, in whose pages God, the devil, and, between them man,
+figured: thus plant life suggested the flower of the root of Jesse,
+foretold by Isaiah, red flowers the Saviour's wounds, and so forth.
+In the earliest Christian times, a remarkable letter existed in
+Alexandria, the so-called 'Physiologus,' which has affected the
+proverbial turns of speech in the world's literature up to the
+present day to an almost unequalled degree.
+
+It gave the symbolic meanings of the different animals. The lamb and
+unicorn were symbols of Christ; sheep, fish, and deer, of his
+followers; dragons, serpents, and bears, of the devil; swine, hares,
+hyenas, of gluttony; the disorderly luxuriance of snow meant death,
+the phoenix the resurrection, and so forth, indeed, whole categories
+of animals were turned into allegories of the truths of
+salvation.[41] The cleverest fables of animals were in _Isengrimen_,
+published in Ghent about 1140 in Latin verse--the story of the sick
+lion and his cure by the fox, and the outwitting of the wolf. Such
+fables did not remain special to German national literature, but
+became popular subjects in the literature of the whole world; and it
+is a significant fact that they afterwards took root especially in
+Flanders, where the taste for still life and delight in Nature has
+always found a home, and which became the nursery, in later times, of
+landscape, animal, and genre painting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE NAIVE FEELING AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES
+
+
+In the development and maturing of the race, as of the individual,
+nothing is more helpful than contact with foreign elements, people of
+other manners, thoughts, and feelings. Intimate intercourse between
+different nationalities rouses what is best in the soul of a nation,
+inviting, as it does, to discussion and opposition, as well as to the
+acquisition of new ideas. The conquests of Alexander the Great opened
+up a new world to the Greek, and a new culture arose--Hellenism. It
+was a new world that rose before the astonished eyes of the
+Crusader--in his case too, the East; but the resulting culture did
+not last. The most diverse motives fused to bring about this great
+migration to a land at once unknown and yet, through religion,
+familiar; and a great variety of characters and nations met under the
+banner of the Cross.
+
+Naturally this shaking up together, not only of Europeans among
+themselves, but of the eastern with the western world, brought about
+a complete revolution in manners, speech, art, science, trade,
+manufacture, thought, and feeling, and so became an important factor
+in general progress.
+
+The narrow boundaries of nationality, race, and education were broken
+through; all felt equal before the leading idea; men, places, plants,
+and animals were alike new and wonderful. Little wonder if German
+knights returning home from the East wove fiction with their fact,
+and produced the most fantastic and adventurous heroic songs.
+
+Many of the noblest of the nations joined the Crusades in pious
+ardour for the cause, and it is easy to imagine the effect of the
+complete novelty of scene upon them. With such tremendous new
+impressions to cope with, it is not surprising that even the best
+minds, untrained as they were, were unequal to the task, and that the
+descriptions of real experiences or events in poetic form failed to
+express what they meant. Besides this, there is no doubt that in many
+ways the facts fell below their ideals; also that the Crusader's
+mantle covered at the same time a rabble, which joined from the
+lowest motives, the scum of Europe. It must also be remembered that
+it is far easier to experience or feel than to pass on that
+experience and feeling to others; that those who wrote did not always
+belong to the most educated; and that they wrote, for the most part,
+with difficulty in Greek or Latin. When all this has been weighed and
+admitted, the fact remains that in existing accounts of the Crusades
+there is great poverty of description of scenery, and lack of much
+feeling for Nature. The historian, as such, was bound to give first
+place to matters of fact and practical importance, and so to judge a
+place by its value to an army passing through or occupying it; by its
+fertility, water-supply, its swamps or stony ground, and so forth;
+but still the modern reader is astonished to see how little
+impression the scenery of the Holy Land made, judged by the accounts
+we possess, upon the Crusaders. Even when it is conceded that other
+important concerns came first, and that danger, want, and hunger must
+often have made everything disagreeable, still, references to Nature
+are very scanty, and one may look in vain for any interest in
+beautiful scenery for its own sake.
+
+There is only matter-of-fact geographical and mythological
+information in William of Tours' _History of the Crusades_; for
+instance, in his description of the Bosphorus he does not waste a
+word over its beauty. But, as 'fruitful' and 'pleasant' are
+ever-recurring adjectives with him, one cannot say that he absolutely
+ignored it.
+
+He said of Durazzo: 'They weather the bad seasons of the year in
+fruitful districts rich in woods and fields, and all acceptable
+conditions'; of Tyre, 'The town has a most excellent position on a
+plain, almost entirely surrounded by mountains. The soil is
+productive, the wood of value in many ways.' Of Antioch, 'Its
+position is very convenient and pleasant, it lies in valleys which
+have excellent and fertile soil, and are most pleasantly watered by
+springs and streams. The mountains which enclose the town on both
+sides are really very high; but send down very clear water, and their
+sides and slopes are covered by buildings up to the very summits.'
+There is nothing about beautiful views, unless one takes this, which
+really only records a meteorological curiosity: 'From the top of one
+mountain one can see the ball of the sun at the fourth watch of the
+night, and if one turns round at the time when the first rays light
+up the darkness, one has night on one side and day on the other.'
+
+Tyre is described again as 'conspicuous for the fertility of its soil
+and the charm of its position.' Its great waterworks are especially
+admired, since by their means 'not only the gardens and most fruitful
+orchards flourish, but the cane from which sugar is made, which is so
+useful to man for health and other purposes, and is sent by merchants
+to the most distant parts of the world.' Other reporters were charmed
+by the fertility and wealth of the East. 'On those who came from the
+poorer and colder western countries, the rich resources of the sunny
+land in comparison with the poverty of home made an impression of
+overflowing plenty, and at times almost of inexhaustibleness. The
+descriptions of certain districts, extolled for their special
+richness, sound almost enthusiastic.[1]
+
+Burkhard von Monte Sion was enthusiastic about Lebanon's wealth of
+meadows and gardens, and the plain round Tripolis, and considered the
+Plain of Esdraelon the most desirable place in the world; but, on
+exact and unprejudiced examination, there is nothing in his words
+beyond homely admiration and matter-of-fact discussion of its great
+practical utility.
+
+He says of La Boneia, 'That plain has many homesteads, and beautiful
+groves of olive and fig and other trees of various kinds, and much
+timber. Moreover, it abounds in no common measure in rivers and
+pasture land'; closes a geographical account of Lebanon thus, 'There
+are in Libanus and Antilibanus themselves fertile and well-tilled
+valleys, rich in pasture land, vineyards, gardens, plantations--in a
+word, in all the good things of the world'; and says of the Plain of
+Galilee, 'I never saw a lovelier country, if our sins and wrong-doing
+did not prevent Christians from living there.'
+
+He had some feeling too for a distant view. He wrote of Samaria: 'The
+site was very beautiful; the view stretched right to the Sea of Joppa
+and to Antipatris and Cæsarea of Palestine, and over the whole
+mountain of Ephraim down to Ramathaym and Sophim and to Carmel near
+Accon by the sea. And it is rich in fountains and gardens and olive
+groves, and all the good things this world desires.' But it would be
+going too far to conclude from the following words that he
+appreciated the contrast between simple and sublime scenery: 'It must
+be noticed too, that the river, from the source of Jordan at the foot
+of Lebanon as far as the Desert of Pharan, has broad and pleasant
+plains on both sides, and beyond these the fields are surrounded by
+very high mountains as far as the Red Sea.'
+
+In dealing with Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, religious
+enthusiasm suppresses any reference to scenery.
+
+These descriptions shew that the wealth and fertility of the country
+were praised before its beauty, and that this was only referred to in
+short, meagre phrases, which tell less about it than any raptures
+without special knowledge.
+
+It was much the same with Phokas, who visited the Holy Land in
+1135.[2]
+
+He was greatly impressed by the position of Antioch, 'with its
+meadows and fruitful gardens, and the murmur of waters as the river,
+fed by the torrents of the Castalian spring, flows quietly round the
+town and besprinkles its towers with its gentle waves ... but most to
+be admired of all is the mountain between town and sea, a noble and
+remarkable sight--indeed, a delight to the beholder's eye ... the
+Orontes flows with countless windings at the foot of it, and
+discharges itself into the sea.'
+
+He thought Lebanon very beautiful and worthy its praise in Holy
+Scripture: 'The sun lies like white hair upon its head; its valleys
+are crowned with pines, cedars, and cypresses; streams, beautiful to
+look at and quite cold, flow from the ravines and valleys down to the
+sea, and the freshly melted snow gives the flowing water its crystal
+clearness.'
+
+Tyre, too, was praised for its beauty: 'Strangers were particularly
+delighted with one spring, which ran through meadows; and if one
+stands on the tower, one can see the dense growth of plants, the
+movement of the leaves in the glow of noon.'
+
+The plain of Nazareth, too, was 'a heaven on earth, the delight of
+the soul.'
+
+But recollections of the sacred story were dearer to Phokas than the
+scenery, and elsewhere he limited himself to noting the rich fruit
+gardens, shady groups of trees, and streams and rivers with pleasant
+banks.
+
+Epiphanius Monachus Hagiopolitæ, in his _Enarratio Syriæ_, was a very
+dry pioneer; so, too, the _Anonymus de locis Hierosolymitanis_;
+Perdiccas, in his _Hierosolyma_, describes Sion thus: 'It stands on
+an eminence so as to strike the eye, and is beautiful to behold,
+owing to a number of vines and flower gardens and pleasant spots.'
+
+It must be admitted then, that, beside utilitarian admiration of a
+Paradise of fruitfulness, there is some record of simple, even
+enthusiastic delight in its beauty; but only as to its general
+features, and in the most meagre terms. The country was more
+interesting to the Crusaders as the scene of the Christian story than
+as a place in which to rest and dream and admire Nature for her own
+sake.
+
+The accounts of German pilgrimages[3] of the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries only contain dry notices, such as those of Jacob von Bern
+(1346-47), Pfintzing (1436-40), and Ulrich Leman (1472-80). The
+last-mentioned praises Damascus in this clumsy fashion: 'The town is
+very gay, quite surrounded by orchards, with many brooks and springs
+flowing inside and out, and an inexpressible number of people in it,'
+etc. Dietrich von Schachten describes Venice in this way: 'Venice
+lies in the sea, and is built neither on land nor on mountain, but on
+wooden piles, which is unbelievable to one who has not seen it'; and
+Candia: 'Candia is a beautiful town in the sea, well built; also a
+very fruitful island, with all sorts of things that men need for
+living.' He describes a ride through Southern Italy: 'Saturday we
+rode from Trepalda, but the same day through chestnut and hazel
+woods; were told that these woods paid the king 16,000 gulden every
+year. After that we rode a German mile through a wood, where each
+tree had its vine--many trees carried 3 ohms of wine, which is
+pleasant to see--and came to Nola.'
+
+He called Naples 'very pretty and big,' and on: 'Then the king took
+us to the sea and shewed us the ports, which are pretty and strong
+with bulwarks and gates; we saw many beautiful ships too,' etc. One
+does not know which is the more wonderful here, the poverty of the
+description or the utter lack of personal observation: what the wood
+produced, and how one was protected from the sea, was more important
+to the writer than wood and sea themselves, and this, even in
+speaking of the Bay of Naples, perhaps the most beautiful spot in
+Europe. But instances like these are typical of German descriptions
+at the time, and their Alpine travels fared no better.[4]
+
+Geographical knowledge of the Alps advanced very slowly; there was as
+yet no æsthetic enjoyment of their beauty. The Frankish historians
+(Gregory of Tours, Fredegar) chronicled special events in the Alps,
+but very briefly. Fredegar, for instance, knew of the sudden
+appearance of a hot spring in the Lake of Thun, and Gregory of Tours
+notes that the land-slip in 563 at the foot of the Dent du Midi,
+above the point where the Rhine enters the Lake of Geneva, was a
+dreadful event. Not only was the Castle of Tauretunum overwhelmed,
+but the blocking of the Rhine caused a deluge felt as far as Geneva.
+The pious prince of the Church explained this as a portent of another
+catastrophe, the pest, which ravaged Gaul soon after.
+
+There was much fabling at that time in the legends of saints, about
+great mines of iron, gold, and silver, and about chamois and buck,
+cattle-breeding and Alpine husbandry in the 'regio montana'; for
+example, in von Aribo's _Vita S. Emmerani_. When the Alps became more
+frequented, especially when, through Charlemagne, a political bridge
+came to unite Italy and Germany, new roads were made and the whole
+region was better known--in fact, early in mediæval times, not only
+political, but ecclesiastical and mercantile life spread its threads
+over a great part of the known world, and began to bind the lives of
+nations together, so that the Alps no longer remained _terra
+incognita_ to dwellers far and near.
+
+We have accounts of Alpine journeys by the Abbé Majolus v. Clugny
+(970), Bernard v. Hildesheim (1101), Aribert v. Mailand, Anno v.
+Coeln[5], but without a trace of orography. They scarcely refer to
+the snow and glacier regions from the side of physical geography, or
+even of æsthetic feeling; and do not mention the mountain monarchs so
+familiar to-day--Mt. Blanc, the Jungfrau, Ortner, Glockner,
+etc.--which were of no value to their life, practical or scientific.
+These writers record nothing but names of places and their own
+troubles and dangers in travelling, especially in winter. And even at
+the end of the fifteenth century, German travels across the Alps were
+written in the same strain--for example, the account of the voyage of
+the Elector-Palatine Alexander v. Zweibrücken and Count Joh. Ludwig
+zu Nassau (1495-96) from Zurich Rapperschwyl and Wesen to Wallensee:
+'This is the real Switzerland; has few villages, just a house here
+and a house there, but beautiful meadows, much cattle, and very high
+mountains, on which snow lies, which falls before Christmas, and is
+as hard as any rock.' As an exception to this we have a vivid and
+poetic description of the famous Verona Pass in Latin verse by
+Guntherus Ligurinus.
+
+Günther's description of this notorious ravine, between sky-high
+Alps, with the torrent rushing at the bottom and a passage so narrow
+that men could only move forward one by one, sounds like a personal
+experience. This twelfth-century poem comes to us, in fact, like a
+belated echo of Fortunatus.
+
+We must now enquire whether the chief representatives of German
+literature at this time shewed any of the national love of Nature,
+whether the influence of the Crusades was visible in them, how far
+scenery took a place in epic and song, and whether, as moderns have
+so often stated, mediæval Germany stood high above antiquity in this
+respect. Gervinus, a classic example on the last point, in the
+section of his history of German poetry which treats of the
+difference between the German fables about animals on the one hand,
+and Esop's and the Oriental on the other, said:
+
+    The way in which animals are handled in the fables demanded a far
+    slighter familiarity between them and men; so exact a knowledge
+    as we see in the German fables, often involving knowledge of
+    their natural history, such insight into the 'privacy of the
+    animal world,' belonged to quite another kind of men. Antiquity
+    did not delight in Nature, and delight in Nature is the very
+    foundation of these poems. Remote antiquity neither knew nor
+    sought to know any natural history; but only wondered at Nature.
+    The art of hunting and the passion for it, often carried to
+    excess in the Middle Ages, was unknown to it. It is a bold remark
+    of Grimm's that he could smell the old smell of the woods in the
+    German animal poems, but it is one whose truth every one will
+    feel, who turns to this simple poetry with an open mind, who
+    cares for Nature and life in the open.
+
+This is a very tangle of empty phrases and misstatements. No people
+stood in more heartfelt and naive relation to Nature, especially to
+the animal world, than the Hindoos and Persians. In earlier
+enquiries[6] we have reviewed the naive feeling displayed in Homer
+and the sentimental in Hellenism, and have seen that the taste for
+hunting increased knowledge of Nature in the open in Hellenic days
+far more than in the Middle Ages. We shall see now that the level of
+feeling reached in those and imperial Roman days was not regained in
+European literature until long after the fall of Latin poetry, and
+that it was the fertilizing influence of that classic spirit, and
+that alone, which enabled the inborn German taste for Nature, and for
+hunting, and plant and animal life, to find artistic expression. It
+was a too superficial knowledge of classic literature, and an
+inclination to synthesis, and clever _a priori_ argument (a style
+impressed upon his day by Hegel's method, and fortunately fast
+disappearing), which led Gervinus to exalt the Middle Ages at the
+expense of antiquity. It sounds like a weak concession when he says
+elsewhere:
+
+    Joy in Nature, which is peculiar to modern times, in contrast to
+    antiquity, which is seen in the earliest mediæval poems, and in
+    which, moreover, expiring antiquity came to meet the German--this
+    joy in Nature, in dwelling on plant and animal life, is the very
+    soul of this (animal) poetry. As in its plastic art, so in all
+    its poetry, antiquity only concerned itself with gods and heroes;
+    its glance was always turned upwards.
+
+But, as a fact, no one has ever stood with feet more firmly planted
+on this earth than the Greek, enjoying life and undeterred by much
+scruple or concern as to the powers above; and centuries of
+development passed before German literature equalled Greek in love of
+Nature and expressive representation of her beauty.
+
+To rank the two national epics of Germany, the _Nibelungenlied_ and
+_Gudrun_, side by side with the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ is to
+exaggerate their value. And here, as ever, overstraining the
+comparison is mischievous.
+
+The _Nibelungenlied_ is undeniably charming with its laconic and yet
+plastic descriptions, its vigorous heroes, and the tragic course of
+their fate; so is _Gudrun_, that melodious poem of the North Sea. But
+they never, either in composition, method of representation, or
+descriptive epithets, reach the perfect art of the Greek epics. What
+moral beauty and plastic force there is in Homer's comparisons and in
+his descriptions of times and seasons! what a clear eye and warm
+heart he has for Nature in all her moods! and what raw and scanty
+beginnings of such things we have in the _Nibelungenlied_! It is true
+Homer had not attained to the degree of sympathy which finds in
+Nature a friend, a sharer of one's joys and sorrows; she is pictured
+objectively in the form of epic comparisons; but how faithfully, and
+with what range and variety!
+
+There can scarcely be another epic in the world so poor in
+descriptions of time and place as the _Nibelungenlied_; it cannot be
+used to prove German feeling for Nature!
+
+India, Persia, and Greece made natural phenomena the counterparts of
+human life, weaving into the tale, by way of comparison or
+environment, charming genre pictures of plant and animal life, each
+complete in itself; in the _Nibelungenlied_ Nature plays no part at
+all, not even as framework.
+
+Time is indicated as sparsely as possible:
+
+'Upon the 7th day at Worms on the Rhine shore, the gallant horsemen
+arrived.'
+
+'On a Whitsun morning we saw them all go by'; or 'When it grew
+towards even, and near the sun's last ray, seeing the air was
+cooler'; or 'He must hang, till light morning threw its glow through
+the window.' The last is the most poetic; elsewhere it is 'Day was
+over, night fell.'
+
+Terseness can be both a beauty and a force; but, in comparison with
+Greece, how very little feeling for Nature these expressions contain!
+
+It is no better with descriptions of place:
+
+'From the Rhine they rode through Hesse, their warriors as well,
+towards the Saxon country, where they to fighting fell.'
+
+'He found a fortress placed upon a mountain.'
+
+'Into a wide-roomed palace of fashion excellent, for there, beneath
+it rushing, one saw the Danube's flood.'
+
+Even the story of the hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite
+matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon
+lost his life ... then they rode from there into a deep wood ...
+there they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the
+broad mead ... one heard mountain and tree echo.'
+
+'The spring of water was pure and cool and good.' ...
+
+'There fell Chriemhild's husband among the flowers ... all round
+about the flowers were wetted with his blood.'
+
+One thinks instinctively of Indian and Greek poetry, of Adonis and
+the death of Baldur in the Northern Saga. But even here, where the
+subject almost suggests it, there is no trace of Nature's sympathy
+with man.
+
+References to the animal world too--Chriemhild's dreams of the
+falcons seized by two eagles, and the two wild boars which attacked
+Siegfried, the game hunted in the forests by the heroes who run like
+panthers--all show it to be of no importance.
+
+Even such phrases as rosy-red, snow-white, etc., are rare--'Her
+lovely face became all rosy-red with pleasure'; but there is a
+certain tenderness in the comparisons of Chriemhild:
+
+'Then came the lovely maiden, even as morning red from sombre clouds
+outbreaking,' and, 'just as the moon in brightness excels the
+brightest stars, and suddenly outshining, athwart the clouds
+appears,' so she excelled all other women.
+
+It has been said that one can hear the sighing of the north wind and
+the roar of the North Sea in _Gudrun_, but this is scarcely more than
+a pretty phrase. The 'dark tempestuous' sea, 'wild unfathomable'
+waves, the shore 'wet from the blood of the slain,' are indeed
+mentioned, but that is all.
+
+Wat of Sturmland says to the young warriors: 'The air is still and
+the moon shines clear ... when the red star yonder in the south dips
+his head in the brine, I shall blow on my great horn that all the
+hosts shall hear'; but it is hope of morning, not delight in the
+starry sky, that he is expressing.
+
+Indications of place too are of the briefest, just 'It was a broad
+neck of land, called the Wülpensand,' or, 'In a few hours they saw
+the shores where they would land, a little harbour lay in sight
+enfolded by low hills clothed with dark fir trees.'
+
+The first trace of sympathy with Nature occurs in the account of the
+effect of Horand's song.
+
+Like Orpheus, he charms the little birds and other creatures: 'He
+sang with such a splendid voice, that the little birds ceased their
+song.'
+
+'And as he began to sing again, all the birds in the copse round
+ceased their sweet songs.'
+
+'The very cattle left their green pastures to hearken, the little
+gold beetles stopped running among the grass, the fishes ceased to
+shoot about in the brooks. He sang long hours, and it seemed but a
+brief moment. The very church bells sounded sweet no longer; the folk
+left the choir songs of the priests and ran to hear him. All who
+heard his voice were heart-sick after the singer, so grand and sweet
+was the strain.'
+
+Indications of time are rarely found more short and concise than
+here:
+
+  When night ended and day began.
+  On the 12th day they quitted the country.
+  In Maytime. On a cool morning.
+
+This is a little richer:
+
+    It was the time when leaves spring up delightfully and birds of
+    all sorts sing their best in the woods.
+
+Much more definite and distinct is:
+
+    It was about that time of the year when departing winter sheds
+    his last terrors upon the earth; a sharp breeze was blowing and
+    the sea was covered with broken up ice; but there were gleams of
+    sunshine upon the hills, and the little birds began to tune their
+    throats tremulously, that they might be ready to sing their lay
+    when the March weather was past.
+
+    Gudrun trembled with cold; her wet garment clung close to her
+    white limbs; the wind dashed her golden hair about her face.
+
+And later, when the morning of Gudrun's deliverance breaks, the
+indications of time, though short, are plastic enough:
+
+    After the space of an hour the red star went down upon the edge
+    of the sea, and Wat of Sturmland, standing upon the hill, blew a
+    great blast on his horn, which was heard in the land for miles
+    round.... The sound of Wat's horn ... wakened a young maid, who,
+    stealing on tiptoe to the window, looked over the bay and beheld
+    the glimmering of spears and helms upon the sands.... 'Awake,
+    mistress,' she cried, 'the host of the Hegelings is at hand.'
+
+Companions are few;
+
+  He sprang like a wild lion.
+
+The shower of stones flung down upon Wat 'is but an April shower.'
+
+Images are few too:
+
+    This flower of hope, to find repose here on the shore, Hartmouth
+    and his friends did not bring to blossom.
+
+Wilhelm Grimm rightly observes:
+
+    At this epoch the poetry of the Fatherland gave no separate
+    descriptions of Nature--descriptions, that is, whose only object
+    was to paint the impression of the landscape in glowing colours
+    upon the mind. The old German masters certainly did not lack
+    feeling for Nature, but they have left us no other expression of
+    it than such as its connection with historical events demanded.
+
+And further:
+
+    The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or, through
+    the Crusades, with Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, did not
+    enrich German poetry with new pictures of Nature, can only, as a
+    general rule, be answered in the negative.
+
+In the courtly epics of chivalry, the place of real Nature was taken
+by a fabulous wonderworld, full of the most fantastic and romantic
+scenery, in which wood, field, plants, and animals were all
+distorted. For instance, in the Alexander saga (of Pfaffen Lamprecht)
+Alexander the Great describes to his teacher Aristotle the wonders he
+has seen, and how one day he came with his army to a dark forest,
+where the interlacing boughs of tall trees completely shut out the
+sunlight. Clear, cool streams ran through it down to the valley, and
+birds' songs echoed in the shade. The ground was covered by an
+enormous quantity of flower buds of wondrous size, which looked like
+great balls, snow-white and rose-coloured, closely folded up.
+Presently, the fragrant goblets opened, and out of all these
+wonder-flowers stepped lovely maidens, rosy as dawn and white as day,
+and about twelve years old. All these thousands of charming beings
+raised their voices together and competed with the birds in song,
+swaying up and down in charming lines, singing and laughing in the
+cool shade. They were dressed in red and white, like the flowers from
+which they were born; but if sun rays fell on them, they would fade
+and die. They were only children of the woodland shade and the
+summer, and lived no longer than the flowers, which May brings to
+life and Autumn kills. In this wood Alexander and his host pitched
+their tents, and lived through the summer with the little maids. But
+their happiness only lasted three months and twelve days:
+
+    When the time came to an end, our joy passed away too; the
+    flowers faded, and the pretty girls died; trees lost their
+    leaves, springs their flow, and the birds their song; all
+    pleasure passed away. Discomfort began to touch my heart with
+    many sorrows, as day by day I saw the beautiful maidens die, the
+    flowers fade: with a heavy heart, I departed with my men.
+
+This fairy-like tale, with its blending of human and plant life, is
+very poetically conceived; but it is only a play of fancy, one of the
+early steps towards the modern feeling.
+
+The battle scenes, as well as other scenes in this poem, are bold and
+exaggerated. Armies meet like roaring seas; missiles fly from both
+sides as thick as snow; after the dreadful bath of blood, sun and
+moon veil their light and turn away from the murder committed there.
+
+Hartmann von der Aue, too, did not draw real Nature, but only one of
+his own invention.
+
+For example, the wild forest with the magic spring in _Iwein_:
+
+    I turned to the wilds next morning, and found an extensive
+    clearing, hidden in the forest, solitary and without husbandmen.
+    There, to my distress, I descried a sad delight of the
+    eyes--beasts of every kind that I know the names of, attacking
+    each other.... this spring is cold and very pure; neither rain,
+    sun, or wind reach it; it is screened by a most beautiful lime
+    tree. The tree is excessively tall and thick, so that neither sun
+    nor rain can penetrate its foliage, winter does not injure it,
+    nor lessen its beauty by one hair; 'tis green and blossoming the
+    whole year round.... Over the spring there is a wonderfully fine
+    stone ... the tree was so covered with birds that I could
+    scarcely see the branches, and even the foliage almost
+    disappeared. The sweet songs were pleasant and resounded through
+    the forest, which re-echoed them....
+
+    As I poured water upon the ruby, the sun, which had just come
+    out, disappeared, the birds' song round about ceased, a black
+    storm approached, dark heavy storm-clouds came from all four
+    quarters of the vault of heaven. It seemed no longer bright day
+    ... soon a thousand flashes of lightning played round me in the
+    forest ... there came storm, rain, and hail ... the storm became
+    so great that the forest broke down.
+
+He never shews a real love for Nature even in his lyrics, for the
+wish for flowers in _Winter Complaint_ can hardly be said to imply
+that:
+
+    He who cares for flowers must lament much at this heavy, dismal
+    time; a wife helps to shorten the long nights. In this way I will
+    shorten long winter without the birds' song.
+
+Wolfram von Eschenbach, too, is very sparing of references to Nature:
+time is given by such phrases as 'when twilight began,' or 'as the
+day broke,' 'at the bright glow of morning' ... 'as day already
+turned to evening.'
+
+His interest in real things was driven into the background by
+love-making and adventures--_Arthur's Round Table_ and the _Holy
+Grail_; all the romance of knighthood. When he described a forest or
+a garden, he always decked it out lavishly.
+
+For instance, the garden in Orgeluse:
+
+    A garden surrounding a mountain, planted with noble trees where
+    pomegranates, figs, olives, vines, and other fruits grew richly
+    ... a spring poured from the rock, and (for all this would have
+    been nothing to him without a fair lady) there he found what did
+    not displease him--a lady so beautiful and fair that he was
+    charmed at the sight, the flower of womanly beauty.
+
+Comparisons are few and not very poetic. In _Songs of the Heart_--
+
+    The lady of the land watered herself with her heart's tears.
+
+    Her eyes rained upon the child.
+
+    Her joy was drowned in lamentation.
+
+Gawan and Orgeluse,
+
+    Spite their outer sweetness, as disagreeable as a shower of rain
+    in sunshine.
+
+    There were many fair flowers, but their colours could not compare
+    with that of Orgeluse.
+
+His heroes are specially fond of birds. Young Parzival
+
+    Felt little care while the little birds sang round him; it made
+    his heart swell, he ran weeping into the house.
+
+and Gawan
+
+    Found a door open into a garden; he stept in to look round and
+    enjoy the air and the singing of the birds.
+
+So we see that in the _Nibelungenlied_ scarcely a plant grew, and
+Hartmann and Wolfram's gardens belonged almost entirely to an unreal
+region; there are no traces of a very deep feeling for Nature in all
+this.
+
+But Gottfried von Strassburg, with his vivid, sensuous imagination
+and keen eye for beauty, shewed a distinct advance both in taste and
+achievement. He, too, notes time briefly: 'And as it drew towards
+evening,' 'Now day had broke.' He repeats his comparisons: fair
+ladies are 'the wonder rose of May,' 'the longing white rose.' The
+two Isolts are sun and dawn. Brangäne is the full moon. The terrified
+girl is thus described:
+
+    Her rosy mouth paled; the fair colour, which was her ornament,
+    died out of her skin; her bright eyes grew dim like night after
+    day.
+
+Another comparison is:
+
+    Like the siren's song, drawing a bark to the reef as by a magnet,
+    so the sweet young queen attracted many hearts.
+
+Love is a usurious plant, whose sun never goes down; a romance
+sweetens the mood as May dew sweetens the blood.
+
+Constant friendship is one which takes the pleasure with the pain,
+the thorn with the rose. The last comparisons shew more thought, and
+still more is seen in the beginning of the poem, _Riwalin and
+Blancheflur_, which has a charming description of Spring.
+
+  Now the festival was agreed upon and arranged
+  For the four flowering weeks
+  When sweet May attracts, till he flies off again.
+  At Tinkapol upon a green plain
+  High up on a wonderful meadow with spring colour
+  Such as no eye has seen before or since. Soft sweet May
+  Had dressed it with his own charming extravagance.
+  There were little wood birds, a joy to the ear,
+  Flowers and grass and green plants and summer meads
+  That were a delight to eye and heart.
+  One found there whatever one would, whatever May should bring--
+  Shade from the sun, limes by the brook,
+  A gentle breeze which brought the prattle
+  Of Mark's court people. May's friend, the green turf,
+  Had made herself a charming costume of flowers,
+  In which she shone back at the guests with a festival of her own;
+  The blossoming trees smiled so sweetly at every one,
+  That heart and mind smiled back again.
+  The pure notes of the birds, blessed and beautiful,
+  Touched heart and senses, filling hill and dale with joy.
+  The dear nightingale,
+  Sweet bird, may it ever be blessed!
+  Sang so lustily upon the bough
+  That many a heart was filled with joy and good humour.
+  There the company pitched itself
+  With great delight on the green grass.
+  The limes gave enough shade,
+  And many covered their tent roofs with green boughs.
+
+There is a heartfelt ring in this. We see that even this early period
+of German mediæval poetry was not entirely lacking in clear voices to
+sing of Nature with real sympathy.
+
+The description of the Minne grotto is famous, with its magical
+accessories, its limes and other trees, birds, songs, and flowers, so
+that 'eye and ear alike found solace'; but the romantic love episode,
+interwoven as it is by the poet with the life of Nature, is more
+interesting for our purpose.
+
+    They had a court, they had a council which brought them nought
+    but joy. Their courtiers were the green trees, the shade and the
+    sunlight, the streamlet and the spring; flowers, grass, leaf, and
+    blossom, which refreshed their eyes. Their service was the song
+    of the birds, the little brown nightingales, the throstlets and
+    the merles and other wood birds. The siskin and the ringdove vied
+    with each other to do them pleasure, all day long their music
+    rejoiced ear and soul. Their love was their high feast.... The
+    man was with the woman, and the woman with the man; they had the
+    fellowship they most desired, and were where they fain would
+    be....
+
+    In the dewy morning they gat them forth to the meadow where grass
+    and flowers alike had been refreshed. The glade was their
+    pleasure-ground; they wandered hither and thither hearkening each
+    other's speech, and waking the song of the birds by their
+    footsteps. Then they turned them to where the cool clear spring
+    rippled forth, and sat beside its stream and watched its flow
+    till the sun grew high in the heaven, and they felt its shade.
+    Then they betook them to the linden, its branches offered them a
+    welcome shelter, the breezes were sweet and soft beneath its
+    shade, and the couch at its feet was decked with the fairest
+    grass and flowers.
+
+With these lovers, love of Nature is only second to love of each
+other. So in the following:
+
+    That same morning had Tristan and his lady-love stolen forth hand
+    in hand and come full early, through the morning dew, to the
+    flowery meadow and the lovely vale. Dove and nightingale saluted
+    them sweetly, greeting their friends Tristan and Iseult. The wild
+    wood birds bade them welcome in their own tongue ... it was as if
+    they had conspired among themselves to give the lovers a morning
+    greeting. They sang from the leafy branches in changeful wise,
+    answering each other in song and refrain. The spring that charmed
+    their eye and ear whispered a welcome, even as did the linden
+    with its rustling leaves. The blossoming trees, the fair meadow,
+    the flowers, and the green grass--all that bloomed laughed at
+    their coming; the dew which cooled their feet and refreshed their
+    heart offered a silent greeting.
+
+The amorous passion was the soil in which, in its early narrow
+stages, sympathy for Nature grew up. Was it the thirteenth-century
+lyrics, the love-songs of the Minnesingers, which unfolded the germ?
+For the lyric is the form in which the deepest expression can be
+given to feeling for Nature, and in which she either appears as
+background, frame, or ornament, or, by borrowing a soul or
+symbolizing thought and feeling, blends with the inner life.
+
+As the German court epics took their material from France, so the
+German love-songs were inspired by the Provençal troubadours. The
+national differences stand out clear to view: the vivid glowing
+Provençal is fresher, more vehement, and mettlesome; the dreamy
+German more monotonous, tame, and melancholy. The one is given to
+proud daring, wooing, battle, and the triumph of victory; the other
+to musing, loving, and brooding enthusiasm. The stamp of the
+occasional, of improvisation, is upon all Provençal work; while with
+the German Minnesingers, everything--Nature as well as love--tends to
+be stereotyped, monotonous.
+
+The scanty remains of Troubadour songs[7] often shew mind and Nature
+very strikingly brought together, either in harmony or contrast. For
+example, Bernard von Ventadour (1195):
+
+    It may annoy others to see the foliage fall from the trees, but
+    it pleases me greatly; one cannot fancy I should long for leaves
+    and flowers when she, my dear one, is haughty to me.
+
+    Cold and snow become flowers and greenery under her charming
+    glance.
+
+    As I slumber at night, I am waked by the sweet song of the
+    nightingale; nothing but love in my mind quite thrilled by
+    shudders of delight.
+
+    God! could I be a swallow and sweep through the air, I would go
+    at midnight to her little chamber.
+
+  When I behold the lark up spring
+  To meet the bright sun joyfully,
+  How he forgets to poise his wing
+  In his gay spirit's revelry.
+  Alas! that mournful thoughts should spring
+  E'en from that happy songster's glee!
+  Strange that such gladdening sight should bring
+  Not joy but pining care to me.
+
+A very modern thought which calls to mind Theodore Storm's touching
+lines after the death of his wife:
+
+    But this I cannot endure, that the sun smiles as before, clocks
+    strike and bells ring as in thy lifetime, and day and night still
+    follow each other.
+
+He connects spring with love:
+
+  When grass grows green and fresh leaves spring
+  And flowers are budding on the plain,
+  When nightingales so sweetly sing
+  And through the greenwood swells the strain,
+  Then joy I in the song and in the flower,
+  Joy in myself but in my lady more;
+  All objects round my spirit turns to joy,
+  But most from her my rapture rises high.
+
+Arnold von Mareuil (about 1200) sings in the same way:
+
+  O! how sweet the breeze of April
+  Breathing soft, as May draws near,
+  While through nights serene and gentle
+  Songs of gladness meet the ear.
+  Every bird his well-known language
+  Warbling in the morning's pride,
+  Revelling on in joy and gladness
+  By his happy partner's side....
+  With such sounds of bliss around me,
+  Who could wear a saddened heart?
+
+He calls his lady-love
+
+    The fairest creature which Nature has produced here below, fairer
+    than I can express and faker than a beautiful May day, than
+    sunshine in March, shade in summer, than May roses, April rain,
+    the flower of beauty, mirror of love, the key of Fame.
+
+Bertran de Born too sings:
+
+  The beautiful spring delights me well
+  When flowers and leaves are growing,
+  And it pleases my heart to hear the swell
+  Of the bird's sweet chorus flowing
+  In the echoing wood, etc.
+
+The Greek lyrists up to Alexandrian times contented themselves with
+implying indirectly that nothing delighted them so much as May and
+its delights; but these singers implicitly state it. The German
+Minnesingers too[8] are loud in praise of spring, as in that
+anonymous song:
+
+  I think nothing so good nor worthy of praise
+  As a fair rose and my good man's love;
+  The song of the little birds in the woods is clear to many a heart.
+
+and summer is greeted with:
+
+    The good are glad that summer comes. See what a benefit it is to
+    many hearts.
+
+The Troubadour motive is here too:
+
+    Winter and snow seem as beautiful flowers and clover to me, when
+    I have embraced her.
+
+and Kürenberg makes a lady sing:
+
+    When I stand there alone in my shift and think of thee, noble
+    knight, I blush like a rose on its thorn.
+
+Delight in summer, complaint of winter--this is the fundamental chord
+struck again and again; there is scarcely any trace of blending the
+feelings of the lover with those of Nature. It is a monotonous
+repetition of a few themes, of flowers and little birds as messengers
+of love, and lady-loves who are brighter than the sun, whose presence
+brings spring in winter or cheers a grey and snowy day.
+
+Deitmar von Eist greets spring with:
+
+    Ah! now the time of the little birds' singing is coming for us,
+    the great lime is greening, the long winter is past, one sees
+    well-shaped flowers spread their glory over the heath. 'Tis a joy
+    to many hearts, and a comfort too to mine.
+
+In another song the birds and roses remind him of a happy past and of
+the lady of his heart.
+
+  A little bird sang on the lime o'erhead,
+  Its song resounded through the wood
+  And turned my heart back to another place;
+  And once again I saw the roses blow,
+  And they brought back the many thoughts
+  I cherish of a lady.
+
+A lady says to a falcon:
+
+  You happy falcon you! You fly whither you will!
+  And choose the tree you like in the wood.
+  I have done the same. I chose a husband
+  For myself, whom my eyes chose.
+  So 'tis fitting for beautiful women.
+
+In winter he complains:
+
+    Alas for summer delight! The birds' song has disappeared with the
+    leaves of the lime. Time has changed, the nightingales are dumb.
+    They have given up their sweet song and the wood has faded from
+    above.
+
+Uhland's beautiful motive in _Spring Faith_, that light and hope will
+come back to the oppressed heart with the flowers and the green, is
+given, though stiffly and dimly, by Heinrich von Veldegge:
+
+    I have some delightful news; the flowers are sprouting on the
+    heath, the birds singing in the wood. Where snow lay before,
+    there is now green clover, bedewed in the morning. Who will may
+    enjoy it. No one forces me to, I am not free from cares.
+
+and elsewhere:
+
+    At the time when flowers and grass come to us, all that made my
+    heart sad will be made good again.
+
+The loss of the beauty of summer makes him sad:
+
+    Since the bright sunlight has changed to cold, and the little
+    birds have left off singing their song, and cold nights have
+    faded the foliage of the lime, my heart is sad.
+
+Ulrich von Guotenberg makes a pretty comparison:
+
+  She is my summer joy, she sows flowers and clover
+  In my heart's meadow, whence I, whate'er befall,
+  Must teem with richer bliss: the light of her eyes
+  Makes me bloom, as the hot sun the dripping trees....
+  Her fair salute, her mild command
+  Softly inclining, make May rain drop down into my heart.
+
+Heinrich von Rugge laments winter:
+
+    The dear nightingale too has forgotten how beautifully she sang
+    ... the birds are mourning everywhere.
+
+and longs for summer:
+
+    I always craved blissful days.... I liked to hear the little
+    birds' delightful songs. Winter cannot but be hard and
+    immeasurably long. I should be glad if it would pass away.
+
+Heinrich von Morungen:
+
+  How did you get into my heart?
+  It must ever be the same with me.
+  As the noon receives her light from the sun,
+  So the glance of your bright eyes, when you leave me,
+  Sinks into my heart.
+
+He calls his love his light of May, his Easter Day:
+
+  She is my sweetheart, a sweet May
+  Bringing delights, a sunshine without cloud.
+
+and says, in promising fidelity: 'My steady mind is not like the
+wind.'
+
+Reinmar says:
+
+  When winter is over
+  I saw the heath with the red flowers, delightful there....
+  The long winter is past away; when I saw the green leaves
+  I gave up much of my sorrow.
+
+In a time of trouble he cried:
+
+    To me it must always be winter.
+
+So we see that Troubadour references to Nature were drawn from a very
+limited area. Individual grasp of scenery was entirely lacking, it
+did not occur to them to seek Nature for her own sake. Their
+comparisons were monotonous, and their scenes bare, stereotyped
+arabesques, not woven into the tissue of lyric feeling. Their ruling
+motives were joy in spring and complaint of winter. Wood, flowers,
+clover, the bright sun, the moon (once), roses, lilies, and woodland
+birds, especially the nightingale, served them as elementary or
+landscape figures.
+
+Wilhelm Grimm says:
+
+    The Minnesingers talk often enough of mild May, the nightingale's
+    song, the dew shining on the flowers of the heath, but always in
+    relation only to their own feelings reflected in them. To
+    indicate sad moods they used faded leaves, silent birds, seed
+    buried in snow.
+
+and Humboldt:
+
+    The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or the
+    Crusades in Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, have enriched the
+    art of poetry in Germany with new natural pictures, can only
+    generally be answered by the negative. It is not remarked that
+    the acquaintance with the East gave any new direction to the
+    songs of the minstrels. The Crusaders came little into actual
+    contact with the Saracens; they even lived in a state of great
+    restraint with other nations who fought in the same cause. One of
+    the oldest lyric poets was Friedrich of Hausen. He perished in
+    the army of Barbarossa. His songs contain many views of the
+    Crusades; but they chiefly express religious sentiments on the
+    pain of being separated from his dear friends. He found no
+    occasion to say anything concerning the country or any of those
+    who took part in the wars, as Reinmar the Elder, Rubin, Neidhart,
+    and Ulrich of Lichtenstein. Reinmar came a pilgrim to Syria, as
+    it appears, in the train of Leopold the 6th, Duke of Austria. He
+    complains that the recollections of his country always haunted
+    him, and drew away his thoughts from God. The date tree has here
+    been mentioned sometimes, when they speak of the palm branches
+    which pious pilgrims bore upon their shoulders. I do not remember
+    that the splendid scenery in Italy has excited the fancy of the
+    minstrels who crossed the Alps. Walther, who had wandered about,
+    had only seen the river Po; but Friedank was at Rome. He merely
+    remarked that grass grew in the palaces of those who formerly
+    bore sway there.
+
+As a fact, even the greatest Minnesinger, Walther, the master lyrist
+of the thirteenth century, was not ahead of his contemporaries in
+this matter. His _Spring Longing_ begins:
+
+  Winter has wrought us harm everywhere,
+  Forest and field are dreary and bare
+  Where the sweet voices of summer once were,
+  Yet by the road where I see maiden fair
+  Tossing the ball, the birds' song is there.
+
+and _Spring and Women_:
+
+  When flowers through the grass begin to spring
+  As though to greet with smiles the sun's bright rays,
+  On some May morning, and in joyous measure,
+  Small songbirds make the dewy forest ring
+  With a sweet chorus of sweet roundelays,
+  Hath life in all its store a purer pleasure?
+  'Tis half a Paradise on earth.
+  Yet ask me what I hold of equal worth,
+  And I will tell what better still
+  Ofttimes before hath pleased mine eyes,
+  And, while I see it, ever will.
+  When a noble maiden, fair and pure,
+  With raiment rich and tresses deftly braided,
+  Mingles, for pleasure's sake, in company,
+  High bred, with eyes that, laughingly demure,
+  Glance round at times and make all else seem faded,
+  As, when the sun shines, all the stars must die.
+  Let May bud forth in all its splendour;
+  What sight so sweet can he engender
+  As with this picture to compare?
+  Unheeded leave we buds and blooms,
+  And gaze upon the lovely fair!
+
+The grace in this rendering of a familiar motive, and the
+individuality in the following _Complaint of Winter_, were both
+unusual at the time:
+
+  Erewhile the world shone red and blue
+  And green in wood and upland too,
+  And birdlets sang on the bough.
+  But now it's grown grey and lost its glow,
+  And there's only the croak of the winter crow,
+  Whence--many a ruffled brow!
+
+Elsewhere he says that his lady's favour turns his winter to spring,
+and adds:
+
+  Cold winter 'twas no more for me,
+  Though others felt it bitterly;
+  To me it was mid May.
+
+He has many pictures of Nature and pretty comparisons, but the
+stereotyped style predominates--heath, flowers, grass, and
+nightingales. The pearl of the collection is the naive song which
+touches sensuous feeling, like the _Song of Solomon_, with the magic
+light of innocence:
+
+  Under the lime on the heath where I sat with my love,
+  There you would find
+  The grass and the flowers all crushed--
+  Sweetly the nightingale sang in the vale by the wood.
+  Tandaradei!
+  When I came up to the meadow my lover was waiting me there.
+  Ah! what a greeting I had! Gracious Mary, 'tis bliss to me still!
+  Tandaradei! Did he kiss me, you ask? Look at the red of my lips!
+  Of sweet flowers of all sorts he made us a bed,
+  I wager who passes now smiles at the sight,
+  The roses would still show just where my head lay.
+  Tandaradei!
+  But how he caressed me, that any but one
+  Should know that, God forbid! I were shamed if they did;
+  Only he and I know it,
+  And one little birdie who never will tell.
+
+So we see that interest in Nature in the literature of the Crusaders
+very seldom went beyond the utilitarian bounds of pleasure and
+admiration in fertility and pleasantness; and the German national
+epics rarely alluded to her traits even by way of comparison. The
+court epics shewed some advance, and sympathy was distinctly
+traceable in Gottfried, and even attained to artistic expression in
+his lyrics, where his own feelings chimed with Nature.
+
+For the rest, the Minnesingers' descriptions were all alike. The
+charm of Nature apart from other considerations, delight in her for
+her own sake alone, was unknown to the time.
+
+Hitherto we have only spoken of literature.
+
+Feeling for Nature reveals itself in plastic art also, especially in
+painting; and since the mind of a people is one united organism, the
+relation between poetry and painting is not one of opposition and
+mutual exclusion--they rather enlarge and explain, or condition each
+other.
+
+As concerns feeling for Nature, it may be taken as a universal rule
+that landscape-painting only develops when Nature is sought for her
+own sake, and that so long as scenery merely serves the purpose of
+ornament in literature, so long it merely serves as accessory and
+background in painting; whereas, when Nature takes a wider space in
+prose and poetry, and becomes an end of representation in herself,
+the moment for the birth of landscape-painting has come. We will
+follow the stages of the development of painting very briefly, from
+Woltmann and Woermann's excellent book,[9] which, if it throws no
+fresh light upon our subject, illustrates what has just been said in
+a striking manner.
+
+In the first centuries _Anno Domini_, painting was wholly proscribed
+by Christendom. Its technique did not differ from that of antiquity;
+but Christendom took up an attitude of antagonism. The picture
+worship of the old religions was opposed to its very origin and
+essence, and was only gradually introduced into the Christian cult
+through heathen influences. It is a fact too, easy to explain,
+especially through its Jewish origin, that Christianity at first felt
+no need of art, and that this one-sidedness only ceased when the
+specifically Jewish element in it had died out, and Christendom
+passed to cultivated Greeks and Romans. In the cemeteries and
+catacombs of the first three centuries, we find purely decorative
+work, light vines with Cupids, but also remains of landscapes; for
+instance, in the oldest part of the cemetery of Domitilla at Rome,
+where the ceiling decoration consists of shepherds, fishers, and
+biblical scenes. The ceiling picture in St Lucina (second century)
+has apparently the Good Shepherd in the middle, and round it
+alternate pictures of Him and of the praying Madonna; whilst in the
+middle it has also charming divisions with fields, branches with
+leaves and flowers, birds, masks, and floating genii.
+
+In Byzantine painting too, the influence of antiquity was still
+visible, especially in a Psaltery with a Commentary and fourteen
+large pictures. David appears here as a shepherd; a beautiful woman's
+form, exhibiting the melody, is leaning with her left arm upon his
+shoulder; a nymph's head peeps out of the foliage; and in front we
+have Bethlehem, and the mountain god resting in a bold position under
+a rock; sheep, goats, and water are close by, and a landscape with
+classic buildings, streams, and mountains forms the background; it is
+very poetically conceived. Elsewhere, too, personifications recur, in
+which classic beauty is still visible, mixed with severe Christian
+forms.
+
+At the end of the tenth century began the Romantic period, which
+closed in the thirteenth.
+
+The brilliant progress made by architecture paved the way for the
+other arts; minds trained in its laws began to look for law in
+organic Nature too, and were no longer content with the old uncertain
+and arbitrary shapes. But as no independent feeling for Nature, in
+the widest sense of the term, existed, mediæval art treated her, not
+according to her own laws, but to those of architecture. With the
+development of the Gothic style, from the thirteenth century on, art
+became a citizen's craft, a branch of industry. Heretofore it had
+possessed but one means of expression--religious festival or
+ceremony, severely ecclesiastical. This limit was now removed. The
+artist lived a wide life, open to impressions from Nature, his
+imagination fed by poetry with new ideas and feelings, and constantly
+stimulated by the love of pleasure, which was so vehement among all
+classes that it turned every civil and ecclesiastical event to
+histrionic purposes, and even made its influence felt upon the
+clergy. The strong religious feeling which pervaded the Middle Ages
+still ruled, and even rose to greater enthusiasm, in accordance with
+the spirit of the day; but it was no longer a matter of blind
+submission of the will, but of conscious acceptance.
+
+It is true that knowledge of the external world was as yet very
+limited; the painter had not explored and mastered it, but only used
+it as a means to represent a certain realm of feeling, studying it
+just so far as this demanded. We have seen the same in the case of
+poetry. The beginnings of realistic painting were visible, although,
+as, for example, in representing animals, no individuality was
+reached.
+
+From the middle of the fourteenth century a new French school sprang
+up. The external world was more keenly and accurately studied,
+especially on its graceful side. It was only at the end of that
+period that painting felt the need to develop the background, and
+indicate actual surroundings by blue sky, hills, Gothic buildings,
+and conventional trees. These were given in linear perspective; of
+aerial perspective there was none. The earlier taste still ruled in
+initialling and border decorations; but little flowers were added by
+degrees to the thorn-leaf pattern, and birds, sometimes angels,
+introduced.
+
+The altar-piece at Cologne, at the end of the fourteenth century, is
+more subjective in conception, and full of lyric feeling. Poetic
+feeling came into favour, especially in Madonna pictures of purely
+idyllic character, which were painted with most charming
+surroundings. Instead of a throne and worshipping figures, Mary was
+placed sitting comfortably with the Child on flowery turf, and saints
+around her; and although the background might be golden instead of
+landscape, yet all the stems and blossoms in the grass were naturally
+and accurately treated. In a little picture in the town museum at
+Frankfort, the Madonna is seated in a rose garden under fruit trees
+gay with birds, and reading a book; a table with food and drinks
+stands close by, and a battlemented wall surrounds the garden. She is
+absorbed in contemplation; three female saints are attending to
+mundane business close by, one drawing water from a brook, another
+picking cherries, the third teaching the child Christ to play the
+zither. There is real feeling in the whole picture, and the landscape
+is worked in with distinct reference to the chief idea.
+
+Hence, although there were many isolated attempts to shew that realistic
+and individual study of Nature had begun, landscape-painting had not
+advanced beyond the position of a background, treated in a way more or
+less suited to the main subject of the picture; and trees, rocks,
+meadows, flowers, were still only framework, ornament, as in the poetry
+of the Minnesingers.[10]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+INDIVIDUALISM AND SENTIMENTAL FEELING
+AT THE RENAISSANCE
+
+
+In a certain sense all times are transitional to those who live in
+them, since what is old is always in process of being destroyed and
+giving way to the new. But there are landmarks in the general
+development of culture, which mark off definite periods and divide
+what has been from what is beginning. Hellenism was such a landmark
+in antiquity, the Renaissance in the Middle Ages.
+
+Without overlooking the differences between Greek and Italian,
+classic and modern, which are relative and not absolute, it is
+instructive to note the great likeness between these two epochs. The
+limits of their culture will stand out more clearly, if, by the aid
+of Helbig's researches and Burckhardt's masterly account of the
+Renaissance, we range the chief points of that likeness side by side.
+
+They were epochs in which an icy crust, which had been lying over
+human thought and feeling, melted as if before a spring breeze. It is
+true that the theory of life which now began to prevail was not
+absolutely new; the stages of growth in a nation's culture are never
+isolated; it was the result of the enlargement of various factors
+already present, and their fusion with a flood of incoming ones.
+
+The Ionic-Doric Greek kingdom widened out in Alexander's time to a
+Hellenic-Asiatic one, and the barriers of the Romano-Germanic Middle
+Ages fell with the Crusades and the great voyages of discovery.
+Hellenism and the Renaissance brought about the transition from
+antiquity and the mediæval to the specifically modern; the Roman
+Empire inherited Hellenism, the Reformation the Renaissance. Both had
+their roots in the past, both made new growth which blossomed at a
+later time. In Hellenism, Oriental elements were mixed with the
+Greek; in the Renaissance, it was a mixture of Germanic with the
+native Italian which caused the revival of classic antiquity and new
+culture. Burckhardt says[1]:
+
+    Elsewhere in Europe men deliberately and with reflection borrowed
+    this or the other element of classical civilization; in Italy,
+    the sympathies both of the learned and of the people were
+    naturally engaged on the side of antiquity as a whole, which
+    stood to them as a symbol of past greatness. The Latin language
+    too was easy to an Italian, and the numerous monuments and
+    documents in which the country abounded facilitated a return to
+    the past. With this tendency, other elements--the popular
+    character which time had now greatly modified, the political
+    institutions imported by the Lombards from Germany, chivalry and
+    northern forms of civilization, and the influence of religion and
+    the Church--combined to produce the modern Italian spirit, which
+    was destined to serve as the model and ideal for the whole
+    western world.
+
+The distance between the works of the Greek artists and
+poets--between Homer, Sophocles, and Phidias on the one hand, and the
+Alexandrian Theocritus and Kallimachos and the Pergamos sculptures on
+the other--is greater than lies between the _Nibelungenlied_ and the
+Minnesingers, and Dante and Petrarch. In both cases one finds oneself
+in a new world of thought and feeling, where each and all bears the
+stamp of change, in matters political and social as well as artistic.
+If, for example, by the aid of Von Helbig's researches,[2] we conjure
+up a picture of the chief points in the history of Greek culture, we
+are astonished to see how almost every point recurred at the
+Renaissance, as described by Burckhardt.
+
+The chief mark of both epochs was individualism, the discovery of the
+individual. In Hellenism it was the barriers of race and position
+which fell; in the Renaissance, the veil, woven of mysticism and
+delusion, which had obscured mediæval faith, thought, and feeling.
+Every man recognized himself to be an independent unit of church,
+state, people, corporation--of all those bodies in which in the
+Middle Ages he had been entirely merged.
+
+Monarchical institutions arose in Hellenism; but the individual was
+no longer content to serve them only as one among many; he must needs
+develop his own powers. Private affairs began to preponderate over
+public; the very physiognomy of the race shewed an individual stamp.
+
+    After the time of Alexander the Great, portrait shewed most
+    marked individuality. Those of the previous period had a certain
+    uniform expression; one would have looked in vain among them for
+    the diversities in contemporary types shewn by comparing
+    Alexander's vivid face full of stormy energy, Menander's with its
+    peculiar look of irony, and the elaborate savant-physiognomy of
+    Aristotle. (HELBIG.)
+
+And Burckhardt says:
+
+    At the close of the thirteenth century Italy began to swarm with
+    individuality; the charm laid upon human personality was
+    dissolved, and a thousand figures meet us each in its own special
+    shape and dress.... Despotism, as we have already seen, fostered
+    in the highest degree the individuality, not only of the tyrant
+    or Condottiere himself, but also of the men whom he protected or
+    used as his tools--the secretary, minister, poet, or companion.
+
+Political indifference brought about a high degree of
+cosmopolitanism, especially among those who were banished. 'My
+country is the whole world,' said Dante; and Ghiberti: 'Only he who
+has learned everything is nowhere a stranger; robbed of his fortune
+and without friends, he is yet a citizen of every country, and can
+fearlessly despise the changes of fortune.'
+
+In both Hellenism and the Renaissance, an effort was made in art and
+science to see things as they really were. In art, detail was
+industriously cultivated; but its naturalism, especially as to
+undraped figures, was due to a sensuous refinement of gallantry and
+erotic feeling. The sensuous flourished no less in Greek times than
+in those of Boccaccio; but the most characteristic peculiarity of
+Hellenism was its intentional revelling in feeling--its
+sentimentality. There was a trace of melancholy upon many faces of
+the time, and unhappy love in endless variations was the poet's main
+theme. Petrarch's lyre was tuned to the same key; a melancholy
+delight in grief was the constant burden of his song.
+
+In Greece the sight of foreign lands had furthered the natural
+sciences, especially geography, astronomy, zoology, and botany; and
+the striving for universality at the Renaissance, which was as much a
+part of its individualism as its passion for fame, was aided by the
+widening of the physical and mental horizons through the Crusades and
+voyages of discovery. Dante was not only the greatest poet of his
+time, but an astronomer; Petrarch was geographer and cartographer,
+and, at the end of the fifteenth century, with Paolo Toscanelli,
+Lucca Baccioli, and Leonardo da Vinci, Italy was beyond all
+comparison the first nation in Europe in mathematics and natural
+science.
+
+    A significant proof of the wide-spread interest in natural
+    history is found in the zeal which shewed itself at an early
+    period for the collection and comparative study of plants and
+    animals. Italy claims to be the first creator of botanical
+    gardens.... princes and wealthy men, in laying out their pleasure
+    gardens, instinctively made a point of collecting the greatest
+    possible number of different plants in all their species and
+    varieties. (BURCKHARDT.)
+
+Leon Battista Alberti, a man of wide theoretical knowledge as well as
+technical and artistic facility of all sorts, entered into the whole
+life around him with a sympathetic intensity that might almost be
+called nervous.
+
+    At the sight of noble trees and waving corn-fields he shed tears
+    ... more than once, when he was ill, the sight of a beautiful
+    landscape cured him. (BURCKHARDT.)
+
+He defined a beautiful landscape as one in which one could see in its
+different parts, sea, mountain, lake or spring, dry rocks or plains,
+wood and valley. Therefore he cared for variety; and, what is more
+striking, in contrast to level country, he admired mountains and
+rocks!
+
+In Hellenism, hunting, to which only the Macedonians had been
+addicted before, became a fashion, and was enjoyed with Oriental pomp
+in the _paradeisoi_. Writers drew most of their comparisons from it.
+In the Renaissance, Petrarch did the same, and animals often served
+as emblems of state--their condition ominous of good or evil--and
+were fostered with superstitious veneration, as, for example, the
+lions at Florence.
+
+Thus the growth of the natural sciences increased interest in the
+external world, and sensitiveness brought about a sentimental
+attitude towards Nature in Hellenism and in the Renaissance.
+
+Both discovered in Nature a source of purest pleasure; the
+Renaissance feeling was, in fact, the extension and enhancement of
+the Hellenic. Burckhardt overlooked the fact that beautiful scenery
+was appreciated and described for its own sake in Hellenism, but he
+says very justly;
+
+    The Italians are the first among modern peoples by whom the
+    outward world was seen and felt as something beautiful.... By the
+    year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine hearty
+    enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found
+    lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations, which
+    gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena
+    of Nature--spring with its flowers, the green fields and the
+    woods. But these pictures are all foreground without perspective.
+
+Among the Minnesingers there were traces of feeling for Nature; but
+only for certain stereotyped phases. Of the individuality of a
+landscape, its characteristic colour, form, and light, not a word was
+said.
+
+Even the Carmina Burana were not much ahead of the Minnesingers in
+this respect, although they deserve a closer examination.
+
+These Latin poems of wandering clerks probably belong to the twelfth
+century, and though no doubt a product in which the whole of Europe
+had a share, their best pieces must be ascribed to a French hand.
+Latin poetry lives again in them, with a freshness the Carlovingian
+Renaissance never reached; they are mediæval in form, but full of a
+frank enjoyment of life and its pleasures, which hardly any
+northerner of that day possessed. Often enough this degenerated into
+frivolity; but the stir of national awakening after the long sleep of
+the Middle Ages is felt like a spring breeze through them all.
+
+It is a far cry from the view of Nature we saw in the Carlovingian
+monks, to these highly-coloured verses. The dim light of churches and
+bare cell walls may have doubled the monks' appreciation of blue
+skies and open-air life; but they were fettered by the constant fight
+with the senses; Nature to them must needs be less a work of God for
+man's delight, than a dangerous means of seduction. 'They wandered
+through Nature with timid misgiving, and their anxious fantasy
+depicted forms of terror or marvellous rescues.[3] The idyllic
+pleasure in the simple charms of Nature, especially in the monastery
+garden of the Carlovingian time, contrasts strikingly with the tone
+of these very mundane _vagantes clerici_, for whom Nature had not
+only long been absorbed and freed from all demoniac influence, but
+peopled by the charming forms of the old mythic poems, and made for
+the joy and profit of men, in the widest and naivest sense of the
+words.
+
+Spring songs, as with the Minnesingers, take up most of the space;
+but the theme is treated with greater variety. Enjoyment of life and
+Nature breathes through them all.
+
+One runs thus:
+
+    Spring cometh, and the earth is decked and studded with vernal
+    flowers. The harmony of the birds' returning song rouses the
+    heart to be glad. It is the time of joy.
+
+Songs 98 to 118 rejoice that winter is gone; for instance:
+
+    Now in the mild springtime Flora opens the lap which the cold
+    frost had locked in cruel time of winter; the zephyr with gentle
+    murmur cometh with the spring; the grove is clad in leaves. The
+    nightingale is singing, the fields are gay with divers hues. It
+    is sweet to walk in the wooded glens, it is sweeter to pluck the
+    lily with the rose, it is sweetest of all to sport with a lovely
+    maiden.
+
+Another makes a similar confession, for Nature and amorous passion
+are the two strings of these lyres:
+
+    Beneath the pleasant foliage of a tree 'tis sweet to rest, while
+    the nightingale sings her plaintive song; sweeter still, to sport
+    in the grass with a fair maiden.... O, to what changeful moods is
+    the heart of the lover prone! As the vessel that wanders o'er the
+    waves without an anchor, so doth Love's uncertain warfare toss
+    'twixt fear and hope.
+
+The beauties of Nature are drawn upon to describe the fair maiden;
+her eyes are compared to stars, her colour to lilies and snow, her
+mouth to a rose, her kiss 'doth rend in sunder all the clouds of
+care.'
+
+    In the flowery season I sat beneath a shady tree while the birds
+    sang in the groves ... and listened to my Thisbe's talk, the talk
+    I love and long for; and we spoke of the sweet interchange of
+    love, and in the doubtful balance of the mind wanton love and
+    chastity were wavering.
+
+    I have seen the bright green of flowers, I have seen the flower
+    of flowers, I have seen the rose of May; I have seen the star
+    that is brighter than all other, that is glorious and fair above
+    all other, through whom may I ever spend my life in love.
+
+On such a theme the poet rings endless changes. The most charming is
+the poem _Phyllis and Flora_. Actual landscape is not given, but
+details are treated with freshness and care:
+
+    In the flowery season of the year, under a sky serene, while the
+    earth's lap was painted with many colours, when the messenger of
+    Aurora had put to flight the stars, sleep left the eyes of
+    Phyllis and of Flora, two maidens whose beauty answered to the
+    morning light. The breeze of spring was gently whispering, the
+    place was green and gay with grass, and in the grass itself there
+    flowed a living brook that played and babbled as it went. And
+    that the sun's heat might not harm the maidens, near the stream
+    there was a spreading pine, decked with leaves and spreading far
+    its interweaving branches, nor could the heat penetrate from
+    without. The maidens sat, the grass supplied the seat.... They
+    intend to go to Love's Paradise: at the entrance of the grove a
+    rivulet murmurs; the breeze is fragrant with myrrh and balsam;
+    they hear the music of a hundred timbrels and lutes. All the
+    notes of the birds resound in all their fulness; they hear the
+    sweet and pleasant song of the blackbird, the garrulous lark, the
+    turtle and the nightingale, etc.... He who stayed there would
+    become immortal; every tree there rejoices in its own fruit; the
+    ways are scented with myrrh and cinnamon and amomum; the master
+    could be forced out of his house.
+
+The first to shew proof of a deepening effect of Nature on the human
+spirit was Dante.
+
+Dante and Petrarch elaborated the Hellenistic feeling for Nature;
+hence the further course of the Renaissance displayed all its
+elements, but with increased subjectivity and individuality.
+
+No one, since the days of Hellenism, had climbed mountains for the
+sake of the view--Dante was the first to do it. And although, in
+ranging heaven, earth, hell, and paradise in the _Divina Commedia_,
+he rarely described real Nature, and then mostly in comparisons; yet,
+as Humboldt pointed out, how incomparably in a few vigorous lines he
+wakens the sense of the morning airs and the light on the distant sea
+in the first canto of Purgatorio:
+
+  The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour,
+  Which fled before it,-so that from afar
+  I recognized the trembling of the sea.
+
+And how vivid this is:
+
+                            The air
+  Impregnate changed to water. Fell the rain:
+  And to the fosses came all that the land
+  Contain'd not, and, as mightiest streams are wont,
+  To the great river with such headlong sweep
+  Rush'd, that naught stayed its course.
+
+  Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade
+  With lively greenness the new-springing day
+  Attempered, eager now to roam and search
+  Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank;
+  Along the champaign leisurely my way
+  Pursuing, o'er the ground that on all sides
+  Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air,
+  That intermitted never, never veered,
+  Smote on my temples gently, as a wind
+  Of softest influence, at which the sprays,
+  Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part
+  Where first the holy mountain casts his shade;
+  Yet were not so disordered; but that still
+  Upon their top the feather'd quiristers
+  Applied their wonted art, and with full joy
+  Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill
+  Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays
+  Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch
+  Along the piny forests on the shore
+  Of Chiassi rolls the gathering melody,
+  When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
+  The dripping south. Already had my steps,
+  Tho' slow, so far into that ancient wood
+  Transported me, I could not ken the place
+  Where I had enter'd; when behold! my path
+  Was bounded by a rill, which to the left
+  With little rippling waters bent the grass
+  That issued from its brink.
+
+and this of the heavenly Paradise:
+
+                                I looked,
+  And, in the likeness of a river, saw
+  Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves
+  Flash'd up effulgence, as they glided on
+  'Twixt banks, on either side, painted with spring,
+  Incredible how fair; and, from the tide,
+  There, ever and anon outstarting, flew
+  Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flowers
+  Did set them, like to rubies chased in gold;
+  Then, as if drunk with odours, plunged again
+  Into the wondrous flood, from which, as one
+  Re-entered, still another rose.
+
+His numerous comparisons conjure up whole scenes, perfect in truth to
+Nature, and shewing a keen and widely ranging eye. For example:
+
+              Bellowing, there groaned
+  A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn
+  By warring winds.
+                                        (Inferno.)
+
+  O'er better waves to steer her rapid course
+  The light bark of my genius lifts the sail,
+  Well pleased to leave so cruel sea behind.
+                                        (Purgatorio.)
+
+  All ye, who in small bark have following sail'd,
+  Eager to listen on the adventurous track
+  Of my proud keel, that singing cuts her way.
+                                        (Paradiso.)
+
+  As sails full spread and bellying with the wind
+  Drop suddenly collapsed, if the mast split,
+  So to the ground down dropp'd the cruel fiend.
+                                        (Inferno.)
+
+              As, near upon the hour of dawn,
+  Through the thick vapours Mars with fiery beam
+  Glares down in west, over the ocean floor.
+                                   (Purgatorio.)
+
+              As 'fore the sun
+  That weighs our vision down, and veils his form
+  In light transcendent, thus my virtue fail'd
+  Unequal.                         (Purgatorio.)
+
+              As sunshine cheers
+  Limbs numb'd by nightly cold, e'en thus my look
+  Unloosed her tongue.
+
+  And now there came o'er the perturbed waves,
+  Loud crashing, terrible, a sound that made
+  Either shore tremble, as if of a wind
+  Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung,
+  That, 'gainst some forest driving all his might,
+  Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls
+  Afar; then, onward pressing, proudly sweeps
+  His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.
+                                         (Inferno.)
+
+  As florets, by the frosty air of night
+  Bent down and closed, when day has blanch'd their leaves
+  Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems,
+  So was my fainting vigour new restored.
+                                         (Inferno.)
+
+      As fall off the light autumnal leaves,
+  One still another following, till the bough
+  Strews all its honours on the earth beneath.
+                                         (Inferno.)
+
+Bees, dolphins, rays of sunlight, snow, starlings, doves, frogs, a
+bull, falcons, fishes, larks, and rooks are all used, generally with
+characteristic touches of detail.
+
+Specially tender is this:
+
+  E'en as the bird, who 'mid the leafy bower
+  Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night
+  With her sweet brood; impatient to descry
+  Their wished looks, and to bring home their food,
+  In the fond quest, unconscious of her toil;
+
+  She, of the time prevenient, on the spray
+  That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze
+  Expects the sun, nor, ever, till the dawn
+  Removeth from the east her eager ken,
+  So stood the dame erect.
+
+The most important forward step was made by Petrarch, and it is
+strange that this escaped Humboldt in his famous sketch in the second
+volume of _Cosmos_, as well as his commentator Schaller, and
+Friedlander.
+
+For when we turn from Hellenism to Petrarch, it does not seem as if
+many centuries lay between; but rather as if notes first struck in
+the one had just blended into distinct harmony in the other.
+
+The modern spirit arose from a union of the genius of the Italian
+people of the thirteenth century with antiquity, and the feeling for
+Nature had a share in the wider culture, both as to sentimentality
+and grasp of scenery. Classic and modern joined hands in Petrarch.
+Many Hellenic motives handed on by Roman poets reappear in his
+poetry, but always with that something in addition of which antiquity
+shewed but a trace--the modern subjectivity and individuality. It was
+the change from early bud to full blossom. He was one of the first to
+deserve the name of modern--modern, that is, in his whole feeling and
+mode of thought, in his sentimentality and his melancholy, and in the
+fact that 'more than most before and after him, he tried to know
+himself and to hand on to others what he knew.' (Geiger.) It is an
+appropriate remark of Hettner's, that the phrase, 'he has discovered
+his heart,' might serve as a motto for Petrarch's songs and sonnets.
+He knew that he had that sentimental disorder which he called
+'acedia,' and wished to be rid of it. This word has a history of its
+own. To the Greeks, to Apollonius, for instance,[4] it meant
+carelessness, indifference; and, joined with the genitive [Greek:
+nooio]--that is, of the mind--it meant, according to the scholiasts,
+as much as [Greek: lypê] (Betrübnis)--that is, distress or grief. In
+the Middle Ages it became 'dislike of intellect so far as that is a
+divine gift'--that disease of the cloister which a monkish chronicler
+defined as 'a sadness or loathing and an immoderate distress of mind,
+caused by mental confusion, through which happiness of mind was
+destroyed, and the mind thrown back upon itself as from an abyss of
+despair.'
+
+To Dante it meant the state--
+
+                                       Sad
+  In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun,
+
+distaste for the good and beautiful.
+
+The modern meaning which it took with Petrarch is well defined by
+Geiger as being neither ecclesiastic nor secular sin,[5] but
+
+    Entirely human and peculiar to the cleverest--the battle between
+    reality and seeming, the attempt to people the arid wastes of the
+    commonplace with philosophic thought--the unhappiness and despair
+    that arise from comparing the unconcern of the majority with
+    one's own painful unrest, from the knowledge that the results of
+    striving do not express the effort made--that human life is but a
+    ceaseless and unworthy rotation, in which the bad are always to
+    the fore, and the good fall behind ... as pessimism, melancholy,
+    world pain (Weltschmerz)--that tormenting feeling which mocks all
+    attempt at definition, and is too vitally connected with erring
+    and striving human nature to be curable--that longing at once for
+    human fellowship and solitude, for active work and a life of
+    contemplation.
+
+Petrarch knew too the pleasure of sadness, what Goethe called 'Wonne
+der Wehmuth,' the _dolendi voluptas._
+
+  Lo, what new pleasure human wits devise!
+  For oftentimes one loves
+  Whatever new thing moves
+  The sighs, that will in closest order go;
+  And I'm of those whom sorrowing behoves;
+  And that with some success
+  I labour, you may guess,
+  When eyes with tears, and heart is brimmed with woe.
+
+In Sonnet 190:
+
+  My chiefest pleasure now is making moan.
+
+  Oh world, oh fruitless thought,
+  Oh luck, my luck, who'st led me thus for spite!...
+  For loving well, with pain I'm rent....
+  Nor can I yet repent,
+  My heart o'erflowed with deadly pleasantness.
+  Now wait I from no less
+  A foe than dealt me my first blow, my last.
+  And were I slain full fast,
+  'Twould seem a sort of mercy to my mind....
+  My ode, I shall i' the field
+  Stand firm; to perish flinching were a shame,
+  In fact, myself I blame
+  For such laments; my portion is so sweet.
+  Tears, sighs, and death I greet.
+  O reader that of death the servant art,
+  Earth can no weal, to match my woes, impart.
+
+His poems are full of scenes and comparisons from Nature; for the
+sympathy for her which goes with this modern and sentimental tone is
+a deep one:
+
+  In that sweet season of my age's prime
+  Which saw the sprout and, as it were, green blade
+  Of the wild passion....
+
+                      Changed me
+  From living man into green laurel whose
+  Array by winter's cold no leaf can lose.
+                                       (Ode 1.)
+
+Love is that by which
+
+  My darknesses were made as bright
+  As clearest noonday light.       (Ode 4.)
+
+Elsewhere it is the light of heaven breaking in his heart, and
+springtime which brings the flowers.
+
+In Sonnet 44 he plays with impossibilities, like the Greek and Roman
+poets:
+
+  Ah me! the sea will have no waves, the snow
+  Will warm and darken, fish on Alps will dwell,
+  And suns droop yonder, where from common cell
+
+  The springs of Tigris and Euphrates flow,
+  Or ever I shall here have truce or peace
+  Or love....
+
+and uses the same comparisons, Sestina 7:
+
+  So many creatures throng not ocean's wave,
+  So many, above the circle of the moon,
+  Of stars were never yet beheld by night;
+  So many birds reside not in the groves;
+  So many herbs hath neither field nor shore,
+  But my heart's thoughts outnumber them each eve.
+
+Many of his poems witness to the truth that the love-passion is the
+best interpreter of Nature, especially in its woes. The woes of love
+are his constant theme, and far more eloquently expressed than its
+bliss:
+
+  So fair I have not seen the sun arise,
+  When heaven was clearest of all cloudy stain--
+  The welkin-bow I have not after rain
+  Seen varied with so many shifting dyes,
+  But that her aspect in more splendid guise
+  Upon the day when I took up Love's chain
+  Diversely glowed, for nothing mortal vies
+  Therewith....                (Sonnet 112.)
+
+  From each fair eyelid's tranquil firmament
+  So brightly shine my stars untreacherous,
+  That none, whose love thoughts are magnanimous,
+  Would from aught else choose warmth or guidance lent.
+  Oh, 'tis miraculous, when on the grass
+  She sits, a very flower, or when she lays
+  Upon its greenness down her bosom white.
+                                       (Sonnet 127.)
+
+  Oh blithe and happy flowers, oh favoured sod,
+  That by my lady in passive mood are pressed,
+  Lawn, which her sweet words hear'st and treasurest,
+  Faint traces, where her shapely foot hath trod,
+  Smooth boughs, green leaves, which now raw juices load,
+  Pale darling violets, and woods which rest
+  In shadow, till that sun's beam you attest,
+  From which hath all your pride and grandeur flowed;
+  Oh land delightsome, oh thou river pure
+  Which bathest her fair face and brilliant eyes
+  And winn'st a virtue from their living light,
+  I envy you each clear and comely guise
+  In which she moves.       (Sonnet 129.)
+
+These recall Nais in Theocritus:
+
+  When she crept or trembling footsteps laid,
+  Green bright and soft she made
+  Wood, water, earth, and stone; yea, with conceit
+  The grasses freshened 'neath her palms and feet.
+  And her fair eyes the fields around her dressed
+  With flowers, and the winds and storms she stilled
+  With utterance unskilled
+  As from a tongue that seeketh yet the breast,
+                                     (Sonnet 25.)
+
+  As oft as yon white foot on fresh green sod
+  Comelily sets the gentle step, a dower
+  Of grace, that opens and revives each flower,
+  Seems by the delicate palm to be bestowed.
+                                     (Sonnet 132.)
+
+  I seem to hear her, hearing airs and sprays,
+  And leaves, and plaintive bird notes, and the brook
+  That steals and murmurs through the sedges green.
+  Such pleasure in lone silence and the maze
+  Of eerie shadowy woods I never took,
+  Though too much tow'r'd my sun they intervene.
+                                    (Sonnet 143.)
+
+and like Goethe's:
+
+  I think of thee when the bright sunlight shimmers
+  Across the sea;
+  When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers
+  I think of thee....
+
+  I hear thee, when the tossing waves' low rumbling
+  Creeps up the hill;
+  I go to the lone wood and listen trembling
+  When all is still....
+
+So Petrarch sings in Ode 15:
+
+  Now therefore, when in youthful guise I see
+  The world attire itself in soft green hue,
+  I think that in this age unripe I view
+  That lovely girl, who's now a lady's mien.
+  Then, when the sun ariseth all aglow,
+  I trace the wonted show
+  Of amorous fire, in some fine heart made queen...
+  When leaves or boughs or violets on earth
+  I see, what time the winter's cold decays,
+  And when the kindly stars are gathering might,
+  Mine eye that violet and green portrays
+  (And nothing else) which, at my warfare's birth,
+  Armed Love so well that yet he worsts me quite.
+  I see the delicate fine tissue light
+  In which our little damsel's limbs are dressed....
+  Oft on the hills a feeble snow-streak lies,
+  Which the sun smiteth in sequestered place.
+  Let sun rule snow! Thou, Love, my ruler art,
+  When on that fair and more than human face
+  I muse, which from afar makes soft my eyes....
+  I never yet saw after mighty rain
+  The roving stars in the calm welkin glide
+  And glitter back between the frost and dew,
+  But straight those lovely eyes are at my side....
+  If ever yet, on roses white and red,
+  My eyes have fallen, where in bowl of gold
+  They were set down, fresh culled by virgin hands,
+  There have I seemed her aspect to behold....
+  But when the year has flecked
+  Some deal with white and yellow flowers the braes,
+  I forthwith recollect
+  That day and place in which I first admired
+  Laura's gold hair outspread, and straight was fired....
+  That I could number all the stars anon
+  And shut the waters in a tiny glass
+  Belike I thought, when in this narrow sheet
+  I got a fancy to record, alas,
+  How many ways this Beauty's paragon
+  Hath spread her light, while standing self-complete,
+  So that from her I never could retreat....
+  She's closed for me all paths in earth and sky.
+
+The reflective modern mind is clear in this, despite its loquacity.
+He was yet more eloquent and intense, more fertile in comparisons,
+when his happiest days were over.
+
+In Ode 24, standing at a window he watches the strange forms his
+imagination conjures up--a wild creature torn in pieces by two dogs,
+a ship wrecked by a storm, a laurel shattered by lightning:
+
+  Within this wood, out of a rock did rise
+  A spring of water, mildly rumbling down,
+  Whereto approached not in any wise
+  The homely shepherd nor the ruder clown,
+  But many muses and the nymphs withal....
+  But while herein I took my chief delight,
+  I saw (alas!) the gaping earth devour
+  The spring, the place, and all clean out of sight--
+  Which yet aggrieves my heart unto this hour....
+  At last, so fair a lady did I spy,
+  That thinking yet on her I burn and quake,
+  On herbs and flowers she walked pensively....
+  A stinging serpent by the heel her caught,
+  Wherewith she languished as the gathered flower.
+
+  Now Zephyrus the blither days brings on,
+  With flowers and leaves, his gallant retinue,
+  And Progne's chiding, Philomela's moan,
+  And maiden spring all white and pink of hue;
+  Now laugh the meadows, heaven is radiant grown,
+  And blithely now doth Love his daughter view;
+  Air, water, earth, now breathe of love alone,
+  And every creature plans again to woo.
+  Ah me! but now return the heaviest sighs,
+  Which my heart from its last resources yields
+  To her that bore its keys to heaven away.
+  And songs of little birds and blooming fields
+  And gracious acts of ladies, fair and wise,
+  Are desert land and uncouth beasts of prey.
+                                      (Sonnet 269.)
+
+  The nightingale, who maketh moan so sweet
+  Over his brood belike or nest-mate dear,
+  So deft and tender are his notes to hear,
+  That fields and skies are with delight replete;
+  And all night long he seems with me to treat,
+  And my hard lot recall unto my ear.
+                                      (Sonnet 270.)
+
+  In every dell
+  The sands of my deep sighs are circumfused.
+                                           (Ode 1.)
+
+  Oh banks, oh dales, oh woods, oh streams, oh fields
+  Ye vouchers of my life's o'erburdened cause,
+  How often Death you've heard me supplicate.
+                                            (Ode 8.)
+
+  Whereso my foot may pass,
+  A balmy rapture wakes
+  When I think, here that darling light hath played.
+  If flower I cull or grass,
+  I ponder that it takes
+  Root in that soil, where wontedly she strayed
+  Betwixt the stream and glade,
+  And found at times a seat
+  Green, fresh, and flower-embossed.   (Ode 13.)
+
+  Whenever plaintive warblings, or the note
+  Of leaves by summer breezes gently stirred,
+  Or baffled murmur of bright waves I've heard
+  Along the green and flowery shore to float,
+  Where meditating love I sat and wrote,
+  Then her whom earth conceals, whom heaven conferred,
+  I hear and see, and know with living word
+  She answereth my sighs, though so remote.
+  'Ah, why art thou,' she pityingly says,
+  'Pining away before thy hour?'
+                               (Sonnet 238.)
+
+  The waters and the branches and the shore,
+  Birds, fishes, flowers, grasses, talk of love,
+  And me to love for ever all invite.
+                               (Sonnet 239.)
+
+  Thou'st left the world, oh Death, without a sun....
+  Her mourners should be earth and sea and air.
+                               (Sonnet 294.)
+
+Here we have happiness and misery felt in the modern way, and Nature
+in the modern way drawn into the circle of thought and feeling, and
+personified.
+
+Petrarch was the first, since the days of Hellenism, to enjoy the
+pleasures of solitude quite consciously.
+
+  How often to my darling place of rest,
+  Fleeing from all, could I myself but flee,
+  I walk and wet with tears my path and breast.
+                                  (Sonnet 240.)
+
+He shared Schiller's thought:
+
+  Oh Nature is perfect, wherever we stray,
+  'Tis man that deforms it with care.
+
+  As love from thought to thought, from hill to hill,
+  Directs me, when all ways that people tread
+  Seem to the quiet of my being, foes,
+  If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or rill
+  Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread,
+  I find--my daunted soul doth there repose....
+  On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find
+  Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth
+  Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane....
+  Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade,
+  I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink
+  Her lovely face I picture from my mind....
+  Oft hath her living likeness met my sight,
+  (Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters clear,
+  On beechen stems, on some green lawny space,
+  Or in white cloud....
+  Her loveliest portrait there my fancy draws,
+  And when Truth overawes
+  That sweet delusion, frozen to the core,
+  I then sit down, on living rock, dead stone,
+  And seem to muse, and weep and write thereon....
+  Then touch my thoughts and sense
+  Those widths of air which hence her beauty part,
+  Which always is so near, yet far away....
+  Beyond that Alp, my Ode,
+  Where heaven above is gladdest and most clear,
+  Again thou'lt meet me where the streamlet flows
+  And thrilling airs disclose
+  The fresh and scented laurel thicket near,
+  There is my heart and she that stealeth it.
+                                        (Ode 17.)
+
+It is the same idea as Goethe's in _Knowest thou the Land_? Again:
+
+  Alone, engrossed, the least frequented strands
+  I traverse with my footsteps faint and slow,
+  And often wary glances round me throw,
+  To flee, should human trace imprint the sands.
+                                      (Sonnet 28.)
+
+  A life of solitude I've ever sought,
+  This many a field and forest knows, and will.
+                                      (Sonnet 221.)
+
+Love of solitude and feeling for Nature limit or increase each other;
+and Petrarch; like Dante, took scientific interest in her, and found
+her a stimulant to mental work.
+
+Burckhardt says: 'The enjoyment of Nature is for him the favourite
+accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the two
+that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that
+he from time to time fled from the world and from his age.'
+
+He wrote a book _On a Life of Solitude (De Vita Solitaria)_ by the
+little river Sorgue, and said in a letter from Vaucluse: 'O if you
+could imagine the delight with which I breathe here, free and far
+from the world, with forests and mountains, rivers and springs, and
+the books of clever men.'
+
+Purely objective descriptions, such as his picture of the Gulf of
+Spezzia and Porto Venere at the end of the sixth book of the
+_Africa_, were rare with him; but, as we have already seen, he
+admired mountain scenery. He refers to the hills on the Riviera di
+Levante as 'hills distinguished by most pleasant wildness and
+wonderful fertility.'[6]
+
+The scenery of Reggio moved him, as he said,[7] to compose a poem. He
+described the storm at Naples in 1343, and the earthquake at Basle.
+As we have seen from one of his odes, he delighted in the wide view
+from mountain heights, and the freedom from the oppression of the air
+lower down. In this respect he was one of Rousseau's forerunners,
+though his 'romantic' feeling was restrained within characteristic
+limits. In a letter of April 26, 1335, interesting both as to the
+period and the personality of the writer, he described to Dionisius
+da Borgo San Sepolchro the ascent of Mt. Ventoux near Avignon which
+he made when he was thirty-two, and greatly enjoyed, though those who
+were with him did not understand his enjoyment. When they had
+laboured through the difficulties of the climb, and saw the clouds
+below them, he was immensely impressed. It was in accordance with his
+love of solitude that lonely mountain tops should attract him, and
+the letter shows that he fully appreciated both climb and view.
+
+'It was a long day, the air fine. We enjoyed the advantages of vigour
+of mind, and strength and agility of body, and everything else
+essential to those engaged in such an undertaking, and so had no
+other difficulties to face than those of the region itself.' ... 'At
+first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of
+the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed.
+I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and
+Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things
+from a mountain of less fame. I turned my eyes towards Italy, whither
+my heart most inclined. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to
+rise close by, although they were really at a great distance.... The
+Bay of Marseilles, the Rhone itself, lay in sight.'
+
+It was a very modern effect of the wide view that 'his whole past
+life with all its follies rose before his mind; he remembered that
+ten years ago, that day, he had quitted Bologna a young man, and
+turned a longing gaze towards his native country: he opened a book
+which was then his constant companion, _The Confessions of St
+Augustine_, and his eye fell on the passage in the tenth chapter:
+
+    And men go about and admire lofty mountains and broad seas, and
+    roaring torrents and the ocean, and the course of the stars, and
+    forget their own selves while doing so.
+
+His brother, to whom he read these words, could not understand why he
+closed the book and said no more. His feeling had suddenly changed.
+
+He knew, when he began the climb, that he was doing something very
+unusual, even unheard of among his contemporaries, and justified
+himself by the example of Philip V. of Macedon, arguing that a young
+man of private station might surely be excused for what was not
+thought blamable in a grey-haired king. Then on the mountain top,
+lost in the view, the passage in St Augustine suddenly occurred to
+him, and he started blaming himself for admiring earthly things so
+much. 'I was amazed ... angry with myself for marvelling but now at
+earthly things, when I ought to have learnt long ago that nothing
+save the soul was marvellous, and that to the greatness of the soul
+nought else was great'; and he closed with an explanation flavoured
+with theology to the taste of his confessor, to whom he was writing.
+The mixture of thoroughly modern delight in Nature[8] with ascetic
+dogma in this letter, gives us a glimpse into the divided feelings of
+one who stood upon the threshold between two eras, mediæval and
+modern, into the reaction of the mediæval mind against the budding
+modern feeling.
+
+This is, at any rate, the first mountain ascent for pleasure since
+Hellenic days, of which we have detailed information. From Greece
+before Alexander we have nothing; but the Persian King Darius, in his
+expedition against the Scythians in the region of Chalcedon, ascended
+the mountain on which stood the Urios temple to Zeus, and there
+'sitting in the temple, he took a view of the Euxine Sea, which is
+worthy of admiration.' (Herodotus.)
+
+Philip V. of Macedon ascended the Hæmus B.C. 181, and Apollonios
+Rhodios describes the panorama spread out before the Argonauts as
+they ascended the Dindymon, and elsewhere recalls the view from Mt.
+Olympus. These are the oldest descriptions of distant views conceived
+as landscape in the classic literature preserved to us. Petrarch's
+ascent comes next in order.
+
+This sentimental and subjective feeling for Nature, half-idyllic,
+half-romantic, which seemed to arise suddenly and spontaneously in
+Petrarch, is not to be wholly explained by a marked individuality,
+nourished by the tendencies of the period; the influence of Roman
+literature, the re-birth of the classic, must also be taken into
+account. For the Renaissance attitude towards Nature was closely
+allied to the Roman, and therefore to the Hellenic; and the fact that
+the first modern man arose on Italian soil was due to the revival of
+antiquity plus its union with the genius of the Italian people. Many
+direct analogies can be traced between Petrarch and the Roman poets;
+it was in their school that his eyes opened to the wonders of Nature,
+and he learnt to blend the inner with the outer life.
+
+Boccaccio does not lead us much further. There is idyllic quality in
+his description of a wood in the _Ameto_,[9] and especially in
+_Fiammetta_, in which he praises country life and describes the
+spring games of the Florentine youth.
+
+This is the description of a valley in the _Decameron_: 'After a walk
+of nearly a mile, they came to the Ladies' Valley, which they entered
+by a straight path, whence there issued forth a fine crystal current,
+and they found it so extremely beautiful and pleasant, especially at
+that sultry season, that nothing could exceed it, and, as some of
+them told me afterwards, the plain in the valley was so exact a
+circle, as if it had been described by a pair of compasses, though it
+seemed rather the work of Nature than of art, and was about half a
+mile in circumference, surrounded by six hills of moderate height, on
+each of which was a palace built in the form of a little castle....
+The part that looks toward the south was planted as thick as they
+could stand together with vines, olives, almonds, cherries, figs, and
+most other kinds of fruit trees, and on the northern side were fine
+plantations of oak, ash, etc., so tall and regular that nothing could
+be more beautiful. The vale, which had only that one entrance, was
+full of firs, cypress trees, laurels, and pines, all placed in such
+order as if it had been done by the direction of some exquisite
+artist, and through which little or no sun could penetrate to the
+ground, which was covered with a thousand different flowers.... But
+what gave no less delight than any of the rest was a rivulet that
+came through a valley which divided two of the mountains, and running
+through the vein of a rock, made a most agreeable murmur with its
+fall, appealing, as it was dashed and sprinkled into drops, like so
+much quicksilver.'
+
+Description of scenery for its own sake is scarcely more than
+attempted here, nor do Petrarch's lyrics, with their free thought of
+passion and overpowering consciousness of the joys and sorrows of
+love, reach the level of Hellenism in this respect. Yet it advanced
+with the Renaissance. Pope Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius) was the first to
+describe actual landscape (Italian), not merely in a few subjective
+lines, but with genuine modern enjoyment. He was one of those figures
+in the world's history in whom all the intellectual life and feeling
+of a time come to a focus.
+
+He had a heart for everything, and an all-round enthusiasm for Nature
+unique in his day. Antiquity and Nature were his two passions, and
+the most beautiful descriptions of Nature before Rousseau and Goethe
+are contained in his _Commentaries_.
+
+Writing of the country round his home, he says:
+
+'The sweet spring time had begun, and round about Siena the smiling
+hills were clothed with leaves and flowers, and the crops were rising
+in plenty in the fields. Even the pasture land quite close to the
+town affords an unspeakably lovely view; gently sloping hills, either
+planted with homely trees or vines, or ploughed for corn, look down
+on pleasant valleys in which grow crops, or green fields are to be
+seen, and brooks are even flowing. There are, too, many plantations,
+either natural or artificial, in which the birds sing with wondrous
+sweetness. Nor is there a mound on which the citizens have not built
+a magnificent estate; they are thus a little way out of the town.
+Through this district the Pope walked with joyous head.'
+
+Again and again love of Nature drew him away even in old age from
+town life and the circle of courtiers and flatterers; he was for ever
+finding new reasons to prolong his _villeggiatura_, despite the
+grumbling of his court, which had to put up with wretched inns or
+monasteries overrun by mice, where the rain came through the roofs
+and the necessaries of life were scanty.[10]
+
+His taste for these beautifully-situated monastic solitudes was a
+riddle to those around him. He wrote of his summer residence in
+Tibur:
+
+'On all sides round the town in summer there are most lovely
+plantations, to which the Pope with his cardinals often retired for
+relaxation, sitting sometimes on some green sward beneath the olives,
+sometimes in a green meadow on the bank of the river Aino, whence he
+could see the clear waters. There are some meadows in a retired glen,
+watered by many streams; Pius often rested in these meadows near the
+luxuriant streams and the shady trees. He lived at Tibur with the
+Minorites on an elevation whence he could see the town and the course
+of the Aino as it flowed into the plain beneath him and through the
+quiet gardens, nor did anything else give him pleasure.
+
+'When the summer was over, he had his bedroom in the house
+overlooking the Aino; from there the most beautiful view was to be
+seen, and also from a neighbouring mountain on the other side of the
+river, still covered with a green and leafy grove ... he completed a
+great part of his journey with the greatest enjoyment.'
+
+In May 1462 he went to the baths at Viterbo, and, old man as he was,
+gives this appreciative description of spring beauties by the way:
+
+'The road by which he made for Sorianum was at that time of the year
+delightful; there was a tremendous quantity of genista, so that a
+great part of the field seemed a mass of flowering yellow, while the
+rest, covered as it was by shrubs and various grasses, brought purple
+and white and a thousand different colours before the eyes. It was
+the month of May, and everything was green. On one side were the
+smiling fields, on the other the smiling woods, in which the birds
+made sweet harmony. At early dawn he used to walk into the fields to
+catch the exquisite breeze before the day should grow hot, and gaze
+at the green crops and the flowering flax, which then, emulating
+heaven's own blue, gave the greatest joy to all beholders.... Now the
+crows are holding vigil, and the ringdoves; and the owl at times
+utters lament with funeral note. The place is most lovely; the view
+in the direction of Siena stretches as far as Amiata, and in the west
+reaches Mt. Argentarius.'
+
+In the plains the plague was raging; the sight of the people
+appealing to him as to a god, moved him to tears as he thought how
+few of the children would survive in the heat. He travelled to a
+castle charmingly placed on the lake of Bolsena, where 'there is a
+shady circular walk in the vineyard under the big grapes; stone steps
+shaded by the vine leaves lead down to the bank, where ilex oaks,
+alive with the songs of blackbirds, stand among the crags.' Halfway
+up the mountain, in the monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court
+took up their quarters.
+
+'The most lovely scenery met the eye. As you look to the west from
+the higher houses, the view reaches beyond Ilcinum and Siena as far
+as the Pistorian Alps. To the north a variety of hills and the
+pleasant green of woods presents itself, stretching a distance of
+five miles; if your sight is good, your eye will travel as far as the
+Apennine range and can see Cortona.'
+
+There he passed the time, shooting birds, fishing, and rowing.
+
+'In the cool air of the hills, among the old oaks and chestnuts, on
+the green meadows where there were no thorns to wound the feet, and
+no snakes or insects to hurt or annoy, the Pope passed days of
+unclouded happiness.'
+
+This is thoroughly modern: 'Silvarum amator,' as he calls himself, he
+includes both the details of the near and the general effect of the
+far-distant landscape.
+
+And with age his appreciation of it only seemed to increase; for
+instance, he says of Todi:
+
+'A most lovely view meets the eye wherever you turn; you can see
+Perusia and all the valley that lies between, full of wide--spreading
+forts and fertile fields, and honoured by the river Tiber, which,
+drawing its coils along like a snake, divides Tuscia from Umbria,
+and, close to the city itself, enters many a mountain, passing
+through which it descends to the plain, murmuring as it goes, as
+though constrained against its will.'
+
+This is his description of a lake storm, during an excursion to the
+Albanian Mountains:
+
+As far as Ostia 'he had a delightful voyage; at night the sea began
+to be most unwontedly troubled, and a severe storm arose. The east
+wind rolled up the waters from their lowest depths, huge waves beat
+the shore; you could have heard the sea, as it were, groaning and
+wailing. So great was the force of the winds, that nothing seemed
+able to resist it; they raged and alternately fled and put one
+another to rout, they overturned woods and anything that withstood
+them. The air glittered with frequent lightning, the sky thundered,
+and terrific thunder-bolts fell from the clouds.... The night was
+pitch dark, though the flashes of lightning were continuous.'
+
+And of a lake at rest he says:
+
+'The beauty of that lake is remarkable; everywhere it is surrounded
+by high rocks, the water is transparently clear. Nature, so far
+superior to art, provided a most pleasant journey. The Nemorian lake,
+with its crystal-clear waters, reflects the faces of those that look
+into it, and fills a deep basin. The descent from the top to the
+bottom is wooded. The poetic genius would never be awakened if it
+slept here; you would say it was the dwelling-place of the Muses, the
+home of the Nymphs, and, if there is any truth in legends, the
+hiding-place of Diana.'
+
+He visited the lakes among the mountains, climbing and resting under
+the trees; the view from Monte Cavo was his favourite, from which he
+could see Terracina, the lakes of Nemi and Albano, etc. He noted
+their extent and formation, and added:
+
+'The genista, however, was especially delightful, covering, as it did
+with its flowers, the greater part of the plains. Then, moreover,
+Rome presented itself fully to the eyes, together with Soracte and
+the Sabine Land, and the Apennine range white with snow, and Tibur
+and Præneste.'
+
+It is clear that it was a thoroughly modern enthusiasm which
+attracted Æneas Sylvius to the country and gave him this ready pen
+for everything in Nature--everything, that is, except bare mountain
+summits.
+
+It is difficult to attribute this faculty for enjoying and describing
+scenery to the influence of antiquity alone, for, save the younger
+Pliny, I know of no Roman under the Empire who possessed it, and,
+besides, we do not know how far Pius II. was acquainted with Roman
+literature. We know that the re-awakening of classic literature
+exerted an influence upon the direction of the feeling for Nature in
+general, and, for the rest, very various elements coalesced. Like
+times produce like streams of tendency, and Hellenism, the Roman
+Empire, and the Renaissance were alike to some extent in the
+conditions of their existence and the results that flowed from them;
+the causal nexus between them is undeniable, and makes them the chief
+stepping-stones on the way to the modern.
+
+Theocritus, Meleager, Petrarch, and Æneas Sylvius may serve as
+representatives of the development of the feeling for Nature from
+classic to modern; they are the ancestors of our enthusiasm, the
+links in the chain which leads up to Rousseau, Goethe, Byron, and
+Shelley.
+
+From the autobiography of Æneas Sylvius and the lyrics of Petrarch we
+gain a far truer picture of the feeling of the period up to the
+sixteenth century than from any poetry in other countries. Even the
+epic had a more modern tone in Italy; Ariosto's descriptions were far
+ahead of any German epic.
+
+Humboldt pointed out very clearly the difference between the epic of
+the people and the epic of art--between Homer and Ariosto. Both, he
+said, are true painters of the world and Nature; but Ariosto pleases
+more by his brilliance and wealth of colour, Homer by purity of form
+and beauty of composition. Ariosto achieves through general effect,
+Homer through perfection of form. Nature is more naive in Homer, the
+subject is paramount, and the singer disappears; in Ariosto, Nature
+is sentimental, and the poet always remains in view upon the stage.
+In Homer all is closely knit, while Ariosto's threads are loosely
+spun, and he breaks them himself in play. Homer almost never
+describes, Ariosto always does.
+
+Ariosto's scenes and comparisons from Nature, being calculated for
+effect, are more subjective, and far more highly-coloured than
+Homer's. But they shew a sympathetic grasp.
+
+The modern bloom, so difficult to define, lies over them--something
+at once sensuous, sentimental, and chivalrous. He is given to
+describing lonely woodland scenery, fit places for trysts and lovers'
+rendezvous.
+
+In the 1st Canto of _Mad Orlando_:
+
+  With flowery thorns, vermilion roses near
+  Her, she upon a lovely bush doth meet,
+  That mirrored doth in the bright waves appear,
+  Shut out by lofty oaks from the sun's heat.
+
+  Amidst the thickest shades there is a clear
+  Space in the middle for a cool retreat;
+  So mixed the leaves and boughs are, through them none
+  Can see; they are impervious to the sun.
+
+In the 6th Canto the Hippogriff carries Roger into a country:
+
+  Nor could he, had he searched the whole world through,
+  Than this a more delightful country see....
+  Soft meads, clear streams, and banks affording shade,
+  Hillocks and plains, by culture fertile made.
+  Fair thickets of the cedar, palm and no
+  Less pleasant myrtle, of the laurel sweet,
+  Of orange trees, where fruit and flow'rs did grow,
+  And which in various forms, all lovely, meet
+  With their thick shades against the fervid glow
+  Of summer days, afforded a retreat;
+  And nightingales, devoid of fear, among
+  Those branches fluttered, pouring forth their song.
+  Amid the lilies white and roses red,
+  Ever more freshened by the tepid air,
+  The stag was seen, with his proud lofty head,
+  And feeling safe, the rabbit and the hare....
+  Sapphires and rubies, topazes, pearls, gold,
+  Hyacinths, chrysolites, and diamonds were
+  Like the night flow'rs, which did their leaves unfold
+  There on those glad plains, painted by the air
+  So green the grass, that if we did behold
+  It here, no emeralds could therewith compare;
+  As fair the foliage of the trees was, which
+  With fruit and flow'r eternally were rich.
+  Amid the boughs, sing yellow, white, and blue,
+  And red and green small feathered creatures gay;
+  The crystals less limpidity of hue
+  Than the still lakes or murmuring brooks display.
+  A gentle breeze, that seemeth still to woo
+  And never change from its accustomed way,
+  Made all around so tremulous the air
+  That no annoyance was the day's hot glare.
+          (Canto 34.)
+
+Descriptions of time are short:
+
+  From the hard face of earth the sun's bright hue
+  Not yet its veil obscure and dark did rend;
+  The Lycaonian offspring scarcely through
+  The furrows of the sky his plough did send.
+          (Canto 80.)
+
+Comparisons, especially about the beauty of women, are very artistic,
+recalling Sappho and Catullus:
+
+  The tender maid is like unto the rose
+  In the fair garden on its native thorn;
+  Whilst it alone and safely doth repose,
+  Nor flock nor shepherd crops it; dewy morn,
+  Water and earth, the breeze that sweetly blows,
+  Are gracious to it; lovely dames adorn
+  With it their bosoms and their beautiful
+  Brows; it enamoured youths delight to cull.
+          (Canto 1.)
+
+  Only, Alcina fairest was by far
+  As is the sun more fair than every star....
+  Milk is the bosom, of luxuriant size,
+  And the fair neck is round and snowy white;
+  Two unripe ivory apples fall and rise
+  Like waves upon the sea-beach when a slight
+  Breeze stirs the ocean.        (Canto 7.)
+
+  Now in a gulf of bliss up to the eyes
+  And of fair things, to swim he doth begin.
+          (Canto 7.)
+
+  So closely doth the ivy not enlace
+  The tree where firmly rooted it doth stand,
+  As clasp each other in their warm embrace
+  These lovers, by each other's sweet breath fanned.
+  Sweet flower, of which on India's shore no trace
+  Is, or on the Sabæan odorous sand.
+          (Canto 7.)
+
+  Her fair face the appearance did maintain
+  That sometimes shewn is by the sky in spring,
+  When at the very time that falls the rain,
+  The sun aside his cloudy veil doth fling.
+  And as the nightingale its pleasant strain
+  Then on the boughs of the green trees doth sing,
+  Thus Love doth bathe his pinions at those bright
+  But tearful eyes, enjoying the clear light.
+          (Canto 11.)
+
+  But as more fickle than the leaf was she,
+  When it in autumn doth more sapless grow,
+  And the old wind doth strip it from the tree,
+  And doth before it in its fury grow.
+                                         (Canto 21.)
+
+He uses the sea:
+
+  As when a bark doth the deep ocean plough,
+  That two winds strike with an alternate blast,
+  'Tis now sent forward by the one, and now
+  Back by the other in its first place cast,
+  And whirled from prow to poop, from poop to prow,
+  But urged by the most potent wind at last
+  Philander thus irresolute between
+  The two thoughts, did to the least wicked lean.
+                                          (Canto 21.)
+
+  As comes the wave upon the salt sea shore
+  Which the smooth wind at first in thought hath fanned;
+  Greater the second is than that before
+  It, and the third more fiercely follows, and
+  Each time the humour more abounds, and more
+  Doth it extend its scourge upon the land:
+  Against Orlando thus from vales below
+  And hills above, doth the vile rabble grow.
+                                            (Canto 24.)
+
+These comparisons not only shew faithful and personal observation,
+but are far more subjective and subtle than, for instance, Dante's.
+The same holds good of Tasso. How beautiful in detail, and how
+sentimental too, is this from _Jerusalem Delivered_:
+
+  Behold how lovely blooms the vernal rose
+  When scarce the leaves her early bud disclose,
+  When, half unwrapt, and half to view revealed,
+  She gives new pleasure from her charms concealed.
+  But when she shews her bosom wide displayed,
+  How soon her sweets exhale, her beauties fade!
+  No more she seems the flower so lately loved,
+  By virgins cherished and by youths approved.
+  So swiftly fleeting with the transient day
+  Passes the flower of mortal life away.
+
+Not less subjective is:
+
+                   Like a ray of light on water
+  A smile of soft desire played in her liquid eyes.
+                                           (Sonnet 18.)
+
+The most famous lines in this poem are those which describe a
+romantic garden so vividly that Humboldt says 'it reminds one of the
+charming scenery of Sorrento.' It certainly proves that even epic
+poetry tried to describe Nature for her own sake:
+
+  The garden then unfolds a beauteous scene,
+  With flowers adorned and ever living green;
+  There silver lakes reflect the beaming day,
+  Here crystal streams in gurgling fountains play.
+  Cool vales descend and sunny hills arise,
+  And groves and caves and grottos strike the eyes.
+  Art showed her utmost power; but art concealed
+  With greater charm the pleased attention held.
+  It seemed as Nature played a sportive part
+  And strove to mock the mimic works of art:
+  By powerful magic breathes the vernal air,
+  And fragrant trees eternal blossoms bear:
+  Eternal fruits on every branch endure,
+  Those swelling from their buds, and these mature:
+  The joyous birds, concealed in every grove,
+  With gentle strife prolong the notes of love.
+  Soft zephyrs breathe on woods and waters round,
+  The woods and waters yield a murmuring sound;
+  When cease the tuneful choir, the wind replies,
+  But, when they sing, in gentle whisper dies;
+  By turns they sink, by turns their music raise
+  And blend, with equal skill, harmonious lays.
+
+But even here the scene is surrounded by an imaginary atmosphere;
+flowers, fruit, creatures, and atmosphere all lie under a magic
+charm. Tasso's importance for our subject lies far more in his
+much-imitated pastorals.
+
+The _Arcadia_ of Jacopo Sannazaro, which appeared in 1504, a work of
+poetic beauty and still greater literary importance,[11] paved the
+way for pastoral poetry, which, like the sonnet, was interwoven with
+prose. The shepherd's occupations are described with care, though
+many of the songs and terms of expression rather fit the man of
+culture than the child of Nature, and he had that genuine enthusiasm
+for the rural which begets a convincing eloquence. ''Tis you,' he
+says at the end, addressing the Muse, 'who first woke the sleeping
+woods, and taught the shepherds how to strike up their lost songs.'
+
+Bembo wrote this inscription for his grave:
+
+  Strew flowers o'er the sacred ashes, here lies Sannazaro;
+  With thee, gentle Virgil, he shares Muse and grave.
+
+Virgil too was industriously imitated in the didactic poetry of his
+country.
+
+Giovanni Rucellai (born 1475) wrote a didactic poem, _The Bees_,
+which begins:
+
+'O chaste virgins, winged visitants of flowery banks, whilst I
+prepared to sing your praise in lofty verse, at peep of day I was
+o'ercome by sleep, and then appeared a chorus of your tiny folk, and
+from their rich mellifluous haunts, in a clear voice these words
+flowed forth.... And I will sing how liquid and serene the air
+distils sweet honey, heavenly gilt, on flowerets and on grass, and
+how the bees, chaste and industrious, gather it, and thereof with
+care and skill make perfumed wax to grace the altars of our God.'
+
+And a didactic poem by Luigi Alamanni (born 1495), called
+_Husbandry_, has: 'O blessed is he who dwells in peace, the actual
+tiller of his joyous fields, to whom, in his remoteness, the most
+righteous earth brings food, and secure in well-being, he rejoices in
+his heart. If thou art not surrounded by society rich with purple and
+gems, nor with houses adorned with costly woods, statues, and
+gold;... at least, secure in the humble dwelling of wood from the
+copse hard by, and common stones collected close at hand, which thine
+own hand has founded and built, whenever thou awakenest at the
+approach of dawn, thou dost not find outside those who bring news of
+a thousand events contrary to thy desires.... Thou wanderest at will,
+now quickly, now slowly, across the green meadow, through the wood,
+over the grassy hill, or by the stream. Now here, now there ... thou
+handlest the hatchet, axe, scythe, or hoe.... To enjoy in sober
+comfort at almost all seasons, with thy dear children, the fruits of
+thine own tree, the tree planted by thyself, this brings a sweetness
+sweet beyond all others.'
+
+These didactic writings, inspired by Virgilian Georgics, show a
+distinct preference for the idyllic.
+
+Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ went through sixty editions in the sixteenth
+century alone. Tasso reckoned with the prevalent taste of his day in
+_Aminta_, which improved the then method of dramatizing a romantic
+idyll. The whole poem bears the stamp of an idealizing and romantic
+imagination, and embodies in lyric form his sentimental idea of the
+Golden Age and an ideal world of Nature. Even down to its details
+_Aminta_ recalls the pastorals of Longos; and Daphne's words (Act I.
+Scene 1) suggest the most feeling outpourings of Kallimachos and
+Nonnos:
+
+  And callest thou sweet spring-time
+  The time of rage and enmity,
+  Which breathing now and smiling,
+  Reminds the whole creation,
+  The animal, the human,
+  Of loving! Dost thou see not
+  How all things are enamoured
+  Of this enamourer, rich with joy and health?
+  Observe that turtle-dove,
+  How, toying with his dulcet murmuring,
+  He kisses his companion. Hear that nightingale
+  Who goes from bough to bough
+  Singing with his loud heart, 'I love!' 'I love!'...
+
+                             The very trees
+  Are loving. See with what affection there,
+  And in how many a clinging turn and twine,
+  The vine holds fast its husband. Fir loves fir,
+  The pine the pine, and ash and willow and beech
+  Each towards the other yearns, and sighs and trembles.
+  That oak tree which appears
+  So rustic and so rough,
+  Even that has something warm in its sound heart;
+  And hadst thou but a spirit and sense of love,
+  Thou hadst found out a meaning for its whispers.
+  Now tell me, would thou be
+  Less than the very plants and have no love?
+
+One seems to hear Sakuntala and her friends talking, or Akontios
+complaining. So, too, when the unhappy lover laments (Aminta):
+
+  In my lamentings I have found
+  A very pity in the pebbly waters,
+  And I have found the trees
+  Return them a kind voice:
+  But never have I found,
+  Nor ever hope to find,
+  Compassion in this hard and beautiful
+  What shall I call her?
+
+Aminta describes to Tirsis how his love grew from boyhood up:
+
+  There grew by little and little in my heart,
+  I knew not from what root,
+  But just as the grass grows that sows itself,
+  An unknown something which continually
+  Made me feel anxious to be with her.
+
+Sylvia kisses him:
+
+  Never did bee from flower
+  Suck sugar so divine
+  As was the honey that I gathered then
+  From those twin roses fresh.
+
+In Act II. Scene 1, the rejected Satyr, like the rejected Polyphemus
+or Amaryllis in Theocritus, complains in antitheses which recall
+Longos:
+
+    The woods hide serpents, lions, and bears under their green
+    shade, and in your bosom hatred, disdain, and cruelty dwell....
+    Alas, when I bring the earliest flowers, you refuse them
+    obstinately, perhaps because lovelier ones bloom on your own
+    face; if I offer beautiful apples, you reject them angrily,
+    perhaps because your beautiful bosom swells with lovelier
+    ones.... and yet I am not to be despised, for I saw myself lately
+    in the clear water, when winds were still and there were no
+    waves.
+
+This is the sentimental pastoral poetry of Hellenism reborn and
+intensified.
+
+So with the elegiac motive so loved by Alexandrian and Roman poets,
+praise of a happy past time; the chorus sings in _Aminta_:
+
+  O lovely age of gold,
+  Not that the rivers rolled
+  With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew;
+  Not that the ready ground
+  Produced without a wound,
+  Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew....
+  But solely that.... the law of gold,
+  That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,
+  Which Nature's own hand wrote--What pleases is permitted!...
+  Go! let us love, the daylight dies, is born;
+  But unto us the light
+  Dies once for all, and sleep brings on eternal night.
+
+Over thirty pastoral plays can be ascribed to Italy in the last third
+of the sixteenth century. The most successful imitator of Tasso was
+Giovanni Battista Guarini (born 1537) in _The True Shepherd (II
+Pastor Fido)_. One quotation will shew how he outvied _Aminta_. In
+Act I, Scene 1, Linko says:
+
+  Look round thee, Sylvia; behold
+  All in the world that's amiable and fair
+  Is love's sweet work: heaven loves, the earth, the sea,
+  Are full of love and own his mighty sway.
+  Love through the woods
+  The fiercest beasts; love through the waves attends
+  Swift gliding dolphins and the sluggish whales.
+  That little bird which sings....
+  Oh, had he human sense,
+  'I burn with love,' he'd cry, 'I burn with love,'
+  And in his heart he truly burns,
+  And in his warble speaks
+  A language, well by his dear mate conceived,
+  Who answering cries, 'And I too burn with love.'
+
+He praises woodland solitude:
+
+  Dear happy groves!
+  And them all silent, solitary gloom,
+  True residence of peace and of repose!
+  How willingly, how willingly my steps
+  To you return, and oh! if but my stars
+  Benightly had decreed
+  My life for solitude, and as my wish
+  Would naturally prompt to pass my days--
+  No, not the Elysian fields,
+  Those happy gardens of the demi-gods,
+  Would I exchange for yon enchanting shades.
+
+The love lyrics of the later Renaissance are remarkably rich in vivid
+pictures of Nature combined with much personal sentiment. Petrarch's
+are the model; he inspired Vittoria Colonna, and she too revelled in
+sad feelings and memories, especially about the death of her
+husband:[12]
+
+'When I see the earth adorned and beautiful with a thousand lovely
+and sweet flowers, and how in the heavens every star is resplendent
+with varied colours; when I see that every solitary and lively
+creature is moved by natural instinct to come out of the forests and
+ancient caverns to seek its fellow by day and by night; and when I
+see the plains adorned again with glorious flowers and new leaves,
+and hear every babbling brook with grateful murmurs bathing its
+flowery banks, so that Nature, in love with herself, delights to gaze
+on the beauty of her works, I say to myself, reflecting: "How brief
+is this our miserable mortal life!" Yesterday this plain was covered
+with snow, to-day it is green and flowery. And again in a moment the
+beauty of the heavens is overclouded by a fierce wind, and the happy
+loving creatures remain hidden amidst the mountains and the woods;
+nor can the sweet songs of the tender plants and happy birds be
+heard, for these cruel storms have dried up the flowers on the
+ground; the birds are mute, the most rapid streams and smallest
+rivulets are checked by frost, and what was one hour so beautiful and
+joyous, is, for a season, miserable and dead.'
+
+Here the two pictures in the inner and outer life are equally vivid
+to the poetess; it is the real 'pleasure of sorrow,' and she lingers
+over them with delight.
+
+Bojardo, too, reminds us of Petrarch; for example, in Sonnet 89:[13]
+
+  Thou shady wood, inured my griefs to hear,
+  So oft expressed in quick and broken sighs;
+  Thou glorious sun, unused to set or rise
+  But as the witness of my daily fear;
+
+  Ye wandering birds, ye flocks and ranging deer,
+  Exempt from my consuming agonies;
+  Thou sunny stream to whom my sorrow flies
+  'Mid savage rocks and wilds, no human traces near.
+
+  O witnesses eternal, how I live!
+  My sufferings hear, and win to their relief
+  That scornful beauty--tell her how I grieve!
+
+  But little 'tis to her to hear my grief.
+  To her, who sees the pangs which I receive,
+  And seeing, deigns them not the least relief.
+
+Lorenzo de Medici's idylls were particularly rich in descriptions of
+Nature and full of feeling. 'Here too that delight in pain, in
+telling of their unhappiness and renunciation; here too those
+wonderful tones which distinguish the sonnets of the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries so favourably from those of a later time.'
+(Geiger.)
+
+There is a delicate compliment in this sonnet:
+
+  O violets, sweet and fresh and pure indeed,
+  Culled by that hand beyond all others fair!
+  What rain or what pure air has striven to bear
+  Flowers far excelling those 'tis wont to yield?
+  What pearly dew, what sun, or sooth what earth
+  Did you with all these subtle charms adorn;
+  And whence is this sweet scent by Nature drawn,
+  Or heaven who deigns to grant it to such worth?
+  O, my dear violets, the hand which chose
+  You from all others, that has made you fair,
+  'Twas that adorned you with such charm and worth;
+  Sweet hand! which took my heart altho' it knows
+  Its lowliness, with that you may compare.
+  To that give thanks, and to none else on earth.
+
+Thus we see that the Italians of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
+fifteenth centuries were penetrated through and through by the modern
+spirit--were, indeed, its pioneers. They recognized their own
+individuality, pondered their own inner life, delighted in the charms
+of Nature, and described them in prose and poetry, both as
+counterparts to feeling and for her own sake.
+
+Over all the literature we have been considering--whether poetic
+comparison and personification, or sentimental descriptions of
+pastoral life and a golden age, of blended inner and outer life, or
+of the finest details of scenery--there lies that bloom of the
+modern, that breath of subjective personality, so hard to define. The
+rest of contemporary Europe had no such culture of heart and mind, no
+such marked individuality, to shew.
+
+The further growth of the Renaissance feeling, itself a rebirth of
+Hellenic and Roman feeling, was long delayed.
+
+Let us turn next to Spain and Portugal--the countries chiefly
+affected by the great voyages of discovery, not only socially and
+economically, but artistically--and see the effect of the new scenery
+upon their imagination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ENTHUSIASM FOR NATURE AMONG THE DISCOVERERS
+AND CATHOLIC MYSTICS
+
+
+The great achievement of the Italian Renaissance was the discovery of
+the world within, of the whole deep contents of the human spirit.
+Burckhart, praising this achievement, says:
+
+    If we were to collect the pearls from the courtly and knightly
+    poetry of all the countries of the West during the two preceding
+    centuries, we should have a mass of wonderful divinations and
+    single pictures of the inward life, which at first sight would
+    seem to rival the poetry of the Italians. Leaving lyrical poetry
+    out of account, Godfrey of Strassburg gives us, in his _Tristram
+    and Isolt_, a representation of human passion, some features of
+    which are immortal. But these pearls lie scattered in the ocean
+    of artificial convention, and they are altogether something very
+    different from a complete objective picture of the inward man and
+    his spiritual wealth.
+
+The discovery of the beauty of scenery followed as a necessary
+corollary of this awakening of individualism, this fathoming of the
+depths of human personality. For only to fully-developed man does
+Nature fully disclose herself.
+
+This had already been stated by one of the most philosophic minds of
+the time, Pico della Mirandola, in his speech on the dignity of man.
+God, he tells us, made man at the close of creation to know the laws
+of the universe, to love its beauty, to admire its greatness. He
+bound him to no fixed place, to no prescribed form of work, and by no
+iron necessity; but gave him freedom to will and to move.
+
+'I have set thee,' said the Creator to Adam, 'in the midst of the
+world, that thou mayest the more easily behold and see all that is
+therein. I created thee a being neither heavenly nor earthly, neither
+mortal nor immortal, only that thou mightest be free to shape and to
+overcome thyself. Thou mayest sink into a beast, and be born again to
+the Divine likeness. The brutes bring with them from their mothers'
+body what they will carry with them as long as they live; the higher
+spirits are from the beginning, or soon after, what they will be for
+ever. To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on
+thine own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal
+life.'
+
+The best men of the Renaissance realized this ideal of an all-round
+development, and it was the glory of Italy in the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries, that she found a new realm in the inner man at
+the very time that her discoveries across the seas were enlarging the
+boundaries of the external world, and her science was studying it.
+Mixed as the motives of the discoverers must have been, like those of
+the crusaders before them, and probably, for the most part,
+self-interested, it is easy to imagine the surprise they must have
+felt at seeing ignorant people, who, to quote Peter Martyr (de rebus
+oceanicis):[1]
+
+    Naked, without weights or measures or death-dealing money, live
+    in a Golden Age without laws, without slanderous judges, without
+    the scales of the balance. Contented with Nature, they spend
+    their lives utterly untroubled for the future.... Theirs is a
+    Golden Age; they do not enclose their farms with trench or wall
+    or hurdle; their gardens are open. Without laws, without the
+    scales of the balance, without judges, they guard the right by
+    Nature's light.
+
+And their wonder at the novelties in climate and vegetation, the
+strange forests, brilliant birds, and splendid stars of the tropics,
+must have been no less.
+
+Yet it is one thing to feel, and another to find words to convey the
+feeling to others; and the explorers often expressed regret for their
+lack of skill in this respect.
+
+Also, and this is more important in criticizing what they wrote,
+these seamen were mostly simple, unlettered folk, to whom a country's
+wealth in natural products and their practical value made the
+strongest appeal, and whose admiration of bays, harbours, trees,
+fields of grain, etc., was measured by the same standard of utility.
+Even such unskilled reporters did not entirely fail to refer to the
+beauty of Nature; but had it not been for the original and powerful
+mind of Christopher Columbus, we should have had little more in the
+way of description than 'pleasant,' 'pretty,' and such words.
+
+Marco Polo described his journey to the coast of Cormos[2] in very
+matter-of-fact fashion, but not without a touch of satisfaction at
+the peculiarities of the place:
+
+    You then approach the very beautiful plain of Formosa, watered by
+    fine rivers, with plantations of the date palms, and having the
+    air filled with francolins, parrots, and other birds unknown to
+    our climate. You ride two days to it, and then arrive at the
+    ocean, on which there is a city and a fort named Cormos. The
+    ships of India bring thither all kinds of spiceries, precious
+    stones, and pearls, cloths of silk and gold, elephants' teeth,
+    and many other articles.... They sow wheat, barley, and other
+    kinds of grain in the month of November, and reap them in March,
+    when they become ripe and perfect; but none except the date will
+    endure till May, being dried up by the extreme heat.
+
+Elsewhere he wrote of scenery in the same strain: of the Persian
+deserts, and the green table-lands and wild gorges of Badachshan,
+Japan with its golden roofed palaces, paradisaical Sunda Islands with
+their 'abundance of treasure and costly spices,' Java the less with
+its eight kingdoms, etc.; but naturally his chief interest was given
+to the manners and customs of the various races, and the fertility
+and uses of their countries.
+
+In Bishop Osorio's _History of Emmanuel, King of Portugal_, we see
+some pleasure in the beauties of Nature peeping through the
+matter-of-fact tone of the day.
+
+Thus, speaking of the companions of Vasco da Gama, he says that they
+admired the far coast of Africa:
+
+    They descried some little islands, which appeared extremely
+    pleasant; the trees were lofty, the meadows of a beautiful
+    verdure, and great numbers of cattle frisked about everywhere;
+    they could see the inhabitants walking upon the shore in vast
+    numbers....
+
+Of Mozambique he says:
+
+    The palm trees are of a great height, covered with long prickly
+    leaves; broad-spreading boughs afford an agreeable shade, and
+    bear nuts of a great size, called cocoes.
+
+Of Melinda:
+
+    The city stands in a beautiful plain, surrounded with a variety
+    of fine gardens; these are stocked with all sorts of trees,
+    especially the orange, the flowers of which yield a most graceful
+    diffusive smell. The country is rich and plentiful, abounding not
+    only with tame and domestic cattle, but with game of all kinds,
+    which the natives hunt down or take with nets.
+
+Of Zanzibar:
+
+    The soil of this place is rich and fertile, and it abounds with
+    springs of the most excellent water; the whole island is covered
+    with beautiful woods, which are extremely fragrant from the many
+    wild citrons growing there, which diffuse the most grateful
+    scent.
+
+Of Brazil, which is 'extremely pleasant and the soil fruitful':
+
+    Clothed with a beautiful verdure, covered with tall trees,
+    abounding with plenty of excellent water ... and so healthy that
+    the inhabitants make no use of medicines, for almost all who die
+    here are not cut off by any distemper, but worn out by age. Here
+    are many large rivers, besides a vast number of delightful
+    springs. The plains are large and spacious, and afford excellent
+    pasture.... In short, the whole country affords a most beautiful
+    prospect, being diversified with hills and valleys, and these
+    covered with thick shady woods stocked with great variety of
+    trees, many of which our people were quite strangers to: of these
+    there was one of a particular nature, the leaves of which, when
+    cut, sent forth a kind of balsam. The trees used in dyeing
+    scarlet grow here in great plenty and to a great height. The soil
+    likewise produces the most useful plants.
+
+Of Ormuz, near Arabia:
+
+    The name of the island seems to be taken from the ancient city of
+    Armuza in Caramania ... the place is sandy and barren, and the
+    soil so very poor that it produces nothing fit for human
+    sustenance, neither by nature nor by the most laborious
+    cultivation ... yet here you might see greater plenty of these,
+    as well as all luxurious superfluities, than in most other
+    countries of a richer and more fertile soil, for the place, poor
+    in itself, having become the great mart for the commodities of
+    India, Persia, and Arabia, was thus abundantly stocked with the
+    produce of all these countries.
+
+Peter Martyr's[3] point of view was much the same. He was full of
+surprise at the splendour round him, and the advantages such
+fertility offered to husbandry:
+
+    Thus after a few days with cheerful hearts they espied the land
+    long looked for....
+
+    As they coasted along by the shore of certain of these islands,
+    they heard nightingales sing in the thick woods in the month of
+    November.
+
+    They found also great rivers of fresh water and natural havens of
+    capacity to harbour great navies of ships.... They found there
+    wild geese, turtle-doves, and ducks, much greater than ours, and
+    as white as swans, with heads of purple colour. Also popinjays,
+    of the which some are green, some yellow, and having their
+    feathers intermingled with green, yellow, and purple, which
+    varieties delighted the sense not a little.... They entered into
+    a main large sea, having in it innumerable islands, marvellously
+    differing one from another; for some of them were very fruitful,
+    full of herbs and trees, other some very dry, barren, and rough,
+    with high rocky mountains of stone, whereof some were of bright
+    blue, or azurine colour, and other glistening white.
+
+He filled a whole page with descriptions of the wonderful wealth of
+flowers, fruit, and vegetables of all kinds, which the ground yields
+even in February. The richness of the prairie grass, the charm of the
+rivers, the wealth of fruit, the enormous size of the trees (with a
+view to native houses), the various kinds of pines, palms, and
+chestnuts, and their uses, the immense downfall of water carried to
+the sea by the rivers--all this he noted with admiration; but
+industrial interest outweighed the æsthetic, even when he called
+Spain happier than Italy. There is no trace of any real feeling for
+scenery, any grasp of landscape as a whole; he did not advance beyond
+scattered details, which attracted his eye chiefly for their material
+uses.
+
+But there is real delight in Nature in the account of a journey to
+the Cape Verde Islands, undertaken on the suggestion of Henry the
+Navigator by Aloise da Mosto,[4] an intelligent Venetian nobleman:
+
+    Cape de Verde is so called because the Portuguese, who had
+    discovered it about a year before, found it covered with trees,
+    which continue green all the year round. This is a high and
+    beautiful Cape, which runs a good length into the sea, and has
+    two hills or little mountains at the point thereof. There are
+    several villages of negroes from Senega, on and about the
+    promontory, who dwell in thatched houses close to the shore, and
+    in sight of those who sail by.... The coast is all low and full
+    of fine large trees, which are constantly green; that is, they
+    never wither as those in Europe do, for the new leaves grow
+    before the old ones fall off. These trees are so near the shore
+    that they seem to drink out of the sea. It is a most beautiful
+    coast to behold, and the author, who had sailed both in the East
+    and West, never saw any comparable with it.
+
+As Ruge says:
+
+    The delight of this solid and prudent citizen of Strasburg in the
+    beauty of the tropics is lost in translation, but very evident in
+    the original account.[5]
+
+After reading it, we cannot quite say with Humboldt that Columbus was
+the very first to give fluent expression to Nature's beauty on the
+shores of the New World; none the less, and apart from his importance
+in other respects, he remains the chief representative of his time in
+the matter. Humboldt noted this in his critical examination of the
+history of geography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in
+which he pointed out his deep feeling for Nature, and also, what only
+those who know the difficulties of language at the time can
+appreciate, the beauty and simplicity of his expression of it.[6]
+
+Columbus is a striking example of the fact that a man's openness to
+Nature increases with his general inner growth. No one doubts that
+uneducated sailors, like other unlettered people, are vividly
+impressed by fine scenery, especially when it is new to them, if they
+possess a spark of mental refinement. They have the feeling, but are
+unable to express it in words. But, as Humboldt says, feeling
+improves speech; with increased culture, the power of expression
+increases.
+
+We owe a debt of gratitude to Fernandez de Navarrete[7] for the Diary
+in which we can trace Columbus' love for Nature increasing to 'a deep
+and poetic feeling for the majesty of creation.'
+
+He wrote, October 8th, 1492, in his diary:
+
+    'Thanks be to God,' says the Admiral, 'the air is very soft like
+    the April at Seville, and it is a pleasure to be there, so balmy
+    are the breezes.'
+
+And Humboldt says:
+
+    The physiognomy and forms of the vegetation, the impenetrable
+    thickets of the forests, in which one can scarcely distinguish
+    the stems to which the several blossoms and leaves belong, the
+    wild luxuriance of the flowering soil along the humid shores, and
+    the rose-coloured flamingoes which, fishing at early morning at
+    the mouth of the rivers, impart animation to the scenery,--all in
+    turn arrested the attention of the old mariner as he sailed along
+    the shores of Cuba, between the small Lucayan Islands and the
+    Jardinillos.
+
+Each new country seemed to him more beautiful than the last; he
+complained that he could not find new words in which to give the
+Queen an impression of the beauty of the Cuban coast.
+
+It will repay us to examine the Diary more closely, since Humboldt
+only treated it shortly and in scattered extracts, and it has been
+partly falsified, unintentionally, by attempts to modernize the
+language instead of adhering to literal translation. What Peschel
+says, for instance, is pretty but distinctly exaggerated:
+
+    Columbus was never weary of listening to the nightingales,
+    comparing the genial Indian climate with the Andalusian spring,
+    and admiring the luxuriant wilderness on these humid shores, with
+    their dense vegetation and forests so rich in all kinds of
+    plants, and alive with swarms of parrots ... with an open eye for
+    all the beauties of Nature and all the wonders of creation, he
+    looked at the splendour of the tropics very much as a tender
+    father looks into the bright eyes of his child.[8]
+
+The Diary of November 3rd says:
+
+    He could see nothing, owing to the dense foliage of the trees,
+    which were very fresh and odoriferous; so that he felt no doubt
+    that there were aromatic herbs among them. He said that all he
+    saw was so beautiful that his eyes could never tire of gazing
+    upon such loveliness, nor his ears of listening to the songs of
+    birds.
+
+November 14th:
+
+    He saw so many islands that he could not count them all, with
+    very high land covered with trees of many kinds and an infinite
+    number of palms. He was much astonished to see so many lofty
+    islands, and assured the Sovereigns that the mountains and
+    islands he had seen since yesterday seemed to him to be second to
+    none in the world, so high and clear of clouds and snow, with the
+    sea at their bases so deep.
+
+November 25th:
+
+    He saw a large stream of beautiful water falling from the
+    mountains above, with a loud noise.... Just then the sailor boys
+    called out that they had found large pines. The Admiral looked up
+    the hill and saw that they were so wonderfully large, that he
+    could not exaggerate their height and straightness, like stout
+    yet fine spindles. He perceived that here there was material for
+    great store of planks and masts for the largest ships in Spain
+    ... the mountains are very high, whence descend many limpid
+    streams, and all the hills are covered with pines, and an
+    infinity of diverse and beautiful trees.
+
+November 27th:
+
+    The freshness and beauty of the trees, the clearness of the water
+    and the birds, made it all so delightful that he wished never to
+    leave them. He said to the men who were with him that to give a
+    true relation to the Sovereigns of the things they had seen, a
+    thousand tongues would not suffice, nor his hand to write it, for
+    that it was like a scene of enchantment.
+
+December 13th:
+
+    The nine men well armed, whom he sent to explore a certain place,
+    said, with regard to the beauty of the land they saw, that the
+    best land in Castille could not be compared with it. The Admiral
+    also said that there was no comparison between them, nor did the
+    Plain of Cordova come near them, the difference being as great as
+    between night and day. They said that all these lands were
+    cultivated, and that a very wide and large river passed through
+    the centre of the valley and could irrigate all the fields. All
+    the trees were green and full of fruit, and the plants tall and
+    covered with flowers. The roads were broad and good. The climate
+    was like April in Castille; the nightingale and other birds sang
+    as they do in Spain during that month, and it was the most
+    pleasant place in the world. Some birds sing sweetly at night,
+    the crickets and frogs are heard a good deal.
+
+All this shews a naive and spontaneous delight in Nature, as free
+from sentimentality as from any grasp of landscape as a distinct
+entity.
+
+In a letter about Cuba, which Humboldt gives, he says:
+
+    The lands are high, and there are many very lofty mountains ...
+    all most beautiful, of a thousand different shapes, accessible
+    and covered with trees of a thousand kinds of such great height
+    that they seemed to reach the skies. I am told that the trees
+    never lose their foliage, and I can well believe it, for I
+    observed that they were as green and luxuriant as in Spain in the
+    month of May. Some were in bloom, others bearing fruit, and
+    others otherwise according to their nature. There were palm trees
+    of six or eight kinds, wonderful in their beautiful variety; but
+    this is the case with all the other trees; fruits and grasses,
+    trees, plants and fruits filled us with admiration. It contains
+    extraordinary pine groves and very extensive plains.
+
+Humboldt here comments that these often-repeated expressions of
+admiration prove a strong feeling for the beauty of Nature, since
+they are concerned with foliage and shade, not with precious metals.
+The next letter shews the growing power of description:
+
+    Reaching the harbour of Bastimentos, I put in.... The storm and a
+    rapid current kept me in for fourteen days, when I again set
+    sail, but not with favourable weather.... I had already made four
+    leagues when the storm recommenced and wearied me to such a
+    degree that I absolutely knew not what to do; my wound re-opened,
+    and for nine days my life was despaired of. Never was the sea
+    seen so high, so terrific, and so covered with foam; not only did
+    the wind oppose our proceeding onward, but it also rendered it
+    highly dangerous to run in for any headland, and kept me in that
+    sea, which seemed to me a sea of blood, seething like a cauldron
+    on a mighty fire. Never did the sky look more fearful; during one
+    day and one night it burned like a furnace, and emitted flashes
+    in such fashion that each time I looked to see if my masts and my
+    sails were not destroyed; these flashes came with such alarming
+    fury that we all thought the ship must have been consumed. All
+    this time the waters from heaven never ceased, not to say that it
+    rained, for it was like a repetition of the Deluge. The men were
+    at this time so crushed in spirit, that they longed for death as
+    a deliverance from so many martyrdoms. Twice already had the
+    ships suffered loss in boats, anchors, and rigging, and were now
+    lying bare without sails.
+
+These extracts shew how feeling for Nature in unlettered minds could
+develop into an enthusiasm which begot to some extent its own power
+of expression. Columbus was entirely deficient in all previous
+knowledge of natural history; but he was gifted with deep feeling
+(the account of the nocturnal visions in the _Lettera Rarissima_ is
+proof of this)[9], mental energy, and a capacity for exact
+observation which many of the other explorers did not possess, and
+these faculties made up for what he lacked in education.
+
+     In Cuba alone, he distinguishes seven or eight
+     different species of palm more beautiful and taller than
+     the date tree; he informs his learned friend Anghiera
+     that he has seen pines and palms wonderfully associated
+     together in one and the same plain, and he even
+     so acutely observed the vegetation around him, that he
+     was the first to notice that there were pines in the
+     mountains of Cibao, whose fruits are not fir cones but
+     berries like the olives of the Axarafe de Sevilla.
+
+     (_Cosmos._)
+
+Most of Vespucci's narratives of travel, especially his letters to
+the Medici, only contain adventures and descriptions of manners and
+customs. He lacked the originality and enthusiasm which gave the
+power of the wing to Columbus.
+
+That imposing Portuguese poem, the _Lusiad_ of Camoens, is full of
+jubilation over the discovery of the New World. Camoens made his
+notes of foreign places at first hand; he had served as a soldier,
+fought at the foot of Atlas in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, had
+doubled the Cape twice, and, inspired by a deep love for Nature, had
+spent sixteen years in examining the phenomena of the ocean on the
+Indian and Chinese shores. He was a great sea painter. His poetic and
+inventive power remind one at times of Dante--for instance, in the
+description of the Dream Face; and he pictures foreign lands with the
+clearness and detail of the discoverers and later travellers. Here
+and there his poetry is like the Diary of Columbus translated into
+verse--epic verse.
+
+He had the same fiery spirit, nerve, and fresh insight, with the
+poet's gift added.
+
+(None the less, the classic apparatus of deities in Thetys' _Apology_
+is no adornment.)
+
+Comparisons from Nature and animals are few but detailed:
+
+  E'en as the prudent ants which towards their nest
+  Bearing the apportioned heavy burden go,
+  Exercise all their forces at their best,
+  Hostile to hostile winter's frost and snow;
+  There, all their toils and labours stand confessed,
+  There, never looked-for energy they show;
+  So, from the Lusitanians to avert
+  Their horrid Fate, the nymphs their power exert.
+
+  Thus, as in some sequestered sylvan mere
+  The frogs (the Lycian people formerly),
+  If that by chance some person should appear
+  While out of water they incautious be,
+  Awake the pool by hopping here and there,
+  To fly the danger which they deem they see,
+  And gathering to some safe retreat they know,
+  Only their heads above the water show--So fly the Moors.
+
+  E'en as when o'er the parching flame there glows
+  A flame, which may from some chance cause ignite,
+  (All while the whistling, puffing Boreas blows),
+  Fanned by the wind sets all the growth alight,
+  The shepherd's group, lying in their repose
+  Of quiet sleep, aroused in wild afright
+  At crackling flames that spread both wide and high,
+  Gather their goods and to the village fly;
+  So doth the Moor.
+
+  E'en as the daisy which once brightly smiled,
+  Plucked by unruly hands before its hour,
+  And harshly treated by the careless child,
+  All in her chaplet tied with artless power.
+  Droops, of its colour and its scent despoiled,
+  So seems this pale and lifeless damsel flower;
+  The roses of her lips are dry and dead,
+  With her sweet life the mingled white and red.
+
+The following simile reminds us of the far-fetched comparison of
+Apollonios Rhodios[11]:
+
+  As the reflected lustre from the bright
+  Steel mirror, or of beauteous crystal fine,
+  Which, being stricken by the solar light,
+  Strikes back and on some other part doth shine;
+  And when, to please the child's vain curious sight,
+  Moved o'er the house, as may his hand incline,
+  Dances on walls and roof and everywhere,
+  Restless and tremulous, now here now there,
+  So did the wandering judgment fluctuate.
+
+He says of Diana:
+
+  And, as confronted on her way she pressed,
+  So beautiful her form and bearing were,
+  That everything that saw her love confessed,
+  The stars, the heaven, and the surrounding air.
+
+The Indus and Ganges are personified in stanza xiv. 74, the Cape in
+v. 50.
+
+His time references are mostly mixed up with ancient mythology:
+
+  As soon, however, as the enamelled morn
+  O'er the calm heaven her lovely looks outspread,
+  Opening to bright Hyperion, new-born,
+  Her purple portals as he raised his head,
+  Then the whole fleet their ships with flags adorn.
+
+and:
+
+  So soon, however, as great Sol has spread
+  His rays o'er earth, whom instantly to meet,
+  Her purple brow Aurora rising shews,
+  And rudely life around the horizon throws.
+
+He is at his best in writing of the sea.
+
+He says of the explorers on first setting sail:
+
+  Now were they sailing o'er wide ocean bright,
+  The restless waves dividing as they flew;
+  The winds were breathing prosperous and light,
+  The vessels' hollow sails were filled to view;
+  The seas were covered o'er with foaming white
+  Where the advancing prows were cutting through
+  The consecrated waters of the deep....
+  Thus went we forth these unknown seas to explore,
+  Which by no people yet explored had been;
+  Seeing new isles and climes which long before
+  Great Henry, first discoverer, had seen.
+
+  Now did the moon in purest lustre rise
+  On Neptune's silvery waves her beams to pour,
+  With stars attendant glittered all the skies,
+  E'en like a meadow daisy-spangled o'er;
+  The fury of the winds all peaceful lies
+  In the dark caverns close along the shore,
+  But still the night-watch constant vigils keep,
+  As long had been their custom on the deep.
+
+  To tell thee of the dangers of the sea
+  At length, which human understanding scare,
+  Thunder-storms, sudden, dreadful in degree,
+  Lightnings, which seem to set on fire the air,
+  Dark floods of rain, nights of obscurity,
+  Rollings of thunder which the world would tear,
+  Were not less labour than a great mistake,
+  E'en if I had an iron voice to speak.
+
+He describes the electric fires of St Elmo and the gradual
+development of the waterspout:
+
+  I saw, and clearly saw, the living light
+  Which sailors everywhere as sacred hold
+  In time of storm and crossing winds that fight,
+  Of tempest dark and desperation cold;
+  Nor less it was to all a marvel quite,
+  And matter surely to alarm the bold,
+  To observe the sea-clouds, with a tube immense,
+  Suck water up from Ocean's deep expanse....
+  A fume or vapour thin and subtle rose,
+  And by the wind begin revolving there;
+  Thence to the topmost clouds a tube it throws,
+  But of a substance so exceeding rare....
+  But when it was quite gorged it then withdrew
+  The foot that on the sea beneath had grown,
+  And o'er the heavens in fine it raining flew,
+  The jacent waters watering with its own.
+
+The storm at sea reminds us of Æschylus in splendour:
+
+  The winds were such, that scarcely could they shew
+  With greater force or greater rage around,
+  Than if it were this purpose then to blow
+  The mighty tower of Babel to the ground....
+  Now rising to the clouds they seem to go
+  O'er the wild waves of Neptune borne on end;
+  Now to the bowels of the deep below;
+  It seems to all their senses, they descend;
+  Notus and Auster, Boreas, Aquila,
+  The very world's machinery would rend;
+  While flashings fire the black and ugly night
+  And shed from pole to pole a dazzling light....
+  But now the star of love beamed forth its ray,
+  Before the sun, upon the horizon clear,
+  And visited, as messenger of day,
+  The earth and spreading sea, with brow to cheer....
+
+And, as it subsides:
+
+  The mountains that we saw at first appeared,
+  In the far view, like clouds and nothing more.
+
+Off the coast of India:
+
+  Now o'er the hills broke forth the morning light
+  Where Ganges' stream is murmuring heard to flow,
+  Free from the storm and from the first sea's fight,
+  Vain terror from their hearts is banished now.
+
+His magic island, the Ilha of Venus, could only have been imagined by
+a poet who had travelled widely. All the delights of the New World
+are there, with the vegetation of Southern Europe added. It is a
+poet's triumphant rendering of impressions which the discoverers so
+often felt their inability to convey:
+
+  From far they saw the island fresh and fair,
+  Which Venus o'er the waters guiding drove
+  (E'en as the wind the canvas white doth bear)....
+  Where the coast forms a bay for resting-place,
+  Curved and all quiet, and whose shining sand
+  Is painted with red shells by Venus' hand....
+  Three beauteous mounts rise nobly to the view,
+  Lifting with graceful pride their sweeling head,
+  O'er which enamelled grass adorning grew.
+  In this delightful lovely island glad,
+  Bright limpid streams their rushing waters threw
+  From heights with rich luxuriant verdure clad,
+  'Midst the white rocks above, their source derive,
+  The streams sonorous, sweet, and fugitive....
+  A thousand trees toward heaven their summits raise,
+  With fruits odoriferous and fair;
+  The orange in its produce bright displays
+  The tint that Daphne carried in her hair;
+  The citron on the ground its branches lays,
+  Laden with yellow weights it cannot bear;
+  The beauteous melons, which the whole perfume
+  The virgin bosom in their form assume.
+  The forest trees, which on the hills combine
+  To ennoble them with leafy hair o'ergrown,
+  Are poplars of Alcides; laurels shine,
+  The which the shining God loved as his own;
+  Myrtles of Cytherea with the pine
+  Of Cybele, by other love o'erthrown;
+  The spreading cypress tree points out where lies
+  The seat of the ethereal paradise....
+  Pomegranates rubicund break forth and shine,
+  A tint whereby thou, ruby, losest sheen.
+  'Twixt the elm branches hangs the jocund vine,
+  With branches some of red and some of green....
+  Then the refined and splendid tapestry,
+  Covering the rustic ground beneath the feet,
+  Makes that of Achemeina dull to be,
+  But makes the shady valley far more sweet.
+  Cephisian flowers with head inclined we see
+  About the calm and lucid lake's retreat....
+  'Twas difficult to fancy which was true,
+  Seeing on heaven and earth all tints the same,
+  If fair Aurora gave the flowers their time,
+  Or from the lovely flowers to her it came;
+  Flora and Zephyr there in painting drew
+  The violets tinted, as of lovers' flame,
+  The iris, and the rose all fair and fresh
+  E'en as it doth on cheek of maiden blush....
+  Along the water sings the snow-white swan,
+  While from the branch respondeth Philomel....
+  Here, in its bill, to the dear nest, with care,
+  The rapid little bird the food doth bear.
+
+Subjective feeling for Nature is better displayed in the lyric than
+the epic.
+
+The Spaniard, Fray Luis de Leon, was a typical example of a
+sixteenth-century lyrist; full of mild enthusiasm for Nature, the
+theosophico-mystical attitude of the Catholic.
+
+A most fervid feeling for Nature from the religious side breathed in
+St Francis of Assisi--the feeling which inspired his hymn to Brother
+Sun (_Cantico del Sole_), and led his brother Egidio, intoxicated
+with love to his Creator, to kiss trees and rocks and weep over
+them[12]:
+
+  Praised by His creatures all,
+  Praised be the Lord my God
+  By Messer Sun, my brother above all,
+  Who by his rays lights us and lights the day--
+  Radiant is she, with his great splendour stored,
+  Thy glory, Lord, confessing.
+  By Sister Moon and Stars my Lord is praised,
+  Where clear and fair they in the heavens are raised
+  By Brother Wind, etc....
+
+His follower, Bonaventura, too, in his verses counted--
+
+    The smallest creatures his brothers and sisters, and called upon
+    crops, vineyards, trees, flowers, and stars to praise God.
+
+Bernard von Clairvaux made it a principle 'to learn from the earth,
+trees, corn, flowers, and grass'; and he wrote in his letter to
+Heinrich Murdach (Letter 106):
+
+    Believe me, I have proved it; you will find more in the woods
+    than in books; trees and stones will teach you what no other
+    teacher can.
+
+He looked upon all natural objects as 'rays of the Godhead,' copies
+of a great original.
+
+His contemporary, Hugo von St Victor, wrote:
+
+    The whole visible world is like a book written by the finger of
+    God. It is created by divine power, and all human beings are
+    figures placed in it, not to shew the free-will of man, but as a
+    revelation and visible sign, by divine will, of God's invisible
+    wisdom. But as one who only glances at an open book sees marks on
+    it, but does not read the letters, so the wicked and sensual man,
+    in whom the spirit of God is not, sees only the outer surface of
+    visible beings and not their deeper parts.
+
+German mystics wrote in the same strain; for instance, the popular
+Franciscan preacher, Berthold von Regensburg (1272),
+
+    Whose sermons on fields and meadows drew many thousands of
+    hearers, and moved them partly by the unusual freshness and
+    vitality of his pious feeling for Nature,
+
+in spite of many florid symbolical accessories, such as we find again
+in Ekkehart and other fifteenth-century mystics, and especially in
+Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek.
+
+The northern prophetess and foundress of an Order Birgitta (1373)
+held that the breath of the Creator was in all visible things: 'We
+feel it pervading us in her visions,' says Hammerich,[13]
+
+    Whether by gurgling brook or snow-covered firs. It is with us
+    when the prophetess leads us along the ridges of the Swedish
+    coast with their surging waves or down the shaft of a mine, or to
+    wander in the quiet of evening through vineyards between roses
+    and lilies, while the dew is falling and the bells ring out the
+    Ave Maria.
+
+Vincentius von Beauvais (1264) in his _Speculum Naturæ_ demonstrates
+the value of studying Nature from a religious and moral point of
+view; and the Carthusian general, Dionysius von Rickel (1471), in his
+paper _On the beauty of the world and the glory of God (De venustate
+mundi et de pulchritudine Dei)_ says in Chapter xxii.: 'All the
+beauty of the animal world is nothing but the reflection and out-flow
+of the original beauty of God,' and gives as special examples:
+
+     Roses, lilies, and other beautiful and fragrant
+     flowers, shady woods, pine trees, pleasant meadows,
+     high, mountains, springs, streams and rivers, and the
+     broad arm of the immeasurable sea ... and above
+     all shine the stars, completing their course in the
+     clear sky in wonderful splendour and majestic order.
+
+Raymundus von Sabieude, a Spaniard, who studied medicine and
+philosophy at Toulouse, and wrote his _Theologia Naturalis_ in 1436,
+considered Nature, like Thomas Aquinas, from a mystical and
+scholastic point of view, as made up of living beings in a graduated
+scale from the lowest to the highest; and he lauded her in terms
+which even Pope Clement VII. thought exaggerated. Piety in him went
+hand in hand with a natural philosophy like Bacon's, and his interest
+in Nature was rather a matter of intellect than feeling.
+
+    God has given us two books--the book of all living beings, or
+    Nature, and the Holy Scriptures. The first was given to man from
+    the beginning when all things were created, for each living being
+    is but a letter of the alphabet written by the finger of God, and
+    the book is composed of them all together as a book is of letters
+    ... man is the capital letter of this book. This book is not like
+    the other, falsified and spoilt, but familiar and intelligible;
+    it makes man joyous and humble and obedient, a hater of evil and
+    a lover of virtue.
+
+Among the savants of the Renaissance who applied the inductive method
+to Nature before Bacon,[14] we must include the thoughtful and pious
+Spaniard Luis Vives (1540), who wrote concerning the useless
+speculations of alchemists and astrologers about occult things: 'It
+is not arguing that is needed here, but silent observation of
+Nature.' Knowledge of Nature, he said, would serve both body and
+soul.
+
+The tender religious lyrics of the mystic, Luis de Leon, followed
+next.[15] His life (1521-1591) brings us up to the days of the
+Inquisition. He himself, an excellent teacher and man of science, was
+imprisoned for years for opinions too openly expressed in his
+writings; but with all his varied fortunes he never lost his innate
+manliness and tenderness. His biographer tells us, that as soon as
+the holidays began, he would hurry away from the gloomy lecture rooms
+and the noisy students at Salamanca, to the country, where he had
+taken an estate belonging to a monastery at the foot of a hill by a
+river, with a little island close by.
+
+It had a large uncultivated garden, made beautiful by fine old trees,
+with paths among the vines and a stream running through it to the
+river, and a long avenue of poplars whose rustle blended with the
+noise of the mill-wheel. Beyond was a view of fields. Leon would sit
+for hours here undisturbed, dipping his feet in the brook under a
+poplar--the tree which was reputed to flourish on sand alone and give
+shelter to all the birds under heaven--while the rustle of the leaves
+sang his melancholy to sleep. His biographer goes on to say that he
+had the Spaniard's special delight in Nature, and understood her
+language and her secrets; and the veiled splendour of her tones,
+colours, and forms could move him to tears. As he sat there gazing at
+the clouds, he felt lifted up in heart by the insignificance of all
+things in comparison with the spirit of man.
+
+In the pitching and tossing of his 'ships of thought' he never lost
+the consciousness of Nature's beauty, and would pray the clouds to
+carry his sighs with them in their tranquil course through heaven. He
+loved the sunrise, birds, flowers, bees, fishes; nothing was
+meaningless to him; all things were letters in a divine alphabet,
+which might bring him a message from above. Nature was symbolic; the
+glow of dawn meant the glow of divine love; a wide view, true
+freedom; rays of sunshine, rays of divine glory; the setting sun,
+eternal light; stars, flowers of light in an everlasting spring.
+
+His love for the country, especially for its peacefulness, was free
+from the folly and excess of the pastoral poetry of his day. He did
+not paint Nature entirely for her own sake; man was always her
+master[16] in his poems, and he sometimes, very finely, introduced
+himself and his affairs at the close, and represented Nature as
+addressing himself.
+
+His descriptions are short, and he often tries to represent sounds
+onomato-poetically.
+
+This is from his ode, _Quiet Life_[17]:
+
+  O happy he who flies
+  Far from the noisy world away--
+  Who with the worthy and the wise
+  Hath chosen the narrow way.
+  The silence of the secret road
+  That leads the soul to virtue and to God!...
+  O streams, and shades, and hills on high,
+  Unto the stillness of your breast
+  My wounded spirit longs to fly--
+  To fly and be at rest.
+  Thus from the world's tempestuous sea,
+  O gentle Nature, do I turn to thee....
+  A garden by the mountain side
+  Is mine, whose flowery blossoming
+  Shews, even in spring's luxuriant pride,
+  What Autumn's suns shall bring:
+  And from mountain's lofty crown
+  A clear and sparkling rill comes tumbling down;
+  Then, pausing in its downward force
+  The venerable trees among,
+  It gurgles on its winding course;
+  And, as it glides along,
+  Gives freshness to the day and pranks
+  With ever changing flowers its mossy banks.
+  The whisper of the balmy breeze
+  Scatters a thousand sweets around,
+  And sweeps in music through the trees
+  With an enchanting sound
+  That laps the soul in calm delight
+  Where crowns and kingdoms are forgotten quite.
+
+The poem, _The Starry Sky_,[18] is full of lofty enthusiasm for
+Nature and piety:
+
+  When yonder glorious sky
+  Lighted with million lamps I contemplate,
+  And turn my dazzled eye
+  To this vain mortal state
+  All mean and visionary, mean and desolate,
+  A mingled joy and grief
+  Fills all my soul with dark solicitude....
+  List to the concert pure
+  Of yon harmonious countless worlds of light.
+  See, in his orbit sure
+  Each takes his journey bright,
+  Led by an unseen hand through the vast maze of night.
+  See how the pale moon rolls
+  Her silver wheel....
+  See Saturn, father of the golden hours,
+  While round him, bright and blest,
+  The whole empyrean showers
+  Its glorious streams of light on this low world of ours.
+  But who to these can turn
+  And weigh them 'gainst a weeping world like this,
+  Nor feel his spirit burn
+  To grasp so sweet a bliss
+  And mourn that exile hard which here his portion is?
+  For there, and there alone,
+  Are peace and joy and never dying love:
+  Day that shall never cease,
+  No night there threatening,
+  No winter there to chill joy's ever-during spring.
+  Ye fields of changeless green
+  Covered with living streams and fadeless flowers;
+  Thou paradise serene,
+  Eternal joyful hours
+  Thy disembodied soul shall welcome in thy towers!
+
+It was chiefly in Spanish literature at this time that Nature was
+used allegorically. Tieck[19] says: 'In Calderon's poetry, and that
+of his contemporaries, we often find, in romances and song-like
+metres, most charming descriptions of the sea, mountains, gardens,
+and woody valleys, but almost always used allegorically, and with an
+artistic polish which ends by giving us, not so much a real
+impression of Nature, as one of clever description in musical verse,
+repeated again and again with slight variations.' This is true of
+Leon, but far more of Calderon, since it belongs to the very essence
+of drama. But, despite his passion for description and his Catholic
+and conventional tone, there is inexhaustible fancy, splendid colour,
+and a modern element of individuality in his poems. His heroes are
+conscious of their own ego, feel themselves to be 'a miniature
+world,' and search out their own feelings 'in the wild waves of
+emotion' (as Aurelian, for example, in _Zenobia_).
+
+Fernando says in _The Constant Prince_:
+
+  These flowers awoke in beauty and delight
+  At early dawn, when stars began to set;
+  At eve they leave us but a fond regret,
+  Locked in the cold embraces of the night.
+  These shades that shame the rainbow's arch of light.
+  Where gold and snow in purple pomp are met,
+  All give a warning man should not forget,
+  When one brief day can darken things so bright.
+  'Tis but to wither that the roses bloom--
+  'Tis to grow old they bear their beauteous flowers,
+  One crimson bud their cradle and their tomb.
+  Such are man's fortunes in this world of ours;
+  They live, they die; one day doth end their doom,
+  For ages past but seem to us like hours.
+
+The warning which Zenobia gives her captor in his hour of triumph to
+beware of sudden reverses of fortune is finely conceived:
+
+  Morn comes forth with rays to crown her,
+  While the sun afar is spreading
+  Golden cloths most finely woven
+  All to dry her tear-drops purely.
+  Up to noon he climbs, then straightway
+  Sinks, and then dark night makes ready
+  For the burial of the sea
+  Canopies of black outstretching--
+  Tall ships fly on linen pinions,
+  On with speed the breezes send it,
+  Small the wide seas seem and straitened,
+  To its quick flight onward tending.
+  Yet one moment, yet one instant,
+  And the tempest roars, uprearing
+  Waves that might the stars extinguish,
+  Lifted for that ship's o'erwhelming.
+  Day, with fear, looks ever nightwards,
+  Calms must storm await with trembling;
+  Close behind the back of pleasure
+  Evermore stalks sadness dreary.
+
+In _Life's a Dream_ Prince Sigismund, chained in a dark prison, says:
+
+  What sinned I more herein
+  Than others, who were also born?
+  Born the bird was, yet with gay
+  Gala vesture, beauty's dower,
+  Scarcely 'tis a winged flower
+  Or a richly plumaged spray,
+  Ere the aerial halls of day
+  It divideth rapidly,
+  And no more will debtor be
+  To the nest it hates to quit;
+  But, with more of soul than it,
+  I am grudged its liberty.
+  And the beast was born, whose skin
+  Scarce those beauteous spots and bars,
+  Like to constellated stars,
+  Doth from its greater painter win
+  Ere the instinct doth begin:
+  Of its fierceness and its pride,
+  And its lair on every side,
+  It has measured far and nigh;
+  While, with better instinct, I
+  Am its liberty denied.
+  Born the mute fish was also,
+  Child of ooze and ocean weed;
+  Scarce a finny bark of speed
+  To the surface brought, and lo!
+  In vast circuits to and fro
+  Measures it on every side
+  Its illimitable home;
+  While, with greater will to roam,
+  I that freedom am denied.
+  Born the streamlet was, a snake
+  Which unwinds the flowers among,
+  Silver serpent, that not long
+  May to them sweet music make,
+  Ere it quits the flowery brake,
+  Onward hastening to the sea
+  With majestic course and free,
+  Which the open plains supply;
+  While, with more life gifted, I
+  Am denied its liberty.
+
+In Act II. Clotardo tells how he has talked to the young prince,
+brought up in solitude and confinement:
+
+  There I spoke with him awhile
+  Of the human arts and letters,
+  Which the still and silent aspect
+  Of the mountains and the heavens
+  Him have taught--that school divine
+  Where he has been long a learner,
+  And the voices of the birds
+  And the beasts has apprehended.
+
+Descriptions of time and place are very rich in colour.
+
+  One morning on the ocean,
+  When the half-awakened sun,
+  Trampling down the lingering shadows
+  Of the western vapours dun,
+  Spread its ruby-tinted tresses
+  Over jessamine and rose,
+  Dried with cloths of gold Aurora's
+  Tears of mingled fire and snows
+  Which to pearl his glance converted.
+
+  Since these gardens cannot steal
+  Away your oft returning woes,
+  Though to beauteous spring they build
+  Snow-white jasmine temples filled
+  With radiant statues of the rose;
+  Come into the sea and make
+  Thy bark the chariot of the sun,
+  And when the golden splendours run
+  Athwart the waves, along thy wake
+  The garden to the sea will say
+  (By melancholy fears deprest)--
+  'The sun already gilds the west,
+  How very short has been this day.'
+
+There is a striking remark about a garden; Menon says:
+
+  A beautiful garden surrounded by wild forest
+  Is the more beautiful the nearer it approaches its opposite.
+
+Splendour of colour was everything with Calderon, but it was
+splendour of so stiff and formal a kind, that, like the whole of his
+intensely severe, even inquisitorial outlook, it leaves us cold.
+
+We must turn to Shakespeare to learn how strongly the pulse of
+sympathy for Nature could beat in contemporary drama. Goethe said:
+'In Calderon you have the wine as the last artificial result of the
+grape, but expressed into the goblet, highly spiced and sweetened,
+and so given you to drink; but in Shakespeare you have the whole
+natural process of its ripening besides, and the grapes themselves
+one by one, for your enjoyment, if you will.'
+
+In _Worship at the Cross_ there is pious feeling for Nature and
+mystical feeling side by side with an obnoxious fanaticism,
+superstition, and other objectionable traits[20]; and mystical
+confessions of the same sort may be gathered in numbers from the
+works of contemporary monks and nuns. Even of such a fanatic and
+self-tormentor as the Spanish Franciscan Petrus von Alcantara (1562),
+his biographer says that despite his strict renunciation of the
+world, he retained a most warm and deep feeling for Nature.
+
+'Whatever he saw of the outer world increased his devotion and gave
+it wings. The starry sky seen through his little monastery window,
+often kept him rapt in deep meditation for hours; often he was as if
+beside himself, so strong was his pious feeling when he saw the power
+and glory of God reflected in charming flowers and plants.'
+
+When Gregorio Lopez (1596), a man who had studied many sides of
+Nature, was asked if so much knowledge confused him, he answered: 'I
+find God in all things, great and small.' Similar remarks are
+attributed to many others.
+
+Next to Leon, as a poet in enthusiasm and mysticism, came St Teresa
+von Avila. She was especially notable for the ravishingly pretty
+pictures and comparisons she drew from Nature to explain the soul
+life of the Christian.[21]
+
+In all these outpourings of mystic feeling for Nature, there was no
+interest in her entirely for her own sake; they were all more or less
+dictated by religious feeling. It was in the later German and Italian
+mystics--for example, Bruno, Campanella, and Jacob Boehme--that a
+more subjective and individual point of view was attained through
+Pantheism and Protestantism.
+
+The Protestant free-speaking Shakespeare shewed a far more intense
+feeling for Nature than the Catholic Calderon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S SYMPATHY FOR NATURE
+
+
+The poetry of India may serve as a measure of the part which Nature
+can play in drama; it is full of comparisons and personifications,
+and eloquent expressions of intimate sympathy with plants and
+animals. In Greek tragedy, Nature stepped into the background;
+metaphors, comparisons, and personifications are rarer; it was only
+by degrees, especially in Sophocles and Euripides, in the choruses
+and monologues, that man's interest in her appeared, and he began to
+greet the light or the sky, land or sea, to attribute love, pity, or
+hate to her, or find comfort in her lonely places. During the Middle
+Ages, drama lay fallow, and the blossoming period of French tragedy,
+educated to the pathos of Seneca, only produced cold declamation,
+frosty rhetoric; of any real sympathy between man and Nature there
+was no question.
+
+Over this mediæval void Calderon was the bridge to Shakespeare.
+
+Shakespeare reached the Greek standpoint and advanced far beyond it.
+He was not only the greatest dramatist of modern times as to human
+action, suffering, and character, but also a genius in the
+interpretation of Nature.[1]
+
+In place of the narrow limits of the old dramatists, he had the wider
+and maturer modern vision, and, despite his mastery of language, he
+was free both from the exaggeration and redundance of Oriental drama,
+and from the mere passion for describing, which so often carried
+Calderon away.
+
+In him too, the subjectivity, which the Renaissance brought into
+modern art, was still more fully developed. His metaphors and
+comparisons shew this, and, most of all, the very perfect art with
+which he assigns Nature a part in the play, and makes her not only
+form the appropriate background, dark or bright as required, but
+exert a distinct influence upon human fate.
+
+As Carrière points out:
+
+    At a period which had painting for its leading art, and was
+    turning its attention to music, his mental accord produced
+    effects in his works to which antiquity was a stranger.
+
+Herder had already noted that Shakespeare gives colour and atmosphere
+where the Greek only gave outline. And although Shakespeare's
+outlines are drawn with more regard to fidelity than to actual
+beauty, yet, like a great painter, he brings all Nature into sympathy
+with man. We feel the ghostly shudder of the November night in
+_Hamlet_, breathe the bracing Highland air in _Macbeth_, the air of
+the woods in _As You Like It_; the storm on the heath roars through
+Lear's mad outburst, the nightingale sings in the pomegranate outside
+Julia's window.
+
+'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,' when Love solves all
+differences in the _Merchant of Venice_! On the other hand, when
+Macbeth is meditating the murder of Duncan, the wolf howls, the owl
+hoots, and the cricket cries. And since Shakespeare's characters
+often act out of part, so that intelligible motive fails, while it is
+important to the poet that each scene be raised to dramatic level and
+viewed in a special light, Goethe's words apply:
+
+    Here everything which in a great world event passes secretly
+    through the air, everything which at the very moment of a
+    terrible occurrence men hide away in their hearts, is expressed;
+    that which they carefully shut up and lock away in their minds is
+    here freely and eloquently brought to light; we recognize the
+    truth to life, but know not how it is achieved.
+
+Amorous passion in his hands is an interpreter of Nature; in one of
+his sonnets he compares it to an ocean which cannot quench thirst.
+
+In Sonnet 130 he says:
+
+  My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
+  Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
+  If snow be white, why then her breasts are dim;
+  If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
+  I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
+  But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
+  And in some perfumes is there more delight
+  Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks....
+  And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare
+  As any she belied by false compare.
+
+His lady-love is a mirror in which the whole world is reflected:
+
+  Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind....
+  For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
+  The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
+  The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
+  The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
+  (Sonnet 113.)
+
+  When she leaves him it seems winter even in spring:
+  'For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
+  And thou away, the very birds are mute.'
+  (Sonnet 97.)
+
+Here, as in the dramas,[2] contrasts in Nature are often used to
+point contrasts in life:
+
+  How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
+  Which like a canker in the fragrant rose
+  Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
+  O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
+  (Sonnet 95.)
+
+and
+
+  No more be grieved at that which thou hast done;
+  Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud;
+  Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
+  And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
+  (Sonnet 35.)
+
+In an opposite sense is Sonnet 70:
+
+  The ornament of beauty is suspect
+  A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air,
+  For canker vice the sweetest buds did love,
+  And thou presentest a pure unstained prime.
+
+Sonnet 7 has:
+
+  Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
+  Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
+  Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
+  Serving with looks his sacred majesty.
+
+Sonnet 18:
+
+  Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
+  Thou art more lovely and more temperate,
+  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
+  And summer's lease hath all too short a date--
+  But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
+  Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
+  Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
+  When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
+  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
+  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
+
+Sonnet 60:
+
+  Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,
+  So do our minutes hasten to their end;
+  Each changing place with that which goes before,
+  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
+
+Sonnet 73:
+
+  That time of life thou mayst in me behold,
+  When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
+  Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
+  Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang
+  In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
+  As after sunset fadeth in the west,
+  Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
+  Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
+  In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
+  That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
+  As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
+  Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
+  This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong
+  To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
+
+There are no better similes for the oncoming of age and death, than
+the sere leaf trembling in the wind, the twilight of the setting sun,
+the expiring flame.
+
+Almost all the comparisons from Nature in his plays are original, and
+rather keen and lightning-like than elaborate, often with the
+terseness of proverbs;
+
+  The strawberry grows underneath the nettle.
+                                      (_Henry V._)
+
+  Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
+                                      (_Henry VI._)
+
+  The waters swell before a boisterous storm.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+Sometimes they are heaped up, like Calderon's, 'making it' (true
+love)
+
+  Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
+  Brief as the lightning in the collied night
+  That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,
+  And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
+  The jaws of darkness do devour it up.
+                        (_Midsummer Night's Dream._)
+
+Compared with Homer's they are very bold, and shew an astonishing
+play of imagination; in place of the naive simplicity and naturalness
+of antiquity, this modern genius gives us a dazzling display of wit
+and thought. To quote only short examples[3]:
+
+  'Open as day,' 'deaf as the sea,' 'poor as winter,'
+  'chaste as unsunn'd snow.'
+
+He ranges all Nature. These are characteristic
+examples:
+
+  King Richard doth himself appear
+  As doth the blushing discontented sun
+  From out the fiery portal of the east,
+  When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
+  To dim his glory and to stain the track
+  Of his bright passage to the occident.
+                                   (_Richard II._)
+
+  Since the more fair crystal is the sky,
+  The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.
+  As when the golden sun salutes the morn,
+  And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,
+  Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach
+  And overlooks the highest peering hills,
+  So Tamora.                  (_Titus Andronicus._)
+
+  As all the world is cheered by the sun,
+  So I by that; it is my day, my life.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not
+  To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,
+  As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote
+  The night of dew that on my cheek down flows;
+  Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright
+  Through the transparent bosom of the deep.
+  As doth thy face through tears of mine give light;
+  Thou shinest on every tear that I do weep.
+                          (_Love's Labour's Lost._)
+
+This is modern down to its finest detail, and much richer in
+individuality than the most famous comparisons of the same kind in
+antiquity.
+
+Sea and stream are used:
+
+  Like an unseasonable stormy day
+  Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores
+  As if the world were all dissolved to tears,
+  So high above his limits swells the rage
+  Of Bolingbroke.                    (_Richard II._)
+
+  The current that with gentle murmur glides,
+  Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage;
+  But when his fair course is not hindered,
+  He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
+  Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
+  He overtaketh on his pilgrimage;
+  And so by many winding nooks he strays
+  With willing sport to the wild ocean.
+  Then let me go, and hinder not my course.
+                        (_Two Gentlemen of Verona._)
+
+  Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.
+  You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow.
+  And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?
+                                       (_Henry VI._)
+
+  If there were reason for these miseries,
+  Then into limits could I bind my woes;
+  When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'er-flow?
+  If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,
+  Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face?
+  And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?
+  I am the sea: hark, how her sighs do blow!
+  She is the weeping welkin, I the earth;
+  Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;
+  Then must my earth with her continual tears
+  Become a deluge, overflow'd and drowned.
+                                (_Titus Andronicus._)
+
+  This battle fares like to the morning's war
+  When dying clouds contend with growing light,
+  What time the shepherd blowing of his nails
+  Can neither call it perfect day nor night.
+  Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea
+  Forced by the tide to combat with the wind;
+  Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea
+  Forced to retire by fury of the wind.
+  Sometime the flood prevails and then the wind:
+  Now one the better, then another best;
+  Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,
+  Yet neither conqueror nor conquered.
+  So is the equal poise of this fell war.
+                                      (_Henry VI._)
+
+In the last five examples the epic treatment and the personifications
+are noteworthy.
+
+Comparisons from animal life are forcible and striking:
+
+  How like a deer, stricken by many princes,
+  Dost thou lie here!              (_Julius Cæsar._)
+
+Richard III. is called:
+
+  The wretched bloody and usurping boar
+  That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,
+  Swills your warm blood like wash and makes his trough
+  In your embowell'd bosoms; this foul swine
+  Lies now even in the centre of this isle.
+  The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind.
+                                     (_Richard III._)
+
+The smallest objects are noted:
+
+  As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
+  They kill us for their sport.        (_King Lear._)
+
+  _Marcus_: Alas! my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.
+
+  _Titus_: But how if that fly had a father and a mother?
+  How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
+  And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
+  Poor harmless fly!
+  That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
+  Came here to make us merry! and thou
+  Hast kill'd him!
+                              (_Titus Andronicus._)
+
+Shakespeare has abundance of this idyllic miniature painting, for
+which all the literature of the day shewed a marked taste.
+
+Tamora says:
+
+  My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad,
+  When everything doth make a gleeful boast?
+  The birds chant melody on every bush,
+  The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun,
+  The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind
+  And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground.
+                             (_Titus Andronicus._)
+
+And Valentine in _Two Gentlemen of Verona_:
+
+  This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
+  I better brook than flourishing peopled towns;
+  Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,
+  And to the nightingale's complaining notes
+  Tune my distresses and record my woes.
+
+Like this, in elegiac sentimentality, is Romeo:
+
+          Before the worshipp'd sun
+  Peer'd forth the golden window of the east....
+  Many a morning hath he there been seen
+  With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew.
+
+_Cymbeline, Winter's Tale_, and _As You Like It_ are particularly
+rich in idyllic traits; the artificiality of court life is contrasted
+with life in the open; there are songs, too, in praise of woodland
+joys:
+
+  Under the greenwood tree
+  Who loves to lie with me,
+  And tune his merry note
+  Unto the sweet bird's throat,
+  Come hither, come hither, come hither!
+  Here shall he see
+  No enemy
+  But winter and rough weather.
+                                (_As You Like It._)
+
+  Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
+  Thou art not so unkind
+  As man's ingratitude.
+  Thy tooth is not so keen,
+  Because thou art not seen
+  Altho' thy breath be rude.
+  Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho unto the green holly!
+  Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly![4]
+                                (_As You Like It._)
+
+Turning again to comparisons, we find birds used abundantly:
+
+  More pity that the eagle should be mewed
+  While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  True hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
+  Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort
+  Rising and cawing at the gun's report
+  Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
+  So at his sight away his fellows fly.
+                       (_Midsummer Night's Dream._)
+
+And plant life is touched with special tenderness:
+
+  All the bystanders had wet their cheeks
+  Like trees bedashed with rain.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  Why grow the branches when the root is gone?
+  Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
+  Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  Ah! my tender babes!
+  My unblown flowers, new appearing sweets.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+Romeo is
+
+  To himself so secret and so close ...
+  As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
+  Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air
+  Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
+
+It is astonishing to see how Shakespeare noted the smallest and most
+fragile things, and found the most poetic expression for them without
+any sacrifice of truth to Nature.
+
+Juliet is 'the sweetest flower of all the field.' Laertes says to
+Ophelia:
+
+  For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour
+  Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
+  A violet in the youth of primy nature,
+  Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,
+  The perfume and suppliance of a moment.
+  The canker galls the infants of the spring
+  Too oft before their buttons be disclosed;
+  And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
+  Contagious blastments are most imminent.
+                                       (_Hamlet._)
+
+Hamlet soliloquizes:
+
+  How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
+  Seems to me all the uses of this world.
+  Fie on't, O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden
+  That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
+  Possess it merely.
+
+    Indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
+    frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
+    excellent canopy the air, look you--this brave o'erhanging
+    firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
+    appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent
+    congregation of vapours.
+
+But the great advance which he made is seen far more in the
+sympathetic way in which he drew Nature into the action of the play.
+
+He established perfect harmony between human fate and the natural
+phenomena around it.
+
+There are moonlight nights for Romeo and Juliet's brief dream, when
+all Nature, moon, stars, garden, seemed steeped in love together.
+
+He places his melancholy, brooding Hamlet
+
+    In a land of mist and long nights, under a gloomy sky, where day
+    is only night without sleep, and the tragedy holds us imprisoned
+    like the North itself, that damp dungeon of Nature. (BOERNE.)
+
+What a dark shudder lies o'er Nature in _Macbeth_! And in _Lear_, as
+Jacobi says:
+
+    What a sight! All Nature, living and lifeless, reasonable and
+    unreasonable, surges together, like towering storm clouds, hither
+    and thither; it is black oppressive Nature with only here and
+    there a lightning flash from God--a flash of Providence, rending
+    the clouds.
+
+One must look at the art by which this is achieved in order to
+justify such enthusiastic expressions. Personification of Nature lies
+at the root of it, and to examine this in the different poets forms
+one of the most interesting chapters of comparative poetry,
+especially in Shakespeare.
+
+With him artistic personification reached a pitch never attained
+before. We can trace the steps by which Greece passed from mythical
+to purely poetic personification, increasing in individuality in the
+Hellenic period; but Shakespeare opened up an entirely new region by
+dint of that flashlight genius of imagination which combined and
+illuminated all and everything.
+
+Hense says[5];
+
+    The personification is plastic when Æschylus calls the heights
+    the neighbours of the stars; individual, when Shakespeare speaks
+    of hills that kiss the sky. It is plastic that fire and sea are
+    foes who conspire together and keep faith to destroy the Argive
+    army; it is individual to call sea and wind old wranglers who
+    enter into a momentary armistice. Other personifications of
+    Shakespeare's, as when he speaks of the 'wanton wind,' calls
+    laughter a fool, and describes time as having a wallet on his
+    back wherein he puts alms for oblivion, are of a kind which did
+    not, and could not, exist in antiquity.
+
+The richer a man's mental endowment, the more individual his
+feelings, the more he can see in Nature.
+
+Shakespeare's fancy revelled in a wealth of images; new metaphors,
+new points of resemblance between the inner and outer worlds, were
+for ever pouring from his inexhaustible imagination.
+
+The motive of amorous passion, for instance, was a very divining-rod
+in his hands, revealing the most delicate relations between Nature
+and the soul. Ibykos had pointed the contrast between the gay spring
+time and his own unhappy heart in which Eros raged like 'the Thracian
+blast.' Theocritus had painted the pretty shepherdess drawing all
+Nature under the spell of her charms; Akontios (Kallimachos) had
+declared that if trees felt the pangs and longings of love, they
+would lose their leaves; all such ideas, modern in their way, had
+been expressed in antiquity.
+
+This is Shakespeare's treatment of them:
+
+  How like a winter hath my absence been
+  From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
+  What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
+  What old December's bareness everywhere!
+  And yet this time removed was summer time,
+  The teeming autumn, big with rich increase ...
+  For summer and his pleasures wait on thee.
+  And thou away the very birds are mute,
+  Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer
+  That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near,
+                                             (Sonnet 97.)
+
+  From you have I been absent in the spring,
+  When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
+  Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
+  That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
+  Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
+  Of different flowers in odour and in hue
+  Could make me any summer's story tell....
+  Yet seem'd it winter still....             (Sonnet 98.)
+
+Or compare again the cypresses in Theocritus sole witnesses of secret
+love; or Walther's
+
+  One little birdie who never will tell,
+
+with
+
+  These blue-veined violets whereon we lean
+  Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.
+                              (_Venus and Adonis._)
+
+Comparisons of ladies' lips to roses, and hands to lilies, are common
+with the old poets. How much more modern is:
+
+  The forward violet thus did I chide;
+  Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
+  If not from my love's breath?...
+  The lily I condemned for thy hand,
+  And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair;
+  The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
+  One blushing shame, another white despair....
+  More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
+  But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.
+                                           (Sonnet 99.)
+
+And how fine the personification in Sonnet 33:
+
+  Full many a glorious morning have I seen
+  Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
+  Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
+  Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
+  Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
+  With ugly rack on his celestial face,
+  And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
+  Stealing unseen to West with this disgrace:
+  Even so my sun one early morn did shine
+  With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
+  But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
+  The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
+  Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
+  Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.
+
+This is night in _Venus and Adonis_:
+
+  Look! the world's comforter with weary gait
+  His day's hot task hath ended in the West;
+  The owl, night's herald, shrieks 'tis very late;
+  The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest
+  And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's light,
+  Do summon us to part and bid good-night.
+
+And this morning, in _Romeo and Juliet_:
+
+  The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,
+  Checkering the Eastern clouds with streaks of light.
+  And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
+  From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels;
+  Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
+  The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry ...
+
+Such wealth and brilliance of personification was not found again
+until Goethe, Byron, and Shelley.
+
+He is unusually rich in descriptive phrases:
+
+  The weary sun hath made a golden set,
+  And by the bright track of his golden car
+  Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.
+
+            The worshipp'd Sun
+  Peered forth the golden window of the East.
+
+            The all-cheering sun
+  Should in the farthest East begin to draw
+  The shady curtains from Aurora's bed.
+
+The moon:
+
+  Like to a silver bow
+  New bent in heaven.
+
+Titania says:
+
+  I will wind thee in my arms....
+  So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
+  Gently entwist; the female ivy so
+  Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
+  O how I love thee!
+
+  That same dew, which sometime on the buds
+  Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,
+  Stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes
+  Like tears.
+                      (_Midsummer Night's Dream._)
+
+                             Daffodils
+  That come before the swallow dares, and take
+  The winds of March with beauty.
+                                (_Winter's Tale._)
+
+                         Pale primroses
+  That die unmarried, ere they can behold
+  Bright Phoebus in his strength.
+                                (_Winter's Tale._)
+
+Goethe calls winds and waves lovers. In _Troilus and Cressida_ we
+have:
+
+  The sea being smooth,
+  How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
+  Upon her patient breast, making their way
+  With those of nobler bulk!
+  But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
+  The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
+  The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut,
+  Bounding between two moist elements
+  Like Perseus' horse.
+
+And further on in the same scene:
+
+  What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
+  Commotion in the winds!
+  ... the bounded waters
+  Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores.
+
+The personification of the river in _Henry IV._ is half mythical:
+
+  When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank
+  In single opposition, hand to hand,
+  He did confound the best part of an hour
+  In changing hardiment with great Glendower;
+  Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink,
+  Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;
+  Who, then affrighted with their bloody looks,
+  Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
+  And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,
+  Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.
+
+Striking instances of personification from _Antony and Cleopatra_
+are:
+
+  The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne
+  Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
+  Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
+  The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
+  Which to the time of flutes kept stroke, and made
+  The water which they beat to follow faster
+  As amorous of their strokes.
+
+And Antony, enthron'd in the market-place, sat alone
+
+  Whistling to the air, which but for vacancy
+  Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
+  And made a gap in nature.
+
+Instead of accumulating further instances of these very modern and
+individual (and sometimes far-fetched) personifications, it is of
+more interest to see how Shakespeare used Nature, not only as
+background and colouring, but to act a part of her own in the play,
+so producing the grandest of all personifications.
+
+At the beginning of Act III. in _King Lear_, Kent asks:
+
+  Who's there beside foul weather?
+
+  _Gentleman_: One minded like the weather, most unquietly.
+
+  _Kent_: Where's the King?
+
+  _Gent_: Contending with the fretful elements.
+  Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
+  Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main,
+  That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,
+  Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage
+  Catch in their fury and make nothing of;
+  Strives in his little world of men to outscorn
+  The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.
+
+In the stormy night on the wild heath the poor old man hears the echo
+of his own feelings in the elements; his daughters' ingratitude,
+hardness, and cruelty produce a moral disturbance like the
+disturbance in Nature; he breaks out:
+
+  Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks. Rage! Blow!
+  You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
+  Till you have drench'd our steeples, drowned the cocks!
+  You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
+  Vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunder-bolts,
+  Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
+  Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
+  Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once
+  That make ungrateful man....
+  Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire, spout rain!
+
+  Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters,
+  I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness;
+  I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
+  You owe me no subscription; then, let fall
+  Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
+  A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man:
+  But yet I call you servile ministers,
+  That will with two pernicious daughters join
+  Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
+  So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!
+
+How closely here animate and inanimate Nature are woven together, the
+reasoning with the unreasoning. The poet makes the storm, rain,
+thunder, and lightning live, and at the same time endues his human
+figures with a strength of feeling and passion which gives them
+kinship to the elements. In _Othello_, too, there _is_ uproar in
+Nature:
+
+  Do but stand upon the foaming shore,
+  The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds....
+  I never did like molestation view
+  On the enchafed flood.
+
+but even the unruly elements spare Desdemona:
+
+  Tempests themselves, high seas and howling winds,
+  The gather'd rocks and congregated sands.
+  Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel--
+  As having sense of beauty, do omit
+  Their mortal natures, letting go safely by
+  The divine Desdemona.
+
+Cassio lays stress upon 'the great contention of the sea and skies';
+but when Othello meets Desdemona, he cries:
+
+                     O my soul's joy!
+  If after every tempest come such calms,
+  May the winds blow till they have wakened death!
+  And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas
+  Olympus-high, and duck again as low
+  As hell's from heaven. If it were now to die,
+  'Twere now to be most happy.
+
+Iago calls the elements to witness his truthfulness:
+
+  Witness, you ever-burning lights above,
+  You elements that clip us round about,
+  Witness, that here Iago doth give up
+  The execution of his wit, hands, heart,
+  To wrong'd Othello's service.
+
+Nature is disgusted at Othello's jealousy:
+
+  Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks;
+  The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets,
+  Is hush'd within the hollow mine of earth
+  And will not hear it.
+
+In terrible mental confusion he cries:
+
+  O insupportable, O heavy hour!
+  Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
+  Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe
+  Should yawn at alteration.
+
+Unhappy Desdemona sings:
+
+  The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
+  Sing all a green willow;
+  Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
+  Sing willow, willow, willow;
+  The fresh streams ran by her and murmur'd her moans,
+  Sing willow, willow, willow.
+
+A song in _Cymbeline_ contains a beautiful personification of
+flowers:
+
+  Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
+  And Phoebus 'gins arise,
+  His steeds to water at those springs
+  On chalic'd flowers that lies;
+  And winking Mary-buds begin
+  To ope their golden eyes;
+  With everything that pretty is,
+  My lady sweet, arise;
+  Arise! Arise!
+
+The clearest expression of sympathy for Nature is in _Macbeth_.
+
+Repeatedly we meet the idea that Nature shudders before the crime,
+and gives signs of coming disaster.
+
+Macbeth himself says:
+
+                   Stars, hide your fires!
+  Let not light see my black and deep desires;
+  The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
+  Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
+
+and Lady Macbeth:
+
+       ... The raven himself is hoarse
+  That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
+  Under my battlements.... Come, thick night,
+  And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
+  That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
+  Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
+  To cry 'Hold! hold!'...
+
+The peaceful castle to which Duncan comes all unsuspectingly, is in
+most striking contrast to the fateful tone which pervades the
+tragedy. Duncan says:
+
+  This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
+  Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
+  Unto our gentle senses.
+
+and Banquo:
+
+                    This guest of summer,
+  The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
+  By his loved masonry, that the heaven's breath
+  Smells wooingly here; no jetty, frieze,
+  Buttress, nor coign of vantage but this bird
+  Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle;
+  Where they most breed and haunt I have observ'd
+  The air is delicate.
+
+Perhaps the familiar swallow has never been treated with more
+discrimination; and at this point of the tale of horror it has the
+effect of a ray of sunshine in a sky dark with storm clouds.
+
+In Act II. Macbeth describes his own horror and Nature's:
+
+               Now o'er the one half world
+  Nature seems dead.... Thou sure and firm-set earth,
+  Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
+  Thy very stones prate of my whereabouts.
+
+Lady Macbeth says:
+
+  It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman
+  Which gives the stern'st good-night.
+
+Lenox describes this night:
+
+  The night has been unruly: where we lay
+  Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
+  Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death
+  And prophesying, with accents terrible,
+  Of dire combustion and confus'd events,
+  New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird
+  Clamour'd the live-long night: some say, the earth
+  Was feverish and did shake.
+
+and later on, an old man says:
+
+  Three score and ten I can remember well;
+  Within the volume of which time I have seen
+  Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
+  Hath trifled former knowings.
+
+Rosse answers him:
+
+                       Ah, good father,
+  Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
+  Threaten his bloody stage; by the clock 'tis day,
+  And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
+  Is't night's predominance or the day's shame
+  That darkness does the-face of earth entomb
+  When living light should kiss it?
+
+The whole play is a thrilling expression of the sympathy for Nature
+which attributes its own feelings to her--a human shudder in presence
+of the wicked--a human horror of crime, most thrilling of all in
+Macbeth's words:
+
+                  Come, seeling night,
+  Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
+  And with thy bloody and invisible hand
+  Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
+  Which keeps me pale.
+
+In _Hamlet_, too, Nature is shocked at man's mis-deeds:
+
+       ... Such an act (the queen's)
+  That blurs the grace and blush of modesty
+       ... Heaven's face doth glow,
+  Yea, this solidity and compound mass
+  With tristful visage, as against the doom,
+  Is thought-sick at the act.
+
+But there are other personifications in this most wonderful of all
+tragedies, such as the magnificent one:
+
+  But look, the dawn, in russet mantle clad.
+  Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.
+
+The first player declaims:
+
+  But, as we often see, against some storm
+  A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
+  The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
+  As hush as death....
+
+Ophelia dies:
+
+  When down her weedy trophies and herself
+  Fell in the weeping brook.
+
+and Laertes commands:
+
+  Lay her i' the earth,
+  And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
+  May violets spring.
+
+Thus Shakespeare's great imagination gave life and soul to every
+detail of Nature, and he obtained the right background for his
+dramas, not only through choice of scenery, but by making Nature a
+sharer of human impulse, happy with the happy, shuddering in the
+presence of wickedness.
+
+He drew every phase of Nature with the individualizing touch which
+stamps her own peculiar character, and also brings her into sympathy
+with the inner life, often with that poetic intuition which is so
+closely allied to mythology. And this holds good not only in dealing
+with the great elementary forces--storms, thunder, lightning,
+etc.--but with flowers, streams, the glow of sunlight. Always and
+everywhere the grasp of Nature was intenser, more individual, and
+subjective, than any we have met hitherto.
+
+Idyllic feeling for Nature became sympathetic in his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE DISCOVERY OF THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE
+IN PAINTING
+
+
+The indispensable condition of landscape-painting--painting, that is,
+which raises the representation of Nature to the level of its main
+subject and paints her entirely for her own sake--is the power to
+compose separate studies into a whole and imbue that with an artistic
+idea. It was therefore impossible among people like the Hebrews,[1]
+whose eyes were always fixed on distance and only noted what lay
+between in a cursory way, and among those who considered detail
+without relation to a whole, as we have seen in mediæval poetry until
+the Renaissance. But just as study of the laws of aerial and linear
+perspective demands a trained and keen eye, and therefore implies
+interest in Nature, so the artistic idea, the soul of the picture,
+depends directly upon the degree of the artist's feeling for her
+Literature and painting are equal witnesses to the feeling for
+Nature, and so long as scenery was only background in poetry, it had
+no greater importance in painting. Landscape painting could only
+arise in the period which produced complete pictures of scenery in
+poetry--the sentimental idyllic period.
+
+We have seen how in the Italian Renaissance the fetters of dogma,
+tradition, and mediæval custom were removed, and servility and
+visionariness gave place to healthy individuality and realism; how
+man and the world were discovered anew; and further, how among the
+other Romanic nations a lively feeling for Nature grew up, partly
+idyllic, partly mystic; and finally, how this feeling found dramatic
+expression in Shakespeare.
+
+Natural philosophy also, in the course of its search for truth, as it
+threw off both one-sided Christian ideas and ancient traditions, came
+gradually to feel an interest in Nature; not only her laws, but her
+beauty, became an object of enthusiastic study. By a very long
+process of development the Hellenic feeling for Nature was reached
+again in the Renaissance; but it always remained, despite its
+sentimental and pantheistic elements, sensual, superficial, and
+naive, in comparison with Christian feeling, which a warmer heart and
+a mind trained in scholastic wisdom had rendered more profound and
+abstract. Hence Nature was sometimes an object of attention in
+detail, sometimes in mass.[2]
+
+As we come to the first landscape painters and their birthplace in
+the Netherlands, we see how steady and orderly is the development of
+the human mind, and how factors that seem isolated are really links
+in one chain.
+
+In the Middle Ages, landscape was only background with more or less
+fitness to the subject. By the fifteenth century it was richer in
+detail, as we see in Pisanello and the Florentines Gozzoli and
+Mantegna. The poetry of earth had been discovered; the gold grounds
+gave way to field, wood, hill, and dale, and the blue behind the
+heads became a dome of sky. In the sixteenth century, Giorgione
+shewed the value of effects of light, and Correggio's backgrounds
+were in harmony with his tender, cheerful scenes. Titian loved to
+paint autumn; the sunny days of October with blue grapes, golden
+oranges, and melons; and evening with deep harmonies of colour over
+the sleeping earth. He was a great pioneer in the realm of landscape.
+With Michael Angelo not a blade of grass grew; his problem was man
+alone. Raphael's backgrounds, on the other hand, are life-like in
+detail: his little birds could fly out of the picture, the stems of
+his plants seem to curve and bend towards us, and we look deep into
+the flower they hold out.[3]
+
+In the German Renaissance too, the great masters limited themselves
+to charming framework and ingenious arabesques for their Madonnas and
+Holy Families. But, as Lübke says,[4] one soon sees that Dürer
+depended on architecture for borders and backgrounds far less than
+Holbein; he preferred landscape.
+
+'The charm of this background is so great, the inwardness of German
+feeling for Nature so strongly expressed in it, that it has a special
+value of its own, and the master through it has become the father of
+landscape painting.'[5]
+
+This must be taken with a grain of salt; but, at all events, it is
+true that Dürer combined 'keen and devoted study of Nature (in the
+widest sense of the word) with a penetration which aimed at tracing
+her facts up to their source.'[6] It is interesting to see how these
+qualities overcame his theoretical views on Nature and art.[7]
+Dürer's deep respect for Nature proved him a child of the new era.
+Melanchthon relates that he often regretted that he had been too much
+attracted in his younger days by variety and the fantastic, and had
+only understood Nature's simple truth and beauty later in life.
+
+His riper judgment preferred her to all other models. Nature, in his
+remarks on the theory of art, includes the animate and the inanimate,
+living creatures as well as scenery, and it is interesting to observe
+that his admiration of her as a divine thing was due to deep
+religious feeling. In his work on Proportion[8] he says:
+
+'Certainly art is hidden in Nature, and he who is able to separate it
+by force from Nature, he possesses it. Never imagine that you can or
+will surpass Nature's achievements; human effort cannot compare with
+the ability which her Creator has given her. Therefore no man can
+ever make a picture which excels Nature's; and when, through much
+copying, he has seized her spirit, it cannot be called original work,
+it is rather something received and learnt, whose seeds grow and bear
+fruit of their own kind. Thereby the gathered treasure of the heart,
+and the new creature which takes shape and form there, comes to light
+in the artist's work.'
+
+Elsewhere Dürer says 'a good painter's mind is full of figures,' and
+he repeatedly remarks upon the superabundant beauty of all living
+things which human intelligence rarely succeeds in reproducing.
+
+The first modern landscapes in which man was only accessory were
+produced in the Netherlands. Quiet, absorbed musing on the external
+world was characteristic of the nation; they studied the smallest and
+most trifling objects with care, and set a high value on minutiæ.
+
+The still-life work of their prime was only possible to such an
+easy-going, life-loving people; the delightful animal pictures of
+Paul Potter and Adrian van de Velde could only have been painted in
+the land of Reineke Fuchs. Carrière says about these masters of genre
+painting[9]: 'Through the emphasis laid upon single objects, they not
+only revealed the national characteristics, but penetrated far into
+the soul of Nature and mirrored their own feelings there, so
+producing works of art of a kind unknown to antiquity. That divine
+element, which the Greek saw in the human form, the Germanic race
+divined in all the visible forms of Nature, and so felt at one with
+them and able to reveal itself through them.
+
+'Nature was studied more for her own sake than in her relation to
+man, and scenery became no longer mere background, but the actual
+object of the picture. Animals, and even men, whether bathing in the
+river, lying under trees, or hunting in the forest, were nothing but
+accessories; inorganic Nature was the essential element. The greatest
+Dutch masters did not turn their attention to the extraordinary and
+stupendous, the splendour of the high Alps or their horrible
+crevasses, or sunny Italian mountains reflected in their lakes or
+tropical luxuriance, but to common objects of everyday life. But
+these they grasped with a precision and depth of feeling which gave
+charm to the most trifling--it was the life of the universe divined
+in its minutiæ. In its treatment of landscape their genre painting
+displayed the very characteristics which had brought it into
+being.'[10]
+
+The physical characters of the country favoured landscape painting
+too. No doubt the moist atmosphere and its silvery sheen, which add
+such freshness and brilliance to the colouring, influenced the
+development of the colour sense, as much as the absence of sharp
+contrasts in contour, the suggestive skies, and abundance of streams,
+woods, meadows, and dales.
+
+But it was in devotional pictures that the Netherlanders first tried
+their wings; landscape and scenes from human life did not free
+themselves permanently from religion and take independent place for
+more than a century later. The fourteenth-century miniatures shew the
+first signs of the northern feeling for Nature in illustrations of
+the seasons in the calendar pictures of religious manuscripts.
+Beginnings of landscape can be clearly seen in that threshold picture
+of Netherland art, the altar-piece at Ghent by the brothers Van Eyck,
+which was finished in 1432. It shews the most accurate observation:
+all the plants, grasses, flowers, rose bushes, vines, and palms, are
+correctly drawn; and the luxuriant valley in which the Christian
+soldiers and the knights are riding, with its rocky walls covered by
+undergrowth jutting stiffly forward, is very like the valley of the
+Maas.
+
+One sees that the charm of landscape has dawned upon the painters.
+
+Their skies are no longer golden, but blue, and flecked with
+cloudlets and alive with birds; wood and meadow shine in sappy green;
+fantastic rocks lie about, and the plains are bounded by low hills.
+They are drinking deep draughts from a newly-opened spring, and they
+can scarcely have enough of it. They would like to paint all the
+leaves and fruit on the trees, all the flowers on the grass, even all
+the dewdrops. The effect of distance too has been discovered, for
+there are blue hill-tops beyond the nearer green ones, and a
+foreground scene opens back on a distant plain (in the Ghent
+altar-piece, the scene with the pilgrims); but they still possess
+very few tones, and their overcrowded detail is almost all, from
+foreground to furthest distance, painted in the same luminous strong
+dark-green, as if in insatiable delight at the beauty of their own
+colour. The progress made by Jan van Eyck in landscape was immense.
+
+To the old masters Nature had been an unintelligible chaos of detail,
+but beauty, through ecclesiastical tradition, an abstract attribute
+of the Holy Family and the Saints, and they had used their best
+powers of imagination in accordance with this view. Hence they placed
+the Madonna upon a background of one colour, generally gilded. But
+now the great discovery was made that Nature was a distinct entity, a
+revelation and reflection of the divine in herself. And Jan van Eyck
+introduced a great variety of landscapes behind his Madonnas. One
+looks, for instance, through an open window to a wide stretch of
+country with fields and fortresses, and towns with streets full of
+people, all backed by mountains. And whether the scene itself, or
+only its background, lies in the open, the landscape is of the
+widest, enlivened by countless forms and adorned by splendid
+buildings.
+
+Molanus, the savant of Löwen, proclaimed Dierick Bouts, born like his
+predecessor Ouwater at Haarlem, to be the inventor of landscape
+painting (claruit inventor in describendo rare); but the van Eycks
+were certainly before him, though he increased the significance of
+landscape painting and shewed knowledge of aerial perspective and
+gradations of tone. Landscape was a distinct entity to him, and could
+excite the mood that suited his subject, as, for instance, in the
+side picture of the Last Supper, where the foreground is drawn with
+such exactness that every plant and even the tiny creatures crawling
+on the grass can be identified.
+
+The scenery of Roger van der Weyden of Brabant--river valleys
+surrounded by jagged rocks and mountains, isolated trees, and meadows
+bright with sappy green--is clearly the result of direct Nature
+study; it has a uniform transparent atmosphere, and a clear green
+shimmer lies over the foreground and gradually passes into blue haze
+further back.
+
+His pupil, Memling, shews the same fine gradations of tone. The
+composition of his richest picture, 'The Marriage of St Catherine,'
+did not allow space for an unbroken landscape, but the lines of wood
+and field converge to a vista in such a way that the general effect
+is one of unity.
+
+Joachim de Patenir, who appeared in 1515, was called a landscape
+painter by his contemporaries, because he reduced his sacred figures
+to a modest size, enlarged his landscape, and handled it with extreme
+care. He was very far from grasping it as a whole, but his method was
+synthetical; his river valleys, with masses of tree and bush and
+romantic rocks, fantastic and picturesque, with fortresses on the
+river banks, all shew this.
+
+Kerry de Bles was like him, but less accurate; with all the rest of
+the sixteenth-century painters of Brabant and Flanders, he did not
+rise to the idea of landscape as a whole.
+
+The most minute attention was given to the accurate painting of
+single objects, especially plants; the Flemings caring more for
+perfect truth to life, the Dutch for beauty. The Flemings generally
+sought to improve their landscape by embellishing its lines, while
+the Dutch gave its spirit, but adhered simply and strictly to Nature.
+The landscapes of Peter Brueghel the elder, with their dancing
+peasants surrounded by rocks, mills, groups of trees, are painful in
+their thoroughness; and Jan Brueghel carried imitation of Nature so
+far that his minutise required a magnifying-glass--it was veritable
+miniature work. He introduced fruit and flower painting as a new
+feature of art.
+
+Rubens and Brueghel often painted on each other's canvas, Brueghel
+supplying landscape backgrounds for Rubens' pictures, and Rubens the
+figures for Brueghel's landscapes. Yet Rubens himself was the best
+landscapist of the Flemish school. He was more than that. For
+Brueghel and his followers, with all their patience and industry,
+their blue-green landscape with imaginary trees, boundless distance
+and endless detail, were very far from a true grasp of Nature. It was
+Rubens and his school who really made landscape a legitimate
+independent branch of art. They studied it in all its aspects, quiet
+and homely, wild and romantic, some taking one and some the other:
+Rubens himself, in his large way, grasping the whole without losing
+sight of its parts. They all lifted the veil from Nature and saw her
+as she was (Falke).
+
+Brueghel put off the execution of a picture for which he had a
+commission from winter to spring, that he might study the flowers for
+it from Nature when they came out, and did not grudge a journey to
+Brussels now and then to paint flowers not to be had at Antwerp.
+There is a characteristic letter which he sent to the Archbishop of
+Milan with a picture:
+
+'I send your Reverence the picture with the flowers, which are all
+painted from Nature. I have painted in as many as possible. I believe
+so many rare and different flowers have never been painted before nor
+so industriously. It will give a beautiful effect in winter; some of
+the colours almost equal Nature. I have painted an ornament under the
+flowers with artistic medallions and curiosities from the sea. I
+leave it to your reverence to judge whether the flowers do not far
+exceed gold and jewels in colour.'
+
+He also painted landscapes in which people were only accessory, sunny
+valleys with leafage, golden cornfields, meadows with rows of dancing
+country folk or reapers in the wheat.
+
+Rubens, though he felt the influence of southern light and sunshine
+as much as his fellows who had been in Italy, took his backgrounds
+from his native land, from parts round Antwerp, Mechlin, and
+Brussels. Foliage, water, and undulating ground were indispensable to
+him--were, to a certain extent, the actual bearers of the impression
+he wished to convey.
+
+Brueghel always kept a childlike attitude, delighting in details, and
+proud of the clever brush which could carry imitation to the point of
+deception. Rubens was the first to treat landscape in a bold
+subjective way. He opened the book of Nature, so to speak, not to
+spell out the words syllable by syllable, but to master her secret,
+to descend into the depths of her soul, and then reflect what he
+found there--in short, he fully understood the task of the landscape
+painter. The fifty landscapes of his which we possess, contain the
+whole scale from a state of idyllic repose to one of dramatic
+excitement and tension. Take, for instance, the evening scene with
+the rainbow in the Louvre, marvellous in its delicate gradations of
+atmospheric tone, and the equally marvellous thunderstorm in the
+Belvedere at Vienna, where a rain-cloud bursts under sulphur
+lightning, and a mountain stream, swollen to a torrent and lashed by
+the hurricane, carries all before it--trees, rocks, animals, and men.
+
+In France, scarcely a flower had been seen in literature since the
+Troubadour days, not even in the classical poetry of Corneille and
+Racine. There were idyllic features in Fénelon's _Telemachus_, and
+Ronsard borrowed motives from antiquity; but it was pastoral poetry
+which blossomed luxuriantly here as in Italy and Spain.
+
+Honoré d'Urfé's famous _Astrée_ was much translated; but both his
+shepherds and his landscape were artificial, and the perfume of
+courts and carpet knights was over the whole, with a certain trace of
+sadness.
+
+The case was different with French painting. After the Netherlands,
+it was France, by her mediæval illustrated manuscripts, who chiefly
+aided in opening the world's eyes to landscape. Both the Poussins
+penetrated below the surface of Nature. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)
+painted serious stately subjects, such as a group of trees in the
+foreground, a hill with a classic building in the middle, and a chain
+of mountains in the distance, and laid more stress on drawing than
+colour. There was greater life in the pictures of his brother-in-law,
+Caspar Doughet, also called Poussin; his grass is more succulent, his
+winds sigh in the trees, his storm bends the boughs and scatters the
+clouds.
+
+It was Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) who brought the ideal style to its
+perfection. He inspired the very elements with mind and feeling; his
+valleys, woods, and seas were just a veil through which divinity was
+visible. All that was ugly, painful, and confused was purified and
+transfigured in his hands. There is no sadness or dejection in his
+pictures, but a spirit of serene beauty, free from ostentation,
+far-fetched contrast, or artificial glitter. Light breezes blow in
+his splendid trees, golden light quivers through them, drawing the
+eye to a bright misty horizon; we say with Uhland, 'The sky is
+solemn, as if it would say "this is the day of the Lord."'
+
+Artistic feeling for Nature became a worship with Claude Lorraine.
+
+The Netherlands recorded all Nature's phases in noble emulation with
+ever-increasing delight.
+
+The poetry of air, cloudland, light, the cool freshness of morning,
+the hazy sultriness of noon, the warm light of evening, it all lives
+and moves in Cuyp's pictures and Wynant's, while Aart van der Meer
+painted moonlight and winter snow, and Jan van Goyen the melancholy
+of mist shot by sunlight. He, too--Jan van Goyen--was very clever in
+producing effect with very small means, with a few trees reflected in
+water, or a sand-heap--the art in which Ruysdael excelled all others.
+The whole poetry of Nature--that secret magic which lies like a spell
+over quiet wood, murmuring sea, still pool, and lonely pasture--took
+form and colour under his hands; so little sufficed to enchant, to
+rouse thought and feeling, and lead them whither he would. Northern
+seriousness and sadness brood over most of his work; the dark trees
+are overhung by heavy clouds and rain, mist and dusky shadows move
+among his ruins. He had painted, says Carrière, the peace of woodland
+solitude long before Tieck found the word for it.
+
+Beechwoods reflected in a stream, misty cloud masses lighted by the
+rising sun; he moves us with such things as with a morning hymn, and
+his picture of a swollen torrent forcing its way between graves which
+catch the last rays of the sun, while a cloud of rain shrouds the
+ruins of a church in the background, is an elegy which has taken
+shape and colour.
+
+Ruysdael marks the culminating point of this period of development,
+which had led from mere backgrounds and single traits of Nature--even
+a flower stem or a blade of grass, up to elaborate compositions
+imbued by a single motive, a single idea.
+
+To conjure up with slight material a complete little world of its
+own, and waken responsive feeling, is not this the secret of the
+charm in the pictures of his school--in the wooded hill or peasant's
+courtyard by Hobbema, the Norwegian mountain scene of Albert van
+Everdingen, the dusky fig-trees, rugged crags, and foaming cataract,
+or the half-sullen, half-smiling sea-pieces of Bakhuysen and Van der
+Velde?
+
+All these great Netherlander far outstripped the poetry of their
+time; it was a hundred years later before mountain and sea found
+their painter in words, and a complete landscape picture was not born
+in German poetry until the end of the eighteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HUMANISM, ROCOCO, AND PIGTAIL
+
+
+Many decades passed before German feeling for Nature reached the
+heights attained by the Italian Renaissance and the Netherland
+landscapists. In the Middle Ages, Germany was engrossed with
+ecclesiastical dogma--man's relation, not only to God, but to the one
+saving Church--and had little interest for Science and Art; and the
+great achievement of the fifteenth century, the Reformation, called
+for word and deed to reckon with a thousand years of old traditions
+and the slavery of intellectual despotism. The new time was born amid
+bitter throes. The questions at issue--religious and ecclesiastical
+questions concerned with the liberty of the Christian--were of the
+most absorbing kind, and though Germany produced minds of individual
+stamp such as she had never known before, characters of original and
+marked physiognomy, it was no time for the quiet contemplation of
+Nature. Mental life was stimulated by the new current of ideas and
+new delight in life awakened: yet there is scarcely a trace of the
+intense feeling for Nature which we have seen in Petrarch and Æneas
+Sylvius.
+
+Largely as it was influenced by the Italian Renaissance, it is
+certainly a mistake to reckon the Humanist movement in Germany, as
+Geiger does,[1] as a 'merely imported culture, entirely lacking
+independence.' The germ of this great movement towards mental freedom
+was contained in the general trend of the time, which was striving to
+free itself from the fetters of the Middle Ages in customs and
+education as well as dogma. It was chiefly a polemical movement, a
+fight between contentious savants. The writings of the Humanists at
+this naively sensuous period were full of the joy of life and love of
+pleasure; but scarcely any simple feeling for Nature can be found in
+them, and there was neither poet nor poem fit to be compared with
+Petrarch and his sonnets.
+
+Natural philosophy, too, was proscribed by scholastic wisdom; the
+real Aristotle was only gradually shelled out from under mediæval
+accretions. The natural philosopher, Conrad Summenhart[2] (1450-1501)
+was quite unable to disbelieve the foolish legend, that the
+appearance of a comet foretold four certain events--heat, wind, war,
+and the death of princes. At the same time, not being superstitious,
+he held aloof from the crazy science of astrology and all the fraud
+connected with it. Indeed, as an observer of Nature, and still more
+as a follower and furtherer of the scholastic Aristotelian natural
+philosophy, he shewed a leaning towards the theory of development,
+for, according to him, the more highly organized structures proceed
+from those of lower organization, and these again form the inorganic
+under the influence of meteors and stars. The poet laureate Conrad
+Celtes (_b_. 1459), a singer of love and composer of four books about
+it, was a true poet. His incessant wandering, for he was always
+moving from place to place, was due in part to love of Nature and of
+novelty, but still more to a desire to spread his own fame. He lacked
+the naivete and openness to impressions of the true child of Nature;
+his songs in praise of spring, etc., scatter a colourless general
+praise, which is evidently the result of arduous thought rather than
+of direct impressions from without; and his many references to
+ancient deities shew that he borrowed more than his phrases.
+
+Though geography was then closely bound up with the writing of
+history, as represented by Beatus Rhenanus (1485-1547) and Johann
+Aventinus, and patriotism and the accounts of new lands led men to
+wish to describe the beauties and advantages of their own, the
+imposing discoveries across the seas did not make so forcible an
+impression upon the German humanist as upon savants elsewhere,
+especially in Italy and Spain. A mystico-theosophical feeling for
+Nature, or rather a magical knowledge of her, flourished in Germany
+at this time among the learned, both among Protestants and those who
+were partially true to Catholicism. One of the strangest exponents of
+such ideas was Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim of Cologne[3] (1535).
+His system of the world abounded in such fantastic caprices as these:
+everything depends on harmony and sympathy; when one of Nature's
+strings is struck, the others sound with it: the analogical
+correspondences are at the same time magical: symbolic relations
+between natural objects are sympathetic also: a true love-bond exists
+between the elm and vine: the sun bestows life on man; the moon,
+growth; Mercury, imagination; Venus, love, etc. God is reflected in
+the macrocosm, gives light in all directions through all creatures,
+is adumbrated in man microcosmically, and so forth.
+
+Among others, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus
+von Hohenheim (1541), ranked Nature and the Bible, like Agrippa, as
+the best books about God and the only ones without falsehood.
+
+'One must study the elements, follow Nature from land to land, since
+each single country is only one leaf in the book of creation. The
+eyes that find pleasure in this true experience are the true
+professors, and more reliable than all learned writings.'
+
+He held man to be less God's very image than a microcosmic copy of
+Nature--the quintessence of the whole world. Other enthusiasts made
+similar statements. Sebastian Frank of Donauwörth (1543) looked upon
+the whole world as an open book and living Bible, in which to study
+the power and art of God and learn His will: everything was His
+image, all creatures are 'a reflection, imprint, and expression of
+God, through knowledge of which man may come to know the true Mover
+and Cause of all things.'
+
+He shewed warm feeling for Nature in many similes and descriptions[4]--
+in fact, much of his pithy drastic writing sounds pantheistic. But he
+was very far from the standpoint of the great Italian philosophers,
+Giordano Bruno and Campanella. Bruno, a poet as well as thinker,
+distinguished Nature in her self-development--matter, soul, and
+mind--as being stages and phases of the One.
+
+  The material of all things issues from the original womb,
+  For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths;
+  She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind.
+  Which fashions its own material, not that of others,
+  And does not falter or doubt, but all by itself
+  Lightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles.
+  Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere,
+  Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one,
+  Orders and disposes of everything together.
+
+Campanella, even in a revolting prison, sang in praise of the wisdom
+and love of God, and His image in Nature. He personified everything
+in her; nothing was without feeling; the very movements of the stars
+depended on sympathy and antipathy; harmony was the central soul of
+all things.
+
+The most extraordinary of all German thinkers was the King of
+Mystics, Jacob Böhme. Theist and pantheist at once, his mind was a
+ferment of different systems of thought. It is very difficult to
+unriddle his _Aurora_, but love of Nature, as well as love of God, is
+clear in its mystical utterances:
+
+  God is the heart or source of Nature.
+  Nature is the body of God.
+
+'As man's mind rules his whole body in every vein and fills his whole
+being, so the Holy Ghost fills all Nature, and is its heart and rules
+in the good qualities of all things.'
+
+'But now heaven is a delightful chamber of pleasure, in which are all
+the powers, as in all Nature the sky is the heart of the waters.'
+
+In another place he calls God the vital power in the tree of life,
+the creatures His branches, and Nature the perfection and
+self-begotten of God.
+
+Nature's powers are explained as passion, will, and love, often in
+lofty and beautiful comparisons:
+
+'As earth always bears beautiful flowers, plants, and trees, as well
+as metals and animate beings, and these finer, stronger, and more
+beautiful at one time than another; and as one springs into being as
+another dies, causing constant use and work, so it is in still
+greater degree with the begetting of the holy mysteries[5] ...
+creation is nothing else than a revelation of the all-pervading
+superficial godhead ... and is like the music of many flutes combined
+into one great harmony.'
+
+But the most representative man, both of the fifteenth century and,
+in a sense, of the German race, was Luther. That maxim of Goethe's
+for teaching and ethics,' Cheerfulness is the mother of all virtues,
+might well serve as a motto for Luther;
+
+The two men had much in common.
+
+The one, standing half in the Middle Ages, had to free himself from
+mental slavery by strength of will and courage of belief.
+
+The other, as the prophet of the nineteenth century, the incarnation
+of the modern man, had to shake off the artificiality and weak
+sentimentality of the eighteenth.
+
+To both alike a healthy joy in existence was the root of being.
+Luther was always open to the influence of Nature, and,
+characteristically, the Psalter was his favourite book. 'Lord, how
+manifold are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them all!'
+
+True to his German character, he could be profoundly sad; but his
+disposition was delightfully cheerful and healthy, and we see from
+his letters and table-talk, that after wife and child, it was in
+'God's dear world' that he took the greatest pleasure. He could not
+have enough of the wonders of creation, great or small. 'By God's
+mercy we begin to see the splendour of His works and wonders in the
+little flowers, as we consider how kind and almighty He is; therefore
+we praise and thank Him. In His creatures we see the power of His
+word--how great it is. In a peach stone, too, for hard as the shell
+is, the very soft kernel within causes it to open at the right
+time.'[6] Again, 'So God is present in all creatures, even the
+smallest leaves and poppy seeds.'
+
+All that he saw of Nature inspired him with confidence in the
+fatherly goodness of God. He wrote, August 5th, 1530, to Chancellor
+Brneck:
+
+    I have lately seen two wonderful things: the first, looking from
+    the window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw
+    never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is
+    still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such
+    pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and
+    because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would
+    certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep
+    over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great
+    sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no vats in
+    which they were contained, yet they did not fall on us, but
+    greeted us with a frown and flew away. When they had gone, the
+    rainbow lighted both the ground and the roof which had held them.
+
+Luther often used very forcible images from Nature. 'It is only for
+the sake of winter that we lie and rot in the earth; when our summer
+comes, our grain will spring up--rain, sun, and wind prepare us for
+it--that is, the Word, the Sacraments, and the Holy Ghost.'
+
+His Bible was an orchard of all sorts of fruit trees; in the
+introduction to the Psalter, he says of the thanksgiving psalms:
+'There one looks into the hearts of the saints as into bright and
+beautiful gardens--nay, as into heaven itself, where pure and happy
+thoughts of God and His goodness are the lovely flowers.'
+
+His description of heaven for his little son John is full of simple
+reverent delight in Nature, quite free from platonic and mystical
+speculation as to God's relation to His universe; and Protestant
+divines kept this tone up to the following century, until the days of
+rationalism and pietism.
+
+Of such spontaneous hearty joy in Nature as this, the national songs
+of a nation are always the medium. They were so now; for, while a
+like feeling was nowhere else to be found, the Volkslieder expressed
+the simple familiar relationship of the child of Nature to wood,
+tree, and flower in touching words and a half-mythical,
+half-allegorical tone which often revealed their old Germanic origin.
+
+There is a fourteenth-century song, probably from the Lower Rhine,[7]
+which suggests the poems of the eighth and ninth centuries, about a
+great quarrel between Spring, crowned with flowers, and hoary-headed
+Winter, in which one praises and the other blames the cuckoo for
+announcing Spring.
+
+In this song, Summer complains to mankind and other friends that a
+mighty master is going to drive him away; this mighty master, Winter,
+then takes up the word, and menaces Spring with the approach of
+frost, who will slight and imprison him, and then kill him; ice and
+hail agree with Winter, and storm, rain, snow, and bitter winds are
+called his vassals, etc.
+
+There are naive verses in praise of Spring and Summer:
+
+  When that the breezes blow in May,
+  And snow melts from the wood away,
+  Blue violets lift their heads on high,
+  And when the little wood-birds sing,
+  And flow'rets from the ground up-spring,
+  Then everybody's glad.
+
+Others complaining of Winter, who must have leave of absence, and the
+wrongs it has wrought are poured out to Summer. The little birds are
+very human; the owlet complains:
+
+        Poor little owlet me!
+  I have to fly all alone through the wood to-night;
+  The branch I want to perch on is broken,
+  The leaves are all faded,
+  My heart is full of grief.
+
+The cuckoo is either praised for bringing good news, or made fun of
+as the 'Gutzgauch.'
+
+  A cuckoo will fly to his heart's treasure, etc.
+
+The fable songs[8] of animal weddings are full of humour. The fox
+makes arrangements for his wedding: 'Up with you now, little birds! I
+am going to take a bride. The starling shall saddle the horses, for
+he has a grey mantle; the beaver with the cap of marten fur must be
+driver, the hare with his light foot shall be outrider; the
+nightingale with his clear voice shall sing the songs, the magpie
+with his steady hop must lead the dances,' etc.
+
+The nightingale, with her rich tones, is beloved and honoured before
+all the winged things; she is called 'the very dear nightingale,' and
+addressed as a lady.
+
+'Thou art a little woodbird, and flyest in and out the green wood;
+fair Nightingale, thou little woodbird, thou shalt be my messenger.'
+
+It is she who warns the girl against false love, or is the silent
+witness of caresses.
+
+There were a great many wishing songs: 'Were I a little bird and had
+two wings, I would fly to thee,' or 'Were I a wild falcon, I would
+take flight and fly down before a rich citizen's house--a little maid
+is there,' etc. 'And were my love a brooklet cold, and sprang out of
+a stone, little should I grieve if I were but a green wood; green is
+the wood, the brooklet is cold, my love is shapely.' The betrayed
+maiden cries: 'Would God I were a white swan! I would fly away over
+mountain and deep valley o'er the wide sea, so that my father and
+mother should not know where I was.'
+
+Flowers were used symbolically in many ways; roses are always the
+flowers of love. 'Pretty girls should be kissed, roses should be
+gathered,' was a common saying; and 'Gather roses by night, for then
+all the leaves are covered with cooling dew.' 'The roses are ready to
+be gathered, so gather them to-day. He who does not gather in summer,
+will not gather in winter.' There is tenderness in this: 'I only know
+a little blue flower, the colour of the sky; it grows in the green
+meadow, 'tis called forget-me-not.'
+
+These are sadder:
+
+  There is a lime tree in this valley,
+  O God! what does it there?
+  It will help me to grieve
+  That I have no lover.
+
+'Alas! you mountains and deep valleys, is this the last time I shall
+see my beloved? Sun, moon, and the whole sky must grieve with me till
+my death.'
+
+Where lovers embrace, flowers spring out of the grass, roses and
+other flowers and grasses laugh, the trees creak and birds sing;[9]
+where lovers part, grass and leaves fade.[10]
+
+Most touching of all is the idea, common to the national songs of all
+nations, that out of the grave of two lovers, lilies and roses spring
+up, or climbing plants, love thus outliving death.
+
+We look in vain among the master singers of the fifteenth and
+sixteenth centuries for such fresh heartfelt tones as these, although
+honest Hans Sachs shews joy in Nature here and there; most charmingly
+in the famous comparison of 'the Wittenberg Nightingale, which every
+one hears everywhere now,' in praise of Luther:
+
+'Wake up, the dawn is nigh! I hear a joyous nightingale singing in
+the green hedge, it fills the hills and valleys with its voice. The
+night is stooping to the west, the day is rising from the east, the
+morning red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks through. The
+moon quenches her light; now she is pale and wan, but erewhile with
+false glamours she dazzled all the sheep and turned them from their
+pasture lands and pastor....'
+
+Fischart too, in his quaint description of a voyage on the Rhine in
+_Glückhaft Schiff_, shews little feeling for Nature; but in
+_Simplicissimus_, on the other hand, that monument of literature
+which reflected contemporary culture to a unique degree, it is very
+marked; the more so since it appeared when Germany lay crushed by the
+Thirty Years' War.
+
+When the hero as a boy was driven from his village home and fled into
+the forest, he came upon a hermit who took care of him, and waking at
+midnight, he heard the old man sing:
+
+  Come, nightingale, comfort of the night,
+  Let your voice rise in a song of joy, come praise the Creator,
+  While other birds are sound asleep and cannot sing!...
+  The stars are shining in the sky in honour of God....
+  My dearest little bird, we will not be the laziest of all
+  And lie asleep; we will beguile the time with praise
+  Till dawn refreshes the desolate woods.
+
+_Simplicissimus_ goes on: 'During this song, methinks, it was as if
+nightingale, owl, and echo had combined in song, and if ever I had
+been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody
+on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to join in the
+melody, so beautiful it seemed; but I was asleep.'
+
+What was the general feeling for Nature in other countries during the
+latter half of the seventeenth century? In Italy and Spain it had
+assumed a form partly bucolic and idyllic, partly theosophically
+mystical; Shakespeare's plays had brought sympathy to maturity in
+England; the Netherlands had given birth to landscape painting, and
+France had the splendid poetic landscapes of Claude Lorraine. But the
+idealism thus reached soon degenerated into mannerism and
+artificiality, the hatching of empty effect.
+
+The aberrations of taste which found expression in the periwig style
+of Louis XIV., and in the pigtails of the eighteenth century,
+affected the feeling for Nature too. The histories of taste in
+general, and of feeling for Nature, have this in common, that their
+line of progress is not uniformly straightforward, but liable to
+zigzags. This is best seen in reviewing the different civilized races
+together. Moreover, new ideas, however forcible and original, even
+epoch-making, do not win acceptance at once, but rather trickle
+slowly through resisting layers; it is long before any new gain in
+culture becomes the common property of the educated, and hence
+opposite extremes are often found side by side--taste for what is
+natural with taste for what is artificial. Garden style is always a
+delicate test of feeling for Nature, shewing, as it does, whether we
+respect her ways or wish to impose our own. The impulse towards the
+modern French gardening came from Italy. Ancient and modern times
+both had to do with it. At the Renaissance there was a return to
+Pliny's style,[11] which the Cinque cento gardens copied. In this
+style laurel and box-hedges were clipt, and marble statues placed
+against them, 'to break the uniformity of the dark green with
+pleasant silhouettes. One looks almost in vain for flowers and turf;
+even trees were exiled to a special wilderness at the edge of the
+garden; but the great ornament of the whole was never missing, the
+wide view over sunny plains and dome-capt towns, or over the distant
+shimmering sea, which had gladdened the eyes of Roman rulers in
+classic days.'[12]
+
+The old French garden as Maître Lenotre laid it out in Louis XIV.'s
+time at Versailles, St Germain, and St Cloud, was architectural in
+design, and directly connected, like Pliny's, with various parts of
+the house, by open halls, pavilions, and colonnades. Every part of
+it--from neat turf parterres bordered by box in front of the terrace,
+designs worked out in flowers or coloured stones, and double rows of
+orange spaliers, to groups of statues and fountains--belonged to one
+symmetrical plan, the focus of which was the house, standing free
+from trees, and visible from every point. Farther off, radiating
+avenues led the eye in the same direction, and every little
+intersecting alley, true to the same principle, ran to a definite
+object--obelisk, temple, or what not. There was no lack of bowers,
+giant shrubberies, and water-courses running canal-wise through the
+park, but they all fell into straight lines; every path was ruled by
+a ruler, the eye could follow it to its very end. Artifice was the
+governing spirit. As Falke says: 'Nature dared not speak but only
+supply material; she had to sacrifice her own inventive power to this
+taste and this art. Hills and woods were only hindrances; the
+straight lines of trees and hedges, with their medley of statues and
+"cabinets de verdure," demanded level ground, and the landscape eye
+of the period only tolerated woods as a finish to its cut and clipt
+artificialities.'[13]
+
+Trees and branches were not allowed to grow at their own sweet will;
+they were cut into cubes, balls, pyramids, even into shapes of
+animals, as the gardener's fancy or his principles decreed; cypresses
+were made into pillars or hearts with the apex above or below; and
+the art of topiary even achieved complete hunting scenes, with
+hunters, stags, dogs, and hares in full chase on a hedge. Of such a
+garden one could say with honest Claudius, ''Tis but a tailor's joke,
+and shews the traces of the scissors; it has nothing of the great
+heart of Nature.'
+
+It was Nature in bondage: 'green architecture,' with all its parts,
+walls, windows, roofs, galleries cut out of leafage, and theatres
+with stage and wings in which silk and velvet marquises with
+full-bottomed wigs and lace jabots, and ladies in hooped petticoats
+and hair in towers, played at private theatricals.
+
+Where water was available, water devices were added. And in the midst
+of all this unnaturalness Greek mythology was introduced: the story
+of Daphne and Apollo appeared in one alley, Meleager and Atalanta in
+another, all Olympus was set in motion to fill up the walls and
+niches. And the people were like their gardens both in dress and
+manners; imposing style was everything.
+
+Then came the Rococo period of Louis XV. The great periwig shrivelled
+to a pigtail, and petty flourish took the place of Lenotre's
+grandezza.
+
+'The unnatural remained, the imposing disappeared and caprice took
+its place,' says Falke. Coquetry too. All the artistic output of the
+time bears this stamp, painting included. Watteau's scenery and
+people were unnatural and affected--mere inventions to suit the
+gallant _fêtes_. But he knew and loved Nature, though he saw her with
+the intoxicated eye of a lover who forgets the individual but keeps a
+glorified impression of her beauty, whereas Boucher's rosy-blue
+landscapes look as if he had never seen their originals. His world
+had nothing in common with Nature, and with reality only this, that
+its sensuousness, gaiety, falsity, and coquetry were true to the
+period. But in both Watteau and Boucher there was a faint glimmer of
+the idyllic--witness the dash of melancholy in Watteau's brightest
+pictures. Feeling for Nature was seeking its lost path--the path it
+was to follow with such increased fervour.
+
+German literature too, in the seventeenth century, stood under the
+sign manual of the Pigtail and Periwig; it was baroque, stilted,
+bombastic, affected, feeling and form alike were forced, not
+spontaneous. Verses were turned out by machinery and glued together.
+Martin Opitz,[14] the recognized leader and king of poets, had
+travelled far, but there is no distinct feeling for Nature in his
+poetry. His words to a mountain:
+
+'Nature has so arranged pleasure here, that he who takes the trouble
+to climb thee is repaid by delight,' scarcely admit the inference
+that he understood the charm of distance in the modern sense. He took
+warmer interest in the bucolic side of country life; rhyming about
+the delightful places, dwellings of peace, with their myrtles,
+mountains, valleys, stones, and flowers, where he longed to be; and
+his _Spring Song_, an obvious imitation of the classics (Horace's
+_Beatus ille_ was his model for _Zlatna_), has this conventional
+contrast between his heart and Nature.
+
+'The frosty ice must melt; snow cannot last any longer, Favonius; the
+gentle breeze is on the, fields again. Seed is growing vigorously,
+grass greening in all its splendour, trees are budding, flowers
+growing ...thou, too my heart, put off thy grief.'
+
+There is more nostalgia than feeling for Nature in this:
+
+'Ye birches and tall limes, waste places, woods and fields, farewell
+to you!
+
+'My comfort and my better dwelling-place is elsewhere!'
+
+But (and this Winter, strange to say, ignores) his pastorals have all
+the sentimental elegiac style of the Pigtail period.
+
+There had been German adaptations of foreign pastorals, such as
+Montreux, _Schãferei von der schönen Juliana_, since 1595; Urfé's
+_Astrée_ and Montemayor's _Diana_ appeared in 1619, and Sidney's
+_Arcadia_ ten years later.
+
+Opitz tried to widen the propaganda for this kind of poetry, and
+hence wrote, not to mention little pastorals such as _Daphne,
+Galatea, Corydon,_ and _Asteria_, his _Schãferei von der 'Nymphen
+Hercinie.'_
+
+His references to Nature in this are as exaggerated as everything
+else in the poem. He tells how he did not wake 'until night, the
+mother of the stars, had gone mad, and the beautiful light of dawn
+began to shew herself and everything with her....
+
+'I sprang up and greeted the sweet rays of the sun, which looked down
+from the tops of the mountains and seemed at the same time to comfort
+me.'
+
+He came to a spring 'which fell from a crag with charming murmur and
+rustle,' cut a long poem in the fir bark, and conversed with three
+shepherds on virtue, love, and travelling, till the nymph Hercynia
+appeared and shewed him the source of the Silesian stream. One of the
+shepherds, Buchner, was particularly enthusiastic about water: 'Kind
+Nature, handmaid of the Highest, has shewn her best handiwork in sea,
+river, and spring.'
+
+Fleming too, who already stood much higher as a lyrist and had
+travelled widely, lacked the power of describing scenery, and must
+needs call Oreads, Dryads, Castor and Pollux to his aid. He rarely
+reached the simple purity of his fine sonnet _An Sich,_ or the
+feeling in this: 'Dense wild wood, where even the Titan's brightest
+rays give no light, pity my sufferings. In my sick soul 'tis as dark
+as in thy black hollow.'
+
+In this time of decline the hymns of the Evangelical Church (to which
+Fleming contributed) were full of feeling, and brought the national
+songs to mind as nothing else did.
+
+A few lines of Paul Gerhardt's seem to me to out-weigh whole volumes
+of contemporary rhymes--lines of such beauty as the _Evening Song_:
+
+  Now all the woods are sleeping,
+  And night and stillness creeping
+  O'er field and city, man and beast;
+  The last faint beam is going,
+  The golden stars are glowing
+  In yonder dark-blue deep.
+
+And after him, and more like him than any one else, came Andreas
+Gryphius.
+
+There was much rhyming about Nature in the poet schools of Hamburg,
+Königsberg, and Nuremberg; but, for the most part, it was an idle
+tinkle of words without feeling, empty artificial stuff with
+high-flown titles, as in Philipp von Zesen's _Pleasure of Spring_,
+and _Poetic Valley of Roses and Lilies_.
+
+'Up, my thoughts, be glad of heart, in this joyous pleasant March;
+ah! see spring is reviving, earth opens her treasury,' etc.
+
+His romances were more noteworthy if not more interesting. He
+certainly aimed high, striving for simplicity and clearness of
+expressions in opposition to the Silesian poets, and hating foreign
+words.
+
+His feeling for Nature was clear; he loved to take his reader into
+the garden, and was enthusiastic about cool shady walks, beds of
+tulips, birds' songs, and echoes. Idyllic pastoral life was the
+fashion--people of distinction gave themselves up to country life and
+wore shepherd costume--and he introduced a pastoral episode into his
+romance, _Die adriatische Rosemund._[15]
+
+Rosemund, whose father places arbitrary conditions in the way of her
+marriage with Markhold, becomes a shepherdess.
+
+    Not far off was a delightful spot where limes and alders made
+    shade on hot summer days for the shepherds and shepherdesses who
+    dwelt around. The shady trees, the meadows, and the streams which
+    ran round it, and through it, made it look beautiful ... the
+    celestial Rosemund had taken up her abode in a little shepherd
+    hut on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded
+    by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning
+    and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more
+    than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel
+    her confused thoughts.
+
+She thought continually of Markhold, and spent her time cutting his
+name in the trees. The following description of a walk with her
+sister Stillmuth and her lover Markhold, gives some idea of the
+formal affected style of the time.
+
+    The day was fine, the sky blue, the weather everywhere warm. The
+    sun shone down on the globe with her pleasant lukewarm beams so
+    pleasantly, that one scarcely cared to stay indoors. They went
+    into the garden, where the roses had opened in the warmth of the
+    sun, and first sat down by the stream, then went to the grottos,
+    where Markhold particularly admired the shell decorations. When
+    this charming party had had enough of both, they finally betook
+    themselves to a leafy walk, where Rosemund introduced pleasant
+    conversation on many topics. She talked first about the many
+    colours of tulips, and remarked that even a painter could not
+    produce a greater variety of tints nor finer pictures than these,
+    etc.
+
+In describing physical beauty, he used comparisons from Nature; for
+instance, in _Simson_[16]:
+
+    The sun at its brightest never shone so brightly as her two eyes
+    ... no flower at its best can shew such red as blooms in the
+    meadow of her cheeks, no civet rose is so milk-white, no lily so
+    delicate and spotless, no snow fresh-fallen and untrodden is so
+    white, as the heaven of her brows, the stronghold of her mind.
+
+H. Anselm von Ziegler und Klipphausen also waxes eloquent in his
+famous _Asiatischen Banise_: 'The suns of her eyes played with
+lightnings; her curly hair, like waves round her head, was somewhat
+darker than white; her cheeks were a pleasant Paradise where rose and
+lily bloomed together in beauty--yea, love itself seemed to pasture
+there.' Elsewhere too this writer, so highly esteemed by the second
+Silesian school of poets, indulged in showy description and inflated
+rhetoric. Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel tried more
+elaborate descriptions of scenery; so that Chovelius says:
+
+    The Duke's German character shews pleasantly in his delight in
+    Nature. The story often takes one into woods and fields; already
+    griefs and cares were carried to the running brook and mossy
+    stone, and happy lovers listened to the nightingale.
+
+His language is barely intelligible, but there is a pleasant breadth
+about his drawing--for example, of the king's meadow and the grotto
+in _Aramena_:
+
+    Very cold crystal streams flowed through the fields and ran
+    softly over the stony ground, making a pleasant murmur. Whilst
+    the ear was thus contented, a distant landscape delighted the
+    eye. No more delightful place, possessing all this at once, could
+    have been found, etc.
+
+    Looking through the numerous air-holes, the eye lost itself in a
+    deep valley, surrounded by nothing but mountains, where the
+    shepherds tended their flocks, and one heard their flutes
+    multiplied by the echo in the most delightful way.
+
+Mawkish shepherd play is mixed here with such verses as (Rahel):
+
+    Thou, Chabras, thou art the dear stream, where Jacob's mouth gave
+    me the first kiss. Thou, clear brook, often bearest away the
+    passionate words of my son of Isaac ... on many a bit of wounded
+    bark, the writing of my wounds is to be found.
+
+The most insipid pastoral nonsense of the time was produced by the
+Nuremberg poets, the Pegnitz shepherds Klaj and Harsdörfer. Their
+strength lay in imitating the sounds of Nature, and they were much
+admired. What is still more astonishing, Lohenstein's writings were
+the model for thirty years, and it was the fashion for any one who
+wrote more simply to apologize for being unable to reach the level of
+so great a master! To us the bombast, artificiality, and hidden
+sensuality of his poetry and Hoffmannswaldan's, are equally
+repulsive.
+
+What dreary, manufactured stuff this is from Lohenstein's _Praise of
+Roses sung by the Sun_[17]:
+
+  This is the queen of flowers and plants,
+  The bride of heaven, world's treasure, child of stars!
+  For whom love sighs, and I myself, the sun, do pant,
+  Because her crown is golden, and her leaves are velvet,
+  Her foot and stylus emerald, her brilliance shames the ruby.
+
+  Other beings possess only single beauties,
+  Nature has made the rose beautiful with all at once.
+  She is ashamed, and blushes
+  Because she sees all the other flowers stand ashamed before her.
+
+In _Rose Love_ he finds the reflection of love in everything:
+
+  In whom does not Love's spirit plant his flame?
+  One sees the oil of love burn in the starry lamps,
+  That pleasant light can nothing be but love,
+  For which the dew from Phoebus' veil doth fall.
+  Heaven loves the beauteous globe of earth,
+  And gazes down on her by night with thousand eyes;
+  While earth to please the heaven
+  Doth clover, lilies, tulips in her green hair twine,
+  The elm and vine stock intertwine,
+  The ivy circles round the almond trees,
+  And weeps salt tears when they are forced apart.
+  And where the flowers burn with glow of Love,
+  It is the rose that shews the brightest flame,
+  For is the rose not of all flowers the queen,
+  The wondrous beauty child of sun and earth?
+
+Artificiality and bombast reached its highest pitch in these poets,
+and feeling for Nature was entirely absent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SYMPTOMS OF A RETURN TO NATURE
+
+
+It is refreshing to find, side by side with these mummified
+productions, the traces of a pure national poetry flowing clear as
+ever, 'breaking forth from the very heart of the people, ever
+renewing its youth, and not misled by the fashion of the day.'[1]
+
+The traces prove that simple primitive love for Nature was not quite
+dead. For instance, this of the Virgin Mary: 'Mary, she went across
+the heath, grass and flowers wept for grief, she did not find her
+son.' And the lines in which the youth forced into the cloister asks
+Nature to lament with him: 'I greet you all, hill and dale, do not
+drive me away--grass and foliage and all the green things in the wild
+forest. O tree! lose your green ornaments, complain, die with
+me--'tis your duty.'
+
+Then the Spring greetings:
+
+  Now we go into the wide, wide world,
+  With joy and delight we go;
+  The woods are dressing, the meadows greening,
+  The flowers beginning to blow.
+  Listen here! and look there! We can scarce trust our eyes,
+  For the singing and soaring, the joy and life everywhere.
+
+And:
+
+  What is sweeter than to wander in the early days of Spring
+  From one place to another in sheer delight and glee;
+  While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult around
+  Fair Nightingale, the foremost of them all?
+
+This has the pulse of true and naive feeling (the hunter is starting
+for the hunt in the early morning):
+
+  When I come into the forest, still and silent everywhere,
+  There's a look of slumber in it, but the air is fresh and cool.
+  Now Aurora paints the fir tops at their very tips with gold,
+  And the little finch sits up there launching forth his song of praise,
+  Thanking for the night that's over, for the day that's just awake
+  Gently blows the breeze of morning, rocking in the topmost twigs,
+  And it bends them down like children, like good children when they pray;
+  And the dew is an oblation as it drops from their green hair.
+  O what beauties in the forest he that we may see and know!
+  One could melt away one's heart before its wonders manifold!
+
+The sixth line in the original has a melody that reminds one of
+Goethe's early work.
+
+But even amidst the artificial poetry then in vogue, there were a few
+side streams which turned away from the main current of the great
+poet schools, from the unnaturalness and bombast affected especially
+by the Silesians. As Winter says, even the satirists Moscherosch and
+Logau were indirectly of use in paving the way for a healthier
+condition, through their severe criticisms of the corruption of the
+language; and Logau's one epigram on May, 'This month is a kiss which
+heaven gives to earth, that she may be a bride now, a mother
+by-and-by,' outweighs all Harsdörfer's and Zesen's poetry about
+Nature.
+
+But even by the side of Opitz and Fleming there was at least one poet
+of real feeling, Friedrich von Spee.[2] With all his mystic and
+pietist Christianity, he kept an open eye for Nature. His poems are
+full of disdain of the world and joy in Nature,[3] longings for death
+and lamentations over sin; he delighted in personifications of
+abstract ideas, childish playing with words and feelings, and
+sentimental enthusiasm. But mawkish and canting as he was apt to be,
+he often shewed a fine appreciation of detail. He was even--a rare
+thing then--fascinated by the sea.
+
+  Now rages and roars the wild, wild sea,
+  Now in soft curves lies quietly;
+  Sweetly the light of the sun's bright glow
+  Mirrors itself in the water below.
+
+  Sad winter's past--the stork is here,
+  Birds are singing and nests appear;
+  Bowery homes steal into the day,
+  Flow'rets present their full array;
+  Like little snakes and woods about,
+  The streams go wandering in and out.
+
+His motives, like his diminutives, are constantly recurring. He uses
+many bold and poetic personifications; the sun 'combs her golden
+hair,' the moon is a good shepherd who leads his sheep the stars
+across the blue heath, blowing upon a soft pipe; the sun adorns
+herself in spring with a crown and a girdle of roses, fills her
+quiver with arrows, and sends her horses to gallop for miles across
+the smooth sky; the wind flies about, stopping for breath from time
+to time; shakes its wings and withdraws into its house when it is
+tired; the brook of Cedron sits, leaning on a bucket in a hollow,
+combing his bulrush hair, his shoulders covered by grass and water;
+he sings a cradle song to his little brooks, or drives them before
+him, etc.
+
+But the most gifted poet of the set, and the most doughty opponent of
+Lohenstein's bombast, was the unhappy Christian Guenther.[4]
+
+He vents his feelings in verse because he must. There is a foretaste
+of Goethe in his lyrics, poured put to free the soul from a burden,
+and melodious as if by accident. As we turn over the leaves of his
+book of songs, we find deep feeling for Nature mingled with his love
+and sorrows.[5]
+
+  Bethink you, flowers and trees and shades,
+  Of the sweet evenings here with Flavia!
+  'Twas here her head upon my shoulder pressed;
+  Conceal, ye limes, what else I dare not say.
+  'Twas here she clover threw and thyme at me,
+  And here I filled her lap with freshest flowers.
+  Ah! that was a good time!
+  I care more for moon and starlight than the pleasantest of days,
+  And with eyes and heart uplifted from my chamber often gaze
+  With an awe that grows apace till it scarcely findeth space.
+
+To his lady-love he writes:
+
+  Here where I am writing now
+  'Tis lonely, shady, cool, and green;
+  And by the slender fig I hear
+  The gentle wind blow towards Schweidnitz.
+  And all the time most ardently
+  I give it thousand kisses for thee.
+
+And at Schweidnitz:
+
+  A thousand greetings, bushes, fields, and trees,
+  You know him well whose many rhymes
+  And songs you've heard, whose kisses seen;
+  Remember the joy of those fine summer nights.
+
+To Eleanora:
+
+  Spring is not far away. Walk in green solitude
+  Between your alder rows, and think ...
+  As in the oft-repeated lesson
+  The young birds' cry shall bear my longing;
+  And when the west wind plays with cheek and dress be sure
+  He tells me of thy longing, and kisses thee a thousand times for me.
+
+In a time of despair, he wrote:
+
+  Storm, rage and tear! winds of misfortune, shew all your tyranny!
+  Twist and split bark and twig,
+  And break the tree of hope in two
+  Stem and leaves are struck by this hail and thunder,
+  The root remains till storm and rain have laid their wrath.
+
+Again:
+
+  The woods I'll wander through,
+  From men I'll flee away,
+  With lonely doves I'll coo,
+  And with the wild things stay.
+  When life's the prey of misery,
+  And all my powers depart,
+  A leafy grave will be
+  Far kinder than thy heart.
+
+True lyrist, he gave Nature her full right in his feelings, and found
+comfort in return; but, as Goethe said of him, gifted but unsteady as
+he was, 'He did not know how to restrain himself, and so his life and
+poetry melted away.'
+
+Among those who made use of better material than the Silesian poets,
+H. Barthold Brockes stood first. Nature was his one and only subject;
+but in this he was not original, he was influenced by England. While
+France was dictating a taste like the baroque, and Germany
+enthusiastically adopting it (every petty prince in the land copied
+the gardens at Versailles, Schwetzingen more closely than the rest),
+a revolution which affected all Europe was brought about by England.
+The order of the following dates is significant: William Kent, the
+famous garden artist, died in 1748, James Thomson in the same year,
+Brockes a year earlier; and about the same time the imitations of
+Robinson Crusoe sprang up like mushrooms.
+
+We have considered Shakespeare's plays; English lyrists too of the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shewed deep feeling for Nature, and
+invested scenery with their own feelings in a very delicate way.
+
+G. Chaucer (1400) praises the nightingale s song in _From the Floure
+and Leafe_:
+
+        So was I with the song
+  Thorow ravished, that till late and long
+  Ne wist I in what place I was ne where; ...
+  And at the last, I gan full well aspie
+  Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree
+  On the further side, even right by me,
+  That gave so passing a delicious smell
+  According to the eglentere full well....
+
+        On the sote grass
+  I sat me downe, for, as for mine entent,
+  The birddes song was more convenient,
+  And more pleasant to me by many fold
+  Than meat or drink or any other thing.
+
+Thomas Wyatt (1542) says of his lady-love:
+
+  The rocks do not so cruelly
+  Repulse the waves continually,
+  As she my suit and affection
+  So that I am past remedy.
+
+Robert Southwell (1595), in _Love's Servile Lott_, compares love to
+April:
+
+  May never was the month for love,
+  For May is full of floures,
+  But rather Aprill, wett by kinde,
+  For love is full of showers....
+  Like winter rose and summer yce,
+  Her joyes are still untymelye;
+  Before her hope, behind remorse,
+  Fayre first, in fyne unseemely.
+
+Edmund Spenser (1598) describes a garden in _The Faerie Queene_:
+
+  There the most daintie Paradise on ground
+  It selfe did offer to his sober eye,
+  In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,
+  And none does others' happinesse envye;
+  The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,
+  The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space,
+  The trembling groves, the christall running by,
+  And, that which all fair workes doth most aggrace,
+  The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.
+
+Mountain scenery was seldom visited or described.
+
+Michael Drayton (1731) wrote an ode on the Peak, in Derbyshire:
+
+  Though on the utmost Peak
+  A while we do remain,
+  Amongst the mountains bleak
+  Exposed to sleet and rain,
+  No sport our hours shall break
+  To exercise our vein.
+
+It is clear that he preferred his comfort to everything, for he goes
+on:
+
+  Yet many rivers clear
+  Here glide in silver swathes,
+  And what of all most dear
+  Buxton's delicious baths,
+  Strong ale and noble chear
+  T' assuage breem winter's scathes.
+
+Thomas Carew (1639) sings:
+
+  Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
+  When June is past, the fading rose,
+  For in your beauties' orient deep
+  These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
+  Ask me no more whither do stray
+  The golden atoms of the day,
+  For in pure love Heaven did prepare
+  Those powders to enrich your hair.
+  Ask me no more whither doth haste
+  The nightingale, when May is past,
+  For in your sweet dividing throat
+  She winters and keeps warm her note.
+  Ask me no more where these stars shine
+  That downwards fall in dead of night,
+  For in your eyes they sit, and there
+  Fixed become, as in their sphere.
+  Ask me no more if east or west
+  The phoenix builds her spicy nest,
+  For unto you at last she flies
+  And in your fragrant bosom dies.
+
+William Drummond (1746) avowed a taste which he knew to be very
+unfashionable:
+
+  Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove,
+  Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own
+  Though solitary, who is not alone,
+  But doth converse with that eternal love.
+  O how more sweet is birds' harmonious moan
+  Or the soft sobbings of the widow'd dove,
+  Than those smooth whisp'rings near a prince's throne....
+  O how more sweet is zephyr's wholesome breath
+  And sighs perfum'd, which new-born flowers unfold.
+
+Another sonnet, to a nightingale, says:
+
+  Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours
+  Of winters past or coming void of care,
+  Well pleased with delights which present are,
+  Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
+  To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
+  Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
+  And what dear gifts on thee He did not spare,
+  A stain to human sense in sin that lowers,
+  What soul can be so sick which by thy songs
+  Attir'd in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
+  Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs?
+
+He greets Spring:
+
+  Sweet Spring, thou turn'st with all thy goodly train
+  Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers;
+  The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
+  The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers.
+
+Robert Blair (1746) sings in _The Grave_:
+
+      Oh, when my friend and I
+  In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on,
+  Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down
+  Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd bank,
+  Where the pure limpid stream has slid along
+  In grateful errors through the underwood,
+  Sweet murmuring; methought the shrill-tongu'd
+      thrush
+  Mended his song of love, the sooty blackbird
+  Mellowed his pipe and soften'd every note,
+  The eglantine smell'd sweeter and the rose
+  Assum'd a dye more deep, whilst ev'ry flower
+  Vied with its fellow plant in luxury
+  Of dress. Oh! then the longest summer's day
+  Seem'd too, too much in haste, still the full heart
+  Had not imparted half; half was happiness
+  Too exquisite to last--Of joys departed
+  Not to return, how painful the remembrance!
+
+The great painter of Nature among the poets was James Thomson. He was
+not original, but followed Pope, who had lighted up the seasons in a
+dry, dogmatic way in _Windsor Forest_, and pastoral poems, and after
+the publication of his _Winter_ the taste of the day carried him on.
+His deep and sentimental affection for Nature was mixed up with piety
+and moralizing. He said in a letter to his friend Paterson:
+
+    Retirement and Nature are more and more my passion every day; and
+    now, even now, the charming time comes on; Heaven is just on the
+    point, or rather in the very act, of giving earth a green gown.
+    The voice of the nightingale is heard in our lane. You must know
+    that I have enlarged my rural domain ... walled, no, no! paled in
+    about as much as my garden consisted of before, so that the walk
+    runs round the hedge, where you may figure me walking any time of
+    day, and sometimes of the night.... May your health continue till
+    you have scraped together enough to return home and live in some
+    snug corner, as happy as the Corycius senex in Virgil's fourth
+    Georgic, whom I recommend both to you and myself as a perfect
+    model of the truest happy life.
+
+It is a fact that Solitude and Nature became a passion with him. He
+would wander about the country for weeks at a time, noting every
+sight and sound, down to the smallest, and finding beauty and divine
+goodness in all. His _Seasons_ were the result.
+
+There is faithful portraiture in these landscapes in verse; some have
+charm and delicacy, but, for the most part, they are only catalogues
+of the external world, wholly lacking in links with the inner life.
+
+Scene after scene is described without pause, or only interrupted by
+sermonizing; it is as monotonous as a gallery of landscape paintings.
+
+The human beings introduced are mere accessories, they do not live,
+and the undercurrent of all is praise of the Highest. His
+predilection is for still life in wood and field, but he does not
+neglect grander scenery; his muse
+
+  "Sees Caledonia, in romantic view:
+  Her airy mountains, from the waving main
+  Invested with a keen diffusive sky,
+  Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge,
+  Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand
+  Planted of old; her azure lakes between,
+  Poured out extensive and of watery wealth
+  Full; winding, deep and green, her fertile vales,
+  With many a cool translucent brimming flood
+  Washed lovely...."
+
+And in _A Hymn_ we read:
+
+  Ye headlong torrents rapid and profound,
+  Ye softer floods that lead the humid maze
+  Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
+  A secret world of wonders in thyself.
+
+It is the lack of human life, the didactic tone, and the wearisome
+detail which destroys interest in the _Seasons_--the lack of happy
+moments of invention. Yet it had great influence on his
+contemporaries in rousing love for Nature, and it contains many
+beautiful passages. For example:
+
+  Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
+  And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
+  While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
+  Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
+
+His most artistic poem is Winter:
+
+  When from the pallid sky the sun descends
+  With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb
+  Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks
+  Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds
+  Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet
+  Which master to obey; while rising slow,
+  Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon
+  Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns.
+  Seen through the turbid fluctuating air,
+  The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray;
+  Or frequent seem to shoot, athwart the gloom,
+  And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.
+  Snatched in short eddies plays the withered leaf,
+  And on the flood the dancing feather floats.
+  With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned,
+  The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale....
+  Retiring from the downs, where all day long
+  They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train
+  Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight
+  And seek the closing shelter of the grove,
+  Assiduous, in his bower, the wailing owl
+  Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high
+  Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.
+  Loud shrieks the soaring heron, and with wild wing
+  The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky skies.
+  Ocean, unequal pressed, with broken tide
+  And blind commotion heaves, while from the shore,
+  Eat into caverns by the restless wave
+  And forest-rustling mountains, comes a voice
+  That solemn-sounding bids the world prepare.
+
+The elaboration of detail in such painting is certain evidence, not
+only of a keen, but an enthusiastic eye for Nature. As he says in
+Winter:
+
+  Nature, great parent! whose unceasing hand
+  Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year!
+  How mighty, how majestic, are thy works!
+  With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul
+  That sees astonish'd, and astonish'd sings!
+
+Brockes was directly influenced by Pope and Thomson, and translated
+the _Seasons_, when he had finished his _Irdisches Vergnügen in
+Gott_. This unwieldy work, insipid and prosaic as it is, was still a
+literary achievement, thanks to the dignity of the subject and the
+high seriousness of its aim, at a time when frivolity was the fashion
+in poetry. Its long pious descriptions of natural phenomena have none
+of the imposing flow of Thomson's strophes. It treats of fire in 138
+verses of eight lines each, of air in 79, water in 78, earth in 74,
+while flowers and fruit are dissected and analyzed at great length;
+and all this rhymed botany and physics is loosely strung together,
+but it shews a warm feeling for Nature of a moralizing and devotional
+sort. He says himself[7] that he took up the study of poetry first as
+an amusement, but later more seriously, and chose Nature as his
+theme, not only because her beauty moved him, but as a means 'whereby
+man might enjoy a permissible pleasure and be edified at the same
+time.'
+
+    So I resolved to sing the praises of the Creator to the best of
+    my powers, and felt the more bound to do it, because I held that
+    such great and almost inexcusable neglect and ingratitude was a
+    wrong to the Creator, and unbecoming in Christendom. I therefore
+    composed different pieces, chiefly in Spring, and tried my best
+    to describe the beauties of Nature, in order, through my own
+    pleasure, to rekindle the praise of the wise Creator in myself
+    and others, and this led at last to the first part of my
+    _Irdisches Vergnügen_. (1721.)
+
+His evidence from animal and plant life for the teleological argument
+is very laughable; take, for example, the often-quoted chamois:
+
+    The fat is good for phthisis, the gall for the face, chamois
+    flesh is good to eat, and its blood cures vertigo--the skin is no
+    less useful. Doth not the love as well as the wisdom and
+    almightiness of the Creator shine forth from this animal?
+
+For the rest, the following lines from _Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott_
+will serve to give an idea of his style; they certainly do honour to
+his laborious attempt to miss none of the charms of the wood:
+
+  Lately as I sat on the green grass
+  Shaded by a lime tree, and read,
+  I raised my eyes by chance and saw
+  Different trees here and there, some far, some near,
+  Some half, some all in light, and some in shade,
+  Their boughs bowed down by leaves.
+  I saw how beautifully both air and flowery mead
+  Were crowned and adorned.
+  To describe the green grace
+  And the landscape it makes so sweet,
+  And at the same time prolong my pleasure,
+  I took pencil and paper
+  And tried to describe the beautiful trees in rhyme,
+  To the glory of God their Creator.
+  Of all the beauty the world lays before our eyes,
+  There certainly is none which does not pale
+  Beside green boughs,
+  Nothing to compare for pure beauty with a wood.
+  The green roofing overhead
+  Makes me feel young again;
+  It hangs there, a living tapestry,
+  To the glory of God and our delight....
+  Beyond many trees that lay in shade
+  I often saw one in full light;
+  A human eye would scarce believe
+  How sweetly twilight, light and darkness
+  Meet side by side in leafy trees.
+  Peering through the leaves with joy
+  We notice, as we see the leaves
+  Lighted from one side only,
+  That we can almost see the sun
+  Mixing gold with the tender green, etc.
+
+and so on for another twenty lines.
+
+Yet this rich Burgomaster of Hamburg, for all that he dealt chiefly
+in rhymed prose, had his moments of rare elevation of thought and
+mystical rapture about Nature; for instance, in the introduction to
+_Ueber das Firmament_:
+
+  As lately in the sapphire depths,
+  Not bound by earth nor water, aim nor end,
+  In the unplumbed aerial sea I gazed,
+  And my absorbed glance, now here, now there,
+  But ever deeper sank--horror came over me,
+  My eye grew dizzy and my soul aghast.
+  That infinite vast vault,
+  True picture of Eternity,
+  Since without birth or end
+  From God alone it comes....
+  It overwhelmed my soul.
+  The mighty dome of deep dark light,
+  Bright darkness without birth or bound,
+  Swallowed the very world--burying thought.
+  My being dwindled to an atom, to a nought;
+  I lost myself,
+  So suddenly it beat me down,
+  And threatened with despair.
+  But in that salutary nothingness, that blessed loss,
+  All present God! in Thee--I found myself again.
+
+While English poetry and its German imitations were shewing these
+signs of reaction from the artificiality of the time, and science and
+philosophy often lauded Nature to the skies, as, for instance,
+Shaftesbury[8] (1671-1713), a return to Nature became the principle
+of English garden-craft in the first half of the eighteenth
+century.[9] The line of progress here, as in taste generally, did not
+run straightforward, but fluctuated. From the geometric gardens of
+Lenotre, England passed to the opposite extreme; in the full tide of
+periwig and hoop petticoat, minuets, beauty-patches and rouge,
+Addison and Pope were banishing everything that was not strictly
+natural from the garden. Addison would even have everything grow wild
+in its own way, and Pope wrote:
+
+  To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
+  To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
+  To swell the terrace or to sink the grot,
+  In all let Nature never be forgot.
+
+William Kent made allowance for this idea; but, as a painter, and
+looking at his native scenery with a painter's eye, he noted its
+characteristic features--the gentle undulations, the freshness of the
+green, the wealth of trees--and based his garden-craft on these.
+
+The straight line was banished; in its place came wide spaces of lawn
+and scattered groups of trees of different sorts--dark fir and alder
+here, silver birch and grey poplar there; and flowery fields with
+streams running through them stood out in relief against dark
+woodland.
+
+Stiff walls, balustrades, terraces, statues, and so forth,
+disappeared; the garden was not to contrast with the surrounding
+landscape, but to merge into it--to be not Art, but a bit of Nature.
+It was, in fact, to be a number of such bits, each distinct from the
+rest--waterfall, sheltered sunny nook, dark wood, light glade. Kent
+himself soon began to vary this mosaic of separate scenes by adding
+ruins and pavilions; but it was Chambers the architect who developed
+the idea of variety by his writings on the dwellings and manners of
+the Chinese.[10]
+
+The fundamental idea that the garden ought to be a sample of the
+landscape was common both to Kent and the Chinese; but, as China is
+far richer than England in varieties of scenery, her gardens included
+mountains, rocks, swamps, and deserts, as well as sunny fields and
+plains, while English gardens were comparatively monotonous. When the
+fashion for the Chinese style came in, as unluckily it did just when
+we were trying to oust the Rococo, so that one pigtail superseded the
+other, variety was achieved by groups of buildings in all sorts of
+styles. Stables, ice-houses, gardeners' cottages took the form of
+pavilions, pagodas, kiosks, and temples.
+
+Meanwhile, as a reaction against the Rococo, enthusiasm for Nature
+increased, and feeling was set free from restraint by the growing
+sentimentality. Richardson's novels fed the taste for the pleasures
+of weeping sensibility, and garden-craft fell under its sway. In all
+periods the insignificant and non-essential is unable to resist the
+general stamp, if that only shews a little originality.
+
+These gardens, with temples to friendship and love, melancholy,
+virtue, re-union, and death, and so forth, were suitable backgrounds
+for the sentimental scenes described in the English novels, and for
+the idyllic poets and moonshine singers of Germany. Here it was the
+fashion to wander, tenderly intertwined, shedding floods of tears and
+exchanging kisses, and pausing at various places to read the
+inscriptions which directed them what to feel. At one spot they were
+to laugh, at another to weep, at a third to be fired with devotion.
+
+Hermitages sprang up everywhere, with hermits, real or dummy. Any
+good house near a wood, or in a shady position, was called a
+hermitage, and dedicated to arcadian life, free from care and
+ceremony. Classic and romantic styles competed for favour in
+architecture; at one moment everything must needs be purely classic,
+each temple Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric; at another Gothic, with the
+ruins and fortresses of mediæval romance. And not only English
+gardens, but those of Europe generally, though to a less degree,
+passed through these stages of development, for no disease is so
+infectious as fashion.
+
+It was not till the end of the eighteenth century that a healthy
+reaction set in in England, when Repton turned back to Kent's
+fundamental principle and freed it from its unnatural excrescences,
+with the formula: the garden should be an artistic representation of
+the landscape, a work of art whose materials are provided by Nature
+herself, whether grass, flowers, bushes, trees, water, or whatever it
+may be that she has to offer. Thus began our modern landscape
+gardening.
+
+In another region too, a change was brought about from the Rococo to
+a more natural style. It is true that Nature plays no direct _rôle_
+in _Robinson Crusoe_, and wins as little notice there as in its
+numberless imitations; yet the book roused a longing for healthier,
+more natural conditions in thousands of minds. It led the idyllic
+tendency of the day back to its source, and by shewing all the
+stages, from the raw state of Nature up to the culture of the
+community, in the life of one man, it brought out the contrast
+between the far-off age of innocence and the perverted present.
+
+The German _Simplicissimus_ closed with a Robinsonade, in which the
+hero, after long wandering, found rest and peace on an island in the
+ocean of the world, alone with himself and Nature. The readers of
+_Robinson Crusoe_ were in much the same position. Defoe was not only
+a true artist, but a man of noble, patient character, and his romance
+proved a healing medicine to many sick minds, pointing the way back
+to Nature and a natural fife, and creating a longing for the lost
+innocence of man.
+
+Rousseau, who was also a zealous advocate of the English gardens, and
+disgusted by the French Pigtail style, was more impressed by
+_Robinson Crusoe_ than by any other book. It was the first book his
+Emilia gave him, as a gospel of Nature and unspoilt taste.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SENSITIVENESS AND EXAGGERATION OF
+THE ELEGIAC IDYLLIC FEELING
+
+
+This longing to return to the lost paradise of Nature gradually
+produced a state of melancholy hyper-sensitiveness, an epidemic of
+world pain, quite as unnatural as the Rococo.
+
+The heart came into its rights again and laid claim to absolute
+dominion in its kingdom, and regret that it had lain so long deprived
+of its own, gave rise to a tearful pensiveness, which added zest to
+restitution. It was convalescence, but followed at once by another
+complaint. Feeling swung from one extreme to the other.
+
+German feeling in the first half of the eighteenth century was
+chiefly influenced, on the one hand, by Richardson's novels, which
+left no room for Nature, and by the poetry of Young and Thomson; on
+the other, by the pastoral idylls interspersed with anacreontic
+love-passages, affected by the French. At first description and
+moralizing preponderated.
+
+In 1729 Haller's _Alps_ appeared. It had the merit of drawing the
+eyes of Europe to Alpine beauty and the moral worth of the Swiss, but
+shewed little eye for romantic scenery. It is full of descriptive
+painting, but not of a kind that appeals: scene follows scene with
+considerable pathos, especially in dealing with the people; but
+landscape is looked at almost entirely from the moralizing or
+utilitarian standpoint.
+
+'Here, where the majestic Mount Gothard elevates its summit above the
+clouds, and where the earth itself seems to approach the sun, Nature
+has assembled in one spot all the choicest treasure of the globe. The
+deserts of Libya, indeed, afford us greater novelties, and its sandy
+plains are more fertile in monsters: but thou, favoured region, art
+adorned with useful productions only, productions which can satisfy
+all the wants of man. Even those heaps of ice, those frowning rocks
+in appearance so sterile, contribute largely to the general good, for
+they supply inexhaustible fountains to fertilize the land. What a
+magnificent picture does Nature spread before the eye, when the sun,
+gilding the top of the Alps, scatters the sea of vapours which
+undulates below! Through the receding vale the theatre of a whole
+world rises to the view! Rocks, valleys, lakes, mountains, and
+forests fill the immeasurable space, and are lost in the wide
+horizon. We take in at a single glance the confines of divers states,
+nations of various characters, languages, and manners, till the eyes,
+overcome by such extent of vision, drop their weary lids, and we ask
+of the enchanted fancy a continuance of the scene.
+
+'When the first emotion of astonishment has subsided, how delightful
+is it to observe each several part which makes up this sublime whole!
+That mass of hills, which presents its graceful declivity covered
+with flocks of sheep whose bleatings resound through the meadows;
+that large clear lake, which reflects from its level surface sunbeams
+gently curved; those valleys, rich in verdure, which compose by their
+various outlines points of perspective which contract in the distance
+of the landscape! Here rises a bare steep mountain laden with the
+accumulated snow of ages; its icy head rests among the clouds,
+repelling the genial rays of the moon and the fervid heat of the
+dog-star: there a chain of cultivated hills spreads before the
+delighted eye; their green pastures are enlivened by flocks, and
+their golden corn waves in the wind: yet climates so different as
+those are only separated by a cool, narrow valley. Behold that
+foaming torrent rushing from a perpendicular height! Its rapid waves
+dash among the rocks, and shoot even beyond their limits. Divided by
+the rapidity of its course and the depth of the abyss where it falls,
+it changes into a grey moving veil; and, at length scattered into
+humid atoms, it shines with the tints of the rainbow, and, suspended
+over the valley, refreshes it with plenteous dew. The traveller
+beholds with astonishment rivers flowing towards the sky, and issuing
+from one cloud, hide themselves in the grey veil of another.
+
+'Those desert places uncheered by the rays of the sun, those frozen
+abysses deprived of all verdure, hide beneath their sterile sands
+invaluable treasures, which defy the rigour of the seasons and all
+the injuries of time! 'Tis in dark and marshy recesses, upon the damp
+grottos, that crystal rocks are formed. Thus splendour is diffused
+through their melancholy vaults, and their shadowy depths gutter with
+the colours of the rainbow. O Nature, how various are thy operations,
+how infinite thy fertility!'
+
+We cannot agree with Frey[1] that 'these few strophes may serve as
+sufficient proof that Haller's poetry is still, even among the mass
+of Alpine poetry, unsurpassed for intense power of direct vision, and
+easily makes one forget its partial lack of flexibility of diction.'
+
+The truth is, flexibility is entirely lacking; but the lines do
+express the taste for open-air life among the great sublimities and
+with simple people. The poem is not romantic but idyllic, with a
+touch of the elegiac. It is the same with the poem _On the Origin of
+Evil_ (Book I.):
+
+  On those still heights whence constant springs flow down,
+  I paused within a copse, lured by the evening breeze;
+  Wide country lay spread out beneath my feet,
+  Bounded by its own size alone....
+  Green woods covered the hills, through which the pale tints of the fields
+  Shone pleasantly.
+  Abundance and repose held sway far as the eye could reach....
+  And yonder wood, what left it to desire
+  With the red tints upon the half-bare beeches
+  And the rich pine's green shade o'er whitened moss?
+  While many a sun-ray through the interstices
+  A quivering light upon the darkness shed,
+  Blending in varying hues green night with golden day
+  How pleasant is the quiet of the copse! ...
+  Yea, all I see is given by Providence,
+  The world itself is for its burgher's joy;
+  Nature's inspired with the general weal,
+  The highest goodness shews its trace in all.
+
+Friedrich von Hagedorn, too, praises country pleasures in _The
+Feeling of Spring_:
+
+  Enamelled meadows! freshly decked in green,
+  I sing your praises constantly;
+  Nature and Spring have decked you out....
+  Delightful quiet, stimulant of joy,
+  How enviable thou art!
+
+This idyllic taste for country life was common at the time,
+especially among the so-called 'anacreontists.' Gleim, for instance,
+in his _Praise of Country Life_: 'Thank God that I have fled from the
+bustle of the world and am myself again under the open sky.'
+
+And in _The Countryman_:
+
+    How happy is he who, free from cares, ploughs his father's
+    fields; every morning the sun shines on the grass in which he
+    lies.
+
+And Joh. Friedrich von Cronegk:
+
+    Fly from sordid cares and the proud tumult of cities ... here in
+    the peaceful valley shy wisdom sports at ease, where the smiling
+    Muse crowns herself with dewy roses.
+
+With this idyllic tone it is not surprising to find the religious
+feeling of many hymn writers; for instance, Gleim in _The Goodness of
+God_:
+
+    For whom did Thy goodness create the world so beautiful, O God?
+    For whom are the flowers on hill and dale? ... Thou gavest us
+    power to perceive the beauty.
+
+And above all, honest Gellert:
+
+    The skies, the globe, the seas, praise the eternal glory. O my
+    Creator, when I consider Thy might and the wisdom of Thy ways....
+    Sunshine and storm preach Thee, and the sands of the sea.
+
+Ewald von Kleist excelled Haller as much as Haller had excelled
+Brockes.
+
+Julian Schmidt says[3]: 'Later on, descriptive poetry, like didactic,
+fell into disgrace; but at that time this dwelling upon the minutiæ
+of Nature served to enrich the imagination; Kleist's descriptions are
+thoughtful and interesting.' It is easy to see that his longer poems
+cost him much labour; they were not the pure songs of feeling that
+gush out spontaneously like a spring from the rock. But in eloquence
+and keenness of observation he excelled his contemporaries, although
+he, too, followed the fashion of eighteenth-century literature, and
+coquetted with Greek nymphs and deities, and the names of winds and
+maidens.
+
+The tendency to depression, increased by his failure to adapt himself
+to military life, made him incline more and more to solitude.
+
+_To Doris_ begins:
+
+  Now spring doth warm the flakeless air,
+  And in the brook the sky reflects her blue,
+  Shepherds in fragrant flowers find delight ...
+  The corn lifts high its golden head,
+  And Zephyr moves in waves across the grain,
+  Her robe the field embroiders; the young rush
+  Adorns the border of each silver stream,
+  Love seeks the green night of the forest shade,
+  And air and sea and earth and heaven smile.
+
+_Sighs for Rest_:
+
+  O silver brook, my leisure's early soother,
+  When wilt thou murmur lullabies again?
+  When shall I trace thy sliding smooth and smoother,
+  While kingfishers along thy reeds complain;
+  Afar from thee with care and toil opprest,
+  Thy image still can calm my troubled breast.
+
+  O ye fair groves and odorous violet valleys,
+  Girt with a garland blue of hills around,
+  Thou quiet lake, where, when Aurora sallies,
+  Her golden tresses seem to sweep the ground:
+  Soft mossy turf, on which I wont to stray,
+  For me no longer bloom thy flow'rets gay.
+  As when the chilly nights of March arise
+  And whirl the howling dust in eddies swift,
+  The sunbeams wither in the dimmer skies,
+  O'er the young ears the sand and pebbles drift:
+  So the war rages, and the furious forces
+  The air with smoke bespread, the field with corses.
+
+  The vineyard bleeds, and trampled is the com,
+  Orchards but heat the kettles of the camp....
+
+  As when a lake which gushing rains invade
+  Breaks down its dams, and fields are overflowed.
+  So floods of fire across the region spread,
+  And standing corn by crackling flames is mowed:
+  Bellowing the cattle fly; the forests burn,
+  And their own ashes the old stems in-urn.
+
+  He too, who fain would live in purity,
+  Feels nature treacherous, hears examples urge,
+  As one who, falling overboard at sea,
+  Beats with his arms and feet the buoyant surge,
+  And climbs at length against some rocky brink,
+  Only beneath exhausted strength to sink.
+
+  My cheek bedewed with holy tears in vain,
+  To love and heaven I vowed a spotless truth:
+  Too soon the noble tear exhaled again,
+  Example conquered, and the glow of youth
+  To live as live one's comrades seems allowed;
+  He who would be a man, must quit the crowd.
+
+He, too, wrote with hymn-like swing in praise of the Creator: 'Great
+is the Lord! the unnumbered heavens are the chambers of his fortress,
+storm and thunder-clouds his chariot.'
+
+The most famous of his poems, and the one most admired in his own
+day, was _Spring_. This is full of love for Nature. It describes a
+country walk after the muggy air of town, and conveys a vivid
+impression of fresh germinating spring, though it is overlaid by
+monotonous detail:
+
+  Receive me, hallowed shades! Ye dwellings of sweet buss!
+  Umbrageous arches full of sleeping dark delights ...
+  Receive me! Fill my soul with longing and with rest ...
+  And you, ye laughing fields,
+  Valleys of roses, labyrinths of streams,
+  I will inhale an ecstasy with your balsamic breath,
+  And, lying in the shade, on strings of gold
+  Sing your indwelling joys....
+  On rosy clouds, with rose and tulip crowned,
+  Spring has come down from heaven....
+  The air grew softer, fields took varied hues,
+  The shades were leafy, and soft notes awoke
+  And flew and warbled round the wood in twilight greenery.
+  Brooks took a silver tint, sweet odours filled the air,
+  The early shepherd's pipe was heard by Echo in the dale....
+  Most dear abode! Ah, were I but allowed
+  Down in the shade by yon loquacious brook
+  Henceforth to live! O sky! thou sea of love,
+  Eternal spring of health, will not thy waters succour me?
+  Must, my life's blossom wither, stifled by the weeds?
+
+Johann Peter Uz, who was undervalued because of his sickly style,
+wrote many little songs full of feeling for Nature, though within
+narrow limits. Their titles shew the pastoral taste[4]:--_Spring_,
+_Morning, Shepherd's Morning Song, The Muse with the Shepherds, The
+Meadow in the Country, Vintage, Evening, May, The Rose, Summer and
+Wine, Winter Night, Longing for Spring_, etc.
+
+Many are fresh and full of warm feeling, especially the Spring Songs:
+
+  See the blossoming of Spring!
+  Will't not taste the joys it showers?
+  Dost not feel its impulse thrill?
+  Friends! away our cares we'll fling!
+  In the joyous time of flowers,
+  Love and Bacchus have their will.
+
+and
+
+  O forest, O green shady paths,
+  Dear place of spring's display!
+  My good luck from the thronging town
+  Has brought me here away.
+
+  O what a fresh breeze flows
+  Down from the wooded hill,
+  How pleasantly the west wind flies
+  With rustling dewy wing
+  Across the vale,
+  Where all is green and blossoming.
+
+The personification is more marked in this:
+
+  Thou hast sent us the Spring in his gleaming robe
+  With roses round his head. Smiling he comes, O God!
+  The hours conduct him to his flowery throne
+  Into the groves he enters and they bloom; fresh green is on the plain,
+  The forest shade returns, the west wind lovingly unfurls
+  Its dewy plumes, and happy birds begin to sing.
+  The face of Nature Thou hast deckt with beauty that enchants,
+  O Thou rich source of all the beautiful ...
+  My heart is lifted up to Thee in purest love.
+
+His feeling for Nature was warm enough, although most of his writing
+was so artificial and tedious from much repetition of a few ideas,
+that Kleist could write to Gleim[5]: 'The odes please me more the
+more I read them. With a few exceptions, they have only one fault,
+too many laurel woods; cut them down a little. Take away the marjoram
+too, it is better in a good sausage than in a beautiful poem.'
+
+Joh. Georg Jacobi also belonged to the circle of poets gathered round
+Gleim; but in many respects he was above it. He imitated the French
+style[6] far less than the others--than Hagedorn, for example; and
+though the Anacreontic element was strong in him, he overcame it, and
+aimed at pure lyrical feeling. From his Life, written by a devoted
+friend, we see that he had all the sentimentality of the day,[7] but
+with much that was healthy and amiable in addition, and he touched
+Nature with peculiar freshness and genuineness.
+
+In a poem to his brother, about the Saale valley near Halle, he
+wrote:
+
+  Lie down in early spring on yon green moss,
+  By yon still brook where heart with heart we spoke,
+  My brother....
+  Will't see the little garden and the pleasant heights above,
+  So quiet and unspoilt? O friend, 'tis Nature speaks
+  In distant wood, near plain and careless glade,
+  Here on my little hill and in the clover....
+  Dost hear the rustle of the streamlet through the wood?
+
+Jacobi was one whose heart, as he said of Gleim, took a warm interest
+in all that breathed, even a violet, and sought sympathy and
+companionship in the whole range of creation.
+
+This is from his _Morning Song_:
+
+  See how the wood awakes, how from the lighted heights
+  With the soft waving breeze
+  The morning glory smiles in the fresh green....
+  Here by the rippling brook and quivering flower,
+  We catch Love's rustle as she gently sweeps
+  Like Spring's own breath athwart the plains.
+
+Another song is;
+
+  Tell me, where's the violet fled.
+  Late so gayly blowing.
+  Springing 'neath fair Flora's tread,
+  Choicest sweets bestowing?
+  Swain, the vernal scene is o'er,
+  And the violet blooms no more.
+
+  Say, where hides the blushing rose,
+  Pride of fragrant morning,
+  Garland meet for beauty's brows,
+  Hill and dale adorning?
+  Gentle maid, the summer's fled,
+  And the hapless rose is dead.
+
+  Bear me then to yonder rill,
+  Late so freely flowing,
+  Watering many a daffodil
+  On its margin glowing.
+  Sun and wind exhaust its store,
+  Yonder rivulet glides no more.
+
+  Lead me to the bowery shade,
+  Late with roses flaunting,
+  Loved resort of youth and maid,
+  Amorous ditties chanting.
+  Hail and wind with fury shower,
+  Leafless mourns the rifled bower!
+
+  Say, where bides the village maid,
+  Late yon cot adorning?
+  Oft I've met her in the glade
+  Fair and fresh as morning.
+  Swain, how short is beauty's bloom,
+  Seek her in her grassy tomb.
+
+  Whither roves the tuneful swain
+  Who, of rural pleasures,
+  Rose and violet, rill and plain,
+  Sang in deftest measures?
+  Maiden, swift life's vision flies,
+  Death has closed the poet's eyes.
+
+_To Nature_ runs thus:
+
+  Leaves are falling, mists are twining, and to winter sleep inclining
+  Are the trees upon the plain,
+  In the hush of stillness ere the snowflakes hide them,
+  Friendly Nature, speak to me again!
+  Thou art echo and reflection of our striving,
+  Thou art painter of our hopes and of our fears,
+  Thou art singer of our joys and of our sorrows,
+  Of our consolations and our groans....
+
+While feeling for Nature was all of this character, idyllic,
+sensitive, sympathetic, but within very narrow bounds, and the poets
+generally were wandering among Greek and Latin bucolics and playing
+with Damon, Myrtil, Chloe, and Daphnis, Salomon Gessner made a
+speciality of elegiac pastoral poetry. He was a better landscapist
+than poet, and his drawings to illustrate his idylls were better than
+the poems themselves. The forest, for instance, and the felling of
+the tree, are well drawn; whereas the sickly sweet Rococo verse in
+imitation of the French, and reminding one more of Longos than
+Theocritus, is lifeless. His rhapsody about Nature is uncongenial to
+modern readers, but his love was real.
+
+The introduction 'to the Reader'[8] is characteristic:
+
+    These Idylls are the fruits of some of my happiest hours; of
+    those hours when imagination and tranquillity shed their sweetest
+    influence over me, and, excluding all which belongs to the period
+    in which we live, recalled all the charms and delights of the
+    Golden Age. A noble and well-regulated mind dwells with pleasure
+    on these images of calm tranquillity and uninterrupted happiness,
+    and the scenes in which the poet delineates the simple beauties
+    of uncorrupted nature are endeared to us by the resemblance we
+    fancy we perceive in them to the most blissful moments that we
+    nave ourselves enjoyed. Often do I fly from the city and seek the
+    deepest solitudes; there, the beauties of the landscape soothe
+    and console my heart, and gradually disperse those impressions of
+    solicitude and disgust which accompanied me from the town;
+    enraptured, I give up my whole soul to the contemplation of
+    Nature, and feel, at such moments, richer than an Utopian
+    monarch, and happier than a shepherd of the Golden Age.
+
+This is a true picture of the time! Man knew that he was sick, and
+fled from town and his fellows into solitude, there to dream himself
+back to a happier past, and revel in the purity and innocence, the
+healing breath, of forest and field.
+
+The magic of moonlight began to be felt. Mirtilla
+
+    perceived his old father slumbering in the moonbeams.... Mirtilla
+    stood long contemplating him, and his eyes rested fondly on the
+    old man except when he raised them toward heaven through the
+    glistening leaves of the vine, and tears of filial love and joy
+    bedewed his cheeks.... How beautiful! how beautiful is the
+    landscape! How bright, how clear appears the deep blue of heaven
+    through the broken clouds! They fly, they pass away, these
+    towering clouds; but strew a shadow as they pass over the sunny
+    landscape.... Oh, what joy overwhelms my soul! how beautiful, how
+    excellent is all around, what an inexhaustible source of rapture!
+    From the enlivening sun down to the little plant that his mild
+    influence nourishes, all is wonderful! What rapture overpowers me
+    when I stand on the high hill and look down on the wide-spread
+    landscape beneath me, when I lay stretched along the grass and
+    examine the various flowers and herbs and their little
+    inhabitants; when at the midnight hour I contemplate the starry
+    heavens!... Wrapt in each other's arms, let us contemplate the
+    approach of morning, the bright glow of sunset, or the soft beams
+    of moonlight; and as I press thee to my trembling heart, let us
+    breathe out in broken accents our praises and thanksgivings. Ah!
+    what inexpressible joy, when with such raptures are blended the
+    transports of the tenderest love.
+
+Many prosaic writings of a different kind shew how universally
+feeling, in the middle of the eighteenth century, turned towards
+Nature.
+
+The æsthetic writer Sulzer (1750) wrote _On the Beauty of Nature_.
+Crugot's widely-read work of edification, _Christ in Solitude_
+(1761), shewed the same point of view among the mystical and pietist
+clergy; and Spalding's _Human Vocation_[9] (written with a warmth
+that reminds one of Gessner) among the rationalists, whom he headed.
+He says:
+
+    Nature contains numberless pleasures, which, through my great
+    sensitiveness, nourish my mind... I open eye and ear, and through
+    these openings pleasures flow into my soul from a thousand sides:
+    flowers painted by the hand of Nature, the rich music of the
+    forest, the bright daylight which pours life and light all round
+    me.... How indifferent, tasteless, and dead is all the fantastic
+    glamour of artificial splendour and luxuriance in comparison with
+    the living radiance of the real beautiful world of Nature, with
+    the joyousness, repose, and admiration I feel before a meadow in
+    blossom, a rustling stream, the pleasant awesomeness of night, or
+    of the majesty of innumerable worlds. Even the commonest and most
+    familiar things in Nature give me endless delight, when I feel
+    them with a heart attuned to joy and admiration.... I lose
+    myself, absorbed in delight, in the consideration of all this
+    general beauty, of which I hold myself to be a not disfigured
+    part.
+
+Klopstock, the torch-bearer of Germany's greatest poets, owed much of
+his power of the wing to religion. He introduced that new epoch in
+the literature of his country which culminated in Goethe. As so often
+happens in mental development, the reaction against prevailing
+conditions and the advance to higher ones, in the middle of the
+eighteenth century, led first of all to the opposite extreme--balance
+was only reached by degrees. What chiefly made Klopstock a literary
+reformer was the glowing enthusiasm and powerful imagination which
+compelled the stiff poetic forms, clumsy as they were, to new rhythm
+and melodious cadence. And although his style degenerated into
+mannerism in the _Messias_, for the youthful impetus which had
+carried his Pegasus over the clouds to the stars could not keep it
+there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence
+remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only
+of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and
+ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic
+raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development,
+and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the
+finest view in the world.
+
+A mind so intent upon the noble and beautiful was sure to be
+enthusiastic about Nature; his correspondence is the best witness to
+this, and at the same time throws side-lights upon the period.
+
+It is difficult to-day to understand the influence which the
+_Messias_ had upon its readers; even Friedenkende spent happy hours
+reading it with pious tears of delight, and young and old were of the
+same opinion.
+
+There is a pretty letter from Gustchen Stolberg[10] to Klopstock,
+which runs thus:
+
+    UETERSEN,
+    25 _April_ 1776.
+
+    In the garden. Yes, in the garden, dearest Klopstock! I have just
+    been walking about, it was so beautiful: the little birds were
+    singing, violets and other flowers wafted their fragrance to me,
+    and I began thinking very warmly of all whom I dearly, dearly
+    love, and so very soon came to my dear Klopstock, who certainly
+    has no truer friend than I am, though perhaps others express it
+    better ... Thanks, thanks, for your very delightful little
+    letter--how dear to me I don't tell you--can't tell you.
+
+C. F. Cramer was his enthusiastic panegyrist. It is not only what he
+says of the private life and special taste of his adored friend which
+is noteworthy, but the way in which he does it--the tone in which, as
+a cultivated man of the day, he judged him. 'He will paint and paint
+Nature. For this he must be acquainted with her. This is why he loves
+her so well. This is why he strays by the brook and weeps. This is
+why in spring he goes out into the fields of blossoms, and his eyes
+run over with tears. All creation fills him with yearning and
+delight. He goes from mountain to valley like a man in a dream. When
+he sees a stream, he follows its course; when a hill, he must climb
+it; when a river--oh! if only he could rush with it to the sea! A
+rock--oh! to look down from its crags to the land below! A hawk
+hovers over him--oh! to have its wings and fly so much nearer to the
+stars! He stands for hours looking at a flower or moss, throws
+himself down on the grass and decks his hat with ivy and cornflowers.
+He goes by moonlight to visit the graves and think of death,
+immortality, and eternal life. Nothing hinders his meditations. He
+sees everything in relation to something else. Every visible object
+has an invisible companion, so ardently, so entirely, so closely does
+he feel it all.'
+
+This, coming straight from life, tells us more than a volume of odes;
+it contains the real feeling of the time, sensitive, dreamy, elegiac.
+
+His friend goes on: 'He walks often and likes it, but generally looks
+for sunny places; he goes very slowly, which is fatal for me, for I
+run when I walk ... Often he stands still and silent, as if there
+were knots which he could not untie (in his thoughts). And truly
+there are unknown depths of feeling as well as thought.'
+
+In another place: 'He went out and gloated over the great scene of
+immeasurable Nature. Orion and the Pleiades moved over his head, the
+dear moon was opposite. Looking intently into her friendly face, he
+greeted her repeatedly: "Moon, Moon, friend of my thoughts; hurry not
+away, dear Moon, but stay. What is thy name? Laura, Cynthia, Cyllene?
+Or shall I call thee beautiful Betty of the Sky?" ... He loved
+country walks; we made for lonely places, dark fearsome thickets,
+lonely unfrequented paths, scrambled up all the hills, spied out
+every bit of Nature, came to rest at last under a shady rock ...
+Klopstock's life is one constant enjoyment. He gives himself up to
+feeling, and revels in Nature's feast ... Winter is his favourite
+time of year....[11] He preaches skating with the unction of a
+missionary to the heathen, and not without working miracles, ... the
+ice by moonlight is a feast of the Gods to him ... only one rule, we
+do not leave the river till the moon has gone.' Klopstock described
+this in his _Skating_:
+
+  O youth, whose skill the ice-cothurn
+  Drives glowing now, and now restrains,
+  On city hearths let faggots burn,
+  But come with me to crystal plains.
+  The scene is filled with vapouring light,
+  As when the winter morning's prime
+  Looks on the lake. Above it night
+  Scatters, like stars, the glittering rime.
+  How still and white is all around!
+  How rings the track with new sparr'd frost!
+  Far off the metal's cymbal sound
+  Betrays thee, for a moment lost ...
+
+Cramer tells how Klopstock paid a long-remembered visit to Count
+Bernstoff at Schloss Stintenburg:
+
+    It has a most romantic situation in a bewitching part of
+    Mecklenburg; 'tis surrounded by forest full of delightful gloom,
+    and a large lake, with a charming little island in the centre,
+    which wakes echoes. Klopstock is very fond of echoes, and is
+    always trying to find them in his walks.
+
+This illustrates the lines in _Stintenburg_:
+
+           Isle of pious solitude,
+  Loved playmate of the echo and the lake, etc.
+
+but in this ode, as in so many of his, simple personal feeling gives
+way to the stilted mannerism of the bard poetry.
+
+He wrote of Soroe,[12] one of the loveliest places in the Island of
+Zealand, as 'an uncommonly pleasant place'; where 'By a sacred tree,
+on a raised grass plot two hundred paces from the great alley, and
+from a view over the Friedensburg Lake towards a little wooded island
+... Fanny appeared to him in the silver evening clouds over the
+tree-tops.'
+
+The day on which he composed _The Lake of Zurich_ was one of the
+pleasantest in his life. Cramer says: 'He has often told me and still
+tells, with youthful fervour, about those delightful days and this
+excursion: the boat full of people, mostly young, all in good
+spirits; charming girls, his wife Herzel, a lovely May morning.'
+
+But, unlike St Preux, he 'seemed less impressed by our scenery than
+by the beauty of our girls,[13] and his letters bear out the
+remark.[14] Yet delight in Nature was always with him: Klopstock's
+lofty morality pours forth all through it. Nature, love, fame, wine,
+everything is looked at from an ennobling point of view.'
+
+  Fair is the majesty of all thy works
+  On the green earth, O Mother Nature fair!
+  But fairer the glad face
+  Enraptured with their view.
+  Come from the vine banks of the glittering lake,
+  Or--hast thou climbed the smiling skies anew--
+  Come on the roseate tip
+  Of evening's breezy wing,
+  And teach my song with glee of youth to glow,
+  Sweet joy, like thee--with glee of shouting youths,
+  Or feeling Fanny's laugh.
+
+  Behind us far already Uto lay.
+  At whose feet Zurich in the quiet vale
+  Feeds her free sons: behind--
+  Receding vine-clad hills.
+  Uncloud'd beamed the top of silver Alps,
+  And warmer beat the heart of gazing youths,
+  And warmer to their fair
+  Companions spoke its glow.
+  And Haller's Doris sang, the pride of song;
+  And Hirzel's Daphne, dear to Kleist and Gleim;
+  And we youths sang and felt
+  As each were--Hagedorn.
+
+  Soon the green meadow took us to the cool
+  And shadowy forest, which becrowns the isle.
+  Then cam'st thou, Joy; thou cam'st
+  Down in full tide to us;
+  Yes, goddess Joy, thyself; we felt, we clasp'd,
+  Best sister of humanity, thyself,
+  With thy dear innocence
+  Accompanied, thyself.
+
+  Sweet thy inspiring breath, O cheerful Spring;
+  When the meads cradle thee, and their soft airs
+  Into the hearts of youths
+  And hearts of virgins glide,
+  Thou makest feeling conqueror. Ah! through thee
+  Fuller, more tremulous, heaves each blooming breast;
+  With lips spell-freed by thee
+  Young love unfaltering pleads.
+  Fair gleams the wine, when to the social change
+  Of thought, or heart-felt pleasure, it invites,
+  And the 'Socratic' cup
+  With dewy roses bound,
+  Sheds through the bosom bliss, and wakes resolves,
+  Such as the drunkard knows not--proud resolves
+  Emboldening to despair
+  Whate'er the sage disowns.
+
+  Delightful thrills against the panting heart
+  Fame's silver voice--and immortality
+  Is a great thought....
+  But sweeter, fairer, more delightful, 'tis
+  On a friend's arm to know oneself a friend....
+  O were ye here, who love me though afar ...
+  How would we build us huts of friendship, here
+  Together dwell for ever.
+
+This is of Fredensborg on an August day:
+
+  Here, too, did Nature tarry, when her hand
+  Pour'd living beauty over dale and hill,
+  And to adorn this pleasant land
+  Long time she lingered and stood still....
+  The lake how tranquil! From its level brim
+  The shore swells gently, wooded o'er with green,
+  And buries in its verdure dim
+  The lustre of the summer e'en....
+
+The inner and outer life are closely blended in _The Early Grave_:
+
+  Welcome, O silver moon,
+  Fair still companion of the night!
+  Friend of the pensive, flee not soon;
+  Thou stayest, and the clouds pass light.
+
+  Young waking May alone
+  Is fair as summer's night so still,
+  When from his locks the dews drop down,
+  And, rosy, he ascends the hill.
+
+  Ye noble souls and true,
+  Whose graves with sacred moss are strawn.
+  Blest were I, might I see with you
+  The glimmering night, the rosy dawn.
+
+This is true lyric feeling, spontaneous, not forced. Many of his
+odes, and parts of the _Messias_, shew great love for Nature. There
+is a fine flight of imagination in _The Festival of Spring_:
+
+    Not into the ocean of all the worlds would I plunge--not hover
+    where the first created, the glad choirs of the sons of light,
+    adore, deeply adore and sunk in ecstasy. Only around the drop on
+    the bucket, only around the earth, would I hover and adore.
+    Hallelujah! hallelujah! the drop on the bucket flowed also out of
+    the hand of the Almighty.
+
+    When out of the hand of the Almighty the greater earth flowed,
+    when the streams of light rushed, and the seven stars began to
+    be--then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the Almighty.
+
+    When a stream of light rushed, and our sun began to be, a
+    cataract of waves of light poured, as adown the rock a
+    storm-cloud, and girded Orion, then flowedst thou, drop, out of
+    the hand of the Almighty. Who are the thousandfold thousands, who
+    all the myriads that inhabit the drop?...
+
+    But thou, worm of Spring, which, greenly golden, art fluttering
+    beside me, thou livest and art, perhaps, ah! not immortal....
+
+    The storm winds that carry the thunder, how they roar, how with
+    loud waves they stream athwart the forest! Now they hush, slow
+    wanders the black cloud....
+
+    Ah! already rushes heaven and earth with the gracious rain; now
+    is the earth refreshed....
+
+    Behold Jehovah comes no longer in storm; in gentle pleasant
+    murmurs comes Jehovah, and under him bends the bow of peace.
+
+In another ode, _The Worlds_, he calls the stars 'drops of the
+ocean.'
+
+Again, in _Death_ he shews the sense of his own nothingness, in
+presence of the overpowering greatness of the Creator:
+
+  Ye starry hosts that glitter in the sky,
+  How ye exalt me! Trancing is the sight
+  Of all Thy glorious works, Most High.
+  How lofty art Thou in Thy wondrous might;
+  What joy to gaze upon these hosts, to one
+  Who feels himself so little, God so great,
+  Himself but dust, and the great God his own!
+  Oh, when I die, such rapture on me wait!
+
+As regards our subject, Klopstock performed this function--he tuned
+the strings of feeling for Nature to a higher pitch, thereby
+excelling all his contemporaries. His poetry always tended to
+extravagance; but in thought, feeling, and language alike, he was
+ahead of his time.
+
+The idyllic was now cultivated with increased fervour, especially by
+the Göttingen Brotherhood of Poets. The artificial and conventional
+began to wane, and Nature's own voice was heard again. The songs of
+Claudius were like a breath of spring.[15] His peasant songs have the
+genuine ring; they are hail-fellow-well-met with Nature. Hebel is the
+only modern poet like him.
+
+  EVENING SONG
+
+  The lovely day-star's run its course....
+  Come, mop my face, dear wife,
+  And then dish up....
+  The silvery moon will look down from his place
+  And preside at our meal over dishes and grace.
+
+He hated artificiality:
+
+    Simple joy in Nature, free from artifice, gives as great a
+    pleasure as an honest lover's kiss.
+
+His _Cradle Song to be sung by Moonlight_ is delightful in its naive
+humour (the moon was his special favourite):
+
+  Sleep then, little one. Why dost thou weep?
+  Moonlight so tender and quiet so deep,
+  Quickly and easily cometh thy sleep.
+  Fond of all little ones is the good moon;
+  Girls most of all, but he even loves boys.
+  Down from up there he sends beautiful toys....
+  He's old as a raven, he goes everywhere;
+  Even when father was young, he was there.
+
+The pearl of his poems is the exquisite _Evening Song_:
+
+  The moon hath risen on high,
+  And in the clear dark sky
+  The golden stars all brightly glow;
+  And black and hushed the woods,
+  While o'er the fields and floods
+  The white mists hover to and fro.
+
+  How still the earth, how calm!
+  What dear and home-like charm
+  From gentle twilight doth she borrow!
+  Like to some quiet room,
+  Where, wrapt in still soft gloom,
+  We sleep away the daylight's sorrow.
+
+Boie's _Evening Song_ is in the same key. None of the moonshine poets
+of his day expressed night-fall like this:
+
+            How still it is! How soft
+            The breezes blow!
+  The lime leaves lisp in whisper and echo answers low;
+  Scarce audibly the rivulet running amid the flower
+  With murmuring ripple laps the edge of yonder mystic bower.
+  And ever darker grows the veil thou weavest o'er the land,
+  And ever quieter the hush--a hush as of the grave....
+  Listen! 'tis Night! she comes, unlighted by a star,
+  And with the slow sweep of her heavy wing
+  Awes and revives the timid earth.
+
+Bürger sings in praise of idyllic comfort in _The Village_, and
+Hoelty's mild enthusiasm, touched with melancholy, turned in the same
+direction.
+
+    My predilection is for rural poetry and melancholy enthusiasm;
+    all I ask is a hut, a forest, a meadow with a spring in it, and a
+    wife in my hut.
+
+The beginning of his _Country Life_ shews that moralizing was still
+in the air:
+
+  Happy the man who has the town escaped!
+  To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks,
+  The shining pebbles preach
+  Virtue's and wisdom's lore....
+  The nightingale on him sings slumber down;
+  The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet,
+  When shines the lovely red
+  Of morning through the trees.
+  Then he admires Thee in the plain, O God!
+  In the ascending pomp of dawning day,
+  Thee in Thy glorious sun.
+  The worm--the budding branch--
+  Where coolness gushes in the waving branch
+  Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests,
+  Inhales the breadth of prime
+  The gentle airs of eve.
+  His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun,
+  And play, and hop, invites to sweeter rest
+  Than golden halls of state
+  Or beds of down afford.
+  To him the plumy people
+  Chatter and whistle on his
+  And from his quiet hand
+  Peck crumbs or peas or grains
+
+His _Winter Song_ runs:
+
+  Summer joys are o'er,
+  Flow'rets bloom no more;
+  Wintry joys are sweeping,
+  Through the snow-drifts peeping;
+  Cheerful evergreen
+  Rarely now is seen.
+
+  No more plumèd throng
+  Charms the woods with song;
+  Ice-bound trees are glittering,
+  Merry snow-birds twittering,
+  Fondly strive to cheer
+  Scenes so cold and drear.
+
+  Winter, still I see
+  Many charms in thee,
+  Love thy chilly greeting,
+  Snow-storms fiercely beating,
+  And the dear delights
+  Of the long, long nights.
+
+Hoeltz was the most sentimental of this group; Joh. Heinrich Voss was
+more robust and cheerful. He put his strength into his longer poems;
+the lyrics contain a great deal of nonsense. An extract from _Luise_
+will shew his idyllic taste:
+
+    Wandering thus through blue fields of flax and acres of barley,
+    both paused on the hill-top, which commands such a view of the
+    whole lake, crisped with the soft breath of the zephyr and
+    sparkling in sunshine; fair were the forests of white barked
+    birch beyond, and the fir-trees, lovely the village at the foot
+    half hid by the wood. Lovely Luise had welcomed her parents and
+    shewn them a green mound under an old beech tree, where the
+    prospect was very inviting. 'There we propose,' said she,  to
+    unpack and to spread the breakfast. Then we'll adjourn to the
+    boat and be rowed for a time on the water,' etc.
+
+We find the same taste, often expressed in a very original way, in
+both the brothers Stolberg. In Christian Stolberg's _Elegy to
+Hangwitz_, for instance, another poem has these lines:
+
+  Thither, where 'mong the trees of life,
+  Where in celestial bowers
+  Under your fig-tree, bowed with fruit
+  And warranting repose,
+  Under your pine, inviting shady joy,
+  Unchanging blooms
+  Eternal Spring!
+
+Friedrich Stolberg was a very prophet of Nature; in his ode _Nature_
+he says:
+
+  He who does not love Nature cannot be my friend.
+
+His prayer may serve as the motto of his day:
+
+  Holy Nature, heavenly fair,
+  Lead me with thy parent care;
+  In thy footsteps let me tread
+  As a willing child is led.
+  When with care and grief opprest,
+  Soft I sink me on thy breast;
+  On thy peaceful bosom laid,
+  Grief shall cease, nor care invade.
+  O congenial power divine,
+  All my votive soul is thine.
+  Lead me with thy parent care,
+  Holy Nature, heavenly fair!
+
+He, too, sang the moon; but Klopstock's influence seems to have
+carried him to higher flights than his contemporaries. He wrote in
+fine language of wild scenery, even sea and mountains, which had
+played no part in German poetry before.
+
+  TO THE SEA
+
+  Thou boundless, shining, glorious sea,
+  With ecstasy I gaze on thee;
+  Joy, joy to him whose early beam
+  Kisses thy lip, bright ocean stream.
+  Thanks for the thousand hours, old sea,
+  Of sweet communion held with thee;
+  Oft as I gazed, thy billowy roll
+  Woke the deep feelings of my soul.
+
+There are beautiful notes, reminding one of Goethe, in his
+_Unsterbliche Jüngling, Ode to a Mountain Torrent_.
+
+  Immortal youth!
+  Thou streamest forth from rocky caves;
+  No mortal saw
+  The cradle of thy might,
+  No ear has heard
+  Thy infant stammering in the gushing Spring.
+  How lovely art thou in thy silver locks!
+  How dreadful thundering from the echoing crags!
+  At thy approach
+  The firwood quakes;
+  Thou easiest down, with root and branch, the fir
+  Thou seizest on the rock,
+  And roll'st it scornful like a pebble on.
+  Thee the sun clothes in dazzling beams of glory,
+  And paints with colours of the heavenly bow
+  The clouds that o'er thy dusky cataracts climb.
+  Why hasten so to the cerulean sea?
+  Is not the neighbourhood of heaven good?
+  Not grand thy temple of encircling rocks?
+  Not fair the forest hanging o'er thy bed?
+  Hasten not so to the cerulean sea;
+  Youth, thou art here,
+  Strong as a god,
+  Free as a god,
+  Though yonder beckon treacherous calms below,
+  The wavering lustre of the silent sea,
+  Now softly silvered by the swimming moon,
+  Now rosy golden in the western beam;
+  Youth, what is silken rest,
+  And what the smiling of the friendly moon,
+  Or gold or purple of the evening sun,
+  To him who feels himself in thraldom's bonds?
+  Here thou canst wildly stream
+  As bids thy heart;
+  Below are masters, ever-changeful minds,
+  Or the dead stillness of the servile main.
+  Hasten not so to the cerulean sea;
+  Youth, thou art here,
+  Strong as a god,
+  Free as a god.
+
+Here we have, with all Klopstock's pathos, a love for the wild and
+grandiose in Nature, almost unique in Germany, in this time of
+idyllic sentimentality. But the discovery of the beauty of romantic
+mountain scenery had been made by Rousseau some time before, for
+Rousseau, too, was a typical forerunner, and his romances fell like a
+bomb-shell among all the idyllic pastoral fiction of the day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE AWAKENING OF FEELING FOR THE ROMANTIC
+
+
+Rousseau was one of those rare men who bring about a complete change
+in the culture of their time by their revolutionary originality. In
+such beings the world's history, so to speak, begins again. Out of
+touch with their own day, and opposed to its ruling taste and mode of
+thought, they are a law unto themselves, and naturally tend to
+measure all things by themselves, while their too great subjectivity
+is apt to be increased by a morbid sophistry of passion and the
+conviction of the prophet.
+
+Of this type, unchecked by a broad sense of humanity, full of
+subversive wilfulness, and not only untrained in moderation, but
+degenerating into crass exaggeration, Rousseau was the first example.
+
+Hellenism, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, had only produced
+forerunners. What in Petrarch was a tendency, became an established
+condition in Rousseau: the acedia reached its climax. All that went
+on in his mind was so much grit for his own mill, subject-matter for
+his observation, and therefore of the greatest value to him. He lived
+in introspection, a spectator of his own struggles, his own waverings
+between an ideal of simple duty and the imperious demands of a
+selfish and sensuous ego. His passion for Nature partially atoned for
+his unamiable and doubtful character; he was false in many ways; but
+that feeling rang true--it was the best part of him, and of that
+'idealism of the heart' whose right of rule he asserted in an age of
+artificiality and petty formalism. Those were no empty words in his
+third letter to Malesherbes:
+
+'Which time of my life do you suppose I recall most often and most
+willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of youth; they were too
+few, too much mixed with bitterness, and they are too far away now.
+It is the time of my retreat, of my solitary walks--those fast-flying
+delicious days that I passed all alone by myself, with my good and
+simple Thérèse, my beloved dog, my old cat, with the wild birds and
+the roes of the forest, with all Nature and her inconceivable Maker.
+
+'When I got up early to go and watch the sunrise from my garden, when
+I saw a fine day begin, my first wish was that neither letters nor
+visitors might come to break its charm....
+
+'Then I would seek out some wild place in the forest, some desert
+spot where there was nothing to shew the hand of man, and so tell of
+servitude and rule--some refuge which I could fancy I was the first
+to discover, and where no importunate third party came between Nature
+and me....
+
+'The gold broom and the purple heather touched my heart; the majestic
+trees that shaded me, the delicate shrubs around, the astonishing
+variety of plants and flowers that I trod under foot, kept me
+alternately admiring and observing.'
+
+His writings shew that with him return to Nature was no mere theory,
+but real earnest; they condemned the popular garden-craft and carpet
+fashions, and set up in their place the rights of the heart, and free
+enjoyment of Nature in her wild state, undisturbed by the hand of
+man.
+
+It was Rousseau who first discovered that the Alps were beautiful.
+But to see this fact in its true light, we must glance back at the
+opinions of preceding periods.[1]
+
+Though the Alpine countries were the arena of all sorts of
+enterprise, warlike and peaceful, in the fifteenth century, most of
+the interest excited by foreign parts was absorbed by the great
+voyages of discovery; the Alps themselves were almost entirely
+omitted from the maps.
+
+To be just to the time, it must be conceded that security and comfort
+in travelling are necessary preliminaries to our modern mountain
+rapture, and in the Middle Ages these were non-existent. Roads and
+inns were few; there was danger from robbers as well as weather, so
+that the prevailing feelings on such journeys were misery and
+anxiety, not pleasure. Knowledge of science, too, was only just
+beginning; botany, geology, and geognosy were very slightly diffused;
+glacier theories were undreamt of. The sight of a familiar scene near
+the great snow-peaks roused men's admiration, because they were
+surprised to find it there; this told especially in favour of the
+idyllic mountain valleys.
+
+Felix Fabri, the preacher monk of Ulm, visited the East in 1480 and
+1483, and gave a lifelike description of his journeys through the
+Alps in his second account. He said[2]:
+
+'Although the Alps themselves seem dreadful and rigid from the cold
+of the snow or the heat of the sun, and reach up to the clouds, the
+valleys below them are pleasant, and as rich and fruitful in all
+earthly delights as Paradise itself. Many people and animals inhabit
+them, and almost every metal is dug out of the Alps, especially
+silver. 'Mid such charms as these men live among the mountains, and
+Nature blooms as if Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres reigned there. No one
+who saw the Alps from afar would believe what a delicious Paradise is
+to be found amid the eternal snow and mountains of perpetual winter
+and never-melting ice.'
+
+Very limited praise only extended to the valleys!
+
+In the sixteenth century we have the records of those who crossed the
+Alps with an army, such as Adam Reissner, the biographer of the
+Frundsberg, and mention their 'awe' at sight of the valleys, and of
+those who had travelled to Italy and the East, and congratulated
+themselves that their troublesome wanderings through the Alps were
+over. Savants were either very sparing of words about their travels,
+or else made rugged verses which shewed no trace of mountain
+inspiration. There were no outbursts of admiration at sight of the
+great snow-peaks; 'horrible' and 'dreadful' were the current
+epithets. The æsthetic sense was not sufficiently developed, and
+discount as we will for the dangers and discomforts of the road, and,
+as with the earlier travellers to the East, for some lack of power of
+expression, the fact remains that mountains were not appreciated. The
+prevalent notion of beautiful scenery was very narrow, and even among
+cultured people only meant broad, level country.
+
+B. Kiechel[3] (1585) was enthusiastic about 'the beautiful level
+scenery' of Lichfeld, and found it difficult to breathe among the
+Alps. Schickhart wrote: 'We were delighted to get away from the
+horrible tedious mountains,' and has nothing to say of the Brenner
+Pass except this poor joke: 'It did not burn us much, for what with
+the ice and very deep snow and horribly cold wind, we found no heat.'
+The most enthusiastic description is of the Lake of Como, by Paulus
+Jovius (1552), praising Bellagio,'[4] In the seventeenth century
+there was some admiration for the colossal proportions of the Alps,
+but only as a foil to the much admired valleys.
+
+J.J. Grasser wrote of Rhoetia[5]: 'There are marble masses
+projecting, looking like walls and towers in imitation of all sorts
+of wonderful architecture. The villages lie scattered in the valleys,
+here and there the ground is most fruitful. There is luxuriance close
+to barrenness, gracefulness close to dreadfulness, life close to
+loneliness. The delight of the painter's eye is here, yet Nature
+excels all the skill of art. The very ravines, tortuous foot-paths,
+torrents, alternately raging and meagre, the arched bridges, waves on
+the lakes, varied dress of the fields, the mighty trees, in short,
+whatever heaven and earth grant to the sight, is an astonishment and
+a pastime to the enraptured eye of the wanderer.'
+
+But this pastime depended upon the contrast between the charming
+valleys and the dreadful mountains.
+
+Joseph Furttenbach (1591) writing about the same district of Thusis,
+described 'the little bridges, under which one hears the Rhine
+flowing with a great roar, and sees what a horrible cruel wilderness
+the place is.' In Conrad Gessner's _De admiratione Montium_ (1541)[6]
+a passage occurs which shews that even in Switzerland itself in the
+sixteenth century one voice was found to praise Alpine scenery in a
+very different way, anticipating Rousseau. 'I have resolved that so
+long as God grants me life I will climb some mountains every year, or
+at least one mountain, partly to learn the mountain flora, partly to
+strengthen my body and refresh my soul. What a pleasure it is to see
+the monstrous mountain masses, and lift one's head among the clouds.
+How it stimulates worship, to be surrounded by the snowy domes, which
+the Great Architect of the world built up in one long day of
+creation! How empty is the life, how mean the striving of those who
+only crawl about on the earth for gain and home-baked pleasures! The
+earthly paradise is closed to them.'
+
+Yet, just as after Rousseau, and even in the nineteenth century,
+travellers were to be found who thought the Alps 'dreadful' (I refer
+to Chateaubriand's 'hideux'), so such praise as this found no echo in
+its own day.
+
+But with the eighteenth century came a change. Travelling no longer
+subserved the one practical end of making acquaintance with the
+occupations, the morals, the affairs generally, of other peoples; a
+new scientific interest arose, geologists and physicists ventured to
+explore the glaciers and regions of perpetual snow, and first
+admiration, and then love, supplanted the old feeling of horror.
+
+Modern methods began with Scheuchzer's (1672-1733) _Itinera Alpina_.
+Every corner of the Alps was explored--the Splugen, Julier, Furka,
+Gotthard, etc.--and glaciers, avalanches, ores, fossils, plants
+examined. Haller, as his verses shew, was botanist as well as
+theologian, historian, and poet; but he did not appreciate mountain
+beauty.
+
+Brockes to some extent did. He described the Harz Mountains in the
+Fourth Book of his _Earthly Pleasure in God (Irdisches Vergüngen in
+Gott)_; and in his _Observations on the Blankenburg Marble_ he said:
+'In many parts the rough mountain heights were monstrously beautiful,
+their size delights and appals us'; and wound up a discussion of wild
+scenery in contrast to cultivated with: 'Ponder this with joy and
+reverence, my soul. The mountain heights wild and beautiful shew us a
+picture of earthly disorder.'[7] It was very long before expressions
+of horror and fear entirely disappeared from descriptions of the
+Alps. In Richardson's _Sir Charles Grandison_ we read: 'We bid adieu
+to France and found ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty
+and rocky mountains. We had left behind us a blooming Spring, which
+enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges on the road we
+passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers.... Every object
+which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' Savoy is 'one
+of the worst countries under Heaven.'
+
+Addison,[8] on the other hand, wrote of the Alps from Ripaille: 'It
+was the pleasantest voyage in the world to follow the windings of
+this river Inn through such a variety of pleasing scenes as the
+course of it naturally led us. We had sometimes on each side of us a
+vast extent of naked rocks and mountains, broken into a thousand
+irregular steps and precipices ... but, as the materials of a fine
+landscape are not always the most profitable to the owner of them, we
+met with but little corn or pasturage,' etc. Lady Mary Wortley[9]
+Montagu wrote from Lyons, Sept. 25, 1718: 'The prodigious aspect of
+mountains covered with eternal snow, clouds hanging far below our
+feet, and the vast cascades tumbling down the rocks with a confused
+roaring, would have been solemnly entertaining to me, if I had
+suffered less from the extreme cold that reigns here.'
+
+On the whole, Switzerland was little known at the beginning of the
+eighteenth century. Many travellers still measured the value of
+scenery entirely by fertility, like Keyssler,[10] who praised
+garden-like level country such as that round Mantua, in contrast to
+the useless wild Tyrolese mountains and the woods of Westphalia; and
+Lüneburg or Moser,[11] who observed ironically to Abbt (1763), after
+reading _Emilia_ and _La Nouvelle Héloise_: 'The far-famed Alps,
+about which so much fuss has been made.'
+
+Rousseau was the real exponent of rapture for the high Alps and
+romantic scenery in general. Isolated voices had expressed some
+feeling before him, but it was he who deliberately proclaimed it, and
+gave romantic scenery the first place among the beauties of Nature.
+He did not, as so many would have it--Du Bois Reymond, for
+example--discover our modern feeling for Nature; the great men of the
+Renaissance, even the Hellenic poets, fore-ran him; but he directed
+it, with feeling itself in general, into new channels.[12]
+
+In French literature he stood alone; the descriptions of landscape
+before him were either borrowed blossoms of antiquity or sentimental
+and erotic pastorals. He opened up again for his country the taste
+for wood and field, sunshine and moonlight, for the idyllic, and,
+above all, for the sublime, which had been lost under artificiality
+and false taste.
+
+The primitive freshness, the genuine ring of his enthusiasm for
+country life, was worth all the laboured pastorals and fables of
+previous periods of literature.
+
+His _Confessions_ opened not only the eyes of France, but the heart.
+
+A Swiss by birth, and living in one of the most beautiful parts of
+Europe, Rousseau was devotedly fond of his home on the Lake of
+Geneva. As a boy he loved to leave the city and rove in the country.
+
+He describes how once on a Sunday in 1728 he wandered about,
+forgetting the time. 'Before me were fields, trees, flowers; the
+beautiful lake, the hill country, and high mountains unfolded
+themselves majestically before my eyes. I gloated over the beautiful
+spectacle while the sun was setting. At last, too late, I saw that
+the city gates were shut.'
+
+From that time on he felt more drawn to Nature than to men. In the
+Fourth Book of the _Confessions_ he says, speaking of 1732:
+
+'A view of the Lake of Geneva and its beautiful banks has had even in
+my idea a particular attraction that I cannot describe, not arising
+merely from the beauty of the prospect, but something, I know not
+what, more interesting which affects and softens me. 'Every time I
+have approached the Vaudois country, I have experienced an impression
+composed of the remembrance of Mademoiselle de Warens, who was born
+there; of my father, who lived there; of Mademoiselle de Wulson, who
+had been my first love; and of several pleasant journeys I had made
+there in my childhood, mingled with some nameless charm, more
+powerfully attractive than all the rest. When that ardent desire for
+a life of happiness and tranquillity (which ever follows me, and for
+which I was born) inflames my mind, 'tis ever to the country of Vaud,
+near the lake, on those charming plains, that imagination leads me.
+An orchard on the banks of that lake, and no other, is absolutely
+necessary; a firm friend, an amiable woman, a cow, and a little boat;
+nor could I enjoy perfect happiness on earth without these
+concomitants.... On my way to Vevey I gave myself up to the soft
+melancholy ... I sighed and wept like a child.'
+
+He clung to Nature, and most of all when surrounded by human beings;
+a morbid impulse to flee from them was always present as a negative
+element in the background of his love for her. His Fifth Reverie, the
+most beautiful one, shews this.
+
+He had gone to the Peter Island on the Lake of Bienne. So far as he
+knew, no other traveller had paid any attention to the place; but
+that did not disturb his confidence in his own taste.
+
+'The shores of the Lake of Bienne are wilder and more romantic than
+those of the Lake of Geneva, because the rocks and woods come nearer
+to the water; but they are not less radiant. With less cultivation
+and fewer vineyards, towns, and houses, there are more green fields
+and shady sheltered spots, more contrasts and irregularities. As
+there are no good carriage roads on these happy shores, the district
+is little frequented by travellers; but it is interesting for the
+solitary contemplation of those who like to intoxicate themselves at
+their leisure with Nature's charms, and to retire into a silence
+unbroken by any sound but the eagle's cry, the intermittent warbling
+of birds, and the roar of torrents falling from the mountains,'
+
+Here he had a delightful Robinson Crusoe existence. The only other
+human beings were the Bernese manager with his family and labourers.
+He counted his two months among the happiest of his life, and would
+have liked to stay for ever. True to his character, he proceeded to
+analyze the charm of the episode, and decided that it was made up of
+the _dolce far niente_, solitude, absence of books and writing
+materials, dealing with simple folk, healthy movement in the open
+air, field labour, and, above all, intercourse with Nature, both in
+admiring and studying her. He was seized with a passion for
+botanizing, and planned a comprehensive Flora Petrinsularis, dividing
+the whole island into quarters, so that no part might escape notice.
+
+'There is nothing more strange than the ravishment, the ecstasy, I
+felt at each observation I made upon vegetable structure and
+organization.
+
+'I would go by myself, throw myself into a boat when the water was
+calm, and row to the middle of the lake, and then, lying full-length
+in the boat with my eyes to the sky, I would let myself drift,
+sometimes for hours, lost in a thousand confused but delicious
+reveries.... Often when the sunset reminded me that it was time to
+return, I found myself so far from the island that I was forced to
+pull with all my strength to get back before night-fall. At other
+times, instead of wandering about the lake, I amused myself by
+skirting the green shores of the island where the limpid water and
+cool shade often invited to a bathe.... When the lake was too rough
+for rowing, I would spend the afternoon scouring the island,
+botanizing right and left. I often sat down to dream at leisure in
+sunny, lonely nooks, or on the terraces and hillocks, to gaze at the
+superb ravishing panorama of the lake and its shores--one side
+crowned by near mountains, the other spread out in rich and fertile
+plains, across which the eye looked to the more distant boundary of
+blue mountains.... When evening fell, I came down from the higher
+parts of the mountains and sat by the shore in some hidden spot, and
+there the sound of the waves and the movements of the water, making
+me oblivious of all other distraction, would plunge me into delicious
+reverie. The ebb and flow of the water, and the sound of it,
+restrained and yet swelling at intervals, by striking eye and ear
+without ceasing, came to the aid of those inner movements of the mind
+which reverie destroys, and sufficed to make me pleasantly conscious
+of existence without the trouble of thinking.... There is nothing
+actual in all this to which the heart can attach itself; even in our
+most intense enjoyment there is scarcely a moment of which the heart
+can truly say "I should like it to stay for ever."'
+
+One thinks of Faust: 'O moment! tarry awhile, thou art so fair!'
+
+However, at the close of the Reverie he admits that he has often had
+such moments--moments free from all earthly passion--on the lake and
+on the island. His feeling was increased by botanical knowledge, and
+later on in life the world of trees and plants became his one safe
+refuge when pursued by delusions of persecution.
+
+The Seventh Reverie has a touching account of his pleasure in botany,
+of the effect of 'earth in her wedding-dress, the only scene in the
+world of which eyes and heart never weary,' the intoxicating sense
+that he was part of a great system in which individual detail
+disappears, and he only sees and hears the whole.
+
+'Shunning men, seeking solitude, no longer dreaming, still less
+thinking, I began to concern myself with all my surroundings, giving
+the preference to my favourites...brilliant flowers, emerald meadows,
+fresh shade, streams, thickets, green turf, these purified my
+imagination.... Attracted by the pleasant objects around, I note
+them, study them, and finally learn to classify them, and so become
+at one stroke as much of a botanist as one need be when one only
+studies Nature to find ever new reasons for loving her.
+
+'The plants seem sown in profusion over the earth like the stars in
+the sky, to invite man, through pleasure and curiosity, to study
+them; but the stars are far off; they require preliminary knowledge
+... while plants grow under our very feet--lie, so to speak, in our
+very hands.'
+
+He had a peaceful sense of being free from his enemies when
+he was pursuing his botany in the woods. He described one
+never-to-be-forgotten ramble when he lost himself in a dense thicket
+close to a dizzy precipice, where, save for some rare birds, he was
+quite alone. He was just feeling the pride of a Columbus in the
+discovery of new ground, when his eye fell upon a manufactory not far
+off. His first feeling was a flash of delight at finding himself
+again among men; but this gave way to the more lasting and painful
+one, that even among the Alps there was no escape from his
+tormentors.
+
+Years later, when he knew that he would never revisit the spot, the
+leaves in his herbarium would carry him back to it in memory.
+
+So strong a personal attachment to Nature, solitude, and retirement
+had not been known before; but it was thrown into this high relief by
+the morbid dread of man and hatred of culture, which formed a
+constant dark background to his mind. It was a state of mind which
+naturally led to intense dislike of formal French gardens and open
+admiration of the English park. He rejected all the garnish of
+garden-craft, even grafted roses and fruit trees, and only admitted
+indigenous plants which grew outdoors.[13] It is greatly due to his
+feeling for English Park style that a healthier garden-craft gained
+ground in Germany as well as France. The foremost maxim of his
+philosophy and teaching, that everything is good as it comes from the
+bosom of mother Nature, or rather from the hand of God, and that man
+and his culture are responsible for all the evil, worked out in his
+attitude towards Nature.
+
+He placed her upon a pedestal, worshipping her, and the Creator
+through her, and this made him the first to recognize the fact that
+study of Nature, especially of botany, should be an important factor
+in the education of children.
+
+His _Confessions_, the truest photographs of a human character in
+existence, shew at once the keenest introspection and intense love
+for Nature. No one before Rousseau had been so aware of his own
+individuality--that is, of himself, as a being--who in this
+particular state only exists once, and has therefore not only
+relative but absolute value. He gave this peculiarity its full value,
+studying it as a thing outside himself, of which every detail was
+important, watching with great interest his own change of moods, the
+fluctuations of that double self which now lifted him to the ideal,
+now cast him down to the lowest and commonest. His relation to Nature
+was the best thing about him, and when he was happy, as he was for
+the first time in the society of Mademoiselle de Warens, Nature
+seemed lovelier than ever.
+
+The scattered passages about Nature in the _Confessions_ have a
+youthful freshness:
+
+'The appearance of Aurora seemed so delightful one morning, that,
+putting on my clothes, I hastened into the country to see the rising
+of the sun. I enjoyed that pleasure to its utmost extent. It was one
+week after midsummer: the earth was covered with verdure and flowers;
+the nightingales, whose soft warblings were almost over, seemed to
+vie with each other, and, in concert with birds of various kinds, to
+bid adieu to spring and hail the approach of a beautiful summer's
+day.'
+
+He loved rambling over hill and dale, even by night; thus, when he
+was at Lyons:
+
+'It had been a very hot day, the evening was delightful, the dew
+moistened the parched grass, no wind was stirring; the air was fresh
+without chilliness, the setting sun had tinged the clouds with a
+beautiful crimson, which was again reflected by the water, and the
+trees bordering the terrace were filled with nightingales that were
+constantly answering each other's songs. I walked along in a kind of
+ecstasy, surrendering my heart and senses to the enjoyment of so many
+delights, and sighing only from regret at enjoying them alone.
+Absorbed in this pleasing reverie, I lengthened my walk till it grew
+very late, without perceiving I was tired. At length I threw myself
+on the steps of a kind of niche in a terrace wall. How charming was
+that couch! The trees formed a stately canopy, a nightingale sat
+directly over me, and with his soft notes lulled me to rest. How
+delicious my repose! my awakening more so. It was broad day; on
+opening my eyes, I saw the water, the verdure, and an adorable
+landscape before me.'
+
+At the end of the Fourth Book he states his idea of beautiful
+scenery:
+
+'I love to walk at my ease and stop at leisure ... travelling on foot
+in a fine country with fine weather ... and having an agreeable
+object to terminate my journey. It is already understood what I mean
+by a fine country; never can a flat one, though ever so beautiful,
+appear such to my eyes. I must have torrents, fir trees, black woods,
+mountains to climb or descend, and rugged roads with precipices on
+either side to alarm me. I experienced this pleasure to its utmost
+extent as I approached Chambéry, not far from a mountain road called
+the Pas d'Échelle. Above the main road, hewn through the solid rock,
+a small river runs and rushes into fearful chasms, which it appears
+to have been millions of ages in forming. The road has been hedged by
+a parapet to prevent accidents, and I was thus enabled to contemplate
+the whole descent and gain vertigoes at pleasure, for a great part of
+my amusement in these steep rocks lies in their causing a giddiness
+and swimming in my head, which I am particularly fond of, provided I
+am in safety. Leaning therefore on the parapet, I remained whole
+hours, catching from time to time a glance of the froth and blue
+water whose rushing caught my ear, mingled with the cries of ravens
+and other birds of prey that flew from rock to rock and bush to bush
+at 600 feet below me.'
+
+His preference was for the wild and sublime, and he was glad that
+this was not a popular taste; but he could write glowing descriptions
+of more idyllic scenery and of village life.
+
+He said of a day at the Charmettes, a property near Chambéry, with
+his beloved friend Madame de Warens, at the end of 1736:
+
+'I arose with the sun and was happy; I walked and was happy; I saw
+Madame de Warens and was happy; I quitted her and still was happy.
+Whether I rambled through the woods, over the hills, or strolled
+along the valley; read, was idle, worked in the garden, or gathered
+fruits, happiness continually accompanied me.'
+
+He offered his morning prayer from a hill-top, and in the evening,
+before he left, stooped to kiss the ground and the trees, gazing till
+they were out of sight at the places where he had been so happy.
+
+At the Hermitage with Thérèse there was a similar idyll.
+
+The most epoch--making event in European feeling for Nature was the
+appearance of _La Nouvelle Héloise_ (1761). The book overflows with
+Rousseau's raptures about the Lake of Geneva. St Preux says:
+
+'The nearer I drew to Switzerland, the greater were my emotions. That
+instant in which I discovered the Lake of Geneva from the heights of
+Jura, was a moment of ecstasy and rapture. The sight of my country,
+my beloved country, where a deluge of pleasure had overflowed my
+heart; the pure and wholesome air of the Alps, the gentle breeze of
+the country, more sweet than the perfumes of the East; that rich and
+fertile spot, that unrivalled landscape, the most beautiful that ever
+struck the eye of man, that delightful abode, to which I found
+nothing comparable in the vast tour of the globe; the mildness of the
+season, the serenity of the climate, a thousand pleasing
+recollections which recalled to my mind the pleasures I had
+enjoyed;--all these circumstances together threw me into a kind of
+transport which I cannot describe, and seemed to collect the
+enjoyment of my whole life into one happy moment.'
+
+_La Nouvelle Héloise_ shewed the world three things in quite a new
+light: the inner consciousness which was determined to give feeling
+its rights again, though well aware that 'a feeling heart is an
+unhappy gift from heaven'; the taste for solitude, 'all noble
+passions are formed in solitude'; and closely bound up with these,
+the love of romantic scenery, which it described for the first time
+in glowing language.
+
+Such expressions as these of St Preux were unheard of at that time:
+'I shall do my best to be free quickly, and able to wander at my ease
+in the wild places that to my mind make the charm of this country.'
+'I am of opinion that this unfrequented country deserves the
+attention of speculative curiosity, and that it wants nothing to
+excite admiration but a skilful spectator'; and 'Nature seems
+desirous of hiding her real charms from the sight of men, because
+they are too little sensible of them, and disfigure them when within
+their reach; she flies from public places; it is on the tops of
+mountains, in the midst of forests, on desert islands, that she
+displays her most affecting charms.'
+
+Rousseau certainly announced his views with all the fervour of a
+prophet proclaiming a newly-discovered truth. The sketch St Preux
+gives of the country that 'deserved a year's study,' in the
+twenty-third letter to Julia, is very poetic. He is ascending a rocky
+path when a new view breaks upon him:
+
+    One moment I beheld stupendous rocks hanging ruinous over my
+    head; the next, I was enveloped in a drizzling cloud, which arose
+    from a vast cascade that, dashing, thundered against the rocks
+    below my feet. On one side a perpetual torrent opened to my view
+    a yawning abyss, which my eyes could hardly fathom with safety;
+    sometimes I was lost in the obscurity of a hanging wood, and then
+    was greatly astonished with the sudden opening of a flowery
+    plain.
+
+He was always charmed by 'a surprising mixture of wild and cultivated
+Nature':
+
+    Here Nature seems to have a singular pleasure in acting
+    contradictory to herself, so different does she appear in the
+    same place in different aspects. Towards the east, the flowers of
+    spring; to the south, the flowers of autumn; and northwards, the
+    ice of winter. Add to that the illusions of vision, the tops of
+    the mountains variously illumined, the harmonious mixture of
+    light and shade....
+
+After climbing, he reflects:
+
+    Upon the top of mountains, the air being subtle and pure, we
+    respire with greater freedom, our bodies are more active, our
+    minds more serene, our pleasures less ardent, and our passions
+    much more moderate. Our meditations acquire a degree of sublimity
+    from the grandeur of the objects around us. It seems as if, being
+    lifted above all human society, we had left every low terrestrial
+    sentiment behind.
+
+He can find no words to express 'the amazing variety, magnitude, and
+beauty of a thousand stupendous objects, the pleasure of gazing at an
+entire new scene ... and beholding, as it were, another Nature and a
+new world.'
+
+Earlier in the year he wrote his letters to Julia upon a block of
+stone in his favourite wild spot, and the wintry landscape harmonized
+with his feelings:
+
+    I run to and fro, climb the rocks and explore my whole district,
+    and find everything as horrible without as I experienced it
+    within. There is no longer any verdure to be seen, the grass is
+    yellow and withered, the trees are stripped of their foliage, and
+    the north-east blast heaps snow and ice around me. In short, the
+    whole face of Nature appears as decayed to my outward senses as I
+    myself from within am dead to hope and joy.
+
+Julia, too, is enthusiastic about places, where 'no vestiges are seen
+of human toil, no appearance of studied and laborious art; every
+object presents only a view of the tender care of Nature, our common
+mother.'
+
+When St Preux knows that she returns his love, his sympathy for
+Nature overflows:
+
+    I find the country more delightful, the verdure fresher and
+    livelier, the air more temperate, and the sky more serene than
+    ever I did before; even the feathered songsters seem to tune
+    their tender throats with more harmony and pleasure; the
+    murmuring rills invite to love-inspiring dalliance, while the
+    blossoms of the vine regale me from afar with the choicest
+    perfumes ... let us animate all Nature, which is absolutely dead
+    without the genial warmth of love.
+
+St Preux escorts his old love to the Meillerie, and it was with his
+description of this that Rousseau unrolled the full charm of mountain
+scenery, and opened the eyes of his readers to see it.
+
+They were climbing a mountain top on the Savoy side of the lake:
+
+    This solitary spot formed a wild and desert nook, but full of
+    those sorts of beauties which are only agreeable to susceptible
+    minds, and appear horrible to others. A torrent, occasioned by
+    the melting of the snow, rolled in a muddy stream within twenty
+    paces of us, and carried dust, sand, and stones along with it,
+    not without considerable noise. Behind us, a chain of
+    inaccessible rocks divided the place where we stood from that
+    part of the Alps which they call the Ice house.... Forests of
+    gloomy fir trees afforded us a melancholy shade on the right,
+    while on the left was a large wood of oak, beyond which the
+    torrent issued; and beneath, that vast body of water which the
+    lake forms in the bay of the Alps, parted us from the rich coast
+    of the Pays de Vaud, crowning the whole landscape with the top of
+    the majestic Jura.
+
+Rousseau's influence upon feeling in general, and feeling for Nature
+in particular, was an extraordinary one, widening and deepening at
+once.
+
+By his strong personal impulse he impelled it into more natural
+paths, and at the same time he discovered the power of the mountains.
+
+He brought to flower the germ which had lain dormant in Hellenism and
+the Renaissance; and although his readers imbibed a sickly strain of
+morbid sentimentality with this passion for the new region of
+feeling, the total effect of his individuality and his idealism was
+to intensify their love for Nature. His feelings woke the liveliest
+echo, and it was not France alone who profited by the lessons he
+taught.
+
+He was no mountaineer himself, but he pointed out the way, and others
+soon followed it. Saussure began his climbing in 1760, exploring the
+Alps with the indomitable spirit of the discoverer and the
+scientist's craving for truth. He ascended Mont Blanc in 1787, and
+only too soon the valleys of Chamounix filled with tourists and
+speculators. One of the first results of Rousseau's imposing
+descriptions of scenery was to rouse the most ardent of French
+romance writers, Bernardin de St Pierre; and his writings, especially
+his beautiful pictures of the Ile de France, followed hard in the
+wake of _La Nouvelle Héloise_.
+
+In _Paul and Virginia_ vivid descriptions of Nature were interwoven
+with an idyllic Robinson Crusoe romance:
+
+    Within this enclosure reigns the most profound silence. The
+    waters, the air, all the elements are at peace. Scarcely does the
+    echo repeat the whispers of the palm trees spreading their broad
+    leaves, the long points of which are gently agitated by the
+    winds. A soft light illumines the bottom of this deep valley, on
+    which the sun shines only at noon. But even at break of day the
+    rays of light are thrown on the surrounding rocks, and their
+    sharp peaks, rising above the shadows of the mountain, appear
+    like tints of gold and purple gleaming upon the azure sky.
+
+Like Rousseau, St Pierre held that 'to take refuge in the wildest and
+most desert places is an instinct common to all feeling and suffering
+beings, as if rocks were ramparts against misfortune, and Nature's
+calm could appease the sorrows of the soul'[14]; but he differed in
+caring for Nature far more for her own sake, and not in opposition to
+culture and a detested world. He wrote too, not as a philosopher
+proclaiming a new gospel, but as a poet[15]; the poetry of Nature had
+been revealed to French literature.
+
+St Pierre drew the beauty of the tropics in a poem, and George
+Forster's _Voyage round the World_[16] shewed how quickly Rousseau's
+influence told upon travels. It was a far cry from the Crusaders and
+discoverers to the highly-cultured Forster, alive to everything that
+was good and beautiful, and able to express it. He was the first to
+describe countries and peoples from both the scientific and artistic
+standpoint--a style of writing which Humboldt perfected, and some
+later writers, Haeckel, for example, in _Indischen Briefen_, have
+carried on with success.
+
+To quote Forster:
+
+    The town of Santa Cruz in Madeira was abreast of us at six in the
+    afternoon. The mountains are here intersected by numerous deep
+    glens and valleys. On the sloping ground we observed several
+    country houses pleasantly situated amidst surrounding vineyards
+    and lofty cypresses, which gave the country altogether a romantic
+    appearance. Early on the 29th we were agreeably surprised with
+    the picturesque appearance of the city of Funchal....
+
+In October 1772, off South Africa:
+
+    The night was scarcely begun when the water all round us afforded
+    the most grand and astonishing sight that can be imagined. As far
+    as we could see, the whole ocean seemed to be in a blaze. Every
+    breaking wave had its summit illuminated by a light similar to
+    that of phosphorus, and the sides of the vessel, coming in
+    contact with the sea, were strongly marked by a luminous line....
+    There was a singularity and a grandeur in the display of this
+    phenomenon which could not fail of giving occupation to the mind,
+    and striking it with a reverential awe, due to omnipotence.
+
+    The ocean was covered to a great extent with myriads of
+    animalcules; these little beings, organized, alive, endowed with
+    locomotive power, a quality of shining whenever they please, of
+    illuminating every body with which they come in contact ... all
+    these ideas crowded upon us, and bade us admire the Creator, even
+    in His minutest works.... I hope I shall not have formed too
+    favourable an opinion of my readers, if I expect that the
+    generality will sympathize with me in these feelings.
+
+In Dusky Bay:
+
+    We glided along by insensible degrees, wafted by light airs past
+    numerous rocky islands, each of which was covered with wood and
+    shrubberies, where numerous evergreens were sweetly contrasted
+    and mingled with the various shades of autumnal yellow. Flocks of
+    aquatic birds enlivened the rocky shores, and the whole country
+    resounded with the wild notes of the feathered tribe.... The view
+    of rude sceneries in the style of Rosa, of antediluvian forests
+    which clothed the rock, and of numerous rills of water which
+    everywhere rolled down the steep declivity, altogether conspired
+    to complete our joy.
+
+Cascade Cove in New Zealand:
+
+    This waterfall at a distance of a mile and a half seems to be but
+    inconsiderable on account of its great elevation; but, after
+    climbing about 200 yards upwards, we ... found a view of great
+    beauty and grandeur before us. The first object which strikes the
+    beholder is a clear column of water eight or ten yards in
+    circumference, which is projected with great impetuosity from the
+    perpendicular rock at the height of 100 yards. Nearly at the
+    fourth part of the whole height this column meeting a part of the
+    same rock, which now acquires a little inclination, spreads on
+    its broad back into a limpid sheet of about twenty-five yards in
+    width. Here its surface is curled, and dashes upon every little
+    eminence in its rapid descent, till it is all collected in a fine
+    basin about sixty yards in circuit, included on three sides by
+    the natural walls of the rocky chasm, and in front by huge masses
+    of stone irregularly piled above each other. Between them the
+    stream finds its way, and runs foaming with the greatest rapidity
+    along the slope of the hill to the sea. The whole neighbourhood
+    of the cascade ... is filled with a steam or watery vapour.... We
+    ... were struck with the sight of a most beautiful rainbow of a
+    perfectly circular form, produced by the meridian rays of the sun
+    refracted in the vapour of the cascade.
+
+    The scenery on the left consists of steep brown rocks fringed on
+    the summits with overhanging shrubs and trees; the enchanting
+    melody of various birds resounded on all sides, and completed the
+    beauty of this wild and romantic spot.
+
+He described: 'A waterspout, a phenomenon which carried so much
+terrific majesty in it, and connected, as it were, the sea with the
+clouds, made our oldest mariners uneasy and at a loss how to behave.'
+
+He begins his diary of August 1773 with O'Taheite:
+
+    It was one of those beautiful mornings which the poets of all
+    nations have attempted to describe, when we saw the isle of
+    O'Taheite within two miles before us. The east wind, which had
+    carried us so far, was entirely vanished, and a faint breeze only
+    wafted a delicious perfume from the land, and curled the surface
+    of the sea. The mountains, clothed with forests, rose majestic in
+    various spiry forms, on which we already perceived the light of
+    the rising sun ... everything seemed as yet asleep; the morning
+    scarce dawned, and a peaceful shade still rested on the
+    landscape....
+
+    This spot was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, and
+    could not fail of bringing to remembrance the most fanciful
+    descriptions of poets, which it eclipsed in beauty; we had a
+    prospect of the plain below us, and of the sea beyond it. In the
+    shade of trees, whose branches hung over the water, we enjoyed a
+    pleasant gale, which softened the heat of the day; and, amidst
+    the solemn uniform noise of the waterfall, which was but seldom
+    interrupted by the whistling of birds, we sat down....
+
+    We could have been well pleased to have passed the whole day in
+    this retirement ... however, feasting our eyes once more with the
+    romantic scenery, we returned to the plain.
+
+It was such descriptions as these which stimulated Humboldt. There is
+a breath of poetry in his writings; his _Views of Nature_ and
+_Cosmos_ give ample proof that love of Nature and knowledge of Nature
+can condition and deepen each other.
+
+It is not surprising that in the flood of scientific 'Travels' which
+followed, especially in imitation of Forster, there were some that
+laid claim to a wonderful grade of feeling. For example, the
+description of a day at the Equator by von Spix and v. Martius in
+their Travels in Brazil in 1817 to 1820:
+
+    In these seas the sun rises from the ocean with great splendour,
+    and gilds the clouds accumulated in the horizon, which in grand
+    and various groups seem to present to the eye of the spectator
+    continents with high mountains and valleys, with volcanoes and
+    seas, mythological and other strange creations of fancy.
+
+    The lamp of day gradually rises in the transparent blue sky; the
+    damp grey fogs subside; the sea is calm or gently rises and
+    falls, with a surface smooth as a mirror, in a regular motion. At
+    noon a pale, faintly shining cloud rises, the herald of a sudden
+    tempest, which at once disturbs the tranquillity of the sea.
+    Thunder and lightning seem as if they would split our planet; but
+    a heavy rain of a salt taste, pouring down in the midst of
+    roaring whirlwinds, puts an end to the raging of the elements,
+    and several semi-circular rainbows, extended over the ocean like
+    gay triumphal arches, announce the peaceful termination of the
+    great natural phenomenon. As soon as the air and sea have
+    recovered their equilibrium, the sky again shews its transparent
+    azure.... As the sun gradually sinks in the clouded horizon, the
+    sea and sky assume a new dress, which is beyond description
+    sublime and magnificent. The most brilliant red, yellow, violet,
+    in infinite shades and contrasts, are poured out in profusion
+    over the azure of the firmament, and are reflected in still gayer
+    variety from the surface of the water. The day departs amid
+    continued lightning on the dusky horizon, while the moon in
+    silent majesty rises from the unbounded ocean into the cloudless
+    upper regions. Variable winds cool the atmosphere; numerous
+    falling stars, coming particularly from the south, shed a magic
+    light; the dark-blue firmament, reflected with the constellations
+    on the untroubled bosom of the water, represents the image of the
+    wholly starry hemisphere; and the ocean, agitated even by the
+    faintest breeze of the night, is changed into a sea of waving
+    fire.... The variety of the light and foliage of the trees, which
+    is seen in the forests, on the slopes of the mountains: the
+    blending of the most diverse colours, and the dark azure and
+    transparency of the sky, impart to the landscapes of the tropical
+    countries a charm to which even the pencil of a Salvator Rosa and
+    a Claude cannot do justice....
+
+    Except at noon, when all living creatures in the torrid zone seek
+    shade and repose, and when a solemn silence is diffused over the
+    scene, illumined by the dazzling beams of the sun, every hour of
+    the day calls into action another race of animals.... When the
+    sun goes down, most of the animals retire to rest ... myriads of
+    luminous beetles now begin to fly about like _ignes fatui_, and
+    the blood-sucking bats hover like phantoms in the profound
+    darkness of the night.... The traveller does not here meet with
+    the impressions of those sublime and rugged high Alps of Europe,
+    nor, on the other hand, those of a meaner nature; but the
+    character of these landscapes combines grandeur with simplicity
+    and softness....
+
+    He who has not personally experienced the enchantment of tranquil
+    moonlight nights in these happy latitudes can never be inspired,
+    even by the most faithful description, with those feelings which
+    scenes of such wondrous beauty excite in the mind of the
+    beholder.
+
+    A delicate transparent mist hangs over the country, the moon
+    shines brightly amid heavy and singularly grouped clouds, the
+    outlines of the objects illuminated by it are clear and well
+    defined, while a magic twilight seems to remove from the eye
+    those which are in shade. Scarce a breath of air is stirring, and
+    the neighbouring mimosas, that have folded up their leaves to
+    sleep, stand motionless beside the dark crowns of the manga, the
+    jaca, and the ethereal jambos; or sometimes a sudden wind arises
+    and the juiceless leaves of the acaju rustle, the richly flowered
+    grumijama and pitanga let drop a fragrant shower of snow-white
+    blossoms; the crowns of the majestic palms wave slowly over the
+    silent roof which they overshade, like a symbol of peace and
+    tranquillity.
+
+    Shrill cries of the cicada, the grasshopper, and tree frog make
+    an incessant hum, and produce by their monotony a pleasing
+    melancholy.... Every half-hour different balsamic odours fill the
+    air, and other flowers alternately unfold their leaves to the
+    night.... While the silent vegetable world, illuminated by scores
+    of fireflies as by a thousand moving stars, charms the night by
+    its delicate effluvia, brilliant lightnings play incessantly on
+    the horizon, and elevate the mind in joyful admiration to the
+    stars, which, glowing in solemn silence in the firmament above
+    the continent and ocean, fill the soul with a presentiment of
+    still sublimer wonders.
+
+Travels by sea were described at much greater length and with much
+more effusion than travels by land; one might infer from the silence
+of the people who moved about in Europe in the eighteenth century,
+that no love of Nature existed. The extreme discomfort of the road up
+to a hundred years ago may account for this silence within Germany.
+
+Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote in 1716 of Saxon Switzerland:
+
+    We passed by moonshine the frightful precipices that divide
+    Bohemia from Saxony, at the bottom of which runs the river Elbe
+    ... in many places the road is so narrow that I could not discern
+    an inch of space between the wheels and the precipice....
+
+and her husband declared that
+
+    he had passed the Alps five times in different places, without
+    having gone a road so dangerous.
+
+Scherr relates that in the late autumn of 1721 a citizen of
+Schwabisch-Gmünd travelled to Ellwangen, a distance of eight hours'
+posting.
+
+Before starting, he had a mass performed in St John's Church 'for the
+safe conclusion of the coming journey.' He set off one Monday with
+his wife and a maid in a two-horse vehicle called a small tilt waggon
+(_Planwägelchen_), but in less than an hour the wheels stuck in mud,
+and the whole party had to get out and push the carriage, up to their
+knees in filth. In the middle of the village of Boebingen the driver
+inadvertently drove the front left wheel into a manure hole, the
+carriage was overturned, and the lady of the party had her nose and
+cheek badly grazed by the iron hoops.
+
+From Moeggelingen to Aalen they were obliged to use three horses, and
+yet it took fully six hours, so that they were obliged to spend the
+night there. Next morning they set off early, and reached the village
+of Hofen by mid-day without accidents. Here for a time the travelling
+ceased, for a hundred paces beyond the village the carriage fell into
+a puddle, and they were all terribly soiled; the maid's right
+shoulder was dislocated, and the manservant's hand injured. The axle
+of one of the wheels was broken, and a horse completely lamed in the
+left forefoot. They had to put up a second time for the night, leave
+horses, carriage, man, and maid in Hofen, and hire a rack waggon, in
+which at last, pitifully shaken, they reached the gates of Ellwangen
+on Wednesday at vesper bells.
+
+When Eva König, Lessing's _fiancée_, was on her way from Brunswick to
+Nuremberg in 1772, she wrote to him from Rattelsdorf (two miles north
+of Bamberg), on February 28th, as follows:
+
+    You will certainly never in your life have heard of a village
+    called Rattelsdorf? We have been in it already twenty-four hours,
+    and who knows if we shall not have to stay four times as long! It
+    depends on the Maine, whether it falls or not; as it is now, one
+    could not cross it, even if one dared to. I have never in my life
+    met with so many hindrances, so many dangers and hardships, as on
+    this journey. I can hardly think of any misfortunes which we have
+    not already had.
+
+She goes on to describe that in thirty-eight hours two axles and two
+poles had been broken, the horses had bolted with them, one horse had
+fallen and died, and so on; on March 2nd they were still prisoners in
+the wretched village.
+
+In 1750 a day's journey was still reckoned at five miles, two hours
+to the mile; and when in July 1750 Klopstock travelled with Gleim
+from Halberstadt to Magdeburg in a light carriage drawn by four
+horses, at the rate of six miles in six hours, he thought this speed
+remarkable enough to merit comparison with the racing in the Olympian
+games. People of any pretensions shunned the discomforts of
+travelling on foot--the bad roads, the insecurity, the dirty inns,
+and the rough treatment in them; to walk abroad in good clothes and
+admire the scenery was an unknown thing. (G. Freytag.)
+
+It was only after the widening of thoroughfares, the invention of
+steamboats (the first was on the Weser 1827) and railways (1835),
+that travelling became commoner and more popular, and feeling for
+Nature was thereby increased.
+
+After the Swiss Alps had been discovered for them, people began to
+feel interest in their native mountains; Zimmermann led the way with
+his observations on a journey in the Harz 1775, and Gatterer in 1785
+published _A Guide to Travelling in the Harz_ in five volumes.
+
+In 1806 appeared Nicolas's _Guide to Switzerland_, in 1777 J.T.
+Volkmar's _Journey to the Riesengebirge_, and before long each little
+country and province, be it Weimar, Mecklenburg, or the Mark, had
+discovered a Switzerland within its own boundaries, with mountains as
+much like the Swiss Alps as a charming little girl is like a giant.
+
+It was the opening of men's eyes to the charms of romantic scenery at
+home.
+
+The Isle of Rügen too, Swedish at that time, with its striking
+contrasts of deep blue bays and inlets, chalk rocks and beech woods,
+came into fashion with lovers of Nature, especially after the road
+from Sagard to Stubbenkamer had been improved[17]--so much so, in
+fact, that in 1805 Grümbke was complaining that many people only went
+there to feast, not to enjoy the scene:
+
+    You know I am no foe to pleasure, and appreciate my food and
+    drink after physical exertion as much as any one; but it is
+    desecration to make that the main object here. In this dreadfully
+    beautiful wilderness, under these green corridors of beeches, on
+    the battlements of this great dazzling temple, before this huge
+    azure mirror of the sea, only high and serious thoughts should
+    find a place--the whole scene, stamped as it is with majesty and
+    mystery, seems designed to attract the mind to the hidden life of
+    the unending world around it. For this, solitude and rest are
+    necessary conditions, hence one must visit Stubbenkamer either
+    alone or with intimate and congenial friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE UNIVERSAL PANTHEISTIC FEELING OF
+MODERN TIMES
+
+
+The eighteenth century, so proudly distinguished as the century of
+Frederic the Great and Maria Theresa, Kant and Lessing, Rousseau and
+Voltaire, the age of enlightenment, and, above all, of the
+Revolution, was the most sentimental period in history. Its feeling
+for Nature bore the same stamp. Many of the Anacreontists and
+Göttingen poets, as well as Klopstock, shewed genuine enthusiasm; but
+their horizon was narrow, and though F. Stolberg sang of the sea and
+his native mountains, most of them only rang the changes on moonlight
+and starlight, pastoral idylls, the joys of spring, and winter
+excursions on the ice. Even Rousseau, the prophet of high mountains,
+was the child of the same sentimental, self-adoring time; a morbid
+strain, call it misanthropy, melancholy, what you will, underlay all
+his passion for Nature. It was Goethe who dissolved the spell which
+lay over the world, and, although born into the days of beautiful
+souls, moonshine poets, seraphic heaven stormers, pastoral poems, and
+_La Nouvelle Héloise_, ennobled and purified the tone of the day and
+freed it from convention!
+
+It was by dint of his genius for expression, the gift of finding the
+one right word, that he became the world's greatest lyrist: what he
+felt became a poem, what he saw a picture.
+
+To see and to fashion into poetry were one with him, whereas his
+predecessors had called out the whole artillery of Olympus--nymphs,
+Oreads, Chloe, Phyllis, Damon, Aurora, Echo, and Zephyr--even the
+still heavier ordnance of the old Teutonic gods and half-gods, only
+to repeat stereotyped ideas, and produce descriptions of scenery,
+without lyric thought and feeling.
+
+But Goethe's genius passed through very evident stages of
+development, and found forerunners in Lessing and Herder.
+
+Lessing's mind was didactic and critical, not lyric, so that his
+importance here is a negative one. In laying down the limits of
+poetry and painting in _Laocoon_, he attacked the error of his day
+which used poetry for pictures, debasing it to mere descriptions of
+seasons, places, plants, etc.
+
+He was dealing with fundamental principles when he said:
+
+    Simonides called painting dumb poetry, and poetry speaking
+    painting; but ... many modern critics have drawn the crudest
+    conclusions possible from this agreement between painting and
+    poetry. At one time they confine poetry within the narrow limits
+    of painting, and at another allow painting to fill the whole wide
+    sphere of poetry.... This fault-finding criticism has partially
+    misled the virtuosos themselves. In poetry a fondness for
+    description, and in painting a fancy for allegory, has arisen
+    from the desire to make the one a speaking picture without really
+    knowing what it can and ought to paint, and the other a dumb poem
+    without having considered in how far painting can express
+    universal ideas without abandoning its proper sphere and
+    degenerating into an arbitrary method of writing.... Since the
+    artist can use but a single moment of ever-changing Nature, and
+    the painter must further confine his study of this one moment to
+    a single point of view, while their works are made not simply to
+    be looked at, but to be contemplated long and often, evidently
+    the most fruitful moment and the most fruitful aspect must be
+    chosen. Now that only is fruitful which allows free play to the
+    imagination. The more we see, the more we must be able to
+    imagine; and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.
+
+And against descriptive poetry he said:
+
+    When a poetaster, says Horace, can do nothing else, he falls to
+    describing a grove, an altar, a brook winding through pleasant
+    meadows, a rushing river, or a rainbow. Pope expressly enjoined
+    upon every one who would not prove himself unworthy the name of
+    poet, to abandon as early as possible this fondness for
+    description. A merely descriptive poem he declared to be a feast
+    made up of sauces.
+
+Acute as his distinction was between poetry as the representative art
+of actions in time, and painting as the representative art of bodies
+in space, he did not give due value to lyric feeling or landscape
+painting.[1] They belong to a region in which his sharp, critical
+acumen was not at home.
+
+But his discussions established the position that external objects of
+any sort, including Nature in all her various shapes, are not proper
+subjects for poetry when taken as Thomson, Brockes, and Haller took
+them, by themselves alone, but must first be imbued with human
+feeling. And the same holds good of landscape painting. Goethe's
+lyrics are the most perfect examples of this blending of the outer
+and inner world.
+
+Lessing's criticisms had a salutary, emancipating effect upon
+prevalent taste; but a more positive influence came into play through
+Herder's warm predilection for the popular songs, which had been so
+long neglected, and for all that rises, as in the Psalms, Homer,
+Shakespeare, Ossian, from primitive sources of feeling, and finds
+spontaneous expression in poetry. The effect of his pioneering was
+marked, especially upon Goethe. Herder understood the revulsion of
+feeling from the unnatural restraint of the Pigtail period, and while
+holding up the mirror to his own day, he at the same time led its
+taste and the expression of it towards what was simple and natural,
+by disclosing the treasures which lay hidden in the poetry of the
+people. The lyric was freed from the artificiality and convention
+which had so long ruled it, and although he did not carry out his
+plan of a history of poetry, his collections and his profound remarks
+upon them were of great service, sowing a seed that bore fruit in
+succeeding days.
+
+The popular songs to him were children of the same mother as the
+plants and flowers. 'All the songs of such unlettered folk,'[2] he
+said, 'weave a living world around existing objects, actions, and
+events. How rich and manifold they all become! And the eye can
+actually see them, the mind realize them; they are set in motion. The
+different parts of the song are no more connected together than the
+trees and bushes in a wood, the rocks in a desert, or the scenes
+depicted.' In another place[3] he put the history of feeling for
+Nature very tersely: 'There is no doubt that the spirit of man is
+made gentler by studying Nature. What did the classics aim at in
+their Georgics, but under various shapes to make man more humane and
+raise him gradually to order, industry, and prosperity, and to the
+power to observe Nature?...' Hence, when poetry revived in the Middle
+Ages, she soon recollected the true land of her birth among the
+plants and flowers. The Provencal and the romantic poets loved the
+same descriptions. Spenser, for instance, has charming stanzas about
+beautiful wilds with their streams and flowers; Cowley's six books on
+plants, vegetables, and trees are written with extraordinary
+affection and a superfluity of imagination; and of our old Brockes,
+Gessner says: 'He observed Nature's many beauties down to their
+finest minutiæ, the smallest things move his tender feelings; a
+dewdrop on a blade of grass in the sunshine inspires him. His scenes
+are often too laboured, too wide in scope, but still his poems are a
+storehouse of pictures direct from Nature. Haller's _Alps_, Kleist's
+poems and Gessner's, Thomson's _Seasons_, speak for themselves.'
+
+He delighted in Shaftesbury's praises of Nature as the good and
+beautiful in the _Moralists_, and translated it[4]; in fact, in
+Herder we have already an æsthetic cult of the beauties of Nature.
+
+After the moral disquisitions of Pope, Addison, Shaftesbury, etc.,
+Nature's influence on man, moral and æsthetic, became, as we have
+already seen, a favourite theme in Germany too, both in pious and
+rationalistic circles[5]; but there are few traces of any æsthetic
+analysis.
+
+The most important one was Kant's, in his _Observations on the
+Beautiful and Sublime_ in 1764. He distinguished, in the finer
+feeling for Nature, a feeling for the sublime and a feeling for the
+beautiful.
+
+    Both touch us pleasantly, but in different ways. The sight of a
+    mountain with a snowy peak reaching above the clouds, the account
+    of a storm ... these excite pleasure, but mixed with awe; while
+    flowery meadows, valleys with winding streams and covered by
+    browsing herds, a description of Elysium ... also cause pleasant
+    feelings, but of a gay and radiant kind. To appreciate the first
+    sensations adequately, we must have a feeling for the sublime; to
+    appreciate the second, a feeling for the beautiful.
+
+He mentioned tall oaks, lonely shades in consecrated groves, and
+night-time, as sublime; day, beds of flowers, low hedges, and trees
+cut into shapes, as beautiful.
+
+    Minds which possess the feeling for the sublime are inclined to
+    lofty thoughts of friendship, scorn of the world, eternity, by
+    the quiet stillness of a summer evening, when the twinkling
+    starlight breaks the darkness. The light of day impels to
+    activity and cheerfulness. The sublime soothes, the beautiful
+    stimulates.
+
+He goes on to subdivide the sublime:
+
+    This feeling is sometimes accompanied by horror or by dejection,
+    sometimes merely by quiet admiration, at other times by a sense
+    of wide-spread beauty. I will call the first the terrible, the
+    second the noble, the third the splendid sublime.
+
+    Profound solitude is sublime, but in a terrible way. This is why
+    great deserts, like the Desert of Gamo in Tartary, have always
+    been the supposed abode of fearful shades, hobgoblins, and
+    ghostly spectres. The sublime is always great and simple; the
+    beautiful may be small, elaborate, and ornamental.
+
+He tried, too, to define the romantic in Nature, though very vaguely:
+
+    The dreadful variety of the sublime, when quite unnatural, is
+    adventurous. When sublimity or beauty is excessive, it is called
+    romantic.
+
+In his _Kalligone_, which appeared in 1800, Herder quoted Kant in
+making one of the characters say, 'One calls day beautiful, night
+sublime,' and tried to carry the idea a step further; 'The sublime
+and beautiful are not opposed to each other, but stem and boughs of a
+tree whose top is the most sublimely beautiful of all,' that is the
+romantic. In the same book he attempted to analyze his impressions of
+Nature, calling a rugged place odious, an insignificant one without
+character tedious. 'In the presence of great mountains,' he says,
+'the spirit is filled with bold aspirations, whereas in gentle
+valleys it lies quiet.' Harmony in variety was his ideal, like the
+sea in storm and calm. 'An ocean of beautiful forms in rest and
+movement.'
+
+And in reference to the contrast between a place made 'dreadful and
+horrible' by a torrent dashing over rocks and a quiet and charming
+valley, he said: 'These changes follow unalterable laws, which are
+recognized by our minds, and in harmony with our feelings.' He saw
+the same order in variety among plants, from the highest to the
+lowest, from palm tree to moss. In the second part of the book he
+gave an enthusiastic description of the sublime in sky and sea.
+
+His beautiful words on the inspiration of Nature shew his insight
+into her relation to the poet soul of the people:
+
+    Everything in Nature must be inspired by life, or it does not
+    move me, I do not feel it. The cooling zephyr and the morning
+    sunbeam, the wind blowing through the trees, and the fragrant
+    carpet of flowers, must cool, warm, pervade us--then we feel
+    Nature. The poet does not say he feels her, unless he feels her
+    intensely, living, palpitating and pervading him, like the wild
+    Nature of Ossian, or the soft luxuriant Nature of Theocritus and
+    the Orientals. In Nature, the more varieties the better; for
+    instance, in a beautiful country I rustle with the wind and
+    become alive (and give life--inspire), I inhale fragrance and
+    exhale it with the flowers; I dissolve in water; I float in the
+    blue sky; I feel all these feelings.
+
+Herder touched the lyre himself with a skilful hand. Thought
+predominated with him, but he could make Nature live in his song.[7]
+'I greet thee, thou wing of heaven,' he sang to the lark; and to the
+rainbow, 'Beautiful child of the sun, picture and hope over dark
+clouds ... hopes are colours, are broken sun-rays and the children of
+tears, truth is the sun.'
+
+In _By the Sea at Naples_ he wrote:
+
+  A-weary of the summer's fiery brand,
+  I sat me down beside the cooling sea,
+  Where the waves heaving, rolled and kissed the strand
+  Of the grey shore, ...
+  And over me, high over in the air,
+  Of the blue skyey vault, rustled the tree ...
+  Queen of all trees, slender and beautiful,
+  The pine tree, lifting me to golden dreams.
+
+In _Recollections of Naples_:
+
+  Yes! they are gone, those happy, happy hours
+  Joyous but short, by Posilippo's bay!
+  Sweet dream of sea and lake, of rock and hill,
+  Grotto and island, and the mirrored sun
+  In the blue water--thou hast passed away!
+
+and
+
+  When the glow of evening softly fades
+  From the still sea, and with her gleaming host
+  The moon ascends the sky.
+
+_Night_ is very poetic:
+
+             And comest thou again,
+  Thou Mother of the stars and heavenly thoughts?
+  Divine and quiet Mother, comest thou?
+  The earth awaits thee, from thy chalice cup
+  But one drop of thy heavenly dew to quaff,
+  Her flowers bend low their heads;
+  And with them, satiate with vision, droops
+  My overcharged soul....
+  O starry goddess with the crown of gold,
+  Upon whose wide-spread sable mantle gleam
+  A thousand worlds ...
+  Silence divine, that filleth all the world,
+  Flowing so softly to the eternal shores
+  Of an eternal universe....
+
+And in _St John's Night_, he exclaims:
+
+  Infinite, ah! inexhaustible art thou, Mother Nature!
+
+Like the rest, Herder suffered from the over-sensitiveness of his
+day. His correspondence with his _fiancée_ shews this[8]; one sees
+Rousseau's influence:
+
+    My pleasantest hours are when, quite alone, I walk in a charming
+    wood close to Bückeburg, or lie upon a wall in the shade of my
+    garden, or lastly, for we have had capital moonlight for three
+    nights, and the last was the best of all, when I enjoy these
+    hours of sweetly sleeping night with all the songs of the
+    nightingale.
+
+    I reckon no hours more delightful than those of green solitude. I
+    live so romantically alone, and among woods and churches, as only
+    poets, lovers, and philosophers can live.
+
+And his _fiancée_ wrote:
+
+    'Tis all joy within and around me since I have known thee, my
+    best beloved: every plant and flower, everything in Nature, seems
+    beautiful to me.
+
+and
+
+    I went early to my little room; the moon was quite covered by
+    clouds, and the night so melancholy from the croaking of the
+    frogs, that I could not leave the window for a long time: my
+    whole soul was dark and cloudy; I thought of thee, my dear one,
+    and that thought, that sigh, reduced me to tears.
+
+and
+
+    Do you like the ears of wheat so much? I never pass a cornfield
+    without stroking them.
+
+Goethe focussed all the rays of feeling for Nature which had found
+lyrical expression before him, and purged taste, beginning with his
+own, of its unnatural and sickly elements. So he became the
+liberating genius of modern culture. Not only did German lyric poetry
+reach its climax in him; but he was the most accurate, individual,
+and universal interpreter of German feeling for Nature.
+
+His wide original mind kept open house for the most diverse elements
+of feeling, and exercised an ennobling control upon each and all at
+will; Homer's naivete, Shakespeare's sympathy, Rousseau's enthusiasm,
+even Ossian's melancholy, found room there.
+
+While most love lyrics of his day were false in feeling, mere raving
+extravagances, and therefore poor in those metaphors and comparisons
+which prove sympathy between Nature and the inner life, it could be
+said of him that 'Nature wished to know what she looked like, and so
+she created Goethe.' He was the microcosm in which the macrocosm of
+modern times was reflected.
+
+He was more modern and universal than any of his predecessors, and
+his insight into Nature and love for her have been rarely equalled in
+later days. He did not live, like so many of the elegiac and idyllic
+poets of the eighteenth century, a mere dream-life of the
+imagination: Goethe stood firmly rooted among the actualities; from
+boyhood up, as he said in _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, he had 'a warm
+feeling for all objective things.'
+
+No poet, Klopstock not excepted, was richer in verbal invention, and
+many of the phrases and epithets which he coined form in themselves
+very striking evidence (which is lost in translation) of his close
+and original observation of Nature.
+
+He has many beautiful comparisons to Nature:
+
+His lady-love is 'brightly beautiful as morning clouds on yonder
+height.'
+
+'I was wont to look at thee as one looks at the stars and moon,
+delighting in thee without the most distant wish in my quiet breast
+to possess thee.'
+
+'I give kisses as the spring gives flowers.'
+
+'My feeling for thee was like seed, which germinates slowly in
+winter, but ripens quickly in summer.'
+
+The stars move 'with flower feet.'
+
+The graces are 'pure as the heart of the waters, as the marrow of
+earth.'
+
+A delicate poem is a rainbow only existing against a dark ground.
+
+In _Stella_:
+
+    Thou dost not feel what heavenly dew to the thirsty it is, to
+    return to thy breast from the sandy desert world.
+
+    I felt free in soul, free as a spring morning.
+
+In _Faust_:
+
+    The cataract bursting through the rocks is the image of human
+    effort; its coloured reflection the image of life.
+
+When Werther feels himself trembling between existence and
+non-existence, everything around him sinking away, and the world
+perishing with him:
+
+    The past flashes like lightning over the dark abyss of the
+    future.
+
+These are among his still more numerous metaphors:
+
+A sea of folly, an ocean of fragrance, the waves of battle, the
+stream of genius, the tiger claw of despair, the sun-ray of the past.
+Iphigenia says to Orestes:
+
+    O let the pure breath of love blow lightly on thy heart's flame
+    and cool it.
+
+and Eleonora complains about Tasso:
+
+    Let him go! But what twilight falls round me now! Formerly the
+    stream carried us along upon the light waves without a rudder.
+
+In Goethe we see very clearly how the inner life, under the pressure
+of its own intensity, will, so to speak, overflow into the outer
+world, making that live in its turn; and how this is especially the
+case when the amorous passion is present to add its impetus to
+feeling, and attribute its own fervour to all around.
+
+_May Song_, _On the Lake_, _Ganymede_, are instances of this.
+
+_Ganymede_:
+
+      Oh, what a glow
+      Around me in morning's
+      Blaze thou diffusest,
+      Beautiful spring!
+  With the rapture of love but intenser,
+  Intenser and deeper and sweeter,
+  Nestles and creeps to my heart
+      The sensation divine
+      Of thy fervour eternal,
+      Oh, thou unspeakably fair!
+
+Beautiful personifications abound:
+
+The sun is proudly throned in heaven.
+
+The glowing sun gazes at the rugged peak or charms it with fiery
+love,
+
+Or bathes like the moon in the ocean.
+
+The parting glance of Mother Sun broods on the grapes.
+
+'Morning came frightening away light sleep with its footsteps.'
+
+'The young day arose with delight.'
+
+The moon: 'Thou spreadest thy glance soothingly over my abode.'
+
+On a cloudy night: 'Evening already rocked earth, and night hung on
+the mountains; from a hill of clouds the moon looked mournfully out
+of the mist.'
+
+'The lofty stars turn their clear eyes down to me.'
+
+Even the rock lives: 'The hard rock opens its bosom, not envying
+earth its deep springs.'
+
+The stream: 'Thou hurriest on with joyful light mood; see the rock
+spring bright with the glance of the stars, yet no shady valley, no
+flowers make him tarry ... his course winds downwards to the plain,
+then he scatters in delightful spray, in cloud waves ... foams
+gloomily to the abyss.'
+
+  With gradual step from out the far-off grey,
+  Self-heralded draws on the storm.
+  Birds on the wing fly low across the water, weighted down,
+  And seamen hasten to reef in the sail
+  Before its stubborn wrath.
+
+His flowers are alive:
+
+  The beauteous snowdrops
+  Droop o'er the plain,
+  The crocus opens
+  Its glowing bud ...
+  With saucy gesture
+  Primroses flare,
+  And roguish violets
+  Hidden with care.
+
+But these are only examples. To obtain a clear idea of Goethe's
+attitude, we must take a more general survey of his work, for his
+poetic relationship to Nature, like his mental development in
+general, passed through various stages of growth. That it was a warm
+one even in youth is shewn by the letter in 1766 from Leipzig[9]:
+
+    You live contented in M. I even so here. Lonely, lonely,
+    altogether lonely. Dearest Riese, this loneliness has impressed
+    my soul with a certain sadness.
+
+  This solitary joy is mine,
+  When far apart from all mankind,
+  By shady brook-side to recline.
+  And keep my loved ones in my mind....
+
+He goes on with these lines:
+
+  Then is my heart with sorrow filled,
+  Sad is mine eye.
+  The flooded brook now rages by,
+  That heretofore so gently rilled.
+  No bird sings in the bushes now,
+  The tree so green is dry,
+  The zephyr which on me did blow
+  So cheering, now storms northerly,
+  And scattered blossoms bears on high.
+
+He was already in full sympathy with Nature. A few of his earlier
+poems[10] shew prevalent taste, the allusions to Zephyr and Lima, for
+instance, in _Night_; but they are followed by lines which are all
+his own.
+
+He had an incomparable way of striking the chords of love and Nature
+together.
+
+Where his lady-love dwells, 'there is love, and goodness is Nature.'
+He thinks of her
+
+  When the bright sunlight shimmers
+       Across the sea,
+  When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers.
+
+  Thou art seductive and charming; flowers,
+  Sun, moon, and stars only worship thee.
+
+There is passionate feeling for Nature in the _May Song_ of his
+Sesenheimer period:
+
+  How gloriously gleameth
+  All Nature to me!
+  How bright the sun beameth,
+  How fresh is the lea!
+  White blossoms are bursting
+  The thickets among,
+  And all the gay greenwood
+  Is ringing with song!
+  There's radiance and rapture
+  That nought can destroy,
+  Oh earth, in thy sunshine,
+  Oh heart, in thy joy.
+  Oh love! thou enchanter
+  So golden and bright,
+  Like the red clouds of morning
+  That rest on yon height,
+  It is them that art clothing
+  The fields and the bowers,
+  And everywhere breathing
+  The incense of flowers.
+
+Looking back in old age to those happy days of youth, he saw in
+memory not only Frederica but the scenery around her. He said
+(_Wahrheit und Dichtung_): 'Her figure never looked more charming
+than when she was moving along a raised footpath; the charm of her
+bearing seemed to vie with the flowering ground, and the
+indestructible cheerfulness of her face with the blue sky.' In Alsace
+he wrote:
+
+    One has only to abandon oneself to the present in order to enjoy
+    the charms of the sky, the glow of the rich earth, the mild
+    evenings, the warm nights, at the side of one's love, or near
+    her.
+
+and one of the poems to Frederica says:
+
+  The world lies round me buried deep in mist, but
+  In one glance of thine lies sunshine and happiness.
+
+There is a strong pulse of life--life that overflows into Nature--in
+_The Departure_:
+
+  To horse! Away, o'er hill and steep,
+  Into the saddle blithe I spring;
+  The eve was cradling earth to sleep,
+  And night upon the mountains hung.
+  With robes of mist around him set,
+  The oak like some huge giant stood,
+  While, with its hundred eyes of jet,
+  Peer'd darkness from the tangled wood.
+  Amid a bank of clouds the moon
+  A sad and troubled glimmer shed;
+  The wind its chilly wings unclosed,
+  And whistled wildly round my head.
+  Night framed a thousand phantoms dire,
+  Yet did I never droop nor start;
+  Within my veins what living fire!
+  What quenchless glow within my heart!
+
+And very like it, though in a minor key, is the Elegy which begins,
+'A tender, youthful trouble.'
+
+He tells in _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ how he found comfort for his love
+troubles in Frankfort:
+
+    They were accustomed to call me, on account of wandering about
+    the district, the 'wanderer.' In producing that calm for the
+    mind, which I felt under the open sky, in the valleys, on the
+    heights, in the fields, and in the woods, the situation of
+    Frankfort was serviceable.... On the setting in of winter a new
+    world was revealed to us, since I at once determined to skate....
+    For this new joyous activity we were also indebted to Klopstock,
+    to his enthusiasm for this happy species of motion.... To pass a
+    splendid Sunday thus on the ice did not satisfy us, we continued
+    in movement late into the night.... The full moon rising from the
+    clouds, over the wide nocturnal meadows which were frozen into
+    fields of ice, the night breeze which rustled towards us on our
+    course, the solemn thunder of the ice which sunk as the water
+    decreased, the strange echo of our own movements, rendered the
+    scenes of Ossian just present to our minds.
+
+His attachment, to Lotte, stirred far deeper feelings than the
+earlier ones to Frederica and Lilli:
+
+    (If I, my own dear Lilli, loved thee not, How should I joy to
+    view this scene so fair! And yet if I, sweet Lilli, loved thee
+    not, Should I be happy here or anywhere?)
+
+and drew him correspondingly nearer to Nature.
+
+There is no book in any language which so lives and moves and has its
+being in Nature as _Werther_.[11] In _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ Goethe
+said of the 'strange element' in which _Werther_ was designed and
+written:
+
+    I sought to free myself internally from all that was foreign to
+    me, to regard the external with love, and to allow all beings,
+    from man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to act
+    upon me, each after its own kind. Thus arose a wonderful affinity
+    with the single objects of Nature, and a hearty concord, a
+    harmony with the whole, so that every change, whether of place or
+    region, or of the times of the day and year, or whatever else
+    could happen, affected me in the deepest manner. The glance of
+    the painter associated itself with that of the poet; the
+    beautiful rural landscape, animated by the pleasant river,
+    increased my love of solitude and favoured my silent observations
+    as they extended on all sides.
+
+The strong influence of _La Nouvelle Héloise_ upon _Werther_ was very
+evident, but there was a marked difference between Goethe's feeling
+for Nature and Rousseau's. Rousseau had the painter's eye, but not
+the keen poetic vision.
+
+Goethe's romances are pervaded by the penetrating quality peculiar to
+his nation, and by virtue of which in _Werther_, the outer world, the
+scenery, was not used as framework, but was always interwoven with
+the hero's mood. The contrast between culture and Nature is always
+marked in Rousseau, and his religion was deism; Goethe resolves
+Nature into feeling, and his religion was a growing pantheism. As a
+work of art, _Werther_ is excellent, _La Nouvelle Héloise_ is not.
+Goethe used his hero's bearing towards Nature with marvellous effect
+to indicate the turns and changes of his moods, just as he indicated
+the threatening calamity and the growing apprehension of it by
+skilful stress laid upon some of her little traits--a faculty which
+only Theodore Storm among later poets has caught from him.
+
+The growth of amorous passion is portrayed as an elementary force,
+and the revolutionary element in the book really consists in the
+strength of this passion and the assertion of its natural rights.
+Everything artificial, forced, conventional, in thought, act, and
+feeling--and what at that time was not?--was repugnant to Werther;
+what he liked most of all was the simplicity of children and
+uneducated people.
+
+    Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other;
+    particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season
+    of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in
+    quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is
+    too late to repair it.
+
+To such intense sympathy as this, all that had been sung ere now by
+German poets had to give place. Nature, which hitherto had played no
+_rôle_ at all in fiction, not even among the English, was Werther's
+truest and most intimate friend.
+
+Werther is sensitive and sentimental, though in a single-hearted way,
+with a sentimentality that reminds us more and more, as the story
+proceeds, of the gloomy tone of Ossian and Young. He is a thoroughly
+original character, who feels that he is right so to be; and although
+he falls a prey to his melancholy, yet there is much more force and
+thought in his outpourings than in all the moonshine tirades that
+preceded him. It is the work of a true poet, in the best days of a
+brilliant youth.
+
+Werther, like Rousseau, was happiest in solitude. Solitude, in the
+'place like paradise,' was precious balm to his feeling heart, which
+he considers 'like a sick child'; and the 'warm heavenly imagination
+of the heart' illuminates Nature round him--his 'favourite valley,'
+the 'sweet spring morning,' Nature's 'unspeakable beauty.' He was
+absorbed in artistic feeling, though he could not draw; 'I could not
+draw them, not a stroke, and have never been a greater artist than at
+that moment.' His power lay in imbuing his whole subject with
+feeling; he felt the heart of Nature beating, and its echo in his own
+breast.
+
+    When the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the
+    meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable
+    foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the
+    inner sanctuary, then I throw myself down in the tall grass by
+    the trickling stream; and as I lie close to the earth, a thousand
+    unknown plants discover themselves to me. When I hear the buzz of
+    the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the
+    countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I
+    feel the presence of the Almighty who formed us in His own image,
+    and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains
+    us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my
+    friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth
+    seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the idea of a
+    beloved mistress, then I often long and think: O that you could
+    describe these conceptions, that you could impress upon paper all
+    that lives so full and warm within you, that it might be the
+    mirror of your soul, as your soul is the mirror of the infinite
+    God!
+
+    O! my friend! but it is too much for my strength. I sink under
+    the weight of the grandeur of these visions.
+
+Werther could not express all his love for Nature, but the secret of
+it lay in the power to bring his own world of thought and feeling
+into communion with her, and so give her speech. He divined something
+immortal in her akin to himself. 'The true feeling of Nature,' he
+said, 'is love.' He poured 'the stream of his genius' over her, and
+she became 'dear and familiar' to him.... The simple homely scenery
+delighted him--the valley, the brook, the fine walnut trees.
+
+    When I go out at sunrise in the morning to Walheim, and with my
+    own hands gather the peas in the garden, which are to serve for
+    my dinner; when I sit down to shell them and read my Homer during
+    the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen,
+    fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up....
+    Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness
+    than those traits of patriarchal life, which, thank heaven, I can
+    imitate without affectation.
+
+With the growth of his love-passion his feeling for Nature increased;
+on July 24th he wrote:
+
+    I never felt happier, I never understood Nature better, even down
+    to the veriest stem or smallest blade of grass.
+
+Then Albert came on the scene, and love became a torment, and Nature
+a tormentor:
+
+    _August_ 18.--Must it ever be thus, that the source of our
+    happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and
+    ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of Nature,
+    overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all
+    paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a
+    demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. When in bye-gone
+    days I gazed from these rocks upon yonder mountains across the
+    river and upon the green flowery valley before me, and saw all
+    nature budding and bursting around--the hills clothed from foot
+    to peak with tall thick forest trees, the valleys in all their
+    varied windings shaded with the loveliest woods, and the soft
+    river gliding along amongst the lisping reeds, mirroring the
+    beautiful clouds which the soft evening breeze wafted across the
+    sky--when I heard the groves about me melodious with the music of
+    birds, and saw the million swarms of insects dancing in the last
+    golden beams of the sun, whose setting rays awoke the humming
+    beetles from their grassy beds, whilst the subdued tumult around
+    directed my attention to the ground, and I there observed the
+    arid rock compelled to yield nutriment to the dry moss, whilst
+    the heath flourished upon the barren sands below me--all this
+    displayed to me the inner warmth which animates all Nature, and
+    filled and glowed within my heart. I felt myself exalted by this
+    overflowing fulness to the perception of the Godhead, and the
+    glorious forms of an infinite universe became visible to my
+    soul.... From the inaccessible mountains across the desert, which
+    no mortal foot has trod, far as the confines of the unknown
+    ocean, breathes the spirit of the eternal Creator, and every atom
+    to which He has given existence finds favour in His sight. Ah!
+    how often at that time has the flight of a bird soaring above my
+    head inspired me with the desire of being transported to the
+    shores of the immeasurable waters, there to quaff the pleasure of
+    life from the foaming goblet of the infinite, and to partake, if
+    but for a moment, even with the confined powers of my soul, the
+    beatitude of the Creator, who accomplishes all things in himself
+    and through himself.... It is as if a curtain had been drawn from
+    before my eyes.... My heart is wasted by the thought of that
+    destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal
+    nature--Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself
+    and every object near it; so that, surrounded by earth, and air,
+    and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart,
+    and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring
+    its own offspring.... If in such moments I find no sympathy ... I
+    either wander through the country, climb some precipitous cliff,
+    or force a path through the trackless thicket, where I am
+    lacerated and torn by thorns and briars, and thence I find
+    relief.
+
+Then, as he was going away, he felt how sympathetic the place had
+been to him:
+
+    I was walking up and down the very avenue which was so dear to
+    me--a secret sympathy had frequently drawn me thither....
+
+the moon rose from behind a hill, increasing his melancholy, and
+Charlotte put his feeling into words, saying (like Klopstock):
+
+    _September_ 10.--Whenever I walk by moonlight, it brings to my
+    remembrance all my beloved and departed friends, and I am filled
+    with thoughts of death and futurity.
+
+Even in his misery he realises the [Greek: charisgoôn] of Euripides,
+Petrarch's _dolendi voluptas_--the _Wonne der Wehmuth_.
+
+On September 4th he wrote:
+
+    It is even so! As Nature puts on her autumn tints, it becomes
+    autumn with me and around me. My leaves are sere and yellow, and
+    the neighbouring trees are divested of their foliage.
+
+It was due to this autumn feeling that he could say:
+
+    Ossian has superseded Homer in my heart. To what a world does the
+    illustrious bard carry me! To wander over pathless wilds,
+    surrounded by impetuous whirlwinds, where, by the feeble light of
+    the moon, we see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the
+    mountain tops, 'mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds
+    issuing from deep caverns.... And this heart is now dead; no
+    sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry, and my senses, no more
+    refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my
+    brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life,
+    that active sacred power which created worlds around me, and it
+    is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills and
+    behold the morning sun breaking through the mists and
+    illuminating the country round it which is still wrapt in
+    silence, whilst the soft stream winds gently through the willows
+    which have shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all
+    her beauties before me, and her wondrous prospects are
+    ineffectual to attract one tear of joy from my withered heart....
+
+On November 30th he wrote: 'About dinner-time I went to walk by the
+river side, for I had no appetite,' and goes on in the tone of
+Ossian:
+
+    Everything around me seemed gloomy: a cold and damp easterly wind
+    blew from the mountains, and black heavy clouds spread over the
+    plain.
+
+and in the dreadful night of the flood:
+
+    Upon the stroke of twelve I hastened forth. I beheld a fearful
+    sight. The foaming torrents rolled from the mountains in the
+    moonlight; fields and meadows, trees and hedges, were confounded
+    together, and the entire valley was converted into a deep lake
+    which was agitated by the roaring wind. And when the moon shone
+    forth and tinged the black clouds with silver, and the impetuous
+    torrent at my feet foamed and resounded with awful and grand
+    impetuosity, I was overcome by a mingled sensation of awe and
+    delight. With extended arms I looked down into the yawning abyss,
+    and cried 'Plunge!' For a moment my senses forsook me, in the
+    intense delight of ending my sorrows and my sufferings by a
+    plunge into that gulf.
+
+To his farewell letter he adds:
+
+    Yes, Nature! put on mourning. Your child, your friend, your
+    lover, draws near his end.
+
+The genuine poetic pantheism, which, for all his melancholy and
+sentimentality, was the spring of Werther's feeling, is seen in
+loftier and more comprehensive form in the first part of _Faust_,
+when Faust opens the book and sees the sign of macrocosmos:
+
+  How all things live and work, and ever blending,
+  Weave one vast whole from Being's ample range!
+  How powers celestial, rising and descending,
+  Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange.
+  Their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging,
+  From heaven to earth their genial influence bringing,
+  Through the wide whole their chimes melodious ringing.
+
+And the Earth spirit says:
+
+  In the currents of life, in action's storm,
+  I float and I wave
+  With billowy motion,--
+  Birth and the grave
+  A limitless ocean.
+
+Not only of knowledge of, but of feeling for, Nature, it is said:
+
+  Inscrutable in broadest light,
+  To be unveiled by force she doth refuse.
+
+But Faust is in deep sympathy with her; witness:
+
+  Thou full-orbed moon! Would thou wert gazing now
+  For the last time upon my troubled brow!
+
+and
+
+  Loos'd from their icy fetters, streams and rills
+  In spring's effusive, quick'ning mildness flow,
+  Hope's budding promise every valley fills.
+  And winter, spent with age, and powerless now,
+  Draws off his forces to the savage hills.
+
+and the idyllic evening mood, which gives way to a burst of longing:
+
+  In the rich sunset see how brightly glow
+  Yon cottage homes girt round with verdant green.
+  Slow sinks the orb, the day is now no more;
+  Yonder he hastens to diffuse new light.
+  Oh! for a pinion from the earth to soar,
+  And after, ever after him to strive!
+  Then should I see the world outspread below,
+  Illumined by the deathless evening beams,
+  The vales reposing, every height aglow,
+  The silver brooklets meeting golden streams....
+  Alas! that when on Spirit wing we rise,
+  No wing material lifts our mortal clay.
+  But 'tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong,
+  To rush aloft, to struggle still towards heaven,
+  When far above us pours its thrilling song
+  The skylark lost amid the purple even,
+  When on extended pinion sweeps amain
+  The lordly eagle o'er the pine-crowned height.
+  And when, still striving towards its home, the crane
+  O'er moor and ocean wings its onward flight.
+
+But the most complete expression of Goethe's attitude, not only in
+the period of _Werther_ and the first part of _Faust_, but generally,
+is contained in the _Monologue_, which was probably written not
+earlier than the spring of 1788:
+
+  Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all
+  For which I prayed. Not vainly hast thou turn'd
+  To me thy countenance in flaming fire;
+  Thou gav'st me glorious Nature for my realm,
+  And also power to feel her and enjoy;
+  Not merely with a cold and wond'ring glance,
+  Thou didst permit me in her depths profound,
+  As in the bosom of a friend, to gaze;
+  Before me thou dost lead her living tribes,
+  And dost in silent grove, in air and stream,
+  Teach me to know my kindred....
+
+His feeling was not admiration alone, nor reverence alone, but the
+sympathy of _Childe Harold_:
+
+  Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
+  Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
+  Is not the love of these deep in my heart
+  With a pure passion? Should I not contemn
+  All objects, if compared with these?
+
+and the very confession of faith of such poetic pantheism is in
+Faust's words:
+
+  Him who dare name,
+  And yet proclaim,
+  Yes, I believe?...
+  The All-embracer,
+  All-sustainer,
+  Doth he not embrace, sustain
+  Thee, me, himself?
+  Lifts not the heaven its dome above?
+  Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us rise?
+  And beaming tenderly with looks of love,
+  Climb not the everlasting stars on high?
+
+The poems which date directly after the Wetzlar period are full of
+this sympathetic pantheistic love for Nature--_Mahomet's Song_, for
+example, with its splendid comparison of pioneering genius to a
+mountain torrent:
+
+  Ho! the spring that bursts
+  From the mountain height
+  Joyous and bright,
+  As the gleam of a star....
+  Down in the vale below
+  Flowers bud beneath his tread ...
+  And woo him with fond eyes.
+  And the streamlets of the mountains
+  Shout to him, and cry out 'Brother'!
+  Brother! take thy brothers with thee,
+  With thee to thine ancient father,
+  To the eternal Ocean,
+  Who with outstretch'd arms awaits us....
+  And so beareth he his brothers
+  To their primal sire expectant,
+  All his bosom throbbing, heaving,
+  With a wild, tumultuous joy.
+
+We see the same pathos--the pathos of Pindar and the Psalms--in the
+comparison:
+
+  Like water is the soul of man,
+  From heaven it comes, to heaven it goes,
+  And back again to earth in ceaseless change.
+
+in the incomparable _Wanderer_, in _Wanderer's Storm Song,_ and,
+above all, in _Ganymede_, already given, of which Loeper remarks:
+
+    The poem is, as it were, a rendering of that letter (Werther's of
+    May 10th) in rhythm. The underlying pantheism had already shewn
+    itself in the _Wanderer's Storm Song_. It was not the delight in
+    God of a Brockes, not the adoration of a Klopstock, not sesthetic
+    enjoyment of Nature, not, as in later years, scientific interest;
+    it was rather a being absorbed in, identified with, Nature, a
+    sympathy carried so far that the very ego was surrendered to the
+    elements.
+
+On the Lake of Zurich he wrote, June 15th, 1775:
+
+  And here I drink new blood, fresh food,
+  From world so free, so blest;
+  How sweet is Nature and how good,
+  Who holds me to her breast.
+
+and Elmire sings in _Ermin and Elmire_:
+
+  From thee, O Nature, with deep breath
+  I drink in painful pleasure.
+
+One of the gems among his Nature poems is _Autumn Feelings_ (it was
+the autumn of his love for Lilli):
+
+  Flourish greener as ye clamber,
+  O ye leaves, to seek my chamber;
+  Up the trellised vine on high
+  May ye swell, twin-berries tender,
+  Juicier far, and with more splendour
+  Ripen, and more speedily.
+  O'er ye broods the sun at even,
+  As he sinks to rest, and heaven
+  Softly breathes into your ear
+  All its fertilizing fulness,
+  While the moon's refreshing coolness,
+  Magic-laden, hovers near.
+  And alas! ye're watered ever
+  By a stream of tears that rill
+  From mine eyes--tears ceasing never,
+  Tears of love that nought can still.
+
+The lyrical effect here depends upon the blending of a single
+impression of Nature with the passing mood--an occasional poem rare
+even for Goethe.
+
+In a letter to Frau von Stein he admitted that he was greatly
+influenced by Nature:
+
+    I have slept well and am quite awake, only a quiet sadness lies
+    upon my soul.... The weather agrees exactly with my state of
+    mind, and I begin to believe that it is the weather around me
+    which has the most immediate effect upon me, and the great world
+    thrills my little one with her own mood.
+
+Again, _To the Moon_, in the spring 1778, expresses perfect communion
+between Nature and feeling:
+
+  Flooded are the brakes and dells
+  With thy phantom light,
+  And my soul receives the spell
+  Of thy mystic night.
+  To the meadow dost thou send
+  Something of thy grace,
+  Like the kind eye of a friend
+  Beaming on my face.
+  Echoes of departed times
+  Vibrate in mine ear,
+  Joyous, sad, like spirit chimes,
+  As I wander here.
+  Flow, flow on, thou little brook,
+  Ever onward go!
+  Trusted heart and tender look
+  Left me even so!
+  Richer treasure earth has none
+  Than I once possessed--
+  Ah! so rich, that when 'twas gone
+  Worthless was the rest.
+  Little brook! adown the vale
+  Rush and take my song:
+  Give it passion, give it wail,
+  As thou leap'st along!
+  Sound it in the winter night
+  When thy streams are full,
+  Murmur it when skies are bright
+  Mirror'd in the pool.
+  Happiest he of all created
+  Who the world can shun,
+  Not in hate, and yet unhated,
+  Sharing thought with none,
+  Save one faithful friend, revealing
+  To his kindly ear
+  Thoughts like these, which o'er me stealing,
+  Make the night so drear.
+
+In January 1778, he wrote to Frau von Stein about the fate of the
+unhappy Chr. von Lassberg, who had drowned himself in the Ilm:
+
+    This inviting grief has something dangerously attractive about
+    it, like the water itself; and the reflections of the stars,
+    which gleam from above and below at once, are alluring.
+
+To the same year belongs _The Fisher_, which gave such melodious
+voice to the magic effect of a shimmering expanse of water, 'the
+moist yet radiant blue,' upon the mood; just as, later on, _The
+Erlking_, with the grey of an autumn evening woven ghostlike round
+tree and shrub, made the mind thrill with foreboding.
+
+Goethe was always an industrious traveller. In his seventieth year he
+went to Frankfort, Strassburg, the Rhine, Thuringia, and the Harz
+Mountains (Harzreise, 1777): 'We went up to the peaks, and down to
+the depths of the earth, and hammered at all the rocks.' His love for
+Nature increased with his science; but, at the same time, poetic
+expression of it took a more objective form; the passionate
+vehemence, the really revolutionary attitude of the _Werther_ period,
+gave way to one equally spiritual and intellectual, but more
+temperate.
+
+This transition is clearly seen in the Swiss letters. In his first
+Swiss travels, 1775, he was only just free from _Werther_, and his
+mind was too agitated for quiet observation:
+
+  Hasten thee, Kronos!...
+  Over stock and stone let thy trot
+  Into life straightway lead....
+  Wide, high, glorious the view
+  Gazing round upon life,
+  While from mount unto mount
+  Hovers the spirit eterne,
+  Life eternal foreboding....
+
+Far more significant and ripe--in fact, mature--are the letters in
+1779, shewing, as they do, the attitude of a man of profound mind, in
+the prime of his life and time. He was the first German poet to fall
+under the spell of the mountains--the strongest spell, as he held,
+which Nature wields in our latitudes. 'These sublime, incomparable
+scenes will remain for ever in my mind'; and of one view in
+particular, over the mountains of Savoy and Valais, the Lake of
+Geneva, and Mont Blanc, he said: 'The view was so great, man's eye
+could not grasp it.'
+
+He wrote of his feelings with perfect openness to Frau von Stein, and
+these letters extended farther back than those from Switzerland, and
+were partly mixed with them.
+
+From Selz:
+
+    An uncommonly fine day, a happy country--still all green, only
+    here and there a yellow beech or oak leaf. Meadows still in their
+    silver beauty--a soft welcome breeze everywhere. Grapes improving
+    with every step and every day. Every peasant's house has a vine
+    up to the roof, and every courtyard a great overhanging arbour.
+    The air of heaven soft, warm, and moist. The Rhine and the clear
+    mountains near at hand, the changing woods, meadows, fields like
+    gardens, do men good, and give me a kind of comfort which I have
+    long lacked.
+
+The pen remains as ever the pen of a poet, but he looks at
+Switzerland now with a mature, settled taste, analyzing his
+impressions, and studying mountains, glaciers, boulders,
+scientifically.
+
+Of the Staubbach Fall, near Lauterbrunnen (Oct. 9th, 1779):
+
+    The clouds broke in the upper air, and the blue sky came through.
+    Clouds clung to the steep sides of the rocks; even the top where
+    the Staubbach falls over, was lightly covered. It was a very
+    noble sight ... then the clouds came down into the valley and
+    covered all the foreground. The great wall over which the water
+    falls, still stood out on the right. Night came on.... In the
+    Munsterthal, through which we came, everything was lofty, but
+    more within the mind's power of comprehension than these. In
+    comparison with the immensities, one is, and must remain, too
+    small.
+
+And after visiting the Berne glacier from Thun (Oct. 14):
+
+    It is difficult to write after all this ... the first glance from
+    the mountain is striking, the district is surprisingly extensive
+    and pleasant ... the road indescribably beautiful ... the view
+    from the Lake of Brienz towards the snow mountains at sunset is
+    great.
+
+More eloquent is the letter of October 3rd, from the Munsterthal:
+
+    The passage through this defile roused in me a grand but calm
+    emotion. The sublime produces a beautiful calmness in the soul,
+    which, entirely possessed by it, feels as great as it ever can
+    feel. How glorious is such a pure feeling, when it rises to the
+    very highest without overflowing. My eye and my soul were both
+    able to take in the objects before me, and as I was preoccupied
+    by nothing, and had no false tastes to counteract their
+    impression, they had on me their full and natural effect. When we
+    compare such a feeling with that we are sensible of, when we
+    laboriously harass ourselves with some trifle, and strain every
+    nerve to gain as much as possible for it, and, as it were, to
+    patch it out, striving to furnish joy and aliment to the mind
+    from its own creation; we then feel sensibly what a poor
+    expedient, after all, the latter is....
+
+    When we see such objects as these for the first time, the
+    unaccustomed soul has to expand itself, and this gives rise to a
+    sort of painful joy, an overflowing of emotion which agitates the
+    mind and draws from us the most delicious tears.... If only
+    destiny had bidden me to dwell in the midst of some grand
+    scenery, then would I every morning have imbibed greatness from
+    its grandeur, as from a lonely valley I would extract patience
+    and repose.
+
+    One guesses in the dark about the origin and existence of these
+    singular forms.... These masses must have been formed grandly and
+    simply by aggregation. Whatever revolutions may subsequently have
+    up-heaved, rent, and divided them ... the idea of such nightly
+    commotions gives one a deep feeling of the eternal stability of
+    the masses.... One feels deeply convinced that here there is
+    nothing accidental, that here there is working an eternal law
+    which, however slowly, yet surely governs the universe.
+
+By the Lake of Geneva, where he thought of Rousseau, he went up the
+Dole:
+
+    The whole of the Pays de Vaux and de Gex lay like a plan before
+    us ... we kept watching the mist, which gradually retired ... one
+    by one we distinctly saw Lausanne ... Vevey.... There are no
+    words to express the beauty and grandeur of this view ... the
+    line of glittering glaciers was continually drawing the eye back
+    again to the mountains.
+
+From Cluse he wrote:
+
+    The air was as warm as it usually is at the beginning of
+    September, and the country we travelled through beautiful. Many
+    of the trees still green; most of them had assumed a
+    brownish-yellow tint, but only a few were quite bare. The crops
+    were rich and verdant, the mountains caught from the red sunset a
+    rosy hue blended with violet, and all these rich tints were
+    combined with grand, beautiful, and agreeable forms of the
+    landscape.
+
+At Chamouni, about effects of light:
+
+    Here too again it seemed to us as if the sun had first of all
+    attracted the light mists which evaporated from the tops of the
+    glaciers, and then a gentle breeze had, as it were, combed the
+    fine vapours like a fleece of foam over the atmosphere. I never
+    remember at home, even in the height of summer, to have seen any
+    so transparent, for here it was a perfect web of light.
+
+At the Col de Baume:
+
+    Whilst I am writing, a remarkable phenomenon is passing along the
+    sky. The mists, which are shifting about and breaking in some
+    places, allow you through their openings, as through skylights,
+    to catch a glimpse of the blue sky, while at the same time the
+    mountain peaks, rising above our roofs of vapour, are illuminated
+    by the sun's rays....
+
+At Leukertad, at the foot of the Gemmi, he wrote (Nov. 9th):
+
+    The clouds which gather here in this valley, at one time
+    completely hiding the immense rocks and absorbing them in a waste
+    impenetrable gloom, or at another letting a part of them be seen
+    like huge spectres, give to the people a cast of melancholy. In
+    the midst of such natural phenomena, the people are full of
+    presentiments and forebodings ... and the eternal and intrinsic
+    energy of his (man's) nature feels itself at every nerve moved to
+    forebode and to indulge in presentiments.
+
+On the way across the Rhine glacier to the Furka, he felt the
+half-suggestive, half-distressing sense of mountain loneliness:
+
+    It was a strange sight ... in the most desolate region of the
+    world, in a boundless monotonous wilderness of mountains
+    enveloped in snow, where for three leagues before and behind you
+    would not expect to meet a living soul, while on both sides you
+    had the deep hollows of a web of mountains, you might see a line
+    of men wending their way, treading each in the deep footsteps of
+    the one before him, and where, in the whole of the wide expanse
+    thus smoothed over, the eye could discern nothing but the track
+    they left behind them. The hollows, as we left them, lay behind
+    us grey and boundless in the mist. The changing clouds
+    continually passed over the pale disc of the sun, and spread over
+    the whole scene a perpetually moving veil.
+
+He sums up the impressions made on him with:
+
+    The perception of such a long chain of Nature's wonders, excites
+    within me a secret and inexpressible feeling of enjoyment.
+
+The most profound change in his mental life was brought about by his
+visit to Italy, 1786-87. The poetic expression of this refining
+process, this striving towards the classic ideal, towards Sophrosyne,
+was _Iphigenia_.
+
+Its effect upon his feeling for Nature appeared in a more
+matter-of-fact tone; the man of feeling gave way to the scientific
+observer.
+
+He had, as he said (Oct. 30th, 1887), lately 'acquired the habit of
+looking only at things, and not, as formerly, seeing with and in the
+things what actually was not there.'
+
+He no longer imputed his feelings to Nature, and studied her
+influence on himself, but looked at her with impersonal interest.
+Weather, cloud, mountain formation, the species of stone, landscape,
+and social themes, were all treated almost systematically as so much
+diary memoranda for future use. There was no artistic treatment in
+such jottings; meteorology, botany, and geology weighed too heavily.
+
+The question, 'Is a place beautiful?' paled beside 'Is its soil
+clay?' 'Are its rocks quartz, chalk, or mica schist?' The problem of
+the archetypal plant was more absorbing than the finest groups of
+trees. The years of practical life at Weimar, and, above all, the
+ever-growing interest in science, were the chief factors in this
+change, which led him, as he said in his _Treatise on Granite_,
+
+    from observation and description of the human heart, that part of
+    creation which is the most youthful, varied, unstable, and
+    destructible, to observation of that Son of Nature, which is the
+    oldest, deepest, most stable, most indestructible.
+
+The enthusiastic subjective realism of stormy youth was replaced by
+the measured objective realism of ripe manhood. Hence the difference
+between his letters from Switzerland and those from Italy, where this
+inner metamorphosis was completed; as he said, 'Between Weimar and
+Palermo I have had many changes.'
+
+For all that, he revelled in the beauty of Italy. As he once said:
+
+    It is natural to me to revere the great and beautiful willingly
+    and with pleasure; and to develop this predisposition day by day
+    and hour by hour by means of such glorious objects, is the most
+    delightful feeling.
+
+The sea made a great impression upon him:
+
+    I set out for the Lido...landed, and walked straight across the
+    isthmus. I heard a loud hollow murmur--it was the sea! I soon saw
+    it; it crested high against the shore as it retired, it was about
+    noon and time of ebb. I have then at last seen the sea with my
+    own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it
+    quitted it.
+
+But further on he only remarks: 'The sea is a great sight.'
+Elsewhere, too, it is only noticed very shortly.
+
+Rome stimulated his mind to increased productiveness, and, partly for
+this reason, he could not assimilate all the new impressions which
+poured in upon him from without, from ruins, paintings, churches,
+palaces, the life of the people. He drew a great deal too; from
+Frascati he wrote (Nov. 15th, 1786):
+
+    The country around is very pleasant; the village lies on the side
+    of a hill, or rather of a mountain, and at every step the
+    draughtsman comes upon the most glorious objects. The prospect is
+    unbounded. Rome lies before you, and beyond it on the right is
+    the sea, the mountains of Tivoli, and so on.
+
+In Rome itself (Feb. 2nd, 1787):
+
+    Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight it is
+    impossible to form a conception without having witnessed it.
+
+During Carnival (Feb. 21st):
+
+    The sky, so infinitely fine and clear, looked down nobly and
+    innocently upon the mummeries.
+
+In the voyage to Sicily:
+
+    At noon we went on board; the weather being extremely fine, we
+    enjoyed the most glorious of views. The corvette lay at anchor
+    near to the Mole. With an unclouded sun the atmosphere was hazy,
+    giving to the rocky walls of Sorrento, which were in the shade, a
+    tint of most beautiful blue. Naples with its living multitudes
+    lay in full sunshine, and glittered brilliantly with countless
+    tints.
+
+and on April 1st:
+
+    With a cloudy sky, a bright but broken moonlight, the reflection
+    on the sea was infinitely beautiful.
+
+At first, Italy, and especially Rome, felt strange to him, in
+scenery, sky, contour, and colour. It was only by degrees that he
+felt at home there.
+
+He refers to this during his second visit to Rome in a notable
+remark, which aptly expresses the faculty of apperception--the link
+between us and the unfamiliar, which enables mental growth.
+
+June 16th, 1787:
+
+    One remark more! Now for the first time do the trees, the rocks,
+    nay, Rome itself, grow dear to me; hitherto I have always felt
+    them as foreign, though, on the other hand, I took pleasure in
+    minor subjects having some resemblance to those I saw in youth.
+
+On August 18th, 1787, he wrote:
+
+    Yesterday before sunrise I drove to Acqua Acetosa. Verily, one
+    might well lose his senses in contemplating the clearness, the
+    manifoldness, the dewy transparency, the heavenly hue of the
+    landscape, especially in the distance.
+
+In October, when he heard of the engagement of a beautiful Milanese
+lady with whom he had fallen in love:
+
+    I again turned me instantly to Nature, as a subject for
+    landscapes, a field I had been meanwhile neglecting, and
+    endeavoured to copy her in this respect with the utmost fidelity.
+    I was, however, more successful in mastering her with my eyes....
+    All the sensual fulness which that region offers us in rocks and
+    trees, in acclivities and declivities, in peaceful lakes and
+    lively streams, all this was grasped by my eye more
+    appreciatively, if possible, than ever before, and I could hardly
+    resent the wound which had to such degree sharpened my inward and
+    outward sense.
+
+On leaving Rome, he wrote:
+
+    Three nights before, the full moon shone in the clearest heaven,
+    and the enchantment shed over the vast town, though often felt
+    before, was never felt so keenly as now. The great masses of
+    light, clear as in mild daylight, the contrast of deep shades,
+    occasionally relieved by reflexions dimly portraying details, all
+    this transported us as if into another, a simpler and a greater,
+    world.
+
+The later diaries on his travels are sketchy throughout, and more
+laconic and objective: for example, at Schaffhausen (Sept. 18th):
+
+    Went out early, 7.30, to see the Falls of the Rhine; colour of
+    water, green--causes of this, the heights covered by mist--the
+    depths clear, and we saw the castle of Laufen half in mist;
+    thought of Ossian. Love mist when moved by deep feeling.
+
+At Brunnen:
+
+    Green of the lake, steep banks, small size of boatman in
+    comparison to the enormous masses of rock. One saw precipices
+    grown over by trees, summits covered by clouds. Sunshine over the
+    scene, one felt the formless greatness of Nature.
+
+He was conscious of the great change in himself since his last visit
+there, and wrote to Schiller (Oct. 14th, 1797):
+
+    I remember the effect these things had upon me twenty years ago.
+    The total impression remained with me, but the details faded, and
+    I had a wonderful longing to repeat the whole experience and
+    correct my impressions. I had become another man, and therefore
+    it must needs appear different to me.
+
+In later years he travelled a great deal in the Harz Mountains, to
+Carlsbad, Toplitz, the Maine, Marienbad, etc. After the death of his
+great friends, Schiller and Carl August, he was more and more lonely,
+and his whole outlook, with increasing years, grew more impersonal,
+his attitude to Nature more abstract and scientific; the archetypal
+plant was superseded by the theory of colours. But he kept fresh eyes
+for natural beauty into ripe age; witness this letter from
+Heidelberg, May 4th, 1808, to Frau von Stein:
+
+    Yesterday evening, after finishing my work, I went alone to the
+    castle, and first scrambled about among the ruins, and then
+    betook myself to the great balcony from which one can overlook
+    the whole country. It was one of the loveliest of May evenings
+    and of sunsets. No! I have really never seen such a fine view!
+    Just imagine! One looked into the beautiful though narrow Neckar
+    valley, covered on both sides with woods and vineyards and fruit
+    trees just coming into flower. Further off the valley widened,
+    and one saw the setting sun reflected in the Rhine as it flowed
+    majestically through most beautiful country. On its further side
+    the horizon was bounded by the Vosges mountains, lit up by the
+    sun as if by a fire. The whole country was covered with fresh
+    green, and close to me were the enormous ruins of the old castle,
+    half in light and half in shade. You can easily fancy how it
+    fascinated me. I stood lost in the view quite half an hour, till
+    the rising moon woke me from my dreams.
+
+Goethe's true lyrical period was in the seventies, before his Italian
+journeys; during and after that time he wrote more dramatic and epic
+poetry, with ballads and the more narrative kind of epic. In sending
+_Der Jüngling und der Mühlbach_ to Schiller from Switzerland in 1797,
+he wrote: 'I have discovered splendid material for idylls and
+elegies, and whatever that sort of poetry is called.'
+
+Nature lyrics were few during his Italian travels, as in the journey
+to Sicily, 1787; among them were _Calm at Sea_:
+
+  Silence deep rules o'er the waters,
+  Calmly slumbering lies the main.
+
+and _Prosperous Voyage_:
+
+  The mist is fast clearing,
+  And radiant is heaven,
+  Whilst Æolus loosens
+  Our anguish-fraught bond.
+
+The most perfect of all such short poems was the _Evening Song_,
+written one September night of 1783 on the Gickelhahn, near Ilmenau.
+He was writing at the same time to Frau von Stein: 'The sky is
+perfectly clear, and I am going out to enjoy the sunset. The view is
+great and simple--the sun down.'
+
+      Every tree top is at peace.
+      E'en the rustling woods do cease
+      Every sound;
+      The small birds sleep on every bough.
+      Wait but a moment--soon wilt thou
+      Sleep in peace.
+
+    The hush of evening, the stilling of desire in the silence of the
+    wood, the beautiful resolution of all discords in Nature's
+    perfect concord, the naive and splendid pantheism of a soul which
+    feels itself at one with the world--all this is not expressed in
+    so many words in the _Night Song_; but it is all there, like the
+    united voicesin a great symphony.                  (SCHURÉ.)
+
+The lines are full of that pantheism which not only brings subject
+and object, Mind and Nature, into symbolic relationship, but works
+them into one tissue. Taken alone with _The Fisher_ and _To the
+Moon_, it would suffice to give him the first place as a poet of
+Nature.
+
+He was not only the greatest poet, but the greatest and most
+universal thinker of modern times. With him feeling and knowledge
+worked together, the one reaching its climax in the lyrics of his
+younger days, the other gradually moderating the fervour of passion,
+and, with the more objective outlook of age, laying greater stress
+upon science. His feeling for Nature, which followed an unbroken
+course, like his mental development generally, stands alone as a type
+of perfectly modern feeling, and yet no one, despite the many
+intervening centuries, stood so near both to Homer and to
+Shakespeare, and in philosophy to Spinoza.
+
+But because with Goethe poetry and philosophy were one, his pantheism
+is full of life and poetic vision, whilst that of the wise man of
+Amsterdam is severely mathematical and abstract. And the postulate of
+this pantheism was sympathy, harmony between Nature and the inner
+life. He felt himself a part of the power which upholds and
+encompasses the world. Nature became his God, love of her his
+religion. In his youth, in the period of _Werther, Ganymede_, and the
+first part of _Faust_, this pantheism was a nameless, unquenchable
+aspiration towards the divine--for wings to reach, like the rays of
+light, to unmeasured heights; as he said in the Swiss mountains,
+'Into the limitless spaces of the air, to soar over abysses, and let
+him down upon inaccessible rocks.'
+
+After the Italian journeys science took the lead, the student of
+Nature supplanted the lover, even his symbolism took a more abstract
+and realistic form. But he never, even in old age, lost his love for
+the beauties of Nature, and, holding to Spinoza's fundamental ideas
+of the unchangeableness and eternity of Nature's laws, and the
+oneness of the Cosmos, he sought to think it out and base it upon
+scientific grounds, through the unbroken succession of animal and
+vegetable forms of life, the uniform 'formation and transformation of
+all organic Nature.' He wrote to Frau von Stein: 'I cannot express to
+you how legible the book of Nature is growing to me; my long spelling
+out has helped me. It takes effect now all of a sudden; my quiet
+delight is inexpressible; I find much that is new, but nothing that
+is unexpected--everything fits in and conforms, because I have no
+system, and care for nothing but truth for its own sake. Soon
+everything about living things will be clear to me.'[13]
+
+Poetic and scientific intuition were simultaneous with him, and their
+common bond was pantheism. This pantheism marked an epoch in the
+history of feeling. For Goethe not only transformed the unreal
+feeling of his day into real, described scenery, and inspired it with
+human feeling, and deciphered the beauty of the Alps, as no one else
+had done, Rousseau not excepted; but he also brought knowledge of
+Nature into harmony with feeling for her, and with his wonderfully
+receptive and constructive mind so studied the earlier centuries,
+that he gathered out all that was valuable in their feeling.
+
+As Goethe in Germany, so Byron in England led the feeling for Nature
+into new paths by his demoniac genius and glowing pantheism. Milton's
+great imagination was too puritan, too biblical, to allow her
+independent importance; he only assigned her a _rôle_ in relation to
+the Deity. In fiction, too, she had no place; but, on the other hand,
+we find her in such melancholy, sentimental outpourings as Young's
+_Night Thoughts_:
+
+  Night, sable Goddess! from her ebon throne
+  In rayless majesty now stretches forth
+  Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world...
+  Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse
+  Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
+  An awful pause, prophetic of her end...etc.
+
+There is a wealth of imagery and comparison amid Ossian's melancholy
+and mourning; clouds and mist are the very shadows of his struggling
+heroes. For instance:
+
+    His spear is a blasted pine, his shield the rising moon. He sat
+    on the shore like a cloud of mist on the rising hill.
+
+    Thou art snow on the heath; thy hair is the mist of Cromla, when
+    it curls on the hill, when it shines to the beam of the west. Thy
+    breasts are two smooth rocks seen from Branno of streams.
+
+    As the troubled noise of the ocean when roll the waves on high;
+    as the last peal of the thunder of heaven, such is the noise of
+    battle.
+
+    As autumn's dark storms pour from two echoing hills, towards each
+    other approached the heroes.
+
+    The clouds of night came rolling down, Darkness rests on the
+    steeps of Cromla. The stars of the north arise over the rolling
+    of Erin's waves; they shew their heads of fire through the flying
+    mist of heaven. A distant wind roars in the wood. Silent and dark
+    is the plain of death.
+
+Wordsworth's influence turned in another direction. His real taste
+was pastoral, and he preached freer intercourse with Nature, glossing
+his ideas rather artificially with a theism, through which one reads
+true love of her, and an undeniable, though hidden, pantheism.
+
+In _The Influence of Natural Objects_ he described how a life spent
+with Nature had early purified him from passion:
+
+  Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
+  With stinted kindness. In November days,
+  When vapours, rolling down the valleys, made
+  A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods
+  At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
+  When by the margin of the trembling lake
+  Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went
+  In solitude, such intercourse was mine.
+  'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,
+  And by the waters all the summer long,
+  And in the frosty season, when the sun
+  Was set, and visible for many a mile,
+  The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
+  I heeded not the summons....
+
+Like Klopstock, he delighted in sledging
+
+      while the stars
+  Eastward were sparkling bright, and in the west
+  The orange sky of evening died away.
+
+Far more characteristic of the man is the confession in _Tintern
+Abbey_:
+
+  Nature then
+  (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
+  And their glad animal movements all gone by)
+  To me was all in all. I cannot paint
+  What then I was. The sounding cataract
+  Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
+  The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
+  The colours and their forms, were then to me
+  An appetite, a feeling and a love
+  That had no need of a remoter charm
+  By thought supplied, or any interest
+  Unborrow'd from the eye.
+
+Beautiful notes, to be struck again more forcibly by the frank
+pantheism of Byron.
+
+What Scott had been doing for Scotland,[14] and Moore for Ireland,
+Wordsworth, with still greater fidelity to truth, tried to do for
+England and her people; in contrast to Byron and Shelley, who forsook
+home to range more widely, or Southey, whose _Thalaba_ begins with an
+imposing description of night in the desert:
+
+      How beautiful is night!
+  A dewy freshness fills the silent air,
+  No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain
+  Breaks the serene of heaven;
+  In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine
+  Rolls through the dark blue depths.
+  Beneath her steady ray
+  The desert-circle spreads
+  Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
+  How beautiful is night!
+
+But all that previous English poets had done seemed harmless and
+innocent in comparison with Byron's revolutionary poetry. Prophecy in
+Rousseau became poetry in Byron.
+
+There was much common ground between these two passionate aspiring
+spirits, who never attained to Goethe's serenity. Both were
+melancholy, and fled from their fellows; both strove for perfect
+liberty and unlimited self-assertion; both felt with the wild and
+uproarious side of Nature, and found idyllic scenes marred by
+thoughts of mankind.
+
+Byron's turbulence never subsided; and his love for Nature,
+passionate and comprehensive as it was, was always 'sickled o'er'
+with misanthropy and pessimism, with the 'world-pain.'
+
+He turned to her first through disdain of his kind and love of
+introspection, and later on, when he was spurned by the London world
+which had been at his feet, and disdain grew into hatred and disgust,
+from a wish to be alone. But, as Boettger says:
+
+    Though this heart, in which the whole universe is reflected, is a
+    sick one, it has immeasurable depths, and an intensified spirit
+    life which draws everything under its sway and inspires it,
+    feeling and observing everything only as part of itself.
+
+The basis of Byron's feeling for Nature was a revolutionary
+one--elementary passion. The genius which threw off stanza after
+stanza steeped in melody, was coupled with an unprecedented
+subjectivity and individualism. When the first part of _Childe
+Harold_ came out, dull London society was bewitched by the music and
+novelty of this enthusiastic lyric of Nature, with its incomparable
+interweaving of scenery and feeling:
+
+  The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew,
+  As glad to waft him from his native home....
+  But when the sun was sinking in the sea,
+  He seized his harp...
+  Adieu, adieu! my native shore
+  Fades o'er the waters blue;
+  The night winds sigh, the breakers roar,
+  And shrieks the wild sea-mew;
+  Yon sun that sets upon the sea
+  We follow in his flight;
+  Farewell awhile to him and thee,
+  My native land, good-night!
+
+He says of the beauty of Lusitania:
+
+  Oh Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
+  What Heaven hath done for this delicious land.
+  What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
+  What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!...
+  The horrid crags, by toppling convent crown'd,
+  The cork trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
+  The mountain moss, by scorching skies imbrown'd,
+  The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep.
+  The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
+  The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
+  The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
+  The vine on high, the willow branch below,
+  Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.
+
+Yet his spirit drives him away, 'more restless than the swallow in
+the skies.'
+
+The charm of the idyllic is in the lines:
+
+  But these between, a silver streamlet glides....
+  Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook,
+  And vacant on the rippling waves doth look,
+  That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow.
+
+The beauty of the sea and night in this:
+
+  The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve!
+  Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand....
+  How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
+  Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown
+  Distinct....
+
+  Bending o'er the vessel's laving side
+  To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere.
+
+He reflects that:
+
+  To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
+  To slowly trace the forest's shady scene....
+  To climb the trackless mountain all unseen
+  With the wild flock that never needs a fold,
+  Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean,--
+  This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold
+  Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.
+  But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
+  To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
+  And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
+  With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ...
+  This is to be alone--this, this is solitude.
+
+His preference for wild scenery shews here:
+
+  Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,
+  Though always changing, in her aspect mild;
+  From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
+  Her never-wean'd, though not her favour'd child.
+  O she is fairest in her features wild,
+  Where nothing polish'd dares pollute her path;
+  To me by day or night she ever smiled,
+  Though I have mark'd her when none other hath,
+  And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.
+
+He observes everything--now 'the billows' melancholy flow' under the
+bows of the ship, now the whole scene at Zitza:
+
+  Where'er we gaze, around, above, below,
+  What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found!
+  Rock, river, forest, mountain, all abound,
+  And bluest skies that harmonize the whole;
+  Beneath, the distant torrent's rushing sound
+  Tells where the volumed cataract doth roll
+  Between those hanging rocks, that shock yet please the soul.
+
+This is full of poetic vision:
+
+  Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove,
+  And weary waves retire to gleam at rest,
+  How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove,
+  Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast,
+  As winds come lightly whispering from the west,
+  Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene;--
+  Here Harold was received a welcome guest;
+  Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene,
+  For many a job could he from Night's soft presence glean.
+
+Feeling himself 'the most unfit of men to herd with man,' he is happy
+only with Nature:
+
+  Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
+  And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
+  That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!
+  Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead.
+
+  Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
+  Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
+  Where a blue sky and glowing clime extends,
+  He had the passion and the power to roam;
+  The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
+  Were unto him companionship; they spake
+  A mutual language, clearer than the tome
+  Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
+  For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake.
+
+Again:
+
+  I live not in myself, but I become
+  Portion of that around me, and to me
+  High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
+  Of human cities torture; I can see
+  Nothing to loathe in Nature save to be
+  A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
+  Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee,
+  And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
+  Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.
+
+  Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
+  Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
+  Is not the love of these deep in my heart
+  With a pure passion? Should I not contemn
+  All objects, if compared with these?
+
+Love of Nature was a passion with him, and when he looked
+
+  Upon the peopled desert past
+  As on a place of agony and strife,
+
+mountains gave him a sense of freedom.
+
+He praised the Rhine:
+
+  Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,
+  Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,
+  Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.
+
+and far more the Alps:
+
+      Above me are the Alps,
+  The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
+  Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
+  And throned eternity in icy halls
+  Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
+  The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow!
+  All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
+  Gather around these summits, as to shew
+  How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.
+
+On the Lake of Geneva:
+
+  Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven...
+  All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,
+  But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
+  And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep.
+  All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
+  Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast,
+  All is concenter'd in a life intense,
+  Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
+  But hath a part of being, and a sense
+  Of that which is of all Creator and defence.
+
+  And this is in the night. Most glorious night,
+  Thou wert not sent for slumber; let me be
+  A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,
+  A portion of the tempest and of thee!
+  How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
+  And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
+  And now again 'tis black--and now, the glee
+  Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth,
+  As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
+  But where of ye, oh tempests, is the goal?
+  Are ye like those within the human breast?
+  Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?
+
+  The morn is up again, the dewy morn
+  With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
+  Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
+  And living as if earth contained no tomb.
+
+In Clarens:
+
+  Clarens! sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love,
+  Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought,
+  Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above
+  The very glaciers have his colours caught,
+  And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought
+  By rays which sleep there lovingly; the rocks,
+  The permanent crags, tell here of Love.
+
+Yet
+
+  Ever and anon of griefs subdued
+  There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
+  Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;
+  And slight withal may be the things which bring
+  Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
+  Aside for ever; it may be a sound,
+  A tone of music, summer's eve or spring,
+  A flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall wound,
+  Striking the electric chain with which we are darkly bound.
+
+The unrest and torment of his own heart he finds reflected in Nature:
+
+  The roar of waters! from the headlong height
+  Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
+  The fall of waters! rapid as the light
+  The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss;
+  The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
+  And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
+  Of their great agony, wrung out from this
+  Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
+  That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
+  And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
+  Returns in an unceasing shower, which round
+  With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain
+  Is an eternal April to the ground,
+  Making it all one emerald; how profound
+  The gulf, and how the giant element
+  From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
+  Crushing the cliffs, which downward, worn and rent
+  With his fierce footsteps, yields in chasms a fearful rent....
+  Horribly beautiful! but, on the verge
+  From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
+  An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge,
+  Like Hope upon a deathbed.
+
+The 'enormous skeleton' of Rome impresses him most by moonlight:
+
+  When the rising moon begins to climb
+  Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
+  When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
+  And the low night breeze waves along the air!
+
+Underlying all his varying moods is this note:
+
+  There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
+  There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
+  There is society, where none intrudes,
+  By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
+  I love not man the less, but Nature more,
+  From these our interviews, in which I steal
+  From all I may be, or have been before,
+  To mingle with the Universe and feel
+  What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
+
+The sea, the sky with its stars and clouds, and the mountains, are
+his passion:
+
+  Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
+  Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
+  Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
+  Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
+  The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
+  A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
+  When, for a moment, like a drop of rain
+  He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
+  Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
+                                  (_Childe Harold_.)
+
+  The day at last has broken. What a night
+  Hath usher'd it! How beautiful in heaven!
+  Though varied with a transitory storm,
+  More beautiful in that variety!...
+               And can the sun so rise,
+  So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
+  Vapours more lovely than the unclouded sky,
+  With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,
+  And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
+  In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth.
+                              (_Sardanapalus.)_
+
+He had loved the Scotch Highlands in youth:
+
+  Amidst Nature's native scenes,
+  Loved to the last, whatever intervenes
+  Between us and our childhood's sympathy
+  Which still reverts to what first caught the eye.
+  He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue
+  Will love each peak that shews a kindred hue,
+  Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
+  And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace.
+                                (_The Island_.)
+
+and in _The Island_ he says:
+
+  How often we forget all time, when lone,
+  Admiring Nature's universal throne,
+  Her woods, her wilds, her waters, the intense
+  Reply of hers to our intelligence!
+  Live not the stars and mountains? Are the waves
+  Without a spirit? Are the dropping cares
+  Without a feeling in their silent tears?
+  No, no; they woo and clasp us to their spheres,
+  Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before
+  Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.
+                                 (_The Island_.)
+
+Byron's feeling was thus, like Goethe's in _Werther_ and _Faust_, a
+pantheistic sympathy. But there was this great difference between
+them--Goethe's mind passed through its period of storm and stress,
+and attained a serene and ripe vision; Byron's never did. Melancholy
+and misanthropy always mingled with his feelings; he was, in fact,
+the father of our modern 'world-pain.'
+
+Still more like a brilliant meteor that flashes and is gone was
+Shelley, the most highly strung of all modern lyrists. With him, too,
+love of Nature amounted to a passion; but it was with her remote
+aerial forms that he was most at home. His imagination, a cosmic one,
+revelling among the spheres, was like Byron's in its preference for
+the great, wide, and distant; but unlike his in giving first place to
+the serene and passionless. As Brandes says: 'In this familiarity
+with the great forms and movements of Nature, Shelley is like Byron;
+but like him as a fair genius is like a dark one, as Ariel is like
+the flame-bringing angel of the morning star.'
+
+We see his love for the sea, especially at rest, in the 'Stanzas
+written in dejection near Naples,' which contain the beautiful line
+which proved so prophetic of his death:
+
+  The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
+  The waves are dancing fast and bright;
+  Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
+  The purple noon's transparent might....
+  I see the deep's untrampled floor
+  With green and purple sea-weeds strewn;
+  I see the waves upon the shore
+  Like light dissolved, in star showers thrown....
+  Yet now despair itself is mild,
+  Even as the winds and waters are;
+  I could lie down like a tired child
+  And weep away the life of care
+  Which I have borne, and yet must bear,--
+  Till death like sleep might steal on me,
+  And I might feel in the warm air
+  My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
+  Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
+
+In his _Essay on Love_, speaking of the irresistible longing for
+sympathy, he says:
+
+    In solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by
+    human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the
+    flowers, the grass, and the water and the sky. In the motion of
+    the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a
+    secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the
+    tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the
+    rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable
+    relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a
+    dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious
+    tenderness to the eyes, like the voice of one beloved singing to
+    you alone.
+
+As Brandes says: 'His pulses beat in secret sympathy with Nature's.
+He called plants and animals his dear sisters and brothers, and the
+words which his wife inscribed upon his tombstone in Rome, "cor
+cordium," are true of his relation to Nature also.'
+
+_The Cloud_, with its marvellously vivid personification, is a
+perfect example of his genius.
+
+It gives the measure of his unlikeness to the more homekeeping
+imaginations of his contemporaries Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, and
+Moore; and at the same time to Byron, for here there are no morbid
+reflections; the poem is pervaded by a naive, childlike tone, such as
+one hears in the old mythologies.
+
+_The Cloud_:
+
+  I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
+  From the seas and the streams;
+  I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
+  In their noonday dreams.
+  From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
+  The sweet buds every one,
+  When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast
+  As she dances about the sun.
+  I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
+  And whiten the green plains under;
+  And then again I dissolve it in rain,
+  And laugh as I pass in thunder.
+
+  I sift the snow on the mountains below,
+  And their great pines groan aghast,
+  And all the night 'tis my pillow white
+  While I sleep in the arms of the Blast....
+  From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
+  Over a torrent sea,
+  Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
+  The mountains its columns be.
+  The triumphal arch through which I march,
+  With hurricane, fire, and snow,
+  When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
+  Is the million-coloured bow;
+  The Sphere-fire above its soft colours wove
+  While the moist earth was laughing below.
+  I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
+  And the nursling of the Sky.
+
+As Brandes puts it; When the cloud sings thus of the moon:
+
+                                               When
+  That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
+  Whom Mortals call the Moon,
+  Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor
+  By the midnight breezes strewn;
+  And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
+  Which only the angels hear,
+  May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
+  The Stars peep behind her and peer.
+
+or of--
+
+  The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
+
+the reader is carried back, by dint of the virgin freshness of the
+poet's imagination, to the time when the phenomena of Nature were
+first moulded into mythology.
+
+This kinship to the myth is very clear in the finest of all his
+poems, the _Ode to the West Wind_, when the poet says to the wind:
+
+  O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,...
+  Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
+  Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed.
+  Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean.
+  Angels of rain and lightning, there are spread
+  On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
+  Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
+  Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
+  Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
+  The locks of the approaching storm.
+
+He calls the wind the 'breath of Autumn's being,' the one
+
+  Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
+  The winged seeds.
+
+And cries to it:
+
+  If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
+  If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
+  A wave to pant beneath thy power and share
+  The impulse of thy strength, only less free
+  Than thou, O uncontrollable!...
+  0 lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
+  I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!
+  A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
+  One too like thee, tameless, and swift, and proud.
+  Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;
+  What if my leaves are falling like its own?
+  The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
+  Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
+  Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
+  My spirit. Be thou me, impetuous one!
+  Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
+  Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;
+  And by the incantation of this verse,
+  Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
+  Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
+  Be through my lips to unawakened earth
+  The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
+  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
+
+His poems are full of this power of inspiring all the elements with
+life, breathing his own feeling into them, and divining love and
+sympathy in them; for instance:
+
+  The fountains mingle with the river,
+  And the river with the ocean;
+  The winds of heaven mix for ever
+  With a sweet emotion....
+  See the mountains kiss high heaven,
+  And the waves clasp one another...
+  And the sunlight clasps the earth,
+  And the moonbeams kiss the sea.
+
+and:
+
+  I love all thou lovest,
+  Spirit of Delight;
+  The fresh earth in new leaves dressed,
+  And the starry night,
+  Autumn evening and the morn
+  When the golden mists are born.
+  I love snow and all the forms
+  Of the radiant frost;
+  I love waves and winds and storms--
+  Everything almost
+  Which is Nature's, and may be
+  Untainted by man's misery.
+
+To Goethe, Byron, and Shelley, this pantheism, universal love,
+sympathy with Nature in all her forms, was the base of feeling; but
+both of England's greatest lyrists, dying young, failed to attain
+perfect harmony of thought and feeling. There always remained a
+bitter ingredient in their poetry.
+
+Let us now turn to France.
+
+
+LAMARTINE AND VICTOR HUGO
+
+Rousseau discovered the beauty of scenery for France; St Pierre
+portrayed it poetically, not only in _Paul and Virginia_, but in
+_Chaumiére Indienne_ and _Etudes de la Nature_. The science which
+these two writers lacked, Buffon possessed in a high degree; but he
+had not the power to delineate Nature and feeling in combination: he
+lacked insight into the hidden analogies between the movements of the
+mind and the phenomena of the outer world. Chateaubriand, on the
+contrary, had this faculty to its full modern extent. It is true that
+his ego was constantly to the fore, even in dealing with Nature, but
+his landscapes were full of sympathetic feeling. He had Rousseau's
+melancholy and unrest, and cared nothing for those 'oppressive
+masses,' mountains, except as backgrounds; but he was enthusiastic
+about the scenery which he saw in America, the virgin forests, and
+the Mississippi--above all, about the sea. His Réné, that life-like
+figure, half-passionate, half-_blasé_, measuring everything by
+himself, and flung hither and thither by the waves of passion, shewed
+a lover's devotion to the sea and to Nature generally.[15] 'It was
+not God whom I contemplated on the waves in the magnificence of His
+works: I saw an unknown woman, and the miracle of his smile, the
+beauties of the sky, seemed to me disclosed by her breath. I would
+have bartered eternity for one of her caresses. I pictured her to
+myself as throbbing behind this veil of the universe which hid her
+from my eyes. Oh! why was it not in my power to rend the veil and
+press the idealized woman to my heart, to spend myself on her bosom
+with the love which is the source of my inspiration, my despair, and
+my life?'
+
+In subjectivity and dreaminess both Chateaubriand and Lamartine were
+like the German romanticists, but their fundamental note was theism,
+not pantheism. The storm of the French Revolution, which made radical
+changes in religion, as in all other things, was followed by a
+reaction. Christianity acquired new power and inwardness, and Nature
+was unceasingly praised as the mirror of the divine idea of creation.
+
+In his _Génie du Christianisme_, Chateaubriand said:
+
+    The true God, in entering into His Works, has given his immensity
+    to Nature... there is an instinct in man, which puts him in
+    communication with the scenes of Nature.
+
+Lamartine was a sentimental dreamer of dreams, a thinker of lofty
+thoughts which lost themselves in the inexpressible. His
+_Meditations_ shew his ardent though sad worship of Nature; his love
+of evening, moonlight, and starlight. For instance, _L'Isolement_:
+
+  Ici gronde le fleuve aux vagues écumantes,
+  Il serpente et s'enfonce en un lointain obscur:
+  Là le lac immobile étend ses eaux dormantes
+  Oò l'étoile du soir se lève dans l'azur.
+  An sommet de ces monts couronnés de bois sombres,
+  Le crépuscule encore jette un dernier rayon;
+  Et le char vaporeux de la reine des ombres
+  Monte et blanchit déjà les bords de l'horizon.
+
+_Le Soir_:
+
+  Le soir ramène le silence....
+  Venus se lève à l'horizon;
+  A mes pieds l'étoile amoureuse
+  De sa lueur mystérieuse
+  Blanchit les tapis de gazon.
+  De ce hêtre au feuillage sombre
+  J'entends frissonner les rameaux;
+  On dirait autour des tombeaux
+  Qu'on entend voltiger une ombre,
+  Tout-à-coup, détaché des cieux,
+  Un rayon de l'astre nocturne,
+  Glissant sur mon front taciturne,
+  Vient mollement toucher mes yeux.
+  Doux reflet d'un globe de flamme
+  Charmant rayon, que me veux-tu?
+  Viens-tu dans mon sein abattu
+  Porter la lumière à mon âme?
+  Descends-tu pour me révéler
+  Des mondes le divin mystére,
+  Ces secrets cachés dans la sphère
+  Où le jour va te rappeler?
+
+In the thought of happy past hours, he questions the lake:
+
+  Un soir, t'en souvient-il, nous voguions en silence;
+  On n'entendait au loin, sur l'onde et sous les cieux,
+  Que le bruit des rameurs qui frappaient en cadence
+  Tes flots harmonieux.
+  O lac! rochers muets! grottes! forêt obscure!
+  Vous que le temps épargne ou qu'il peut rajeunir
+  Gardez de cette nuit, gardez, belle nature,
+  Au moins le souvenir!...
+  Que le vent qui gémit, le roseau qui soupire
+  Que les parfums légers de ton air embaumé,
+  Que tout ce qu'on entend, l'on voit, ou l'on respire,
+  Tout dise: 'ils out aimés!
+
+_La Prière_ has:
+
+  Le roi brillant du jour, se couchant dans sa gloire,
+  Descend avec lenteur de son char de victoire;
+  Le nuage éclatant qui le cache à nos yeux
+  Conserve en sillons d'or sa trace dans les cieux,
+  Et d'un reflet de pourpre inonde l'étendue.
+  Comme une lampe d'or dans l'azur suspendue,
+  La lune se balance aux bords de l'horizon;
+  Ses rayons affaiblis dorment sur le gazon,
+  Et le voile des nuits sur les monts se déplie.
+  C'est l'heure, où la nature, un moment recueillie,
+  Entre la nuit qui touche et le jour qui s'enfuit
+  S'élève au créateur du jour et de la nuit,
+  Et semble offrir à Dieu dans son brillant langage,
+  De la création le magnifique hommage.
+  Voilà le sacrifice immense, universelle!
+  L'univers est le temple, et la terre est l'autel;
+  Les cieux en sont le dôme et ses astres sans nombre,
+  Ces feux demi-voilés, pâle ornement de l'ombre,
+  Dans la voûte d'azur avec ordre semés,
+  Sont les sacrés flambeaux pour ce temple allumés...
+  Mais ce temple est sans voix...
+
+  ...Mon coeur seul parle dans ce silence--
+  La voix de l'univers c'est mon intelligence.
+  Sur les rayons du soir, sur les ailes du vent,
+  Elle s'élève à Dieu...
+
+_Le Golfe de Baia_:
+
+  Vois-tu comme le flot paisible
+  Sur le rivage vient mourir?
+  Mais déjà l'ombre plus épaisse
+  Tombe et brunit les vastes mers;
+  Le bord s'efface, le bruit cesse,
+  Le silence occupe les airs.
+  C'est l'heure où la Mélancholie
+  S'assied pensive et recueillie
+  Aux bords silencieux des mers.
+
+The decay of autumn corresponds to his own dolorous feelings:
+
+  Oui, dans ces jours d'automne où la nature expire,
+  A ses regards voilés je trouve plus d'attraits;
+  C'est l'adieu d'un ami, c'est le dernier sourire
+  Des lèvres que la mort va fermer pour jamais.
+
+This is from _Ischia_:
+
+  Le Soleil va porter le jour à d'autres mondes;
+  Dans l'horizon désert Phébé monte sans bruit,
+  Et jette, en pénétrant les ténébres profondes,
+  Un voile transparent sur le front de la nuit.
+  Voyez du haut des monts ses clartés ondoyantes
+  Comme un fleuve de flamme inonder les coteaux,
+  Dormir dans les vallons on glisser sur les pentes,
+  Ou rejaillir au loin du sein brillant des eaux....
+  Doux comme le soupir d'un enfant qui sommeille,
+  Un son vague et plaintif se répand dans les airs....
+  Mortel! ouvre ton âme à ces torrents de vie,
+  Reçois par tous les sens les charmes de la nuit....
+
+He sees the transitoriness of all earthly things reflected in Nature:
+
+  L'onde qui baise ce rivage,
+  De quoi se plaint-elle à ses bords?
+  Pourquoi le roseau sur la plage, pourquoi le ruisseau sous l'ombrage,
+  Rendent-ils de tristes accords?
+  De quoi gémit la tourterelle? Tout naist, tout paise.
+
+Such a depth of sympathy and dreamy dolorous reverie was new to
+France, but Rousseau had broken the ice, and henceforward feeling
+flowed freely. To Lamartine the theist, as to the pantheists Goethe,
+Shelley, and Byron, Nature was a friend and lover.
+
+Victor Hugo was of the same mind, but his poetry is clearer and more
+plastic than Lamartine's. We quote from his finest poems, the
+_Feuilles d'Automne_. He was a true lyrist, familiar both with the
+external life of Nature and the inner life of man. His beautiful 'Ce
+qu'on entend sur la montagne' has the spirit of _Faust_. He imagines
+himself upon a mountain top, with earth on one side, the sea on the
+other; and there he hears two voices unlike any ever heard before:
+
+  L'une venait des mers, chant de gloire! hymne heureux!
+  C'était la voix des flots qui se parlaient entre eux....
+  Or, comme je l'ai dit, l'Océan magnifique
+  Epandait une voix joyeuse et pacifique
+  Chantant comme la harpe aux temples de Sion,
+  Et louait la beauté de la création.
+
+while from the other voice:
+
+  Pleurs et cris! L'injure, l'anatheme....
+  C'était la terre et l'homme qui pleuraient!...
+  L'une disait, Nature! et l'autre, Humanité!
+
+The personifications in this poem are beautiful. He, too, like
+Lamartine, loves sea and stars most of all. These verses from _Les
+Orientales_ remind one of St Augustine:
+
+  J'étais seul près des flots par une nuit d'étoiles,
+  Pas un nuage aux cieux; sur les mers pas de voiles,
+  Et les bois et les monts et toute la nature
+  Semblaient interroger dans confus murmure
+  Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel.
+  Et les étoiles d'or, légions infinies,
+  A voix haute, à voix basse, avec mille harmonies
+  Disaient en inclinant leurs couronnes de feu,
+  Et les flots bleus, que rien gouverne et n'arrête,
+  Disaient en recourbant l'écume de leur crête:
+  C'est le Seigneur Dieu, le Seigneur Dieu!
+
+  Parfois lorsque tout dort, je m'assieds plein de joie
+  Sous le dôme étoilé qui sur nos fronts flamboie;
+  J'écoute si d'en haut il tombe quelque bruit;
+  Et l'heure vainement me frappe de son aile
+  Quand je contemple ému cette fête eternelle
+  Que le ciel rayonnant donne au monde la nuit!
+  Souvent alors j'ai cru que ces soleils de flamme
+  Dans ce monde endormi n'échauffaient que mon âme;
+  Qu'à les comprendre seul j'étais prédestiné;
+  Que j'étais, moi, vaine ombre obscure et taciturne,
+  Le roi mystérieuse de la pompe nocturne;
+  Que le ciel pour moi seul s'était illuminé!
+
+The necessary condition of delight in Nature is very strikingly
+given:
+
+  Si vous avez en vous, vivantes et pressées,
+  Un monde intérieur d'images, de pensées,
+  De sentimens, d'amour, d'ardente passion
+  Pour féconder ce monde, échangez-le sans cesse
+  Avec l'autre univers visible qui vous presse!
+  Mêlez toute votre âme à la création....
+  Que sous nos doigts puissans exhale la nature,
+  Cette immense clavier!
+
+His lyrics are rich in fine scenes from Nature, unrolled in cold but
+stately periods, and the poetic intuition which always divines the
+spirit life brought him near to that pantheism which we find in all
+the greatest English and German poets of his time,[16] and which lay,
+too, at the root of German romanticism.
+
+
+THE GERMAN ROMANTICISTS
+
+Schiller did not possess the intrinsically lyrical genius of Goethe;
+his strength lay, not in song, but drama, and in a didactic form of
+epic--the song not of feeling, but of thought.
+
+Descriptions of Nature occur here and there in his epics and dramas;
+but his feeling for her was chiefly theoretic. Like his
+contemporaries, he passed through a sentimental period; _Evening_
+shews this, and _Melancholy, to Laura_:
+
+  Laura, a sunrise seems to break
+  Where'er thy happy looks may glow....
+  Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
+  Silver clear and sunbeam glassing,
+  Mays into blossom sad autumn by thee:
+  Night and desert, if they spy thee,
+  To gardens laugh--with daylight shine,
+  Lit by those happy smiles of thine!
+
+With such ecstatic extravagances contrast the excellent descriptions
+of Nature full of objective life in his longer poems--for instance,
+the tumult of Charybdis and the unceasing rain in _The Diver_,
+evening in _The Hostage_, and landscape in _William Tell_ and _The
+Walk_. In the last, as Julian Schmidt says, the ever varying scenery
+is made a 'frame for a kind of phenomenology of mankind.'
+
+    Flowers of all hue are struggling into glow
+  Along the blooming fields; yet their sweet strife
+  Melts into one harmonious concord. Lo!
+  The path allures me through the pastoral green
+  And the wide world of fields! The labouring bee
+  Hums round me, and on hesitating wing
+  O'er beds of purple clover, quiveringly
+  Hovers the butterfly. Save these, all life
+  Sleeps in the glowing sunlight's steady sheen--
+  E'en from the west no breeze the lull'd airs bring.
+  Hark! in the calm aloft I hear the skylark sing.
+  The thicket rustles near, the alders bow
+  Down their green coronals, and as I pass,
+  Waves in the rising wind the silvering grass;
+  Come! day's ambrosial night! receive me now
+  Beneath the roof by shadowy beeches made
+  Cool-breathing, etc.
+
+Schiller's interest in Nature was more a matter of reflection than
+direct observation; its real tendency was philosophical and ethical.
+He called Nature naive (he included naturalness in Nature); those who
+seek her, sentimental; but he overlooked (as we saw in an earlier
+chapter) the fact that antiquity did not always remain naive, and
+that not all moderns are sentimental.
+
+As Rousseau's pupil he drew a sharp distinction between Nature and
+Art, and felt happy in solitude where 'man with his torment does not
+come,' lying, as he says in _The Bride of Messina_, like a child on
+the bosom of Nature.
+
+In Schiller's sense of the word, perhaps no poet has been more
+sentimental about Nature than Jean Paul.
+
+He was the humorous and satirical idyllist _par excellence_, and laid
+the scenes of his romances in idyllic surroundings, using the
+trifling events of daily life to wonderful purpose. There is an
+almost oriental splendour in his pages, with their audacious
+metaphors and mixture of ideas. With the exception of Lake Maggiore
+in _Titan_, he gives no set descriptions of landscape; but all his
+references to it, all his sunrises and sunsets, are saturated with
+the temperament of his characters, and they revel in feeling. They
+all love Nature, and wander indefatigably about their own
+countryside, finding the reflection of their feelings in her. There
+is a constant interweaving of the human soul and the universe;
+therein lies his pantheistic trait. 'To each man,' he said,[17]
+'Nature appears different, and the only question is, which is the
+most beautiful? Nature is for ever becoming flesh for mankind; outer
+Nature takes a different form in each mind.' Certainly the nature of
+Jean Paul was different from the Nature of other mortals. Was she
+more beautiful? He wrote of her in his usual baroque style, with a
+wealth of thought and feeling, and everywhere the sparkle of genius;
+but it is all presented in the strangest motley, as exaggerated and
+unenjoyable as can be. For example, from _Siebenkâs_:
+
+    I appeared again then on the last evening of the year 1794, on
+    the red waves of which so many bodies, bled to death, were borne
+    away to the ocean of eternity.
+
+    To the butterfly--proboscis of Siebenkäs, enough honey--cells
+    were still open in every blue thistle-blossom of destiny.
+
+    When they had passed the gate--that is to say, the
+    un-Palmyra-like ruins of it--the crystal reflecting grotto of the
+    August night stood open and shining above the dark green earth,
+    and the ocean-calm of Nature stayed the wild storm of the human
+    heart. Night was drawing and closing her curtain (a sky full of
+    silent suns, not a breath of breeze moving in it) up above the
+    world, and down beneath it the reaped corn stood in the sheaves
+    without a rustle. The cricket with his one constant song, and a
+    poor old man gathering snails for the snail pits, seemed to be
+    the only things that dwelt in the far-reaching darkness.
+
+When it was autumn in his heart:
+
+    Above the meadows, where all the flowers were withered and dead;
+    above the fields, where the corn ears waved no more, floated dim
+    phantom forms, all pale and wan, faint pictures of the past. Over
+    the grand eternal woods and hills a biting mist was draped in
+    clinging folds, as if all Nature, trembling into dust, must
+    vanish in its wreaths.... But one bright thought pierced these
+    dark fogs of Nature and the soul, turning them to a white
+    gleaming mist, a dew all glittering with rainbow colours, and
+    gently lighting upon flowers.
+
+When his married life grew more unhappy, in December:
+
+    The heart of our sorrowful Firmian grew sadder yet, as he stood
+    upon this cold, burnt-out hearth-place of Nature.
+
+and in spring
+
+    it seemed to him as if his life dwelt, not in a bodily heart, but
+    in some warm and tender tear, as if his heavy-laden soul were
+    expanding and breaking away through some chink in its prison, and
+    melting into a tone of music, a blue ether wave.
+
+And _Titan_ expresses that inner enfranchisement which Nature bestows
+upon us:
+
+    Exalted Nature! when we see and love thee, we love our fellow-men
+    more warmly, and when we must pity or forget them, thou still
+    remainest with us, reposing before the moist eye like a verdant
+    chain of mountains in the evening red. Ah! before the soul in
+    whose sight the morning dew of its ideals has faded to a cold,
+    grey drizzle ... thou remainest, quickening Nature, with thy
+    flowers and mountains and cataracts, a faithful comforter; and
+    the bleeding son of the gods, cold and speechless, dashes the
+    drop of anguish from his eyes, that they may rest, far and clear,
+    on thy volcanoes, and on thy springs and on thy suns.
+
+This is sunset in his abstruse artistic handling:
+
+    The sun sinks, and the earth closes her great eye like that of a
+    dying god. Then smoke the hills like altars; out of every wood
+    ascends a chorus; the veils of day, the shadows, float around the
+    enkindled transparent tree-tops, and fall upon the gay, gem-like
+    flowers. And the burnished gold of the west throws back a dead
+    gold on the east, and tinges with rosy light the hovering breast
+    of the tremulous lark--the evening bell of Nature.
+
+And this sunrise:
+
+    The flame of the sun now shot up ever nearer to the kindled
+    morning clouds; at length in the heavens, in the brooks and
+    ponds, and in the blooming cups of dew, a hundred suns rose
+    together, while a thousand colours floated over the earth, and
+    one pure dazzling white broke from the sky. It seemed as if an
+    almighty earthquake had forced up from the ocean, yet dripping, a
+    new-created blooming plain, stretching out beyond the bounds of
+    vision, with all its young instincts and powers; the fire of
+    earth glowed beneath the roots of the immense hanging garden, and
+    the fire of heaven poured down its flames and burnt the colours
+    into the mountain summits and the flowers. Between the porcelain
+    towers of white mountains the coloured blooming heights stood as
+    thrones of the Fruit-Goddess; over the far-spread camp of
+    pleasure blossom-cups and sultry drops were pitched here and
+    there like peopled tents; the ground was inlaid with swarming
+    nurseries of grasses and little hearts, and one heart detached
+    itself after another with wings, or fins, or feelers, from the
+    hot breeding-cell of Nature, and hummed and sucked and smacked
+    its little lips, and sung: and for every little proboscis some
+    blossom-cup of; joy was already open. The darling child of the
+    infinite mother, man, alone stood with bright joyful eyes upon
+    the market-place of the living city of the sun, full of
+    brilliance and noise, and gazed, delighted, around him into all
+    its countless streets; but his eternal mother rested veiled in
+    immensity, and only by the warmth which went to his heart did he
+    feel that he was lying upon hers.
+
+For very overflow of thought and imagery and ecstasy of feeling, Jean
+Paul never achieved a balanced beauty of expression.
+
+The ideal classic standard which Winckelmann and Lessing had laid
+down--simple and plastic, calm because objective, crystal-clear in
+thought and expression--and which Goethe and Schiller had sought to
+realize and imbue with modern ideas, was too strictly limited for the
+Romanticists. Hyperion's words expressed their taste more accurately:
+'O, man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he thinks!' and they
+laid stress upon restless movement, fantastic, highly-coloured
+effects, a crass subjectivity, a reckless licence of the imagination.
+
+Actual and visible things were disregarded; they did not accord with
+this claim for infinity and the nebulous, for exploring the secret
+depths of the soul.
+
+It was perhaps a necessary reaction from Goethe's classicism; but it
+passed like a bad dream, after tending, thanks to its heterogeneous
+elements, now to the mediæval period, now to that of Storm and
+Stress, and now to Goethe, Herder, and Winckelmann. It certainly
+contained germs of good, which have grown and flourished in our own
+day.
+
+In keeping with its whole character, the Romantic feeling for Nature
+was subjective and fantastic to excess, mystically enthusiastic,
+often with a dreamy symbolism at once deep and naive; its inmost core
+was pantheistic, with a pantheism shading off imperceptibly into
+mysticism.
+
+After _Werther_, there is perhaps no work of modern fiction in which
+Nature plays so artistic a part as in Holderlin's _Hyperion_.
+
+Embittered by life's failure to realize his ideals, he cries: 'But
+thou art still visible, sun in the sky! Thou art still green, sacred
+earth! The streams still rush to the sea, and shady trees rustle at
+noon. The spring's song of joy sings my mortal thoughts to sleep. The
+abundance of the universe nourishes and satiates my famished being to
+intoxication.'
+
+This mystical pantheism could not be more clearly expressed than
+here:
+
+    O blessed Nature! I know not how it happens when I lift my eyes
+    to your beauty; but all the joy of the sky is in the tears which
+    I shed before you--a lover before the lady of his love. When the
+    soft waves of the air play round my breast, my whole being is
+    speechless and listens. Absorbed in the blue expanse, I often
+    look up to the ether and down to the holy sea; and it seems as if
+    a kindred spirit opened its arms to me, as if the pain of
+    loneliness were lost in the divine life. To be one with all that
+    lives, in blessed self-forgetfulness to return to the All of
+    Nature, that is the height of thought and bliss--the sacred
+    mountain height, the place of eternal rest, where noon loses its
+    sultriness and thunder its voice, and the rough sea is like the
+    waves in a field of wheat.
+
+To such feeling as this the actualities are but fetters, hindering
+aspiration.
+
+'O, if great Nature be the daughter of a father, is the daughter's
+heart not his heart? Is not he her deepest feeling? But have I found
+it? Do I know it?'
+
+He tries to discern the 'soul of Nature,' hears 'the melody of
+morning light begin with soft notes.' He says to the flower, 'You are
+my sister,' and to the springs, 'We are of one race': he finds
+symbolic resemblance between his heart and all the days and seasons:
+he feels the beauty of the 'land like paradise,' while scarcely ever,
+except in the poem _Heidelberg_, giving a clear sketch of scenery. A
+number of fine comparisons from Nature are scattered through his
+writings [18]:
+
+  The caresses of the charming breezes.
+
+  She light, clear, flattering sea.
+
+  Sacred air, the sister of the mind which moves and
+  lives in us with fiery force, present everywhere immortal.
+
+  Earth, 'one of the flowers of the sky.'
+
+  Heaven, 'the unending garden of life.'
+
+  Beauty, that 'which is one and all.'
+
+He describes his love in a mystical form:
+
+    We were but one flower, and our souls lived in each other as
+    flowers do, when they love and hide their joy within a closed
+    calyx.... The clear starry night had now become my element, for
+    the beautiful life of my love grew in the stillness as in the
+    depths of earth gold grows mysteriously.
+
+He delights 'thus to drink the joy of the world out of one cup with
+the lady of his love.'
+
+'Yea, man is a sun, seeing all and transfiguring all when he loves;
+and when he does not love, he is like a dark dwelling in which a
+little smelly lamp is burning.' All this is soft and feminine, but it
+has real poetic charm.
+
+Beautiful too, though sad and gloomy, is his _Song of Fate_:
+
+    Nowhere may man abide,
+  But painfully from hour to hour
+  He stumbles blindly on to the unknown,
+  As water falls from rock to rock
+    The long year through.
+
+His pantheism finds expression in the odes--in _To Nature_, for
+instance:
+
+  Since my heart turneth upward to the sun
+    As one that hears her voice,
+  Hailing the stars as brothers, and the spring
+    As melody divine;
+  Since in the breath that stirs the wood thy soul,
+    The soul of joy, doth move
+  On the still waters of my heart--therefore,
+    O Nature! these are golden days to me!
+
+Tieck, too, was keenly alive to Nature. Spring[19]:
+
+  Look all around thee how the spring advances!
+  New life is playing through the gay green trees!
+  See how in yonder bower the light leaf dances
+  To the bird's tread and to the quivering breeze!
+  How every blossom in the sunlight glances!
+  The winter frost to his dark cavern flees,
+  And earth, warm wakened, feels through every vein
+  The kindling influence of the vernal rain.
+  Now silvery streamlets, from the mountain stealing,
+  Dance joyously the verdant vales along;
+  Cold fear no more the songster's tongue is sealing,
+  Down in the thick dark grove is heard his song.
+  And all their bright and lovely hues revealing,
+  A thousand plants the field and forest throng;
+  Light comes upon the earth in radiant showers,
+  And mingling rainbows play among the flowers.
+
+All his writings seem intoxicated with Nature. The hero of his novel
+_William Lovell_, scamp though he is, a man of criminal egotism whose
+only law is licence, is deeply in love with Nature.
+
+He wrote from Florence:
+
+    Nature refreshes my soul with her endless beauty. I am often full
+    of enthusiasm at the thousand charms of Nature and Art ... at
+    last my longing to travel to wonderful distant places is
+    satisfied. Even as a child, when I stood outside my father's
+    country-house, and gazed at the distant mountains and discovered
+    a windmill on the very line of the horizon, it seemed to beckon
+    me as it turned, my blood pulsed more quickly, my mind flew to
+    distant regions, a strange longing often filled my eyes with
+    tears.
+
+    Often it seems to me as if the enigma in ourselves were about to
+    be unriddled, as if we were suddenly to see the transformation of
+    all our feelings and strange experiences. Night surrounded me
+    with a hundred terrors, the transparent moonlight sky was like a
+    crystal dome overhead--in this world the most unusual feelings
+    were as shadows.
+
+'Franz Sternbald' had the same intoxicated feeling for Nature:
+
+    I should like to fill the whole world with songs of love, to move
+    moonrise and sunrise to echo back my joys and sorrows; and trees,
+    twigs, leaves, grasses to catch the melody and all repeat my
+    music with a thousand tongues.[20]
+
+To the Romantic School, Music and Nature were a passion; they longed
+to resolve all their feelings, like Byron, at one flash, into music.
+'For thought is too distant.' Night and the forest, moonlight and
+starlight, were in all their songs.
+
+There is a background of landscape all through _Franz Sternbald's
+Wanderings_.
+
+In the novels of the eighteenth century landscape had had no place;
+Hermes once gave a few lines to sunset, but excused it as an
+extravagance, and begged readers and critics not to think that he
+only wanted to fill up the page.
+
+Rousseau altered this; Sophie la Roche, in her _Freundschaftlichen
+Frauenzimmerbriefen_, introduced ruins, moonlight scenery, hills,
+vales, and flowering hedges, etc., into scenes of thought and
+feeling; and most of all, Goethe in _Werther_ tunes scenery and soul
+to one key. In his later romances he avoided descriptions of scenery.
+Jean Paul, like Tieck in _Franz Sternbald_, never spares us one
+sunset or sunrise. Some of Tieck's concise descriptions are very
+telling, like Theodore Storm's at the present day:
+
+    Rosy light quivered on the blades of grass, and morning moved in
+    waves along them.
+
+    The redder the evening grew, the heavier became his dreams; the
+    darkened trees, the shadows lengthening across the fields, the
+    smoke from the roofs of a little village, and the stars coming
+    into view one by one in the sky--all this moved him deeply, moved
+    him to a wistful compassion for himself.
+
+As Franz wanders about the wood:
+
+    He observes the trees reflected in a neighbouring pond. He had
+    never looked at landscape with this pleasure, it had never been
+    given to him to discern the various colours and their shadows,
+    the charm of the stillness, the effect of the foliage, as now in
+    the clear water. Till now he had never drawn a landscape, only
+    looked at it as a necessary adjunct to many historical pictures,
+    had never felt that lifeless Nature could herself compose
+    something whole and complete in itself, and so worthy to be
+    represented.
+
+Tieck's shorter stories, fairy tales and others, shew taste for the
+mysterious and indefinite aspects of Nature--reflections in water,
+rays of light, cloud forms:
+
+    They became to him the most fitting characters in which to record
+    that indefinite inexpressible feeling which gave its special
+    colour to his spiritual life.[21]
+
+The pantheism of Boehme, with whom he was closely associated, always
+attracted him, and in Jena he came under the influence of Steffens,
+and also of Schelling, whose philosophy of Nature called Nature a
+mysterious poem, a dreaming mind. This mind it became the chief aim
+of Novalis, as well as Tieck, to decipher.
+
+From simple descriptions of Nature he went on to read mystic meanings
+into her, seeking, psychologically in his novels and mystically in
+his fairy tales, to fathom the connection between natural phenomena
+and elementary human feeling. _Blond Egbert_ was the earliest example
+of this:
+
+    Night looked sullenly through the windows, and the trees without
+    rustled in the wet cold ... the moon looked fitfully through
+    breaks in the driving clouds.[22]
+
+In the same book Bertha describes the horror of loneliness, the vague
+longings, and then the overwhelming delight in new impressions, which
+seized her when she fled from home as a child and lost herself among
+the mountains.
+
+_The Runenberg_ gives in a very powerful way the idea of the weird
+fascination which the subterranean powers were supposed to exert over
+men, alluring and befooling them, and rousing their thirst for gold.
+
+The demoniacal elements in mountain scenery, its crags and abysses,
+are contrasted with idyllic plains. The tale is sprinkled over with
+descriptions of Nature, which give it a fairy-like effect.[23]
+
+The most extraordinary product of this School was Novalis. With him
+everything resolved itself into presentiment, twilight, night, into
+vague longings for a vague distant goal, which he expressed by the
+search for 'the blue flower.' This is from _Heinrich von
+Ofterdingen_:
+
+'The cheerful pageant of the glorious evening rocked him in soft
+imaginings; the flower of his heart was visible now and then as by
+sheet lightning.' He looked at Nature with the mystic's eye, and
+described her fantastically:
+
+    I am never tired of looking minutely at the different plants.
+    Growing plants are the direct language of the earth; each new
+    leaf, each remarkable flower, is a mystery which projects itself,
+    and because it cannot move with love and longing, nor attain to
+    words, is a dumb, quiet plant. When in solitude one finds such a
+    flower, does it not seem as if all around it were brightened,
+    and, best of all, do not the little feathered notes around it
+    remain near? One could weep for joy, and there, far from the
+    world, stick hands and feet into the earth, to take root, and
+    never more leave so delightful a spot. This green mysterious
+    carpet of love is drawn over the whole earth.
+
+It is not surprising that night should attract this unnaturally
+excited imagination most of all:
+
+    Sacred, inexpressible, mysterious Night, delicious balsam drops
+    from thy hands, from the poppy sheaf; thou upliftest the heavy
+    wings of the Spirit.[24]
+
+Night and death are delight and bliss.
+
+The fairy-like tale of _Hyacinth and Little Rose,_ with its charming
+personifications, is refreshing after all this:
+
+    The violet told the strawberry in confidence, she told her friend
+    the gooseberry, who never ceased to jeer when Hyacinth went, so
+    the whole garden and wood soon knew it, and when Hyacinth went
+    out, voices from all sides cried out, 'Little Rose is my
+    favourite.' When he goes into the wide world to find the land of
+    Isis, he asks the way of the animals, and of springs, rocks, and
+    trees, and the flowers smile at him, the springs offer him a
+    fresh drink, and there is wonderful music when he comes home. 'O
+    that men could understand the music of Nature!' cries the
+    listener in the tale. Then follows a description of 'the sweet
+    passion for the being of Nature and her enchanting raptures,' and
+    the charm of the poetic imagination which finds 'a great sympathy
+    with man's heart' in all the external world. For example, in the
+    breath of wind, which 'with a thousand dark and dolorous notes
+    seems to dissolve one's quiet grief into one deep melodious sigh
+    of all Nature.'
+
+    'And am I myself other than the stream when I gaze gloomily down
+    into its waters and lose my thoughts in its flow?' And in ecstasy
+    the youth exclaims: 'Whose heart does not leap for joy, when he
+    feels Nature's innermost life in its fulness, when that powerful
+    feeling, for which language has no other name than love and
+    bliss, spreads like a vapour through his being, and he sinks,
+    palpitating, on the dark alluring breast of Nature, and his poor
+    self is lost in the overwhelming waves of joy?'[25]
+
+Here we have the key to the romantic feeling for Nature--communion of
+the soul with Nature in a twilight mood of dreamy absorption.
+
+Yet amidst all this, real delight in romantic scenery was not quite
+lacking: witness Hulsen's[26] _Observations on Nature on a Journey
+through Switzerland_; and the genuine lyric of Nature, untainted by
+mystic and sickly influences, was still to be heard, as in
+Eichendorff's beautiful songs and his _Tautgenichts_.
+
+The Romantic School, in fact, far as it erred from the path, did
+enlarge the life of feeling generally, and with that, feeling for
+Nature, and modern literature is still bound to it by a thousand
+threads.
+
+Our modern rapture has thus been reached by a path which, with many
+deviations in its course, has come to us from a remote past, and is
+still carrying us farther forward.
+
+Its present intensity is due to the growth of science, for although
+feeling has become more realistic and matter-of-fact in these days of
+electricity and the microscope, love for Nature has increased with
+knowledge. Science has even become the investigator of religion, and
+the pantheistic tendency of the great poets has passed into us,
+either in the idea of an all-present God, or in that of organic force
+working through matter--the indestructible active principle of life
+in the region of the visible. Our explorers combine enthusiasm for
+Nature with their tireless search for truth--for example, Humboldt,
+Haeckel, and Paul Güssfeldt; and though, as the shadow side to this
+light, travelling and admiration of Nature have become a fashion, yet
+who nowadays can watch a great sunset or a storm over the sea, and
+remain insensible to the impression?
+
+Landscape painting and poetry shew the same deviations from the
+straight line of development as in earlier times. Our garden craft,
+like our architecture, is eclectic; but the English park style is
+still the most adequate expression of prevalent taste: spaces of turf
+with tree groups, a view over land or sea, gradual change from garden
+to field; to which has been added a wider cultivation of foreign
+plants. In landscape painting the zigzag course is very marked:
+landscapes such as Bocklin's, entirely projected by the imagination
+and corresponding to nothing on earth, hang together in our galleries
+with the most faithful studies from Nature. It is the same with
+literature. In fiction, novels which perpetuate the sentimental
+rhapsodies of an early period, and open their chapters with forced
+descriptions of landscape, stand side by side with the masterly work
+of great writers--for example, Spielhagen, Wilhelmine von Hillern,
+and Theodore Storm.
+
+In poetry, the lyric of Nature is inexhaustible. Heine, the greatest
+lyrist after Goethe, though his poetry has, like the Nixie, an
+enchantingly fair body with a fish's tail, wrote in the _Travels in
+the Harz_: 'How infinitely blissful is the feeling when the outer
+world of phenomena blends and harmonizes with the inner world of
+feeling; when green trees, thoughts, birds' songs, sweet melancholy,
+the azure of heaven, memory, and the perfume of flowers, run together
+and form the loveliest of arabesques.'
+
+But his delight in Nature was spoilt by irony and straining after
+effect--for example, in _The Fig Tree_; and although _The Lotos
+Flower_ is a gem, and the _North Sea Pictures_ shew the fine eye of a
+poet who, like Byron and Shelley, can create myths, his
+personifications as a whole are affected, and his personal feeling is
+forced upon Nature for the sake of a witty effect.
+
+Every element of Nature has found skilled interpreters both in poetry
+and painting, and technical facility and truth of representation now
+stand on one level with the appreciation of her charms.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _Kritische Gänge_. Comp. Vischer, _Ueber den optischen
+Formsinn,_ and Carl du Prel, _Psychologie der Lyrik_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: As in elegy _Ghatarkarparam_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Comp. Humboldt, _Cosmos_. Schnaase, _Geschichte der
+bildenden Künste_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen
+und Römern_, Biese.]
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+[Footnote 1: Lucos ac nemora consecrant deorumque nominibus adpellant
+secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident, Tac. Germ. Comp. Grimm,
+_Deutsche Mythologie_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Grimm. Simrock, _Handbuch der Mythologie_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Grimm.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Grimm.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Grimm.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Geschichte der bildenden Künste_. Comp. Grimm,
+_Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Grimm.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Carrière, _Die Poesie_.]
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+[Footnote 1: Clement of Rome, i _Cor._ 19, 20. Zoeckler, _Geschichte
+der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Comp. _Vita S. Basilii_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Basilii opera omnia_. Parisus, 1730.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Cosmos_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Biese, _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den
+Griechen und Römern_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Mélanges philosophiques, historiques, et littéraires_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Homily_ 4.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Homily_ 6.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Biese, _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den
+Griechen und Römern_.
+
+'In spring the Cydmian apple trees give blossom watered by river
+streams in the hallowed garden of the nymphs; in spring the buds grow
+and swell beneath the leafy shadow of the vine branch. But my heart
+knoweth no season of respite; nay, like the Thracian blast that
+rageth with its lightning, so doth it bear down from Aphrodite's
+side, dark and fearless, with scorching frenzy in its train, and from
+its depths shaketh my heart with might.']
+
+[Footnote 10: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 11: _Deutsche Rundschau_, 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 13: Chrysostom was not only utilitarian, but praised and
+enjoyed the world's beauty. From the fifth to third century, Greek
+progress in feeling for Nature can be traced from unconscious to
+conscious pleasure in her beauty.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _De Mortalitate_, cap. 4.]
+
+[Footnote 15: _Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Literatur_.]
+
+[Footnote 16: When one thinks of Sappho, Simonides, Theocritus,
+Meleager, Catullus, Ovid, and Horace, it cannot be denied that this
+is true of Greek and Roman lyric.]
+
+[Footnote 17: As in the Homeric time, when each sphere of Nature was
+held to be subject to and under the influence of its special deity.
+But it cannot be admitted that metaphor was freer and bolder in the
+hymns; on the contrary, it was very limited and monotonous.]
+
+[Footnote 18: In _Cathemerinon_.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Comp. fragrant gardens of Paradise, Hymn 3.
+
+In Hamartigenia he says that the evil and ugly in Nature originates
+in the devil.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Ebert.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The Robinsonade of the hermit Bonosus upon a rocky
+island is interesting.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 23: Comp. _ad Paulinum_, epist. 19, _Monum. German._ v. 2.]
+
+[Footnote 24: _Carm. nat. 7._]
+
+[Footnote 25: _Ep._ xi.]
+
+[Footnote 26: _Migne Patrol_ 60.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Migne Patrol_ 59.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Ebert.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 30: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Migne Patrol_ 58.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Carm._ lib. i.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Amoenitas loci_: Variorum libri Lugduni, 1677.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Monum. Germ._, 4th ed., Leo, lib. viii.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Deutsche Rundschau_, 1882.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Monum. German Histor., poet. lat. medii ævi_, I.
+Berlin 1881, ed. Dümmler.  Alcuin, _Carmen_ 23.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Zoeckler, _Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen
+Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_. 'On rocky crags by the sea, on
+shores fringed by oak or beech woods, in the shady depths of forests,
+on towering mountain tops, or on the banks of great rivers, one sees
+the ruins or the still inhabited buildings which once served as the
+dwellings of the monks who, with the cross as their only weapon, were
+the pioneers of our modern culture. Their flight from the life of
+traffic and bustle in the larger towns was by no means a flight from
+the beauties of Nature.' The last statement is only partly true. In
+the prime of the monastic era the beauties of Nature were held to be
+a snare of the devil. Still, in choosing a site, beauty of position
+was constantly referred to as an auxiliary motive. 'Bernhard loved
+the valley,' 'but Bernhard chose mountains,' are significant
+phrases.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Comp. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, on the old Germanic
+idea of a conflict between winter and spring.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Dümmler, vi. _Carolus et Leo papa._]
+
+[Footnote 40: Walahfridi Strabi, _De cultura hortorum_.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Comp. H. von Eichen, _Geschichte und System der
+mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung_. Stuttg. Cotta, 1887.]
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+[Footnote 1: Prutz, _Geschichte der Kreuzzüge_. Berlin, 1883.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Allatius, _Symmicta_. Coeln, 1653.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem heiligen Lande_,
+Roehricht und Meissner. Berlin, 1880.]
+
+[Footnote 4: For excellent bibliographical evidence see _Die
+geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter_ in supplement to
+_Münchner Allgem. Zeitung_, January 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Comp. Oehlmann, _Die Alpenpässe im Mittelalter, Jahrbuch
+für Schweizer_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 7: Fr. Diez, _Leben und Werke der Troubadours_. Zwickau,
+1829]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Des Minnesangs Frühling_, von Lachmann-Haupt.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Geschichte der Malerei._ Woermann und Wottmann.]
+
+[Footnote 10: 'Detailed study of Nature had begun; but the attempt to
+blend the separate elements into a background landscape in
+perspective betrayed the insecurity and constraint of dilettante work
+at every point.' Ludwig Kämmerer on the period before Van Eyck in
+_Die Landschaft in der deutschen Kunst bis zum Tode Albrecht Dürers_.
+Leipzig, 1880]
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+[Footnote 1: _Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien._]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Untersuchungen über die kampanische Wandmalerei._
+Leipzig, 1873.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Comp. Schnaase, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Argon_, ii. 219; iii. 260, 298. Comp. Cic. _ad Att._,
+iv. 18, 3.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland._
+Berlin, 1882. (Oncken, _Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstettungen_,
+ii. 8.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Itinerar. syr._, Burckhardt ii.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Loci specie percussus_, Burckhardt i.]
+
+[Footnote 8: In his paper 'Kulturgeschichte und Naturwissenschaft'
+(_Deutsche Rundschau_, vol. xiii.), which is full both of original
+ideas and of exaggerated summary opinions, Du Bois Reymond fails to
+do justice to this, and altogether misjudges Petrarch's feeling for
+Nature. After giving this letter in proof of mediæval feeling, he
+goes on to say: 'Full of shame and remorse, he descends the mountain
+without another word. The poor fellow had given himself up to
+innocent enjoyment for a moment, without thinking of the welfare of
+his soul, and instead of gloomy introspection, had looked into the
+enticing outer world. Western humanity was so morbid at that time,
+that the consciousness of having done this was enough to cause
+painful inner conflict to a man like Petrarch--a man of refined
+feeling, and scientific, though not a deep thinker.' Even granting
+this, which is too tragically put, the world was on the very eve of
+freeing itself from this position, and Petrarch serves as a witness
+to the change.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Comp., too, _De Genealogia Deorum_, xv., in which he
+says of trees, meadows, brooks, flocks and herds, cottages, etc.,
+that these things 'animum mulcent,' their effect is 'mentem in se
+colligere.']
+
+[Footnote 10: Comp. Voigt, _Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini als Papst
+Pius II. und sein Zeitalter_.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Comp. Geiger and Ad. Wolff, _Die Klassiker aller Zeiten
+und Nationen_.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Quando mira la terra ornata e bella. Rime di V.
+Colonna.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Ombrosa selva che il mio duolo ascolti.]
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+[Footnote 1: Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen._
+Berlin, 1881. (_Allgem. Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen_, von
+Oncken.)  _Die neu Welt der Landschaften_, etc. Strasburg, 1534.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _De rebus oceanicis et novo orbi Decades tres Petri
+Martyris at Angleria Mediolanensis, Coloniæ_, 1574.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Il viaggio di Giovan Leone e Le Navagazioni, di Aloise
+da Mosto. di Pietro, di Cintra. di Anxone, di un Piloto Portuguese e
+di Vasco di Gama quali si leggono nella raccolta di Giovambattista
+Ramusio._ Venezia, 1837.]
+
+[Footnote 4: For example, this from Ramusio: 'And the coast is all
+low land, full of most beautiful and very tall trees, which are
+evergreen, as the leaves do not wither as do those in our country,
+but a new leaf appears before the other is cast off: the trees extend
+right down into the marshy tract of shore, and look as if flourishing
+on the sea. The coast is a most glorious sight, and in my opinion,
+though I have cruised about in many parts both in the East and in the
+West, I have never seen any coast which surpassed this in beauty. It
+is everywhere washed by many rivers, and small streams of little
+importance, as big ships will not be able to enter them.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Ideler, _Examen critique_. Cosmos.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Coleccion de los viajes y decubrimientos que hicieron
+por mar los espanoles desde fines del siglo XV. con varios documentos
+ineditos ... co-ordinata e illustrada por Don Martin Fernandez de
+Navarrete._ Madrid, 1858.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen._]
+
+[Footnote 8: As he lay sick and despairing off Belem, an unknown
+voice said to him compassionately: 'O fool! and slow to believe and
+serve thy God.... He gave thee the keys of those barriers of the
+ocean sea which were closed with such mighty chains, and thou wast
+obeyed through many lands, and hast gained an honourable fame
+throughout Christendom.' In a letter to the King and Queen of Spain
+in fourth voyage.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Humboldt.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 11: Zoeckler, _Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen
+Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_.]
+
+[Footnote 12: F. Hammerich, _St Birgitta._]
+
+[Footnote 13: Zoeckler, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 14: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Humboldt.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Comp. Carrière, _Die Poesie_.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Zoeckler, in Herzog's _Real-Encykl._, xxi., refers to
+'Le Solitaire des Indes ou la Vie de Gregoire Lopez.' Goerres, _Die
+christliche Mystik_; S. Arnold, _Leben der Gläubigen_; French, _Life
+of St Teresa_.]
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+[Footnote 1: In _Shakespeare Studien_, chap. 4, Hense treats
+Shakespeare's attitude towards Nature very suggestively; but I have
+gone my own way.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Hamlet_, i. 3: 'The canker galls the infants of the
+spring too oft before their buttons be disclosed.' Comp. i. 1; _Romeo
+and Juliet_, i. 1; _Henry VI._, part 2, iii. 1; _Tempest_, i. 2.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Comp. Henkel, _Das Goethe'sche Gleichnis_; _Henry IV._,
+2nd pt., iv. 4; _Richard II._, i. i; _Othello_, iii. 3, and v. 2;
+_Cymbeline_, ii. 4; _King John_, ii. 2; _Hamlet_, iii. 1; _Tempest_,
+iv. 2.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See Hense for bucolic idyllic traits.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Poetische Personifikation in griechischen Dichtungen._]
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+[Footnote 1: Comp. Woermann, _Ueber den landschaftlichen Natursinn
+der Griechen und Römer, Vorstudien zu einer Arckäologie der
+Landschaftsmalerei_. München, 1871.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Comp. Schnaase, _Geschichte der bildenden Künste im 15
+Jahrhundert_, edited by Lübke. Stuttgart, 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Falke, _Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks_. Leipzig,
+1880]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Geschichte der deutschen Renaissance_. Stuttgart,
+1873.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Comp. also Kaemmerer, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 6: Lûbke, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 7: Lûbke refers to A. von Zahn's searching work, _Durer's
+Kunstlehre und sein Verhältnis zur Renaissance_. Leipzig, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Proportion III., B.T. iii. b. Nuremberg, 1528.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 10: In what follows, I have borrowed largely from
+Rosenberg's interesting writings (_Greuzboten_, Nos. 43 and 44,
+1884-85), and still more from Schnaase, Falke, and Carrière, as I
+myself only know the masters represented at Berlin and Munich.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Kaemmerer, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 12: Kaemmerer, _op. cit._]
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+[Footnote 1: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und
+Deutschland._]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und
+Deutschland._]
+
+[Footnote 3: Zoeckler.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Comp. Hase, _Sebastian Frank von Woerd der
+Schwarmgeist_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Comp. Hubert, _Kleine Schriften_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Zoeckler, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Comp. Uhland, _Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und
+Sage_. Alte hoch und nieder deutsche Volkslieder, where plants, ivy,
+holly, box, and willow, represent summer and winter.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Uhland.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Uhland.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Wunderhorn.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 12: Fred Cohn, '_Die Gärten in alter und neuer Zeit,' D.
+Rundschau_ 18, 1879. In Italy in the sixteenth century there was a
+change to this extent, that greenery was no longer clipt, but allowed
+to grow naturally, and the garden represented the transition from
+palace to landscape, from bare architectural forms to the free
+creations of Nature. The passion for flowers--the art of the pleasure
+garden, flourished in Holland and Germany. (Falke.)]
+
+[Footnote 13: W.H. Riehl states (_Kulturstudien aus drei
+Jahrhunderten_) that Berlin, Augsburg, Leipzig, Darmstadt, and
+Mannheim were described in the seventeenth century as having 'very
+fine and delightful positions'; and the finest parts of the Black
+Forest, Harz and Thuringian mountains as 'very desolate,' deserted,
+and monotonous, or, at best, as not particularly pleasant scenery. If
+only a region were flat and treeless, a delicious landscape could be
+charmed out of it. Welcker, Court physician at Hesse Cassel,
+describing Schlangenbad in 1721, said that it lay in a desolate,
+unpleasing district, where nothing grew but foliage and grass, but
+that through ingenious planting of clipt trees in lines and cross
+lines, some sort of artistic effect had been produced. Clearly the
+principles of French garden-craft had become a widely accepted dogma
+of taste. Riehl contrasts the periwig period with the mediæval, and
+concludes that the mediæval backgrounds of pictures implied feeling
+for the wild and romantic. He says: 'In the Middle Ages the painters
+chose romantic jagged forms of mountains and rocks for backgrounds,
+hence the wild, bare, and arid counted as a prototype of beautiful
+scenery, while some centuries later such forms were held to be too
+rustic and irregular for beauty.' One cannot entirely agree with
+this. He weakens it himself in what follows. 'It was not a real scene
+which rose Alp-like before their mind's eye, but an imaginary and
+sacred one; their fantastic, romantic ideal called for rough and
+rugged environment': and adds, arguing in a circle, 'Their minds
+passed then to real portraiture of Nature, and decided the landscape
+eye of the period.' My own opinion is that the loftiness of the
+'heroic' mountain backgrounds seemed suitable for the sacred subjects
+which loomed so large and sublime in their own minds, and that these
+backgrounds did not reveal their ideal of landscape beauty, nor 'a
+romantic feeling for Nature,' nor 'a taste for the romantic,' nor yet
+a wondrous change of view in the periwig period.]
+
+[Footnote 14: In his _Harburg Program_ of 1883 _(Beiträge zur
+Geschichte des Naturgefühls_), after an incomplete survey of ancient
+and modern writings on the subject, Winter sketches the development
+of modern feeling for Nature in Germany from Opitz to 1770, as shewn
+in the literature of that period, basing his information chiefly upon
+Goedeke's _Deutsche Dichtung._]
+
+[Footnote 15: Comp. Chovelius _Die bedeutendsten deutschen Romanz des
+17 Jahrhunderts_. Leipzig, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Chovelius.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Daniel Lohenstein's _Blumen_. Breslau, 1689.]
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+[Footnote 1: Freiherr von Ditfurth, _Deutsche Volks und
+Gesellschaftslieder des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts_, 1872.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Goedeke-Tittmannschen Sammlung, xiii.,
+_Trutz-Nachtigall._]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Tittmann's _Deutsche Dichter des 17 Jahrhunderts_, vol.
+vi.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Comp., too, iv. 5: 'Die ihr alles hört und saget, Luft
+and Forst und Meer durchjaget; Echo, Sonne, Mond, und Wind, Sagt mir
+doch, wo steckt mein Kind?'
+
+21. 'Den sanften West bewegt mein Klagen, Es rauscht der Bach den
+Seufzern nach Aus Mitleid meiner Plagen; Die Vögel schweigen, Um nur
+zu zeigen Dass diese schöne Tyrannei Auch Tieren überlegen sei.'
+_Abendlied_ contains beautiful personifications: 'Der Feierabend ist
+gemacht, Die Arbeit schläft, der Traum erwacht, Die Sonne führt die
+Pferde trinken; Der Erdkreis wandert zu der Ruh, Die Nacht drückt ihm
+die Augen zu, Die schon dem süssen Schlafe winken.']
+
+[Footnote 6: Hettner, _Litteraturgeschichte des 18 Jahrhunderts_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Lappenberg in _Zeitschrift für Hamburgische Geschichte_,
+ii. Hettner, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 8: 'Ye fields and woods, my refuge from the toilsome world
+of business, receive me in your quiet sanctuaries and favour my
+Retreat and thoughtful Solitude. Ye verdant plains, how gladly I
+salute ye! Hail all ye blissful Mansions! Known Seats! Delightful
+Prospects! Majestick Beautys of this earth, and all ye rural Powers
+and Graces! Bless'd be ye chaste Abodes of happiest Mortals who here
+in peaceful Innocence enjoy a Life unenvy'd, the Divine, whilst with
+its bless'd Tranquility it affords a happy Leisure and Retreat for
+Man, who, made for contemplation and to search his own and other
+natures, may here best meditate the cause of Things, and, plac'd
+amidst the various scenes of Nature, may nearer view her Works. O
+glorious Nature! supremely fair and sovereignly good! All-loving and
+All-lovely All-Divine! Whose looks are so becoming, and of such
+infinite grace, whose study brings such Wisdom, and whose
+contemplation such Delight.... Since by thee (O Sovereign mind!) I
+have been form'd such as I am, intelligent and rational; since the
+peculiar Dignity of my Nature is to know and contemplate Thee; permit
+that with due freedom I exert those Facultys with which thou hast
+adorn'd me. Bear with my ventrous and bold approach. And since not
+vain Curiosity, nor fond Conceit, nor Love of aught save Thee alone,
+inspires me with such thoughts as these, be thou my Assistant, and
+guide me in this Pursuit; whilst I venture thus to tread the
+Labyrinth of wide Nature, and endeavour to trace thee in thy Works.']
+
+[Footnote 9: Comp. Jacob von Falke, '_Der englische Garten_' (_Nord
+und Süd_, Nov. 1884), and his _Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Dessins des édifices, meubles, habits, machines, et
+utensils des Chinois_, 1757.]
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+[Footnote 1: '_Die Alpen im Lichte verschiedener Zeitalter_,'
+_Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Vorträge_, Virchow und Holtzendorff.
+Berlin, 1877.]
+
+[Footnote 2:
+
+  Geschäfte Zwang und Grillen Entweihn nicht diese Trift;
+  Ich finde hier im Stillen Des Unmuts Gegengift.
+  Es webet, wallt, und spielet, Das Laub um jeden Strauch,
+  Und jede Staude fühlet Des lauen Zephyrs Hauch.
+  Was mir vor Augen schwebet Gefällt und hüpft und singt,
+  Und alles, alles lebet, Und alles scheint verjüngt.
+  Ihr Thäler und ihr Höhen Die Lust und Sommer schmückt!
+  Euch ungestört zu sehen, Ist, was mein Herz erquickt.
+  Die Reizung freier Felder Beschämt der Gärten Pracht,
+  Und in die offnen Wälder Wird ohne Zwang gelacht....
+  In jährlich neuen Schätzen zeigt sich des Landmanns Glück,
+  Und Freiheit und Ergötzen Erheitern seinen Blick....
+  Ihm prangt die fette Weide Und die betante Flur;
+  Ihm grünet Lust und Freude Ihm malet die Natur.']
+
+[Footnote 3: _Litteratur geschichte_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Sämtliche poetische Werke_, J.P. Uz. Leipzig, 1786.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Sämtliche Werke_. Berlin, 1803.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Sämtliche Werke_, J.G. Jacobi, vol. viii. Zurich,
+1882.]
+
+[Footnote 7: He said of his garden at Freiburg, which was laid out in
+terraces on a slope, that all that Flora and Pomona could offer was
+gathered there. It had a special Poet's Corner on a hillock under a
+poplar, where a moss-covered seat was laid for him upon some
+limestone rock-work; white and yellow jasmine grew round, and laurels
+and myrtles hung down over his head. Here he would rest when he
+walked in the sun; on his left was a mossy Ara, a little artificial
+stone altar on which he laid his book, and from here he could gaze
+across the visible bit of the distant Rhine to the Vosges, and give
+himself up undisturbed to his thoughts.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Gessners _Schriften_. Zurich, 1770.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Spalding, _Die Bestimmung des Menschen_. Leipzig, 1768.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Klopstock's _Briefe_. Brunswick, 1867.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Comp. _Odes_, 'Die Kunst Tialfs' and 'Winterfreuden.']
+
+[Footnote 12: _Briefe_.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Julian Schmidt.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Comp. his letters from Switzerland, which contain
+nothing particular about the scenery, although he crossed the Lake of
+Zurich, and 'a wicked mountain' to the Lake of Zug and Lucerne.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Claudius, who, at a time when the lyric both of poetry
+and music was lost in Germany in conventional tea and coffee songs,
+was the first to rediscover the direct expression of feeling--that
+is, Nature feeling. (Storm's _Hausbuch_.)]
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+[Footnote 1: I have obtained much information and suggestion from
+'_Ueber die geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter_,' and
+'_Ueber die Alpine Reiselitteratur in fruherer Zeit_,' in _Allgem.
+Zeitung_. Jan. 11, 1885, and Sept. 1885, respectively.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Evagatorium 3, Bibliothek d. litterar. Vereins_.
+Stuttgart, 1849.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Bibliothek des litterar. Vereins_. Stuttgart, 1886.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Descriptio Larii lacus_. Milan, 1558.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Itinerarium Basil_. 1624.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Osenbrüggen, _Wanderungen in der Schweiz_, 1867;
+_Entwickelungsgeschichte des Schweizreisens_; Friedländer, _Ueber die
+Entstehung und Entwickelung_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Comp. Erich Schmidt, _Richardson, Rousseau, and Goethe_.
+Jena, 1875.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Remarks on several parts of Italy. London, 1761.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Letters of Lady M. Wortley Montagu, Sept. 25, 1718.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Friedländer, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 11: Schmidt. Moser's description of a sensitive soul in
+_Patriotischen Phantasien_ is most amusing.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Laprade adduces little of importance in his book _Le
+Sentiment de la Nature_ (2nd edition), the first volume of which I
+have dealt with elsewhere. I have little in common with Laprade,
+although he is the only writer who has treated the subject
+comprehensively and historically. His standpoint is that of Catholic
+theology; he never separates feeling for Nature from religion, and is
+severe upon unbelievers. The book is well written, and in parts
+clever, but only touches the surface and misses much. His position is
+thus laid down: 'Le vrai sentiment de la Nature, le seul poétique, le
+seul fécond et puissant, le seul innocent de tout danger, est celui
+qui ne sépare jamais l'idée des choses visibles de la pensée de
+Dieu.' He accounts for the lack of any important expressions of
+feeling for Nature in French classics with: 'Le génie de la France
+est le génie de l'action.' and 'L'âme humaine est le but de la
+poésie.' He recognizes that even with Fénélon 'la Nature reste à ses
+yeux comme une simple décoration du drame que l'homme y joue, le
+poëte en lui ne la regarde jamais à travers les yeux du mystique.' Of
+the treatment of Nature in La Fontaine's Fables, he says: 'Ce n'est
+pas peindre la Nature, c'est l'abolir'; and draws this conclusion:
+'Le sentiment de l'infini est absent de la poésie du dix-septième
+siècle aussi bien que le sentiment de la Nature'; and again:
+'L'esprit général du dix-huitième siècle est la négation même de la
+poésie ... l'amour de la Nature n'était guerre autre chose qu'une
+haine déguisée et une déclaration de guerre a la société et a la
+réligion. Il n'y a pai trace du sentiment légitime et profond qui
+attire l'artiste et le poëte vers les splendeurs de la création,
+révélatrices du monde invisible. Ne demandez pas an dix-huitème
+siècle la poésie de la Nature, pas plus que celle du coeur.' Buffon
+shews 'l'état poétique des sciences de la Nature,' but his brilliant
+prose painting lacks 'la présence de Dieu, la révélation de l'infini
+les harmonies de l'âme et de la Nature n'existent pas pour Buffon....
+plus de la rhétorique que de vrai sentiment de la Nature.']
+
+[Footnote 13: Comp. the garden of Elysium in _La Nouvelle Héloise:_
+Where the gardener's hand is nowhere to be discerned, nothing
+contradicts the idea of a desert island, and I cannot perceive any
+footsteps of men ... you see nothing here in an exact row, nothing
+level, Nature plants nothing by the ruler.']
+
+[Footnote 14: _OEuvres de Jacques Bernardin Henri de Saint Pierre_.]
+
+[Footnote 15: 'B. de S. Pierre a plus que Rousseau les facultés
+propres du paysagiste, l'amour même du pittoresque, la vive curiosité
+des sites, des animaux, et des plants, la couleur et une certaine
+magie spéciale du pinceau,' Laprade adds the reproof: 'Sa pensée
+réligieuse est au-dessous de son talent d'artiste et en abaisse le
+niveau.']
+
+[Footnote 16: _Voyage round the World_, 1772-1775.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Paul Lemnius, 1597, _Landes Rugiae_; Kosegarten,
+1777-1779; Rellstab, 1799, _Ausflucht noch der Insel Rügen;_ Navest,
+1800, _Wanderungen durch die Insel Rügen_; Grümbke, 1805; _Indigena,
+Streifzüge durch das Rügenland_. J.P. Hackert in 1762, and K. D.
+Friedrichs in 1792, painted the scenery. Comp. E. Boll, _Die Inset
+Rügen_, 1858.]
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+[Footnote 1: Comp. Gottschall, _Poetik_. Breslau, 1853.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker_, Sämtliche
+_Werke_, Teil 7.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Op. cit._, Teil 15.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Zur Philosophie und Gesehichte,_ 2 Teil.]
+
+[Footnote 5: J.G. Sulzer's _Unterredungen über die Schönheit der
+Nätur nebst desselben moralischen Betrachtungen über besondere
+Gegenstände der Naturlehre_ is typical. Charites describes his
+conversion to the love of Nature by his friend Eukrates. Eukrates
+woke him at dawn and led him to a hill close by, as the sun rose. The
+fresh air, the birds' songs, and the wide landscape move him, and
+Eukrates points out that the love of Nature is the 'most natural of
+pleasures,' making the labourer so happy that he forgets servitude
+and misery, and sings at his work. 'This pleasure is always new to
+us, and the heart, provided it be not possessed by vanity or stormy
+passions, lies always open to it. Do you not know that they who are
+in trouble, and, above all, they who are in love, find their chief
+relief here? Is not a sick man better cheered by sunshine than by any
+other refreshment?' Then he points out Nature's harmonies and changes
+of colour, and warns Charites to avoid the storms of the passions.
+'Yonder brook is a picture of our soul; so long as it runs quietly
+between its banks, the water is clear and grass and flowers border
+it; but when it swells and flows tumultuously, all this ornament is
+torn away, and it becomes turbid. To delight in Nature the mind must
+be free.... She is a sanctity only approached by pure souls.... As
+only the quiet stream shews the sky and the objects around, so it is
+only on quiet souls that Nature's pictures are painted; ruffled water
+reflects nothing.' He waxes eloquent about birds' songs, flowers, and
+brooks, and wanders by the hour in the woods, 'all his senses open to
+Nature's impressions,' which are 'rays from that source of all
+beauty, the sight of which will one day bless the soul.' His friend
+is soon convinced that Nature cannot be overpraised, and that her art
+is endlessly great.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Vorn Gefühl des Schönen und Physiologie überhaupt._
+Winter.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Comp. _Das Fluchtigste_. 'Tadle nicht der Nachtigallen,
+Bald verhallend süsses Lied,' oder 'Nichts verliert sich,' etc.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Herder's _Nachlass_, Düntzer und F.G. von Herder, 1857.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Bernay's _Der junge Goethe_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Die Sprödde, Die Bekehrte, März, Lust und Qual, Luna,
+Gegenwart_.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Laprade is all admiration for the 'incomparable artiste
+et poëte inspiré du sentiment de la Nature, c'est qu'il excelle à
+peindre le monde extérieur et le coeur humain l'un par l'autre, qu'il
+mêle les images de l'univers visible à l'expression des sentiments
+intimes, de manière à n'en former qu'un seul tissu.... Tous les
+éléments d'un objet d'une situation apparaissent à la fois, et dans
+leur harmonie, essentielle à cet incomparable esprit.' He is
+astonished at the symbolism in _Werthtr_: 'Chaque lettre répond à la
+saison ou elle est écrite.... l'idee et l'image s'identifient dans un
+fait suprême, dans un cri; il se fait entre l'émotion intime et
+l'impression du dehors une sorte de fusion.' And despite Goethe's
+Greek paganism and pantheism, he declares: 'Le nom de Goethe marque
+une de ces grandes dates, une de ces grandes révolutions de la
+poésie--la plus grande, nous le croyons, depuis Homer.' ... 'Goethe
+est la plus haut expression poétique des tendances de notre siècle
+vers le monde extérieur et la philosophie de la Nature.']
+
+[Footnote 12: Comp. _Tagebucher und Briefe Goethe's aus Italien an
+Frau von Stein und Herder_. E. Schmidt, Weimar, 1886.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Julian Schmidt.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _The Lady of the Lake_ breathes a delightful freshness,
+the very spirit of mountain and wood, free alike from the moral
+preaching of Wordsworth, and from the storms of passion.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Laprade.]
+
+[Footnote 16: 'Sa formule réligieuse, c'est une question; sa pensée,
+c'est le doute ... l'artiste divinise chaque détail. Son panthéisme
+ne s'applique pas seulement à l'ensemble des choses; Dieu tout entier
+est réellement présent poor lui dans chaque fragment de matière dans
+le plus immonde animal ... c'est une réligion aussi vieille que
+l'humanité décline; cela s'appelle purement et simplement le
+fétichisme.' (Laprade.)]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Vorschule der Æsthetik_. Compare 'With every genius a
+new Nature is created for us in the further unveiling of the old.' 2
+Aufi. _Berlin Reimer_, 1827.]
+
+[Footnote 18: 'Like a lily softly swaying in the hushed air, so my
+being moves in its elements, in the charming dream of her.' 'Our
+souls rush forward in colossal plans, like exulting streams rushing
+perpetually through mountain and forest.' 'If the old mute rock of
+Fate did not stand opposing them, the waves of the heart would never
+foam so beautifully and become mind.' 'There is a night in the soul
+which no gleam of starlight, not even dry wood, illuminates,' etc.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Comp. Tieck's _Biographie von Koepke_. Brandes.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Franz Sternbald_, I. Berlin, 1798.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Haym, _Die romantische Schule_. Berlin, 1870.]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Phantasus_, i. Berlin, 1812.]
+
+[Footnote 23: 'A young hunter was sitting in the heart of the
+mountains in a thoughtful mood beside his fowling-piece, while the
+noise of the water and the woods was sounding through the solitude
+... it grew darker ... the birds of night began to shoot with fitful
+wing along their mazy courses ... unthinkingly he pulled a straggling
+root from the earth, and on the instant heard with affright a stifled
+moan underground, which winded downwards in doleful tones, and died
+plaintively away in the deep distance. The sound went through his
+inmost heart; it seized him as if he had unwittingly touched the
+wound, of which the dying frame of Nature was expiring in its agony.'
+(Runenberg.)]
+
+[Footnote 24: _Hymnen an die Nacht_.]
+
+[Footnote 25: In _Die Lehrlinge von Sais_.]
+
+[Footnote 26: _Athenäum_, iii., 1800.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Addison
+Æschylus
+Agrippa v. Nettesheim
+Alamanni
+Alberti, Leon
+Alcantara
+Alcuin
+Alexander
+Ambrose
+Angilbert
+Anno v. Coeln
+Apollonios Rhodios
+Apollonius Sidonius
+Apuleius
+Aquinus, Thomas
+Aribert v. Mailand
+Aribo
+Ariosto
+Aristophanes
+Aristotle
+Augustine
+Augustus
+Ausonius
+Aventinus
+Avitus
+
+Baccioli, Lucca
+Bakhuysen
+Basil
+Beauvais, V. v.
+Beda
+v. Bern
+Bernhard v. Clairvaux
+Bernhard v. Hildesheim
+Bernhard v. Ventadour
+Bertran de Born
+Birgitta
+Blair
+de Bles
+Boccaccio
+Boecklin
+Boehme
+Boetius
+Boie
+Bojardo
+Bonaventura
+Boucher
+Bouts
+Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, A. v.
+Brockes
+Brueghel, Peter and Jan
+Bruno
+Buffon
+Bürger
+Burkhard v. Monte Sion
+Byron,
+
+Calderon
+Calpernius
+Camoens
+Campanella
+Carew
+Cassiodorus
+Catullus
+Celtes
+Chambers
+Charlemagne
+Chateaubriand
+Chaucer
+Chlodwig
+Chlotaire
+Chrysostom
+Cicero
+Claudius
+Clement of Rome
+v. Clugny, Abbé M.
+Colonna, Vittoria
+Columbus
+Columella
+Corneille
+Cornelia
+Correggio
+Cowley
+Cramer
+Cronegk
+Crugot
+Cuyp
+Cyprian
+
+Dante
+Darius
+Defoe
+Dionisius da B.S. Sepolchro
+Domidius
+Dracontius
+Drayton
+Drummond
+du Bois-Reymond
+Dürer
+
+v. Eichendorff
+Eist, Deitmar v.
+Ekkehart
+Ennodius
+Epiphanius, M.H.
+Euripides
+Everdingen, A. v.
+v. Eyck
+
+Fabri
+Fénélon
+Fischart
+Fleming
+Forster
+Fortunatus,
+Francis of Assisi
+Frank, Sebastian
+Fredegar
+Frederic the Great
+Friedlander
+Fürttenbach
+
+Gatterer
+Gellert
+Gerhard, Paul
+Gervinus
+Gessner, Conrad
+Gessner, Salomon
+Giorgione
+Gleim
+Goethe
+Gogen
+Gottfried v. Strassburg
+Gozzoli
+Grasser
+Gregory Nazianzen
+Gregory of Nyssa
+Gregory of Tours
+Grümbke
+Gryphius
+Guarini, G.
+Günther, Christian
+Günther d. Liguriner
+Guotenberg, U. v.
+Gussfeldt
+
+Hadrian
+Haeckel
+Hagedorn
+Haller
+Harsdörfer
+Hartmann
+Hebel
+Hegel
+Heine
+Herder
+Hermes
+Hilary
+Hillern, W. v.
+Hobbema
+Hoffmannswaldau
+Hölderlin
+Hölty
+Homer
+Horace
+Hugo v. St. Victor
+Hugo, Victor
+Hulsen
+Humboldt
+
+Ibykos
+Isodore
+
+Jacob v. Bern
+Jacobi, Joh. G.
+Jerome
+Jovius
+
+Kalidasa
+Kallimachos
+Kant
+Kent
+Keyssler
+Kiechel
+Klaj
+Kleist, E. v.
+Klipphausen
+Klopstock
+König, Eva
+Kürenberg
+
+Lamartine
+Lamprecht
+Leman
+Lenôtre
+Leon, Luis de
+Leonardo da Vinci
+Lessing
+Livy
+Logau
+Lohenstein
+Longos
+Lopez
+Lorraine, Claude
+Louis XIV.
+Louis XV.
+Lucretius
+Ludwig zu Nassau
+Luis de Leon
+Lüneberg
+Luther
+
+Maghas
+Mantegna
+Mareuil, A. v.
+Maria Theresa
+v. Martius
+Medici, Lorenzo de
+Meer, Aart v. d.
+Meleager
+Memling
+Menander
+Michael Angelo
+Milton
+Minucius Felix
+Molanus
+Montagu
+Montemayor
+Montreux
+Moore
+Morungen, H. v.
+
+Moscherosch
+Möser
+Mosto, A. da
+Murdach
+
+Navarrete, F. de
+Nemesianus
+Nettesheim, C.A. v.
+Nicolas
+Nonnos
+Novalis
+
+Opitz
+Osorio
+Ossian
+Ouwater
+Ovid
+
+Paracelsus
+Patenir
+Paul, Jean,
+Paul, St
+Paulinus of Nola
+Perdiccas
+Peter Martyr
+Petrarch
+Pfintzing
+Phidias
+Philip of Macedon
+Phokas
+Pico della Mirandola
+Pierre, B. de St
+Pindar
+Pisanello
+Pius II. (Enea Silvio),
+Plato
+Pliny
+Polo, Marco
+Pope
+Potter, Paul
+Poussin
+Propertius
+Prudentius
+Ptolemaios
+
+Racine
+Radegunde
+Raphael
+Regensburg
+Reinmar
+Reissner
+Richardson
+Rickel, D. v.
+Roche, Sophie la
+Ronsard
+Rousseau,
+Rubens
+Rucellai
+Rückert
+Rugge
+Ruysbroek
+Ruysdael
+
+Sabiende, R. v.
+Sachs, Hans
+Sannazaro
+Sappho
+Saussure
+v. Schachten
+Schaller
+Scherr
+Scheuchzer
+Schickhart
+Schiller
+Scipio Africanus
+Scott
+Seneca
+Shaftesbury
+Shakespeare,
+Shelley,
+Sidney
+Simonides
+Socrates
+Sophocles
+Southey
+Southwell
+Spalding
+Spee
+Spenser
+Spielhagen
+Spinoza
+Spix
+Stolberg
+Storm, Th.
+Sulzer
+Summenhart
+Suso
+
+Tasso
+Tauler
+Teresa v. Avila
+Theocritus
+Theodoric
+Theodulf
+Thomson
+Tiberius
+Tibullus
+Tieck
+Titian
+Toscanelli, Paolo
+
+Uhland
+d'Urfé
+Uz, Joh. P.
+
+Vasco da Gama
+Velde, Adrian v. d.
+Veldegge, H. v.
+Vespucci
+Virgil
+Vischer
+Vives, Luis
+Volkmar
+Voltaire
+Voss
+
+Wahlafried
+Walther v. d. Vogelweide
+Wandelbert
+Watteau
+Weyden, Roger v. d.
+William of Tours
+Winckelmann
+Wolfram v. Eschenbach
+Wordsworth
+Wyatt
+Wynant
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+Young
+
+Zesen, P. v.
+Ziegler, A. v.
+Zimmermann
+Zweibrücken, A. v.
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times, by Alfred Biese</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Development of the Feeling for Nature in
+the Middle Ages and Modern Times, by Alfred Biese</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times</p>
+<p>Author: Alfred Biese</p>
+<p>Release Date: October 20, 2004  [eBook #13814]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES***</p>
+<br /><br /><h4>E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Leonard Johnson,<br />
+                and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h4><br /><br />
+<hr class="full" />
+<br />
+  <h2 class="title">The Development</h2>
+
+  <h5>of the</h5>
+
+  <h1>Feeling for Nature</h1>
+
+  <h2 class="title">In the Middle Ages and</h2>
+
+  <h2 class="title">Modern Times</h2>
+
+  <h5>BY</h5>
+
+  <h3>ALFRED BIESE</h3>
+
+  <h5>DIRECTOR OF THE K. K. GYMNASIUM AT NEUWIED</h5>
+
+  <h5>1905</h5>
+
+  <h5><i>Authorized translation from the German</i></h5><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pgv" id="pgv">v</a></span>
+
+  <h2>Table of Contents</h2>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li><a href="#pref">AUTHORS PREFACE</a></li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#intro">INTRODUCTION</a></li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch1">CHAPTER I</a></li>
+
+    <li>CHRISTIANITY AND GERMANISM</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch2">CHAPTER II</a></li>
+
+    <li>THE THEOLOGICAL CHRISTIAN AND THE SYMPATHETIC HEATHEN FEELING
+    OF THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES A.D.</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch3">CHAPTER III</a></li>
+
+    <li>THE NAIVE FEELING AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch4">CHAPTER IV</a></li>
+
+    <li>INDIVIDUALISM AND SENTIMENTAL FEELING AT THE RENAISSANCE</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch5">CHAPTER V</a></li>
+
+    <li>ENTHUSIASM FOR NATURE AMONG THE DISCOVERERS AND CATHOLIC
+    MYSTICS</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch6">CHAPTER VI</a></li>
+
+    <li>SHAKESPEARE'S SYMPATHY FOR NATURE</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch7">CHAPTER VII</a></li>
+
+    <li>THE DISCOVERY OF THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE IN PAINTING</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch8">CHAPTER VIII</a></li>
+
+    <li>HUMANISM, ROCOCO, AND PIGTAIL</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch9">CHAPTER IX</a></li>
+
+    <li>SYMPTOMS OF A RETURN TO NATURE</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch10">CHAPTER X</a></li>
+
+    <li>THE SENSITIVENESS AND EXAGGERATION OF THE ELEGIAC IDYLLIC
+    FEELING</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch11">CHAPTER XI</a></li>
+
+    <li>THE AWAKENING OF FEELING FOR THE ROMANTIC</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#ch12">CHAPTER XII</a></li>
+
+    <li>THE UNIVERSAL PANTHEISTIC FEELING OF MODERN TIMES</li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#notes">NOTES</a></li>
+
+    <li style="list-style: none"><br /></li>
+
+    <li><a href="#index">INDEX</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <h2><a name="pref" id="pref">AUTHOR'S PREFACE</a></h2>
+
+  <p>The encouraging reception of my "Development of the Feeling for
+  Nature among the Greeks and Romans" gradually decided me, after some
+  years, to carry the subject on to modern tunes. Enticing as it was, I
+  did not shut my eyes to the great difficulties of a task whose
+  dimensions have daunted many a savant since the days of Humboldt's
+  clever, terse sketches of the feeling for Nature in different times
+  and peoples. But the subject, once approached, would not let me go.
+  Its solution seemed only possible from the side of historical
+  development, not from that of <i>a priori</i> synthesis. The almost
+  inexhaustible amount of material, especially towards modern times,
+  has often obliged me to limit myself to typical forerunners of the
+  various epochs, although, at the same time, I have tried not to lose
+  the thread of general development. By the addition of the chief
+  phases of landscape, painting, and garden craft, I have aimed at
+  giving completeness to the historical picture; but I hold that
+  literature, especially poetry, as the most intimate medium of a
+  nation's feelings, is the chief source of information in an enquiry
+  which may <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgvi" id=
+  "pgvi">vi</a></span>form a contribution, not only to the history of
+  taste, but also to the comparative history of literature. At a time
+  too when the natural sciences are so highly developed, and the cult
+  of Nature is so widespread, a book of this kind may perhaps claim the
+  interest of that wide circle of educated readers to whom the modern
+  delight in Nature on its many sides makes appeal. And this the more,
+  since books are rare which seek to embrace the whole mental
+  development of the Middle Ages and modern times, and are, at the same
+  time, intended for and intelligible to all people of cultivation.</p>
+
+  <p>The book has been a work of love, and I hope it will be read with
+  pleasure, not only by those whose special domain it touches, but by
+  all who care for the eternal beauties of Nature. To those who know my
+  earlier papers in the <i>Preussische Jahrbücher</i>, the
+  <i>Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte</i>, and the
+  <i>Litteraturbeilage des Hamburgischen Correspondents</i>, I trust
+  this fuller and more connected treatment of the theme will prove
+  welcome.</p>
+
+  <p>ALFRED BIESE. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgvii" id=
+  "pgvii">vii</a></span></p>
+
+  <p><i>Published Translations of the following Authors have been
+  used</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>SANSCRIT.--Jones, Wilson, Arnold, anonymous translator in a
+  publication of the Society for Resuscitation of Ancient
+  Literature.</p>
+
+  <p>LATIN AND GREEK.--Lightfoot, Jowett, Farrar, Lodge, Dalrymple,
+  Bigg, Pilkington, Hodgkin, De Montalembert, Gary, Lok, Murray, Gibb,
+  a translator in Bonn's Classics.</p>
+
+  <p>ITALIAN.--Gary, Longfellow, Cayley, Robinson, Kelly, Bent, Hoole,
+  Roscoe, Leigh Hunt, Lofft, Astley, Oliphant.</p>
+
+  <p>GERMAN.--Horton and Bell, Middlemore, Lytton, Swanwick, Dwight,
+  Boylau, Bowling, Bell, Aytoun, Martin, Oxenford, Morrison, M'Cullum,
+  Winkworth, Howorth, Taylor, Nind, Brooks, Lloyd, Frothingham, Ewing,
+  Noel, Austin, Carlyle, Storr, Weston, Phillips.</p>
+
+  <p>SPANISH.--Markham, Major, Bowring, Hasell, M'Carthy, French.</p>
+
+  <p>FRENCH.--Anonymous translator of Rousseau.</p>
+
+  <p>PORTUGUESE.--Aubertin.</p>
+
+  <p>The Translator's thanks are also due to the author for a few
+  alterations in and additions to the text, and to Miss Edgehill, Miss
+  Tomlinson, and Dr B. Scheifers for translations from Greek and Latin,
+  Italian, and Middle German respectively. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pgviii" id="pgviii">viii</a></span></p>
+  <hr />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg001" id="pg001">001</a></span>
+
+  <h2><a name="intro" id="intro">INTRODUCTION</a></h2>
+
+  <p>Nature in her ever-constant, ever-changing phases is indispensable
+  to man, his whole existence depends upon her, and she influences him
+  in manifold ways, in mind as well as body.</p>
+
+  <p>The physical character of a country is reflected in its
+  inhabitants; the one factor of climate alone gives a very different
+  outlook to northerner and southerner. But whereas primitive man, to
+  whom the darkness of night meant anxiety, either feared Nature or
+  worshipped her with awe, civilised man tries to lift her veil, and
+  through science and art to understand her inner and outer beauty--the
+  scientist in her laws, the man of religion in her relation to his
+  Creator, the artist in reproducing the impressions she makes upon
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>Probably it has always been common to healthy minds to take some
+  pleasure in her; but it needs no slight culture of heart and mind to
+  grasp her meaning and make it clear to others. Her book lies open
+  before us, but the interpretations have been many and dissimilar. A
+  fine statue or a richly-coloured picture appeals to all, but only
+  knowledge can appreciate it at its true value and discover the full
+  meaning of the artist. And as with Art, so with Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>For Nature is the greatest artist, though dumb until man, with his
+  inexplicable power of putting himself in her place, transferring to
+  her his bodily and mental self, gives her speech. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg002" id="pg002">002</a></span> Goethe said 'man
+  never understands how anthropomorphic he is.' No study, however
+  comprehensive, enables him to overstep human limits, or conceive a
+  concrete being, even the highest, from a wholly impersonal point of
+  view. His own self always remains an encumbering factor. In a real
+  sense he only understands himself, and his measure for all things is
+  man. To understand the world outside him, he must needs ascribe his
+  own attributes to it, must lend his own being to find it again.</p>
+
+  <p>This unexplained faculty, or rather inherent necessity, which
+  implies at once a power and a limit, extends to persons as well as
+  things. The significant word sympathy expresses it. To feel a
+  friend's grief is to put oneself in his place, think from his
+  standpoint and in his mood--that is, suffer with him. The fear and
+  sympathy which condition the action of tragedy depend upon the same
+  mental process; one's own point of view is shifted to that of
+  another, and when the two are in harmony, and only then, the claim of
+  beauty is satisfied, and æsthetic pleasure results.</p>
+
+  <p>By the well-known expression of Greek philosophy, 'like is only
+  understood by like,' the Pythagoreans meant that the mathematically
+  trained mind is the organ by which the mathematically constructed
+  cosmos is understood. The expression may also serve as an æsthetic
+  aphorism. The charm of the simplest lyrical song depends upon the
+  hearer's power to put himself in the mood or situation described by
+  the poet, on an interplay between subject and object.</p>
+
+  <p>Everything in mental life depends upon this faculty. We observe,
+  ponder, feel, because a kindred vibration in the object sets our own
+  fibres in motion.</p>
+
+  <p>'You resemble the mind which you understand.'</p>
+
+  <p>It is a magic bridge from our own mind, making <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg003" id="pg003">003</a></span>access possible to
+  a work of art, an electric current conveying the artist's ideas into
+  our souls.</p>
+
+  <p>We know how a drama or a song can thrill us when our feeling
+  vibrates with it; and that thrill, Faust tells us, is the best part
+  of man.</p>
+
+  <p>If inventive work in whatever art or science gives the purest kind
+  of pleasure, Nature herself seeming to work through the artist,
+  rousing those impulses which come to him as revelations, there is
+  pleasure also in the passive reception of beauty, especially when we
+  are not content to remain passive, but trace out and rethink the
+  artist's thoughts, remaking his work.</p>
+
+  <p>'To invent for oneself is beautiful; but to recognise gladly and
+  treasure up the happy inventions of others is that less thine?' said
+  Goethe in his <i>Jahreszeiten</i>; and in the <i>Aphorisms</i>,
+  confirming what has just been said: 'We know of no world except in
+  relation to man, we desire no art but that which is the expression of
+  this relation.' And, further, 'Look into yourselves and you will find
+  everything, and rejoice if outside yourselves, as you may say, lies a
+  Nature which says yea and amen to all that you have found there.'</p>
+
+  <p>Certainly Nature only bestows on man in proportion to his own
+  inner wealth. As Rückert says, 'the charm of a landscape lies in
+  this, that it seems to reflect back that part of one's inner life, of
+  mind, mood, and feeling, which we have given it.' And Ebers, 'Lay
+  down your best of heart and mind before eternal Nature; she will
+  repay you a thousandfold, with full hands.'</p>
+
+  <p>And Vischer remarks, 'Nature at her greatest is not so great that
+  she can work without man's mind.' Every landscape can be beautiful
+  and stimulating if human feeling colours it, and it will be most so
+  to him who brings the richest endowment of heart and mind to bear:
+  Nature only discloses her whole self to a whole man.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg004" id="pg004">004</a></span>
+  But it is under the poet's wand above all, that, like the marble at
+  Pygmalion's breast, she grows warm and breathes and answers to his
+  charm; as in that symbolic saga, the listening woods and waters and
+  the creatures followed Orpheus with his lute. Scientific knowledge,
+  optical, acoustical, meteorological, geological, only widens and
+  deepens love for her and increases and refines the sense of her
+  beauty. In short, deep feeling for Nature always proves considerable
+  culture of heart and mind.</p>
+
+  <p>There is a constant analogy between the growth of this feeling and
+  that of general culture.</p>
+
+  <p>As each nation and time has its own mode of thought, which is
+  constantly changing, so each period has its 'landscape eye.' The same
+  rule applies to individuals. Nature, as Jean Paul said, is made
+  intelligible to man in being for ever made flesh. We cannot look at
+  her impersonally, we must needs give her form and soul, in order to
+  grasp and describe her.</p>
+
+  <p>Vischer says<a href="#a1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> 'it is simply by an
+  act of comparison that we think we see our own life in inanimate
+  objects.' We say that Nature's clearness is like clearness of mind,
+  that her darkness and gloom are like a dark and gloomy mood; then,
+  omitting 'like,' we go on to ascribe our qualities directly to her,
+  and say, this neighbourhood, this air, this general tone of colour,
+  is cheerful, melancholy, and so forth. Here we are prompted by an
+  undeveloped dormant consciousness which really only compares, while
+  it seems to take one thing for another. In this way we come to say
+  that a rock projects boldly, that fire rages furiously over a
+  building, that a summer evening with flocks going home at sunset is
+  peaceful and idyllic; that autumn, dripping with rain, its willows
+  sighing in the wind, is elegiac and melancholy and so forth.</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps Nature would not prove to be this ready symbol of man's
+  inner life were there no secret <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg005"
+  id="pg005">005</a></span>rapport between the two. It is as if, in
+  some mysterious way, we meet in her another mind, which speaks a
+  language we know, wakening a foretaste of kinship; and whether the
+  soul she expresses is one we have lent her, or her own which we have
+  divined, the relationship is still one of give and take.</p>
+
+  <p>Let us take a rapid survey of the course of this feeling in
+  antiquity. Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness
+  for Nature, and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings
+  between man and plants and animals.</p>
+
+  <p>They are found in the loftiest flights of religious enthusiasm in
+  the Vedas, where, be it only in reference to the splendour of dawn or
+  the 'golden-handed sun,' Nature is always assumed to be closely
+  connected with man's inner and outer life. Later on, as Brahminism
+  appeared, deepening the contemplative side of Hindoo character, and
+  the drama and historical plays came in, generalities gave way to
+  definite localizing, and in the Epics ornate descriptions of actual
+  landscape took independent place. Nature's sympathy with human joys
+  and griefs was taken for granted, and she played a part of her own in
+  drama.</p>
+
+  <p>In the <i>Mahâbhârata</i>, when Damajanti is wandering in search
+  of her lost Nala and sees the great mountain top, she asks it for her
+  prince.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Oh mountain lord!</p>
+
+    <p>Far seen and celebrated hill, that cleav'st</p>
+
+    <p>The blue o' the sky, refuge of living things,</p>
+
+    <p>Most noble eminence, I worship thee!...</p>
+
+    <p>O Mount, whose double ridge stamps on the sky</p>
+
+    <p>Yon line, by five-score splendid pinnacles</p>
+
+    <p>Indented; tell me, in this gloomy wood</p>
+
+    <p>Hast thou seen Nala? Nala, wise and bold!</p>
+
+    <p>Ah mountain! why consolest thou me not,</p>
+
+    <p>Answering one word to sorrowful, distressed,</p>
+
+    <p>Lonely, lost Damajanti?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And when she comes to the tree Asoka, she implores: <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg006" id="pg006">006</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Ah, lovely tree! that wavest here</p>
+
+    <p>Thy crown of countless shining clustering blooms</p>
+
+    <p>As thou wert woodland king! Asoka tree!</p>
+
+    <p>Tree called the sorrow-ender, heart's-ease tree!</p>
+
+    <p>Be what thy name saith; end my sorrow now,</p>
+
+    <p>Saying, ah, bright Asoka, thou hast seen</p>
+
+    <p>My Prince, my dauntless Nala--seen that lord</p>
+
+    <p>Whom Damajanti loves and his foes fear.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In Maghas' epic, <i>The Death of Sisupala</i>, plants and animals
+  lead the same voluptuous life as the 'deep-bosomed, wide-hipped'
+  girls with the ardent men.</p>
+
+  <p>'The mountain Raivataka touches the ether with a thousand heads,
+  earth with a thousand feet, the sun and moon are his eyes. When the
+  birds are tired and tremble with delight from the caresses of their
+  mates, he grants them shade from lotos leaves. Who in the world is
+  not astonished when he has climbed, to see the prince of mountains
+  who overshadows the ether and far-reaching regions of earth, standing
+  there with his great projecting crags, while the moon's sickle
+  trembles on his summit?'</p>
+
+  <p>In Kalidasa's <i>Urwasi</i>, the deserted King who is searching
+  for his wife asks the peacock:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">Oh tell,</p>
+
+    <p>If, free on the wing as you soar,</p>
+
+    <p>You have seen the loved nymph I deplore--</p>
+
+    <p>You will know her, the fairest of damsels fair,</p>
+
+    <p>By her large soft eye and her graceful air;</p>
+
+    <p>Bird of the dark blue throat and eye of jet,</p>
+
+    <p>Oh tell me, have you seen the lovely face</p>
+
+    <p>Of my fair bride--lost in this dreary wilderness?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and the mountain:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Say mountain, whose expansive slope confines</p>
+
+    <p>The forest verge, oh, tell me hast thou seen</p>
+
+    <p>A nymph as beauteous as the bride of love</p>
+
+    <p>Mounting with slender frame thy steep ascent,</p>
+
+    <p>Or wearied, resting in thy crowning woods?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>As he sits by the side of the stream, he asks whence comes its
+  charm: <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg007" id=
+  "pg007">007</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Whilst gazing on the stream, whose new swollen waters</p>
+
+    <p>Yet turbid flow, what strange imaginings</p>
+
+    <p>Possess my soul and fill it with delight.</p>
+
+    <p>The rippling wave is like her aching brow;</p>
+
+    <p>The fluttering line of storks, her timid tongue;</p>
+
+    <p>The foaming spray, her white loose floating vest;</p>
+
+    <p>And this meandering course the current tracks</p>
+
+    <p>Her undulating gait.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Then he sees a creeper without flowers, and a strange attraction
+  impels him to embrace it, for its likeness to his lost love:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Vine of the wilderness, behold</p>
+
+    <p>A lone heartbroken wretch in me,</p>
+
+    <p>Who dreams in his embrace to fold</p>
+
+    <p>His love, as wild he clings to thee.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thereupon the creeper transforms itself into Urwasi.</p>
+
+  <p>In Kalidasa's <i>Sakuntala</i>, too, when the pretty girls are
+  watering the flowers in the garden, Sakuntala says: 'It is not only
+  in obedience to our father that I thus employ myself. I really feel
+  the affection of a sister for these young plants.' Taking it for
+  granted that the mango tree has the same feeling for herself, she
+  cries: 'Yon Amra tree, my friends, points with the fingers of its
+  leaves, which the gale gently agitates, and seems inclined to whisper
+  some secret'; and with maiden shyness, attributing her own thoughts
+  about love to the plants, one of her comrades says: 'See, my
+  Sakuntala, how yon fresh Mallica which you have surnamed Vanadosini
+  or Delight of the Grove, has chosen the sweet Amra for her
+  bridegroom....'</p>
+
+  <p>'How charming is the season, when the nuptials even of plants are
+  thus publicly celebrated!'--and elsewhere:</p>
+
+  <p>'Here is a plant, Sakuntala, which you have forgotten.' Sakuntala:
+  'Then I shall forget myself.'</p>
+
+  <p>Birds, clouds,<a href="#a2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> and waves are
+  messengers of love; all Nature grieves at the separation of lovers.
+  When <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg008" id=
+  "pg008">008</a></span>Sakuntala is leaving her forest, one of her
+  friends says: 'Mark the affliction of the forest itself when the time
+  of your departure approaches!</p>
+
+  <p>'The female antelope browses no more on the collected Cusa grass,
+  and the pea-hen ceases to dance on the lawn; the very plants of the
+  grove, whose pale leaves fall on the ground, lose their strength and
+  their beauty.'</p>
+
+  <p>The poems of India, especially those devoted to descriptions of
+  Nature, abound in such bold, picturesque personifications, which are
+  touching, despite their extravagance, through their intense sympathy
+  with Nature. They shew the Hindoo attitude toward Nature in general,
+  as well as his boundless fancy. I select one example from 'The
+  Gathering of the Seasons' in Kalidasa's <i>Ritusanhare</i>: a
+  description of the Rains.</p>
+
+  <p>'Pouring rain in torrents at the request of the thirst-stricken
+  Chatakas, and emitting slow mutterings pleasing to the ears, clouds,
+  bent down by the weight of their watery contents, are slowly moving
+  on....</p>
+
+  <p>'The rivers being filled up with the muddy water of the rivers,
+  their force is increased. Therefore, felling down the trees on both
+  the banks, they, like unchaste women, are going quickly towards the
+  ocean....</p>
+
+  <p>'The heat of the forest has been removed by the sprinkling of new
+  water, and the Ketaka flowers have blossomed. On the branches of
+  trees being shaken by the wind, it appears that the entire forest is
+  dancing in delight. On the blossoming of Ketaka flowers it appears
+  that the forest is smiling. Thinking, "he is our refuge when we are
+  bent down by the weight of water, the clouds are enlivening with
+  torrents the mount Vindhya assailed with fierce heat (of the
+  summer)."'</p>
+
+  <p>Charming pictures and comparisons are numerous, though they have
+  the exaggeration common to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg009" id=
+  "pg009">009</a></span>oriental imagination, 'Love was the cause of my
+  distemper, and love has healed it; as a summer's day, grown black
+  with clouds, relieves all animals from the heat which itself had
+  caused.'</p>
+
+  <p>'Should you be removed to the ends of the world, you will be fixed
+  in this heart, as the shade of a lofty tree remains with it even when
+  the day is departed.'</p>
+
+  <p>'The tree of my hope which had risen so luxuriantly is broken
+  down.'</p>
+
+  <p>'Removed from the bosom of my father, like a young sandal tree
+  rent from the hill of Malaja, how shall I exist in a strange
+  soil?'</p>
+
+  <p>This familiar intercourse with Nature stood far as the poles
+  asunder from the monotheistic attitude of the Hebrew. The individual,
+  it is true, was nothing in comparison with Brahma, the All-One; but
+  the divine pervaded and sanctified all things, and so gave them a
+  certain value; whilst before Jehovah, throned above the world, the
+  whole universe was but dust and ashes. The Hindoo, wrapt in the
+  contemplation of Nature, described her at great length and for her
+  own sake, the Hebrew only for the sake of his Creator. She had no
+  independent significance for him; he looked at her only 'sub specie
+  eterni Dei,' in the mirror of the eternal God. Hence he took interest
+  in her phases only as revelations of his God, noting one after
+  another only to group them synthetically under the idea of Godhead.
+  Hence too, despite his profound inwardness--'The heart is deceitful
+  above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?'
+  (<i>Jeremiah</i>)--human individuality was only expressed in its
+  relation to Jehovah.</p>
+
+  <p>'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth
+  his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night
+  sheweth knowledge.'--<i>Psalm</i> 19.</p>
+
+  <p>'Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad; let the sea
+  roar, and the fulness thereof.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg010" id="pg010">010</a></span>
+  'Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the
+  trees of the wood rejoice.'--<i>Psalm</i> 96.</p>
+
+  <p>'Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful
+  together.'--<i>Psalm</i> 98.</p>
+
+  <p>'The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up
+  their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is
+  mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of
+  the sea.'--<i>Psalm</i> 93.</p>
+
+  <p>'The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains
+  skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.'--<i>Psalm</i>
+  114.</p>
+
+  <p>'The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were
+  afraid: the depths also were troubled.'--<i>Psalm</i> 77.</p>
+
+  <p>All these lofty personifications of inanimate Nature only
+  characterise her in her relation to another, and that not man but
+  God. Nothing had significance by itself, Nature was but a book in
+  which to read of Jehovah; and for this reason the Hebrew could not be
+  wrapt in her, could not seek her for her own sake, she was only a
+  revelation of the Deity.</p>
+
+  <p>'Lord, how great are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all:
+  the earth is full of thy goodness.'</p>
+
+  <p>Yet there is a fiery glow of enthusiasm in the songs in praise of
+  Jehovah's wonders in creation.</p>
+
+  <p>'0 Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour
+  and majesty.</p>
+
+  <p>'Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest
+  out the heavens like a curtain.</p>
+
+  <p>'Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters; who maketh
+  the clouds his chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind.</p>
+
+  <p>'Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire; who
+  laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for
+  ever.</p>
+
+  <p>'Thou coveredst the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above
+  the mountains.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg011" id="pg011">011</a></span>
+  'At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted
+  away.</p>
+
+  <p>'They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the
+  place which thou hast founded for them.</p>
+
+  <p>'Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn
+  not again to cover the earth.</p>
+
+  <p>'He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the
+  hills.</p>
+
+  <p>'They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses
+  quench their thirst.</p>
+
+  <p>'By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation,
+  which sing among the branches ...</p>
+
+  <p>'He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the
+  service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth.</p>
+
+  <p>'And wine that maketh glad the heart of man ...</p>
+
+  <p>'The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon,
+  which he hath planted.</p>
+
+  <p>'Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees
+  are her house.</p>
+
+  <p>'The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for
+  the conies.</p>
+
+  <p>'He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going
+  down.</p>
+
+  <p>'Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of
+  the forest do creep forth.</p>
+
+  <p>'The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from
+  God.</p>
+
+  <p>'The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them
+  down in their dens.</p>
+
+  <p>'Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the
+  evening....</p>
+
+  <p>'This great and wide sea, wherein are creeping things innumerable,
+  both small and great beasts....</p>
+
+  <p>'He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; he toucheth the hills,
+  and they smoke.</p>
+
+  <p>'I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg012" id="pg012">012</a></span>sing praise to my
+  God as long as I have my being.'--<i>Psalm</i> 104.</p>
+
+  <p>And what a lofty point of view is shewn by the overpowering words
+  which Job puts into the mouth of Jehovah; 'Where wast thou when I
+  laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast
+  understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof if thou knowest, or
+  who hath stretched the line upon it?</p>
+
+  <p>'Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the
+  corner stone thereof?</p>
+
+  <p>'When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
+  shouted for joy?...</p>
+
+  <p>'Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the
+  dayspring to know his place?</p>
+
+  <p>'That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked
+  might be shaken out of it?...</p>
+
+  <p>'Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou
+  walked in the search of the deep?...</p>
+
+  <p>'Declare, if thou knowest it all!...</p>
+
+  <p>'Where is the way where light dwelleth, and as for darkness, where
+  is the place thereof?' etc.</p>
+
+  <p>Compare with this <i>Isaiah</i> xl. verse 12, etc.</p>
+
+  <p>Metaphors too, though poetic and fine, are not individualized.</p>
+
+  <p>'Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts: all thy
+  waves and thy billows are gone over me.'--<i>Psalm</i> 42.</p>
+
+  <p>'Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink
+  in deep mire, where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters,
+  where the floods overflow me.'--<i>Psalm</i> 69.</p>
+
+  <p>There are many pictures from the animal world; and these are more
+  elaborate in Job than elsewhere (see <i>Job</i> xl. and xli.).
+  Personifications, as we have seen, are many, but Nature is only
+  called upon to sympathise with man in isolated cases, as, for
+  instance, in 2 <i>Samuel</i> i.:</p>
+
+  <p>'Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg013" id="pg013">013</a></span>neither let there
+  be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of
+  the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as if he had not
+  been anointed with oil.'</p>
+
+  <p>The Cosmos unfolded itself to the Hebrew<a href=
+  "#a3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> as one great whole, and the glance fixed
+  upon a distant horizon missed the nearer lying detail of phenomena.
+  His imagination ranged the universe with the wings of the wind, and
+  took vivid note of air, sky, sea, and land, but only, so to speak, in
+  passing; it never rested there, but hurried past the boundaries of
+  earth to Jehovah's throne, and from that height looked down upon
+  creation.</p>
+
+  <p>The attitude of the Greek was very different. Standing firmly
+  rooted in the world of sense, his open mind and his marvellous eye
+  for beauty appreciated the glorious external world around him down to
+  its finest detail. His was the race of the beautiful, the first in
+  history to train all its powers into harmony to produce a culture of
+  beauty equal in form and contents, and his unique achievement in art
+  and science enriched all after times with lasting standards of the
+  great and beautiful.</p>
+
+  <p>The influence of classic literature upon the Middle Ages and
+  modern times has not only endured, but has gone on increasing with
+  the centuries; so that we must know the position reached by Greece
+  and Rome as to feeling for Nature, in order to discover whether the
+  line of advance in the Middle Ages led directly forward or began by a
+  backward movement--a zigzag.</p>
+
+  <p>The terms ancient and modern, naive and sentimental, classic and
+  romantic, have been shibboleths of culture from Jean Paul, Schiller,
+  and Hegel, to Vischer. Jean Paul, in his <i>Vorschule zur
+  Aesthetik</i>, compares the ideally simple Greek poetry, with its
+  objectivity, serenity, and moral grace, with the musical poetry of
+  the romantic period, and speaks of one as the sunlight that pervades
+  our waking <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg014" id=
+  "pg014">014</a></span>hours, the other as the moonlight that gleams
+  fitfully on our dreaming ones. Schiller's epoch-making essay <i>On
+  Naive and Sentimental Poetry</i>, with its rough division into the
+  classic-naive depending on a harmony between nature and mind, and the
+  modern-sentimental depending on a longing for a lost paradise, is
+  constantly quoted to shew that the Greeks took no pleasure in Nature.
+  This is misleading. Schiller's Greek was very limited; in the very
+  year (1795) in which the essay appeared in <i>The Hours</i>, he was
+  asking Humboldt's advice as to learning Greek, with special reference
+  to Homer and Xenophon.</p>
+
+  <p>To him Homer was the Greek <i>par excellence</i>, and who would
+  not agree with him to-day?</p>
+
+  <p>As in Greek mythology, that naive poem of Nature, the product of
+  the artistic impulse of the race to stamp its impressions in a
+  beautiful and harmonious form, so in the clear-cut comparisons in
+  Homer, the feeling for Nature is profound; but the Homeric hero had
+  no personal relations with her, no conscious leaning towards her; the
+  descriptions only served to frame human action, in time or space.</p>
+
+  <p>But that cheerful, unreflecting youth of mankind, that naive
+  Homeric time, was short in spite of Schiller, who, in the very essay
+  referred to, included Euripides, Virgil, and Horace among the
+  sentimental, and Shakespeare among the naive, poets--a fact often
+  overlooked.</p>
+
+  <p>In line with the general development of culture, Greek feeling for
+  Nature passed through various stages. These can be clearly traced
+  from objective similes and naive, homely comparisons to poetic
+  personifications, and so on to more extended descriptions, in which
+  scenery was brought into harmony or contrast with man's inner life;
+  until finally, in Hellenism, Nature was treated for her own sake, and
+  man reduced to the position of supernumerary <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg015" id="pg015">015</a></span>both in poetry and
+  also--so approaching the modern--in landscape-painting.</p>
+
+  <p>Greece had her sentimental epoch; she did not, as we have said,
+  long remain naive. From Sophist days a steady process of
+  decomposition went on--in other words, a movement towards what we
+  call modern, a movement which to the classic mind led backward; but
+  from the wider standpoint of general development meant advance. For
+  the path of culture is always the same in the nations; it leads first
+  upward and then downward, and all ripening knowledge, while it
+  enriches the mind, brings with it some unforeseen loss. Mankind pays
+  heavily for each new gain; it paid for increased subjectivity and
+  inwardness by a loss in public spirit and patriotism which, once the
+  most valued of national possessions, fell away before the increasing
+  individuality, the germ of the modern spirit. For what is the modern
+  spirit but limitless individuality?</p>
+
+  <p>The greater the knowledge of self, the richer the inner life. Man
+  becomes his own chief problem--he begins to watch the lightest
+  flutter of his own feelings, to grasp and reflect upon them, to look
+  upon himself in fact as in a mirror; and it is in this doubling of
+  the ego, so to speak, that sentimentality in the modern sense
+  consists. It leads to love of solitude, the fittest state for the
+  growth of a conscious love of Nature, for, as Rousseau said 'all
+  noble passions are formed in solitude,' 'tis there that one
+  recognizes one's own heart as 'the rarest and most valuable of all
+  possessions.' 'Oh, what a fatal gift of Heaven is a feeling heart!'
+  and elsewhere he said: 'Hearts that are warmed by a divine fire find
+  a pure delight in their own feelings which is independent of fate and
+  of the whole world.' Euripides, too, loved solitude, and avoided the
+  noise of town life by retiring to a grotto at Salamis which he had
+  arranged for himself with a view of the sea; for which reason, his
+  biographer tells us, most of his similes are drawn <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg016" id="pg016">016</a></span>from the sea. He,
+  rather than Petrarch or Rousseau, was the father of sentimentality.
+  His morbidly sensitive Hippolytos cries 'Alas! would it were possible
+  that I should see myself standing face to face, in which case I
+  should have wept for the sorrows that we suffer'; and in the chorus
+  of <i>The Suppliants</i> we have: 'This insatiate joy of mourning
+  leads me on like as the liquid drop flowing from the sun-trodden
+  rock, ever increasing of groans.' In Euripides we have the first
+  loosening of that ingenuous bond between Nature and the human spirit,
+  as the Sophists laid the axe to the root of the old Hellenic ideas
+  and beliefs. Subjectivity had already gained in strength from the
+  birth of the lyric, that most individual of all expressions of
+  feeling; and since the lyric cannot dispense with the external world,
+  classic song now shewed the tender subjective feeling for Nature
+  which we see in Sappho, Pindar, and Simonides. Yet Euripides (and
+  Aristophanes, whose painful mad laugh, as Doysen says, expresses the
+  same distraction and despair as the deep melancholy of Euripides)
+  only paved the way for that sentimental, idyllic feeling for Nature
+  which dwelt on her quiet charms for their own sake, as in Theocritus,
+  and, like the modern, rose to greater intensity in the presence of
+  the amorous passion, as we see in Kallimachos and the Anthology. It
+  was the outcome of Hellenism, of which sentimental introspection, the
+  freeing of the ego from the bonds of race and position, and the
+  discovery of the individual in all directions of human existence,
+  were marks. And this feeling developing from Homer to Longos, from
+  unreflecting to conscious and then to sentimental pleasure in Nature,
+  was expressed not only in poetry but in painting, although the latter
+  never fully mastered technique.</p>
+
+  <p>The common thoughtless statement, so often supported by quotations
+  from Schiller, Gervinus, and others, that Greek antiquity was not
+  alive to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg017" id=
+  "pg017">017</a></span>the beauty of Nature and her responsiveness to
+  human moods, and neither painted scenery nor felt the melancholy
+  poetic charm of ruins and tombs, is therefore a perversion of the
+  truth; but it must be conceded that the feeling which existed then
+  was but the germ of our modern one. It was fettered by the specific
+  national beliefs concerning the world and deities, by the undeveloped
+  state of the natural sciences, which, except botany, still lay in
+  swaddling-clothes, by the new influence of Christendom, and by that
+  strict feeling for style which, very much to its advantage, imposed a
+  moderation that would have excluded much of our senseless modern
+  rhapsody.</p>
+
+  <p>It was not unnatural that Schiller, in distaste for the weak riot
+  of feeling and the passion for describing Nature which obtained in
+  his day, was led to overpraise the Homeric naïvete and overblame the
+  sentimentality which he wrongly identified with it.</p>
+
+  <p>In all that is called art, the Romans were pupils of the Greek,
+  and their achievements in the region of beauty cannot be compared
+  with his. But they advanced the course of general culture, and their
+  feeling--always more subjective, abstract, self-conscious, and
+  reflective--has a comparatively familiar, because modern, ring in the
+  great poets.</p>
+
+  <p>The preference for the practical and social-economic is traceable
+  in their feeling for Nature. Their mythology also lay too much within
+  the bounds of the intelligible; shewed itself too much in forms and
+  ceremonies, in a cult; but it had not lost the sense of awe--it still
+  heard the voices of mysterious powers in the depths of the
+  forest.</p>
+
+  <p>The dramatists wove effective metaphors and descriptions of Nature
+  into their plays.</p>
+
+  <p>Lucretius laid the foundations of a knowledge of her which refined
+  both his enjoyment and his descriptions; and the elegiac sentimental
+  style, which we see developed in Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Virgil,
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg018" id="pg018">018</a></span>and
+  Horace, first came to light in the great lyrist Catullus. In Imperial
+  times feeling for Nature grew with the growth of culture in general;
+  men turned to her in times of bad cheer, and found comfort in the
+  great sky spaces, the constant stars, and forests that trembled with
+  awe of the divine Numen.</p>
+
+  <p>It was so with Seneca, a pantheist through and through. Pliny the
+  younger was quite modern in his choice of rural solitudes, and his
+  appreciation of the views from his villa. With Hadrian and Apuleius
+  the Roman rococo literature began; Apuleius was astonishingly modern,
+  and Ausonius was almost German in the depth and tenderness of his
+  feeling for Nature. Garden-culture and landscape-painting shewed the
+  same movement towards the sympathetic and elegiac-sentimental.</p>
+
+  <p>Those who deny the Roman feeling for Nature might learn better
+  from a glance at the ruins of their villas. As H. Nissen says in his
+  <i>Italische Landeskunde</i>:</p>
+
+  <p>'It was more than mere fashion which drew the Roman to the
+  sea-side, and attracted so strongly all those great figures, from the
+  elder Scipio Africanus and his noble daughter, Cornelia, down to
+  Augustus and Tiberius and their successors, whenever their powers
+  flagged in the Forum. There were soft breezes to cool the brow,
+  colour and outline to refresh the eye, and wide views that appealed
+  to a race born to extensive lordship.</p>
+
+  <p>'In passing along the desolate, fever-stricken coasts of Latium
+  and Campania to-day, one comes upon many traces of former splendour,
+  and one is reminded that the pleasure which the old Romans took in
+  the sea-side was spoilt for those who came after them by the havoc of
+  the time.'</p>
+
+  <p>In many points, Roman feeling for Nature was more developed than
+  Greek. For instance, the Romans appreciated landscape as a whole, and
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg019" id=
+  "pg019">019</a></span>distance, light and shade in wood and water,
+  reflections, the charms of hunting and rowing, day-dreams on a
+  mountain side, and so forth.</p>
+
+  <p>That antiquity and the Middle Ages had any taste for romantic
+  scenery has been energetically denied; but we can find a trace of it.
+  The landscape which the Roman admired was level, graceful, and
+  gentle; he certainly did not see any beauty in the Alps. Livy's
+  'Foeditas Alpinum' and the dreadful descriptions of Ammian, with
+  others, are the much-quoted vouchers for this. Nor is it surprising;
+  for modern appreciation, still in its youth, is really due to
+  increased knowledge about Nature, to a change of feeling, and to the
+  conveniences of modern travelling, unknown 2000 years ago.</p>
+
+  <p>The dangers and hardships of those days must have put enjoyment
+  out of the question; and only served to heighten the unfavourable
+  contrast between the wildness of the mountain regions and the
+  cultivation of Italy.</p>
+
+  <p>Lucretius looked at wild scenery with horror, but later on it
+  became a favourite subject for description; and Seneca notes, as
+  shewing a morbid state of mind, in his essay on tranquillity of mind,
+  that travelling not only attracts men to delightful places, but that
+  some even exclaim: 'Let us go now into Campania; now that delicate
+  soil delighteth us, let us visit the wood countries, let us visit the
+  forest of Calabria, and let us seek some pleasure amidst the deserts,
+  in such sort as these wandering eyes of ours may be relieved in
+  beholding, at our pleasure, the strange solitude of these savage
+  places.'</p>
+
+  <p>We have thus briefly surveyed on the one hand, in theory, the
+  conditions under which a conscious feeling for Nature develops, and
+  the forms in which it expresses itself; and, on the other, the course
+  this feeling has followed in antiquity among the Hindoos, Hebrews,
+  Greeks, and Romans. The movement <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg020" id="pg020">020</a></span>toward the modern, toward the
+  subjective and individual, lies clear to view. We will now trace its
+  gradual development along lines which are always strictly analogous
+  to those of culture in general, through the Middle Ages. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg021" id="pg021">021</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch1" id="ch1">CHAPTER I</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>CHRISTIANITY AND GERMANISM</h3>
+
+  <p>When the heathen world had outlived its faculties, and its
+  creative power had failed, it sank into the ocean of the past--a
+  sphinx, with her riddle guessed,--and mediæval civilization arose,
+  founded upon Christianity and Germanism. There are times in the
+  world's history when change seems to be abrupt, the old to be swept
+  away and all things made new at a stroke, as if by the
+  world-consuming fire of the old Saga. But, in reality, all change is
+  gradual; the old is for ever failing and passing out of sight, to be
+  taken up as a ferment into the ever emerging new, which changes and
+  remodels as it will. It was so with Christianity. It is easy to
+  imagine that it arose suddenly, like a phoenix, from the ashes of
+  heathendom; but, although dependent at heart upon the sublime
+  personality of its Founder, it was none the less a product of its
+  age, and a result of gradual development--a river with sources partly
+  in Judea, partly in Hellas. And mediæval Christianity never denied
+  the traces of its double origin.</p>
+
+  <p>Upon this syncretic soil its literature sprang up, moulded as to
+  matter upon Old Testament and specifically Christian models, as to
+  form upon the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg022" id=
+  "pg022">022</a></span>great writers of antiquity; but matter and form
+  are only separable in the abstract, and the Middle Ages are woven
+  through and through with both Greco-Roman and Jewish elements.</p>
+
+  <p>But these elements were unfavourable to the development of feeling
+  for Nature; Judaism admitted no delight in her for her own sake, and
+  Christianity intensified the Judaic opposition between God and the
+  world, Creator and created.</p>
+
+  <p>'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; if
+  any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him': by
+  which John meant, raise your eyes to your Heavenly Father, throned
+  above the clouds.</p>
+
+  <p>Christianity in its stringent form was transcendental, despising
+  the world and renouncing its pleasures. It held that Creation,
+  through the entrance of sin, had become a caricature, and that
+  earthly existence had only the very limited value of a thoroughfare
+  to the eternal Kingdom.</p>
+
+  <p>While joy in existence characterized the Hellenic world until its
+  downfall, and the Greek took life serenely, delighting in its smooth
+  flow; with Christianity, as Jean Paul put it, 'all the present of
+  earth vanished into the future of Heaven, and the Kingdom of the
+  Infinite arose upon the ruins of the finite.'</p>
+
+  <p>The beauty of earth was looked upon as an enchantment of the
+  devil; and sin, the worm in the fruit, lurked in its alluring
+  forms.</p>
+
+  <p>Classic mythology created a world of its own, dimly veiled by the
+  visible one; every phase of Nature shewed the presence or action of
+  deities with whom man had intimate relations; every form of life,
+  animated by them, held something familiar to him, even sacred--his
+  landscape was absorbed by the gods.</p>
+
+  <p>To Judaism and Christianity, Nature was a fallen angel, separated
+  as far as possible from her God. They only recognized one world--that
+  of spirit; and <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg023" id=
+  "pg023">023</a></span>one sphere of the spiritual, religion--the
+  relation between God and man. Material things were a delusion of
+  Satan's; the heaven on which their eyes were fixed was a very distant
+  one.</p>
+
+  <p>The Hellenic belief in deities was pandemonistic and cosmic;
+  Christianity, in its original tendency, anti-cosmic and hostile to
+  Nature. And Nature, like the world at large, only existed for it in
+  relation to its Creator, and was no longer 'the great mother of all
+  things,' but merely an instrument in the hands of Providence.</p>
+
+  <p>The Greek looked at phenomena in detail, in their inexhaustible
+  variety, rarely at things as a whole; the Christian considered Nature
+  as a work of God, full of wonderful order, in which detail had only
+  the importance of a link in a chain.</p>
+
+  <p>As Lotze says, 'The creative artistic impulse could be of no use
+  to a conception of life in which nothing retained independent
+  significance, but everything referred to or symbolized something
+  else.' But yet, the idea of individuality, of the importance of the
+  ego, gained ground as never before through this introspection and
+  merging of material in spiritual, this giving spirit the exclusive
+  sway; and Christianity, while it broke down the barriers of nation,
+  race, and position, and widened the cleft between Nature and spirit,
+  discovered at the same time the worth of the individual.</p>
+
+  <p>And this individuality was one of the chief steps towards an
+  artistic, that is, individual point of view about Nature, for it was
+  not possible to consider her freely and for her own sake alone, until
+  the unlimited independence of mind had been recognized.</p>
+
+  <p>But the full development of Christianity was only reached when it
+  blended with the Germanic spirit, with the German Gemüth (for which
+  no other language has a word), and intensified, by so doing, the
+  innately subjective temperament of the race.</p>
+
+  <p>The northern climate gives pause for the development <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg024" id="pg024">024</a></span>of the inner life;
+  its long bleak winter, with the heavy atmosphere and slow coming of
+  spring, wake a craving for light and warmth, and throw man back on
+  himself. This inward inclination, which made itself felt very early
+  in the German race, by bringing out the contemplative and independent
+  sides of his character, and so disinclining him for combined action
+  with his fellows, forwarded the growth of the over-ripe seeds of
+  classic culture and vital Christianity.</p>
+
+  <p>The Romanic nations, with their brilliant, sharply-defined
+  landscape and serene skies, always retained something of the
+  objective delight in life which belonged to antiquity; they never
+  felt that mysterious impulse towards dreams and enthusiastic longing
+  which the Northerner draws from his lowering skies and dark woods,
+  his mists on level and height, the grey in grey of his atmosphere,
+  and his ever varying landscape. A raw climate drives man indoors in
+  mind as well as body, and prompts that craving for spring and delight
+  in its coming which have been the chief notes in northern feeling for
+  Nature from earliest times.</p>
+
+  <p>Vischer has shewn in his <i>Aesthetik</i>, that German feeling was
+  early influenced by the different forms of plant life around it.
+  Rigid pine, delicate birch, stalwart oak, each had its effect; and
+  the wildness and roughness of land, sea, and animal life in the North
+  combined with the cold of the climate to create the taste for
+  domestic comfort, for fireside dreams, and thought-weaving by the
+  hearth.</p>
+
+  <p>Nature schooled the race to hard work and scanty pleasure, and yet
+  its relationship to her was deep and heartfelt from the first.
+  Devoutly religious, it gazed at her with mingled love and fear; and
+  the deposit of its ideas about her was its mythology.</p>
+
+  <p>Its gods dwelt in mountain tops, holes in the rocks, and rivers,
+  and especially in dark forests and in the leafy boughs of sacred
+  trees; and the howling of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg025" id=
+  "pg025">025</a></span>wind, the rustle of leaves, the soughing in the
+  tree tops, were sounds of their presence. The worship of woods lasted
+  far into Christian times, especially among the Saxons and
+  Frisians.<a href="#b1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Wodan was the all-powerful father of gods and men--the highest
+  god, who, as among all the Aryan nations, represented Heaven. Light
+  was his shining helmet, clouds were the dark cap he put on when he
+  spread rain over the earth, or crashed through the air as a wild
+  hunter with his raging pack. His son Donar shewed himself in thunder
+  and lightning, as he rode with swinging axe on his goat-spanned car.
+  Mountains were sacred to both, as plants to Ziu. Freyr and Freya were
+  goddesses of fertility, love, and spring; a ram was sacred to them,
+  whose golden fleece illuminated night as well as day, and who drew
+  their car with a horse's speed.<a href="#b2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> As
+  with Freya, an image of the goddess Nerthus was drawn through the
+  land in spring, to announce peace and fertility to mortals.</p>
+
+  <p>The suggestive myth of Baldur, god of light and spring, killed by
+  blind Hödur, was the expression of general grief at the passing of
+  beauty.</p>
+
+  <p>The <i>Edda</i> has a touching picture of the sorrow of Nature, of
+  her trees and plants, when the one beloved of all living things fell,
+  pierced by an arrow. Holda was first the mild and gracious goddess,
+  then a divine being, encompassing the earth. She might be seen in
+  morning hours by her favourite haunts of lake and spring, a beautiful
+  white woman, who bathed and vanished. When snow fell, she was making
+  her bed, and the feathers flew. Agriculture and domestic order were
+  under her care.</p>
+
+  <p>Ostara was goddess of bright dawn, of rising light, and awakening
+  spring, as Hel of subterranean night, the darkness of the underworld.
+  Frigg, wife of the highest god, knew the story of existence, and
+  protected marriage. She was the Northern Juno or Hera.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg026" id="pg026">026</a></span>
+  Ravines and hollows in the mountains were the dwelling-places of the
+  dwarfs (Erdmännlein), sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly to
+  man; now peaceful and helpful, now impish spirits of mischief in
+  cloud caps and grey coats, thievish and jolly.</p>
+
+  <p>They were visible by moonlight, dancing in the fields; and when
+  their track was found in the dew,<a href="#b3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> a
+  good harvest was expected. Popular belief took the floating autumn
+  cobwebs for the work of elves and fairies. The spirits of mountain
+  and wood were related to the water-spirits, nixies who sat combing
+  their long hair in the sun, or stretched up lovely arms out of the
+  water. The elves belonged to the more spiritual side of Nature, the
+  giants to the grosser. Rocks and stones were the weapons of the
+  giants; they removed mountains and hills, and boulders were pebbles
+  shaken out of their shoes.</p>
+
+  <p>Among animals the horse was sacred to many deities, and gods and
+  goddesses readily transformed themselves into birds. Two ravens,
+  Hugin and Munin, whose names signify thought and memory, were Odin's
+  constant companions. The gift of prophecy was ascribed to the cuckoo,
+  as its monotonous voice heralded the spring:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Kukuk vam haven, wo lange sail ik leven?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There were many legends of men and snakes who exchanged shapes,
+  and whom it was unlucky to kill.<a href="#b4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The sun and moon, too, were familiar figures in legends.</p>
+
+  <p>Their movement across the sky was a flight from two pursuing
+  wolves, of which one, the Fenris wolf, was fated one day to catch and
+  devour the moon. The German, like the Greek, dreaded nothing more
+  than the eclipse of sun or moon, and connected it with the
+  destruction of all things and the end of the world. In the moon spots
+  he saw a human form carrying a hare or a stick or an axe on his
+  shoulder.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg027" id="pg027">027</a></span>
+  The Solstices impressed him most of all, with their almost constant
+  day in summer, almost constant night in winter. Sun, moon, and stars
+  were the eyes of heaven; there was a pious custom to greet the stars
+  before going to bed. Still earlier, they were sparks of fire from
+  Muspilli, to light the gods home. Night, day, and the sun had their
+  cars--night and day with one horse, the sun with two: sunrise brought
+  sounds sweeter than the song of birds or strings; the rising sun, it
+  was said, rings for joy, murmuring daybreak laughs.<a href=
+  "#b5"><sup>[5]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Day brought joy, night sorrow; the first was good and friendly,
+  the second bad and hostile. The birds greeted daytime and summer with
+  songs of delight, but grieved in silence through night and winter:
+  the first swallow and stork were hailed as spring's messengers. May
+  with greening woods led in beloved summer, frost and snow the
+  winter.</p>
+
+  <p>So myth, fable, and legend were interlaced in confusion; who can
+  separate the threads?</p>
+
+  <p>At any rate, the point of view which they indicate remained the
+  common one even far into the Middle Ages, and shewed simple familiar
+  intercourse with Nature. Even legal formulæ were full of pictures
+  from Nature. In the customary oath to render a contract binding, the
+  promise is to hold, so it runs, 'so long as the sun shines and rivers
+  flow, so long as the wind blows and birds sing, so far off as earth
+  is green and fir trees grow, so far as the vault of heaven reaches.'
+  As Schnaase says,<a href="#b6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> though with some
+  exaggeration, such formulæ, in their summary survey of earth and sky,
+  often give a complete landscape poem in a few words. He points out
+  that in northern, as opposed to classic mythology, Nature was
+  considered, not in the cursory Hebrew way, that hurried over or
+  missed detail, but as a whole, and in her relation to man's inner
+  life.</p>
+
+  <p>'The collective picture of heaven and earth, of cloud movement, of
+  the mute life of plants--that <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg028"
+  id="pg028">028</a></span>side of Nature which had almost escaped the
+  eye of antiquity--occupied the Northerner most of all.</p>
+
+  <p>'The <i>Edda</i> even represents all Nature together in one
+  colossal form--the form of the giant Ymir, whom the sons of Boer
+  slew, in order to make the mountains from his bones, the earth from
+  his flesh, the skies from his skull.'</p>
+
+  <p>A still grander mythical synthesis was the representation of the
+  whole world under the form of the sacred ash tree Yggdrasil. This was
+  the world tree which united heaven, earth, and hell. Its branches
+  stretched across the world and reached up to the skies, and its roots
+  spread in different directions--one toward the race of Asa in heaven,
+  another toward the Hrimthursen, the third toward the underworld; and
+  on both roots and branches creatures lived and played--eagle,
+  squirrel, stag, and snake; while by the murmuring Urdhar stream,
+  which rippled over one root, the Nones sat in judgment with the race
+  of Asa.</p>
+
+  <p>Not less significant was the conception of the end of the world,
+  the twilight of the gods (Götterdämmerung), according to which all
+  the wicked powers broke loose and fought against the gods; the sun
+  and moon were devoured by wolves, the stars fell and earth quaked,
+  the monster world-serpent Joermungande, in giant rage, reared himself
+  out of the water and came to land: Loki led the Hrimthursen and the
+  retinue of hell, and Surt, with his shining hair, rode away from the
+  flaming earth across Bifröst, the rainbow, which broke beneath
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>After the world conflagration a new and better earth arose, with
+  rejuvenated gods.<a href="#b7"><sup>[7]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>German mediæval poetry, as a whole, epic and lyric, was interwoven
+  with a hazy network of suggestive myth and legend; and moral
+  elements, which in mythology were hidden by the prominence of Nature,
+  stood out clear to view in the fate and <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg029" id="pg029">029</a></span>character of the
+  heroes. The germ of many of our fairy tales is a bit of purest poetry
+  of Nature--a genuine Nature myth transferred to human affairs, which
+  lay nearer to the child-like popular mind, and were therefore more
+  readily understood by it.</p>
+
+  <p>So, for instance, from the Maiden of the Shield, Sigrdrifa, who
+  was pierced by Odin's sleep thorn, and who originally represented the
+  earth, frozen in winter, kissed awake by the sun-god, came Brunhild,
+  whose mail Siegfried's sword penetrated as the sun rays penetrate the
+  frost, and lastly the King's daughter, who pricked herself with the
+  fateful spindle, and sank into deep sleep. And as Sigrdrifa was
+  surrounded by walls of flame, so now we have a thorny hedge of wild
+  briar round the beautiful maiden (hence named Dornröschen) when the
+  lucky prince comes to waken her with a kiss.<a href=
+  "#b8"><sup>[8]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Not all fairy tales have preserved the myth into Christian times
+  in so poetic and transparent a form as this. Its poetic germ arose
+  from hidden depths of myth and legend, and, like heathen
+  superstitions in the first centuries of Christianity, found its most
+  fruitful soil among the people. It has often been disguised beyond
+  recognition by legends, and by the worship of the Madonna and saints,
+  but it has never been destroyed, and it keeps its magic to the
+  present day.</p>
+
+  <p>We see then that the inborn German feeling for Nature, conditioned
+  by climate and landscape, and pronounced in his mythology, found both
+  an obstacle and a support in Christianity--an obstacle in its
+  transcendentalism, and a support in its inwardness. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg030" id="pg030">030</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch2" id="ch2">CHAPTER II</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>THE THEOLOGICAL CHRISTIAN AND THE SYMPATHETIC HEATHEN FEELING OF
+  THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES A.D.</h3>
+
+  <p>The Middle Ages employed its best intellectual power in solving
+  the problems of man's relation to God and the Redeemer, his moral
+  vocation, and his claim to the Kingdom of the blessed. Mind and heart
+  were almost entirely engrossed by the dogmas of the new faith, such
+  as the incarnation, original sin, and free-will, and by doubts which
+  the Old Testament had raised and not solved. Life was looked upon as
+  a test-place, a thoroughfare to the heavenly Kingdom; earth, with its
+  beauty and its appeal to the senses, as a temptress.</p>
+
+  <p>To flee the world and to lack artistic feeling were therefore
+  marks of the period. We have no trace of scientific knowledge applied
+  to Nature, and she was treated with increasing contempt, as the
+  influence of antiquity died out. In spite of this, the attitude of
+  the Apostolic Fathers was very far from hostile. Their fundamental
+  idea was the Psalmist's 'Lord, how great are Thy works; in wisdom
+  hast Thou made them all!' and yet they turned to Nature--at any rate,
+  the noblest Grecians among them--not only for proof of divine wisdom
+  and goodness, but with a degree of personal inclination, an
+  enthusiasm, to which antiquity was a stranger.</p>
+
+  <p>Clement of Rome wrote to the Corinthians:</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg031" id="pg031">031</a></span>
+  'Let us note how free from anger He is towards all His creatures. The
+  heavens are moved by His direction and obey Him in peace. Day and
+  night accomplish the course assigned to them by Him, without
+  hindrance one to another. The sun and the moon and the dancing stars,
+  according to His appointment, circle in harmony within the bounds
+  assigned to them, without any swerving aside. The earth, bearing
+  fruit in fulfilment of His will at her proper seasons, putteth forth
+  the food that supplieth abundantly both men and beasts and all living
+  things which are thereupon, making no dissension, neither altering
+  anything which He hath decreed. Moreover, the inscrutable depths of
+  the abysses and unutterable statutes of the nether regions are
+  constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea,
+  gathered together by His workmanship into its reservoirs, passeth not
+  the barriers wherewith it is surrounded; but even as He ordered it,
+  so it doeth. For He said, "so far shalt thou come, and thy waves
+  shall be broken within thee." The ocean which is impassable for men,
+  and the worlds beyond it, are directed by the same ordinances of the
+  Master. The seasons of spring and summer and autumn and winter give
+  way in succession one to another in peace. The winds in their several
+  quarters at their proper seasons fulfil their ministry without
+  disturbance, and the overflowing fountains, created for enjoyment and
+  health, without fail give their breasts which sustain the life for
+  men. Yea, the smallest of living things come together in concord and
+  peace.'<a href="#c1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The three great Cappadocians, the most representative of the Greek
+  Fathers and leaders of the fourth century, wrote about the scenery
+  round them in a tone of sentimentality not less astonishing, in view
+  of the prejudice which denies all feeling for Nature to the Middle
+  Ages, than their broad humanity and free handling of dogma.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg032" id="pg032">032</a></span> It
+  was no ascetic renouncing the world and solitude<a href=
+  "#c2"><sup>[2]</sup></a>; but rather a sensitive man, thoughtful and
+  dreamy at once, who wrote as follows (Basil the Great to Gregory
+  Nazianzen):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It is a lofty mountain overshadowed with a deep wood, irrigated
+    on the north by cold and transparent streams. At its foot is spread
+    a low plain, enriched perpetually with the streams from the
+    mountains. The wood, a virgin forest of trees of various kinds and
+    foliage which grows around it, almost serves it as a rampart; so
+    that even the Isle of Calypso, which Homer evidently admired as a
+    paragon of loveliness, is nothing in comparison with this. For
+    indeed it is very nearly an island, from its being enclosed on all
+    sides with rocky boundaries. On two sides of it are deep and
+    precipitous ravines, and on another side the river flowing from the
+    steep is itself a continuous and almost impassable barrier. The
+    mountain range, with its moon-shaped windings, walls off the
+    accessible parts of the plain. There is but one entrance, of which
+    we are the masters. My hut is built on another point, which uplifts
+    a lofty pinnacle on the summit, so that this plain is outspread
+    before the gaze, and from the height I can catch a glimpse of the
+    river flowing round, which to my fancy affords no less delight than
+    the view of the Strymore as you look from Amphipolis. For the
+    Strymore broadens into lakes with its more tranquil stream, and is
+    so sluggish as almost to forfeit the character of a river. The
+    Iris, on the other hand, flowing with a swifter course than any
+    river I know, for a short space billows along the adjacent rock,
+    and then, plunging over it, rolls into a deep whirlpool, affording
+    a most delightful view to me and to every spectator, and abundantly
+    supplying the needs of the inhabitants, for it nurtures an
+    incredible number of fishes in its eddies.</p>
+
+    <p>Why need I tell you of the sweet exhalations from the earth or
+    the breezes from the river? Other persons might admire the
+    multitude of the flowers, or of the lyric birds, but I have no time
+    to attend to them. But my highest eulogy of the spot is, that,
+    prolific as it is of all kinds of fruits from its happy situation,
+    it bears for me the sweetest of all fruits, tranquillity; not only
+    because it is free from the noises of cities, but because it is not
+    traversed by a single visitor except the hunters, who occasionally
+    join us. For, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg033" id=
+    "pg033">033</a></span>besides its other advantages, it also
+    produces animals--not bears and wolves, like yours--heaven forbid!
+    But it feeds herds of stags, and of wild goats and hares, and
+    creatures of that kind. Do you not then observe what a narrow risk
+    I ran, fool that I was, to change such a spot for Tiberine, the
+    depth of the habitable world? I am now hastening to it, pardon me.
+    For even Alcmæon, when he discovered the Echinades, no longer
+    endured his wanderings.<a href="#c3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This highly-cultured prince of the Church clearly valued the place
+  quite as much for its repose, its idyllic solitude, for what we
+  moderns would call its romantic surroundings, sylvan and rugged at
+  once, as for its fertility and practical uses. But it is too much to
+  say, with Humboldt<a href="#c4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>In this simple description of scenery and forest life, feelings
+    are expressed which are more intimately in unison with those of
+    modern tunes, than anything which has been transmitted to us from
+    Greek or Roman antiquity. From the lonely Alpine hut to which Basil
+    withdrew, the eye wanders over the humid and leafy roof of the
+    forest below.... The poetic and mythical allusion at the close of
+    the letter falls on the Christian ear like an echo from another and
+    earlier world.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The Hellenic poets of the Anthology, and the younger Pliny in
+  Imperial days, held the same tone, elegiac and idyllic<a href=
+  "#c5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>; as Villemain says, 'These pleasant
+  pictures, these poetic allusions, do not shew the austerity of the
+  cloister.'<a href="#c6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> The specifically Christian
+  and monastic was hidden by the purely human.</p>
+
+  <p>Other writings of Basil's express still more strongly the mild
+  dejection which longs for solitude. For instance, when Gregory had
+  been dwelling upon the emptiness of all earthly things, he said in
+  reply, that peace of soul must be man's chief aim, and could only be
+  attained by separation from the world, by solitude; 'for the
+  contemplation of Nature abates the fever of the soul, and banishes
+  all insincerity and presumption.' Therefore he loved the quiet
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg034" id="pg034">034</a></span>corner
+  where he was undisturbed by human intercourse.</p>
+
+  <p>He drew melancholy comparisons from Nature: men were compared to
+  wandering clouds that dissolve into nothing, to wavering shadows, and
+  shipwrecked beings, etc.</p>
+
+  <p>His homilies on the Hexameron, too, shew thought of Nature. There
+  is a fine sense for the play of colour on the sea here: 'A pleasant
+  sight is the glistening sea when a settled calm doth hold it; but
+  pleasant too it is to behold its surface ruffled by gentle breezes,
+  and its colour now purple, now white, now dark; when it dasheth not
+  with violence against the neighbouring coast, but holdeth it in
+  tranquil embrace.'<a href="#c7"><sup>[7]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>There is enthusiastic admiration for Nature mixed with his
+  profound religious feeling in the whole description of the stars, the
+  seasons, etc. The expression of Ptolymäos, that when he gazed at the
+  stars he felt himself raised to the table of Zeus, is weak in
+  comparison with Basil's words, 'If, on a clear night, you have fixed
+  your gaze upon the beauty of the stars, and then suddenly turned to
+  thoughts of the artist of the universe, whoever he be, who has
+  adorned the sky so wonderfully with these undying flowers, and has so
+  planned it that the beauty of the spectacle is not less than its
+  conformity to law....if the finite and perishable world is so
+  beautiful, what must the infinite and invisible be?'<a href=
+  "#c8"><sup>[8]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>For him, as for modern minds, starlight brought thoughts of
+  eternity: 'If the greatness of the sky is beyond human comprehension,
+  what mind, what understanding could fathom eternal things?'</p>
+
+  <p>Gregory Nazianzen's feeling for Nature was intensely melancholy.
+  His poem <i>On Human Nature</i> says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>For yesterday, worn out with my grief alone, I sat apart in a
+    shady grove, gnawing my heart out. For <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg035" id="pg035">035</a></span>somehow I love
+    this remedy in time of grief, to talk with mine own heart in
+    silence. And the breezes whispered to the note of the songster
+    birds, and from the branches brought to me sweet slumber, though my
+    heart was well-nigh broken. And the cicadas, friends of the sun,
+    chirped with the shrill note that issues from their breasts, and
+    filled the whole grove with sound. A cold spring hard by bedewed my
+    feet as it flowed gently through the glen; but I was held in the
+    strong grip of grief, nor did I seek aught of these things, for the
+    mind, when it is burdened with sorrow, is not fain to take part in
+    pleasure.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The classic writers had also contrasted Nature with mind, as, for
+  example, Ibykos in his famous <i>Spring Song</i><a href=
+  "#c9"><sup>[9]</sup></a>; but not with Gregory's brooding melancholy
+  and self-tormenting introspection. The poem goes on to compare him to
+  a cloud that wanders hither and thither in darkness, without even a
+  visible outline of that for which he longed; without peace:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I am a stream of troubled water: ever onward I move, nor hath
+    any part of me rest; thou wilt not a second time pass over that
+    stream thou didst before pass over, nor wilt thou see a second time
+    the man thou sawest before.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In his dreamy enthusiasm he likes nothing better than solitude:
+  'Happy he who leads a lonely life, happy he who with the mighty force
+  of a pure mind seeth the glory of the lights of heaven.'</p>
+
+  <p>The same tone constantly recurs in his writings. Human life is but
+  dust, blown by the wind; a stormy voyage, faded grass; kingdoms and
+  powers are waves of the sea, which suck under and drown; a charming
+  girl is a rose with thorns, etc.</p>
+
+  <p>Gregory of Nyssa again praises the order and splendour of Nature
+  and her Creator in Old Testament style: 'Seeing the harmony of the
+  whole, of wonders in heaven and in earth, and how the elements of
+  things, though mutually opposed, are all by Nature welded together,
+  and make for one aim through a certain indefinable
+  intercommunion.'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg036" id="pg036">036</a></span>
+  With the pathos of Job he cries:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <p>Who has spread out the ground at my feet?</p>
+
+      <p>Who has made the sky firm over me as a dome?</p>
+
+      <p>Who carries the sun as a torch before me?</p>
+
+      <p>Who sends springs into the ravines?</p>
+
+      <p>Who prepares the path of the waters?</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>And who gives my spirit the wing for that high flight in which I
+    leave earth behind and hasten through the wide ocean of air, know
+    the beauty of the ether, and lift myself to the stars and observe
+    all their splendour, and, not staying there, but passing beyond the
+    limits of mutable things, comprehend unchangeable Nature--the
+    immutable Power which is based upon itself, and leads and supports
+    all that exists?</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This, with its markedly poetic swing, is surprisingly like the
+  passage in Plato's <i>Phædo</i>, where Socrates says: 'If any man
+  could arrive at the exterior limit or take the wings of a bird and
+  come to the top, then, like a fish who puts his head out of the water
+  and sees this world, he would see a world beyond; and if the nature
+  of man could sustain the sight, he would acknowledge that this other
+  world was the place of the true heaven and the true light and the
+  true earth.' But even the thought, that the order and splendour of
+  Nature witnessed to the eternal powers which had created her, was not
+  strange to the Greek, as Aristotle proves in the remarks which Cicero
+  preserved to us in his treatise <i>On the Nature of the Gods</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Well then did Aristotle observe: 'If there were men whose
+  habitations had been always underground, in great and commodious
+  houses, adorned with statues and pictures, finished with everything
+  which they who are reputed happy abound with, and if, without
+  stirring from thence, they should be informed of a certain divine
+  power and majesty, and after some time the earth should open, and
+  they should quit their dark abode to come to us, where they should
+  immediately behold the earth, the seas, the heavens, should consider
+  the vast <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg037" id=
+  "pg037">037</a></span>extent of the clouds and force of the winds,
+  should see the sun, and observe his grandeur and beauty, and also his
+  generative power, inasmuch as day is occasioned by the diffusion of
+  his light through the sky, and when night has obscured the earth,
+  they should contemplate the heavens bespangled and adorned with
+  stars, the surprising variety of the moon in her increase and wane,
+  the rising and setting of all the stars and the inviolable regularity
+  of all their courses; when,' says he, 'they should see these things,
+  they would undoubtedly conclude that there are gods, and that these
+  are their mighty works.'</p>
+
+  <p>Thus unconsciously the Greek Fathers of the Church took over the
+  thoughts of the great classic philosophers, only substituting a unity
+  for a plurality of godhead. To soar upon the wings of bird, wind, or
+  cloud, a <i>motif</i> which we find here in Gregory of Nyssa, and
+  which reached its finest expression in Ganymede and the evening scene
+  in Faust, had reached a very modern degree of development in
+  antiquity.<a href="#c10"><sup>[10]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Gregory of Nyssa was still more sentimental and plaintive than
+  Basil and Gregory Nazianzen:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>When I see every ledge of rock, every valley and plain, covered
+    with new-born verdure, the varied beauty of the trees, and the
+    lilies at my feet decked by Nature with the double charms of
+    perfume and of colour, when in the distance I see the ocean,
+    towards which the clouds are onward borne, my spirit is overpowered
+    by a sadness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When in autumn the
+    fruits have passed away, the leaves have fallen, and the branches
+    of the trees, dried and shrivelled, are robbed of their leafy
+    adornments, we are instinctively led, amid the everlasting and
+    regular change in Nature, to feel the harmony of the wondrous
+    powers pervading all things. He who contemplates them with the eye
+    of the soul, feels the littleness of man amid the greatness of the
+    universe.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Are not these thoughts, which Humboldt rightly strings together,
+  highly significant and modern? Especially <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg038" id="pg038">038</a></span>in view of the
+  opinion which Du Bois Reymond, for example, expresses: 'In antiquity,
+  mediæval times, and in later literature up to the last century, one
+  seeks in vain for the expression of what we call a feeling for
+  Nature.'<a href="#c11"><sup>[11]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Might not Werther have written them? They have all his sentimental
+  melancholy, coupled with that 'delight of sorrow' which owes its name
+  (Wonne der Wehmuth) to Goethe, although its meaning was known to
+  Euripides.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet it was only in rare cases, such as Seneca and Aristotle, that
+  classic writers combined such appreciation of Nature's individual
+  traits with that lofty view of the universe which elevates and
+  humbles at once.</p>
+
+  <p>Gregory shewed the blending of Christian with classic feeling; and
+  the deepening of the inner life through the new faith is quite as
+  clear in patristic writings as their close relationship to the
+  classic.</p>
+
+  <p>But the thinkers and poets of the Middle Ages did not always see
+  Nature under the brilliant light of Hellenic influence; there were
+  wide spaces of time in which monkish asceticism held sway, and she
+  was treated with most unscientific contempt. For the development of
+  feeling did not proceed in one unswerving line, but was subject to
+  backward movements. The rosy afterglow of the classic world was upon
+  these Greek Fathers; but at the same time they suffered from the
+  sorrowfulness of the new religion, which held so many sad and
+  pessimistic elements.</p>
+
+  <p>The classic spirit seemed to shudder before the eternity of the
+  individual, before the unfathomable depths which opened up for
+  mankind with this religion of the soul, which can find no rest in
+  itself, no peace in the world, unless it be at one with God in
+  self-forgetting devotion and surrender.</p>
+
+  <p>Solitude, to which all the deeper minds at this time paid homage,
+  became the mother of new and <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg039"
+  id="pg039">039</a></span>great thoughts, and of a view of the world
+  little behind the modern in sentimentality.</p>
+
+  <p>What Villemain says of the quotation from Gregory Nazianzen just
+  given, applies with equal force to the others:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>No doubt there is a singular charm in this mixture of abstract
+    thoughts and emotions, this contrast between the beauties of Nature
+    and the unrest of a heart tormented by the enigma of existence and
+    seeking to find rest in faith.... It was not the poetry of Homer,
+    it was another poetry.... It was in the new form of contemplative
+    poetry, in this sadness of man about himself, in these impulses
+    towards God and the future, in this idealism so little known by the
+    poets of antiquity, that the Christian imagination could compete
+    without disadvantage. It was there that that poetry arose which
+    modern satiety seeks for, the poetry of reverie and reflection,
+    which penetrates man's heart and deciphers his most intimate
+    thoughts and vaguest wishes.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Contempt for art was a characteristic of the Fathers of the
+  Church, and to that end they extolled Nature; man's handiwork,
+  however dazzling, was but vanity in their eyes, whereas Nature was
+  the handiwork of the Creator. Culture and Nature were purposely set
+  in opposition to each other.<a href="#c12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> St
+  Chrysostom wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>If the aspect of the colonnades of sumptuous buildings would
+    lead thy spirit astray, look upwards to the vault of heaven, and
+    around thee on the open fields, in which herds graze by the water's
+    side. Who does not despise all the creations of art, when in the
+    stillness of his soul he watches with admiration the rising of the
+    sun, as it pours its golden light over the face of the earth; when
+    resting on the thick grass beside the murmuring spring, or beneath
+    the sombre shade of a thick and leafy tree, the eye rests on the
+    far receding and hazy distance?</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The visible to them was but a mirror of the invisible; as Paul
+  says (13th of the 1st Corinthians): 'Here we see in a glass darkly,'
+  and Goethe: 'Everything transitory is but a similitude.' <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg040" id="pg040">040</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>God (says St Chrysostom again) has placed man in the world as in
+    a royal palace gleaming with gold and precious stones; but the
+    wonderful thing about this palace is, that it is not made of stone,
+    but of far costlier material; he has not lighted up a golden
+    candelabra, but given lights their fixed course in the roof of the
+    palace, where they are not only useful to us, but an object of
+    great delight.<a href="#c13"><sup>[13]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The Roman secular writers of the first Christian centuries had not
+  this depth of thought and sadness; but from them too we have notable
+  descriptions of Nature in which personal pleasure and sympathy are
+  evident motives as well as religious feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>In the little <i>Octavius</i> of Minucius Felix, a writing full of
+  genuine human feeling of the time of Commodus, the mixture of the
+  heathen culture and opinions of antiquity with the Christian way of
+  thinking has a very modern ring. The scenery is finely sketched.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The heats of summer being over, autumn began to be temperate ...
+    we (two friends, a heathen and a Christian) agreed to go to the
+    delightful city of Ostia.... As, at break of day, we were
+    proceeding along the banks of the Tiber towards the sea, that the
+    soft breeze might invigorate our limbs, and that we might enjoy the
+    pleasure of feeling the beach gently subside under our footsteps,
+    Cæcilius observed an image of Serapis, and having raised his hands
+    to his lips, after the wont of the superstitious vulgar, he kissed
+    it.... Then Octavius said: 'It is not the part of a good man,
+    brother Marcus, thus to leave an intimate companion and friend
+    amidst blind popular ignorance, and to suffer him, in such open
+    daylight, to stumble against stones,' etc.... Discoursing after
+    this sort, we traversed the space between Ostia and the sea, and
+    arrived at the open coast. There the gentle surges had smoothed the
+    outermost sands like a pleasure walk, and as the sea, although the
+    winds blow not, is ever unquiet, it came forward to the shore, not
+    hoary and foaming, but with waves gently swelling and curled. On
+    this occasion we were agreeably amused by the varieties of its
+    appearance, for, as we stood on the margin and dipped the soles of
+    our feet in the water, the wave alternately struck at us, and then
+    receding, and sliding away, seemed to swallow <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg041" id="pg041">041</a></span>up itself. We
+    saw some boys eagerly engaged in the game of throwing shells in the
+    sea.... Cæcilius said: 'All things ebb into the fountain from which
+    they spring, and return back to their original without contriver,
+    author, or supreme arbiter ... showers fall, winds blow, thunder
+    bellows, and lightnings flash ... but they have no aim.' Octavius
+    answers: 'Behold the heaven itself, how wide it is stretched out,
+    and with what rapidity its revolutions are performed, whether in
+    the night when studded with stars, or in the daytime when the sun
+    ranges over it, and then you will learn with what a wonderful and
+    divine hand the balance is held by the Supreme Moderator of all
+    things; see how the circuit made by the sun produces the year, and
+    how the moon, in her increase, wanes and changes, drives the months
+    around.... Observe the sea, it is bound by a law that the shore
+    imposes; the variety of trees, how each of them is enlivened from
+    the bowels of the earth! Behold the ocean, it ebbs and flows
+    alternately. Look at the springs, they trickle with a perpetual
+    flow; at rivers, they hold on their course in quick and continued
+    motion. Why should I speak of the ridges of mountains, aptly
+    disposed? of the gentle slope of hills, or of plains widely
+    extended?... In this mansion of the world, when you fully consider
+    the heaven and the earth, and that providence, order, and
+    government visible in them, assure yourself that there is indeed a
+    Lord and Parent of the whole ... do not enquire for the name of
+    God--God is his name.... If I should call Him Father, you would
+    imagine Him earthly; if King, carnal; and if Lord, mortal. Remove
+    all epithets, and then you will be sensible of His glory....'</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>How like Faust's confession of faith to Gretchen:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Him who dare name</p>
+
+    <p>And yet proclaim,</p>
+
+    <p>Yes! I believe...</p>
+
+    <p>The All-embracer,</p>
+
+    <p>All-sustainer,</p>
+
+    <p>Doth he not embrace, sustain,</p>
+
+    <p>Thee, me, Himself?</p>
+
+    <p>Lifts not the Heaven its dome above?</p>
+
+    <p>Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us rise?...</p>
+
+    <p>And beaming tenderly with looks of love</p>
+
+    <p>Climb not the everlasting stars on high?...</p>
+
+    <p>Fill thence thy heart, how large so e'er it be,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg042" id=
+    "pg042">042</a></span>And in the feeling when thou'rt wholly
+    blest,</p>
+
+    <p>Then call it what thou wilt--Bliss! Heart! Love! God!</p>
+
+    <p>I have no name for it--'tis feeling all</p>
+
+    <p>Name is but sound and smoke</p>
+
+    <p>Shrouding the glow of Heaven.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such statements of belief were not rare in the Apologists; but
+  Nature at this time was losing independent importance in men's minds,
+  like life itself, which after Cyprian was counted as nothing but a
+  fight with the devil.<a href="#c14"><sup>[14]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>There is deep reverence for Nature in the lyrics, the hymns of the
+  first centuries A.D., as a work of God and an emblem of moral ideas.
+  Ebert observes<a href="#c15"><sup>[15]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>In comparison with the old Roman, one can easily see the
+    peculiarities and perfect originality of these Christian lyrics. I
+    do not mean merely in that dominance of the soul life in which man
+    appeared to be quite merged, and which makes them such profound
+    expressions of feeling; but in man's relationship to Nature, which,
+    one might say, supplies the colour to the painter's brush.<a href=
+    "#c16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> Nature appears here in the service of
+    ideal moral powers and robbed of her independence;<a href=
+    "#c17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> the servant of her Creator, whose direct
+    command she obeys. She is his instrument for man's welfare, and
+    also at times, under the temporary mastery of the devil, for his
+    destruction. Thus Nature easily symbolizes the moral world.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>'Bountiful Giver of light, through whose calm brightness, when the
+  time of night is past and gone, the daylight is suffused abroad,
+  Thou, the world's true morning star, clearer than the full glorious
+  sun, Thou very dayspring, very light in all its fulness, that dost
+  illumine the innermost recesses of the heart,' sings St Hilary in his
+  Morning Hymn; and in another hymn, declaring himself unworthy to lift
+  his sinful eyes to the clear stars, he urges all the creatures, and
+  heaven, earth, sea and river, hill and wood, rose, lily, and star to
+  weep with him and lament the sinfulness of man.</p>
+
+  <p>In the Morning Hymn of St Ambrose dawn is <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg043" id="pg043">043</a></span>used symbolically;
+  dark night pales, the light of the world is born again, and the new
+  birth of the soul raises to new energy; Christ is called the true
+  sun, the source of light; 'let modesty be as the dawn, faith as the
+  noonday, let the mind know no twilight.'</p>
+
+  <p>And Prudentius sings in a Morning Hymn <a href=
+  "#c18"><sup>[18]</sup></a>: 'Night and mist and darkness fade, light
+  dawns, the globe brightens, Christ is coming!' and again: 'The herald
+  bird of dawn announces day, Christ the awaker calls us to life.' And
+  in the ninth hymn: 'Let flowing rivers, waves, the seashore's
+  thundering, showers, heat, snow, frost, forest and breeze, night,
+  day, praise Thee throughout the ages.'<a href=
+  "#c19"><sup>[19]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>He speaks of Christ as the sun that never sets, never is obscured
+  by clouds, the flower of David, of the root of Jesse; of the eternal
+  Fatherland where the whole ground is fragrant with beds of purple
+  roses, violets, and crocuses, and slender twigs drop balsam.</p>
+
+  <p>St Jerome united Christian genius, as Ebert says, with classic
+  culture to such a degree that his writings, especially his letters,
+  often shew a distinctly modern tone,<a href=
+  "#c20"><sup>[20]</sup></a> and go to prove that asceticism so
+  deepened and intensified character that even literary style took
+  individual stamp.<a href="#c21"><sup>[21]</sup></a> But the most
+  perfect representative, the most modern man, of his day was
+  Augustine.</p>
+
+  <p>As Rousseau's <i>Confessions</i> revealed the revolutionary genius
+  of the eighteenth century, Augustine's opened out a powerful
+  character, fully conscious of its own importance, striving with the
+  problems of the time, and throwing search-lights into every corner of
+  its own passionate heart. He had attained, after much struggling, to
+  a glowing faith, and he described the process in characteristic and
+  drastic similes from Nature, which are scarcely suitable for
+  translation. He said on one occasion:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>For I burned at times in my youth to satiate myself with deeds
+    of hell, and dared to run wild in many <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg044" id="pg044">044</a></span>a dark love
+    passage.... In the time of my youth I took my fill passionately
+    among the wild beasts, and I dared to roam the woods and pursue my
+    vagrant loves beneath the shade; and my beauty consumed away and I
+    was loathsome in Thy sight, pleasing myself and desiring to please
+    the eyes of men.... The seething waves of my youth flowed up to the
+    shores of matrimony....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Comfortless at the death of his friend:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I burned, I sighed, I wept, I was distraught, for I bore within
+    me a soul rent and bloodstained, that would no longer brook my
+    carrying; yet I found no place where I could lay it down, neither
+    in pleasant groves nor in sport was it at rest. All things, even
+    the light itself, were filled with shuddering.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Augustine, like Rousseau, understood 'que c'est un fatal présent
+  du ciel qu'une ame sensible.'</p>
+
+  <p>He looked upon his own heart as a sick child, and sought healing
+  for it in Nature and solitude, though in vain.</p>
+
+  <p>The pantheistic belief of the Manicheans that all things, fire,
+  air, water, etc., were alive, that figs wept when they were picked
+  and the mother tree shed milky tears for the loss of them, that
+  everything in heaven and earth was a part of godhead, gave him no
+  comfort; it was rather the personal God of the Psalms whom he saw in
+  the ordering of Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>The cosmological element in theism has never been more beautifully
+  expressed than in his words:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I asked the earth, and she said: 'I am not He,' and all things
+    that are in her did confess the same. I asked the sea and the
+    depths and creeping things, and they answered: 'We are not thy God,
+    seek higher.' I asked the blowing breezes, and the whole expanse of
+    air with its inhabitants made answer: 'Anaxagoras was at fault, I
+    am not God.' I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and
+    with a loud voice did they exclaim: 'He made us.' My question was
+    the enquiry of my spirit, their answer was the beauty of their
+    form.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In another place:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Not with uncertain but with sure consciousness, Lord, I love
+    Thee. But behold, sea and sky and all <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg045" id="pg045">045</a></span>things in them
+    from all sides tell me that I must love Thee, nor do they cease to
+    give all men this message, so that they are without excuse. Sky and
+    earth speak to the deaf Thy praises: when I love Thee, I love not
+    beauty of form, nor radiancy of light; but when I love my God, I
+    love the light, the voice, the sweetness, the food, the embrace of
+    my innermost soul. That is what I love when I love my God.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Augustine's interest in Nature was thus religious. At the same
+  time, the soothing influence of quiet woods was not unknown to
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>The likeness and unlikeness between the Christian and heathen
+  points of view are very clear in the correspondence between Ausonius,
+  the poet of the Moselle, and Paulinus, Bishop of Nola; and the deep
+  friendship expressed in it raises their dilettante verses to the
+  level of true poetry.</p>
+
+  <p>Ausonius, thoroughly heathen as he was, carries us far forward
+  into Christian-Germanic times by his sentimentality and his artistic
+  descriptions of the scenery of the Moselle.<a href=
+  "#c22"><sup>[22]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>It is characteristic of the decline of heathendom, that the lack
+  of original national material to serve as inspiration, as the Æneas
+  Saga had once served, led the best men of the time to muse on Nature,
+  and describe scenery and travels. Nothing in classic Roman poetry
+  attests such an acute grasp of Nature's little secret charms as the
+  small poem about the sunny banks of the Moselle, vine-clad and
+  crowned by villas, and reflected in the crystal water below. It
+  seemed as if the Roman, with the German climate, had imbibed the
+  German love of Nature; as if its scenery had bewitched him like the
+  German maiden whom he compared to roses and lilies in his song.</p>
+
+  <p>Many parts of his poetical epistles are in the same tone, and we
+  learn incidentally from them that a lengthy preamble about weather
+  and place belonged to letter-writing even then.<a href=
+  "#c23"><sup>[23]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Feeling for Nature and love of his friend are interwoven into a
+  truly poetic appeal in No. 64, in which <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg046" id="pg046">046</a></span>Ausonius complains
+  that Paulinus does not answer his letters:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Rocks give answer to the speech of man, and his words striking
+    against the caves resound, and from the groves cometh the echo of
+    his voice. The cliffs of the coast cry out, the rivers murmur, the
+    hedge hums with the bees that feed upon it, the reedy banks have
+    their own harmonious notes, the foliage of the pine talks in
+    trembling whispers to the winds: what time the light south-east
+    falls on the pointed leaves, songs of Dindymus give answer in the
+    Gargaric grove. Nature has made nothing dumb; the birds of the air
+    and the beasts of the earth are not silent, the snake has its hiss,
+    the fishes of the sea as they breathe give forth their note....
+    Have the Basque mountains and the snowy haunts of the Pyrenees
+    taken away thy urbanity?... May he, who advises thee to keep
+    silence, never enjoy the singing of sweet songs nor the voices of
+    Nature ... sad and in need may he live in desolate regions, and
+    wander silent in the rounded heights of the Alpine range.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The sounds of Nature are detailed with great delicacy in this
+  appeal, and we see that the Alps are referred to as desolate
+  regions.</p>
+
+  <p>In another letter (25) he reminded his friend of their mutual
+  love, their home at Burdigala, his country-house with its
+  vine-slopes, fields, woods, etc., and went on:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Yet without thee no year advanceth with grateful change of
+    season; the rainy spring passeth without flower, the dog-star burns
+    with blazing heat, Pomona bringeth not the changing scents of
+    autumn, Aquarius pours forth his waters and saddens winter.
+    Pontius, dear heart, seest thou what thou hast done?</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Closing in the same tender strain with a picture of his hope
+  fulfilled:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Now he leaves the snowy towns of the Iberians, now he holds the
+    fields of the Tarbellians, now passeth he beneath the halls of
+    Ebromagus, now he is gliding down the stream, and now he knocketh
+    at thy door! Can we believe it? Or do they who love, fashion
+    themselves dreams?</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg047" id="pg047">047</a></span>
+  The greater inwardness of feeling here, as contrasted with classic
+  times, is undeniable; the tone verges on the sentimentality of the
+  correspondences between 'beautiful souls' in the eighteenth
+  century.</p>
+
+  <p>Paulinus was touchingly devoted to his former teacher Ausonius,
+  and in every way a man of fine and tender feeling. He gave himself
+  with zeal to Christianity, and became an ascetic and bishop.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a bitter grief to him that his Ausonius remained a heathen
+  when he himself had sworn allegiance to Christ and said adieu to
+  Apollo. There is a fine urbanity and humanity in his writings, but he
+  did not, like Ausonius, love Nature for her own sake. The one took
+  the Christian ascetic point of view, the other the classic heathen,
+  with sympathy and sentiment in addition.</p>
+
+  <p>Paulinus recognized the difference, and contrasted their ideas of
+  solitude. 'They are not crazed, nor is it their savage fierceness
+  that makes men choose to live in lonely spots; rather, turning their
+  eyes to the lofty stars, they contemplate God, and set the leisure
+  that is free from empty cares, to fathom the depths of truth they
+  love.'</p>
+
+  <p>In answer to his friend's praise of home, he praised Spain, in
+  which he was living, and many copious descriptions of time and place
+  run through his other writings<a href="#c24"><sup>[24]</sup></a>; but
+  while he yielded nothing to Ausonius in the matter of friendship,
+  'sooner shall life disappear from my body than thy image from my
+  heart,' he was without his quiet musing delight in Nature. For her
+  the heathen had the clearer eye and warmer heart; the Christian
+  bishop only acknowledged her existence in relation to his Creator,
+  declaring with pride that no power had been given to us over the
+  elements, nor to them over us, and that not from the stars but from
+  our own hearts come the hindrances to virtue.</p>
+
+  <p>Lives of the saints and paraphrases of the story of creation were
+  the principal themes of the Christian <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg048" id="pg048">048</a></span>poets of the fourth and fifth
+  centuries. In some of these the hermit was extolled with a dash of
+  Robinson Crusoe romance, and the descriptions of natural phenomena in
+  connection with Genesis often showed a feeling for the beauty of
+  Nature in poetic language. Dracontius drew a detailed picture of
+  Paradise with much self-satisfaction.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Then in flight the joyous feathered throng passed through the
+    heavens, beating the air with sounding wings, various notes do they
+    pour forth in soothing harmony, and, methinks, together praise for
+    that they were accounted worthy to be created.<a href=
+    "#c26"><sup>[26]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>For the charming legend of Paradise was to many Christian minds of
+  this time what the long-lost bliss of Elysium and the Golden Age had
+  been to the Hellenic poets and the Roman elegist--the theme of much
+  vivid imagery and highly-coloured word-painting.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Eternal spring softens the air, a healing flame floods the world
+    with light, all the elements glow in healing warmth; as the shades
+    of night fade, day rises.... Then the feathered flocks fly joyfully
+    through the air, beating it with their wings in the rush of their
+    passage, and with flattering satisfaction their voices are heard,
+    and I think they praise God that they were found worthy to be
+    created; some shine in snowy white, some in purple, some in
+    saffron, some in yellow gold; others have white feathers round the
+    eyes, while neck and breast are of the bright tint of the hyacinth
+    ... and upon the branches, the birds are moved to and fro with them
+    by the wind.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This shews careful observation of detail; but, for the most part,
+  such idyllic feeling was checked by lofty religious thoughts.</p>
+
+  <p>'Man,' he cries, 'should rule over Nature, over all that it
+  contains, over all earth offers in fruit, flowers, and verdure that
+  tree and vine, sea and spring, can give.' He summons all creation to
+  praise the Creator--stars and seasons, hail-storm and <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg049" id="pg049">049</a></span>lightning, earth,
+  sea, river and spring, cloud and night, plants, animals, and light;
+  and he describes the flood in bold flights of fancy.</p>
+
+  <p>In the three books of Avitus<a href="#c27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> we
+  have 'a complete poem of the lost Paradise, far removed from a mere
+  paraphrase or versification of the Bible,'<a href=
+  "#c28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> which shews artistic leanings and
+  sympathetic feeling here and there. As Catullus<a href=
+  "#c29"><sup>[29]</sup></a> pictures the stars looking down upon the
+  quiet love of mortals by night, and Theocritus<a href=
+  "#c30"><sup>[30]</sup></a> makes the cypresses their only witnesses,
+  the Christian poet surrounds the marriage of our first parents with
+  the sympathy of Nature:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>And angel voices joined in harmony and sang to the chaste and
+    pure; Paradise was their wedding-chamber, earth their dowry, and
+    the stars of heaven rejoiced with gladsome radiance.... The
+    kindness of heaven maintains eternal spring there; the tumultuous
+    south wind does not penetrate, the clouds forsake an air which is
+    always pure.... The soil has no need of rains to refresh it, and
+    the plants prosper by virtue of their own dew. The earth is always
+    verdant, and its surface animated by a sweet warmth resplendent
+    with beauty. Herbs never abandon the hills, the trees never lose
+    their leaves, etc.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And when Adam and Eve leave it, they find all the rest of the
+  beautiful world ugly and narrow in comparison. 'Day is dark to their
+  eyes, and under the clear sun they complain that the light has
+  disappeared.'</p>
+
+  <p>It was the reflection of their own condition in Nature. Among
+  heathen writers who were influenced, without being entirely swayed,
+  by Christian teaching, and imitated the rhetorical Roman style in
+  describing Nature, Apollonius Sidonius takes a prominent place. In
+  spite of many empty phrases and a stilted style, difficult to
+  understand as well as to translate, his poems, and still more his
+  letters, give many interesting pictures of the culture of his part of
+  the fifth century. In Carm. 2 he draws a <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg050" id="pg050">050</a></span>highly--coloured
+  picture of the home of Pontius Leontas,<a href=
+  "#c31"><sup>[31]</sup></a> a fine country property, and paints the
+  charms of the villa with all the art of his rhetoric and some real
+  appreciation. The meeting of the two rivers, the Garonne and the
+  Dordogne, in the introduction is poetically rendered, and he goes on
+  to describe the cool hall and grottos, state-rooms, pillars--above
+  all, the splendid view: 'There on the top of the fortress I sit down
+  and lean back and gaze at the mountains covered by olives, so dear to
+  the Muse and the goats. I shall wander in their shade, and believe
+  that coward Daphne grants me her love.' He delighted in unspoilt
+  Nature, and describes:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>My fountain, which, as it flows from the mountain-side, is
+    overshadowed by a many-covered grotto with its wide circle. It
+    needs not Art; Nature has given it grace. That no artist's hand has
+    touched it is its charm; it is no masterpiece of skill, no hammer
+    with resounding blow will adorn the rocks, nor marble fill up the
+    place where the tufa is worn away.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He lays stress upon the contrast between culture and Nature, town
+  luxury and country solitude, in his second letter to Domidius, and
+  describes the beauties of his own modest estate with sentimental
+  delight:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>You reproach me for loitering in the country; I might complain
+    with more reason that you stay in the town when the earth shines in
+    the light of spring, the ice is melting from the Alps, and the soil
+    is marked by the dry fissures of tortuous furrows ... the stones in
+    the stream, and the mud on the banks are dried up ... here neither
+    nude statues, comic actors, nor Hippodrome are to be found ... the
+    noise of the waters is so great that it drowns conversation. From
+    the dining-room, if you have time to spare at meals, you can occupy
+    it with the delight of looking at the scenery, and watch the
+    fishing ... here you can find a hidden recess, cool even in summer
+    heat, a place to sleep in. Here what joy it is to listen to the
+    cicadas chirping at noonday, and to the frogs croaking when the
+    twilight is coming on, and to the swans and geese giving note at
+    the early hours of the night, and at midnight to the cocks crowing
+    together, and to the boding crows with three-fold <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg051" id="pg051">051</a></span>note greeting
+    the ruddy torch of the rising dawn; and in the half light of the
+    morning to hear the nightingale warbling in the bushes, and the
+    swallow twittering among the beams.... Between whiles, the
+    shepherds play in their rustic fashion. Not far off is a wood where
+    the branches of two huge limes interlace, though their trunks are
+    apart (in their shade we play ball), and a lake that rises to such
+    fury in a storm that the trees that border it are wetted by the
+    spray.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In another letter to Domidius he described a visit to the
+  country-seat of two of his friends:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>We were torn from one pleasure to another--games, feastings,
+    chatting, rowing, bathing, fishing.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>As a true adherent even as a bishop of classic culture and
+  humanity, Sidonius is thus an interesting figure in these wild times,
+  with his Pliny-like enthusiasm for country rather than city, and his
+  susceptibility to woodland and pastoral life.</p>
+
+  <p>The limit of extravagance in the bombastic rhetoric of the period
+  was reached in the travels of Ennodius,<a href=
+  "#c32"><sup>[32]</sup></a> who was scarcely more than a fantastic
+  prattler. The purest, noblest, and most important figure of the sixth
+  century was undoubtedly Boetius; but it is Cassiodorus, a statesman
+  of the first rank under Theodoric, who in his <i>Variorium libris</i>
+  gives the most interesting view of the attitude of his day towards
+  Nature. He revelled in her and in describing her. After praising Baja
+  for its beauty<a href="#c33"><sup>[33]</sup></a> and Lactarius for
+  its healthiness, he said of Scyllacium:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The city of Scyllacium hangs upon the hills like a cluster of
+    grapes, not that it may pride itself upon their difficult ascent,
+    but that it may voluptuously gaze on verdant plains and the blue
+    back of the sea. The city beholds the rising sun from its very
+    cradle, when the day that is about to be born sends forward no
+    heralding Aurora; but as soon as it begins to rise, the quivering
+    brightness displays its torch. It beholds Phoebus in his joy; it is
+    bathed in the brightness of that luminary so that it might be
+    thought to be itself the native land of the sun, the claims of
+    Rhodes to that honour being outdone.... It enjoys a translucent
+    air, but withal so temperate, that its winters are sunny and its
+    summers cool, and life passes there without sorrow, since
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg052" id=
+    "pg052">052</a></span>hostile seasons are feared by none. Hence,
+    too, man himself is here freer of soul than elsewhere, for this
+    temperateness of the climate prevails in all things.... Assuredly
+    for the body to imbibe muddy waters is a different thing from
+    sucking in the transparency of a sweet fountain. Even so the vigour
+    of the mind is repressed when it is clogged by a heavy atmosphere.
+    Nature itself hath made us subject to these influences.... clouds
+    make us feel sad, and again a bright day fills us with joy.... At
+    the foot of the Moscian Mount we hollowed out the bowels of the
+    rock, and tastefully introduced therein the eddying waves of
+    Nereus. Here a troop of fishes sporting in free captivity refreshes
+    all minds with delight, and charms all eyes with admiration. They
+    run greedily to the hand of man, and, before they become his food,
+    seek dainties from him.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He described the town as rich in vineyards and olive woods,
+  cornfields and villas.</p>
+
+  <p>He awarded the palm of beauty to Como and its lake, and although
+  he wrote in the clumsy language of a decaying literature, this
+  sixth-century sketch still strikes us as surprisingly complete and
+  artistic in feeling:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Como, with its precipitous mountains and its vast expanse of
+    lake, seems placed there for the defence of the Province of
+    Liguria; and yet again, it is so beautiful, that one would think it
+    was created for pleasure only.</p>
+
+    <p>To the south lies a fertile plain with easy roads for the
+    transport of provisions; on the north, a lake sixty miles long
+    abounding in fish, soothing the mind with delicious recreation....
+    Rightly is it called Como, because it is adorned with such gifts.
+    The lake lies in a shell-like valley with white margins. Above
+    rises a diadem of lofty mountains, their slopes studded with bright
+    villas; a girdle of olives below, vineyards above, while a crest of
+    thick chestnut woods adorns the very summit of the hills. Streams
+    of snowy clearness dash from the hill-sides into the lake. On the
+    eastern side these unite to form the river Addua, so called because
+    it contains the added volume of two streams.... So delightful a
+    region makes men delicate and averse to labour.... Therefore the
+    inhabitants deserve special consideration, and for this reason we
+    wish them to enjoy perpetually the royal bounty.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg053" id="pg053">053</a></span>
+  This shews, beyond dispute, that the taste for the beauty of Nature,
+  even at that wild time, was not dead, and that the writer's attitude
+  was not mainly utilitarian. He noted the fertility of the land in
+  wine and grain, and of the sea in fish, but he laid far greater
+  stress upon its charms and their influence upon the inhabitants.</p>
+
+  <p>On <i>a priori</i> grounds (so misleading in questions of this
+  kind) one would scarcely expect the most disturbed period in the
+  history of the European people to have produced a Venantius
+  Fortunatus, the greatest and most celebrated poet of the sixth
+  century. His whole personality, as well as his poetry, shewed the
+  blending of heathenism and Christianity, of Germanism and Romanism,
+  and it is only now and then among the Roman elegists and later epic
+  poets that we meet a feeling for Nature which can be compared to his.
+  Like all the poets of this late period, his verse lacks form, is
+  rugged and pompous, moving upon the stilts of classic reminiscences,
+  and coining monstrous new expressions for itself; but its feeling is
+  always sincere. It was the last gleam of a setting sun of literature
+  that fell upon this one beneficent figure. He was born in the
+  district of Treviso near Venice, and crossed the Alps a little before
+  the great Lombard invasion, while the Merovingians, following in the
+  steps of Chlodwig, were outdoing each other in bloodshed and cruelty.
+  In the midst of this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the
+  poets by virtue of his talent and purity of character. His poems are
+  often disfigured by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but
+  his keen eye for men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for
+  Nature shews not only in dealing with scenery, but in linking it with
+  the inner life.</p>
+
+  <p>The lover's wish in <i>On Virginity</i>,<a href=
+  "#c34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> one of his longer poems, suggests the
+  Volkslieder:</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg054" id=
+  "pg054">054</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>O that I too might go, if my hurrying foot could poise amid the
+    lights of heaven and hold on its starry course. But now, without
+    thee, night comes drearily with its dark wings, and the day itself
+    and the glittering sunshine is darkness to me. Lily, narcissus,
+    violet, rose, nard, amomum, bring me no joy--nay, no flower
+    delights my heart. That I may see thee, I pass hovering through
+    each cloud, and my love teaches my wandering eyes to pierce the
+    mist, and lo! in dread fear I ask the stormy winds what they have
+    to tell me of my lord. Before thy feet I long to wash the pavement,
+    and with my hair to sweep thy temples. Whatever it be, I will bear
+    it; all hard things are sweet; if only I see thee, this penalty is
+    my joy. But be thou mindful, for thy vows do I yearn; I have thee
+    in my heart, have me in thy heart too.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This is more tender in feeling than any poem by Catullus or
+  Tibullus. We can only explain it by two facts--the deepening of the
+  inner life through Christianity (we almost hear Christ's words about
+  the 'great sinner'), and the intimate friendship which Fortunatus
+  enjoyed with a German lady, who may justly be called the noblest and
+  purest figure of her time in Franconia.</p>
+
+  <p>This was Radegunde, the unhappy daughter of a Thuringian king, who
+  first saw her father's kingdom lost, and then, fleeing from the
+  cruelty of her husband, the bloodstained Chlotaire, took the veil in
+  Poitiers and founded a convent, of which she made Agnes, a noble
+  Franconian lady, the abbess. When Fortunatus visited the place, these
+  ladies became his devoted friends, and he remained there as a priest
+  until the death of Radegunde. His poems to them, which were often
+  letters and notes written off-hand, are full of affection and
+  gratitude (he was, by the way, a gourmet, and the ladies made
+  allowance for this weakness in dainty gifts), and form an enduring
+  witness of a pure and most touching friendship. They contain many
+  pretty sketches of Nature and delicate offerings of flowers. In one
+  he said: 'If the season brought white lilies or blossomed in red
+  roses, I <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg055" id=
+  "pg055">055</a></span>would send them to you, but now you must be
+  content with purple violets for a greeting'; and in another, because
+  gold and purple are not allowable, he sends her flowers, that she may
+  have 'her gold in crocuses, her purple in violets, and they may adorn
+  her hair with even greater delight than she draws from their
+  fragrance.' Once, when following pious custom, she had withdrawn into
+  her cell, his 'straying thoughts go in search of her':</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>How quickly dost thou hide the light from mine eyes! for without
+    thee I am o'erweighted by the clouds that bear me down, and though
+    thou flee and hide thyself here but for a few short days, that
+    month is longer than the whole hurrying year. Prithee, let the joys
+    of Easter bring thee back in safety, and so may a two-fold light
+    return to us at once.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And when she comes out, he cries:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Thou hadst robbed me of my happiness; now it returns to me with
+    thee, thou makest me doubly celebrate this solemn festival....
+    Though the seedlings are only just beginning to shoot up from the
+    furrows, yet I to-day will reap my harvest in seeing thee once
+    more. To-day do I gather in the fruit and lay the peaceful sheaves
+    together. Though the field is bare, nor decked with ears of corn,
+    yet all, through thy return, is radiant fulness.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The comparison is tedious and spun out; but the idea is poetic. We
+  find it in the classics: for instance, in Theocritus, when he praises
+  Nais, whose beauty draws even Nature under her sway, and whose coming
+  makes spring everywhere:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Where has my light hidden herself from my straying eyes? When I
+    see not thee, I am ne'er satisfied. Though the heavens be bright,
+    though the clouds have fled, yet for me is the day sunless, if it
+    hide thee from me.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The most touching evidence of this friendship is the poem <i>On
+  the Downfall of Thuringia</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>'One must,' says Leo,<a href="#c35"><sup>[35]</sup></a> 'refer the
+  chief excellence <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg056" id=
+  "pg056">056</a></span>of the poem to the lady who tells the tale,
+  must grant that the irresistible power of the description, the
+  spectacle of the freshly open wounds, the sympathy in the consuming
+  sorrow of a friend, gave unwonted power of the wing to this
+  low-flying pen.' Radegunde is thinking of her only remaining
+  relative, Amalafried:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>When the wind murmurs, I listen if it bring me some news, but of
+    all my kindred not even a shadow presents itself to me.... And
+    thou, Amalafried, gentle son of my father's brother, does no
+    anxiety for me consume thy heart? Hast thou forgotten what
+    Radegunde was to thee in thy earliest years, and how much thou
+    lovedst me, and how thou heldst the place of the father, mother,
+    brother, and sister whom I had lost? An hour absent from thee
+    seemed to me eternal; now ages pass, and I never hear a word from
+    thee. A whole world now lies betwixt those who loved each other and
+    who of old were never separate. If others, for pity alone, cross
+    the Alps to seek their lost slaves, wherefore am I forgotten?--I
+    who am bound to thee by blood? Where art thou? I ask the wind as it
+    sighs, the clouds as they pass--at least some bird might bring me
+    news of thee. If the holy enclosure of this monastery did not
+    restrain me, thou shouldst see me suddenly appear beside thee. I
+    could cross the stormy seas in winter if it were necessary. The
+    tempest that alarms the sailors should cause no fear to me who love
+    thee. If my vessel were dashed to pieces by the tempest, I should
+    cling to a plank to reach thee, and if I could find nothing to
+    cling to, I should go to thee swimming, exhausted. If I could but
+    see thee once more, I should deny all the perils of the
+    journey....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>There is little about Nature in this beautiful avowal of love and
+  longing, but the whole colouring of the mood forms a background of
+  feeling for his longer descriptions. His very long and tedious poem
+  about the bridal journey of Gelesiuntha, the Spanish princess, who
+  married King Chilperic, shews deep and touching feeling in parts. She
+  left her Toledo home with a heavy heart, crossing the Pyrenees, where
+  'the mountains shining with snow <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg057" id="pg057">057</a></span>reach to the stars, and their sharp
+  peaks project over the rain clouds.' In the same vein as Ausonius,
+  when he urged Paulinus to write to him, she begs her sister for
+  news:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>By thy name full oft I call thee, Gelesiuntha, sister mine: with
+    this name fountains, woods, rivers, and fields resound. Art thou
+    silent, Gelesiuntha? Answer as to thy sister stones and mountains,
+    groves and waters and sky, answer in language mute.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In troubled thought and care she asked the very breezes, but of
+  her sister's safety all were silent.</p>
+
+  <p>Fortunatus, like Ausonius, not only looked at Nature with
+  sympathy, but was a master in description of scenery. His lengthy
+  descriptions of spring are mostly only decorative work, but here and
+  there we find a really poetic idea. For example:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>At the first spring, when earth has doffed her frost, the field
+    is clothed with variegated grass; the mountains stretch their leafy
+    heads towards the sky, the shady tree renews its verdant foliage,
+    the lovely vine is swelling with budding branches, giving promise
+    that a weight of grapes shall hang from its prolific stems. While
+    all joys return, the earth is dead and dull.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The soft violets paint the field with their own purple, the
+    meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh
+    shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up,
+    and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and the
+    birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent, with
+    imprisoned song, are now recalled to their song.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He describes the cold winter, and a hot summer's day, when</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Even in the forests no shade was to be found, and the traveller
+    almost fainted on the burning roads, longing for shade and cool
+    drinks. At last the rustle of a crystal stream is heard, he hurries
+    to it with delight, he lies down and lays his limbs in the soft
+    kisses of the grass.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg058" id="pg058">058</a></span>
+  His poems about beautiful and noteworthy places include some on the
+  Garonne and Gers (Egircius):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>So dried up by heat that it is neither river nor land, and the
+    grumbling croak of the frog, sole ruler of the realm from which the
+    fish are banished, is heard in the lonely swamp; but when the rain
+    pours down, the flood swells, and what was a lake suddenly becomes
+    a sea.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He has many verses of this sort, written with little wit but great
+  satisfaction.</p>
+
+  <p>More attractive are descriptions of the Rhine and Moselle,
+  recalling Ausonius, and due to love partly of Nature, partly of
+  verbal scene-painting. The best and most famous of these is on his
+  journey by the Moselle from Metz to Andernach on the Rhine. Here he
+  shews a keen eye and fine taste for wide views and high mountains, as
+  well as for the minutiæ of scenery, with artistic treatment. He also
+  blends his own thoughts and feelings with his impressions of Nature,
+  making it clear that he values her not merely for decoration, but for
+  her own sake.</p>
+
+  <p>He has been called the last Roman poet; in reality, he belonged
+  not only to the period which directly succeeded his own, when the
+  Roman world already lay in ruins, but to the fully-developed Middle
+  Ages--the time when Christianity and Germanism had mated with Roman
+  minds.</p>
+
+  <p>In his best pieces, such as his famous elegy, he caught the
+  classic tone to perfection, feeling himself in vital union with the
+  great of bygone centuries; but in thought and feeling he was really
+  modern and under the influence of the Christian Germanic spirit with
+  all its depth and intensity. His touching friendship with Radegunde
+  is, as it were, a symbol of the blending of the two elements out of
+  which the modern sprang. It was the stimulating influence of the
+  noble Germanic princess, herself <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg059" id="pg059">059</a></span>Christian in soul, which fanned the
+  dying sparks of classic poetry into a flame.</p>
+
+  <p>Fortunatus stood upon a borderland. Literature was retreating
+  further and further from the classic models, and culture was
+  declining to its fall. In Gaul, as in Spain and Italy, the shadows of
+  coming night were broadening over literary activity, thought, and
+  feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a characteristic fact in Roman literature, that not only its
+  great lights, but the lesser ones who followed them, were
+  enthusiastically imitated. Latin poetry of the Middle Ages lived upon
+  recollections of the past, or tried to raise itself again by its
+  help; even so late a comer as Fortunatus became in his turn an object
+  of marvel, and was copied by poets who never reached his level.</p>
+
+  <p>It is not surprising that feeling for Nature shewed a
+  corresponding shallowness and lassitude.</p>
+
+  <p>Not only bucolic but didactic writing was modelled upon the
+  classic. Isodorus and Beda, in their works with identical titles
+  'concerning the existence of things,' relied on Roman models no less
+  than Alcuin, who had formed himself on the pattern of Augustine's
+  time in his <i>Conflict between Winter and Spring</i>, as well as in
+  many single verses, directly inspired by Virgil.<a href=
+  "#c36"><sup>[36]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>His <i>Farewell to his Cell</i> caught the idyllic tone very
+  neatly:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Beloved cell, retirement's sweet abode!</p>
+
+    <p>Farewell, a last farewell, thy poet bids thee!</p>
+
+    <p>Beloved cell, by smiling woods embraced,</p>
+
+    <p>Whose branches, shaken by the genial breeze,</p>
+
+    <p>To meditation oft my mind disposed.</p>
+
+    <p>Around thee too, their health-reviving herbs</p>
+
+    <p>In verdure gay the fertile meadows spread;</p>
+
+    <p>And murmuring near, by flowery banks confined,</p>
+
+    <p>Through fragrant meads the crystal streamlets glide,</p>
+
+    <p>Wherein his nets the joyful fisher casts,</p>
+
+    <p>And fragrant with the apple bending bough,</p>
+
+    <p>With rose and lily joined, the gardens smile;</p>
+
+    <p>While jubilant, along thy verdant glades <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg060" id="pg060">060</a></span>At dawn his
+    melody each songster pours,</p>
+
+    <p>And to his God attunes the notes of praise.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>These heartfelt effusions express a feeling which certainly
+  inspired many monks when they turned from their gloomy cells to the
+  gardens and woods beyond--a feeling compounded of renunciation of the
+  world with idyllic comfort in their surroundings. If their
+  fundamental feeling was worship and praise of the Creator, their
+  constant outdoor work, which, during the first centuries, was
+  strenuous cultivation of the soil, must have roused a deep
+  appreciation of Nature in the nobler minds among them. Their choice
+  of sites for monasteries and hermitages fully bears out this
+  view.<a href="#c37"><sup>[37]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p><i>The Conflict between Spring and Winter</i>, with its classic
+  suggestions, is penetrated by a truly German love of spring.<a href=
+  "#c38"><sup>[38]</sup></a> It described the time when the cuckoo
+  sings high in the branches, grass clothes earth with many tints, and
+  the nightingale sings untiringly in the red-gold butcher's broom,
+  captivating us with her changing melodies.</p>
+
+  <p>Among the savants whom Charlemagne gathered round him was
+  Angilbert. Virgil was his model, but the influence of the lighter
+  fluency of Fortunatus was visible, as in so many of his
+  contemporaries. With a vivid and artistic pen he described the wood
+  and park of Aachen and the Kaiser's brilliant hunt<a href=
+  "#c39"><sup>[39]</sup></a>; the great forest grove, the grassy
+  meadows with brooks and all sorts of birds flitting about, the
+  thicket stocked with many kinds of game.</p>
+
+  <p>At the same time, his writing betrayed the conventional tone of
+  courts in its praise of his great secular lord, and a 'thoughtful
+  romantic inclination' for the eternal feminine, for the beautiful
+  women with splendid ornaments, and necks shining like milk or snow or
+  glowing like a rose, who, as Ebert puts it, 'lay far from the
+  asceticism of the poetry of the saints.'</p>
+
+  <p>Naso Muadorinus in his pastorals took Calpurnius <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg061" id="pg061">061</a></span>and Nemesianus for
+  his models, just as they had taken Virgil, and Virgil Theocritus.
+  Muadorinus imitated the latter in his pastorals.</p>
+
+  <p>In an alternate song of his between an old man and a boy, the old
+  man draws an artistic contrast between the shady coolness of the wood
+  and the mid-day glow of the sun, while the boy praises Him whose
+  songs the creatures follow as once they followed Orpheus with his
+  lute; and at the end, Charlemagne, who was extolled at the beginning
+  as a second Cæsar, is exalted to heaven as the founder of a new
+  Golden Age.</p>
+
+  <p>In the Carolingian Renaissance of the Augustine epoch of
+  literature, Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, takes first place. At any
+  rate, he described in a very superior way, and, like Fortunatus, with
+  some humour, the draining of the Larte at Le Mans, Feb. 820; also, in
+  a light and lively strain, the Battle of the Birds, and, with the
+  same strong colouring, Paradise.</p>
+
+  <p>The idyll of the cloister garden, so often treated, became famous
+  in the much-read <i>Hortulus</i> of Wahlafried.<a href=
+  "#c40"><sup>[40]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Despite classical flourishes from Virgil and Columella, and
+  pharmaceutical handling of plants, there is a good deal of thoughtful
+  observation of Nature in these 444 hexameters.</p>
+
+  <p>They contain descriptions of seasons, of recipes, flowers and
+  vegetables, of the gardener's pleasure in digging his fields in
+  spring, clearing them of nettles, and levelling the ground thrown up
+  by the moles, in protecting his seedlings from rain and sun, and,
+  later on, in his gay beds of deciduous plants.</p>
+
+  <p>There is a touch here and there which is not unpoetic--for
+  instance:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>A bright green patch of dark blue rue paints this shady grove;
+    it has short leaves and throws out short umbels, and passes the
+    breath of the wind and the rays of the sun right down to the end of
+    the stalk, and at a gentle touch gives forth a heavy scent.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg062" id="pg062">062</a></span>
+  and:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>With what verse, with what song, can the dry thinness of my
+    meagre muse rightly extol the shining lily, whose whiteness is as
+    the whiteness of gleaming snow, whose sweet scent is as the scent
+    of Sabian woods?</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He closes pleasantly too, adjuring Grimald to read the book under
+  the shade of the peach tree, while his school-fellows play round and
+  pick the great delicate fruit which they can barely grasp with one
+  hand. In the poem to the layman Ruodbern (100 hexameters) he
+  described the dangers of Alpine travelling, both from weather and
+  other foes. In those days the difficulties of the road excluded all
+  interest in mountain beauty. There is a tender and expressive poem in
+  Sapphic metre, in which, homesick and cold in winter, he sang his
+  longing for beautiful Reichenau. But even he, like most of his
+  predecessors and all his followers, wielded his pen with labour,
+  expression often failing to keep pace with thought.</p>
+
+  <p>It only remains to mention Wandalbert, a monk of the monastery at
+  Prün, who, in a postscript to the <i>Conclusio des Martyrologium</i>,
+  gives a charming account of a landowner's life in field, garden, and
+  hunt.</p>
+
+  <p>In the cloister, then, idyllic comfort, delighting in Nature and a
+  quiet country life, was quite as much at home as scholarship and
+  classical study. But we shall look there in vain for any trace of the
+  sentimental, the profoundly melancholy attitude of the Fathers of the
+  Church, Basil and Gregory, or for Augustine's deep faith and devout
+  admiration of the works of creation: even the tone of Ausonius and
+  Fortunatus, in their charming descriptions of scenery, was now a
+  thing of the past. Feeling for Nature--sentimental, sympathetic,
+  cosmic, and dogmatic--had dwindled down to mere pleasure in
+  cultivating flowers in the garden, to the level Aachen <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg063" id="pg063">063</a></span>landscape and such
+  like; and the power to describe the impression made by scenery was,
+  like the impression itself, lame and weary.</p>
+
+  <p>It was the night of the decline breaking over Latin
+  literature.</p>
+
+  <p>And how did it stand with German literature up to the eleventh
+  century? A German Kingdom had existed from the treaties of Verdun and
+  Mersen (842), but during this period traces of German poetry are few,
+  outweighed by Latin.</p>
+
+  <p>The two great Messianic poems, <i>Heliand</i> and <i>Krist</i>,
+  stand out alone. In the <i>Heliand</i> the storm on the lake of
+  Gennesaret is vividly painted:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Then began the power of the storm; in the whirlwind the waves
+    rose, night descended, the sea broke with uproar, wind and water
+    battled together; yet, obedient to the command and to the
+    controlling word, the water stilled itself and flowed serenely.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In <i>Krist</i> there is a certain distinction in the description
+  of the Ascension, as the rising figures soar past the constellations
+  of stars, which disappear beneath their feet; for the rest, the
+  symbolic so supplants the direct meaning, that in place of an epic we
+  have a moralizing sermon. But there are traces of delight in the
+  beauty of the outer world, in the sunshine, and sympathy is
+  attributed to Nature:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>She grew very angry at such deeds.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poem <i>Muspilli</i> (the world fire) shews the old northern
+  feeling for Nature; still more the few existing words of the
+  <i>Wessobrunner Prayer</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>This I heard as the greatest marvel among men,</p>
+
+    <p>That once there was no earth nor heaven above,</p>
+
+    <p>The bright stars gave no light, the sun shone not,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor the moon, nor the glorious sea.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>How plainly 'the bright stars' and the 'glorious sea' shew joy in
+  the beauty of the world!</p>
+
+  <p>In the oldest Scandinavian poems the inflexible <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg064" id="pg064">064</a></span>character of the
+  Northerner and the northern landscape is reflected; the descriptions
+  are short and scanty; it is not mountain, rock, and sea which count
+  as beautiful, but pleasant, and, above all, fruitful scenery. The
+  imagery is bold: (Kenninger) the wind is the wolf of wood or sail,
+  the sea the pathway of the whale, the bath of the diving bird,
+  etc.</p>
+
+  <p>The Anglo-Saxon was especially distinguished by his forcible
+  images and epithets. In Rynerwulf we have 'night falls like a helmet,
+  dark brown covers the mountains.' 'The sky is the fortress of the
+  storm, the sun the torch of the world, the jewel of splendour.' 'Fire
+  is eager, wild, blind, and raging; the sea is the gray sea, and the
+  sparkling splendid sea; waves are graves of the dead,' etc.</p>
+
+  <p>Vivid feeling for Nature is not among the characteristic features
+  of either Scandinavian or old German poetry.</p>
+
+  <p>It is naive and objective throughout, and seldom weighty or
+  forcible.</p>
+
+  <p>The Waltharius shews the influence of Virgil's language, in
+  highly-coloured and sympathetic descriptions like those of the Latin
+  poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance.</p>
+
+  <p>Animal saga probably first arose just before the twelfth century,
+  and their home was probably Franconia.</p>
+
+  <p>Like the genial notices of plant life in the Latin poems of the
+  Carlovingian period, the animal poems shewed interest in the animal
+  world--the interest of a child who ponders individual differences and
+  peculiarities, the virtues and failings so closely allied to its own.
+  It was a naive 'hand-and-glove' footing between man and the
+  creatures, which attributed all his wishes and weaknesses to them,
+  wiped out all differences between them with perfect impartiality, and
+  gave the characteristics of each animal with exactness and
+  poetry.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg065" id="pg065">065</a></span>
+  The soil for the cultivation of poetry about animals was prepared by
+  the symbolic and allegorical way of looking at Nature which held sway
+  all through the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+  <p>The material was used as a symbolic language for the immaterial,
+  the world of sense conceived of as a great picture-book of the truths
+  of salvation, in whose pages God, the devil, and, between them man,
+  figured: thus plant life suggested the flower of the root of Jesse,
+  foretold by Isaiah, red flowers the Saviour's wounds, and so forth.
+  In the earliest Christian times, a remarkable letter existed in
+  Alexandria, the so-called 'Physiologus,' which has affected the
+  proverbial turns of speech in the world's literature up to the
+  present day to an almost unequalled degree.</p>
+
+  <p>It gave the symbolic meanings of the different animals. The lamb
+  and unicorn were symbols of Christ; sheep, fish, and deer, of his
+  followers; dragons, serpents, and bears, of the devil; swine, hares,
+  hyenas, of gluttony; the disorderly luxuriance of snow meant death,
+  the phoenix the resurrection, and so forth, indeed, whole categories
+  of animals were turned into allegories of the truths of
+  salvation.<a href="#c41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> The cleverest fables of
+  animals were in <i>Isengrimen</i>, published in Ghent about 1140 in
+  Latin verse--the story of the sick lion and his cure by the fox, and
+  the outwitting of the wolf. Such fables did not remain special to
+  German national literature, but became popular subjects in the
+  literature of the whole world; and it is a significant fact that they
+  afterwards took root especially in Flanders, where the taste for
+  still life and delight in Nature has always found a home, and which
+  became the nursery, in later times, of landscape, animal, and genre
+  painting. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg066" id=
+  "pg066">066</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch3" id="ch3">CHAPTER III</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>THE NAIVE FEELING AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES</h3>
+
+  <p>In the development and maturing of the race, as of the individual,
+  nothing is more helpful than contact with foreign elements, people of
+  other manners, thoughts, and feelings. Intimate intercourse between
+  different nationalities rouses what is best in the soul of a nation,
+  inviting, as it does, to discussion and opposition, as well as to the
+  acquisition of new ideas. The conquests of Alexander the Great opened
+  up a new world to the Greek, and a new culture arose--Hellenism. It
+  was a new world that rose before the astonished eyes of the
+  Crusader--in his case too, the East; but the resulting culture did
+  not last. The most diverse motives fused to bring about this great
+  migration to a land at once unknown and yet, through religion,
+  familiar; and a great variety of characters and nations met under the
+  banner of the Cross.</p>
+
+  <p>Naturally this shaking up together, not only of Europeans among
+  themselves, but of the eastern with the western world, brought about
+  a complete revolution in manners, speech, art, science, trade,
+  manufacture, thought, and feeling, and so became an important factor
+  in general progress.</p>
+
+  <p>The narrow boundaries of nationality, race, and education were
+  broken through; all felt equal before the leading idea; men, places,
+  plants, and animals were alike new and wonderful. Little <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg067" id="pg067">067</a></span>wonder if German
+  knights returning home from the East wove fiction with their fact,
+  and produced the most fantastic and adventurous heroic songs.</p>
+
+  <p>Many of the noblest of the nations joined the Crusades in pious
+  ardour for the cause, and it is easy to imagine the effect of the
+  complete novelty of scene upon them. With such tremendous new
+  impressions to cope with, it is not surprising that even the best
+  minds, untrained as they were, were unequal to the task, and that the
+  descriptions of real experiences or events in poetic form failed to
+  express what they meant. Besides this, there is no doubt that in many
+  ways the facts fell below their ideals; also that the Crusader's
+  mantle covered at the same time a rabble, which joined from the
+  lowest motives, the scum of Europe. It must also be remembered that
+  it is far easier to experience or feel than to pass on that
+  experience and feeling to others; that those who wrote did not always
+  belong to the most educated; and that they wrote, for the most part,
+  with difficulty in Greek or Latin. When all this has been weighed and
+  admitted, the fact remains that in existing accounts of the Crusades
+  there is great poverty of description of scenery, and lack of much
+  feeling for Nature. The historian, as such, was bound to give first
+  place to matters of fact and practical importance, and so to judge a
+  place by its value to an army passing through or occupying it; by its
+  fertility, water-supply, its swamps or stony ground, and so forth;
+  but still the modern reader is astonished to see how little
+  impression the scenery of the Holy Land made, judged by the accounts
+  we possess, upon the Crusaders. Even when it is conceded that other
+  important concerns came first, and that danger, want, and hunger must
+  often have made everything disagreeable, still, references to Nature
+  are very scanty, and one may look in vain for any interest in
+  beautiful scenery for its own sake.</p>
+
+  <p>There is only matter-of-fact geographical and <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg068" id="pg068">068</a></span>mythological
+  information in William of Tours' <i>History of the Crusades</i>; for
+  instance, in his description of the Bosphorus he does not waste a
+  word over its beauty. But, as 'fruitful' and 'pleasant' are
+  ever-recurring adjectives with him, one cannot say that he absolutely
+  ignored it.</p>
+
+  <p>He said of Durazzo: 'They weather the bad seasons of the year in
+  fruitful districts rich in woods and fields, and all acceptable
+  conditions'; of Tyre, 'The town has a most excellent position on a
+  plain, almost entirely surrounded by mountains. The soil is
+  productive, the wood of value in many ways.' Of Antioch, 'Its
+  position is very convenient and pleasant, it lies in valleys which
+  have excellent and fertile soil, and are most pleasantly watered by
+  springs and streams. The mountains which enclose the town on both
+  sides are really very high; but send down very clear water, and their
+  sides and slopes are covered by buildings up to the very summits.'
+  There is nothing about beautiful views, unless one takes this, which
+  really only records a meteorological curiosity: 'From the top of one
+  mountain one can see the ball of the sun at the fourth watch of the
+  night, and if one turns round at the time when the first rays light
+  up the darkness, one has night on one side and day on the other.'</p>
+
+  <p>Tyre is described again as 'conspicuous for the fertility of its
+  soil and the charm of its position.' Its great waterworks are
+  especially admired, since by their means 'not only the gardens and
+  most fruitful orchards flourish, but the cane from which sugar is
+  made, which is so useful to man for health and other purposes, and is
+  sent by merchants to the most distant parts of the world.' Other
+  reporters were charmed by the fertility and wealth of the East. 'On
+  those who came from the poorer and colder western countries, the rich
+  resources of the sunny land in comparison with the poverty of home
+  made an impression of overflowing plenty, and at <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg069" id="pg069">069</a></span>times almost of
+  inexhaustibleness. The descriptions of certain districts, extolled
+  for their special richness, sound almost enthusiastic.<a href=
+  "#d1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Burkhard von Monte Sion was enthusiastic about Lebanon's wealth of
+  meadows and gardens, and the plain round Tripolis, and considered the
+  Plain of Esdraelon the most desirable place in the world; but, on
+  exact and unprejudiced examination, there is nothing in his words
+  beyond homely admiration and matter-of-fact discussion of its great
+  practical utility.</p>
+
+  <p>He says of La Boneia, 'That plain has many homesteads, and
+  beautiful groves of olive and fig and other trees of various kinds,
+  and much timber. Moreover, it abounds in no common measure in rivers
+  and pasture land'; closes a geographical account of Lebanon thus,
+  'There are in Libanus and Antilibanus themselves fertile and
+  well-tilled valleys, rich in pasture land, vineyards, gardens,
+  plantations--in a word, in all the good things of the world'; and
+  says of the Plain of Galilee, 'I never saw a lovelier country, if our
+  sins and wrong-doing did not prevent Christians from living
+  there.'</p>
+
+  <p>He had some feeling too for a distant view. He wrote of Samaria:
+  'The site was very beautiful; the view stretched right to the Sea of
+  Joppa and to Antipatris and Cæsarea of Palestine, and over the whole
+  mountain of Ephraim down to Ramathaym and Sophim and to Carmel near
+  Accon by the sea. And it is rich in fountains and gardens and olive
+  groves, and all the good things this world desires.' But it would be
+  going too far to conclude from the following words that he
+  appreciated the contrast between simple and sublime scenery: 'It must
+  be noticed too, that the river, from the source of Jordan at the foot
+  of Lebanon as far as the Desert of Pharan, has broad and pleasant
+  plains on both sides, and beyond these the fields are surrounded by
+  very high mountains as far as the Red Sea.'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg070" id="pg070">070</a></span> In
+  dealing with Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, religious enthusiasm
+  suppresses any reference to scenery.</p>
+
+  <p>These descriptions shew that the wealth and fertility of the
+  country were praised before its beauty, and that this was only
+  referred to in short, meagre phrases, which tell less about it than
+  any raptures without special knowledge.</p>
+
+  <p>It was much the same with Phokas, who visited the Holy Land in
+  1135.<a href="#d2"><sup>[2]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>He was greatly impressed by the position of Antioch, 'with its
+  meadows and fruitful gardens, and the murmur of waters as the river,
+  fed by the torrents of the Castalian spring, flows quietly round the
+  town and besprinkles its towers with its gentle waves ... but most to
+  be admired of all is the mountain between town and sea, a noble and
+  remarkable sight--indeed, a delight to the beholder's eye ... the
+  Orontes flows with countless windings at the foot of it, and
+  discharges itself into the sea.'</p>
+
+  <p>He thought Lebanon very beautiful and worthy its praise in Holy
+  Scripture: 'The sun lies like white hair upon its head; its valleys
+  are crowned with pines, cedars, and cypresses; streams, beautiful to
+  look at and quite cold, flow from the ravines and valleys down to the
+  sea, and the freshly melted snow gives the flowing water its crystal
+  clearness.'</p>
+
+  <p>Tyre, too, was praised for its beauty: 'Strangers were
+  particularly delighted with one spring, which ran through meadows;
+  and if one stands on the tower, one can see the dense growth of
+  plants, the movement of the leaves in the glow of noon.'</p>
+
+  <p>The plain of Nazareth, too, was 'a heaven on earth, the delight of
+  the soul.'</p>
+
+  <p>But recollections of the sacred story were dearer to Phokas than
+  the scenery, and elsewhere he limited himself to noting the rich
+  fruit gardens, shady groups of trees, and streams and rivers with
+  pleasant banks.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg071" id="pg071">071</a></span>
+  Epiphanius Monachus Hagiopolitæ, in his <i>Enarratio Syriæ</i>, was a
+  very dry pioneer; so, too, the <i>Anonymus de locis
+  Hierosolymitanis</i>; Perdiccas, in his <i>Hierosolyma</i>, describes
+  Sion thus: 'It stands on an eminence so as to strike the eye, and is
+  beautiful to behold, owing to a number of vines and flower gardens
+  and pleasant spots.'</p>
+
+  <p>It must be admitted then, that, beside utilitarian admiration of a
+  Paradise of fruitfulness, there is some record of simple, even
+  enthusiastic delight in its beauty; but only as to its general
+  features, and in the most meagre terms. The country was more
+  interesting to the Crusaders as the scene of the Christian story than
+  as a place in which to rest and dream and admire Nature for her own
+  sake.</p>
+
+  <p>The accounts of German pilgrimages<a href="#d3"><sup>[3]</sup></a>
+  of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries only contain dry notices,
+  such as those of Jacob von Bern (1346-47), Pfintzing (1436-40), and
+  Ulrich Leman (1472-80). The last-mentioned praises Damascus in this
+  clumsy fashion: 'The town is very gay, quite surrounded by orchards,
+  with many brooks and springs flowing inside and out, and an
+  inexpressible number of people in it,' etc. Dietrich von Schachten
+  describes Venice in this way: 'Venice lies in the sea, and is built
+  neither on land nor on mountain, but on wooden piles, which is
+  unbelievable to one who has not seen it'; and Candia: 'Candia is a
+  beautiful town in the sea, well built; also a very fruitful island,
+  with all sorts of things that men need for living.' He describes a
+  ride through Southern Italy: 'Saturday we rode from Trepalda, but the
+  same day through chestnut and hazel woods; were told that these woods
+  paid the king 16,000 gulden every year. After that we rode a German
+  mile through a wood, where each tree had its vine--many trees carried
+  3 ohms of wine, which is pleasant to see--and came to Nola.'</p>
+
+  <p>He called Naples 'very pretty and big,' and <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg072" id="pg072">072</a></span>on: 'Then the king
+  took us to the sea and shewed us the ports, which are pretty and
+  strong with bulwarks and gates; we saw many beautiful ships too,'
+  etc. One does not know which is the more wonderful here, the poverty
+  of the description or the utter lack of personal observation: what
+  the wood produced, and how one was protected from the sea, was more
+  important to the writer than wood and sea themselves, and this, even
+  in speaking of the Bay of Naples, perhaps the most beautiful spot in
+  Europe. But instances like these are typical of German descriptions
+  at the time, and their Alpine travels fared no better.<a href=
+  "#d4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Geographical knowledge of the Alps advanced very slowly; there was
+  as yet no æsthetic enjoyment of their beauty. The Frankish historians
+  (Gregory of Tours, Fredegar) chronicled special events in the Alps,
+  but very briefly. Fredegar, for instance, knew of the sudden
+  appearance of a hot spring in the Lake of Thun, and Gregory of Tours
+  notes that the land-slip in 563 at the foot of the Dent du Midi,
+  above the point where the Rhine enters the Lake of Geneva, was a
+  dreadful event. Not only was the Castle of Tauretunum overwhelmed,
+  but the blocking of the Rhine caused a deluge felt as far as Geneva.
+  The pious prince of the Church explained this as a portent of another
+  catastrophe, the pest, which ravaged Gaul soon after.</p>
+
+  <p>There was much fabling at that time in the legends of saints,
+  about great mines of iron, gold, and silver, and about chamois and
+  buck, cattle-breeding and Alpine husbandry in the 'regio montana';
+  for example, in von Aribo's <i>Vita S. Emmerani</i>. When the Alps
+  became more frequented, especially when, through Charlemagne, a
+  political bridge came to unite Italy and Germany, new roads were made
+  and the whole region was better known--in fact, early in mediæval
+  times, not only political, but ecclesiastical and mercantile life
+  spread its threads over a great <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg073"
+  id="pg073">073</a></span>part of the known world, and began to bind
+  the lives of nations together, so that the Alps no longer remained
+  <i>terra incognita</i> to dwellers far and near.</p>
+
+  <p>We have accounts of Alpine journeys by the Abbé Majolus v. Clugny
+  (970), Bernard v. Hildesheim (1101), Aribert v. Mailand, Anno v.
+  Coeln<a href="#d5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>, but without a trace of
+  orography. They scarcely refer to the snow and glacier regions from
+  the side of physical geography, or even of æsthetic feeling; and do
+  not mention the mountain monarchs so familiar to-day--Mt. Blanc, the
+  Jungfrau, Ortner, Glockner, etc.--which were of no value to their
+  life, practical or scientific. These writers record nothing but names
+  of places and their own troubles and dangers in travelling,
+  especially in winter. And even at the end of the fifteenth century,
+  German travels across the Alps were written in the same strain--for
+  example, the account of the voyage of the Elector-Palatine Alexander
+  v. Zweibrücken and Count Joh. Ludwig zu Nassau (1495-96) from Zurich
+  Rapperschwyl and Wesen to Wallensee: 'This is the real Switzerland;
+  has few villages, just a house here and a house there, but beautiful
+  meadows, much cattle, and very high mountains, on which snow lies,
+  which falls before Christmas, and is as hard as any rock.' As an
+  exception to this we have a vivid and poetic description of the
+  famous Verona Pass in Latin verse by Guntherus Ligurinus.</p>
+
+  <p>Günther's description of this notorious ravine, between sky-high
+  Alps, with the torrent rushing at the bottom and a passage so narrow
+  that men could only move forward one by one, sounds like a personal
+  experience. This twelfth-century poem comes to us, in fact, like a
+  belated echo of Fortunatus.</p>
+
+  <p>We must now enquire whether the chief representatives of German
+  literature at this time shewed any of the national love of Nature,
+  whether the influence of the Crusades was visible in them, how far
+  scenery <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg074" id=
+  "pg074">074</a></span>took a place in epic and song, and whether, as
+  moderns have so often stated, mediæval Germany stood high above
+  antiquity in this respect. Gervinus, a classic example on the last
+  point, in the section of his history of German poetry which treats of
+  the difference between the German fables about animals on the one
+  hand, and Esop's and the Oriental on the other, said:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The way in which animals are handled in the fables demanded a
+    far slighter familiarity between them and men; so exact a knowledge
+    as we see in the German fables, often involving knowledge of their
+    natural history, such insight into the 'privacy of the animal
+    world,' belonged to quite another kind of men. Antiquity did not
+    delight in Nature, and delight in Nature is the very foundation of
+    these poems. Remote antiquity neither knew nor sought to know any
+    natural history; but only wondered at Nature. The art of hunting
+    and the passion for it, often carried to excess in the Middle Ages,
+    was unknown to it. It is a bold remark of Grimm's that he could
+    smell the old smell of the woods in the German animal poems, but it
+    is one whose truth every one will feel, who turns to this simple
+    poetry with an open mind, who cares for Nature and life in the
+    open.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This is a very tangle of empty phrases and misstatements. No
+  people stood in more heartfelt and naive relation to Nature,
+  especially to the animal world, than the Hindoos and Persians. In
+  earlier enquiries<a href="#d6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> we have reviewed
+  the naive feeling displayed in Homer and the sentimental in
+  Hellenism, and have seen that the taste for hunting increased
+  knowledge of Nature in the open in Hellenic days far more than in the
+  Middle Ages. We shall see now that the level of feeling reached in
+  those and imperial Roman days was not regained in European literature
+  until long after the fall of Latin poetry, and that it was the
+  fertilizing influence of that classic spirit, and that alone, which
+  enabled the inborn German taste for Nature, and for hunting, and
+  plant and animal life, to find artistic expression. It was a too
+  superficial <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg075" id=
+  "pg075">075</a></span>knowledge of classic literature, and an
+  inclination to synthesis, and clever <i>a priori</i> argument (a
+  style impressed upon his day by Hegel's method, and fortunately fast
+  disappearing), which led Gervinus to exalt the Middle Ages at the
+  expense of antiquity. It sounds like a weak concession when he says
+  elsewhere:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Joy in Nature, which is peculiar to modern times, in contrast to
+    antiquity, which is seen in the earliest mediæval poems, and in
+    which, moreover, expiring antiquity came to meet the German--this
+    joy in Nature, in dwelling on plant and animal life, is the very
+    soul of this (animal) poetry. As in its plastic art, so in all its
+    poetry, antiquity only concerned itself with gods and heroes; its
+    glance was always turned upwards.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>But, as a fact, no one has ever stood with feet more firmly
+  planted on this earth than the Greek, enjoying life and undeterred by
+  much scruple or concern as to the powers above; and centuries of
+  development passed before German literature equalled Greek in love of
+  Nature and expressive representation of her beauty.</p>
+
+  <p>To rank the two national epics of Germany, the
+  <i>Nibelungenlied</i> and <i>Gudrun</i>, side by side with the
+  <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> is to exaggerate their value. And
+  here, as ever, overstraining the comparison is mischievous.</p>
+
+  <p>The <i>Nibelungenlied</i> is undeniably charming with its laconic
+  and yet plastic descriptions, its vigorous heroes, and the tragic
+  course of their fate; so is <i>Gudrun</i>, that melodious poem of the
+  North Sea. But they never, either in composition, method of
+  representation, or descriptive epithets, reach the perfect art of the
+  Greek epics. What moral beauty and plastic force there is in Homer's
+  comparisons and in his descriptions of times and seasons! what a
+  clear eye and warm heart he has for Nature in all her moods! and what
+  raw and scanty beginnings of such things we have in the
+  <i>Nibelungenlied</i>! It <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg076" id=
+  "pg076">076</a></span>is true Homer had not attained to the degree of
+  sympathy which finds in Nature a friend, a sharer of one's joys and
+  sorrows; she is pictured objectively in the form of epic comparisons;
+  but how faithfully, and with what range and variety!</p>
+
+  <p>There can scarcely be another epic in the world so poor in
+  descriptions of time and place as the <i>Nibelungenlied</i>; it
+  cannot be used to prove German feeling for Nature!</p>
+
+  <p>India, Persia, and Greece made natural phenomena the counterparts
+  of human life, weaving into the tale, by way of comparison or
+  environment, charming genre pictures of plant and animal life, each
+  complete in itself; in the <i>Nibelungenlied</i> Nature plays no part
+  at all, not even as framework.</p>
+
+  <p>Time is indicated as sparsely as possible:</p>
+
+  <p>'Upon the 7th day at Worms on the Rhine shore, the gallant
+  horsemen arrived.'</p>
+
+  <p>'On a Whitsun morning we saw them all go by'; or 'When it grew
+  towards even, and near the sun's last ray, seeing the air was
+  cooler'; or 'He must hang, till light morning threw its glow through
+  the window.' The last is the most poetic; elsewhere it is 'Day was
+  over, night fell.'</p>
+
+  <p>Terseness can be both a beauty and a force; but, in comparison
+  with Greece, how very little feeling for Nature these expressions
+  contain!</p>
+
+  <p>It is no better with descriptions of place:</p>
+
+  <p>'From the Rhine they rode through Hesse, their warriors as well,
+  towards the Saxon country, where they to fighting fell.'</p>
+
+  <p>'He found a fortress placed upon a mountain.'</p>
+
+  <p>'Into a wide-roomed palace of fashion excellent, for there,
+  beneath it rushing, one saw the Danube's flood.'</p>
+
+  <p>Even the story of the hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite
+  matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon
+  lost his life ... then <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg077" id=
+  "pg077">077</a></span>they rode from there into a deep wood ... there
+  they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the broad
+  mead ... one heard mountain and tree echo.'</p>
+
+  <p>'The spring of water was pure and cool and good.' ...</p>
+
+  <p>'There fell Chriemhild's husband among the flowers ... all round
+  about the flowers were wetted with his blood.'</p>
+
+  <p>One thinks instinctively of Indian and Greek poetry, of Adonis and
+  the death of Baldur in the Northern Saga. But even here, where the
+  subject almost suggests it, there is no trace of Nature's sympathy
+  with man.</p>
+
+  <p>References to the animal world too--Chriemhild's dreams of the
+  falcons seized by two eagles, and the two wild boars which attacked
+  Siegfried, the game hunted in the forests by the heroes who run like
+  panthers--all show it to be of no importance.</p>
+
+  <p>Even such phrases as rosy-red, snow-white, etc., are rare--'Her
+  lovely face became all rosy-red with pleasure'; but there is a
+  certain tenderness in the comparisons of Chriemhild:</p>
+
+  <p>'Then came the lovely maiden, even as morning red from sombre
+  clouds outbreaking,' and, 'just as the moon in brightness excels the
+  brightest stars, and suddenly outshining, athwart the clouds
+  appears,' so she excelled all other women.</p>
+
+  <p>It has been said that one can hear the sighing of the north wind
+  and the roar of the North Sea in <i>Gudrun</i>, but this is scarcely
+  more than a pretty phrase. The 'dark tempestuous' sea, 'wild
+  unfathomable' waves, the shore 'wet from the blood of the slain,' are
+  indeed mentioned, but that is all.</p>
+
+  <p>Wat of Sturmland says to the young warriors: 'The air is still and
+  the moon shines clear ... when the red star yonder in the south dips
+  his head in the brine, I shall blow on my great horn that all
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg078" id="pg078">078</a></span>the
+  hosts shall hear'; but it is hope of morning, not delight in the
+  starry sky, that he is expressing.</p>
+
+  <p>Indications of place too are of the briefest, just 'It was a broad
+  neck of land, called the Wülpensand,' or, 'In a few hours they saw
+  the shores where they would land, a little harbour lay in sight
+  enfolded by low hills clothed with dark fir trees.'</p>
+
+  <p>The first trace of sympathy with Nature occurs in the account of
+  the effect of Horand's song.</p>
+
+  <p>Like Orpheus, he charms the little birds and other creatures: 'He
+  sang with such a splendid voice, that the little birds ceased their
+  song.'</p>
+
+  <p>'And as he began to sing again, all the birds in the copse round
+  ceased their sweet songs.'</p>
+
+  <p>'The very cattle left their green pastures to hearken, the little
+  gold beetles stopped running among the grass, the fishes ceased to
+  shoot about in the brooks. He sang long hours, and it seemed but a
+  brief moment. The very church bells sounded sweet no longer; the folk
+  left the choir songs of the priests and ran to hear him. All who
+  heard his voice were heart-sick after the singer, so grand and sweet
+  was the strain.'</p>
+
+  <p>Indications of time are rarely found more short and concise than
+  here:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When night ended and day began.</p>
+
+    <p>On the 12th day they quitted the country.</p>
+
+    <p>In Maytime. On a cool morning.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This is a little richer:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It was the time when leaves spring up delightfully and birds of
+    all sorts sing their best in the woods.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Much more definite and distinct is:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It was about that time of the year when departing winter sheds
+    his last terrors upon the earth; a sharp breeze was blowing and the
+    sea was covered with broken up ice; but there were gleams of
+    sunshine upon the hills, and the little birds began to tune their
+    throats tremulously, that they might be ready to sing their lay
+    when the March weather was past.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg079" id=
+  "pg079">079</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Gudrun trembled with cold; her wet garment clung close to her
+    white limbs; the wind dashed her golden hair about her face.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And later, when the morning of Gudrun's deliverance breaks, the
+  indications of time, though short, are plastic enough:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>After the space of an hour the red star went down upon the edge
+    of the sea, and Wat of Sturmland, standing upon the hill, blew a
+    great blast on his horn, which was heard in the land for miles
+    round.... The sound of Wat's horn ... wakened a young maid, who,
+    stealing on tiptoe to the window, looked over the bay and beheld
+    the glimmering of spears and helms upon the sands.... 'Awake,
+    mistress,' she cried, 'the host of the Hegelings is at hand.'</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Companions are few;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>He sprang like a wild lion.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The shower of stones flung down upon Wat 'is but an April
+  shower.'</p>
+
+  <p>Images are few too:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>This flower of hope, to find repose here on the shore, Hartmouth
+    and his friends did not bring to blossom.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Wilhelm Grimm rightly observes:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>At this epoch the poetry of the Fatherland gave no separate
+    descriptions of Nature--descriptions, that is, whose only object
+    was to paint the impression of the landscape in glowing colours
+    upon the mind. The old German masters certainly did not lack
+    feeling for Nature, but they have left us no other expression of it
+    than such as its connection with historical events demanded.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And further:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or, through
+    the Crusades, with Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, did not enrich
+    German poetry with new pictures of Nature, can only, as a general
+    rule, be answered in the negative.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In the courtly epics of chivalry, the place of real Nature was
+  taken by a fabulous wonderworld, full <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg080" id="pg080">080</a></span>of the most fantastic and romantic
+  scenery, in which wood, field, plants, and animals were all
+  distorted. For instance, in the Alexander saga (of Pfaffen Lamprecht)
+  Alexander the Great describes to his teacher Aristotle the wonders he
+  has seen, and how one day he came with his army to a dark forest,
+  where the interlacing boughs of tall trees completely shut out the
+  sunlight. Clear, cool streams ran through it down to the valley, and
+  birds' songs echoed in the shade. The ground was covered by an
+  enormous quantity of flower buds of wondrous size, which looked like
+  great balls, snow-white and rose-coloured, closely folded up.
+  Presently, the fragrant goblets opened, and out of all these
+  wonder-flowers stepped lovely maidens, rosy as dawn and white as day,
+  and about twelve years old. All these thousands of charming beings
+  raised their voices together and competed with the birds in song,
+  swaying up and down in charming lines, singing and laughing in the
+  cool shade. They were dressed in red and white, like the flowers from
+  which they were born; but if sun rays fell on them, they would fade
+  and die. They were only children of the woodland shade and the
+  summer, and lived no longer than the flowers, which May brings to
+  life and Autumn kills. In this wood Alexander and his host pitched
+  their tents, and lived through the summer with the little maids. But
+  their happiness only lasted three months and twelve days:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>When the time came to an end, our joy passed away too; the
+    flowers faded, and the pretty girls died; trees lost their leaves,
+    springs their flow, and the birds their song; all pleasure passed
+    away. Discomfort began to touch my heart with many sorrows, as day
+    by day I saw the beautiful maidens die, the flowers fade: with a
+    heavy heart, I departed with my men.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This fairy-like tale, with its blending of human and plant life,
+  is very poetically conceived; but it is <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg081" id="pg081">081</a></span>only a play of
+  fancy, one of the early steps towards the modern feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>The battle scenes, as well as other scenes in this poem, are bold
+  and exaggerated. Armies meet like roaring seas; missiles fly from
+  both sides as thick as snow; after the dreadful bath of blood, sun
+  and moon veil their light and turn away from the murder committed
+  there.</p>
+
+  <p>Hartmann von der Aue, too, did not draw real Nature, but only one
+  of his own invention.</p>
+
+  <p>For example, the wild forest with the magic spring in
+  <i>Iwein</i>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I turned to the wilds next morning, and found an extensive
+    clearing, hidden in the forest, solitary and without husbandmen.
+    There, to my distress, I descried a sad delight of the eyes--beasts
+    of every kind that I know the names of, attacking each other....
+    this spring is cold and very pure; neither rain, sun, or wind reach
+    it; it is screened by a most beautiful lime tree. The tree is
+    excessively tall and thick, so that neither sun nor rain can
+    penetrate its foliage, winter does not injure it, nor lessen its
+    beauty by one hair; 'tis green and blossoming the whole year
+    round.... Over the spring there is a wonderfully fine stone ... the
+    tree was so covered with birds that I could scarcely see the
+    branches, and even the foliage almost disappeared. The sweet songs
+    were pleasant and resounded through the forest, which re-echoed
+    them....</p>
+
+    <p>As I poured water upon the ruby, the sun, which had just come
+    out, disappeared, the birds' song round about ceased, a black storm
+    approached, dark heavy storm-clouds came from all four quarters of
+    the vault of heaven. It seemed no longer bright day ... soon a
+    thousand flashes of lightning played round me in the forest ...
+    there came storm, rain, and hail ... the storm became so great that
+    the forest broke down.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He never shews a real love for Nature even in his lyrics, for the
+  wish for flowers in <i>Winter Complaint</i> can hardly be said to
+  imply that:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>He who cares for flowers must lament much at this heavy, dismal
+    time; a wife helps to shorten the long nights. In this way I will
+    shorten long winter without the birds' song.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg082" id="pg082">082</a></span>
+  Wolfram von Eschenbach, too, is very sparing of references to Nature:
+  time is given by such phrases as 'when twilight began,' or 'as the
+  day broke,' 'at the bright glow of morning' ... 'as day already
+  turned to evening.'</p>
+
+  <p>His interest in real things was driven into the background by
+  love-making and adventures--<i>Arthur's Round Table</i> and the
+  <i>Holy Grail</i>; all the romance of knighthood. When he described a
+  forest or a garden, he always decked it out lavishly.</p>
+
+  <p>For instance, the garden in Orgeluse:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>A garden surrounding a mountain, planted with noble trees where
+    pomegranates, figs, olives, vines, and other fruits grew richly ...
+    a spring poured from the rock, and (for all this would have been
+    nothing to him without a fair lady) there he found what did not
+    displease him--a lady so beautiful and fair that he was charmed at
+    the sight, the flower of womanly beauty.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Comparisons are few and not very poetic. In <i>Songs of the
+  Heart</i>--</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The lady of the land watered herself with her heart's tears.</p>
+
+    <p>Her eyes rained upon the child.</p>
+
+    <p>Her joy was drowned in lamentation.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Gawan and Orgeluse,</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Spite their outer sweetness, as disagreeable as a shower of rain
+    in sunshine.</p>
+
+    <p>There were many fair flowers, but their colours could not
+    compare with that of Orgeluse.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>His heroes are specially fond of birds. Young Parzival</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Felt little care while the little birds sang round him; it made
+    his heart swell, he ran weeping into the house.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and Gawan</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Found a door open into a garden; he stept in to look round and
+    enjoy the air and the singing of the birds.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg083" id="pg083">083</a></span> So
+  we see that in the <i>Nibelungenlied</i> scarcely a plant grew, and
+  Hartmann and Wolfram's gardens belonged almost entirely to an unreal
+  region; there are no traces of a very deep feeling for Nature in all
+  this.</p>
+
+  <p>But Gottfried von Strassburg, with his vivid, sensuous imagination
+  and keen eye for beauty, shewed a distinct advance both in taste and
+  achievement. He, too, notes time briefly: 'And as it drew towards
+  evening,' 'Now day had broke.' He repeats his comparisons: fair
+  ladies are 'the wonder rose of May,' 'the longing white rose.' The
+  two Isolts are sun and dawn. Brangäne is the full moon. The terrified
+  girl is thus described:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Her rosy mouth paled; the fair colour, which was her ornament,
+    died out of her skin; her bright eyes grew dim like night after
+    day.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Another comparison is:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Like the siren's song, drawing a bark to the reef as by a
+    magnet, so the sweet young queen attracted many hearts.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Love is a usurious plant, whose sun never goes down; a romance
+  sweetens the mood as May dew sweetens the blood.</p>
+
+  <p>Constant friendship is one which takes the pleasure with the pain,
+  the thorn with the rose. The last comparisons shew more thought, and
+  still more is seen in the beginning of the poem, <i>Riwalin and
+  Blancheflur</i>, which has a charming description of Spring.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Now the festival was agreed upon and arranged</p>
+
+    <p>For the four flowering weeks</p>
+
+    <p>When sweet May attracts, till he flies off again.</p>
+
+    <p>At Tinkapol upon a green plain</p>
+
+    <p>High up on a wonderful meadow with spring colour</p>
+
+    <p>Such as no eye has seen before or since. Soft sweet May</p>
+
+    <p>Had dressed it with his own charming extravagance.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg084" id=
+    "pg084">084</a></span>There were little wood birds, a joy to the
+    ear,</p>
+
+    <p>Flowers and grass and green plants and summer meads</p>
+
+    <p>That were a delight to eye and heart.</p>
+
+    <p>One found there whatever one would, whatever May should
+    bring--</p>
+
+    <p>Shade from the sun, limes by the brook,</p>
+
+    <p>A gentle breeze which brought the prattle</p>
+
+    <p>Of Mark's court people. May's friend, the green turf,</p>
+
+    <p>Had made herself a charming costume of flowers,</p>
+
+    <p>In which she shone back at the guests with a festival of her
+    own;</p>
+
+    <p>The blossoming trees smiled so sweetly at every one,</p>
+
+    <p>That heart and mind smiled back again.</p>
+
+    <p>The pure notes of the birds, blessed and beautiful,</p>
+
+    <p>Touched heart and senses, filling hill and dale with joy.</p>
+
+    <p>The dear nightingale,</p>
+
+    <p>Sweet bird, may it ever be blessed!</p>
+
+    <p>Sang so lustily upon the bough</p>
+
+    <p>That many a heart was filled with joy and good humour.</p>
+
+    <p>There the company pitched itself</p>
+
+    <p>With great delight on the green grass.</p>
+
+    <p>The limes gave enough shade,</p>
+
+    <p>And many covered their tent roofs with green boughs.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is a heartfelt ring in this. We see that even this early
+  period of German mediæval poetry was not entirely lacking in clear
+  voices to sing of Nature with real sympathy.</p>
+
+  <p>The description of the Minne grotto is famous, with its magical
+  accessories, its limes and other trees, birds, songs, and flowers, so
+  that 'eye and ear alike found solace'; but the romantic love episode,
+  interwoven as it is by the poet with the life of Nature, is more
+  interesting for our purpose.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>They had a court, they had a council which brought them nought
+    but joy. Their courtiers were the green trees, the shade and the
+    sunlight, the streamlet and the spring; flowers, grass, leaf, and
+    blossom, which <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg085" id=
+    "pg085">085</a></span>refreshed their eyes. Their service was the
+    song of the birds, the little brown nightingales, the throstlets
+    and the merles and other wood birds. The siskin and the ringdove
+    vied with each other to do them pleasure, all day long their music
+    rejoiced ear and soul. Their love was their high feast.... The man
+    was with the woman, and the woman with the man; they had the
+    fellowship they most desired, and were where they fain would
+    be....</p>
+
+    <p>In the dewy morning they gat them forth to the meadow where
+    grass and flowers alike had been refreshed. The glade was their
+    pleasure-ground; they wandered hither and thither hearkening each
+    other's speech, and waking the song of the birds by their
+    footsteps. Then they turned them to where the cool clear spring
+    rippled forth, and sat beside its stream and watched its flow till
+    the sun grew high in the heaven, and they felt its shade. Then they
+    betook them to the linden, its branches offered them a welcome
+    shelter, the breezes were sweet and soft beneath its shade, and the
+    couch at its feet was decked with the fairest grass and
+    flowers.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>With these lovers, love of Nature is only second to love of each
+  other. So in the following:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>That same morning had Tristan and his lady-love stolen forth
+    hand in hand and come full early, through the morning dew, to the
+    flowery meadow and the lovely vale. Dove and nightingale saluted
+    them sweetly, greeting their friends Tristan and Iseult. The wild
+    wood birds bade them welcome in their own tongue ... it was as if
+    they had conspired among themselves to give the lovers a morning
+    greeting. They sang from the leafy branches in changeful wise,
+    answering each other in song and refrain. The spring that charmed
+    their eye and ear whispered a welcome, even as did the linden with
+    its rustling leaves. The blossoming trees, the fair meadow, the
+    flowers, and the green grass--all that bloomed laughed at their
+    coming; the dew which cooled their feet and refreshed their heart
+    offered a silent greeting.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The amorous passion was the soil in which, in its early narrow
+  stages, sympathy for Nature grew up. Was it the thirteenth-century
+  lyrics, the love-songs of the Minnesingers, which unfolded the germ?
+  For the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg086" id=
+  "pg086">086</a></span>lyric is the form in which the deepest
+  expression can be given to feeling for Nature, and in which she
+  either appears as background, frame, or ornament, or, by borrowing a
+  soul or symbolizing thought and feeling, blends with the inner
+  life.</p>
+
+  <p>As the German court epics took their material from France, so the
+  German love-songs were inspired by the Provençal troubadours. The
+  national differences stand out clear to view: the vivid glowing
+  Provençal is fresher, more vehement, and mettlesome; the dreamy
+  German more monotonous, tame, and melancholy. The one is given to
+  proud daring, wooing, battle, and the triumph of victory; the other
+  to musing, loving, and brooding enthusiasm. The stamp of the
+  occasional, of improvisation, is upon all Provençal work; while with
+  the German Minnesingers, everything--Nature as well as love--tends to
+  be stereotyped, monotonous.</p>
+
+  <p>The scanty remains of Troubadour songs<a href=
+  "#d7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> often shew mind and Nature very strikingly
+  brought together, either in harmony or contrast. For example, Bernard
+  von Ventadour (1195):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It may annoy others to see the foliage fall from the trees, but
+    it pleases me greatly; one cannot fancy I should long for leaves
+    and flowers when she, my dear one, is haughty to me.</p>
+
+    <p>Cold and snow become flowers and greenery under her charming
+    glance.</p>
+
+    <p>As I slumber at night, I am waked by the sweet song of the
+    nightingale; nothing but love in my mind quite thrilled by shudders
+    of delight.</p>
+
+    <p>God! could I be a swallow and sweep through the air, I would go
+    at midnight to her little chamber.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When I behold the lark up spring</p>
+
+    <p>To meet the bright sun joyfully,</p>
+
+    <p>How he forgets to poise his wing</p>
+
+    <p>In his gay spirit's revelry.</p>
+
+    <p>Alas! that mournful thoughts should spring</p>
+
+    <p>E'en from that happy songster's glee!</p>
+
+    <p>Strange that such gladdening sight should bring</p>
+
+    <p>Not joy but pining care to me.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg087" id="pg087">087</a></span> A
+  very modern thought which calls to mind Theodore Storm's touching
+  lines after the death of his wife:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>But this I cannot endure, that the sun smiles as before, clocks
+    strike and bells ring as in thy lifetime, and day and night still
+    follow each other.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He connects spring with love:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When grass grows green and fresh leaves spring</p>
+
+    <p>And flowers are budding on the plain,</p>
+
+    <p>When nightingales so sweetly sing</p>
+
+    <p>And through the greenwood swells the strain,</p>
+
+    <p>Then joy I in the song and in the flower,</p>
+
+    <p>Joy in myself but in my lady more;</p>
+
+    <p>All objects round my spirit turns to joy,</p>
+
+    <p>But most from her my rapture rises high.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Arnold von Mareuil (about 1200) sings in the same way:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>O! how sweet the breeze of April</p>
+
+    <p>Breathing soft, as May draws near,</p>
+
+    <p>While through nights serene and gentle</p>
+
+    <p>Songs of gladness meet the ear.</p>
+
+    <p>Every bird his well-known language</p>
+
+    <p>Warbling in the morning's pride,</p>
+
+    <p>Revelling on in joy and gladness</p>
+
+    <p>By his happy partner's side....</p>
+
+    <p>With such sounds of bliss around me,</p>
+
+    <p>Who could wear a saddened heart?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He calls his lady-love</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The fairest creature which Nature has produced here below,
+    fairer than I can express and faker than a beautiful May day, than
+    sunshine in March, shade in summer, than May roses, April rain, the
+    flower of beauty, mirror of love, the key of Fame.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Bertran de Born too sings:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The beautiful spring delights me well</p>
+
+    <p>When flowers and leaves are growing,</p>
+
+    <p>And it pleases my heart to hear the swell</p>
+
+    <p>Of the bird's sweet chorus flowing</p>
+
+    <p>In the echoing wood, etc.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg088" id="pg088">088</a></span>
+
+  <p>The Greek lyrists up to Alexandrian times contented themselves
+  with implying indirectly that nothing delighted them so much as May
+  and its delights; but these singers implicitly state it. The German
+  Minnesingers too<a href="#d8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> are loud in praise
+  of spring, as in that anonymous song:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>I think nothing so good nor worthy of praise</p>
+
+    <p>As a fair rose and my good man's love;</p>
+
+    <p>The song of the little birds in the woods is clear to many a
+    heart.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and summer is greeted with:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The good are glad that summer comes. See what a benefit it is to
+    many hearts.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The Troubadour motive is here too:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Winter and snow seem as beautiful flowers and clover to me, when
+    I have embraced her.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and Kürenberg makes a lady sing:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>When I stand there alone in my shift and think of thee, noble
+    knight, I blush like a rose on its thorn.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Delight in summer, complaint of winter--this is the fundamental
+  chord struck again and again; there is scarcely any trace of blending
+  the feelings of the lover with those of Nature. It is a monotonous
+  repetition of a few themes, of flowers and little birds as messengers
+  of love, and lady-loves who are brighter than the sun, whose presence
+  brings spring in winter or cheers a grey and snowy day.</p>
+
+  <p>Deitmar von Eist greets spring with:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Ah! now the time of the little birds' singing is coming for us,
+    the great lime is greening, the long winter is past, one sees
+    well-shaped flowers spread their glory over the heath. 'Tis a joy
+    to many hearts, and a comfort too to mine.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In another song the birds and roses remind him of a happy past and
+  of the lady of his heart. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg089" id=
+  "pg089">089</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>A little bird sang on the lime o'erhead,</p>
+
+    <p>Its song resounded through the wood</p>
+
+    <p>And turned my heart back to another place;</p>
+
+    <p>And once again I saw the roses blow,</p>
+
+    <p>And they brought back the many thoughts</p>
+
+    <p>I cherish of a lady.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>A lady says to a falcon:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>You happy falcon you! You fly whither you will!</p>
+
+    <p>And choose the tree you like in the wood.</p>
+
+    <p>I have done the same. I chose a husband</p>
+
+    <p>For myself, whom my eyes chose.</p>
+
+    <p>So 'tis fitting for beautiful women.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In winter he complains:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Alas for summer delight! The birds' song has disappeared with
+    the leaves of the lime. Time has changed, the nightingales are
+    dumb. They have given up their sweet song and the wood has faded
+    from above.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Uhland's beautiful motive in <i>Spring Faith</i>, that light and
+  hope will come back to the oppressed heart with the flowers and the
+  green, is given, though stiffly and dimly, by Heinrich von
+  Veldegge:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I have some delightful news; the flowers are sprouting on the
+    heath, the birds singing in the wood. Where snow lay before, there
+    is now green clover, bedewed in the morning. Who will may enjoy it.
+    No one forces me to, I am not free from cares.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and elsewhere:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>At the time when flowers and grass come to us, all that made my
+    heart sad will be made good again.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The loss of the beauty of summer makes him sad:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Since the bright sunlight has changed to cold, and the little
+    birds have left off singing their song, and cold nights have faded
+    the foliage of the lime, my heart is sad.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Ulrich von Guotenberg makes a pretty comparison: <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg090" id="pg090">090</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>She is my summer joy, she sows flowers and clover</p>
+
+    <p>In my heart's meadow, whence I, whate'er befall,</p>
+
+    <p>Must teem with richer bliss: the light of her eyes</p>
+
+    <p>Makes me bloom, as the hot sun the dripping trees....</p>
+
+    <p>Her fair salute, her mild command</p>
+
+    <p>Softly inclining, make May rain drop down into my heart.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Heinrich von Rugge laments winter:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The dear nightingale too has forgotten how beautifully she sang
+    ... the birds are mourning everywhere.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and longs for summer:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I always craved blissful days.... I liked to hear the little
+    birds' delightful songs. Winter cannot but be hard and immeasurably
+    long. I should be glad if it would pass away.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Heinrich von Morungen:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>How did you get into my heart?</p>
+
+    <p>It must ever be the same with me.</p>
+
+    <p>As the noon receives her light from the sun,</p>
+
+    <p>So the glance of your bright eyes, when you leave me,</p>
+
+    <p>Sinks into my heart.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He calls his love his light of May, his Easter Day:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>She is my sweetheart, a sweet May</p>
+
+    <p>Bringing delights, a sunshine without cloud.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and says, in promising fidelity: 'My steady mind is not like the
+  wind.'</p>
+
+  <p>Reinmar says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When winter is over</p>
+
+    <p>I saw the heath with the red flowers, delightful there....</p>
+
+    <p>The long winter is past away; when I saw the green leaves</p>
+
+    <p>I gave up much of my sorrow.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In a time of trouble he cried:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>To me it must always be winter.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg091" id="pg091">091</a></span> So
+  we see that Troubadour references to Nature were drawn from a very
+  limited area. Individual grasp of scenery was entirely lacking, it
+  did not occur to them to seek Nature for her own sake. Their
+  comparisons were monotonous, and their scenes bare, stereotyped
+  arabesques, not woven into the tissue of lyric feeling. Their ruling
+  motives were joy in spring and complaint of winter. Wood, flowers,
+  clover, the bright sun, the moon (once), roses, lilies, and woodland
+  birds, especially the nightingale, served them as elementary or
+  landscape figures.</p>
+
+  <p>Wilhelm Grimm says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The Minnesingers talk often enough of mild May, the
+    nightingale's song, the dew shining on the flowers of the heath,
+    but always in relation only to their own feelings reflected in
+    them. To indicate sad moods they used faded leaves, silent birds,
+    seed buried in snow.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and Humboldt:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or the
+    Crusades in Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, have enriched the art
+    of poetry in Germany with new natural pictures, can only generally
+    be answered by the negative. It is not remarked that the
+    acquaintance with the East gave any new direction to the songs of
+    the minstrels. The Crusaders came little into actual contact with
+    the Saracens; they even lived in a state of great restraint with
+    other nations who fought in the same cause. One of the oldest lyric
+    poets was Friedrich of Hausen. He perished in the army of
+    Barbarossa. His songs contain many views of the Crusades; but they
+    chiefly express religious sentiments on the pain of being separated
+    from his dear friends. He found no occasion to say anything
+    concerning the country or any of those who took part in the wars,
+    as Reinmar the Elder, Rubin, Neidhart, and Ulrich of Lichtenstein.
+    Reinmar came a pilgrim to Syria, as it appears, in the train of
+    Leopold the 6th, Duke of Austria. He complains that the
+    recollections of his country always haunted him, and drew away his
+    thoughts from God. The date tree has here been mentioned sometimes,
+    when they speak of the palm branches which pious <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg092" id="pg092">092</a></span>pilgrims bore
+    upon their shoulders. I do not remember that the splendid scenery
+    in Italy has excited the fancy of the minstrels who crossed the
+    Alps. Walther, who had wandered about, had only seen the river Po;
+    but Friedank was at Rome. He merely remarked that grass grew in the
+    palaces of those who formerly bore sway there.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>As a fact, even the greatest Minnesinger, Walther, the master
+  lyrist of the thirteenth century, was not ahead of his contemporaries
+  in this matter. His <i>Spring Longing</i> begins:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Winter has wrought us harm everywhere,</p>
+
+    <p>Forest and field are dreary and bare</p>
+
+    <p>Where the sweet voices of summer once were,</p>
+
+    <p>Yet by the road where I see maiden fair</p>
+
+    <p>Tossing the ball, the birds' song is there.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and <i>Spring and Women</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When flowers through the grass begin to spring</p>
+
+    <p>As though to greet with smiles the sun's bright rays,</p>
+
+    <p>On some May morning, and in joyous measure,</p>
+
+    <p>Small songbirds make the dewy forest ring</p>
+
+    <p>With a sweet chorus of sweet roundelays,</p>
+
+    <p>Hath life in all its store a purer pleasure?</p>
+
+    <p>'Tis half a Paradise on earth.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet ask me what I hold of equal worth,</p>
+
+    <p>And I will tell what better still</p>
+
+    <p>Ofttimes before hath pleased mine eyes,</p>
+
+    <p>And, while I see it, ever will.</p>
+
+    <p>When a noble maiden, fair and pure,</p>
+
+    <p>With raiment rich and tresses deftly braided,</p>
+
+    <p>Mingles, for pleasure's sake, in company,</p>
+
+    <p>High bred, with eyes that, laughingly demure,</p>
+
+    <p>Glance round at times and make all else seem faded,</p>
+
+    <p>As, when the sun shines, all the stars must die.</p>
+
+    <p>Let May bud forth in all its splendour;</p>
+
+    <p>What sight so sweet can he engender</p>
+
+    <p>As with this picture to compare?</p>
+
+    <p>Unheeded leave we buds and blooms,</p>
+
+    <p>And gaze upon the lovely fair!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The grace in this rendering of a familiar motive, and the
+  individuality in the following <i>Complaint of Winter</i>, were both
+  unusual at the time: <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg093" id=
+  "pg093">093</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Erewhile the world shone red and blue</p>
+
+    <p>And green in wood and upland too,</p>
+
+    <p>And birdlets sang on the bough.</p>
+
+    <p>But now it's grown grey and lost its glow,</p>
+
+    <p>And there's only the croak of the winter crow,</p>
+
+    <p>Whence--many a ruffled brow!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Elsewhere he says that his lady's favour turns his winter to
+  spring, and adds:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Cold winter 'twas no more for me,</p>
+
+    <p>Though others felt it bitterly;</p>
+
+    <p>To me it was mid May.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He has many pictures of Nature and pretty comparisons, but the
+  stereotyped style predominates--heath, flowers, grass, and
+  nightingales. The pearl of the collection is the naive song which
+  touches sensuous feeling, like the <i>Song of Solomon</i>, with the
+  magic light of innocence:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Under the lime on the heath where I sat with my love,</p>
+
+    <p>There you would find</p>
+
+    <p>The grass and the flowers all crushed--</p>
+
+    <p>Sweetly the nightingale sang in the vale by the wood.</p>
+
+    <p>Tandaradei!</p>
+
+    <p>When I came up to the meadow my lover was waiting me there.</p>
+
+    <p>Ah! what a greeting I had! Gracious Mary, 'tis bliss to me
+    still!</p>
+
+    <p>Tandaradei! Did he kiss me, you ask? Look at the red of my
+    lips!</p>
+
+    <p>Of sweet flowers of all sorts he made us a bed,</p>
+
+    <p>I wager who passes now smiles at the sight,</p>
+
+    <p>The roses would still show just where my head lay.</p>
+
+    <p>Tandaradei!</p>
+
+    <p>But how he caressed me, that any but one</p>
+
+    <p>Should know that, God forbid! I were shamed if they did;</p>
+
+    <p>Only he and I know it,</p>
+
+    <p>And one little birdie who never will tell.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So we see that interest in Nature in the literature of the
+  Crusaders very seldom went beyond the utilitarian bounds of pleasure
+  and admiration in fertility and pleasantness; and the German
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg094" id=
+  "pg094">094</a></span>national epics rarely alluded to her traits
+  even by way of comparison. The court epics shewed some advance, and
+  sympathy was distinctly traceable in Gottfried, and even attained to
+  artistic expression in his lyrics, where his own feelings chimed with
+  Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>For the rest, the Minnesingers' descriptions were all alike. The
+  charm of Nature apart from other considerations, delight in her for
+  her own sake alone, was unknown to the time.</p>
+
+  <p>Hitherto we have only spoken of literature.</p>
+
+  <p>Feeling for Nature reveals itself in plastic art also, especially
+  in painting; and since the mind of a people is one united organism,
+  the relation between poetry and painting is not one of opposition and
+  mutual exclusion--they rather enlarge and explain, or condition each
+  other.</p>
+
+  <p>As concerns feeling for Nature, it may be taken as a universal
+  rule that landscape-painting only develops when Nature is sought for
+  her own sake, and that so long as scenery merely serves the purpose
+  of ornament in literature, so long it merely serves as accessory and
+  background in painting; whereas, when Nature takes a wider space in
+  prose and poetry, and becomes an end of representation in herself,
+  the moment for the birth of landscape-painting has come. We will
+  follow the stages of the development of painting very briefly, from
+  Woltmann and Woermann's excellent book,<a href=
+  "#d9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> which, if it throws no fresh light upon our
+  subject, illustrates what has just been said in a striking
+  manner.</p>
+
+  <p>In the first centuries <i>Anno Domini</i>, painting was wholly
+  proscribed by Christendom. Its technique did not differ from that of
+  antiquity; but Christendom took up an attitude of antagonism. The
+  picture worship of the old religions was opposed to its very origin
+  and essence, and was only gradually introduced into the Christian
+  cult through heathen influences. It is a fact too, easy to explain,
+  especially <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg095" id=
+  "pg095">095</a></span>through its Jewish origin, that Christianity at
+  first felt no need of art, and that this one-sidedness only ceased
+  when the specifically Jewish element in it had died out, and
+  Christendom passed to cultivated Greeks and Romans. In the cemeteries
+  and catacombs of the first three centuries, we find purely decorative
+  work, light vines with Cupids, but also remains of landscapes; for
+  instance, in the oldest part of the cemetery of Domitilla at Rome,
+  where the ceiling decoration consists of shepherds, fishers, and
+  biblical scenes. The ceiling picture in St Lucina (second century)
+  has apparently the Good Shepherd in the middle, and round it
+  alternate pictures of Him and of the praying Madonna; whilst in the
+  middle it has also charming divisions with fields, branches with
+  leaves and flowers, birds, masks, and floating genii.</p>
+
+  <p>In Byzantine painting too, the influence of antiquity was still
+  visible, especially in a Psaltery with a Commentary and fourteen
+  large pictures. David appears here as a shepherd; a beautiful woman's
+  form, exhibiting the melody, is leaning with her left arm upon his
+  shoulder; a nymph's head peeps out of the foliage; and in front we
+  have Bethlehem, and the mountain god resting in a bold position under
+  a rock; sheep, goats, and water are close by, and a landscape with
+  classic buildings, streams, and mountains forms the background; it is
+  very poetically conceived. Elsewhere, too, personifications recur, in
+  which classic beauty is still visible, mixed with severe Christian
+  forms.</p>
+
+  <p>At the end of the tenth century began the Romantic period, which
+  closed in the thirteenth.</p>
+
+  <p>The brilliant progress made by architecture paved the way for the
+  other arts; minds trained in its laws began to look for law in
+  organic Nature too, and were no longer content with the old uncertain
+  and arbitrary shapes. But as no independent feeling for Nature, in
+  the widest sense of the term, existed, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg096" id="pg096">096</a></span>mediæval art treated her, not
+  according to her own laws, but to those of architecture. With the
+  development of the Gothic style, from the thirteenth century on, art
+  became a citizen's craft, a branch of industry. Heretofore it had
+  possessed but one means of expression--religious festival or
+  ceremony, severely ecclesiastical. This limit was now removed. The
+  artist lived a wide life, open to impressions from Nature, his
+  imagination fed by poetry with new ideas and feelings, and constantly
+  stimulated by the love of pleasure, which was so vehement among all
+  classes that it turned every civil and ecclesiastical event to
+  histrionic purposes, and even made its influence felt upon the
+  clergy. The strong religious feeling which pervaded the Middle Ages
+  still ruled, and even rose to greater enthusiasm, in accordance with
+  the spirit of the day; but it was no longer a matter of blind
+  submission of the will, but of conscious acceptance.</p>
+
+  <p>It is true that knowledge of the external world was as yet very
+  limited; the painter had not explored and mastered it, but only used
+  it as a means to represent a certain realm of feeling, studying it
+  just so far as this demanded. We have seen the same in the case of
+  poetry. The beginnings of realistic painting were visible, although,
+  as, for example, in representing animals, no individuality was
+  reached.</p>
+
+  <p>From the middle of the fourteenth century a new French school
+  sprang up. The external world was more keenly and accurately studied,
+  especially on its graceful side. It was only at the end of that
+  period that painting felt the need to develop the background, and
+  indicate actual surroundings by blue sky, hills, Gothic buildings,
+  and conventional trees. These were given in linear perspective; of
+  aerial perspective there was none. The earlier taste still ruled in
+  initialling and border decorations; but little flowers were added by
+  degrees to the thorn-leaf pattern, and birds, sometimes angels,
+  introduced.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg097" id="pg097">097</a></span>
+  The altar-piece at Cologne, at the end of the fourteenth century, is
+  more subjective in conception, and full of lyric feeling. Poetic
+  feeling came into favour, especially in Madonna pictures of purely
+  idyllic character, which were painted with most charming
+  surroundings. Instead of a throne and worshipping figures, Mary was
+  placed sitting comfortably with the Child on flowery turf, and saints
+  around her; and although the background might be golden instead of
+  landscape, yet all the stems and blossoms in the grass were naturally
+  and accurately treated. In a little picture in the town museum at
+  Frankfort, the Madonna is seated in a rose garden under fruit trees
+  gay with birds, and reading a book; a table with food and drinks
+  stands close by, and a battlemented wall surrounds the garden. She is
+  absorbed in contemplation; three female saints are attending to
+  mundane business close by, one drawing water from a brook, another
+  picking cherries, the third teaching the child Christ to play the
+  zither. There is real feeling in the whole picture, and the landscape
+  is worked in with distinct reference to the chief idea.</p>
+
+  <p>Hence, although there were many isolated attempts to shew that
+  realistic and individual study of Nature had begun,
+  landscape-painting had not advanced beyond the position of a
+  background, treated in a way more or less suited to the main subject
+  of the picture; and trees, rocks, meadows, flowers, were still only
+  framework, ornament, as in the poetry of the Minnesingers.<a href=
+  "#d10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg098" id=
+  "pg098">098</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch4" id="ch4">CHAPTER IV</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>INDIVIDUALISM AND SENTIMENTAL FEELING AT THE RENAISSANCE</h3>
+
+  <p>In a certain sense all times are transitional to those who live in
+  them, since what is old is always in process of being destroyed and
+  giving way to the new. But there are landmarks in the general
+  development of culture, which mark off definite periods and divide
+  what has been from what is beginning. Hellenism was such a landmark
+  in antiquity, the Renaissance in the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+  <p>Without overlooking the differences between Greek and Italian,
+  classic and modern, which are relative and not absolute, it is
+  instructive to note the great likeness between these two epochs. The
+  limits of their culture will stand out more clearly, if, by the aid
+  of Helbig's researches and Burckhardt's masterly account of the
+  Renaissance, we range the chief points of that likeness side by
+  side.</p>
+
+  <p>They were epochs in which an icy crust, which had been lying over
+  human thought and feeling, melted as if before a spring breeze. It is
+  true that the theory of life which now began to prevail was not
+  absolutely new; the stages of growth in a nation's culture are never
+  isolated; it was the result of the enlargement of various factors
+  already present, and their fusion with a flood of incoming ones.</p>
+
+  <p>The Ionic-Doric Greek kingdom widened out in Alexander's time to a
+  Hellenic-Asiatic one, and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg099"
+  id="pg099">099</a></span>barriers of the Romano-Germanic Middle Ages
+  fell with the Crusades and the great voyages of discovery. Hellenism
+  and the Renaissance brought about the transition from antiquity and
+  the mediæval to the specifically modern; the Roman Empire inherited
+  Hellenism, the Reformation the Renaissance. Both had their roots in
+  the past, both made new growth which blossomed at a later time. In
+  Hellenism, Oriental elements were mixed with the Greek; in the
+  Renaissance, it was a mixture of Germanic with the native Italian
+  which caused the revival of classic antiquity and new culture.
+  Burckhardt says<a href="#e1"><sup>[1]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Elsewhere in Europe men deliberately and with reflection
+    borrowed this or the other element of classical civilization; in
+    Italy, the sympathies both of the learned and of the people were
+    naturally engaged on the side of antiquity as a whole, which stood
+    to them as a symbol of past greatness. The Latin language too was
+    easy to an Italian, and the numerous monuments and documents in
+    which the country abounded facilitated a return to the past. With
+    this tendency, other elements--the popular character which time had
+    now greatly modified, the political institutions imported by the
+    Lombards from Germany, chivalry and northern forms of civilization,
+    and the influence of religion and the Church--combined to produce
+    the modern Italian spirit, which was destined to serve as the model
+    and ideal for the whole western world.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The distance between the works of the Greek artists and
+  poets--between Homer, Sophocles, and Phidias on the one hand, and the
+  Alexandrian Theocritus and Kallimachos and the Pergamos sculptures on
+  the other--is greater than lies between the <i>Nibelungenlied</i> and
+  the Minnesingers, and Dante and Petrarch. In both cases one finds
+  oneself in a new world of thought and feeling, where each and all
+  bears the stamp of change, in matters political and social as well as
+  artistic. If, for example, by the aid of Von Helbig's
+  researches,<a href="#e2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> we conjure up a
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg100" id=
+  "pg100">100</a></span>picture of the chief points in the history of
+  Greek culture, we are astonished to see how almost every point
+  recurred at the Renaissance, as described by Burckhardt.</p>
+
+  <p>The chief mark of both epochs was individualism, the discovery of
+  the individual. In Hellenism it was the barriers of race and position
+  which fell; in the Renaissance, the veil, woven of mysticism and
+  delusion, which had obscured mediæval faith, thought, and feeling.
+  Every man recognized himself to be an independent unit of church,
+  state, people, corporation--of all those bodies in which in the
+  Middle Ages he had been entirely merged.</p>
+
+  <p>Monarchical institutions arose in Hellenism; but the individual
+  was no longer content to serve them only as one among many; he must
+  needs develop his own powers. Private affairs began to preponderate
+  over public; the very physiognomy of the race shewed an individual
+  stamp.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>After the time of Alexander the Great, portrait shewed most
+    marked individuality. Those of the previous period had a certain
+    uniform expression; one would have looked in vain among them for
+    the diversities in contemporary types shewn by comparing
+    Alexander's vivid face full of stormy energy, Menander's with its
+    peculiar look of irony, and the elaborate savant-physiognomy of
+    Aristotle. (HELBIG.)</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And Burckhardt says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>At the close of the thirteenth century Italy began to swarm with
+    individuality; the charm laid upon human personality was dissolved,
+    and a thousand figures meet us each in its own special shape and
+    dress.... Despotism, as we have already seen, fostered in the
+    highest degree the individuality, not only of the tyrant or
+    Condottiere himself, but also of the men whom he protected or used
+    as his tools--the secretary, minister, poet, or companion.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Political indifference brought about a high degree of
+  cosmopolitanism, especially among those who <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg101" id="pg101">101</a></span>were banished. 'My
+  country is the whole world,' said Dante; and Ghiberti: 'Only he who
+  has learned everything is nowhere a stranger; robbed of his fortune
+  and without friends, he is yet a citizen of every country, and can
+  fearlessly despise the changes of fortune.'</p>
+
+  <p>In both Hellenism and the Renaissance, an effort was made in art
+  and science to see things as they really were. In art, detail was
+  industriously cultivated; but its naturalism, especially as to
+  undraped figures, was due to a sensuous refinement of gallantry and
+  erotic feeling. The sensuous flourished no less in Greek times than
+  in those of Boccaccio; but the most characteristic peculiarity of
+  Hellenism was its intentional revelling in feeling--its
+  sentimentality. There was a trace of melancholy upon many faces of
+  the time, and unhappy love in endless variations was the poet's main
+  theme. Petrarch's lyre was tuned to the same key; a melancholy
+  delight in grief was the constant burden of his song.</p>
+
+  <p>In Greece the sight of foreign lands had furthered the natural
+  sciences, especially geography, astronomy, zoology, and botany; and
+  the striving for universality at the Renaissance, which was as much a
+  part of its individualism as its passion for fame, was aided by the
+  widening of the physical and mental horizons through the Crusades and
+  voyages of discovery. Dante was not only the greatest poet of his
+  time, but an astronomer; Petrarch was geographer and cartographer,
+  and, at the end of the fifteenth century, with Paolo Toscanelli,
+  Lucca Baccioli, and Leonardo da Vinci, Italy was beyond all
+  comparison the first nation in Europe in mathematics and natural
+  science.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>A significant proof of the wide-spread interest in natural
+    history is found in the zeal which shewed itself at an early period
+    for the collection and comparative study of plants and animals.
+    Italy claims <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg102" id=
+    "pg102">102</a></span>to be the first creator of botanical
+    gardens.... princes and wealthy men, in laying out their pleasure
+    gardens, instinctively made a point of collecting the greatest
+    possible number of different plants in all their species and
+    varieties. (BURCKHARDT.)</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Leon Battista Alberti, a man of wide theoretical knowledge as well
+  as technical and artistic facility of all sorts, entered into the
+  whole life around him with a sympathetic intensity that might almost
+  be called nervous.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>At the sight of noble trees and waving corn-fields he shed tears
+    ... more than once, when he was ill, the sight of a beautiful
+    landscape cured him. (BURCKHARDT.)</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He defined a beautiful landscape as one in which one could see in
+  its different parts, sea, mountain, lake or spring, dry rocks or
+  plains, wood and valley. Therefore he cared for variety; and, what is
+  more striking, in contrast to level country, he admired mountains and
+  rocks!</p>
+
+  <p>In Hellenism, hunting, to which only the Macedonians had been
+  addicted before, became a fashion, and was enjoyed with Oriental pomp
+  in the <i>paradeisoi</i>. Writers drew most of their comparisons from
+  it. In the Renaissance, Petrarch did the same, and animals often
+  served as emblems of state--their condition ominous of good or
+  evil--and were fostered with superstitious veneration, as, for
+  example, the lions at Florence.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus the growth of the natural sciences increased interest in the
+  external world, and sensitiveness brought about a sentimental
+  attitude towards Nature in Hellenism and in the Renaissance.</p>
+
+  <p>Both discovered in Nature a source of purest pleasure; the
+  Renaissance feeling was, in fact, the extension and enhancement of
+  the Hellenic. Burckhardt overlooked the fact that beautiful scenery
+  was appreciated and described for its own sake in Hellenism, but he
+  says very justly;</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg103" id=
+  "pg103">103</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The Italians are the first among modern peoples by whom the
+    outward world was seen and felt as something beautiful.... By the
+    year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine hearty
+    enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found
+    lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations, which
+    gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena
+    of Nature--spring with its flowers, the green fields and the woods.
+    But these pictures are all foreground without perspective.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Among the Minnesingers there were traces of feeling for Nature;
+  but only for certain stereotyped phases. Of the individuality of a
+  landscape, its characteristic colour, form, and light, not a word was
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>Even the Carmina Burana were not much ahead of the Minnesingers in
+  this respect, although they deserve a closer examination.</p>
+
+  <p>These Latin poems of wandering clerks probably belong to the
+  twelfth century, and though no doubt a product in which the whole of
+  Europe had a share, their best pieces must be ascribed to a French
+  hand. Latin poetry lives again in them, with a freshness the
+  Carlovingian Renaissance never reached; they are mediæval in form,
+  but full of a frank enjoyment of life and its pleasures, which hardly
+  any northerner of that day possessed. Often enough this degenerated
+  into frivolity; but the stir of national awakening after the long
+  sleep of the Middle Ages is felt like a spring breeze through them
+  all.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a far cry from the view of Nature we saw in the Carlovingian
+  monks, to these highly-coloured verses. The dim light of churches and
+  bare cell walls may have doubled the monks' appreciation of blue
+  skies and open-air life; but they were fettered by the constant fight
+  with the senses; Nature to them must needs be less a work of God for
+  man's delight, than a dangerous means of seduction. 'They wandered
+  through Nature with timid misgiving, and their anxious fantasy
+  depicted <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg104" id=
+  "pg104">104</a></span>forms of terror or marvellous rescues.<a href=
+  "#e3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> The idyllic pleasure in the simple charms of
+  Nature, especially in the monastery garden of the Carlovingian time,
+  contrasts strikingly with the tone of these very mundane <i>vagantes
+  clerici</i>, for whom Nature had not only long been absorbed and
+  freed from all demoniac influence, but peopled by the charming forms
+  of the old mythic poems, and made for the joy and profit of men, in
+  the widest and naivest sense of the words.</p>
+
+  <p>Spring songs, as with the Minnesingers, take up most of the space;
+  but the theme is treated with greater variety. Enjoyment of life and
+  Nature breathes through them all.</p>
+
+  <p>One runs thus:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Spring cometh, and the earth is decked and studded with vernal
+    flowers. The harmony of the birds' returning song rouses the heart
+    to be glad. It is the time of joy.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Songs 98 to 118 rejoice that winter is gone; for instance:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Now in the mild springtime Flora opens the lap which the cold
+    frost had locked in cruel time of winter; the zephyr with gentle
+    murmur cometh with the spring; the grove is clad in leaves. The
+    nightingale is singing, the fields are gay with divers hues. It is
+    sweet to walk in the wooded glens, it is sweeter to pluck the lily
+    with the rose, it is sweetest of all to sport with a lovely
+    maiden.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Another makes a similar confession, for Nature and amorous passion
+  are the two strings of these lyres:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Beneath the pleasant foliage of a tree 'tis sweet to rest, while
+    the nightingale sings her plaintive song; sweeter still, to sport
+    in the grass with a fair maiden.... O, to what changeful moods is
+    the heart of the lover prone! As the vessel that wanders o'er the
+    waves without an anchor, so doth Love's uncertain warfare toss
+    'twixt fear and hope.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg105" id="pg105">105</a></span>
+  The beauties of Nature are drawn upon to describe the fair maiden;
+  her eyes are compared to stars, her colour to lilies and snow, her
+  mouth to a rose, her kiss 'doth rend in sunder all the clouds of
+  care.'</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>In the flowery season I sat beneath a shady tree while the birds
+    sang in the groves ... and listened to my Thisbe's talk, the talk I
+    love and long for; and we spoke of the sweet interchange of love,
+    and in the doubtful balance of the mind wanton love and chastity
+    were wavering.</p>
+
+    <p>I have seen the bright green of flowers, I have seen the flower
+    of flowers, I have seen the rose of May; I have seen the star that
+    is brighter than all other, that is glorious and fair above all
+    other, through whom may I ever spend my life in love.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>On such a theme the poet rings endless changes. The most charming
+  is the poem <i>Phyllis and Flora</i>. Actual landscape is not given,
+  but details are treated with freshness and care:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>In the flowery season of the year, under a sky serene, while the
+    earth's lap was painted with many colours, when the messenger of
+    Aurora had put to flight the stars, sleep left the eyes of Phyllis
+    and of Flora, two maidens whose beauty answered to the morning
+    light. The breeze of spring was gently whispering, the place was
+    green and gay with grass, and in the grass itself there flowed a
+    living brook that played and babbled as it went. And that the sun's
+    heat might not harm the maidens, near the stream there was a
+    spreading pine, decked with leaves and spreading far its
+    interweaving branches, nor could the heat penetrate from without.
+    The maidens sat, the grass supplied the seat.... They intend to go
+    to Love's Paradise: at the entrance of the grove a rivulet murmurs;
+    the breeze is fragrant with myrrh and balsam; they hear the music
+    of a hundred timbrels and lutes. All the notes of the birds resound
+    in all their fulness; they hear the sweet and pleasant song of the
+    blackbird, the garrulous lark, the turtle and the nightingale,
+    etc.... He who stayed there would become immortal; every tree there
+    rejoices in its own fruit; the ways are scented with myrrh and
+    cinnamon and amomum; the master could be forced out of his
+    house.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg106" id="pg106">106</a></span>
+  The first to shew proof of a deepening effect of Nature on the human
+  spirit was Dante.</p>
+
+  <p>Dante and Petrarch elaborated the Hellenistic feeling for Nature;
+  hence the further course of the Renaissance displayed all its
+  elements, but with increased subjectivity and individuality.</p>
+
+  <p>No one, since the days of Hellenism, had climbed mountains for the
+  sake of the view--Dante was the first to do it. And although, in
+  ranging heaven, earth, hell, and paradise in the <i>Divina
+  Commedia</i>, he rarely described real Nature, and then mostly in
+  comparisons; yet, as Humboldt pointed out, how incomparably in a few
+  vigorous lines he wakens the sense of the morning airs and the light
+  on the distant sea in the first canto of Purgatorio:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour,</p>
+
+    <p>Which fled before it,-so that from afar</p>
+
+    <p>I recognized the trembling of the sea.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And how vivid this is:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i12">The air</p>
+
+      <p>Impregnate changed to water. Fell the rain:</p>
+
+      <p>And to the fosses came all that the land</p>
+
+      <p>Contain'd not, and, as mightiest streams are wont,</p>
+
+      <p>To the great river with such headlong sweep</p>
+
+      <p>Rush'd, that naught stayed its course.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade</p>
+
+      <p>With lively greenness the new-springing day</p>
+
+      <p>Attempered, eager now to roam and search</p>
+
+      <p>Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank;</p>
+
+      <p>Along the champaign leisurely my way</p>
+
+      <p>Pursuing, o'er the ground that on all sides</p>
+
+      <p>Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air,</p>
+
+      <p>That intermitted never, never veered,</p>
+
+      <p>Smote on my temples gently, as a wind</p>
+
+      <p>Of softest influence, at which the sprays,</p>
+
+      <p>Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part</p>
+
+      <p>Where first the holy mountain casts his shade;</p>
+
+      <p>Yet were not so disordered; but that still</p>
+
+      <p>Upon their top the feather'd quiristers</p>
+
+      <p>Applied their wonted art, and with full joy</p>
+
+      <p>Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg107" id=
+      "pg107">107</a></span>Amid the leaves, that to their jocund
+      lays</p>
+
+      <p>Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch</p>
+
+      <p>Along the piny forests on the shore</p>
+
+      <p>Of Chiassi rolls the gathering melody,</p>
+
+      <p>When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed</p>
+
+      <p>The dripping south. Already had my steps,</p>
+
+      <p>Tho' slow, so far into that ancient wood</p>
+
+      <p>Transported me, I could not ken the place</p>
+
+      <p>Where I had enter'd; when behold! my path</p>
+
+      <p>Was bounded by a rill, which to the left</p>
+
+      <p>With little rippling waters bent the grass</p>
+
+      <p>That issued from its brink.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and this of the heavenly Paradise:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">I looked,</p>
+
+    <p>And, in the likeness of a river, saw</p>
+
+    <p>Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves</p>
+
+    <p>Flash'd up effulgence, as they glided on</p>
+
+    <p>'Twixt banks, on either side, painted with spring,</p>
+
+    <p>Incredible how fair; and, from the tide,</p>
+
+    <p>There, ever and anon outstarting, flew</p>
+
+    <p>Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flowers</p>
+
+    <p>Did set them, like to rubies chased in gold;</p>
+
+    <p>Then, as if drunk with odours, plunged again</p>
+
+    <p>Into the wondrous flood, from which, as one</p>
+
+    <p>Re-entered, still another rose.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His numerous comparisons conjure up whole scenes, perfect in truth
+  to Nature, and shewing a keen and widely ranging eye. For
+  example:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">Bellowing, there groaned</p>
+
+    <p>A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn</p>
+
+    <p>By warring winds.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Inferno.)</p>
+
+    <p>O'er better waves to steer her rapid course</p>
+
+    <p>The light bark of my genius lifts the sail,</p>
+
+    <p>Well pleased to leave so cruel sea behind.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Purgatorio.)</p>
+
+    <p>All ye, who in small bark have following sail'd,</p>
+
+    <p>Eager to listen on the adventurous track</p>
+
+    <p>Of my proud keel, that singing cuts her way.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Paradiso.)</p>
+
+    <p>As sails full spread and bellying with the wind</p>
+
+    <p>Drop suddenly collapsed, if the mast split,</p>
+
+    <p>So to the ground down dropp'd the cruel fiend.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Inferno.)</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg108" id=
+    "pg108">108</a></span></p>
+
+    <p class="i8">As, near upon the hour of dawn,</p>
+
+    <p>Through the thick vapours Mars with fiery beam</p>
+
+    <p>Glares down in west, over the ocean floor.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Purgatorio.)</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">As 'fore the sun</p>
+
+    <p>That weighs our vision down, and veils his form</p>
+
+    <p>In light transcendent, thus my virtue fail'd</p>
+
+    <p>Unequal.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Purgatorio.)</p>
+
+    <p class="i6">As sunshine cheers</p>
+
+    <p>Limbs numb'd by nightly cold, e'en thus my look</p>
+
+    <p>Unloosed her tongue.</p>
+
+    <p>And now there came o'er the perturbed waves,</p>
+
+    <p>Loud crashing, terrible, a sound that made</p>
+
+    <p>Either shore tremble, as if of a wind</p>
+
+    <p>Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung,</p>
+
+    <p>That, 'gainst some forest driving all his might,</p>
+
+    <p>Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls</p>
+
+    <p>Afar; then, onward pressing, proudly sweeps</p>
+
+    <p>His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Inferno.)</p>
+
+    <p>As florets, by the frosty air of night</p>
+
+    <p>Bent down and closed, when day has blanch'd their leaves</p>
+
+    <p>Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems,</p>
+
+    <p>So was my fainting vigour new restored.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Inferno.)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">As fall off the light autumnal leaves,</p>
+
+    <p>One still another following, till the bough</p>
+
+    <p>Strews all its honours on the earth beneath.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Inferno.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Bees, dolphins, rays of sunlight, snow, starlings, doves, frogs, a
+  bull, falcons, fishes, larks, and rooks are all used, generally with
+  characteristic touches of detail.</p>
+
+  <p>Specially tender is this:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>E'en as the bird, who 'mid the leafy bower</p>
+
+      <p>Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night</p>
+
+      <p>With her sweet brood; impatient to descry</p>
+
+      <p>Their wished looks, and to bring home their food,</p>
+
+      <p>In the fond quest, unconscious of her toil; <span class=
+      "pagenum"><a name="pg109" id="pg109">109</a></span></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>She, of the time prevenient, on the spray</p>
+
+      <p>That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze</p>
+
+      <p>Expects the sun, nor, ever, till the dawn</p>
+
+      <p>Removeth from the east her eager ken,</p>
+
+      <p>So stood the dame erect.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The most important forward step was made by Petrarch, and it is
+  strange that this escaped Humboldt in his famous sketch in the second
+  volume of <i>Cosmos</i>, as well as his commentator Schaller, and
+  Friedlander.</p>
+
+  <p>For when we turn from Hellenism to Petrarch, it does not seem as
+  if many centuries lay between; but rather as if notes first struck in
+  the one had just blended into distinct harmony in the other.</p>
+
+  <p>The modern spirit arose from a union of the genius of the Italian
+  people of the thirteenth century with antiquity, and the feeling for
+  Nature had a share in the wider culture, both as to sentimentality
+  and grasp of scenery. Classic and modern joined hands in Petrarch.
+  Many Hellenic motives handed on by Roman poets reappear in his
+  poetry, but always with that something in addition of which antiquity
+  shewed but a trace--the modern subjectivity and individuality. It was
+  the change from early bud to full blossom. He was one of the first to
+  deserve the name of modern--modern, that is, in his whole feeling and
+  mode of thought, in his sentimentality and his melancholy, and in the
+  fact that 'more than most before and after him, he tried to know
+  himself and to hand on to others what he knew.' (Geiger.) It is an
+  appropriate remark of Hettner's, that the phrase, 'he has discovered
+  his heart,' might serve as a motto for Petrarch's songs and sonnets.
+  He knew that he had that sentimental disorder which he called
+  'acedia,' and wished to be rid of it. This word has a history of its
+  own. To the Greeks, to Apollonius, for instance,<a href=
+  "#e4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> it meant carelessness, indifference; and,
+  joined with the genitive [Greek: nooio]--that is, of the mind--it
+  meant, according to the scholiasts, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg110" id="pg110">110</a></span>as much as [Greek: lypê]
+  (Betrübnis)--that is, distress or grief. In the Middle Ages it became
+  'dislike of intellect so far as that is a divine gift'--that disease
+  of the cloister which a monkish chronicler defined as 'a sadness or
+  loathing and an immoderate distress of mind, caused by mental
+  confusion, through which happiness of mind was destroyed, and the
+  mind thrown back upon itself as from an abyss of despair.'</p>
+
+  <p>To Dante it meant the state--</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">Sad</p>
+
+    <p>In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun,</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>distaste for the good and beautiful.</p>
+
+  <p>The modern meaning which it took with Petrarch is well defined by
+  Geiger as being neither ecclesiastic nor secular sin,<a href=
+  "#e5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> but</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Entirely human and peculiar to the cleverest--the battle between
+    reality and seeming, the attempt to people the arid wastes of the
+    commonplace with philosophic thought--the unhappiness and despair
+    that arise from comparing the unconcern of the majority with one's
+    own painful unrest, from the knowledge that the results of striving
+    do not express the effort made--that human life is but a ceaseless
+    and unworthy rotation, in which the bad are always to the fore, and
+    the good fall behind ... as pessimism, melancholy, world pain
+    (Weltschmerz)--that tormenting feeling which mocks all attempt at
+    definition, and is too vitally connected with erring and striving
+    human nature to be curable--that longing at once for human
+    fellowship and solitude, for active work and a life of
+    contemplation.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Petrarch knew too the pleasure of sadness, what Goethe called
+  'Wonne der Wehmuth,' the <i>dolendi voluptas.</i></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Lo, what new pleasure human wits devise!</p>
+
+    <p>For oftentimes one loves</p>
+
+    <p>Whatever new thing moves</p>
+
+    <p>The sighs, that will in closest order go;</p>
+
+    <p>And I'm of those whom sorrowing behoves;</p>
+
+    <p>And that with some success</p>
+
+    <p>I labour, you may guess,</p>
+
+    <p>When eyes with tears, and heart is brimmed with woe.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg111" id="pg111">111</a></span> In
+  Sonnet 190:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>My chiefest pleasure now is making moan.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Oh world, oh fruitless thought,</p>
+
+      <p>Oh luck, my luck, who'st led me thus for spite!...</p>
+
+      <p>For loving well, with pain I'm rent....</p>
+
+      <p>Nor can I yet repent,</p>
+
+      <p>My heart o'erflowed with deadly pleasantness.</p>
+
+      <p>Now wait I from no less</p>
+
+      <p>A foe than dealt me my first blow, my last.</p>
+
+      <p>And were I slain full fast,</p>
+
+      <p>'Twould seem a sort of mercy to my mind....</p>
+
+      <p>My ode, I shall i' the field</p>
+
+      <p>Stand firm; to perish flinching were a shame,</p>
+
+      <p>In fact, myself I blame</p>
+
+      <p>For such laments; my portion is so sweet.</p>
+
+      <p>Tears, sighs, and death I greet.</p>
+
+      <p>O reader that of death the servant art,</p>
+
+      <p>Earth can no weal, to match my woes, impart.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His poems are full of scenes and comparisons from Nature; for the
+  sympathy for her which goes with this modern and sentimental tone is
+  a deep one:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>In that sweet season of my age's prime</p>
+
+      <p>Which saw the sprout and, as it were, green blade</p>
+
+      <p>Of the wild passion....</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i10">Changed me</p>
+
+      <p>From living man into green laurel whose</p>
+
+      <p>Array by winter's cold no leaf can lose.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Ode 1.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Love is that by which</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>My darknesses were made as bright</p>
+
+    <p>As clearest noonday light. (Ode 4.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Elsewhere it is the light of heaven breaking in his heart, and
+  springtime which brings the flowers.</p>
+
+  <p>In Sonnet 44 he plays with impossibilities, like the Greek and
+  Roman poets:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Ah me! the sea will have no waves, the snow</p>
+
+    <p>Will warm and darken, fish on Alps will dwell,</p>
+
+    <p>And suns droop yonder, where from common cell</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg112" id=
+    "pg112">112</a></span></p>
+
+    <p>The springs of Tigris and Euphrates flow,</p>
+
+    <p>Or ever I shall here have truce or peace</p>
+
+    <p>Or love....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and uses the same comparisons, Sestina 7:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>So many creatures throng not ocean's wave,</p>
+
+    <p>So many, above the circle of the moon,</p>
+
+    <p>Of stars were never yet beheld by night;</p>
+
+    <p>So many birds reside not in the groves;</p>
+
+    <p>So many herbs hath neither field nor shore,</p>
+
+    <p>But my heart's thoughts outnumber them each eve.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Many of his poems witness to the truth that the love-passion is
+  the best interpreter of Nature, especially in its woes. The woes of
+  love are his constant theme, and far more eloquently expressed than
+  its bliss:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>So fair I have not seen the sun arise,</p>
+
+      <p>When heaven was clearest of all cloudy stain--</p>
+
+      <p>The welkin-bow I have not after rain</p>
+
+      <p>Seen varied with so many shifting dyes,</p>
+
+      <p>But that her aspect in more splendid guise</p>
+
+      <p>Upon the day when I took up Love's chain</p>
+
+      <p>Diversely glowed, for nothing mortal vies</p>
+
+      <p>Therewith.... (Sonnet 112.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>From each fair eyelid's tranquil firmament</p>
+
+      <p>So brightly shine my stars untreacherous,</p>
+
+      <p>That none, whose love thoughts are magnanimous,</p>
+
+      <p>Would from aught else choose warmth or guidance lent.</p>
+
+      <p>Oh, 'tis miraculous, when on the grass</p>
+
+      <p>She sits, a very flower, or when she lays</p>
+
+      <p>Upon its greenness down her bosom white.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 127.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Oh blithe and happy flowers, oh favoured sod,</p>
+
+      <p>That by my lady in passive mood are pressed,</p>
+
+      <p>Lawn, which her sweet words hear'st and treasurest,</p>
+
+      <p>Faint traces, where her shapely foot hath trod,</p>
+
+      <p>Smooth boughs, green leaves, which now raw juices load,</p>
+
+      <p>Pale darling violets, and woods which rest</p>
+
+      <p>In shadow, till that sun's beam you attest,</p>
+
+      <p>From which hath all your pride and grandeur flowed;</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg113" id=
+      "pg113">113</a></span>Oh land delightsome, oh thou river pure</p>
+
+      <p>Which bathest her fair face and brilliant eyes</p>
+
+      <p>And winn'st a virtue from their living light,</p>
+
+      <p>I envy you each clear and comely guise</p>
+
+      <p>In which she moves.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(Sonnet 129.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>These recall Nais in Theocritus:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>When she crept or trembling footsteps laid,</p>
+
+      <p>Green bright and soft she made</p>
+
+      <p>Wood, water, earth, and stone; yea, with conceit</p>
+
+      <p>The grasses freshened 'neath her palms and feet.</p>
+
+      <p>And her fair eyes the fields around her dressed</p>
+
+      <p>With flowers, and the winds and storms she stilled</p>
+
+      <p>With utterance unskilled</p>
+
+      <p>As from a tongue that seeketh yet the breast,</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 25.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>As oft as yon white foot on fresh green sod</p>
+
+      <p>Comelily sets the gentle step, a dower</p>
+
+      <p>Of grace, that opens and revives each flower,</p>
+
+      <p>Seems by the delicate palm to be bestowed.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 132.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>I seem to hear her, hearing airs and sprays,</p>
+
+      <p>And leaves, and plaintive bird notes, and the brook</p>
+
+      <p>That steals and murmurs through the sedges green.</p>
+
+      <p>Such pleasure in lone silence and the maze</p>
+
+      <p>Of eerie shadowy woods I never took,</p>
+
+      <p>Though too much tow'r'd my sun they intervene.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 143.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and like Goethe's:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>I think of thee when the bright sunlight shimmers</p>
+
+      <p>Across the sea;</p>
+
+      <p>When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers</p>
+
+      <p>I think of thee....</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>I hear thee, when the tossing waves' low rumbling</p>
+
+      <p>Creeps up the hill;</p>
+
+      <p>I go to the lone wood and listen trembling</p>
+
+      <p>When all is still....</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So Petrarch sings in Ode 15:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Now therefore, when in youthful guise I see</p>
+
+    <p>The world attire itself in soft green hue,</p>
+
+    <p>I think that in this age unripe I view</p>
+
+    <p>That lovely girl, who's now a lady's mien.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg114" id=
+    "pg114">114</a></span>Then, when the sun ariseth all aglow,</p>
+
+    <p>I trace the wonted show</p>
+
+    <p>Of amorous fire, in some fine heart made queen...</p>
+
+    <p>When leaves or boughs or violets on earth</p>
+
+    <p>I see, what time the winter's cold decays,</p>
+
+    <p>And when the kindly stars are gathering might,</p>
+
+    <p>Mine eye that violet and green portrays</p>
+
+    <p>(And nothing else) which, at my warfare's birth,</p>
+
+    <p>Armed Love so well that yet he worsts me quite.</p>
+
+    <p>I see the delicate fine tissue light</p>
+
+    <p>In which our little damsel's limbs are dressed....</p>
+
+    <p>Oft on the hills a feeble snow-streak lies,</p>
+
+    <p>Which the sun smiteth in sequestered place.</p>
+
+    <p>Let sun rule snow! Thou, Love, my ruler art,</p>
+
+    <p>When on that fair and more than human face</p>
+
+    <p>I muse, which from afar makes soft my eyes....</p>
+
+    <p>I never yet saw after mighty rain</p>
+
+    <p>The roving stars in the calm welkin glide</p>
+
+    <p>And glitter back between the frost and dew,</p>
+
+    <p>But straight those lovely eyes are at my side....</p>
+
+    <p>If ever yet, on roses white and red,</p>
+
+    <p>My eyes have fallen, where in bowl of gold</p>
+
+    <p>They were set down, fresh culled by virgin hands,</p>
+
+    <p>There have I seemed her aspect to behold....</p>
+
+    <p>But when the year has flecked</p>
+
+    <p>Some deal with white and yellow flowers the braes,</p>
+
+    <p>I forthwith recollect</p>
+
+    <p>That day and place in which I first admired</p>
+
+    <p>Laura's gold hair outspread, and straight was fired....</p>
+
+    <p>That I could number all the stars anon</p>
+
+    <p>And shut the waters in a tiny glass</p>
+
+    <p>Belike I thought, when in this narrow sheet</p>
+
+    <p>I got a fancy to record, alas,</p>
+
+    <p>How many ways this Beauty's paragon</p>
+
+    <p>Hath spread her light, while standing self-complete,</p>
+
+    <p>So that from her I never could retreat....</p>
+
+    <p>She's closed for me all paths in earth and sky.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The reflective modern mind is clear in this, despite its
+  loquacity. He was yet more eloquent and intense, more fertile in
+  comparisons, when his happiest days were over.</p>
+
+  <p>In Ode 24, standing at a window he watches the strange forms his
+  imagination conjures up--a wild creature torn in pieces by two dogs,
+  a ship wrecked by a storm, a laurel shattered by lightning:
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg115" id="pg115">115</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Within this wood, out of a rock did rise</p>
+
+      <p>A spring of water, mildly rumbling down,</p>
+
+      <p>Whereto approached not in any wise</p>
+
+      <p>The homely shepherd nor the ruder clown,</p>
+
+      <p>But many muses and the nymphs withal....</p>
+
+      <p>But while herein I took my chief delight,</p>
+
+      <p>I saw (alas!) the gaping earth devour</p>
+
+      <p>The spring, the place, and all clean out of sight--</p>
+
+      <p>Which yet aggrieves my heart unto this hour....</p>
+
+      <p>At last, so fair a lady did I spy,</p>
+
+      <p>That thinking yet on her I burn and quake,</p>
+
+      <p>On herbs and flowers she walked pensively....</p>
+
+      <p>A stinging serpent by the heel her caught,</p>
+
+      <p>Wherewith she languished as the gathered flower.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Now Zephyrus the blither days brings on,</p>
+
+      <p>With flowers and leaves, his gallant retinue,</p>
+
+      <p>And Progne's chiding, Philomela's moan,</p>
+
+      <p>And maiden spring all white and pink of hue;</p>
+
+      <p>Now laugh the meadows, heaven is radiant grown,</p>
+
+      <p>And blithely now doth Love his daughter view;</p>
+
+      <p>Air, water, earth, now breathe of love alone,</p>
+
+      <p>And every creature plans again to woo.</p>
+
+      <p>Ah me! but now return the heaviest sighs,</p>
+
+      <p>Which my heart from its last resources yields</p>
+
+      <p>To her that bore its keys to heaven away.</p>
+
+      <p>And songs of little birds and blooming fields</p>
+
+      <p>And gracious acts of ladies, fair and wise,</p>
+
+      <p>Are desert land and uncouth beasts of prey.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 269.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The nightingale, who maketh moan so sweet</p>
+
+      <p>Over his brood belike or nest-mate dear,</p>
+
+      <p>So deft and tender are his notes to hear,</p>
+
+      <p>That fields and skies are with delight replete;</p>
+
+      <p>And all night long he seems with me to treat,</p>
+
+      <p>And my hard lot recall unto my ear.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 270.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>In every dell</p>
+
+      <p>The sands of my deep sighs are circumfused.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Ode 1.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Oh banks, oh dales, oh woods, oh streams, oh fields</p>
+
+      <p>Ye vouchers of my life's o'erburdened cause,</p>
+
+      <p>How often Death you've heard me supplicate.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Ode 8.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Whereso my foot may pass,</p>
+
+      <p>A balmy rapture wakes</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg116" id=
+      "pg116">116</a></span>When I think, here that darling light hath
+      played.</p>
+
+      <p>If flower I cull or grass,</p>
+
+      <p>I ponder that it takes</p>
+
+      <p>Root in that soil, where wontedly she strayed</p>
+
+      <p>Betwixt the stream and glade,</p>
+
+      <p>And found at times a seat</p>
+
+      <p>Green, fresh, and flower-embossed. (Ode 13.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Whenever plaintive warblings, or the note</p>
+
+      <p>Of leaves by summer breezes gently stirred,</p>
+
+      <p>Or baffled murmur of bright waves I've heard</p>
+
+      <p>Along the green and flowery shore to float,</p>
+
+      <p>Where meditating love I sat and wrote,</p>
+
+      <p>Then her whom earth conceals, whom heaven conferred,</p>
+
+      <p>I hear and see, and know with living word</p>
+
+      <p>She answereth my sighs, though so remote.</p>
+
+      <p>'Ah, why art thou,' she pityingly says,</p>
+
+      <p>'Pining away before thy hour?'</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 238.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The waters and the branches and the shore,</p>
+
+      <p>Birds, fishes, flowers, grasses, talk of love,</p>
+
+      <p>And me to love for ever all invite.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 239.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Thou'st left the world, oh Death, without a sun....</p>
+
+      <p>Her mourners should be earth and sea and air.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 294.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Here we have happiness and misery felt in the modern way, and
+  Nature in the modern way drawn into the circle of thought and
+  feeling, and personified.</p>
+
+  <p>Petrarch was the first, since the days of Hellenism, to enjoy the
+  pleasures of solitude quite consciously.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>How often to my darling place of rest,</p>
+
+    <p>Fleeing from all, could I myself but flee,</p>
+
+    <p>I walk and wet with tears my path and breast.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Sonnet 240.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He shared Schiller's thought:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Oh Nature is perfect, wherever we stray,</p>
+
+      <p>'Tis man that deforms it with care.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>As love from thought to thought, from hill to hill,</p>
+
+      <p>Directs me, when all ways that people tread</p>
+
+      <p>Seem to the quiet of my being, foes,</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg117" id=
+      "pg117">117</a></span>If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or
+      rill</p>
+
+      <p>Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread,</p>
+
+      <p>I find--my daunted soul doth there repose....</p>
+
+      <p>On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find</p>
+
+      <p>Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth</p>
+
+      <p>Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane....</p>
+
+      <p>Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade,</p>
+
+      <p>I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink</p>
+
+      <p>Her lovely face I picture from my mind....</p>
+
+      <p>Oft hath her living likeness met my sight, (Oh who'll believe
+      the word?) in waters clear,</p>
+
+      <p>On beechen stems, on some green lawny space,</p>
+
+      <p>Or in white cloud....</p>
+
+      <p>Her loveliest portrait there my fancy draws,</p>
+
+      <p>And when Truth overawes</p>
+
+      <p>That sweet delusion, frozen to the core,</p>
+
+      <p>I then sit down, on living rock, dead stone,</p>
+
+      <p>And seem to muse, and weep and write thereon....</p>
+
+      <p>Then touch my thoughts and sense</p>
+
+      <p>Those widths of air which hence her beauty part,</p>
+
+      <p>Which always is so near, yet far away....</p>
+
+      <p>Beyond that Alp, my Ode,</p>
+
+      <p>Where heaven above is gladdest and most clear,</p>
+
+      <p>Again thou'lt meet me where the streamlet flows</p>
+
+      <p>And thrilling airs disclose</p>
+
+      <p>The fresh and scented laurel thicket near,</p>
+
+      <p>There is my heart and she that stealeth it.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Ode 17.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is the same idea as Goethe's in <i>Knowest thou the Land</i>?
+  Again:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Alone, engrossed, the least frequented strands</p>
+
+      <p>I traverse with my footsteps faint and slow,</p>
+
+      <p>And often wary glances round me throw,</p>
+
+      <p>To flee, should human trace imprint the sands.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 28.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>A life of solitude I've ever sought,</p>
+
+      <p>This many a field and forest knows, and will.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 221.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Love of solitude and feeling for Nature limit or increase each
+  other; and Petrarch; like Dante, took scientific interest in her, and
+  found her a stimulant to mental work.</p>
+
+  <p>Burckhardt says: 'The enjoyment of Nature is for him the favourite
+  accompaniment of intellectual <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg118"
+  id="pg118">118</a></span>pursuits; it was to combine the two that he
+  lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that he from
+  time to time fled from the world and from his age.'</p>
+
+  <p>He wrote a book <i>On a Life of Solitude (De Vita Solitaria)</i>
+  by the little river Sorgue, and said in a letter from Vaucluse: 'O if
+  you could imagine the delight with which I breathe here, free and far
+  from the world, with forests and mountains, rivers and springs, and
+  the books of clever men.'</p>
+
+  <p>Purely objective descriptions, such as his picture of the Gulf of
+  Spezzia and Porto Venere at the end of the sixth book of the
+  <i>Africa</i>, were rare with him; but, as we have already seen, he
+  admired mountain scenery. He refers to the hills on the Riviera di
+  Levante as 'hills distinguished by most pleasant wildness and
+  wonderful fertility.'<a href="#e6"><sup>[6]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The scenery of Reggio moved him, as he said,<a href=
+  "#e7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> to compose a poem. He described the storm at
+  Naples in 1343, and the earthquake at Basle. As we have seen from one
+  of his odes, he delighted in the wide view from mountain heights, and
+  the freedom from the oppression of the air lower down. In this
+  respect he was one of Rousseau's forerunners, though his 'romantic'
+  feeling was restrained within characteristic limits. In a letter of
+  April 26, 1335, interesting both as to the period and the personality
+  of the writer, he described to Dionisius da Borgo San Sepolchro the
+  ascent of Mt. Ventoux near Avignon which he made when he was
+  thirty-two, and greatly enjoyed, though those who were with him did
+  not understand his enjoyment. When they had laboured through the
+  difficulties of the climb, and saw the clouds below them, he was
+  immensely impressed. It was in accordance with his love of solitude
+  that lonely mountain tops should attract him, and the letter shows
+  that he fully appreciated both climb and view.</p>
+
+  <p>'It was a long day, the air fine. We enjoyed the <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg119" id="pg119">119</a></span>advantages of
+  vigour of mind, and strength and agility of body, and everything else
+  essential to those engaged in such an undertaking, and so had no
+  other difficulties to face than those of the region itself.' ... 'At
+  first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of
+  the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed.
+  I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and
+  Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things
+  from a mountain of less fame. I turned my eyes towards Italy, whither
+  my heart most inclined. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to
+  rise close by, although they were really at a great distance.... The
+  Bay of Marseilles, the Rhone itself, lay in sight.'</p>
+
+  <p>It was a very modern effect of the wide view that 'his whole past
+  life with all its follies rose before his mind; he remembered that
+  ten years ago, that day, he had quitted Bologna a young man, and
+  turned a longing gaze towards his native country: he opened a book
+  which was then his constant companion, <i>The Confessions of St
+  Augustine</i>, and his eye fell on the passage in the tenth
+  chapter:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>And men go about and admire lofty mountains and broad seas, and
+    roaring torrents and the ocean, and the course of the stars, and
+    forget their own selves while doing so.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>His brother, to whom he read these words, could not understand why
+  he closed the book and said no more. His feeling had suddenly
+  changed.</p>
+
+  <p>He knew, when he began the climb, that he was doing something very
+  unusual, even unheard of among his contemporaries, and justified
+  himself by the example of Philip V. of Macedon, arguing that a young
+  man of private station might surely be excused for what was not
+  thought blamable in a grey-haired king. Then on the mountain top,
+  lost in the view, the passage in St Augustine suddenly occurred to
+  him, and he started blaming himself <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg120" id="pg120">120</a></span>for admiring earthly things so much.
+  'I was amazed ... angry with myself for marvelling but now at earthly
+  things, when I ought to have learnt long ago that nothing save the
+  soul was marvellous, and that to the greatness of the soul nought
+  else was great'; and he closed with an explanation flavoured with
+  theology to the taste of his confessor, to whom he was writing. The
+  mixture of thoroughly modern delight in Nature<a href=
+  "#e8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> with ascetic dogma in this letter, gives us
+  a glimpse into the divided feelings of one who stood upon the
+  threshold between two eras, mediæval and modern, into the reaction of
+  the mediæval mind against the budding modern feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>This is, at any rate, the first mountain ascent for pleasure since
+  Hellenic days, of which we have detailed information. From Greece
+  before Alexander we have nothing; but the Persian King Darius, in his
+  expedition against the Scythians in the region of Chalcedon, ascended
+  the mountain on which stood the Urios temple to Zeus, and there
+  'sitting in the temple, he took a view of the Euxine Sea, which is
+  worthy of admiration.' (Herodotus.)</p>
+
+  <p>Philip V. of Macedon ascended the Hæmus B.C. 181, and Apollonios
+  Rhodios describes the panorama spread out before the Argonauts as
+  they ascended the Dindymon, and elsewhere recalls the view from Mt.
+  Olympus. These are the oldest descriptions of distant views conceived
+  as landscape in the classic literature preserved to us. Petrarch's
+  ascent comes next in order.</p>
+
+  <p>This sentimental and subjective feeling for Nature, half-idyllic,
+  half-romantic, which seemed to arise suddenly and spontaneously in
+  Petrarch, is not to be wholly explained by a marked individuality,
+  nourished by the tendencies of the period; the influence of Roman
+  literature, the re-birth of the classic, must also be taken into
+  account. For the Renaissance attitude towards Nature was closely
+  allied to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg121" id=
+  "pg121">121</a></span>the Roman, and therefore to the Hellenic; and
+  the fact that the first modern man arose on Italian soil was due to
+  the revival of antiquity plus its union with the genius of the
+  Italian people. Many direct analogies can be traced between Petrarch
+  and the Roman poets; it was in their school that his eyes opened to
+  the wonders of Nature, and he learnt to blend the inner with the
+  outer life.</p>
+
+  <p>Boccaccio does not lead us much further. There is idyllic quality
+  in his description of a wood in the <i>Ameto</i>,<a href=
+  "#e9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> and especially in <i>Fiammetta</i>, in which
+  he praises country life and describes the spring games of the
+  Florentine youth.</p>
+
+  <p>This is the description of a valley in the <i>Decameron</i>:
+  'After a walk of nearly a mile, they came to the Ladies' Valley,
+  which they entered by a straight path, whence there issued forth a
+  fine crystal current, and they found it so extremely beautiful and
+  pleasant, especially at that sultry season, that nothing could exceed
+  it, and, as some of them told me afterwards, the plain in the valley
+  was so exact a circle, as if it had been described by a pair of
+  compasses, though it seemed rather the work of Nature than of art,
+  and was about half a mile in circumference, surrounded by six hills
+  of moderate height, on each of which was a palace built in the form
+  of a little castle.... The part that looks toward the south was
+  planted as thick as they could stand together with vines, olives,
+  almonds, cherries, figs, and most other kinds of fruit trees, and on
+  the northern side were fine plantations of oak, ash, etc., so tall
+  and regular that nothing could be more beautiful. The vale, which had
+  only that one entrance, was full of firs, cypress trees, laurels, and
+  pines, all placed in such order as if it had been done by the
+  direction of some exquisite artist, and through which little or no
+  sun could penetrate to the ground, which was covered with a thousand
+  different flowers.... But what gave no less delight than any of the
+  rest was a <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg122" id=
+  "pg122">122</a></span>rivulet that came through a valley which
+  divided two of the mountains, and running through the vein of a rock,
+  made a most agreeable murmur with its fall, appealing, as it was
+  dashed and sprinkled into drops, like so much quicksilver.'</p>
+
+  <p>Description of scenery for its own sake is scarcely more than
+  attempted here, nor do Petrarch's lyrics, with their free thought of
+  passion and overpowering consciousness of the joys and sorrows of
+  love, reach the level of Hellenism in this respect. Yet it advanced
+  with the Renaissance. Pope Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius) was the first to
+  describe actual landscape (Italian), not merely in a few subjective
+  lines, but with genuine modern enjoyment. He was one of those figures
+  in the world's history in whom all the intellectual life and feeling
+  of a time come to a focus.</p>
+
+  <p>He had a heart for everything, and an all-round enthusiasm for
+  Nature unique in his day. Antiquity and Nature were his two passions,
+  and the most beautiful descriptions of Nature before Rousseau and
+  Goethe are contained in his <i>Commentaries</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Writing of the country round his home, he says:</p>
+
+  <p>'The sweet spring time had begun, and round about Siena the
+  smiling hills were clothed with leaves and flowers, and the crops
+  were rising in plenty in the fields. Even the pasture land quite
+  close to the town affords an unspeakably lovely view; gently sloping
+  hills, either planted with homely trees or vines, or ploughed for
+  corn, look down on pleasant valleys in which grow crops, or green
+  fields are to be seen, and brooks are even flowing. There are, too,
+  many plantations, either natural or artificial, in which the birds
+  sing with wondrous sweetness. Nor is there a mound on which the
+  citizens have not built a magnificent estate; they are thus a little
+  way out of the town. Through this district the Pope walked with
+  joyous head.'</p>
+
+  <p>Again and again love of Nature drew him away <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg123" id="pg123">123</a></span>even in old age
+  from town life and the circle of courtiers and flatterers; he was for
+  ever finding new reasons to prolong his <i>villeggiatura</i>, despite
+  the grumbling of his court, which had to put up with wretched inns or
+  monasteries overrun by mice, where the rain came through the roofs
+  and the necessaries of life were scanty.<a href=
+  "#e10"><sup>[10]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>His taste for these beautifully-situated monastic solitudes was a
+  riddle to those around him. He wrote of his summer residence in
+  Tibur:</p>
+
+  <p>'On all sides round the town in summer there are most lovely
+  plantations, to which the Pope with his cardinals often retired for
+  relaxation, sitting sometimes on some green sward beneath the olives,
+  sometimes in a green meadow on the bank of the river Aino, whence he
+  could see the clear waters. There are some meadows in a retired glen,
+  watered by many streams; Pius often rested in these meadows near the
+  luxuriant streams and the shady trees. He lived at Tibur with the
+  Minorites on an elevation whence he could see the town and the course
+  of the Aino as it flowed into the plain beneath him and through the
+  quiet gardens, nor did anything else give him pleasure.</p>
+
+  <p>'When the summer was over, he had his bedroom in the house
+  overlooking the Aino; from there the most beautiful view was to be
+  seen, and also from a neighbouring mountain on the other side of the
+  river, still covered with a green and leafy grove ... he completed a
+  great part of his journey with the greatest enjoyment.'</p>
+
+  <p>In May 1462 he went to the baths at Viterbo, and, old man as he
+  was, gives this appreciative description of spring beauties by the
+  way:</p>
+
+  <p>'The road by which he made for Sorianum was at that time of the
+  year delightful; there was a tremendous quantity of genista, so that
+  a great part of the field seemed a mass of flowering yellow, while
+  the rest, covered as it was by shrubs and various <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg124" id="pg124">124</a></span>grasses, brought
+  purple and white and a thousand different colours before the eyes. It
+  was the month of May, and everything was green. On one side were the
+  smiling fields, on the other the smiling woods, in which the birds
+  made sweet harmony. At early dawn he used to walk into the fields to
+  catch the exquisite breeze before the day should grow hot, and gaze
+  at the green crops and the flowering flax, which then, emulating
+  heaven's own blue, gave the greatest joy to all beholders.... Now the
+  crows are holding vigil, and the ringdoves; and the owl at times
+  utters lament with funeral note. The place is most lovely; the view
+  in the direction of Siena stretches as far as Amiata, and in the west
+  reaches Mt. Argentarius.'</p>
+
+  <p>In the plains the plague was raging; the sight of the people
+  appealing to him as to a god, moved him to tears as he thought how
+  few of the children would survive in the heat. He travelled to a
+  castle charmingly placed on the lake of Bolsena, where 'there is a
+  shady circular walk in the vineyard under the big grapes; stone steps
+  shaded by the vine leaves lead down to the bank, where ilex oaks,
+  alive with the songs of blackbirds, stand among the crags.' Halfway
+  up the mountain, in the monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court
+  took up their quarters.</p>
+
+  <p>'The most lovely scenery met the eye. As you look to the west from
+  the higher houses, the view reaches beyond Ilcinum and Siena as far
+  as the Pistorian Alps. To the north a variety of hills and the
+  pleasant green of woods presents itself, stretching a distance of
+  five miles; if your sight is good, your eye will travel as far as the
+  Apennine range and can see Cortona.'</p>
+
+  <p>There he passed the time, shooting birds, fishing, and rowing.</p>
+
+  <p>'In the cool air of the hills, among the old oaks and chestnuts,
+  on the green meadows where there were no thorns to wound the feet,
+  and no snakes <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg125" id=
+  "pg125">125</a></span>or insects to hurt or annoy, the Pope passed
+  days of unclouded happiness.'</p>
+
+  <p>This is thoroughly modern: 'Silvarum amator,' as he calls himself,
+  he includes both the details of the near and the general effect of
+  the far-distant landscape.</p>
+
+  <p>And with age his appreciation of it only seemed to increase; for
+  instance, he says of Todi:</p>
+
+  <p>'A most lovely view meets the eye wherever you turn; you can see
+  Perusia and all the valley that lies between, full of wide--spreading
+  forts and fertile fields, and honoured by the river Tiber, which,
+  drawing its coils along like a snake, divides Tuscia from Umbria,
+  and, close to the city itself, enters many a mountain, passing
+  through which it descends to the plain, murmuring as it goes, as
+  though constrained against its will.'</p>
+
+  <p>This is his description of a lake storm, during an excursion to
+  the Albanian Mountains:</p>
+
+  <p>As far as Ostia 'he had a delightful voyage; at night the sea
+  began to be most unwontedly troubled, and a severe storm arose. The
+  east wind rolled up the waters from their lowest depths, huge waves
+  beat the shore; you could have heard the sea, as it were, groaning
+  and wailing. So great was the force of the winds, that nothing seemed
+  able to resist it; they raged and alternately fled and put one
+  another to rout, they overturned woods and anything that withstood
+  them. The air glittered with frequent lightning, the sky thundered,
+  and terrific thunder-bolts fell from the clouds.... The night was
+  pitch dark, though the flashes of lightning were continuous.'</p>
+
+  <p>And of a lake at rest he says:</p>
+
+  <p>'The beauty of that lake is remarkable; everywhere it is
+  surrounded by high rocks, the water is transparently clear. Nature,
+  so far superior to art, provided a most pleasant journey. The
+  Nemorian lake, with its crystal-clear waters, reflects the faces
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg126" id="pg126">126</a></span>of
+  those that look into it, and fills a deep basin. The descent from the
+  top to the bottom is wooded. The poetic genius would never be
+  awakened if it slept here; you would say it was the dwelling-place of
+  the Muses, the home of the Nymphs, and, if there is any truth in
+  legends, the hiding-place of Diana.'</p>
+
+  <p>He visited the lakes among the mountains, climbing and resting
+  under the trees; the view from Monte Cavo was his favourite, from
+  which he could see Terracina, the lakes of Nemi and Albano, etc. He
+  noted their extent and formation, and added:</p>
+
+  <p>'The genista, however, was especially delightful, covering, as it
+  did with its flowers, the greater part of the plains. Then, moreover,
+  Rome presented itself fully to the eyes, together with Soracte and
+  the Sabine Land, and the Apennine range white with snow, and Tibur
+  and Præneste.'</p>
+
+  <p>It is clear that it was a thoroughly modern enthusiasm which
+  attracted Æneas Sylvius to the country and gave him this ready pen
+  for everything in Nature--everything, that is, except bare mountain
+  summits.</p>
+
+  <p>It is difficult to attribute this faculty for enjoying and
+  describing scenery to the influence of antiquity alone, for, save the
+  younger Pliny, I know of no Roman under the Empire who possessed it,
+  and, besides, we do not know how far Pius II. was acquainted with
+  Roman literature. We know that the re-awakening of classic literature
+  exerted an influence upon the direction of the feeling for Nature in
+  general, and, for the rest, very various elements coalesced. Like
+  times produce like streams of tendency, and Hellenism, the Roman
+  Empire, and the Renaissance were alike to some extent in the
+  conditions of their existence and the results that flowed from them;
+  the causal nexus between them is undeniable, and makes them the chief
+  stepping-stones on the way to the modern.</p>
+
+  <p>Theocritus, Meleager, Petrarch, and Æneas Sylvius <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg127" id="pg127">127</a></span>may serve as
+  representatives of the development of the feeling for Nature from
+  classic to modern; they are the ancestors of our enthusiasm, the
+  links in the chain which leads up to Rousseau, Goethe, Byron, and
+  Shelley.</p>
+
+  <p>From the autobiography of Æneas Sylvius and the lyrics of Petrarch
+  we gain a far truer picture of the feeling of the period up to the
+  sixteenth century than from any poetry in other countries. Even the
+  epic had a more modern tone in Italy; Ariosto's descriptions were far
+  ahead of any German epic.</p>
+
+  <p>Humboldt pointed out very clearly the difference between the epic
+  of the people and the epic of art--between Homer and Ariosto. Both,
+  he said, are true painters of the world and Nature; but Ariosto
+  pleases more by his brilliance and wealth of colour, Homer by purity
+  of form and beauty of composition. Ariosto achieves through general
+  effect, Homer through perfection of form. Nature is more naive in
+  Homer, the subject is paramount, and the singer disappears; in
+  Ariosto, Nature is sentimental, and the poet always remains in view
+  upon the stage. In Homer all is closely knit, while Ariosto's threads
+  are loosely spun, and he breaks them himself in play. Homer almost
+  never describes, Ariosto always does.</p>
+
+  <p>Ariosto's scenes and comparisons from Nature, being calculated for
+  effect, are more subjective, and far more highly-coloured than
+  Homer's. But they shew a sympathetic grasp.</p>
+
+  <p>The modern bloom, so difficult to define, lies over
+  them--something at once sensuous, sentimental, and chivalrous. He is
+  given to describing lonely woodland scenery, fit places for trysts
+  and lovers' rendezvous.</p>
+
+  <p>In the 1st Canto of <i>Mad Orlando</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>With flowery thorns, vermilion roses near</p>
+
+    <p>Her, she upon a lovely bush doth meet,</p>
+
+    <p>That mirrored doth in the bright waves appear,</p>
+
+    <p>Shut out by lofty oaks from the sun's heat.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg128" id=
+    "pg128">128</a></span></p>
+
+    <p>Amidst the thickest shades there is a clear</p>
+
+    <p>Space in the middle for a cool retreat;</p>
+
+    <p>So mixed the leaves and boughs are, through them none</p>
+
+    <p>Can see; they are impervious to the sun.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In the 6th Canto the Hippogriff carries Roger into a country:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Nor could he, had he searched the whole world through,</p>
+
+    <p>Than this a more delightful country see....</p>
+
+    <p>Soft meads, clear streams, and banks affording shade,</p>
+
+    <p>Hillocks and plains, by culture fertile made.</p>
+
+    <p>Fair thickets of the cedar, palm and no</p>
+
+    <p>Less pleasant myrtle, of the laurel sweet,</p>
+
+    <p>Of orange trees, where fruit and flow'rs did grow,</p>
+
+    <p>And which in various forms, all lovely, meet</p>
+
+    <p>With their thick shades against the fervid glow</p>
+
+    <p>Of summer days, afforded a retreat;</p>
+
+    <p>And nightingales, devoid of fear, among</p>
+
+    <p>Those branches fluttered, pouring forth their song.</p>
+
+    <p>Amid the lilies white and roses red,</p>
+
+    <p>Ever more freshened by the tepid air,</p>
+
+    <p>The stag was seen, with his proud lofty head,</p>
+
+    <p>And feeling safe, the rabbit and the hare....</p>
+
+    <p>Sapphires and rubies, topazes, pearls, gold,</p>
+
+    <p>Hyacinths, chrysolites, and diamonds were</p>
+
+    <p>Like the night flow'rs, which did their leaves unfold</p>
+
+    <p>There on those glad plains, painted by the air</p>
+
+    <p>So green the grass, that if we did behold</p>
+
+    <p>It here, no emeralds could therewith compare;</p>
+
+    <p>As fair the foliage of the trees was, which</p>
+
+    <p>With fruit and flow'r eternally were rich.</p>
+
+    <p>Amid the boughs, sing yellow, white, and blue,</p>
+
+    <p>And red and green small feathered creatures gay;</p>
+
+    <p>The crystals less limpidity of hue</p>
+
+    <p>Than the still lakes or murmuring brooks display.</p>
+
+    <p>A gentle breeze, that seemeth still to woo</p>
+
+    <p>And never change from its accustomed way,</p>
+
+    <p>Made all around so tremulous the air</p>
+
+    <p>That no annoyance was the day's hot glare.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Canto 34.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Descriptions of time are short:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>From the hard face of earth the sun's bright hue</p>
+
+    <p>Not yet its veil obscure and dark did rend;</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg129" id=
+    "pg129">129</a></span>The Lycaonian offspring scarcely through</p>
+
+    <p>The furrows of the sky his plough did send.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Canto 80.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Comparisons, especially about the beauty of women, are very
+  artistic, recalling Sappho and Catullus:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The tender maid is like unto the rose</p>
+
+      <p>In the fair garden on its native thorn;</p>
+
+      <p>Whilst it alone and safely doth repose,</p>
+
+      <p>Nor flock nor shepherd crops it; dewy morn,</p>
+
+      <p>Water and earth, the breeze that sweetly blows,</p>
+
+      <p>Are gracious to it; lovely dames adorn</p>
+
+      <p>With it their bosoms and their beautiful</p>
+
+      <p>Brows; it enamoured youths delight to cull.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Canto 1.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Only, Alcina fairest was by far</p>
+
+      <p>As is the sun more fair than every star....</p>
+
+      <p>Milk is the bosom, of luxuriant size,</p>
+
+      <p>And the fair neck is round and snowy white;</p>
+
+      <p>Two unripe ivory apples fall and rise</p>
+
+      <p>Like waves upon the sea-beach when a slight</p>
+
+      <p>Breeze stirs the ocean.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Canto 7.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Now in a gulf of bliss up to the eyes</p>
+
+      <p>And of fair things, to swim he doth begin.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Canto 7.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>So closely doth the ivy not enlace</p>
+
+      <p>The tree where firmly rooted it doth stand,</p>
+
+      <p>As clasp each other in their warm embrace</p>
+
+      <p>These lovers, by each other's sweet breath fanned.</p>
+
+      <p>Sweet flower, of which on India's shore no trace</p>
+
+      <p>Is, or on the Sabæan odorous sand.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Canto 7.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Her fair face the appearance did maintain</p>
+
+      <p>That sometimes shewn is by the sky in spring,</p>
+
+      <p>When at the very time that falls the rain,</p>
+
+      <p>The sun aside his cloudy veil doth fling.</p>
+
+      <p>And as the nightingale its pleasant strain</p>
+
+      <p>Then on the boughs of the green trees doth sing,</p>
+
+      <p>Thus Love doth bathe his pinions at those bright</p>
+
+      <p>But tearful eyes, enjoying the clear light.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Canto 11.)</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg130" id=
+      "pg130">130</a></span></p>
+
+      <p>But as more fickle than the leaf was she,</p>
+
+      <p>When it in autumn doth more sapless grow,</p>
+
+      <p>And the old wind doth strip it from the tree,</p>
+
+      <p>And doth before it in its fury grow.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Canto 21.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He uses the sea:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>As when a bark doth the deep ocean plough,</p>
+
+      <p>That two winds strike with an alternate blast,</p>
+
+      <p>'Tis now sent forward by the one, and now</p>
+
+      <p>Back by the other in its first place cast,</p>
+
+      <p>And whirled from prow to poop, from poop to prow,</p>
+
+      <p>But urged by the most potent wind at last</p>
+
+      <p>Philander thus irresolute between</p>
+
+      <p>The two thoughts, did to the least wicked lean.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Canto 21.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>As comes the wave upon the salt sea shore</p>
+
+      <p>Which the smooth wind at first in thought hath fanned;</p>
+
+      <p>Greater the second is than that before</p>
+
+      <p>It, and the third more fiercely follows, and</p>
+
+      <p>Each time the humour more abounds, and more</p>
+
+      <p>Doth it extend its scourge upon the land:</p>
+
+      <p>Against Orlando thus from vales below</p>
+
+      <p>And hills above, doth the vile rabble grow.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Canto 24.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>These comparisons not only shew faithful and personal observation,
+  but are far more subjective and subtle than, for instance, Dante's.
+  The same holds good of Tasso. How beautiful in detail, and how
+  sentimental too, is this from <i>Jerusalem Delivered</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Behold how lovely blooms the vernal rose</p>
+
+    <p>When scarce the leaves her early bud disclose,</p>
+
+    <p>When, half unwrapt, and half to view revealed,</p>
+
+    <p>She gives new pleasure from her charms concealed.</p>
+
+    <p>But when she shews her bosom wide displayed,</p>
+
+    <p>How soon her sweets exhale, her beauties fade!</p>
+
+    <p>No more she seems the flower so lately loved,</p>
+
+    <p>By virgins cherished and by youths approved.</p>
+
+    <p>So swiftly fleeting with the transient day</p>
+
+    <p>Passes the flower of mortal life away.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg131" id="pg131">131</a></span>
+  Not less subjective is:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">Like a ray of light on water</p>
+
+    <p>A smile of soft desire played in her liquid eyes.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Sonnet 18.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The most famous lines in this poem are those which describe a
+  romantic garden so vividly that Humboldt says 'it reminds one of the
+  charming scenery of Sorrento.' It certainly proves that even epic
+  poetry tried to describe Nature for her own sake:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The garden then unfolds a beauteous scene,</p>
+
+    <p>With flowers adorned and ever living green;</p>
+
+    <p>There silver lakes reflect the beaming day,</p>
+
+    <p>Here crystal streams in gurgling fountains play.</p>
+
+    <p>Cool vales descend and sunny hills arise,</p>
+
+    <p>And groves and caves and grottos strike the eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>Art showed her utmost power; but art concealed</p>
+
+    <p>With greater charm the pleased attention held.</p>
+
+    <p>It seemed as Nature played a sportive part</p>
+
+    <p>And strove to mock the mimic works of art:</p>
+
+    <p>By powerful magic breathes the vernal air,</p>
+
+    <p>And fragrant trees eternal blossoms bear:</p>
+
+    <p>Eternal fruits on every branch endure,</p>
+
+    <p>Those swelling from their buds, and these mature:</p>
+
+    <p>The joyous birds, concealed in every grove,</p>
+
+    <p>With gentle strife prolong the notes of love.</p>
+
+    <p>Soft zephyrs breathe on woods and waters round,</p>
+
+    <p>The woods and waters yield a murmuring sound;</p>
+
+    <p>When cease the tuneful choir, the wind replies,</p>
+
+    <p>But, when they sing, in gentle whisper dies;</p>
+
+    <p>By turns they sink, by turns their music raise</p>
+
+    <p>And blend, with equal skill, harmonious lays.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But even here the scene is surrounded by an imaginary atmosphere;
+  flowers, fruit, creatures, and atmosphere all lie under a magic
+  charm. Tasso's importance for our subject lies far more in his
+  much-imitated pastorals.</p>
+
+  <p>The <i>Arcadia</i> of Jacopo Sannazaro, which appeared in 1504, a
+  work of poetic beauty and still greater literary importance,<a href=
+  "#e11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> paved the way for pastoral poetry, which,
+  like the sonnet, was interwoven with <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg132" id="pg132">132</a></span>prose. The shepherd's occupations
+  are described with care, though many of the songs and terms of
+  expression rather fit the man of culture than the child of Nature,
+  and he had that genuine enthusiasm for the rural which begets a
+  convincing eloquence. 'Tis you,' he says at the end, addressing the
+  Muse, 'who first woke the sleeping woods, and taught the shepherds
+  how to strike up their lost songs.'</p>
+
+  <p>Bembo wrote this inscription for his grave:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Strew flowers o'er the sacred ashes, here lies Sannazaro;</p>
+
+    <p>With thee, gentle Virgil, he shares Muse and grave.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Virgil too was industriously imitated in the didactic poetry of
+  his country.</p>
+
+  <p>Giovanni Rucellai (born 1475) wrote a didactic poem, <i>The
+  Bees</i>, which begins:</p>
+
+  <p>'O chaste virgins, winged visitants of flowery banks, whilst I
+  prepared to sing your praise in lofty verse, at peep of day I was
+  o'ercome by sleep, and then appeared a chorus of your tiny folk, and
+  from their rich mellifluous haunts, in a clear voice these words
+  flowed forth.... And I will sing how liquid and serene the air
+  distils sweet honey, heavenly gilt, on flowerets and on grass, and
+  how the bees, chaste and industrious, gather it, and thereof with
+  care and skill make perfumed wax to grace the altars of our God.'</p>
+
+  <p>And a didactic poem by Luigi Alamanni (born 1495), called
+  <i>Husbandry</i>, has: 'O blessed is he who dwells in peace, the
+  actual tiller of his joyous fields, to whom, in his remoteness, the
+  most righteous earth brings food, and secure in well-being, he
+  rejoices in his heart. If thou art not surrounded by society rich
+  with purple and gems, nor with houses adorned with costly woods,
+  statues, and gold;... at least, secure in the humble dwelling of wood
+  from the copse hard by, and common stones collected close at hand,
+  which thine own hand has founded and built, whenever thou awakenest
+  at the approach <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg133" id=
+  "pg133">133</a></span>of dawn, thou dost not find outside those who
+  bring news of a thousand events contrary to thy desires.... Thou
+  wanderest at will, now quickly, now slowly, across the green meadow,
+  through the wood, over the grassy hill, or by the stream. Now here,
+  now there ... thou handlest the hatchet, axe, scythe, or hoe.... To
+  enjoy in sober comfort at almost all seasons, with thy dear children,
+  the fruits of thine own tree, the tree planted by thyself, this
+  brings a sweetness sweet beyond all others.'</p>
+
+  <p>These didactic writings, inspired by Virgilian Georgics, show a
+  distinct preference for the idyllic.</p>
+
+  <p>Sannazaro's <i>Arcadia</i> went through sixty editions in the
+  sixteenth century alone. Tasso reckoned with the prevalent taste of
+  his day in <i>Aminta</i>, which improved the then method of
+  dramatizing a romantic idyll. The whole poem bears the stamp of an
+  idealizing and romantic imagination, and embodies in lyric form his
+  sentimental idea of the Golden Age and an ideal world of Nature. Even
+  down to its details <i>Aminta</i> recalls the pastorals of Longos;
+  and Daphne's words (Act I. Scene 1) suggest the most feeling
+  outpourings of Kallimachos and Nonnos:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>And callest thou sweet spring-time</p>
+
+      <p>The time of rage and enmity,</p>
+
+      <p>Which breathing now and smiling,</p>
+
+      <p>Reminds the whole creation,</p>
+
+      <p>The animal, the human,</p>
+
+      <p>Of loving! Dost thou see not</p>
+
+      <p>How all things are enamoured</p>
+
+      <p>Of this enamourer, rich with joy and health?</p>
+
+      <p>Observe that turtle-dove,</p>
+
+      <p>How, toying with his dulcet murmuring,</p>
+
+      <p>He kisses his companion. Hear that nightingale</p>
+
+      <p>Who goes from bough to bough</p>
+
+      <p>Singing with his loud heart, 'I love!' 'I love!'...</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i10">The very trees</p>
+
+      <p>Are loving. See with what affection there,</p>
+
+      <p>And in how many a clinging turn and twine,</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg134" id=
+      "pg134">134</a></span>The vine holds fast its husband. Fir loves
+      fir,</p>
+
+      <p>The pine the pine, and ash and willow and beech</p>
+
+      <p>Each towards the other yearns, and sighs and trembles.</p>
+
+      <p>That oak tree which appears</p>
+
+      <p>So rustic and so rough,</p>
+
+      <p>Even that has something warm in its sound heart;</p>
+
+      <p>And hadst thou but a spirit and sense of love,</p>
+
+      <p>Thou hadst found out a meaning for its whispers.</p>
+
+      <p>Now tell me, would thou be</p>
+
+      <p>Less than the very plants and have no love?</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>One seems to hear Sakuntala and her friends talking, or Akontios
+  complaining. So, too, when the unhappy lover laments (Aminta):</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>In my lamentings I have found</p>
+
+    <p>A very pity in the pebbly waters,</p>
+
+    <p>And I have found the trees</p>
+
+    <p>Return them a kind voice:</p>
+
+    <p>But never have I found,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor ever hope to find,</p>
+
+    <p>Compassion in this hard and beautiful</p>
+
+    <p>What shall I call her?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Aminta describes to Tirsis how his love grew from boyhood up:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>There grew by little and little in my heart,</p>
+
+    <p>I knew not from what root,</p>
+
+    <p>But just as the grass grows that sows itself,</p>
+
+    <p>An unknown something which continually</p>
+
+    <p>Made me feel anxious to be with her.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Sylvia kisses him:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Never did bee from flower</p>
+
+    <p>Suck sugar so divine</p>
+
+    <p>As was the honey that I gathered then</p>
+
+    <p>From those twin roses fresh.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In Act II. Scene 1, the rejected Satyr, like the rejected
+  Polyphemus or Amaryllis in Theocritus, complains in antitheses which
+  recall Longos:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The woods hide serpents, lions, and bears under their green
+    shade, and in your bosom hatred, disdain, and cruelty dwell....
+    Alas, when I bring the earliest flowers, you refuse them
+    obstinately, perhaps because <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg135"
+    id="pg135">135</a></span>lovelier ones bloom on your own face; if I
+    offer beautiful apples, you reject them angrily, perhaps because
+    your beautiful bosom swells with lovelier ones.... and yet I am not
+    to be despised, for I saw myself lately in the clear water, when
+    winds were still and there were no waves.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This is the sentimental pastoral poetry of Hellenism reborn and
+  intensified.</p>
+
+  <p>So with the elegiac motive so loved by Alexandrian and Roman
+  poets, praise of a happy past time; the chorus sings in
+  <i>Aminta</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>O lovely age of gold,</p>
+
+    <p>Not that the rivers rolled</p>
+
+    <p>With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew;</p>
+
+    <p>Not that the ready ground</p>
+
+    <p>Produced without a wound,</p>
+
+    <p>Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew....</p>
+
+    <p>But solely that.... the law of gold,</p>
+
+    <p>That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,</p>
+
+    <p>Which Nature's own hand wrote--What pleases is permitted!...</p>
+
+    <p>Go! let us love, the daylight dies, is born;</p>
+
+    <p>But unto us the light</p>
+
+    <p>Dies once for all, and sleep brings on eternal night.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Over thirty pastoral plays can be ascribed to Italy in the last
+  third of the sixteenth century. The most successful imitator of Tasso
+  was Giovanni Battista Guarini (born 1537) in <i>The True Shepherd (II
+  Pastor Fido)</i>. One quotation will shew how he outvied
+  <i>Aminta</i>. In Act I, Scene 1, Linko says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Look round thee, Sylvia; behold</p>
+
+    <p>All in the world that's amiable and fair</p>
+
+    <p>Is love's sweet work: heaven loves, the earth, the sea,</p>
+
+    <p>Are full of love and own his mighty sway.</p>
+
+    <p>Love through the woods</p>
+
+    <p>The fiercest beasts; love through the waves attends</p>
+
+    <p>Swift gliding dolphins and the sluggish whales.</p>
+
+    <p>That little bird which sings....</p>
+
+    <p>Oh, had he human sense,</p>
+
+    <p>'I burn with love,' he'd cry, 'I burn with love,'</p>
+
+    <p>And in his heart he truly burns,</p>
+
+    <p>And in his warble speaks</p>
+
+    <p>A language, well by his dear mate conceived,</p>
+
+    <p>Who answering cries, 'And I too burn with love.'</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg136" id="pg136">136</a></span>
+
+  <p>He praises woodland solitude:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Dear happy groves!</p>
+
+    <p>And them all silent, solitary gloom,</p>
+
+    <p>True residence of peace and of repose!</p>
+
+    <p>How willingly, how willingly my steps</p>
+
+    <p>To you return, and oh! if but my stars</p>
+
+    <p>Benightly had decreed</p>
+
+    <p>My life for solitude, and as my wish</p>
+
+    <p>Would naturally prompt to pass my days--</p>
+
+    <p>No, not the Elysian fields,</p>
+
+    <p>Those happy gardens of the demi-gods,</p>
+
+    <p>Would I exchange for yon enchanting shades.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The love lyrics of the later Renaissance are remarkably rich in
+  vivid pictures of Nature combined with much personal sentiment.
+  Petrarch's are the model; he inspired Vittoria Colonna, and she too
+  revelled in sad feelings and memories, especially about the death of
+  her husband:<a href="#e12"><sup>[12]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>'When I see the earth adorned and beautiful with a thousand lovely
+  and sweet flowers, and how in the heavens every star is resplendent
+  with varied colours; when I see that every solitary and lively
+  creature is moved by natural instinct to come out of the forests and
+  ancient caverns to seek its fellow by day and by night; and when I
+  see the plains adorned again with glorious flowers and new leaves,
+  and hear every babbling brook with grateful murmurs bathing its
+  flowery banks, so that Nature, in love with herself, delights to gaze
+  on the beauty of her works, I say to myself, reflecting: "How brief
+  is this our miserable mortal life!" Yesterday this plain was covered
+  with snow, to-day it is green and flowery. And again in a moment the
+  beauty of the heavens is overclouded by a fierce wind, and the happy
+  loving creatures remain hidden amidst the mountains and the woods;
+  nor can the sweet songs of the tender plants and happy birds be
+  heard, for these cruel storms have dried up the flowers on the
+  ground; the birds are mute, the most rapid <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg137" id="pg137">137</a></span>streams and
+  smallest rivulets are checked by frost, and what was one hour so
+  beautiful and joyous, is, for a season, miserable and dead.'</p>
+
+  <p>Here the two pictures in the inner and outer life are equally
+  vivid to the poetess; it is the real 'pleasure of sorrow,' and she
+  lingers over them with delight.</p>
+
+  <p>Bojardo, too, reminds us of Petrarch; for example, in Sonnet
+  89:<a href="#e13"><sup>[13]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Thou shady wood, inured my griefs to hear,</p>
+
+      <p>So oft expressed in quick and broken sighs;</p>
+
+      <p>Thou glorious sun, unused to set or rise</p>
+
+      <p>But as the witness of my daily fear;</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Ye wandering birds, ye flocks and ranging deer,</p>
+
+      <p>Exempt from my consuming agonies;</p>
+
+      <p>Thou sunny stream to whom my sorrow flies</p>
+
+      <p>'Mid savage rocks and wilds, no human traces near.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>O witnesses eternal, how I live!</p>
+
+      <p>My sufferings hear, and win to their relief</p>
+
+      <p>That scornful beauty--tell her how I grieve!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>But little 'tis to her to hear my grief.</p>
+
+      <p>To her, who sees the pangs which I receive,</p>
+
+      <p>And seeing, deigns them not the least relief.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Lorenzo de Medici's idylls were particularly rich in descriptions
+  of Nature and full of feeling. 'Here too that delight in pain, in
+  telling of their unhappiness and renunciation; here too those
+  wonderful tones which distinguish the sonnets of the fourteenth and
+  fifteenth centuries so favourably from those of a later time.'
+  (Geiger.)</p>
+
+  <p>There is a delicate compliment in this sonnet:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>O violets, sweet and fresh and pure indeed,</p>
+
+    <p>Culled by that hand beyond all others fair!</p>
+
+    <p>What rain or what pure air has striven to bear</p>
+
+    <p>Flowers far excelling those 'tis wont to yield?</p>
+
+    <p>What pearly dew, what sun, or sooth what earth</p>
+
+    <p>Did you with all these subtle charms adorn;</p>
+
+    <p>And whence is this sweet scent by Nature drawn,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg138" id=
+    "pg138">138</a></span>Or heaven who deigns to grant it to such
+    worth?</p>
+
+    <p>O, my dear violets, the hand which chose</p>
+
+    <p>You from all others, that has made you fair,</p>
+
+    <p>'Twas that adorned you with such charm and worth;</p>
+
+    <p>Sweet hand! which took my heart altho' it knows</p>
+
+    <p>Its lowliness, with that you may compare.</p>
+
+    <p>To that give thanks, and to none else on earth.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus we see that the Italians of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
+  fifteenth centuries were penetrated through and through by the modern
+  spirit--were, indeed, its pioneers. They recognized their own
+  individuality, pondered their own inner life, delighted in the charms
+  of Nature, and described them in prose and poetry, both as
+  counterparts to feeling and for her own sake.</p>
+
+  <p>Over all the literature we have been considering--whether poetic
+  comparison and personification, or sentimental descriptions of
+  pastoral life and a golden age, of blended inner and outer life, or
+  of the finest details of scenery--there lies that bloom of the
+  modern, that breath of subjective personality, so hard to define. The
+  rest of contemporary Europe had no such culture of heart and mind, no
+  such marked individuality, to shew.</p>
+
+  <p>The further growth of the Renaissance feeling, itself a rebirth of
+  Hellenic and Roman feeling, was long delayed.</p>
+
+  <p>Let us turn next to Spain and Portugal--the countries chiefly
+  affected by the great voyages of discovery, not only socially and
+  economically, but artistically--and see the effect of the new scenery
+  upon their imagination. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg139" id=
+  "pg139">139</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch5" id="ch5">CHAPTER V</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>ENTHUSIASM FOR NATURE AMONG THE DISCOVERERS AND CATHOLIC
+  MYSTICS</h3>
+
+  <p>The great achievement of the Italian Renaissance was the discovery
+  of the world within, of the whole deep contents of the human spirit.
+  Burckhart, praising this achievement, says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>If we were to collect the pearls from the courtly and knightly
+    poetry of all the countries of the West during the two preceding
+    centuries, we should have a mass of wonderful divinations and
+    single pictures of the inward life, which at first sight would seem
+    to rival the poetry of the Italians. Leaving lyrical poetry out of
+    account, Godfrey of Strassburg gives us, in his <i>Tristram and
+    Isolt</i>, a representation of human passion, some features of
+    which are immortal. But these pearls lie scattered in the ocean of
+    artificial convention, and they are altogether something very
+    different from a complete objective picture of the inward man and
+    his spiritual wealth.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The discovery of the beauty of scenery followed as a necessary
+  corollary of this awakening of individualism, this fathoming of the
+  depths of human personality. For only to fully-developed man does
+  Nature fully disclose herself.</p>
+
+  <p>This had already been stated by one of the most philosophic minds
+  of the time, Pico della Mirandola, in his speech on the dignity of
+  man. God, he tells us, made man at the close of creation to know the
+  laws of the universe, to love its beauty, to admire its <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg140" id="pg140">140</a></span>greatness. He
+  bound him to no fixed place, to no prescribed form of work, and by no
+  iron necessity; but gave him freedom to will and to move.</p>
+
+  <p>'I have set thee,' said the Creator to Adam, 'in the midst of the
+  world, that thou mayest the more easily behold and see all that is
+  therein. I created thee a being neither heavenly nor earthly, neither
+  mortal nor immortal, only that thou mightest be free to shape and to
+  overcome thyself. Thou mayest sink into a beast, and be born again to
+  the Divine likeness. The brutes bring with them from their mothers'
+  body what they will carry with them as long as they live; the higher
+  spirits are from the beginning, or soon after, what they will be for
+  ever. To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on
+  thine own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal
+  life.'</p>
+
+  <p>The best men of the Renaissance realized this ideal of an
+  all-round development, and it was the glory of Italy in the
+  fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that she found a new realm in the
+  inner man at the very time that her discoveries across the seas were
+  enlarging the boundaries of the external world, and her science was
+  studying it. Mixed as the motives of the discoverers must have been,
+  like those of the crusaders before them, and probably, for the most
+  part, self-interested, it is easy to imagine the surprise they must
+  have felt at seeing ignorant people, who, to quote Peter Martyr (de
+  rebus oceanicis):<a href="#f1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Naked, without weights or measures or death-dealing money, live
+    in a Golden Age without laws, without slanderous judges, without
+    the scales of the balance. Contented with Nature, they spend their
+    lives utterly untroubled for the future.... Theirs is a Golden Age;
+    they do not enclose their farms with trench or wall or hurdle;
+    their gardens are open. Without laws, without the scales of the
+    balance, without judges, they guard the right by Nature's
+    light.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg141" id="pg141">141</a></span>
+  And their wonder at the novelties in climate and vegetation, the
+  strange forests, brilliant birds, and splendid stars of the tropics,
+  must have been no less.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet it is one thing to feel, and another to find words to convey
+  the feeling to others; and the explorers often expressed regret for
+  their lack of skill in this respect.</p>
+
+  <p>Also, and this is more important in criticizing what they wrote,
+  these seamen were mostly simple, unlettered folk, to whom a country's
+  wealth in natural products and their practical value made the
+  strongest appeal, and whose admiration of bays, harbours, trees,
+  fields of grain, etc., was measured by the same standard of utility.
+  Even such unskilled reporters did not entirely fail to refer to the
+  beauty of Nature; but had it not been for the original and powerful
+  mind of Christopher Columbus, we should have had little more in the
+  way of description than 'pleasant,' 'pretty,' and such words.</p>
+
+  <p>Marco Polo described his journey to the coast of Cormos<a href=
+  "#f2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> in very matter-of-fact fashion, but not
+  without a touch of satisfaction at the peculiarities of the
+  place:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>You then approach the very beautiful plain of Formosa, watered
+    by fine rivers, with plantations of the date palms, and having the
+    air filled with francolins, parrots, and other birds unknown to our
+    climate. You ride two days to it, and then arrive at the ocean, on
+    which there is a city and a fort named Cormos. The ships of India
+    bring thither all kinds of spiceries, precious stones, and pearls,
+    cloths of silk and gold, elephants' teeth, and many other
+    articles.... They sow wheat, barley, and other kinds of grain in
+    the month of November, and reap them in March, when they become
+    ripe and perfect; but none except the date will endure till May,
+    being dried up by the extreme heat.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Elsewhere he wrote of scenery in the same strain: of the Persian
+  deserts, and the green table-lands and wild gorges of Badachshan,
+  Japan with its golden <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg142" id=
+  "pg142">142</a></span>roofed palaces, paradisaical Sunda Islands with
+  their 'abundance of treasure and costly spices,' Java the less with
+  its eight kingdoms, etc.; but naturally his chief interest was given
+  to the manners and customs of the various races, and the fertility
+  and uses of their countries.</p>
+
+  <p>In Bishop Osorio's <i>History of Emmanuel, King of Portugal</i>,
+  we see some pleasure in the beauties of Nature peeping through the
+  matter-of-fact tone of the day.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, speaking of the companions of Vasco da Gama, he says that
+  they admired the far coast of Africa:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>They descried some little islands, which appeared extremely
+    pleasant; the trees were lofty, the meadows of a beautiful verdure,
+    and great numbers of cattle frisked about everywhere; they could
+    see the inhabitants walking upon the shore in vast numbers....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Of Mozambique he says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The palm trees are of a great height, covered with long prickly
+    leaves; broad-spreading boughs afford an agreeable shade, and bear
+    nuts of a great size, called cocoes.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Of Melinda:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The city stands in a beautiful plain, surrounded with a variety
+    of fine gardens; these are stocked with all sorts of trees,
+    especially the orange, the flowers of which yield a most graceful
+    diffusive smell. The country is rich and plentiful, abounding not
+    only with tame and domestic cattle, but with game of all kinds,
+    which the natives hunt down or take with nets.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Of Zanzibar:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The soil of this place is rich and fertile, and it abounds with
+    springs of the most excellent water; the whole island is covered
+    with beautiful woods, which are extremely fragrant from the many
+    wild citrons growing there, which diffuse the most grateful
+    scent.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Of Brazil, which is 'extremely pleasant and the soil
+  fruitful':</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg143" id=
+  "pg143">143</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Clothed with a beautiful verdure, covered with tall trees,
+    abounding with plenty of excellent water ... and so healthy that
+    the inhabitants make no use of medicines, for almost all who die
+    here are not cut off by any distemper, but worn out by age. Here
+    are many large rivers, besides a vast number of delightful springs.
+    The plains are large and spacious, and afford excellent pasture....
+    In short, the whole country affords a most beautiful prospect,
+    being diversified with hills and valleys, and these covered with
+    thick shady woods stocked with great variety of trees, many of
+    which our people were quite strangers to: of these there was one of
+    a particular nature, the leaves of which, when cut, sent forth a
+    kind of balsam. The trees used in dyeing scarlet grow here in great
+    plenty and to a great height. The soil likewise produces the most
+    useful plants.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Of Ormuz, near Arabia:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The name of the island seems to be taken from the ancient city
+    of Armuza in Caramania ... the place is sandy and barren, and the
+    soil so very poor that it produces nothing fit for human
+    sustenance, neither by nature nor by the most laborious cultivation
+    ... yet here you might see greater plenty of these, as well as all
+    luxurious superfluities, than in most other countries of a richer
+    and more fertile soil, for the place, poor in itself, having become
+    the great mart for the commodities of India, Persia, and Arabia,
+    was thus abundantly stocked with the produce of all these
+    countries.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Peter Martyr's<a href="#f3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> point of view was
+  much the same. He was full of surprise at the splendour round him,
+  and the advantages such fertility offered to husbandry:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Thus after a few days with cheerful hearts they espied the land
+    long looked for....</p>
+
+    <p>As they coasted along by the shore of certain of these islands,
+    they heard nightingales sing in the thick woods in the month of
+    November.</p>
+
+    <p>They found also great rivers of fresh water and natural havens
+    of capacity to harbour great navies of ships.... They found there
+    wild geese, turtle-doves, and ducks, much greater than ours, and as
+    white <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg144" id=
+    "pg144">144</a></span>as swans, with heads of purple colour. Also
+    popinjays, of the which some are green, some yellow, and having
+    their feathers intermingled with green, yellow, and purple, which
+    varieties delighted the sense not a little.... They entered into a
+    main large sea, having in it innumerable islands, marvellously
+    differing one from another; for some of them were very fruitful,
+    full of herbs and trees, other some very dry, barren, and rough,
+    with high rocky mountains of stone, whereof some were of bright
+    blue, or azurine colour, and other glistening white.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He filled a whole page with descriptions of the wonderful wealth
+  of flowers, fruit, and vegetables of all kinds, which the ground
+  yields even in February. The richness of the prairie grass, the charm
+  of the rivers, the wealth of fruit, the enormous size of the trees
+  (with a view to native houses), the various kinds of pines, palms,
+  and chestnuts, and their uses, the immense downfall of water carried
+  to the sea by the rivers--all this he noted with admiration; but
+  industrial interest outweighed the æsthetic, even when he called
+  Spain happier than Italy. There is no trace of any real feeling for
+  scenery, any grasp of landscape as a whole; he did not advance beyond
+  scattered details, which attracted his eye chiefly for their material
+  uses.</p>
+
+  <p>But there is real delight in Nature in the account of a journey to
+  the Cape Verde Islands, undertaken on the suggestion of Henry the
+  Navigator by Aloise da Mosto,<a href="#f4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> an
+  intelligent Venetian nobleman:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Cape de Verde is so called because the Portuguese, who had
+    discovered it about a year before, found it covered with trees,
+    which continue green all the year round. This is a high and
+    beautiful Cape, which runs a good length into the sea, and has two
+    hills or little mountains at the point thereof. There are several
+    villages of negroes from Senega, on and about the promontory, who
+    dwell in thatched houses close to the shore, and in sight of those
+    who sail by.... The coast is all low and full of fine large trees,
+    which are constantly green; that is, they never wither as those in
+    Europe do, for the new leaves grow before the <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg145" id="pg145">145</a></span>old ones fall
+    off. These trees are so near the shore that they seem to drink out
+    of the sea. It is a most beautiful coast to behold, and the author,
+    who had sailed both in the East and West, never saw any comparable
+    with it.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>As Ruge says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The delight of this solid and prudent citizen of Strasburg in
+    the beauty of the tropics is lost in translation, but very evident
+    in the original account.<a href="#f5"><sup>[5]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>After reading it, we cannot quite say with Humboldt that Columbus
+  was the very first to give fluent expression to Nature's beauty on
+  the shores of the New World; none the less, and apart from his
+  importance in other respects, he remains the chief representative of
+  his time in the matter. Humboldt noted this in his critical
+  examination of the history of geography in the fifteenth and
+  sixteenth centuries, in which he pointed out his deep feeling for
+  Nature, and also, what only those who know the difficulties of
+  language at the time can appreciate, the beauty and simplicity of his
+  expression of it.<a href="#f6"><sup>[6]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Columbus is a striking example of the fact that a man's openness
+  to Nature increases with his general inner growth. No one doubts that
+  uneducated sailors, like other unlettered people, are vividly
+  impressed by fine scenery, especially when it is new to them, if they
+  possess a spark of mental refinement. They have the feeling, but are
+  unable to express it in words. But, as Humboldt says, feeling
+  improves speech; with increased culture, the power of expression
+  increases.</p>
+
+  <p>We owe a debt of gratitude to Fernandez de Navarrete<a href=
+  "#f7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> for the Diary in which we can trace
+  Columbus' love for Nature increasing to 'a deep and poetic feeling
+  for the majesty of creation.'</p>
+
+  <p>He wrote, October 8th, 1492, in his diary:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>'Thanks be to God,' says the Admiral, 'the air is very soft like
+    the April at Seville, and it is a pleasure to be there, so balmy
+    are the breezes.'</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg146" id="pg146">146</a></span>
+  And Humboldt says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The physiognomy and forms of the vegetation, the impenetrable
+    thickets of the forests, in which one can scarcely distinguish the
+    stems to which the several blossoms and leaves belong, the wild
+    luxuriance of the flowering soil along the humid shores, and the
+    rose-coloured flamingoes which, fishing at early morning at the
+    mouth of the rivers, impart animation to the scenery,--all in turn
+    arrested the attention of the old mariner as he sailed along the
+    shores of Cuba, between the small Lucayan Islands and the
+    Jardinillos.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Each new country seemed to him more beautiful than the last; he
+  complained that he could not find new words in which to give the
+  Queen an impression of the beauty of the Cuban coast.</p>
+
+  <p>It will repay us to examine the Diary more closely, since Humboldt
+  only treated it shortly and in scattered extracts, and it has been
+  partly falsified, unintentionally, by attempts to modernize the
+  language instead of adhering to literal translation. What Peschel
+  says, for instance, is pretty but distinctly exaggerated:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Columbus was never weary of listening to the nightingales,
+    comparing the genial Indian climate with the Andalusian spring, and
+    admiring the luxuriant wilderness on these humid shores, with their
+    dense vegetation and forests so rich in all kinds of plants, and
+    alive with swarms of parrots ... with an open eye for all the
+    beauties of Nature and all the wonders of creation, he looked at
+    the splendour of the tropics very much as a tender father looks
+    into the bright eyes of his child.<a href=
+    "#f8"><sup>[8]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The Diary of November 3rd says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>He could see nothing, owing to the dense foliage of the trees,
+    which were very fresh and odoriferous; so that he felt no doubt
+    that there were aromatic herbs among them. He said that all he saw
+    was so beautiful that his eyes could never tire of gazing upon such
+    loveliness, nor his ears of listening to the songs of birds.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>November 14th:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>He saw so many islands that he could not count them all, with
+    very high land covered with trees of many kinds and an infinite
+    number of palms. He was much <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg147"
+    id="pg147">147</a></span>astonished to see so many lofty islands,
+    and assured the Sovereigns that the mountains and islands he had
+    seen since yesterday seemed to him to be second to none in the
+    world, so high and clear of clouds and snow, with the sea at their
+    bases so deep.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>November 25th:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>He saw a large stream of beautiful water falling from the
+    mountains above, with a loud noise.... Just then the sailor boys
+    called out that they had found large pines. The Admiral looked up
+    the hill and saw that they were so wonderfully large, that he could
+    not exaggerate their height and straightness, like stout yet fine
+    spindles. He perceived that here there was material for great store
+    of planks and masts for the largest ships in Spain ... the
+    mountains are very high, whence descend many limpid streams, and
+    all the hills are covered with pines, and an infinity of diverse
+    and beautiful trees.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>November 27th:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The freshness and beauty of the trees, the clearness of the
+    water and the birds, made it all so delightful that he wished never
+    to leave them. He said to the men who were with him that to give a
+    true relation to the Sovereigns of the things they had seen, a
+    thousand tongues would not suffice, nor his hand to write it, for
+    that it was like a scene of enchantment.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>December 13th:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The nine men well armed, whom he sent to explore a certain
+    place, said, with regard to the beauty of the land they saw, that
+    the best land in Castille could not be compared with it. The
+    Admiral also said that there was no comparison between them, nor
+    did the Plain of Cordova come near them, the difference being as
+    great as between night and day. They said that all these lands were
+    cultivated, and that a very wide and large river passed through the
+    centre of the valley and could irrigate all the fields. All the
+    trees were green and full of fruit, and the plants tall and covered
+    with flowers. The roads were broad and good. The climate was like
+    April in Castille; the nightingale and other birds sang as they do
+    in Spain during that month, and it was the most pleasant place in
+    the world. Some birds sing sweetly at night, the crickets and frogs
+    are heard a good deal.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg148" id="pg148">148</a></span>
+  All this shews a naive and spontaneous delight in Nature, as free
+  from sentimentality as from any grasp of landscape as a distinct
+  entity.</p>
+
+  <p>In a letter about Cuba, which Humboldt gives, he says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The lands are high, and there are many very lofty mountains ...
+    all most beautiful, of a thousand different shapes, accessible and
+    covered with trees of a thousand kinds of such great height that
+    they seemed to reach the skies. I am told that the trees never lose
+    their foliage, and I can well believe it, for I observed that they
+    were as green and luxuriant as in Spain in the month of May. Some
+    were in bloom, others bearing fruit, and others otherwise according
+    to their nature. There were palm trees of six or eight kinds,
+    wonderful in their beautiful variety; but this is the case with all
+    the other trees; fruits and grasses, trees, plants and fruits
+    filled us with admiration. It contains extraordinary pine groves
+    and very extensive plains.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Humboldt here comments that these often-repeated expressions of
+  admiration prove a strong feeling for the beauty of Nature, since
+  they are concerned with foliage and shade, not with precious metals.
+  The next letter shews the growing power of description:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Reaching the harbour of Bastimentos, I put in.... The storm and
+    a rapid current kept me in for fourteen days, when I again set
+    sail, but not with favourable weather.... I had already made four
+    leagues when the storm recommenced and wearied me to such a degree
+    that I absolutely knew not what to do; my wound re-opened, and for
+    nine days my life was despaired of. Never was the sea seen so high,
+    so terrific, and so covered with foam; not only did the wind oppose
+    our proceeding onward, but it also rendered it highly dangerous to
+    run in for any headland, and kept me in that sea, which seemed to
+    me a sea of blood, seething like a cauldron on a mighty fire. Never
+    did the sky look more fearful; during one day and one night it
+    burned like a furnace, and emitted flashes in such fashion that
+    each time I looked to see if my masts and my sails were not
+    destroyed; these flashes came with such alarming fury that we all
+    thought the ship must have been consumed. All this time the waters
+    from heaven never ceased, not to say that it <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg149" id="pg149">149</a></span>rained, for it
+    was like a repetition of the Deluge. The men were at this time so
+    crushed in spirit, that they longed for death as a deliverance from
+    so many martyrdoms. Twice already had the ships suffered loss in
+    boats, anchors, and rigging, and were now lying bare without
+    sails.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>These extracts shew how feeling for Nature in unlettered minds
+  could develop into an enthusiasm which begot to some extent its own
+  power of expression. Columbus was entirely deficient in all previous
+  knowledge of natural history; but he was gifted with deep feeling
+  (the account of the nocturnal visions in the <i>Lettera Rarissima</i>
+  is proof of this)<a href="#f9"><sup>[9]</sup></a>, mental energy, and
+  a capacity for exact observation which many of the other explorers
+  did not possess, and these faculties made up for what he lacked in
+  education.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>In Cuba alone, he distinguishes seven or eight different species
+    of palm more beautiful and taller than the date tree; he informs
+    his learned friend Anghiera that he has seen pines and palms
+    wonderfully associated together in one and the same plain, and he
+    even so acutely observed the vegetation around him, that he was the
+    first to notice that there were pines in the mountains of Cibao,
+    whose fruits are not fir cones but berries like the olives of the
+    Axarafe de Sevilla.</p>
+
+    <p>(<i>Cosmos.</i>)</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Most of Vespucci's narratives of travel, especially his letters to
+  the Medici, only contain adventures and descriptions of manners and
+  customs. He lacked the originality and enthusiasm which gave the
+  power of the wing to Columbus.</p>
+
+  <p>That imposing Portuguese poem, the <i>Lusiad</i> of Camoens, is
+  full of jubilation over the discovery of the New World. Camoens made
+  his notes of foreign places at first hand; he had served as a
+  soldier, fought at the foot of Atlas in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf,
+  had doubled the Cape twice, and, inspired by a deep love for Nature,
+  had spent sixteen years in examining the phenomena of the ocean on
+  the Indian and <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg150" id=
+  "pg150">150</a></span>Chinese shores. He was a great sea painter. His
+  poetic and inventive power remind one at times of Dante--for
+  instance, in the description of the Dream Face; and he pictures
+  foreign lands with the clearness and detail of the discoverers and
+  later travellers. Here and there his poetry is like the Diary of
+  Columbus translated into verse--epic verse.</p>
+
+  <p>He had the same fiery spirit, nerve, and fresh insight, with the
+  poet's gift added.</p>
+
+  <p>(None the less, the classic apparatus of deities in Thetys'
+  <i>Apology</i> is no adornment.)</p>
+
+  <p>Comparisons from Nature and animals are few but detailed:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>E'en as the prudent ants which towards their nest</p>
+
+      <p>Bearing the apportioned heavy burden go,</p>
+
+      <p>Exercise all their forces at their best,</p>
+
+      <p>Hostile to hostile winter's frost and snow;</p>
+
+      <p>There, all their toils and labours stand confessed,</p>
+
+      <p>There, never looked-for energy they show;</p>
+
+      <p>So, from the Lusitanians to avert</p>
+
+      <p>Their horrid Fate, the nymphs their power exert.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Thus, as in some sequestered sylvan mere</p>
+
+      <p>The frogs (the Lycian people formerly),</p>
+
+      <p>If that by chance some person should appear</p>
+
+      <p>While out of water they incautious be,</p>
+
+      <p>Awake the pool by hopping here and there,</p>
+
+      <p>To fly the danger which they deem they see,</p>
+
+      <p>And gathering to some safe retreat they know,</p>
+
+      <p>Only their heads above the water show--So fly the Moors.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>E'en as when o'er the parching flame there glows</p>
+
+      <p>A flame, which may from some chance cause ignite,</p>
+
+      <p>(All while the whistling, puffing Boreas blows),</p>
+
+      <p>Fanned by the wind sets all the growth alight,</p>
+
+      <p>The shepherd's group, lying in their repose</p>
+
+      <p>Of quiet sleep, aroused in wild afright</p>
+
+      <p>At crackling flames that spread both wide and high,</p>
+
+      <p>Gather their goods and to the village fly;</p>
+
+      <p>So doth the Moor.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>E'en as the daisy which once brightly smiled,</p>
+
+      <p>Plucked by unruly hands before its hour,</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg151" id=
+      "pg151">151</a></span>And harshly treated by the careless
+      child,</p>
+
+      <p>All in her chaplet tied with artless power.</p>
+
+      <p>Droops, of its colour and its scent despoiled,</p>
+
+      <p>So seems this pale and lifeless damsel flower;</p>
+
+      <p>The roses of her lips are dry and dead,</p>
+
+      <p>With her sweet life the mingled white and red.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The following simile reminds us of the far-fetched comparison of
+  Apollonios Rhodios<a href="#f11"><sup>[11]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>As the reflected lustre from the bright</p>
+
+    <p>Steel mirror, or of beauteous crystal fine,</p>
+
+    <p>Which, being stricken by the solar light,</p>
+
+    <p>Strikes back and on some other part doth shine;</p>
+
+    <p>And when, to please the child's vain curious sight,</p>
+
+    <p>Moved o'er the house, as may his hand incline,</p>
+
+    <p>Dances on walls and roof and everywhere,</p>
+
+    <p>Restless and tremulous, now here now there,</p>
+
+    <p>So did the wandering judgment fluctuate.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He says of Diana:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>And, as confronted on her way she pressed,</p>
+
+    <p>So beautiful her form and bearing were,</p>
+
+    <p>That everything that saw her love confessed,</p>
+
+    <p>The stars, the heaven, and the surrounding air.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The Indus and Ganges are personified in stanza xiv. 74, the Cape
+  in v. 50.</p>
+
+  <p>His time references are mostly mixed up with ancient
+  mythology:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>As soon, however, as the enamelled morn</p>
+
+    <p>O'er the calm heaven her lovely looks outspread,</p>
+
+    <p>Opening to bright Hyperion, new-born,</p>
+
+    <p>Her purple portals as he raised his head,</p>
+
+    <p>Then the whole fleet their ships with flags adorn.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>So soon, however, as great Sol has spread</p>
+
+    <p>His rays o'er earth, whom instantly to meet,</p>
+
+    <p>Her purple brow Aurora rising shews,</p>
+
+    <p>And rudely life around the horizon throws.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He is at his best in writing of the sea.</p>
+
+  <p>He says of the explorers on first setting sail: <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg152" id="pg152">152</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Now were they sailing o'er wide ocean bright,</p>
+
+      <p>The restless waves dividing as they flew;</p>
+
+      <p>The winds were breathing prosperous and light,</p>
+
+      <p>The vessels' hollow sails were filled to view;</p>
+
+      <p>The seas were covered o'er with foaming white</p>
+
+      <p>Where the advancing prows were cutting through</p>
+
+      <p>The consecrated waters of the deep....</p>
+
+      <p>Thus went we forth these unknown seas to explore,</p>
+
+      <p>Which by no people yet explored had been;</p>
+
+      <p>Seeing new isles and climes which long before</p>
+
+      <p>Great Henry, first discoverer, had seen.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Now did the moon in purest lustre rise</p>
+
+      <p>On Neptune's silvery waves her beams to pour,</p>
+
+      <p>With stars attendant glittered all the skies,</p>
+
+      <p>E'en like a meadow daisy-spangled o'er;</p>
+
+      <p>The fury of the winds all peaceful lies</p>
+
+      <p>In the dark caverns close along the shore,</p>
+
+      <p>But still the night-watch constant vigils keep,</p>
+
+      <p>As long had been their custom on the deep.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>To tell thee of the dangers of the sea</p>
+
+      <p>At length, which human understanding scare,</p>
+
+      <p>Thunder-storms, sudden, dreadful in degree,</p>
+
+      <p>Lightnings, which seem to set on fire the air,</p>
+
+      <p>Dark floods of rain, nights of obscurity,</p>
+
+      <p>Rollings of thunder which the world would tear,</p>
+
+      <p>Were not less labour than a great mistake,</p>
+
+      <p>E'en if I had an iron voice to speak.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He describes the electric fires of St Elmo and the gradual
+  development of the waterspout:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>I saw, and clearly saw, the living light</p>
+
+    <p>Which sailors everywhere as sacred hold</p>
+
+    <p>In time of storm and crossing winds that fight,</p>
+
+    <p>Of tempest dark and desperation cold;</p>
+
+    <p>Nor less it was to all a marvel quite,</p>
+
+    <p>And matter surely to alarm the bold,</p>
+
+    <p>To observe the sea-clouds, with a tube immense,</p>
+
+    <p>Suck water up from Ocean's deep expanse....</p>
+
+    <p>A fume or vapour thin and subtle rose,</p>
+
+    <p>And by the wind begin revolving there;</p>
+
+    <p>Thence to the topmost clouds a tube it throws,</p>
+
+    <p>But of a substance so exceeding rare....</p>
+
+    <p>But when it was quite gorged it then withdrew</p>
+
+    <p>The foot that on the sea beneath had grown,</p>
+
+    <p>And o'er the heavens in fine it raining flew,</p>
+
+    <p>The jacent waters watering with its own.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg153" id="pg153">153</a></span>
+  The storm at sea reminds us of Æschylus in splendour:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The winds were such, that scarcely could they shew</p>
+
+    <p>With greater force or greater rage around,</p>
+
+    <p>Than if it were this purpose then to blow</p>
+
+    <p>The mighty tower of Babel to the ground....</p>
+
+    <p>Now rising to the clouds they seem to go</p>
+
+    <p>O'er the wild waves of Neptune borne on end;</p>
+
+    <p>Now to the bowels of the deep below;</p>
+
+    <p>It seems to all their senses, they descend;</p>
+
+    <p>Notus and Auster, Boreas, Aquila,</p>
+
+    <p>The very world's machinery would rend;</p>
+
+    <p>While flashings fire the black and ugly night</p>
+
+    <p>And shed from pole to pole a dazzling light....</p>
+
+    <p>But now the star of love beamed forth its ray,</p>
+
+    <p>Before the sun, upon the horizon clear,</p>
+
+    <p>And visited, as messenger of day,</p>
+
+    <p>The earth and spreading sea, with brow to cheer....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, as it subsides:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The mountains that we saw at first appeared,</p>
+
+    <p>In the far view, like clouds and nothing more.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Off the coast of India:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Now o'er the hills broke forth the morning light</p>
+
+    <p>Where Ganges' stream is murmuring heard to flow,</p>
+
+    <p>Free from the storm and from the first sea's fight,</p>
+
+    <p>Vain terror from their hearts is banished now.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His magic island, the Ilha of Venus, could only have been imagined
+  by a poet who had travelled widely. All the delights of the New World
+  are there, with the vegetation of Southern Europe added. It is a
+  poet's triumphant rendering of impressions which the discoverers so
+  often felt their inability to convey:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>From far they saw the island fresh and fair,</p>
+
+    <p>Which Venus o'er the waters guiding drove</p>
+
+    <p>(E'en as the wind the canvas white doth bear)....</p>
+
+    <p>Where the coast forms a bay for resting-place,</p>
+
+    <p>Curved and all quiet, and whose shining sand</p>
+
+    <p>Is painted with red shells by Venus' hand....</p>
+
+    <p>Three beauteous mounts rise nobly to the view,</p>
+
+    <p>Lifting with graceful pride their sweeling head,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg154" id=
+    "pg154">154</a></span>O'er which enamelled grass adorning grew.</p>
+
+    <p>In this delightful lovely island glad,</p>
+
+    <p>Bright limpid streams their rushing waters threw</p>
+
+    <p>From heights with rich luxuriant verdure clad,</p>
+
+    <p>'Midst the white rocks above, their source derive,</p>
+
+    <p>The streams sonorous, sweet, and fugitive....</p>
+
+    <p>A thousand trees toward heaven their summits raise,</p>
+
+    <p>With fruits odoriferous and fair;</p>
+
+    <p>The orange in its produce bright displays</p>
+
+    <p>The tint that Daphne carried in her hair;</p>
+
+    <p>The citron on the ground its branches lays,</p>
+
+    <p>Laden with yellow weights it cannot bear;</p>
+
+    <p>The beauteous melons, which the whole perfume</p>
+
+    <p>The virgin bosom in their form assume.</p>
+
+    <p>The forest trees, which on the hills combine</p>
+
+    <p>To ennoble them with leafy hair o'ergrown,</p>
+
+    <p>Are poplars of Alcides; laurels shine,</p>
+
+    <p>The which the shining God loved as his own;</p>
+
+    <p>Myrtles of Cytherea with the pine</p>
+
+    <p>Of Cybele, by other love o'erthrown;</p>
+
+    <p>The spreading cypress tree points out where lies</p>
+
+    <p>The seat of the ethereal paradise....</p>
+
+    <p>Pomegranates rubicund break forth and shine,</p>
+
+    <p>A tint whereby thou, ruby, losest sheen.</p>
+
+    <p>'Twixt the elm branches hangs the jocund vine,</p>
+
+    <p>With branches some of red and some of green....</p>
+
+    <p>Then the refined and splendid tapestry,</p>
+
+    <p>Covering the rustic ground beneath the feet,</p>
+
+    <p>Makes that of Achemeina dull to be,</p>
+
+    <p>But makes the shady valley far more sweet.</p>
+
+    <p>Cephisian flowers with head inclined we see</p>
+
+    <p>About the calm and lucid lake's retreat....</p>
+
+    <p>'Twas difficult to fancy which was true,</p>
+
+    <p>Seeing on heaven and earth all tints the same,</p>
+
+    <p>If fair Aurora gave the flowers their time,</p>
+
+    <p>Or from the lovely flowers to her it came;</p>
+
+    <p>Flora and Zephyr there in painting drew</p>
+
+    <p>The violets tinted, as of lovers' flame,</p>
+
+    <p>The iris, and the rose all fair and fresh</p>
+
+    <p>E'en as it doth on cheek of maiden blush....</p>
+
+    <p>Along the water sings the snow-white swan,</p>
+
+    <p>While from the branch respondeth Philomel....</p>
+
+    <p>Here, in its bill, to the dear nest, with care,</p>
+
+    <p>The rapid little bird the food doth bear.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Subjective feeling for Nature is better displayed in the lyric
+  than the epic.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg155" id="pg155">155</a></span>
+  The Spaniard, Fray Luis de Leon, was a typical example of a
+  sixteenth-century lyrist; full of mild enthusiasm for Nature, the
+  theosophico-mystical attitude of the Catholic.</p>
+
+  <p>A most fervid feeling for Nature from the religious side breathed
+  in St Francis of Assisi--the feeling which inspired his hymn to
+  Brother Sun (<i>Cantico del Sole</i>), and led his brother Egidio,
+  intoxicated with love to his Creator, to kiss trees and rocks and
+  weep over them<a href="#f12"><sup>[12]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Praised by His creatures all,</p>
+
+    <p>Praised be the Lord my God</p>
+
+    <p>By Messer Sun, my brother above all,</p>
+
+    <p>Who by his rays lights us and lights the day--</p>
+
+    <p>Radiant is she, with his great splendour stored,</p>
+
+    <p>Thy glory, Lord, confessing.</p>
+
+    <p>By Sister Moon and Stars my Lord is praised,</p>
+
+    <p>Where clear and fair they in the heavens are raised</p>
+
+    <p>By Brother Wind, etc....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His follower, Bonaventura, too, in his verses counted--</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The smallest creatures his brothers and sisters, and called upon
+    crops, vineyards, trees, flowers, and stars to praise God.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Bernard von Clairvaux made it a principle 'to learn from the
+  earth, trees, corn, flowers, and grass'; and he wrote in his letter
+  to Heinrich Murdach (Letter 106):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Believe me, I have proved it; you will find more in the woods
+    than in books; trees and stones will teach you what no other
+    teacher can.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He looked upon all natural objects as 'rays of the Godhead,'
+  copies of a great original.</p>
+
+  <p>His contemporary, Hugo von St Victor, wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The whole visible world is like a book written by the finger of
+    God. It is created by divine power, and all human beings are
+    figures placed in it, not to shew the free-will of man, but as a
+    revelation and visible sign, by divine will, of God's invisible
+    wisdom. But <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg156" id=
+    "pg156">156</a></span>as one who only glances at an open book sees
+    marks on it, but does not read the letters, so the wicked and
+    sensual man, in whom the spirit of God is not, sees only the outer
+    surface of visible beings and not their deeper parts.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>German mystics wrote in the same strain; for instance, the popular
+  Franciscan preacher, Berthold von Regensburg (1272),</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Whose sermons on fields and meadows drew many thousands of
+    hearers, and moved them partly by the unusual freshness and
+    vitality of his pious feeling for Nature,</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>in spite of many florid symbolical accessories, such as we find
+  again in Ekkehart and other fifteenth-century mystics, and especially
+  in Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek.</p>
+
+  <p>The northern prophetess and foundress of an Order Birgitta (1373)
+  held that the breath of the Creator was in all visible things: 'We
+  feel it pervading us in her visions,' says Hammerich,<a href=
+  "#f13"><sup>[13]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Whether by gurgling brook or snow-covered firs. It is with us
+    when the prophetess leads us along the ridges of the Swedish coast
+    with their surging waves or down the shaft of a mine, or to wander
+    in the quiet of evening through vineyards between roses and lilies,
+    while the dew is falling and the bells ring out the Ave Maria.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Vincentius von Beauvais (1264) in his <i>Speculum Naturæ</i>
+  demonstrates the value of studying Nature from a religious and moral
+  point of view; and the Carthusian general, Dionysius von Rickel
+  (1471), in his paper <i>On the beauty of the world and the glory of
+  God (De venustate mundi et de pulchritudine Dei)</i> says in Chapter
+  xxii.: 'All the beauty of the animal world is nothing but the
+  reflection and out-flow of the original beauty of God,' and gives as
+  special examples:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Roses, lilies, and other beautiful and fragrant flowers, shady
+    woods, pine trees, pleasant meadows, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+    "pg157" id="pg157">157</a></span>high, mountains, springs, streams
+    and rivers, and the broad arm of the immeasurable sea ... and above
+    all shine the stars, completing their course in the clear sky in
+    wonderful splendour and majestic order.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Raymundus von Sabieude, a Spaniard, who studied medicine and
+  philosophy at Toulouse, and wrote his <i>Theologia Naturalis</i> in
+  1436, considered Nature, like Thomas Aquinas, from a mystical and
+  scholastic point of view, as made up of living beings in a graduated
+  scale from the lowest to the highest; and he lauded her in terms
+  which even Pope Clement VII. thought exaggerated. Piety in him went
+  hand in hand with a natural philosophy like Bacon's, and his interest
+  in Nature was rather a matter of intellect than feeling.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>God has given us two books--the book of all living beings, or
+    Nature, and the Holy Scriptures. The first was given to man from
+    the beginning when all things were created, for each living being
+    is but a letter of the alphabet written by the finger of God, and
+    the book is composed of them all together as a book is of letters
+    ... man is the capital letter of this book. This book is not like
+    the other, falsified and spoilt, but familiar and intelligible; it
+    makes man joyous and humble and obedient, a hater of evil and a
+    lover of virtue.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Among the savants of the Renaissance who applied the inductive
+  method to Nature before Bacon,<a href="#f14"><sup>[14]</sup></a> we
+  must include the thoughtful and pious Spaniard Luis Vives (1540), who
+  wrote concerning the useless speculations of alchemists and
+  astrologers about occult things: 'It is not arguing that is needed
+  here, but silent observation of Nature.' Knowledge of Nature, he
+  said, would serve both body and soul.</p>
+
+  <p>The tender religious lyrics of the mystic, Luis de Leon, followed
+  next.<a href="#f16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> His life (1521-1591) brings
+  us up to the days of the Inquisition. He himself, an excellent
+  teacher and man of science, was imprisoned for years for opinions too
+  openly expressed in his writings; but with all his varied fortunes he
+  never <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg158" id=
+  "pg158">158</a></span>lost his innate manliness and tenderness. His
+  biographer tells us, that as soon as the holidays began, he would
+  hurry away from the gloomy lecture rooms and the noisy students at
+  Salamanca, to the country, where he had taken an estate belonging to
+  a monastery at the foot of a hill by a river, with a little island
+  close by.</p>
+
+  <p>It had a large uncultivated garden, made beautiful by fine old
+  trees, with paths among the vines and a stream running through it to
+  the river, and a long avenue of poplars whose rustle blended with the
+  noise of the mill-wheel. Beyond was a view of fields. Leon would sit
+  for hours here undisturbed, dipping his feet in the brook under a
+  poplar--the tree which was reputed to flourish on sand alone and give
+  shelter to all the birds under heaven--while the rustle of the leaves
+  sang his melancholy to sleep. His biographer goes on to say that he
+  had the Spaniard's special delight in Nature, and understood her
+  language and her secrets; and the veiled splendour of her tones,
+  colours, and forms could move him to tears. As he sat there gazing at
+  the clouds, he felt lifted up in heart by the insignificance of all
+  things in comparison with the spirit of man.</p>
+
+  <p>In the pitching and tossing of his 'ships of thought' he never
+  lost the consciousness of Nature's beauty, and would pray the clouds
+  to carry his sighs with them in their tranquil course through heaven.
+  He loved the sunrise, birds, flowers, bees, fishes; nothing was
+  meaningless to him; all things were letters in a divine alphabet,
+  which might bring him a message from above. Nature was symbolic; the
+  glow of dawn meant the glow of divine love; a wide view, true
+  freedom; rays of sunshine, rays of divine glory; the setting sun,
+  eternal light; stars, flowers of light in an everlasting spring.</p>
+
+  <p>His love for the country, especially for its peacefulness, was
+  free from the folly and excess of the pastoral poetry of his day. He
+  did not paint Nature <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg159" id=
+  "pg159">159</a></span>entirely for her own sake; man was always her
+  master<a href="#f15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> in his poems, and he
+  sometimes, very finely, introduced himself and his affairs at the
+  close, and represented Nature as addressing himself.</p>
+
+  <p>His descriptions are short, and he often tries to represent sounds
+  onomato-poetically.</p>
+
+  <p>This is from his ode, <i>Quiet Life</i><a href=
+  "#f17"><sup>[17]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>O happy he who flies</p>
+
+    <p>Far from the noisy world away--</p>
+
+    <p>Who with the worthy and the wise</p>
+
+    <p>Hath chosen the narrow way.</p>
+
+    <p>The silence of the secret road</p>
+
+    <p>That leads the soul to virtue and to God!...</p>
+
+    <p>O streams, and shades, and hills on high,</p>
+
+    <p>Unto the stillness of your breast</p>
+
+    <p>My wounded spirit longs to fly--</p>
+
+    <p>To fly and be at rest.</p>
+
+    <p>Thus from the world's tempestuous sea,</p>
+
+    <p>O gentle Nature, do I turn to thee....</p>
+
+    <p>A garden by the mountain side</p>
+
+    <p>Is mine, whose flowery blossoming</p>
+
+    <p>Shews, even in spring's luxuriant pride,</p>
+
+    <p>What Autumn's suns shall bring:</p>
+
+    <p>And from mountain's lofty crown</p>
+
+    <p>A clear and sparkling rill comes tumbling down;</p>
+
+    <p>Then, pausing in its downward force</p>
+
+    <p>The venerable trees among,</p>
+
+    <p>It gurgles on its winding course;</p>
+
+    <p>And, as it glides along,</p>
+
+    <p>Gives freshness to the day and pranks</p>
+
+    <p>With ever changing flowers its mossy banks.</p>
+
+    <p>The whisper of the balmy breeze</p>
+
+    <p>Scatters a thousand sweets around,</p>
+
+    <p>And sweeps in music through the trees</p>
+
+    <p>With an enchanting sound</p>
+
+    <p>That laps the soul in calm delight</p>
+
+    <p>Where crowns and kingdoms are forgotten quite.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poem, <i>The Starry Sky</i>,<a href="#f18"><sup>[18]</sup></a>
+  is full of lofty enthusiasm for Nature and piety:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When yonder glorious sky</p>
+
+    <p>Lighted with million lamps I contemplate,</p>
+
+    <p>And turn my dazzled eye</p>
+
+    <p>To this vain mortal state</p>
+
+    <p>All mean and visionary, mean and desolate,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg160" id="pg160">160</a></span>A
+    mingled joy and grief</p>
+
+    <p>Fills all my soul with dark solicitude....</p>
+
+    <p>List to the concert pure</p>
+
+    <p>Of yon harmonious countless worlds of light.</p>
+
+    <p>See, in his orbit sure</p>
+
+    <p>Each takes his journey bright,</p>
+
+    <p>Led by an unseen hand through the vast maze of night.</p>
+
+    <p>See how the pale moon rolls</p>
+
+    <p>Her silver wheel....</p>
+
+    <p>See Saturn, father of the golden hours,</p>
+
+    <p>While round him, bright and blest,</p>
+
+    <p>The whole empyrean showers</p>
+
+    <p>Its glorious streams of light on this low world of ours.</p>
+
+    <p>But who to these can turn</p>
+
+    <p>And weigh them 'gainst a weeping world like this,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor feel his spirit burn</p>
+
+    <p>To grasp so sweet a bliss</p>
+
+    <p>And mourn that exile hard which here his portion is?</p>
+
+    <p>For there, and there alone,</p>
+
+    <p>Are peace and joy and never dying love:</p>
+
+    <p>Day that shall never cease,</p>
+
+    <p>No night there threatening,</p>
+
+    <p>No winter there to chill joy's ever-during spring.</p>
+
+    <p>Ye fields of changeless green</p>
+
+    <p>Covered with living streams and fadeless flowers;</p>
+
+    <p>Thou paradise serene,</p>
+
+    <p>Eternal joyful hours</p>
+
+    <p>Thy disembodied soul shall welcome in thy towers!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It was chiefly in Spanish literature at this time that Nature was
+  used allegorically. Tieck<a href="#f19"><sup>[19]</sup></a> says: 'In
+  Calderon's poetry, and that of his contemporaries, we often find, in
+  romances and song-like metres, most charming descriptions of the sea,
+  mountains, gardens, and woody valleys, but almost always used
+  allegorically, and with an artistic polish which ends by giving us,
+  not so much a real impression of Nature, as one of clever description
+  in musical verse, repeated again and again with slight variations.'
+  This is true of Leon, but far more of Calderon, since it belongs to
+  the very essence of drama. But, despite his passion for description
+  and his Catholic and conventional tone, there is inexhaustible fancy,
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg161" id=
+  "pg161">161</a></span>splendid colour, and a modern element of
+  individuality in his poems. His heroes are conscious of their own
+  ego, feel themselves to be 'a miniature world,' and search out their
+  own feelings 'in the wild waves of emotion' (as Aurelian, for
+  example, in <i>Zenobia</i>).</p>
+
+  <p>Fernando says in <i>The Constant Prince</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>These flowers awoke in beauty and delight</p>
+
+    <p>At early dawn, when stars began to set;</p>
+
+    <p>At eve they leave us but a fond regret,</p>
+
+    <p>Locked in the cold embraces of the night.</p>
+
+    <p>These shades that shame the rainbow's arch of light.</p>
+
+    <p>Where gold and snow in purple pomp are met,</p>
+
+    <p>All give a warning man should not forget,</p>
+
+    <p>When one brief day can darken things so bright.</p>
+
+    <p>'Tis but to wither that the roses bloom--</p>
+
+    <p>'Tis to grow old they bear their beauteous flowers,</p>
+
+    <p>One crimson bud their cradle and their tomb.</p>
+
+    <p>Such are man's fortunes in this world of ours;</p>
+
+    <p>They live, they die; one day doth end their doom,</p>
+
+    <p>For ages past but seem to us like hours.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The warning which Zenobia gives her captor in his hour of triumph
+  to beware of sudden reverses of fortune is finely conceived:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Morn comes forth with rays to crown her,</p>
+
+    <p>While the sun afar is spreading</p>
+
+    <p>Golden cloths most finely woven</p>
+
+    <p>All to dry her tear-drops purely.</p>
+
+    <p>Up to noon he climbs, then straightway</p>
+
+    <p>Sinks, and then dark night makes ready</p>
+
+    <p>For the burial of the sea</p>
+
+    <p>Canopies of black outstretching--</p>
+
+    <p>Tall ships fly on linen pinions,</p>
+
+    <p>On with speed the breezes send it,</p>
+
+    <p>Small the wide seas seem and straitened,</p>
+
+    <p>To its quick flight onward tending.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet one moment, yet one instant,</p>
+
+    <p>And the tempest roars, uprearing</p>
+
+    <p>Waves that might the stars extinguish,</p>
+
+    <p>Lifted for that ship's o'erwhelming.</p>
+
+    <p>Day, with fear, looks ever nightwards,</p>
+
+    <p>Calms must storm await with trembling;</p>
+
+    <p>Close behind the back of pleasure</p>
+
+    <p>Evermore stalks sadness dreary.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg162" id=
+  "pg162">162</a></span></p>
+
+  <p>In <i>Life's a Dream</i> Prince Sigismund, chained in a dark
+  prison, says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>What sinned I more herein</p>
+
+    <p>Than others, who were also born?</p>
+
+    <p>Born the bird was, yet with gay</p>
+
+    <p>Gala vesture, beauty's dower,</p>
+
+    <p>Scarcely 'tis a winged flower</p>
+
+    <p>Or a richly plumaged spray,</p>
+
+    <p>Ere the aerial halls of day</p>
+
+    <p>It divideth rapidly,</p>
+
+    <p>And no more will debtor be</p>
+
+    <p>To the nest it hates to quit;</p>
+
+    <p>But, with more of soul than it,</p>
+
+    <p>I am grudged its liberty.</p>
+
+    <p>And the beast was born, whose skin</p>
+
+    <p>Scarce those beauteous spots and bars,</p>
+
+    <p>Like to constellated stars,</p>
+
+    <p>Doth from its greater painter win</p>
+
+    <p>Ere the instinct doth begin:</p>
+
+    <p>Of its fierceness and its pride,</p>
+
+    <p>And its lair on every side,</p>
+
+    <p>It has measured far and nigh;</p>
+
+    <p>While, with better instinct, I</p>
+
+    <p>Am its liberty denied.</p>
+
+    <p>Born the mute fish was also,</p>
+
+    <p>Child of ooze and ocean weed;</p>
+
+    <p>Scarce a finny bark of speed</p>
+
+    <p>To the surface brought, and lo!</p>
+
+    <p>In vast circuits to and fro</p>
+
+    <p>Measures it on every side</p>
+
+    <p>Its illimitable home;</p>
+
+    <p>While, with greater will to roam,</p>
+
+    <p>I that freedom am denied.</p>
+
+    <p>Born the streamlet was, a snake</p>
+
+    <p>Which unwinds the flowers among,</p>
+
+    <p>Silver serpent, that not long</p>
+
+    <p>May to them sweet music make,</p>
+
+    <p>Ere it quits the flowery brake,</p>
+
+    <p>Onward hastening to the sea</p>
+
+    <p>With majestic course and free,</p>
+
+    <p>Which the open plains supply;</p>
+
+    <p>While, with more life gifted, I</p>
+
+    <p>Am denied its liberty.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In Act II. Clotardo tells how he has talked to the young prince,
+  brought up in solitude and confinement: <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg163" id="pg163">163</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>There I spoke with him awhile</p>
+
+    <p>Of the human arts and letters,</p>
+
+    <p>Which the still and silent aspect</p>
+
+    <p>Of the mountains and the heavens</p>
+
+    <p>Him have taught--that school divine</p>
+
+    <p>Where he has been long a learner,</p>
+
+    <p>And the voices of the birds</p>
+
+    <p>And the beasts has apprehended.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Descriptions of time and place are very rich in colour.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>One morning on the ocean,</p>
+
+      <p>When the half-awakened sun,</p>
+
+      <p>Trampling down the lingering shadows</p>
+
+      <p>Of the western vapours dun,</p>
+
+      <p>Spread its ruby-tinted tresses</p>
+
+      <p>Over jessamine and rose,</p>
+
+      <p>Dried with cloths of gold Aurora's</p>
+
+      <p>Tears of mingled fire and snows</p>
+
+      <p>Which to pearl his glance converted.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Since these gardens cannot steal</p>
+
+      <p>Away your oft returning woes,</p>
+
+      <p>Though to beauteous spring they build</p>
+
+      <p>Snow-white jasmine temples filled</p>
+
+      <p>With radiant statues of the rose;</p>
+
+      <p>Come into the sea and make</p>
+
+      <p>Thy bark the chariot of the sun,</p>
+
+      <p>And when the golden splendours run</p>
+
+      <p>Athwart the waves, along thy wake</p>
+
+      <p>The garden to the sea will say</p>
+
+      <p>(By melancholy fears deprest)--</p>
+
+      <p>'The sun already gilds the west,</p>
+
+      <p>How very short has been this day.'</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is a striking remark about a garden; Menon says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>A beautiful garden surrounded by wild forest</p>
+
+    <p>Is the more beautiful the nearer it approaches its opposite.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Splendour of colour was everything with Calderon, but it was
+  splendour of so stiff and formal a kind, that, like the whole of his
+  intensely severe, even inquisitorial outlook, it leaves us cold.</p>
+
+  <p>We must turn to Shakespeare to learn how strongly <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg164" id="pg164">164</a></span>the pulse of
+  sympathy for Nature could beat in contemporary drama. Goethe said:
+  'In Calderon you have the wine as the last artificial result of the
+  grape, but expressed into the goblet, highly spiced and sweetened,
+  and so given you to drink; but in Shakespeare you have the whole
+  natural process of its ripening besides, and the grapes themselves
+  one by one, for your enjoyment, if you will.'</p>
+
+  <p>In <i>Worship at the Cross</i> there is pious feeling for Nature
+  and mystical feeling side by side with an obnoxious fanaticism,
+  superstition, and other objectionable traits<a href=
+  "#f20"><sup>[20]</sup></a>; and mystical confessions of the same sort
+  may be gathered in numbers from the works of contemporary monks and
+  nuns. Even of such a fanatic and self-tormentor as the Spanish
+  Franciscan Petrus von Alcantara (1562), his biographer says that
+  despite his strict renunciation of the world, he retained a most warm
+  and deep feeling for Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>'Whatever he saw of the outer world increased his devotion and
+  gave it wings. The starry sky seen through his little monastery
+  window, often kept him rapt in deep meditation for hours; often he
+  was as if beside himself, so strong was his pious feeling when he saw
+  the power and glory of God reflected in charming flowers and
+  plants.'</p>
+
+  <p>When Gregorio Lopez (1596), a man who had studied many sides of
+  Nature, was asked if so much knowledge confused him, he answered: 'I
+  find God in all things, great and small.' Similar remarks are
+  attributed to many others.</p>
+
+  <p>Next to Leon, as a poet in enthusiasm and mysticism, came St
+  Teresa von Avila. She was especially notable for the ravishingly
+  pretty pictures and comparisons she drew from Nature to explain the
+  soul life of the Christian.<a href="#f20"><sup>[21]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>In all these outpourings of mystic feeling for Nature, there was
+  no interest in her entirely for her own sake; they were all more or
+  less dictated by <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg165" id=
+  "pg165">165</a></span>religious feeling. It was in the later German
+  and Italian mystics--for example, Bruno, Campanella, and Jacob
+  Boehme--that a more subjective and individual point of view was
+  attained through Pantheism and Protestantism.</p>
+
+  <p>The Protestant free-speaking Shakespeare shewed a far more intense
+  feeling for Nature than the Catholic Calderon. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg166" id="pg166">166</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch6" id="ch6">CHAPTER VI</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>SHAKESPEARE'S SYMPATHY FOR NATURE</h3>
+
+  <p>The poetry of India may serve as a measure of the part which
+  Nature can play in drama; it is full of comparisons and
+  personifications, and eloquent expressions of intimate sympathy with
+  plants and animals. In Greek tragedy, Nature stepped into the
+  background; metaphors, comparisons, and personifications are rarer;
+  it was only by degrees, especially in Sophocles and Euripides, in the
+  choruses and monologues, that man's interest in her appeared, and he
+  began to greet the light or the sky, land or sea, to attribute love,
+  pity, or hate to her, or find comfort in her lonely places. During
+  the Middle Ages, drama lay fallow, and the blossoming period of
+  French tragedy, educated to the pathos of Seneca, only produced cold
+  declamation, frosty rhetoric; of any real sympathy between man and
+  Nature there was no question.</p>
+
+  <p>Over this mediæval void Calderon was the bridge to
+  Shakespeare.</p>
+
+  <p>Shakespeare reached the Greek standpoint and advanced far beyond
+  it. He was not only the greatest dramatist of modern times as to
+  human action, suffering, and character, but also a genius in the
+  interpretation of Nature.<a href="#g1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>In place of the narrow limits of the old dramatists, he had the
+  wider and maturer modern vision, and, despite his mastery of
+  language, he was free both <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg167" id=
+  "pg167">167</a></span>from the exaggeration and redundance of
+  Oriental drama, and from the mere passion for describing, which so
+  often carried Calderon away.</p>
+
+  <p>In him too, the subjectivity, which the Renaissance brought into
+  modern art, was still more fully developed. His metaphors and
+  comparisons shew this, and, most of all, the very perfect art with
+  which he assigns Nature a part in the play, and makes her not only
+  form the appropriate background, dark or bright as required, but
+  exert a distinct influence upon human fate.</p>
+
+  <p>As Carrière points out:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>At a period which had painting for its leading art, and was
+    turning its attention to music, his mental accord produced effects
+    in his works to which antiquity was a stranger.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Herder had already noted that Shakespeare gives colour and
+  atmosphere where the Greek only gave outline. And although
+  Shakespeare's outlines are drawn with more regard to fidelity than to
+  actual beauty, yet, like a great painter, he brings all Nature into
+  sympathy with man. We feel the ghostly shudder of the November night
+  in <i>Hamlet</i>, breathe the bracing Highland air in <i>Macbeth</i>,
+  the air of the woods in <i>As You Like It</i>; the storm on the heath
+  roars through Lear's mad outburst, the nightingale sings in the
+  pomegranate outside Julia's window.</p>
+
+  <p>'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,' when Love solves
+  all differences in the <i>Merchant of Venice</i>! On the other hand,
+  when Macbeth is meditating the murder of Duncan, the wolf howls, the
+  owl hoots, and the cricket cries. And since Shakespeare's characters
+  often act out of part, so that intelligible motive fails, while it is
+  important to the poet that each scene be raised to dramatic level and
+  viewed in a special light, Goethe's words apply:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Here everything which in a great world event passes secretly
+    through the air, everything which at the very <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg168" id="pg168">168</a></span>moment of a
+    terrible occurrence men hide away in their hearts, is expressed;
+    that which they carefully shut up and lock away in their minds is
+    here freely and eloquently brought to light; we recognize the truth
+    to life, but know not how it is achieved.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Amorous passion in his hands is an interpreter of Nature; in one
+  of his sonnets he compares it to an ocean which cannot quench
+  thirst.</p>
+
+  <p>In Sonnet 130 he says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;</p>
+
+    <p>Coral is far more red than her lips' red;</p>
+
+    <p>If snow be white, why then her breasts are dim;</p>
+
+    <p>If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.</p>
+
+    <p>I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,</p>
+
+    <p>But no such roses see I in her cheeks;</p>
+
+    <p>And in some perfumes is there more delight</p>
+
+    <p>Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks....</p>
+
+    <p>And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare</p>
+
+    <p>As any she belied by false compare.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His lady-love is a mirror in which the whole world is
+  reflected:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind....</p>
+
+      <p>For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,</p>
+
+      <p>The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,</p>
+
+      <p>The mountain or the sea, the day or night,</p>
+
+      <p>The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 113.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>When she leaves him it seems winter even in spring:</p>
+
+      <p>'For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,</p>
+
+      <p>And thou away, the very birds are mute.'</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 97.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Here, as in the dramas,<a href="#g2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> contrasts
+  in Nature are often used to point contrasts in life:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame</p>
+
+    <p>Which like a canker in the fragrant rose</p>
+
+    <p>Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!</p>
+
+    <p>O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Sonnet 95.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>No more be grieved at that which thou hast done;</p>
+
+    <p>Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud;</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg169" id=
+    "pg169">169</a></span>Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and
+    sun,</p>
+
+    <p>And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Sonnet 35.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In an opposite sense is Sonnet 70:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The ornament of beauty is suspect</p>
+
+    <p>A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air,</p>
+
+    <p>For canker vice the sweetest buds did love,</p>
+
+    <p>And thou presentest a pure unstained prime.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Sonnet 7 has:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Lo! in the orient when the gracious light</p>
+
+    <p>Lifts up his burning head, each under eye</p>
+
+    <p>Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,</p>
+
+    <p>Serving with looks his sacred majesty.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Sonnet 18:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?</p>
+
+    <p>Thou art more lovely and more temperate,</p>
+
+    <p>Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,</p>
+
+    <p>And summer's lease hath all too short a date--</p>
+
+    <p>But thy eternal summer shall not fade,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;</p>
+
+    <p>Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,</p>
+
+    <p>When in eternal lines to time thou growest:</p>
+
+    <p>So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,</p>
+
+    <p>So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Sonnet 60:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,</p>
+
+    <p>So do our minutes hasten to their end;</p>
+
+    <p>Each changing place with that which goes before,</p>
+
+    <p>In sequent toil all forwards do contend.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Sonnet 73:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>That time of life thou mayst in me behold,</p>
+
+    <p>When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang</p>
+
+    <p>Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,</p>
+
+    <p>Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang</p>
+
+    <p>In me thou see'st the twilight of such day</p>
+
+    <p>As after sunset fadeth in the west,</p>
+
+    <p>Which by-and-by black night doth take away,</p>
+
+    <p>Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.</p>
+
+    <p>In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire</p>
+
+    <p>That on the ashes of his youth doth lie</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg170" id=
+    "pg170">170</a></span>As the death-bed whereon it must expire,</p>
+
+    <p>Consumed with that which it was nourished by.</p>
+
+    <p>This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong</p>
+
+    <p>To love that well which thou must leave ere long.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There are no better similes for the oncoming of age and death,
+  than the sere leaf trembling in the wind, the twilight of the setting
+  sun, the expiring flame.</p>
+
+  <p>Almost all the comparisons from Nature in his plays are original,
+  and rather keen and lightning-like than elaborate, often with the
+  terseness of proverbs;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The strawberry grows underneath the nettle.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Henry V.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Henry VI.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The waters swell before a boisterous storm.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Sometimes they are heaped up, like Calderon's, 'making it' (true
+  love)</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,</p>
+
+    <p>Brief as the lightning in the collied night</p>
+
+    <p>That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,</p>
+
+    <p>And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'</p>
+
+    <p>The jaws of darkness do devour it up.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(<i>Midsummer Night's Dream.</i>)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Compared with Homer's they are very bold, and shew an astonishing
+  play of imagination; in place of the naive simplicity and naturalness
+  of antiquity, this modern genius gives us a dazzling display of wit
+  and thought. To quote only short examples<a href=
+  "#g3"><sup>[3]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>'Open as day,' 'deaf as the sea,' 'poor as winter,'</p>
+
+    <p>'chaste as unsunn'd snow.'</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He ranges all Nature. These are characteristic examples:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>King Richard doth himself appear</p>
+
+      <p>As doth the blushing discontented sun</p>
+
+      <p>From out the fiery portal of the east,</p>
+
+      <p>When he perceives the envious clouds are bent</p>
+
+      <p>To dim his glory and to stain the track</p>
+
+      <p>Of his bright passage to the occident.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard II.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg171" id="pg171">171</a></span>
+
+      <p>Since the more fair crystal is the sky,</p>
+
+      <p>The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.</p>
+
+      <p>As when the golden sun salutes the morn,</p>
+
+      <p>And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,</p>
+
+      <p>Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach</p>
+
+      <p>And overlooks the highest peering hills,</p>
+
+      <p>So Tamora.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Titus Andronicus.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>As all the world is cheered by the sun,</p>
+
+      <p>So I by that; it is my day, my life.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not</p>
+
+      <p>To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,</p>
+
+      <p>As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote</p>
+
+      <p>The night of dew that on my cheek down flows;</p>
+
+      <p>Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright</p>
+
+      <p>Through the transparent bosom of the deep.</p>
+
+      <p>As doth thy face through tears of mine give light;</p>
+
+      <p>Thou shinest on every tear that I do weep.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Love's Labour's Lost.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This is modern down to its finest detail, and much richer in
+  individuality than the most famous comparisons of the same kind in
+  antiquity.</p>
+
+  <p>Sea and stream are used:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Like an unseasonable stormy day</p>
+
+      <p>Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores</p>
+
+      <p>As if the world were all dissolved to tears,</p>
+
+      <p>So high above his limits swells the rage</p>
+
+      <p>Of Bolingbroke. (<i>Richard II.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The current that with gentle murmur glides,</p>
+
+      <p>Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage;</p>
+
+      <p>But when his fair course is not hindered,</p>
+
+      <p>He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,</p>
+
+      <p>Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge</p>
+
+      <p>He overtaketh on his pilgrimage;</p>
+
+      <p>And so by many winding nooks he strays</p>
+
+      <p>With willing sport to the wild ocean.</p>
+
+      <p>Then let me go, and hinder not my course. (<i>Two Gentlemen of
+      Verona.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.</p>
+
+      <p>You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow.</p>
+
+      <p>And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Henry VI.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg172" id="pg172">172</a></span>
+
+      <p>If there were reason for these miseries,</p>
+
+      <p>Then into limits could I bind my woes;</p>
+
+      <p>When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'er-flow?</p>
+
+      <p>If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,</p>
+
+      <p>Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face?</p>
+
+      <p>And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?</p>
+
+      <p>I am the sea: hark, how her sighs do blow!</p>
+
+      <p>She is the weeping welkin, I the earth;</p>
+
+      <p>Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;</p>
+
+      <p>Then must my earth with her continual tears</p>
+
+      <p>Become a deluge, overflow'd and drowned.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Titus Andronicus.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>This battle fares like to the morning's war</p>
+
+      <p>When dying clouds contend with growing light,</p>
+
+      <p>What time the shepherd blowing of his nails</p>
+
+      <p>Can neither call it perfect day nor night.</p>
+
+      <p>Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea</p>
+
+      <p>Forced by the tide to combat with the wind;</p>
+
+      <p>Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea</p>
+
+      <p>Forced to retire by fury of the wind.</p>
+
+      <p>Sometime the flood prevails and then the wind:</p>
+
+      <p>Now one the better, then another best;</p>
+
+      <p>Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,</p>
+
+      <p>Yet neither conqueror nor conquered.</p>
+
+      <p>So is the equal poise of this fell war.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Henry VI.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In the last five examples the epic treatment and the
+  personifications are noteworthy.</p>
+
+  <p>Comparisons from animal life are forcible and striking:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>How like a deer, stricken by many princes,</p>
+
+    <p>Dost thou lie here! (<i>Julius Cæsar.</i>)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Richard III. is called:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The wretched bloody and usurping boar</p>
+
+    <p>That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,</p>
+
+    <p>Swills your warm blood like wash and makes his trough</p>
+
+    <p>In your embowell'd bosoms; this foul swine</p>
+
+    <p>Lies now even in the centre of this isle.</p>
+
+    <p>The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The smallest objects are noted:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;</p>
+
+      <p>They kill us for their sport.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; (<i>King
+      Lear.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg173" id=
+      "pg173">173</a></span></p>
+
+      <p><i>Marcus</i>: Alas! my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Titus</i>: But how if that fly had a father and a
+      mother?</p>
+
+      <p>How would he hang his slender gilded wings,</p>
+
+      <p>And buzz lamenting doings in the air!</p>
+
+      <p>Poor harmless fly!</p>
+
+      <p>That, with his pretty buzzing melody,</p>
+
+      <p>Came here to make us merry! and thou</p>
+
+      <p>Hast kill'd him!</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Titus Andronicus.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Shakespeare has abundance of this idyllic miniature painting, for
+  which all the literature of the day shewed a marked taste.</p>
+
+  <p>Tamora says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad,</p>
+
+    <p>When everything doth make a gleeful boast?</p>
+
+    <p>The birds chant melody on every bush,</p>
+
+    <p>The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun,</p>
+
+    <p>The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind</p>
+
+    <p>And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(<i>Titus Andronicus.</i>)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And Valentine in <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,</p>
+
+    <p>I better brook than flourishing peopled towns;</p>
+
+    <p>Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,</p>
+
+    <p>And to the nightingale's complaining notes</p>
+
+    <p>Tune my distresses and record my woes.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Like this, in elegiac sentimentality, is Romeo:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">Before the worshipp'd sun</p>
+
+    <p>Peer'd forth the golden window of the east....</p>
+
+    <p>Many a morning hath he there been seen</p>
+
+    <p>With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><i>Cymbeline, Winter's Tale</i>, and <i>As You Like It</i> are
+  particularly rich in idyllic traits; the artificiality of court life
+  is contrasted with life in the open; there are songs, too, in praise
+  of woodland joys:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Under the greenwood tree</p>
+
+      <p>Who loves to lie with me,</p>
+
+      <p>And tune his merry note</p>
+
+      <p>Unto the sweet bird's throat,</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg174" id=
+      "pg174">174</a></span>Come hither, come hither, come hither!</p>
+
+      <p>Here shall he see</p>
+
+      <p>No enemy</p>
+
+      <p>But winter and rough weather.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>As You Like It.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Blow, blow, thou winter wind,</p>
+
+      <p>Thou art not so unkind</p>
+
+      <p>As man's ingratitude.</p>
+
+      <p>Thy tooth is not so keen,</p>
+
+      <p>Because thou art not seen</p>
+
+      <p>Altho' thy breath be rude.</p>
+
+      <p>Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho unto the green holly!</p>
+
+      <p>Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly!<a href=
+      "#g4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>As You Like It.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Turning again to comparisons, we find birds used abundantly:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>More pity that the eagle should be mewed</p>
+
+      <p>While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>True hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,</p>
+
+      <p>Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort</p>
+
+      <p>Rising and cawing at the gun's report</p>
+
+      <p>Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,</p>
+
+      <p>So at his sight away his fellows fly.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Midsummer Night's Dream.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And plant life is touched with special tenderness:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>All the bystanders had wet their cheeks</p>
+
+      <p>Like trees bedashed with rain.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Why grow the branches when the root is gone?</p>
+
+      <p>Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,</p>
+
+      <p>Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Ah! my tender babes!</p>
+
+      <p>My unblown flowers, new appearing sweets.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Richard III.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg175" id="pg175">175</a></span>
+  Romeo is</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>To himself so secret and so close ...</p>
+
+    <p>As is the bud bit with an envious worm,</p>
+
+    <p>Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air</p>
+
+    <p>Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is astonishing to see how Shakespeare noted the smallest and
+  most fragile things, and found the most poetic expression for them
+  without any sacrifice of truth to Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>Juliet is 'the sweetest flower of all the field.' Laertes says to
+  Ophelia:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour</p>
+
+    <p>Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,</p>
+
+    <p>A violet in the youth of primy nature,</p>
+
+    <p>Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,</p>
+
+    <p>The perfume and suppliance of a moment.</p>
+
+    <p>The canker galls the infants of the spring</p>
+
+    <p>Too oft before their buttons be disclosed;</p>
+
+    <p>And in the morn and liquid dew of youth</p>
+
+    <p>Contagious blastments are most imminent.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(<i>Hamlet.</i>)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Hamlet soliloquizes:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable</p>
+
+    <p>Seems to me all the uses of this world.</p>
+
+    <p>Fie on't, O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden</p>
+
+    <p>That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature</p>
+
+    <p>Possess it merely.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
+    frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
+    excellent canopy the air, look you--this brave o'erhanging
+    firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
+    appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation
+    of vapours.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>But the great advance which he made is seen far more in the
+  sympathetic way in which he drew Nature into the action of the
+  play.</p>
+
+  <p>He established perfect harmony between human fate and the natural
+  phenomena around it.</p>
+
+  <p>There are moonlight nights for Romeo and Juliet's <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg176" id="pg176">176</a></span>brief dream, when
+  all Nature, moon, stars, garden, seemed steeped in love together.</p>
+
+  <p>He places his melancholy, brooding Hamlet</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>In a land of mist and long nights, under a gloomy sky, where day
+    is only night without sleep, and the tragedy holds us imprisoned
+    like the North itself, that damp dungeon of Nature. (BOERNE.)</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>What a dark shudder lies o'er Nature in <i>Macbeth</i>! And in
+  <i>Lear</i>, as Jacobi says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>What a sight! All Nature, living and lifeless, reasonable and
+    unreasonable, surges together, like towering storm clouds, hither
+    and thither; it is black oppressive Nature with only here and there
+    a lightning flash from God--a flash of Providence, rending the
+    clouds.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>One must look at the art by which this is achieved in order to
+  justify such enthusiastic expressions. Personification of Nature lies
+  at the root of it, and to examine this in the different poets forms
+  one of the most interesting chapters of comparative poetry,
+  especially in Shakespeare.</p>
+
+  <p>With him artistic personification reached a pitch never attained
+  before. We can trace the steps by which Greece passed from mythical
+  to purely poetic personification, increasing in individuality in the
+  Hellenic period; but Shakespeare opened up an entirely new region by
+  dint of that flashlight genius of imagination which combined and
+  illuminated all and everything.</p>
+
+  <p>Hense says<a href="#g5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>;</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The personification is plastic when Æschylus calls the heights
+    the neighbours of the stars; individual, when Shakespeare speaks of
+    hills that kiss the sky. It is plastic that fire and sea are foes
+    who conspire together and keep faith to destroy the Argive army; it
+    is individual to call sea and wind old wranglers who enter into a
+    momentary armistice. Other personifications of Shakespeare's, as
+    when he speaks of the 'wanton wind,' calls laughter a fool, and
+    describes time as having a wallet on his back wherein he puts alms
+    for oblivion, are of a kind which did not, and could not, exist in
+    antiquity.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg177" id="pg177">177</a></span>
+  The richer a man's mental endowment, the more individual his
+  feelings, the more he can see in Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>Shakespeare's fancy revelled in a wealth of images; new metaphors,
+  new points of resemblance between the inner and outer worlds, were
+  for ever pouring from his inexhaustible imagination.</p>
+
+  <p>The motive of amorous passion, for instance, was a very
+  divining-rod in his hands, revealing the most delicate relations
+  between Nature and the soul. Ibykos had pointed the contrast between
+  the gay spring time and his own unhappy heart in which Eros raged
+  like 'the Thracian blast.' Theocritus had painted the pretty
+  shepherdess drawing all Nature under the spell of her charms;
+  Akontios (Kallimachos) had declared that if trees felt the pangs and
+  longings of love, they would lose their leaves; all such ideas,
+  modern in their way, had been expressed in antiquity.</p>
+
+  <p>This is Shakespeare's treatment of them:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>How like a winter hath my absence been</p>
+
+      <p>From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!</p>
+
+      <p>What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!</p>
+
+      <p>What old December's bareness everywhere!</p>
+
+      <p>And yet this time removed was summer time,</p>
+
+      <p>The teeming autumn, big with rich increase ...</p>
+
+      <p>For summer and his pleasures wait on thee.</p>
+
+      <p>And thou away the very birds are mute,</p>
+
+      <p>Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer</p>
+
+      <p>That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near,</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 97.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>From you have I been absent in the spring,</p>
+
+      <p>When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim</p>
+
+      <p>Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,</p>
+
+      <p>That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.</p>
+
+      <p>Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell</p>
+
+      <p>Of different flowers in odour and in hue</p>
+
+      <p>Could make me any summer's story tell....</p>
+
+      <p>Yet seem'd it winter still....</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(Sonnet 98.)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Or compare again the cypresses in Theocritus sole witnesses of
+  secret love; or Walther's <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg178" id=
+  "pg178">178</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>One little birdie who never will tell,</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>with</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>These blue-veined violets whereon we lean</p>
+
+    <p>Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(<i>Venus and Adonis.</i>)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Comparisons of ladies' lips to roses, and hands to lilies, are
+  common with the old poets. How much more modern is:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The forward violet thus did I chide;</p>
+
+    <p>Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells</p>
+
+    <p>If not from my love's breath?...</p>
+
+    <p>The lily I condemned for thy hand,</p>
+
+    <p>And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair;</p>
+
+    <p>The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,</p>
+
+    <p>One blushing shame, another white despair....</p>
+
+    <p>More flowers I noted, yet I none could see</p>
+
+    <p>But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(Sonnet 99.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And how fine the personification in Sonnet 33:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Full many a glorious morning have I seen</p>
+
+    <p>Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,</p>
+
+    <p>Kissing with golden face the meadows green,</p>
+
+    <p>Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;</p>
+
+    <p>Anon permit the basest clouds to ride</p>
+
+    <p>With ugly rack on his celestial face,</p>
+
+    <p>And from the forlorn world his visage hide,</p>
+
+    <p>Stealing unseen to West with this disgrace:</p>
+
+    <p>Even so my sun one early morn did shine</p>
+
+    <p>With all triumphant splendour on my brow;</p>
+
+    <p>But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;</p>
+
+    <p>The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;</p>
+
+    <p>Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This is night in <i>Venus and Adonis</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Look! the world's comforter with weary gait</p>
+
+    <p>His day's hot task hath ended in the West;</p>
+
+    <p>The owl, night's herald, shrieks 'tis very late;</p>
+
+    <p>The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest</p>
+
+    <p>And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's light,</p>
+
+    <p>Do summon us to part and bid good-night.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg179" id="pg179">179</a></span>
+  And this morning, in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,</p>
+
+    <p>Checkering the Eastern clouds with streaks of light.</p>
+
+    <p>And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels</p>
+
+    <p>From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels;</p>
+
+    <p>Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,</p>
+
+    <p>The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry ...</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such wealth and brilliance of personification was not found again
+  until Goethe, Byron, and Shelley.</p>
+
+  <p>He is unusually rich in descriptive phrases:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The weary sun hath made a golden set,</p>
+
+      <p>And by the bright track of his golden car</p>
+
+      <p>Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4">The worshipp'd Sun</p>
+
+      <p>Peered forth the golden window of the East.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4">The all-cheering sun</p>
+
+      <p>Should in the farthest East begin to draw</p>
+
+      <p>The shady curtains from Aurora's bed.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The moon:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Like to a silver bow</p>
+
+    <p>New bent in heaven.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Titania says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>I will wind thee in my arms....</p>
+
+      <p>So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle</p>
+
+      <p>Gently entwist; the female ivy so</p>
+
+      <p>Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.</p>
+
+      <p>O how I love thee!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>That same dew, which sometime on the buds</p>
+
+      <p>Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,</p>
+
+      <p>Stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes</p>
+
+      <p>Like tears.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Midsummer Night's Dream.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i14">Daffodils</p>
+
+      <p>That come before the swallow dares, and take</p>
+
+      <p>The winds of March with beauty.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Winter's Tale.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i14">Pale primroses</p>
+
+      <p>That die unmarried, ere they can behold</p>
+
+      <p>Bright Phoebus in his strength.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Winter's Tale.</i>)</p>
+    </div>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg180" id="pg180">180</a></span>
+
+  <p>Goethe calls winds and waves lovers. In <i>Troilus and
+  Cressida</i> we have:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The sea being smooth,</p>
+
+    <p>How many shallow bauble boats dare sail</p>
+
+    <p>Upon her patient breast, making their way</p>
+
+    <p>With those of nobler bulk!</p>
+
+    <p>But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage</p>
+
+    <p>The gentle Thetis, and anon behold</p>
+
+    <p>The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut,</p>
+
+    <p>Bounding between two moist elements</p>
+
+    <p>Like Perseus' horse.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And further on in the same scene:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!</p>
+
+    <p>Commotion in the winds!</p>
+
+    <p>... the bounded waters</p>
+
+    <p>Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The personification of the river in <i>Henry IV.</i> is half
+  mythical:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank</p>
+
+    <p>In single opposition, hand to hand,</p>
+
+    <p>He did confound the best part of an hour</p>
+
+    <p>In changing hardiment with great Glendower;</p>
+
+    <p>Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink,</p>
+
+    <p>Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;</p>
+
+    <p>Who, then affrighted with their bloody looks,</p>
+
+    <p>Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,</p>
+
+    <p>And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,</p>
+
+    <p>Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Striking instances of personification from <i>Antony and
+  Cleopatra</i> are:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne</p>
+
+    <p>Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;</p>
+
+    <p>Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that</p>
+
+    <p>The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,</p>
+
+    <p>Which to the time of flutes kept stroke, and made</p>
+
+    <p>The water which they beat to follow faster</p>
+
+    <p>As amorous of their strokes.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg181" id="pg181">181</a></span>
+  And Antony, enthron'd in the market-place, sat alone</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Whistling to the air, which but for vacancy</p>
+
+    <p>Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too</p>
+
+    <p>And made a gap in nature.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Instead of accumulating further instances of these very modern and
+  individual (and sometimes far-fetched) personifications, it is of
+  more interest to see how Shakespeare used Nature, not only as
+  background and colouring, but to act a part of her own in the play,
+  so producing the grandest of all personifications.</p>
+
+  <p>At the beginning of Act III. in <i>King Lear</i>, Kent asks:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Who's there beside foul weather?</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Gentleman</i>: One minded like the weather, most
+      unquietly.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Kent</i>: Where's the King?</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><i>Gent</i>: Contending with the fretful elements.</p>
+
+      <p>Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,</p>
+
+      <p>Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main,</p>
+
+      <p>That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,</p>
+
+      <p>Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage</p>
+
+      <p>Catch in their fury and make nothing of;</p>
+
+      <p>Strives in his little world of men to outscorn</p>
+
+      <p>The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In the stormy night on the wild heath the poor old man hears the
+  echo of his own feelings in the elements; his daughters' ingratitude,
+  hardness, and cruelty produce a moral disturbance like the
+  disturbance in Nature; he breaks out:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks. Rage! Blow!</p>
+
+    <p>You cataracts and hurricanes, spout</p>
+
+    <p>Till you have drench'd our steeples, drowned the cocks!</p>
+
+    <p>You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,</p>
+
+    <p>Vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunder-bolts,</p>
+
+    <p>Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,</p>
+
+    <p>Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!</p>
+
+    <p>Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once</p>
+
+    <p>That make ungrateful man....</p>
+
+    <p>Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire, spout rain!</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg182" id=
+    "pg182">182</a></span></p>
+
+    <p>Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters,</p>
+
+    <p>I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness;</p>
+
+    <p>I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,</p>
+
+    <p>You owe me no subscription; then, let fall</p>
+
+    <p>Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,</p>
+
+    <p>A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man:</p>
+
+    <p>But yet I call you servile ministers,</p>
+
+    <p>That will with two pernicious daughters join</p>
+
+    <p>Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head</p>
+
+    <p>So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>How closely here animate and inanimate Nature are woven together,
+  the reasoning with the unreasoning. The poet makes the storm, rain,
+  thunder, and lightning live, and at the same time endues his human
+  figures with a strength of feeling and passion which gives them
+  kinship to the elements. In <i>Othello</i>, too, there <i>is</i>
+  uproar in Nature:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Do but stand upon the foaming shore,</p>
+
+    <p>The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds....</p>
+
+    <p>I never did like molestation view</p>
+
+    <p>On the enchafed flood.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>but even the unruly elements spare Desdemona:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Tempests themselves, high seas and howling winds,</p>
+
+    <p>The gather'd rocks and congregated sands.</p>
+
+    <p>Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel--</p>
+
+    <p>As having sense of beauty, do omit</p>
+
+    <p>Their mortal natures, letting go safely by</p>
+
+    <p>The divine Desdemona.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Cassio lays stress upon 'the great contention of the sea and
+  skies'; but when Othello meets Desdemona, he cries:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">O my soul's joy!</p>
+
+    <p>If after every tempest come such calms,</p>
+
+    <p>May the winds blow till they have wakened death!</p>
+
+    <p>And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas</p>
+
+    <p>Olympus-high, and duck again as low</p>
+
+    <p>As hell's from heaven. If it were now to die,</p>
+
+    <p>'Twere now to be most happy.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Iago calls the elements to witness his truthfulness:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Witness, you ever-burning lights above,</p>
+
+    <p>You elements that clip us round about,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg183" id=
+    "pg183">183</a></span></p>
+
+    <p>Witness, that here Iago doth give up</p>
+
+    <p>The execution of his wit, hands, heart,</p>
+
+    <p>To wrong'd Othello's service.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nature is disgusted at Othello's jealousy:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks;</p>
+
+    <p>The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets,</p>
+
+    <p>Is hush'd within the hollow mine of earth</p>
+
+    <p>And will not hear it.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In terrible mental confusion he cries:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>O insupportable, O heavy hour!</p>
+
+    <p>Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse</p>
+
+    <p>Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe</p>
+
+    <p>Should yawn at alteration.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Unhappy Desdemona sings:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,</p>
+
+    <p>Sing all a green willow;</p>
+
+    <p>Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,</p>
+
+    <p>Sing willow, willow, willow;</p>
+
+    <p>The fresh streams ran by her and murmur'd her moans,</p>
+
+    <p>Sing willow, willow, willow.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>A song in <i>Cymbeline</i> contains a beautiful personification of
+  flowers:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,</p>
+
+    <p>And Phoebus 'gins arise,</p>
+
+    <p>His steeds to water at those springs</p>
+
+    <p>On chalic'd flowers that lies;</p>
+
+    <p>And winking Mary-buds begin</p>
+
+    <p>To ope their golden eyes;</p>
+
+    <p>With everything that pretty is,</p>
+
+    <p>My lady sweet, arise;</p>
+
+    <p>Arise! Arise!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The clearest expression of sympathy for Nature is in
+  <i>Macbeth</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Repeatedly we meet the idea that Nature shudders before the crime,
+  and gives signs of coming disaster.</p>
+
+  <p>Macbeth himself says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">Stars, hide your fires!</p>
+
+    <p>Let not light see my black and deep desires;</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg184" id=
+    "pg184">184</a></span>The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be</p>
+
+    <p>Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and Lady Macbeth:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">... The raven himself is hoarse</p>
+
+    <p>That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan</p>
+
+    <p>Under my battlements.... Come, thick night,</p>
+
+    <p>And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,</p>
+
+    <p>That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark</p>
+
+    <p>To cry 'Hold! hold!'...</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The peaceful castle to which Duncan comes all unsuspectingly, is
+  in most striking contrast to the fateful tone which pervades the
+  tragedy. Duncan says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air</p>
+
+    <p>Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself</p>
+
+    <p>Unto our gentle senses.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and Banquo:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">This guest of summer,</p>
+
+    <p>The temple-haunting martlet, does approve</p>
+
+    <p>By his loved masonry, that the heaven's breath</p>
+
+    <p>Smells wooingly here; no jetty, frieze,</p>
+
+    <p>Buttress, nor coign of vantage but this bird</p>
+
+    <p>Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle;</p>
+
+    <p>Where they most breed and haunt I have observ'd</p>
+
+    <p>The air is delicate.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Perhaps the familiar swallow has never been treated with more
+  discrimination; and at this point of the tale of horror it has the
+  effect of a ray of sunshine in a sky dark with storm clouds.</p>
+
+  <p>In Act II. Macbeth describes his own horror and Nature's:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">Now o'er the one half world</p>
+
+    <p>Nature seems dead.... Thou sure and firm-set earth,</p>
+
+    <p>Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear</p>
+
+    <p>Thy very stones prate of my whereabouts.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Lady Macbeth says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman</p>
+
+    <p>Which gives the stern'st good-night.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg185" id="pg185">185</a></span>
+  Lenox describes this night:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The night has been unruly: where we lay</p>
+
+    <p>Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,</p>
+
+    <p>Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death</p>
+
+    <p>And prophesying, with accents terrible,</p>
+
+    <p>Of dire combustion and confus'd events,</p>
+
+    <p>New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird</p>
+
+    <p>Clamour'd the live-long night: some say, the earth</p>
+
+    <p>Was feverish and did shake.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and later on, an old man says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Three score and ten I can remember well;</p>
+
+    <p>Within the volume of which time I have seen</p>
+
+    <p>Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night</p>
+
+    <p>Hath trifled former knowings.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Rosse answers him:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">Ah, good father,</p>
+
+    <p>Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act,</p>
+
+    <p>Threaten his bloody stage; by the clock 'tis day,</p>
+
+    <p>And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.</p>
+
+    <p>Is't night's predominance or the day's shame</p>
+
+    <p>That darkness does the-face of earth entomb</p>
+
+    <p>When living light should kiss it?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The whole play is a thrilling expression of the sympathy for
+  Nature which attributes its own feelings to her--a human shudder in
+  presence of the wicked--a human horror of crime, most thrilling of
+  all in Macbeth's words:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">Come, seeling night,</p>
+
+    <p>Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,</p>
+
+    <p>And with thy bloody and invisible hand</p>
+
+    <p>Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond</p>
+
+    <p>Which keeps me pale.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In <i>Hamlet</i>, too, Nature is shocked at man's mis-deeds:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">... Such an act (the queen's)</p>
+
+    <p>That blurs the grace and blush of modesty</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">... Heaven's face doth glow,</p>
+
+    <p>Yea, this solidity and compound mass</p>
+
+    <p>With tristful visage, as against the doom,</p>
+
+    <p>Is thought-sick at the act.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg186" id="pg186">186</a></span>
+
+  <p>But there are other personifications in this most wonderful of all
+  tragedies, such as the magnificent one:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>But look, the dawn, in russet mantle clad.</p>
+
+    <p>Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The first player declaims:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>But, as we often see, against some storm</p>
+
+    <p>A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,</p>
+
+    <p>The bold winds speechless, and the orb below</p>
+
+    <p>As hush as death....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Ophelia dies:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When down her weedy trophies and herself</p>
+
+    <p>Fell in the weeping brook.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and Laertes commands:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Lay her i' the earth,</p>
+
+    <p>And from her fair and unpolluted flesh</p>
+
+    <p>May violets spring.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus Shakespeare's great imagination gave life and soul to every
+  detail of Nature, and he obtained the right background for his
+  dramas, not only through choice of scenery, but by making Nature a
+  sharer of human impulse, happy with the happy, shuddering in the
+  presence of wickedness.</p>
+
+  <p>He drew every phase of Nature with the individualizing touch which
+  stamps her own peculiar character, and also brings her into sympathy
+  with the inner life, often with that poetic intuition which is so
+  closely allied to mythology. And this holds good not only in dealing
+  with the great elementary forces--storms, thunder, lightning,
+  etc.--but with flowers, streams, the glow of sunlight. Always and
+  everywhere the grasp of Nature was intenser, more individual, and
+  subjective, than any we have met hitherto.</p>
+
+  <p>Idyllic feeling for Nature became sympathetic in his hands.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg187" id="pg187">187</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch7" id="ch7">CHAPTER VII</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>THE DISCOVERY OF THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE IN PAINTING</h3>
+
+  <p>The indispensable condition of landscape-painting--painting, that
+  is, which raises the representation of Nature to the level of its
+  main subject and paints her entirely for her own sake--is the power
+  to compose separate studies into a whole and imbue that with an
+  artistic idea. It was therefore impossible among people like the
+  Hebrews,<a href="#h1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> whose eyes were always fixed
+  on distance and only noted what lay between in a cursory way, and
+  among those who considered detail without relation to a whole, as we
+  have seen in mediæval poetry until the Renaissance. But just as study
+  of the laws of aerial and linear perspective demands a trained and
+  keen eye, and therefore implies interest in Nature, so the artistic
+  idea, the soul of the picture, depends directly upon the degree of
+  the artist's feeling for her Literature and painting are equal
+  witnesses to the feeling for Nature, and so long as scenery was only
+  background in poetry, it had no greater importance in painting.
+  Landscape painting could only arise in the period which produced
+  complete pictures of scenery in poetry--the sentimental idyllic
+  period.</p>
+
+  <p>We have seen how in the Italian Renaissance the fetters of dogma,
+  tradition, and mediæval custom were removed, and servility and
+  visionariness gave place to healthy individuality and realism; how
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg188" id="pg188">188</a></span>man
+  and the world were discovered anew; and further, how among the other
+  Romanic nations a lively feeling for Nature grew up, partly idyllic,
+  partly mystic; and finally, how this feeling found dramatic
+  expression in Shakespeare.</p>
+
+  <p>Natural philosophy also, in the course of its search for truth, as
+  it threw off both one-sided Christian ideas and ancient traditions,
+  came gradually to feel an interest in Nature; not only her laws, but
+  her beauty, became an object of enthusiastic study. By a very long
+  process of development the Hellenic feeling for Nature was reached
+  again in the Renaissance; but it always remained, despite its
+  sentimental and pantheistic elements, sensual, superficial, and
+  naive, in comparison with Christian feeling, which a warmer heart and
+  a mind trained in scholastic wisdom had rendered more profound and
+  abstract. Hence Nature was sometimes an object of attention in
+  detail, sometimes in mass.<a href="#h2"><sup>[2]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>As we come to the first landscape painters and their birthplace in
+  the Netherlands, we see how steady and orderly is the development of
+  the human mind, and how factors that seem isolated are really links
+  in one chain.</p>
+
+  <p>In the Middle Ages, landscape was only background with more or
+  less fitness to the subject. By the fifteenth century it was richer
+  in detail, as we see in Pisanello and the Florentines Gozzoli and
+  Mantegna. The poetry of earth had been discovered; the gold grounds
+  gave way to field, wood, hill, and dale, and the blue behind the
+  heads became a dome of sky. In the sixteenth century, Giorgione
+  shewed the value of effects of light, and Correggio's backgrounds
+  were in harmony with his tender, cheerful scenes. Titian loved to
+  paint autumn; the sunny days of October with blue grapes, golden
+  oranges, and melons; and evening with deep harmonies of colour over
+  the sleeping earth. He was a great pioneer in the realm of
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg189" id=
+  "pg189">189</a></span>landscape. With Michael Angelo not a blade of
+  grass grew; his problem was man alone. Raphael's backgrounds, on the
+  other hand, are life-like in detail: his little birds could fly out
+  of the picture, the stems of his plants seem to curve and bend
+  towards us, and we look deep into the flower they hold out.<a href=
+  "#h3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>In the German Renaissance too, the great masters limited
+  themselves to charming framework and ingenious arabesques for their
+  Madonnas and Holy Families. But, as Lübke says,<a href=
+  "#h4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> one soon sees that Dürer depended on
+  architecture for borders and backgrounds far less than Holbein; he
+  preferred landscape.</p>
+
+  <p>'The charm of this background is so great, the inwardness of
+  German feeling for Nature so strongly expressed in it, that it has a
+  special value of its own, and the master through it has become the
+  father of landscape painting.'<a href="#h5"><sup>[5]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>This must be taken with a grain of salt; but, at all events, it is
+  true that Dürer combined 'keen and devoted study of Nature (in the
+  widest sense of the word) with a penetration which aimed at tracing
+  her facts up to their source.'<a href="#h6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> It is
+  interesting to see how these qualities overcame his theoretical views
+  on Nature and art.<a href="#h7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> Dürer's deep
+  respect for Nature proved him a child of the new era. Melanchthon
+  relates that he often regretted that he had been too much attracted
+  in his younger days by variety and the fantastic, and had only
+  understood Nature's simple truth and beauty later in life.</p>
+
+  <p>His riper judgment preferred her to all other models. Nature, in
+  his remarks on the theory of art, includes the animate and the
+  inanimate, living creatures as well as scenery, and it is interesting
+  to observe that his admiration of her as a divine thing was due to
+  deep religious feeling. In his work on Proportion<a href=
+  "#h8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> he says:</p>
+
+  <p>'Certainly art is hidden in Nature, and he who is able to separate
+  it by force from Nature, he <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg190" id=
+  "pg190">190</a></span>possesses it. Never imagine that you can or
+  will surpass Nature's achievements; human effort cannot compare with
+  the ability which her Creator has given her. Therefore no man can
+  ever make a picture which excels Nature's; and when, through much
+  copying, he has seized her spirit, it cannot be called original work,
+  it is rather something received and learnt, whose seeds grow and bear
+  fruit of their own kind. Thereby the gathered treasure of the heart,
+  and the new creature which takes shape and form there, comes to light
+  in the artist's work.'</p>
+
+  <p>Elsewhere Dürer says 'a good painter's mind is full of figures,'
+  and he repeatedly remarks upon the superabundant beauty of all living
+  things which human intelligence rarely succeeds in reproducing.</p>
+
+  <p>The first modern landscapes in which man was only accessory were
+  produced in the Netherlands. Quiet, absorbed musing on the external
+  world was characteristic of the nation; they studied the smallest and
+  most trifling objects with care, and set a high value on minutiæ.</p>
+
+  <p>The still-life work of their prime was only possible to such an
+  easy-going, life-loving people; the delightful animal pictures of
+  Paul Potter and Adrian van de Velde could only have been painted in
+  the land of Reineke Fuchs. Carrière says about these masters of genre
+  painting<a href="#h9"><sup>[9]</sup></a>: 'Through the emphasis laid
+  upon single objects, they not only revealed the national
+  characteristics, but penetrated far into the soul of Nature and
+  mirrored their own feelings there, so producing works of art of a
+  kind unknown to antiquity. That divine element, which the Greek saw
+  in the human form, the Germanic race divined in all the visible forms
+  of Nature, and so felt at one with them and able to reveal itself
+  through them.</p>
+
+  <p>'Nature was studied more for her own sake than in her relation to
+  man, and scenery became no longer mere background, but the actual
+  object of the picture. Animals, and even men, whether bathing
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg191" id="pg191">191</a></span>in the
+  river, lying under trees, or hunting in the forest, were nothing but
+  accessories; inorganic Nature was the essential element. The greatest
+  Dutch masters did not turn their attention to the extraordinary and
+  stupendous, the splendour of the high Alps or their horrible
+  crevasses, or sunny Italian mountains reflected in their lakes or
+  tropical luxuriance, but to common objects of everyday life. But
+  these they grasped with a precision and depth of feeling which gave
+  charm to the most trifling--it was the life of the universe divined
+  in its minutiæ. In its treatment of landscape their genre painting
+  displayed the very characteristics which had brought it into
+  being.'<a href="#h10"><sup>[10]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The physical characters of the country favoured landscape painting
+  too. No doubt the moist atmosphere and its silvery sheen, which add
+  such freshness and brilliance to the colouring, influenced the
+  development of the colour sense, as much as the absence of sharp
+  contrasts in contour, the suggestive skies, and abundance of streams,
+  woods, meadows, and dales.</p>
+
+  <p>But it was in devotional pictures that the Netherlanders first
+  tried their wings; landscape and scenes from human life did not free
+  themselves permanently from religion and take independent place for
+  more than a century later. The fourteenth-century miniatures shew the
+  first signs of the northern feeling for Nature in illustrations of
+  the seasons in the calendar pictures of religious manuscripts.
+  Beginnings of landscape can be clearly seen in that threshold picture
+  of Netherland art, the altar-piece at Ghent by the brothers Van Eyck,
+  which was finished in 1432. It shews the most accurate observation:
+  all the plants, grasses, flowers, rose bushes, vines, and palms, are
+  correctly drawn; and the luxuriant valley in which the Christian
+  soldiers and the knights are riding, with its rocky walls covered by
+  undergrowth jutting stiffly forward, is very like the valley of the
+  Maas.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg192" id="pg192">192</a></span>
+  One sees that the charm of landscape has dawned upon the
+  painters.</p>
+
+  <p>Their skies are no longer golden, but blue, and flecked with
+  cloudlets and alive with birds; wood and meadow shine in sappy green;
+  fantastic rocks lie about, and the plains are bounded by low hills.
+  They are drinking deep draughts from a newly-opened spring, and they
+  can scarcely have enough of it. They would like to paint all the
+  leaves and fruit on the trees, all the flowers on the grass, even all
+  the dewdrops. The effect of distance too has been discovered, for
+  there are blue hill-tops beyond the nearer green ones, and a
+  foreground scene opens back on a distant plain (in the Ghent
+  altar-piece, the scene with the pilgrims); but they still possess
+  very few tones, and their overcrowded detail is almost all, from
+  foreground to furthest distance, painted in the same luminous strong
+  dark-green, as if in insatiable delight at the beauty of their own
+  colour. The progress made by Jan van Eyck in landscape was
+  immense.</p>
+
+  <p>To the old masters Nature had been an unintelligible chaos of
+  detail, but beauty, through ecclesiastical tradition, an abstract
+  attribute of the Holy Family and the Saints, and they had used their
+  best powers of imagination in accordance with this view. Hence they
+  placed the Madonna upon a background of one colour, generally gilded.
+  But now the great discovery was made that Nature was a distinct
+  entity, a revelation and reflection of the divine in herself. And Jan
+  van Eyck introduced a great variety of landscapes behind his
+  Madonnas. One looks, for instance, through an open window to a wide
+  stretch of country with fields and fortresses, and towns with streets
+  full of people, all backed by mountains. And whether the scene
+  itself, or only its background, lies in the open, the landscape is of
+  the widest, enlivened by countless forms and adorned by splendid
+  buildings.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg193" id="pg193">193</a></span>
+  Molanus, the savant of Löwen, proclaimed Dierick Bouts, born like his
+  predecessor Ouwater at Haarlem, to be the inventor of landscape
+  painting (claruit inventor in describendo rare); but the van Eycks
+  were certainly before him, though he increased the significance of
+  landscape painting and shewed knowledge of aerial perspective and
+  gradations of tone. Landscape was a distinct entity to him, and could
+  excite the mood that suited his subject, as, for instance, in the
+  side picture of the Last Supper, where the foreground is drawn with
+  such exactness that every plant and even the tiny creatures crawling
+  on the grass can be identified.</p>
+
+  <p>The scenery of Roger van der Weyden of Brabant--river valleys
+  surrounded by jagged rocks and mountains, isolated trees, and meadows
+  bright with sappy green--is clearly the result of direct Nature
+  study; it has a uniform transparent atmosphere, and a clear green
+  shimmer lies over the foreground and gradually passes into blue haze
+  further back.</p>
+
+  <p>His pupil, Memling, shews the same fine gradations of tone. The
+  composition of his richest picture, 'The Marriage of St Catherine,'
+  did not allow space for an unbroken landscape, but the lines of wood
+  and field converge to a vista in such a way that the general effect
+  is one of unity.</p>
+
+  <p>Joachim de Patenir, who appeared in 1515, was called a landscape
+  painter by his contemporaries, because he reduced his sacred figures
+  to a modest size, enlarged his landscape, and handled it with extreme
+  care. He was very far from grasping it as a whole, but his method was
+  synthetical; his river valleys, with masses of tree and bush and
+  romantic rocks, fantastic and picturesque, with fortresses on the
+  river banks, all shew this.</p>
+
+  <p>Kerry de Bles was like him, but less accurate; with all the rest
+  of the sixteenth-century painters of Brabant and Flanders, he did not
+  rise to the idea of landscape as a whole.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg194" id="pg194">194</a></span>
+  The most minute attention was given to the accurate painting of
+  single objects, especially plants; the Flemings caring more for
+  perfect truth to life, the Dutch for beauty. The Flemings generally
+  sought to improve their landscape by embellishing its lines, while
+  the Dutch gave its spirit, but adhered simply and strictly to Nature.
+  The landscapes of Peter Brueghel the elder, with their dancing
+  peasants surrounded by rocks, mills, groups of trees, are painful in
+  their thoroughness; and Jan Brueghel carried imitation of Nature so
+  far that his minutise required a magnifying-glass--it was veritable
+  miniature work. He introduced fruit and flower painting as a new
+  feature of art.</p>
+
+  <p>Rubens and Brueghel often painted on each other's canvas, Brueghel
+  supplying landscape backgrounds for Rubens' pictures, and Rubens the
+  figures for Brueghel's landscapes. Yet Rubens himself was the best
+  landscapist of the Flemish school. He was more than that. For
+  Brueghel and his followers, with all their patience and industry,
+  their blue-green landscape with imaginary trees, boundless distance
+  and endless detail, were very far from a true grasp of Nature. It was
+  Rubens and his school who really made landscape a legitimate
+  independent branch of art. They studied it in all its aspects, quiet
+  and homely, wild and romantic, some taking one and some the other:
+  Rubens himself, in his large way, grasping the whole without losing
+  sight of its parts. They all lifted the veil from Nature and saw her
+  as she was (Falke).</p>
+
+  <p>Brueghel put off the execution of a picture for which he had a
+  commission from winter to spring, that he might study the flowers for
+  it from Nature when they came out, and did not grudge a journey to
+  Brussels now and then to paint flowers not to be had at Antwerp.
+  There is a characteristic letter which he sent to the Archbishop of
+  Milan with a picture:</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg195" id="pg195">195</a></span> 'I
+  send your Reverence the picture with the flowers, which are all
+  painted from Nature. I have painted in as many as possible. I believe
+  so many rare and different flowers have never been painted before nor
+  so industriously. It will give a beautiful effect in winter; some of
+  the colours almost equal Nature. I have painted an ornament under the
+  flowers with artistic medallions and curiosities from the sea. I
+  leave it to your reverence to judge whether the flowers do not far
+  exceed gold and jewels in colour.'</p>
+
+  <p>He also painted landscapes in which people were only accessory,
+  sunny valleys with leafage, golden cornfields, meadows with rows of
+  dancing country folk or reapers in the wheat.</p>
+
+  <p>Rubens, though he felt the influence of southern light and
+  sunshine as much as his fellows who had been in Italy, took his
+  backgrounds from his native land, from parts round Antwerp, Mechlin,
+  and Brussels. Foliage, water, and undulating ground were
+  indispensable to him--were, to a certain extent, the actual bearers
+  of the impression he wished to convey.</p>
+
+  <p>Brueghel always kept a childlike attitude, delighting in details,
+  and proud of the clever brush which could carry imitation to the
+  point of deception. Rubens was the first to treat landscape in a bold
+  subjective way. He opened the book of Nature, so to speak, not to
+  spell out the words syllable by syllable, but to master her secret,
+  to descend into the depths of her soul, and then reflect what he
+  found there--in short, he fully understood the task of the landscape
+  painter. The fifty landscapes of his which we possess, contain the
+  whole scale from a state of idyllic repose to one of dramatic
+  excitement and tension. Take, for instance, the evening scene with
+  the rainbow in the Louvre, marvellous in its delicate gradations of
+  atmospheric tone, and the equally marvellous thunderstorm in the
+  Belvedere <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg196" id=
+  "pg196">196</a></span>at Vienna, where a rain-cloud bursts under
+  sulphur lightning, and a mountain stream, swollen to a torrent and
+  lashed by the hurricane, carries all before it--trees, rocks,
+  animals, and men.</p>
+
+  <p>In France, scarcely a flower had been seen in literature since the
+  Troubadour days, not even in the classical poetry of Corneille and
+  Racine. There were idyllic features in Fénelon's <i>Telemachus</i>,
+  and Ronsard borrowed motives from antiquity; but it was pastoral
+  poetry which blossomed luxuriantly here as in Italy and Spain.</p>
+
+  <p>Honoré d'Urfé's famous <i>Astrée</i> was much translated; but both
+  his shepherds and his landscape were artificial, and the perfume of
+  courts and carpet knights was over the whole, with a certain trace of
+  sadness.</p>
+
+  <p>The case was different with French painting. After the
+  Netherlands, it was France, by her mediæval illustrated manuscripts,
+  who chiefly aided in opening the world's eyes to landscape. Both the
+  Poussins penetrated below the surface of Nature. Nicolas Poussin
+  (1594-1665) painted serious stately subjects, such as a group of
+  trees in the foreground, a hill with a classic building in the
+  middle, and a chain of mountains in the distance, and laid more
+  stress on drawing than colour. There was greater life in the pictures
+  of his brother-in-law, Caspar Doughet, also called Poussin; his grass
+  is more succulent, his winds sigh in the trees, his storm bends the
+  boughs and scatters the clouds.</p>
+
+  <p>It was Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) who brought the ideal style to
+  its perfection. He inspired the very elements with mind and feeling;
+  his valleys, woods, and seas were just a veil through which divinity
+  was visible. All that was ugly, painful, and confused was purified
+  and transfigured in his hands. There is no sadness or dejection in
+  his pictures, but a spirit of serene beauty, free from ostentation,
+  far-fetched contrast, or artificial glitter. Light <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg197" id="pg197">197</a></span>breezes blow in
+  his splendid trees, golden light quivers through them, drawing the
+  eye to a bright misty horizon; we say with Uhland, 'The sky is
+  solemn, as if it would say "this is the day of the Lord."'</p>
+
+  <p>Artistic feeling for Nature became a worship with Claude
+  Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>The Netherlands recorded all Nature's phases in noble emulation
+  with ever-increasing delight.</p>
+
+  <p>The poetry of air, cloudland, light, the cool freshness of
+  morning, the hazy sultriness of noon, the warm light of evening, it
+  all lives and moves in Cuyp's pictures and Wynant's, while Aart van
+  der Meer painted moonlight and winter snow, and Jan van Goyen the
+  melancholy of mist shot by sunlight. He, too--Jan van Goyen--was very
+  clever in producing effect with very small means, with a few trees
+  reflected in water, or a sand-heap--the art in which Ruysdael
+  excelled all others. The whole poetry of Nature--that secret magic
+  which lies like a spell over quiet wood, murmuring sea, still pool,
+  and lonely pasture--took form and colour under his hands; so little
+  sufficed to enchant, to rouse thought and feeling, and lead them
+  whither he would. Northern seriousness and sadness brood over most of
+  his work; the dark trees are overhung by heavy clouds and rain, mist
+  and dusky shadows move among his ruins. He had painted, says
+  Carrière, the peace of woodland solitude long before Tieck found the
+  word for it.</p>
+
+  <p>Beechwoods reflected in a stream, misty cloud masses lighted by
+  the rising sun; he moves us with such things as with a morning hymn,
+  and his picture of a swollen torrent forcing its way between graves
+  which catch the last rays of the sun, while a cloud of rain shrouds
+  the ruins of a church in the background, is an elegy which has taken
+  shape and colour.</p>
+
+  <p>Ruysdael marks the culminating point of this period of
+  development, which had led from mere <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg198" id="pg198">198</a></span>backgrounds and single traits of
+  Nature--even a flower stem or a blade of grass, up to elaborate
+  compositions imbued by a single motive, a single idea.</p>
+
+  <p>To conjure up with slight material a complete little world of its
+  own, and waken responsive feeling, is not this the secret of the
+  charm in the pictures of his school--in the wooded hill or peasant's
+  courtyard by Hobbema, the Norwegian mountain scene of Albert van
+  Everdingen, the dusky fig-trees, rugged crags, and foaming cataract,
+  or the half-sullen, half-smiling sea-pieces of Bakhuysen and Van der
+  Velde?</p>
+
+  <p>All these great Netherlander far outstripped the poetry of their
+  time; it was a hundred years later before mountain and sea found
+  their painter in words, and a complete landscape picture was not born
+  in German poetry until the end of the eighteenth century.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg199" id="pg199">199</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch8" id="ch8">CHAPTER VIII</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>HUMANISM, ROCOCO, AND PIGTAIL</h3>
+
+  <p>Many decades passed before German feeling for Nature reached the
+  heights attained by the Italian Renaissance and the Netherland
+  landscapists. In the Middle Ages, Germany was engrossed with
+  ecclesiastical dogma--man's relation, not only to God, but to the one
+  saving Church--and had little interest for Science and Art; and the
+  great achievement of the fifteenth century, the Reformation, called
+  for word and deed to reckon with a thousand years of old traditions
+  and the slavery of intellectual despotism. The new time was born amid
+  bitter throes. The questions at issue--religious and ecclesiastical
+  questions concerned with the liberty of the Christian--were of the
+  most absorbing kind, and though Germany produced minds of individual
+  stamp such as she had never known before, characters of original and
+  marked physiognomy, it was no time for the quiet contemplation of
+  Nature. Mental life was stimulated by the new current of ideas and
+  new delight in life awakened: yet there is scarcely a trace of the
+  intense feeling for Nature which we have seen in Petrarch and Æneas
+  Sylvius.</p>
+
+  <p>Largely as it was influenced by the Italian Renaissance, it is
+  certainly a mistake to reckon the Humanist movement in Germany, as
+  Geiger does,<a href="#i1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> as a 'merely imported
+  culture, entirely lacking independence.' The germ of this great
+  movement <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg200" id=
+  "pg200">200</a></span>towards mental freedom was contained in the
+  general trend of the time, which was striving to free itself from the
+  fetters of the Middle Ages in customs and education as well as dogma.
+  It was chiefly a polemical movement, a fight between contentious
+  savants. The writings of the Humanists at this naively sensuous
+  period were full of the joy of life and love of pleasure; but
+  scarcely any simple feeling for Nature can be found in them, and
+  there was neither poet nor poem fit to be compared with Petrarch and
+  his sonnets.</p>
+
+  <p>Natural philosophy, too, was proscribed by scholastic wisdom; the
+  real Aristotle was only gradually shelled out from under mediæval
+  accretions. The natural philosopher, Conrad Summenhart<a href=
+  "#i2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> (1450-1501) was quite unable to disbelieve
+  the foolish legend, that the appearance of a comet foretold four
+  certain events--heat, wind, war, and the death of princes. At the
+  same time, not being superstitious, he held aloof from the crazy
+  science of astrology and all the fraud connected with it. Indeed, as
+  an observer of Nature, and still more as a follower and furtherer of
+  the scholastic Aristotelian natural philosophy, he shewed a leaning
+  towards the theory of development, for, according to him, the more
+  highly organized structures proceed from those of lower organization,
+  and these again form the inorganic under the influence of meteors and
+  stars. The poet laureate Conrad Celtes (<i>b</i>. 1459), a singer of
+  love and composer of four books about it, was a true poet. His
+  incessant wandering, for he was always moving from place to place,
+  was due in part to love of Nature and of novelty, but still more to a
+  desire to spread his own fame. He lacked the naivete and openness to
+  impressions of the true child of Nature; his songs in praise of
+  spring, etc., scatter a colourless general praise, which is evidently
+  the result of arduous thought rather than of direct impressions from
+  without; and his many references <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg201" id="pg201">201</a></span>to ancient deities shew that he
+  borrowed more than his phrases.</p>
+
+  <p>Though geography was then closely bound up with the writing of
+  history, as represented by Beatus Rhenanus (1485-1547) and Johann
+  Aventinus, and patriotism and the accounts of new lands led men to
+  wish to describe the beauties and advantages of their own, the
+  imposing discoveries across the seas did not make so forcible an
+  impression upon the German humanist as upon savants elsewhere,
+  especially in Italy and Spain. A mystico-theosophical feeling for
+  Nature, or rather a magical knowledge of her, flourished in Germany
+  at this time among the learned, both among Protestants and those who
+  were partially true to Catholicism. One of the strangest exponents of
+  such ideas was Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim of Cologne<a href=
+  "#i3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> (1535). His system of the world abounded in
+  such fantastic caprices as these: everything depends on harmony and
+  sympathy; when one of Nature's strings is struck, the others sound
+  with it: the analogical correspondences are at the same time magical:
+  symbolic relations between natural objects are sympathetic also: a
+  true love-bond exists between the elm and vine: the sun bestows life
+  on man; the moon, growth; Mercury, imagination; Venus, love, etc. God
+  is reflected in the macrocosm, gives light in all directions through
+  all creatures, is adumbrated in man microcosmically, and so
+  forth.</p>
+
+  <p>Among others, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus
+  von Hohenheim (1541), ranked Nature and the Bible, like Agrippa, as
+  the best books about God and the only ones without falsehood.</p>
+
+  <p>'One must study the elements, follow Nature from land to land,
+  since each single country is only one leaf in the book of creation.
+  The eyes that find pleasure in this true experience are the true
+  professors, and more reliable than all learned writings.'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg202" id="pg202">202</a></span> He
+  held man to be less God's very image than a microcosmic copy of
+  Nature--the quintessence of the whole world. Other enthusiasts made
+  similar statements. Sebastian Frank of Donauwörth (1543) looked upon
+  the whole world as an open book and living Bible, in which to study
+  the power and art of God and learn His will: everything was His
+  image, all creatures are 'a reflection, imprint, and expression of
+  God, through knowledge of which man may come to know the true Mover
+  and Cause of all things.'</p>
+
+  <p>He shewed warm feeling for Nature in many similes and
+  descriptions<a href="#i4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>--in fact, much of his
+  pithy drastic writing sounds pantheistic. But he was very far from
+  the standpoint of the great Italian philosophers, Giordano Bruno and
+  Campanella. Bruno, a poet as well as thinker, distinguished Nature in
+  her self-development--matter, soul, and mind--as being stages and
+  phases of the One.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The material of all things issues from the original womb,</p>
+
+    <p>For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths;</p>
+
+    <p>She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind.</p>
+
+    <p>Which fashions its own material, not that of others,</p>
+
+    <p>And does not falter or doubt, but all by itself</p>
+
+    <p>Lightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles.</p>
+
+    <p>Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere,</p>
+
+    <p>Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one,</p>
+
+    <p>Orders and disposes of everything together.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Campanella, even in a revolting prison, sang in praise of the
+  wisdom and love of God, and His image in Nature. He personified
+  everything in her; nothing was without feeling; the very movements of
+  the stars depended on sympathy and antipathy; harmony was the central
+  soul of all things.</p>
+
+  <p>The most extraordinary of all German thinkers was the King of
+  Mystics, Jacob Böhme. Theist and pantheist at once, his mind was a
+  ferment of different <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg203" id=
+  "pg203">203</a></span>systems of thought. It is very difficult to
+  unriddle his <i>Aurora</i>, but love of Nature, as well as love of
+  God, is clear in its mystical utterances:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>God is the heart or source of Nature.</p>
+
+    <p>Nature is the body of God.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>'As man's mind rules his whole body in every vein and fills his
+  whole being, so the Holy Ghost fills all Nature, and is its heart and
+  rules in the good qualities of all things.'</p>
+
+  <p>'But now heaven is a delightful chamber of pleasure, in which are
+  all the powers, as in all Nature the sky is the heart of the
+  waters.'</p>
+
+  <p>In another place he calls God the vital power in the tree of life,
+  the creatures His branches, and Nature the perfection and
+  self-begotten of God.</p>
+
+  <p>Nature's powers are explained as passion, will, and love, often in
+  lofty and beautiful comparisons:</p>
+
+  <p>'As earth always bears beautiful flowers, plants, and trees, as
+  well as metals and animate beings, and these finer, stronger, and
+  more beautiful at one time than another; and as one springs into
+  being as another dies, causing constant use and work, so it is in
+  still greater degree with the begetting of the holy mysteries<a href=
+  "#i5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> ... creation is nothing else than a
+  revelation of the all-pervading superficial godhead ... and is like
+  the music of many flutes combined into one great harmony.'</p>
+
+  <p>But the most representative man, both of the fifteenth century
+  and, in a sense, of the German race, was Luther. That maxim of
+  Goethe's for teaching and ethics,' Cheerfulness is the mother of all
+  virtues, might well serve as a motto for Luther;</p>
+
+  <p>The two men had much in common.</p>
+
+  <p>The one, standing half in the Middle Ages, had to free himself
+  from mental slavery by strength of will and courage of belief.</p>
+
+  <p>The other, as the prophet of the nineteenth century, the
+  incarnation of the modern man, had to shake off <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg204" id="pg204">204</a></span>the artificiality
+  and weak sentimentality of the eighteenth.</p>
+
+  <p>To both alike a healthy joy in existence was the root of being.
+  Luther was always open to the influence of Nature, and,
+  characteristically, the Psalter was his favourite book. 'Lord, how
+  manifold are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them all!'</p>
+
+  <p>True to his German character, he could be profoundly sad; but his
+  disposition was delightfully cheerful and healthy, and we see from
+  his letters and table-talk, that after wife and child, it was in
+  'God's dear world' that he took the greatest pleasure. He could not
+  have enough of the wonders of creation, great or small. 'By God's
+  mercy we begin to see the splendour of His works and wonders in the
+  little flowers, as we consider how kind and almighty He is; therefore
+  we praise and thank Him. In His creatures we see the power of His
+  word--how great it is. In a peach stone, too, for hard as the shell
+  is, the very soft kernel within causes it to open at the right
+  time.'<a href="#i6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> Again, 'So God is present in
+  all creatures, even the smallest leaves and poppy seeds.'</p>
+
+  <p>All that he saw of Nature inspired him with confidence in the
+  fatherly goodness of God. He wrote, August 5th, 1530, to Chancellor
+  Brneck:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I have lately seen two wonderful things: the first, looking from
+    the window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw
+    never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is still
+    firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such pillars
+    and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and because they
+    cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would certainly fall ...
+    the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep over our heads, so
+    heavy that they might be compared to a great sea, and yet I saw no
+    ground on which they rested, and no vats in which they were
+    contained, yet they did not fall on us, but greeted us with a frown
+    and flew away. When they had gone, the rainbow lighted both the
+    ground and the roof which had held them.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Luther often used very forcible images from <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg205" id="pg205">205</a></span>Nature. 'It is
+  only for the sake of winter that we lie and rot in the earth; when
+  our summer comes, our grain will spring up--rain, sun, and wind
+  prepare us for it--that is, the Word, the Sacraments, and the Holy
+  Ghost.'</p>
+
+  <p>His Bible was an orchard of all sorts of fruit trees; in the
+  introduction to the Psalter, he says of the thanksgiving psalms:
+  'There one looks into the hearts of the saints as into bright and
+  beautiful gardens--nay, as into heaven itself, where pure and happy
+  thoughts of God and His goodness are the lovely flowers.'</p>
+
+  <p>His description of heaven for his little son John is full of
+  simple reverent delight in Nature, quite free from platonic and
+  mystical speculation as to God's relation to His universe; and
+  Protestant divines kept this tone up to the following century, until
+  the days of rationalism and pietism.</p>
+
+  <p>Of such spontaneous hearty joy in Nature as this, the national
+  songs of a nation are always the medium. They were so now; for, while
+  a like feeling was nowhere else to be found, the Volkslieder
+  expressed the simple familiar relationship of the child of Nature to
+  wood, tree, and flower in touching words and a half-mythical,
+  half-allegorical tone which often revealed their old Germanic
+  origin.</p>
+
+  <p>There is a fourteenth-century song, probably from the Lower
+  Rhine,<a href="#i7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> which suggests the poems of
+  the eighth and ninth centuries, about a great quarrel between Spring,
+  crowned with flowers, and hoary-headed Winter, in which one praises
+  and the other blames the cuckoo for announcing Spring.</p>
+
+  <p>In this song, Summer complains to mankind and other friends that a
+  mighty master is going to drive him away; this mighty master, Winter,
+  then takes up the word, and menaces Spring with the approach of
+  frost, who will slight and imprison him, and then kill him; ice and
+  hail agree with Winter, and storm, rain, snow, and bitter winds are
+  called his vassals, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg206" id="pg206">206</a></span>
+  There are naive verses in praise of Spring and Summer:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When that the breezes blow in May,</p>
+
+    <p>And snow melts from the wood away,</p>
+
+    <p>Blue violets lift their heads on high,</p>
+
+    <p>And when the little wood-birds sing,</p>
+
+    <p>And flow'rets from the ground up-spring,</p>
+
+    <p>Then everybody's glad.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Others complaining of Winter, who must have leave of absence, and
+  the wrongs it has wrought are poured out to Summer. The little birds
+  are very human; the owlet complains:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">Poor little owlet me!</p>
+
+    <p>I have to fly all alone through the wood to-night;</p>
+
+    <p>The branch I want to perch on is broken,</p>
+
+    <p>The leaves are all faded,</p>
+
+    <p>My heart is full of grief.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The cuckoo is either praised for bringing good news, or made fun
+  of as the 'Gutzgauch.'</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>A cuckoo will fly to his heart's treasure, etc.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The fable songs<a href="#i8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> of animal weddings
+  are full of humour. The fox makes arrangements for his wedding: 'Up
+  with you now, little birds! I am going to take a bride. The starling
+  shall saddle the horses, for he has a grey mantle; the beaver with
+  the cap of marten fur must be driver, the hare with his light foot
+  shall be outrider; the nightingale with his clear voice shall sing
+  the songs, the magpie with his steady hop must lead the dances,'
+  etc.</p>
+
+  <p>The nightingale, with her rich tones, is beloved and honoured
+  before all the winged things; she is called 'the very dear
+  nightingale,' and addressed as a lady.</p>
+
+  <p>'Thou art a little woodbird, and flyest in and out the green wood;
+  fair Nightingale, thou little woodbird, thou shalt be my
+  messenger.'</p>
+
+  <p>It is she who warns the girl against false love, or is the silent
+  witness of caresses.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg207" id="pg207">207</a></span>
+  There were a great many wishing songs: 'Were I a little bird and had
+  two wings, I would fly to thee,' or 'Were I a wild falcon, I would
+  take flight and fly down before a rich citizen's house--a little maid
+  is there,' etc. 'And were my love a brooklet cold, and sprang out of
+  a stone, little should I grieve if I were but a green wood; green is
+  the wood, the brooklet is cold, my love is shapely.' The betrayed
+  maiden cries: 'Would God I were a white swan! I would fly away over
+  mountain and deep valley o'er the wide sea, so that my father and
+  mother should not know where I was.'</p>
+
+  <p>Flowers were used symbolically in many ways; roses are always the
+  flowers of love. 'Pretty girls should be kissed, roses should be
+  gathered,' was a common saying; and 'Gather roses by night, for then
+  all the leaves are covered with cooling dew.' 'The roses are ready to
+  be gathered, so gather them to-day. He who does not gather in summer,
+  will not gather in winter.' There is tenderness in this: 'I only know
+  a little blue flower, the colour of the sky; it grows in the green
+  meadow, 'tis called forget-me-not.'</p>
+
+  <p>These are sadder:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>There is a lime tree in this valley,</p>
+
+    <p>O God! what does it there?</p>
+
+    <p>It will help me to grieve</p>
+
+    <p>That I have no lover.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>'Alas! you mountains and deep valleys, is this the last time I
+  shall see my beloved? Sun, moon, and the whole sky must grieve with
+  me till my death.'</p>
+
+  <p>Where lovers embrace, flowers spring out of the grass, roses and
+  other flowers and grasses laugh, the trees creak and birds
+  sing;<a href="#i9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> where lovers part, grass and
+  leaves fade.<a href="#i10"><sup>[10]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Most touching of all is the idea, common to the national songs of
+  all nations, that out of the grave of <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg208" id="pg208">208</a></span>two lovers, lilies and roses spring
+  up, or climbing plants, love thus outliving death.</p>
+
+  <p>We look in vain among the master singers of the fifteenth and
+  sixteenth centuries for such fresh heartfelt tones as these, although
+  honest Hans Sachs shews joy in Nature here and there; most charmingly
+  in the famous comparison of 'the Wittenberg Nightingale, which every
+  one hears everywhere now,' in praise of Luther:</p>
+
+  <p>'Wake up, the dawn is nigh! I hear a joyous nightingale singing in
+  the green hedge, it fills the hills and valleys with its voice. The
+  night is stooping to the west, the day is rising from the east, the
+  morning red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks through. The
+  moon quenches her light; now she is pale and wan, but erewhile with
+  false glamours she dazzled all the sheep and turned them from their
+  pasture lands and pastor....'</p>
+
+  <p>Fischart too, in his quaint description of a voyage on the Rhine
+  in <i>Glückhaft Schiff</i>, shews little feeling for Nature; but in
+  <i>Simplicissimus</i>, on the other hand, that monument of literature
+  which reflected contemporary culture to a unique degree, it is very
+  marked; the more so since it appeared when Germany lay crushed by the
+  Thirty Years' War.</p>
+
+  <p>When the hero as a boy was driven from his village home and fled
+  into the forest, he came upon a hermit who took care of him, and
+  waking at midnight, he heard the old man sing:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Come, nightingale, comfort of the night,</p>
+
+    <p>Let your voice rise in a song of joy, come praise the
+    Creator,</p>
+
+    <p>While other birds are sound asleep and cannot sing!...</p>
+
+    <p>The stars are shining in the sky in honour of God....</p>
+
+    <p>My dearest little bird, we will not be the laziest of all</p>
+
+    <p>And lie asleep; we will beguile the time with praise</p>
+
+    <p>Till dawn refreshes the desolate woods.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><i>Simplicissimus</i> goes on: 'During this song, methinks, it was
+  as if nightingale, owl, and echo had combined <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg209" id="pg209">209</a></span>in song, and if
+  ever I had been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate
+  the melody on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to
+  join in the melody, so beautiful it seemed; but I was asleep.'</p>
+
+  <p>What was the general feeling for Nature in other countries during
+  the latter half of the seventeenth century? In Italy and Spain it had
+  assumed a form partly bucolic and idyllic, partly theosophically
+  mystical; Shakespeare's plays had brought sympathy to maturity in
+  England; the Netherlands had given birth to landscape painting, and
+  France had the splendid poetic landscapes of Claude Lorraine. But the
+  idealism thus reached soon degenerated into mannerism and
+  artificiality, the hatching of empty effect.</p>
+
+  <p>The aberrations of taste which found expression in the periwig
+  style of Louis XIV., and in the pigtails of the eighteenth century,
+  affected the feeling for Nature too. The histories of taste in
+  general, and of feeling for Nature, have this in common, that their
+  line of progress is not uniformly straightforward, but liable to
+  zigzags. This is best seen in reviewing the different civilized races
+  together. Moreover, new ideas, however forcible and original, even
+  epoch-making, do not win acceptance at once, but rather trickle
+  slowly through resisting layers; it is long before any new gain in
+  culture becomes the common property of the educated, and hence
+  opposite extremes are often found side by side--taste for what is
+  natural with taste for what is artificial. Garden style is always a
+  delicate test of feeling for Nature, shewing, as it does, whether we
+  respect her ways or wish to impose our own. The impulse towards the
+  modern French gardening came from Italy. Ancient and modern times
+  both had to do with it. At the Renaissance there was a return to
+  Pliny's style,<a href="#i11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> which the Cinque
+  cento gardens copied. In this style laurel and box-hedges were clipt,
+  and <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg210" id=
+  "pg210">210</a></span>marble statues placed against them, 'to break
+  the uniformity of the dark green with pleasant silhouettes. One looks
+  almost in vain for flowers and turf; even trees were exiled to a
+  special wilderness at the edge of the garden; but the great ornament
+  of the whole was never missing, the wide view over sunny plains and
+  dome-capt towns, or over the distant shimmering sea, which had
+  gladdened the eyes of Roman rulers in classic days.'<a href=
+  "#i12"><sup>[12]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The old French garden as Maître Lenotre laid it out in Louis
+  XIV.'s time at Versailles, St Germain, and St Cloud, was
+  architectural in design, and directly connected, like Pliny's, with
+  various parts of the house, by open halls, pavilions, and colonnades.
+  Every part of it--from neat turf parterres bordered by box in front
+  of the terrace, designs worked out in flowers or coloured stones, and
+  double rows of orange spaliers, to groups of statues and
+  fountains--belonged to one symmetrical plan, the focus of which was
+  the house, standing free from trees, and visible from every point.
+  Farther off, radiating avenues led the eye in the same direction, and
+  every little intersecting alley, true to the same principle, ran to a
+  definite object--obelisk, temple, or what not. There was no lack of
+  bowers, giant shrubberies, and water-courses running canal-wise
+  through the park, but they all fell into straight lines; every path
+  was ruled by a ruler, the eye could follow it to its very end.
+  Artifice was the governing spirit. As Falke says: 'Nature dared not
+  speak but only supply material; she had to sacrifice her own
+  inventive power to this taste and this art. Hills and woods were only
+  hindrances; the straight lines of trees and hedges, with their medley
+  of statues and "cabinets de verdure," demanded level ground, and the
+  landscape eye of the period only tolerated woods as a finish to its
+  cut and clipt artificialities.'<a href="#i13"><sup>[13]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Trees and branches were not allowed to grow at their own sweet
+  will; they were cut into cubes, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg211"
+  id="pg211">211</a></span>balls, pyramids, even into shapes of
+  animals, as the gardener's fancy or his principles decreed; cypresses
+  were made into pillars or hearts with the apex above or below; and
+  the art of topiary even achieved complete hunting scenes, with
+  hunters, stags, dogs, and hares in full chase on a hedge. Of such a
+  garden one could say with honest Claudius, ''Tis but a tailor's joke,
+  and shews the traces of the scissors; it has nothing of the great
+  heart of Nature.'</p>
+
+  <p>It was Nature in bondage: 'green architecture,' with all its
+  parts, walls, windows, roofs, galleries cut out of leafage, and
+  theatres with stage and wings in which silk and velvet marquises with
+  full-bottomed wigs and lace jabots, and ladies in hooped petticoats
+  and hair in towers, played at private theatricals.</p>
+
+  <p>Where water was available, water devices were added. And in the
+  midst of all this unnaturalness Greek mythology was introduced: the
+  story of Daphne and Apollo appeared in one alley, Meleager and
+  Atalanta in another, all Olympus was set in motion to fill up the
+  walls and niches. And the people were like their gardens both in
+  dress and manners; imposing style was everything.</p>
+
+  <p>Then came the Rococo period of Louis XV. The great periwig
+  shrivelled to a pigtail, and petty flourish took the place of
+  Lenotre's grandezza.</p>
+
+  <p>'The unnatural remained, the imposing disappeared and caprice took
+  its place,' says Falke. Coquetry too. All the artistic output of the
+  time bears this stamp, painting included. Watteau's scenery and
+  people were unnatural and affected--mere inventions to suit the
+  gallant <i>fêtes</i>. But he knew and loved Nature, though he saw her
+  with the intoxicated eye of a lover who forgets the individual but
+  keeps a glorified impression of her beauty, whereas Boucher's
+  rosy-blue landscapes look as if he had never seen their originals.
+  His world had nothing in common with Nature, and with reality
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg212" id="pg212">212</a></span>only
+  this, that its sensuousness, gaiety, falsity, and coquetry were true
+  to the period. But in both Watteau and Boucher there was a faint
+  glimmer of the idyllic--witness the dash of melancholy in Watteau's
+  brightest pictures. Feeling for Nature was seeking its lost path--the
+  path it was to follow with such increased fervour.</p>
+
+  <p>German literature too, in the seventeenth century, stood under the
+  sign manual of the Pigtail and Periwig; it was baroque, stilted,
+  bombastic, affected, feeling and form alike were forced, not
+  spontaneous. Verses were turned out by machinery and glued together.
+  Martin Opitz,<a href="#i14"><sup>[14]</sup></a> the recognized leader
+  and king of poets, had travelled far, but there is no distinct
+  feeling for Nature in his poetry. His words to a mountain:</p>
+
+  <p>'Nature has so arranged pleasure here, that he who takes the
+  trouble to climb thee is repaid by delight,' scarcely admit the
+  inference that he understood the charm of distance in the modern
+  sense. He took warmer interest in the bucolic side of country life;
+  rhyming about the delightful places, dwellings of peace, with their
+  myrtles, mountains, valleys, stones, and flowers, where he longed to
+  be; and his <i>Spring Song</i>, an obvious imitation of the classics
+  (Horace's <i>Beatus ille</i> was his model for <i>Zlatna</i>), has
+  this conventional contrast between his heart and Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>'The frosty ice must melt; snow cannot last any longer, Favonius;
+  the gentle breeze is on the, fields again. Seed is growing
+  vigorously, grass greening in all its splendour, trees are budding,
+  flowers growing ...thou, too my heart, put off thy grief.'</p>
+
+  <p>There is more nostalgia than feeling for Nature in this:</p>
+
+  <p>'Ye birches and tall limes, waste places, woods and fields,
+  farewell to you!</p>
+
+  <p>'My comfort and my better dwelling-place is elsewhere!'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg213" id="pg213">213</a></span>
+  But (and this Winter, strange to say, ignores) his pastorals have all
+  the sentimental elegiac style of the Pigtail period.</p>
+
+  <p>There had been German adaptations of foreign pastorals, such as
+  Montreux, <i>Schãferei von der schönen Juliana</i>, since 1595;
+  Urfé's <i>Astrée</i> and Montemayor's <i>Diana</i> appeared in 1619,
+  and Sidney's <i>Arcadia</i> ten years later.</p>
+
+  <p>Opitz tried to widen the propaganda for this kind of poetry, and
+  hence wrote, not to mention little pastorals such as <i>Daphne,
+  Galatea, Corydon,</i> and <i>Asteria</i>, his <i>Schãferei von der
+  'Nymphen Hercinie.'</i></p>
+
+  <p>His references to Nature in this are as exaggerated as everything
+  else in the poem. He tells how he did not wake 'until night, the
+  mother of the stars, had gone mad, and the beautiful light of dawn
+  began to shew herself and everything with her....</p>
+
+  <p>'I sprang up and greeted the sweet rays of the sun, which looked
+  down from the tops of the mountains and seemed at the same time to
+  comfort me.'</p>
+
+  <p>He came to a spring 'which fell from a crag with charming murmur
+  and rustle,' cut a long poem in the fir bark, and conversed with
+  three shepherds on virtue, love, and travelling, till the nymph
+  Hercynia appeared and shewed him the source of the Silesian stream.
+  One of the shepherds, Buchner, was particularly enthusiastic about
+  water: 'Kind Nature, handmaid of the Highest, has shewn her best
+  handiwork in sea, river, and spring.'</p>
+
+  <p>Fleming too, who already stood much higher as a lyrist and had
+  travelled widely, lacked the power of describing scenery, and must
+  needs call Oreads, Dryads, Castor and Pollux to his aid. He rarely
+  reached the simple purity of his fine sonnet <i>An Sich,</i> or the
+  feeling in this: 'Dense wild wood, where even the Titan's brightest
+  rays give no light, pity my sufferings. In my sick soul 'tis as dark
+  as in thy black hollow.'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg214" id="pg214">214</a></span> In
+  this time of decline the hymns of the Evangelical Church (to which
+  Fleming contributed) were full of feeling, and brought the national
+  songs to mind as nothing else did.</p>
+
+  <p>A few lines of Paul Gerhardt's seem to me to out-weigh whole
+  volumes of contemporary rhymes--lines of such beauty as the
+  <i>Evening Song</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Now all the woods are sleeping,</p>
+
+    <p>And night and stillness creeping</p>
+
+    <p>O'er field and city, man and beast;</p>
+
+    <p>The last faint beam is going,</p>
+
+    <p>The golden stars are glowing</p>
+
+    <p>In yonder dark-blue deep.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And after him, and more like him than any one else, came Andreas
+  Gryphius.</p>
+
+  <p>There was much rhyming about Nature in the poet schools of
+  Hamburg, Königsberg, and Nuremberg; but, for the most part, it was an
+  idle tinkle of words without feeling, empty artificial stuff with
+  high-flown titles, as in Philipp von Zesen's <i>Pleasure of
+  Spring</i>, and <i>Poetic Valley of Roses and Lilies</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>'Up, my thoughts, be glad of heart, in this joyous pleasant March;
+  ah! see spring is reviving, earth opens her treasury,' etc.</p>
+
+  <p>His romances were more noteworthy if not more interesting. He
+  certainly aimed high, striving for simplicity and clearness of
+  expressions in opposition to the Silesian poets, and hating foreign
+  words.</p>
+
+  <p>His feeling for Nature was clear; he loved to take his reader into
+  the garden, and was enthusiastic about cool shady walks, beds of
+  tulips, birds' songs, and echoes. Idyllic pastoral life was the
+  fashion--people of distinction gave themselves up to country life and
+  wore shepherd costume--and he introduced a pastoral episode into his
+  romance, <i>Die adriatische Rosemund.</i><a href=
+  "#i15"><sup>[15]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Rosemund, whose father places arbitrary conditions in the way of
+  her marriage with Markhold, becomes a shepherdess.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg215" id=
+  "pg215">215</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Not far off was a delightful spot where limes and alders made
+    shade on hot summer days for the shepherds and shepherdesses who
+    dwelt around. The shady trees, the meadows, and the streams which
+    ran round it, and through it, made it look beautiful ... the
+    celestial Rosemund had taken up her abode in a little shepherd hut
+    on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded by some
+    lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning and
+    evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more than
+    human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel her
+    confused thoughts.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>She thought continually of Markhold, and spent her time cutting
+  his name in the trees. The following description of a walk with her
+  sister Stillmuth and her lover Markhold, gives some idea of the
+  formal affected style of the time.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The day was fine, the sky blue, the weather everywhere warm. The
+    sun shone down on the globe with her pleasant lukewarm beams so
+    pleasantly, that one scarcely cared to stay indoors. They went into
+    the garden, where the roses had opened in the warmth of the sun,
+    and first sat down by the stream, then went to the grottos, where
+    Markhold particularly admired the shell decorations. When this
+    charming party had had enough of both, they finally betook
+    themselves to a leafy walk, where Rosemund introduced pleasant
+    conversation on many topics. She talked first about the many
+    colours of tulips, and remarked that even a painter could not
+    produce a greater variety of tints nor finer pictures than these,
+    etc.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In describing physical beauty, he used comparisons from Nature;
+  for instance, in <i>Simson</i><a href="#i16"><sup>[16]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The sun at its brightest never shone so brightly as her two eyes
+    ... no flower at its best can shew such red as blooms in the meadow
+    of her cheeks, no civet rose is so milk-white, no lily so delicate
+    and spotless, no snow fresh-fallen and untrodden is so white, as
+    the heaven of her brows, the stronghold of her mind.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>H. Anselm von Ziegler und Klipphausen also waxes eloquent in his
+  famous <i>Asiatischen Banise</i>: 'The suns of her eyes played with
+  lightnings; her <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg216" id=
+  "pg216">216</a></span>curly hair, like waves round her head, was
+  somewhat darker than white; her cheeks were a pleasant Paradise where
+  rose and lily bloomed together in beauty--yea, love itself seemed to
+  pasture there.' Elsewhere too this writer, so highly esteemed by the
+  second Silesian school of poets, indulged in showy description and
+  inflated rhetoric. Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel tried
+  more elaborate descriptions of scenery; so that Chovelius says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The Duke's German character shews pleasantly in his delight in
+    Nature. The story often takes one into woods and fields; already
+    griefs and cares were carried to the running brook and mossy stone,
+    and happy lovers listened to the nightingale.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>His language is barely intelligible, but there is a pleasant
+  breadth about his drawing--for example, of the king's meadow and the
+  grotto in <i>Aramena</i>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Very cold crystal streams flowed through the fields and ran
+    softly over the stony ground, making a pleasant murmur. Whilst the
+    ear was thus contented, a distant landscape delighted the eye. No
+    more delightful place, possessing all this at once, could have been
+    found, etc.</p>
+
+    <p>Looking through the numerous air-holes, the eye lost itself in a
+    deep valley, surrounded by nothing but mountains, where the
+    shepherds tended their flocks, and one heard their flutes
+    multiplied by the echo in the most delightful way.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Mawkish shepherd play is mixed here with such verses as
+  (Rahel):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Thou, Chabras, thou art the dear stream, where Jacob's mouth
+    gave me the first kiss. Thou, clear brook, often bearest away the
+    passionate words of my son of Isaac ... on many a bit of wounded
+    bark, the writing of my wounds is to be found.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The most insipid pastoral nonsense of the time was produced by the
+  Nuremberg poets, the Pegnitz shepherds Klaj and Harsdörfer. Their
+  strength lay in imitating the sounds of Nature, and they were
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg217" id="pg217">217</a></span>much
+  admired. What is still more astonishing, Lohenstein's writings were
+  the model for thirty years, and it was the fashion for any one who
+  wrote more simply to apologize for being unable to reach the level of
+  so great a master! To us the bombast, artificiality, and hidden
+  sensuality of his poetry and Hoffmannswaldan's, are equally
+  repulsive.</p>
+
+  <p>What dreary, manufactured stuff this is from Lohenstein's
+  <i>Praise of Roses sung by the Sun</i><a href=
+  "#i17"><sup>[17]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>This is the queen of flowers and plants,</p>
+
+      <p>The bride of heaven, world's treasure, child of stars!</p>
+
+      <p>For whom love sighs, and I myself, the sun, do pant,</p>
+
+      <p>Because her crown is golden, and her leaves are velvet,</p>
+
+      <p>Her foot and stylus emerald, her brilliance shames the
+      ruby.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Other beings possess only single beauties,</p>
+
+      <p>Nature has made the rose beautiful with all at once.</p>
+
+      <p>She is ashamed, and blushes</p>
+
+      <p>Because she sees all the other flowers stand ashamed before
+      her.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In <i>Rose Love</i> he finds the reflection of love in
+  everything:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>In whom does not Love's spirit plant his flame?</p>
+
+    <p>One sees the oil of love burn in the starry lamps,</p>
+
+    <p>That pleasant light can nothing be but love,</p>
+
+    <p>For which the dew from Phoebus' veil doth fall.</p>
+
+    <p>Heaven loves the beauteous globe of earth,</p>
+
+    <p>And gazes down on her by night with thousand eyes;</p>
+
+    <p>While earth to please the heaven</p>
+
+    <p>Doth clover, lilies, tulips in her green hair twine,</p>
+
+    <p>The elm and vine stock intertwine,</p>
+
+    <p>The ivy circles round the almond trees,</p>
+
+    <p>And weeps salt tears when they are forced apart.</p>
+
+    <p>And where the flowers burn with glow of Love,</p>
+
+    <p>It is the rose that shews the brightest flame,</p>
+
+    <p>For is the rose not of all flowers the queen,</p>
+
+    <p>The wondrous beauty child of sun and earth?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Artificiality and bombast reached its highest pitch in these
+  poets, and feeling for Nature was entirely absent. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg218" id="pg218">218</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch9" id="ch9">CHAPTER IX</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>SYMPTOMS OF A RETURN TO NATURE</h3>
+
+  <p>It is refreshing to find, side by side with these mummified
+  productions, the traces of a pure national poetry flowing clear as
+  ever, 'breaking forth from the very heart of the people, ever
+  renewing its youth, and not misled by the fashion of the
+  day.'<a href="#j1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The traces prove that simple primitive love for Nature was not
+  quite dead. For instance, this of the Virgin Mary: 'Mary, she went
+  across the heath, grass and flowers wept for grief, she did not find
+  her son.' And the lines in which the youth forced into the cloister
+  asks Nature to lament with him: 'I greet you all, hill and dale, do
+  not drive me away--grass and foliage and all the green things in the
+  wild forest. O tree! lose your green ornaments, complain, die with
+  me--'tis your duty.'</p>
+
+  <p>Then the Spring greetings:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Now we go into the wide, wide world,</p>
+
+    <p>With joy and delight we go;</p>
+
+    <p>The woods are dressing, the meadows greening,</p>
+
+    <p>The flowers beginning to blow.</p>
+
+    <p>Listen here! and look there! We can scarce trust our eyes,</p>
+
+    <p>For the singing and soaring, the joy and life everywhere.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>What is sweeter than to wander in the early days of Spring</p>
+
+    <p>From one place to another in sheer delight and glee;</p>
+
+    <p>While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult
+    around</p>
+
+    <p>Fair Nightingale, the foremost of them all?</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg219" id="pg219">219</a></span>
+
+  <p>This has the pulse of true and naive feeling (the hunter is
+  starting for the hunt in the early morning):</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When I come into the forest, still and silent everywhere,</p>
+
+    <p>There's a look of slumber in it, but the air is fresh and
+    cool.</p>
+
+    <p>Now Aurora paints the fir tops at their very tips with gold,</p>
+
+    <p>And the little finch sits up there launching forth his song of
+    praise,</p>
+
+    <p>Thanking for the night that's over, for the day that's just
+    awake</p>
+
+    <p>Gently blows the breeze of morning, rocking in the topmost
+    twigs,</p>
+
+    <p>And it bends them down like children, like good children when
+    they pray;</p>
+
+    <p>And the dew is an oblation as it drops from their green
+    hair.</p>
+
+    <p>O what beauties in the forest he that we may see and know!</p>
+
+    <p>One could melt away one's heart before its wonders manifold!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The sixth line in the original has a melody that reminds one of
+  Goethe's early work.</p>
+
+  <p>But even amidst the artificial poetry then in vogue, there were a
+  few side streams which turned away from the main current of the great
+  poet schools, from the unnaturalness and bombast affected especially
+  by the Silesians. As Winter says, even the satirists Moscherosch and
+  Logau were indirectly of use in paving the way for a healthier
+  condition, through their severe criticisms of the corruption of the
+  language; and Logau's one epigram on May, 'This month is a kiss which
+  heaven gives to earth, that she may be a bride now, a mother
+  by-and-by,' outweighs all Harsdörfer's and Zesen's poetry about
+  Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>But even by the side of Opitz and Fleming there was at least one
+  poet of real feeling, Friedrich von Spee.<a href=
+  "#j2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> With all his mystic and pietist
+  Christianity, he kept an open eye for Nature. His poems are full of
+  disdain of the world and joy in Nature,<a href=
+  "#j3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> longings <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg220" id="pg220">220</a></span>for death and lamentations over sin;
+  he delighted in personifications of abstract ideas, childish playing
+  with words and feelings, and sentimental enthusiasm. But mawkish and
+  canting as he was apt to be, he often shewed a fine appreciation of
+  detail. He was even--a rare thing then--fascinated by the sea.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Now rages and roars the wild, wild sea,</p>
+
+      <p>Now in soft curves lies quietly;</p>
+
+      <p>Sweetly the light of the sun's bright glow</p>
+
+      <p>Mirrors itself in the water below.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Sad winter's past--the stork is here,</p>
+
+      <p>Birds are singing and nests appear;</p>
+
+      <p>Bowery homes steal into the day,</p>
+
+      <p>Flow'rets present their full array;</p>
+
+      <p>Like little snakes and woods about,</p>
+
+      <p>The streams go wandering in and out.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His motives, like his diminutives, are constantly recurring. He
+  uses many bold and poetic personifications; the sun 'combs her golden
+  hair,' the moon is a good shepherd who leads his sheep the stars
+  across the blue heath, blowing upon a soft pipe; the sun adorns
+  herself in spring with a crown and a girdle of roses, fills her
+  quiver with arrows, and sends her horses to gallop for miles across
+  the smooth sky; the wind flies about, stopping for breath from time
+  to time; shakes its wings and withdraws into its house when it is
+  tired; the brook of Cedron sits, leaning on a bucket in a hollow,
+  combing his bulrush hair, his shoulders covered by grass and water;
+  he sings a cradle song to his little brooks, or drives them before
+  him, etc.</p>
+
+  <p>But the most gifted poet of the set, and the most doughty opponent
+  of Lohenstein's bombast, was the unhappy Christian Guenther.<a href=
+  "#j4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>He vents his feelings in verse because he must. There is a
+  foretaste of Goethe in his lyrics, poured put to free the soul from a
+  burden, and melodious as if by accident. As we turn over the leaves
+  of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg221" id=
+  "pg221">221</a></span>book of songs, we find deep feeling for Nature
+  mingled with his love and sorrows.<a href=
+  "#j5"><sup>[5]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Bethink you, flowers and trees and shades,</p>
+
+    <p>Of the sweet evenings here with Flavia!</p>
+
+    <p>'Twas here her head upon my shoulder pressed;</p>
+
+    <p>Conceal, ye limes, what else I dare not say.</p>
+
+    <p>'Twas here she clover threw and thyme at me,</p>
+
+    <p>And here I filled her lap with freshest flowers.</p>
+
+    <p>Ah! that was a good time!</p>
+
+    <p>I care more for moon and starlight than the pleasantest of
+    days,</p>
+
+    <p>And with eyes and heart uplifted from my chamber often gaze</p>
+
+    <p>With an awe that grows apace till it scarcely findeth space.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>To his lady-love he writes:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Here where I am writing now</p>
+
+    <p>'Tis lonely, shady, cool, and green;</p>
+
+    <p>And by the slender fig I hear</p>
+
+    <p>The gentle wind blow towards Schweidnitz.</p>
+
+    <p>And all the time most ardently</p>
+
+    <p>I give it thousand kisses for thee.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And at Schweidnitz:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>A thousand greetings, bushes, fields, and trees,</p>
+
+    <p>You know him well whose many rhymes</p>
+
+    <p>And songs you've heard, whose kisses seen;</p>
+
+    <p>Remember the joy of those fine summer nights.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>To Eleanora:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Spring is not far away. Walk in green solitude</p>
+
+    <p>Between your alder rows, and think ...</p>
+
+    <p>As in the oft-repeated lesson</p>
+
+    <p>The young birds' cry shall bear my longing;</p>
+
+    <p>And when the west wind plays with cheek and dress be sure</p>
+
+    <p>He tells me of thy longing, and kisses thee a thousand times for
+    me.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In a time of despair, he wrote:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Storm, rage and tear! winds of misfortune, shew all your
+    tyranny!</p>
+
+    <p>Twist and split bark and twig,</p>
+
+    <p>And break the tree of hope in two <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+    "pg222" id="pg222">222</a></span></p>
+
+    <p>Stem and leaves are struck by this hail and thunder,</p>
+
+    <p>The root remains till storm and rain have laid their wrath.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Again:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The woods I'll wander through,</p>
+
+    <p>From men I'll flee away,</p>
+
+    <p>With lonely doves I'll coo,</p>
+
+    <p>And with the wild things stay.</p>
+
+    <p>When life's the prey of misery,</p>
+
+    <p>And all my powers depart,</p>
+
+    <p>A leafy grave will be</p>
+
+    <p>Far kinder than thy heart.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>True lyrist, he gave Nature her full right in his feelings, and
+  found comfort in return; but, as Goethe said of him, gifted but
+  unsteady as he was, 'He did not know how to restrain himself, and so
+  his life and poetry melted away.'</p>
+
+  <p>Among those who made use of better material than the Silesian
+  poets, H. Barthold Brockes stood first. Nature was his one and only
+  subject; but in this he was not original, he was influenced by
+  England. While France was dictating a taste like the baroque, and
+  Germany enthusiastically adopting it (every petty prince in the land
+  copied the gardens at Versailles, Schwetzingen more closely than the
+  rest), a revolution which affected all Europe was brought about by
+  England. The order of the following dates is significant: William
+  Kent, the famous garden artist, died in 1748, James Thomson in the
+  same year, Brockes a year earlier; and about the same time the
+  imitations of Robinson Crusoe sprang up like mushrooms.</p>
+
+  <p>We have considered Shakespeare's plays; English lyrists too of the
+  fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shewed deep feeling for Nature, and
+  invested scenery with their own feelings in a very delicate way.</p>
+
+  <p>G. Chaucer (1400) praises the nightingale s song in <i>From the
+  Floure and Leafe</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">So was I with the song</p>
+
+      <p>Thorow ravished, that till late and long <span class=
+      "pagenum"><a name="pg223" id="pg223">223</a></span></p>
+
+      <p>Ne wist I in what place I was ne where; ...</p>
+
+      <p>And at the last, I gan full well aspie</p>
+
+      <p>Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree</p>
+
+      <p>On the further side, even right by me,</p>
+
+      <p>That gave so passing a delicious smell</p>
+
+      <p>According to the eglentere full well....</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">On the sote grass</p>
+
+      <p>I sat me downe, for, as for mine entent,</p>
+
+      <p>The birddes song was more convenient,</p>
+
+      <p>And more pleasant to me by many fold</p>
+
+      <p>Than meat or drink or any other thing.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thomas Wyatt (1542) says of his lady-love:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The rocks do not so cruelly</p>
+
+    <p>Repulse the waves continually,</p>
+
+    <p>As she my suit and affection</p>
+
+    <p>So that I am past remedy.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Robert Southwell (1595), in <i>Love's Servile Lott</i>, compares
+  love to April:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>May never was the month for love,</p>
+
+    <p>For May is full of floures,</p>
+
+    <p>But rather Aprill, wett by kinde,</p>
+
+    <p>For love is full of showers....</p>
+
+    <p>Like winter rose and summer yce,</p>
+
+    <p>Her joyes are still untymelye;</p>
+
+    <p>Before her hope, behind remorse,</p>
+
+    <p>Fayre first, in fyne unseemely.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Edmund Spenser (1598) describes a garden in <i>The Faerie
+  Queene</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>There the most daintie Paradise on ground</p>
+
+    <p>It selfe did offer to his sober eye,</p>
+
+    <p>In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,</p>
+
+    <p>And none does others' happinesse envye;</p>
+
+    <p>The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,</p>
+
+    <p>The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space,</p>
+
+    <p>The trembling groves, the christall running by,</p>
+
+    <p>And, that which all fair workes doth most aggrace,</p>
+
+    <p>The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Mountain scenery was seldom visited or described.</p>
+
+  <p>Michael Drayton (1731) wrote an ode on the Peak, in
+  Derbyshire:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Though on the utmost Peak</p>
+
+    <p>A while we do remain,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg224" id=
+    "pg224">224</a></span>Amongst the mountains bleak</p>
+
+    <p>Exposed to sleet and rain,</p>
+
+    <p>No sport our hours shall break</p>
+
+    <p>To exercise our vein.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is clear that he preferred his comfort to everything, for he
+  goes on:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Yet many rivers clear</p>
+
+    <p>Here glide in silver swathes,</p>
+
+    <p>And what of all most dear</p>
+
+    <p>Buxton's delicious baths,</p>
+
+    <p>Strong ale and noble chear</p>
+
+    <p>T' assuage breem winter's scathes.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thomas Carew (1639) sings:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Ask me no more where Jove bestows,</p>
+
+    <p>When June is past, the fading rose,</p>
+
+    <p>For in your beauties' orient deep</p>
+
+    <p>These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.</p>
+
+    <p>Ask me no more whither do stray</p>
+
+    <p>The golden atoms of the day,</p>
+
+    <p>For in pure love Heaven did prepare</p>
+
+    <p>Those powders to enrich your hair.</p>
+
+    <p>Ask me no more whither doth haste</p>
+
+    <p>The nightingale, when May is past,</p>
+
+    <p>For in your sweet dividing throat</p>
+
+    <p>She winters and keeps warm her note.</p>
+
+    <p>Ask me no more where these stars shine</p>
+
+    <p>That downwards fall in dead of night,</p>
+
+    <p>For in your eyes they sit, and there</p>
+
+    <p>Fixed become, as in their sphere.</p>
+
+    <p>Ask me no more if east or west</p>
+
+    <p>The phoenix builds her spicy nest,</p>
+
+    <p>For unto you at last she flies</p>
+
+    <p>And in your fragrant bosom dies.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>William Drummond (1746) avowed a taste which he knew to be very
+  unfashionable:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove,</p>
+
+    <p>Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own</p>
+
+    <p>Though solitary, who is not alone,</p>
+
+    <p>But doth converse with that eternal love.</p>
+
+    <p>O how more sweet is birds' harmonious moan</p>
+
+    <p>Or the soft sobbings of the widow'd dove,</p>
+
+    <p>Than those smooth whisp'rings near a prince's throne....</p>
+
+    <p>O how more sweet is zephyr's wholesome breath</p>
+
+    <p>And sighs perfum'd, which new-born flowers unfold.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg225" id="pg225">225</a></span>
+
+  <p>Another sonnet, to a nightingale, says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours</p>
+
+    <p>Of winters past or coming void of care,</p>
+
+    <p>Well pleased with delights which present are,</p>
+
+    <p>Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;</p>
+
+    <p>To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers</p>
+
+    <p>Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,</p>
+
+    <p>And what dear gifts on thee He did not spare,</p>
+
+    <p>A stain to human sense in sin that lowers,</p>
+
+    <p>What soul can be so sick which by thy songs</p>
+
+    <p>Attir'd in sweetness, sweetly is not driven</p>
+
+    <p>Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He greets Spring:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Sweet Spring, thou turn'st with all thy goodly train</p>
+
+    <p>Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers;</p>
+
+    <p>The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,</p>
+
+    <p>The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Robert Blair (1746) sings in <i>The Grave</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">Oh, when my friend and I</p>
+
+    <p>In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on,</p>
+
+    <p>Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down</p>
+
+    <p>Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd bank,</p>
+
+    <p>Where the pure limpid stream has slid along</p>
+
+    <p>In grateful errors through the underwood,</p>
+
+    <p>Sweet murmuring; methought the shrill-tongu'd thrush</p>
+
+    <p>Mended his song of love, the sooty blackbird</p>
+
+    <p>Mellowed his pipe and soften'd every note,</p>
+
+    <p>The eglantine smell'd sweeter and the rose</p>
+
+    <p>Assum'd a dye more deep, whilst ev'ry flower</p>
+
+    <p>Vied with its fellow plant in luxury</p>
+
+    <p>Of dress. Oh! then the longest summer's day</p>
+
+    <p>Seem'd too, too much in haste, still the full heart</p>
+
+    <p>Had not imparted half; half was happiness</p>
+
+    <p>Too exquisite to last--Of joys departed</p>
+
+    <p>Not to return, how painful the remembrance!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The great painter of Nature among the poets was James Thomson. He
+  was not original, but followed Pope, who had lighted up the seasons
+  in a dry, dogmatic way in <i>Windsor Forest</i>, and pastoral poems,
+  and after the publication of his <i>Winter</i> the taste of the day
+  carried him on. His deep and <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg226"
+  id="pg226">226</a></span>sentimental affection for Nature was mixed
+  up with piety and moralizing. He said in a letter to his friend
+  Paterson:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Retirement and Nature are more and more my passion every day;
+    and now, even now, the charming time comes on; Heaven is just on
+    the point, or rather in the very act, of giving earth a green gown.
+    The voice of the nightingale is heard in our lane. You must know
+    that I have enlarged my rural domain ... walled, no, no! paled in
+    about as much as my garden consisted of before, so that the walk
+    runs round the hedge, where you may figure me walking any time of
+    day, and sometimes of the night.... May your health continue till
+    you have scraped together enough to return home and live in some
+    snug corner, as happy as the Corycius senex in Virgil's fourth
+    Georgic, whom I recommend both to you and myself as a perfect model
+    of the truest happy life.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>It is a fact that Solitude and Nature became a passion with him.
+  He would wander about the country for weeks at a time, noting every
+  sight and sound, down to the smallest, and finding beauty and divine
+  goodness in all. His <i>Seasons</i> were the result.</p>
+
+  <p>There is faithful portraiture in these landscapes in verse; some
+  have charm and delicacy, but, for the most part, they are only
+  catalogues of the external world, wholly lacking in links with the
+  inner life.</p>
+
+  <p>Scene after scene is described without pause, or only interrupted
+  by sermonizing; it is as monotonous as a gallery of landscape
+  paintings.</p>
+
+  <p>The human beings introduced are mere accessories, they do not
+  live, and the undercurrent of all is praise of the Highest. His
+  predilection is for still life in wood and field, but he does not
+  neglect grander scenery; his muse</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Sees Caledonia, in romantic view:</p>
+
+    <p>Her airy mountains, from the waving main</p>
+
+    <p>Invested with a keen diffusive sky,</p>
+
+    <p>Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge,</p>
+
+    <p>Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand</p>
+
+    <p>Planted of old; her azure lakes between,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg227" id=
+    "pg227">227</a></span>Poured out extensive and of watery wealth</p>
+
+    <p>Full; winding, deep and green, her fertile vales,</p>
+
+    <p>With many a cool translucent brimming flood</p>
+
+    <p>Washed lovely...."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And in <i>A Hymn</i> we read:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Ye headlong torrents rapid and profound,</p>
+
+    <p>Ye softer floods that lead the humid maze</p>
+
+    <p>Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,</p>
+
+    <p>A secret world of wonders in thyself.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is the lack of human life, the didactic tone, and the wearisome
+  detail which destroys interest in the <i>Seasons</i>--the lack of
+  happy moments of invention. Yet it had great influence on his
+  contemporaries in rousing love for Nature, and it contains many
+  beautiful passages. For example:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,</p>
+
+    <p>And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,</p>
+
+    <p>While music wakes around, veiled in a shower</p>
+
+    <p>Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His most artistic poem is Winter:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When from the pallid sky the sun descends</p>
+
+    <p>With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb</p>
+
+    <p>Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks</p>
+
+    <p>Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds</p>
+
+    <p>Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet</p>
+
+    <p>Which master to obey; while rising slow,</p>
+
+    <p>Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon</p>
+
+    <p>Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns.</p>
+
+    <p>Seen through the turbid fluctuating air,</p>
+
+    <p>The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray;</p>
+
+    <p>Or frequent seem to shoot, athwart the gloom,</p>
+
+    <p>And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.</p>
+
+    <p>Snatched in short eddies plays the withered leaf,</p>
+
+    <p>And on the flood the dancing feather floats.</p>
+
+    <p>With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned,</p>
+
+    <p>The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale....</p>
+
+    <p>Retiring from the downs, where all day long</p>
+
+    <p>They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train</p>
+
+    <p>Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight</p>
+
+    <p>And seek the closing shelter of the grove,</p>
+
+    <p>Assiduous, in his bower, the wailing owl</p>
+
+    <p>Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high</p>
+
+    <p>Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg228" id=
+    "pg228">228</a></span>Loud shrieks the soaring heron, and with wild
+    wing</p>
+
+    <p>The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky skies.</p>
+
+    <p>Ocean, unequal pressed, with broken tide</p>
+
+    <p>And blind commotion heaves, while from the shore,</p>
+
+    <p>Eat into caverns by the restless wave</p>
+
+    <p>And forest-rustling mountains, comes a voice</p>
+
+    <p>That solemn-sounding bids the world prepare.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The elaboration of detail in such painting is certain evidence,
+  not only of a keen, but an enthusiastic eye for Nature. As he says in
+  Winter:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Nature, great parent! whose unceasing hand</p>
+
+    <p>Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year!</p>
+
+    <p>How mighty, how majestic, are thy works!</p>
+
+    <p>With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul</p>
+
+    <p>That sees astonish'd, and astonish'd sings!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Brockes was directly influenced by Pope and Thomson, and
+  translated the <i>Seasons</i>, when he had finished his <i>Irdisches
+  Vergnügen in Gott</i>. This unwieldy work, insipid and prosaic as it
+  is, was still a literary achievement, thanks to the dignity of the
+  subject and the high seriousness of its aim, at a time when frivolity
+  was the fashion in poetry. Its long pious descriptions of natural
+  phenomena have none of the imposing flow of Thomson's strophes. It
+  treats of fire in 138 verses of eight lines each, of air in 79, water
+  in 78, earth in 74, while flowers and fruit are dissected and
+  analyzed at great length; and all this rhymed botany and physics is
+  loosely strung together, but it shews a warm feeling for Nature of a
+  moralizing and devotional sort. He says himself<a href=
+  "#j7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> that he took up the study of poetry first as
+  an amusement, but later more seriously, and chose Nature as his
+  theme, not only because her beauty moved him, but as a means 'whereby
+  man might enjoy a permissible pleasure and be edified at the same
+  time.'</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>So I resolved to sing the praises of the Creator to the best of
+    my powers, and felt the more bound to do it, because I held that
+    such great and almost inexcusable <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+    "pg229" id="pg229">229</a></span>neglect and ingratitude was a
+    wrong to the Creator, and unbecoming in Christendom. I therefore
+    composed different pieces, chiefly in Spring, and tried my best to
+    describe the beauties of Nature, in order, through my own pleasure,
+    to rekindle the praise of the wise Creator in myself and others,
+    and this led at last to the first part of my <i>Irdisches
+    Vergnügen</i>. (1721.)</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>His evidence from animal and plant life for the teleological
+  argument is very laughable; take, for example, the often-quoted
+  chamois:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The fat is good for phthisis, the gall for the face, chamois
+    flesh is good to eat, and its blood cures vertigo--the skin is no
+    less useful. Doth not the love as well as the wisdom and
+    almightiness of the Creator shine forth from this animal?</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>For the rest, the following lines from <i>Irdisches Vergnügen in
+  Gott</i> will serve to give an idea of his style; they certainly do
+  honour to his laborious attempt to miss none of the charms of the
+  wood:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Lately as I sat on the green grass</p>
+
+    <p>Shaded by a lime tree, and read,</p>
+
+    <p>I raised my eyes by chance and saw</p>
+
+    <p>Different trees here and there, some far, some near,</p>
+
+    <p>Some half, some all in light, and some in shade,</p>
+
+    <p>Their boughs bowed down by leaves.</p>
+
+    <p>I saw how beautifully both air and flowery mead</p>
+
+    <p>Were crowned and adorned.</p>
+
+    <p>To describe the green grace</p>
+
+    <p>And the landscape it makes so sweet,</p>
+
+    <p>And at the same time prolong my pleasure,</p>
+
+    <p>I took pencil and paper</p>
+
+    <p>And tried to describe the beautiful trees in rhyme,</p>
+
+    <p>To the glory of God their Creator.</p>
+
+    <p>Of all the beauty the world lays before our eyes,</p>
+
+    <p>There certainly is none which does not pale</p>
+
+    <p>Beside green boughs,</p>
+
+    <p>Nothing to compare for pure beauty with a wood.</p>
+
+    <p>The green roofing overhead</p>
+
+    <p>Makes me feel young again;</p>
+
+    <p>It hangs there, a living tapestry,</p>
+
+    <p>To the glory of God and our delight....</p>
+
+    <p>Beyond many trees that lay in shade</p>
+
+    <p>I often saw one in full light;</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg230" id="pg230">230</a></span>A
+    human eye would scarce believe</p>
+
+    <p>How sweetly twilight, light and darkness</p>
+
+    <p>Meet side by side in leafy trees.</p>
+
+    <p>Peering through the leaves with joy</p>
+
+    <p>We notice, as we see the leaves</p>
+
+    <p>Lighted from one side only,</p>
+
+    <p>That we can almost see the sun</p>
+
+    <p>Mixing gold with the tender green, etc.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and so on for another twenty lines.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet this rich Burgomaster of Hamburg, for all that he dealt
+  chiefly in rhymed prose, had his moments of rare elevation of thought
+  and mystical rapture about Nature; for instance, in the introduction
+  to <i>Ueber das Firmament</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>As lately in the sapphire depths,</p>
+
+    <p>Not bound by earth nor water, aim nor end,</p>
+
+    <p>In the unplumbed aerial sea I gazed,</p>
+
+    <p>And my absorbed glance, now here, now there,</p>
+
+    <p>But ever deeper sank--horror came over me,</p>
+
+    <p>My eye grew dizzy and my soul aghast.</p>
+
+    <p>That infinite vast vault,</p>
+
+    <p>True picture of Eternity,</p>
+
+    <p>Since without birth or end</p>
+
+    <p>From God alone it comes....</p>
+
+    <p>It overwhelmed my soul.</p>
+
+    <p>The mighty dome of deep dark light,</p>
+
+    <p>Bright darkness without birth or bound,</p>
+
+    <p>Swallowed the very world--burying thought.</p>
+
+    <p>My being dwindled to an atom, to a nought;</p>
+
+    <p>I lost myself,</p>
+
+    <p>So suddenly it beat me down,</p>
+
+    <p>And threatened with despair.</p>
+
+    <p>But in that salutary nothingness, that blessed loss,</p>
+
+    <p>All present God! in Thee--I found myself again.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>While English poetry and its German imitations were shewing these
+  signs of reaction from the artificiality of the time, and science and
+  philosophy often lauded Nature to the skies, as, for instance,
+  Shaftesbury<a href="#j8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> (1671-1713), a return to
+  Nature became the principle of English garden-craft in the first half
+  of the eighteenth century.<a href="#j9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> The line
+  of progress here, as in taste generally, did not run <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg231" id="pg231">231</a></span>straightforward,
+  but fluctuated. From the geometric gardens of Lenotre, England passed
+  to the opposite extreme; in the full tide of periwig and hoop
+  petticoat, minuets, beauty-patches and rouge, Addison and Pope were
+  banishing everything that was not strictly natural from the garden.
+  Addison would even have everything grow wild in its own way, and Pope
+  wrote:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>To build, to plant, whatever you intend,</p>
+
+    <p>To rear the column, or the arch to bend,</p>
+
+    <p>To swell the terrace or to sink the grot,</p>
+
+    <p>In all let Nature never be forgot.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>William Kent made allowance for this idea; but, as a painter, and
+  looking at his native scenery with a painter's eye, he noted its
+  characteristic features--the gentle undulations, the freshness of the
+  green, the wealth of trees--and based his garden-craft on these.</p>
+
+  <p>The straight line was banished; in its place came wide spaces of
+  lawn and scattered groups of trees of different sorts--dark fir and
+  alder here, silver birch and grey poplar there; and flowery fields
+  with streams running through them stood out in relief against dark
+  woodland.</p>
+
+  <p>Stiff walls, balustrades, terraces, statues, and so forth,
+  disappeared; the garden was not to contrast with the surrounding
+  landscape, but to merge into it--to be not Art, but a bit of Nature.
+  It was, in fact, to be a number of such bits, each distinct from the
+  rest--waterfall, sheltered sunny nook, dark wood, light glade. Kent
+  himself soon began to vary this mosaic of separate scenes by adding
+  ruins and pavilions; but it was Chambers the architect who developed
+  the idea of variety by his writings on the dwellings and manners of
+  the Chinese.<a href="#j10"><sup>[10]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The fundamental idea that the garden ought to be a sample of the
+  landscape was common both <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg232" id=
+  "pg232">232</a></span>to Kent and the Chinese; but, as China is far
+  richer than England in varieties of scenery, her gardens included
+  mountains, rocks, swamps, and deserts, as well as sunny fields and
+  plains, while English gardens were comparatively monotonous. When the
+  fashion for the Chinese style came in, as unluckily it did just when
+  we were trying to oust the Rococo, so that one pigtail superseded the
+  other, variety was achieved by groups of buildings in all sorts of
+  styles. Stables, ice-houses, gardeners' cottages took the form of
+  pavilions, pagodas, kiosks, and temples.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, as a reaction against the Rococo, enthusiasm for Nature
+  increased, and feeling was set free from restraint by the growing
+  sentimentality. Richardson's novels fed the taste for the pleasures
+  of weeping sensibility, and garden-craft fell under its sway. In all
+  periods the insignificant and non-essential is unable to resist the
+  general stamp, if that only shews a little originality.</p>
+
+  <p>These gardens, with temples to friendship and love, melancholy,
+  virtue, re-union, and death, and so forth, were suitable backgrounds
+  for the sentimental scenes described in the English novels, and for
+  the idyllic poets and moonshine singers of Germany. Here it was the
+  fashion to wander, tenderly intertwined, shedding floods of tears and
+  exchanging kisses, and pausing at various places to read the
+  inscriptions which directed them what to feel. At one spot they were
+  to laugh, at another to weep, at a third to be fired with
+  devotion.</p>
+
+  <p>Hermitages sprang up everywhere, with hermits, real or dummy. Any
+  good house near a wood, or in a shady position, was called a
+  hermitage, and dedicated to arcadian life, free from care and
+  ceremony. Classic and romantic styles competed for favour in
+  architecture; at one moment everything must needs be purely classic,
+  each temple Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric; at another Gothic, with the
+  ruins <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg233" id=
+  "pg233">233</a></span>and fortresses of mediæval romance. And not
+  only English gardens, but those of Europe generally, though to a less
+  degree, passed through these stages of development, for no disease is
+  so infectious as fashion.</p>
+
+  <p>It was not till the end of the eighteenth century that a healthy
+  reaction set in in England, when Repton turned back to Kent's
+  fundamental principle and freed it from its unnatural excrescences,
+  with the formula: the garden should be an artistic representation of
+  the landscape, a work of art whose materials are provided by Nature
+  herself, whether grass, flowers, bushes, trees, water, or whatever it
+  may be that she has to offer. Thus began our modern landscape
+  gardening.</p>
+
+  <p>In another region too, a change was brought about from the Rococo
+  to a more natural style. It is true that Nature plays no direct
+  <i>rôle</i> in <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, and wins as little notice
+  there as in its numberless imitations; yet the book roused a longing
+  for healthier, more natural conditions in thousands of minds. It led
+  the idyllic tendency of the day back to its source, and by shewing
+  all the stages, from the raw state of Nature up to the culture of the
+  community, in the life of one man, it brought out the contrast
+  between the far-off age of innocence and the perverted present.</p>
+
+  <p>The German <i>Simplicissimus</i> closed with a Robinsonade, in
+  which the hero, after long wandering, found rest and peace on an
+  island in the ocean of the world, alone with himself and Nature. The
+  readers of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> were in much the same position.
+  Defoe was not only a true artist, but a man of noble, patient
+  character, and his romance proved a healing medicine to many sick
+  minds, pointing the way back to Nature and a natural fife, and
+  creating a longing for the lost innocence of man.</p>
+
+  <p>Rousseau, who was also a zealous advocate of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg234" id="pg234">234</a></span>the English
+  gardens, and disgusted by the French Pigtail style, was more
+  impressed by <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> than by any other book. It was
+  the first book his Emilia gave him, as a gospel of Nature and
+  unspoilt taste. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg235" id=
+  "pg235">235</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch10" id="ch10">CHAPTER X</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>THE SENSITIVENESS AND EXAGGERATION OF THE ELEGIAC IDYLLIC
+  FEELING</h3>
+
+  <p>This longing to return to the lost paradise of Nature gradually
+  produced a state of melancholy hyper-sensitiveness, an epidemic of
+  world pain, quite as unnatural as the Rococo.</p>
+
+  <p>The heart came into its rights again and laid claim to absolute
+  dominion in its kingdom, and regret that it had lain so long deprived
+  of its own, gave rise to a tearful pensiveness, which added zest to
+  restitution. It was convalescence, but followed at once by another
+  complaint. Feeling swung from one extreme to the other.</p>
+
+  <p>German feeling in the first half of the eighteenth century was
+  chiefly influenced, on the one hand, by Richardson's novels, which
+  left no room for Nature, and by the poetry of Young and Thomson; on
+  the other, by the pastoral idylls interspersed with anacreontic
+  love-passages, affected by the French. At first description and
+  moralizing preponderated.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1729 Haller's <i>Alps</i> appeared. It had the merit of drawing
+  the eyes of Europe to Alpine beauty and the moral worth of the Swiss,
+  but shewed little eye for romantic scenery. It is full of descriptive
+  painting, but not of a kind that appeals: scene follows scene with
+  considerable pathos, especially in dealing with the people; but
+  landscape is looked <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg236" id=
+  "pg236">236</a></span>at almost entirely from the moralizing or
+  utilitarian standpoint.</p>
+
+  <p>'Here, where the majestic Mount Gothard elevates its summit above
+  the clouds, and where the earth itself seems to approach the sun,
+  Nature has assembled in one spot all the choicest treasure of the
+  globe. The deserts of Libya, indeed, afford us greater novelties, and
+  its sandy plains are more fertile in monsters: but thou, favoured
+  region, art adorned with useful productions only, productions which
+  can satisfy all the wants of man. Even those heaps of ice, those
+  frowning rocks in appearance so sterile, contribute largely to the
+  general good, for they supply inexhaustible fountains to fertilize
+  the land. What a magnificent picture does Nature spread before the
+  eye, when the sun, gilding the top of the Alps, scatters the sea of
+  vapours which undulates below! Through the receding vale the theatre
+  of a whole world rises to the view! Rocks, valleys, lakes, mountains,
+  and forests fill the immeasurable space, and are lost in the wide
+  horizon. We take in at a single glance the confines of divers states,
+  nations of various characters, languages, and manners, till the eyes,
+  overcome by such extent of vision, drop their weary lids, and we ask
+  of the enchanted fancy a continuance of the scene.</p>
+
+  <p>'When the first emotion of astonishment has subsided, how
+  delightful is it to observe each several part which makes up this
+  sublime whole! That mass of hills, which presents its graceful
+  declivity covered with flocks of sheep whose bleatings resound
+  through the meadows; that large clear lake, which reflects from its
+  level surface sunbeams gently curved; those valleys, rich in verdure,
+  which compose by their various outlines points of perspective which
+  contract in the distance of the landscape! Here rises a bare steep
+  mountain laden with the accumulated snow of ages; its icy head rests
+  among the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg237" id=
+  "pg237">237</a></span>clouds, repelling the genial rays of the moon
+  and the fervid heat of the dog-star: there a chain of cultivated
+  hills spreads before the delighted eye; their green pastures are
+  enlivened by flocks, and their golden corn waves in the wind: yet
+  climates so different as those are only separated by a cool, narrow
+  valley. Behold that foaming torrent rushing from a perpendicular
+  height! Its rapid waves dash among the rocks, and shoot even beyond
+  their limits. Divided by the rapidity of its course and the depth of
+  the abyss where it falls, it changes into a grey moving veil; and, at
+  length scattered into humid atoms, it shines with the tints of the
+  rainbow, and, suspended over the valley, refreshes it with plenteous
+  dew. The traveller beholds with astonishment rivers flowing towards
+  the sky, and issuing from one cloud, hide themselves in the grey veil
+  of another.</p>
+
+  <p>'Those desert places uncheered by the rays of the sun, those
+  frozen abysses deprived of all verdure, hide beneath their sterile
+  sands invaluable treasures, which defy the rigour of the seasons and
+  all the injuries of time! 'Tis in dark and marshy recesses, upon the
+  damp grottos, that crystal rocks are formed. Thus splendour is
+  diffused through their melancholy vaults, and their shadowy depths
+  gutter with the colours of the rainbow. O Nature, how various are thy
+  operations, how infinite thy fertility!'</p>
+
+  <p>We cannot agree with Frey<a href="#k1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> that
+  'these few strophes may serve as sufficient proof that Haller's
+  poetry is still, even among the mass of Alpine poetry, unsurpassed
+  for intense power of direct vision, and easily makes one forget its
+  partial lack of flexibility of diction.'</p>
+
+  <p>The truth is, flexibility is entirely lacking; but the lines do
+  express the taste for open-air life among the great sublimities and
+  with simple people. The poem is not romantic but idyllic, with a
+  touch of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg238" id=
+  "pg238">238</a></span>elegiac. It is the same with the poem <i>On the
+  Origin of Evil</i> (Book I.):</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>On those still heights whence constant springs flow down,</p>
+
+    <p>I paused within a copse, lured by the evening breeze;</p>
+
+    <p>Wide country lay spread out beneath my feet,</p>
+
+    <p>Bounded by its own size alone....</p>
+
+    <p>Green woods covered the hills, through which the pale tints of
+    the fields</p>
+
+    <p>Shone pleasantly.</p>
+
+    <p>Abundance and repose held sway far as the eye could
+    reach....</p>
+
+    <p>And yonder wood, what left it to desire</p>
+
+    <p>With the red tints upon the half-bare beeches</p>
+
+    <p>And the rich pine's green shade o'er whitened moss?</p>
+
+    <p>While many a sun-ray through the interstices</p>
+
+    <p>A quivering light upon the darkness shed,</p>
+
+    <p>Blending in varying hues green night with golden day</p>
+
+    <p>How pleasant is the quiet of the copse! ...</p>
+
+    <p>Yea, all I see is given by Providence,</p>
+
+    <p>The world itself is for its burgher's joy;</p>
+
+    <p>Nature's inspired with the general weal,</p>
+
+    <p>The highest goodness shews its trace in all.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Friedrich von Hagedorn, too, praises country pleasures in <i>The
+  Feeling of Spring</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Enamelled meadows! freshly decked in green,</p>
+
+    <p>I sing your praises constantly;</p>
+
+    <p>Nature and Spring have decked you out....</p>
+
+    <p>Delightful quiet, stimulant of joy,</p>
+
+    <p>How enviable thou art!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This idyllic taste for country life was common at the time,
+  especially among the so-called 'anacreontists.' Gleim, for instance,
+  in his <i>Praise of Country Life</i>: 'Thank God that I have fled
+  from the bustle of the world and am myself again under the open
+  sky.'</p>
+
+  <p>And in <i>The Countryman</i>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>How happy is he who, free from cares, ploughs his father's
+    fields; every morning the sun shines on the grass in which he
+    lies.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg239" id="pg239">239</a></span>
+  And Joh. Friedrich von Cronegk:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Fly from sordid cares and the proud tumult of cities ... here in
+    the peaceful valley shy wisdom sports at ease, where the smiling
+    Muse crowns herself with dewy roses.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>With this idyllic tone it is not surprising to find the religious
+  feeling of many hymn writers; for instance, Gleim in <i>The Goodness
+  of God</i>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>For whom did Thy goodness create the world so beautiful, O God?
+    For whom are the flowers on hill and dale? ... Thou gavest us power
+    to perceive the beauty.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And above all, honest Gellert:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The skies, the globe, the seas, praise the eternal glory. O my
+    Creator, when I consider Thy might and the wisdom of Thy ways....
+    Sunshine and storm preach Thee, and the sands of the sea.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Ewald von Kleist excelled Haller as much as Haller had excelled
+  Brockes.</p>
+
+  <p>Julian Schmidt says<a href="#k3"><sup>[3]</sup></a>: 'Later on,
+  descriptive poetry, like didactic, fell into disgrace; but at that
+  time this dwelling upon the minutiæ of Nature served to enrich the
+  imagination; Kleist's descriptions are thoughtful and interesting.'
+  It is easy to see that his longer poems cost him much labour; they
+  were not the pure songs of feeling that gush out spontaneously like a
+  spring from the rock. But in eloquence and keenness of observation he
+  excelled his contemporaries, although he, too, followed the fashion
+  of eighteenth-century literature, and coquetted with Greek nymphs and
+  deities, and the names of winds and maidens.</p>
+
+  <p>The tendency to depression, increased by his failure to adapt
+  himself to military life, made him incline more and more to
+  solitude.</p>
+
+  <p><i>To Doris</i> begins:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Now spring doth warm the flakeless air,</p>
+
+    <p>And in the brook the sky reflects her blue,</p>
+
+    <p>Shepherds in fragrant flowers find delight ...</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg240" id=
+    "pg240">240</a></span>The corn lifts high its golden head,</p>
+
+    <p>And Zephyr moves in waves across the grain,</p>
+
+    <p>Her robe the field embroiders; the young rush</p>
+
+    <p>Adorns the border of each silver stream,</p>
+
+    <p>Love seeks the green night of the forest shade,</p>
+
+    <p>And air and sea and earth and heaven smile.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><i>Sighs for Rest</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>O silver brook, my leisure's early soother,</p>
+
+      <p>When wilt thou murmur lullabies again?</p>
+
+      <p>When shall I trace thy sliding smooth and smoother,</p>
+
+      <p>While kingfishers along thy reeds complain;</p>
+
+      <p>Afar from thee with care and toil opprest,</p>
+
+      <p>Thy image still can calm my troubled breast.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>O ye fair groves and odorous violet valleys,</p>
+
+      <p>Girt with a garland blue of hills around,</p>
+
+      <p>Thou quiet lake, where, when Aurora sallies,</p>
+
+      <p>Her golden tresses seem to sweep the ground:</p>
+
+      <p>Soft mossy turf, on which I wont to stray,</p>
+
+      <p>For me no longer bloom thy flow'rets gay.</p>
+
+      <p>As when the chilly nights of March arise</p>
+
+      <p>And whirl the howling dust in eddies swift,</p>
+
+      <p>The sunbeams wither in the dimmer skies,</p>
+
+      <p>O'er the young ears the sand and pebbles drift:</p>
+
+      <p>So the war rages, and the furious forces</p>
+
+      <p>The air with smoke bespread, the field with corses.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The vineyard bleeds, and trampled is the com,</p>
+
+      <p>Orchards but heat the kettles of the camp....</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>As when a lake which gushing rains invade</p>
+
+      <p>Breaks down its dams, and fields are overflowed.</p>
+
+      <p>So floods of fire across the region spread,</p>
+
+      <p>And standing corn by crackling flames is mowed:</p>
+
+      <p>Bellowing the cattle fly; the forests burn,</p>
+
+      <p>And their own ashes the old stems in-urn.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>He too, who fain would live in purity,</p>
+
+      <p>Feels nature treacherous, hears examples urge,</p>
+
+      <p>As one who, falling overboard at sea,</p>
+
+      <p>Beats with his arms and feet the buoyant surge,</p>
+
+      <p>And climbs at length against some rocky brink,</p>
+
+      <p>Only beneath exhausted strength to sink.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>My cheek bedewed with holy tears in vain,</p>
+
+      <p>To love and heaven I vowed a spotless truth:</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg241" id=
+      "pg241">241</a></span>Too soon the noble tear exhaled again,</p>
+
+      <p>Example conquered, and the glow of youth</p>
+
+      <p>To live as live one's comrades seems allowed;</p>
+
+      <p>He who would be a man, must quit the crowd.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He, too, wrote with hymn-like swing in praise of the Creator:
+  'Great is the Lord! the unnumbered heavens are the chambers of his
+  fortress, storm and thunder-clouds his chariot.'</p>
+
+  <p>The most famous of his poems, and the one most admired in his own
+  day, was <i>Spring</i>. This is full of love for Nature. It describes
+  a country walk after the muggy air of town, and conveys a vivid
+  impression of fresh germinating spring, though it is overlaid by
+  monotonous detail:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Receive me, hallowed shades! Ye dwellings of sweet buss!</p>
+
+    <p>Umbrageous arches full of sleeping dark delights ...</p>
+
+    <p>Receive me! Fill my soul with longing and with rest ...</p>
+
+    <p>And you, ye laughing fields,</p>
+
+    <p>Valleys of roses, labyrinths of streams,</p>
+
+    <p>I will inhale an ecstasy with your balsamic breath,</p>
+
+    <p>And, lying in the shade, on strings of gold</p>
+
+    <p>Sing your indwelling joys....</p>
+
+    <p>On rosy clouds, with rose and tulip crowned,</p>
+
+    <p>Spring has come down from heaven....</p>
+
+    <p>The air grew softer, fields took varied hues,</p>
+
+    <p>The shades were leafy, and soft notes awoke</p>
+
+    <p>And flew and warbled round the wood in twilight greenery.</p>
+
+    <p>Brooks took a silver tint, sweet odours filled the air,</p>
+
+    <p>The early shepherd's pipe was heard by Echo in the dale....</p>
+
+    <p>Most dear abode! Ah, were I but allowed</p>
+
+    <p>Down in the shade by yon loquacious brook</p>
+
+    <p>Henceforth to live! O sky! thou sea of love,</p>
+
+    <p>Eternal spring of health, will not thy waters succour me?</p>
+
+    <p>Must, my life's blossom wither, stifled by the weeds?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Johann Peter Uz, who was undervalued because of his sickly style,
+  wrote many little songs full of feeling for Nature, though within
+  narrow limits. Their titles shew the pastoral taste<a href=
+  "#k4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>:--<i>Spring</i>, <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg242" id="pg242">242</a></span><i>Morning,
+  Shepherd's Morning Song, The Muse with the Shepherds, The Meadow in
+  the Country, Vintage, Evening, May, The Rose, Summer and Wine, Winter
+  Night, Longing for Spring</i>, etc.</p>
+
+  <p>Many are fresh and full of warm feeling, especially the Spring
+  Songs:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>See the blossoming of Spring!</p>
+
+    <p>Will't not taste the joys it showers?</p>
+
+    <p>Dost not feel its impulse thrill?</p>
+
+    <p>Friends! away our cares we'll fling!</p>
+
+    <p>In the joyous time of flowers,</p>
+
+    <p>Love and Bacchus have their will.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>O forest, O green shady paths,</p>
+
+      <p>Dear place of spring's display!</p>
+
+      <p>My good luck from the thronging town</p>
+
+      <p>Has brought me here away.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>O what a fresh breeze flows</p>
+
+      <p>Down from the wooded hill,</p>
+
+      <p>How pleasantly the west wind flies</p>
+
+      <p>With rustling dewy wing</p>
+
+      <p>Across the vale,</p>
+
+      <p>Where all is green and blossoming.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The personification is more marked in this:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Thou hast sent us the Spring in his gleaming robe</p>
+
+    <p>With roses round his head. Smiling he comes, O God!</p>
+
+    <p>The hours conduct him to his flowery throne</p>
+
+    <p>Into the groves he enters and they bloom; fresh green is on the
+    plain,</p>
+
+    <p>The forest shade returns, the west wind lovingly unfurls</p>
+
+    <p>Its dewy plumes, and happy birds begin to sing.</p>
+
+    <p>The face of Nature Thou hast deckt with beauty that
+    enchants,</p>
+
+    <p>O Thou rich source of all the beautiful ...</p>
+
+    <p>My heart is lifted up to Thee in purest love.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His feeling for Nature was warm enough, although most of his
+  writing was so artificial and tedious from much repetition of a few
+  ideas, that Kleist could <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg243" id=
+  "pg243">243</a></span>write to Gleim<a href="#k5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>:
+  'The odes please me more the more I read them. With a few exceptions,
+  they have only one fault, too many laurel woods; cut them down a
+  little. Take away the marjoram too, it is better in a good sausage
+  than in a beautiful poem.'</p>
+
+  <p>Joh. Georg Jacobi also belonged to the circle of poets gathered
+  round Gleim; but in many respects he was above it. He imitated the
+  French style<a href="#k6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> far less than the
+  others--than Hagedorn, for example; and though the Anacreontic
+  element was strong in him, he overcame it, and aimed at pure lyrical
+  feeling. From his Life, written by a devoted friend, we see that he
+  had all the sentimentality of the day,<a href=
+  "#k7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> but with much that was healthy and amiable
+  in addition, and he touched Nature with peculiar freshness and
+  genuineness.</p>
+
+  <p>In a poem to his brother, about the Saale valley near Halle, he
+  wrote:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Lie down in early spring on yon green moss,</p>
+
+    <p>By yon still brook where heart with heart we spoke,</p>
+
+    <p>My brother....</p>
+
+    <p>Will't see the little garden and the pleasant heights above,</p>
+
+    <p>So quiet and unspoilt? O friend, 'tis Nature speaks</p>
+
+    <p>In distant wood, near plain and careless glade,</p>
+
+    <p>Here on my little hill and in the clover....</p>
+
+    <p>Dost hear the rustle of the streamlet through the wood?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Jacobi was one whose heart, as he said of Gleim, took a warm
+  interest in all that breathed, even a violet, and sought sympathy and
+  companionship in the whole range of creation.</p>
+
+  <p>This is from his <i>Morning Song</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>See how the wood awakes, how from the lighted heights</p>
+
+    <p>With the soft waving breeze</p>
+
+    <p>The morning glory smiles in the fresh green....</p>
+
+    <p>Here by the rippling brook and quivering flower,</p>
+
+    <p>We catch Love's rustle as she gently sweeps</p>
+
+    <p>Like Spring's own breath athwart the plains.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Another song is;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Tell me, where's the violet fled.</p>
+
+      <p>Late so gayly blowing.</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg244" id=
+      "pg244">244</a></span>Springing 'neath fair Flora's tread,</p>
+
+      <p>Choicest sweets bestowing?</p>
+
+      <p>Swain, the vernal scene is o'er,</p>
+
+      <p>And the violet blooms no more.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Say, where hides the blushing rose,</p>
+
+      <p>Pride of fragrant morning,</p>
+
+      <p>Garland meet for beauty's brows,</p>
+
+      <p>Hill and dale adorning?</p>
+
+      <p>Gentle maid, the summer's fled,</p>
+
+      <p>And the hapless rose is dead.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Bear me then to yonder rill,</p>
+
+      <p>Late so freely flowing,</p>
+
+      <p>Watering many a daffodil</p>
+
+      <p>On its margin glowing.</p>
+
+      <p>Sun and wind exhaust its store,</p>
+
+      <p>Yonder rivulet glides no more.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Lead me to the bowery shade,</p>
+
+      <p>Late with roses flaunting,</p>
+
+      <p>Loved resort of youth and maid,</p>
+
+      <p>Amorous ditties chanting.</p>
+
+      <p>Hail and wind with fury shower,</p>
+
+      <p>Leafless mourns the rifled bower!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Say, where bides the village maid,</p>
+
+      <p>Late yon cot adorning?</p>
+
+      <p>Oft I've met her in the glade</p>
+
+      <p>Fair and fresh as morning.</p>
+
+      <p>Swain, how short is beauty's bloom,</p>
+
+      <p>Seek her in her grassy tomb.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Whither roves the tuneful swain</p>
+
+      <p>Who, of rural pleasures,</p>
+
+      <p>Rose and violet, rill and plain,</p>
+
+      <p>Sang in deftest measures?</p>
+
+      <p>Maiden, swift life's vision flies,</p>
+
+      <p>Death has closed the poet's eyes.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><i>To Nature</i> runs thus:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Leaves are falling, mists are twining, and to winter sleep
+    inclining</p>
+
+    <p>Are the trees upon the plain,</p>
+
+    <p>In the hush of stillness ere the snowflakes hide them,</p>
+
+    <p>Friendly Nature, speak to me again!</p>
+
+    <p>Thou art echo and reflection of our striving,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg245" id=
+    "pg245">245</a></span>Thou art painter of our hopes and of our
+    fears,</p>
+
+    <p>Thou art singer of our joys and of our sorrows,</p>
+
+    <p>Of our consolations and our groans....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>While feeling for Nature was all of this character, idyllic,
+  sensitive, sympathetic, but within very narrow bounds, and the poets
+  generally were wandering among Greek and Latin bucolics and playing
+  with Damon, Myrtil, Chloe, and Daphnis, Salomon Gessner made a
+  speciality of elegiac pastoral poetry. He was a better landscapist
+  than poet, and his drawings to illustrate his idylls were better than
+  the poems themselves. The forest, for instance, and the felling of
+  the tree, are well drawn; whereas the sickly sweet Rococo verse in
+  imitation of the French, and reminding one more of Longos than
+  Theocritus, is lifeless. His rhapsody about Nature is uncongenial to
+  modern readers, but his love was real.</p>
+
+  <p>The introduction 'to the Reader'<a href="#k8"><sup>[8]</sup></a>
+  is characteristic:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>These Idylls are the fruits of some of my happiest hours; of
+    those hours when imagination and tranquillity shed their sweetest
+    influence over me, and, excluding all which belongs to the period
+    in which we live, recalled all the charms and delights of the
+    Golden Age. A noble and well-regulated mind dwells with pleasure on
+    these images of calm tranquillity and uninterrupted happiness, and
+    the scenes in which the poet delineates the simple beauties of
+    uncorrupted nature are endeared to us by the resemblance we fancy
+    we perceive in them to the most blissful moments that we nave
+    ourselves enjoyed. Often do I fly from the city and seek the
+    deepest solitudes; there, the beauties of the landscape soothe and
+    console my heart, and gradually disperse those impressions of
+    solicitude and disgust which accompanied me from the town;
+    enraptured, I give up my whole soul to the contemplation of Nature,
+    and feel, at such moments, richer than an Utopian monarch, and
+    happier than a shepherd of the Golden Age.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This is a true picture of the time! Man knew that he was sick, and
+  fled from town and his fellows <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg246"
+  id="pg246">246</a></span>into solitude, there to dream himself back
+  to a happier past, and revel in the purity and innocence, the healing
+  breath, of forest and field.</p>
+
+  <p>The magic of moonlight began to be felt. Mirtilla</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>perceived his old father slumbering in the moonbeams....
+    Mirtilla stood long contemplating him, and his eyes rested fondly
+    on the old man except when he raised them toward heaven through the
+    glistening leaves of the vine, and tears of filial love and joy
+    bedewed his cheeks.... How beautiful! how beautiful is the
+    landscape! How bright, how clear appears the deep blue of heaven
+    through the broken clouds! They fly, they pass away, these towering
+    clouds; but strew a shadow as they pass over the sunny
+    landscape.... Oh, what joy overwhelms my soul! how beautiful, how
+    excellent is all around, what an inexhaustible source of rapture!
+    From the enlivening sun down to the little plant that his mild
+    influence nourishes, all is wonderful! What rapture overpowers me
+    when I stand on the high hill and look down on the wide-spread
+    landscape beneath me, when I lay stretched along the grass and
+    examine the various flowers and herbs and their little inhabitants;
+    when at the midnight hour I contemplate the starry heavens!...
+    Wrapt in each other's arms, let us contemplate the approach of
+    morning, the bright glow of sunset, or the soft beams of moonlight;
+    and as I press thee to my trembling heart, let us breathe out in
+    broken accents our praises and thanksgivings. Ah! what
+    inexpressible joy, when with such raptures are blended the
+    transports of the tenderest love.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Many prosaic writings of a different kind shew how universally
+  feeling, in the middle of the eighteenth century, turned towards
+  Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>The æsthetic writer Sulzer (1750) wrote <i>On the Beauty of
+  Nature</i>. Crugot's widely-read work of edification, <i>Christ in
+  Solitude</i> (1761), shewed the same point of view among the mystical
+  and pietist clergy; and Spalding's <i>Human Vocation</i><a href=
+  "#k9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> (written with a warmth that reminds one of
+  Gessner) among the rationalists, whom he headed. He says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Nature contains numberless pleasures, which, through my great
+    sensitiveness, nourish my mind... I open <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg247" id="pg247">247</a></span>eye and ear, and
+    through these openings pleasures flow into my soul from a thousand
+    sides: flowers painted by the hand of Nature, the rich music of the
+    forest, the bright daylight which pours life and light all round
+    me.... How indifferent, tasteless, and dead is all the fantastic
+    glamour of artificial splendour and luxuriance in comparison with
+    the living radiance of the real beautiful world of Nature, with the
+    joyousness, repose, and admiration I feel before a meadow in
+    blossom, a rustling stream, the pleasant awesomeness of night, or
+    of the majesty of innumerable worlds. Even the commonest and most
+    familiar things in Nature give me endless delight, when I feel them
+    with a heart attuned to joy and admiration.... I lose myself,
+    absorbed in delight, in the consideration of all this general
+    beauty, of which I hold myself to be a not disfigured part.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Klopstock, the torch-bearer of Germany's greatest poets, owed much
+  of his power of the wing to religion. He introduced that new epoch in
+  the literature of his country which culminated in Goethe. As so often
+  happens in mental development, the reaction against prevailing
+  conditions and the advance to higher ones, in the middle of the
+  eighteenth century, led first of all to the opposite extreme--balance
+  was only reached by degrees. What chiefly made Klopstock a literary
+  reformer was the glowing enthusiasm and powerful imagination which
+  compelled the stiff poetic forms, clumsy as they were, to new rhythm
+  and melodious cadence. And although his style degenerated into
+  mannerism in the <i>Messias</i>, for the youthful impetus which had
+  carried his Pegasus over the clouds to the stars could not keep it
+  there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence
+  remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only
+  of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and
+  ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic
+  raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development,
+  and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the
+  finest view in the world.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg248" id="pg248">248</a></span> A
+  mind so intent upon the noble and beautiful was sure to be
+  enthusiastic about Nature; his correspondence is the best witness to
+  this, and at the same time throws side-lights upon the period.</p>
+
+  <p>It is difficult to-day to understand the influence which the
+  <i>Messias</i> had upon its readers; even Friedenkende spent happy
+  hours reading it with pious tears of delight, and young and old were
+  of the same opinion.</p>
+
+  <p>There is a pretty letter from Gustchen Stolberg<a href=
+  "#k10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> to Klopstock, which runs thus:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>UETERSEN, 25 <i>April</i> 1776.</p>
+
+    <p>In the garden. Yes, in the garden, dearest Klopstock! I have
+    just been walking about, it was so beautiful: the little birds were
+    singing, violets and other flowers wafted their fragrance to me,
+    and I began thinking very warmly of all whom I dearly, dearly love,
+    and so very soon came to my dear Klopstock, who certainly has no
+    truer friend than I am, though perhaps others express it better ...
+    Thanks, thanks, for your very delightful little letter--how dear to
+    me I don't tell you--can't tell you.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>C. F. Cramer was his enthusiastic panegyrist. It is not only what
+  he says of the private life and special taste of his adored friend
+  which is noteworthy, but the way in which he does it--the tone in
+  which, as a cultivated man of the day, he judged him. 'He will paint
+  and paint Nature. For this he must be acquainted with her. This is
+  why he loves her so well. This is why he strays by the brook and
+  weeps. This is why in spring he goes out into the fields of blossoms,
+  and his eyes run over with tears. All creation fills him with
+  yearning and delight. He goes from mountain to valley like a man in a
+  dream. When he sees a stream, he follows its course; when a hill, he
+  must climb it; when a river--oh! if only he could rush with it to the
+  sea! A rock--oh! to look down from its crags to the land below! A
+  hawk hovers over <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg249" id=
+  "pg249">249</a></span>him--oh! to have its wings and fly so much
+  nearer to the stars! He stands for hours looking at a flower or moss,
+  throws himself down on the grass and decks his hat with ivy and
+  cornflowers. He goes by moonlight to visit the graves and think of
+  death, immortality, and eternal life. Nothing hinders his
+  meditations. He sees everything in relation to something else. Every
+  visible object has an invisible companion, so ardently, so entirely,
+  so closely does he feel it all.'</p>
+
+  <p>This, coming straight from life, tells us more than a volume of
+  odes; it contains the real feeling of the time, sensitive, dreamy,
+  elegiac.</p>
+
+  <p>His friend goes on: 'He walks often and likes it, but generally
+  looks for sunny places; he goes very slowly, which is fatal for me,
+  for I run when I walk ... Often he stands still and silent, as if
+  there were knots which he could not untie (in his thoughts). And
+  truly there are unknown depths of feeling as well as thought.'</p>
+
+  <p>In another place: 'He went out and gloated over the great scene of
+  immeasurable Nature. Orion and the Pleiades moved over his head, the
+  dear moon was opposite. Looking intently into her friendly face, he
+  greeted her repeatedly: "Moon, Moon, friend of my thoughts; hurry not
+  away, dear Moon, but stay. What is thy name? Laura, Cynthia, Cyllene?
+  Or shall I call thee beautiful Betty of the Sky?" ... He loved
+  country walks; we made for lonely places, dark fearsome thickets,
+  lonely unfrequented paths, scrambled up all the hills, spied out
+  every bit of Nature, came to rest at last under a shady rock ...
+  Klopstock's life is one constant enjoyment. He gives himself up to
+  feeling, and revels in Nature's feast ... Winter is his favourite
+  time of year....<a href="#k11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> He preaches
+  skating with the unction of a missionary to the heathen, and not
+  without working miracles, ... the ice by moonlight is a feast of the
+  Gods to him ... only <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg250" id=
+  "pg250">250</a></span>one rule, we do not leave the river till the
+  moon has gone.' Klopstock described this in his <i>Skating</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>O youth, whose skill the ice-cothurn</p>
+
+    <p>Drives glowing now, and now restrains,</p>
+
+    <p>On city hearths let faggots burn,</p>
+
+    <p>But come with me to crystal plains.</p>
+
+    <p>The scene is filled with vapouring light,</p>
+
+    <p>As when the winter morning's prime</p>
+
+    <p>Looks on the lake. Above it night</p>
+
+    <p>Scatters, like stars, the glittering rime.</p>
+
+    <p>How still and white is all around!</p>
+
+    <p>How rings the track with new sparr'd frost!</p>
+
+    <p>Far off the metal's cymbal sound</p>
+
+    <p>Betrays thee, for a moment lost ...</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Cramer tells how Klopstock paid a long-remembered visit to Count
+  Bernstoff at Schloss Stintenburg:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It has a most romantic situation in a bewitching part of
+    Mecklenburg; 'tis surrounded by forest full of delightful gloom,
+    and a large lake, with a charming little island in the centre,
+    which wakes echoes. Klopstock is very fond of echoes, and is always
+    trying to find them in his walks.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This illustrates the lines in <i>Stintenburg</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">Isle of pious solitude,</p>
+
+    <p>Loved playmate of the echo and the lake, etc.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>but in this ode, as in so many of his, simple personal feeling
+  gives way to the stilted mannerism of the bard poetry.</p>
+
+  <p>He wrote of Soroe,<a href="#k12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> one of the
+  loveliest places in the Island of Zealand, as 'an uncommonly pleasant
+  place'; where 'By a sacred tree, on a raised grass plot two hundred
+  paces from the great alley, and from a view over the Friedensburg
+  Lake towards a little wooded island ... Fanny appeared to him in the
+  silver evening clouds over the tree-tops.'</p>
+
+  <p>The day on which he composed <i>The Lake of Zurich</i> was one of
+  the pleasantest in his life. Cramer says: 'He has often told me and
+  still tells, with youthful fervour, about those delightful days
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg251" id="pg251">251</a></span>and
+  this excursion: the boat full of people, mostly young, all in good
+  spirits; charming girls, his wife Herzel, a lovely May morning.'</p>
+
+  <p>But, unlike St Preux, he 'seemed less impressed by our scenery
+  than by the beauty of our girls,<a href="#k13"><sup>[13]</sup></a>
+  and his letters bear out the remark.<a href=
+  "#k14"><sup>[14]</sup></a> Yet delight in Nature was always with him:
+  Klopstock's lofty morality pours forth all through it. Nature, love,
+  fame, wine, everything is looked at from an ennobling point of
+  view.'</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Fair is the majesty of all thy works</p>
+
+      <p>On the green earth, O Mother Nature fair!</p>
+
+      <p>But fairer the glad face</p>
+
+      <p>Enraptured with their view.</p>
+
+      <p>Come from the vine banks of the glittering lake,</p>
+
+      <p>Or--hast thou climbed the smiling skies anew--</p>
+
+      <p>Come on the roseate tip</p>
+
+      <p>Of evening's breezy wing,</p>
+
+      <p>And teach my song with glee of youth to glow,</p>
+
+      <p>Sweet joy, like thee--with glee of shouting youths,</p>
+
+      <p>Or feeling Fanny's laugh.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Behind us far already Uto lay.</p>
+
+      <p>At whose feet Zurich in the quiet vale</p>
+
+      <p>Feeds her free sons: behind--</p>
+
+      <p>Receding vine-clad hills.</p>
+
+      <p>Uncloud'd beamed the top of silver Alps,</p>
+
+      <p>And warmer beat the heart of gazing youths,</p>
+
+      <p>And warmer to their fair</p>
+
+      <p>Companions spoke its glow.</p>
+
+      <p>And Haller's Doris sang, the pride of song;</p>
+
+      <p>And Hirzel's Daphne, dear to Kleist and Gleim;</p>
+
+      <p>And we youths sang and felt</p>
+
+      <p>As each were--Hagedorn.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Soon the green meadow took us to the cool</p>
+
+      <p>And shadowy forest, which becrowns the isle.</p>
+
+      <p>Then cam'st thou, Joy; thou cam'st</p>
+
+      <p>Down in full tide to us;</p>
+
+      <p>Yes, goddess Joy, thyself; we felt, we clasp'd,</p>
+
+      <p>Best sister of humanity, thyself,</p>
+
+      <p>With thy dear innocence</p>
+
+      <p>Accompanied, thyself.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg252" id=
+      "pg252">252</a></span></p>
+
+      <p>Sweet thy inspiring breath, O cheerful Spring;</p>
+
+      <p>When the meads cradle thee, and their soft airs</p>
+
+      <p>Into the hearts of youths</p>
+
+      <p>And hearts of virgins glide,</p>
+
+      <p>Thou makest feeling conqueror. Ah! through thee</p>
+
+      <p>Fuller, more tremulous, heaves each blooming breast;</p>
+
+      <p>With lips spell-freed by thee</p>
+
+      <p>Young love unfaltering pleads.</p>
+
+      <p>Fair gleams the wine, when to the social change</p>
+
+      <p>Of thought, or heart-felt pleasure, it invites,</p>
+
+      <p>And the 'Socratic' cup</p>
+
+      <p>With dewy roses bound,</p>
+
+      <p>Sheds through the bosom bliss, and wakes resolves,</p>
+
+      <p>Such as the drunkard knows not--proud resolves</p>
+
+      <p>Emboldening to despair</p>
+
+      <p>Whate'er the sage disowns.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Delightful thrills against the panting heart</p>
+
+      <p>Fame's silver voice--and immortality</p>
+
+      <p>Is a great thought....</p>
+
+      <p>But sweeter, fairer, more delightful, 'tis</p>
+
+      <p>On a friend's arm to know oneself a friend....</p>
+
+      <p>O were ye here, who love me though afar ...</p>
+
+      <p>How would we build us huts of friendship, here</p>
+
+      <p>Together dwell for ever.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This is of Fredensborg on an August day:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Here, too, did Nature tarry, when her hand</p>
+
+    <p>Pour'd living beauty over dale and hill,</p>
+
+    <p>And to adorn this pleasant land</p>
+
+    <p>Long time she lingered and stood still....</p>
+
+    <p>The lake how tranquil! From its level brim</p>
+
+    <p>The shore swells gently, wooded o'er with green,</p>
+
+    <p>And buries in its verdure dim</p>
+
+    <p>The lustre of the summer e'en....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The inner and outer life are closely blended in <i>The Early
+  Grave</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Welcome, O silver moon,</p>
+
+      <p>Fair still companion of the night!</p>
+
+      <p>Friend of the pensive, flee not soon;</p>
+
+      <p>Thou stayest, and the clouds pass light.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Young waking May alone</p>
+
+      <p>Is fair as summer's night so still,</p>
+
+      <p>When from his locks the dews drop down,</p>
+
+      <p>And, rosy, he ascends the hill. <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+      "pg253" id="pg253">253</a></span></p>
+
+      <p>Ye noble souls and true,</p>
+
+      <p>Whose graves with sacred moss are strawn.</p>
+
+      <p>Blest were I, might I see with you</p>
+
+      <p>The glimmering night, the rosy dawn.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This is true lyric feeling, spontaneous, not forced. Many of his
+  odes, and parts of the <i>Messias</i>, shew great love for Nature.
+  There is a fine flight of imagination in <i>The Festival of
+  Spring</i>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Not into the ocean of all the worlds would I plunge--not hover
+    where the first created, the glad choirs of the sons of light,
+    adore, deeply adore and sunk in ecstasy. Only around the drop on
+    the bucket, only around the earth, would I hover and adore.
+    Hallelujah! hallelujah! the drop on the bucket flowed also out of
+    the hand of the Almighty.</p>
+
+    <p>When out of the hand of the Almighty the greater earth flowed,
+    when the streams of light rushed, and the seven stars began to
+    be--then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the Almighty.</p>
+
+    <p>When a stream of light rushed, and our sun began to be, a
+    cataract of waves of light poured, as adown the rock a storm-cloud,
+    and girded Orion, then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the
+    Almighty. Who are the thousandfold thousands, who all the myriads
+    that inhabit the drop?...</p>
+
+    <p>But thou, worm of Spring, which, greenly golden, art fluttering
+    beside me, thou livest and art, perhaps, ah! not immortal....</p>
+
+    <p>The storm winds that carry the thunder, how they roar, how with
+    loud waves they stream athwart the forest! Now they hush, slow
+    wanders the black cloud....</p>
+
+    <p>Ah! already rushes heaven and earth with the gracious rain; now
+    is the earth refreshed....</p>
+
+    <p>Behold Jehovah comes no longer in storm; in gentle pleasant
+    murmurs comes Jehovah, and under him bends the bow of peace.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In another ode, <i>The Worlds</i>, he calls the stars 'drops of
+  the ocean.'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg254" id="pg254">254</a></span>
+  Again, in <i>Death</i> he shews the sense of his own nothingness, in
+  presence of the overpowering greatness of the Creator:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Ye starry hosts that glitter in the sky,</p>
+
+    <p>How ye exalt me! Trancing is the sight</p>
+
+    <p>Of all Thy glorious works, Most High.</p>
+
+    <p>How lofty art Thou in Thy wondrous might;</p>
+
+    <p>What joy to gaze upon these hosts, to one</p>
+
+    <p>Who feels himself so little, God so great,</p>
+
+    <p>Himself but dust, and the great God his own!</p>
+
+    <p>Oh, when I die, such rapture on me wait!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>As regards our subject, Klopstock performed this function--he
+  tuned the strings of feeling for Nature to a higher pitch, thereby
+  excelling all his contemporaries. His poetry always tended to
+  extravagance; but in thought, feeling, and language alike, he was
+  ahead of his time.</p>
+
+  <p>The idyllic was now cultivated with increased fervour, especially
+  by the Göttingen Brotherhood of Poets. The artificial and
+  conventional began to wane, and Nature's own voice was heard again.
+  The songs of Claudius were like a breath of spring.<a href=
+  "#k15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> His peasant songs have the genuine ring;
+  they are hail-fellow-well-met with Nature. Hebel is the only modern
+  poet like him.</p>
+
+  <h4>EVENING SONG</h4>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The lovely day-star's run its course....</p>
+
+    <p>Come, mop my face, dear wife,</p>
+
+    <p>And then dish up....</p>
+
+    <p>The silvery moon will look down from his place</p>
+
+    <p>And preside at our meal over dishes and grace.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He hated artificiality:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Simple joy in Nature, free from artifice, gives as great a
+    pleasure as an honest lover's kiss.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>His <i>Cradle Song to be sung by Moonlight</i> is delightful in
+  its naive humour (the moon was his special favourite): <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg255" id="pg255">255</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Sleep then, little one. Why dost thou weep?</p>
+
+    <p>Moonlight so tender and quiet so deep,</p>
+
+    <p>Quickly and easily cometh thy sleep.</p>
+
+    <p>Fond of all little ones is the good moon;</p>
+
+    <p>Girls most of all, but he even loves boys.</p>
+
+    <p>Down from up there he sends beautiful toys....</p>
+
+    <p>He's old as a raven, he goes everywhere;</p>
+
+    <p>Even when father was young, he was there.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The pearl of his poems is the exquisite <i>Evening Song</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The moon hath risen on high,</p>
+
+      <p>And in the clear dark sky</p>
+
+      <p>The golden stars all brightly glow;</p>
+
+      <p>And black and hushed the woods,</p>
+
+      <p>While o'er the fields and floods</p>
+
+      <p>The white mists hover to and fro.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>How still the earth, how calm!</p>
+
+      <p>What dear and home-like charm</p>
+
+      <p>From gentle twilight doth she borrow!</p>
+
+      <p>Like to some quiet room,</p>
+
+      <p>Where, wrapt in still soft gloom,</p>
+
+      <p>We sleep away the daylight's sorrow.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Boie's <i>Evening Song</i> is in the same key. None of the
+  moonshine poets of his day expressed night-fall like this:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">How still it is! How soft</p>
+
+    <p class="i6">The breezes blow!</p>
+
+    <p>The lime leaves lisp in whisper and echo answers low;</p>
+
+    <p>Scarce audibly the rivulet running amid the flower</p>
+
+    <p>With murmuring ripple laps the edge of yonder mystic bower.</p>
+
+    <p>And ever darker grows the veil thou weavest o'er the land,</p>
+
+    <p>And ever quieter the hush--a hush as of the grave....</p>
+
+    <p>Listen! 'tis Night! she comes, unlighted by a star,</p>
+
+    <p>And with the slow sweep of her heavy wing</p>
+
+    <p>Awes and revives the timid earth.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Bürger sings in praise of idyllic comfort in <i>The Village</i>,
+  and Hoelty's mild enthusiasm, touched with melancholy, turned in the
+  same direction.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg256" id=
+  "pg256">256</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>My predilection is for rural poetry and melancholy enthusiasm;
+    all I ask is a hut, a forest, a meadow with a spring in it, and a
+    wife in my hut.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The beginning of his <i>Country Life</i> shews that moralizing was
+  still in the air:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Happy the man who has the town escaped!</p>
+
+    <p>To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks,</p>
+
+    <p>The shining pebbles preach</p>
+
+    <p>Virtue's and wisdom's lore....</p>
+
+    <p>The nightingale on him sings slumber down;</p>
+
+    <p>The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet,</p>
+
+    <p>When shines the lovely red</p>
+
+    <p>Of morning through the trees.</p>
+
+    <p>Then he admires Thee in the plain, O God!</p>
+
+    <p>In the ascending pomp of dawning day,</p>
+
+    <p>Thee in Thy glorious sun.</p>
+
+    <p>The worm--the budding branch--</p>
+
+    <p>Where coolness gushes in the waving branch</p>
+
+    <p>Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests,</p>
+
+    <p>Inhales the breadth of prime</p>
+
+    <p>The gentle airs of eve.</p>
+
+    <p>His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun,</p>
+
+    <p>And play, and hop, invites to sweeter rest</p>
+
+    <p>Than golden halls of state</p>
+
+    <p>Or beds of down afford.</p>
+
+    <p>To him the plumy people</p>
+
+    <p>Chatter and whistle on his</p>
+
+    <p>And from his quiet hand</p>
+
+    <p>Peck crumbs or peas or grains</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His <i>Winter Song</i> runs:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Summer joys are o'er,</p>
+
+      <p>Flow'rets bloom no more;</p>
+
+      <p>Wintry joys are sweeping,</p>
+
+      <p>Through the snow-drifts peeping;</p>
+
+      <p>Cheerful evergreen</p>
+
+      <p>Rarely now is seen.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>No more plumèd throng</p>
+
+      <p>Charms the woods with song;</p>
+
+      <p>Ice-bound trees are glittering,</p>
+
+      <p>Merry snow-birds twittering,</p>
+
+      <p>Fondly strive to cheer</p>
+
+      <p>Scenes so cold and drear.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pg257"
+      id="pg257">257</a></span></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Winter, still I see</p>
+
+      <p>Many charms in thee,</p>
+
+      <p>Love thy chilly greeting,</p>
+
+      <p>Snow-storms fiercely beating,</p>
+
+      <p>And the dear delights</p>
+
+      <p>Of the long, long nights.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Hoeltz was the most sentimental of this group; Joh. Heinrich Voss
+  was more robust and cheerful. He put his strength into his longer
+  poems; the lyrics contain a great deal of nonsense. An extract from
+  <i>Luise</i> will shew his idyllic taste:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Wandering thus through blue fields of flax and acres of barley,
+    both paused on the hill-top, which commands such a view of the
+    whole lake, crisped with the soft breath of the zephyr and
+    sparkling in sunshine; fair were the forests of white barked birch
+    beyond, and the fir-trees, lovely the village at the foot half hid
+    by the wood. Lovely Luise had welcomed her parents and shewn them a
+    green mound under an old beech tree, where the prospect was very
+    inviting. 'There we propose,' said she, to unpack and to spread the
+    breakfast. Then we'll adjourn to the boat and be rowed for a time
+    on the water,' etc.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>We find the same taste, often expressed in a very original way, in
+  both the brothers Stolberg. In Christian Stolberg's <i>Elegy to
+  Hangwitz</i>, for instance, another poem has these lines:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Thither, where 'mong the trees of life,</p>
+
+    <p>Where in celestial bowers</p>
+
+    <p>Under your fig-tree, bowed with fruit</p>
+
+    <p>And warranting repose,</p>
+
+    <p>Under your pine, inviting shady joy,</p>
+
+    <p>Unchanging blooms</p>
+
+    <p>Eternal Spring!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Friedrich Stolberg was a very prophet of Nature; in his ode
+  <i>Nature</i> he says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>He who does not love Nature cannot be my friend.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His prayer may serve as the motto of his day:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Holy Nature, heavenly fair,</p>
+
+    <p>Lead me with thy parent care;</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg258" id=
+    "pg258">258</a></span>In thy footsteps let me tread</p>
+
+    <p>As a willing child is led.</p>
+
+    <p>When with care and grief opprest,</p>
+
+    <p>Soft I sink me on thy breast;</p>
+
+    <p>On thy peaceful bosom laid,</p>
+
+    <p>Grief shall cease, nor care invade.</p>
+
+    <p>O congenial power divine,</p>
+
+    <p>All my votive soul is thine.</p>
+
+    <p>Lead me with thy parent care,</p>
+
+    <p>Holy Nature, heavenly fair!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He, too, sang the moon; but Klopstock's influence seems to have
+  carried him to higher flights than his contemporaries. He wrote in
+  fine language of wild scenery, even sea and mountains, which had
+  played no part in German poetry before.</p>
+
+  <h4>TO THE SEA</h4>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Thou boundless, shining, glorious sea,</p>
+
+    <p>With ecstasy I gaze on thee;</p>
+
+    <p>Joy, joy to him whose early beam</p>
+
+    <p>Kisses thy lip, bright ocean stream.</p>
+
+    <p>Thanks for the thousand hours, old sea,</p>
+
+    <p>Of sweet communion held with thee;</p>
+
+    <p>Oft as I gazed, thy billowy roll</p>
+
+    <p>Woke the deep feelings of my soul.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There are beautiful notes, reminding one of Goethe, in his
+  <i>Unsterbliche Jüngling, Ode to a Mountain Torrent</i>.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Immortal youth!</p>
+
+    <p>Thou streamest forth from rocky caves;</p>
+
+    <p>No mortal saw</p>
+
+    <p>The cradle of thy might,</p>
+
+    <p>No ear has heard</p>
+
+    <p>Thy infant stammering in the gushing Spring.</p>
+
+    <p>How lovely art thou in thy silver locks!</p>
+
+    <p>How dreadful thundering from the echoing crags!</p>
+
+    <p>At thy approach</p>
+
+    <p>The firwood quakes;</p>
+
+    <p>Thou easiest down, with root and branch, the fir</p>
+
+    <p>Thou seizest on the rock,</p>
+
+    <p>And roll'st it scornful like a pebble on.</p>
+
+    <p>Thee the sun clothes in dazzling beams of glory,</p>
+
+    <p>And paints with colours of the heavenly bow</p>
+
+    <p>The clouds that o'er thy dusky cataracts climb.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg259" id=
+    "pg259">259</a></span>Why hasten so to the cerulean sea?</p>
+
+    <p>Is not the neighbourhood of heaven good?</p>
+
+    <p>Not grand thy temple of encircling rocks?</p>
+
+    <p>Not fair the forest hanging o'er thy bed?</p>
+
+    <p>Hasten not so to the cerulean sea;</p>
+
+    <p>Youth, thou art here,</p>
+
+    <p>Strong as a god,</p>
+
+    <p>Free as a god,</p>
+
+    <p>Though yonder beckon treacherous calms below,</p>
+
+    <p>The wavering lustre of the silent sea,</p>
+
+    <p>Now softly silvered by the swimming moon,</p>
+
+    <p>Now rosy golden in the western beam;</p>
+
+    <p>Youth, what is silken rest,</p>
+
+    <p>And what the smiling of the friendly moon,</p>
+
+    <p>Or gold or purple of the evening sun,</p>
+
+    <p>To him who feels himself in thraldom's bonds?</p>
+
+    <p>Here thou canst wildly stream</p>
+
+    <p>As bids thy heart;</p>
+
+    <p>Below are masters, ever-changeful minds,</p>
+
+    <p>Or the dead stillness of the servile main.</p>
+
+    <p>Hasten not so to the cerulean sea;</p>
+
+    <p>Youth, thou art here,</p>
+
+    <p>Strong as a god,</p>
+
+    <p>Free as a god.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Here we have, with all Klopstock's pathos, a love for the wild and
+  grandiose in Nature, almost unique in Germany, in this time of
+  idyllic sentimentality. But the discovery of the beauty of romantic
+  mountain scenery had been made by Rousseau some time before, for
+  Rousseau, too, was a typical forerunner, and his romances fell like a
+  bomb-shell among all the idyllic pastoral fiction of the day.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg260" id="pg260">260</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch11" id="ch11">CHAPTER XI</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>THE AWAKENING OF FEELING FOR THE ROMANTIC</h3>
+
+  <p>Rousseau was one of those rare men who bring about a complete
+  change in the culture of their time by their revolutionary
+  originality. In such beings the world's history, so to speak, begins
+  again. Out of touch with their own day, and opposed to its ruling
+  taste and mode of thought, they are a law unto themselves, and
+  naturally tend to measure all things by themselves, while their too
+  great subjectivity is apt to be increased by a morbid sophistry of
+  passion and the conviction of the prophet.</p>
+
+  <p>Of this type, unchecked by a broad sense of humanity, full of
+  subversive wilfulness, and not only untrained in moderation, but
+  degenerating into crass exaggeration, Rousseau was the first
+  example.</p>
+
+  <p>Hellenism, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, had only produced
+  forerunners. What in Petrarch was a tendency, became an established
+  condition in Rousseau: the acedia reached its climax. All that went
+  on in his mind was so much grit for his own mill, subject-matter for
+  his observation, and therefore of the greatest value to him. He lived
+  in introspection, a spectator of his own struggles, his own waverings
+  between an ideal of simple duty and the imperious demands of a
+  selfish and sensuous ego. His passion for Nature partially atoned for
+  his unamiable and doubtful character; he was false in many ways; but
+  that feeling rang true--it was <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg261"
+  id="pg261">261</a></span>the best part of him, and of that 'idealism
+  of the heart' whose right of rule he asserted in an age of
+  artificiality and petty formalism. Those were no empty words in his
+  third letter to Malesherbes:</p>
+
+  <p>'Which time of my life do you suppose I recall most often and most
+  willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of youth; they were too
+  few, too much mixed with bitterness, and they are too far away now.
+  It is the time of my retreat, of my solitary walks--those fast-flying
+  delicious days that I passed all alone by myself, with my good and
+  simple Thérèse, my beloved dog, my old cat, with the wild birds and
+  the roes of the forest, with all Nature and her inconceivable
+  Maker.</p>
+
+  <p>'When I got up early to go and watch the sunrise from my garden,
+  when I saw a fine day begin, my first wish was that neither letters
+  nor visitors might come to break its charm....</p>
+
+  <p>'Then I would seek out some wild place in the forest, some desert
+  spot where there was nothing to shew the hand of man, and so tell of
+  servitude and rule--some refuge which I could fancy I was the first
+  to discover, and where no importunate third party came between Nature
+  and me....</p>
+
+  <p>'The gold broom and the purple heather touched my heart; the
+  majestic trees that shaded me, the delicate shrubs around, the
+  astonishing variety of plants and flowers that I trod under foot,
+  kept me alternately admiring and observing.'</p>
+
+  <p>His writings shew that with him return to Nature was no mere
+  theory, but real earnest; they condemned the popular garden-craft and
+  carpet fashions, and set up in their place the rights of the heart,
+  and free enjoyment of Nature in her wild state, undisturbed by the
+  hand of man.</p>
+
+  <p>It was Rousseau who first discovered that the Alps were beautiful.
+  But to see this fact in its true light, we must glance back at the
+  opinions of preceding periods.<a href="#l1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg262" id="pg262">262</a></span>
+  Though the Alpine countries were the arena of all sorts of
+  enterprise, warlike and peaceful, in the fifteenth century, most of
+  the interest excited by foreign parts was absorbed by the great
+  voyages of discovery; the Alps themselves were almost entirely
+  omitted from the maps.</p>
+
+  <p>To be just to the time, it must be conceded that security and
+  comfort in travelling are necessary preliminaries to our modern
+  mountain rapture, and in the Middle Ages these were non-existent.
+  Roads and inns were few; there was danger from robbers as well as
+  weather, so that the prevailing feelings on such journeys were misery
+  and anxiety, not pleasure. Knowledge of science, too, was only just
+  beginning; botany, geology, and geognosy were very slightly diffused;
+  glacier theories were undreamt of. The sight of a familiar scene near
+  the great snow-peaks roused men's admiration, because they were
+  surprised to find it there; this told especially in favour of the
+  idyllic mountain valleys.</p>
+
+  <p>Felix Fabri, the preacher monk of Ulm, visited the East in 1480
+  and 1483, and gave a lifelike description of his journeys through the
+  Alps in his second account. He said<a href=
+  "#l2"><sup>[2]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <p>'Although the Alps themselves seem dreadful and rigid from the
+  cold of the snow or the heat of the sun, and reach up to the clouds,
+  the valleys below them are pleasant, and as rich and fruitful in all
+  earthly delights as Paradise itself. Many people and animals inhabit
+  them, and almost every metal is dug out of the Alps, especially
+  silver. 'Mid such charms as these men live among the mountains, and
+  Nature blooms as if Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres reigned there. No one
+  who saw the Alps from afar would believe what a delicious Paradise is
+  to be found amid the eternal snow and mountains of perpetual winter
+  and never-melting ice.'</p>
+
+  <p>Very limited praise only extended to the valleys!</p>
+
+  <p>In the sixteenth century we have the records of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg263" id="pg263">263</a></span>those who crossed
+  the Alps with an army, such as Adam Reissner, the biographer of the
+  Frundsberg, and mention their 'awe' at sight of the valleys, and of
+  those who had travelled to Italy and the East, and congratulated
+  themselves that their troublesome wanderings through the Alps were
+  over. Savants were either very sparing of words about their travels,
+  or else made rugged verses which shewed no trace of mountain
+  inspiration. There were no outbursts of admiration at sight of the
+  great snow-peaks; 'horrible' and 'dreadful' were the current
+  epithets. The æsthetic sense was not sufficiently developed, and
+  discount as we will for the dangers and discomforts of the road, and,
+  as with the earlier travellers to the East, for some lack of power of
+  expression, the fact remains that mountains were not appreciated. The
+  prevalent notion of beautiful scenery was very narrow, and even among
+  cultured people only meant broad, level country.</p>
+
+  <p>B. Kiechel<a href="#l3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> (1585) was enthusiastic
+  about 'the beautiful level scenery' of Lichfeld, and found it
+  difficult to breathe among the Alps. Schickhart wrote: 'We were
+  delighted to get away from the horrible tedious mountains,' and has
+  nothing to say of the Brenner Pass except this poor joke: 'It did not
+  burn us much, for what with the ice and very deep snow and horribly
+  cold wind, we found no heat.' The most enthusiastic description is of
+  the Lake of Como, by Paulus Jovius (1552), praising
+  Bellagio,'<a href="#l4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> In the seventeenth century
+  there was some admiration for the colossal proportions of the Alps,
+  but only as a foil to the much admired valleys.</p>
+
+  <p>J.J. Grasser wrote of Rhoetia<a href="#l5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>:
+  'There are marble masses projecting, looking like walls and towers in
+  imitation of all sorts of wonderful architecture. The villages lie
+  scattered in the valleys, here and there the ground is most fruitful.
+  There <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg264" id=
+  "pg264">264</a></span>is luxuriance close to barrenness, gracefulness
+  close to dreadfulness, life close to loneliness. The delight of the
+  painter's eye is here, yet Nature excels all the skill of art. The
+  very ravines, tortuous foot-paths, torrents, alternately raging and
+  meagre, the arched bridges, waves on the lakes, varied dress of the
+  fields, the mighty trees, in short, whatever heaven and earth grant
+  to the sight, is an astonishment and a pastime to the enraptured eye
+  of the wanderer.'</p>
+
+  <p>But this pastime depended upon the contrast between the charming
+  valleys and the dreadful mountains.</p>
+
+  <p>Joseph Furttenbach (1591) writing about the same district of
+  Thusis, described 'the little bridges, under which one hears the
+  Rhine flowing with a great roar, and sees what a horrible cruel
+  wilderness the place is.' In Conrad Gessner's <i>De admiratione
+  Montium</i> (1541)<a href="#l6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> a passage occurs
+  which shews that even in Switzerland itself in the sixteenth century
+  one voice was found to praise Alpine scenery in a very different way,
+  anticipating Rousseau. 'I have resolved that so long as God grants me
+  life I will climb some mountains every year, or at least one
+  mountain, partly to learn the mountain flora, partly to strengthen my
+  body and refresh my soul. What a pleasure it is to see the monstrous
+  mountain masses, and lift one's head among the clouds. How it
+  stimulates worship, to be surrounded by the snowy domes, which the
+  Great Architect of the world built up in one long day of creation!
+  How empty is the life, how mean the striving of those who only crawl
+  about on the earth for gain and home-baked pleasures! The earthly
+  paradise is closed to them.'</p>
+
+  <p>Yet, just as after Rousseau, and even in the nineteenth century,
+  travellers were to be found who thought the Alps 'dreadful' (I refer
+  to Chateaubriand's 'hideux'), so such praise as this found no echo in
+  its own day.</p>
+
+  <p>But with the eighteenth century came a change. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg265" id="pg265">265</a></span>Travelling no
+  longer subserved the one practical end of making acquaintance with
+  the occupations, the morals, the affairs generally, of other peoples;
+  a new scientific interest arose, geologists and physicists ventured
+  to explore the glaciers and regions of perpetual snow, and first
+  admiration, and then love, supplanted the old feeling of horror.</p>
+
+  <p>Modern methods began with Scheuchzer's (1672-1733) <i>Itinera
+  Alpina</i>. Every corner of the Alps was explored--the Splugen,
+  Julier, Furka, Gotthard, etc.--and glaciers, avalanches, ores,
+  fossils, plants examined. Haller, as his verses shew, was botanist as
+  well as theologian, historian, and poet; but he did not appreciate
+  mountain beauty.</p>
+
+  <p>Brockes to some extent did. He described the Harz Mountains in the
+  Fourth Book of his <i>Earthly Pleasure in God (Irdisches Vergüngen in
+  Gott)</i>; and in his <i>Observations on the Blankenburg Marble</i>
+  he said: 'In many parts the rough mountain heights were monstrously
+  beautiful, their size delights and appals us'; and wound up a
+  discussion of wild scenery in contrast to cultivated with: 'Ponder
+  this with joy and reverence, my soul. The mountain heights wild and
+  beautiful shew us a picture of earthly disorder.'<a href=
+  "#l7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> It was very long before expressions of
+  horror and fear entirely disappeared from descriptions of the Alps.
+  In Richardson's <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i> we read: 'We bid adieu
+  to France and found ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty
+  and rocky mountains. We had left behind us a blooming Spring, which
+  enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges on the road we
+  passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers.... Every object
+  which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' Savoy is 'one
+  of the worst countries under Heaven.'</p>
+
+  <p>Addison,<a href="#l8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> on the other hand,
+  wrote of the Alps from Ripaille: 'It was the pleasantest voyage in
+  the world to follow the windings of this river Inn <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg266" id="pg266">266</a></span>through such a
+  variety of pleasing scenes as the course of it naturally led us. We
+  had sometimes on each side of us a vast extent of naked rocks and
+  mountains, broken into a thousand irregular steps and precipices
+  ... but, as the materials of a fine landscape are not always the
+  most profitable to the owner of them, we met with but little corn
+  or pasturage,' etc. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu<a
+  href="#l9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> wrote from Lyons, Sept. 25, 1718:
+  'The prodigious aspect of mountains covered with eternal snow,
+  clouds hanging far below our feet, and the vast cascades tumbling
+  down the rocks with a confused roaring, would have been solemnly
+  entertaining to me, if I had suffered less from the extreme cold
+  that reigns here.'</p>
+
+  <p>On the whole, Switzerland was little known at the beginning of the
+  eighteenth century. Many travellers still measured the value of
+  scenery entirely by fertility, like Keyssler,<a href=
+  "#l10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> who praised garden-like level country such
+  as that round Mantua, in contrast to the useless wild Tyrolese
+  mountains and the woods of Westphalia; and Lüneburg or Moser,<a href=
+  "#l11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> who observed ironically to Abbt (1763),
+  after reading <i>Emilia</i> and <i>La Nouvelle Héloise</i>: 'The
+  far-famed Alps, about which so much fuss has been made.'</p>
+
+  <p>Rousseau was the real exponent of rapture for the high Alps and
+  romantic scenery in general. Isolated voices had expressed some
+  feeling before him, but it was he who deliberately proclaimed it, and
+  gave romantic scenery the first place among the beauties of Nature.
+  He did not, as so many would have it--Du Bois Reymond, for
+  example--discover our modern feeling for Nature; the great men of the
+  Renaissance, even the Hellenic poets, fore-ran him; but he directed
+  it, with feeling itself in general, into new channels.<a href=
+  "#l12"><sup>[12]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>In French literature he stood alone; the descriptions of landscape
+  before him were either borrowed blossoms of antiquity or sentimental
+  and erotic <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg267" id=
+  "pg267">267</a></span>pastorals. He opened up again for his country
+  the taste for wood and field, sunshine and moonlight, for the
+  idyllic, and, above all, for the sublime, which had been lost under
+  artificiality and false taste.</p>
+
+  <p>The primitive freshness, the genuine ring of his enthusiasm for
+  country life, was worth all the laboured pastorals and fables of
+  previous periods of literature.</p>
+
+  <p>His <i>Confessions</i> opened not only the eyes of France, but the
+  heart.</p>
+
+  <p>A Swiss by birth, and living in one of the most beautiful parts of
+  Europe, Rousseau was devotedly fond of his home on the Lake of
+  Geneva. As a boy he loved to leave the city and rove in the
+  country.</p>
+
+  <p>He describes how once on a Sunday in 1728 he wandered about,
+  forgetting the time. 'Before me were fields, trees, flowers; the
+  beautiful lake, the hill country, and high mountains unfolded
+  themselves majestically before my eyes. I gloated over the beautiful
+  spectacle while the sun was setting. At last, too late, I saw that
+  the city gates were shut.'</p>
+
+  <p>From that time on he felt more drawn to Nature than to men. In the
+  Fourth Book of the <i>Confessions</i> he says, speaking of 1732:</p>
+
+  <p>'A view of the Lake of Geneva and its beautiful banks has had even
+  in my idea a particular attraction that I cannot describe, not
+  arising merely from the beauty of the prospect, but something, I know
+  not what, more interesting which affects and softens me. 'Every time
+  I have approached the Vaudois country, I have experienced an
+  impression composed of the remembrance of Mademoiselle de Warens, who
+  was born there; of my father, who lived there; of Mademoiselle de
+  Wulson, who had been my first love; and of several pleasant journeys
+  I had made there in my childhood, mingled with some nameless charm,
+  more powerfully attractive than all the rest. When that ardent desire
+  for a life of happiness and <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg268" id=
+  "pg268">268</a></span>tranquillity (which ever follows me, and for
+  which I was born) inflames my mind, 'tis ever to the country of Vaud,
+  near the lake, on those charming plains, that imagination leads me.
+  An orchard on the banks of that lake, and no other, is absolutely
+  necessary; a firm friend, an amiable woman, a cow, and a little boat;
+  nor could I enjoy perfect happiness on earth without these
+  concomitants.... On my way to Vevey I gave myself up to the soft
+  melancholy ... I sighed and wept like a child.'</p>
+
+  <p>He clung to Nature, and most of all when surrounded by human
+  beings; a morbid impulse to flee from them was always present as a
+  negative element in the background of his love for her. His Fifth
+  Reverie, the most beautiful one, shews this.</p>
+
+  <p>He had gone to the Peter Island on the Lake of Bienne. So far as
+  he knew, no other traveller had paid any attention to the place; but
+  that did not disturb his confidence in his own taste.</p>
+
+  <p>'The shores of the Lake of Bienne are wilder and more romantic
+  than those of the Lake of Geneva, because the rocks and woods come
+  nearer to the water; but they are not less radiant. With less
+  cultivation and fewer vineyards, towns, and houses, there are more
+  green fields and shady sheltered spots, more contrasts and
+  irregularities. As there are no good carriage roads on these happy
+  shores, the district is little frequented by travellers; but it is
+  interesting for the solitary contemplation of those who like to
+  intoxicate themselves at their leisure with Nature's charms, and to
+  retire into a silence unbroken by any sound but the eagle's cry, the
+  intermittent warbling of birds, and the roar of torrents falling from
+  the mountains,'</p>
+
+  <p>Here he had a delightful Robinson Crusoe existence. The only other
+  human beings were the Bernese manager with his family and labourers.
+  He counted his two months among the happiest of his life, and would
+  have liked to stay for ever. True <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg269" id="pg269">269</a></span>to his character, he proceeded to
+  analyze the charm of the episode, and decided that it was made up of
+  the <i>dolce far niente</i>, solitude, absence of books and writing
+  materials, dealing with simple folk, healthy movement in the open
+  air, field labour, and, above all, intercourse with Nature, both in
+  admiring and studying her. He was seized with a passion for
+  botanizing, and planned a comprehensive Flora Petrinsularis, dividing
+  the whole island into quarters, so that no part might escape
+  notice.</p>
+
+  <p>'There is nothing more strange than the ravishment, the ecstasy, I
+  felt at each observation I made upon vegetable structure and
+  organization.</p>
+
+  <p>'I would go by myself, throw myself into a boat when the water was
+  calm, and row to the middle of the lake, and then, lying full-length
+  in the boat with my eyes to the sky, I would let myself drift,
+  sometimes for hours, lost in a thousand confused but delicious
+  reveries.... Often when the sunset reminded me that it was time to
+  return, I found myself so far from the island that I was forced to
+  pull with all my strength to get back before night-fall. At other
+  times, instead of wandering about the lake, I amused myself by
+  skirting the green shores of the island where the limpid water and
+  cool shade often invited to a bathe.... When the lake was too rough
+  for rowing, I would spend the afternoon scouring the island,
+  botanizing right and left. I often sat down to dream at leisure in
+  sunny, lonely nooks, or on the terraces and hillocks, to gaze at the
+  superb ravishing panorama of the lake and its shores--one side
+  crowned by near mountains, the other spread out in rich and fertile
+  plains, across which the eye looked to the more distant boundary of
+  blue mountains.... When evening fell, I came down from the higher
+  parts of the mountains and sat by the shore in some hidden spot, and
+  there the sound of the waves and the movements of the water, making
+  me oblivious of all other distraction, would <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg270" id="pg270">270</a></span>plunge me into
+  delicious reverie. The ebb and flow of the water, and the sound of
+  it, restrained and yet swelling at intervals, by striking eye and ear
+  without ceasing, came to the aid of those inner movements of the mind
+  which reverie destroys, and sufficed to make me pleasantly conscious
+  of existence without the trouble of thinking.... There is nothing
+  actual in all this to which the heart can attach itself; even in our
+  most intense enjoyment there is scarcely a moment of which the heart
+  can truly say "I should like it to stay for ever."'</p>
+
+  <p>One thinks of Faust: 'O moment! tarry awhile, thou art so
+  fair!'</p>
+
+  <p>However, at the close of the Reverie he admits that he has often
+  had such moments--moments free from all earthly passion--on the lake
+  and on the island. His feeling was increased by botanical knowledge,
+  and later on in life the world of trees and plants became his one
+  safe refuge when pursued by delusions of persecution.</p>
+
+  <p>The Seventh Reverie has a touching account of his pleasure in
+  botany, of the effect of 'earth in her wedding-dress, the only scene
+  in the world of which eyes and heart never weary,' the intoxicating
+  sense that he was part of a great system in which individual detail
+  disappears, and he only sees and hears the whole.</p>
+
+  <p>'Shunning men, seeking solitude, no longer dreaming, still less
+  thinking, I began to concern myself with all my surroundings, giving
+  the preference to my favourites...brilliant flowers, emerald meadows,
+  fresh shade, streams, thickets, green turf, these purified my
+  imagination.... Attracted by the pleasant objects around, I note
+  them, study them, and finally learn to classify them, and so become
+  at one stroke as much of a botanist as one need be when one only
+  studies Nature to find ever new reasons for loving her.</p>
+
+  <p>'The plants seem sown in profusion over the <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg271" id="pg271">271</a></span>earth like the
+  stars in the sky, to invite man, through pleasure and curiosity, to
+  study them; but the stars are far off; they require preliminary
+  knowledge ... while plants grow under our very feet--lie, so to
+  speak, in our very hands.'</p>
+
+  <p>He had a peaceful sense of being free from his enemies when he was
+  pursuing his botany in the woods. He described one
+  never-to-be-forgotten ramble when he lost himself in a dense thicket
+  close to a dizzy precipice, where, save for some rare birds, he was
+  quite alone. He was just feeling the pride of a Columbus in the
+  discovery of new ground, when his eye fell upon a manufactory not far
+  off. His first feeling was a flash of delight at finding himself
+  again among men; but this gave way to the more lasting and painful
+  one, that even among the Alps there was no escape from his
+  tormentors.</p>
+
+  <p>Years later, when he knew that he would never revisit the spot,
+  the leaves in his herbarium would carry him back to it in memory.</p>
+
+  <p>So strong a personal attachment to Nature, solitude, and
+  retirement had not been known before; but it was thrown into this
+  high relief by the morbid dread of man and hatred of culture, which
+  formed a constant dark background to his mind. It was a state of mind
+  which naturally led to intense dislike of formal French gardens and
+  open admiration of the English park. He rejected all the garnish of
+  garden-craft, even grafted roses and fruit trees, and only admitted
+  indigenous plants which grew outdoors.<a href=
+  "#l13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> It is greatly due to his feeling for
+  English Park style that a healthier garden-craft gained ground in
+  Germany as well as France. The foremost maxim of his philosophy and
+  teaching, that everything is good as it comes from the bosom of
+  mother Nature, or rather from the hand of God, and that man and his
+  culture are responsible for all the evil, worked out in his attitude
+  towards Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>He placed her upon a pedestal, worshipping her, <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg272" id="pg272">272</a></span>and the Creator
+  through her, and this made him the first to recognize the fact that
+  study of Nature, especially of botany, should be an important factor
+  in the education of children.</p>
+
+  <p>His <i>Confessions</i>, the truest photographs of a human
+  character in existence, shew at once the keenest introspection and
+  intense love for Nature. No one before Rousseau had been so aware of
+  his own individuality--that is, of himself, as a being--who in this
+  particular state only exists once, and has therefore not only
+  relative but absolute value. He gave this peculiarity its full value,
+  studying it as a thing outside himself, of which every detail was
+  important, watching with great interest his own change of moods, the
+  fluctuations of that double self which now lifted him to the ideal,
+  now cast him down to the lowest and commonest. His relation to Nature
+  was the best thing about him, and when he was happy, as he was for
+  the first time in the society of Mademoiselle de Warens, Nature
+  seemed lovelier than ever.</p>
+
+  <p>The scattered passages about Nature in the <i>Confessions</i> have
+  a youthful freshness:</p>
+
+  <p>'The appearance of Aurora seemed so delightful one morning, that,
+  putting on my clothes, I hastened into the country to see the rising
+  of the sun. I enjoyed that pleasure to its utmost extent. It was one
+  week after midsummer: the earth was covered with verdure and flowers;
+  the nightingales, whose soft warblings were almost over, seemed to
+  vie with each other, and, in concert with birds of various kinds, to
+  bid adieu to spring and hail the approach of a beautiful summer's
+  day.'</p>
+
+  <p>He loved rambling over hill and dale, even by night; thus, when he
+  was at Lyons:</p>
+
+  <p>'It had been a very hot day, the evening was delightful, the dew
+  moistened the parched grass, no wind was stirring; the air was fresh
+  without chilliness, the setting sun had tinged the clouds with
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg273" id="pg273">273</a></span>a
+  beautiful crimson, which was again reflected by the water, and the
+  trees bordering the terrace were filled with nightingales that were
+  constantly answering each other's songs. I walked along in a kind of
+  ecstasy, surrendering my heart and senses to the enjoyment of so many
+  delights, and sighing only from regret at enjoying them alone.
+  Absorbed in this pleasing reverie, I lengthened my walk till it grew
+  very late, without perceiving I was tired. At length I threw myself
+  on the steps of a kind of niche in a terrace wall. How charming was
+  that couch! The trees formed a stately canopy, a nightingale sat
+  directly over me, and with his soft notes lulled me to rest. How
+  delicious my repose! my awakening more so. It was broad day; on
+  opening my eyes, I saw the water, the verdure, and an adorable
+  landscape before me.'</p>
+
+  <p>At the end of the Fourth Book he states his idea of beautiful
+  scenery:</p>
+
+  <p>'I love to walk at my ease and stop at leisure ... travelling on
+  foot in a fine country with fine weather ... and having an agreeable
+  object to terminate my journey. It is already understood what I mean
+  by a fine country; never can a flat one, though ever so beautiful,
+  appear such to my eyes. I must have torrents, fir trees, black woods,
+  mountains to climb or descend, and rugged roads with precipices on
+  either side to alarm me. I experienced this pleasure to its utmost
+  extent as I approached Chambéry, not far from a mountain road called
+  the Pas d'Échelle. Above the main road, hewn through the solid rock,
+  a small river runs and rushes into fearful chasms, which it appears
+  to have been millions of ages in forming. The road has been hedged by
+  a parapet to prevent accidents, and I was thus enabled to contemplate
+  the whole descent and gain vertigoes at pleasure, for a great part of
+  my amusement in these steep rocks lies in their causing a giddiness
+  and swimming in my head, which I am <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg274" id="pg274">274</a></span>particularly fond of, provided I am
+  in safety. Leaning therefore on the parapet, I remained whole hours,
+  catching from time to time a glance of the froth and blue water whose
+  rushing caught my ear, mingled with the cries of ravens and other
+  birds of prey that flew from rock to rock and bush to bush at 600
+  feet below me.'</p>
+
+  <p>His preference was for the wild and sublime, and he was glad that
+  this was not a popular taste; but he could write glowing descriptions
+  of more idyllic scenery and of village life.</p>
+
+  <p>He said of a day at the Charmettes, a property near Chambéry, with
+  his beloved friend Madame de Warens, at the end of 1736:</p>
+
+  <p>'I arose with the sun and was happy; I walked and was happy; I saw
+  Madame de Warens and was happy; I quitted her and still was happy.
+  Whether I rambled through the woods, over the hills, or strolled
+  along the valley; read, was idle, worked in the garden, or gathered
+  fruits, happiness continually accompanied me.'</p>
+
+  <p>He offered his morning prayer from a hill-top, and in the evening,
+  before he left, stooped to kiss the ground and the trees, gazing till
+  they were out of sight at the places where he had been so happy.</p>
+
+  <p>At the Hermitage with Thérèse there was a similar idyll.</p>
+
+  <p>The most epoch--making event in European feeling for Nature was
+  the appearance of <i>La Nouvelle Héloise</i> (1761). The book
+  overflows with Rousseau's raptures about the Lake of Geneva. St Preux
+  says:</p>
+
+  <p>'The nearer I drew to Switzerland, the greater were my emotions.
+  That instant in which I discovered the Lake of Geneva from the
+  heights of Jura, was a moment of ecstasy and rapture. The sight of my
+  country, my beloved country, where a deluge of pleasure had
+  overflowed my heart; the pure and wholesome air of the Alps, the
+  gentle breeze <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg275" id=
+  "pg275">275</a></span>of the country, more sweet than the perfumes of
+  the East; that rich and fertile spot, that unrivalled landscape, the
+  most beautiful that ever struck the eye of man, that delightful
+  abode, to which I found nothing comparable in the vast tour of the
+  globe; the mildness of the season, the serenity of the climate, a
+  thousand pleasing recollections which recalled to my mind the
+  pleasures I had enjoyed;--all these circumstances together threw me
+  into a kind of transport which I cannot describe, and seemed to
+  collect the enjoyment of my whole life into one happy moment.'</p>
+
+  <p><i>La Nouvelle Héloise</i> shewed the world three things in quite
+  a new light: the inner consciousness which was determined to give
+  feeling its rights again, though well aware that 'a feeling heart is
+  an unhappy gift from heaven'; the taste for solitude, 'all noble
+  passions are formed in solitude'; and closely bound up with these,
+  the love of romantic scenery, which it described for the first time
+  in glowing language.</p>
+
+  <p>Such expressions as these of St Preux were unheard of at that
+  time: 'I shall do my best to be free quickly, and able to wander at
+  my ease in the wild places that to my mind make the charm of this
+  country.' 'I am of opinion that this unfrequented country deserves
+  the attention of speculative curiosity, and that it wants nothing to
+  excite admiration but a skilful spectator'; and 'Nature seems
+  desirous of hiding her real charms from the sight of men, because
+  they are too little sensible of them, and disfigure them when within
+  their reach; she flies from public places; it is on the tops of
+  mountains, in the midst of forests, on desert islands, that she
+  displays her most affecting charms.'</p>
+
+  <p>Rousseau certainly announced his views with all the fervour of a
+  prophet proclaiming a newly-discovered truth. The sketch St Preux
+  gives of the country that 'deserved a year's study,' in the
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg276" id=
+  "pg276">276</a></span>twenty-third letter to Julia, is very poetic.
+  He is ascending a rocky path when a new view breaks upon him:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>One moment I beheld stupendous rocks hanging ruinous over my
+    head; the next, I was enveloped in a drizzling cloud, which arose
+    from a vast cascade that, dashing, thundered against the rocks
+    below my feet. On one side a perpetual torrent opened to my view a
+    yawning abyss, which my eyes could hardly fathom with safety;
+    sometimes I was lost in the obscurity of a hanging wood, and then
+    was greatly astonished with the sudden opening of a flowery
+    plain.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He was always charmed by 'a surprising mixture of wild and
+  cultivated Nature':</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Here Nature seems to have a singular pleasure in acting
+    contradictory to herself, so different does she appear in the same
+    place in different aspects. Towards the east, the flowers of
+    spring; to the south, the flowers of autumn; and northwards, the
+    ice of winter. Add to that the illusions of vision, the tops of the
+    mountains variously illumined, the harmonious mixture of light and
+    shade....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>After climbing, he reflects:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Upon the top of mountains, the air being subtle and pure, we
+    respire with greater freedom, our bodies are more active, our minds
+    more serene, our pleasures less ardent, and our passions much more
+    moderate. Our meditations acquire a degree of sublimity from the
+    grandeur of the objects around us. It seems as if, being lifted
+    above all human society, we had left every low terrestrial
+    sentiment behind.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He can find no words to express 'the amazing variety, magnitude,
+  and beauty of a thousand stupendous objects, the pleasure of gazing
+  at an entire new scene ... and beholding, as it were, another Nature
+  and a new world.'</p>
+
+  <p>Earlier in the year he wrote his letters to Julia upon a block of
+  stone in his favourite wild spot, and the wintry landscape harmonized
+  with his feelings:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I run to and fro, climb the rocks and explore my whole district,
+    and find everything as horrible without <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg277" id="pg277">277</a></span>as I experienced
+    it within. There is no longer any verdure to be seen, the grass is
+    yellow and withered, the trees are stripped of their foliage, and
+    the north-east blast heaps snow and ice around me. In short, the
+    whole face of Nature appears as decayed to my outward senses as I
+    myself from within am dead to hope and joy.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Julia, too, is enthusiastic about places, where 'no vestiges are
+  seen of human toil, no appearance of studied and laborious art; every
+  object presents only a view of the tender care of Nature, our common
+  mother.'</p>
+
+  <p>When St Preux knows that she returns his love, his sympathy for
+  Nature overflows:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I find the country more delightful, the verdure fresher and
+    livelier, the air more temperate, and the sky more serene than ever
+    I did before; even the feathered songsters seem to tune their
+    tender throats with more harmony and pleasure; the murmuring rills
+    invite to love-inspiring dalliance, while the blossoms of the vine
+    regale me from afar with the choicest perfumes ... let us animate
+    all Nature, which is absolutely dead without the genial warmth of
+    love.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>St Preux escorts his old love to the Meillerie, and it was with
+  his description of this that Rousseau unrolled the full charm of
+  mountain scenery, and opened the eyes of his readers to see it.</p>
+
+  <p>They were climbing a mountain top on the Savoy side of the
+  lake:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>This solitary spot formed a wild and desert nook, but full of
+    those sorts of beauties which are only agreeable to susceptible
+    minds, and appear horrible to others. A torrent, occasioned by the
+    melting of the snow, rolled in a muddy stream within twenty paces
+    of us, and carried dust, sand, and stones along with it, not
+    without considerable noise. Behind us, a chain of inaccessible
+    rocks divided the place where we stood from that part of the Alps
+    which they call the Ice house.... Forests of gloomy fir trees
+    afforded us a melancholy shade on the right, while on the left was
+    a large wood of oak, beyond which the torrent issued; and beneath,
+    that vast body of water which the <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+    "pg278" id="pg278">278</a></span>lake forms in the bay of the Alps,
+    parted us from the rich coast of the Pays de Vaud, crowning the
+    whole landscape with the top of the majestic Jura.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Rousseau's influence upon feeling in general, and feeling for
+  Nature in particular, was an extraordinary one, widening and
+  deepening at once.</p>
+
+  <p>By his strong personal impulse he impelled it into more natural
+  paths, and at the same time he discovered the power of the
+  mountains.</p>
+
+  <p>He brought to flower the germ which had lain dormant in Hellenism
+  and the Renaissance; and although his readers imbibed a sickly strain
+  of morbid sentimentality with this passion for the new region of
+  feeling, the total effect of his individuality and his idealism was
+  to intensify their love for Nature. His feelings woke the liveliest
+  echo, and it was not France alone who profited by the lessons he
+  taught.</p>
+
+  <p>He was no mountaineer himself, but he pointed out the way, and
+  others soon followed it. Saussure began his climbing in 1760,
+  exploring the Alps with the indomitable spirit of the discoverer and
+  the scientist's craving for truth. He ascended Mont Blanc in 1787,
+  and only too soon the valleys of Chamounix filled with tourists and
+  speculators. One of the first results of Rousseau's imposing
+  descriptions of scenery was to rouse the most ardent of French
+  romance writers, Bernardin de St Pierre; and his writings, especially
+  his beautiful pictures of the Ile de France, followed hard in the
+  wake of <i>La Nouvelle Héloise</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>In <i>Paul and Virginia</i> vivid descriptions of Nature were
+  interwoven with an idyllic Robinson Crusoe romance:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Within this enclosure reigns the most profound silence. The
+    waters, the air, all the elements are at peace. Scarcely does the
+    echo repeat the whispers of the palm trees spreading their broad
+    leaves, the long points of which are gently agitated by the winds.
+    A soft light illumines the bottom of this deep valley, <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg279" id="pg279">279</a></span>on which the sun
+    shines only at noon. But even at break of day the rays of light are
+    thrown on the surrounding rocks, and their sharp peaks, rising
+    above the shadows of the mountain, appear like tints of gold and
+    purple gleaming upon the azure sky.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Like Rousseau, St Pierre held that 'to take refuge in the wildest
+  and most desert places is an instinct common to all feeling and
+  suffering beings, as if rocks were ramparts against misfortune, and
+  Nature's calm could appease the sorrows of the soul'<a href=
+  "#l14"><sup>[14]</sup></a>; but he differed in caring for Nature far
+  more for her own sake, and not in opposition to culture and a
+  detested world. He wrote too, not as a philosopher proclaiming a new
+  gospel, but as a poet<a href="#l15"><sup>[15]</sup></a>; the poetry
+  of Nature had been revealed to French literature.</p>
+
+  <p>St Pierre drew the beauty of the tropics in a poem, and George
+  Forster's <i>Voyage round the World</i><a href=
+  "#l16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> shewed how quickly Rousseau's influence
+  told upon travels. It was a far cry from the Crusaders and
+  discoverers to the highly-cultured Forster, alive to everything that
+  was good and beautiful, and able to express it. He was the first to
+  describe countries and peoples from both the scientific and artistic
+  standpoint--a style of writing which Humboldt perfected, and some
+  later writers, Haeckel, for example, in <i>Indischen Briefen</i>,
+  have carried on with success.</p>
+
+  <p>To quote Forster:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The town of Santa Cruz in Madeira was abreast of us at six in
+    the afternoon. The mountains are here intersected by numerous deep
+    glens and valleys. On the sloping ground we observed several
+    country houses pleasantly situated amidst surrounding vineyards and
+    lofty cypresses, which gave the country altogether a romantic
+    appearance. Early on the 29th we were agreeably surprised with the
+    picturesque appearance of the city of Funchal....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In October 1772, off South Africa:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The night was scarcely begun when the water all round us
+    afforded the most grand and astonishing sight <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg280" id="pg280">280</a></span>that can be
+    imagined. As far as we could see, the whole ocean seemed to be in a
+    blaze. Every breaking wave had its summit illuminated by a light
+    similar to that of phosphorus, and the sides of the vessel, coming
+    in contact with the sea, were strongly marked by a luminous
+    line.... There was a singularity and a grandeur in the display of
+    this phenomenon which could not fail of giving occupation to the
+    mind, and striking it with a reverential awe, due to
+    omnipotence.</p>
+
+    <p>The ocean was covered to a great extent with myriads of
+    animalcules; these little beings, organized, alive, endowed with
+    locomotive power, a quality of shining whenever they please, of
+    illuminating every body with which they come in contact ... all
+    these ideas crowded upon us, and bade us admire the Creator, even
+    in His minutest works.... I hope I shall not have formed too
+    favourable an opinion of my readers, if I expect that the
+    generality will sympathize with me in these feelings.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In Dusky Bay:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>We glided along by insensible degrees, wafted by light airs past
+    numerous rocky islands, each of which was covered with wood and
+    shrubberies, where numerous evergreens were sweetly contrasted and
+    mingled with the various shades of autumnal yellow. Flocks of
+    aquatic birds enlivened the rocky shores, and the whole country
+    resounded with the wild notes of the feathered tribe.... The view
+    of rude sceneries in the style of Rosa, of antediluvian forests
+    which clothed the rock, and of numerous rills of water which
+    everywhere rolled down the steep declivity, altogether conspired to
+    complete our joy.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Cascade Cove in New Zealand:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>This waterfall at a distance of a mile and a half seems to be
+    but inconsiderable on account of its great elevation; but, after
+    climbing about 200 yards upwards, we ... found a view of great
+    beauty and grandeur before us. The first object which strikes the
+    beholder is a clear column of water eight or ten yards in
+    circumference, which is projected with great impetuosity from the
+    perpendicular rock at the height of 100 yards. Nearly at the fourth
+    part of the whole height this column meeting a part of the same
+    rock, which now acquires a little inclination, spreads on its
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg281" id=
+    "pg281">281</a></span>broad back into a limpid sheet of about
+    twenty-five yards in width. Here its surface is curled, and dashes
+    upon every little eminence in its rapid descent, till it is all
+    collected in a fine basin about sixty yards in circuit, included on
+    three sides by the natural walls of the rocky chasm, and in front
+    by huge masses of stone irregularly piled above each other. Between
+    them the stream finds its way, and runs foaming with the greatest
+    rapidity along the slope of the hill to the sea. The whole
+    neighbourhood of the cascade ... is filled with a steam or watery
+    vapour.... We ... were struck with the sight of a most beautiful
+    rainbow of a perfectly circular form, produced by the meridian rays
+    of the sun refracted in the vapour of the cascade.</p>
+
+    <p>The scenery on the left consists of steep brown rocks fringed on
+    the summits with overhanging shrubs and trees; the enchanting
+    melody of various birds resounded on all sides, and completed the
+    beauty of this wild and romantic spot.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He described: 'A waterspout, a phenomenon which carried so much
+  terrific majesty in it, and connected, as it were, the sea with the
+  clouds, made our oldest mariners uneasy and at a loss how to
+  behave.'</p>
+
+  <p>He begins his diary of August 1773 with O'Taheite:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It was one of those beautiful mornings which the poets of all
+    nations have attempted to describe, when we saw the isle of
+    O'Taheite within two miles before us. The east wind, which had
+    carried us so far, was entirely vanished, and a faint breeze only
+    wafted a delicious perfume from the land, and curled the surface of
+    the sea. The mountains, clothed with forests, rose majestic in
+    various spiry forms, on which we already perceived the light of the
+    rising sun ... everything seemed as yet asleep; the morning scarce
+    dawned, and a peaceful shade still rested on the landscape....</p>
+
+    <p>This spot was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, and
+    could not fail of bringing to remembrance the most fanciful
+    descriptions of poets, which it eclipsed in beauty; we had a
+    prospect of the plain below us, and of the sea beyond it. In the
+    shade of trees, whose branches hung over the water, we enjoyed
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg282" id="pg282">282</a></span>a
+    pleasant gale, which softened the heat of the day; and, amidst the
+    solemn uniform noise of the waterfall, which was but seldom
+    interrupted by the whistling of birds, we sat down....</p>
+
+    <p>We could have been well pleased to have passed the whole day in
+    this retirement ... however, feasting our eyes once more with the
+    romantic scenery, we returned to the plain.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>It was such descriptions as these which stimulated Humboldt. There
+  is a breath of poetry in his writings; his <i>Views of Nature</i> and
+  <i>Cosmos</i> give ample proof that love of Nature and knowledge of
+  Nature can condition and deepen each other.</p>
+
+  <p>It is not surprising that in the flood of scientific 'Travels'
+  which followed, especially in imitation of Forster, there were some
+  that laid claim to a wonderful grade of feeling. For example, the
+  description of a day at the Equator by von Spix and v. Martius in
+  their Travels in Brazil in 1817 to 1820:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>In these seas the sun rises from the ocean with great splendour,
+    and gilds the clouds accumulated in the horizon, which in grand and
+    various groups seem to present to the eye of the spectator
+    continents with high mountains and valleys, with volcanoes and
+    seas, mythological and other strange creations of fancy.</p>
+
+    <p>The lamp of day gradually rises in the transparent blue sky; the
+    damp grey fogs subside; the sea is calm or gently rises and falls,
+    with a surface smooth as a mirror, in a regular motion. At noon a
+    pale, faintly shining cloud rises, the herald of a sudden tempest,
+    which at once disturbs the tranquillity of the sea. Thunder and
+    lightning seem as if they would split our planet; but a heavy rain
+    of a salt taste, pouring down in the midst of roaring whirlwinds,
+    puts an end to the raging of the elements, and several
+    semi-circular rainbows, extended over the ocean like gay triumphal
+    arches, announce the peaceful termination of the great natural
+    phenomenon. As soon as the air and sea have recovered their
+    equilibrium, the sky again shews its transparent azure.... As the
+    sun gradually sinks in the clouded horizon, the sea and sky assume
+    a new dress, which is beyond description sublime and magnificent.
+    The most brilliant red, yellow, violet, in <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg283" id="pg283">283</a></span>infinite shades
+    and contrasts, are poured out in profusion over the azure of the
+    firmament, and are reflected in still gayer variety from the
+    surface of the water. The day departs amid continued lightning on
+    the dusky horizon, while the moon in silent majesty rises from the
+    unbounded ocean into the cloudless upper regions. Variable winds
+    cool the atmosphere; numerous falling stars, coming particularly
+    from the south, shed a magic light; the dark-blue firmament,
+    reflected with the constellations on the untroubled bosom of the
+    water, represents the image of the wholly starry hemisphere; and
+    the ocean, agitated even by the faintest breeze of the night, is
+    changed into a sea of waving fire.... The variety of the light and
+    foliage of the trees, which is seen in the forests, on the slopes
+    of the mountains: the blending of the most diverse colours, and the
+    dark azure and transparency of the sky, impart to the landscapes of
+    the tropical countries a charm to which even the pencil of a
+    Salvator Rosa and a Claude cannot do justice....</p>
+
+    <p>Except at noon, when all living creatures in the torrid zone
+    seek shade and repose, and when a solemn silence is diffused over
+    the scene, illumined by the dazzling beams of the sun, every hour
+    of the day calls into action another race of animals.... When the
+    sun goes down, most of the animals retire to rest ... myriads of
+    luminous beetles now begin to fly about like <i>ignes fatui</i>,
+    and the blood-sucking bats hover like phantoms in the profound
+    darkness of the night.... The traveller does not here meet with the
+    impressions of those sublime and rugged high Alps of Europe, nor,
+    on the other hand, those of a meaner nature; but the character of
+    these landscapes combines grandeur with simplicity and
+    softness....</p>
+
+    <p>He who has not personally experienced the enchantment of
+    tranquil moonlight nights in these happy latitudes can never be
+    inspired, even by the most faithful description, with those
+    feelings which scenes of such wondrous beauty excite in the mind of
+    the beholder.</p>
+
+    <p>A delicate transparent mist hangs over the country, the moon
+    shines brightly amid heavy and singularly grouped clouds, the
+    outlines of the objects illuminated by it are clear and well
+    defined, while a magic twilight seems to remove from the eye those
+    which are in shade. Scarce a breath of air is stirring, and the
+    neighbouring mimosas, that have folded up their leaves to sleep,
+    stand motionless beside the dark crowns of <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg284" id="pg284">284</a></span>the manga, the
+    jaca, and the ethereal jambos; or sometimes a sudden wind arises
+    and the juiceless leaves of the acaju rustle, the richly flowered
+    grumijama and pitanga let drop a fragrant shower of snow-white
+    blossoms; the crowns of the majestic palms wave slowly over the
+    silent roof which they overshade, like a symbol of peace and
+    tranquillity.</p>
+
+    <p>Shrill cries of the cicada, the grasshopper, and tree frog make
+    an incessant hum, and produce by their monotony a pleasing
+    melancholy.... Every half-hour different balsamic odours fill the
+    air, and other flowers alternately unfold their leaves to the
+    night.... While the silent vegetable world, illuminated by scores
+    of fireflies as by a thousand moving stars, charms the night by its
+    delicate effluvia, brilliant lightnings play incessantly on the
+    horizon, and elevate the mind in joyful admiration to the stars,
+    which, glowing in solemn silence in the firmament above the
+    continent and ocean, fill the soul with a presentiment of still
+    sublimer wonders.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Travels by sea were described at much greater length and with much
+  more effusion than travels by land; one might infer from the silence
+  of the people who moved about in Europe in the eighteenth century,
+  that no love of Nature existed. The extreme discomfort of the road up
+  to a hundred years ago may account for this silence within
+  Germany.</p>
+
+  <p>Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote in 1716 of Saxon Switzerland:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>We passed by moonshine the frightful precipices that divide
+    Bohemia from Saxony, at the bottom of which runs the river Elbe ...
+    in many places the road is so narrow that I could not discern an
+    inch of space between the wheels and the precipice....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and her husband declared that</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>he had passed the Alps five times in different places, without
+    having gone a road so dangerous.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Scherr relates that in the late autumn of 1721 a citizen of
+  Schwabisch-Gmünd travelled to Ellwangen, a distance of eight hours'
+  posting.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg285" id="pg285">285</a></span>
+  Before starting, he had a mass performed in St John's Church 'for the
+  safe conclusion of the coming journey.' He set off one Monday with
+  his wife and a maid in a two-horse vehicle called a small tilt waggon
+  (<i>Planwägelchen</i>), but in less than an hour the wheels stuck in
+  mud, and the whole party had to get out and push the carriage, up to
+  their knees in filth. In the middle of the village of Boebingen the
+  driver inadvertently drove the front left wheel into a manure hole,
+  the carriage was overturned, and the lady of the party had her nose
+  and cheek badly grazed by the iron hoops.</p>
+
+  <p>From Moeggelingen to Aalen they were obliged to use three horses,
+  and yet it took fully six hours, so that they were obliged to spend
+  the night there. Next morning they set off early, and reached the
+  village of Hofen by mid-day without accidents. Here for a time the
+  travelling ceased, for a hundred paces beyond the village the
+  carriage fell into a puddle, and they were all terribly soiled; the
+  maid's right shoulder was dislocated, and the manservant's hand
+  injured. The axle of one of the wheels was broken, and a horse
+  completely lamed in the left forefoot. They had to put up a second
+  time for the night, leave horses, carriage, man, and maid in Hofen,
+  and hire a rack waggon, in which at last, pitifully shaken, they
+  reached the gates of Ellwangen on Wednesday at vesper bells.</p>
+
+  <p>When Eva König, Lessing's <i>fiancée</i>, was on her way from
+  Brunswick to Nuremberg in 1772, she wrote to him from Rattelsdorf
+  (two miles north of Bamberg), on February 28th, as follows:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>You will certainly never in your life have heard of a village
+    called Rattelsdorf? We have been in it already twenty-four hours,
+    and who knows if we shall not have to stay four times as long! It
+    depends on the Maine, whether it falls or not; as it is now, one
+    could not cross it, even if one dared to. I have never in my life
+    met with so many hindrances, so many dangers and hardships, as on
+    this journey. I can <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg286" id=
+    "pg286">286</a></span>hardly think of any misfortunes which we have
+    not already had.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>She goes on to describe that in thirty-eight hours two axles and
+  two poles had been broken, the horses had bolted with them, one horse
+  had fallen and died, and so on; on March 2nd they were still
+  prisoners in the wretched village.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1750 a day's journey was still reckoned at five miles, two
+  hours to the mile; and when in July 1750 Klopstock travelled with
+  Gleim from Halberstadt to Magdeburg in a light carriage drawn by four
+  horses, at the rate of six miles in six hours, he thought this speed
+  remarkable enough to merit comparison with the racing in the Olympian
+  games. People of any pretensions shunned the discomforts of
+  travelling on foot--the bad roads, the insecurity, the dirty inns,
+  and the rough treatment in them; to walk abroad in good clothes and
+  admire the scenery was an unknown thing. (G. Freytag.)</p>
+
+  <p>It was only after the widening of thoroughfares, the invention of
+  steamboats (the first was on the Weser 1827) and railways (1835),
+  that travelling became commoner and more popular, and feeling for
+  Nature was thereby increased.</p>
+
+  <p>After the Swiss Alps had been discovered for them, people began to
+  feel interest in their native mountains; Zimmermann led the way with
+  his observations on a journey in the Harz 1775, and Gatterer in 1785
+  published <i>A Guide to Travelling in the Harz</i> in five
+  volumes.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1806 appeared Nicolas's <i>Guide to Switzerland</i>, in 1777
+  J.T. Volkmar's <i>Journey to the Riesengebirge</i>, and before long
+  each little country and province, be it Weimar, Mecklenburg, or the
+  Mark, had discovered a Switzerland within its own boundaries, with
+  mountains as much like the Swiss Alps as a charming little girl is
+  like a giant.</p>
+
+  <p>It was the opening of men's eyes to the charms of romantic scenery
+  at home.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg287" id="pg287">287</a></span>
+  The Isle of Rügen too, Swedish at that time, with its striking
+  contrasts of deep blue bays and inlets, chalk rocks and beech woods,
+  came into fashion with lovers of Nature, especially after the road
+  from Sagard to Stubbenkamer had been improved<a href=
+  "#l17"><sup>[17]</sup></a>--so much so, in fact, that in 1805 Grümbke
+  was complaining that many people only went there to feast, not to
+  enjoy the scene:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>You know I am no foe to pleasure, and appreciate my food and
+    drink after physical exertion as much as any one; but it is
+    desecration to make that the main object here. In this dreadfully
+    beautiful wilderness, under these green corridors of beeches, on
+    the battlements of this great dazzling temple, before this huge
+    azure mirror of the sea, only high and serious thoughts should find
+    a place--the whole scene, stamped as it is with majesty and
+    mystery, seems designed to attract the mind to the hidden life of
+    the unending world around it. For this, solitude and rest are
+    necessary conditions, hence one must visit Stubbenkamer either
+    alone or with intimate and congenial friends.</p>
+  </blockquote><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg288" id=
+  "pg288">288</a></span>
+
+  <h2><a name="ch12" id="ch12">CHAPTER XII</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>THE UNIVERSAL PANTHEISTIC FEELING OF MODERN TIMES</h3>
+
+  <p>The eighteenth century, so proudly distinguished as the century of
+  Frederic the Great and Maria Theresa, Kant and Lessing, Rousseau and
+  Voltaire, the age of enlightenment, and, above all, of the
+  Revolution, was the most sentimental period in history. Its feeling
+  for Nature bore the same stamp. Many of the Anacreontists and
+  Göttingen poets, as well as Klopstock, shewed genuine enthusiasm; but
+  their horizon was narrow, and though F. Stolberg sang of the sea and
+  his native mountains, most of them only rang the changes on moonlight
+  and starlight, pastoral idylls, the joys of spring, and winter
+  excursions on the ice. Even Rousseau, the prophet of high mountains,
+  was the child of the same sentimental, self-adoring time; a morbid
+  strain, call it misanthropy, melancholy, what you will, underlay all
+  his passion for Nature. It was Goethe who dissolved the spell which
+  lay over the world, and, although born into the days of beautiful
+  souls, moonshine poets, seraphic heaven stormers, pastoral poems, and
+  <i>La Nouvelle Héloise</i>, ennobled and purified the tone of the day
+  and freed it from convention!</p>
+
+  <p>It was by dint of his genius for expression, the gift of finding
+  the one right word, that he became the world's greatest lyrist: what
+  he felt became a poem, what he saw a picture.</p>
+
+  <p>To see and to fashion into poetry were one with <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg289" id="pg289">289</a></span>him, whereas his
+  predecessors had called out the whole artillery of Olympus--nymphs,
+  Oreads, Chloe, Phyllis, Damon, Aurora, Echo, and Zephyr--even the
+  still heavier ordnance of the old Teutonic gods and half-gods, only
+  to repeat stereotyped ideas, and produce descriptions of scenery,
+  without lyric thought and feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>But Goethe's genius passed through very evident stages of
+  development, and found forerunners in Lessing and Herder.</p>
+
+  <p>Lessing's mind was didactic and critical, not lyric, so that his
+  importance here is a negative one. In laying down the limits of
+  poetry and painting in <i>Laocoon</i>, he attacked the error of his
+  day which used poetry for pictures, debasing it to mere descriptions
+  of seasons, places, plants, etc.</p>
+
+  <p>He was dealing with fundamental principles when he said:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Simonides called painting dumb poetry, and poetry speaking
+    painting; but ... many modern critics have drawn the crudest
+    conclusions possible from this agreement between painting and
+    poetry. At one time they confine poetry within the narrow limits of
+    painting, and at another allow painting to fill the whole wide
+    sphere of poetry.... This fault-finding criticism has partially
+    misled the virtuosos themselves. In poetry a fondness for
+    description, and in painting a fancy for allegory, has arisen from
+    the desire to make the one a speaking picture without really
+    knowing what it can and ought to paint, and the other a dumb poem
+    without having considered in how far painting can express universal
+    ideas without abandoning its proper sphere and degenerating into an
+    arbitrary method of writing.... Since the artist can use but a
+    single moment of ever-changing Nature, and the painter must further
+    confine his study of this one moment to a single point of view,
+    while their works are made not simply to be looked at, but to be
+    contemplated long and often, evidently the most fruitful moment and
+    the most fruitful aspect must be chosen. Now that only is fruitful
+    which allows free play to the imagination. The more we see, the
+    more we must be able to imagine; and the more we imagine, the more
+    we must think we see.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg290" id="pg290">290</a></span>
+  And against descriptive poetry he said:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>When a poetaster, says Horace, can do nothing else, he falls to
+    describing a grove, an altar, a brook winding through pleasant
+    meadows, a rushing river, or a rainbow. Pope expressly enjoined
+    upon every one who would not prove himself unworthy the name of
+    poet, to abandon as early as possible this fondness for
+    description. A merely descriptive poem he declared to be a feast
+    made up of sauces.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Acute as his distinction was between poetry as the representative
+  art of actions in time, and painting as the representative art of
+  bodies in space, he did not give due value to lyric feeling or
+  landscape painting.<a href="#m1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> They belong to a
+  region in which his sharp, critical acumen was not at home.</p>
+
+  <p>But his discussions established the position that external objects
+  of any sort, including Nature in all her various shapes, are not
+  proper subjects for poetry when taken as Thomson, Brockes, and Haller
+  took them, by themselves alone, but must first be imbued with human
+  feeling. And the same holds good of landscape painting. Goethe's
+  lyrics are the most perfect examples of this blending of the outer
+  and inner world.</p>
+
+  <p>Lessing's criticisms had a salutary, emancipating effect upon
+  prevalent taste; but a more positive influence came into play through
+  Herder's warm predilection for the popular songs, which had been so
+  long neglected, and for all that rises, as in the Psalms, Homer,
+  Shakespeare, Ossian, from primitive sources of feeling, and finds
+  spontaneous expression in poetry. The effect of his pioneering was
+  marked, especially upon Goethe. Herder understood the revulsion of
+  feeling from the unnatural restraint of the Pigtail period, and while
+  holding up the mirror to his own day, he at the same time led its
+  taste and the expression of it towards what was simple and natural,
+  by disclosing the treasures which lay hidden in the poetry of the
+  people. The lyric was freed from the artificiality and convention
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg291" id="pg291">291</a></span>which
+  had so long ruled it, and although he did not carry out his plan of a
+  history of poetry, his collections and his profound remarks upon them
+  were of great service, sowing a seed that bore fruit in succeeding
+  days.</p>
+
+  <p>The popular songs to him were children of the same mother as the
+  plants and flowers. 'All the songs of such unlettered folk,'<a href=
+  "#m2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> he said, 'weave a living world around
+  existing objects, actions, and events. How rich and manifold they all
+  become! And the eye can actually see them, the mind realize them;
+  they are set in motion. The different parts of the song are no more
+  connected together than the trees and bushes in a wood, the rocks in
+  a desert, or the scenes depicted.' In another place<a href=
+  "#m3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> he put the history of feeling for Nature
+  very tersely: 'There is no doubt that the spirit of man is made
+  gentler by studying Nature. What did the classics aim at in their
+  Georgics, but under various shapes to make man more humane and raise
+  him gradually to order, industry, and prosperity, and to the power to
+  observe Nature?...' Hence, when poetry revived in the Middle Ages,
+  she soon recollected the true land of her birth among the plants and
+  flowers. The Provencal and the romantic poets loved the same
+  descriptions. Spenser, for instance, has charming stanzas about
+  beautiful wilds with their streams and flowers; Cowley's six books on
+  plants, vegetables, and trees are written with extraordinary
+  affection and a superfluity of imagination; and of our old Brockes,
+  Gessner says: 'He observed Nature's many beauties down to their
+  finest minutiæ, the smallest things move his tender feelings; a
+  dewdrop on a blade of grass in the sunshine inspires him. His scenes
+  are often too laboured, too wide in scope, but still his poems are a
+  storehouse of pictures direct from Nature. Haller's <i>Alps</i>,
+  Kleist's poems and Gessner's, Thomson's <i>Seasons</i>, speak for
+  themselves.'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg292" id="pg292">292</a></span> He
+  delighted in Shaftesbury's praises of Nature as the good and
+  beautiful in the <i>Moralists</i>, and translated it<a href=
+  "#m4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>; in fact, in Herder we have already an
+  æsthetic cult of the beauties of Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>After the moral disquisitions of Pope, Addison, Shaftesbury, etc.,
+  Nature's influence on man, moral and æsthetic, became, as we have
+  already seen, a favourite theme in Germany too, both in pious and
+  rationalistic circles<a href="#m5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>; but there are
+  few traces of any æsthetic analysis.</p>
+
+  <p>The most important one was Kant's, in his <i>Observations on the
+  Beautiful and Sublime</i> in 1764. He distinguished, in the finer
+  feeling for Nature, a feeling for the sublime and a feeling for the
+  beautiful.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Both touch us pleasantly, but in different ways. The sight of a
+    mountain with a snowy peak reaching above the clouds, the account
+    of a storm ... these excite pleasure, but mixed with awe; while
+    flowery meadows, valleys with winding streams and covered by
+    browsing herds, a description of Elysium ... also cause pleasant
+    feelings, but of a gay and radiant kind. To appreciate the first
+    sensations adequately, we must have a feeling for the sublime; to
+    appreciate the second, a feeling for the beautiful.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He mentioned tall oaks, lonely shades in consecrated groves, and
+  night-time, as sublime; day, beds of flowers, low hedges, and trees
+  cut into shapes, as beautiful.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Minds which possess the feeling for the sublime are inclined to
+    lofty thoughts of friendship, scorn of the world, eternity, by the
+    quiet stillness of a summer evening, when the twinkling starlight
+    breaks the darkness. The light of day impels to activity and
+    cheerfulness. The sublime soothes, the beautiful stimulates.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He goes on to subdivide the sublime:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>This feeling is sometimes accompanied by horror or by dejection,
+    sometimes merely by quiet admiration, at other times by a sense of
+    wide-spread beauty. I will call the first the terrible, the second
+    the noble, the third the splendid sublime.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg293" id="pg293">293</a></span>
+    Profound solitude is sublime, but in a terrible way. This is why
+    great deserts, like the Desert of Gamo in Tartary, have always been
+    the supposed abode of fearful shades, hobgoblins, and ghostly
+    spectres. The sublime is always great and simple; the beautiful may
+    be small, elaborate, and ornamental.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He tried, too, to define the romantic in Nature, though very
+  vaguely:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The dreadful variety of the sublime, when quite unnatural, is
+    adventurous. When sublimity or beauty is excessive, it is called
+    romantic.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In his <i>Kalligone</i>, which appeared in 1800, Herder quoted
+  Kant in making one of the characters say, 'One calls day beautiful,
+  night sublime,' and tried to carry the idea a step further; 'The
+  sublime and beautiful are not opposed to each other, but stem and
+  boughs of a tree whose top is the most sublimely beautiful of all,'
+  that is the romantic. In the same book he attempted to analyze his
+  impressions of Nature, calling a rugged place odious, an
+  insignificant one without character tedious. 'In the presence of
+  great mountains,' he says, 'the spirit is filled with bold
+  aspirations, whereas in gentle valleys it lies quiet.' Harmony in
+  variety was his ideal, like the sea in storm and calm. 'An ocean of
+  beautiful forms in rest and movement.'</p>
+
+  <p>And in reference to the contrast between a place made 'dreadful
+  and horrible' by a torrent dashing over rocks and a quiet and
+  charming valley, he said: 'These changes follow unalterable laws,
+  which are recognized by our minds, and in harmony with our feelings.'
+  He saw the same order in variety among plants, from the highest to
+  the lowest, from palm tree to moss. In the second part of the book he
+  gave an enthusiastic description of the sublime in sky and sea.</p>
+
+  <p>His beautiful words on the inspiration of Nature shew his insight
+  into her relation to the poet soul of the people:<span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg294" id="pg294">294</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Everything in Nature must be inspired by life, or it does not
+    move me, I do not feel it. The cooling zephyr and the morning
+    sunbeam, the wind blowing through the trees, and the fragrant
+    carpet of flowers, must cool, warm, pervade us--then we feel
+    Nature. The poet does not say he feels her, unless he feels her
+    intensely, living, palpitating and pervading him, like the wild
+    Nature of Ossian, or the soft luxuriant Nature of Theocritus and
+    the Orientals. In Nature, the more varieties the better; for
+    instance, in a beautiful country I rustle with the wind and become
+    alive (and give life--inspire), I inhale fragrance and exhale it
+    with the flowers; I dissolve in water; I float in the blue sky; I
+    feel all these feelings.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Herder touched the lyre himself with a skilful hand. Thought
+  predominated with him, but he could make Nature live in his
+  song.<a href="#m7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> 'I greet thee, thou wing of
+  heaven,' he sang to the lark; and to the rainbow, 'Beautiful child of
+  the sun, picture and hope over dark clouds ... hopes are colours, are
+  broken sun-rays and the children of tears, truth is the sun.'</p>
+
+  <p>In <i>By the Sea at Naples</i> he wrote:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>A-weary of the summer's fiery brand,</p>
+
+    <p>I sat me down beside the cooling sea,</p>
+
+    <p>Where the waves heaving, rolled and kissed the strand</p>
+
+    <p>Of the grey shore, ...</p>
+
+    <p>And over me, high over in the air,</p>
+
+    <p>Of the blue skyey vault, rustled the tree ...</p>
+
+    <p>Queen of all trees, slender and beautiful,</p>
+
+    <p>The pine tree, lifting me to golden dreams.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In <i>Recollections of Naples</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Yes! they are gone, those happy, happy hours</p>
+
+    <p>Joyous but short, by Posilippo's bay!</p>
+
+    <p>Sweet dream of sea and lake, of rock and hill,</p>
+
+    <p>Grotto and island, and the mirrored sun</p>
+
+    <p>In the blue water--thou hast passed away!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When the glow of evening softly fades</p>
+
+    <p>From the still sea, and with her gleaming host</p>
+
+    <p>The moon ascends the sky.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg295" id="pg295">295</a></span>
+
+  <p><i>Night</i> is very poetic:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">And comest thou again,</p>
+
+    <p>Thou Mother of the stars and heavenly thoughts?</p>
+
+    <p>Divine and quiet Mother, comest thou?</p>
+
+    <p>The earth awaits thee, from thy chalice cup</p>
+
+    <p>But one drop of thy heavenly dew to quaff,</p>
+
+    <p>Her flowers bend low their heads;</p>
+
+    <p>And with them, satiate with vision, droops</p>
+
+    <p>My overcharged soul....</p>
+
+    <p>O starry goddess with the crown of gold,</p>
+
+    <p>Upon whose wide-spread sable mantle gleam</p>
+
+    <p>A thousand worlds ...</p>
+
+    <p>Silence divine, that filleth all the world,</p>
+
+    <p>Flowing so softly to the eternal shores</p>
+
+    <p>Of an eternal universe....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And in <i>St John's Night</i>, he exclaims:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Infinite, ah! inexhaustible art thou, Mother Nature!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Like the rest, Herder suffered from the over-sensitiveness of his
+  day. His correspondence with his <i>fiancée</i> shews this<a href=
+  "#m8"><sup>[8]</sup></a>; one sees Rousseau's influence:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>My pleasantest hours are when, quite alone, I walk in a charming
+    wood close to Bückeburg, or lie upon a wall in the shade of my
+    garden, or lastly, for we have had capital moonlight for three
+    nights, and the last was the best of all, when I enjoy these hours
+    of sweetly sleeping night with all the songs of the
+    nightingale.</p>
+
+    <p>I reckon no hours more delightful than those of green solitude.
+    I live so romantically alone, and among woods and churches, as only
+    poets, lovers, and philosophers can live.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And his <i>fiancée</i> wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>'Tis all joy within and around me since I have known thee, my
+    best beloved: every plant and flower, everything in Nature, seems
+    beautiful to me.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I went early to my little room; the moon was quite covered by
+    clouds, and the night so melancholy from the croaking of the frogs,
+    that I could not leave the window for a long time: my whole soul
+    was dark and cloudy; I thought of thee, my dear one, and that
+    thought, that sigh, reduced me to tears.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg296" id="pg296">296</a></span>
+  and</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Do you like the ears of wheat so much? I never pass a cornfield
+    without stroking them.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Goethe focussed all the rays of feeling for Nature which had found
+  lyrical expression before him, and purged taste, beginning with his
+  own, of its unnatural and sickly elements. So he became the
+  liberating genius of modern culture. Not only did German lyric poetry
+  reach its climax in him; but he was the most accurate, individual,
+  and universal interpreter of German feeling for Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>His wide original mind kept open house for the most diverse
+  elements of feeling, and exercised an ennobling control upon each and
+  all at will; Homer's naivete, Shakespeare's sympathy, Rousseau's
+  enthusiasm, even Ossian's melancholy, found room there.</p>
+
+  <p>While most love lyrics of his day were false in feeling, mere
+  raving extravagances, and therefore poor in those metaphors and
+  comparisons which prove sympathy between Nature and the inner life,
+  it could be said of him that 'Nature wished to know what she looked
+  like, and so she created Goethe.' He was the microcosm in which the
+  macrocosm of modern times was reflected.</p>
+
+  <p>He was more modern and universal than any of his predecessors, and
+  his insight into Nature and love for her have been rarely equalled in
+  later days. He did not live, like so many of the elegiac and idyllic
+  poets of the eighteenth century, a mere dream-life of the
+  imagination: Goethe stood firmly rooted among the actualities; from
+  boyhood up, as he said in <i>Wahrheit und Dichtung</i>, he had 'a
+  warm feeling for all objective things.'</p>
+
+  <p>No poet, Klopstock not excepted, was richer in verbal invention,
+  and many of the phrases and epithets which he coined form in
+  themselves very striking evidence (which is lost in translation) of
+  his close and original observation of Nature.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg297" id="pg297">297</a></span> He
+  has many beautiful comparisons to Nature:</p>
+
+  <p>His lady-love is 'brightly beautiful as morning clouds on yonder
+  height.'</p>
+
+  <p>'I was wont to look at thee as one looks at the stars and moon,
+  delighting in thee without the most distant wish in my quiet breast
+  to possess thee.'</p>
+
+  <p>'I give kisses as the spring gives flowers.'</p>
+
+  <p>'My feeling for thee was like seed, which germinates slowly in
+  winter, but ripens quickly in summer.'</p>
+
+  <p>The stars move 'with flower feet.'</p>
+
+  <p>The graces are 'pure as the heart of the waters, as the marrow of
+  earth.'</p>
+
+  <p>A delicate poem is a rainbow only existing against a dark
+  ground.</p>
+
+  <p>In <i>Stella</i>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Thou dost not feel what heavenly dew to the thirsty it is, to
+    return to thy breast from the sandy desert world.</p>
+
+    <p>I felt free in soul, free as a spring morning.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In <i>Faust</i>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The cataract bursting through the rocks is the image of human
+    effort; its coloured reflection the image of life.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>When Werther feels himself trembling between existence and
+  non-existence, everything around him sinking away, and the world
+  perishing with him:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The past flashes like lightning over the dark abyss of the
+    future.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>These are among his still more numerous metaphors:</p>
+
+  <p>A sea of folly, an ocean of fragrance, the waves of battle, the
+  stream of genius, the tiger claw of despair, the sun-ray of the past.
+  Iphigenia says to Orestes:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>O let the pure breath of love blow lightly on thy heart's flame
+    and cool it.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg298" id="pg298">298</a></span>
+  and Eleonora complains about Tasso:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Let him go! But what twilight falls round me now! Formerly the
+    stream carried us along upon the light waves without a rudder.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In Goethe we see very clearly how the inner life, under the
+  pressure of its own intensity, will, so to speak, overflow into the
+  outer world, making that live in its turn; and how this is especially
+  the case when the amorous passion is present to add its impetus to
+  feeling, and attribute its own fervour to all around.</p>
+
+  <p><i>May Song</i>, <i>On the Lake</i>, <i>Ganymede</i>, are
+  instances of this.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Ganymede</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Oh, what a glow</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Around me in morning's</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Blaze thou diffusest,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Beautiful spring!</p>
+
+    <p>With the rapture of love but intenser,</p>
+
+    <p>Intenser and deeper and sweeter,</p>
+
+    <p>Nestles and creeps to my heart</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The sensation divine</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Of thy fervour eternal,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Oh, thou unspeakably fair!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Beautiful personifications abound:</p>
+
+  <p>The sun is proudly throned in heaven.</p>
+
+  <p>The glowing sun gazes at the rugged peak or charms it with fiery
+  love,</p>
+
+  <p>Or bathes like the moon in the ocean.</p>
+
+  <p>The parting glance of Mother Sun broods on the grapes.</p>
+
+  <p>'Morning came frightening away light sleep with its
+  footsteps.'</p>
+
+  <p>'The young day arose with delight.'</p>
+
+  <p>The moon: 'Thou spreadest thy glance soothingly over my
+  abode.'</p>
+
+  <p>On a cloudy night: 'Evening already rocked earth, and night hung
+  on the mountains; from a hill of clouds the moon looked mournfully
+  out of the mist.'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg299" id="pg299">299</a></span>
+  'The lofty stars turn their clear eyes down to me.'</p>
+
+  <p>Even the rock lives: 'The hard rock opens its bosom, not envying
+  earth its deep springs.'</p>
+
+  <p>The stream: 'Thou hurriest on with joyful light mood; see the rock
+  spring bright with the glance of the stars, yet no shady valley, no
+  flowers make him tarry ... his course winds downwards to the plain,
+  then he scatters in delightful spray, in cloud waves ... foams
+  gloomily to the abyss.'</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>With gradual step from out the far-off grey,</p>
+
+    <p>Self-heralded draws on the storm.</p>
+
+    <p>Birds on the wing fly low across the water, weighted down,</p>
+
+    <p>And seamen hasten to reef in the sail</p>
+
+    <p>Before its stubborn wrath.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His flowers are alive:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The beauteous snowdrops</p>
+
+    <p>Droop o'er the plain,</p>
+
+    <p>The crocus opens</p>
+
+    <p>Its glowing bud ...</p>
+
+    <p>With saucy gesture</p>
+
+    <p>Primroses flare,</p>
+
+    <p>And roguish violets</p>
+
+    <p>Hidden with care.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But these are only examples. To obtain a clear idea of Goethe's
+  attitude, we must take a more general survey of his work, for his
+  poetic relationship to Nature, like his mental development in
+  general, passed through various stages of growth. That it was a warm
+  one even in youth is shewn by the letter in 1766 from Leipzig<a href=
+  "#m9"><sup>[9]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>You live contented in M. I even so here. Lonely, lonely,
+    altogether lonely. Dearest Riese, this loneliness has impressed my
+    soul with a certain sadness.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>This solitary joy is mine,</p>
+
+    <p>When far apart from all mankind,</p>
+
+    <p>By shady brook-side to recline.</p>
+
+    <p>And keep my loved ones in my mind....</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg300" id="pg300">300</a></span>
+
+  <p>He goes on with these lines:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Then is my heart with sorrow filled,</p>
+
+    <p>Sad is mine eye.</p>
+
+    <p>The flooded brook now rages by,</p>
+
+    <p>That heretofore so gently rilled.</p>
+
+    <p>No bird sings in the bushes now,</p>
+
+    <p>The tree so green is dry,</p>
+
+    <p>The zephyr which on me did blow</p>
+
+    <p>So cheering, now storms northerly,</p>
+
+    <p>And scattered blossoms bears on high.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He was already in full sympathy with Nature. A few of his earlier
+  poems<a href="#m10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> shew prevalent taste, the
+  allusions to Zephyr and Lima, for instance, in <i>Night</i>; but they
+  are followed by lines which are all his own.</p>
+
+  <p>He had an incomparable way of striking the chords of love and
+  Nature together.</p>
+
+  <p>Where his lady-love dwells, 'there is love, and goodness is
+  Nature.' He thinks of her</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>When the bright sunlight shimmers</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Across the sea,</p>
+
+      <p>When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Thou art seductive and charming; flowers,</p>
+
+      <p>Sun, moon, and stars only worship thee.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is passionate feeling for Nature in the <i>May Song</i> of
+  his Sesenheimer period:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>How gloriously gleameth</p>
+
+    <p>All Nature to me!</p>
+
+    <p>How bright the sun beameth,</p>
+
+    <p>How fresh is the lea!</p>
+
+    <p>White blossoms are bursting</p>
+
+    <p>The thickets among,</p>
+
+    <p>And all the gay greenwood</p>
+
+    <p>Is ringing with song!</p>
+
+    <p>There's radiance and rapture</p>
+
+    <p>That nought can destroy,</p>
+
+    <p>Oh earth, in thy sunshine,</p>
+
+    <p>Oh heart, in thy joy.</p>
+
+    <p>Oh love! thou enchanter</p>
+
+    <p>So golden and bright,</p>
+
+    <p>Like the red clouds of morning</p>
+
+    <p>That rest on yon height,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg301" id=
+    "pg301">301</a></span>It is them that art clothing</p>
+
+    <p>The fields and the bowers,</p>
+
+    <p>And everywhere breathing</p>
+
+    <p>The incense of flowers.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Looking back in old age to those happy days of youth, he saw in
+  memory not only Frederica but the scenery around her. He said
+  (<i>Wahrheit und Dichtung</i>): 'Her figure never looked more
+  charming than when she was moving along a raised footpath; the charm
+  of her bearing seemed to vie with the flowering ground, and the
+  indestructible cheerfulness of her face with the blue sky.' In Alsace
+  he wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>One has only to abandon oneself to the present in order to enjoy
+    the charms of the sky, the glow of the rich earth, the mild
+    evenings, the warm nights, at the side of one's love, or near
+    her.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and one of the poems to Frederica says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The world lies round me buried deep in mist, but</p>
+
+    <p>In one glance of thine lies sunshine and happiness.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is a strong pulse of life--life that overflows into
+  Nature--in <i>The Departure</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>To horse! Away, o'er hill and steep,</p>
+
+    <p>Into the saddle blithe I spring;</p>
+
+    <p>The eve was cradling earth to sleep,</p>
+
+    <p>And night upon the mountains hung.</p>
+
+    <p>With robes of mist around him set,</p>
+
+    <p>The oak like some huge giant stood,</p>
+
+    <p>While, with its hundred eyes of jet,</p>
+
+    <p>Peer'd darkness from the tangled wood.</p>
+
+    <p>Amid a bank of clouds the moon</p>
+
+    <p>A sad and troubled glimmer shed;</p>
+
+    <p>The wind its chilly wings unclosed,</p>
+
+    <p>And whistled wildly round my head.</p>
+
+    <p>Night framed a thousand phantoms dire,</p>
+
+    <p>Yet did I never droop nor start;</p>
+
+    <p>Within my veins what living fire!</p>
+
+    <p>What quenchless glow within my heart!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And very like it, though in a minor key, is the Elegy which
+  begins, 'A tender, youthful trouble.'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg302" id="pg302">302</a></span> He
+  tells in <i>Wahrheit und Dichtung</i> how he found comfort for his
+  love troubles in Frankfort:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>They were accustomed to call me, on account of wandering about
+    the district, the 'wanderer.' In producing that calm for the mind,
+    which I felt under the open sky, in the valleys, on the heights, in
+    the fields, and in the woods, the situation of Frankfort was
+    serviceable.... On the setting in of winter a new world was
+    revealed to us, since I at once determined to skate.... For this
+    new joyous activity we were also indebted to Klopstock, to his
+    enthusiasm for this happy species of motion.... To pass a splendid
+    Sunday thus on the ice did not satisfy us, we continued in movement
+    late into the night.... The full moon rising from the clouds, over
+    the wide nocturnal meadows which were frozen into fields of ice,
+    the night breeze which rustled towards us on our course, the solemn
+    thunder of the ice which sunk as the water decreased, the strange
+    echo of our own movements, rendered the scenes of Ossian just
+    present to our minds.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>His attachment, to Lotte, stirred far deeper feelings than the
+  earlier ones to Frederica and Lilli:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>(If I, my own dear Lilli, loved thee not, How should I joy to
+    view this scene so fair! And yet if I, sweet Lilli, loved thee not,
+    Should I be happy here or anywhere?)</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and drew him correspondingly nearer to Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>There is no book in any language which so lives and moves and has
+  its being in Nature as <i>Werther</i>.<a href=
+  "#m11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> In <i>Wahrheit und Dichtung</i> Goethe
+  said of the 'strange element' in which <i>Werther</i> was designed
+  and written:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I sought to free myself internally from all that was foreign to
+    me, to regard the external with love, and to allow all beings, from
+    man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to act upon me,
+    each after its own kind. Thus arose a wonderful affinity with the
+    single objects of Nature, and a hearty concord, a harmony with the
+    whole, so that every change, whether of place or region, or of the
+    times of the day and year, or whatever else could happen, affected
+    me in the deepest manner. The glance of the painter associated
+    itself with that of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg303" id=
+    "pg303">303</a></span>the poet; the beautiful rural landscape,
+    animated by the pleasant river, increased my love of solitude and
+    favoured my silent observations as they extended on all sides.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The strong influence of <i>La Nouvelle Héloise</i> upon
+  <i>Werther</i> was very evident, but there was a marked difference
+  between Goethe's feeling for Nature and Rousseau's. Rousseau had the
+  painter's eye, but not the keen poetic vision.</p>
+
+  <p>Goethe's romances are pervaded by the penetrating quality peculiar
+  to his nation, and by virtue of which in <i>Werther</i>, the outer
+  world, the scenery, was not used as framework, but was always
+  interwoven with the hero's mood. The contrast between culture and
+  Nature is always marked in Rousseau, and his religion was deism;
+  Goethe resolves Nature into feeling, and his religion was a growing
+  pantheism. As a work of art, <i>Werther</i> is excellent, <i>La
+  Nouvelle Héloise</i> is not. Goethe used his hero's bearing towards
+  Nature with marvellous effect to indicate the turns and changes of
+  his moods, just as he indicated the threatening calamity and the
+  growing apprehension of it by skilful stress laid upon some of her
+  little traits--a faculty which only Theodore Storm among later poets
+  has caught from him.</p>
+
+  <p>The growth of amorous passion is portrayed as an elementary force,
+  and the revolutionary element in the book really consists in the
+  strength of this passion and the assertion of its natural rights.
+  Everything artificial, forced, conventional, in thought, act, and
+  feeling--and what at that time was not?--was repugnant to Werther;
+  what he liked most of all was the simplicity of children and
+  uneducated people.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other;
+    particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of
+    pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels
+    and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to
+    repair it.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg304" id="pg304">304</a></span> To
+  such intense sympathy as this, all that had been sung ere now by
+  German poets had to give place. Nature, which hitherto had played no
+  <i>rôle</i> at all in fiction, not even among the English, was
+  Werther's truest and most intimate friend.</p>
+
+  <p>Werther is sensitive and sentimental, though in a single-hearted
+  way, with a sentimentality that reminds us more and more, as the
+  story proceeds, of the gloomy tone of Ossian and Young. He is a
+  thoroughly original character, who feels that he is right so to be;
+  and although he falls a prey to his melancholy, yet there is much
+  more force and thought in his outpourings than in all the moonshine
+  tirades that preceded him. It is the work of a true poet, in the best
+  days of a brilliant youth.</p>
+
+  <p>Werther, like Rousseau, was happiest in solitude. Solitude, in the
+  'place like paradise,' was precious balm to his feeling heart, which
+  he considers 'like a sick child'; and the 'warm heavenly imagination
+  of the heart' illuminates Nature round him--his 'favourite valley,'
+  the 'sweet spring morning,' Nature's 'unspeakable beauty.' He was
+  absorbed in artistic feeling, though he could not draw; 'I could not
+  draw them, not a stroke, and have never been a greater artist than at
+  that moment.' His power lay in imbuing his whole subject with
+  feeling; he felt the heart of Nature beating, and its echo in his own
+  breast.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>When the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the
+    meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage
+    of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner
+    sanctuary, then I throw myself down in the tall grass by the
+    trickling stream; and as I lie close to the earth, a thousand
+    unknown plants discover themselves to me. When I hear the buzz of
+    the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the
+    countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel
+    the presence of the Almighty who formed us in His own image, and
+    the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as
+    it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg305" id=
+    "pg305">305</a></span>friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes,
+    and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power,
+    like the idea of a beloved mistress, then I often long and think: O
+    that you could describe these conceptions, that you could impress
+    upon paper all that lives so full and warm within you, that it
+    might be the mirror of your soul, as your soul is the mirror of the
+    infinite God!</p>
+
+    <p>O! my friend! but it is too much for my strength. I sink under
+    the weight of the grandeur of these visions.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Werther could not express all his love for Nature, but the secret
+  of it lay in the power to bring his own world of thought and feeling
+  into communion with her, and so give her speech. He divined something
+  immortal in her akin to himself. 'The true feeling of Nature,' he
+  said, 'is love.' He poured 'the stream of his genius' over her, and
+  she became 'dear and familiar' to him.... The simple homely scenery
+  delighted him--the valley, the brook, the fine walnut trees.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>When I go out at sunrise in the morning to Walheim, and with my
+    own hands gather the peas in the garden, which are to serve for my
+    dinner; when I sit down to shell them and read my Homer during the
+    intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch
+    my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up.... Nothing
+    fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those
+    traits of patriarchal life, which, thank heaven, I can imitate
+    without affectation.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>With the growth of his love-passion his feeling for Nature
+  increased; on July 24th he wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I never felt happier, I never understood Nature better, even
+    down to the veriest stem or smallest blade of grass.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Then Albert came on the scene, and love became a torment, and
+  Nature a tormentor:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p><i>August</i> 18.--Must it ever be thus, that the source of our
+    happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and
+    ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of Nature,
+    overwhelming me with <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg306" id=
+    "pg306">306</a></span>a torrent of delight, and which brought all
+    paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a
+    demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. When in bye-gone
+    days I gazed from these rocks upon yonder mountains across the
+    river and upon the green flowery valley before me, and saw all
+    nature budding and bursting around--the hills clothed from foot to
+    peak with tall thick forest trees, the valleys in all their varied
+    windings shaded with the loveliest woods, and the soft river
+    gliding along amongst the lisping reeds, mirroring the beautiful
+    clouds which the soft evening breeze wafted across the sky--when I
+    heard the groves about me melodious with the music of birds, and
+    saw the million swarms of insects dancing in the last golden beams
+    of the sun, whose setting rays awoke the humming beetles from their
+    grassy beds, whilst the subdued tumult around directed my attention
+    to the ground, and I there observed the arid rock compelled to
+    yield nutriment to the dry moss, whilst the heath flourished upon
+    the barren sands below me--all this displayed to me the inner
+    warmth which animates all Nature, and filled and glowed within my
+    heart. I felt myself exalted by this overflowing fulness to the
+    perception of the Godhead, and the glorious forms of an infinite
+    universe became visible to my soul.... From the inaccessible
+    mountains across the desert, which no mortal foot has trod, far as
+    the confines of the unknown ocean, breathes the spirit of the
+    eternal Creator, and every atom to which He has given existence
+    finds favour in His sight. Ah! how often at that time has the
+    flight of a bird soaring above my head inspired me with the desire
+    of being transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters,
+    there to quaff the pleasure of life from the foaming goblet of the
+    infinite, and to partake, if but for a moment, even with the
+    confined powers of my soul, the beatitude of the Creator, who
+    accomplishes all things in himself and through himself.... It is as
+    if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes.... My heart is
+    wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies
+    concealed in every part of universal nature--Nature has formed
+    nothing that does not consume itself and every object near it; so
+    that, surrounded by earth, and air, and all the active powers, I
+    wander on my way with aching heart, and the universe is to me a
+    fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring.... If in
+    such moments I find no sympathy ... I either wander through the
+    country, climb some precipitous cliff, or force a path through the
+    trackless <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg307" id=
+    "pg307">307</a></span>thicket, where I am lacerated and torn by
+    thorns and briars, and thence I find relief.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Then, as he was going away, he felt how sympathetic the place had
+  been to him:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I was walking up and down the very avenue which was so dear to
+    me--a secret sympathy had frequently drawn me thither....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>the moon rose from behind a hill, increasing his melancholy, and
+  Charlotte put his feeling into words, saying (like Klopstock):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p><i>September</i> 10.--Whenever I walk by moonlight, it brings to
+    my remembrance all my beloved and departed friends, and I am filled
+    with thoughts of death and futurity.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Even in his misery he realises the [Greek: charisgoôn] of
+  Euripides, Petrarch's <i>dolendi voluptas</i>--the <i>Wonne der
+  Wehmuth</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>On September 4th he wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It is even so! As Nature puts on her autumn tints, it becomes
+    autumn with me and around me. My leaves are sere and yellow, and
+    the neighbouring trees are divested of their foliage.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>It was due to this autumn feeling that he could say:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Ossian has superseded Homer in my heart. To what a world does
+    the illustrious bard carry me! To wander over pathless wilds,
+    surrounded by impetuous whirlwinds, where, by the feeble light of
+    the moon, we see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the
+    mountain tops, 'mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds
+    issuing from deep caverns.... And this heart is now dead; no
+    sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry, and my senses, no more
+    refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my
+    brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life, that
+    active sacred power which created worlds around me, and it is no
+    more. When I look from my window at the distant hills and behold
+    the morning sun breaking through the mists and illuminating the
+    country round it which is still wrapt in silence, whilst the soft
+    stream <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg308" id=
+    "pg308">308</a></span>winds gently through the willows which have
+    shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all her beauties
+    before me, and her wondrous prospects are ineffectual to attract
+    one tear of joy from my withered heart....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>On November 30th he wrote: 'About dinner-time I went to walk by
+  the river side, for I had no appetite,' and goes on in the tone of
+  Ossian:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Everything around me seemed gloomy: a cold and damp easterly
+    wind blew from the mountains, and black heavy clouds spread over
+    the plain.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and in the dreadful night of the flood:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Upon the stroke of twelve I hastened forth. I beheld a fearful
+    sight. The foaming torrents rolled from the mountains in the
+    moonlight; fields and meadows, trees and hedges, were confounded
+    together, and the entire valley was converted into a deep lake
+    which was agitated by the roaring wind. And when the moon shone
+    forth and tinged the black clouds with silver, and the impetuous
+    torrent at my feet foamed and resounded with awful and grand
+    impetuosity, I was overcome by a mingled sensation of awe and
+    delight. With extended arms I looked down into the yawning abyss,
+    and cried 'Plunge!' For a moment my senses forsook me, in the
+    intense delight of ending my sorrows and my sufferings by a plunge
+    into that gulf.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>To his farewell letter he adds:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Yes, Nature! put on mourning. Your child, your friend, your
+    lover, draws near his end.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The genuine poetic pantheism, which, for all his melancholy and
+  sentimentality, was the spring of Werther's feeling, is seen in
+  loftier and more comprehensive form in the first part of
+  <i>Faust</i>, when Faust opens the book and sees the sign of
+  macrocosmos:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>How all things live and work, and ever blending,</p>
+
+    <p>Weave one vast whole from Being's ample range!</p>
+
+    <p>How powers celestial, rising and descending,</p>
+
+    <p>Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange.</p>
+
+    <p>Their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging,</p>
+
+    <p>From heaven to earth their genial influence bringing,</p>
+
+    <p>Through the wide whole their chimes melodious ringing.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg309" id="pg309">309</a></span>
+  And the Earth spirit says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>In the currents of life, in action's storm,</p>
+
+    <p>I float and I wave</p>
+
+    <p>With billowy motion,--</p>
+
+    <p>Birth and the grave</p>
+
+    <p>A limitless ocean.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Not only of knowledge of, but of feeling for, Nature, it is
+  said:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Inscrutable in broadest light,</p>
+
+    <p>To be unveiled by force she doth refuse.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But Faust is in deep sympathy with her; witness:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Thou full-orbed moon! Would thou wert gazing now</p>
+
+    <p>For the last time upon my troubled brow!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Loos'd from their icy fetters, streams and rills</p>
+
+    <p>In spring's effusive, quick'ning mildness flow,</p>
+
+    <p>Hope's budding promise every valley fills.</p>
+
+    <p>And winter, spent with age, and powerless now,</p>
+
+    <p>Draws off his forces to the savage hills.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and the idyllic evening mood, which gives way to a burst of
+  longing:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>In the rich sunset see how brightly glow</p>
+
+    <p>Yon cottage homes girt round with verdant green.</p>
+
+    <p>Slow sinks the orb, the day is now no more;</p>
+
+    <p>Yonder he hastens to diffuse new light.</p>
+
+    <p>Oh! for a pinion from the earth to soar,</p>
+
+    <p>And after, ever after him to strive!</p>
+
+    <p>Then should I see the world outspread below,</p>
+
+    <p>Illumined by the deathless evening beams,</p>
+
+    <p>The vales reposing, every height aglow,</p>
+
+    <p>The silver brooklets meeting golden streams....</p>
+
+    <p>Alas! that when on Spirit wing we rise,</p>
+
+    <p>No wing material lifts our mortal clay.</p>
+
+    <p>But 'tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong,</p>
+
+    <p>To rush aloft, to struggle still towards heaven,</p>
+
+    <p>When far above us pours its thrilling song</p>
+
+    <p>The skylark lost amid the purple even,</p>
+
+    <p>When on extended pinion sweeps amain</p>
+
+    <p>The lordly eagle o'er the pine-crowned height.</p>
+
+    <p>And when, still striving towards its home, the crane</p>
+
+    <p>O'er moor and ocean wings its onward flight.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg310" id="pg310">310</a></span>
+
+  <p>But the most complete expression of Goethe's attitude, not only in
+  the period of <i>Werther</i> and the first part of <i>Faust</i>, but
+  generally, is contained in the <i>Monologue</i>, which was probably
+  written not earlier than the spring of 1788:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all</p>
+
+    <p>For which I prayed. Not vainly hast thou turn'd</p>
+
+    <p>To me thy countenance in flaming fire;</p>
+
+    <p>Thou gav'st me glorious Nature for my realm,</p>
+
+    <p>And also power to feel her and enjoy;</p>
+
+    <p>Not merely with a cold and wond'ring glance,</p>
+
+    <p>Thou didst permit me in her depths profound,</p>
+
+    <p>As in the bosom of a friend, to gaze;</p>
+
+    <p>Before me thou dost lead her living tribes,</p>
+
+    <p>And dost in silent grove, in air and stream,</p>
+
+    <p>Teach me to know my kindred....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His feeling was not admiration alone, nor reverence alone, but the
+  sympathy of <i>Childe Harold</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part</p>
+
+    <p>Of me and of my soul, as I of them?</p>
+
+    <p>Is not the love of these deep in my heart</p>
+
+    <p>With a pure passion? Should I not contemn</p>
+
+    <p>All objects, if compared with these?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and the very confession of faith of such poetic pantheism is in
+  Faust's words:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Him who dare name,</p>
+
+    <p>And yet proclaim,</p>
+
+    <p>Yes, I believe?...</p>
+
+    <p>The All-embracer,</p>
+
+    <p>All-sustainer,</p>
+
+    <p>Doth he not embrace, sustain</p>
+
+    <p>Thee, me, himself?</p>
+
+    <p>Lifts not the heaven its dome above?</p>
+
+    <p>Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us rise?</p>
+
+    <p>And beaming tenderly with looks of love,</p>
+
+    <p>Climb not the everlasting stars on high?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poems which date directly after the Wetzlar period are full of
+  this sympathetic pantheistic love for Nature--<i>Mahomet's Song</i>,
+  for example, with its splendid comparison of pioneering genius to a
+  mountain torrent: <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg311" id=
+  "pg311">311</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Ho! the spring that bursts</p>
+
+    <p>From the mountain height</p>
+
+    <p>Joyous and bright,</p>
+
+    <p>As the gleam of a star....</p>
+
+    <p>Down in the vale below</p>
+
+    <p>Flowers bud beneath his tread ...</p>
+
+    <p>And woo him with fond eyes.</p>
+
+    <p>And the streamlets of the mountains</p>
+
+    <p>Shout to him, and cry out 'Brother'!</p>
+
+    <p>Brother! take thy brothers with thee,</p>
+
+    <p>With thee to thine ancient father,</p>
+
+    <p>To the eternal Ocean,</p>
+
+    <p>Who with outstretch'd arms awaits us....</p>
+
+    <p>And so beareth he his brothers</p>
+
+    <p>To their primal sire expectant,</p>
+
+    <p>All his bosom throbbing, heaving,</p>
+
+    <p>With a wild, tumultuous joy.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We see the same pathos--the pathos of Pindar and the Psalms--in
+  the comparison:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Like water is the soul of man,</p>
+
+    <p>From heaven it comes, to heaven it goes,</p>
+
+    <p>And back again to earth in ceaseless change.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>in the incomparable <i>Wanderer</i>, in <i>Wanderer's Storm
+  Song,</i> and, above all, in <i>Ganymede</i>, already given, of which
+  Loeper remarks:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The poem is, as it were, a rendering of that letter (Werther's
+    of May 10th) in rhythm. The underlying pantheism had already shewn
+    itself in the <i>Wanderer's Storm Song</i>. It was not the delight
+    in God of a Brockes, not the adoration of a Klopstock, not
+    sesthetic enjoyment of Nature, not, as in later years, scientific
+    interest; it was rather a being absorbed in, identified with,
+    Nature, a sympathy carried so far that the very ego was surrendered
+    to the elements.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>On the Lake of Zurich he wrote, June 15th, 1775:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>And here I drink new blood, fresh food,</p>
+
+    <p>From world so free, so blest;</p>
+
+    <p>How sweet is Nature and how good,</p>
+
+    <p>Who holds me to her breast.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and Elmire sings in <i>Ermin and Elmire</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>From thee, O Nature, with deep breath</p>
+
+    <p>I drink in painful pleasure.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg312" id="pg312">312</a></span>
+
+  <p>One of the gems among his Nature poems is <i>Autumn Feelings</i>
+  (it was the autumn of his love for Lilli):</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Flourish greener as ye clamber,</p>
+
+    <p>O ye leaves, to seek my chamber;</p>
+
+    <p>Up the trellised vine on high</p>
+
+    <p>May ye swell, twin-berries tender,</p>
+
+    <p>Juicier far, and with more splendour</p>
+
+    <p>Ripen, and more speedily.</p>
+
+    <p>O'er ye broods the sun at even,</p>
+
+    <p>As he sinks to rest, and heaven</p>
+
+    <p>Softly breathes into your ear</p>
+
+    <p>All its fertilizing fulness,</p>
+
+    <p>While the moon's refreshing coolness,</p>
+
+    <p>Magic-laden, hovers near.</p>
+
+    <p>And alas! ye're watered ever</p>
+
+    <p>By a stream of tears that rill</p>
+
+    <p>From mine eyes--tears ceasing never,</p>
+
+    <p>Tears of love that nought can still.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The lyrical effect here depends upon the blending of a single
+  impression of Nature with the passing mood--an occasional poem rare
+  even for Goethe.</p>
+
+  <p>In a letter to Frau von Stein he admitted that he was greatly
+  influenced by Nature:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I have slept well and am quite awake, only a quiet sadness lies
+    upon my soul.... The weather agrees exactly with my state of mind,
+    and I begin to believe that it is the weather around me which has
+    the most immediate effect upon me, and the great world thrills my
+    little one with her own mood.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Again, <i>To the Moon</i>, in the spring 1778, expresses perfect
+  communion between Nature and feeling:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Flooded are the brakes and dells</p>
+
+    <p>With thy phantom light,</p>
+
+    <p>And my soul receives the spell</p>
+
+    <p>Of thy mystic night.</p>
+
+    <p>To the meadow dost thou send</p>
+
+    <p>Something of thy grace,</p>
+
+    <p>Like the kind eye of a friend</p>
+
+    <p>Beaming on my face.</p>
+
+    <p>Echoes of departed times</p>
+
+    <p>Vibrate in mine ear,</p>
+
+    <p>Joyous, sad, like spirit chimes,</p>
+
+    <p>As I wander here.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg313" id=
+    "pg313">313</a></span>Flow, flow on, thou little brook,</p>
+
+    <p>Ever onward go!</p>
+
+    <p>Trusted heart and tender look</p>
+
+    <p>Left me even so!</p>
+
+    <p>Richer treasure earth has none</p>
+
+    <p>Than I once possessed--</p>
+
+    <p>Ah! so rich, that when 'twas gone</p>
+
+    <p>Worthless was the rest.</p>
+
+    <p>Little brook! adown the vale</p>
+
+    <p>Rush and take my song:</p>
+
+    <p>Give it passion, give it wail,</p>
+
+    <p>As thou leap'st along!</p>
+
+    <p>Sound it in the winter night</p>
+
+    <p>When thy streams are full,</p>
+
+    <p>Murmur it when skies are bright</p>
+
+    <p>Mirror'd in the pool.</p>
+
+    <p>Happiest he of all created</p>
+
+    <p>Who the world can shun,</p>
+
+    <p>Not in hate, and yet unhated,</p>
+
+    <p>Sharing thought with none,</p>
+
+    <p>Save one faithful friend, revealing</p>
+
+    <p>To his kindly ear</p>
+
+    <p>Thoughts like these, which o'er me stealing,</p>
+
+    <p>Make the night so drear.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In January 1778, he wrote to Frau von Stein about the fate of the
+  unhappy Chr. von Lassberg, who had drowned himself in the Ilm:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>This inviting grief has something dangerously attractive about
+    it, like the water itself; and the reflections of the stars, which
+    gleam from above and below at once, are alluring.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>To the same year belongs <i>The Fisher</i>, which gave such
+  melodious voice to the magic effect of a shimmering expanse of water,
+  'the moist yet radiant blue,' upon the mood; just as, later on,
+  <i>The Erlking</i>, with the grey of an autumn evening woven
+  ghostlike round tree and shrub, made the mind thrill with
+  foreboding.</p>
+
+  <p>Goethe was always an industrious traveller. In his seventieth year
+  he went to Frankfort, Strassburg, the Rhine, Thuringia, and the Harz
+  Mountains (Harzreise, 1777): 'We went up to the peaks, and down to
+  the depths of the earth, and hammered at <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg314" id="pg314">314</a></span>all the rocks.'
+  His love for Nature increased with his science; but, at the same
+  time, poetic expression of it took a more objective form; the
+  passionate vehemence, the really revolutionary attitude of the
+  <i>Werther</i> period, gave way to one equally spiritual and
+  intellectual, but more temperate.</p>
+
+  <p>This transition is clearly seen in the Swiss letters. In his first
+  Swiss travels, 1775, he was only just free from <i>Werther</i>, and
+  his mind was too agitated for quiet observation:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Hasten thee, Kronos!...</p>
+
+    <p>Over stock and stone let thy trot</p>
+
+    <p>Into life straightway lead....</p>
+
+    <p>Wide, high, glorious the view</p>
+
+    <p>Gazing round upon life,</p>
+
+    <p>While from mount unto mount</p>
+
+    <p>Hovers the spirit eterne,</p>
+
+    <p>Life eternal foreboding....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Far more significant and ripe--in fact, mature--are the letters in
+  1779, shewing, as they do, the attitude of a man of profound mind, in
+  the prime of his life and time. He was the first German poet to fall
+  under the spell of the mountains--the strongest spell, as he held,
+  which Nature wields in our latitudes. 'These sublime, incomparable
+  scenes will remain for ever in my mind'; and of one view in
+  particular, over the mountains of Savoy and Valais, the Lake of
+  Geneva, and Mont Blanc, he said: 'The view was so great, man's eye
+  could not grasp it.'</p>
+
+  <p>He wrote of his feelings with perfect openness to Frau von Stein,
+  and these letters extended farther back than those from Switzerland,
+  and were partly mixed with them.</p>
+
+  <p>From Selz:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>An uncommonly fine day, a happy country--still all green, only
+    here and there a yellow beech or oak leaf. Meadows still in their
+    silver beauty--a soft welcome breeze everywhere. Grapes improving
+    with every step and every day. Every peasant's house has a vine up
+    to the roof, and every courtyard a great <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg315" id="pg315">315</a></span>overhanging
+    arbour. The air of heaven soft, warm, and moist. The Rhine and the
+    clear mountains near at hand, the changing woods, meadows, fields
+    like gardens, do men good, and give me a kind of comfort which I
+    have long lacked.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The pen remains as ever the pen of a poet, but he looks at
+  Switzerland now with a mature, settled taste, analyzing his
+  impressions, and studying mountains, glaciers, boulders,
+  scientifically.</p>
+
+  <p>Of the Staubbach Fall, near Lauterbrunnen (Oct. 9th, 1779):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The clouds broke in the upper air, and the blue sky came
+    through. Clouds clung to the steep sides of the rocks; even the top
+    where the Staubbach falls over, was lightly covered. It was a very
+    noble sight ... then the clouds came down into the valley and
+    covered all the foreground. The great wall over which the water
+    falls, still stood out on the right. Night came on.... In the
+    Munsterthal, through which we came, everything was lofty, but more
+    within the mind's power of comprehension than these. In comparison
+    with the immensities, one is, and must remain, too small.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And after visiting the Berne glacier from Thun (Oct. 14):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It is difficult to write after all this ... the first glance
+    from the mountain is striking, the district is surprisingly
+    extensive and pleasant ... the road indescribably beautiful ... the
+    view from the Lake of Brienz towards the snow mountains at sunset
+    is great.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>More eloquent is the letter of October 3rd, from the
+  Munsterthal:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The passage through this defile roused in me a grand but calm
+    emotion. The sublime produces a beautiful calmness in the soul,
+    which, entirely possessed by it, feels as great as it ever can
+    feel. How glorious is such a pure feeling, when it rises to the
+    very highest without overflowing. My eye and my soul were both able
+    to take in the objects before me, and as I was preoccupied by
+    nothing, and had no false tastes to counteract their impression,
+    they had on me their full and natural <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg316" id="pg316">316</a></span>effect. When we
+    compare such a feeling with that we are sensible of, when we
+    laboriously harass ourselves with some trifle, and strain every
+    nerve to gain as much as possible for it, and, as it were, to patch
+    it out, striving to furnish joy and aliment to the mind from its
+    own creation; we then feel sensibly what a poor expedient, after
+    all, the latter is....</p>
+
+    <p>When we see such objects as these for the first time, the
+    unaccustomed soul has to expand itself, and this gives rise to a
+    sort of painful joy, an overflowing of emotion which agitates the
+    mind and draws from us the most delicious tears.... If only destiny
+    had bidden me to dwell in the midst of some grand scenery, then
+    would I every morning have imbibed greatness from its grandeur, as
+    from a lonely valley I would extract patience and repose.</p>
+
+    <p>One guesses in the dark about the origin and existence of these
+    singular forms.... These masses must have been formed grandly and
+    simply by aggregation. Whatever revolutions may subsequently have
+    up-heaved, rent, and divided them ... the idea of such nightly
+    commotions gives one a deep feeling of the eternal stability of the
+    masses.... One feels deeply convinced that here there is nothing
+    accidental, that here there is working an eternal law which,
+    however slowly, yet surely governs the universe.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>By the Lake of Geneva, where he thought of Rousseau, he went up
+  the Dole:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The whole of the Pays de Vaux and de Gex lay like a plan before
+    us ... we kept watching the mist, which gradually retired ... one
+    by one we distinctly saw Lausanne ... Vevey.... There are no words
+    to express the beauty and grandeur of this view ... the line of
+    glittering glaciers was continually drawing the eye back again to
+    the mountains.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>From Cluse he wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The air was as warm as it usually is at the beginning of
+    September, and the country we travelled through beautiful. Many of
+    the trees still green; most of them had assumed a brownish-yellow
+    tint, but only a few were quite bare. The crops were rich and
+    verdant, the mountains caught from the red sunset a rosy hue
+    blended with violet, and all these rich tints were combined with
+    grand, beautiful, and agreeable forms of the landscape.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg317" id="pg317">317</a></span> At
+  Chamouni, about effects of light:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Here too again it seemed to us as if the sun had first of all
+    attracted the light mists which evaporated from the tops of the
+    glaciers, and then a gentle breeze had, as it were, combed the fine
+    vapours like a fleece of foam over the atmosphere. I never remember
+    at home, even in the height of summer, to have seen any so
+    transparent, for here it was a perfect web of light.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>At the Col de Baume:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Whilst I am writing, a remarkable phenomenon is passing along
+    the sky. The mists, which are shifting about and breaking in some
+    places, allow you through their openings, as through skylights, to
+    catch a glimpse of the blue sky, while at the same time the
+    mountain peaks, rising above our roofs of vapour, are illuminated
+    by the sun's rays....</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>At Leukertad, at the foot of the Gemmi, he wrote (Nov. 9th):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The clouds which gather here in this valley, at one time
+    completely hiding the immense rocks and absorbing them in a waste
+    impenetrable gloom, or at another letting a part of them be seen
+    like huge spectres, give to the people a cast of melancholy. In the
+    midst of such natural phenomena, the people are full of
+    presentiments and forebodings ... and the eternal and intrinsic
+    energy of his (man's) nature feels itself at every nerve moved to
+    forebode and to indulge in presentiments.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>On the way across the Rhine glacier to the Furka, he felt the
+  half-suggestive, half-distressing sense of mountain loneliness:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It was a strange sight ... in the most desolate region of the
+    world, in a boundless monotonous wilderness of mountains enveloped
+    in snow, where for three leagues before and behind you would not
+    expect to meet a living soul, while on both sides you had the deep
+    hollows of a web of mountains, you might see a line of men wending
+    their way, treading each in the deep footsteps of the one before
+    him, and where, in the whole of the wide expanse thus smoothed
+    over, the eye could discern nothing but the track they left behind
+    them. The hollows, as we left them, lay behind us grey and
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg318" id=
+    "pg318">318</a></span>boundless in the mist. The changing clouds
+    continually passed over the pale disc of the sun, and spread over
+    the whole scene a perpetually moving veil.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He sums up the impressions made on him with:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The perception of such a long chain of Nature's wonders, excites
+    within me a secret and inexpressible feeling of enjoyment.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The most profound change in his mental life was brought about by
+  his visit to Italy, 1786-87. The poetic expression of this refining
+  process, this striving towards the classic ideal, towards Sophrosyne,
+  was <i>Iphigenia</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Its effect upon his feeling for Nature appeared in a more
+  matter-of-fact tone; the man of feeling gave way to the scientific
+  observer.</p>
+
+  <p>He had, as he said (Oct. 30th, 1887), lately 'acquired the habit
+  of looking only at things, and not, as formerly, seeing with and in
+  the things what actually was not there.'</p>
+
+  <p>He no longer imputed his feelings to Nature, and studied her
+  influence on himself, but looked at her with impersonal interest.
+  Weather, cloud, mountain formation, the species of stone, landscape,
+  and social themes, were all treated almost systematically as so much
+  diary memoranda for future use. There was no artistic treatment in
+  such jottings; meteorology, botany, and geology weighed too
+  heavily.</p>
+
+  <p>The question, 'Is a place beautiful?' paled beside 'Is its soil
+  clay?' 'Are its rocks quartz, chalk, or mica schist?' The problem of
+  the archetypal plant was more absorbing than the finest groups of
+  trees. The years of practical life at Weimar, and, above all, the
+  ever-growing interest in science, were the chief factors in this
+  change, which led him, as he said in his <i>Treatise on
+  Granite</i>,</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>from observation and description of the human heart, that part
+    of creation which is the most youthful, varied, unstable, and
+    destructible, to observation of that Son of Nature, which is the
+    oldest, deepest, most stable, most indestructible.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg319" id="pg319">319</a></span>
+  The enthusiastic subjective realism of stormy youth was replaced by
+  the measured objective realism of ripe manhood. Hence the difference
+  between his letters from Switzerland and those from Italy, where this
+  inner metamorphosis was completed; as he said, 'Between Weimar and
+  Palermo I have had many changes.'</p>
+
+  <p>For all that, he revelled in the beauty of Italy. As he once
+  said:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>It is natural to me to revere the great and beautiful willingly
+    and with pleasure; and to develop this predisposition day by day
+    and hour by hour by means of such glorious objects, is the most
+    delightful feeling.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The sea made a great impression upon him:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I set out for the Lido...landed, and walked straight across the
+    isthmus. I heard a loud hollow murmur--it was the sea! I soon saw
+    it; it crested high against the shore as it retired, it was about
+    noon and time of ebb. I have then at last seen the sea with my own
+    eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it quitted
+    it.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>But further on he only remarks: 'The sea is a great sight.'
+  Elsewhere, too, it is only noticed very shortly.</p>
+
+  <p>Rome stimulated his mind to increased productiveness, and, partly
+  for this reason, he could not assimilate all the new impressions
+  which poured in upon him from without, from ruins, paintings,
+  churches, palaces, the life of the people. He drew a great deal too;
+  from Frascati he wrote (Nov. 15th, 1786):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The country around is very pleasant; the village lies on the
+    side of a hill, or rather of a mountain, and at every step the
+    draughtsman comes upon the most glorious objects. The prospect is
+    unbounded. Rome lies before you, and beyond it on the right is the
+    sea, the mountains of Tivoli, and so on.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In Rome itself (Feb. 2nd, 1787):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight it is
+    impossible to form a conception without having witnessed it.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg320" id="pg320">320</a></span>
+  During Carnival (Feb. 21st):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The sky, so infinitely fine and clear, looked down nobly and
+    innocently upon the mummeries.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In the voyage to Sicily:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>At noon we went on board; the weather being extremely fine, we
+    enjoyed the most glorious of views. The corvette lay at anchor near
+    to the Mole. With an unclouded sun the atmosphere was hazy, giving
+    to the rocky walls of Sorrento, which were in the shade, a tint of
+    most beautiful blue. Naples with its living multitudes lay in full
+    sunshine, and glittered brilliantly with countless tints.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>and on April 1st:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>With a cloudy sky, a bright but broken moonlight, the reflection
+    on the sea was infinitely beautiful.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>At first, Italy, and especially Rome, felt strange to him, in
+  scenery, sky, contour, and colour. It was only by degrees that he
+  felt at home there.</p>
+
+  <p>He refers to this during his second visit to Rome in a notable
+  remark, which aptly expresses the faculty of apperception--the link
+  between us and the unfamiliar, which enables mental growth.</p>
+
+  <p>June 16th, 1787:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>One remark more! Now for the first time do the trees, the rocks,
+    nay, Rome itself, grow dear to me; hitherto I have always felt them
+    as foreign, though, on the other hand, I took pleasure in minor
+    subjects having some resemblance to those I saw in youth.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>On August 18th, 1787, he wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Yesterday before sunrise I drove to Acqua Acetosa. Verily, one
+    might well lose his senses in contemplating the clearness, the
+    manifoldness, the dewy transparency, the heavenly hue of the
+    landscape, especially in the distance.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In October, when he heard of the engagement of a beautiful
+  Milanese lady with whom he had fallen in love:</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg321" id=
+  "pg321">321</a></span></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I again turned me instantly to Nature, as a subject for
+    landscapes, a field I had been meanwhile neglecting, and
+    endeavoured to copy her in this respect with the utmost fidelity. I
+    was, however, more successful in mastering her with my eyes.... All
+    the sensual fulness which that region offers us in rocks and trees,
+    in acclivities and declivities, in peaceful lakes and lively
+    streams, all this was grasped by my eye more appreciatively, if
+    possible, than ever before, and I could hardly resent the wound
+    which had to such degree sharpened my inward and outward sense.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>On leaving Rome, he wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Three nights before, the full moon shone in the clearest heaven,
+    and the enchantment shed over the vast town, though often felt
+    before, was never felt so keenly as now. The great masses of light,
+    clear as in mild daylight, the contrast of deep shades,
+    occasionally relieved by reflexions dimly portraying details, all
+    this transported us as if into another, a simpler and a greater,
+    world.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The later diaries on his travels are sketchy throughout, and more
+  laconic and objective: for example, at Schaffhausen (Sept. 18th):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Went out early, 7.30, to see the Falls of the Rhine; colour of
+    water, green--causes of this, the heights covered by mist--the
+    depths clear, and we saw the castle of Laufen half in mist; thought
+    of Ossian. Love mist when moved by deep feeling.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>At Brunnen:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Green of the lake, steep banks, small size of boatman in
+    comparison to the enormous masses of rock. One saw precipices grown
+    over by trees, summits covered by clouds. Sunshine over the scene,
+    one felt the formless greatness of Nature.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He was conscious of the great change in himself since his last
+  visit there, and wrote to Schiller (Oct. 14th, 1797):</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I remember the effect these things had upon me twenty years ago.
+    The total impression remained with me, but the details faded, and I
+    had a wonderful longing to repeat the whole experience and correct
+    my impressions. I had become another man, and therefore it must
+    needs appear different to me.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg322" id="pg322">322</a></span> In
+  later years he travelled a great deal in the Harz Mountains, to
+  Carlsbad, Toplitz, the Maine, Marienbad, etc. After the death of his
+  great friends, Schiller and Carl August, he was more and more lonely,
+  and his whole outlook, with increasing years, grew more impersonal,
+  his attitude to Nature more abstract and scientific; the archetypal
+  plant was superseded by the theory of colours. But he kept fresh eyes
+  for natural beauty into ripe age; witness this letter from
+  Heidelberg, May 4th, 1808, to Frau von Stein:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Yesterday evening, after finishing my work, I went alone to the
+    castle, and first scrambled about among the ruins, and then betook
+    myself to the great balcony from which one can overlook the whole
+    country. It was one of the loveliest of May evenings and of
+    sunsets. No! I have really never seen such a fine view! Just
+    imagine! One looked into the beautiful though narrow Neckar valley,
+    covered on both sides with woods and vineyards and fruit trees just
+    coming into flower. Further off the valley widened, and one saw the
+    setting sun reflected in the Rhine as it flowed majestically
+    through most beautiful country. On its further side the horizon was
+    bounded by the Vosges mountains, lit up by the sun as if by a fire.
+    The whole country was covered with fresh green, and close to me
+    were the enormous ruins of the old castle, half in light and half
+    in shade. You can easily fancy how it fascinated me. I stood lost
+    in the view quite half an hour, till the rising moon woke me from
+    my dreams.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Goethe's true lyrical period was in the seventies, before his
+  Italian journeys; during and after that time he wrote more dramatic
+  and epic poetry, with ballads and the more narrative kind of epic. In
+  sending <i>Der Jüngling und der Mühlbach</i> to Schiller from
+  Switzerland in 1797, he wrote: 'I have discovered splendid material
+  for idylls and elegies, and whatever that sort of poetry is
+  called.'</p>
+
+  <p>Nature lyrics were few during his Italian travels, as in the
+  journey to Sicily, 1787; among them were <i>Calm at Sea</i>:
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg323" id="pg323">323</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Silence deep rules o'er the waters,</p>
+
+    <p>Calmly slumbering lies the main.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and <i>Prosperous Voyage</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The mist is fast clearing,</p>
+
+    <p>And radiant is heaven,</p>
+
+    <p>Whilst Æolus loosens</p>
+
+    <p>Our anguish-fraught bond.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The most perfect of all such short poems was the <i>Evening
+  Song</i>, written one September night of 1783 on the Gickelhahn, near
+  Ilmenau. He was writing at the same time to Frau von Stein: 'The sky
+  is perfectly clear, and I am going out to enjoy the sunset. The view
+  is great and simple--the sun down.'</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <div class="poem">
+      <p>Every tree top is at peace.</p>
+
+      <p>E'en the rustling woods do cease</p>
+
+      <p>Every sound;</p>
+
+      <p>The small birds sleep on every bough.</p>
+
+      <p>Wait but a moment--soon wilt thou</p>
+
+      <p>Sleep in peace.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>The hush of evening, the stilling of desire in the silence of
+    the wood, the beautiful resolution of all discords in Nature's
+    perfect concord, the naive and splendid pantheism of a soul which
+    feels itself at one with the world--all this is not expressed in so
+    many words in the <i>Night Song</i>; but it is all there, like the
+    united voicesin a great symphony. (SCHURÉ.)</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The lines are full of that pantheism which not only brings subject
+  and object, Mind and Nature, into symbolic relationship, but works
+  them into one tissue. Taken alone with <i>The Fisher</i> and <i>To
+  the Moon</i>, it would suffice to give him the first place as a poet
+  of Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>He was not only the greatest poet, but the greatest and most
+  universal thinker of modern times. With him feeling and knowledge
+  worked together, the one reaching its climax in the lyrics of his
+  younger days, the other gradually moderating the fervour of passion,
+  and, with the more objective outlook of age, laying greater stress
+  upon science. His feeling <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg324" id=
+  "pg324">324</a></span>for Nature, which followed an unbroken course,
+  like his mental development generally, stands alone as a type of
+  perfectly modern feeling, and yet no one, despite the many
+  intervening centuries, stood so near both to Homer and to
+  Shakespeare, and in philosophy to Spinoza.</p>
+
+  <p>But because with Goethe poetry and philosophy were one, his
+  pantheism is full of life and poetic vision, whilst that of the wise
+  man of Amsterdam is severely mathematical and abstract. And the
+  postulate of this pantheism was sympathy, harmony between Nature and
+  the inner life. He felt himself a part of the power which upholds and
+  encompasses the world. Nature became his God, love of her his
+  religion. In his youth, in the period of <i>Werther, Ganymede</i>,
+  and the first part of <i>Faust</i>, this pantheism was a nameless,
+  unquenchable aspiration towards the divine--for wings to reach, like
+  the rays of light, to unmeasured heights; as he said in the Swiss
+  mountains, 'Into the limitless spaces of the air, to soar over
+  abysses, and let him down upon inaccessible rocks.'</p>
+
+  <p>After the Italian journeys science took the lead, the student of
+  Nature supplanted the lover, even his symbolism took a more abstract
+  and realistic form. But he never, even in old age, lost his love for
+  the beauties of Nature, and, holding to Spinoza's fundamental ideas
+  of the unchangeableness and eternity of Nature's laws, and the
+  oneness of the Cosmos, he sought to think it out and base it upon
+  scientific grounds, through the unbroken succession of animal and
+  vegetable forms of life, the uniform 'formation and transformation of
+  all organic Nature.' He wrote to Frau von Stein: 'I cannot express to
+  you how legible the book of Nature is growing to me; my long spelling
+  out has helped me. It takes effect now all of a sudden; my quiet
+  delight is inexpressible; I find much that is new, but nothing that
+  is unexpected--everything fits in and <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg325" id="pg325">325</a></span>conforms, because I have no system,
+  and care for nothing but truth for its own sake. Soon everything
+  about living things will be clear to me.'<a href=
+  "#m13"><sup>[13]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Poetic and scientific intuition were simultaneous with him, and
+  their common bond was pantheism. This pantheism marked an epoch in
+  the history of feeling. For Goethe not only transformed the unreal
+  feeling of his day into real, described scenery, and inspired it with
+  human feeling, and deciphered the beauty of the Alps, as no one else
+  had done, Rousseau not excepted; but he also brought knowledge of
+  Nature into harmony with feeling for her, and with his wonderfully
+  receptive and constructive mind so studied the earlier centuries,
+  that he gathered out all that was valuable in their feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>As Goethe in Germany, so Byron in England led the feeling for
+  Nature into new paths by his demoniac genius and glowing pantheism.
+  Milton's great imagination was too puritan, too biblical, to allow
+  her independent importance; he only assigned her a <i>rôle</i> in
+  relation to the Deity. In fiction, too, she had no place; but, on the
+  other hand, we find her in such melancholy, sentimental outpourings
+  as Young's <i>Night Thoughts</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Night, sable Goddess! from her ebon throne</p>
+
+    <p>In rayless majesty now stretches forth</p>
+
+    <p>Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world...</p>
+
+    <p>Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse</p>
+
+    <p>Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;</p>
+
+    <p>An awful pause, prophetic of her end...etc.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is a wealth of imagery and comparison amid Ossian's
+  melancholy and mourning; clouds and mist are the very shadows of his
+  struggling heroes. For instance:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>His spear is a blasted pine, his shield the rising moon. He sat
+    on the shore like a cloud of mist on the rising hill.</p>
+
+    <p>Thou art snow on the heath; thy hair is the mist of Cromla, when
+    it curls on the hill, when it shines to <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg326" id="pg326">326</a></span>the beam of the
+    west. Thy breasts are two smooth rocks seen from Branno of
+    streams.</p>
+
+    <p>As the troubled noise of the ocean when roll the waves on high;
+    as the last peal of the thunder of heaven, such is the noise of
+    battle.</p>
+
+    <p>As autumn's dark storms pour from two echoing hills, towards
+    each other approached the heroes.</p>
+
+    <p>The clouds of night came rolling down, Darkness rests on the
+    steeps of Cromla. The stars of the north arise over the rolling of
+    Erin's waves; they shew their heads of fire through the flying mist
+    of heaven. A distant wind roars in the wood. Silent and dark is the
+    plain of death.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Wordsworth's influence turned in another direction. His real taste
+  was pastoral, and he preached freer intercourse with Nature, glossing
+  his ideas rather artificially with a theism, through which one reads
+  true love of her, and an undeniable, though hidden, pantheism.</p>
+
+  <p>In <i>The Influence of Natural Objects</i> he described how a life
+  spent with Nature had early purified him from passion:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me</p>
+
+    <p>With stinted kindness. In November days,</p>
+
+    <p>When vapours, rolling down the valleys, made</p>
+
+    <p>A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods</p>
+
+    <p>At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights,</p>
+
+    <p>When by the margin of the trembling lake</p>
+
+    <p>Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went</p>
+
+    <p>In solitude, such intercourse was mine.</p>
+
+    <p>'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,</p>
+
+    <p>And by the waters all the summer long,</p>
+
+    <p>And in the frosty season, when the sun</p>
+
+    <p>Was set, and visible for many a mile,</p>
+
+    <p>The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,</p>
+
+    <p>I heeded not the summons....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Like Klopstock, he delighted in sledging</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">while the stars</p>
+
+    <p>Eastward were sparkling bright, and in the west</p>
+
+    <p>The orange sky of evening died away.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Far more characteristic of the man is the confession in <i>Tintern
+  Abbey</i>: <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg327" id=
+  "pg327">327</a></span></p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Nature then</p>
+
+    <p>(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days</p>
+
+    <p>And their glad animal movements all gone by)</p>
+
+    <p>To me was all in all. I cannot paint</p>
+
+    <p>What then I was. The sounding cataract</p>
+
+    <p>Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,</p>
+
+    <p>The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,</p>
+
+    <p>The colours and their forms, were then to me</p>
+
+    <p>An appetite, a feeling and a love</p>
+
+    <p>That had no need of a remoter charm</p>
+
+    <p>By thought supplied, or any interest</p>
+
+    <p>Unborrow'd from the eye.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Beautiful notes, to be struck again more forcibly by the frank
+  pantheism of Byron.</p>
+
+  <p>What Scott had been doing for Scotland,<a href=
+  "#m14"><sup>[14]</sup></a> and Moore for Ireland, Wordsworth, with
+  still greater fidelity to truth, tried to do for England and her
+  people; in contrast to Byron and Shelley, who forsook home to range
+  more widely, or Southey, whose <i>Thalaba</i> begins with an imposing
+  description of night in the desert:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">How beautiful is night!</p>
+
+    <p>A dewy freshness fills the silent air,</p>
+
+    <p>No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain</p>
+
+    <p>Breaks the serene of heaven;</p>
+
+    <p>In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine</p>
+
+    <p>Rolls through the dark blue depths.</p>
+
+    <p>Beneath her steady ray</p>
+
+    <p>The desert-circle spreads</p>
+
+    <p>Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.</p>
+
+    <p>How beautiful is night!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But all that previous English poets had done seemed harmless and
+  innocent in comparison with Byron's revolutionary poetry. Prophecy in
+  Rousseau became poetry in Byron.</p>
+
+  <p>There was much common ground between these two passionate aspiring
+  spirits, who never attained to Goethe's serenity. Both were
+  melancholy, and fled from their fellows; both strove for perfect
+  liberty and unlimited self-assertion; both felt with the wild and
+  uproarious side of Nature, and found idyllic scenes marred by
+  thoughts of mankind.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg328" id="pg328">328</a></span>
+  Byron's turbulence never subsided; and his love for Nature,
+  passionate and comprehensive as it was, was always 'sickled o'er'
+  with misanthropy and pessimism, with the 'world-pain.'</p>
+
+  <p>He turned to her first through disdain of his kind and love of
+  introspection, and later on, when he was spurned by the London world
+  which had been at his feet, and disdain grew into hatred and disgust,
+  from a wish to be alone. But, as Boettger says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Though this heart, in which the whole universe is reflected, is
+    a sick one, it has immeasurable depths, and an intensified spirit
+    life which draws everything under its sway and inspires it, feeling
+    and observing everything only as part of itself.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The basis of Byron's feeling for Nature was a revolutionary
+  one--elementary passion. The genius which threw off stanza after
+  stanza steeped in melody, was coupled with an unprecedented
+  subjectivity and individualism. When the first part of <i>Childe
+  Harold</i> came out, dull London society was bewitched by the music
+  and novelty of this enthusiastic lyric of Nature, with its
+  incomparable interweaving of scenery and feeling:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew,</p>
+
+    <p>As glad to waft him from his native home....</p>
+
+    <p>But when the sun was sinking in the sea,</p>
+
+    <p>He seized his harp...</p>
+
+    <p>Adieu, adieu! my native shore</p>
+
+    <p>Fades o'er the waters blue;</p>
+
+    <p>The night winds sigh, the breakers roar,</p>
+
+    <p>And shrieks the wild sea-mew;</p>
+
+    <p>Yon sun that sets upon the sea</p>
+
+    <p>We follow in his flight;</p>
+
+    <p>Farewell awhile to him and thee,</p>
+
+    <p>My native land, good-night!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He says of the beauty of Lusitania:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Oh Christ! it is a goodly sight to see</p>
+
+    <p>What Heaven hath done for this delicious land.</p>
+
+    <p>What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!</p>
+
+    <p>What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!...</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg329" id=
+    "pg329">329</a></span>The horrid crags, by toppling convent
+    crown'd,</p>
+
+    <p>The cork trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,</p>
+
+    <p>The mountain moss, by scorching skies imbrown'd,</p>
+
+    <p>The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep.</p>
+
+    <p>The tender azure of the unruffled deep,</p>
+
+    <p>The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,</p>
+
+    <p>The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,</p>
+
+    <p>The vine on high, the willow branch below,</p>
+
+    <p>Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Yet his spirit drives him away, 'more restless than the swallow in
+  the skies.'</p>
+
+  <p>The charm of the idyllic is in the lines:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>But these between, a silver streamlet glides....</p>
+
+    <p>Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook,</p>
+
+    <p>And vacant on the rippling waves doth look,</p>
+
+    <p>That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The beauty of the sea and night in this:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve!</p>
+
+      <p>Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand....</p>
+
+      <p>How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,</p>
+
+      <p>Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown</p>
+
+      <p>Distinct....</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Bending o'er the vessel's laving side</p>
+
+      <p>To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He reflects that:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,</p>
+
+    <p>To slowly trace the forest's shady scene....</p>
+
+    <p>To climb the trackless mountain all unseen</p>
+
+    <p>With the wild flock that never needs a fold,</p>
+
+    <p>Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean,--</p>
+
+    <p>This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold</p>
+
+    <p>Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.</p>
+
+    <p>But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,</p>
+
+    <p>To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,</p>
+
+    <p>And roam along, the world's tired denizen,</p>
+
+    <p>With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ...</p>
+
+    <p>This is to be alone--this, this is solitude.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His preference for wild scenery shews here:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,</p>
+
+    <p>Though always changing, in her aspect mild;</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg330" id=
+    "pg330">330</a></span>From her bare bosom let me take my fill,</p>
+
+    <p>Her never-wean'd, though not her favour'd child.</p>
+
+    <p>O she is fairest in her features wild,</p>
+
+    <p>Where nothing polish'd dares pollute her path;</p>
+
+    <p>To me by day or night she ever smiled,</p>
+
+    <p>Though I have mark'd her when none other hath,</p>
+
+    <p>And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He observes everything--now 'the billows' melancholy flow' under
+  the bows of the ship, now the whole scene at Zitza:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Where'er we gaze, around, above, below,</p>
+
+    <p>What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found!</p>
+
+    <p>Rock, river, forest, mountain, all abound,</p>
+
+    <p>And bluest skies that harmonize the whole;</p>
+
+    <p>Beneath, the distant torrent's rushing sound</p>
+
+    <p>Tells where the volumed cataract doth roll</p>
+
+    <p>Between those hanging rocks, that shock yet please the soul.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This is full of poetic vision:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove,</p>
+
+    <p>And weary waves retire to gleam at rest,</p>
+
+    <p>How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove,</p>
+
+    <p>Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast,</p>
+
+    <p>As winds come lightly whispering from the west,</p>
+
+    <p>Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene;--</p>
+
+    <p>Here Harold was received a welcome guest;</p>
+
+    <p>Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene,</p>
+
+    <p>For many a job could he from Night's soft presence glean.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Feeling himself 'the most unfit of men to herd with man,' he is
+  happy only with Nature:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Once more upon the waters! yet once more!</p>
+
+      <p>And the waves bound beneath me as a steed</p>
+
+      <p>That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!</p>
+
+      <p>Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;</p>
+
+      <p>Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;</p>
+
+      <p>Where a blue sky and glowing clime extends,</p>
+
+      <p>He had the passion and the power to roam;</p>
+
+      <p>The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg331" id=
+      "pg331">331</a></span>Were unto him companionship; they spake</p>
+
+      <p>A mutual language, clearer than the tome</p>
+
+      <p>Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake</p>
+
+      <p>For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Again:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>I live not in myself, but I become</p>
+
+      <p>Portion of that around me, and to me</p>
+
+      <p>High mountains are a feeling, but the hum</p>
+
+      <p>Of human cities torture; I can see</p>
+
+      <p>Nothing to loathe in Nature save to be</p>
+
+      <p>A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,</p>
+
+      <p>Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee,</p>
+
+      <p>And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain</p>
+
+      <p>Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part</p>
+
+      <p>Of me and of my soul, as I of them?</p>
+
+      <p>Is not the love of these deep in my heart</p>
+
+      <p>With a pure passion? Should I not contemn</p>
+
+      <p>All objects, if compared with these?</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Love of Nature was a passion with him, and when he looked</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Upon the peopled desert past</p>
+
+    <p>As on a place of agony and strife,</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>mountains gave him a sense of freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>He praised the Rhine:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,</p>
+
+    <p>Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,</p>
+
+    <p>Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and far more the Alps:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Above me are the Alps,</p>
+
+    <p>The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls</p>
+
+    <p>Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,</p>
+
+    <p>And throned eternity in icy halls</p>
+
+    <p>Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls</p>
+
+    <p>The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow!</p>
+
+    <p>All that expands the spirit, yet appals,</p>
+
+    <p>Gather around these summits, as to shew</p>
+
+    <p>How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg332" id="pg332">332</a></span>
+
+  <p>On the Lake of Geneva:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven...</p>
+
+      <p>All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,</p>
+
+      <p>But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;</p>
+
+      <p>And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep.</p>
+
+      <p>All heaven and earth are still: from the high host</p>
+
+      <p>Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast,</p>
+
+      <p>All is concenter'd in a life intense,</p>
+
+      <p>Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,</p>
+
+      <p>But hath a part of being, and a sense</p>
+
+      <p>Of that which is of all Creator and defence.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>And this is in the night. Most glorious night,</p>
+
+      <p>Thou wert not sent for slumber; let me be</p>
+
+      <p>A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,</p>
+
+      <p>A portion of the tempest and of thee!</p>
+
+      <p>How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,</p>
+
+      <p>And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!</p>
+
+      <p>And now again 'tis black--and now, the glee</p>
+
+      <p>Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth,</p>
+
+      <p>As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.</p>
+
+      <p>But where of ye, oh tempests, is the goal?</p>
+
+      <p>Are ye like those within the human breast?</p>
+
+      <p>Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The morn is up again, the dewy morn</p>
+
+      <p>With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,</p>
+
+      <p>Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,</p>
+
+      <p>And living as if earth contained no tomb.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In Clarens:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Clarens! sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love,</p>
+
+    <p>Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought,</p>
+
+    <p>Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above</p>
+
+    <p>The very glaciers have his colours caught,</p>
+
+    <p>And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought</p>
+
+    <p>By rays which sleep there lovingly; the rocks,</p>
+
+    <p>The permanent crags, tell here of Love.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Yet</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Ever and anon of griefs subdued</p>
+
+    <p>There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,</p>
+
+    <p>Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;</p>
+
+    <p>And slight withal may be the things which bring</p>
+
+    <p>Back on the heart the weight which it would fling</p>
+
+    <p>Aside for ever; it may be a sound,</p>
+
+    <p>A tone of music, summer's eve or spring,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg333" id="pg333">333</a></span>A
+    flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall wound,</p>
+
+    <p>Striking the electric chain with which we are darkly bound.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The unrest and torment of his own heart he finds reflected in
+  Nature:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The roar of waters! from the headlong height</p>
+
+    <p>Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;</p>
+
+    <p>The fall of waters! rapid as the light</p>
+
+    <p>The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss;</p>
+
+    <p>The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,</p>
+
+    <p>And boil in endless torture; while the sweat</p>
+
+    <p>Of their great agony, wrung out from this</p>
+
+    <p>Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet</p>
+
+    <p>That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,</p>
+
+    <p>And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again</p>
+
+    <p>Returns in an unceasing shower, which round</p>
+
+    <p>With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain</p>
+
+    <p>Is an eternal April to the ground,</p>
+
+    <p>Making it all one emerald; how profound</p>
+
+    <p>The gulf, and how the giant element</p>
+
+    <p>From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,</p>
+
+    <p>Crushing the cliffs, which downward, worn and rent</p>
+
+    <p>With his fierce footsteps, yields in chasms a fearful
+    rent....</p>
+
+    <p>Horribly beautiful! but, on the verge</p>
+
+    <p>From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,</p>
+
+    <p>An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge,</p>
+
+    <p>Like Hope upon a deathbed.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The 'enormous skeleton' of Rome impresses him most by
+  moonlight:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>When the rising moon begins to climb</p>
+
+    <p>Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;</p>
+
+    <p>When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,</p>
+
+    <p>And the low night breeze waves along the air!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Underlying all his varying moods is this note:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,</p>
+
+    <p>There is a rapture on the lonely shore,</p>
+
+    <p>There is society, where none intrudes,</p>
+
+    <p>By the deep sea, and music in its roar:</p>
+
+    <p>I love not man the less, but Nature more,</p>
+
+    <p>From these our interviews, in which I steal</p>
+
+    <p>From all I may be, or have been before,</p>
+
+    <p>To mingle with the Universe and feel</p>
+
+    <p>What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg334" id="pg334">334</a></span>
+
+  <p>The sea, the sky with its stars and clouds, and the mountains, are
+  his passion:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!</p>
+
+      <p>Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;</p>
+
+      <p>Man marks the earth with ruin--his control</p>
+
+      <p>Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain</p>
+
+      <p>The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain</p>
+
+      <p>A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,</p>
+
+      <p>When, for a moment, like a drop of rain</p>
+
+      <p>He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,</p>
+
+      <p>Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Childe Harold</i>.)</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The day at last has broken. What a night</p>
+
+      <p>Hath usher'd it! How beautiful in heaven!</p>
+
+      <p>Though varied with a transitory storm,</p>
+
+      <p>More beautiful in that variety!...</p>
+
+      <p class="i8">And can the sun so rise,</p>
+
+      <p>So bright, so rolling back the clouds into</p>
+
+      <p>Vapours more lovely than the unclouded sky,</p>
+
+      <p>With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,</p>
+
+      <p>And billows purpler than the ocean's, making</p>
+
+      <p>In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth.</p>
+
+      <p class="i14">(<i>Sardanapalus.)</i></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He had loved the Scotch Highlands in youth:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Amidst Nature's native scenes,</p>
+
+    <p>Loved to the last, whatever intervenes</p>
+
+    <p>Between us and our childhood's sympathy</p>
+
+    <p>Which still reverts to what first caught the eye.</p>
+
+    <p>He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue</p>
+
+    <p>Will love each peak that shews a kindred hue,</p>
+
+    <p>Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,</p>
+
+    <p>And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(<i>The Island</i>.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and in <i>The Island</i> he says:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>How often we forget all time, when lone,</p>
+
+    <p>Admiring Nature's universal throne,</p>
+
+    <p>Her woods, her wilds, her waters, the intense</p>
+
+    <p>Reply of hers to our intelligence!</p>
+
+    <p>Live not the stars and mountains? Are the waves</p>
+
+    <p>Without a spirit? Are the dropping cares</p>
+
+    <p>Without a feeling in their silent tears?</p>
+
+    <p>No, no; they woo and clasp us to their spheres,</p>
+
+    <p>Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before</p>
+
+    <p>Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.</p>
+
+    <p class="i14">(<i>The Island</i>.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg335" id="pg335">335</a></span>
+  Byron's feeling was thus, like Goethe's in <i>Werther</i> and
+  <i>Faust</i>, a pantheistic sympathy. But there was this great
+  difference between them--Goethe's mind passed through its period of
+  storm and stress, and attained a serene and ripe vision; Byron's
+  never did. Melancholy and misanthropy always mingled with his
+  feelings; he was, in fact, the father of our modern 'world-pain.'</p>
+
+  <p>Still more like a brilliant meteor that flashes and is gone was
+  Shelley, the most highly strung of all modern lyrists. With him, too,
+  love of Nature amounted to a passion; but it was with her remote
+  aerial forms that he was most at home. His imagination, a cosmic one,
+  revelling among the spheres, was like Byron's in its preference for
+  the great, wide, and distant; but unlike his in giving first place to
+  the serene and passionless. As Brandes says: 'In this familiarity
+  with the great forms and movements of Nature, Shelley is like Byron;
+  but like him as a fair genius is like a dark one, as Ariel is like
+  the flame-bringing angel of the morning star.'</p>
+
+  <p>We see his love for the sea, especially at rest, in the 'Stanzas
+  written in dejection near Naples,' which contain the beautiful line
+  which proved so prophetic of his death:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The sun is warm, the sky is clear,</p>
+
+    <p>The waves are dancing fast and bright;</p>
+
+    <p>Blue isles and snowy mountains wear</p>
+
+    <p>The purple noon's transparent might....</p>
+
+    <p>I see the deep's untrampled floor</p>
+
+    <p>With green and purple sea-weeds strewn;</p>
+
+    <p>I see the waves upon the shore</p>
+
+    <p>Like light dissolved, in star showers thrown....</p>
+
+    <p>Yet now despair itself is mild,</p>
+
+    <p>Even as the winds and waters are;</p>
+
+    <p>I could lie down like a tired child</p>
+
+    <p>And weep away the life of care</p>
+
+    <p>Which I have borne, and yet must bear,--</p>
+
+    <p>Till death like sleep might steal on me,</p>
+
+    <p>And I might feel in the warm air</p>
+
+    <p>My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea</p>
+
+    <p>Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg336" id="pg336">336</a></span> In
+  his <i>Essay on Love</i>, speaking of the irresistible longing for
+  sympathy, he says:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>In solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by
+    human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the
+    flowers, the grass, and the water and the sky. In the motion of the
+    very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a
+    secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the
+    tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the
+    rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable
+    relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a
+    dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious
+    tenderness to the eyes, like the voice of one beloved singing to
+    you alone.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>As Brandes says: 'His pulses beat in secret sympathy with
+  Nature's. He called plants and animals his dear sisters and brothers,
+  and the words which his wife inscribed upon his tombstone in Rome,
+  "cor cordium," are true of his relation to Nature also.'</p>
+
+  <p><i>The Cloud</i>, with its marvellously vivid personification, is
+  a perfect example of his genius.</p>
+
+  <p>It gives the measure of his unlikeness to the more homekeeping
+  imaginations of his contemporaries Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, and
+  Moore; and at the same time to Byron, for here there are no morbid
+  reflections; the poem is pervaded by a naive, childlike tone, such as
+  one hears in the old mythologies.</p>
+
+  <p><i>The Cloud</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers</p>
+
+    <p>From the seas and the streams;</p>
+
+    <p>I bear light shade for the leaves when laid</p>
+
+    <p>In their noonday dreams.</p>
+
+    <p>From my wings are shaken the dews that waken</p>
+
+    <p>The sweet buds every one,</p>
+
+    <p>When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast</p>
+
+    <p>As she dances about the sun.</p>
+
+    <p>I wield the flail of the lashing hail,</p>
+
+    <p>And whiten the green plains under;</p>
+
+    <p>And then again I dissolve it in rain,</p>
+
+    <p>And laugh as I pass in thunder.<span class="pagenum"><a name=
+    "pg337" id="pg337">337</a></span></p>
+
+    <p>I sift the snow on the mountains below,</p>
+
+    <p>And their great pines groan aghast,</p>
+
+    <p>And all the night 'tis my pillow white</p>
+
+    <p>While I sleep in the arms of the Blast....</p>
+
+    <p>From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,</p>
+
+    <p>Over a torrent sea,</p>
+
+    <p>Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,</p>
+
+    <p>The mountains its columns be.</p>
+
+    <p>The triumphal arch through which I march,</p>
+
+    <p>With hurricane, fire, and snow,</p>
+
+    <p>When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,</p>
+
+    <p>Is the million-coloured bow;</p>
+
+    <p>The Sphere-fire above its soft colours wove</p>
+
+    <p>While the moist earth was laughing below.</p>
+
+    <p>I am the daughter of Earth and Water,</p>
+
+    <p>And the nursling of the Sky.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>As Brandes puts it; When the cloud sings thus of the moon:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">When</p>
+
+    <p>That orbed maiden with white fire laden,</p>
+
+    <p>Whom Mortals call the Moon,</p>
+
+    <p>Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor</p>
+
+    <p>By the midnight breezes strewn;</p>
+
+    <p>And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,</p>
+
+    <p>Which only the angels hear,</p>
+
+    <p>May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,</p>
+
+    <p>The Stars peep behind her and peer.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>or of--</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>the reader is carried back, by dint of the virgin freshness of the
+  poet's imagination, to the time when the phenomena of Nature were
+  first moulded into mythology.</p>
+
+  <p>This kinship to the myth is very clear in the finest of all his
+  poems, the <i>Ode to the West Wind</i>, when the poet says to the
+  wind:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,...</p>
+
+    <p>Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,</p>
+
+    <p>Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed.</p>
+
+    <p>Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean.</p>
+
+    <p>Angels of rain and lightning, there are spread</p>
+
+    <p>On the blue surface of thine airy surge,</p>
+
+    <p>Like the bright hair uplifted from the head</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg338" id=
+    "pg338">338</a></span>Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim
+    verge</p>
+
+    <p>Of the horizon to the zenith's height,</p>
+
+    <p>The locks of the approaching storm.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He calls the wind the 'breath of Autumn's being,' the one</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed</p>
+
+    <p>The winged seeds.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And cries to it:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;</p>
+
+    <p>If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;</p>
+
+    <p>A wave to pant beneath thy power and share</p>
+
+    <p>The impulse of thy strength, only less free</p>
+
+    <p>Than thou, O uncontrollable!...</p>
+
+    <p>0 lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!</p>
+
+    <p>I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!</p>
+
+    <p>A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed</p>
+
+    <p>One too like thee, tameless, and swift, and proud.</p>
+
+    <p>Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;</p>
+
+    <p>What if my leaves are falling like its own?</p>
+
+    <p>The tumult of thy mighty harmonies</p>
+
+    <p>Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,</p>
+
+    <p>Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,</p>
+
+    <p>My spirit. Be thou me, impetuous one!</p>
+
+    <p>Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,</p>
+
+    <p>Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;</p>
+
+    <p>And by the incantation of this verse,</p>
+
+    <p>Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth</p>
+
+    <p>Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!</p>
+
+    <p>Be through my lips to unawakened earth</p>
+
+    <p>The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,</p>
+
+    <p>If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His poems are full of this power of inspiring all the elements
+  with life, breathing his own feeling into them, and divining love and
+  sympathy in them; for instance:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>The fountains mingle with the river,</p>
+
+    <p>And the river with the ocean;</p>
+
+    <p>The winds of heaven mix for ever</p>
+
+    <p>With a sweet emotion....</p>
+
+    <p>See the mountains kiss high heaven,</p>
+
+    <p>And the waves clasp one another...</p>
+
+    <p>And the sunlight clasps the earth,</p>
+
+    <p>And the moonbeams kiss the sea.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg339" id=
+  "pg339">339</a></span>and:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>I love all thou lovest,</p>
+
+    <p>Spirit of Delight;</p>
+
+    <p>The fresh earth in new leaves dressed,</p>
+
+    <p>And the starry night,</p>
+
+    <p>Autumn evening and the morn</p>
+
+    <p>When the golden mists are born.</p>
+
+    <p>I love snow and all the forms</p>
+
+    <p>Of the radiant frost;</p>
+
+    <p>I love waves and winds and storms--</p>
+
+    <p>Everything almost</p>
+
+    <p>Which is Nature's, and may be</p>
+
+    <p>Untainted by man's misery.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>To Goethe, Byron, and Shelley, this pantheism, universal love,
+  sympathy with Nature in all her forms, was the base of feeling; but
+  both of England's greatest lyrists, dying young, failed to attain
+  perfect harmony of thought and feeling. There always remained a
+  bitter ingredient in their poetry.</p>
+
+  <p>Let us now turn to France.</p>
+
+  <h4>LAMARTINE AND VICTOR HUGO</h4>
+
+  <p>Rousseau discovered the beauty of scenery for France; St Pierre
+  portrayed it poetically, not only in <i>Paul and Virginia</i>, but in
+  <i>Chaumiére Indienne</i> and <i>Etudes de la Nature</i>. The science
+  which these two writers lacked, Buffon possessed in a high degree;
+  but he had not the power to delineate Nature and feeling in
+  combination: he lacked insight into the hidden analogies between the
+  movements of the mind and the phenomena of the outer world.
+  Chateaubriand, on the contrary, had this faculty to its full modern
+  extent. It is true that his ego was constantly to the fore, even in
+  dealing with Nature, but his landscapes were full of sympathetic
+  feeling. He had Rousseau's melancholy and unrest, and cared nothing
+  for those 'oppressive masses,' mountains, except as backgrounds; but
+  he was enthusiastic about the scenery which he saw in America, the
+  virgin forests, and the Mississippi--above all, about the sea. His
+  Réné, that life-like <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg340" id=
+  "pg340">340</a></span>figure, half-passionate, half-<i>blasé</i>,
+  measuring everything by himself, and flung hither and thither by the
+  waves of passion, shewed a lover's devotion to the sea and to Nature
+  generally.<a href="#m15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> 'It was not God whom I
+  contemplated on the waves in the magnificence of His works: I saw an
+  unknown woman, and the miracle of his smile, the beauties of the sky,
+  seemed to me disclosed by her breath. I would have bartered eternity
+  for one of her caresses. I pictured her to myself as throbbing behind
+  this veil of the universe which hid her from my eyes. Oh! why was it
+  not in my power to rend the veil and press the idealized woman to my
+  heart, to spend myself on her bosom with the love which is the source
+  of my inspiration, my despair, and my life?'</p>
+
+  <p>In subjectivity and dreaminess both Chateaubriand and Lamartine
+  were like the German romanticists, but their fundamental note was
+  theism, not pantheism. The storm of the French Revolution, which made
+  radical changes in religion, as in all other things, was followed by
+  a reaction. Christianity acquired new power and inwardness, and
+  Nature was unceasingly praised as the mirror of the divine idea of
+  creation.</p>
+
+  <p>In his <i>Génie du Christianisme</i>, Chateaubriand said:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The true God, in entering into His Works, has given his
+    immensity to Nature... there is an instinct in man, which puts him
+    in communication with the scenes of Nature.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Lamartine was a sentimental dreamer of dreams, a thinker of lofty
+  thoughts which lost themselves in the inexpressible. His
+  <i>Meditations</i> shew his ardent though sad worship of Nature; his
+  love of evening, moonlight, and starlight. For instance,
+  <i>L'Isolement</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Ici gronde le fleuve aux vagues écumantes,</p>
+
+    <p>Il serpente et s'enfonce en un lointain obscur:</p>
+
+    <p>Là le lac immobile étend ses eaux dormantes</p>
+
+    <p>Oò l'étoile du soir se lève dans l'azur.</p>
+
+    <p>An sommet de ces monts couronnés de bois sombres,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg341" id=
+    "pg341">341</a></span>Le crépuscule encore jette un dernier
+    rayon;</p>
+
+    <p>Et le char vaporeux de la reine des ombres</p>
+
+    <p>Monte et blanchit déjà les bords de l'horizon.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><i>Le Soir</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Le soir ramène le silence....</p>
+
+    <p>Venus se lève à l'horizon;</p>
+
+    <p>A mes pieds l'étoile amoureuse</p>
+
+    <p>De sa lueur mystérieuse</p>
+
+    <p>Blanchit les tapis de gazon.</p>
+
+    <p>De ce hêtre au feuillage sombre</p>
+
+    <p>J'entends frissonner les rameaux;</p>
+
+    <p>On dirait autour des tombeaux</p>
+
+    <p>Qu'on entend voltiger une ombre,</p>
+
+    <p>Tout-à-coup, détaché des cieux,</p>
+
+    <p>Un rayon de l'astre nocturne,</p>
+
+    <p>Glissant sur mon front taciturne,</p>
+
+    <p>Vient mollement toucher mes yeux.</p>
+
+    <p>Doux reflet d'un globe de flamme</p>
+
+    <p>Charmant rayon, que me veux-tu?</p>
+
+    <p>Viens-tu dans mon sein abattu</p>
+
+    <p>Porter la lumière à mon âme?</p>
+
+    <p>Descends-tu pour me révéler</p>
+
+    <p>Des mondes le divin mystére,</p>
+
+    <p>Ces secrets cachés dans la sphère</p>
+
+    <p>Où le jour va te rappeler?</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In the thought of happy past hours, he questions the lake:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Un soir, t'en souvient-il, nous voguions en silence;</p>
+
+    <p>On n'entendait au loin, sur l'onde et sous les cieux,</p>
+
+    <p>Que le bruit des rameurs qui frappaient en cadence</p>
+
+    <p>Tes flots harmonieux.</p>
+
+    <p>O lac! rochers muets! grottes! forêt obscure!</p>
+
+    <p>Vous que le temps épargne ou qu'il peut rajeunir</p>
+
+    <p>Gardez de cette nuit, gardez, belle nature,</p>
+
+    <p>Au moins le souvenir!...</p>
+
+    <p>Que le vent qui gémit, le roseau qui soupire</p>
+
+    <p>Que les parfums légers de ton air embaumé,</p>
+
+    <p>Que tout ce qu'on entend, l'on voit, ou l'on respire,</p>
+
+    <p>Tout dise: 'ils out aimés!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><i>La Prière</i> has:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Le roi brillant du jour, se couchant dans sa gloire,</p>
+
+      <p>Descend avec lenteur de son char de victoire;</p>
+
+      <p>Le nuage éclatant qui le cache à nos yeux</p>
+
+      <p>Conserve en sillons d'or sa trace dans les cieux,</p>
+
+      <p>Et d'un reflet de pourpre inonde l'étendue.</p>
+
+      <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg342" id=
+      "pg342">342</a></span>Comme une lampe d'or dans l'azur
+      suspendue,</p>
+
+      <p>La lune se balance aux bords de l'horizon;</p>
+
+      <p>Ses rayons affaiblis dorment sur le gazon,</p>
+
+      <p>Et le voile des nuits sur les monts se déplie.</p>
+
+      <p>C'est l'heure, où la nature, un moment recueillie,</p>
+
+      <p>Entre la nuit qui touche et le jour qui s'enfuit</p>
+
+      <p>S'élève au créateur du jour et de la nuit,</p>
+
+      <p>Et semble offrir à Dieu dans son brillant langage,</p>
+
+      <p>De la création le magnifique hommage.</p>
+
+      <p>Voilà le sacrifice immense, universelle!</p>
+
+      <p>L'univers est le temple, et la terre est l'autel;</p>
+
+      <p>Les cieux en sont le dôme et ses astres sans nombre,</p>
+
+      <p>Ces feux demi-voilés, pâle ornement de l'ombre,</p>
+
+      <p>Dans la voûte d'azur avec ordre semés,</p>
+
+      <p>Sont les sacrés flambeaux pour ce temple allumés...</p>
+
+      <p>Mais ce temple est sans voix...</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>...Mon coeur seul parle dans ce silence--</p>
+
+      <p>La voix de l'univers c'est mon intelligence.</p>
+
+      <p>Sur les rayons du soir, sur les ailes du vent,</p>
+
+      <p>Elle s'élève à Dieu...</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><i>Le Golfe de Baia</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Vois-tu comme le flot paisible</p>
+
+    <p>Sur le rivage vient mourir?</p>
+
+    <p>Mais déjà l'ombre plus épaisse</p>
+
+    <p>Tombe et brunit les vastes mers;</p>
+
+    <p>Le bord s'efface, le bruit cesse,</p>
+
+    <p>Le silence occupe les airs.</p>
+
+    <p>C'est l'heure où la Mélancholie</p>
+
+    <p>S'assied pensive et recueillie</p>
+
+    <p>Aux bords silencieux des mers.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The decay of autumn corresponds to his own dolorous feelings:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Oui, dans ces jours d'automne où la nature expire,</p>
+
+    <p>A ses regards voilés je trouve plus d'attraits;</p>
+
+    <p>C'est l'adieu d'un ami, c'est le dernier sourire</p>
+
+    <p>Des lèvres que la mort va fermer pour jamais.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This is from <i>Ischia</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Le Soleil va porter le jour à d'autres mondes;</p>
+
+    <p>Dans l'horizon désert Phébé monte sans bruit,</p>
+
+    <p>Et jette, en pénétrant les ténébres profondes,</p>
+
+    <p>Un voile transparent sur le front de la nuit.</p>
+
+    <p>Voyez du haut des monts ses clartés ondoyantes</p>
+
+    <p>Comme un fleuve de flamme inonder les coteaux,</p>
+
+    <p>Dormir dans les vallons on glisser sur les pentes,</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg343" id=
+    "pg343">343</a></span>Ou rejaillir au loin du sein brillant des
+    eaux....</p>
+
+    <p>Doux comme le soupir d'un enfant qui sommeille,</p>
+
+    <p>Un son vague et plaintif se répand dans les airs....</p>
+
+    <p>Mortel! ouvre ton âme à ces torrents de vie,</p>
+
+    <p>Reçois par tous les sens les charmes de la nuit....</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He sees the transitoriness of all earthly things reflected in
+  Nature:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>L'onde qui baise ce rivage,</p>
+
+    <p>De quoi se plaint-elle à ses bords?</p>
+
+    <p>Pourquoi le roseau sur la plage, pourquoi le ruisseau sous
+    l'ombrage,</p>
+
+    <p>Rendent-ils de tristes accords?</p>
+
+    <p>De quoi gémit la tourterelle? Tout naist, tout paise.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such a depth of sympathy and dreamy dolorous reverie was new to
+  France, but Rousseau had broken the ice, and henceforward feeling
+  flowed freely. To Lamartine the theist, as to the pantheists Goethe,
+  Shelley, and Byron, Nature was a friend and lover.</p>
+
+  <p>Victor Hugo was of the same mind, but his poetry is clearer and
+  more plastic than Lamartine's. We quote from his finest poems, the
+  <i>Feuilles d'Automne</i>. He was a true lyrist, familiar both with
+  the external life of Nature and the inner life of man. His beautiful
+  'Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne' has the spirit of <i>Faust</i>. He
+  imagines himself upon a mountain top, with earth on one side, the sea
+  on the other; and there he hears two voices unlike any ever heard
+  before:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>L'une venait des mers, chant de gloire! hymne heureux!</p>
+
+    <p>C'était la voix des flots qui se parlaient entre eux....</p>
+
+    <p>Or, comme je l'ai dit, l'Océan magnifique</p>
+
+    <p>Epandait une voix joyeuse et pacifique</p>
+
+    <p>Chantant comme la harpe aux temples de Sion,</p>
+
+    <p>Et louait la beauté de la création.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>while from the other voice:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Pleurs et cris! L'injure, l'anatheme....</p>
+
+    <p>C'était la terre et l'homme qui pleuraient!...</p>
+
+    <p>L'une disait, Nature! et l'autre, Humanité!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg344" id="pg344">344</a></span>
+  The personifications in this poem are beautiful. He, too, like
+  Lamartine, loves sea and stars most of all. These verses from <i>Les
+  Orientales</i> remind one of St Augustine:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>J'étais seul près des flots par une nuit d'étoiles,</p>
+
+      <p>Pas un nuage aux cieux; sur les mers pas de voiles,</p>
+
+      <p>Et les bois et les monts et toute la nature</p>
+
+      <p>Semblaient interroger dans confus murmure</p>
+
+      <p>Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel.</p>
+
+      <p>Et les étoiles d'or, légions infinies,</p>
+
+      <p>A voix haute, à voix basse, avec mille harmonies</p>
+
+      <p>Disaient en inclinant leurs couronnes de feu,</p>
+
+      <p>Et les flots bleus, que rien gouverne et n'arrête,</p>
+
+      <p>Disaient en recourbant l'écume de leur crête:</p>
+
+      <p>C'est le Seigneur Dieu, le Seigneur Dieu!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Parfois lorsque tout dort, je m'assieds plein de joie</p>
+
+      <p>Sous le dôme étoilé qui sur nos fronts flamboie;</p>
+
+      <p>J'écoute si d'en haut il tombe quelque bruit;</p>
+
+      <p>Et l'heure vainement me frappe de son aile</p>
+
+      <p>Quand je contemple ému cette fête eternelle</p>
+
+      <p>Que le ciel rayonnant donne au monde la nuit!</p>
+
+      <p>Souvent alors j'ai cru que ces soleils de flamme</p>
+
+      <p>Dans ce monde endormi n'échauffaient que mon âme;</p>
+
+      <p>Qu'à les comprendre seul j'étais prédestiné;</p>
+
+      <p>Que j'étais, moi, vaine ombre obscure et taciturne,</p>
+
+      <p>Le roi mystérieuse de la pompe nocturne;</p>
+
+      <p>Que le ciel pour moi seul s'était illuminé!</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The necessary condition of delight in Nature is very strikingly
+  given:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Si vous avez en vous, vivantes et pressées,</p>
+
+    <p>Un monde intérieur d'images, de pensées,</p>
+
+    <p>De sentimens, d'amour, d'ardente passion</p>
+
+    <p>Pour féconder ce monde, échangez-le sans cesse</p>
+
+    <p>Avec l'autre univers visible qui vous presse!</p>
+
+    <p>Mêlez toute votre âme à la création....</p>
+
+    <p>Que sous nos doigts puissans exhale la nature,</p>
+
+    <p>Cette immense clavier!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His lyrics are rich in fine scenes from Nature, unrolled in cold
+  but stately periods, and the poetic intuition which always divines
+  the spirit life brought him near to that pantheism which we find in
+  all the greatest English and German poets of his time,<a href=
+  "#m16"><sup>[16]</sup></a> and which lay, too, at the root of German
+  romanticism. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg345" id=
+  "pg345">345</a></span></p>
+
+  <h4>THE GERMAN ROMANTICISTS</h4>
+
+  <p>Schiller did not possess the intrinsically lyrical genius of
+  Goethe; his strength lay, not in song, but drama, and in a didactic
+  form of epic--the song not of feeling, but of thought.</p>
+
+  <p>Descriptions of Nature occur here and there in his epics and
+  dramas; but his feeling for her was chiefly theoretic. Like his
+  contemporaries, he passed through a sentimental period;
+  <i>Evening</i> shews this, and <i>Melancholy, to Laura</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Laura, a sunrise seems to break</p>
+
+    <p>Where'er thy happy looks may glow....</p>
+
+    <p>Thy soul--a crystal river passing,</p>
+
+    <p>Silver clear and sunbeam glassing,</p>
+
+    <p>Mays into blossom sad autumn by thee:</p>
+
+    <p>Night and desert, if they spy thee,</p>
+
+    <p>To gardens laugh--with daylight shine,</p>
+
+    <p>Lit by those happy smiles of thine!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>With such ecstatic extravagances contrast the excellent
+  descriptions of Nature full of objective life in his longer
+  poems--for instance, the tumult of Charybdis and the unceasing rain
+  in <i>The Diver</i>, evening in <i>The Hostage</i>, and landscape in
+  <i>William Tell</i> and <i>The Walk</i>. In the last, as Julian
+  Schmidt says, the ever varying scenery is made a 'frame for a kind of
+  phenomenology of mankind.'</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Flowers of all hue are struggling into glow</p>
+
+    <p>Along the blooming fields; yet their sweet strife</p>
+
+    <p>Melts into one harmonious concord. Lo!</p>
+
+    <p>The path allures me through the pastoral green</p>
+
+    <p>And the wide world of fields! The labouring bee</p>
+
+    <p>Hums round me, and on hesitating wing</p>
+
+    <p>O'er beds of purple clover, quiveringly</p>
+
+    <p>Hovers the butterfly. Save these, all life</p>
+
+    <p>Sleeps in the glowing sunlight's steady sheen--</p>
+
+    <p>E'en from the west no breeze the lull'd airs bring.</p>
+
+    <p>Hark! in the calm aloft I hear the skylark sing.</p>
+
+    <p>The thicket rustles near, the alders bow</p>
+
+    <p>Down their green coronals, and as I pass,</p>
+
+    <p>Waves in the rising wind the silvering grass;</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg346" id=
+    "pg346">346</a></span>Come! day's ambrosial night! receive me
+    now</p>
+
+    <p>Beneath the roof by shadowy beeches made</p>
+
+    <p>Cool-breathing, etc.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Schiller's interest in Nature was more a matter of reflection than
+  direct observation; its real tendency was philosophical and ethical.
+  He called Nature naive (he included naturalness in Nature); those who
+  seek her, sentimental; but he overlooked (as we saw in an earlier
+  chapter) the fact that antiquity did not always remain naive, and
+  that not all moderns are sentimental.</p>
+
+  <p>As Rousseau's pupil he drew a sharp distinction between Nature and
+  Art, and felt happy in solitude where 'man with his torment does not
+  come,' lying, as he says in <i>The Bride of Messina</i>, like a child
+  on the bosom of Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>In Schiller's sense of the word, perhaps no poet has been more
+  sentimental about Nature than Jean Paul.</p>
+
+  <p>He was the humorous and satirical idyllist <i>par excellence</i>,
+  and laid the scenes of his romances in idyllic surroundings, using
+  the trifling events of daily life to wonderful purpose. There is an
+  almost oriental splendour in his pages, with their audacious
+  metaphors and mixture of ideas. With the exception of Lake Maggiore
+  in <i>Titan</i>, he gives no set descriptions of landscape; but all
+  his references to it, all his sunrises and sunsets, are saturated
+  with the temperament of his characters, and they revel in feeling.
+  They all love Nature, and wander indefatigably about their own
+  countryside, finding the reflection of their feelings in her. There
+  is a constant interweaving of the human soul and the universe;
+  therein lies his pantheistic trait. 'To each man,' he said,<a href=
+  "#m17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> 'Nature appears different, and the only
+  question is, which is the most beautiful? Nature is for ever becoming
+  flesh for mankind; outer Nature takes a different form in each mind.'
+  Certainly the nature of Jean Paul was different <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg347" id="pg347">347</a></span>from the Nature of
+  other mortals. Was she more beautiful? He wrote of her in his usual
+  baroque style, with a wealth of thought and feeling, and everywhere
+  the sparkle of genius; but it is all presented in the strangest
+  motley, as exaggerated and unenjoyable as can be. For example, from
+  <i>Siebenkâs</i>:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I appeared again then on the last evening of the year 1794, on
+    the red waves of which so many bodies, bled to death, were borne
+    away to the ocean of eternity.</p>
+
+    <p>To the butterfly--proboscis of Siebenkäs, enough honey--cells
+    were still open in every blue thistle-blossom of destiny.</p>
+
+    <p>When they had passed the gate--that is to say, the
+    un-Palmyra-like ruins of it--the crystal reflecting grotto of the
+    August night stood open and shining above the dark green earth, and
+    the ocean-calm of Nature stayed the wild storm of the human heart.
+    Night was drawing and closing her curtain (a sky full of silent
+    suns, not a breath of breeze moving in it) up above the world, and
+    down beneath it the reaped corn stood in the sheaves without a
+    rustle. The cricket with his one constant song, and a poor old man
+    gathering snails for the snail pits, seemed to be the only things
+    that dwelt in the far-reaching darkness.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>When it was autumn in his heart:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Above the meadows, where all the flowers were withered and dead;
+    above the fields, where the corn ears waved no more, floated dim
+    phantom forms, all pale and wan, faint pictures of the past. Over
+    the grand eternal woods and hills a biting mist was draped in
+    clinging folds, as if all Nature, trembling into dust, must vanish
+    in its wreaths.... But one bright thought pierced these dark fogs
+    of Nature and the soul, turning them to a white gleaming mist, a
+    dew all glittering with rainbow colours, and gently lighting upon
+    flowers.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>When his married life grew more unhappy, in December:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The heart of our sorrowful Firmian grew sadder yet, as he stood
+    upon this cold, burnt-out hearth-place of Nature.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg348" id="pg348">348</a></span>
+  and in spring</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>it seemed to him as if his life dwelt, not in a bodily heart,
+    but in some warm and tender tear, as if his heavy-laden soul were
+    expanding and breaking away through some chink in its prison, and
+    melting into a tone of music, a blue ether wave.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And <i>Titan</i> expresses that inner enfranchisement which Nature
+  bestows upon us:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Exalted Nature! when we see and love thee, we love our
+    fellow-men more warmly, and when we must pity or forget them, thou
+    still remainest with us, reposing before the moist eye like a
+    verdant chain of mountains in the evening red. Ah! before the soul
+    in whose sight the morning dew of its ideals has faded to a cold,
+    grey drizzle ... thou remainest, quickening Nature, with thy
+    flowers and mountains and cataracts, a faithful comforter; and the
+    bleeding son of the gods, cold and speechless, dashes the drop of
+    anguish from his eyes, that they may rest, far and clear, on thy
+    volcanoes, and on thy springs and on thy suns.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>This is sunset in his abstruse artistic handling:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The sun sinks, and the earth closes her great eye like that of a
+    dying god. Then smoke the hills like altars; out of every wood
+    ascends a chorus; the veils of day, the shadows, float around the
+    enkindled transparent tree-tops, and fall upon the gay, gem-like
+    flowers. And the burnished gold of the west throws back a dead gold
+    on the east, and tinges with rosy light the hovering breast of the
+    tremulous lark--the evening bell of Nature.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>And this sunrise:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The flame of the sun now shot up ever nearer to the kindled
+    morning clouds; at length in the heavens, in the brooks and ponds,
+    and in the blooming cups of dew, a hundred suns rose together,
+    while a thousand colours floated over the earth, and one pure
+    dazzling white broke from the sky. It seemed as if an almighty
+    earthquake had forced up from the ocean, yet dripping, a
+    new-created blooming plain, stretching out beyond the bounds of
+    vision, with all its young instincts and powers; the fire of earth
+    glowed beneath the roots of the immense hanging garden, and the
+    fire of heaven poured down its flames and burnt the colours into
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg349" id="pg349">349</a></span>the
+    mountain summits and the flowers. Between the porcelain towers of
+    white mountains the coloured blooming heights stood as thrones of
+    the Fruit-Goddess; over the far-spread camp of pleasure
+    blossom-cups and sultry drops were pitched here and there like
+    peopled tents; the ground was inlaid with swarming nurseries of
+    grasses and little hearts, and one heart detached itself after
+    another with wings, or fins, or feelers, from the hot breeding-cell
+    of Nature, and hummed and sucked and smacked its little lips, and
+    sung: and for every little proboscis some blossom-cup of; joy was
+    already open. The darling child of the infinite mother, man, alone
+    stood with bright joyful eyes upon the market-place of the living
+    city of the sun, full of brilliance and noise, and gazed,
+    delighted, around him into all its countless streets; but his
+    eternal mother rested veiled in immensity, and only by the warmth
+    which went to his heart did he feel that he was lying upon
+    hers.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>For very overflow of thought and imagery and ecstasy of feeling,
+  Jean Paul never achieved a balanced beauty of expression.</p>
+
+  <p>The ideal classic standard which Winckelmann and Lessing had laid
+  down--simple and plastic, calm because objective, crystal-clear in
+  thought and expression--and which Goethe and Schiller had sought to
+  realize and imbue with modern ideas, was too strictly limited for the
+  Romanticists. Hyperion's words expressed their taste more accurately:
+  'O, man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he thinks!' and they
+  laid stress upon restless movement, fantastic, highly-coloured
+  effects, a crass subjectivity, a reckless licence of the
+  imagination.</p>
+
+  <p>Actual and visible things were disregarded; they did not accord
+  with this claim for infinity and the nebulous, for exploring the
+  secret depths of the soul.</p>
+
+  <p>It was perhaps a necessary reaction from Goethe's classicism; but
+  it passed like a bad dream, after tending, thanks to its
+  heterogeneous elements, now to the mediæval period, now to that of
+  Storm and Stress, and now to Goethe, Herder, and <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg350" id="pg350">350</a></span>Winckelmann. It
+  certainly contained germs of good, which have grown and flourished in
+  our own day.</p>
+
+  <p>In keeping with its whole character, the Romantic feeling for
+  Nature was subjective and fantastic to excess, mystically
+  enthusiastic, often with a dreamy symbolism at once deep and naive;
+  its inmost core was pantheistic, with a pantheism shading off
+  imperceptibly into mysticism.</p>
+
+  <p>After <i>Werther</i>, there is perhaps no work of modern fiction
+  in which Nature plays so artistic a part as in Holderlin's
+  <i>Hyperion</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Embittered by life's failure to realize his ideals, he cries: 'But
+  thou art still visible, sun in the sky! Thou art still green, sacred
+  earth! The streams still rush to the sea, and shady trees rustle at
+  noon. The spring's song of joy sings my mortal thoughts to sleep. The
+  abundance of the universe nourishes and satiates my famished being to
+  intoxication.'</p>
+
+  <p>This mystical pantheism could not be more clearly expressed than
+  here:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>O blessed Nature! I know not how it happens when I lift my eyes
+    to your beauty; but all the joy of the sky is in the tears which I
+    shed before you--a lover before the lady of his love. When the soft
+    waves of the air play round my breast, my whole being is speechless
+    and listens. Absorbed in the blue expanse, I often look up to the
+    ether and down to the holy sea; and it seems as if a kindred spirit
+    opened its arms to me, as if the pain of loneliness were lost in
+    the divine life. To be one with all that lives, in blessed
+    self-forgetfulness to return to the All of Nature, that is the
+    height of thought and bliss--the sacred mountain height, the place
+    of eternal rest, where noon loses its sultriness and thunder its
+    voice, and the rough sea is like the waves in a field of wheat.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>To such feeling as this the actualities are but fetters, hindering
+  aspiration.</p>
+
+  <p>'O, if great Nature be the daughter of a father, is the daughter's
+  heart not his heart? Is not he her deepest feeling? But have I found
+  it? Do I know it?'</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg351" id="pg351">351</a></span> He
+  tries to discern the 'soul of Nature,' hears 'the melody of morning
+  light begin with soft notes.' He says to the flower, 'You are my
+  sister,' and to the springs, 'We are of one race': he finds symbolic
+  resemblance between his heart and all the days and seasons: he feels
+  the beauty of the 'land like paradise,' while scarcely ever, except
+  in the poem <i>Heidelberg</i>, giving a clear sketch of scenery. A
+  number of fine comparisons from Nature are scattered through his
+  writings <a href="#m18"><sup>[18]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>The caresses of the charming breezes.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>She light, clear, flattering sea.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Sacred air, the sister of the mind which moves and</p>
+
+      <p>lives in us with fiery force, present everywhere immortal.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Earth, 'one of the flowers of the sky.'</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Heaven, 'the unending garden of life.'</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>Beauty, that 'which is one and all.'</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He describes his love in a mystical form:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>We were but one flower, and our souls lived in each other as
+    flowers do, when they love and hide their joy within a closed
+    calyx.... The clear starry night had now become my element, for the
+    beautiful life of my love grew in the stillness as in the depths of
+    earth gold grows mysteriously.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>He delights 'thus to drink the joy of the world out of one cup
+  with the lady of his love.'</p>
+
+  <p>'Yea, man is a sun, seeing all and transfiguring all when he
+  loves; and when he does not love, he is like a dark dwelling in which
+  a little smelly lamp is burning.' All this is soft and feminine, but
+  it has real poetic charm.</p>
+
+  <p>Beautiful too, though sad and gloomy, is his <i>Song of
+  Fate</i>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Nowhere may man abide,</p>
+
+    <p>But painfully from hour to hour</p>
+
+    <p>He stumbles blindly on to the unknown,</p>
+
+    <p>As water falls from rock to rock</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The long year through.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg352" id="pg352">352</a></span>
+  His pantheism finds expression in the odes--in <i>To Nature</i>, for
+  instance:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Since my heart turneth upward to the sun</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">As one that hears her voice,</p>
+
+    <p>Hailing the stars as brothers, and the spring</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">As melody divine;</p>
+
+    <p>Since in the breath that stirs the wood thy soul,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The soul of joy, doth move</p>
+
+    <p>On the still waters of my heart--therefore,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">O Nature! these are golden days to me!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Tieck, too, was keenly alive to Nature. Spring<a href=
+  "#m19"><sup>[19]</sup></a>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Look all around thee how the spring advances!</p>
+
+    <p>New life is playing through the gay green trees!</p>
+
+    <p>See how in yonder bower the light leaf dances</p>
+
+    <p>To the bird's tread and to the quivering breeze!</p>
+
+    <p>How every blossom in the sunlight glances!</p>
+
+    <p>The winter frost to his dark cavern flees,</p>
+
+    <p>And earth, warm wakened, feels through every vein</p>
+
+    <p>The kindling influence of the vernal rain.</p>
+
+    <p>Now silvery streamlets, from the mountain stealing,</p>
+
+    <p>Dance joyously the verdant vales along;</p>
+
+    <p>Cold fear no more the songster's tongue is sealing,</p>
+
+    <p>Down in the thick dark grove is heard his song.</p>
+
+    <p>And all their bright and lovely hues revealing,</p>
+
+    <p>A thousand plants the field and forest throng;</p>
+
+    <p>Light comes upon the earth in radiant showers,</p>
+
+    <p>And mingling rainbows play among the flowers.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>All his writings seem intoxicated with Nature. The hero of his
+  novel <i>William Lovell</i>, scamp though he is, a man of criminal
+  egotism whose only law is licence, is deeply in love with Nature.</p>
+
+  <p>He wrote from Florence:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Nature refreshes my soul with her endless beauty. I am often
+    full of enthusiasm at the thousand charms of Nature and Art ... at
+    last my longing to travel to wonderful distant places is satisfied.
+    Even as a child, when I stood outside my father's country-house,
+    and gazed at the distant mountains and discovered a windmill on the
+    very line of the horizon, it seemed to beckon me as it turned, my
+    blood pulsed more quickly, my mind flew to distant regions, a
+    strange longing often filled my eyes with tears.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg353" id="pg353">353</a></span>
+    Often it seems to me as if the enigma in ourselves were about to be
+    unriddled, as if we were suddenly to see the transformation of all
+    our feelings and strange experiences. Night surrounded me with a
+    hundred terrors, the transparent moonlight sky was like a crystal
+    dome overhead--in this world the most unusual feelings were as
+    shadows.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>'Franz Sternbald' had the same intoxicated feeling for Nature:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I should like to fill the whole world with songs of love, to
+    move moonrise and sunrise to echo back my joys and sorrows; and
+    trees, twigs, leaves, grasses to catch the melody and all repeat my
+    music with a thousand tongues.<a href=
+    "#m20"><sup>[20]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>To the Romantic School, Music and Nature were a passion; they
+  longed to resolve all their feelings, like Byron, at one flash, into
+  music. 'For thought is too distant.' Night and the forest, moonlight
+  and starlight, were in all their songs.</p>
+
+  <p>There is a background of landscape all through <i>Franz
+  Sternbald's Wanderings</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>In the novels of the eighteenth century landscape had had no
+  place; Hermes once gave a few lines to sunset, but excused it as an
+  extravagance, and begged readers and critics not to think that he
+  only wanted to fill up the page.</p>
+
+  <p>Rousseau altered this; Sophie la Roche, in her
+  <i>Freundschaftlichen Frauenzimmerbriefen</i>, introduced ruins,
+  moonlight scenery, hills, vales, and flowering hedges, etc., into
+  scenes of thought and feeling; and most of all, Goethe in
+  <i>Werther</i> tunes scenery and soul to one key. In his later
+  romances he avoided descriptions of scenery. Jean Paul, like Tieck in
+  <i>Franz Sternbald</i>, never spares us one sunset or sunrise. Some
+  of Tieck's concise descriptions are very telling, like Theodore
+  Storm's at the present day:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Rosy light quivered on the blades of grass, and morning moved in
+    waves along them.</p>
+
+    <p>The redder the evening grew, the heavier became his dreams; the
+    darkened trees, the shadows lengthening <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg354" id="pg354">354</a></span>across the
+    fields, the smoke from the roofs of a little village, and the stars
+    coming into view one by one in the sky--all this moved him deeply,
+    moved him to a wistful compassion for himself.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>As Franz wanders about the wood:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>He observes the trees reflected in a neighbouring pond. He had
+    never looked at landscape with this pleasure, it had never been
+    given to him to discern the various colours and their shadows, the
+    charm of the stillness, the effect of the foliage, as now in the
+    clear water. Till now he had never drawn a landscape, only looked
+    at it as a necessary adjunct to many historical pictures, had never
+    felt that lifeless Nature could herself compose something whole and
+    complete in itself, and so worthy to be represented.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Tieck's shorter stories, fairy tales and others, shew taste for
+  the mysterious and indefinite aspects of Nature--reflections in
+  water, rays of light, cloud forms:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>They became to him the most fitting characters in which to
+    record that indefinite inexpressible feeling which gave its special
+    colour to his spiritual life.<a href="#m21"><sup>[21]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The pantheism of Boehme, with whom he was closely associated,
+  always attracted him, and in Jena he came under the influence of
+  Steffens, and also of Schelling, whose philosophy of Nature called
+  Nature a mysterious poem, a dreaming mind. This mind it became the
+  chief aim of Novalis, as well as Tieck, to decipher.</p>
+
+  <p>From simple descriptions of Nature he went on to read mystic
+  meanings into her, seeking, psychologically in his novels and
+  mystically in his fairy tales, to fathom the connection between
+  natural phenomena and elementary human feeling. <i>Blond Egbert</i>
+  was the earliest example of this:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Night looked sullenly through the windows, and the trees without
+    rustled in the wet cold ... the moon looked fitfully through breaks
+    in the driving clouds.<a href="#m22"><sup>[22]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>In the same book Bertha describes the horror of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg355" id="pg355">355</a></span>loneliness, the
+  vague longings, and then the overwhelming delight in new impressions,
+  which seized her when she fled from home as a child and lost herself
+  among the mountains.</p>
+
+  <p><i>The Runenberg</i> gives in a very powerful way the idea of the
+  weird fascination which the subterranean powers were supposed to
+  exert over men, alluring and befooling them, and rousing their thirst
+  for gold.</p>
+
+  <p>The demoniacal elements in mountain scenery, its crags and
+  abysses, are contrasted with idyllic plains. The tale is sprinkled
+  over with descriptions of Nature, which give it a fairy-like
+  effect.<a href="#m23"><sup>[23]</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>The most extraordinary product of this School was Novalis. With
+  him everything resolved itself into presentiment, twilight, night,
+  into vague longings for a vague distant goal, which he expressed by
+  the search for 'the blue flower.' This is from <i>Heinrich von
+  Ofterdingen</i>:</p>
+
+  <p>'The cheerful pageant of the glorious evening rocked him in soft
+  imaginings; the flower of his heart was visible now and then as by
+  sheet lightning.' He looked at Nature with the mystic's eye, and
+  described her fantastically:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>I am never tired of looking minutely at the different plants.
+    Growing plants are the direct language of the earth; each new leaf,
+    each remarkable flower, is a mystery which projects itself, and
+    because it cannot move with love and longing, nor attain to words,
+    is a dumb, quiet plant. When in solitude one finds such a flower,
+    does it not seem as if all around it were brightened, and, best of
+    all, do not the little feathered notes around it remain near? One
+    could weep for joy, and there, far from the world, stick hands and
+    feet into the earth, to take root, and never more leave so
+    delightful a spot. This green mysterious carpet of love is drawn
+    over the whole earth.</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>It is not surprising that night should attract this unnaturally
+  excited imagination most of all:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>Sacred, inexpressible, mysterious Night, delicious <span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg356" id="pg356">356</a></span>balsam drops
+    from thy hands, from the poppy sheaf; thou upliftest the heavy
+    wings of the Spirit.<a href="#m24"><sup>[24]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Night and death are delight and bliss.</p>
+
+  <p>The fairy-like tale of <i>Hyacinth and Little Rose,</i> with its
+  charming personifications, is refreshing after all this:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>The violet told the strawberry in confidence, she told her
+    friend the gooseberry, who never ceased to jeer when Hyacinth went,
+    so the whole garden and wood soon knew it, and when Hyacinth went
+    out, voices from all sides cried out, 'Little Rose is my
+    favourite.' When he goes into the wide world to find the land of
+    Isis, he asks the way of the animals, and of springs, rocks, and
+    trees, and the flowers smile at him, the springs offer him a fresh
+    drink, and there is wonderful music when he comes home. 'O that men
+    could understand the music of Nature!' cries the listener in the
+    tale. Then follows a description of 'the sweet passion for the
+    being of Nature and her enchanting raptures,' and the charm of the
+    poetic imagination which finds 'a great sympathy with man's heart'
+    in all the external world. For example, in the breath of wind,
+    which 'with a thousand dark and dolorous notes seems to dissolve
+    one's quiet grief into one deep melodious sigh of all Nature.'</p>
+
+    <p>'And am I myself other than the stream when I gaze gloomily down
+    into its waters and lose my thoughts in its flow?' And in ecstasy
+    the youth exclaims: 'Whose heart does not leap for joy, when he
+    feels Nature's innermost life in its fulness, when that powerful
+    feeling, for which language has no other name than love and bliss,
+    spreads like a vapour through his being, and he sinks, palpitating,
+    on the dark alluring breast of Nature, and his poor self is lost in
+    the overwhelming waves of joy?'<a href=
+    "#m25"><sup>[25]</sup></a></p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Here we have the key to the romantic feeling for Nature--communion
+  of the soul with Nature in a twilight mood of dreamy absorption.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet amidst all this, real delight in romantic scenery was not
+  quite lacking: witness Hulsen's<a href="#m26"><sup>[26]</sup></a>
+  <i>Observations on Nature on a Journey through Switzerland</i>; and
+  the genuine lyric of Nature, untainted by mystic and sickly
+  influences, was still to be heard, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg357" id="pg357">357</a></span>as in Eichendorff's beautiful songs
+  and his <i>Tautgenichts</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>The Romantic School, in fact, far as it erred from the path, did
+  enlarge the life of feeling generally, and with that, feeling for
+  Nature, and modern literature is still bound to it by a thousand
+  threads.</p>
+
+  <p>Our modern rapture has thus been reached by a path which, with
+  many deviations in its course, has come to us from a remote past, and
+  is still carrying us farther forward.</p>
+
+  <p>Its present intensity is due to the growth of science, for
+  although feeling has become more realistic and matter-of-fact in
+  these days of electricity and the microscope, love for Nature has
+  increased with knowledge. Science has even become the investigator of
+  religion, and the pantheistic tendency of the great poets has passed
+  into us, either in the idea of an all-present God, or in that of
+  organic force working through matter--the indestructible active
+  principle of life in the region of the visible. Our explorers combine
+  enthusiasm for Nature with their tireless search for truth--for
+  example, Humboldt, Haeckel, and Paul Güssfeldt; and though, as the
+  shadow side to this light, travelling and admiration of Nature have
+  become a fashion, yet who nowadays can watch a great sunset or a
+  storm over the sea, and remain insensible to the impression?</p>
+
+  <p>Landscape painting and poetry shew the same deviations from the
+  straight line of development as in earlier times. Our garden craft,
+  like our architecture, is eclectic; but the English park style is
+  still the most adequate expression of prevalent taste: spaces of turf
+  with tree groups, a view over land or sea, gradual change from garden
+  to field; to which has been added a wider cultivation of foreign
+  plants. In landscape painting the zigzag course is very marked:
+  landscapes such as Bocklin's, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg358"
+  id="pg358">358</a></span>entirely projected by the imagination and
+  corresponding to nothing on earth, hang together in our galleries
+  with the most faithful studies from Nature. It is the same with
+  literature. In fiction, novels which perpetuate the sentimental
+  rhapsodies of an early period, and open their chapters with forced
+  descriptions of landscape, stand side by side with the masterly work
+  of great writers--for example, Spielhagen, Wilhelmine von Hillern,
+  and Theodore Storm.</p>
+
+  <p>In poetry, the lyric of Nature is inexhaustible. Heine, the
+  greatest lyrist after Goethe, though his poetry has, like the Nixie,
+  an enchantingly fair body with a fish's tail, wrote in the <i>Travels
+  in the Harz</i>: 'How infinitely blissful is the feeling when the
+  outer world of phenomena blends and harmonizes with the inner world
+  of feeling; when green trees, thoughts, birds' songs, sweet
+  melancholy, the azure of heaven, memory, and the perfume of flowers,
+  run together and form the loveliest of arabesques.'</p>
+
+  <p>But his delight in Nature was spoilt by irony and straining after
+  effect--for example, in <i>The Fig Tree</i>; and although <i>The
+  Lotos Flower</i> is a gem, and the <i>North Sea Pictures</i> shew the
+  fine eye of a poet who, like Byron and Shelley, can create myths, his
+  personifications as a whole are affected, and his personal feeling is
+  forced upon Nature for the sake of a witty effect.</p>
+
+  <p>Every element of Nature has found skilled interpreters both in
+  poetry and painting, and technical facility and truth of
+  representation now stand on one level with the appreciation of her
+  charms. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg359" id=
+  "pg359">359</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="notes" id="notes">NOTES</a></h2>
+
+  <h4>INTRODUCTION</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="a1" id="a1">1</a>: <i>Kritische Gänge</i>. Comp. Vischer,
+  <i>Ueber den optischen Formsinn,</i> and Carl du Prel, <i>Psychologie
+  der Lyrik</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="a2" id="a2">2</a>: As in elegy <i>Ghatarkarparam</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="a3" id="a3">3</a>: Comp. Humboldt, <i>Cosmos</i>.
+  Schnaase, <i>Geschichte der bildenden Künste</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="a4" id="a4">4</a>: See <i>Die Entwickelung des
+  Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern</i>, Biese.
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER I</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="b1" id="b1">1</a>: Lucos ac nemora consecrant deorumque
+  nominibus adpellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident, Tac.
+  Germ. Comp. Grimm, <i>Deutsche Mythologie</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="b2" id="b2">2</a>: Grimm. Simrock, <i>Handbuch der
+  Mythologie</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="b3" id="b3">3</a>: Grimm.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="b4" id="b4">4</a>: Grimm.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="b5" id="b5">5</a>: Grimm.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="b6" id="b6">6</a>: <i>Geschichte der bildenden
+  Künste</i>. Comp. Grimm, <i>Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="b7" id="b7">7</a>: Grimm.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="b8" id="b8">8</a>: Carrière, <i>Die Poesie</i>.
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER II</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="c1" id="c1">1</a>: Clement of Rome, i <i>Cor.</i> 19, 20.
+  Zoeckler, <i>Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und
+  Naturwissenschaft</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c2" id="c2">2</a>: Comp. <i>Vita S. Basilii</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c3" id="c3">3</a>: <i>Basilii opera omnia</i>. Parisus,
+  1730.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c4" id="c4">4</a>: <i>Cosmos</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c5" id="c5">5</a>: Biese, <i>Die Entwickelung des
+  Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c6" id="c6">6</a>: <i>Mélanges philosophiques,
+  historiques, et littéraires</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c7" id="c7">7</a>: <i>Homily</i> 4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c8" id="c8">8</a>: <i>Homily</i> 6.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c9" id="c9">9</a>: Biese, <i>Die Entwickelung des
+  Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>'In spring the Cydmian apple trees give blossom watered by river
+  streams in the hallowed garden of the nymphs; in spring the buds grow
+  and swell beneath the leafy shadow of the vine branch. But my heart
+  knoweth no season of respite; nay, like the Thracian blast that
+  rageth with its lightning, so doth it bear down from Aphrodite's
+  side, dark and fearless, with scorching frenzy in its train, and from
+  its depths shaketh my heart with might.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c10" id="c10">10</a>: Comp. Biese, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="c11" id="c11">11</a>: <i>Deutsche Rundschau</i>,
+  1879.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg360" id="pg360">360</a></span>
+  <a name="c12" id="c12">12</a>: Comp. Biese, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="c13" id="c13">13</a>: Chrysostom was not only
+  utilitarian, but praised and enjoyed the world's beauty. From the
+  fifth to third century, Greek progress in feeling for Nature can be
+  traced from unconscious to conscious pleasure in her beauty.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c14" id="c14">14</a>: <i>De Mortalitate</i>, cap. 4.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c15" id="c15">15</a>: <i>Geschichte der
+  christlich-lateinischen Literatur</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c16" id="c16">16</a>: When one thinks of Sappho,
+  Simonides, Theocritus, Meleager, Catullus, Ovid, and Horace, it
+  cannot be denied that this is true of Greek and Roman lyric.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c17" id="c17">17</a>: As in the Homeric time, when each
+  sphere of Nature was held to be subject to and under the influence of
+  its special deity. But it cannot be admitted that metaphor was freer
+  and bolder in the hymns; on the contrary, it was very limited and
+  monotonous.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c18" id="c18">18</a>: In <i>Cathemerinon</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c19" id="c19">19</a>: Comp. fragrant gardens of Paradise,
+  Hymn 3.</p>
+
+  <p>In Hamartigenia he says that the evil and ugly in Nature
+  originates in the devil.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c20" id="c20">20</a>: Ebert.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c21" id="c21">21</a>: The Robinsonade of the hermit
+  Bonosus upon a rocky island is interesting.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c22" id="c22">22</a>: Comp. Biese, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="c23" id="c23">23</a>: Comp. <i>ad Paulinum</i>, epist.
+  19, <i>Monum. German.</i> v. 2.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c24" id="c24">24</a>: <i>Carm. nat. 7.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="c25" id="c25">25</a>: <i>Ep.</i> xi.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c26" id="c26">26</a>: <i>Migne Patrol</i> 60.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c27" id="c27">27</a>: <i>Migne Patrol</i> 59.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c28" id="c28">28</a>: Ebert.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c29" id="c29">29</a>: Comp. Biese, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="c30" id="c30">30</a>: Comp. Biese, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="c31" id="c31">31</a>: <i>Migne Patrol</i> 58.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c32" id="c32">32</a>: <i>Carm.</i> lib. i.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c33" id="c33">33</a>: <i>Amoenitas loci</i>: Variorum
+  libri Lugduni, 1677.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c34" id="c34">34</a>: <i>Monum. Germ.</i>, 4th ed., Leo,
+  lib. viii.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c35" id="c35">35</a>: <i>Deutsche Rundschau</i>,
+  1882.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c36" id="c36">36</a>: <i>Monum. German Histor., poet.
+  lat. medii ævi</i>, I. Berlin 1881, ed. Dümmler. Alcuin,
+  <i>Carmen</i> 23.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c37" id="c37">37</a>: Zoeckler, <i>Geschichte der
+  Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft</i>. 'On rocky
+  crags by the sea, on shores fringed by oak or beech woods, in the
+  shady depths of forests, on towering mountain tops, or on the banks
+  of great rivers, one sees the ruins or the still inhabited buildings
+  which once served as the dwellings of the monks who, with the cross
+  as their only weapon, were the pioneers of our modern culture. Their
+  flight from the life of traffic and bustle in the larger towns was by
+  no means a flight from the beauties of Nature.' The last statement is
+  only partly true. In the prime of the monastic era the beauties of
+  Nature were held to be a snare of the devil. Still, in choosing a
+  site, beauty of position was constantly referred to as an auxiliary
+  motive. 'Bernhard loved the valley,' 'but Bernhard chose mountains,'
+  are significant phrases.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg361" id="pg361">361</a></span>
+  <a name="c38" id="c38">38</a>: Comp. Grimm, <i>Deutsche
+  Mythologie</i>, on the old Germanic idea of a conflict between winter
+  and spring.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c39" id="c39">39</a>: Dümmler, vi. <i>Carolus et Leo
+  papa.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="c40" id="c40">40</a>: Walahfridi Strabi, <i>De cultura
+  hortorum</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="c41" id="c41">41</a>: Comp. H. von Eichen, <i>Geschichte
+  und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung</i>. Stuttg. Cotta,
+  1887.
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER III</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="d1" id="d1">1</a>: Prutz, <i>Geschichte der
+  Kreuzzüge</i>. Berlin, 1883.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="d2" id="d2">2</a>: Allatius, <i>Symmicta</i>. Coeln,
+  1653.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="d3" id="d3">3</a>: <i>Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem
+  heiligen Lande</i>, Roehricht und Meissner. Berlin, 1880.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="d4" id="d4">4</a>: For excellent bibliographical evidence
+  see <i>Die geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter</i> in
+  supplement to <i>Münchner Allgem. Zeitung</i>, January 1885.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="d5" id="d5">5</a>: Comp. Oehlmann, <i>Die Alpenpässe im
+  Mittelalter, Jahrbuch für Schweizer</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="d6" id="d6">6</a>: Biese, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="d7" id="d7">7</a>: Fr. Diez, <i>Leben und Werke der
+  Troubadours</i>. Zwickau, 1829</p>
+
+  <p><a name="d8" id="d8">8</a>: <i>Des Minnesangs Frühling</i>, von
+  Lachmann-Haupt.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="d9" id="d9">9</a>: <i>Geschichte der Malerei.</i>
+  Woermann und Wottmann.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="d10" id="d10">10</a>: 'Detailed study of Nature had
+  begun; but the attempt to blend the separate elements into a
+  background landscape in perspective betrayed the insecurity and
+  constraint of dilettante work at every point.' Ludwig Kämmerer on the
+  period before Van Eyck in <i>Die Landschaft in der deutschen Kunst
+  bis zum Tode Albrecht Dürers</i>. Leipzig, 1880
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER IV</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="e1" id="e1">1</a>: <i>Die Kultur der Renaissance in
+  Italien.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="e2" id="e2">2</a>: <i>Untersuchungen über die kampanische
+  Wandmalerei.</i> Leipzig, 1873.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e3" id="e3">3</a>: Comp. Schnaase, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="e4" id="e4">4</a>: <i>Argon</i>, ii. 219; iii. 260, 298.
+  Comp. Cic. <i>ad Att.</i>, iv. 18, 3.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e5" id="e5">5</a>: <i>Renaissance und Humanismus in
+  Italien und Deutschland.</i> Berlin, 1882. (Oncken, <i>Allgemeine
+  Geschichte in Einzeldarstettungen</i>, ii. 8.)</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e6" id="e6">6</a>: <i>Itinerar. syr.</i>, Burckhardt
+  ii.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e7" id="e7">7</a>: <i>Loci specie percussus</i>,
+  Burckhardt i.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e8" id="e8">8</a>: In his paper 'Kulturgeschichte und
+  Naturwissenschaft' (<i>Deutsche Rundschau</i>, vol. xiii.), which is
+  full both of original ideas and of exaggerated summary opinions, Du
+  Bois Reymond fails to do justice to this, and altogether misjudges
+  Petrarch's feeling for Nature. After giving this letter in proof of
+  mediæval feeling, he goes on to say: 'Full <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg362" id="pg362">362</a></span>of shame and
+  remorse, he descends the mountain without another word. The poor
+  fellow had given himself up to innocent enjoyment for a moment,
+  without thinking of the welfare of his soul, and instead of gloomy
+  introspection, had looked into the enticing outer world. Western
+  humanity was so morbid at that time, that the consciousness of having
+  done this was enough to cause painful inner conflict to a man like
+  Petrarch--a man of refined feeling, and scientific, though not a deep
+  thinker.' Even granting this, which is too tragically put, the world
+  was on the very eve of freeing itself from this position, and
+  Petrarch serves as a witness to the change.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e9" id="e9">9</a>: Comp., too, <i>De Genealogia
+  Deorum</i>, xv., in which he says of trees, meadows, brooks, flocks
+  and herds, cottages, etc., that these things 'animum mulcent,' their
+  effect is 'mentem in se colligere.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e10" id="e10">10</a>: Comp. Voigt, <i>Enea Silvio de'
+  Piccolomini als Papst Pius II. und sein Zeitalter</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e11" id="e11">11</a>: Comp. Geiger and Ad. Wolff, <i>Die
+  Klassiker aller Zeiten und Nationen</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e12" id="e12">12</a>: Quando mira la terra ornata e
+  bella. Rime di V. Colonna.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="e13" id="e13">13</a>: Ombrosa selva che il mio duolo
+  ascolti.
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER V</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="f1" id="f1">1</a>: Ruge, <i>Geschichte des Zeitalters der
+  Entdeckungen.</i> Berlin, 1881. (<i>Allgem. Geschichte in
+  Einzeldarstellungen</i>, von Oncken.) <i>Die neu Welt der
+  Landschaften</i>, etc. Strasburg, 1534.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f2" id="f2">2</a>: <i>De rebus oceanicis et novo orbi
+  Decades tres Petri Martyris at Angleria Mediolanensis, Coloniæ</i>,
+  1574.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f3" id="f3">3</a>: <i>Il viaggio di Giovan Leone e Le
+  Navagazioni, di Aloise da Mosto, di Pietro, di Cintra, di Anxone, di
+  un Piloto Portuguese e di Vasco di Gama quali si leggono nella
+  raccolta di Giovambattista Ramusio.</i> Venezia, 1837.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f4" id="f4">4</a>: For example, this from Ramusio: 'And
+  the coast is all low land, full of most beautiful and very tall
+  trees, which are evergreen, as the leaves do not wither as do those
+  in our country, but a new leaf appears before the other is cast off:
+  the trees extend right down into the marshy tract of shore, and look
+  as if flourishing on the sea. The coast is a most glorious sight, and
+  in my opinion, though I have cruised about in many parts both in the
+  East and in the West, I have never seen any coast which surpassed
+  this in beauty. It is everywhere washed by many rivers, and small
+  streams of little importance, as big ships will not be able to enter
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f5" id="f5">5</a>: Ideler, <i>Examen critique</i>.
+  Cosmos.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg363" id="pg363">363</a></span>
+  <a name="f6" id="f6">6</a>: <i>Coleccion de los viajes y
+  decubrimientos que hicieron por mar los espanoles desde fines del
+  siglo XV. con varios documentos ineditos ... co-ordinata e illustrada
+  por Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete.</i> Madrid, 1858.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f7" id="f7">7</a>: <i>Geschichte des Zeitalters der
+  Entdeckungen.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="f8" id="f8">8</a>: As he lay sick and despairing off
+  Belem, an unknown voice said to him compassionately: 'O fool! and
+  slow to believe and serve thy God.... He gave thee the keys of those
+  barriers of the ocean sea which were closed with such mighty chains,
+  and thou wast obeyed through many lands, and hast gained an
+  honourable fame throughout Christendom.' In a letter to the King and
+  Queen of Spain in fourth voyage.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f9" id="f9">9</a>: Humboldt.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f10" id="f10">10</a>: Biese, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="f11" id="f11">11</a>: Zoeckler, <i>Geschichte der
+  Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f12" id="f12">12</a>: F. Hammerich, <i>St
+  Birgitta.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="f13" id="f13">13</a>: Zoeckler, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="f14" id="f14">14</a>: Comp. Wilkens' <i>Fray Luis de
+  Leon</i>. Halle, 1866.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f15" id="f15">15</a>: Comp. Wilkens' <i>Fray Luis de
+  Leon</i>. Halle, 1866.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f16" id="f16">16</a>: Comp. Wilkens' <i>Fray Luis de
+  Leon</i>. Halle, 1866.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f17" id="f17">17</a>: Comp. Wilkens' <i>Fray Luis de
+  Leon</i>. Halle, 1866.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f18" id="f18">18</a>: Humboldt.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f19" id="f19">19</a>: Comp. Carrière, <i>Die
+  Poesie</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="f20" id="f20">20</a>: Zoeckler, in Herzog's
+  <i>Real-Encykl.</i>, xxi., refers to 'Le Solitaire des Indes ou la
+  Vie de Gregoire Lopez.' Goerres, <i>Die christliche Mystik</i>; S.
+  Arnold, <i>Leben der Gläubigen</i>; French, <i>Life of St Teresa</i>.
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER VI</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="g1" id="g1">1</a>: In <i>Shakespeare Studien</i>, chap.
+  4, Hense treats Shakespeare's attitude towards Nature very
+  suggestively; but I have gone my own way.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="g2" id="g2">2</a>: <i>Hamlet</i>, i. 3: 'The canker galls
+  the infants of the spring too oft before their buttons be disclosed.'
+  Comp. i. 1; <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, i. 1; <i>Henry VI.</i>, part 2,
+  iii. 1; <i>Tempest</i>, i. 2.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="g3" id="g3">3</a>: Comp. Henkel, <i>Das Goethe'sche
+  Gleichnis</i>; <i>Henry IV.</i>, 2nd pt., iv. 4; <i>Richard II.</i>,
+  i. i; <i>Othello</i>, iii. 3, and v. 2; <i>Cymbeline</i>, ii. 4;
+  <i>King John</i>, ii. 2; <i>Hamlet</i>, iii. 1; <i>Tempest</i>, iv.
+  2.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="g4" id="g4">4</a>: See Hense for bucolic idyllic
+  traits.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="g5" id="g5">5</a>: <i>Poetische Personifikation in
+  griechischen Dichtungen.</i>
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER VII</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="h1" id="h1">1</a>: Comp. Woermann, <i>Ueber den
+  landschaftlichen Natursinn der Griechen und Römer, Vorstudien zu
+  einer Arckäologie der Landschaftsmalerei</i>. München, 1871.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="h2" id="h2">2</a>: Comp. Schnaase, <i>Geschichte der
+  bildenden Künste im 15 Jahrhundert</i>, edited by Lübke. Stuttgart,
+  1879.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg364" id="pg364">364</a></span>
+  <a name="h3" id="h3">3</a>: Falke, <i>Geschichte des modernen
+  Geschmacks</i>. Leipzig, 1880</p>
+
+  <p><a name="h4" id="h4">4</a>: <i>Geschichte der deutschen
+  Renaissance</i>. Stuttgart, 1873.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="h5" id="h5">5</a>: Comp. also Kaemmerer, <i>op.
+  cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="h6" id="h6">6</a>: Lûbke, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="h7" id="h7">7</a>: Lûbke refers to A. von Zahn's
+  searching work, <i>Durer's Kunstlehre und sein Verhältnis zur
+  Renaissance</i>. Leipzig, 1866.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="h8" id="h8">8</a>: Proportion III., B.T. iii. b.
+  Nuremberg, 1528.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="h9" id="h9">9</a>: <i>Op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="h10" id="h10">10</a>: In what follows, I have borrowed
+  largely from Rosenberg's interesting writings (<i>Greuzboten</i>,
+  Nos. 43 and 44, 1884-85), and still more from Schnaase, Falke, and
+  Carrière, as I myself only know the masters represented at Berlin and
+  Munich.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="h11" id="h11">11</a>: Kaemmerer, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="h12" id="h12">12</a>: Kaemmerer, <i>op. cit.</i>
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER VIII</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="i1" id="i1">1</a>: <i>Renaissance und Humanismus in
+  Italien und Deutschland.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="i2" id="i2">2</a>: <i>Renaissance und Humanismus in
+  Italien und Deutschland.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="i3" id="i3">3</a>: Zoeckler.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i4" id="i4">4</a>: Comp. Hase, <i>Sebastian Frank von
+  Woerd der Schwarmgeist</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i5" id="i5">5</a>: Comp. Hubert, <i>Kleine
+  Schriften</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i6" id="i6">6</a>: Zoeckler, etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i7" id="i7">7</a>: Comp. Uhland, <i>Schriften zur
+  Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage</i>. Alte hoch und nieder deutsche
+  Volkslieder, where plants, ivy, holly, box, and willow, represent
+  summer and winter.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i8" id="i8">8</a>: Uhland.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i9" id="i9">9</a>: Uhland.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i10" id="i10">10</a>: Wunderhorn.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i11" id="i11">11</a>: Biese, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="i12" id="i12">12</a>: Fred Cohn, '<i>Die Gärten in alter
+  und neuer Zeit,' D. Rundschau</i> 18, 1879. In Italy in the sixteenth
+  century there was a change to this extent, that greenery was no
+  longer clipt, but allowed to grow naturally, and the garden
+  represented the transition from palace to landscape, from bare
+  architectural forms to the free creations of Nature. The passion for
+  flowers--the art of the pleasure garden, flourished in Holland and
+  Germany. (Falke.)</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i13" id="i13">13</a>: W.H. Riehl states (<i>Kulturstudien
+  aus drei Jahrhunderten</i>) that Berlin, Augsburg, Leipzig,
+  Darmstadt, and Mannheim were described in the seventeenth century as
+  having 'very fine and delightful positions'; and the finest parts of
+  the Black Forest, Harz and Thuringian mountains as 'very desolate,'
+  deserted, and monotonous, or, at best, as not particularly pleasant
+  scenery. If only a region were flat and treeless, a delicious
+  landscape could be charmed out of it. Welcker, Court physician at
+  Hesse Cassel, describing Schlangenbad in 1721, said that it lay in a
+  desolate, unpleasing district, where nothing grew but foliage and
+  grass, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg365" id=
+  "pg365">365</a></span>but that through ingenious planting of clipt
+  trees in lines and cross lines, some sort of artistic effect had been
+  produced. Clearly the principles of French garden-craft had become a
+  widely accepted dogma of taste. Riehl contrasts the periwig period
+  with the mediæval, and concludes that the mediæval backgrounds of
+  pictures implied feeling for the wild and romantic. He says: 'In the
+  Middle Ages the painters chose romantic jagged forms of mountains and
+  rocks for backgrounds, hence the wild, bare, and arid counted as a
+  prototype of beautiful scenery, while some centuries later such forms
+  were held to be too rustic and irregular for beauty.' One cannot
+  entirely agree with this. He weakens it himself in what follows. 'It
+  was not a real scene which rose Alp-like before their mind's eye, but
+  an imaginary and sacred one; their fantastic, romantic ideal called
+  for rough and rugged environment': and adds, arguing in a circle,
+  'Their minds passed then to real portraiture of Nature, and decided
+  the landscape eye of the period.' My own opinion is that the
+  loftiness of the 'heroic' mountain backgrounds seemed suitable for
+  the sacred subjects which loomed so large and sublime in their own
+  minds, and that these backgrounds did not reveal their ideal of
+  landscape beauty, nor 'a romantic feeling for Nature,' nor 'a taste
+  for the romantic,' nor yet a wondrous change of view in the periwig
+  period.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i14" id="i14">14</a>: In his <i>Harburg Program</i> of
+  1883 <i>(Beiträge zur Geschichte des Naturgefühls</i>), after an
+  incomplete survey of ancient and modern writings on the subject,
+  Winter sketches the development of modern feeling for Nature in
+  Germany from Opitz to 1770, as shewn in the literature of that
+  period, basing his information chiefly upon Goedeke's <i>Deutsche
+  Dichtung.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="i15" id="i15">15</a>: Comp. Chovelius <i>Die
+  bedeutendsten deutschen Romanz des 17 Jahrhunderts</i>. Leipzig,
+  1866.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i16" id="i16">16</a>: Chovelius.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="i17" id="i17">17</a>: Daniel Lohenstein's <i>Blumen</i>.
+  Breslau, 1689.
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER IX</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="j1" id="j1">1</a>: Freiherr von Ditfurth, <i>Deutsche
+  Volks und Gesellschaftslieder des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts</i>,
+  1872.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="j2" id="j2">2</a>: Goedeke-Tittmannschen Sammlung, xiii.,
+  <i>Trutz-Nachtigall.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="j3" id="j3">3</a>: <i>Geschichte der deutschen
+  Litteratur</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="j4" id="j4">4</a>: Tittmann's <i>Deutsche Dichter des 17
+  Jahrhunderts</i>, vol. vi.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="j5" id="j5">5</a>: Comp., too, iv. 5: 'Die ihr alles hört
+  und saget, Luft and Forst und Meer durchjaget; Echo, Sonne, Mond, und
+  Wind, Sagt mir doch, wo steckt mein Kind?'</p>
+
+  <p>21. 'Den sanften West bewegt mein Klagen, Es rauscht <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg366" id="pg366">366</a></span>der Bach den
+  Seufzern nach Aus Mitleid meiner Plagen; Die Vögel schweigen, Um nur
+  zu zeigen Dass diese schöne Tyrannei Auch Tieren überlegen sei.'
+  <i>Abendlied</i> contains beautiful personifications: 'Der Feierabend
+  ist gemacht, Die Arbeit schläft, der Traum erwacht, Die Sonne führt
+  die Pferde trinken; Der Erdkreis wandert zu der Ruh, Die Nacht drückt
+  ihm die Augen zu, Die schon dem süssen Schlafe winken.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="j6" id="j6">6</a>: Hettner, <i>Litteraturgeschichte des
+  18 Jahrhunderts</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="j7" id="j7">7</a>: Lappenberg in <i>Zeitschrift für
+  Hamburgische Geschichte</i>, ii. Hettner, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="j8" id="j8">8</a>: 'Ye fields and woods, my refuge from
+  the toilsome world of business, receive me in your quiet sanctuaries
+  and favour my Retreat and thoughtful Solitude. Ye verdant plains, how
+  gladly I salute ye! Hail all ye blissful Mansions! Known Seats!
+  Delightful Prospects! Majestick Beautys of this earth, and all ye
+  rural Powers and Graces! Bless'd be ye chaste Abodes of happiest
+  Mortals who here in peaceful Innocence enjoy a Life unenvy'd, the
+  Divine, whilst with its bless'd Tranquility it affords a happy
+  Leisure and Retreat for Man, who, made for contemplation and to
+  search his own and other natures, may here best meditate the cause of
+  Things, and, plac'd amidst the various scenes of Nature, may nearer
+  view her Works. O glorious Nature! supremely fair and sovereignly
+  good! All-loving and All-lovely All-Divine! Whose looks are so
+  becoming, and of such infinite grace, whose study brings such Wisdom,
+  and whose contemplation such Delight.... Since by thee (O Sovereign
+  mind!) I have been form'd such as I am, intelligent and rational;
+  since the peculiar Dignity of my Nature is to know and contemplate
+  Thee; permit that with due freedom I exert those Facultys with which
+  thou hast adorn'd me. Bear with my ventrous and bold approach. And
+  since not vain Curiosity, nor fond Conceit, nor Love of aught save
+  Thee alone, inspires me with such thoughts as these, be thou my
+  Assistant, and guide me in this Pursuit; whilst I venture thus to
+  tread the Labyrinth of wide Nature, and endeavour to trace thee in
+  thy Works.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="j9" id="j9">9</a>: Comp. Jacob von Falke, '<i>Der
+  englische Garten</i>' (<i>Nord und Süd</i>, Nov. 1884), and his
+  <i>Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="j10" id="j10">10</a>: <i>Dessins des édifices, meubles,
+  habits, machines, et utensils des Chinois</i>, 1757.
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER X</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="k1" id="k1">1</a>: '<i>Die Alpen im Lichte verschiedener
+  Zeitalter</i>,' <i>Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Vorträge</i>, Virchow
+  und Holtzendorff. Berlin, 1877.</p>
+
+  <p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg367" id="pg367">367</a></span>
+  <a name="k2" id="k2">2</a>:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>Geschäfte Zwang und Grillen Entweihn nicht diese Trift;</p>
+
+    <p>Ich finde hier im Stillen Des Unmuts Gegengift.</p>
+
+    <p>Es webet, wallt, und spielet, Das Laub um jeden Strauch,</p>
+
+    <p>Und jede Staude fühlet Des lauen Zephyrs Hauch.</p>
+
+    <p>Was mir vor Augen schwebet Gefällt und hüpft und singt,</p>
+
+    <p>Und alles, alles lebet, Und alles scheint verjüngt.</p>
+
+    <p>Ihr Thäler und ihr Höhen Die Lust und Sommer schmückt!</p>
+
+    <p>Euch ungestört zu sehen, Ist, was mein Herz erquickt.</p>
+
+    <p>Die Reizung freier Felder Beschämt der Gärten Pracht,</p>
+
+    <p>Und in die offnen Wälder Wird ohne Zwang gelacht....</p>
+
+    <p>In jährlich neuen Schätzen zeigt sich des Landmanns Glück,</p>
+
+    <p>Und Freiheit und Ergötzen Erheitern seinen Blick....</p>
+
+    <p>Ihm prangt die fette Weide Und die betante Flur;</p>
+
+    <p>Ihm grünet Lust und Freude Ihm malet die Natur.'</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="k3" id="k3">3</a>: <i>Litteratur geschichte</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k4" id="k4">4</a>: <i>Sämtliche poetische Werke</i>, J.P.
+  Uz. Leipzig, 1786.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k5" id="k5">5</a>: <i>Sämtliche Werke</i>. Berlin,
+  1803.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k6" id="k6">6</a>: <i>Sämtliche Werke</i>, J.G. Jacobi,
+  vol. viii. Zurich, 1882.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k7" id="k7">7</a>: He said of his garden at Freiburg,
+  which was laid out in terraces on a slope, that all that Flora and
+  Pomona could offer was gathered there. It had a special Poet's Corner
+  on a hillock under a poplar, where a moss-covered seat was laid for
+  him upon some limestone rock-work; white and yellow jasmine grew
+  round, and laurels and myrtles hung down over his head. Here he would
+  rest when he walked in the sun; on his left was a mossy Ara, a little
+  artificial stone altar on which he laid his book, and from here he
+  could gaze across the visible bit of the distant Rhine to the Vosges,
+  and give himself up undisturbed to his thoughts.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k8" id="k8">8</a>: Gessners <i>Schriften</i>. Zurich,
+  1770.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k9" id="k9">9</a>: Spalding, <i>Die Bestimmung des
+  Menschen</i>. Leipzig, 1768.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k10" id="k10">10</a>: Klopstock's <i>Briefe</i>.
+  Brunswick, 1867.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k11" id="k11">11</a>: Comp. <i>Odes</i>, 'Die Kunst
+  Tialfs' and 'Winterfreuden.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k12" id="k12">12</a>: <i>Briefe</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k13" id="k13">13</a>: Julian Schmidt.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k14" id="k14">14</a>: Comp. his letters from Switzerland,
+  which contain nothing particular about the scenery, although he
+  crossed the Lake of Zurich, and 'a wicked mountain' to the Lake of
+  Zug and Lucerne.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="k15" id="k15">15</a>: Claudius, who, at a time when the
+  lyric both of poetry and music was lost in Germany in conventional
+  tea and coffee songs, was the first to rediscover the direct
+  expression of feeling--that is, Nature feeling. (Storm's
+  <i>Hausbuch</i>.) <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg368" id=
+  "pg368">368</a></span>
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER XI</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="l1" id="l1">1</a>: I have obtained much information and
+  suggestion from '<i>Ueber die geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im
+  Mittelalter</i>,' and '<i>Ueber die Alpine Reiselitteratur in
+  fruherer Zeit</i>,' in <i>Allgem. Zeitung</i>. Jan. 11, 1885, and
+  Sept. 1885, respectively.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l2" id="l2">2</a>: <i>Evagatorium 3, Bibliothek d.
+  litterar. Vereins</i>. Stuttgart, 1849.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l3" id="l3">3</a>: <i>Bibliothek des litterar.
+  Vereins</i>. Stuttgart, 1886.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l4" id="l4">4</a>: <i>Descriptio Larii lacus</i>. Milan,
+  1558.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l5" id="l5">5</a>: <i>Itinerarium Basil</i>. 1624.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l6" id="l6">6</a>: Osenbrüggen, <i>Wanderungen in der
+  Schweiz</i>, 1867; <i>Entwickelungsgeschichte des Schweizreisens</i>;
+  Friedländer, <i>Ueber die Entstehung und Entwickelung</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l7" id="l7">7</a>: Comp. Erich Schmidt, <i>Richardson,
+  Rousseau, and Goethe</i>. Jena, 1875.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l8" id="l8">8</a>: Remarks on several parts of Italy.
+  London, 1761.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l9" id="l9">9</a>: Letters of Lady M. Wortley Montagu,
+  Sept. 25, 1718.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l10" id="l10">10</a>: Friedländer, <i>op. cit.</i></p>
+
+  <p><a name="l11" id="l11">11</a>: Schmidt. Moser's description of a
+  sensitive soul in <i>Patriotischen Phantasien</i> is most
+  amusing.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l12" id="l12">12</a>: Laprade adduces little of
+  importance in his book <i>Le Sentiment de la Nature</i> (2nd
+  edition), the first volume of which I have dealt with elsewhere. I
+  have little in common with Laprade, although he is the only writer
+  who has treated the subject comprehensively and historically. His
+  standpoint is that of Catholic theology; he never separates feeling
+  for Nature from religion, and is severe upon unbelievers. The book is
+  well written, and in parts clever, but only touches the surface and
+  misses much. His position is thus laid down: 'Le vrai sentiment de la
+  Nature, le seul poétique, le seul fécond et puissant, le seul
+  innocent de tout danger, est celui qui ne sépare jamais l'idée des
+  choses visibles de la pensée de Dieu.' He accounts for the lack of
+  any important expressions of feeling for Nature in French classics
+  with: 'Le génie de la France est le génie de l'action.' and 'L'âme
+  humaine est le but de la poésie.' He recognizes that even with
+  Fénélon 'la Nature reste à ses yeux comme une simple décoration du
+  drame que l'homme y joue, le poëte en lui ne la regarde jamais à
+  travers les yeux du mystique.' Of the treatment of Nature in La
+  Fontaine's Fables, he says: 'Ce n'est pas peindre la Nature, c'est
+  l'abolir'; and draws this conclusion: 'Le sentiment de l'infini est
+  absent de la poésie du dix-septième siècle aussi bien que le
+  sentiment de la Nature'; and again: 'L'esprit général du dix-huitième
+  siècle est la négation même de la poésie ... l'amour de la Nature
+  n'était guerre autre <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg369" id=
+  "pg369">369</a></span>chose qu'une haine déguisée et une déclaration
+  de guerre a la société et a la réligion. Il n'y a pai trace du
+  sentiment légitime et profond qui attire l'artiste et le poëte vers
+  les splendeurs de la création, révélatrices du monde invisible. Ne
+  demandez pas an dix-huitème siècle la poésie de la Nature, pas plus
+  que celle du coeur.' Buffon shews 'l'état poétique des sciences de la
+  Nature,' but his brilliant prose painting lacks 'la présence de Dieu,
+  la révélation de l'infini les harmonies de l'âme et de la Nature
+  n'existent pas pour Buffon.... plus de la rhétorique que de vrai
+  sentiment de la Nature.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l13" id="l13">13</a>: Comp. the garden of Elysium in
+  <i>La Nouvelle Héloise:</i> Where the gardener's hand is nowhere to
+  be discerned, nothing contradicts the idea of a desert island, and I
+  cannot perceive any footsteps of men ... you see nothing here in an
+  exact row, nothing level, Nature plants nothing by the ruler.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l14" id="l14">14</a>: <i>OEuvres de Jacques Bernardin
+  Henri de Saint Pierre</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l15" id="l15">15</a>: 'B. de S. Pierre a plus que
+  Rousseau les facultés propres du paysagiste, l'amour même du
+  pittoresque, la vive curiosité des sites, des animaux, et des plants,
+  la couleur et une certaine magie spéciale du pinceau,' Laprade adds
+  the reproof: 'Sa pensée réligieuse est au-dessous de son talent
+  d'artiste et en abaisse le niveau.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l16" id="l16">16</a>: <i>Voyage round the World</i>,
+  1772-1775.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="l17" id="l17">17</a>: Paul Lemnius, 1597, <i>Landes
+  Rugiae</i>; Kosegarten, 1777-1779; Rellstab, 1799, <i>Ausflucht noch
+  der Insel Rügen;</i> Navest, 1800, <i>Wanderungen durch die Insel
+  Rügen</i>; Grümbke, 1805; <i>Indigena, Streifzüge durch das
+  Rügenland</i>. J.P. Hackert in 1762, and K. D. Friedrichs in 1792,
+  painted the scenery. Comp. E. Boll, <i>Die Inset Rügen</i>, 1858.
+  <br /></p>
+
+  <h4>CHAPTER XII</h4>
+
+  <p><a name="m1" id="m1">1</a>: Comp. Gottschall, <i>Poetik</i>.
+  Breslau, 1853.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m2" id="m2">2</a>: <i>Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter
+  Völker</i>, Sämtliche <i>Werke</i>, Teil 7.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m3" id="m3">3</a>: <i>Op. cit.</i>, Teil 15.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m4" id="m4">4</a>: <i>Zur Philosophie und Gesehichte,</i>
+  2 Teil.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m5" id="m5">5</a>: J.G. Sulzer's <i>Unterredungen über
+  die Schönheit der Nätur nebst desselben moralischen Betrachtungen
+  über besondere Gegenstände der Naturlehre</i> is typical. Charites
+  describes his conversion to the love of Nature by his friend
+  Eukrates. Eukrates woke him at dawn and led him to a hill close by,
+  as the sun rose. The fresh air, the birds' songs, and the wide
+  landscape move him, and Eukrates points out that the love of Nature
+  is the 'most natural of pleasures,' making <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg370" id="pg370">370</a></span>the labourer so
+  happy that he forgets servitude and misery, and sings at his work.
+  'This pleasure is always new to us, and the heart, provided it be not
+  possessed by vanity or stormy passions, lies always open to it. Do
+  you not know that they who are in trouble, and, above all, they who
+  are in love, find their chief relief here? Is not a sick man better
+  cheered by sunshine than by any other refreshment?' Then he points
+  out Nature's harmonies and changes of colour, and warns Charites to
+  avoid the storms of the passions. 'Yonder brook is a picture of our
+  soul; so long as it runs quietly between its banks, the water is
+  clear and grass and flowers border it; but when it swells and flows
+  tumultuously, all this ornament is torn away, and it becomes turbid.
+  To delight in Nature the mind must be free.... She is a sanctity only
+  approached by pure souls.... As only the quiet stream shews the sky
+  and the objects around, so it is only on quiet souls that Nature's
+  pictures are painted; ruffled water reflects nothing.' He waxes
+  eloquent about birds' songs, flowers, and brooks, and wanders by the
+  hour in the woods, 'all his senses open to Nature's impressions,'
+  which are 'rays from that source of all beauty, the sight of which
+  will one day bless the soul.' His friend is soon convinced that
+  Nature cannot be overpraised, and that her art is endlessly
+  great.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m6" id="m6">6</a>: <i>Vorn Gefühl des Schönen und
+  Physiologie überhaupt.</i> Winter.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m7" id="m7">7</a>: Comp. <i>Das Fluchtigste</i>. 'Tadle
+  nicht der Nachtigallen, Bald verhallend süsses Lied,' oder 'Nichts
+  verliert sich,' etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m8" id="m8">8</a>: Herder's <i>Nachlass</i>, Düntzer und
+  F.G. von Herder, 1857.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m9" id="m9">9</a>: Bernay's <i>Der junge Goethe</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m10" id="m10">10</a>: <i>Die Sprödde, Die Bekehrte, März,
+  Lust und Qual, Luna, Gegenwart</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m11" id="m11">11</a>: Laprade is all admiration for the
+  'incomparable artiste et poëte inspiré du sentiment de la Nature,
+  c'est qu'il excelle à peindre le monde extérieur et le coeur humain
+  l'un par l'autre, qu'il mêle les images de l'univers visible à
+  l'expression des sentiments intimes, de manière à n'en former qu'un
+  seul tissu.... Tous les éléments d'un objet d'une situation
+  apparaissent à la fois, et dans leur harmonie, essentielle à cet
+  incomparable esprit.' He is astonished at the symbolism in
+  <i>Werthtr</i>: 'Chaque lettre répond à la saison ou elle est
+  écrite.... l'idee et l'image s'identifient dans un fait suprême, dans
+  un cri; il se fait entre l'émotion intime et l'impression du dehors
+  une sorte de fusion.' And despite Goethe's Greek paganism and
+  pantheism, he declares: 'Le nom de Goethe marque une de ces grandes
+  dates, une de ces grandes révolutions de la poésie--la plus grande,
+  nous le croyons, depuis Homer.' ... 'Goethe <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg371" id="pg371">371</a></span>est la plus haut
+  expression poétique des tendances de notre siècle vers le monde
+  extérieur et la philosophie de la Nature.'</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m12" id="m12">12</a>: Comp. <i>Tagebucher und Briefe
+  Goethe's aus Italien an Frau von Stein und Herder</i>. E. Schmidt,
+  Weimar, 1886.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m13" id="m13">13</a>: Julian Schmidt.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m14" id="m14">14</a>: <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>
+  breathes a delightful freshness, the very spirit of mountain and
+  wood, free alike from the moral preaching of Wordsworth, and from the
+  storms of passion.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m15" id="m15">15</a>: Laprade.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m16" id="m16">16</a>: 'Sa formule réligieuse, c'est une
+  question; sa pensée, c'est le doute ... l'artiste divinise chaque
+  détail. Son panthéisme ne s'applique pas seulement à l'ensemble des
+  choses; Dieu tout entier est réellement présent poor lui dans chaque
+  fragment de matière dans le plus immonde animal ... c'est une
+  réligion aussi vieille que l'humanité décline; cela s'appelle
+  purement et simplement le fétichisme.' (Laprade.)</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m17" id="m17">17</a>: <i>Vorschule der Æsthetik</i>.
+  Compare 'With every genius a new Nature is created for us in the
+  further unveiling of the old.' 2 Aufi. <i>Berlin Reimer</i>,
+  1827.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m18" id="m18">18</a>: 'Like a lily softly swaying in the
+  hushed air, so my being moves in its elements, in the charming dream
+  of her.' 'Our souls rush forward in colossal plans, like exulting
+  streams rushing perpetually through mountain and forest.' 'If the old
+  mute rock of Fate did not stand opposing them, the waves of the heart
+  would never foam so beautifully and become mind.' 'There is a night
+  in the soul which no gleam of starlight, not even dry wood,
+  illuminates,' etc.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m19" id="m19">19</a>: Comp. Tieck's <i>Biographie von
+  Koepke</i>. Brandes.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m20" id="m20">20</a>: <i>Franz Sternbald</i>, I. Berlin,
+  1798.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m21" id="m21">21</a>: Haym, <i>Die romantische
+  Schule</i>. Berlin, 1870.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m22" id="m22">22</a>: <i>Phantasus</i>, i. Berlin,
+  1812.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m23" id="m23">23</a>: 'A young hunter was sitting in the
+  heart of the mountains in a thoughtful mood beside his fowling-piece,
+  while the noise of the water and the woods was sounding through the
+  solitude ... it grew darker ... the birds of night began to shoot
+  with fitful wing along their mazy courses ... unthinkingly he pulled
+  a straggling root from the earth, and on the instant heard with
+  affright a stifled moan underground, which winded downwards in
+  doleful tones, and died plaintively away in the deep distance. The
+  sound went through his inmost heart; it seized him as if he had
+  unwittingly touched the wound, of which the dying frame of Nature was
+  expiring in its agony.' (Runenberg.)</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m24" id="m24">24</a>: <i>Hymnen an die Nacht</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m25" id="m25">25</a>: In <i>Die Lehrlinge von
+  Sais</i>.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="m26" id="m26">26</a>: <i>Athenäum</i>, iii., 1800.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg372" id="pg372">372</a></span></p>
+
+  <h2><a name="index" id="index">INDEX</a></h2>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Addison, <a href="#pg231">231</a>, <a href="#pg265">265</a>,
+    <a href="#pg292">292</a></li>
+
+    <li>Æschylus, <a href="#pg153">153</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg176">176</a></li>
+
+    <li>Agrippa v. Nettesheim, <a href="#pg201">201</a></li>
+
+    <li>Alamanni, <a href="#pg132">132</a></li>
+
+    <li>Alberti, Leon, <a href="#pg102">102</a></li>
+
+    <li>Alcantara, <a href="#pg164">164</a></li>
+
+    <li>Alcuin, <a href="#pg059">59</a></li>
+
+    <li>Alexander, <a href="#pg066">66</a>, <a href="#pg098">98</a>,
+    <a href="#pg100">100</a>, <a href="#pg120">120</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ambrose, <a href="#pg042">42</a></li>
+
+    <li>Angilbert, <a href="#pg060">60</a></li>
+
+    <li>Anno v. Coeln, <a href="#pg073">73</a></li>
+
+    <li>Apollonios Rhodios, <a href="#pg120">120</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg151">151</a></li>
+
+    <li>Apollonius Sidonius, <a href="#pg049">49</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg050">50</a>, <a href="#pg051">51</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg109">109</a></li>
+
+    <li>Apuleius, <a href="#pg018">18</a></li>
+
+    <li>Aquinus, Thomas, <a href="#pg157">157</a></li>
+
+    <li>Aribert v. Mailand, <a href="#pg073">73</a></li>
+
+    <li>Aribo, <a href="#pg072">72</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ariosto, <a href="#pg127">127</a></li>
+
+    <li>Aristophanes, <a href="#pg016">16</a></li>
+
+    <li>Aristotle, <a href="#pg016">16</a>, <a href="#pg036">36</a>,
+    <a href="#pg038">38</a>, <a href="#pg100">100</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg200">200</a></li>
+
+    <li>Augustine, <a href="#pg043">43</a>, <a href="#pg044">44</a>,
+    <a href="#pg045">45</a>, <a href="#pg062">62</a></li>
+
+    <li>Augustus, <a href="#pg018">18</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ausonius, <a href="#pg018">18</a>, <a href="#pg045">45</a>,
+    <a href="#pg046">46</a>, <a href="#pg047">47</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg057">57</a>, <a href="#pg062">62</a></li>
+
+    <li>Aventinus, <a href="#pg201">201</a></li>
+
+    <li>Avitus, <a href="#pg049">49</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Baccioli, Lucca, <a href="#pg101">101</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bakhuysen, <a href="#pg198">198</a></li>
+
+    <li>Basil, <a href="#pg032">32</a>, <a href="#pg033">33</a>,
+    <a href="#pg034">34</a>, <a href="#pg037">37</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg062">62</a></li>
+
+    <li>Beauvais, V. v., <a href="#pg156">156</a></li>
+
+    <li>Beda, <a href="#pg059">59</a></li>
+
+    <li>v. Bern, <a href="#pg071">71</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bernhard v. Clairvaux, <a href="#pg155">155</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bernhard v. Hildesheim, <a href="#pg073">73</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bernhard v. Ventadour, <a href="#pg086">86</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bertran de Born, <a href="#pg087">87</a></li>
+
+    <li>Birgitta, <a href="#pg156">156</a></li>
+
+    <li>Blair, <a href="#pg225">225</a></li>
+
+    <li>de Bles, <a href="#pg193">193</a></li>
+
+    <li>Boccaccio, <a href="#pg121">121</a></li>
+
+    <li>Boecklin, <a href="#pg357">357</a></li>
+
+    <li>Boehme, <a href="#pg165">165</a>, <a href="#pg202">202</a></li>
+
+    <li>Boetius, <a href="#pg051">51</a></li>
+
+    <li>Boie, <a href="#pg255">255</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bojardo, <a href="#pg137">137</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bonaventura, <a href="#pg155">155</a></li>
+
+    <li>Boucher, <a href="#pg211">211</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg212">212</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bouts, <a href="#pg193">193</a></li>
+
+    <li>Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, A. v., <a href="#pg216">216</a></li>
+
+    <li>Brockes, <a href="#pg222">222</a>, <a href="#pg228">228</a>,
+    <a href="#pg239">239</a>, <a href="#pg265">265</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg290">290</a>, <a href="#pg291">291</a></li>
+
+    <li>Brueghel, Peter and Jan, <a href="#pg194">194</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg195">195</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bruno, <a href="#pg165">165</a>, <a href="#pg202">202</a></li>
+
+    <li>Buffon, <a href="#pg339">339</a></li>
+
+    <li>Bürger, <a href="#pg255">255</a></li>
+
+    <li>Burkhard v. Monte Sion, <a href="#pg069">69</a></li>
+
+    <li>Byron, <a href="#pg127">127</a>, <a href="#pg179">179</a>,
+    <a href="#pg325">325</a>, <a href="#pg327">327</a>-335, <a href=
+    "#pg339">339</a>, <a href="#pg343">343</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg353">353</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Calderon, <a href="#pg160">160</a>, <a href="#pg163">163</a>,
+    <a href="#pg164">164</a>, <a href="#pg166">166</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg167">167</a>, <a href="#pg170">170</a></li>
+
+    <li>Calpernius, <a href="#pg060">60</a></li>
+
+    <li>Camoens, <a href="#pg149">149</a></li>
+
+    <li>Campanella, <a href="#pg165">165</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg202">202</a></li>
+
+    <li>Carew, <a href="#pg224">224</a></li>
+
+    <li>Cassiodorus, <a href="#pg051">51</a></li>
+
+    <li>Catullus, <a href="#pg018">18</a>, <a href="#pg049">49</a>,
+    <a href="#pg054">54</a>, <a href="#pg129">129</a></li>
+
+    <li>Celtes, <a href="#pg200">200</a></li>
+
+    <li>Chambers, <a href="#pg231">231</a></li>
+
+    <li>Charlemagne, <a href="#pg060">60</a>, <a href="#pg061">61</a>,
+    <a href="#pg072">72</a></li>
+
+    <li>Chateaubriand, <a href="#pg264">264</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg339">339</a>, <a href="#pg340">340</a></li>
+
+    <li>Chaucer, <a href="#pg222">222</a></li>
+
+    <li>Chlodwig, <a href="#pg053">53</a></li>
+
+    <li>Chlotaire, <a href="#pg054">54</a></li>
+
+    <li>Chrysostom, <a href="#pg039">39</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg040">40</a></li>
+
+    <li>Cicero, <a href="#pg036">36</a></li>
+
+    <li>Claudius, <a href="#pg254">254</a></li>
+
+    <li>Clement of Rome, <a href="#pg030">30</a></li>
+
+    <li>v. Clugny, Abbé M., <a href="#pg073">73</a></li>
+
+    <li>Colonna, Vittoria, <a href="#pg136">136</a></li>
+
+    <li>Columbus, <a href="#pg141">141</a>, <a href="#pg145">145</a>,
+    <a href="#pg150">150</a></li>
+
+    <li>Columella, <a href="#pg061">61</a></li>
+
+    <li>Corneille, <a href="#pg196">196</a></li>
+
+    <li>Cornelia, <a href="#pg018">18</a></li>
+
+    <li>Correggio, <a href="#pg188">188</a></li>
+
+    <li>Cowley, <a href="#pg291">291</a></li>
+
+    <li>Cramer, <a href="#pg310">310</a>, <a href="#pg312">312</a></li>
+
+    <li>Cronegk, <a href="#pg239">239</a></li>
+
+    <li>Crugot, <a href="#pg246">246</a></li>
+
+    <li>Cuyp, <a href="#pg197">197</a></li>
+
+    <li>Cyprian, <a href="#pg042">42</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Dante, <a href="#pg099">99</a>, <a href="#pg101">101</a>,
+    <a href="#pg106">106</a>, <a href="#pg110">110</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg117">117</a>, <a href="#pg130">130</a></li>
+
+    <li>Darius, <a href="#pg120">120</a></li>
+
+    <li>Defoe, <a href="#pg233">233</a></li>
+
+    <li>Dionisius da B.S. Sepolchro, <a href="#pg118">118</a></li>
+
+    <li>Domidius, <a href="#pg050">50</a>, <a href="#pg051">51</a></li>
+
+    <li>Dracontius, <a href="#pg048">48</a></li>
+
+    <li>Drayton, <a href="#pg223">223</a></li>
+
+    <li>Drummond, <a href="#pg224">224</a></li>
+
+    <li>du Bois-Reymond, <a href="#pg038">38</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg266">266</a></li>
+
+    <li>Dürer, <a href="#pg189">189</a>, <a href="#pg190">190</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>v. Eichendorff, <a href="#pg357">357</a></li>
+
+    <li>Eist, Deitmar v., <a href="#pg088">88</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ekkehart, <a href="#pg156">156</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ennodius, <a href="#pg051">51</a></li>
+
+    <li>Epiphanius, M.H., <a href="#pg071">71</a></li>
+
+    <li>Euripides, <a href="#pg014">14</a>, <a href="#pg015">15</a>,
+    <a href="#pg016">16</a>, <a href="#pg166">166</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg307">307</a></li>
+
+    <li>Everdingen, A. v., <a href="#pg198">198</a></li>
+
+    <li>v. Eyck, <a href="#pg191">191</a>, <a href="#pg192">192</a>,
+    <a href="#pg193">193</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Fabri, <a href="#pg262">262</a></li>
+
+    <li>Fénélon, <a href="#pg196">196</a></li>
+
+    <li>Fischart, <a href="#pg208">208</a></li>
+
+    <li>Fleming, <a href="#pg213">213</a></li>
+
+    <li>Forster, <a href="#pg279">279</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg282">282</a></li>
+
+    <li>Fortunatus, <a href="#pg053">53</a>-62, <a href=
+    "#pg073">73</a></li>
+
+    <li>Francis of Assisi, <a href="#pg155">155</a></li>
+
+    <li>Frank, Sebastian, <a href="#pg202">202</a></li>
+
+    <li>Fredegar, <a href="#pg072">72</a></li>
+
+    <li>Frederic the Great, <a href="#pg288">288</a></li>
+
+    <li>Friedlander, <a href="#pg109">109</a></li>
+
+    <li>Fürttenbach, <a href="#pg264">264</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Gatterer, <a href="#pg286">286</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gellert, <a href="#pg239">239</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gerhard, Paul, <a href="#pg214">214</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gervinus, <a href="#pg016">16</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gessner, Conrad, <a href="#pg246">246</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg264">264</a>, <a href="#pg291">291</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gessner, Salomon, <a href="#pg245">245</a></li>
+
+    <li>Giorgione, <a href="#pg188">188</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gleim, <a href="#pg239">239</a>, <a href="#pg243">243</a>,
+    <a href="#pg286">286</a></li>
+
+    <li>Goethe, <a href="#pg002">2</a>, <a href="#pg003">3</a>,
+    <a href="#pg038">38</a>, <a href="#pg039">39</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg110">110</a>, <a href="#pg113">113</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg117">117</a>, <a href="#pg127">127</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg164">164</a>, <a href="#pg179">179</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg180">180</a>, <a href="#pg203">203</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg219">219</a>, <a href="#pg222">222</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg247">247</a>, <a href="#pg288">288</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg289">289</a>, <a href="#pg290">290</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg296">296</a>-325, <a href="#pg339">339</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg343">343</a>, <a href="#pg349">349</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gogen, <a href="#pg197">197</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gottfried v. Strassburg, <a href="#pg083">83</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gozzoli, <a href="#pg188">188</a></li>
+
+    <li>Grasser, <a href="#pg263">263</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gregory Nazianzen, <a href="#pg032">32</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg034">34</a>, <a href="#pg035">35</a>, <a href="#pg037">37</a>,
+    <a href="#pg039">39</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gregory of Nyssa, <a href="#pg035">35</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg037">37</a>, <a href="#pg038">38</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gregory of Tours, <a href="#pg072">72</a></li>
+
+    <li>Grümbke, <a href="#pg287">287</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gryphius, <a href="#pg214">214</a></li>
+
+    <li>Guarini, G., <a href="#pg135">135</a></li>
+
+    <li>Günther, Christian, <a href="#pg220">220</a></li>
+
+    <li>Günther d. Liguriner, <a href="#pg073">73</a></li>
+
+    <li>Guotenberg, U. v., <a href="#pg089">89</a></li>
+
+    <li>Gussfeldt, <a href="#pg357">357</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Hadrian, <a href="#pg018">18</a></li>
+
+    <li>Haeckel, <a href="#pg279">279</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg357">357</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hagedorn, <a href="#pg238">238</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg243">243</a></li>
+
+    <li>Haller, <a href="#pg235">235</a>, <a href="#pg237">237</a>,
+    <a href="#pg239">239</a>, <a href="#pg265">265</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg290">290</a>, <a href="#pg291">291</a></li>
+
+    <li>Harsdörfer, <a href="#pg216">216</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg219">219</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hartmann, <a href="#pg081">81</a>, <a href="#pg083">83</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hebel, <a href="#pg254">254</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hegel, <a href="#pg013">13</a>, <a href="#pg075">75</a></li>
+
+    <li>Heine, <a href="#pg358">358</a></li>
+
+    <li>Herder, <a href="#pg289">289</a>, <a href="#pg290">290</a>,
+    <a href="#pg292">292</a>, <a href="#pg294">294</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg295">295</a>, <a href="#pg349">349</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hermes, <a href="#pg353">353</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hilary, <a href="#pg042">42</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hillern, W. v. <a href="#pg358">358</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hobbema, <a href="#pg198">198</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hoffmannswaldau, <a href="#pg217">217</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hölderlin, <a href="#pg350">350</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hölty, <a href="#pg255">255</a>, <a href="#pg257">257</a></li>
+
+    <li>Homer, <a href="#pg014">14</a>, <a href="#pg016">16</a>,
+    <a href="#pg075">75</a>, <a href="#pg076">76</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg099">99</a>, <a href="#pg127">127</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg170">170</a>, <a href="#pg324">324</a></li>
+
+    <li>Horace, <a href="#pg014">14</a>, <a href="#pg018">18</a>,
+    <a href="#pg290">290</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hugo v. St. Victor, <a href="#pg155">155</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hugo, Victor, <a href="#pg343">343</a></li>
+
+    <li>Hulsen, <a href="#pg356">356</a></li>
+
+    <li>Humboldt, <a href="#pg014">14</a>, <a href="#pg033">33</a>,
+    <a href="#pg037">37</a>, <a href="#pg091">91</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg106">106</a>, <a href="#pg109">109</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg145">145</a>, <a href="#pg279">279</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg357">357</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Ibykos, <a href="#pg035">35</a>, <a href="#pg177">177</a></li>
+
+    <li>Isodore, <a href="#pg059">59</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Jacob v. Bern, <a href="#pg071">71</a></li>
+
+    <li>Jacobi, Joh. G., <a href="#pg243">243</a></li>
+
+    <li>Jerome, <a href="#pg043">43</a></li>
+
+    <li>Jovius, <a href="#pg263">263</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Kalidasa, <a href="#pg006">6</a>, <a href="#pg007">7</a>,
+    <a href="#pg008">8</a>, <a href="#pg133">133</a></li>
+
+    <li>Kallimachos, <a href="#pg016">16</a>, <a href="#pg019">19</a>,
+    <a href="#pg177">177</a></li>
+
+    <li>Kant, <a href="#pg288">288</a>, <a href="#pg292">292</a></li>
+
+    <li>Kent, <a href="#pg222">222</a>, <a href="#pg231">231</a>,
+    <a href="#pg233">233</a></li>
+
+    <li>Keyssler, <a href="#pg266">266</a></li>
+
+    <li>Kiechel, <a href="#pg263">263</a></li>
+
+    <li>Klaj, <a href="#pg216">216</a></li>
+
+    <li>Kleist, E. v., <a href="#pg239">239</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg242">242</a>, <a href="#pg291">291</a></li>
+
+    <li>Klipphausen, <a href="#pg215">215</a></li>
+
+    <li>Klopstock, <a href="#pg247">247</a>, <a href="#pg248">248</a>,
+    <a href="#pg249">249</a>, <a href="#pg250">250</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg254">254</a>, <a href="#pg258">258</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg259">259</a>, <a href="#pg286">286</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg288">288</a>, <a href="#pg296">296</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg326">326</a></li>
+
+    <li>König, Eva, <a href="#pg285">285</a></li>
+
+    <li>Kürenberg, <a href="#pg088">88</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Lamartine, <a href="#pg340">340</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg343">343</a></li>
+
+    <li>Lamprecht, <a href="#pg080">80</a></li>
+
+    <li>Leman, <a href="#pg071">71</a></li>
+
+    <li>Lenôtre, <a href="#pg210">210</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg231">231</a></li>
+
+    <li>Leon, Luis de, <a href="#pg157">157</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg160">160</a></li>
+
+    <li>Leonardo da Vinci, <a href="#pg101">101</a></li>
+
+    <li>Lessing, <a href="#pg288">288</a>, <a href="#pg289">289</a>,
+    <a href="#pg290">290</a>, <a href="#pg349">349</a></li>
+
+    <li>Livy, <a href="#pg019">19</a></li>
+
+    <li>Logau, <a href="#pg219">219</a></li>
+
+    <li>Lohenstein, <a href="#pg217">217</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg220">220</a></li>
+
+    <li>Longos, <a href="#pg016">16</a>, <a href="#pg134">134</a>,
+    <a href="#pg245">245</a></li>
+
+    <li>Lopez, <a href="#pg164">164</a></li>
+
+    <li>Lorraine, Claude, <a href="#pg196">196</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg209">209</a></li>
+
+    <li>Louis XIV., <a href="#pg209">209</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg211">211</a></li>
+
+    <li>Louis XV., <a href="#pg211">211</a></li>
+
+    <li>Lucretius, <a href="#pg017">17</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg019">19</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ludwig zu Nassau, <a href="#pg073">73</a></li>
+
+    <li>Luis de Leon, <a href="#pg155">155</a></li>
+
+    <li>Lüneberg, <a href="#pg266">266</a></li>
+
+    <li>Luther, <a href="#pg203">203</a>, <a href="#pg204">204</a>,
+    <a href="#pg208">208</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Maghas, <a href="#pg006">6</a></li>
+
+    <li>Mantegna, <a href="#pg188">188</a></li>
+
+    <li>Mareuil, A. v., <a href="#pg087">87</a></li>
+
+    <li>Maria Theresa, <a href="#pg288">288</a></li>
+
+    <li>v. Martius, <a href="#pg282">282</a></li>
+
+    <li>Medici, Lorenzo de, <a href="#pg137">137</a></li>
+
+    <li>Meer, Aart v. d., <a href="#pg197">197</a></li>
+
+    <li>Meleager, <a href="#pg126">126</a></li>
+
+    <li>Memling, <a href="#pg193">193</a></li>
+
+    <li>Menander, <a href="#pg100">100</a></li>
+
+    <li>Michael Angelo, <a href="#pg188">188</a></li>
+
+    <li>Milton, <a href="#pg325">325</a></li>
+
+    <li>Minucius Felix, <a href="#pg040">40</a></li>
+
+    <li>Molanus, <a href="#pg193">193</a></li>
+
+    <li>Montagu, <a href="#pg266">266</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg284">284</a></li>
+
+    <li>Montemayor, <a href="#pg213">213</a></li>
+
+    <li>Montreux, <a href="#pg213">213</a></li>
+
+    <li>Moore, <a href="#pg327">327</a></li>
+
+    <li>Morungen, H. v., <a href="#pg090">90</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Moscherosch, <a href="#pg219">219</a></li>
+
+    <li>Möser, <a href="#pg266">266</a></li>
+
+    <li>Mosto, A. da, <a href="#pg144">144</a></li>
+
+    <li>Murdach, <a href="#pg155">155</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Navarrete, F. de, <a href="#pg145">145</a></li>
+
+    <li>Nemesianus, <a href="#pg061">61</a></li>
+
+    <li>Nettesheim, C.A. v., <a href="#pg201">201</a></li>
+
+    <li>Nicolas, <a href="#pg286">286</a></li>
+
+    <li>Nonnos, <a href="#pg133">133</a></li>
+
+    <li>Novalis, <a href="#pg355">355</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Opitz, <a href="#pg212">212</a></li>
+
+    <li>Osorio, <a href="#pg142">142</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ossian, <a href="#pg325">325</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ouwater, <a href="#pg193">193</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ovid, <a href="#pg017">17</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Paracelsus, <a href="#pg201">201</a></li>
+
+    <li>Patenir, <a href="#pg193">193</a></li>
+
+    <li>Paul, Jean, <a href="#pg004">4</a>, <a href="#pg013">13</a>,
+    <a href="#pg346">346</a>, <a href="#pg349">349</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg353">353</a></li>
+
+    <li>Paul, St, <a href="#pg039">39</a></li>
+
+    <li>Paulinus of Nola, <a href="#pg045">45</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg046">46</a>, <a href="#pg047">47</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg057">57</a></li>
+
+    <li>Perdiccas, <a href="#pg071">71</a></li>
+
+    <li>Peter Martyr, <a href="#pg140">140</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg143">143</a></li>
+
+    <li>Petrarch, <a href="#pg016">16</a>, <a href="#pg019">19</a>,
+    <a href="#pg101">101</a>, <a href="#pg102">102</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg106">106</a>, <a href="#pg109">109</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg110">110</a>, <a href="#pg113">113</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg116">116</a>, <a href="#pg117">117</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg120">120</a>, <a href="#pg121">121</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg122">122</a>, <a href="#pg126">126</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg127">127</a>, <a href="#pg136">136</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg137">137</a>, <a href="#pg199">199</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg307">307</a></li>
+
+    <li>Pfintzing, <a href="#pg071">71</a></li>
+
+    <li>Phidias, <a href="#pg099">99</a></li>
+
+    <li>Philip of Macedon, <a href="#pg119">119</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg120">120</a></li>
+
+    <li>Phokas, <a href="#pg070">70</a></li>
+
+    <li>Pico della Mirandola, <a href="#pg139">139</a></li>
+
+    <li>Pierre, B. de St, <a href="#pg278">278</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg279">279</a>, <a href="#pg339">339</a></li>
+
+    <li>Pindar, <a href="#pg016">16</a></li>
+
+    <li>Pisanello, <a href="#pg188">188</a></li>
+
+    <li>Pius II. (Enea Silvio), <a href="#pg122">122</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg126">126</a>, <a href="#pg127">127</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg199">199</a></li>
+
+    <li>Plato, <a href="#pg036">36</a></li>
+
+    <li>Pliny, <a href="#pg018">18</a>, <a href="#pg033">33</a>,
+    <a href="#pg126">126</a>, <a href="#pg209">209</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg210">210</a></li>
+
+    <li>Polo, Marco, <a href="#pg141">141</a></li>
+
+    <li>Pope, <a href="#pg225">225</a>, <a href="#pg228">228</a>,
+    <a href="#pg231">231</a>, <a href="#pg290">290</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg292">292</a></li>
+
+    <li>Potter, Paul, <a href="#pg190">190</a></li>
+
+    <li>Poussin, <a href="#pg196">196</a></li>
+
+    <li>Propertius, <a href="#pg017">17</a></li>
+
+    <li>Prudentius, <a href="#pg043">43</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ptolemaios, <a href="#pg034">34</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Racine, <a href="#pg196">196</a></li>
+
+    <li>Radegunde, <a href="#pg054">54</a>, <a href="#pg056">56</a>,
+    <a href="#pg058">58</a></li>
+
+    <li>Raphael, <a href="#pg188">188</a></li>
+
+    <li>Regensburg, <a href="#pg156">156</a></li>
+
+    <li>Reinmar, <a href="#pg090">90</a></li>
+
+    <li>Reissner, <a href="#pg263">263</a></li>
+
+    <li>Richardson, <a href="#pg235">235</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg265">265</a></li>
+
+    <li>Rickel, D. v., <a href="#pg156">156</a></li>
+
+    <li>Roche, Sophie la, <a href="#pg353">353</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ronsard, <a href="#pg196">196</a></li>
+
+    <li>Rousseau, <a href="#pg015">15</a>, <a href="#pg016">16</a>,
+    <a href="#pg043">43</a>, <a href="#pg044">44</a> <a href=
+    "#pg127">127</a>, <a href="#pg233">233</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg259">259</a>, <a href="#pg260">260</a>-266, <a href=
+    "#pg279">279</a>, <a href="#pg288">288</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg303">303</a>, <a href="#pg327">327</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg339">339</a>, <a href="#pg353">353</a></li>
+
+    <li>Rubens, <a href="#pg194">194</a>, <a href="#pg195">195</a></li>
+
+    <li>Rucellai, <a href="#pg132">132</a></li>
+
+    <li>Rückert, <a href="#pg003">3</a></li>
+
+    <li>Rugge, <a href="#pg090">90</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ruysbroek, <a href="#pg156">156</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ruysdael, <a href="#pg197">197</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Sabiende, R. v., <a href="#pg157">157</a></li>
+
+    <li>Sachs, Hans, <a href="#pg208">208</a></li>
+
+    <li>Sannazaro, <a href="#pg131">131</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg133">133</a></li>
+
+    <li>Sappho, <a href="#pg016">16</a>, <a href="#pg129">129</a></li>
+
+    <li>Saussure, <a href="#pg278">278</a></li>
+
+    <li>v. Schachten, <a href="#pg071">71</a></li>
+
+    <li>Schaller, <a href="#pg109">109</a></li>
+
+    <li>Scherr, <a href="#pg284">284</a></li>
+
+    <li>Scheuchzer, <a href="#pg265">265</a></li>
+
+    <li>Schickhart, <a href="#pg263">263</a></li>
+
+    <li>Schiller, <a href="#pg013">13</a>, <a href="#pg014">14</a>,
+    <a href="#pg016">16</a>, <a href="#pg017">17</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg116">116</a>, <a href="#pg345">345</a>-346, <a href=
+    "#pg349">349</a></li>
+
+    <li>Scipio Africanus, <a href="#pg018">18</a></li>
+
+    <li>Scott, <a href="#pg327">327</a></li>
+
+    <li>Seneca, <a href="#pg018">18</a>, <a href="#pg019">19</a>,
+    <a href="#pg038">38</a>, <a href="#pg166">166</a></li>
+
+    <li>Shaftesbury, <a href="#pg230">230</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg292">292</a></li>
+
+    <li>Shakespeare, <a href="#pg014">14</a>, <a href="#pg163">163</a>,
+    <a href="#pg164">164</a>, <a href="#pg166">166</a>-209, <a href=
+    "#pg324">324</a></li>
+
+    <li>Shelley, <a href="#pg127">127</a>, <a href="#pg179">179</a>,
+    <a href="#pg327">327</a>, <a href="#pg335">335</a>-339, <a href=
+    "#pg343">343</a></li>
+
+    <li>Sidney, <a href="#pg213">213</a></li>
+
+    <li>Simonides, <a href="#pg016">16</a></li>
+
+    <li>Socrates, <a href="#pg036">36</a></li>
+
+    <li>Sophocles, <a href="#pg099">99</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg166">166</a></li>
+
+    <li>Southey, <a href="#pg327">327</a></li>
+
+    <li>Southwell, <a href="#pg223">223</a></li>
+
+    <li>Spalding, <a href="#pg246">246</a></li>
+
+    <li>Spee, <a href="#pg219">219</a></li>
+
+    <li>Spenser, <a href="#pg223">223</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg291">291</a></li>
+
+    <li>Spielhagen, <a href="#pg358">358</a></li>
+
+    <li>Spinoza, <a href="#pg324">324</a></li>
+
+    <li>Spix, <a href="#pg282">282</a></li>
+
+    <li>Stolberg, <a href="#pg257">257</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg288">288</a></li>
+
+    <li>Storm, Th., <a href="#pg303">303</a>, <a href="#pg353">353</a>,
+    <a href="#pg358">358</a></li>
+
+    <li>Sulzer, <a href="#pg246">246</a></li>
+
+    <li>Summenhart, <a href="#pg200">200</a></li>
+
+    <li>Suso, <a href="#pg156">156</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Tasso, <a href="#pg130">130</a>, <a href="#pg131">131</a></li>
+
+    <li>Tauler, <a href="#pg156">156</a></li>
+
+    <li>Teresa v. Avila, <a href="#pg164">164</a></li>
+
+    <li>Theocritus, <a href="#pg016">16</a>, <a href="#pg049">49</a>,
+    <a href="#pg055">55</a>, <a href="#pg061">61</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg099">99</a>, <a href="#pg113">113</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg126">126</a>, <a href="#pg134">134</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg177">177</a>, <a href="#pg245">245</a></li>
+
+    <li>Theodoric, <a href="#pg051">51</a></li>
+
+    <li>Theodulf, <a href="#pg061">61</a></li>
+
+    <li>Thomson, <a href="#pg222">222</a>, <a href="#pg225">225</a>,
+    <a href="#pg228">228</a>, <a href="#pg235">235</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg290">290</a>, <a href="#pg291">291</a></li>
+
+    <li>Tiberius, <a href="#pg018">18</a></li>
+
+    <li>Tibullus, <a href="#pg054">54</a></li>
+
+    <li>Tieck, <a href="#pg197">197</a>, <a href="#pg353">353</a>,
+    <a href="#pg354">354</a></li>
+
+    <li>Titian, <a href="#pg188">188</a></li>
+
+    <li>Toscanelli, Paolo, <a href="#pg101">101</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Uhland, <a href="#pg089">89</a></li>
+
+    <li>d'Urfé, <a href="#pg196">196</a>, <a href="#pg213">213</a></li>
+
+    <li>Uz, Joh. P., <a href="#pg241">241</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Vasco da Gama, <a href="#pg142">142</a></li>
+
+    <li>Velde, Adrian v. d., <a href="#pg190">190</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg198">198</a></li>
+
+    <li>Veldegge, H. v., <a href="#pg089">89</a></li>
+
+    <li>Vespucci, <a href="#pg149">149</a></li>
+
+    <li>Virgil, <a href="#pg014">14</a>, <a href="#pg017">17</a>,
+    <a href="#pg059">59</a>, <a href="#pg060">60</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg061">61</a>, <a href="#pg132">132</a></li>
+
+    <li>Vischer, <a href="#pg003">3</a>, <a href="#pg004">4</a>,
+    <a href="#pg013">13</a>, <a href="#pg024">24</a></li>
+
+    <li>Vives, Luis, <a href="#pg157">157</a></li>
+
+    <li>Volkmar, <a href="#pg286">286</a></li>
+
+    <li>Voltaire, <a href="#pg288">288</a></li>
+
+    <li>Voss, <a href="#pg257">257</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Wahlafried, <a href="#pg061">61</a></li>
+
+    <li>Walther v. d. Vogelweide, <a href="#pg092">92</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg093">93</a>, <a href="#pg177">177</a></li>
+
+    <li>Wandelbert, <a href="#pg062">62</a></li>
+
+    <li>Watteau, <a href="#pg211">211</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg212">212</a></li>
+
+    <li>Weyden, Roger v. d., <a href="#pg193">193</a></li>
+
+    <li>William of Tours, <a href="#pg068">68</a></li>
+
+    <li>Winckelmann, <a href="#pg349">349</a></li>
+
+    <li>Wolfram v. Eschenbach, <a href="#pg082">82</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg083">83</a></li>
+
+    <li>Wordsworth, <a href="#pg326">326</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg327">327</a></li>
+
+    <li>Wyatt, <a href="#pg223">223</a></li>
+
+    <li>Wynant, <a href="#pg197">197</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Young, <a href="#pg232">232</a>, <a href="#pg325">325</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+  <ul>
+    <li>Zesen, P. v., <a href="#pg214">214</a>, <a href=
+    "#pg219">219</a></li>
+
+    <li>Ziegler, A. v., <a href="#pg215">215</a></li>
+
+    <li>Zimmermann, <a href="#pg286">286</a></li>
+
+    <li>Zweibrücken, A. v., <a href="#pg073">73</a></li>
+  </ul>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 13814-h.txt or 13814-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/8/1/13814">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/8/1/13814</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
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diff --git a/old/13814.txt b/old/13814.txt
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+++ b/old/13814.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Development of the Feeling for Nature in
+the Middle Ages and Modern Times, by Alfred Biese
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and
+Modern Times
+
+Author: Alfred Biese
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2004  [eBook #13814]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR
+NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Leonard Johnson, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
+AND MODERN TIMES
+
+by
+
+ALFRED BIESE
+
+Director of the K. K. Gymnasium at Neuwied
+
+Authorized translation from the German
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE
+
+
+The encouraging reception of my "Development of the Feeling for
+Nature among the Greeks and Romans" gradually decided me, after some
+years, to carry the subject on to modern tunes. Enticing as it was, I
+did not shut my eyes to the great difficulties of a task whose
+dimensions have daunted many a savant since the days of Humboldt's
+clever, terse sketches of the feeling for Nature in different times
+and peoples. But the subject, once approached, would not let me go.
+Its solution seemed only possible from the side of historical
+development, not from that of _a priori_ synthesis. The almost
+inexhaustible amount of material, especially towards modern times,
+has often obliged me to limit myself to typical forerunners of the
+various epochs, although, at the same time, I have tried not to lose
+the thread of general development. By the addition of the chief
+phases of landscape, painting, and garden craft, I have aimed at
+giving completeness to the historical picture; but I hold that
+literature, especially poetry, as the most intimate medium of a
+nation's feelings, is the chief source of information in an enquiry
+which may form a contribution, not only to the history of taste, but
+also to the comparative history of literature. At a time too when the
+natural sciences are so highly developed, and the cult of Nature is
+so widespread, a book of this kind may perhaps claim the interest of
+that wide circle of educated readers to whom the modern delight in
+Nature on its many sides makes appeal. And this the more, since books
+are rare which seek to embrace the whole mental development of the
+Middle Ages and modern times, and are, at the same time, intended for
+and intelligible to all people of cultivation.
+
+The book has been a work of love, and I hope it will be read with
+pleasure, not only by those whose special domain it touches, but by
+all who care for the eternal beauties of Nature. To those who know my
+earlier papers in the _Preussische Jahrbuecher_, the _Zeitschrift fuer
+Vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte_, and the _Litteraturbeilage des
+Hamburgischen Correspondents_, I trust this fuller and more connected
+treatment of the theme will prove welcome.
+
+ALFRED BIESE.
+
+
+
+
+Published Translations of the following Authors have been used:
+
+SANSCRIT.--Jones, Wilson, Arnold, anonymous translator in a
+publication of the Society for Resuscitation of Ancient Literature.
+
+LATIN AND GREEK.--Lightfoot, Jowett, Farrar, Lodge, Dalrymple, Bigg,
+Pilkington, Hodgkin, De Montalembert, Gary, Lok, Murray, Gibb, a
+translator in Bonn's Classics.
+
+ITALIAN.--Gary, Longfellow, Cayley, Robinson, Kelly, Bent, Hoole,
+Roscoe, Leigh Hunt, Lofft, Astley, Oliphant.
+
+GERMAN.--Horton and Bell, Middlemore, Lytton, Swanwick, Dwight,
+Boylau, Bowling, Bell, Aytoun, Martin, Oxenford, Morrison, M'Cullum,
+Winkworth, Howorth, Taylor, Nind, Brooks, Lloyd, Frothingham, Ewing,
+Noel, Austin, Carlyle, Storr, Weston, Phillips.
+
+SPANISH.--Markham, Major, Bowring, Hasell, M'Carthy, French.
+
+FRENCH.--Anonymous translator of Rousseau.
+
+PORTUGUESE.--Aubertin.
+
+The Translator's thanks are also due to the author for a few
+alterations in and additions to the text, and to Miss Edgehill, Miss
+Tomlinson, and Dr B. Scheifers for translations from Greek and Latin,
+Italian, and Middle German respectively.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Nature in her ever-constant, ever-changing phases is indispensable to
+man, his whole existence depends upon her, and she influences him in
+manifold ways, in mind as well as body.
+
+The physical character of a country is reflected in its inhabitants;
+the one factor of climate alone gives a very different outlook to
+northerner and southerner. But whereas primitive man, to whom the
+darkness of night meant anxiety, either feared Nature or worshipped
+her with awe, civilised man tries to lift her veil, and through
+science and art to understand her inner and outer beauty--the
+scientist in her laws, the man of religion in her relation to his
+Creator, the artist in reproducing the impressions she makes upon
+him.
+
+Probably it has always been common to healthy minds to take some
+pleasure in her; but it needs no slight culture of heart and mind to
+grasp her meaning and make it clear to others. Her book lies open
+before us, but the interpretations have been many and dissimilar. A
+fine statue or a richly-coloured picture appeals to all, but only
+knowledge can appreciate it at its true value and discover the full
+meaning of the artist. And as with Art, so with Nature.
+
+For Nature is the greatest artist, though dumb until man, with his
+inexplicable power of putting himself in her place, transferring to
+her his bodily and mental self, gives her speech.
+
+Goethe said 'man never understands how anthropomorphic he is.' No
+study, however comprehensive, enables him to overstep human limits,
+or conceive a concrete being, even the highest, from a wholly
+impersonal point of view. His own self always remains an encumbering
+factor. In a real sense he only understands himself, and his measure
+for all things is man. To understand the world outside him, he must
+needs ascribe his own attributes to it, must lend his own being to
+find it again.
+
+This unexplained faculty, or rather inherent necessity, which implies
+at once a power and a limit, extends to persons as well as things.
+The significant word sympathy expresses it. To feel a friend's grief
+is to put oneself in his place, think from his standpoint and in his
+mood--that is, suffer with him. The fear and sympathy which condition
+the action of tragedy depend upon the same mental process; one's own
+point of view is shifted to that of another, and when the two are in
+harmony, and only then, the claim of beauty is satisfied, and
+aesthetic pleasure results.
+
+By the well-known expression of Greek philosophy, 'like is only
+understood by like,' the Pythagoreans meant that the mathematically
+trained mind is the organ by which the mathematically constructed
+cosmos is understood. The expression may also serve as an aesthetic
+aphorism. The charm of the simplest lyrical song depends upon the
+hearer's power to put himself in the mood or situation described by
+the poet, on an interplay between subject and object.
+
+Everything in mental life depends upon this faculty. We observe,
+ponder, feel, because a kindred vibration in the object sets our own
+fibres in motion.
+
+'You resemble the mind which you understand.'
+
+It is a magic bridge from our own mind, making access possible to a
+work of art, an electric current conveying the artist's ideas into
+our souls.
+
+We know how a drama or a song can thrill us when our feeling vibrates
+with it; and that thrill, Faust tells us, is the best part of man.
+
+If inventive work in whatever art or science gives the purest kind of
+pleasure, Nature herself seeming to work through the artist, rousing
+those impulses which come to him as revelations, there is pleasure
+also in the passive reception of beauty, especially when we are not
+content to remain passive, but trace out and rethink the artist's
+thoughts, remaking his work.
+
+'To invent for oneself is beautiful; but to recognise gladly and
+treasure up the happy inventions of others is that less thine?' said
+Goethe in his _Jahreszeiten_; and in the _Aphorisms_, confirming what
+has just been said: 'We know of no world except in relation to man,
+we desire no art but that which is the expression of this relation.'
+And, further, 'Look into yourselves and you will find everything, and
+rejoice if outside yourselves, as you may say, lies a Nature which
+says yea and amen to all that you have found there.'
+
+Certainly Nature only bestows on man in proportion to his own inner
+wealth. As Rueckert says, 'the charm of a landscape lies in this, that
+it seems to reflect back that part of one's inner life, of mind,
+mood, and feeling, which we have given it.' And Ebers, 'Lay down your
+best of heart and mind before eternal Nature; she will repay you a
+thousandfold, with full hands.'
+
+And Vischer remarks, 'Nature at her greatest is not so great that she
+can work without man's mind.' Every landscape can be beautiful and
+stimulating if human feeling colours it, and it will be most so to
+him who brings the richest endowment of heart and mind to bear:
+Nature only discloses her whole self to a whole man.
+
+But it is under the poet's wand above all, that, like the marble at
+Pygmalion's breast, she grows warm and breathes and answers to his
+charm; as in that symbolic saga, the listening woods and waters and
+the creatures followed Orpheus with his lute. Scientific knowledge,
+optical, acoustical, meteorological, geological, only widens and
+deepens love for her and increases and refines the sense of her
+beauty. In short, deep feeling for Nature always proves considerable
+culture of heart and mind.
+
+There is a constant analogy between the growth of this feeling and
+that of general culture.
+
+As each nation and time has its own mode of thought, which is
+constantly changing, so each period has its 'landscape eye.' The same
+rule applies to individuals. Nature, as Jean Paul said, is made
+intelligible to man in being for ever made flesh. We cannot look at
+her impersonally, we must needs give her form and soul, in order to
+grasp and describe her.
+
+Vischer says[1] 'it is simply by an act of comparison that we think
+we see our own life in inanimate objects.' We say that Nature's
+clearness is like clearness of mind, that her darkness and gloom are
+like a dark and gloomy mood; then, omitting 'like,' we go on to
+ascribe our qualities directly to her, and say, this neighbourhood,
+this air, this general tone of colour, is cheerful, melancholy, and
+so forth. Here we are prompted by an undeveloped dormant
+consciousness which really only compares, while it seems to take one
+thing for another. In this way we come to say that a rock projects
+boldly, that fire rages furiously over a building, that a summer
+evening with flocks going home at sunset is peaceful and idyllic;
+that autumn, dripping with rain, its willows sighing in the wind, is
+elegiac and melancholy and so forth.
+
+Perhaps Nature would not prove to be this ready symbol of man's inner
+life were there no secret rapport between the two. It is as if, in
+some mysterious way, we meet in her another mind, which speaks a
+language we know, wakening a foretaste of kinship; and whether the
+soul she expresses is one we have lent her, or her own which we have
+divined, the relationship is still one of give and take.
+
+Let us take a rapid survey of the course of this feeling in
+antiquity. Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness
+for Nature, and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings
+between man and plants and animals.
+
+They are found in the loftiest flights of religious enthusiasm in the
+Vedas, where, be it only in reference to the splendour of dawn or the
+'golden-handed sun,' Nature is always assumed to be closely connected
+with man's inner and outer life. Later on, as Brahminism appeared,
+deepening the contemplative side of Hindoo character, and the drama
+and historical plays came in, generalities gave way to definite
+localizing, and in the Epics ornate descriptions of actual landscape
+took independent place. Nature's sympathy with human joys and griefs
+was taken for granted, and she played a part of her own in drama.
+
+In the _Mahabharata_, when Damajanti is wandering in search of her
+lost Nala and sees the great mountain top, she asks it for her
+prince.
+
+    Oh mountain lord!
+  Far seen and celebrated hill, that cleav'st
+  The blue o' the sky, refuge of living things,
+  Most noble eminence, I worship thee!...
+  O Mount, whose double ridge stamps on the sky
+  Yon line, by five-score splendid pinnacles
+  Indented; tell me, in this gloomy wood
+  Hast thou seen Nala? Nala, wise and bold!
+  Ah mountain! why consolest thou me not,
+  Answering one word to sorrowful, distressed,
+  Lonely, lost Damajanti?
+
+And when she comes to the tree Asoka, she implores:
+
+  Ah, lovely tree! that wavest here
+  Thy crown of countless shining clustering blooms
+  As thou wert woodland king! Asoka tree!
+  Tree called the sorrow-ender, heart's-ease tree!
+  Be what thy name saith; end my sorrow now,
+  Saying, ah, bright Asoka, thou hast seen
+  My Prince, my dauntless Nala--seen that lord
+  Whom Damajanti loves and his foes fear.
+
+In Maghas' epic, _The Death of Sisupala_, plants and animals lead the
+same voluptuous life as the 'deep-bosomed, wide-hipped' girls with
+the ardent men.
+
+'The mountain Raivataka touches the ether with a thousand heads,
+earth with a thousand feet, the sun and moon are his eyes. When the
+birds are tired and tremble with delight from the caresses of their
+mates, he grants them shade from lotos leaves. Who in the world is
+not astonished when he has climbed, to see the prince of mountains
+who overshadows the ether and far-reaching regions of earth, standing
+there with his great projecting crags, while the moon's sickle
+trembles on his summit?'
+
+In Kalidasa's _Urwasi_, the deserted King who is searching for his
+wife asks the peacock:
+
+    Oh tell,
+  If, free on the wing as you soar,
+  You have seen the loved nymph I deplore--
+  You will know her, the fairest of damsels fair,
+  By her large soft eye and her graceful air;
+  Bird of the dark blue throat and eye of jet,
+  Oh tell me, have you seen the lovely face
+  Of my fair bride--lost in this dreary wilderness?
+
+and the mountain:
+
+  Say mountain, whose expansive slope confines
+  The forest verge, oh, tell me hast thou seen
+  A nymph as beauteous as the bride of love
+  Mounting with slender frame thy steep ascent,
+  Or wearied, resting in thy crowning woods?
+
+As he sits by the side of the stream, he asks whence comes its charm:
+
+  Whilst gazing on the stream, whose new swollen waters
+  Yet turbid flow, what strange imaginings
+  Possess my soul and fill it with delight.
+  The rippling wave is like her aching brow;
+  The fluttering line of storks, her timid tongue;
+  The foaming spray, her white loose floating vest;
+  And this meandering course the current tracks
+  Her undulating gait.
+
+Then he sees a creeper without flowers, and a strange attraction
+impels him to embrace it, for its likeness to his lost love:
+
+  Vine of the wilderness, behold
+  A lone heartbroken wretch in me,
+  Who dreams in his embrace to fold
+  His love, as wild he clings to thee.
+
+Thereupon the creeper transforms itself into Urwasi.
+
+In Kalidasa's _Sakuntala_, too, when the pretty girls are watering
+the flowers in the garden, Sakuntala says: 'It is not only in
+obedience to our father that I thus employ myself. I really feel the
+affection of a sister for these young plants.' Taking it for granted
+that the mango tree has the same feeling for herself, she cries: 'Yon
+Amra tree, my friends, points with the fingers of its leaves, which
+the gale gently agitates, and seems inclined to whisper some secret';
+and with maiden shyness, attributing her own thoughts about love to
+the plants, one of her comrades says: 'See, my Sakuntala, how yon
+fresh Mallica which you have surnamed Vanadosini or Delight of the
+Grove, has chosen the sweet Amra for her bridegroom....'
+
+'How charming is the season, when the nuptials even of plants are
+thus publicly celebrated!'--and elsewhere:
+
+'Here is a plant, Sakuntala, which you have forgotten.' Sakuntala:
+'Then I shall forget myself.'
+
+Birds,[2] clouds, and waves are messengers of love; all Nature
+grieves at the separation of lovers. When Sakuntala is leaving her
+forest, one of her friends says: 'Mark the affliction of the forest
+itself when the time of your departure approaches!
+
+'The female antelope browses no more on the collected Cusa grass, and
+the pea-hen ceases to dance on the lawn; the very plants of the
+grove, whose pale leaves fall on the ground, lose their strength and
+their beauty.'
+
+The poems of India, especially those devoted to descriptions of
+Nature, abound in such bold, picturesque personifications, which are
+touching, despite their extravagance, through their intense sympathy
+with Nature. They shew the Hindoo attitude toward Nature in general,
+as well as his boundless fancy. I select one example from 'The
+Gathering of the Seasons' in Kalidasa's _Ritusanhare_: a description
+of the Rains.
+
+'Pouring rain in torrents at the request of the thirst-stricken
+Chatakas, and emitting slow mutterings pleasing to the ears, clouds,
+bent down by the weight of their watery contents, are slowly moving
+on....
+
+'The rivers being filled up with the muddy water of the rivers, their
+force is increased. Therefore, felling down the trees on both the
+banks, they, like unchaste women, are going quickly towards the
+ocean....
+
+'The heat of the forest has been removed by the sprinkling of new
+water, and the Ketaka flowers have blossomed. On the branches of
+trees being shaken by the wind, it appears that the entire forest is
+dancing in delight. On the blossoming of Ketaka flowers it appears
+that the forest is smiling. Thinking, "he is our refuge when we are
+bent down by the weight of water, the clouds are enlivening with
+torrents the mount Vindhya assailed with fierce heat (of the
+summer)."'
+
+Charming pictures and comparisons are numerous, though they have the
+exaggeration common to oriental imagination, 'Love was the cause of
+my distemper, and love has healed it; as a summer's day, grown black
+with clouds, relieves all animals from the heat which itself had
+caused.'
+
+'Should you be removed to the ends of the world, you will be fixed in
+this heart, as the shade of a lofty tree remains with it even when
+the day is departed.'
+
+'The tree of my hope which had risen so luxuriantly is broken down.'
+
+'Removed from the bosom of my father, like a young sandal tree rent
+from the hill of Malaja, how shall I exist in a strange soil?'
+
+This familiar intercourse with Nature stood far as the poles asunder
+from the monotheistic attitude of the Hebrew. The individual, it is
+true, was nothing in comparison with Brahma, the All-One; but the
+divine pervaded and sanctified all things, and so gave them a certain
+value; whilst before Jehovah, throned above the world, the whole
+universe was but dust and ashes. The Hindoo, wrapt in the
+contemplation of Nature, described her at great length and for her
+own sake, the Hebrew only for the sake of his Creator. She had no
+independent significance for him; he looked at her only 'sub specie
+eterni Dei,' in the mirror of the eternal God. Hence he took interest
+in her phases only as revelations of his God, noting one after
+another only to group them synthetically under the idea of Godhead.
+Hence too, despite his profound inwardness--'The heart is deceitful
+above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?'
+(_Jeremiah_)--human individuality was only expressed in its relation
+to Jehovah.
+
+'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his
+handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth
+knowledge.'--_Psalm_ 19.
+
+'Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar,
+and the fulness thereof.
+
+'Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the
+trees of the wood rejoice.'--_Psalm_ 96.
+
+'Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful
+together.'--_Psalm_ 98.
+
+'The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their
+voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier
+than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the
+sea.'--_Psalm_ 93.
+
+'The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains
+skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.'--_Psalm_ 114.
+
+'The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid:
+the depths also were troubled.'--_Psalm_ 77.
+
+All these lofty personifications of inanimate Nature only
+characterise her in her relation to another, and that not man but
+God. Nothing had significance by itself, Nature was but a book in
+which to read of Jehovah; and for this reason the Hebrew could not be
+wrapt in her, could not seek her for her own sake, she was only a
+revelation of the Deity.
+
+'Lord, how great are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all:
+the earth is full of thy goodness.'
+
+Yet there is a fiery glow of enthusiasm in the songs in praise of
+Jehovah's wonders in creation.
+
+'0 Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and
+majesty.
+
+'Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest
+out the heavens like a curtain.
+
+'Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters; who maketh the
+clouds his chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind.
+
+'Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire; who
+laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for
+ever.
+
+'Thou coveredst the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above
+the mountains.
+
+'At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted
+away.
+
+'They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the
+place which thou hast founded for them.
+
+'Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn
+not again to cover the earth.
+
+'He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills.
+
+'They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench
+their thirst.
+
+'By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which
+sing among the branches ...
+
+'He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the
+service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth.
+
+'And wine that maketh glad the heart of man ...
+
+'The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which
+he hath planted.
+
+'Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees
+are her house.
+
+'The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for
+the conies.
+
+'He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.
+
+'Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the
+forest do creep forth.
+
+'The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.
+
+'The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down
+in their dens.
+
+'Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening....
+
+'This great and wide sea, wherein are creeping things innumerable,
+both small and great beasts....
+
+'He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; he toucheth the hills,
+and they smoke.
+
+'I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to
+my God as long as I have my being.'--_Psalm_ 104.
+
+And what a lofty point of view is shewn by the overpowering words
+which Job puts into the mouth of Jehovah; 'Where wast thou when I
+laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast
+understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof if thou knowest, or
+who hath stretched the line upon it?
+
+'Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the
+corner stone thereof?
+
+'When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
+shouted for joy?...
+
+'Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the
+dayspring to know his place?
+
+'That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked
+might be shaken out of it?...
+
+'Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked
+in the search of the deep?...
+
+'Declare, if thou knowest it all!...
+
+'Where is the way where light dwelleth, and as for darkness, where is
+the place thereof?' etc.
+
+Compare with this _Isaiah_ xl. verse 12, etc.
+
+Metaphors too, though poetic and fine, are not individualized.
+
+'Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts: all thy
+waves and thy billows are gone over me.'--_Psalm_ 42.
+
+'Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in
+deep mire, where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters,
+where the floods overflow me.'--_Psalm_ 69.
+
+There are many pictures from the animal world; and these are more
+elaborate in Job than elsewhere (see _Job_ xl. and xli.).
+Personifications, as we have seen, are many, but Nature is only
+called upon to sympathise with man in isolated cases, as, for
+instance, in 2 _Samuel_ i.:
+
+'Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be
+rain upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the
+mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as if he had not been
+anointed with oil.'
+
+The Cosmos unfolded itself to the Hebrew[3] as one great whole, and
+the glance fixed upon a distant horizon missed the nearer lying
+detail of phenomena. His imagination ranged the universe with the
+wings of the wind, and took vivid note of air, sky, sea, and land,
+but only, so to speak, in passing; it never rested there, but hurried
+past the boundaries of earth to Jehovah's throne, and from that
+height looked down upon creation.
+
+The attitude of the Greek was very different. Standing firmly rooted
+in the world of sense, his open mind and his marvellous eye for
+beauty appreciated the glorious external world around him down to its
+finest detail. His was the race of the beautiful, the first in
+history to train all its powers into harmony to produce a culture of
+beauty equal in form and contents, and his unique achievement in art
+and science enriched all after times with lasting standards of the
+great and beautiful.
+
+The influence of classic literature upon the Middle Ages and modern
+times has not only endured, but has gone on increasing with the
+centuries; so that we must know the position reached by Greece and
+Rome as to feeling for Nature, in order to discover whether the line
+of advance in the Middle Ages led directly forward or began by a
+backward movement--a zigzag.
+
+The terms ancient and modern, naive and sentimental, classic and
+romantic, have been shibboleths of culture from Jean Paul, Schiller,
+and Hegel, to Vischer. Jean Paul, in his _Vorschule zur Aesthetik_,
+compares the ideally simple Greek poetry, with its objectivity,
+serenity, and moral grace, with the musical poetry of the romantic
+period, and speaks of one as the sunlight that pervades our waking
+hours, the other as the moonlight that gleams fitfully on our
+dreaming ones. Schiller's epoch-making essay _On Naive and
+Sentimental Poetry_, with its rough division into the classic-naive
+depending on a harmony between nature and mind, and the
+modern-sentimental depending on a longing for a lost paradise, is
+constantly quoted to shew that the Greeks took no pleasure in Nature.
+This is misleading. Schiller's Greek was very limited; in the very
+year (1795) in which the essay appeared in _The Hours_, he was asking
+Humboldt's advice as to learning Greek, with special reference to
+Homer and Xenophon.
+
+To him Homer was the Greek _par excellence_, and who would not agree
+with him to-day?
+
+As in Greek mythology, that naive poem of Nature, the product of the
+artistic impulse of the race to stamp its impressions in a beautiful
+and harmonious form, so in the clear-cut comparisons in Homer, the
+feeling for Nature is profound; but the Homeric hero had no personal
+relations with her, no conscious leaning towards her; the
+descriptions only served to frame human action, in time or space.
+
+But that cheerful, unreflecting youth of mankind, that naive Homeric
+time, was short in spite of Schiller, who, in the very essay referred
+to, included Euripides, Virgil, and Horace among the sentimental, and
+Shakespeare among the naive, poets--a fact often overlooked.
+
+In line with the general development of culture, Greek feeling for
+Nature passed through various stages. These can be clearly traced
+from objective similes and naive, homely comparisons to poetic
+personifications, and so on to more extended descriptions, in which
+scenery was brought into harmony or contrast with man's inner life;
+until finally, in Hellenism, Nature was treated for her own sake, and
+man reduced to the position of supernumerary both in poetry and
+also--so approaching the modern--in landscape-painting.
+
+Greece had her sentimental epoch; she did not, as we have said, long
+remain naive. From Sophist days a steady process of decomposition
+went on--in other words, a movement towards what we call modern, a
+movement which to the classic mind led backward; but from the wider
+standpoint of general development meant advance. For the path of
+culture is always the same in the nations; it leads first upward and
+then downward, and all ripening knowledge, while it enriches the
+mind, brings with it some unforeseen loss. Mankind pays heavily for
+each new gain; it paid for increased subjectivity and inwardness by a
+loss in public spirit and patriotism which, once the most valued of
+national possessions, fell away before the increasing individuality,
+the germ of the modern spirit. For what is the modern spirit but
+limitless individuality?
+
+The greater the knowledge of self, the richer the inner life. Man
+becomes his own chief problem--he begins to watch the lightest
+flutter of his own feelings, to grasp and reflect upon them, to look
+upon himself in fact as in a mirror; and it is in this doubling of
+the ego, so to speak, that sentimentality in the modern sense
+consists. It leads to love of solitude, the fittest state for the
+growth of a conscious love of Nature, for, as Rousseau said 'all
+noble passions are formed in solitude,' 'tis there that one
+recognizes one's own heart as 'the rarest and most valuable of all
+possessions.' 'Oh, what a fatal gift of Heaven is a feeling heart!'
+and elsewhere he said: 'Hearts that are warmed by a divine fire find
+a pure delight in their own feelings which is independent of fate and
+of the whole world.' Euripides, too, loved solitude, and avoided the
+noise of town life by retiring to a grotto at Salamis which he had
+arranged for himself with a view of the sea; for which reason, his
+biographer tells us, most of his similes are drawn from the sea. He,
+rather than Petrarch or Rousseau, was the father of sentimentality.
+His morbidly sensitive Hippolytos cries 'Alas! would it were possible
+that I should see myself standing face to face, in which case I
+should have wept for the sorrows that we suffer'; and in the chorus
+of _The Suppliants_ we have: 'This insatiate joy of mourning leads me
+on like as the liquid drop flowing from the sun-trodden rock, ever
+increasing of groans.' In Euripides we have the first loosening of
+that ingenuous bond between Nature and the human spirit, as the
+Sophists laid the axe to the root of the old Hellenic ideas and
+beliefs. Subjectivity had already gained in strength from the birth
+of the lyric, that most individual of all expressions of feeling; and
+since the lyric cannot dispense with the external world, classic song
+now shewed the tender subjective feeling for Nature which we see in
+Sappho, Pindar, and Simonides. Yet Euripides (and Aristophanes, whose
+painful mad laugh, as Doysen says, expresses the same distraction and
+despair as the deep melancholy of Euripides) only paved the way for
+that sentimental, idyllic feeling for Nature which dwelt on her quiet
+charms for their own sake, as in Theocritus, and, like the modern,
+rose to greater intensity in the presence of the amorous passion, as
+we see in Kallimachos and the Anthology. It was the outcome of
+Hellenism, of which sentimental introspection, the freeing of the ego
+from the bonds of race and position, and the discovery of the
+individual in all directions of human existence, were marks. And this
+feeling developing from Homer to Longos, from unreflecting to
+conscious and then to sentimental pleasure in Nature, was expressed
+not only in poetry but in painting, although the latter never fully
+mastered technique.
+
+The common thoughtless statement, so often supported by quotations
+from Schiller, Gervinus, and others, that Greek antiquity was not
+alive to the beauty of Nature and her responsiveness to human moods,
+and neither painted scenery nor felt the melancholy poetic charm of
+ruins and tombs, is therefore a perversion of the truth; but it must
+be conceded that the feeling which existed then was but the germ of
+our modern one. It was fettered by the specific national beliefs
+concerning the world and deities, by the undeveloped state of the
+natural sciences, which, except botany, still lay in swaddling-clothes,
+by the new influence of Christendom, and by that strict feeling for
+style which, very much to its advantage, imposed a moderation that
+would have excluded much of our senseless modern rhapsody.
+
+It was not unnatural that Schiller, in distaste for the weak riot of
+feeling and the passion for describing Nature which obtained in his
+day, was led to overpraise the Homeric naivete and overblame the
+sentimentality which he wrongly identified with it.
+
+In all that is called art, the Romans were pupils of the Greek, and
+their achievements in the region of beauty cannot be compared with
+his. But they advanced the course of general culture, and their
+feeling--always more subjective, abstract, self-conscious, and
+reflective--has a comparatively familiar, because modern, ring in the
+great poets.
+
+The preference for the practical and social-economic is traceable in
+their feeling for Nature. Their mythology also lay too much within
+the bounds of the intelligible; shewed itself too much in forms and
+ceremonies, in a cult; but it had not lost the sense of awe--it still
+heard the voices of mysterious powers in the depths of the forest.
+
+The dramatists wove effective metaphors and descriptions of Nature
+into their plays.
+
+Lucretius laid the foundations of a knowledge of her which refined
+both his enjoyment and his descriptions; and the elegiac sentimental
+style, which we see developed in Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Virgil,
+and Horace, first came to light in the great lyrist Catullus. In
+Imperial times feeling for Nature grew with the growth of culture in
+general; men turned to her in times of bad cheer, and found comfort
+in the great sky spaces, the constant stars, and forests that
+trembled with awe of the divine Numen.
+
+It was so with Seneca, a pantheist through and through. Pliny the
+younger was quite modern in his choice of rural solitudes, and his
+appreciation of the views from his villa. With Hadrian and Apuleius
+the Roman rococo literature began; Apuleius was astonishingly modern,
+and Ausonius was almost German in the depth and tenderness of his
+feeling for Nature. Garden-culture and landscape-painting shewed the
+same movement towards the sympathetic and elegiac-sentimental.
+
+Those who deny the Roman feeling for Nature might learn better from a
+glance at the ruins of their villas. As H. Nissen says in his
+_Italische Landeskunde_:
+
+'It was more than mere fashion which drew the Roman to the sea-side,
+and attracted so strongly all those great figures, from the elder
+Scipio Africanus and his noble daughter, Cornelia, down to Augustus
+and Tiberius and their successors, whenever their powers flagged in
+the Forum. There were soft breezes to cool the brow, colour and
+outline to refresh the eye, and wide views that appealed to a race
+born to extensive lordship.
+
+'In passing along the desolate, fever-stricken coasts of Latium and
+Campania to-day, one comes upon many traces of former splendour, and
+one is reminded that the pleasure which the old Romans took in the
+sea-side was spoilt for those who came after them by the havoc of the
+time.'
+
+In many points, Roman feeling for Nature was more developed than
+Greek. For instance, the Romans appreciated landscape as a whole, and
+distance, light and shade in wood and water, reflections, the charms
+of hunting and rowing, day-dreams on a mountain side, and so forth.
+
+That antiquity and the Middle Ages had any taste for romantic scenery
+has been energetically denied; but we can find a trace of it. The
+landscape which the Roman admired was level, graceful, and gentle; he
+certainly did not see any beauty in the Alps. Livy's 'Foeditas
+Alpinum' and the dreadful descriptions of Ammian, with others, are
+the much-quoted vouchers for this. Nor is it surprising; for modern
+appreciation, still in its youth, is really due to increased
+knowledge about Nature, to a change of feeling, and to the
+conveniences of modern travelling, unknown 2000 years ago.
+
+The dangers and hardships of those days must have put enjoyment out
+of the question; and only served to heighten the unfavourable
+contrast between the wildness of the mountain regions and the
+cultivation of Italy.
+
+Lucretius looked at wild scenery with horror, but later on it became
+a favourite subject for description; and Seneca notes, as shewing a
+morbid state of mind, in his essay on tranquillity of mind, that
+travelling not only attracts men to delightful places, but that some
+even exclaim: 'Let us go now into Campania; now that delicate soil
+delighteth us, let us visit the wood countries, let us visit the
+forest of Calabria, and let us seek some pleasure amidst the deserts,
+in such sort as these wandering eyes of ours may be relieved in
+beholding, at our pleasure, the strange solitude of these savage
+places.'
+
+We have thus briefly surveyed on the one hand, in theory, the
+conditions under which a conscious feeling for Nature develops, and
+the forms in which it expresses itself; and, on the other, the course
+this feeling has followed in antiquity among the Hindoos, Hebrews,
+Greeks, and Romans. The movement toward the modern, toward the
+subjective and individual, lies clear to view. We will now trace its
+gradual development along lines which are always strictly analogous
+to those of culture in general, through the Middle Ages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CHRISTIANITY AND GERMANISM
+
+
+When the heathen world had outlived its faculties, and its creative
+power had failed, it sank into the ocean of the past--a sphinx, with
+her riddle guessed,--and mediaeval civilization arose, founded upon
+Christianity and Germanism. There are times in the world's history
+when change seems to be abrupt, the old to be swept away and all
+things made new at a stroke, as if by the world-consuming fire of the
+old Saga. But, in reality, all change is gradual; the old is for ever
+failing and passing out of sight, to be taken up as a ferment into
+the ever emerging new, which changes and remodels as it will. It was
+so with Christianity. It is easy to imagine that it arose suddenly,
+like a phoenix, from the ashes of heathendom; but, although dependent
+at heart upon the sublime personality of its Founder, it was none the
+less a product of its age, and a result of gradual development--a
+river with sources partly in Judea, partly in Hellas. And mediaeval
+Christianity never denied the traces of its double origin.
+
+Upon this syncretic soil its literature sprang up, moulded as to
+matter upon Old Testament and specifically Christian models, as to
+form upon the great writers of antiquity; but matter and form are
+only separable in the abstract, and the Middle Ages are woven through
+and through with both Greco-Roman and Jewish elements.
+
+But these elements were unfavourable to the development of feeling
+for Nature; Judaism admitted no delight in her for her own sake, and
+Christianity intensified the Judaic opposition between God and the
+world, Creator and created.
+
+'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; if any
+man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him': by which
+John meant, raise your eyes to your Heavenly Father, throned above
+the clouds.
+
+Christianity in its stringent form was transcendental, despising the
+world and renouncing its pleasures. It held that Creation, through
+the entrance of sin, had become a caricature, and that earthly
+existence had only the very limited value of a thoroughfare to the
+eternal Kingdom.
+
+While joy in existence characterized the Hellenic world until its
+downfall, and the Greek took life serenely, delighting in its smooth
+flow; with Christianity, as Jean Paul put it, 'all the present of
+earth vanished into the future of Heaven, and the Kingdom of the
+Infinite arose upon the ruins of the finite.'
+
+The beauty of earth was looked upon as an enchantment of the devil;
+and sin, the worm in the fruit, lurked in its alluring forms.
+
+Classic mythology created a world of its own, dimly veiled by the
+visible one; every phase of Nature shewed the presence or action of
+deities with whom man had intimate relations; every form of life,
+animated by them, held something familiar to him, even sacred--his
+landscape was absorbed by the gods.
+
+To Judaism and Christianity, Nature was a fallen angel, separated as
+far as possible from her God. They only recognized one world--that of
+spirit; and one sphere of the spiritual, religion--the relation
+between God and man. Material things were a delusion of Satan's; the
+heaven on which their eyes were fixed was a very distant one.
+
+The Hellenic belief in deities was pandemonistic and cosmic;
+Christianity, in its original tendency, anti-cosmic and hostile to
+Nature. And Nature, like the world at large, only existed for it in
+relation to its Creator, and was no longer 'the great mother of all
+things,' but merely an instrument in the hands of Providence.
+
+The Greek looked at phenomena in detail, in their inexhaustible
+variety, rarely at things as a whole; the Christian considered Nature
+as a work of God, full of wonderful order, in which detail had only
+the importance of a link in a chain.
+
+As Lotze says, 'The creative artistic impulse could be of no use to a
+conception of life in which nothing retained independent
+significance, but everything referred to or symbolized something
+else.' But yet, the idea of individuality, of the importance of the
+ego, gained ground as never before through this introspection and
+merging of material in spiritual, this giving spirit the exclusive
+sway; and Christianity, while it broke down the barriers of nation,
+race, and position, and widened the cleft between Nature and spirit,
+discovered at the same time the worth of the individual.
+
+And this individuality was one of the chief steps towards an
+artistic, that is, individual point of view about Nature, for it was
+not possible to consider her freely and for her own sake alone, until
+the unlimited independence of mind had been recognized.
+
+But the full development of Christianity was only reached when it
+blended with the Germanic spirit, with the German Gemueth (for which
+no other language has a word), and intensified, by so doing, the
+innately subjective temperament of the race.
+
+The northern climate gives pause for the development of the inner
+life; its long bleak winter, with the heavy atmosphere and slow
+coming of spring, wake a craving for light and warmth, and throw man
+back on himself. This inward inclination, which made itself felt very
+early in the German race, by bringing out the contemplative and
+independent sides of his character, and so disinclining him for
+combined action with his fellows, forwarded the growth of the
+over-ripe seeds of classic culture and vital Christianity.
+
+The Romanic nations, with their brilliant, sharply-defined landscape
+and serene skies, always retained something of the objective delight
+in life which belonged to antiquity; they never felt that mysterious
+impulse towards dreams and enthusiastic longing which the Northerner
+draws from his lowering skies and dark woods, his mists on level and
+height, the grey in grey of his atmosphere, and his ever varying
+landscape. A raw climate drives man indoors in mind as well as body,
+and prompts that craving for spring and delight in its coming which
+have been the chief notes in northern feeling for Nature from
+earliest times.
+
+Vischer has shewn in his _Aesthetik_, that German feeling was early
+influenced by the different forms of plant life around it. Rigid
+pine, delicate birch, stalwart oak, each had its effect; and the
+wildness and roughness of land, sea, and animal life in the North
+combined with the cold of the climate to create the taste for
+domestic comfort, for fireside dreams, and thought-weaving by the
+hearth.
+
+Nature schooled the race to hard work and scanty pleasure, and yet
+its relationship to her was deep and heartfelt from the first.
+Devoutly religious, it gazed at her with mingled love and fear; and
+the deposit of its ideas about her was its mythology.
+
+Its gods dwelt in mountain tops, holes in the rocks, and rivers, and
+especially in dark forests and in the leafy boughs of sacred trees;
+and the howling of wind, the rustle of leaves, the soughing in the
+tree tops, were sounds of their presence. The worship of woods lasted
+far into Christian times, especially among the Saxons and
+Frisians.[1]
+
+Wodan was the all-powerful father of gods and men--the highest god,
+who, as among all the Aryan nations, represented Heaven. Light was
+his shining helmet, clouds were the dark cap he put on when he spread
+rain over the earth, or crashed through the air as a wild hunter with
+his raging pack. His son Donar shewed himself in thunder and
+lightning, as he rode with swinging axe on his goat-spanned car.
+Mountains were sacred to both, as plants to Ziu. Freyr and Freya were
+goddesses of fertility, love, and spring; a ram was sacred to them,
+whose golden fleece illuminated night as well as day, and who drew
+their car with a horse's speed.[2] As with Freya, an image of the
+goddess Nerthus was drawn through the land in spring, to announce
+peace and fertility to mortals.
+
+The suggestive myth of Baldur, god of light and spring, killed by
+blind Hoedur, was the expression of general grief at the passing of
+beauty.
+
+The _Edda_ has a touching picture of the sorrow of Nature, of her
+trees and plants, when the one beloved of all living things fell,
+pierced by an arrow. Holda was first the mild and gracious goddess,
+then a divine being, encompassing the earth. She might be seen in
+morning hours by her favourite haunts of lake and spring, a beautiful
+white woman, who bathed and vanished. When snow fell, she was making
+her bed, and the feathers flew. Agriculture and domestic order were
+under her care.
+
+Ostara was goddess of bright dawn, of rising light, and awakening
+spring, as Hel of subterranean night, the darkness of the underworld.
+Frigg, wife of the highest god, knew the story of existence, and
+protected marriage. She was the Northern Juno or Hera.
+
+Ravines and hollows in the mountains were the dwelling-places of the
+dwarfs (Erdmaennlein), sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly to
+man; now peaceful and helpful, now impish spirits of mischief in
+cloud caps and grey coats, thievish and jolly.
+
+They were visible by moonlight, dancing in the fields; and when their
+track was found in the dew,[3] a good harvest was expected. Popular
+belief took the floating autumn cobwebs for the work of elves and
+fairies. The spirits of mountain and wood were related to the
+water-spirits, nixies who sat combing their long hair in the sun, or
+stretched up lovely arms out of the water. The elves belonged to the
+more spiritual side of Nature, the giants to the grosser. Rocks and
+stones were the weapons of the giants; they removed mountains and
+hills, and boulders were pebbles shaken out of their shoes.
+
+Among animals the horse was sacred to many deities, and gods and
+goddesses readily transformed themselves into birds. Two ravens,
+Hugin and Munin, whose names signify thought and memory, were Odin's
+constant companions. The gift of prophecy was ascribed to the cuckoo,
+as its monotonous voice heralded the spring:
+
+  Kukuk vam haven, wo lange sail ik leven?
+
+There were many legends of men and snakes who exchanged shapes, and
+whom it was unlucky to kill.[4]
+
+The sun and moon, too, were familiar figures in legends.
+
+Their movement across the sky was a flight from two pursuing wolves,
+of which one, the Fenris wolf, was fated one day to catch and devour
+the moon. The German, like the Greek, dreaded nothing more than the
+eclipse of sun or moon, and connected it with the destruction of all
+things and the end of the world. In the moon spots he saw a human
+form carrying a hare or a stick or an axe on his shoulder.
+
+The Solstices impressed him most of all, with their almost constant
+day in summer, almost constant night in winter. Sun, moon, and stars
+were the eyes of heaven; there was a pious custom to greet the stars
+before going to bed. Still earlier, they were sparks of fire from
+Muspilli, to light the gods home. Night, day, and the sun had their
+cars--night and day with one horse, the sun with two: sunrise brought
+sounds sweeter than the song of birds or strings; the rising sun, it
+was said, rings for joy, murmuring daybreak laughs.[5]
+
+Day brought joy, night sorrow; the first was good and friendly, the
+second bad and hostile. The birds greeted daytime and summer with
+songs of delight, but grieved in silence through night and winter:
+the first swallow and stork were hailed as spring's messengers. May
+with greening woods led in beloved summer, frost and snow the winter.
+
+So myth, fable, and legend were interlaced in confusion; who can
+separate the threads?
+
+At any rate, the point of view which they indicate remained the
+common one even far into the Middle Ages, and shewed simple familiar
+intercourse with Nature. Even legal formulae were full of pictures
+from Nature. In the customary oath to render a contract binding, the
+promise is to hold, so it runs, 'so long as the sun shines and rivers
+flow, so long as the wind blows and birds sing, so far off as earth
+is green and fir trees grow, so far as the vault of heaven reaches.'
+As Schnaase says,[6] though with some exaggeration, such formulae, in
+their summary survey of earth and sky, often give a complete
+landscape poem in a few words. He points out that in northern, as
+opposed to classic mythology, Nature was considered, not in the
+cursory Hebrew way, that hurried over or missed detail, but as a
+whole, and in her relation to man's inner life.
+
+'The collective picture of heaven and earth, of cloud movement, of
+the mute life of plants--that side of Nature which had almost escaped
+the eye of antiquity--occupied the Northerner most of all.
+
+'The _Edda_ even represents all Nature together in one colossal
+form--the form of the giant Ymir, whom the sons of Boer slew, in
+order to make the mountains from his bones, the earth from his flesh,
+the skies from his skull.'
+
+A still grander mythical synthesis was the representation of the
+whole world under the form of the sacred ash tree Yggdrasil. This was
+the world tree which united heaven, earth, and hell. Its branches
+stretched across the world and reached up to the skies, and its roots
+spread in different directions--one toward the race of Asa in heaven,
+another toward the Hrimthursen, the third toward the underworld; and
+on both roots and branches creatures lived and played--eagle,
+squirrel, stag, and snake; while by the murmuring Urdhar stream,
+which rippled over one root, the Nones sat in judgment with the race
+of Asa.
+
+Not less significant was the conception of the end of the world, the
+twilight of the gods (Goetterdaemmerung), according to which all the
+wicked powers broke loose and fought against the gods; the sun and
+moon were devoured by wolves, the stars fell and earth quaked, the
+monster world-serpent Joermungande, in giant rage, reared himself out
+of the water and came to land: Loki led the Hrimthursen and the
+retinue of hell, and Surt, with his shining hair, rode away from the
+flaming earth across Bifroest, the rainbow, which broke beneath him.
+
+After the world conflagration a new and better earth arose, with
+rejuvenated gods.[7]
+
+German mediaeval poetry, as a whole, epic and lyric, was interwoven
+with a hazy network of suggestive myth and legend; and moral
+elements, which in mythology were hidden by the prominence of Nature,
+stood out clear to view in the fate and character of the heroes. The
+germ of many of our fairy tales is a bit of purest poetry of
+Nature--a genuine Nature myth transferred to human affairs, which lay
+nearer to the child-like popular mind, and were therefore more
+readily understood by it.
+
+So, for instance, from the Maiden of the Shield, Sigrdrifa, who was
+pierced by Odin's sleep thorn, and who originally represented the
+earth, frozen in winter, kissed awake by the sun-god, came Brunhild,
+whose mail Siegfried's sword penetrated as the sun rays penetrate the
+frost, and lastly the King's daughter, who pricked herself with the
+fateful spindle, and sank into deep sleep. And as Sigrdrifa was
+surrounded by walls of flame, so now we have a thorny hedge of wild
+briar round the beautiful maiden (hence named Dornroeschen) when the
+lucky prince comes to waken her with a kiss.[8]
+
+Not all fairy tales have preserved the myth into Christian times in
+so poetic and transparent a form as this. Its poetic germ arose from
+hidden depths of myth and legend, and, like heathen superstitions in
+the first centuries of Christianity, found its most fruitful soil
+among the people. It has often been disguised beyond recognition by
+legends, and by the worship of the Madonna and saints, but it has
+never been destroyed, and it keeps its magic to the present day.
+
+We see then that the inborn German feeling for Nature, conditioned by
+climate and landscape, and pronounced in his mythology, found both an
+obstacle and a support in Christianity--an obstacle in its
+transcendentalism, and a support in its inwardness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE THEOLOGICAL CHRISTIAN AND THE SYMPATHETIC
+HEATHEN FEELING OF THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES A.D.
+
+
+The Middle Ages employed its best intellectual power in solving the
+problems of man's relation to God and the Redeemer, his moral
+vocation, and his claim to the Kingdom of the blessed. Mind and heart
+were almost entirely engrossed by the dogmas of the new faith, such
+as the incarnation, original sin, and free-will, and by doubts which
+the Old Testament had raised and not solved. Life was looked upon as
+a test-place, a thoroughfare to the heavenly Kingdom; earth, with its
+beauty and its appeal to the senses, as a temptress.
+
+To flee the world and to lack artistic feeling were therefore marks
+of the period. We have no trace of scientific knowledge applied to
+Nature, and she was treated with increasing contempt, as the
+influence of antiquity died out. In spite of this, the attitude of
+the Apostolic Fathers was very far from hostile. Their fundamental
+idea was the Psalmist's 'Lord, how great are Thy works; in wisdom
+hast Thou made them all!' and yet they turned to Nature--at any rate,
+the noblest Grecians among them--not only for proof of divine wisdom
+and goodness, but with a degree of personal inclination, an
+enthusiasm, to which antiquity was a stranger.
+
+Clement of Rome wrote to the Corinthians:
+
+'Let us note how free from anger He is towards all His creatures. The
+heavens are moved by His direction and obey Him in peace. Day and
+night accomplish the course assigned to them by Him, without
+hindrance one to another. The sun and the moon and the dancing stars,
+according to His appointment, circle in harmony within the bounds
+assigned to them, without any swerving aside. The earth, bearing
+fruit in fulfilment of His will at her proper seasons, putteth forth
+the food that supplieth abundantly both men and beasts and all living
+things which are thereupon, making no dissension, neither altering
+anything which He hath decreed. Moreover, the inscrutable depths of
+the abysses and unutterable statutes of the nether regions are
+constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea,
+gathered together by His workmanship into its reservoirs, passeth not
+the barriers wherewith it is surrounded; but even as He ordered it,
+so it doeth. For He said, "so far shalt thou come, and thy waves
+shall be broken within thee." The ocean which is impassable for men,
+and the worlds beyond it, are directed by the same ordinances of the
+Master. The seasons of spring and summer and autumn and winter give
+way in succession one to another in peace. The winds in their several
+quarters at their proper seasons fulfil their ministry without
+disturbance, and the overflowing fountains, created for enjoyment and
+health, without fail give their breasts which sustain the life for
+men. Yea, the smallest of living things come together in concord and
+peace.'[1]
+
+The three great Cappadocians, the most representative of the Greek
+Fathers and leaders of the fourth century, wrote about the scenery
+round them in a tone of sentimentality not less astonishing, in view
+of the prejudice which denies all feeling for Nature to the Middle
+Ages, than their broad humanity and free handling of dogma.
+
+It was no ascetic renouncing the world and solitude[2]; but rather a
+sensitive man, thoughtful and dreamy at once, who wrote as follows
+(Basil the Great to Gregory Nazianzen):
+
+    It is a lofty mountain overshadowed with a deep wood, irrigated
+    on the north by cold and transparent streams. At its foot is
+    spread a low plain, enriched perpetually with the streams from
+    the mountains. The wood, a virgin forest of trees of various
+    kinds and foliage which grows around it, almost serves it as a
+    rampart; so that even the Isle of Calypso, which Homer evidently
+    admired as a paragon of loveliness, is nothing in comparison with
+    this. For indeed it is very nearly an island, from its being
+    enclosed on all sides with rocky boundaries. On two sides of it
+    are deep and precipitous ravines, and on another side the river
+    flowing from the steep is itself a continuous and almost
+    impassable barrier. The mountain range, with its moon-shaped
+    windings, walls off the accessible parts of the plain. There is
+    but one entrance, of which we are the masters. My hut is built on
+    another point, which uplifts a lofty pinnacle on the summit, so
+    that this plain is outspread before the gaze, and from the height
+    I can catch a glimpse of the river flowing round, which to my
+    fancy affords no less delight than the view of the Strymore as
+    you look from Amphipolis. For the Strymore broadens into lakes
+    with its more tranquil stream, and is so sluggish as almost to
+    forfeit the character of a river. The Iris, on the other hand,
+    flowing with a swifter course than any river I know, for a short
+    space billows along the adjacent rock, and then, plunging over
+    it, rolls into a deep whirlpool, affording a most delightful view
+    to me and to every spectator, and abundantly supplying the needs
+    of the inhabitants, for it nurtures an incredible number of
+    fishes in its eddies.
+
+    Why need I tell you of the sweet exhalations from the earth or
+    the breezes from the river? Other persons might admire the
+    multitude of the flowers, or of the lyric birds, but I have no
+    time to attend to them. But my highest eulogy of the spot is,
+    that, prolific as it is of all kinds of fruits from its happy
+    situation, it bears for me the sweetest of all fruits,
+    tranquillity; not only because it is free from the noises of
+    cities, but because it is not traversed by a single visitor
+    except the hunters, who occasionally join us. For, besides its
+    other advantages, it also produces animals--not bears and wolves,
+    like yours--heaven forbid! But it feeds herds of stags, and of
+    wild goats and hares, and creatures of that kind. Do you not then
+    observe what a narrow risk I ran, fool that I was, to change such
+    a spot for Tiberine, the depth of the habitable world? I am now
+    hastening to it, pardon me. For even Alcmaeon, when he discovered
+    the Echinades, no longer endured his wanderings.[3]
+
+This highly-cultured prince of the Church clearly valued the place
+quite as much for its repose, its idyllic solitude, for what we
+moderns would call its romantic surroundings, sylvan and rugged at
+once, as for its fertility and practical uses. But it is too much to
+say, with Humboldt[4]:
+
+    In this simple description of scenery and forest life, feelings
+    are expressed which are more intimately in unison with those of
+    modern tunes, than anything which has been transmitted to us from
+    Greek or Roman antiquity. From the lonely Alpine hut to which
+    Basil withdrew, the eye wanders over the humid and leafy roof of
+    the forest below.... The poetic and mythical allusion at the
+    close of the letter falls on the Christian ear like an echo from
+    another and earlier world.
+
+The Hellenic poets of the Anthology, and the younger Pliny in
+Imperial days, held the same tone, elegiac and idyllic[5]; as
+Villemain says, 'These pleasant pictures, these poetic allusions, do
+not shew the austerity of the cloister.'[6] The specifically
+Christian and monastic was hidden by the purely human.
+
+Other writings of Basil's express still more strongly the mild
+dejection which longs for solitude. For instance, when Gregory had
+been dwelling upon the emptiness of all earthly things, he said in
+reply, that peace of soul must be man's chief aim, and could only be
+attained by separation from the world, by solitude; 'for the
+contemplation of Nature abates the fever of the soul, and banishes
+all insincerity and presumption.' Therefore he loved the quiet corner
+where he was undisturbed by human intercourse.
+
+He drew melancholy comparisons from Nature: men were compared to
+wandering clouds that dissolve into nothing, to wavering shadows, and
+shipwrecked beings, etc.
+
+His homilies on the Hexameron, too, shew thought of Nature. There is
+a fine sense for the play of colour on the sea here: 'A pleasant
+sight is the glistening sea when a settled calm doth hold it; but
+pleasant too it is to behold its surface ruffled by gentle breezes,
+and its colour now purple, now white, now dark; when it dasheth not
+with violence against the neighbouring coast, but holdeth it in
+tranquil embrace.'[7]
+
+There is enthusiastic admiration for Nature mixed with his profound
+religious feeling in the whole description of the stars, the seasons,
+etc. The expression of Ptolymaeos, that when he gazed at the stars he
+felt himself raised to the table of Zeus, is weak in comparison with
+Basil's words, 'If, on a clear night, you have fixed your gaze upon
+the beauty of the stars, and then suddenly turned to thoughts of the
+artist of the universe, whoever he be, who has adorned the sky so
+wonderfully with these undying flowers, and has so planned it that
+the beauty of the spectacle is not less than its conformity to
+law....if the finite and perishable world is so beautiful, what must
+the infinite and invisible be?'[8]
+
+For him, as for modern minds, starlight brought thoughts of eternity:
+'If the greatness of the sky is beyond human comprehension, what
+mind, what understanding could fathom eternal things?'
+
+Gregory Nazianzen's feeling for Nature was intensely melancholy. His
+poem _On Human Nature_ says:
+
+    For yesterday, worn out with my grief alone, I sat apart in a
+    shady grove, gnawing my heart out. For somehow I love this remedy
+    in time of grief, to talk with mine own heart in silence. And the
+    breezes whispered to the note of the songster birds, and from the
+    branches brought to me sweet slumber, though my heart was
+    well-nigh broken. And the cicadas, friends of the sun, chirped
+    with the shrill note that issues from their breasts, and filled
+    the whole grove with sound. A cold spring hard by bedewed my feet
+    as it flowed gently through the glen; but I was held in the
+    strong grip of grief, nor did I seek aught of these things, for
+    the mind, when it is burdened with sorrow, is not fain to take
+    part in pleasure.
+
+The classic writers had also contrasted Nature with mind, as, for
+example, Ibykos in his famous _Spring Song_[9]; but not with
+Gregory's brooding melancholy and self-tormenting introspection. The
+poem goes on to compare him to a cloud that wanders hither and
+thither in darkness, without even a visible outline of that for which
+he longed; without peace:
+
+    I am a stream of troubled water: ever onward I move, nor hath any
+    part of me rest; thou wilt not a second time pass over that
+    stream thou didst before pass over, nor wilt thou see a second
+    time the man thou sawest before.
+
+In his dreamy enthusiasm he likes nothing better than solitude:
+'Happy he who leads a lonely life, happy he who with the mighty force
+of a pure mind seeth the glory of the lights of heaven.'
+
+The same tone constantly recurs in his writings. Human life is but
+dust, blown by the wind; a stormy voyage, faded grass; kingdoms and
+powers are waves of the sea, which suck under and drown; a charming
+girl is a rose with thorns, etc.
+
+Gregory of Nyssa again praises the order and splendour of Nature and
+her Creator in Old Testament style: 'Seeing the harmony of the whole,
+of wonders in heaven and in earth, and how the elements of things,
+though mutually opposed, are all by Nature welded together, and make
+for one aim through a certain indefinable intercommunion.'
+
+With the pathos of Job he cries:
+
+      Who has spread out the ground at my feet?
+      Who has made the sky firm over me as a dome?
+      Who carries the sun as a torch before me?
+      Who sends springs into the ravines?
+      Who prepares the path of the waters?
+
+    And who gives my spirit the wing for that high flight in which I
+    leave earth behind and hasten through the wide ocean of air, know
+    the beauty of the ether, and lift myself to the stars and observe
+    all their splendour, and, not staying there, but passing beyond
+    the limits of mutable things, comprehend unchangeable Nature--the
+    immutable Power which is based upon itself, and leads and
+    supports all that exists?
+
+This, with its markedly poetic swing, is surprisingly like the
+passage in Plato's _Phaedo_, where Socrates says: 'If any man could
+arrive at the exterior limit or take the wings of a bird and come to
+the top, then, like a fish who puts his head out of the water and
+sees this world, he would see a world beyond; and if the nature of
+man could sustain the sight, he would acknowledge that this other
+world was the place of the true heaven and the true light and the
+true earth.' But even the thought, that the order and splendour of
+Nature witnessed to the eternal powers which had created her, was not
+strange to the Greek, as Aristotle proves in the remarks which Cicero
+preserved to us in his treatise _On the Nature of the Gods_.
+
+Well then did Aristotle observe: 'If there were men whose habitations
+had been always underground, in great and commodious houses, adorned
+with statues and pictures, finished with everything which they who
+are reputed happy abound with, and if, without stirring from thence,
+they should be informed of a certain divine power and majesty, and
+after some time the earth should open, and they should quit their
+dark abode to come to us, where they should immediately behold the
+earth, the seas, the heavens, should consider the vast extent of the
+clouds and force of the winds, should see the sun, and observe his
+grandeur and beauty, and also his generative power, inasmuch as day
+is occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky, and when
+night has obscured the earth, they should contemplate the heavens
+bespangled and adorned with stars, the surprising variety of the moon
+in her increase and wane, the rising and setting of all the stars and
+the inviolable regularity of all their courses; when,' says he, 'they
+should see these things, they would undoubtedly conclude that there
+are gods, and that these are their mighty works.'
+
+Thus unconsciously the Greek Fathers of the Church took over the
+thoughts of the great classic philosophers, only substituting a unity
+for a plurality of godhead. To soar upon the wings of bird, wind, or
+cloud, a _motif_ which we find here in Gregory of Nyssa, and which
+reached its finest expression in Ganymede and the evening scene in
+Faust, had reached a very modern degree of development in
+antiquity.[10]
+
+Gregory of Nyssa was still more sentimental and plaintive than Basil
+and Gregory Nazianzen:
+
+    When I see every ledge of rock, every valley and plain, covered
+    with new-born verdure, the varied beauty of the trees, and the
+    lilies at my feet decked by Nature with the double charms of
+    perfume and of colour, when in the distance I see the ocean,
+    towards which the clouds are onward borne, my spirit is
+    overpowered by a sadness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When in
+    autumn the fruits have passed away, the leaves have fallen, and
+    the branches of the trees, dried and shrivelled, are robbed of
+    their leafy adornments, we are instinctively led, amid the
+    everlasting and regular change in Nature, to feel the harmony of
+    the wondrous powers pervading all things. He who contemplates
+    them with the eye of the soul, feels the littleness of man amid
+    the greatness of the universe.
+
+Are not these thoughts, which Humboldt rightly strings together,
+highly significant and modern? Especially in view of the opinion
+which Du Bois Reymond, for example, expresses: 'In antiquity,
+mediaeval times, and in later literature up to the last century, one
+seeks in vain for the expression of what we call a feeling for
+Nature.'[11]
+
+Might not Werther have written them? They have all his sentimental
+melancholy, coupled with that 'delight of sorrow' which owes its name
+(Wonne der Wehmuth) to Goethe, although its meaning was known to
+Euripides.
+
+Yet it was only in rare cases, such as Seneca and Aristotle, that
+classic writers combined such appreciation of Nature's individual
+traits with that lofty view of the universe which elevates and
+humbles at once.
+
+Gregory shewed the blending of Christian with classic feeling; and
+the deepening of the inner life through the new faith is quite as
+clear in patristic writings as their close relationship to the
+classic.
+
+But the thinkers and poets of the Middle Ages did not always see
+Nature under the brilliant light of Hellenic influence; there were
+wide spaces of time in which monkish asceticism held sway, and she
+was treated with most unscientific contempt. For the development of
+feeling did not proceed in one unswerving line, but was subject to
+backward movements. The rosy afterglow of the classic world was upon
+these Greek Fathers; but at the same time they suffered from the
+sorrowfulness of the new religion, which held so many sad and
+pessimistic elements.
+
+The classic spirit seemed to shudder before the eternity of the
+individual, before the unfathomable depths which opened up for
+mankind with this religion of the soul, which can find no rest in
+itself, no peace in the world, unless it be at one with God in
+self-forgetting devotion and surrender.
+
+Solitude, to which all the deeper minds at this time paid homage,
+became the mother of new and great thoughts, and of a view of the
+world little behind the modern in sentimentality.
+
+What Villemain says of the quotation from Gregory Nazianzen just
+given, applies with equal force to the others:
+
+    No doubt there is a singular charm in this mixture of abstract
+    thoughts and emotions, this contrast between the beauties of
+    Nature and the unrest of a heart tormented by the enigma of
+    existence and seeking to find rest in faith.... It was not the
+    poetry of Homer, it was another poetry.... It was in the new form
+    of contemplative poetry, in this sadness of man about himself, in
+    these impulses towards God and the future, in this idealism so
+    little known by the poets of antiquity, that the Christian
+    imagination could compete without disadvantage. It was there that
+    that poetry arose which modern satiety seeks for, the poetry of
+    reverie and reflection, which penetrates man's heart and
+    deciphers his most intimate thoughts and vaguest wishes.
+
+Contempt for art was a characteristic of the Fathers of the Church,
+and to that end they extolled Nature; man's handiwork, however
+dazzling, was but vanity in their eyes, whereas Nature was the
+handiwork of the Creator. Culture and Nature were purposely set in
+opposition to each other.[12] St Chrysostom wrote:
+
+    If the aspect of the colonnades of sumptuous buildings would lead
+    thy spirit astray, look upwards to the vault of heaven, and
+    around thee on the open fields, in which herds graze by the
+    water's side. Who does not despise all the creations of art, when
+    in the stillness of his soul he watches with admiration the
+    rising of the sun, as it pours its golden light over the face of
+    the earth; when resting on the thick grass beside the murmuring
+    spring, or beneath the sombre shade of a thick and leafy tree,
+    the eye rests on the far receding and hazy distance?
+
+The visible to them was but a mirror of the invisible; as Paul says
+(13th of the 1st Corinthians): 'Here we see in a glass darkly,' and
+Goethe: 'Everything transitory is but a similitude.'
+
+    God (says St Chrysostom again) has placed man in the world as in
+    a royal palace gleaming with gold and precious stones; but the
+    wonderful thing about this palace is, that it is not made of
+    stone, but of far costlier material; he has not lighted up a
+    golden candelabra, but given lights their fixed course in the
+    roof of the palace, where they are not only useful to us, but an
+    object of great delight.[13]
+
+The Roman secular writers of the first Christian centuries had not
+this depth of thought and sadness; but from them too we have notable
+descriptions of Nature in which personal pleasure and sympathy are
+evident motives as well as religious feeling.
+
+In the little _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix, a writing full of genuine
+human feeling of the time of Commodus, the mixture of the heathen
+culture and opinions of antiquity with the Christian way of thinking
+has a very modern ring. The scenery is finely sketched.
+
+    The heats of summer being over, autumn began to be temperate ...
+    we (two friends, a heathen and a Christian) agreed to go to the
+    delightful city of Ostia.... As, at break of day, we were
+    proceeding along the banks of the Tiber towards the sea, that the
+    soft breeze might invigorate our limbs, and that we might enjoy
+    the pleasure of feeling the beach gently subside under our
+    footsteps, Caecilius observed an image of Serapis, and having
+    raised his hands to his lips, after the wont of the superstitious
+    vulgar, he kissed it.... Then Octavius said: 'It is not the part
+    of a good man, brother Marcus, thus to leave an intimate
+    companion and friend amidst blind popular ignorance, and to
+    suffer him, in such open daylight, to stumble against stones,'
+    etc.... Discoursing after this sort, we traversed the space
+    between Ostia and the sea, and arrived at the open coast. There
+    the gentle surges had smoothed the outermost sands like a
+    pleasure walk, and as the sea, although the winds blow not, is
+    ever unquiet, it came forward to the shore, not hoary and
+    foaming, but with waves gently swelling and curled. On this
+    occasion we were agreeably amused by the varieties of its
+    appearance, for, as we stood on the margin and dipped the soles
+    of our feet in the water, the wave alternately struck at us, and
+    then receding, and sliding away, seemed to swallow up itself. We
+    saw some boys eagerly engaged in the game of throwing shells in
+    the sea.... Caecilius said: 'All things ebb into the fountain from
+    which they spring, and return back to their original without
+    contriver, author, or supreme arbiter ... showers fall, winds
+    blow, thunder bellows, and lightnings flash ... but they have no
+    aim.' Octavius answers: 'Behold the heaven itself, how wide it is
+    stretched out, and with what rapidity its revolutions are
+    performed, whether in the night when studded with stars, or in
+    the daytime when the sun ranges over it, and then you will learn
+    with what a wonderful and divine hand the balance is held by the
+    Supreme Moderator of all things; see how the circuit made by the
+    sun produces the year, and how the moon, in her increase, wanes
+    and changes, drives the months around.... Observe the sea, it is
+    bound by a law that the shore imposes; the variety of trees, how
+    each of them is enlivened from the bowels of the earth! Behold
+    the ocean, it ebbs and flows alternately. Look at the springs,
+    they trickle with a perpetual flow; at rivers, they hold on their
+    course in quick and continued motion. Why should I speak of the
+    ridges of mountains, aptly disposed? of the gentle slope of
+    hills, or of plains widely extended?... In this mansion of the
+    world, when you fully consider the heaven and the earth, and that
+    providence, order, and government visible in them, assure
+    yourself that there is indeed a Lord and Parent of the whole ...
+    do not enquire for the name of God--God is his name.... If I
+    should call Him Father, you would imagine Him earthly; if King,
+    carnal; and if Lord, mortal. Remove all epithets, and then you
+    will be sensible of His glory....'
+
+How like Faust's confession of faith to Gretchen:
+
+  Him who dare name
+  And yet proclaim,
+  Yes! I believe...
+  The All-embracer,
+  All-sustainer,
+  Doth he not embrace, sustain,
+  Thee, me, Himself?
+  Lifts not the Heaven its dome above?
+  Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us rise?...
+  And beaming tenderly with looks of love
+  Climb not the everlasting stars on high?...
+  Fill thence thy heart, how large so e'er it be,
+  And in the feeling when thou'rt wholly blest,
+  Then call it what thou wilt--Bliss! Heart! Love! God!
+  I have no name for it--'tis feeling all
+  Name is but sound and smoke
+  Shrouding the glow of Heaven.
+
+Such statements of belief were not rare in the Apologists; but Nature
+at this time was losing independent importance in men's minds, like
+life itself, which after Cyprian was counted as nothing but a fight
+with the devil.[14]
+
+There is deep reverence for Nature in the lyrics, the hymns of the
+first centuries A.D., as a work of God and an emblem of moral ideas.
+Ebert observes[15]
+
+    In comparison with the old Roman, one can easily see the
+    peculiarities and perfect originality of these Christian lyrics.
+    I do not mean merely in that dominance of the soul life in which
+    man appeared to be quite merged, and which makes them such
+    profound expressions of feeling; but in man's relationship to
+    Nature, which, one might say, supplies the colour to the
+    painter's brush.[16] Nature appears here in the service of ideal
+    moral powers and robbed of her independence;[17] the servant of
+    her Creator, whose direct command she obeys. She is his
+    instrument for man's welfare, and also at times, under the
+    temporary mastery of the devil, for his destruction. Thus Nature
+    easily symbolizes the moral world.
+
+'Bountiful Giver of light, through whose calm brightness, when the
+time of night is past and gone, the daylight is suffused abroad,
+Thou, the world's true morning star, clearer than the full glorious
+sun, Thou very dayspring, very light in all its fulness, that dost
+illumine the innermost recesses of the heart,' sings St Hilary in his
+Morning Hymn; and in another hymn, declaring himself unworthy to lift
+his sinful eyes to the clear stars, he urges all the creatures, and
+heaven, earth, sea and river, hill and wood, rose, lily, and star to
+weep with him and lament the sinfulness of man.
+
+In the Morning Hymn of St Ambrose dawn is used symbolically; dark
+night pales, the light of the world is born again, and the new birth
+of the soul raises to new energy; Christ is called the true sun, the
+source of light; 'let modesty be as the dawn, faith as the noonday,
+let the mind know no twilight.'
+
+And Prudentius sings in a Morning Hymn [18]: 'Night and mist and
+darkness fade, light dawns, the globe brightens, Christ is coming!'
+and again: 'The herald bird of dawn announces day, Christ the awaker
+calls us to life.' And in the ninth hymn: 'Let flowing rivers, waves,
+the seashore's thundering, showers, heat, snow, frost, forest and
+breeze, night, day, praise Thee throughout the ages.'[19]
+
+He speaks of Christ as the sun that never sets, never is obscured by
+clouds, the flower of David, of the root of Jesse; of the eternal
+Fatherland where the whole ground is fragrant with beds of purple
+roses, violets, and crocuses, and slender twigs drop balsam.
+
+St Jerome united Christian genius, as Ebert says, with classic
+culture to such a degree that his writings, especially his letters,
+often shew a distinctly modern tone,[20] and go to prove that
+asceticism so deepened and intensified character that even literary
+style took individual stamp.[21] But the most perfect representative,
+the most modern man, of his day was Augustine.
+
+As Rousseau's _Confessions_ revealed the revolutionary genius of the
+eighteenth century, Augustine's opened out a powerful character,
+fully conscious of its own importance, striving with the problems of
+the time, and throwing search-lights into every corner of its own
+passionate heart. He had attained, after much struggling, to a
+glowing faith, and he described the process in characteristic and
+drastic similes from Nature, which are scarcely suitable for
+translation. He said on one occasion:
+
+    For I burned at times in my youth to satiate myself with deeds of
+    hell, and dared to run wild in many a dark love passage.... In
+    the time of my youth I took my fill passionately among the wild
+    beasts, and I dared to roam the woods and pursue my vagrant loves
+    beneath the shade; and my beauty consumed away and I was
+    loathsome in Thy sight, pleasing myself and desiring to please
+    the eyes of men.... The seething waves of my youth flowed up to
+    the shores of matrimony....
+
+Comfortless at the death of his friend:
+
+    I burned, I sighed, I wept, I was distraught, for I bore within
+    me a soul rent and bloodstained, that would no longer brook my
+    carrying; yet I found no place where I could lay it down, neither
+    in pleasant groves nor in sport was it at rest. All things, even
+    the light itself, were filled with shuddering.
+
+Augustine, like Rousseau, understood 'que c'est un fatal present du
+ciel qu'une ame sensible.'
+
+He looked upon his own heart as a sick child, and sought healing for
+it in Nature and solitude, though in vain.
+
+The pantheistic belief of the Manicheans that all things, fire, air,
+water, etc., were alive, that figs wept when they were picked and the
+mother tree shed milky tears for the loss of them, that everything in
+heaven and earth was a part of godhead, gave him no comfort; it was
+rather the personal God of the Psalms whom he saw in the ordering of
+Nature.
+
+The cosmological element in theism has never been more beautifully
+expressed than in his words:
+
+    I asked the earth, and she said: 'I am not He,' and all things
+    that are in her did confess the same. I asked the sea and the
+    depths and creeping things, and they answered: 'We are not thy
+    God, seek higher.' I asked the blowing breezes, and the whole
+    expanse of air with its inhabitants made answer: 'Anaxagoras was
+    at fault, I am not God.' I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, the
+    stars, and with a loud voice did they exclaim: 'He made us.' My
+    question was the enquiry of my spirit, their answer was the
+    beauty of their form.
+
+In another place:
+
+    Not with uncertain but with sure consciousness, Lord, I love
+    Thee. But behold, sea and sky and all things in them from all
+    sides tell me that I must love Thee, nor do they cease to give
+    all men this message, so that they are without excuse. Sky and
+    earth speak to the deaf Thy praises: when I love Thee, I love not
+    beauty of form, nor radiancy of light; but when I love my God, I
+    love the light, the voice, the sweetness, the food, the embrace
+    of my innermost soul. That is what I love when I love my God.
+
+Augustine's interest in Nature was thus religious. At the same time,
+the soothing influence of quiet woods was not unknown to him.
+
+The likeness and unlikeness between the Christian and heathen points
+of view are very clear in the correspondence between Ausonius, the
+poet of the Moselle, and Paulinus, Bishop of Nola; and the deep
+friendship expressed in it raises their dilettante verses to the
+level of true poetry.
+
+Ausonius, thoroughly heathen as he was, carries us far forward into
+Christian-Germanic times by his sentimentality and his artistic
+descriptions of the scenery of the Moselle.[22]
+
+It is characteristic of the decline of heathendom, that the lack of
+original national material to serve as inspiration, as the AEneas Saga
+had once served, led the best men of the time to muse on Nature, and
+describe scenery and travels. Nothing in classic Roman poetry attests
+such an acute grasp of Nature's little secret charms as the small
+poem about the sunny banks of the Moselle, vine-clad and crowned by
+villas, and reflected in the crystal water below. It seemed as if the
+Roman, with the German climate, had imbibed the German love of
+Nature; as if its scenery had bewitched him like the German maiden
+whom he compared to roses and lilies in his song.
+
+Many parts of his poetical epistles are in the same tone, and we
+learn incidentally from them that a lengthy preamble about weather
+and place belonged to letter-writing even then.[23]
+
+Feeling for Nature and love of his friend are interwoven into a truly
+poetic appeal in No. 64, in which Ausonius complains that Paulinus
+does not answer his letters:
+
+    Rocks give answer to the speech of man, and his words striking
+    against the caves resound, and from the groves cometh the echo of
+    his voice. The cliffs of the coast cry out, the rivers murmur,
+    the hedge hums with the bees that feed upon it, the reedy banks
+    have their own harmonious notes, the foliage of the pine talks in
+    trembling whispers to the winds: what time the light south-east
+    falls on the pointed leaves, songs of Dindymus give answer in the
+    Gargaric grove. Nature has made nothing dumb; the birds of the
+    air and the beasts of the earth are not silent, the snake has its
+    hiss, the fishes of the sea as they breathe give forth their
+    note.... Have the Basque mountains and the snowy haunts of the
+    Pyrenees taken away thy urbanity?... May he, who advises thee to
+    keep silence, never enjoy the singing of sweet songs nor the
+    voices of Nature ... sad and in need may he live in desolate
+    regions, and wander silent in the rounded heights of the Alpine
+    range.
+
+The sounds of Nature are detailed with great delicacy in this appeal,
+and we see that the Alps are referred to as desolate regions.
+
+In another letter (25) he reminded his friend of their mutual love,
+their home at Burdigala, his country-house with its vine-slopes,
+fields, woods, etc., and went on:
+
+    Yet without thee no year advanceth with grateful change of
+    season; the rainy spring passeth without flower, the dog-star
+    burns with blazing heat, Pomona bringeth not the changing scents
+    of autumn, Aquarius pours forth his waters and saddens winter.
+    Pontius, dear heart, seest thou what thou hast done?
+
+Closing in the same tender strain with a picture of his hope
+fulfilled:
+
+    Now he leaves the snowy towns of the Iberians, now he holds the
+    fields of the Tarbellians, now passeth he beneath the halls of
+    Ebromagus, now he is gliding down the stream, and now he knocketh
+    at thy door! Can we believe it? Or do they who love, fashion
+    themselves dreams?
+
+The greater inwardness of feeling here, as contrasted with classic
+times, is undeniable; the tone verges on the sentimentality of the
+correspondences between 'beautiful souls' in the eighteenth century.
+
+Paulinus was touchingly devoted to his former teacher Ausonius, and
+in every way a man of fine and tender feeling. He gave himself with
+zeal to Christianity, and became an ascetic and bishop.
+
+It was a bitter grief to him that his Ausonius remained a heathen
+when he himself had sworn allegiance to Christ and said adieu to
+Apollo. There is a fine urbanity and humanity in his writings, but he
+did not, like Ausonius, love Nature for her own sake. The one took
+the Christian ascetic point of view, the other the classic heathen,
+with sympathy and sentiment in addition.
+
+Paulinus recognized the difference, and contrasted their ideas of
+solitude. 'They are not crazed, nor is it their savage fierceness
+that makes men choose to live in lonely spots; rather, turning their
+eyes to the lofty stars, they contemplate God, and set the leisure
+that is free from empty cares, to fathom the depths of truth they
+love.'
+
+In answer to his friend's praise of home, he praised Spain, in which
+he was living, and many copious descriptions of time and place run
+through his other writings[24]; but while he yielded nothing to
+Ausonius in the matter of friendship, 'sooner shall life disappear
+from my body than thy image from my heart,' he was without his quiet
+musing delight in Nature. For her the heathen had the clearer eye and
+warmer heart; the Christian bishop only acknowledged her existence in
+relation to his Creator, declaring with pride that no power had been
+given to us over the elements, nor to them over us, and that not from
+the stars but from our own hearts come the hindrances to virtue.
+
+Lives of the saints and paraphrases of the story of creation were the
+principal themes of the Christian poets of the fourth and fifth
+centuries. In some of these the hermit was extolled with a dash of
+Robinson Crusoe romance, and the descriptions of natural phenomena in
+connection with Genesis often showed a feeling for the beauty of
+Nature in poetic language. Dracontius drew a detailed picture of
+Paradise with much self-satisfaction.
+
+    Then in flight the joyous feathered throng passed through the
+    heavens, beating the air with sounding wings, various notes do
+    they pour forth in soothing harmony, and, methinks, together
+    praise for that they were accounted worthy to be created.[26]
+
+For the charming legend of Paradise was to many Christian minds of
+this time what the long-lost bliss of Elysium and the Golden Age had
+been to the Hellenic poets and the Roman elegist--the theme of much
+vivid imagery and highly-coloured word-painting.
+
+    Eternal spring softens the air, a healing flame floods the world
+    with light, all the elements glow in healing warmth; as the
+    shades of night fade, day rises.... Then the feathered flocks fly
+    joyfully through the air, beating it with their wings in the rush
+    of their passage, and with flattering satisfaction their voices
+    are heard, and I think they praise God that they were found
+    worthy to be created; some shine in snowy white, some in purple,
+    some in saffron, some in yellow gold; others have white feathers
+    round the eyes, while neck and breast are of the bright tint of
+    the hyacinth ... and upon the branches, the birds are moved to
+    and fro with them by the wind.
+
+This shews careful observation of detail; but, for the most part,
+such idyllic feeling was checked by lofty religious thoughts.
+
+'Man,' he cries, 'should rule over Nature, over all that it contains,
+over all earth offers in fruit, flowers, and verdure that tree and
+vine, sea and spring, can give.' He summons all creation to praise
+the Creator--stars and seasons, hail-storm and lightning, earth, sea,
+river and spring, cloud and night, plants, animals, and light; and he
+describes the flood in bold flights of fancy.
+
+In the three books of Avitus[27] we have 'a complete poem of the lost
+Paradise, far removed from a mere paraphrase or versification of the
+Bible,'[28] which shews artistic leanings and sympathetic feeling
+here and there. As Catullus[29] pictures the stars looking down upon
+the quiet love of mortals by night, and Theocritus[30] makes the
+cypresses their only witnesses, the Christian poet surrounds the
+marriage of our first parents with the sympathy of Nature:
+
+    And angel voices joined in harmony and sang to the chaste and
+    pure; Paradise was their wedding-chamber, earth their dowry, and
+    the stars of heaven rejoiced with gladsome radiance.... The
+    kindness of heaven maintains eternal spring there; the tumultuous
+    south wind does not penetrate, the clouds forsake an air which is
+    always pure.... The soil has no need of rains to refresh it, and
+    the plants prosper by virtue of their own dew. The earth is
+    always verdant, and its surface animated by a sweet warmth
+    resplendent with beauty. Herbs never abandon the hills, the trees
+    never lose their leaves, etc.
+
+And when Adam and Eve leave it, they find all the rest of the
+beautiful world ugly and narrow in comparison. 'Day is dark to their
+eyes, and under the clear sun they complain that the light has
+disappeared.'
+
+It was the reflection of their own condition in Nature. Among heathen
+writers who were influenced, without being entirely swayed, by
+Christian teaching, and imitated the rhetorical Roman style in
+describing Nature, Apollonius Sidonius takes a prominent place. In
+spite of many empty phrases and a stilted style, difficult to
+understand as well as to translate, his poems, and still more his
+letters, give many interesting pictures of the culture of his part of
+the fifth century. In Carm. 2 he draws a highly--coloured picture of
+the home of Pontius Leontas,[31] a fine country property, and paints
+the charms of the villa with all the art of his rhetoric and some
+real appreciation. The meeting of the two rivers, the Garonne and the
+Dordogne, in the introduction is poetically rendered, and he goes on
+to describe the cool hall and grottos, state-rooms, pillars--above
+all, the splendid view: 'There on the top of the fortress I sit down
+and lean back and gaze at the mountains covered by olives, so dear to
+the Muse and the goats. I shall wander in their shade, and believe
+that coward Daphne grants me her love.' He delighted in unspoilt
+Nature, and describes:
+
+    My fountain, which, as it flows from the mountain-side, is
+    overshadowed by a many-covered grotto with its wide circle. It
+    needs not Art; Nature has given it grace. That no artist's hand
+    has touched it is its charm; it is no masterpiece of skill, no
+    hammer with resounding blow will adorn the rocks, nor marble fill
+    up the place where the tufa is worn away.
+
+He lays stress upon the contrast between culture and Nature, town
+luxury and country solitude, in his second letter to Domidius, and
+describes the beauties of his own modest estate with sentimental
+delight:
+
+    You reproach me for loitering in the country; I might complain
+    with more reason that you stay in the town when the earth shines
+    in the light of spring, the ice is melting from the Alps, and the
+    soil is marked by the dry fissures of tortuous furrows ... the
+    stones in the stream, and the mud on the banks are dried up ...
+    here neither nude statues, comic actors, nor Hippodrome are to be
+    found ... the noise of the waters is so great that it drowns
+    conversation. From the dining-room, if you have time to spare at
+    meals, you can occupy it with the delight of looking at the
+    scenery, and watch the fishing ... here you can find a hidden
+    recess, cool even in summer heat, a place to sleep in. Here what
+    joy it is to listen to the cicadas chirping at noonday, and to
+    the frogs croaking when the twilight is coming on, and to the
+    swans and geese giving note at the early hours of the night, and
+    at midnight to the cocks crowing together, and to the boding
+    crows with three-fold note greeting the ruddy torch of the rising
+    dawn; and in the half light of the morning to hear the
+    nightingale warbling in the bushes, and the swallow twittering
+    among the beams.... Between whiles, the shepherds play in their
+    rustic fashion. Not far off is a wood where the branches of two
+    huge limes interlace, though their trunks are apart (in their
+    shade we play ball), and a lake that rises to such fury in a
+    storm that the trees that border it are wetted by the spray.
+
+In another letter to Domidius he described a visit to the
+country-seat of two of his friends:
+
+    We were torn from one pleasure to another--games, feastings,
+    chatting, rowing, bathing, fishing.
+
+As a true adherent even as a bishop of classic culture and humanity,
+Sidonius is thus an interesting figure in these wild times, with his
+Pliny-like enthusiasm for country rather than city, and his
+susceptibility to woodland and pastoral life.
+
+The limit of extravagance in the bombastic rhetoric of the period was
+reached in the travels of Ennodius,[32] who was scarcely more than a
+fantastic prattler. The purest, noblest, and most important figure of
+the sixth century was undoubtedly Boetius; but it is Cassiodorus, a
+statesman of the first rank under Theodoric, who in his _Variorium
+libris_ gives the most interesting view of the attitude of his day
+towards Nature. He revelled in her and in describing her. After
+praising Baja for its beauty[33] and Lactarius for its healthiness,
+he said of Scyllacium:
+
+    The city of Scyllacium hangs upon the hills like a cluster of
+    grapes, not that it may pride itself upon their difficult ascent,
+    but that it may voluptuously gaze on verdant plains and the blue
+    back of the sea. The city beholds the rising sun from its very
+    cradle, when the day that is about to be born sends forward no
+    heralding Aurora; but as soon as it begins to rise, the quivering
+    brightness displays its torch. It beholds Phoebus in his joy; it
+    is bathed in the brightness of that luminary so that it might be
+    thought to be itself the native land of the sun, the claims of
+    Rhodes to that honour being outdone.... It enjoys a translucent
+    air, but withal so temperate, that its winters are sunny and its
+    summers cool, and life passes there without sorrow, since hostile
+    seasons are feared by none. Hence, too, man himself is here freer
+    of soul than elsewhere, for this temperateness of the climate
+    prevails in all things.... Assuredly for the body to imbibe muddy
+    waters is a different thing from sucking in the transparency of a
+    sweet fountain. Even so the vigour of the mind is repressed when
+    it is clogged by a heavy atmosphere. Nature itself hath made us
+    subject to these influences.... clouds make us feel sad, and
+    again a bright day fills us with joy.... At the foot of the
+    Moscian Mount we hollowed out the bowels of the rock, and
+    tastefully introduced therein the eddying waves of Nereus. Here a
+    troop of fishes sporting in free captivity refreshes all minds
+    with delight, and charms all eyes with admiration. They run
+    greedily to the hand of man, and, before they become his food,
+    seek dainties from him.
+
+He described the town as rich in vineyards and olive woods,
+cornfields and villas.
+
+He awarded the palm of beauty to Como and its lake, and although he
+wrote in the clumsy language of a decaying literature, this
+sixth-century sketch still strikes us as surprisingly complete and
+artistic in feeling:
+
+    Como, with its precipitous mountains and its vast expanse of
+    lake, seems placed there for the defence of the Province of
+    Liguria; and yet again, it is so beautiful, that one would think
+    it was created for pleasure only.
+
+    To the south lies a fertile plain with easy roads for the
+    transport of provisions; on the north, a lake sixty miles long
+    abounding in fish, soothing the mind with delicious
+    recreation.... Rightly is it called Como, because it is adorned
+    with such gifts. The lake lies in a shell-like valley with white
+    margins. Above rises a diadem of lofty mountains, their slopes
+    studded with bright villas; a girdle of olives below, vineyards
+    above, while a crest of thick chestnut woods adorns the very
+    summit of the hills. Streams of snowy clearness dash from the
+    hill-sides into the lake. On the eastern side these unite to form
+    the river Addua, so called because it contains the added volume
+    of two streams.... So delightful a region makes men delicate and
+    averse to labour.... Therefore the inhabitants deserve special
+    consideration, and for this reason we wish them to enjoy
+    perpetually the royal bounty.
+
+This shews, beyond dispute, that the taste for the beauty of Nature,
+even at that wild time, was not dead, and that the writer's attitude
+was not mainly utilitarian. He noted the fertility of the land in
+wine and grain, and of the sea in fish, but he laid far greater
+stress upon its charms and their influence upon the inhabitants.
+
+On _a priori_ grounds (so misleading in questions of this kind) one
+would scarcely expect the most disturbed period in the history of the
+European people to have produced a Venantius Fortunatus, the greatest
+and most celebrated poet of the sixth century. His whole personality,
+as well as his poetry, shewed the blending of heathenism and
+Christianity, of Germanism and Romanism, and it is only now and then
+among the Roman elegists and later epic poets that we meet a feeling
+for Nature which can be compared to his. Like all the poets of this
+late period, his verse lacks form, is rugged and pompous, moving upon
+the stilts of classic reminiscences, and coining monstrous new
+expressions for itself; but its feeling is always sincere. It was the
+last gleam of a setting sun of literature that fell upon this one
+beneficent figure. He was born in the district of Treviso near
+Venice, and crossed the Alps a little before the great Lombard
+invasion, while the Merovingians, following in the steps of Chlodwig,
+were outdoing each other in bloodshed and cruelty. In the midst of
+this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the poets by virtue
+of his talent and purity of character. His poems are often disfigured
+by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but his keen eye for
+men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for Nature shews not
+only in dealing with scenery, but in linking it with the inner life.
+
+The lover's wish in _On Virginity_,[34] one of his longer poems,
+suggests the Volkslieder:
+
+    O that I too might go, if my hurrying foot could poise amid the
+    lights of heaven and hold on its starry course. But now, without
+    thee, night comes drearily with its dark wings, and the day
+    itself and the glittering sunshine is darkness to me. Lily,
+    narcissus, violet, rose, nard, amomum, bring me no joy--nay, no
+    flower delights my heart. That I may see thee, I pass hovering
+    through each cloud, and my love teaches my wandering eyes to
+    pierce the mist, and lo! in dread fear I ask the stormy winds
+    what they have to tell me of my lord. Before thy feet I long to
+    wash the pavement, and with my hair to sweep thy temples.
+    Whatever it be, I will bear it; all hard things are sweet; if
+    only I see thee, this penalty is my joy. But be thou mindful, for
+    thy vows do I yearn; I have thee in my heart, have me in thy
+    heart too.
+
+This is more tender in feeling than any poem by Catullus or Tibullus.
+We can only explain it by two facts--the deepening of the inner life
+through Christianity (we almost hear Christ's words about the 'great
+sinner'), and the intimate friendship which Fortunatus enjoyed with a
+German lady, who may justly be called the noblest and purest figure
+of her time in Franconia.
+
+This was Radegunde, the unhappy daughter of a Thuringian king, who
+first saw her father's kingdom lost, and then, fleeing from the
+cruelty of her husband, the bloodstained Chlotaire, took the veil in
+Poitiers and founded a convent, of which she made Agnes, a noble
+Franconian lady, the abbess. When Fortunatus visited the place, these
+ladies became his devoted friends, and he remained there as a priest
+until the death of Radegunde. His poems to them, which were often
+letters and notes written off-hand, are full of affection and
+gratitude (he was, by the way, a gourmet, and the ladies made
+allowance for this weakness in dainty gifts), and form an enduring
+witness of a pure and most touching friendship. They contain many
+pretty sketches of Nature and delicate offerings of flowers. In one
+he said: 'If the season brought white lilies or blossomed in red
+roses, I would send them to you, but now you must be content with
+purple violets for a greeting'; and in another, because gold and
+purple are not allowable, he sends her flowers, that she may have
+'her gold in crocuses, her purple in violets, and they may adorn her
+hair with even greater delight than she draws from their fragrance.'
+Once, when following pious custom, she had withdrawn into her cell,
+his 'straying thoughts go in search of her':
+
+    How quickly dost thou hide the light from mine eyes! for without
+    thee I am o'erweighted by the clouds that bear me down, and
+    though thou flee and hide thyself here but for a few short days,
+    that month is longer than the whole hurrying year. Prithee, let
+    the joys of Easter bring thee back in safety, and so may a
+    two-fold light return to us at once.
+
+And when she comes out, he cries:
+
+    Thou hadst robbed me of my happiness; now it returns to me with
+    thee, thou makest me doubly celebrate this solemn festival....
+    Though the seedlings are only just beginning to shoot up from the
+    furrows, yet I to-day will reap my harvest in seeing thee once
+    more. To-day do I gather in the fruit and lay the peaceful
+    sheaves together. Though the field is bare, nor decked with ears
+    of corn, yet all, through thy return, is radiant fulness.
+
+The comparison is tedious and spun out; but the idea is poetic. We
+find it in the classics: for instance, in Theocritus, when he praises
+Nais, whose beauty draws even Nature under her sway, and whose coming
+makes spring everywhere:
+
+    Where has my light hidden herself from my straying eyes? When I
+    see not thee, I am ne'er satisfied. Though the heavens be bright,
+    though the clouds have fled, yet for me is the day sunless, if it
+    hide thee from me.
+
+The most touching evidence of this friendship is the poem _On the
+Downfall of Thuringia_.
+
+'One must,' says Leo,[35] 'refer the chief excellence of the poem to
+the lady who tells the tale, must grant that the irresistible power
+of the description, the spectacle of the freshly open wounds, the
+sympathy in the consuming sorrow of a friend, gave unwonted power of
+the wing to this low-flying pen.' Radegunde is thinking of her only
+remaining relative, Amalafried:
+
+    When the wind murmurs, I listen if it bring me some news, but of
+    all my kindred not even a shadow presents itself to me.... And
+    thou, Amalafried, gentle son of my father's brother, does no
+    anxiety for me consume thy heart? Hast thou forgotten what
+    Radegunde was to thee in thy earliest years, and how much thou
+    lovedst me, and how thou heldst the place of the father, mother,
+    brother, and sister whom I had lost? An hour absent from thee
+    seemed to me eternal; now ages pass, and I never hear a word from
+    thee. A whole world now lies betwixt those who loved each other
+    and who of old were never separate. If others, for pity alone,
+    cross the Alps to seek their lost slaves, wherefore am I
+    forgotten?--I who am bound to thee by blood? Where art thou? I
+    ask the wind as it sighs, the clouds as they pass--at least some
+    bird might bring me news of thee. If the holy enclosure of this
+    monastery did not restrain me, thou shouldst see me suddenly
+    appear beside thee. I could cross the stormy seas in winter if it
+    were necessary. The tempest that alarms the sailors should cause
+    no fear to me who love thee. If my vessel were dashed to pieces
+    by the tempest, I should cling to a plank to reach thee, and if I
+    could find nothing to cling to, I should go to thee swimming,
+    exhausted. If I could but see thee once more, I should deny all
+    the perils of the journey....
+
+There is little about Nature in this beautiful avowal of love and
+longing, but the whole colouring of the mood forms a background of
+feeling for his longer descriptions. His very long and tedious poem
+about the bridal journey of Gelesiuntha, the Spanish princess, who
+married King Chilperic, shews deep and touching feeling in parts. She
+left her Toledo home with a heavy heart, crossing the Pyrenees, where
+'the mountains shining with snow reach to the stars, and their sharp
+peaks project over the rain clouds.' In the same vein as Ausonius,
+when he urged Paulinus to write to him, she begs her sister for news:
+
+    By thy name full oft I call thee, Gelesiuntha, sister mine: with
+    this name fountains, woods, rivers, and fields resound. Art thou
+    silent, Gelesiuntha? Answer as to thy sister stones and
+    mountains, groves and waters and sky, answer in language mute.
+
+In troubled thought and care she asked the very breezes, but of her
+sister's safety all were silent.
+
+Fortunatus, like Ausonius, not only looked at Nature with sympathy,
+but was a master in description of scenery. His lengthy descriptions
+of spring are mostly only decorative work, but here and there we find
+a really poetic idea. For example:
+
+At the first spring, when earth has doffed her frost,
+the field is clothed with variegated grass; the mountains
+stretch their leafy heads towards the sky, the
+shady tree renews its verdant foliage, the lovely vine
+is swelling with budding branches, giving promise that
+a weight of grapes shall hang from its prolific stems.
+While all joys return, the earth is dead and dull.
+
+And:
+
+    The soft violets paint the field with their own purple, the
+    meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh
+    shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring
+    up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and
+    the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent,
+    with imprisoned song, are now recalled to their song.
+
+He describes the cold winter, and a hot summer's day, when
+
+    Even in the forests no shade was to be found, and the traveller
+    almost fainted on the burning roads, longing for shade and cool
+    drinks. At last the rustle of a crystal stream is heard, he
+    hurries to it with delight, he lies down and lays his limbs in
+    the soft kisses of the grass.
+
+His poems about beautiful and noteworthy places include some on the
+Garonne and Gers (Egircius):
+
+    So dried up by heat that it is neither river nor land, and the
+    grumbling croak of the frog, sole ruler of the realm from which
+    the fish are banished, is heard in the lonely swamp; but when the
+    rain pours down, the flood swells, and what was a lake suddenly
+    becomes a sea.
+
+He has many verses of this sort, written with little wit but great
+satisfaction.
+
+More attractive are descriptions of the Rhine and Moselle, recalling
+Ausonius, and due to love partly of Nature, partly of verbal
+scene-painting. The best and most famous of these is on his journey
+by the Moselle from Metz to Andernach on the Rhine. Here he shews a
+keen eye and fine taste for wide views and high mountains, as well as
+for the minutiae of scenery, with artistic treatment. He also blends
+his own thoughts and feelings with his impressions of Nature, making
+it clear that he values her not merely for decoration, but for her
+own sake.
+
+He has been called the last Roman poet; in reality, he belonged not
+only to the period which directly succeeded his own, when the Roman
+world already lay in ruins, but to the fully-developed Middle
+Ages--the time when Christianity and Germanism had mated with Roman
+minds.
+
+In his best pieces, such as his famous elegy, he caught the classic
+tone to perfection, feeling himself in vital union with the great of
+bygone centuries; but in thought and feeling he was really modern and
+under the influence of the Christian Germanic spirit with all its
+depth and intensity. His touching friendship with Radegunde is, as it
+were, a symbol of the blending of the two elements out of which the
+modern sprang. It was the stimulating influence of the noble Germanic
+princess, herself Christian in soul, which fanned the dying sparks of
+classic poetry into a flame.
+
+Fortunatus stood upon a borderland. Literature was retreating further
+and further from the classic models, and culture was declining to its
+fall. In Gaul, as in Spain and Italy, the shadows of coming night
+were broadening over literary activity, thought, and feeling.
+
+It is a characteristic fact in Roman literature, that not only its
+great lights, but the lesser ones who followed them, were
+enthusiastically imitated. Latin poetry of the Middle Ages lived upon
+recollections of the past, or tried to raise itself again by its
+help; even so late a comer as Fortunatus became in his turn an object
+of marvel, and was copied by poets who never reached his level.
+
+It is not surprising that feeling for Nature shewed a corresponding
+shallowness and lassitude.
+
+Not only bucolic but didactic writing was modelled upon the classic.
+Isodorus and Beda, in their works with identical titles 'concerning
+the existence of things,' relied on Roman models no less than Alcuin,
+who had formed himself on the pattern of Augustine's time in his
+_Conflict between Winter and Spring_, as well as in many single
+verses, directly inspired by Virgil.[36]
+
+His _Farewell to his Cell_ caught the idyllic tone very neatly:
+
+  Beloved cell, retirement's sweet abode!
+  Farewell, a last farewell, thy poet bids thee!
+  Beloved cell, by smiling woods embraced,
+  Whose branches, shaken by the genial breeze,
+  To meditation oft my mind disposed.
+  Around thee too, their health-reviving herbs
+  In verdure gay the fertile meadows spread;
+  And murmuring near, by flowery banks confined,
+  Through fragrant meads the crystal streamlets glide,
+  Wherein his nets the joyful fisher casts,
+  And fragrant with the apple bending bough,
+  With rose and lily joined, the gardens smile;
+  While jubilant, along thy verdant glades
+  At dawn his melody each songster pours,
+  And to his God attunes the notes of praise.
+
+These heartfelt effusions express a feeling which certainly inspired
+many monks when they turned from their gloomy cells to the gardens
+and woods beyond--a feeling compounded of renunciation of the world
+with idyllic comfort in their surroundings. If their fundamental
+feeling was worship and praise of the Creator, their constant outdoor
+work, which, during the first centuries, was strenuous cultivation of
+the soil, must have roused a deep appreciation of Nature in the
+nobler minds among them. Their choice of sites for monasteries and
+hermitages fully bears out this view.[37]
+
+_The Conflict between Spring and Winter_, with its classic
+suggestions, is penetrated by a truly German love of spring.[38] It
+described the time when the cuckoo sings high in the branches, grass
+clothes earth with many tints, and the nightingale sings untiringly
+in the red-gold butcher's broom, captivating us with her changing
+melodies.
+
+Among the savants whom Charlemagne gathered round him was Angilbert.
+Virgil was his model, but the influence of the lighter fluency of
+Fortunatus was visible, as in so many of his contemporaries. With a
+vivid and artistic pen he described the wood and park of Aachen and
+the Kaiser's brilliant hunt[39]; the great forest grove, the grassy
+meadows with brooks and all sorts of birds flitting about, the
+thicket stocked with many kinds of game.
+
+At the same time, his writing betrayed the conventional tone of
+courts in its praise of his great secular lord, and a 'thoughtful
+romantic inclination' for the eternal feminine, for the beautiful
+women with splendid ornaments, and necks shining like milk or snow or
+glowing like a rose, who, as Ebert puts it, 'lay far from the
+asceticism of the poetry of the saints.'
+
+Naso Muadorinus in his pastorals took Calpurnius and Nemesianus for
+his models, just as they had taken Virgil, and Virgil Theocritus.
+Muadorinus imitated the latter in his pastorals.
+
+In an alternate song of his between an old man and a boy, the old man
+draws an artistic contrast between the shady coolness of the wood and
+the mid-day glow of the sun, while the boy praises Him whose songs
+the creatures follow as once they followed Orpheus with his lute; and
+at the end, Charlemagne, who was extolled at the beginning as a
+second Caesar, is exalted to heaven as the founder of a new Golden
+Age.
+
+In the Carolingian Renaissance of the Augustine epoch of literature,
+Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, takes first place. At any rate, he
+described in a very superior way, and, like Fortunatus, with some
+humour, the draining of the Larte at Le Mans, Feb. 820; also, in a
+light and lively strain, the Battle of the Birds, and, with the same
+strong colouring, Paradise.
+
+The idyll of the cloister garden, so often treated, became famous in
+the much-read _Hortulus_ of Wahlafried.[40]
+
+Despite classical flourishes from Virgil and Columella, and
+pharmaceutical handling of plants, there is a good deal of thoughtful
+observation of Nature in these 444 hexameters.
+
+They contain descriptions of seasons, of recipes, flowers and
+vegetables, of the gardener's pleasure in digging his fields in
+spring, clearing them of nettles, and levelling the ground thrown up
+by the moles, in protecting his seedlings from rain and sun, and,
+later on, in his gay beds of deciduous plants.
+
+There is a touch here and there which is not unpoetic--for instance:
+
+    A bright green patch of dark blue rue paints this shady grove; it
+    has short leaves and throws out short umbels, and passes the
+    breath of the wind and the rays of the sun right down to the end
+    of the stalk, and at a gentle touch gives forth a heavy scent.
+
+and:
+
+    With what verse, with what song, can the dry thinness of my
+    meagre muse rightly extol the shining lily, whose whiteness is as
+    the whiteness of gleaming snow, whose sweet scent is as the scent
+    of Sabian woods?
+
+He closes pleasantly too, adjuring Grimald to read the book under the
+shade of the peach tree, while his school-fellows play round and pick
+the great delicate fruit which they can barely grasp with one hand.
+In the poem to the layman Ruodbern (100 hexameters) he described the
+dangers of Alpine travelling, both from weather and other foes. In
+those days the difficulties of the road excluded all interest in
+mountain beauty. There is a tender and expressive poem in Sapphic
+metre, in which, homesick and cold in winter, he sang his longing for
+beautiful Reichenau. But even he, like most of his predecessors and
+all his followers, wielded his pen with labour, expression often
+failing to keep pace with thought.
+
+It only remains to mention Wandalbert, a monk of the monastery at
+Pruen, who, in a postscript to the _Conclusio des Martyrologium_,
+gives a charming account of a landowner's life in field, garden, and
+hunt.
+
+In the cloister, then, idyllic comfort, delighting in Nature and a
+quiet country life, was quite as much at home as scholarship and
+classical study. But we shall look there in vain for any trace of the
+sentimental, the profoundly melancholy attitude of the Fathers of the
+Church, Basil and Gregory, or for Augustine's deep faith and devout
+admiration of the works of creation: even the tone of Ausonius and
+Fortunatus, in their charming descriptions of scenery, was now a
+thing of the past. Feeling for Nature--sentimental, sympathetic,
+cosmic, and dogmatic--had dwindled down to mere pleasure in
+cultivating flowers in the garden, to the level Aachen landscape and
+such like; and the power to describe the impression made by scenery
+was, like the impression itself, lame and weary.
+
+It was the night of the decline breaking over Latin literature.
+
+And how did it stand with German literature up to the eleventh
+century? A German Kingdom had existed from the treaties of Verdun and
+Mersen (842), but during this period traces of German poetry are few,
+outweighed by Latin.
+
+The two great Messianic poems, _Heliand_ and _Krist_, stand out
+alone. In the _Heliand_ the storm on the lake of Gennesaret is
+vividly painted:
+
+    Then began the power of the storm; in the whirlwind the waves
+    rose, night descended, the sea broke with uproar, wind and water
+    battled together; yet, obedient to the command and to the
+    controlling word, the water stilled itself and flowed serenely.
+
+In _Krist_ there is a certain distinction in the description of the
+Ascension, as the rising figures soar past the constellations of
+stars, which disappear beneath their feet; for the rest, the symbolic
+so supplants the direct meaning, that in place of an epic we have a
+moralizing sermon. But there are traces of delight in the beauty of
+the outer world, in the sunshine, and sympathy is attributed to
+Nature:
+
+  She grew very angry at such deeds.
+
+The poem _Muspilli_ (the world fire) shews the old northern feeling
+for Nature; still more the few existing words of the _Wessobrunner
+Prayer_:
+
+  This I heard as the greatest marvel among men,
+  That once there was no earth nor heaven above,
+  The bright stars gave no light, the sun shone not,
+  Nor the moon, nor the glorious sea.
+
+How plainly 'the bright stars' and the 'glorious sea' shew joy in the
+beauty of the world!
+
+In the oldest Scandinavian poems the inflexible character of the
+Northerner and the northern landscape is reflected; the descriptions
+are short and scanty; it is not mountain, rock, and sea which count
+as beautiful, but pleasant, and, above all, fruitful scenery. The
+imagery is bold: (Kenninger) the wind is the wolf of wood or sail,
+the sea the pathway of the whale, the bath of the diving bird, etc.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon was especially distinguished by his forcible images
+and epithets. In Rynerwulf we have 'night falls like a helmet, dark
+brown covers the mountains.' 'The sky is the fortress of the storm,
+the sun the torch of the world, the jewel of splendour.' 'Fire is
+eager, wild, blind, and raging; the sea is the gray sea, and the
+sparkling splendid sea; waves are graves of the dead,' etc.
+
+Vivid feeling for Nature is not among the characteristic features of
+either Scandinavian or old German poetry.
+
+It is naive and objective throughout, and seldom weighty or forcible.
+
+The Waltharius shews the influence of Virgil's language, in
+highly-coloured and sympathetic descriptions like those of the Latin
+poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance.
+
+Animal saga probably first arose just before the twelfth century, and
+their home was probably Franconia.
+
+Like the genial notices of plant life in the Latin poems of the
+Carlovingian period, the animal poems shewed interest in the animal
+world--the interest of a child who ponders individual differences and
+peculiarities, the virtues and failings so closely allied to its own.
+It was a naive 'hand-and-glove' footing between man and the
+creatures, which attributed all his wishes and weaknesses to them,
+wiped out all differences between them with perfect impartiality, and
+gave the characteristics of each animal with exactness and poetry.
+
+The soil for the cultivation of poetry about animals was prepared by
+the symbolic and allegorical way of looking at Nature which held sway
+all through the Middle Ages.
+
+The material was used as a symbolic language for the immaterial, the
+world of sense conceived of as a great picture-book of the truths of
+salvation, in whose pages God, the devil, and, between them man,
+figured: thus plant life suggested the flower of the root of Jesse,
+foretold by Isaiah, red flowers the Saviour's wounds, and so forth.
+In the earliest Christian times, a remarkable letter existed in
+Alexandria, the so-called 'Physiologus,' which has affected the
+proverbial turns of speech in the world's literature up to the
+present day to an almost unequalled degree.
+
+It gave the symbolic meanings of the different animals. The lamb and
+unicorn were symbols of Christ; sheep, fish, and deer, of his
+followers; dragons, serpents, and bears, of the devil; swine, hares,
+hyenas, of gluttony; the disorderly luxuriance of snow meant death,
+the phoenix the resurrection, and so forth, indeed, whole categories
+of animals were turned into allegories of the truths of
+salvation.[41] The cleverest fables of animals were in _Isengrimen_,
+published in Ghent about 1140 in Latin verse--the story of the sick
+lion and his cure by the fox, and the outwitting of the wolf. Such
+fables did not remain special to German national literature, but
+became popular subjects in the literature of the whole world; and it
+is a significant fact that they afterwards took root especially in
+Flanders, where the taste for still life and delight in Nature has
+always found a home, and which became the nursery, in later times, of
+landscape, animal, and genre painting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE NAIVE FEELING AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES
+
+
+In the development and maturing of the race, as of the individual,
+nothing is more helpful than contact with foreign elements, people of
+other manners, thoughts, and feelings. Intimate intercourse between
+different nationalities rouses what is best in the soul of a nation,
+inviting, as it does, to discussion and opposition, as well as to the
+acquisition of new ideas. The conquests of Alexander the Great opened
+up a new world to the Greek, and a new culture arose--Hellenism. It
+was a new world that rose before the astonished eyes of the
+Crusader--in his case too, the East; but the resulting culture did
+not last. The most diverse motives fused to bring about this great
+migration to a land at once unknown and yet, through religion,
+familiar; and a great variety of characters and nations met under the
+banner of the Cross.
+
+Naturally this shaking up together, not only of Europeans among
+themselves, but of the eastern with the western world, brought about
+a complete revolution in manners, speech, art, science, trade,
+manufacture, thought, and feeling, and so became an important factor
+in general progress.
+
+The narrow boundaries of nationality, race, and education were broken
+through; all felt equal before the leading idea; men, places, plants,
+and animals were alike new and wonderful. Little wonder if German
+knights returning home from the East wove fiction with their fact,
+and produced the most fantastic and adventurous heroic songs.
+
+Many of the noblest of the nations joined the Crusades in pious
+ardour for the cause, and it is easy to imagine the effect of the
+complete novelty of scene upon them. With such tremendous new
+impressions to cope with, it is not surprising that even the best
+minds, untrained as they were, were unequal to the task, and that the
+descriptions of real experiences or events in poetic form failed to
+express what they meant. Besides this, there is no doubt that in many
+ways the facts fell below their ideals; also that the Crusader's
+mantle covered at the same time a rabble, which joined from the
+lowest motives, the scum of Europe. It must also be remembered that
+it is far easier to experience or feel than to pass on that
+experience and feeling to others; that those who wrote did not always
+belong to the most educated; and that they wrote, for the most part,
+with difficulty in Greek or Latin. When all this has been weighed and
+admitted, the fact remains that in existing accounts of the Crusades
+there is great poverty of description of scenery, and lack of much
+feeling for Nature. The historian, as such, was bound to give first
+place to matters of fact and practical importance, and so to judge a
+place by its value to an army passing through or occupying it; by its
+fertility, water-supply, its swamps or stony ground, and so forth;
+but still the modern reader is astonished to see how little
+impression the scenery of the Holy Land made, judged by the accounts
+we possess, upon the Crusaders. Even when it is conceded that other
+important concerns came first, and that danger, want, and hunger must
+often have made everything disagreeable, still, references to Nature
+are very scanty, and one may look in vain for any interest in
+beautiful scenery for its own sake.
+
+There is only matter-of-fact geographical and mythological
+information in William of Tours' _History of the Crusades_; for
+instance, in his description of the Bosphorus he does not waste a
+word over its beauty. But, as 'fruitful' and 'pleasant' are
+ever-recurring adjectives with him, one cannot say that he absolutely
+ignored it.
+
+He said of Durazzo: 'They weather the bad seasons of the year in
+fruitful districts rich in woods and fields, and all acceptable
+conditions'; of Tyre, 'The town has a most excellent position on a
+plain, almost entirely surrounded by mountains. The soil is
+productive, the wood of value in many ways.' Of Antioch, 'Its
+position is very convenient and pleasant, it lies in valleys which
+have excellent and fertile soil, and are most pleasantly watered by
+springs and streams. The mountains which enclose the town on both
+sides are really very high; but send down very clear water, and their
+sides and slopes are covered by buildings up to the very summits.'
+There is nothing about beautiful views, unless one takes this, which
+really only records a meteorological curiosity: 'From the top of one
+mountain one can see the ball of the sun at the fourth watch of the
+night, and if one turns round at the time when the first rays light
+up the darkness, one has night on one side and day on the other.'
+
+Tyre is described again as 'conspicuous for the fertility of its soil
+and the charm of its position.' Its great waterworks are especially
+admired, since by their means 'not only the gardens and most fruitful
+orchards flourish, but the cane from which sugar is made, which is so
+useful to man for health and other purposes, and is sent by merchants
+to the most distant parts of the world.' Other reporters were charmed
+by the fertility and wealth of the East. 'On those who came from the
+poorer and colder western countries, the rich resources of the sunny
+land in comparison with the poverty of home made an impression of
+overflowing plenty, and at times almost of inexhaustibleness. The
+descriptions of certain districts, extolled for their special
+richness, sound almost enthusiastic.[1]
+
+Burkhard von Monte Sion was enthusiastic about Lebanon's wealth of
+meadows and gardens, and the plain round Tripolis, and considered the
+Plain of Esdraelon the most desirable place in the world; but, on
+exact and unprejudiced examination, there is nothing in his words
+beyond homely admiration and matter-of-fact discussion of its great
+practical utility.
+
+He says of La Boneia, 'That plain has many homesteads, and beautiful
+groves of olive and fig and other trees of various kinds, and much
+timber. Moreover, it abounds in no common measure in rivers and
+pasture land'; closes a geographical account of Lebanon thus, 'There
+are in Libanus and Antilibanus themselves fertile and well-tilled
+valleys, rich in pasture land, vineyards, gardens, plantations--in a
+word, in all the good things of the world'; and says of the Plain of
+Galilee, 'I never saw a lovelier country, if our sins and wrong-doing
+did not prevent Christians from living there.'
+
+He had some feeling too for a distant view. He wrote of Samaria: 'The
+site was very beautiful; the view stretched right to the Sea of Joppa
+and to Antipatris and Caesarea of Palestine, and over the whole
+mountain of Ephraim down to Ramathaym and Sophim and to Carmel near
+Accon by the sea. And it is rich in fountains and gardens and olive
+groves, and all the good things this world desires.' But it would be
+going too far to conclude from the following words that he
+appreciated the contrast between simple and sublime scenery: 'It must
+be noticed too, that the river, from the source of Jordan at the foot
+of Lebanon as far as the Desert of Pharan, has broad and pleasant
+plains on both sides, and beyond these the fields are surrounded by
+very high mountains as far as the Red Sea.'
+
+In dealing with Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, religious
+enthusiasm suppresses any reference to scenery.
+
+These descriptions shew that the wealth and fertility of the country
+were praised before its beauty, and that this was only referred to in
+short, meagre phrases, which tell less about it than any raptures
+without special knowledge.
+
+It was much the same with Phokas, who visited the Holy Land in
+1135.[2]
+
+He was greatly impressed by the position of Antioch, 'with its
+meadows and fruitful gardens, and the murmur of waters as the river,
+fed by the torrents of the Castalian spring, flows quietly round the
+town and besprinkles its towers with its gentle waves ... but most to
+be admired of all is the mountain between town and sea, a noble and
+remarkable sight--indeed, a delight to the beholder's eye ... the
+Orontes flows with countless windings at the foot of it, and
+discharges itself into the sea.'
+
+He thought Lebanon very beautiful and worthy its praise in Holy
+Scripture: 'The sun lies like white hair upon its head; its valleys
+are crowned with pines, cedars, and cypresses; streams, beautiful to
+look at and quite cold, flow from the ravines and valleys down to the
+sea, and the freshly melted snow gives the flowing water its crystal
+clearness.'
+
+Tyre, too, was praised for its beauty: 'Strangers were particularly
+delighted with one spring, which ran through meadows; and if one
+stands on the tower, one can see the dense growth of plants, the
+movement of the leaves in the glow of noon.'
+
+The plain of Nazareth, too, was 'a heaven on earth, the delight of
+the soul.'
+
+But recollections of the sacred story were dearer to Phokas than the
+scenery, and elsewhere he limited himself to noting the rich fruit
+gardens, shady groups of trees, and streams and rivers with pleasant
+banks.
+
+Epiphanius Monachus Hagiopolitae, in his _Enarratio Syriae_, was a very
+dry pioneer; so, too, the _Anonymus de locis Hierosolymitanis_;
+Perdiccas, in his _Hierosolyma_, describes Sion thus: 'It stands on
+an eminence so as to strike the eye, and is beautiful to behold,
+owing to a number of vines and flower gardens and pleasant spots.'
+
+It must be admitted then, that, beside utilitarian admiration of a
+Paradise of fruitfulness, there is some record of simple, even
+enthusiastic delight in its beauty; but only as to its general
+features, and in the most meagre terms. The country was more
+interesting to the Crusaders as the scene of the Christian story than
+as a place in which to rest and dream and admire Nature for her own
+sake.
+
+The accounts of German pilgrimages[3] of the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries only contain dry notices, such as those of Jacob von Bern
+(1346-47), Pfintzing (1436-40), and Ulrich Leman (1472-80). The
+last-mentioned praises Damascus in this clumsy fashion: 'The town is
+very gay, quite surrounded by orchards, with many brooks and springs
+flowing inside and out, and an inexpressible number of people in it,'
+etc. Dietrich von Schachten describes Venice in this way: 'Venice
+lies in the sea, and is built neither on land nor on mountain, but on
+wooden piles, which is unbelievable to one who has not seen it'; and
+Candia: 'Candia is a beautiful town in the sea, well built; also a
+very fruitful island, with all sorts of things that men need for
+living.' He describes a ride through Southern Italy: 'Saturday we
+rode from Trepalda, but the same day through chestnut and hazel
+woods; were told that these woods paid the king 16,000 gulden every
+year. After that we rode a German mile through a wood, where each
+tree had its vine--many trees carried 3 ohms of wine, which is
+pleasant to see--and came to Nola.'
+
+He called Naples 'very pretty and big,' and on: 'Then the king took
+us to the sea and shewed us the ports, which are pretty and strong
+with bulwarks and gates; we saw many beautiful ships too,' etc. One
+does not know which is the more wonderful here, the poverty of the
+description or the utter lack of personal observation: what the wood
+produced, and how one was protected from the sea, was more important
+to the writer than wood and sea themselves, and this, even in
+speaking of the Bay of Naples, perhaps the most beautiful spot in
+Europe. But instances like these are typical of German descriptions
+at the time, and their Alpine travels fared no better.[4]
+
+Geographical knowledge of the Alps advanced very slowly; there was as
+yet no aesthetic enjoyment of their beauty. The Frankish historians
+(Gregory of Tours, Fredegar) chronicled special events in the Alps,
+but very briefly. Fredegar, for instance, knew of the sudden
+appearance of a hot spring in the Lake of Thun, and Gregory of Tours
+notes that the land-slip in 563 at the foot of the Dent du Midi,
+above the point where the Rhine enters the Lake of Geneva, was a
+dreadful event. Not only was the Castle of Tauretunum overwhelmed,
+but the blocking of the Rhine caused a deluge felt as far as Geneva.
+The pious prince of the Church explained this as a portent of another
+catastrophe, the pest, which ravaged Gaul soon after.
+
+There was much fabling at that time in the legends of saints, about
+great mines of iron, gold, and silver, and about chamois and buck,
+cattle-breeding and Alpine husbandry in the 'regio montana'; for
+example, in von Aribo's _Vita S. Emmerani_. When the Alps became more
+frequented, especially when, through Charlemagne, a political bridge
+came to unite Italy and Germany, new roads were made and the whole
+region was better known--in fact, early in mediaeval times, not only
+political, but ecclesiastical and mercantile life spread its threads
+over a great part of the known world, and began to bind the lives of
+nations together, so that the Alps no longer remained _terra
+incognita_ to dwellers far and near.
+
+We have accounts of Alpine journeys by the Abbe Majolus v. Clugny
+(970), Bernard v. Hildesheim (1101), Aribert v. Mailand, Anno v.
+Coeln[5], but without a trace of orography. They scarcely refer to
+the snow and glacier regions from the side of physical geography, or
+even of aesthetic feeling; and do not mention the mountain monarchs so
+familiar to-day--Mt. Blanc, the Jungfrau, Ortner, Glockner,
+etc.--which were of no value to their life, practical or scientific.
+These writers record nothing but names of places and their own
+troubles and dangers in travelling, especially in winter. And even at
+the end of the fifteenth century, German travels across the Alps were
+written in the same strain--for example, the account of the voyage of
+the Elector-Palatine Alexander v. Zweibruecken and Count Joh. Ludwig
+zu Nassau (1495-96) from Zurich Rapperschwyl and Wesen to Wallensee:
+'This is the real Switzerland; has few villages, just a house here
+and a house there, but beautiful meadows, much cattle, and very high
+mountains, on which snow lies, which falls before Christmas, and is
+as hard as any rock.' As an exception to this we have a vivid and
+poetic description of the famous Verona Pass in Latin verse by
+Guntherus Ligurinus.
+
+Guenther's description of this notorious ravine, between sky-high
+Alps, with the torrent rushing at the bottom and a passage so narrow
+that men could only move forward one by one, sounds like a personal
+experience. This twelfth-century poem comes to us, in fact, like a
+belated echo of Fortunatus.
+
+We must now enquire whether the chief representatives of German
+literature at this time shewed any of the national love of Nature,
+whether the influence of the Crusades was visible in them, how far
+scenery took a place in epic and song, and whether, as moderns have
+so often stated, mediaeval Germany stood high above antiquity in this
+respect. Gervinus, a classic example on the last point, in the
+section of his history of German poetry which treats of the
+difference between the German fables about animals on the one hand,
+and Esop's and the Oriental on the other, said:
+
+    The way in which animals are handled in the fables demanded a far
+    slighter familiarity between them and men; so exact a knowledge
+    as we see in the German fables, often involving knowledge of
+    their natural history, such insight into the 'privacy of the
+    animal world,' belonged to quite another kind of men. Antiquity
+    did not delight in Nature, and delight in Nature is the very
+    foundation of these poems. Remote antiquity neither knew nor
+    sought to know any natural history; but only wondered at Nature.
+    The art of hunting and the passion for it, often carried to
+    excess in the Middle Ages, was unknown to it. It is a bold remark
+    of Grimm's that he could smell the old smell of the woods in the
+    German animal poems, but it is one whose truth every one will
+    feel, who turns to this simple poetry with an open mind, who
+    cares for Nature and life in the open.
+
+This is a very tangle of empty phrases and misstatements. No people
+stood in more heartfelt and naive relation to Nature, especially to
+the animal world, than the Hindoos and Persians. In earlier
+enquiries[6] we have reviewed the naive feeling displayed in Homer
+and the sentimental in Hellenism, and have seen that the taste for
+hunting increased knowledge of Nature in the open in Hellenic days
+far more than in the Middle Ages. We shall see now that the level of
+feeling reached in those and imperial Roman days was not regained in
+European literature until long after the fall of Latin poetry, and
+that it was the fertilizing influence of that classic spirit, and
+that alone, which enabled the inborn German taste for Nature, and for
+hunting, and plant and animal life, to find artistic expression. It
+was a too superficial knowledge of classic literature, and an
+inclination to synthesis, and clever _a priori_ argument (a style
+impressed upon his day by Hegel's method, and fortunately fast
+disappearing), which led Gervinus to exalt the Middle Ages at the
+expense of antiquity. It sounds like a weak concession when he says
+elsewhere:
+
+    Joy in Nature, which is peculiar to modern times, in contrast to
+    antiquity, which is seen in the earliest mediaeval poems, and in
+    which, moreover, expiring antiquity came to meet the German--this
+    joy in Nature, in dwelling on plant and animal life, is the very
+    soul of this (animal) poetry. As in its plastic art, so in all
+    its poetry, antiquity only concerned itself with gods and heroes;
+    its glance was always turned upwards.
+
+But, as a fact, no one has ever stood with feet more firmly planted
+on this earth than the Greek, enjoying life and undeterred by much
+scruple or concern as to the powers above; and centuries of
+development passed before German literature equalled Greek in love of
+Nature and expressive representation of her beauty.
+
+To rank the two national epics of Germany, the _Nibelungenlied_ and
+_Gudrun_, side by side with the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ is to
+exaggerate their value. And here, as ever, overstraining the
+comparison is mischievous.
+
+The _Nibelungenlied_ is undeniably charming with its laconic and yet
+plastic descriptions, its vigorous heroes, and the tragic course of
+their fate; so is _Gudrun_, that melodious poem of the North Sea. But
+they never, either in composition, method of representation, or
+descriptive epithets, reach the perfect art of the Greek epics. What
+moral beauty and plastic force there is in Homer's comparisons and in
+his descriptions of times and seasons! what a clear eye and warm
+heart he has for Nature in all her moods! and what raw and scanty
+beginnings of such things we have in the _Nibelungenlied_! It is true
+Homer had not attained to the degree of sympathy which finds in
+Nature a friend, a sharer of one's joys and sorrows; she is pictured
+objectively in the form of epic comparisons; but how faithfully, and
+with what range and variety!
+
+There can scarcely be another epic in the world so poor in
+descriptions of time and place as the _Nibelungenlied_; it cannot be
+used to prove German feeling for Nature!
+
+India, Persia, and Greece made natural phenomena the counterparts of
+human life, weaving into the tale, by way of comparison or
+environment, charming genre pictures of plant and animal life, each
+complete in itself; in the _Nibelungenlied_ Nature plays no part at
+all, not even as framework.
+
+Time is indicated as sparsely as possible:
+
+'Upon the 7th day at Worms on the Rhine shore, the gallant horsemen
+arrived.'
+
+'On a Whitsun morning we saw them all go by'; or 'When it grew
+towards even, and near the sun's last ray, seeing the air was
+cooler'; or 'He must hang, till light morning threw its glow through
+the window.' The last is the most poetic; elsewhere it is 'Day was
+over, night fell.'
+
+Terseness can be both a beauty and a force; but, in comparison with
+Greece, how very little feeling for Nature these expressions contain!
+
+It is no better with descriptions of place:
+
+'From the Rhine they rode through Hesse, their warriors as well,
+towards the Saxon country, where they to fighting fell.'
+
+'He found a fortress placed upon a mountain.'
+
+'Into a wide-roomed palace of fashion excellent, for there, beneath
+it rushing, one saw the Danube's flood.'
+
+Even the story of the hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite
+matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon
+lost his life ... then they rode from there into a deep wood ...
+there they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the
+broad mead ... one heard mountain and tree echo.'
+
+'The spring of water was pure and cool and good.' ...
+
+'There fell Chriemhild's husband among the flowers ... all round
+about the flowers were wetted with his blood.'
+
+One thinks instinctively of Indian and Greek poetry, of Adonis and
+the death of Baldur in the Northern Saga. But even here, where the
+subject almost suggests it, there is no trace of Nature's sympathy
+with man.
+
+References to the animal world too--Chriemhild's dreams of the
+falcons seized by two eagles, and the two wild boars which attacked
+Siegfried, the game hunted in the forests by the heroes who run like
+panthers--all show it to be of no importance.
+
+Even such phrases as rosy-red, snow-white, etc., are rare--'Her
+lovely face became all rosy-red with pleasure'; but there is a
+certain tenderness in the comparisons of Chriemhild:
+
+'Then came the lovely maiden, even as morning red from sombre clouds
+outbreaking,' and, 'just as the moon in brightness excels the
+brightest stars, and suddenly outshining, athwart the clouds
+appears,' so she excelled all other women.
+
+It has been said that one can hear the sighing of the north wind and
+the roar of the North Sea in _Gudrun_, but this is scarcely more than
+a pretty phrase. The 'dark tempestuous' sea, 'wild unfathomable'
+waves, the shore 'wet from the blood of the slain,' are indeed
+mentioned, but that is all.
+
+Wat of Sturmland says to the young warriors: 'The air is still and
+the moon shines clear ... when the red star yonder in the south dips
+his head in the brine, I shall blow on my great horn that all the
+hosts shall hear'; but it is hope of morning, not delight in the
+starry sky, that he is expressing.
+
+Indications of place too are of the briefest, just 'It was a broad
+neck of land, called the Wuelpensand,' or, 'In a few hours they saw
+the shores where they would land, a little harbour lay in sight
+enfolded by low hills clothed with dark fir trees.'
+
+The first trace of sympathy with Nature occurs in the account of the
+effect of Horand's song.
+
+Like Orpheus, he charms the little birds and other creatures: 'He
+sang with such a splendid voice, that the little birds ceased their
+song.'
+
+'And as he began to sing again, all the birds in the copse round
+ceased their sweet songs.'
+
+'The very cattle left their green pastures to hearken, the little
+gold beetles stopped running among the grass, the fishes ceased to
+shoot about in the brooks. He sang long hours, and it seemed but a
+brief moment. The very church bells sounded sweet no longer; the folk
+left the choir songs of the priests and ran to hear him. All who
+heard his voice were heart-sick after the singer, so grand and sweet
+was the strain.'
+
+Indications of time are rarely found more short and concise than
+here:
+
+  When night ended and day began.
+  On the 12th day they quitted the country.
+  In Maytime. On a cool morning.
+
+This is a little richer:
+
+    It was the time when leaves spring up delightfully and birds of
+    all sorts sing their best in the woods.
+
+Much more definite and distinct is:
+
+    It was about that time of the year when departing winter sheds
+    his last terrors upon the earth; a sharp breeze was blowing and
+    the sea was covered with broken up ice; but there were gleams of
+    sunshine upon the hills, and the little birds began to tune their
+    throats tremulously, that they might be ready to sing their lay
+    when the March weather was past.
+
+    Gudrun trembled with cold; her wet garment clung close to her
+    white limbs; the wind dashed her golden hair about her face.
+
+And later, when the morning of Gudrun's deliverance breaks, the
+indications of time, though short, are plastic enough:
+
+    After the space of an hour the red star went down upon the edge
+    of the sea, and Wat of Sturmland, standing upon the hill, blew a
+    great blast on his horn, which was heard in the land for miles
+    round.... The sound of Wat's horn ... wakened a young maid, who,
+    stealing on tiptoe to the window, looked over the bay and beheld
+    the glimmering of spears and helms upon the sands.... 'Awake,
+    mistress,' she cried, 'the host of the Hegelings is at hand.'
+
+Companions are few;
+
+  He sprang like a wild lion.
+
+The shower of stones flung down upon Wat 'is but an April shower.'
+
+Images are few too:
+
+    This flower of hope, to find repose here on the shore, Hartmouth
+    and his friends did not bring to blossom.
+
+Wilhelm Grimm rightly observes:
+
+    At this epoch the poetry of the Fatherland gave no separate
+    descriptions of Nature--descriptions, that is, whose only object
+    was to paint the impression of the landscape in glowing colours
+    upon the mind. The old German masters certainly did not lack
+    feeling for Nature, but they have left us no other expression of
+    it than such as its connection with historical events demanded.
+
+And further:
+
+    The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or, through
+    the Crusades, with Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, did not
+    enrich German poetry with new pictures of Nature, can only, as a
+    general rule, be answered in the negative.
+
+In the courtly epics of chivalry, the place of real Nature was taken
+by a fabulous wonderworld, full of the most fantastic and romantic
+scenery, in which wood, field, plants, and animals were all
+distorted. For instance, in the Alexander saga (of Pfaffen Lamprecht)
+Alexander the Great describes to his teacher Aristotle the wonders he
+has seen, and how one day he came with his army to a dark forest,
+where the interlacing boughs of tall trees completely shut out the
+sunlight. Clear, cool streams ran through it down to the valley, and
+birds' songs echoed in the shade. The ground was covered by an
+enormous quantity of flower buds of wondrous size, which looked like
+great balls, snow-white and rose-coloured, closely folded up.
+Presently, the fragrant goblets opened, and out of all these
+wonder-flowers stepped lovely maidens, rosy as dawn and white as day,
+and about twelve years old. All these thousands of charming beings
+raised their voices together and competed with the birds in song,
+swaying up and down in charming lines, singing and laughing in the
+cool shade. They were dressed in red and white, like the flowers from
+which they were born; but if sun rays fell on them, they would fade
+and die. They were only children of the woodland shade and the
+summer, and lived no longer than the flowers, which May brings to
+life and Autumn kills. In this wood Alexander and his host pitched
+their tents, and lived through the summer with the little maids. But
+their happiness only lasted three months and twelve days:
+
+    When the time came to an end, our joy passed away too; the
+    flowers faded, and the pretty girls died; trees lost their
+    leaves, springs their flow, and the birds their song; all
+    pleasure passed away. Discomfort began to touch my heart with
+    many sorrows, as day by day I saw the beautiful maidens die, the
+    flowers fade: with a heavy heart, I departed with my men.
+
+This fairy-like tale, with its blending of human and plant life, is
+very poetically conceived; but it is only a play of fancy, one of the
+early steps towards the modern feeling.
+
+The battle scenes, as well as other scenes in this poem, are bold and
+exaggerated. Armies meet like roaring seas; missiles fly from both
+sides as thick as snow; after the dreadful bath of blood, sun and
+moon veil their light and turn away from the murder committed there.
+
+Hartmann von der Aue, too, did not draw real Nature, but only one of
+his own invention.
+
+For example, the wild forest with the magic spring in _Iwein_:
+
+    I turned to the wilds next morning, and found an extensive
+    clearing, hidden in the forest, solitary and without husbandmen.
+    There, to my distress, I descried a sad delight of the
+    eyes--beasts of every kind that I know the names of, attacking
+    each other.... this spring is cold and very pure; neither rain,
+    sun, or wind reach it; it is screened by a most beautiful lime
+    tree. The tree is excessively tall and thick, so that neither sun
+    nor rain can penetrate its foliage, winter does not injure it,
+    nor lessen its beauty by one hair; 'tis green and blossoming the
+    whole year round.... Over the spring there is a wonderfully fine
+    stone ... the tree was so covered with birds that I could
+    scarcely see the branches, and even the foliage almost
+    disappeared. The sweet songs were pleasant and resounded through
+    the forest, which re-echoed them....
+
+    As I poured water upon the ruby, the sun, which had just come
+    out, disappeared, the birds' song round about ceased, a black
+    storm approached, dark heavy storm-clouds came from all four
+    quarters of the vault of heaven. It seemed no longer bright day
+    ... soon a thousand flashes of lightning played round me in the
+    forest ... there came storm, rain, and hail ... the storm became
+    so great that the forest broke down.
+
+He never shews a real love for Nature even in his lyrics, for the
+wish for flowers in _Winter Complaint_ can hardly be said to imply
+that:
+
+    He who cares for flowers must lament much at this heavy, dismal
+    time; a wife helps to shorten the long nights. In this way I will
+    shorten long winter without the birds' song.
+
+Wolfram von Eschenbach, too, is very sparing of references to Nature:
+time is given by such phrases as 'when twilight began,' or 'as the
+day broke,' 'at the bright glow of morning' ... 'as day already
+turned to evening.'
+
+His interest in real things was driven into the background by
+love-making and adventures--_Arthur's Round Table_ and the _Holy
+Grail_; all the romance of knighthood. When he described a forest or
+a garden, he always decked it out lavishly.
+
+For instance, the garden in Orgeluse:
+
+    A garden surrounding a mountain, planted with noble trees where
+    pomegranates, figs, olives, vines, and other fruits grew richly
+    ... a spring poured from the rock, and (for all this would have
+    been nothing to him without a fair lady) there he found what did
+    not displease him--a lady so beautiful and fair that he was
+    charmed at the sight, the flower of womanly beauty.
+
+Comparisons are few and not very poetic. In _Songs of the Heart_--
+
+    The lady of the land watered herself with her heart's tears.
+
+    Her eyes rained upon the child.
+
+    Her joy was drowned in lamentation.
+
+Gawan and Orgeluse,
+
+    Spite their outer sweetness, as disagreeable as a shower of rain
+    in sunshine.
+
+    There were many fair flowers, but their colours could not compare
+    with that of Orgeluse.
+
+His heroes are specially fond of birds. Young Parzival
+
+    Felt little care while the little birds sang round him; it made
+    his heart swell, he ran weeping into the house.
+
+and Gawan
+
+    Found a door open into a garden; he stept in to look round and
+    enjoy the air and the singing of the birds.
+
+So we see that in the _Nibelungenlied_ scarcely a plant grew, and
+Hartmann and Wolfram's gardens belonged almost entirely to an unreal
+region; there are no traces of a very deep feeling for Nature in all
+this.
+
+But Gottfried von Strassburg, with his vivid, sensuous imagination
+and keen eye for beauty, shewed a distinct advance both in taste and
+achievement. He, too, notes time briefly: 'And as it drew towards
+evening,' 'Now day had broke.' He repeats his comparisons: fair
+ladies are 'the wonder rose of May,' 'the longing white rose.' The
+two Isolts are sun and dawn. Brangaene is the full moon. The terrified
+girl is thus described:
+
+    Her rosy mouth paled; the fair colour, which was her ornament,
+    died out of her skin; her bright eyes grew dim like night after
+    day.
+
+Another comparison is:
+
+    Like the siren's song, drawing a bark to the reef as by a magnet,
+    so the sweet young queen attracted many hearts.
+
+Love is a usurious plant, whose sun never goes down; a romance
+sweetens the mood as May dew sweetens the blood.
+
+Constant friendship is one which takes the pleasure with the pain,
+the thorn with the rose. The last comparisons shew more thought, and
+still more is seen in the beginning of the poem, _Riwalin and
+Blancheflur_, which has a charming description of Spring.
+
+  Now the festival was agreed upon and arranged
+  For the four flowering weeks
+  When sweet May attracts, till he flies off again.
+  At Tinkapol upon a green plain
+  High up on a wonderful meadow with spring colour
+  Such as no eye has seen before or since. Soft sweet May
+  Had dressed it with his own charming extravagance.
+  There were little wood birds, a joy to the ear,
+  Flowers and grass and green plants and summer meads
+  That were a delight to eye and heart.
+  One found there whatever one would, whatever May should bring--
+  Shade from the sun, limes by the brook,
+  A gentle breeze which brought the prattle
+  Of Mark's court people. May's friend, the green turf,
+  Had made herself a charming costume of flowers,
+  In which she shone back at the guests with a festival of her own;
+  The blossoming trees smiled so sweetly at every one,
+  That heart and mind smiled back again.
+  The pure notes of the birds, blessed and beautiful,
+  Touched heart and senses, filling hill and dale with joy.
+  The dear nightingale,
+  Sweet bird, may it ever be blessed!
+  Sang so lustily upon the bough
+  That many a heart was filled with joy and good humour.
+  There the company pitched itself
+  With great delight on the green grass.
+  The limes gave enough shade,
+  And many covered their tent roofs with green boughs.
+
+There is a heartfelt ring in this. We see that even this early period
+of German mediaeval poetry was not entirely lacking in clear voices to
+sing of Nature with real sympathy.
+
+The description of the Minne grotto is famous, with its magical
+accessories, its limes and other trees, birds, songs, and flowers, so
+that 'eye and ear alike found solace'; but the romantic love episode,
+interwoven as it is by the poet with the life of Nature, is more
+interesting for our purpose.
+
+    They had a court, they had a council which brought them nought
+    but joy. Their courtiers were the green trees, the shade and the
+    sunlight, the streamlet and the spring; flowers, grass, leaf, and
+    blossom, which refreshed their eyes. Their service was the song
+    of the birds, the little brown nightingales, the throstlets and
+    the merles and other wood birds. The siskin and the ringdove vied
+    with each other to do them pleasure, all day long their music
+    rejoiced ear and soul. Their love was their high feast.... The
+    man was with the woman, and the woman with the man; they had the
+    fellowship they most desired, and were where they fain would
+    be....
+
+    In the dewy morning they gat them forth to the meadow where grass
+    and flowers alike had been refreshed. The glade was their
+    pleasure-ground; they wandered hither and thither hearkening each
+    other's speech, and waking the song of the birds by their
+    footsteps. Then they turned them to where the cool clear spring
+    rippled forth, and sat beside its stream and watched its flow
+    till the sun grew high in the heaven, and they felt its shade.
+    Then they betook them to the linden, its branches offered them a
+    welcome shelter, the breezes were sweet and soft beneath its
+    shade, and the couch at its feet was decked with the fairest
+    grass and flowers.
+
+With these lovers, love of Nature is only second to love of each
+other. So in the following:
+
+    That same morning had Tristan and his lady-love stolen forth hand
+    in hand and come full early, through the morning dew, to the
+    flowery meadow and the lovely vale. Dove and nightingale saluted
+    them sweetly, greeting their friends Tristan and Iseult. The wild
+    wood birds bade them welcome in their own tongue ... it was as if
+    they had conspired among themselves to give the lovers a morning
+    greeting. They sang from the leafy branches in changeful wise,
+    answering each other in song and refrain. The spring that charmed
+    their eye and ear whispered a welcome, even as did the linden
+    with its rustling leaves. The blossoming trees, the fair meadow,
+    the flowers, and the green grass--all that bloomed laughed at
+    their coming; the dew which cooled their feet and refreshed their
+    heart offered a silent greeting.
+
+The amorous passion was the soil in which, in its early narrow
+stages, sympathy for Nature grew up. Was it the thirteenth-century
+lyrics, the love-songs of the Minnesingers, which unfolded the germ?
+For the lyric is the form in which the deepest expression can be
+given to feeling for Nature, and in which she either appears as
+background, frame, or ornament, or, by borrowing a soul or
+symbolizing thought and feeling, blends with the inner life.
+
+As the German court epics took their material from France, so the
+German love-songs were inspired by the Provencal troubadours. The
+national differences stand out clear to view: the vivid glowing
+Provencal is fresher, more vehement, and mettlesome; the dreamy
+German more monotonous, tame, and melancholy. The one is given to
+proud daring, wooing, battle, and the triumph of victory; the other
+to musing, loving, and brooding enthusiasm. The stamp of the
+occasional, of improvisation, is upon all Provencal work; while with
+the German Minnesingers, everything--Nature as well as love--tends to
+be stereotyped, monotonous.
+
+The scanty remains of Troubadour songs[7] often shew mind and Nature
+very strikingly brought together, either in harmony or contrast. For
+example, Bernard von Ventadour (1195):
+
+    It may annoy others to see the foliage fall from the trees, but
+    it pleases me greatly; one cannot fancy I should long for leaves
+    and flowers when she, my dear one, is haughty to me.
+
+    Cold and snow become flowers and greenery under her charming
+    glance.
+
+    As I slumber at night, I am waked by the sweet song of the
+    nightingale; nothing but love in my mind quite thrilled by
+    shudders of delight.
+
+    God! could I be a swallow and sweep through the air, I would go
+    at midnight to her little chamber.
+
+  When I behold the lark up spring
+  To meet the bright sun joyfully,
+  How he forgets to poise his wing
+  In his gay spirit's revelry.
+  Alas! that mournful thoughts should spring
+  E'en from that happy songster's glee!
+  Strange that such gladdening sight should bring
+  Not joy but pining care to me.
+
+A very modern thought which calls to mind Theodore Storm's touching
+lines after the death of his wife:
+
+    But this I cannot endure, that the sun smiles as before, clocks
+    strike and bells ring as in thy lifetime, and day and night still
+    follow each other.
+
+He connects spring with love:
+
+  When grass grows green and fresh leaves spring
+  And flowers are budding on the plain,
+  When nightingales so sweetly sing
+  And through the greenwood swells the strain,
+  Then joy I in the song and in the flower,
+  Joy in myself but in my lady more;
+  All objects round my spirit turns to joy,
+  But most from her my rapture rises high.
+
+Arnold von Mareuil (about 1200) sings in the same way:
+
+  O! how sweet the breeze of April
+  Breathing soft, as May draws near,
+  While through nights serene and gentle
+  Songs of gladness meet the ear.
+  Every bird his well-known language
+  Warbling in the morning's pride,
+  Revelling on in joy and gladness
+  By his happy partner's side....
+  With such sounds of bliss around me,
+  Who could wear a saddened heart?
+
+He calls his lady-love
+
+    The fairest creature which Nature has produced here below, fairer
+    than I can express and faker than a beautiful May day, than
+    sunshine in March, shade in summer, than May roses, April rain,
+    the flower of beauty, mirror of love, the key of Fame.
+
+Bertran de Born too sings:
+
+  The beautiful spring delights me well
+  When flowers and leaves are growing,
+  And it pleases my heart to hear the swell
+  Of the bird's sweet chorus flowing
+  In the echoing wood, etc.
+
+The Greek lyrists up to Alexandrian times contented themselves with
+implying indirectly that nothing delighted them so much as May and
+its delights; but these singers implicitly state it. The German
+Minnesingers too[8] are loud in praise of spring, as in that
+anonymous song:
+
+  I think nothing so good nor worthy of praise
+  As a fair rose and my good man's love;
+  The song of the little birds in the woods is clear to many a heart.
+
+and summer is greeted with:
+
+    The good are glad that summer comes. See what a benefit it is to
+    many hearts.
+
+The Troubadour motive is here too:
+
+    Winter and snow seem as beautiful flowers and clover to me, when
+    I have embraced her.
+
+and Kuerenberg makes a lady sing:
+
+    When I stand there alone in my shift and think of thee, noble
+    knight, I blush like a rose on its thorn.
+
+Delight in summer, complaint of winter--this is the fundamental chord
+struck again and again; there is scarcely any trace of blending the
+feelings of the lover with those of Nature. It is a monotonous
+repetition of a few themes, of flowers and little birds as messengers
+of love, and lady-loves who are brighter than the sun, whose presence
+brings spring in winter or cheers a grey and snowy day.
+
+Deitmar von Eist greets spring with:
+
+    Ah! now the time of the little birds' singing is coming for us,
+    the great lime is greening, the long winter is past, one sees
+    well-shaped flowers spread their glory over the heath. 'Tis a joy
+    to many hearts, and a comfort too to mine.
+
+In another song the birds and roses remind him of a happy past and of
+the lady of his heart.
+
+  A little bird sang on the lime o'erhead,
+  Its song resounded through the wood
+  And turned my heart back to another place;
+  And once again I saw the roses blow,
+  And they brought back the many thoughts
+  I cherish of a lady.
+
+A lady says to a falcon:
+
+  You happy falcon you! You fly whither you will!
+  And choose the tree you like in the wood.
+  I have done the same. I chose a husband
+  For myself, whom my eyes chose.
+  So 'tis fitting for beautiful women.
+
+In winter he complains:
+
+    Alas for summer delight! The birds' song has disappeared with the
+    leaves of the lime. Time has changed, the nightingales are dumb.
+    They have given up their sweet song and the wood has faded from
+    above.
+
+Uhland's beautiful motive in _Spring Faith_, that light and hope will
+come back to the oppressed heart with the flowers and the green, is
+given, though stiffly and dimly, by Heinrich von Veldegge:
+
+    I have some delightful news; the flowers are sprouting on the
+    heath, the birds singing in the wood. Where snow lay before,
+    there is now green clover, bedewed in the morning. Who will may
+    enjoy it. No one forces me to, I am not free from cares.
+
+and elsewhere:
+
+    At the time when flowers and grass come to us, all that made my
+    heart sad will be made good again.
+
+The loss of the beauty of summer makes him sad:
+
+    Since the bright sunlight has changed to cold, and the little
+    birds have left off singing their song, and cold nights have
+    faded the foliage of the lime, my heart is sad.
+
+Ulrich von Guotenberg makes a pretty comparison:
+
+  She is my summer joy, she sows flowers and clover
+  In my heart's meadow, whence I, whate'er befall,
+  Must teem with richer bliss: the light of her eyes
+  Makes me bloom, as the hot sun the dripping trees....
+  Her fair salute, her mild command
+  Softly inclining, make May rain drop down into my heart.
+
+Heinrich von Rugge laments winter:
+
+    The dear nightingale too has forgotten how beautifully she sang
+    ... the birds are mourning everywhere.
+
+and longs for summer:
+
+    I always craved blissful days.... I liked to hear the little
+    birds' delightful songs. Winter cannot but be hard and
+    immeasurably long. I should be glad if it would pass away.
+
+Heinrich von Morungen:
+
+  How did you get into my heart?
+  It must ever be the same with me.
+  As the noon receives her light from the sun,
+  So the glance of your bright eyes, when you leave me,
+  Sinks into my heart.
+
+He calls his love his light of May, his Easter Day:
+
+  She is my sweetheart, a sweet May
+  Bringing delights, a sunshine without cloud.
+
+and says, in promising fidelity: 'My steady mind is not like the
+wind.'
+
+Reinmar says:
+
+  When winter is over
+  I saw the heath with the red flowers, delightful there....
+  The long winter is past away; when I saw the green leaves
+  I gave up much of my sorrow.
+
+In a time of trouble he cried:
+
+    To me it must always be winter.
+
+So we see that Troubadour references to Nature were drawn from a very
+limited area. Individual grasp of scenery was entirely lacking, it
+did not occur to them to seek Nature for her own sake. Their
+comparisons were monotonous, and their scenes bare, stereotyped
+arabesques, not woven into the tissue of lyric feeling. Their ruling
+motives were joy in spring and complaint of winter. Wood, flowers,
+clover, the bright sun, the moon (once), roses, lilies, and woodland
+birds, especially the nightingale, served them as elementary or
+landscape figures.
+
+Wilhelm Grimm says:
+
+    The Minnesingers talk often enough of mild May, the nightingale's
+    song, the dew shining on the flowers of the heath, but always in
+    relation only to their own feelings reflected in them. To
+    indicate sad moods they used faded leaves, silent birds, seed
+    buried in snow.
+
+and Humboldt:
+
+    The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or the
+    Crusades in Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, have enriched the
+    art of poetry in Germany with new natural pictures, can only
+    generally be answered by the negative. It is not remarked that
+    the acquaintance with the East gave any new direction to the
+    songs of the minstrels. The Crusaders came little into actual
+    contact with the Saracens; they even lived in a state of great
+    restraint with other nations who fought in the same cause. One of
+    the oldest lyric poets was Friedrich of Hausen. He perished in
+    the army of Barbarossa. His songs contain many views of the
+    Crusades; but they chiefly express religious sentiments on the
+    pain of being separated from his dear friends. He found no
+    occasion to say anything concerning the country or any of those
+    who took part in the wars, as Reinmar the Elder, Rubin, Neidhart,
+    and Ulrich of Lichtenstein. Reinmar came a pilgrim to Syria, as
+    it appears, in the train of Leopold the 6th, Duke of Austria. He
+    complains that the recollections of his country always haunted
+    him, and drew away his thoughts from God. The date tree has here
+    been mentioned sometimes, when they speak of the palm branches
+    which pious pilgrims bore upon their shoulders. I do not remember
+    that the splendid scenery in Italy has excited the fancy of the
+    minstrels who crossed the Alps. Walther, who had wandered about,
+    had only seen the river Po; but Friedank was at Rome. He merely
+    remarked that grass grew in the palaces of those who formerly
+    bore sway there.
+
+As a fact, even the greatest Minnesinger, Walther, the master lyrist
+of the thirteenth century, was not ahead of his contemporaries in
+this matter. His _Spring Longing_ begins:
+
+  Winter has wrought us harm everywhere,
+  Forest and field are dreary and bare
+  Where the sweet voices of summer once were,
+  Yet by the road where I see maiden fair
+  Tossing the ball, the birds' song is there.
+
+and _Spring and Women_:
+
+  When flowers through the grass begin to spring
+  As though to greet with smiles the sun's bright rays,
+  On some May morning, and in joyous measure,
+  Small songbirds make the dewy forest ring
+  With a sweet chorus of sweet roundelays,
+  Hath life in all its store a purer pleasure?
+  'Tis half a Paradise on earth.
+  Yet ask me what I hold of equal worth,
+  And I will tell what better still
+  Ofttimes before hath pleased mine eyes,
+  And, while I see it, ever will.
+  When a noble maiden, fair and pure,
+  With raiment rich and tresses deftly braided,
+  Mingles, for pleasure's sake, in company,
+  High bred, with eyes that, laughingly demure,
+  Glance round at times and make all else seem faded,
+  As, when the sun shines, all the stars must die.
+  Let May bud forth in all its splendour;
+  What sight so sweet can he engender
+  As with this picture to compare?
+  Unheeded leave we buds and blooms,
+  And gaze upon the lovely fair!
+
+The grace in this rendering of a familiar motive, and the
+individuality in the following _Complaint of Winter_, were both
+unusual at the time:
+
+  Erewhile the world shone red and blue
+  And green in wood and upland too,
+  And birdlets sang on the bough.
+  But now it's grown grey and lost its glow,
+  And there's only the croak of the winter crow,
+  Whence--many a ruffled brow!
+
+Elsewhere he says that his lady's favour turns his winter to spring,
+and adds:
+
+  Cold winter 'twas no more for me,
+  Though others felt it bitterly;
+  To me it was mid May.
+
+He has many pictures of Nature and pretty comparisons, but the
+stereotyped style predominates--heath, flowers, grass, and
+nightingales. The pearl of the collection is the naive song which
+touches sensuous feeling, like the _Song of Solomon_, with the magic
+light of innocence:
+
+  Under the lime on the heath where I sat with my love,
+  There you would find
+  The grass and the flowers all crushed--
+  Sweetly the nightingale sang in the vale by the wood.
+  Tandaradei!
+  When I came up to the meadow my lover was waiting me there.
+  Ah! what a greeting I had! Gracious Mary, 'tis bliss to me still!
+  Tandaradei! Did he kiss me, you ask? Look at the red of my lips!
+  Of sweet flowers of all sorts he made us a bed,
+  I wager who passes now smiles at the sight,
+  The roses would still show just where my head lay.
+  Tandaradei!
+  But how he caressed me, that any but one
+  Should know that, God forbid! I were shamed if they did;
+  Only he and I know it,
+  And one little birdie who never will tell.
+
+So we see that interest in Nature in the literature of the Crusaders
+very seldom went beyond the utilitarian bounds of pleasure and
+admiration in fertility and pleasantness; and the German national
+epics rarely alluded to her traits even by way of comparison. The
+court epics shewed some advance, and sympathy was distinctly
+traceable in Gottfried, and even attained to artistic expression in
+his lyrics, where his own feelings chimed with Nature.
+
+For the rest, the Minnesingers' descriptions were all alike. The
+charm of Nature apart from other considerations, delight in her for
+her own sake alone, was unknown to the time.
+
+Hitherto we have only spoken of literature.
+
+Feeling for Nature reveals itself in plastic art also, especially in
+painting; and since the mind of a people is one united organism, the
+relation between poetry and painting is not one of opposition and
+mutual exclusion--they rather enlarge and explain, or condition each
+other.
+
+As concerns feeling for Nature, it may be taken as a universal rule
+that landscape-painting only develops when Nature is sought for her
+own sake, and that so long as scenery merely serves the purpose of
+ornament in literature, so long it merely serves as accessory and
+background in painting; whereas, when Nature takes a wider space in
+prose and poetry, and becomes an end of representation in herself,
+the moment for the birth of landscape-painting has come. We will
+follow the stages of the development of painting very briefly, from
+Woltmann and Woermann's excellent book,[9] which, if it throws no
+fresh light upon our subject, illustrates what has just been said in
+a striking manner.
+
+In the first centuries _Anno Domini_, painting was wholly proscribed
+by Christendom. Its technique did not differ from that of antiquity;
+but Christendom took up an attitude of antagonism. The picture
+worship of the old religions was opposed to its very origin and
+essence, and was only gradually introduced into the Christian cult
+through heathen influences. It is a fact too, easy to explain,
+especially through its Jewish origin, that Christianity at first felt
+no need of art, and that this one-sidedness only ceased when the
+specifically Jewish element in it had died out, and Christendom
+passed to cultivated Greeks and Romans. In the cemeteries and
+catacombs of the first three centuries, we find purely decorative
+work, light vines with Cupids, but also remains of landscapes; for
+instance, in the oldest part of the cemetery of Domitilla at Rome,
+where the ceiling decoration consists of shepherds, fishers, and
+biblical scenes. The ceiling picture in St Lucina (second century)
+has apparently the Good Shepherd in the middle, and round it
+alternate pictures of Him and of the praying Madonna; whilst in the
+middle it has also charming divisions with fields, branches with
+leaves and flowers, birds, masks, and floating genii.
+
+In Byzantine painting too, the influence of antiquity was still
+visible, especially in a Psaltery with a Commentary and fourteen
+large pictures. David appears here as a shepherd; a beautiful woman's
+form, exhibiting the melody, is leaning with her left arm upon his
+shoulder; a nymph's head peeps out of the foliage; and in front we
+have Bethlehem, and the mountain god resting in a bold position under
+a rock; sheep, goats, and water are close by, and a landscape with
+classic buildings, streams, and mountains forms the background; it is
+very poetically conceived. Elsewhere, too, personifications recur, in
+which classic beauty is still visible, mixed with severe Christian
+forms.
+
+At the end of the tenth century began the Romantic period, which
+closed in the thirteenth.
+
+The brilliant progress made by architecture paved the way for the
+other arts; minds trained in its laws began to look for law in
+organic Nature too, and were no longer content with the old uncertain
+and arbitrary shapes. But as no independent feeling for Nature, in
+the widest sense of the term, existed, mediaeval art treated her, not
+according to her own laws, but to those of architecture. With the
+development of the Gothic style, from the thirteenth century on, art
+became a citizen's craft, a branch of industry. Heretofore it had
+possessed but one means of expression--religious festival or
+ceremony, severely ecclesiastical. This limit was now removed. The
+artist lived a wide life, open to impressions from Nature, his
+imagination fed by poetry with new ideas and feelings, and constantly
+stimulated by the love of pleasure, which was so vehement among all
+classes that it turned every civil and ecclesiastical event to
+histrionic purposes, and even made its influence felt upon the
+clergy. The strong religious feeling which pervaded the Middle Ages
+still ruled, and even rose to greater enthusiasm, in accordance with
+the spirit of the day; but it was no longer a matter of blind
+submission of the will, but of conscious acceptance.
+
+It is true that knowledge of the external world was as yet very
+limited; the painter had not explored and mastered it, but only used
+it as a means to represent a certain realm of feeling, studying it
+just so far as this demanded. We have seen the same in the case of
+poetry. The beginnings of realistic painting were visible, although,
+as, for example, in representing animals, no individuality was
+reached.
+
+From the middle of the fourteenth century a new French school sprang
+up. The external world was more keenly and accurately studied,
+especially on its graceful side. It was only at the end of that
+period that painting felt the need to develop the background, and
+indicate actual surroundings by blue sky, hills, Gothic buildings,
+and conventional trees. These were given in linear perspective; of
+aerial perspective there was none. The earlier taste still ruled in
+initialling and border decorations; but little flowers were added by
+degrees to the thorn-leaf pattern, and birds, sometimes angels,
+introduced.
+
+The altar-piece at Cologne, at the end of the fourteenth century, is
+more subjective in conception, and full of lyric feeling. Poetic
+feeling came into favour, especially in Madonna pictures of purely
+idyllic character, which were painted with most charming
+surroundings. Instead of a throne and worshipping figures, Mary was
+placed sitting comfortably with the Child on flowery turf, and saints
+around her; and although the background might be golden instead of
+landscape, yet all the stems and blossoms in the grass were naturally
+and accurately treated. In a little picture in the town museum at
+Frankfort, the Madonna is seated in a rose garden under fruit trees
+gay with birds, and reading a book; a table with food and drinks
+stands close by, and a battlemented wall surrounds the garden. She is
+absorbed in contemplation; three female saints are attending to
+mundane business close by, one drawing water from a brook, another
+picking cherries, the third teaching the child Christ to play the
+zither. There is real feeling in the whole picture, and the landscape
+is worked in with distinct reference to the chief idea.
+
+Hence, although there were many isolated attempts to shew that realistic
+and individual study of Nature had begun, landscape-painting had not
+advanced beyond the position of a background, treated in a way more or
+less suited to the main subject of the picture; and trees, rocks,
+meadows, flowers, were still only framework, ornament, as in the poetry
+of the Minnesingers.[10]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+INDIVIDUALISM AND SENTIMENTAL FEELING
+AT THE RENAISSANCE
+
+
+In a certain sense all times are transitional to those who live in
+them, since what is old is always in process of being destroyed and
+giving way to the new. But there are landmarks in the general
+development of culture, which mark off definite periods and divide
+what has been from what is beginning. Hellenism was such a landmark
+in antiquity, the Renaissance in the Middle Ages.
+
+Without overlooking the differences between Greek and Italian,
+classic and modern, which are relative and not absolute, it is
+instructive to note the great likeness between these two epochs. The
+limits of their culture will stand out more clearly, if, by the aid
+of Helbig's researches and Burckhardt's masterly account of the
+Renaissance, we range the chief points of that likeness side by side.
+
+They were epochs in which an icy crust, which had been lying over
+human thought and feeling, melted as if before a spring breeze. It is
+true that the theory of life which now began to prevail was not
+absolutely new; the stages of growth in a nation's culture are never
+isolated; it was the result of the enlargement of various factors
+already present, and their fusion with a flood of incoming ones.
+
+The Ionic-Doric Greek kingdom widened out in Alexander's time to a
+Hellenic-Asiatic one, and the barriers of the Romano-Germanic Middle
+Ages fell with the Crusades and the great voyages of discovery.
+Hellenism and the Renaissance brought about the transition from
+antiquity and the mediaeval to the specifically modern; the Roman
+Empire inherited Hellenism, the Reformation the Renaissance. Both had
+their roots in the past, both made new growth which blossomed at a
+later time. In Hellenism, Oriental elements were mixed with the
+Greek; in the Renaissance, it was a mixture of Germanic with the
+native Italian which caused the revival of classic antiquity and new
+culture. Burckhardt says[1]:
+
+    Elsewhere in Europe men deliberately and with reflection borrowed
+    this or the other element of classical civilization; in Italy,
+    the sympathies both of the learned and of the people were
+    naturally engaged on the side of antiquity as a whole, which
+    stood to them as a symbol of past greatness. The Latin language
+    too was easy to an Italian, and the numerous monuments and
+    documents in which the country abounded facilitated a return to
+    the past. With this tendency, other elements--the popular
+    character which time had now greatly modified, the political
+    institutions imported by the Lombards from Germany, chivalry and
+    northern forms of civilization, and the influence of religion and
+    the Church--combined to produce the modern Italian spirit, which
+    was destined to serve as the model and ideal for the whole
+    western world.
+
+The distance between the works of the Greek artists and
+poets--between Homer, Sophocles, and Phidias on the one hand, and the
+Alexandrian Theocritus and Kallimachos and the Pergamos sculptures on
+the other--is greater than lies between the _Nibelungenlied_ and the
+Minnesingers, and Dante and Petrarch. In both cases one finds oneself
+in a new world of thought and feeling, where each and all bears the
+stamp of change, in matters political and social as well as artistic.
+If, for example, by the aid of Von Helbig's researches,[2] we conjure
+up a picture of the chief points in the history of Greek culture, we
+are astonished to see how almost every point recurred at the
+Renaissance, as described by Burckhardt.
+
+The chief mark of both epochs was individualism, the discovery of the
+individual. In Hellenism it was the barriers of race and position
+which fell; in the Renaissance, the veil, woven of mysticism and
+delusion, which had obscured mediaeval faith, thought, and feeling.
+Every man recognized himself to be an independent unit of church,
+state, people, corporation--of all those bodies in which in the
+Middle Ages he had been entirely merged.
+
+Monarchical institutions arose in Hellenism; but the individual was
+no longer content to serve them only as one among many; he must needs
+develop his own powers. Private affairs began to preponderate over
+public; the very physiognomy of the race shewed an individual stamp.
+
+    After the time of Alexander the Great, portrait shewed most
+    marked individuality. Those of the previous period had a certain
+    uniform expression; one would have looked in vain among them for
+    the diversities in contemporary types shewn by comparing
+    Alexander's vivid face full of stormy energy, Menander's with its
+    peculiar look of irony, and the elaborate savant-physiognomy of
+    Aristotle. (HELBIG.)
+
+And Burckhardt says:
+
+    At the close of the thirteenth century Italy began to swarm with
+    individuality; the charm laid upon human personality was
+    dissolved, and a thousand figures meet us each in its own special
+    shape and dress.... Despotism, as we have already seen, fostered
+    in the highest degree the individuality, not only of the tyrant
+    or Condottiere himself, but also of the men whom he protected or
+    used as his tools--the secretary, minister, poet, or companion.
+
+Political indifference brought about a high degree of
+cosmopolitanism, especially among those who were banished. 'My
+country is the whole world,' said Dante; and Ghiberti: 'Only he who
+has learned everything is nowhere a stranger; robbed of his fortune
+and without friends, he is yet a citizen of every country, and can
+fearlessly despise the changes of fortune.'
+
+In both Hellenism and the Renaissance, an effort was made in art and
+science to see things as they really were. In art, detail was
+industriously cultivated; but its naturalism, especially as to
+undraped figures, was due to a sensuous refinement of gallantry and
+erotic feeling. The sensuous flourished no less in Greek times than
+in those of Boccaccio; but the most characteristic peculiarity of
+Hellenism was its intentional revelling in feeling--its
+sentimentality. There was a trace of melancholy upon many faces of
+the time, and unhappy love in endless variations was the poet's main
+theme. Petrarch's lyre was tuned to the same key; a melancholy
+delight in grief was the constant burden of his song.
+
+In Greece the sight of foreign lands had furthered the natural
+sciences, especially geography, astronomy, zoology, and botany; and
+the striving for universality at the Renaissance, which was as much a
+part of its individualism as its passion for fame, was aided by the
+widening of the physical and mental horizons through the Crusades and
+voyages of discovery. Dante was not only the greatest poet of his
+time, but an astronomer; Petrarch was geographer and cartographer,
+and, at the end of the fifteenth century, with Paolo Toscanelli,
+Lucca Baccioli, and Leonardo da Vinci, Italy was beyond all
+comparison the first nation in Europe in mathematics and natural
+science.
+
+    A significant proof of the wide-spread interest in natural
+    history is found in the zeal which shewed itself at an early
+    period for the collection and comparative study of plants and
+    animals. Italy claims to be the first creator of botanical
+    gardens.... princes and wealthy men, in laying out their pleasure
+    gardens, instinctively made a point of collecting the greatest
+    possible number of different plants in all their species and
+    varieties. (BURCKHARDT.)
+
+Leon Battista Alberti, a man of wide theoretical knowledge as well as
+technical and artistic facility of all sorts, entered into the whole
+life around him with a sympathetic intensity that might almost be
+called nervous.
+
+    At the sight of noble trees and waving corn-fields he shed tears
+    ... more than once, when he was ill, the sight of a beautiful
+    landscape cured him. (BURCKHARDT.)
+
+He defined a beautiful landscape as one in which one could see in its
+different parts, sea, mountain, lake or spring, dry rocks or plains,
+wood and valley. Therefore he cared for variety; and, what is more
+striking, in contrast to level country, he admired mountains and
+rocks!
+
+In Hellenism, hunting, to which only the Macedonians had been
+addicted before, became a fashion, and was enjoyed with Oriental pomp
+in the _paradeisoi_. Writers drew most of their comparisons from it.
+In the Renaissance, Petrarch did the same, and animals often served
+as emblems of state--their condition ominous of good or evil--and
+were fostered with superstitious veneration, as, for example, the
+lions at Florence.
+
+Thus the growth of the natural sciences increased interest in the
+external world, and sensitiveness brought about a sentimental
+attitude towards Nature in Hellenism and in the Renaissance.
+
+Both discovered in Nature a source of purest pleasure; the
+Renaissance feeling was, in fact, the extension and enhancement of
+the Hellenic. Burckhardt overlooked the fact that beautiful scenery
+was appreciated and described for its own sake in Hellenism, but he
+says very justly;
+
+    The Italians are the first among modern peoples by whom the
+    outward world was seen and felt as something beautiful.... By the
+    year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine hearty
+    enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found
+    lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations, which
+    gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena
+    of Nature--spring with its flowers, the green fields and the
+    woods. But these pictures are all foreground without perspective.
+
+Among the Minnesingers there were traces of feeling for Nature; but
+only for certain stereotyped phases. Of the individuality of a
+landscape, its characteristic colour, form, and light, not a word was
+said.
+
+Even the Carmina Burana were not much ahead of the Minnesingers in
+this respect, although they deserve a closer examination.
+
+These Latin poems of wandering clerks probably belong to the twelfth
+century, and though no doubt a product in which the whole of Europe
+had a share, their best pieces must be ascribed to a French hand.
+Latin poetry lives again in them, with a freshness the Carlovingian
+Renaissance never reached; they are mediaeval in form, but full of a
+frank enjoyment of life and its pleasures, which hardly any
+northerner of that day possessed. Often enough this degenerated into
+frivolity; but the stir of national awakening after the long sleep of
+the Middle Ages is felt like a spring breeze through them all.
+
+It is a far cry from the view of Nature we saw in the Carlovingian
+monks, to these highly-coloured verses. The dim light of churches and
+bare cell walls may have doubled the monks' appreciation of blue
+skies and open-air life; but they were fettered by the constant fight
+with the senses; Nature to them must needs be less a work of God for
+man's delight, than a dangerous means of seduction. 'They wandered
+through Nature with timid misgiving, and their anxious fantasy
+depicted forms of terror or marvellous rescues.[3] The idyllic
+pleasure in the simple charms of Nature, especially in the monastery
+garden of the Carlovingian time, contrasts strikingly with the tone
+of these very mundane _vagantes clerici_, for whom Nature had not
+only long been absorbed and freed from all demoniac influence, but
+peopled by the charming forms of the old mythic poems, and made for
+the joy and profit of men, in the widest and naivest sense of the
+words.
+
+Spring songs, as with the Minnesingers, take up most of the space;
+but the theme is treated with greater variety. Enjoyment of life and
+Nature breathes through them all.
+
+One runs thus:
+
+    Spring cometh, and the earth is decked and studded with vernal
+    flowers. The harmony of the birds' returning song rouses the
+    heart to be glad. It is the time of joy.
+
+Songs 98 to 118 rejoice that winter is gone; for instance:
+
+    Now in the mild springtime Flora opens the lap which the cold
+    frost had locked in cruel time of winter; the zephyr with gentle
+    murmur cometh with the spring; the grove is clad in leaves. The
+    nightingale is singing, the fields are gay with divers hues. It
+    is sweet to walk in the wooded glens, it is sweeter to pluck the
+    lily with the rose, it is sweetest of all to sport with a lovely
+    maiden.
+
+Another makes a similar confession, for Nature and amorous passion
+are the two strings of these lyres:
+
+    Beneath the pleasant foliage of a tree 'tis sweet to rest, while
+    the nightingale sings her plaintive song; sweeter still, to sport
+    in the grass with a fair maiden.... O, to what changeful moods is
+    the heart of the lover prone! As the vessel that wanders o'er the
+    waves without an anchor, so doth Love's uncertain warfare toss
+    'twixt fear and hope.
+
+The beauties of Nature are drawn upon to describe the fair maiden;
+her eyes are compared to stars, her colour to lilies and snow, her
+mouth to a rose, her kiss 'doth rend in sunder all the clouds of
+care.'
+
+    In the flowery season I sat beneath a shady tree while the birds
+    sang in the groves ... and listened to my Thisbe's talk, the talk
+    I love and long for; and we spoke of the sweet interchange of
+    love, and in the doubtful balance of the mind wanton love and
+    chastity were wavering.
+
+    I have seen the bright green of flowers, I have seen the flower
+    of flowers, I have seen the rose of May; I have seen the star
+    that is brighter than all other, that is glorious and fair above
+    all other, through whom may I ever spend my life in love.
+
+On such a theme the poet rings endless changes. The most charming is
+the poem _Phyllis and Flora_. Actual landscape is not given, but
+details are treated with freshness and care:
+
+    In the flowery season of the year, under a sky serene, while the
+    earth's lap was painted with many colours, when the messenger of
+    Aurora had put to flight the stars, sleep left the eyes of
+    Phyllis and of Flora, two maidens whose beauty answered to the
+    morning light. The breeze of spring was gently whispering, the
+    place was green and gay with grass, and in the grass itself there
+    flowed a living brook that played and babbled as it went. And
+    that the sun's heat might not harm the maidens, near the stream
+    there was a spreading pine, decked with leaves and spreading far
+    its interweaving branches, nor could the heat penetrate from
+    without. The maidens sat, the grass supplied the seat.... They
+    intend to go to Love's Paradise: at the entrance of the grove a
+    rivulet murmurs; the breeze is fragrant with myrrh and balsam;
+    they hear the music of a hundred timbrels and lutes. All the
+    notes of the birds resound in all their fulness; they hear the
+    sweet and pleasant song of the blackbird, the garrulous lark, the
+    turtle and the nightingale, etc.... He who stayed there would
+    become immortal; every tree there rejoices in its own fruit; the
+    ways are scented with myrrh and cinnamon and amomum; the master
+    could be forced out of his house.
+
+The first to shew proof of a deepening effect of Nature on the human
+spirit was Dante.
+
+Dante and Petrarch elaborated the Hellenistic feeling for Nature;
+hence the further course of the Renaissance displayed all its
+elements, but with increased subjectivity and individuality.
+
+No one, since the days of Hellenism, had climbed mountains for the
+sake of the view--Dante was the first to do it. And although, in
+ranging heaven, earth, hell, and paradise in the _Divina Commedia_,
+he rarely described real Nature, and then mostly in comparisons; yet,
+as Humboldt pointed out, how incomparably in a few vigorous lines he
+wakens the sense of the morning airs and the light on the distant sea
+in the first canto of Purgatorio:
+
+  The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour,
+  Which fled before it,-so that from afar
+  I recognized the trembling of the sea.
+
+And how vivid this is:
+
+                            The air
+  Impregnate changed to water. Fell the rain:
+  And to the fosses came all that the land
+  Contain'd not, and, as mightiest streams are wont,
+  To the great river with such headlong sweep
+  Rush'd, that naught stayed its course.
+
+  Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade
+  With lively greenness the new-springing day
+  Attempered, eager now to roam and search
+  Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank;
+  Along the champaign leisurely my way
+  Pursuing, o'er the ground that on all sides
+  Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air,
+  That intermitted never, never veered,
+  Smote on my temples gently, as a wind
+  Of softest influence, at which the sprays,
+  Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part
+  Where first the holy mountain casts his shade;
+  Yet were not so disordered; but that still
+  Upon their top the feather'd quiristers
+  Applied their wonted art, and with full joy
+  Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill
+  Amid the leaves, that to their jocund lays
+  Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch
+  Along the piny forests on the shore
+  Of Chiassi rolls the gathering melody,
+  When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
+  The dripping south. Already had my steps,
+  Tho' slow, so far into that ancient wood
+  Transported me, I could not ken the place
+  Where I had enter'd; when behold! my path
+  Was bounded by a rill, which to the left
+  With little rippling waters bent the grass
+  That issued from its brink.
+
+and this of the heavenly Paradise:
+
+                                I looked,
+  And, in the likeness of a river, saw
+  Light flowing, from whose amber-seeming waves
+  Flash'd up effulgence, as they glided on
+  'Twixt banks, on either side, painted with spring,
+  Incredible how fair; and, from the tide,
+  There, ever and anon outstarting, flew
+  Sparkles instinct with life; and in the flowers
+  Did set them, like to rubies chased in gold;
+  Then, as if drunk with odours, plunged again
+  Into the wondrous flood, from which, as one
+  Re-entered, still another rose.
+
+His numerous comparisons conjure up whole scenes, perfect in truth to
+Nature, and shewing a keen and widely ranging eye. For example:
+
+              Bellowing, there groaned
+  A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn
+  By warring winds.
+                                        (Inferno.)
+
+  O'er better waves to steer her rapid course
+  The light bark of my genius lifts the sail,
+  Well pleased to leave so cruel sea behind.
+                                        (Purgatorio.)
+
+  All ye, who in small bark have following sail'd,
+  Eager to listen on the adventurous track
+  Of my proud keel, that singing cuts her way.
+                                        (Paradiso.)
+
+  As sails full spread and bellying with the wind
+  Drop suddenly collapsed, if the mast split,
+  So to the ground down dropp'd the cruel fiend.
+                                        (Inferno.)
+
+              As, near upon the hour of dawn,
+  Through the thick vapours Mars with fiery beam
+  Glares down in west, over the ocean floor.
+                                   (Purgatorio.)
+
+              As 'fore the sun
+  That weighs our vision down, and veils his form
+  In light transcendent, thus my virtue fail'd
+  Unequal.                         (Purgatorio.)
+
+              As sunshine cheers
+  Limbs numb'd by nightly cold, e'en thus my look
+  Unloosed her tongue.
+
+  And now there came o'er the perturbed waves,
+  Loud crashing, terrible, a sound that made
+  Either shore tremble, as if of a wind
+  Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung,
+  That, 'gainst some forest driving all his might,
+  Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls
+  Afar; then, onward pressing, proudly sweeps
+  His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.
+                                         (Inferno.)
+
+  As florets, by the frosty air of night
+  Bent down and closed, when day has blanch'd their leaves
+  Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems,
+  So was my fainting vigour new restored.
+                                         (Inferno.)
+
+      As fall off the light autumnal leaves,
+  One still another following, till the bough
+  Strews all its honours on the earth beneath.
+                                         (Inferno.)
+
+Bees, dolphins, rays of sunlight, snow, starlings, doves, frogs, a
+bull, falcons, fishes, larks, and rooks are all used, generally with
+characteristic touches of detail.
+
+Specially tender is this:
+
+  E'en as the bird, who 'mid the leafy bower
+  Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night
+  With her sweet brood; impatient to descry
+  Their wished looks, and to bring home their food,
+  In the fond quest, unconscious of her toil;
+
+  She, of the time prevenient, on the spray
+  That overhangs their couch, with wakeful gaze
+  Expects the sun, nor, ever, till the dawn
+  Removeth from the east her eager ken,
+  So stood the dame erect.
+
+The most important forward step was made by Petrarch, and it is
+strange that this escaped Humboldt in his famous sketch in the second
+volume of _Cosmos_, as well as his commentator Schaller, and
+Friedlander.
+
+For when we turn from Hellenism to Petrarch, it does not seem as if
+many centuries lay between; but rather as if notes first struck in
+the one had just blended into distinct harmony in the other.
+
+The modern spirit arose from a union of the genius of the Italian
+people of the thirteenth century with antiquity, and the feeling for
+Nature had a share in the wider culture, both as to sentimentality
+and grasp of scenery. Classic and modern joined hands in Petrarch.
+Many Hellenic motives handed on by Roman poets reappear in his
+poetry, but always with that something in addition of which antiquity
+shewed but a trace--the modern subjectivity and individuality. It was
+the change from early bud to full blossom. He was one of the first to
+deserve the name of modern--modern, that is, in his whole feeling and
+mode of thought, in his sentimentality and his melancholy, and in the
+fact that 'more than most before and after him, he tried to know
+himself and to hand on to others what he knew.' (Geiger.) It is an
+appropriate remark of Hettner's, that the phrase, 'he has discovered
+his heart,' might serve as a motto for Petrarch's songs and sonnets.
+He knew that he had that sentimental disorder which he called
+'acedia,' and wished to be rid of it. This word has a history of its
+own. To the Greeks, to Apollonius, for instance,[4] it meant
+carelessness, indifference; and, joined with the genitive [Greek:
+nooio]--that is, of the mind--it meant, according to the scholiasts,
+as much as [Greek: lype] (Betruebnis)--that is, distress or grief. In
+the Middle Ages it became 'dislike of intellect so far as that is a
+divine gift'--that disease of the cloister which a monkish chronicler
+defined as 'a sadness or loathing and an immoderate distress of mind,
+caused by mental confusion, through which happiness of mind was
+destroyed, and the mind thrown back upon itself as from an abyss of
+despair.'
+
+To Dante it meant the state--
+
+                                       Sad
+  In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun,
+
+distaste for the good and beautiful.
+
+The modern meaning which it took with Petrarch is well defined by
+Geiger as being neither ecclesiastic nor secular sin,[5] but
+
+    Entirely human and peculiar to the cleverest--the battle between
+    reality and seeming, the attempt to people the arid wastes of the
+    commonplace with philosophic thought--the unhappiness and despair
+    that arise from comparing the unconcern of the majority with
+    one's own painful unrest, from the knowledge that the results of
+    striving do not express the effort made--that human life is but a
+    ceaseless and unworthy rotation, in which the bad are always to
+    the fore, and the good fall behind ... as pessimism, melancholy,
+    world pain (Weltschmerz)--that tormenting feeling which mocks all
+    attempt at definition, and is too vitally connected with erring
+    and striving human nature to be curable--that longing at once for
+    human fellowship and solitude, for active work and a life of
+    contemplation.
+
+Petrarch knew too the pleasure of sadness, what Goethe called 'Wonne
+der Wehmuth,' the _dolendi voluptas._
+
+  Lo, what new pleasure human wits devise!
+  For oftentimes one loves
+  Whatever new thing moves
+  The sighs, that will in closest order go;
+  And I'm of those whom sorrowing behoves;
+  And that with some success
+  I labour, you may guess,
+  When eyes with tears, and heart is brimmed with woe.
+
+In Sonnet 190:
+
+  My chiefest pleasure now is making moan.
+
+  Oh world, oh fruitless thought,
+  Oh luck, my luck, who'st led me thus for spite!...
+  For loving well, with pain I'm rent....
+  Nor can I yet repent,
+  My heart o'erflowed with deadly pleasantness.
+  Now wait I from no less
+  A foe than dealt me my first blow, my last.
+  And were I slain full fast,
+  'Twould seem a sort of mercy to my mind....
+  My ode, I shall i' the field
+  Stand firm; to perish flinching were a shame,
+  In fact, myself I blame
+  For such laments; my portion is so sweet.
+  Tears, sighs, and death I greet.
+  O reader that of death the servant art,
+  Earth can no weal, to match my woes, impart.
+
+His poems are full of scenes and comparisons from Nature; for the
+sympathy for her which goes with this modern and sentimental tone is
+a deep one:
+
+  In that sweet season of my age's prime
+  Which saw the sprout and, as it were, green blade
+  Of the wild passion....
+
+                      Changed me
+  From living man into green laurel whose
+  Array by winter's cold no leaf can lose.
+                                       (Ode 1.)
+
+Love is that by which
+
+  My darknesses were made as bright
+  As clearest noonday light.       (Ode 4.)
+
+Elsewhere it is the light of heaven breaking in his heart, and
+springtime which brings the flowers.
+
+In Sonnet 44 he plays with impossibilities, like the Greek and Roman
+poets:
+
+  Ah me! the sea will have no waves, the snow
+  Will warm and darken, fish on Alps will dwell,
+  And suns droop yonder, where from common cell
+
+  The springs of Tigris and Euphrates flow,
+  Or ever I shall here have truce or peace
+  Or love....
+
+and uses the same comparisons, Sestina 7:
+
+  So many creatures throng not ocean's wave,
+  So many, above the circle of the moon,
+  Of stars were never yet beheld by night;
+  So many birds reside not in the groves;
+  So many herbs hath neither field nor shore,
+  But my heart's thoughts outnumber them each eve.
+
+Many of his poems witness to the truth that the love-passion is the
+best interpreter of Nature, especially in its woes. The woes of love
+are his constant theme, and far more eloquently expressed than its
+bliss:
+
+  So fair I have not seen the sun arise,
+  When heaven was clearest of all cloudy stain--
+  The welkin-bow I have not after rain
+  Seen varied with so many shifting dyes,
+  But that her aspect in more splendid guise
+  Upon the day when I took up Love's chain
+  Diversely glowed, for nothing mortal vies
+  Therewith....                (Sonnet 112.)
+
+  From each fair eyelid's tranquil firmament
+  So brightly shine my stars untreacherous,
+  That none, whose love thoughts are magnanimous,
+  Would from aught else choose warmth or guidance lent.
+  Oh, 'tis miraculous, when on the grass
+  She sits, a very flower, or when she lays
+  Upon its greenness down her bosom white.
+                                       (Sonnet 127.)
+
+  Oh blithe and happy flowers, oh favoured sod,
+  That by my lady in passive mood are pressed,
+  Lawn, which her sweet words hear'st and treasurest,
+  Faint traces, where her shapely foot hath trod,
+  Smooth boughs, green leaves, which now raw juices load,
+  Pale darling violets, and woods which rest
+  In shadow, till that sun's beam you attest,
+  From which hath all your pride and grandeur flowed;
+  Oh land delightsome, oh thou river pure
+  Which bathest her fair face and brilliant eyes
+  And winn'st a virtue from their living light,
+  I envy you each clear and comely guise
+  In which she moves.       (Sonnet 129.)
+
+These recall Nais in Theocritus:
+
+  When she crept or trembling footsteps laid,
+  Green bright and soft she made
+  Wood, water, earth, and stone; yea, with conceit
+  The grasses freshened 'neath her palms and feet.
+  And her fair eyes the fields around her dressed
+  With flowers, and the winds and storms she stilled
+  With utterance unskilled
+  As from a tongue that seeketh yet the breast,
+                                     (Sonnet 25.)
+
+  As oft as yon white foot on fresh green sod
+  Comelily sets the gentle step, a dower
+  Of grace, that opens and revives each flower,
+  Seems by the delicate palm to be bestowed.
+                                     (Sonnet 132.)
+
+  I seem to hear her, hearing airs and sprays,
+  And leaves, and plaintive bird notes, and the brook
+  That steals and murmurs through the sedges green.
+  Such pleasure in lone silence and the maze
+  Of eerie shadowy woods I never took,
+  Though too much tow'r'd my sun they intervene.
+                                    (Sonnet 143.)
+
+and like Goethe's:
+
+  I think of thee when the bright sunlight shimmers
+  Across the sea;
+  When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers
+  I think of thee....
+
+  I hear thee, when the tossing waves' low rumbling
+  Creeps up the hill;
+  I go to the lone wood and listen trembling
+  When all is still....
+
+So Petrarch sings in Ode 15:
+
+  Now therefore, when in youthful guise I see
+  The world attire itself in soft green hue,
+  I think that in this age unripe I view
+  That lovely girl, who's now a lady's mien.
+  Then, when the sun ariseth all aglow,
+  I trace the wonted show
+  Of amorous fire, in some fine heart made queen...
+  When leaves or boughs or violets on earth
+  I see, what time the winter's cold decays,
+  And when the kindly stars are gathering might,
+  Mine eye that violet and green portrays
+  (And nothing else) which, at my warfare's birth,
+  Armed Love so well that yet he worsts me quite.
+  I see the delicate fine tissue light
+  In which our little damsel's limbs are dressed....
+  Oft on the hills a feeble snow-streak lies,
+  Which the sun smiteth in sequestered place.
+  Let sun rule snow! Thou, Love, my ruler art,
+  When on that fair and more than human face
+  I muse, which from afar makes soft my eyes....
+  I never yet saw after mighty rain
+  The roving stars in the calm welkin glide
+  And glitter back between the frost and dew,
+  But straight those lovely eyes are at my side....
+  If ever yet, on roses white and red,
+  My eyes have fallen, where in bowl of gold
+  They were set down, fresh culled by virgin hands,
+  There have I seemed her aspect to behold....
+  But when the year has flecked
+  Some deal with white and yellow flowers the braes,
+  I forthwith recollect
+  That day and place in which I first admired
+  Laura's gold hair outspread, and straight was fired....
+  That I could number all the stars anon
+  And shut the waters in a tiny glass
+  Belike I thought, when in this narrow sheet
+  I got a fancy to record, alas,
+  How many ways this Beauty's paragon
+  Hath spread her light, while standing self-complete,
+  So that from her I never could retreat....
+  She's closed for me all paths in earth and sky.
+
+The reflective modern mind is clear in this, despite its loquacity.
+He was yet more eloquent and intense, more fertile in comparisons,
+when his happiest days were over.
+
+In Ode 24, standing at a window he watches the strange forms his
+imagination conjures up--a wild creature torn in pieces by two dogs,
+a ship wrecked by a storm, a laurel shattered by lightning:
+
+  Within this wood, out of a rock did rise
+  A spring of water, mildly rumbling down,
+  Whereto approached not in any wise
+  The homely shepherd nor the ruder clown,
+  But many muses and the nymphs withal....
+  But while herein I took my chief delight,
+  I saw (alas!) the gaping earth devour
+  The spring, the place, and all clean out of sight--
+  Which yet aggrieves my heart unto this hour....
+  At last, so fair a lady did I spy,
+  That thinking yet on her I burn and quake,
+  On herbs and flowers she walked pensively....
+  A stinging serpent by the heel her caught,
+  Wherewith she languished as the gathered flower.
+
+  Now Zephyrus the blither days brings on,
+  With flowers and leaves, his gallant retinue,
+  And Progne's chiding, Philomela's moan,
+  And maiden spring all white and pink of hue;
+  Now laugh the meadows, heaven is radiant grown,
+  And blithely now doth Love his daughter view;
+  Air, water, earth, now breathe of love alone,
+  And every creature plans again to woo.
+  Ah me! but now return the heaviest sighs,
+  Which my heart from its last resources yields
+  To her that bore its keys to heaven away.
+  And songs of little birds and blooming fields
+  And gracious acts of ladies, fair and wise,
+  Are desert land and uncouth beasts of prey.
+                                      (Sonnet 269.)
+
+  The nightingale, who maketh moan so sweet
+  Over his brood belike or nest-mate dear,
+  So deft and tender are his notes to hear,
+  That fields and skies are with delight replete;
+  And all night long he seems with me to treat,
+  And my hard lot recall unto my ear.
+                                      (Sonnet 270.)
+
+  In every dell
+  The sands of my deep sighs are circumfused.
+                                           (Ode 1.)
+
+  Oh banks, oh dales, oh woods, oh streams, oh fields
+  Ye vouchers of my life's o'erburdened cause,
+  How often Death you've heard me supplicate.
+                                            (Ode 8.)
+
+  Whereso my foot may pass,
+  A balmy rapture wakes
+  When I think, here that darling light hath played.
+  If flower I cull or grass,
+  I ponder that it takes
+  Root in that soil, where wontedly she strayed
+  Betwixt the stream and glade,
+  And found at times a seat
+  Green, fresh, and flower-embossed.   (Ode 13.)
+
+  Whenever plaintive warblings, or the note
+  Of leaves by summer breezes gently stirred,
+  Or baffled murmur of bright waves I've heard
+  Along the green and flowery shore to float,
+  Where meditating love I sat and wrote,
+  Then her whom earth conceals, whom heaven conferred,
+  I hear and see, and know with living word
+  She answereth my sighs, though so remote.
+  'Ah, why art thou,' she pityingly says,
+  'Pining away before thy hour?'
+                               (Sonnet 238.)
+
+  The waters and the branches and the shore,
+  Birds, fishes, flowers, grasses, talk of love,
+  And me to love for ever all invite.
+                               (Sonnet 239.)
+
+  Thou'st left the world, oh Death, without a sun....
+  Her mourners should be earth and sea and air.
+                               (Sonnet 294.)
+
+Here we have happiness and misery felt in the modern way, and Nature
+in the modern way drawn into the circle of thought and feeling, and
+personified.
+
+Petrarch was the first, since the days of Hellenism, to enjoy the
+pleasures of solitude quite consciously.
+
+  How often to my darling place of rest,
+  Fleeing from all, could I myself but flee,
+  I walk and wet with tears my path and breast.
+                                  (Sonnet 240.)
+
+He shared Schiller's thought:
+
+  Oh Nature is perfect, wherever we stray,
+  'Tis man that deforms it with care.
+
+  As love from thought to thought, from hill to hill,
+  Directs me, when all ways that people tread
+  Seem to the quiet of my being, foes,
+  If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or rill
+  Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread,
+  I find--my daunted soul doth there repose....
+  On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find
+  Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth
+  Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane....
+  Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade,
+  I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink
+  Her lovely face I picture from my mind....
+  Oft hath her living likeness met my sight,
+  (Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters clear,
+  On beechen stems, on some green lawny space,
+  Or in white cloud....
+  Her loveliest portrait there my fancy draws,
+  And when Truth overawes
+  That sweet delusion, frozen to the core,
+  I then sit down, on living rock, dead stone,
+  And seem to muse, and weep and write thereon....
+  Then touch my thoughts and sense
+  Those widths of air which hence her beauty part,
+  Which always is so near, yet far away....
+  Beyond that Alp, my Ode,
+  Where heaven above is gladdest and most clear,
+  Again thou'lt meet me where the streamlet flows
+  And thrilling airs disclose
+  The fresh and scented laurel thicket near,
+  There is my heart and she that stealeth it.
+                                        (Ode 17.)
+
+It is the same idea as Goethe's in _Knowest thou the Land_? Again:
+
+  Alone, engrossed, the least frequented strands
+  I traverse with my footsteps faint and slow,
+  And often wary glances round me throw,
+  To flee, should human trace imprint the sands.
+                                      (Sonnet 28.)
+
+  A life of solitude I've ever sought,
+  This many a field and forest knows, and will.
+                                      (Sonnet 221.)
+
+Love of solitude and feeling for Nature limit or increase each other;
+and Petrarch; like Dante, took scientific interest in her, and found
+her a stimulant to mental work.
+
+Burckhardt says: 'The enjoyment of Nature is for him the favourite
+accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the two
+that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that
+he from time to time fled from the world and from his age.'
+
+He wrote a book _On a Life of Solitude (De Vita Solitaria)_ by the
+little river Sorgue, and said in a letter from Vaucluse: 'O if you
+could imagine the delight with which I breathe here, free and far
+from the world, with forests and mountains, rivers and springs, and
+the books of clever men.'
+
+Purely objective descriptions, such as his picture of the Gulf of
+Spezzia and Porto Venere at the end of the sixth book of the
+_Africa_, were rare with him; but, as we have already seen, he
+admired mountain scenery. He refers to the hills on the Riviera di
+Levante as 'hills distinguished by most pleasant wildness and
+wonderful fertility.'[6]
+
+The scenery of Reggio moved him, as he said,[7] to compose a poem. He
+described the storm at Naples in 1343, and the earthquake at Basle.
+As we have seen from one of his odes, he delighted in the wide view
+from mountain heights, and the freedom from the oppression of the air
+lower down. In this respect he was one of Rousseau's forerunners,
+though his 'romantic' feeling was restrained within characteristic
+limits. In a letter of April 26, 1335, interesting both as to the
+period and the personality of the writer, he described to Dionisius
+da Borgo San Sepolchro the ascent of Mt. Ventoux near Avignon which
+he made when he was thirty-two, and greatly enjoyed, though those who
+were with him did not understand his enjoyment. When they had
+laboured through the difficulties of the climb, and saw the clouds
+below them, he was immensely impressed. It was in accordance with his
+love of solitude that lonely mountain tops should attract him, and
+the letter shows that he fully appreciated both climb and view.
+
+'It was a long day, the air fine. We enjoyed the advantages of vigour
+of mind, and strength and agility of body, and everything else
+essential to those engaged in such an undertaking, and so had no
+other difficulties to face than those of the region itself.' ... 'At
+first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of
+the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed.
+I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and
+Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things
+from a mountain of less fame. I turned my eyes towards Italy, whither
+my heart most inclined. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to
+rise close by, although they were really at a great distance.... The
+Bay of Marseilles, the Rhone itself, lay in sight.'
+
+It was a very modern effect of the wide view that 'his whole past
+life with all its follies rose before his mind; he remembered that
+ten years ago, that day, he had quitted Bologna a young man, and
+turned a longing gaze towards his native country: he opened a book
+which was then his constant companion, _The Confessions of St
+Augustine_, and his eye fell on the passage in the tenth chapter:
+
+    And men go about and admire lofty mountains and broad seas, and
+    roaring torrents and the ocean, and the course of the stars, and
+    forget their own selves while doing so.
+
+His brother, to whom he read these words, could not understand why he
+closed the book and said no more. His feeling had suddenly changed.
+
+He knew, when he began the climb, that he was doing something very
+unusual, even unheard of among his contemporaries, and justified
+himself by the example of Philip V. of Macedon, arguing that a young
+man of private station might surely be excused for what was not
+thought blamable in a grey-haired king. Then on the mountain top,
+lost in the view, the passage in St Augustine suddenly occurred to
+him, and he started blaming himself for admiring earthly things so
+much. 'I was amazed ... angry with myself for marvelling but now at
+earthly things, when I ought to have learnt long ago that nothing
+save the soul was marvellous, and that to the greatness of the soul
+nought else was great'; and he closed with an explanation flavoured
+with theology to the taste of his confessor, to whom he was writing.
+The mixture of thoroughly modern delight in Nature[8] with ascetic
+dogma in this letter, gives us a glimpse into the divided feelings of
+one who stood upon the threshold between two eras, mediaeval and
+modern, into the reaction of the mediaeval mind against the budding
+modern feeling.
+
+This is, at any rate, the first mountain ascent for pleasure since
+Hellenic days, of which we have detailed information. From Greece
+before Alexander we have nothing; but the Persian King Darius, in his
+expedition against the Scythians in the region of Chalcedon, ascended
+the mountain on which stood the Urios temple to Zeus, and there
+'sitting in the temple, he took a view of the Euxine Sea, which is
+worthy of admiration.' (Herodotus.)
+
+Philip V. of Macedon ascended the Haemus B.C. 181, and Apollonios
+Rhodios describes the panorama spread out before the Argonauts as
+they ascended the Dindymon, and elsewhere recalls the view from Mt.
+Olympus. These are the oldest descriptions of distant views conceived
+as landscape in the classic literature preserved to us. Petrarch's
+ascent comes next in order.
+
+This sentimental and subjective feeling for Nature, half-idyllic,
+half-romantic, which seemed to arise suddenly and spontaneously in
+Petrarch, is not to be wholly explained by a marked individuality,
+nourished by the tendencies of the period; the influence of Roman
+literature, the re-birth of the classic, must also be taken into
+account. For the Renaissance attitude towards Nature was closely
+allied to the Roman, and therefore to the Hellenic; and the fact that
+the first modern man arose on Italian soil was due to the revival of
+antiquity plus its union with the genius of the Italian people. Many
+direct analogies can be traced between Petrarch and the Roman poets;
+it was in their school that his eyes opened to the wonders of Nature,
+and he learnt to blend the inner with the outer life.
+
+Boccaccio does not lead us much further. There is idyllic quality in
+his description of a wood in the _Ameto_,[9] and especially in
+_Fiammetta_, in which he praises country life and describes the
+spring games of the Florentine youth.
+
+This is the description of a valley in the _Decameron_: 'After a walk
+of nearly a mile, they came to the Ladies' Valley, which they entered
+by a straight path, whence there issued forth a fine crystal current,
+and they found it so extremely beautiful and pleasant, especially at
+that sultry season, that nothing could exceed it, and, as some of
+them told me afterwards, the plain in the valley was so exact a
+circle, as if it had been described by a pair of compasses, though it
+seemed rather the work of Nature than of art, and was about half a
+mile in circumference, surrounded by six hills of moderate height, on
+each of which was a palace built in the form of a little castle....
+The part that looks toward the south was planted as thick as they
+could stand together with vines, olives, almonds, cherries, figs, and
+most other kinds of fruit trees, and on the northern side were fine
+plantations of oak, ash, etc., so tall and regular that nothing could
+be more beautiful. The vale, which had only that one entrance, was
+full of firs, cypress trees, laurels, and pines, all placed in such
+order as if it had been done by the direction of some exquisite
+artist, and through which little or no sun could penetrate to the
+ground, which was covered with a thousand different flowers.... But
+what gave no less delight than any of the rest was a rivulet that
+came through a valley which divided two of the mountains, and running
+through the vein of a rock, made a most agreeable murmur with its
+fall, appealing, as it was dashed and sprinkled into drops, like so
+much quicksilver.'
+
+Description of scenery for its own sake is scarcely more than
+attempted here, nor do Petrarch's lyrics, with their free thought of
+passion and overpowering consciousness of the joys and sorrows of
+love, reach the level of Hellenism in this respect. Yet it advanced
+with the Renaissance. Pope Pius II. (AEneas Sylvius) was the first to
+describe actual landscape (Italian), not merely in a few subjective
+lines, but with genuine modern enjoyment. He was one of those figures
+in the world's history in whom all the intellectual life and feeling
+of a time come to a focus.
+
+He had a heart for everything, and an all-round enthusiasm for Nature
+unique in his day. Antiquity and Nature were his two passions, and
+the most beautiful descriptions of Nature before Rousseau and Goethe
+are contained in his _Commentaries_.
+
+Writing of the country round his home, he says:
+
+'The sweet spring time had begun, and round about Siena the smiling
+hills were clothed with leaves and flowers, and the crops were rising
+in plenty in the fields. Even the pasture land quite close to the
+town affords an unspeakably lovely view; gently sloping hills, either
+planted with homely trees or vines, or ploughed for corn, look down
+on pleasant valleys in which grow crops, or green fields are to be
+seen, and brooks are even flowing. There are, too, many plantations,
+either natural or artificial, in which the birds sing with wondrous
+sweetness. Nor is there a mound on which the citizens have not built
+a magnificent estate; they are thus a little way out of the town.
+Through this district the Pope walked with joyous head.'
+
+Again and again love of Nature drew him away even in old age from
+town life and the circle of courtiers and flatterers; he was for ever
+finding new reasons to prolong his _villeggiatura_, despite the
+grumbling of his court, which had to put up with wretched inns or
+monasteries overrun by mice, where the rain came through the roofs
+and the necessaries of life were scanty.[10]
+
+His taste for these beautifully-situated monastic solitudes was a
+riddle to those around him. He wrote of his summer residence in
+Tibur:
+
+'On all sides round the town in summer there are most lovely
+plantations, to which the Pope with his cardinals often retired for
+relaxation, sitting sometimes on some green sward beneath the olives,
+sometimes in a green meadow on the bank of the river Aino, whence he
+could see the clear waters. There are some meadows in a retired glen,
+watered by many streams; Pius often rested in these meadows near the
+luxuriant streams and the shady trees. He lived at Tibur with the
+Minorites on an elevation whence he could see the town and the course
+of the Aino as it flowed into the plain beneath him and through the
+quiet gardens, nor did anything else give him pleasure.
+
+'When the summer was over, he had his bedroom in the house
+overlooking the Aino; from there the most beautiful view was to be
+seen, and also from a neighbouring mountain on the other side of the
+river, still covered with a green and leafy grove ... he completed a
+great part of his journey with the greatest enjoyment.'
+
+In May 1462 he went to the baths at Viterbo, and, old man as he was,
+gives this appreciative description of spring beauties by the way:
+
+'The road by which he made for Sorianum was at that time of the year
+delightful; there was a tremendous quantity of genista, so that a
+great part of the field seemed a mass of flowering yellow, while the
+rest, covered as it was by shrubs and various grasses, brought purple
+and white and a thousand different colours before the eyes. It was
+the month of May, and everything was green. On one side were the
+smiling fields, on the other the smiling woods, in which the birds
+made sweet harmony. At early dawn he used to walk into the fields to
+catch the exquisite breeze before the day should grow hot, and gaze
+at the green crops and the flowering flax, which then, emulating
+heaven's own blue, gave the greatest joy to all beholders.... Now the
+crows are holding vigil, and the ringdoves; and the owl at times
+utters lament with funeral note. The place is most lovely; the view
+in the direction of Siena stretches as far as Amiata, and in the west
+reaches Mt. Argentarius.'
+
+In the plains the plague was raging; the sight of the people
+appealing to him as to a god, moved him to tears as he thought how
+few of the children would survive in the heat. He travelled to a
+castle charmingly placed on the lake of Bolsena, where 'there is a
+shady circular walk in the vineyard under the big grapes; stone steps
+shaded by the vine leaves lead down to the bank, where ilex oaks,
+alive with the songs of blackbirds, stand among the crags.' Halfway
+up the mountain, in the monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court
+took up their quarters.
+
+'The most lovely scenery met the eye. As you look to the west from
+the higher houses, the view reaches beyond Ilcinum and Siena as far
+as the Pistorian Alps. To the north a variety of hills and the
+pleasant green of woods presents itself, stretching a distance of
+five miles; if your sight is good, your eye will travel as far as the
+Apennine range and can see Cortona.'
+
+There he passed the time, shooting birds, fishing, and rowing.
+
+'In the cool air of the hills, among the old oaks and chestnuts, on
+the green meadows where there were no thorns to wound the feet, and
+no snakes or insects to hurt or annoy, the Pope passed days of
+unclouded happiness.'
+
+This is thoroughly modern: 'Silvarum amator,' as he calls himself, he
+includes both the details of the near and the general effect of the
+far-distant landscape.
+
+And with age his appreciation of it only seemed to increase; for
+instance, he says of Todi:
+
+'A most lovely view meets the eye wherever you turn; you can see
+Perusia and all the valley that lies between, full of wide--spreading
+forts and fertile fields, and honoured by the river Tiber, which,
+drawing its coils along like a snake, divides Tuscia from Umbria,
+and, close to the city itself, enters many a mountain, passing
+through which it descends to the plain, murmuring as it goes, as
+though constrained against its will.'
+
+This is his description of a lake storm, during an excursion to the
+Albanian Mountains:
+
+As far as Ostia 'he had a delightful voyage; at night the sea began
+to be most unwontedly troubled, and a severe storm arose. The east
+wind rolled up the waters from their lowest depths, huge waves beat
+the shore; you could have heard the sea, as it were, groaning and
+wailing. So great was the force of the winds, that nothing seemed
+able to resist it; they raged and alternately fled and put one
+another to rout, they overturned woods and anything that withstood
+them. The air glittered with frequent lightning, the sky thundered,
+and terrific thunder-bolts fell from the clouds.... The night was
+pitch dark, though the flashes of lightning were continuous.'
+
+And of a lake at rest he says:
+
+'The beauty of that lake is remarkable; everywhere it is surrounded
+by high rocks, the water is transparently clear. Nature, so far
+superior to art, provided a most pleasant journey. The Nemorian lake,
+with its crystal-clear waters, reflects the faces of those that look
+into it, and fills a deep basin. The descent from the top to the
+bottom is wooded. The poetic genius would never be awakened if it
+slept here; you would say it was the dwelling-place of the Muses, the
+home of the Nymphs, and, if there is any truth in legends, the
+hiding-place of Diana.'
+
+He visited the lakes among the mountains, climbing and resting under
+the trees; the view from Monte Cavo was his favourite, from which he
+could see Terracina, the lakes of Nemi and Albano, etc. He noted
+their extent and formation, and added:
+
+'The genista, however, was especially delightful, covering, as it did
+with its flowers, the greater part of the plains. Then, moreover,
+Rome presented itself fully to the eyes, together with Soracte and
+the Sabine Land, and the Apennine range white with snow, and Tibur
+and Praeneste.'
+
+It is clear that it was a thoroughly modern enthusiasm which
+attracted AEneas Sylvius to the country and gave him this ready pen
+for everything in Nature--everything, that is, except bare mountain
+summits.
+
+It is difficult to attribute this faculty for enjoying and describing
+scenery to the influence of antiquity alone, for, save the younger
+Pliny, I know of no Roman under the Empire who possessed it, and,
+besides, we do not know how far Pius II. was acquainted with Roman
+literature. We know that the re-awakening of classic literature
+exerted an influence upon the direction of the feeling for Nature in
+general, and, for the rest, very various elements coalesced. Like
+times produce like streams of tendency, and Hellenism, the Roman
+Empire, and the Renaissance were alike to some extent in the
+conditions of their existence and the results that flowed from them;
+the causal nexus between them is undeniable, and makes them the chief
+stepping-stones on the way to the modern.
+
+Theocritus, Meleager, Petrarch, and AEneas Sylvius may serve as
+representatives of the development of the feeling for Nature from
+classic to modern; they are the ancestors of our enthusiasm, the
+links in the chain which leads up to Rousseau, Goethe, Byron, and
+Shelley.
+
+From the autobiography of AEneas Sylvius and the lyrics of Petrarch we
+gain a far truer picture of the feeling of the period up to the
+sixteenth century than from any poetry in other countries. Even the
+epic had a more modern tone in Italy; Ariosto's descriptions were far
+ahead of any German epic.
+
+Humboldt pointed out very clearly the difference between the epic of
+the people and the epic of art--between Homer and Ariosto. Both, he
+said, are true painters of the world and Nature; but Ariosto pleases
+more by his brilliance and wealth of colour, Homer by purity of form
+and beauty of composition. Ariosto achieves through general effect,
+Homer through perfection of form. Nature is more naive in Homer, the
+subject is paramount, and the singer disappears; in Ariosto, Nature
+is sentimental, and the poet always remains in view upon the stage.
+In Homer all is closely knit, while Ariosto's threads are loosely
+spun, and he breaks them himself in play. Homer almost never
+describes, Ariosto always does.
+
+Ariosto's scenes and comparisons from Nature, being calculated for
+effect, are more subjective, and far more highly-coloured than
+Homer's. But they shew a sympathetic grasp.
+
+The modern bloom, so difficult to define, lies over them--something
+at once sensuous, sentimental, and chivalrous. He is given to
+describing lonely woodland scenery, fit places for trysts and lovers'
+rendezvous.
+
+In the 1st Canto of _Mad Orlando_:
+
+  With flowery thorns, vermilion roses near
+  Her, she upon a lovely bush doth meet,
+  That mirrored doth in the bright waves appear,
+  Shut out by lofty oaks from the sun's heat.
+
+  Amidst the thickest shades there is a clear
+  Space in the middle for a cool retreat;
+  So mixed the leaves and boughs are, through them none
+  Can see; they are impervious to the sun.
+
+In the 6th Canto the Hippogriff carries Roger into a country:
+
+  Nor could he, had he searched the whole world through,
+  Than this a more delightful country see....
+  Soft meads, clear streams, and banks affording shade,
+  Hillocks and plains, by culture fertile made.
+  Fair thickets of the cedar, palm and no
+  Less pleasant myrtle, of the laurel sweet,
+  Of orange trees, where fruit and flow'rs did grow,
+  And which in various forms, all lovely, meet
+  With their thick shades against the fervid glow
+  Of summer days, afforded a retreat;
+  And nightingales, devoid of fear, among
+  Those branches fluttered, pouring forth their song.
+  Amid the lilies white and roses red,
+  Ever more freshened by the tepid air,
+  The stag was seen, with his proud lofty head,
+  And feeling safe, the rabbit and the hare....
+  Sapphires and rubies, topazes, pearls, gold,
+  Hyacinths, chrysolites, and diamonds were
+  Like the night flow'rs, which did their leaves unfold
+  There on those glad plains, painted by the air
+  So green the grass, that if we did behold
+  It here, no emeralds could therewith compare;
+  As fair the foliage of the trees was, which
+  With fruit and flow'r eternally were rich.
+  Amid the boughs, sing yellow, white, and blue,
+  And red and green small feathered creatures gay;
+  The crystals less limpidity of hue
+  Than the still lakes or murmuring brooks display.
+  A gentle breeze, that seemeth still to woo
+  And never change from its accustomed way,
+  Made all around so tremulous the air
+  That no annoyance was the day's hot glare.
+          (Canto 34.)
+
+Descriptions of time are short:
+
+  From the hard face of earth the sun's bright hue
+  Not yet its veil obscure and dark did rend;
+  The Lycaonian offspring scarcely through
+  The furrows of the sky his plough did send.
+          (Canto 80.)
+
+Comparisons, especially about the beauty of women, are very artistic,
+recalling Sappho and Catullus:
+
+  The tender maid is like unto the rose
+  In the fair garden on its native thorn;
+  Whilst it alone and safely doth repose,
+  Nor flock nor shepherd crops it; dewy morn,
+  Water and earth, the breeze that sweetly blows,
+  Are gracious to it; lovely dames adorn
+  With it their bosoms and their beautiful
+  Brows; it enamoured youths delight to cull.
+          (Canto 1.)
+
+  Only, Alcina fairest was by far
+  As is the sun more fair than every star....
+  Milk is the bosom, of luxuriant size,
+  And the fair neck is round and snowy white;
+  Two unripe ivory apples fall and rise
+  Like waves upon the sea-beach when a slight
+  Breeze stirs the ocean.        (Canto 7.)
+
+  Now in a gulf of bliss up to the eyes
+  And of fair things, to swim he doth begin.
+          (Canto 7.)
+
+  So closely doth the ivy not enlace
+  The tree where firmly rooted it doth stand,
+  As clasp each other in their warm embrace
+  These lovers, by each other's sweet breath fanned.
+  Sweet flower, of which on India's shore no trace
+  Is, or on the Sabaean odorous sand.
+          (Canto 7.)
+
+  Her fair face the appearance did maintain
+  That sometimes shewn is by the sky in spring,
+  When at the very time that falls the rain,
+  The sun aside his cloudy veil doth fling.
+  And as the nightingale its pleasant strain
+  Then on the boughs of the green trees doth sing,
+  Thus Love doth bathe his pinions at those bright
+  But tearful eyes, enjoying the clear light.
+          (Canto 11.)
+
+  But as more fickle than the leaf was she,
+  When it in autumn doth more sapless grow,
+  And the old wind doth strip it from the tree,
+  And doth before it in its fury grow.
+                                         (Canto 21.)
+
+He uses the sea:
+
+  As when a bark doth the deep ocean plough,
+  That two winds strike with an alternate blast,
+  'Tis now sent forward by the one, and now
+  Back by the other in its first place cast,
+  And whirled from prow to poop, from poop to prow,
+  But urged by the most potent wind at last
+  Philander thus irresolute between
+  The two thoughts, did to the least wicked lean.
+                                          (Canto 21.)
+
+  As comes the wave upon the salt sea shore
+  Which the smooth wind at first in thought hath fanned;
+  Greater the second is than that before
+  It, and the third more fiercely follows, and
+  Each time the humour more abounds, and more
+  Doth it extend its scourge upon the land:
+  Against Orlando thus from vales below
+  And hills above, doth the vile rabble grow.
+                                            (Canto 24.)
+
+These comparisons not only shew faithful and personal observation,
+but are far more subjective and subtle than, for instance, Dante's.
+The same holds good of Tasso. How beautiful in detail, and how
+sentimental too, is this from _Jerusalem Delivered_:
+
+  Behold how lovely blooms the vernal rose
+  When scarce the leaves her early bud disclose,
+  When, half unwrapt, and half to view revealed,
+  She gives new pleasure from her charms concealed.
+  But when she shews her bosom wide displayed,
+  How soon her sweets exhale, her beauties fade!
+  No more she seems the flower so lately loved,
+  By virgins cherished and by youths approved.
+  So swiftly fleeting with the transient day
+  Passes the flower of mortal life away.
+
+Not less subjective is:
+
+                   Like a ray of light on water
+  A smile of soft desire played in her liquid eyes.
+                                           (Sonnet 18.)
+
+The most famous lines in this poem are those which describe a
+romantic garden so vividly that Humboldt says 'it reminds one of the
+charming scenery of Sorrento.' It certainly proves that even epic
+poetry tried to describe Nature for her own sake:
+
+  The garden then unfolds a beauteous scene,
+  With flowers adorned and ever living green;
+  There silver lakes reflect the beaming day,
+  Here crystal streams in gurgling fountains play.
+  Cool vales descend and sunny hills arise,
+  And groves and caves and grottos strike the eyes.
+  Art showed her utmost power; but art concealed
+  With greater charm the pleased attention held.
+  It seemed as Nature played a sportive part
+  And strove to mock the mimic works of art:
+  By powerful magic breathes the vernal air,
+  And fragrant trees eternal blossoms bear:
+  Eternal fruits on every branch endure,
+  Those swelling from their buds, and these mature:
+  The joyous birds, concealed in every grove,
+  With gentle strife prolong the notes of love.
+  Soft zephyrs breathe on woods and waters round,
+  The woods and waters yield a murmuring sound;
+  When cease the tuneful choir, the wind replies,
+  But, when they sing, in gentle whisper dies;
+  By turns they sink, by turns their music raise
+  And blend, with equal skill, harmonious lays.
+
+But even here the scene is surrounded by an imaginary atmosphere;
+flowers, fruit, creatures, and atmosphere all lie under a magic
+charm. Tasso's importance for our subject lies far more in his
+much-imitated pastorals.
+
+The _Arcadia_ of Jacopo Sannazaro, which appeared in 1504, a work of
+poetic beauty and still greater literary importance,[11] paved the
+way for pastoral poetry, which, like the sonnet, was interwoven with
+prose. The shepherd's occupations are described with care, though
+many of the songs and terms of expression rather fit the man of
+culture than the child of Nature, and he had that genuine enthusiasm
+for the rural which begets a convincing eloquence. ''Tis you,' he
+says at the end, addressing the Muse, 'who first woke the sleeping
+woods, and taught the shepherds how to strike up their lost songs.'
+
+Bembo wrote this inscription for his grave:
+
+  Strew flowers o'er the sacred ashes, here lies Sannazaro;
+  With thee, gentle Virgil, he shares Muse and grave.
+
+Virgil too was industriously imitated in the didactic poetry of his
+country.
+
+Giovanni Rucellai (born 1475) wrote a didactic poem, _The Bees_,
+which begins:
+
+'O chaste virgins, winged visitants of flowery banks, whilst I
+prepared to sing your praise in lofty verse, at peep of day I was
+o'ercome by sleep, and then appeared a chorus of your tiny folk, and
+from their rich mellifluous haunts, in a clear voice these words
+flowed forth.... And I will sing how liquid and serene the air
+distils sweet honey, heavenly gilt, on flowerets and on grass, and
+how the bees, chaste and industrious, gather it, and thereof with
+care and skill make perfumed wax to grace the altars of our God.'
+
+And a didactic poem by Luigi Alamanni (born 1495), called
+_Husbandry_, has: 'O blessed is he who dwells in peace, the actual
+tiller of his joyous fields, to whom, in his remoteness, the most
+righteous earth brings food, and secure in well-being, he rejoices in
+his heart. If thou art not surrounded by society rich with purple and
+gems, nor with houses adorned with costly woods, statues, and
+gold;... at least, secure in the humble dwelling of wood from the
+copse hard by, and common stones collected close at hand, which thine
+own hand has founded and built, whenever thou awakenest at the
+approach of dawn, thou dost not find outside those who bring news of
+a thousand events contrary to thy desires.... Thou wanderest at will,
+now quickly, now slowly, across the green meadow, through the wood,
+over the grassy hill, or by the stream. Now here, now there ... thou
+handlest the hatchet, axe, scythe, or hoe.... To enjoy in sober
+comfort at almost all seasons, with thy dear children, the fruits of
+thine own tree, the tree planted by thyself, this brings a sweetness
+sweet beyond all others.'
+
+These didactic writings, inspired by Virgilian Georgics, show a
+distinct preference for the idyllic.
+
+Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ went through sixty editions in the sixteenth
+century alone. Tasso reckoned with the prevalent taste of his day in
+_Aminta_, which improved the then method of dramatizing a romantic
+idyll. The whole poem bears the stamp of an idealizing and romantic
+imagination, and embodies in lyric form his sentimental idea of the
+Golden Age and an ideal world of Nature. Even down to its details
+_Aminta_ recalls the pastorals of Longos; and Daphne's words (Act I.
+Scene 1) suggest the most feeling outpourings of Kallimachos and
+Nonnos:
+
+  And callest thou sweet spring-time
+  The time of rage and enmity,
+  Which breathing now and smiling,
+  Reminds the whole creation,
+  The animal, the human,
+  Of loving! Dost thou see not
+  How all things are enamoured
+  Of this enamourer, rich with joy and health?
+  Observe that turtle-dove,
+  How, toying with his dulcet murmuring,
+  He kisses his companion. Hear that nightingale
+  Who goes from bough to bough
+  Singing with his loud heart, 'I love!' 'I love!'...
+
+                             The very trees
+  Are loving. See with what affection there,
+  And in how many a clinging turn and twine,
+  The vine holds fast its husband. Fir loves fir,
+  The pine the pine, and ash and willow and beech
+  Each towards the other yearns, and sighs and trembles.
+  That oak tree which appears
+  So rustic and so rough,
+  Even that has something warm in its sound heart;
+  And hadst thou but a spirit and sense of love,
+  Thou hadst found out a meaning for its whispers.
+  Now tell me, would thou be
+  Less than the very plants and have no love?
+
+One seems to hear Sakuntala and her friends talking, or Akontios
+complaining. So, too, when the unhappy lover laments (Aminta):
+
+  In my lamentings I have found
+  A very pity in the pebbly waters,
+  And I have found the trees
+  Return them a kind voice:
+  But never have I found,
+  Nor ever hope to find,
+  Compassion in this hard and beautiful
+  What shall I call her?
+
+Aminta describes to Tirsis how his love grew from boyhood up:
+
+  There grew by little and little in my heart,
+  I knew not from what root,
+  But just as the grass grows that sows itself,
+  An unknown something which continually
+  Made me feel anxious to be with her.
+
+Sylvia kisses him:
+
+  Never did bee from flower
+  Suck sugar so divine
+  As was the honey that I gathered then
+  From those twin roses fresh.
+
+In Act II. Scene 1, the rejected Satyr, like the rejected Polyphemus
+or Amaryllis in Theocritus, complains in antitheses which recall
+Longos:
+
+    The woods hide serpents, lions, and bears under their green
+    shade, and in your bosom hatred, disdain, and cruelty dwell....
+    Alas, when I bring the earliest flowers, you refuse them
+    obstinately, perhaps because lovelier ones bloom on your own
+    face; if I offer beautiful apples, you reject them angrily,
+    perhaps because your beautiful bosom swells with lovelier
+    ones.... and yet I am not to be despised, for I saw myself lately
+    in the clear water, when winds were still and there were no
+    waves.
+
+This is the sentimental pastoral poetry of Hellenism reborn and
+intensified.
+
+So with the elegiac motive so loved by Alexandrian and Roman poets,
+praise of a happy past time; the chorus sings in _Aminta_:
+
+  O lovely age of gold,
+  Not that the rivers rolled
+  With milk, or that the woods wept honeydew;
+  Not that the ready ground
+  Produced without a wound,
+  Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew....
+  But solely that.... the law of gold,
+  That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,
+  Which Nature's own hand wrote--What pleases is permitted!...
+  Go! let us love, the daylight dies, is born;
+  But unto us the light
+  Dies once for all, and sleep brings on eternal night.
+
+Over thirty pastoral plays can be ascribed to Italy in the last third
+of the sixteenth century. The most successful imitator of Tasso was
+Giovanni Battista Guarini (born 1537) in _The True Shepherd (II
+Pastor Fido)_. One quotation will shew how he outvied _Aminta_. In
+Act I, Scene 1, Linko says:
+
+  Look round thee, Sylvia; behold
+  All in the world that's amiable and fair
+  Is love's sweet work: heaven loves, the earth, the sea,
+  Are full of love and own his mighty sway.
+  Love through the woods
+  The fiercest beasts; love through the waves attends
+  Swift gliding dolphins and the sluggish whales.
+  That little bird which sings....
+  Oh, had he human sense,
+  'I burn with love,' he'd cry, 'I burn with love,'
+  And in his heart he truly burns,
+  And in his warble speaks
+  A language, well by his dear mate conceived,
+  Who answering cries, 'And I too burn with love.'
+
+He praises woodland solitude:
+
+  Dear happy groves!
+  And them all silent, solitary gloom,
+  True residence of peace and of repose!
+  How willingly, how willingly my steps
+  To you return, and oh! if but my stars
+  Benightly had decreed
+  My life for solitude, and as my wish
+  Would naturally prompt to pass my days--
+  No, not the Elysian fields,
+  Those happy gardens of the demi-gods,
+  Would I exchange for yon enchanting shades.
+
+The love lyrics of the later Renaissance are remarkably rich in vivid
+pictures of Nature combined with much personal sentiment. Petrarch's
+are the model; he inspired Vittoria Colonna, and she too revelled in
+sad feelings and memories, especially about the death of her
+husband:[12]
+
+'When I see the earth adorned and beautiful with a thousand lovely
+and sweet flowers, and how in the heavens every star is resplendent
+with varied colours; when I see that every solitary and lively
+creature is moved by natural instinct to come out of the forests and
+ancient caverns to seek its fellow by day and by night; and when I
+see the plains adorned again with glorious flowers and new leaves,
+and hear every babbling brook with grateful murmurs bathing its
+flowery banks, so that Nature, in love with herself, delights to gaze
+on the beauty of her works, I say to myself, reflecting: "How brief
+is this our miserable mortal life!" Yesterday this plain was covered
+with snow, to-day it is green and flowery. And again in a moment the
+beauty of the heavens is overclouded by a fierce wind, and the happy
+loving creatures remain hidden amidst the mountains and the woods;
+nor can the sweet songs of the tender plants and happy birds be
+heard, for these cruel storms have dried up the flowers on the
+ground; the birds are mute, the most rapid streams and smallest
+rivulets are checked by frost, and what was one hour so beautiful and
+joyous, is, for a season, miserable and dead.'
+
+Here the two pictures in the inner and outer life are equally vivid
+to the poetess; it is the real 'pleasure of sorrow,' and she lingers
+over them with delight.
+
+Bojardo, too, reminds us of Petrarch; for example, in Sonnet 89:[13]
+
+  Thou shady wood, inured my griefs to hear,
+  So oft expressed in quick and broken sighs;
+  Thou glorious sun, unused to set or rise
+  But as the witness of my daily fear;
+
+  Ye wandering birds, ye flocks and ranging deer,
+  Exempt from my consuming agonies;
+  Thou sunny stream to whom my sorrow flies
+  'Mid savage rocks and wilds, no human traces near.
+
+  O witnesses eternal, how I live!
+  My sufferings hear, and win to their relief
+  That scornful beauty--tell her how I grieve!
+
+  But little 'tis to her to hear my grief.
+  To her, who sees the pangs which I receive,
+  And seeing, deigns them not the least relief.
+
+Lorenzo de Medici's idylls were particularly rich in descriptions of
+Nature and full of feeling. 'Here too that delight in pain, in
+telling of their unhappiness and renunciation; here too those
+wonderful tones which distinguish the sonnets of the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries so favourably from those of a later time.'
+(Geiger.)
+
+There is a delicate compliment in this sonnet:
+
+  O violets, sweet and fresh and pure indeed,
+  Culled by that hand beyond all others fair!
+  What rain or what pure air has striven to bear
+  Flowers far excelling those 'tis wont to yield?
+  What pearly dew, what sun, or sooth what earth
+  Did you with all these subtle charms adorn;
+  And whence is this sweet scent by Nature drawn,
+  Or heaven who deigns to grant it to such worth?
+  O, my dear violets, the hand which chose
+  You from all others, that has made you fair,
+  'Twas that adorned you with such charm and worth;
+  Sweet hand! which took my heart altho' it knows
+  Its lowliness, with that you may compare.
+  To that give thanks, and to none else on earth.
+
+Thus we see that the Italians of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
+fifteenth centuries were penetrated through and through by the modern
+spirit--were, indeed, its pioneers. They recognized their own
+individuality, pondered their own inner life, delighted in the charms
+of Nature, and described them in prose and poetry, both as
+counterparts to feeling and for her own sake.
+
+Over all the literature we have been considering--whether poetic
+comparison and personification, or sentimental descriptions of
+pastoral life and a golden age, of blended inner and outer life, or
+of the finest details of scenery--there lies that bloom of the
+modern, that breath of subjective personality, so hard to define. The
+rest of contemporary Europe had no such culture of heart and mind, no
+such marked individuality, to shew.
+
+The further growth of the Renaissance feeling, itself a rebirth of
+Hellenic and Roman feeling, was long delayed.
+
+Let us turn next to Spain and Portugal--the countries chiefly
+affected by the great voyages of discovery, not only socially and
+economically, but artistically--and see the effect of the new scenery
+upon their imagination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ENTHUSIASM FOR NATURE AMONG THE DISCOVERERS
+AND CATHOLIC MYSTICS
+
+
+The great achievement of the Italian Renaissance was the discovery of
+the world within, of the whole deep contents of the human spirit.
+Burckhart, praising this achievement, says:
+
+    If we were to collect the pearls from the courtly and knightly
+    poetry of all the countries of the West during the two preceding
+    centuries, we should have a mass of wonderful divinations and
+    single pictures of the inward life, which at first sight would
+    seem to rival the poetry of the Italians. Leaving lyrical poetry
+    out of account, Godfrey of Strassburg gives us, in his _Tristram
+    and Isolt_, a representation of human passion, some features of
+    which are immortal. But these pearls lie scattered in the ocean
+    of artificial convention, and they are altogether something very
+    different from a complete objective picture of the inward man and
+    his spiritual wealth.
+
+The discovery of the beauty of scenery followed as a necessary
+corollary of this awakening of individualism, this fathoming of the
+depths of human personality. For only to fully-developed man does
+Nature fully disclose herself.
+
+This had already been stated by one of the most philosophic minds of
+the time, Pico della Mirandola, in his speech on the dignity of man.
+God, he tells us, made man at the close of creation to know the laws
+of the universe, to love its beauty, to admire its greatness. He
+bound him to no fixed place, to no prescribed form of work, and by no
+iron necessity; but gave him freedom to will and to move.
+
+'I have set thee,' said the Creator to Adam, 'in the midst of the
+world, that thou mayest the more easily behold and see all that is
+therein. I created thee a being neither heavenly nor earthly, neither
+mortal nor immortal, only that thou mightest be free to shape and to
+overcome thyself. Thou mayest sink into a beast, and be born again to
+the Divine likeness. The brutes bring with them from their mothers'
+body what they will carry with them as long as they live; the higher
+spirits are from the beginning, or soon after, what they will be for
+ever. To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on
+thine own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal
+life.'
+
+The best men of the Renaissance realized this ideal of an all-round
+development, and it was the glory of Italy in the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries, that she found a new realm in the inner man at
+the very time that her discoveries across the seas were enlarging the
+boundaries of the external world, and her science was studying it.
+Mixed as the motives of the discoverers must have been, like those of
+the crusaders before them, and probably, for the most part,
+self-interested, it is easy to imagine the surprise they must have
+felt at seeing ignorant people, who, to quote Peter Martyr (de rebus
+oceanicis):[1]
+
+    Naked, without weights or measures or death-dealing money, live
+    in a Golden Age without laws, without slanderous judges, without
+    the scales of the balance. Contented with Nature, they spend
+    their lives utterly untroubled for the future.... Theirs is a
+    Golden Age; they do not enclose their farms with trench or wall
+    or hurdle; their gardens are open. Without laws, without the
+    scales of the balance, without judges, they guard the right by
+    Nature's light.
+
+And their wonder at the novelties in climate and vegetation, the
+strange forests, brilliant birds, and splendid stars of the tropics,
+must have been no less.
+
+Yet it is one thing to feel, and another to find words to convey the
+feeling to others; and the explorers often expressed regret for their
+lack of skill in this respect.
+
+Also, and this is more important in criticizing what they wrote,
+these seamen were mostly simple, unlettered folk, to whom a country's
+wealth in natural products and their practical value made the
+strongest appeal, and whose admiration of bays, harbours, trees,
+fields of grain, etc., was measured by the same standard of utility.
+Even such unskilled reporters did not entirely fail to refer to the
+beauty of Nature; but had it not been for the original and powerful
+mind of Christopher Columbus, we should have had little more in the
+way of description than 'pleasant,' 'pretty,' and such words.
+
+Marco Polo described his journey to the coast of Cormos[2] in very
+matter-of-fact fashion, but not without a touch of satisfaction at
+the peculiarities of the place:
+
+    You then approach the very beautiful plain of Formosa, watered by
+    fine rivers, with plantations of the date palms, and having the
+    air filled with francolins, parrots, and other birds unknown to
+    our climate. You ride two days to it, and then arrive at the
+    ocean, on which there is a city and a fort named Cormos. The
+    ships of India bring thither all kinds of spiceries, precious
+    stones, and pearls, cloths of silk and gold, elephants' teeth,
+    and many other articles.... They sow wheat, barley, and other
+    kinds of grain in the month of November, and reap them in March,
+    when they become ripe and perfect; but none except the date will
+    endure till May, being dried up by the extreme heat.
+
+Elsewhere he wrote of scenery in the same strain: of the Persian
+deserts, and the green table-lands and wild gorges of Badachshan,
+Japan with its golden roofed palaces, paradisaical Sunda Islands with
+their 'abundance of treasure and costly spices,' Java the less with
+its eight kingdoms, etc.; but naturally his chief interest was given
+to the manners and customs of the various races, and the fertility
+and uses of their countries.
+
+In Bishop Osorio's _History of Emmanuel, King of Portugal_, we see
+some pleasure in the beauties of Nature peeping through the
+matter-of-fact tone of the day.
+
+Thus, speaking of the companions of Vasco da Gama, he says that they
+admired the far coast of Africa:
+
+    They descried some little islands, which appeared extremely
+    pleasant; the trees were lofty, the meadows of a beautiful
+    verdure, and great numbers of cattle frisked about everywhere;
+    they could see the inhabitants walking upon the shore in vast
+    numbers....
+
+Of Mozambique he says:
+
+    The palm trees are of a great height, covered with long prickly
+    leaves; broad-spreading boughs afford an agreeable shade, and
+    bear nuts of a great size, called cocoes.
+
+Of Melinda:
+
+    The city stands in a beautiful plain, surrounded with a variety
+    of fine gardens; these are stocked with all sorts of trees,
+    especially the orange, the flowers of which yield a most graceful
+    diffusive smell. The country is rich and plentiful, abounding not
+    only with tame and domestic cattle, but with game of all kinds,
+    which the natives hunt down or take with nets.
+
+Of Zanzibar:
+
+    The soil of this place is rich and fertile, and it abounds with
+    springs of the most excellent water; the whole island is covered
+    with beautiful woods, which are extremely fragrant from the many
+    wild citrons growing there, which diffuse the most grateful
+    scent.
+
+Of Brazil, which is 'extremely pleasant and the soil fruitful':
+
+    Clothed with a beautiful verdure, covered with tall trees,
+    abounding with plenty of excellent water ... and so healthy that
+    the inhabitants make no use of medicines, for almost all who die
+    here are not cut off by any distemper, but worn out by age. Here
+    are many large rivers, besides a vast number of delightful
+    springs. The plains are large and spacious, and afford excellent
+    pasture.... In short, the whole country affords a most beautiful
+    prospect, being diversified with hills and valleys, and these
+    covered with thick shady woods stocked with great variety of
+    trees, many of which our people were quite strangers to: of these
+    there was one of a particular nature, the leaves of which, when
+    cut, sent forth a kind of balsam. The trees used in dyeing
+    scarlet grow here in great plenty and to a great height. The soil
+    likewise produces the most useful plants.
+
+Of Ormuz, near Arabia:
+
+    The name of the island seems to be taken from the ancient city of
+    Armuza in Caramania ... the place is sandy and barren, and the
+    soil so very poor that it produces nothing fit for human
+    sustenance, neither by nature nor by the most laborious
+    cultivation ... yet here you might see greater plenty of these,
+    as well as all luxurious superfluities, than in most other
+    countries of a richer and more fertile soil, for the place, poor
+    in itself, having become the great mart for the commodities of
+    India, Persia, and Arabia, was thus abundantly stocked with the
+    produce of all these countries.
+
+Peter Martyr's[3] point of view was much the same. He was full of
+surprise at the splendour round him, and the advantages such
+fertility offered to husbandry:
+
+    Thus after a few days with cheerful hearts they espied the land
+    long looked for....
+
+    As they coasted along by the shore of certain of these islands,
+    they heard nightingales sing in the thick woods in the month of
+    November.
+
+    They found also great rivers of fresh water and natural havens of
+    capacity to harbour great navies of ships.... They found there
+    wild geese, turtle-doves, and ducks, much greater than ours, and
+    as white as swans, with heads of purple colour. Also popinjays,
+    of the which some are green, some yellow, and having their
+    feathers intermingled with green, yellow, and purple, which
+    varieties delighted the sense not a little.... They entered into
+    a main large sea, having in it innumerable islands, marvellously
+    differing one from another; for some of them were very fruitful,
+    full of herbs and trees, other some very dry, barren, and rough,
+    with high rocky mountains of stone, whereof some were of bright
+    blue, or azurine colour, and other glistening white.
+
+He filled a whole page with descriptions of the wonderful wealth of
+flowers, fruit, and vegetables of all kinds, which the ground yields
+even in February. The richness of the prairie grass, the charm of the
+rivers, the wealth of fruit, the enormous size of the trees (with a
+view to native houses), the various kinds of pines, palms, and
+chestnuts, and their uses, the immense downfall of water carried to
+the sea by the rivers--all this he noted with admiration; but
+industrial interest outweighed the aesthetic, even when he called
+Spain happier than Italy. There is no trace of any real feeling for
+scenery, any grasp of landscape as a whole; he did not advance beyond
+scattered details, which attracted his eye chiefly for their material
+uses.
+
+But there is real delight in Nature in the account of a journey to
+the Cape Verde Islands, undertaken on the suggestion of Henry the
+Navigator by Aloise da Mosto,[4] an intelligent Venetian nobleman:
+
+    Cape de Verde is so called because the Portuguese, who had
+    discovered it about a year before, found it covered with trees,
+    which continue green all the year round. This is a high and
+    beautiful Cape, which runs a good length into the sea, and has
+    two hills or little mountains at the point thereof. There are
+    several villages of negroes from Senega, on and about the
+    promontory, who dwell in thatched houses close to the shore, and
+    in sight of those who sail by.... The coast is all low and full
+    of fine large trees, which are constantly green; that is, they
+    never wither as those in Europe do, for the new leaves grow
+    before the old ones fall off. These trees are so near the shore
+    that they seem to drink out of the sea. It is a most beautiful
+    coast to behold, and the author, who had sailed both in the East
+    and West, never saw any comparable with it.
+
+As Ruge says:
+
+    The delight of this solid and prudent citizen of Strasburg in the
+    beauty of the tropics is lost in translation, but very evident in
+    the original account.[5]
+
+After reading it, we cannot quite say with Humboldt that Columbus was
+the very first to give fluent expression to Nature's beauty on the
+shores of the New World; none the less, and apart from his importance
+in other respects, he remains the chief representative of his time in
+the matter. Humboldt noted this in his critical examination of the
+history of geography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in
+which he pointed out his deep feeling for Nature, and also, what only
+those who know the difficulties of language at the time can
+appreciate, the beauty and simplicity of his expression of it.[6]
+
+Columbus is a striking example of the fact that a man's openness to
+Nature increases with his general inner growth. No one doubts that
+uneducated sailors, like other unlettered people, are vividly
+impressed by fine scenery, especially when it is new to them, if they
+possess a spark of mental refinement. They have the feeling, but are
+unable to express it in words. But, as Humboldt says, feeling
+improves speech; with increased culture, the power of expression
+increases.
+
+We owe a debt of gratitude to Fernandez de Navarrete[7] for the Diary
+in which we can trace Columbus' love for Nature increasing to 'a deep
+and poetic feeling for the majesty of creation.'
+
+He wrote, October 8th, 1492, in his diary:
+
+    'Thanks be to God,' says the Admiral, 'the air is very soft like
+    the April at Seville, and it is a pleasure to be there, so balmy
+    are the breezes.'
+
+And Humboldt says:
+
+    The physiognomy and forms of the vegetation, the impenetrable
+    thickets of the forests, in which one can scarcely distinguish
+    the stems to which the several blossoms and leaves belong, the
+    wild luxuriance of the flowering soil along the humid shores, and
+    the rose-coloured flamingoes which, fishing at early morning at
+    the mouth of the rivers, impart animation to the scenery,--all in
+    turn arrested the attention of the old mariner as he sailed along
+    the shores of Cuba, between the small Lucayan Islands and the
+    Jardinillos.
+
+Each new country seemed to him more beautiful than the last; he
+complained that he could not find new words in which to give the
+Queen an impression of the beauty of the Cuban coast.
+
+It will repay us to examine the Diary more closely, since Humboldt
+only treated it shortly and in scattered extracts, and it has been
+partly falsified, unintentionally, by attempts to modernize the
+language instead of adhering to literal translation. What Peschel
+says, for instance, is pretty but distinctly exaggerated:
+
+    Columbus was never weary of listening to the nightingales,
+    comparing the genial Indian climate with the Andalusian spring,
+    and admiring the luxuriant wilderness on these humid shores, with
+    their dense vegetation and forests so rich in all kinds of
+    plants, and alive with swarms of parrots ... with an open eye for
+    all the beauties of Nature and all the wonders of creation, he
+    looked at the splendour of the tropics very much as a tender
+    father looks into the bright eyes of his child.[8]
+
+The Diary of November 3rd says:
+
+    He could see nothing, owing to the dense foliage of the trees,
+    which were very fresh and odoriferous; so that he felt no doubt
+    that there were aromatic herbs among them. He said that all he
+    saw was so beautiful that his eyes could never tire of gazing
+    upon such loveliness, nor his ears of listening to the songs of
+    birds.
+
+November 14th:
+
+    He saw so many islands that he could not count them all, with
+    very high land covered with trees of many kinds and an infinite
+    number of palms. He was much astonished to see so many lofty
+    islands, and assured the Sovereigns that the mountains and
+    islands he had seen since yesterday seemed to him to be second to
+    none in the world, so high and clear of clouds and snow, with the
+    sea at their bases so deep.
+
+November 25th:
+
+    He saw a large stream of beautiful water falling from the
+    mountains above, with a loud noise.... Just then the sailor boys
+    called out that they had found large pines. The Admiral looked up
+    the hill and saw that they were so wonderfully large, that he
+    could not exaggerate their height and straightness, like stout
+    yet fine spindles. He perceived that here there was material for
+    great store of planks and masts for the largest ships in Spain
+    ... the mountains are very high, whence descend many limpid
+    streams, and all the hills are covered with pines, and an
+    infinity of diverse and beautiful trees.
+
+November 27th:
+
+    The freshness and beauty of the trees, the clearness of the water
+    and the birds, made it all so delightful that he wished never to
+    leave them. He said to the men who were with him that to give a
+    true relation to the Sovereigns of the things they had seen, a
+    thousand tongues would not suffice, nor his hand to write it, for
+    that it was like a scene of enchantment.
+
+December 13th:
+
+    The nine men well armed, whom he sent to explore a certain place,
+    said, with regard to the beauty of the land they saw, that the
+    best land in Castille could not be compared with it. The Admiral
+    also said that there was no comparison between them, nor did the
+    Plain of Cordova come near them, the difference being as great as
+    between night and day. They said that all these lands were
+    cultivated, and that a very wide and large river passed through
+    the centre of the valley and could irrigate all the fields. All
+    the trees were green and full of fruit, and the plants tall and
+    covered with flowers. The roads were broad and good. The climate
+    was like April in Castille; the nightingale and other birds sang
+    as they do in Spain during that month, and it was the most
+    pleasant place in the world. Some birds sing sweetly at night,
+    the crickets and frogs are heard a good deal.
+
+All this shews a naive and spontaneous delight in Nature, as free
+from sentimentality as from any grasp of landscape as a distinct
+entity.
+
+In a letter about Cuba, which Humboldt gives, he says:
+
+    The lands are high, and there are many very lofty mountains ...
+    all most beautiful, of a thousand different shapes, accessible
+    and covered with trees of a thousand kinds of such great height
+    that they seemed to reach the skies. I am told that the trees
+    never lose their foliage, and I can well believe it, for I
+    observed that they were as green and luxuriant as in Spain in the
+    month of May. Some were in bloom, others bearing fruit, and
+    others otherwise according to their nature. There were palm trees
+    of six or eight kinds, wonderful in their beautiful variety; but
+    this is the case with all the other trees; fruits and grasses,
+    trees, plants and fruits filled us with admiration. It contains
+    extraordinary pine groves and very extensive plains.
+
+Humboldt here comments that these often-repeated expressions of
+admiration prove a strong feeling for the beauty of Nature, since
+they are concerned with foliage and shade, not with precious metals.
+The next letter shews the growing power of description:
+
+    Reaching the harbour of Bastimentos, I put in.... The storm and a
+    rapid current kept me in for fourteen days, when I again set
+    sail, but not with favourable weather.... I had already made four
+    leagues when the storm recommenced and wearied me to such a
+    degree that I absolutely knew not what to do; my wound re-opened,
+    and for nine days my life was despaired of. Never was the sea
+    seen so high, so terrific, and so covered with foam; not only did
+    the wind oppose our proceeding onward, but it also rendered it
+    highly dangerous to run in for any headland, and kept me in that
+    sea, which seemed to me a sea of blood, seething like a cauldron
+    on a mighty fire. Never did the sky look more fearful; during one
+    day and one night it burned like a furnace, and emitted flashes
+    in such fashion that each time I looked to see if my masts and my
+    sails were not destroyed; these flashes came with such alarming
+    fury that we all thought the ship must have been consumed. All
+    this time the waters from heaven never ceased, not to say that it
+    rained, for it was like a repetition of the Deluge. The men were
+    at this time so crushed in spirit, that they longed for death as
+    a deliverance from so many martyrdoms. Twice already had the
+    ships suffered loss in boats, anchors, and rigging, and were now
+    lying bare without sails.
+
+These extracts shew how feeling for Nature in unlettered minds could
+develop into an enthusiasm which begot to some extent its own power
+of expression. Columbus was entirely deficient in all previous
+knowledge of natural history; but he was gifted with deep feeling
+(the account of the nocturnal visions in the _Lettera Rarissima_ is
+proof of this)[9], mental energy, and a capacity for exact
+observation which many of the other explorers did not possess, and
+these faculties made up for what he lacked in education.
+
+     In Cuba alone, he distinguishes seven or eight
+     different species of palm more beautiful and taller than
+     the date tree; he informs his learned friend Anghiera
+     that he has seen pines and palms wonderfully associated
+     together in one and the same plain, and he even
+     so acutely observed the vegetation around him, that he
+     was the first to notice that there were pines in the
+     mountains of Cibao, whose fruits are not fir cones but
+     berries like the olives of the Axarafe de Sevilla.
+
+     (_Cosmos._)
+
+Most of Vespucci's narratives of travel, especially his letters to
+the Medici, only contain adventures and descriptions of manners and
+customs. He lacked the originality and enthusiasm which gave the
+power of the wing to Columbus.
+
+That imposing Portuguese poem, the _Lusiad_ of Camoens, is full of
+jubilation over the discovery of the New World. Camoens made his
+notes of foreign places at first hand; he had served as a soldier,
+fought at the foot of Atlas in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, had
+doubled the Cape twice, and, inspired by a deep love for Nature, had
+spent sixteen years in examining the phenomena of the ocean on the
+Indian and Chinese shores. He was a great sea painter. His poetic and
+inventive power remind one at times of Dante--for instance, in the
+description of the Dream Face; and he pictures foreign lands with the
+clearness and detail of the discoverers and later travellers. Here
+and there his poetry is like the Diary of Columbus translated into
+verse--epic verse.
+
+He had the same fiery spirit, nerve, and fresh insight, with the
+poet's gift added.
+
+(None the less, the classic apparatus of deities in Thetys' _Apology_
+is no adornment.)
+
+Comparisons from Nature and animals are few but detailed:
+
+  E'en as the prudent ants which towards their nest
+  Bearing the apportioned heavy burden go,
+  Exercise all their forces at their best,
+  Hostile to hostile winter's frost and snow;
+  There, all their toils and labours stand confessed,
+  There, never looked-for energy they show;
+  So, from the Lusitanians to avert
+  Their horrid Fate, the nymphs their power exert.
+
+  Thus, as in some sequestered sylvan mere
+  The frogs (the Lycian people formerly),
+  If that by chance some person should appear
+  While out of water they incautious be,
+  Awake the pool by hopping here and there,
+  To fly the danger which they deem they see,
+  And gathering to some safe retreat they know,
+  Only their heads above the water show--So fly the Moors.
+
+  E'en as when o'er the parching flame there glows
+  A flame, which may from some chance cause ignite,
+  (All while the whistling, puffing Boreas blows),
+  Fanned by the wind sets all the growth alight,
+  The shepherd's group, lying in their repose
+  Of quiet sleep, aroused in wild afright
+  At crackling flames that spread both wide and high,
+  Gather their goods and to the village fly;
+  So doth the Moor.
+
+  E'en as the daisy which once brightly smiled,
+  Plucked by unruly hands before its hour,
+  And harshly treated by the careless child,
+  All in her chaplet tied with artless power.
+  Droops, of its colour and its scent despoiled,
+  So seems this pale and lifeless damsel flower;
+  The roses of her lips are dry and dead,
+  With her sweet life the mingled white and red.
+
+The following simile reminds us of the far-fetched comparison of
+Apollonios Rhodios[11]:
+
+  As the reflected lustre from the bright
+  Steel mirror, or of beauteous crystal fine,
+  Which, being stricken by the solar light,
+  Strikes back and on some other part doth shine;
+  And when, to please the child's vain curious sight,
+  Moved o'er the house, as may his hand incline,
+  Dances on walls and roof and everywhere,
+  Restless and tremulous, now here now there,
+  So did the wandering judgment fluctuate.
+
+He says of Diana:
+
+  And, as confronted on her way she pressed,
+  So beautiful her form and bearing were,
+  That everything that saw her love confessed,
+  The stars, the heaven, and the surrounding air.
+
+The Indus and Ganges are personified in stanza xiv. 74, the Cape in
+v. 50.
+
+His time references are mostly mixed up with ancient mythology:
+
+  As soon, however, as the enamelled morn
+  O'er the calm heaven her lovely looks outspread,
+  Opening to bright Hyperion, new-born,
+  Her purple portals as he raised his head,
+  Then the whole fleet their ships with flags adorn.
+
+and:
+
+  So soon, however, as great Sol has spread
+  His rays o'er earth, whom instantly to meet,
+  Her purple brow Aurora rising shews,
+  And rudely life around the horizon throws.
+
+He is at his best in writing of the sea.
+
+He says of the explorers on first setting sail:
+
+  Now were they sailing o'er wide ocean bright,
+  The restless waves dividing as they flew;
+  The winds were breathing prosperous and light,
+  The vessels' hollow sails were filled to view;
+  The seas were covered o'er with foaming white
+  Where the advancing prows were cutting through
+  The consecrated waters of the deep....
+  Thus went we forth these unknown seas to explore,
+  Which by no people yet explored had been;
+  Seeing new isles and climes which long before
+  Great Henry, first discoverer, had seen.
+
+  Now did the moon in purest lustre rise
+  On Neptune's silvery waves her beams to pour,
+  With stars attendant glittered all the skies,
+  E'en like a meadow daisy-spangled o'er;
+  The fury of the winds all peaceful lies
+  In the dark caverns close along the shore,
+  But still the night-watch constant vigils keep,
+  As long had been their custom on the deep.
+
+  To tell thee of the dangers of the sea
+  At length, which human understanding scare,
+  Thunder-storms, sudden, dreadful in degree,
+  Lightnings, which seem to set on fire the air,
+  Dark floods of rain, nights of obscurity,
+  Rollings of thunder which the world would tear,
+  Were not less labour than a great mistake,
+  E'en if I had an iron voice to speak.
+
+He describes the electric fires of St Elmo and the gradual
+development of the waterspout:
+
+  I saw, and clearly saw, the living light
+  Which sailors everywhere as sacred hold
+  In time of storm and crossing winds that fight,
+  Of tempest dark and desperation cold;
+  Nor less it was to all a marvel quite,
+  And matter surely to alarm the bold,
+  To observe the sea-clouds, with a tube immense,
+  Suck water up from Ocean's deep expanse....
+  A fume or vapour thin and subtle rose,
+  And by the wind begin revolving there;
+  Thence to the topmost clouds a tube it throws,
+  But of a substance so exceeding rare....
+  But when it was quite gorged it then withdrew
+  The foot that on the sea beneath had grown,
+  And o'er the heavens in fine it raining flew,
+  The jacent waters watering with its own.
+
+The storm at sea reminds us of AEschylus in splendour:
+
+  The winds were such, that scarcely could they shew
+  With greater force or greater rage around,
+  Than if it were this purpose then to blow
+  The mighty tower of Babel to the ground....
+  Now rising to the clouds they seem to go
+  O'er the wild waves of Neptune borne on end;
+  Now to the bowels of the deep below;
+  It seems to all their senses, they descend;
+  Notus and Auster, Boreas, Aquila,
+  The very world's machinery would rend;
+  While flashings fire the black and ugly night
+  And shed from pole to pole a dazzling light....
+  But now the star of love beamed forth its ray,
+  Before the sun, upon the horizon clear,
+  And visited, as messenger of day,
+  The earth and spreading sea, with brow to cheer....
+
+And, as it subsides:
+
+  The mountains that we saw at first appeared,
+  In the far view, like clouds and nothing more.
+
+Off the coast of India:
+
+  Now o'er the hills broke forth the morning light
+  Where Ganges' stream is murmuring heard to flow,
+  Free from the storm and from the first sea's fight,
+  Vain terror from their hearts is banished now.
+
+His magic island, the Ilha of Venus, could only have been imagined by
+a poet who had travelled widely. All the delights of the New World
+are there, with the vegetation of Southern Europe added. It is a
+poet's triumphant rendering of impressions which the discoverers so
+often felt their inability to convey:
+
+  From far they saw the island fresh and fair,
+  Which Venus o'er the waters guiding drove
+  (E'en as the wind the canvas white doth bear)....
+  Where the coast forms a bay for resting-place,
+  Curved and all quiet, and whose shining sand
+  Is painted with red shells by Venus' hand....
+  Three beauteous mounts rise nobly to the view,
+  Lifting with graceful pride their sweeling head,
+  O'er which enamelled grass adorning grew.
+  In this delightful lovely island glad,
+  Bright limpid streams their rushing waters threw
+  From heights with rich luxuriant verdure clad,
+  'Midst the white rocks above, their source derive,
+  The streams sonorous, sweet, and fugitive....
+  A thousand trees toward heaven their summits raise,
+  With fruits odoriferous and fair;
+  The orange in its produce bright displays
+  The tint that Daphne carried in her hair;
+  The citron on the ground its branches lays,
+  Laden with yellow weights it cannot bear;
+  The beauteous melons, which the whole perfume
+  The virgin bosom in their form assume.
+  The forest trees, which on the hills combine
+  To ennoble them with leafy hair o'ergrown,
+  Are poplars of Alcides; laurels shine,
+  The which the shining God loved as his own;
+  Myrtles of Cytherea with the pine
+  Of Cybele, by other love o'erthrown;
+  The spreading cypress tree points out where lies
+  The seat of the ethereal paradise....
+  Pomegranates rubicund break forth and shine,
+  A tint whereby thou, ruby, losest sheen.
+  'Twixt the elm branches hangs the jocund vine,
+  With branches some of red and some of green....
+  Then the refined and splendid tapestry,
+  Covering the rustic ground beneath the feet,
+  Makes that of Achemeina dull to be,
+  But makes the shady valley far more sweet.
+  Cephisian flowers with head inclined we see
+  About the calm and lucid lake's retreat....
+  'Twas difficult to fancy which was true,
+  Seeing on heaven and earth all tints the same,
+  If fair Aurora gave the flowers their time,
+  Or from the lovely flowers to her it came;
+  Flora and Zephyr there in painting drew
+  The violets tinted, as of lovers' flame,
+  The iris, and the rose all fair and fresh
+  E'en as it doth on cheek of maiden blush....
+  Along the water sings the snow-white swan,
+  While from the branch respondeth Philomel....
+  Here, in its bill, to the dear nest, with care,
+  The rapid little bird the food doth bear.
+
+Subjective feeling for Nature is better displayed in the lyric than
+the epic.
+
+The Spaniard, Fray Luis de Leon, was a typical example of a
+sixteenth-century lyrist; full of mild enthusiasm for Nature, the
+theosophico-mystical attitude of the Catholic.
+
+A most fervid feeling for Nature from the religious side breathed in
+St Francis of Assisi--the feeling which inspired his hymn to Brother
+Sun (_Cantico del Sole_), and led his brother Egidio, intoxicated
+with love to his Creator, to kiss trees and rocks and weep over
+them[12]:
+
+  Praised by His creatures all,
+  Praised be the Lord my God
+  By Messer Sun, my brother above all,
+  Who by his rays lights us and lights the day--
+  Radiant is she, with his great splendour stored,
+  Thy glory, Lord, confessing.
+  By Sister Moon and Stars my Lord is praised,
+  Where clear and fair they in the heavens are raised
+  By Brother Wind, etc....
+
+His follower, Bonaventura, too, in his verses counted--
+
+    The smallest creatures his brothers and sisters, and called upon
+    crops, vineyards, trees, flowers, and stars to praise God.
+
+Bernard von Clairvaux made it a principle 'to learn from the earth,
+trees, corn, flowers, and grass'; and he wrote in his letter to
+Heinrich Murdach (Letter 106):
+
+    Believe me, I have proved it; you will find more in the woods
+    than in books; trees and stones will teach you what no other
+    teacher can.
+
+He looked upon all natural objects as 'rays of the Godhead,' copies
+of a great original.
+
+His contemporary, Hugo von St Victor, wrote:
+
+    The whole visible world is like a book written by the finger of
+    God. It is created by divine power, and all human beings are
+    figures placed in it, not to shew the free-will of man, but as a
+    revelation and visible sign, by divine will, of God's invisible
+    wisdom. But as one who only glances at an open book sees marks on
+    it, but does not read the letters, so the wicked and sensual man,
+    in whom the spirit of God is not, sees only the outer surface of
+    visible beings and not their deeper parts.
+
+German mystics wrote in the same strain; for instance, the popular
+Franciscan preacher, Berthold von Regensburg (1272),
+
+    Whose sermons on fields and meadows drew many thousands of
+    hearers, and moved them partly by the unusual freshness and
+    vitality of his pious feeling for Nature,
+
+in spite of many florid symbolical accessories, such as we find again
+in Ekkehart and other fifteenth-century mystics, and especially in
+Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek.
+
+The northern prophetess and foundress of an Order Birgitta (1373)
+held that the breath of the Creator was in all visible things: 'We
+feel it pervading us in her visions,' says Hammerich,[13]
+
+    Whether by gurgling brook or snow-covered firs. It is with us
+    when the prophetess leads us along the ridges of the Swedish
+    coast with their surging waves or down the shaft of a mine, or to
+    wander in the quiet of evening through vineyards between roses
+    and lilies, while the dew is falling and the bells ring out the
+    Ave Maria.
+
+Vincentius von Beauvais (1264) in his _Speculum Naturae_ demonstrates
+the value of studying Nature from a religious and moral point of
+view; and the Carthusian general, Dionysius von Rickel (1471), in his
+paper _On the beauty of the world and the glory of God (De venustate
+mundi et de pulchritudine Dei)_ says in Chapter xxii.: 'All the
+beauty of the animal world is nothing but the reflection and out-flow
+of the original beauty of God,' and gives as special examples:
+
+     Roses, lilies, and other beautiful and fragrant
+     flowers, shady woods, pine trees, pleasant meadows,
+     high, mountains, springs, streams and rivers, and the
+     broad arm of the immeasurable sea ... and above
+     all shine the stars, completing their course in the
+     clear sky in wonderful splendour and majestic order.
+
+Raymundus von Sabieude, a Spaniard, who studied medicine and
+philosophy at Toulouse, and wrote his _Theologia Naturalis_ in 1436,
+considered Nature, like Thomas Aquinas, from a mystical and
+scholastic point of view, as made up of living beings in a graduated
+scale from the lowest to the highest; and he lauded her in terms
+which even Pope Clement VII. thought exaggerated. Piety in him went
+hand in hand with a natural philosophy like Bacon's, and his interest
+in Nature was rather a matter of intellect than feeling.
+
+    God has given us two books--the book of all living beings, or
+    Nature, and the Holy Scriptures. The first was given to man from
+    the beginning when all things were created, for each living being
+    is but a letter of the alphabet written by the finger of God, and
+    the book is composed of them all together as a book is of letters
+    ... man is the capital letter of this book. This book is not like
+    the other, falsified and spoilt, but familiar and intelligible;
+    it makes man joyous and humble and obedient, a hater of evil and
+    a lover of virtue.
+
+Among the savants of the Renaissance who applied the inductive method
+to Nature before Bacon,[14] we must include the thoughtful and pious
+Spaniard Luis Vives (1540), who wrote concerning the useless
+speculations of alchemists and astrologers about occult things: 'It
+is not arguing that is needed here, but silent observation of
+Nature.' Knowledge of Nature, he said, would serve both body and
+soul.
+
+The tender religious lyrics of the mystic, Luis de Leon, followed
+next.[15] His life (1521-1591) brings us up to the days of the
+Inquisition. He himself, an excellent teacher and man of science, was
+imprisoned for years for opinions too openly expressed in his
+writings; but with all his varied fortunes he never lost his innate
+manliness and tenderness. His biographer tells us, that as soon as
+the holidays began, he would hurry away from the gloomy lecture rooms
+and the noisy students at Salamanca, to the country, where he had
+taken an estate belonging to a monastery at the foot of a hill by a
+river, with a little island close by.
+
+It had a large uncultivated garden, made beautiful by fine old trees,
+with paths among the vines and a stream running through it to the
+river, and a long avenue of poplars whose rustle blended with the
+noise of the mill-wheel. Beyond was a view of fields. Leon would sit
+for hours here undisturbed, dipping his feet in the brook under a
+poplar--the tree which was reputed to flourish on sand alone and give
+shelter to all the birds under heaven--while the rustle of the leaves
+sang his melancholy to sleep. His biographer goes on to say that he
+had the Spaniard's special delight in Nature, and understood her
+language and her secrets; and the veiled splendour of her tones,
+colours, and forms could move him to tears. As he sat there gazing at
+the clouds, he felt lifted up in heart by the insignificance of all
+things in comparison with the spirit of man.
+
+In the pitching and tossing of his 'ships of thought' he never lost
+the consciousness of Nature's beauty, and would pray the clouds to
+carry his sighs with them in their tranquil course through heaven. He
+loved the sunrise, birds, flowers, bees, fishes; nothing was
+meaningless to him; all things were letters in a divine alphabet,
+which might bring him a message from above. Nature was symbolic; the
+glow of dawn meant the glow of divine love; a wide view, true
+freedom; rays of sunshine, rays of divine glory; the setting sun,
+eternal light; stars, flowers of light in an everlasting spring.
+
+His love for the country, especially for its peacefulness, was free
+from the folly and excess of the pastoral poetry of his day. He did
+not paint Nature entirely for her own sake; man was always her
+master[16] in his poems, and he sometimes, very finely, introduced
+himself and his affairs at the close, and represented Nature as
+addressing himself.
+
+His descriptions are short, and he often tries to represent sounds
+onomato-poetically.
+
+This is from his ode, _Quiet Life_[17]:
+
+  O happy he who flies
+  Far from the noisy world away--
+  Who with the worthy and the wise
+  Hath chosen the narrow way.
+  The silence of the secret road
+  That leads the soul to virtue and to God!...
+  O streams, and shades, and hills on high,
+  Unto the stillness of your breast
+  My wounded spirit longs to fly--
+  To fly and be at rest.
+  Thus from the world's tempestuous sea,
+  O gentle Nature, do I turn to thee....
+  A garden by the mountain side
+  Is mine, whose flowery blossoming
+  Shews, even in spring's luxuriant pride,
+  What Autumn's suns shall bring:
+  And from mountain's lofty crown
+  A clear and sparkling rill comes tumbling down;
+  Then, pausing in its downward force
+  The venerable trees among,
+  It gurgles on its winding course;
+  And, as it glides along,
+  Gives freshness to the day and pranks
+  With ever changing flowers its mossy banks.
+  The whisper of the balmy breeze
+  Scatters a thousand sweets around,
+  And sweeps in music through the trees
+  With an enchanting sound
+  That laps the soul in calm delight
+  Where crowns and kingdoms are forgotten quite.
+
+The poem, _The Starry Sky_,[18] is full of lofty enthusiasm for
+Nature and piety:
+
+  When yonder glorious sky
+  Lighted with million lamps I contemplate,
+  And turn my dazzled eye
+  To this vain mortal state
+  All mean and visionary, mean and desolate,
+  A mingled joy and grief
+  Fills all my soul with dark solicitude....
+  List to the concert pure
+  Of yon harmonious countless worlds of light.
+  See, in his orbit sure
+  Each takes his journey bright,
+  Led by an unseen hand through the vast maze of night.
+  See how the pale moon rolls
+  Her silver wheel....
+  See Saturn, father of the golden hours,
+  While round him, bright and blest,
+  The whole empyrean showers
+  Its glorious streams of light on this low world of ours.
+  But who to these can turn
+  And weigh them 'gainst a weeping world like this,
+  Nor feel his spirit burn
+  To grasp so sweet a bliss
+  And mourn that exile hard which here his portion is?
+  For there, and there alone,
+  Are peace and joy and never dying love:
+  Day that shall never cease,
+  No night there threatening,
+  No winter there to chill joy's ever-during spring.
+  Ye fields of changeless green
+  Covered with living streams and fadeless flowers;
+  Thou paradise serene,
+  Eternal joyful hours
+  Thy disembodied soul shall welcome in thy towers!
+
+It was chiefly in Spanish literature at this time that Nature was
+used allegorically. Tieck[19] says: 'In Calderon's poetry, and that
+of his contemporaries, we often find, in romances and song-like
+metres, most charming descriptions of the sea, mountains, gardens,
+and woody valleys, but almost always used allegorically, and with an
+artistic polish which ends by giving us, not so much a real
+impression of Nature, as one of clever description in musical verse,
+repeated again and again with slight variations.' This is true of
+Leon, but far more of Calderon, since it belongs to the very essence
+of drama. But, despite his passion for description and his Catholic
+and conventional tone, there is inexhaustible fancy, splendid colour,
+and a modern element of individuality in his poems. His heroes are
+conscious of their own ego, feel themselves to be 'a miniature
+world,' and search out their own feelings 'in the wild waves of
+emotion' (as Aurelian, for example, in _Zenobia_).
+
+Fernando says in _The Constant Prince_:
+
+  These flowers awoke in beauty and delight
+  At early dawn, when stars began to set;
+  At eve they leave us but a fond regret,
+  Locked in the cold embraces of the night.
+  These shades that shame the rainbow's arch of light.
+  Where gold and snow in purple pomp are met,
+  All give a warning man should not forget,
+  When one brief day can darken things so bright.
+  'Tis but to wither that the roses bloom--
+  'Tis to grow old they bear their beauteous flowers,
+  One crimson bud their cradle and their tomb.
+  Such are man's fortunes in this world of ours;
+  They live, they die; one day doth end their doom,
+  For ages past but seem to us like hours.
+
+The warning which Zenobia gives her captor in his hour of triumph to
+beware of sudden reverses of fortune is finely conceived:
+
+  Morn comes forth with rays to crown her,
+  While the sun afar is spreading
+  Golden cloths most finely woven
+  All to dry her tear-drops purely.
+  Up to noon he climbs, then straightway
+  Sinks, and then dark night makes ready
+  For the burial of the sea
+  Canopies of black outstretching--
+  Tall ships fly on linen pinions,
+  On with speed the breezes send it,
+  Small the wide seas seem and straitened,
+  To its quick flight onward tending.
+  Yet one moment, yet one instant,
+  And the tempest roars, uprearing
+  Waves that might the stars extinguish,
+  Lifted for that ship's o'erwhelming.
+  Day, with fear, looks ever nightwards,
+  Calms must storm await with trembling;
+  Close behind the back of pleasure
+  Evermore stalks sadness dreary.
+
+In _Life's a Dream_ Prince Sigismund, chained in a dark prison, says:
+
+  What sinned I more herein
+  Than others, who were also born?
+  Born the bird was, yet with gay
+  Gala vesture, beauty's dower,
+  Scarcely 'tis a winged flower
+  Or a richly plumaged spray,
+  Ere the aerial halls of day
+  It divideth rapidly,
+  And no more will debtor be
+  To the nest it hates to quit;
+  But, with more of soul than it,
+  I am grudged its liberty.
+  And the beast was born, whose skin
+  Scarce those beauteous spots and bars,
+  Like to constellated stars,
+  Doth from its greater painter win
+  Ere the instinct doth begin:
+  Of its fierceness and its pride,
+  And its lair on every side,
+  It has measured far and nigh;
+  While, with better instinct, I
+  Am its liberty denied.
+  Born the mute fish was also,
+  Child of ooze and ocean weed;
+  Scarce a finny bark of speed
+  To the surface brought, and lo!
+  In vast circuits to and fro
+  Measures it on every side
+  Its illimitable home;
+  While, with greater will to roam,
+  I that freedom am denied.
+  Born the streamlet was, a snake
+  Which unwinds the flowers among,
+  Silver serpent, that not long
+  May to them sweet music make,
+  Ere it quits the flowery brake,
+  Onward hastening to the sea
+  With majestic course and free,
+  Which the open plains supply;
+  While, with more life gifted, I
+  Am denied its liberty.
+
+In Act II. Clotardo tells how he has talked to the young prince,
+brought up in solitude and confinement:
+
+  There I spoke with him awhile
+  Of the human arts and letters,
+  Which the still and silent aspect
+  Of the mountains and the heavens
+  Him have taught--that school divine
+  Where he has been long a learner,
+  And the voices of the birds
+  And the beasts has apprehended.
+
+Descriptions of time and place are very rich in colour.
+
+  One morning on the ocean,
+  When the half-awakened sun,
+  Trampling down the lingering shadows
+  Of the western vapours dun,
+  Spread its ruby-tinted tresses
+  Over jessamine and rose,
+  Dried with cloths of gold Aurora's
+  Tears of mingled fire and snows
+  Which to pearl his glance converted.
+
+  Since these gardens cannot steal
+  Away your oft returning woes,
+  Though to beauteous spring they build
+  Snow-white jasmine temples filled
+  With radiant statues of the rose;
+  Come into the sea and make
+  Thy bark the chariot of the sun,
+  And when the golden splendours run
+  Athwart the waves, along thy wake
+  The garden to the sea will say
+  (By melancholy fears deprest)--
+  'The sun already gilds the west,
+  How very short has been this day.'
+
+There is a striking remark about a garden; Menon says:
+
+  A beautiful garden surrounded by wild forest
+  Is the more beautiful the nearer it approaches its opposite.
+
+Splendour of colour was everything with Calderon, but it was
+splendour of so stiff and formal a kind, that, like the whole of his
+intensely severe, even inquisitorial outlook, it leaves us cold.
+
+We must turn to Shakespeare to learn how strongly the pulse of
+sympathy for Nature could beat in contemporary drama. Goethe said:
+'In Calderon you have the wine as the last artificial result of the
+grape, but expressed into the goblet, highly spiced and sweetened,
+and so given you to drink; but in Shakespeare you have the whole
+natural process of its ripening besides, and the grapes themselves
+one by one, for your enjoyment, if you will.'
+
+In _Worship at the Cross_ there is pious feeling for Nature and
+mystical feeling side by side with an obnoxious fanaticism,
+superstition, and other objectionable traits[20]; and mystical
+confessions of the same sort may be gathered in numbers from the
+works of contemporary monks and nuns. Even of such a fanatic and
+self-tormentor as the Spanish Franciscan Petrus von Alcantara (1562),
+his biographer says that despite his strict renunciation of the
+world, he retained a most warm and deep feeling for Nature.
+
+'Whatever he saw of the outer world increased his devotion and gave
+it wings. The starry sky seen through his little monastery window,
+often kept him rapt in deep meditation for hours; often he was as if
+beside himself, so strong was his pious feeling when he saw the power
+and glory of God reflected in charming flowers and plants.'
+
+When Gregorio Lopez (1596), a man who had studied many sides of
+Nature, was asked if so much knowledge confused him, he answered: 'I
+find God in all things, great and small.' Similar remarks are
+attributed to many others.
+
+Next to Leon, as a poet in enthusiasm and mysticism, came St Teresa
+von Avila. She was especially notable for the ravishingly pretty
+pictures and comparisons she drew from Nature to explain the soul
+life of the Christian.[21]
+
+In all these outpourings of mystic feeling for Nature, there was no
+interest in her entirely for her own sake; they were all more or less
+dictated by religious feeling. It was in the later German and Italian
+mystics--for example, Bruno, Campanella, and Jacob Boehme--that a
+more subjective and individual point of view was attained through
+Pantheism and Protestantism.
+
+The Protestant free-speaking Shakespeare shewed a far more intense
+feeling for Nature than the Catholic Calderon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S SYMPATHY FOR NATURE
+
+
+The poetry of India may serve as a measure of the part which Nature
+can play in drama; it is full of comparisons and personifications,
+and eloquent expressions of intimate sympathy with plants and
+animals. In Greek tragedy, Nature stepped into the background;
+metaphors, comparisons, and personifications are rarer; it was only
+by degrees, especially in Sophocles and Euripides, in the choruses
+and monologues, that man's interest in her appeared, and he began to
+greet the light or the sky, land or sea, to attribute love, pity, or
+hate to her, or find comfort in her lonely places. During the Middle
+Ages, drama lay fallow, and the blossoming period of French tragedy,
+educated to the pathos of Seneca, only produced cold declamation,
+frosty rhetoric; of any real sympathy between man and Nature there
+was no question.
+
+Over this mediaeval void Calderon was the bridge to Shakespeare.
+
+Shakespeare reached the Greek standpoint and advanced far beyond it.
+He was not only the greatest dramatist of modern times as to human
+action, suffering, and character, but also a genius in the
+interpretation of Nature.[1]
+
+In place of the narrow limits of the old dramatists, he had the wider
+and maturer modern vision, and, despite his mastery of language, he
+was free both from the exaggeration and redundance of Oriental drama,
+and from the mere passion for describing, which so often carried
+Calderon away.
+
+In him too, the subjectivity, which the Renaissance brought into
+modern art, was still more fully developed. His metaphors and
+comparisons shew this, and, most of all, the very perfect art with
+which he assigns Nature a part in the play, and makes her not only
+form the appropriate background, dark or bright as required, but
+exert a distinct influence upon human fate.
+
+As Carriere points out:
+
+    At a period which had painting for its leading art, and was
+    turning its attention to music, his mental accord produced
+    effects in his works to which antiquity was a stranger.
+
+Herder had already noted that Shakespeare gives colour and atmosphere
+where the Greek only gave outline. And although Shakespeare's
+outlines are drawn with more regard to fidelity than to actual
+beauty, yet, like a great painter, he brings all Nature into sympathy
+with man. We feel the ghostly shudder of the November night in
+_Hamlet_, breathe the bracing Highland air in _Macbeth_, the air of
+the woods in _As You Like It_; the storm on the heath roars through
+Lear's mad outburst, the nightingale sings in the pomegranate outside
+Julia's window.
+
+'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,' when Love solves all
+differences in the _Merchant of Venice_! On the other hand, when
+Macbeth is meditating the murder of Duncan, the wolf howls, the owl
+hoots, and the cricket cries. And since Shakespeare's characters
+often act out of part, so that intelligible motive fails, while it is
+important to the poet that each scene be raised to dramatic level and
+viewed in a special light, Goethe's words apply:
+
+    Here everything which in a great world event passes secretly
+    through the air, everything which at the very moment of a
+    terrible occurrence men hide away in their hearts, is expressed;
+    that which they carefully shut up and lock away in their minds is
+    here freely and eloquently brought to light; we recognize the
+    truth to life, but know not how it is achieved.
+
+Amorous passion in his hands is an interpreter of Nature; in one of
+his sonnets he compares it to an ocean which cannot quench thirst.
+
+In Sonnet 130 he says:
+
+  My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
+  Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
+  If snow be white, why then her breasts are dim;
+  If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
+  I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
+  But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
+  And in some perfumes is there more delight
+  Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks....
+  And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare
+  As any she belied by false compare.
+
+His lady-love is a mirror in which the whole world is reflected:
+
+  Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind....
+  For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
+  The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
+  The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
+  The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
+  (Sonnet 113.)
+
+  When she leaves him it seems winter even in spring:
+  'For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
+  And thou away, the very birds are mute.'
+  (Sonnet 97.)
+
+Here, as in the dramas,[2] contrasts in Nature are often used to
+point contrasts in life:
+
+  How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
+  Which like a canker in the fragrant rose
+  Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
+  O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
+  (Sonnet 95.)
+
+and
+
+  No more be grieved at that which thou hast done;
+  Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud;
+  Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
+  And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
+  (Sonnet 35.)
+
+In an opposite sense is Sonnet 70:
+
+  The ornament of beauty is suspect
+  A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air,
+  For canker vice the sweetest buds did love,
+  And thou presentest a pure unstained prime.
+
+Sonnet 7 has:
+
+  Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
+  Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
+  Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
+  Serving with looks his sacred majesty.
+
+Sonnet 18:
+
+  Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
+  Thou art more lovely and more temperate,
+  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
+  And summer's lease hath all too short a date--
+  But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
+  Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
+  Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
+  When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
+  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
+  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
+
+Sonnet 60:
+
+  Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,
+  So do our minutes hasten to their end;
+  Each changing place with that which goes before,
+  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
+
+Sonnet 73:
+
+  That time of life thou mayst in me behold,
+  When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
+  Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
+  Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang
+  In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
+  As after sunset fadeth in the west,
+  Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
+  Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
+  In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
+  That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
+  As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
+  Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
+  This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong
+  To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
+
+There are no better similes for the oncoming of age and death, than
+the sere leaf trembling in the wind, the twilight of the setting sun,
+the expiring flame.
+
+Almost all the comparisons from Nature in his plays are original, and
+rather keen and lightning-like than elaborate, often with the
+terseness of proverbs;
+
+  The strawberry grows underneath the nettle.
+                                      (_Henry V._)
+
+  Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
+                                      (_Henry VI._)
+
+  The waters swell before a boisterous storm.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+Sometimes they are heaped up, like Calderon's, 'making it' (true
+love)
+
+  Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
+  Brief as the lightning in the collied night
+  That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,
+  And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
+  The jaws of darkness do devour it up.
+                        (_Midsummer Night's Dream._)
+
+Compared with Homer's they are very bold, and shew an astonishing
+play of imagination; in place of the naive simplicity and naturalness
+of antiquity, this modern genius gives us a dazzling display of wit
+and thought. To quote only short examples[3]:
+
+  'Open as day,' 'deaf as the sea,' 'poor as winter,'
+  'chaste as unsunn'd snow.'
+
+He ranges all Nature. These are characteristic
+examples:
+
+  King Richard doth himself appear
+  As doth the blushing discontented sun
+  From out the fiery portal of the east,
+  When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
+  To dim his glory and to stain the track
+  Of his bright passage to the occident.
+                                   (_Richard II._)
+
+  Since the more fair crystal is the sky,
+  The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.
+  As when the golden sun salutes the morn,
+  And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,
+  Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach
+  And overlooks the highest peering hills,
+  So Tamora.                  (_Titus Andronicus._)
+
+  As all the world is cheered by the sun,
+  So I by that; it is my day, my life.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not
+  To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,
+  As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote
+  The night of dew that on my cheek down flows;
+  Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright
+  Through the transparent bosom of the deep.
+  As doth thy face through tears of mine give light;
+  Thou shinest on every tear that I do weep.
+                          (_Love's Labour's Lost._)
+
+This is modern down to its finest detail, and much richer in
+individuality than the most famous comparisons of the same kind in
+antiquity.
+
+Sea and stream are used:
+
+  Like an unseasonable stormy day
+  Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores
+  As if the world were all dissolved to tears,
+  So high above his limits swells the rage
+  Of Bolingbroke.                    (_Richard II._)
+
+  The current that with gentle murmur glides,
+  Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage;
+  But when his fair course is not hindered,
+  He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
+  Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
+  He overtaketh on his pilgrimage;
+  And so by many winding nooks he strays
+  With willing sport to the wild ocean.
+  Then let me go, and hinder not my course.
+                        (_Two Gentlemen of Verona._)
+
+  Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.
+  You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow.
+  And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?
+                                       (_Henry VI._)
+
+  If there were reason for these miseries,
+  Then into limits could I bind my woes;
+  When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'er-flow?
+  If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,
+  Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face?
+  And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?
+  I am the sea: hark, how her sighs do blow!
+  She is the weeping welkin, I the earth;
+  Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;
+  Then must my earth with her continual tears
+  Become a deluge, overflow'd and drowned.
+                                (_Titus Andronicus._)
+
+  This battle fares like to the morning's war
+  When dying clouds contend with growing light,
+  What time the shepherd blowing of his nails
+  Can neither call it perfect day nor night.
+  Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea
+  Forced by the tide to combat with the wind;
+  Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea
+  Forced to retire by fury of the wind.
+  Sometime the flood prevails and then the wind:
+  Now one the better, then another best;
+  Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,
+  Yet neither conqueror nor conquered.
+  So is the equal poise of this fell war.
+                                      (_Henry VI._)
+
+In the last five examples the epic treatment and the personifications
+are noteworthy.
+
+Comparisons from animal life are forcible and striking:
+
+  How like a deer, stricken by many princes,
+  Dost thou lie here!              (_Julius Caesar._)
+
+Richard III. is called:
+
+  The wretched bloody and usurping boar
+  That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,
+  Swills your warm blood like wash and makes his trough
+  In your embowell'd bosoms; this foul swine
+  Lies now even in the centre of this isle.
+  The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind.
+                                     (_Richard III._)
+
+The smallest objects are noted:
+
+  As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
+  They kill us for their sport.        (_King Lear._)
+
+  _Marcus_: Alas! my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.
+
+  _Titus_: But how if that fly had a father and a mother?
+  How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
+  And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
+  Poor harmless fly!
+  That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
+  Came here to make us merry! and thou
+  Hast kill'd him!
+                              (_Titus Andronicus._)
+
+Shakespeare has abundance of this idyllic miniature painting, for
+which all the literature of the day shewed a marked taste.
+
+Tamora says:
+
+  My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad,
+  When everything doth make a gleeful boast?
+  The birds chant melody on every bush,
+  The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun,
+  The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind
+  And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground.
+                             (_Titus Andronicus._)
+
+And Valentine in _Two Gentlemen of Verona_:
+
+  This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
+  I better brook than flourishing peopled towns;
+  Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,
+  And to the nightingale's complaining notes
+  Tune my distresses and record my woes.
+
+Like this, in elegiac sentimentality, is Romeo:
+
+          Before the worshipp'd sun
+  Peer'd forth the golden window of the east....
+  Many a morning hath he there been seen
+  With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew.
+
+_Cymbeline, Winter's Tale_, and _As You Like It_ are particularly
+rich in idyllic traits; the artificiality of court life is contrasted
+with life in the open; there are songs, too, in praise of woodland
+joys:
+
+  Under the greenwood tree
+  Who loves to lie with me,
+  And tune his merry note
+  Unto the sweet bird's throat,
+  Come hither, come hither, come hither!
+  Here shall he see
+  No enemy
+  But winter and rough weather.
+                                (_As You Like It._)
+
+  Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
+  Thou art not so unkind
+  As man's ingratitude.
+  Thy tooth is not so keen,
+  Because thou art not seen
+  Altho' thy breath be rude.
+  Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho unto the green holly!
+  Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly![4]
+                                (_As You Like It._)
+
+Turning again to comparisons, we find birds used abundantly:
+
+  More pity that the eagle should be mewed
+  While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  True hope is swift and flies with swallow's wings.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
+  Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort
+  Rising and cawing at the gun's report
+  Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
+  So at his sight away his fellows fly.
+                       (_Midsummer Night's Dream._)
+
+And plant life is touched with special tenderness:
+
+  All the bystanders had wet their cheeks
+  Like trees bedashed with rain.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  Why grow the branches when the root is gone?
+  Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
+  Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+  Ah! my tender babes!
+  My unblown flowers, new appearing sweets.
+                                   (_Richard III._)
+
+Romeo is
+
+  To himself so secret and so close ...
+  As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
+  Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air
+  Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
+
+It is astonishing to see how Shakespeare noted the smallest and most
+fragile things, and found the most poetic expression for them without
+any sacrifice of truth to Nature.
+
+Juliet is 'the sweetest flower of all the field.' Laertes says to
+Ophelia:
+
+  For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour
+  Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
+  A violet in the youth of primy nature,
+  Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,
+  The perfume and suppliance of a moment.
+  The canker galls the infants of the spring
+  Too oft before their buttons be disclosed;
+  And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
+  Contagious blastments are most imminent.
+                                       (_Hamlet._)
+
+Hamlet soliloquizes:
+
+  How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
+  Seems to me all the uses of this world.
+  Fie on't, O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden
+  That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
+  Possess it merely.
+
+    Indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
+    frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
+    excellent canopy the air, look you--this brave o'erhanging
+    firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
+    appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent
+    congregation of vapours.
+
+But the great advance which he made is seen far more in the
+sympathetic way in which he drew Nature into the action of the play.
+
+He established perfect harmony between human fate and the natural
+phenomena around it.
+
+There are moonlight nights for Romeo and Juliet's brief dream, when
+all Nature, moon, stars, garden, seemed steeped in love together.
+
+He places his melancholy, brooding Hamlet
+
+    In a land of mist and long nights, under a gloomy sky, where day
+    is only night without sleep, and the tragedy holds us imprisoned
+    like the North itself, that damp dungeon of Nature. (BOERNE.)
+
+What a dark shudder lies o'er Nature in _Macbeth_! And in _Lear_, as
+Jacobi says:
+
+    What a sight! All Nature, living and lifeless, reasonable and
+    unreasonable, surges together, like towering storm clouds, hither
+    and thither; it is black oppressive Nature with only here and
+    there a lightning flash from God--a flash of Providence, rending
+    the clouds.
+
+One must look at the art by which this is achieved in order to
+justify such enthusiastic expressions. Personification of Nature lies
+at the root of it, and to examine this in the different poets forms
+one of the most interesting chapters of comparative poetry,
+especially in Shakespeare.
+
+With him artistic personification reached a pitch never attained
+before. We can trace the steps by which Greece passed from mythical
+to purely poetic personification, increasing in individuality in the
+Hellenic period; but Shakespeare opened up an entirely new region by
+dint of that flashlight genius of imagination which combined and
+illuminated all and everything.
+
+Hense says[5];
+
+    The personification is plastic when AEschylus calls the heights
+    the neighbours of the stars; individual, when Shakespeare speaks
+    of hills that kiss the sky. It is plastic that fire and sea are
+    foes who conspire together and keep faith to destroy the Argive
+    army; it is individual to call sea and wind old wranglers who
+    enter into a momentary armistice. Other personifications of
+    Shakespeare's, as when he speaks of the 'wanton wind,' calls
+    laughter a fool, and describes time as having a wallet on his
+    back wherein he puts alms for oblivion, are of a kind which did
+    not, and could not, exist in antiquity.
+
+The richer a man's mental endowment, the more individual his
+feelings, the more he can see in Nature.
+
+Shakespeare's fancy revelled in a wealth of images; new metaphors,
+new points of resemblance between the inner and outer worlds, were
+for ever pouring from his inexhaustible imagination.
+
+The motive of amorous passion, for instance, was a very divining-rod
+in his hands, revealing the most delicate relations between Nature
+and the soul. Ibykos had pointed the contrast between the gay spring
+time and his own unhappy heart in which Eros raged like 'the Thracian
+blast.' Theocritus had painted the pretty shepherdess drawing all
+Nature under the spell of her charms; Akontios (Kallimachos) had
+declared that if trees felt the pangs and longings of love, they
+would lose their leaves; all such ideas, modern in their way, had
+been expressed in antiquity.
+
+This is Shakespeare's treatment of them:
+
+  How like a winter hath my absence been
+  From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
+  What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
+  What old December's bareness everywhere!
+  And yet this time removed was summer time,
+  The teeming autumn, big with rich increase ...
+  For summer and his pleasures wait on thee.
+  And thou away the very birds are mute,
+  Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer
+  That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near,
+                                             (Sonnet 97.)
+
+  From you have I been absent in the spring,
+  When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
+  Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
+  That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
+  Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
+  Of different flowers in odour and in hue
+  Could make me any summer's story tell....
+  Yet seem'd it winter still....             (Sonnet 98.)
+
+Or compare again the cypresses in Theocritus sole witnesses of secret
+love; or Walther's
+
+  One little birdie who never will tell,
+
+with
+
+  These blue-veined violets whereon we lean
+  Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.
+                              (_Venus and Adonis._)
+
+Comparisons of ladies' lips to roses, and hands to lilies, are common
+with the old poets. How much more modern is:
+
+  The forward violet thus did I chide;
+  Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells
+  If not from my love's breath?...
+  The lily I condemned for thy hand,
+  And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair;
+  The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
+  One blushing shame, another white despair....
+  More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
+  But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.
+                                           (Sonnet 99.)
+
+And how fine the personification in Sonnet 33:
+
+  Full many a glorious morning have I seen
+  Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
+  Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
+  Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
+  Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
+  With ugly rack on his celestial face,
+  And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
+  Stealing unseen to West with this disgrace:
+  Even so my sun one early morn did shine
+  With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
+  But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
+  The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
+  Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
+  Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.
+
+This is night in _Venus and Adonis_:
+
+  Look! the world's comforter with weary gait
+  His day's hot task hath ended in the West;
+  The owl, night's herald, shrieks 'tis very late;
+  The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest
+  And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's light,
+  Do summon us to part and bid good-night.
+
+And this morning, in _Romeo and Juliet_:
+
+  The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,
+  Checkering the Eastern clouds with streaks of light.
+  And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
+  From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels;
+  Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
+  The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry ...
+
+Such wealth and brilliance of personification was not found again
+until Goethe, Byron, and Shelley.
+
+He is unusually rich in descriptive phrases:
+
+  The weary sun hath made a golden set,
+  And by the bright track of his golden car
+  Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.
+
+            The worshipp'd Sun
+  Peered forth the golden window of the East.
+
+            The all-cheering sun
+  Should in the farthest East begin to draw
+  The shady curtains from Aurora's bed.
+
+The moon:
+
+  Like to a silver bow
+  New bent in heaven.
+
+Titania says:
+
+  I will wind thee in my arms....
+  So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
+  Gently entwist; the female ivy so
+  Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
+  O how I love thee!
+
+  That same dew, which sometime on the buds
+  Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,
+  Stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes
+  Like tears.
+                      (_Midsummer Night's Dream._)
+
+                             Daffodils
+  That come before the swallow dares, and take
+  The winds of March with beauty.
+                                (_Winter's Tale._)
+
+                         Pale primroses
+  That die unmarried, ere they can behold
+  Bright Phoebus in his strength.
+                                (_Winter's Tale._)
+
+Goethe calls winds and waves lovers. In _Troilus and Cressida_ we
+have:
+
+  The sea being smooth,
+  How many shallow bauble boats dare sail
+  Upon her patient breast, making their way
+  With those of nobler bulk!
+  But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
+  The gentle Thetis, and anon behold
+  The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut,
+  Bounding between two moist elements
+  Like Perseus' horse.
+
+And further on in the same scene:
+
+  What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
+  Commotion in the winds!
+  ... the bounded waters
+  Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores.
+
+The personification of the river in _Henry IV._ is half mythical:
+
+  When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank
+  In single opposition, hand to hand,
+  He did confound the best part of an hour
+  In changing hardiment with great Glendower;
+  Three times they breath'd, and three times did they drink,
+  Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;
+  Who, then affrighted with their bloody looks,
+  Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
+  And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,
+  Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.
+
+Striking instances of personification from _Antony and Cleopatra_
+are:
+
+  The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne
+  Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
+  Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
+  The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
+  Which to the time of flutes kept stroke, and made
+  The water which they beat to follow faster
+  As amorous of their strokes.
+
+And Antony, enthron'd in the market-place, sat alone
+
+  Whistling to the air, which but for vacancy
+  Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
+  And made a gap in nature.
+
+Instead of accumulating further instances of these very modern and
+individual (and sometimes far-fetched) personifications, it is of
+more interest to see how Shakespeare used Nature, not only as
+background and colouring, but to act a part of her own in the play,
+so producing the grandest of all personifications.
+
+At the beginning of Act III. in _King Lear_, Kent asks:
+
+  Who's there beside foul weather?
+
+  _Gentleman_: One minded like the weather, most unquietly.
+
+  _Kent_: Where's the King?
+
+  _Gent_: Contending with the fretful elements.
+  Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
+  Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main,
+  That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,
+  Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage
+  Catch in their fury and make nothing of;
+  Strives in his little world of men to outscorn
+  The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.
+
+In the stormy night on the wild heath the poor old man hears the echo
+of his own feelings in the elements; his daughters' ingratitude,
+hardness, and cruelty produce a moral disturbance like the
+disturbance in Nature; he breaks out:
+
+  Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks. Rage! Blow!
+  You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
+  Till you have drench'd our steeples, drowned the cocks!
+  You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
+  Vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunder-bolts,
+  Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
+  Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
+  Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once
+  That make ungrateful man....
+  Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire, spout rain!
+
+  Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters,
+  I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness;
+  I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
+  You owe me no subscription; then, let fall
+  Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
+  A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man:
+  But yet I call you servile ministers,
+  That will with two pernicious daughters join
+  Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
+  So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!
+
+How closely here animate and inanimate Nature are woven together, the
+reasoning with the unreasoning. The poet makes the storm, rain,
+thunder, and lightning live, and at the same time endues his human
+figures with a strength of feeling and passion which gives them
+kinship to the elements. In _Othello_, too, there _is_ uproar in
+Nature:
+
+  Do but stand upon the foaming shore,
+  The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds....
+  I never did like molestation view
+  On the enchafed flood.
+
+but even the unruly elements spare Desdemona:
+
+  Tempests themselves, high seas and howling winds,
+  The gather'd rocks and congregated sands.
+  Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel--
+  As having sense of beauty, do omit
+  Their mortal natures, letting go safely by
+  The divine Desdemona.
+
+Cassio lays stress upon 'the great contention of the sea and skies';
+but when Othello meets Desdemona, he cries:
+
+                     O my soul's joy!
+  If after every tempest come such calms,
+  May the winds blow till they have wakened death!
+  And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas
+  Olympus-high, and duck again as low
+  As hell's from heaven. If it were now to die,
+  'Twere now to be most happy.
+
+Iago calls the elements to witness his truthfulness:
+
+  Witness, you ever-burning lights above,
+  You elements that clip us round about,
+  Witness, that here Iago doth give up
+  The execution of his wit, hands, heart,
+  To wrong'd Othello's service.
+
+Nature is disgusted at Othello's jealousy:
+
+  Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks;
+  The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets,
+  Is hush'd within the hollow mine of earth
+  And will not hear it.
+
+In terrible mental confusion he cries:
+
+  O insupportable, O heavy hour!
+  Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
+  Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe
+  Should yawn at alteration.
+
+Unhappy Desdemona sings:
+
+  The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
+  Sing all a green willow;
+  Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
+  Sing willow, willow, willow;
+  The fresh streams ran by her and murmur'd her moans,
+  Sing willow, willow, willow.
+
+A song in _Cymbeline_ contains a beautiful personification of
+flowers:
+
+  Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
+  And Phoebus 'gins arise,
+  His steeds to water at those springs
+  On chalic'd flowers that lies;
+  And winking Mary-buds begin
+  To ope their golden eyes;
+  With everything that pretty is,
+  My lady sweet, arise;
+  Arise! Arise!
+
+The clearest expression of sympathy for Nature is in _Macbeth_.
+
+Repeatedly we meet the idea that Nature shudders before the crime,
+and gives signs of coming disaster.
+
+Macbeth himself says:
+
+                   Stars, hide your fires!
+  Let not light see my black and deep desires;
+  The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
+  Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
+
+and Lady Macbeth:
+
+       ... The raven himself is hoarse
+  That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
+  Under my battlements.... Come, thick night,
+  And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
+  That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
+  Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
+  To cry 'Hold! hold!'...
+
+The peaceful castle to which Duncan comes all unsuspectingly, is in
+most striking contrast to the fateful tone which pervades the
+tragedy. Duncan says:
+
+  This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
+  Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
+  Unto our gentle senses.
+
+and Banquo:
+
+                    This guest of summer,
+  The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
+  By his loved masonry, that the heaven's breath
+  Smells wooingly here; no jetty, frieze,
+  Buttress, nor coign of vantage but this bird
+  Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle;
+  Where they most breed and haunt I have observ'd
+  The air is delicate.
+
+Perhaps the familiar swallow has never been treated with more
+discrimination; and at this point of the tale of horror it has the
+effect of a ray of sunshine in a sky dark with storm clouds.
+
+In Act II. Macbeth describes his own horror and Nature's:
+
+               Now o'er the one half world
+  Nature seems dead.... Thou sure and firm-set earth,
+  Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
+  Thy very stones prate of my whereabouts.
+
+Lady Macbeth says:
+
+  It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman
+  Which gives the stern'st good-night.
+
+Lenox describes this night:
+
+  The night has been unruly: where we lay
+  Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
+  Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death
+  And prophesying, with accents terrible,
+  Of dire combustion and confus'd events,
+  New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird
+  Clamour'd the live-long night: some say, the earth
+  Was feverish and did shake.
+
+and later on, an old man says:
+
+  Three score and ten I can remember well;
+  Within the volume of which time I have seen
+  Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
+  Hath trifled former knowings.
+
+Rosse answers him:
+
+                       Ah, good father,
+  Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
+  Threaten his bloody stage; by the clock 'tis day,
+  And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
+  Is't night's predominance or the day's shame
+  That darkness does the-face of earth entomb
+  When living light should kiss it?
+
+The whole play is a thrilling expression of the sympathy for Nature
+which attributes its own feelings to her--a human shudder in presence
+of the wicked--a human horror of crime, most thrilling of all in
+Macbeth's words:
+
+                  Come, seeling night,
+  Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
+  And with thy bloody and invisible hand
+  Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
+  Which keeps me pale.
+
+In _Hamlet_, too, Nature is shocked at man's mis-deeds:
+
+       ... Such an act (the queen's)
+  That blurs the grace and blush of modesty
+       ... Heaven's face doth glow,
+  Yea, this solidity and compound mass
+  With tristful visage, as against the doom,
+  Is thought-sick at the act.
+
+But there are other personifications in this most wonderful of all
+tragedies, such as the magnificent one:
+
+  But look, the dawn, in russet mantle clad.
+  Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.
+
+The first player declaims:
+
+  But, as we often see, against some storm
+  A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
+  The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
+  As hush as death....
+
+Ophelia dies:
+
+  When down her weedy trophies and herself
+  Fell in the weeping brook.
+
+and Laertes commands:
+
+  Lay her i' the earth,
+  And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
+  May violets spring.
+
+Thus Shakespeare's great imagination gave life and soul to every
+detail of Nature, and he obtained the right background for his
+dramas, not only through choice of scenery, but by making Nature a
+sharer of human impulse, happy with the happy, shuddering in the
+presence of wickedness.
+
+He drew every phase of Nature with the individualizing touch which
+stamps her own peculiar character, and also brings her into sympathy
+with the inner life, often with that poetic intuition which is so
+closely allied to mythology. And this holds good not only in dealing
+with the great elementary forces--storms, thunder, lightning,
+etc.--but with flowers, streams, the glow of sunlight. Always and
+everywhere the grasp of Nature was intenser, more individual, and
+subjective, than any we have met hitherto.
+
+Idyllic feeling for Nature became sympathetic in his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE DISCOVERY OF THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE
+IN PAINTING
+
+
+The indispensable condition of landscape-painting--painting, that is,
+which raises the representation of Nature to the level of its main
+subject and paints her entirely for her own sake--is the power to
+compose separate studies into a whole and imbue that with an artistic
+idea. It was therefore impossible among people like the Hebrews,[1]
+whose eyes were always fixed on distance and only noted what lay
+between in a cursory way, and among those who considered detail
+without relation to a whole, as we have seen in mediaeval poetry until
+the Renaissance. But just as study of the laws of aerial and linear
+perspective demands a trained and keen eye, and therefore implies
+interest in Nature, so the artistic idea, the soul of the picture,
+depends directly upon the degree of the artist's feeling for her
+Literature and painting are equal witnesses to the feeling for
+Nature, and so long as scenery was only background in poetry, it had
+no greater importance in painting. Landscape painting could only
+arise in the period which produced complete pictures of scenery in
+poetry--the sentimental idyllic period.
+
+We have seen how in the Italian Renaissance the fetters of dogma,
+tradition, and mediaeval custom were removed, and servility and
+visionariness gave place to healthy individuality and realism; how
+man and the world were discovered anew; and further, how among the
+other Romanic nations a lively feeling for Nature grew up, partly
+idyllic, partly mystic; and finally, how this feeling found dramatic
+expression in Shakespeare.
+
+Natural philosophy also, in the course of its search for truth, as it
+threw off both one-sided Christian ideas and ancient traditions, came
+gradually to feel an interest in Nature; not only her laws, but her
+beauty, became an object of enthusiastic study. By a very long
+process of development the Hellenic feeling for Nature was reached
+again in the Renaissance; but it always remained, despite its
+sentimental and pantheistic elements, sensual, superficial, and
+naive, in comparison with Christian feeling, which a warmer heart and
+a mind trained in scholastic wisdom had rendered more profound and
+abstract. Hence Nature was sometimes an object of attention in
+detail, sometimes in mass.[2]
+
+As we come to the first landscape painters and their birthplace in
+the Netherlands, we see how steady and orderly is the development of
+the human mind, and how factors that seem isolated are really links
+in one chain.
+
+In the Middle Ages, landscape was only background with more or less
+fitness to the subject. By the fifteenth century it was richer in
+detail, as we see in Pisanello and the Florentines Gozzoli and
+Mantegna. The poetry of earth had been discovered; the gold grounds
+gave way to field, wood, hill, and dale, and the blue behind the
+heads became a dome of sky. In the sixteenth century, Giorgione
+shewed the value of effects of light, and Correggio's backgrounds
+were in harmony with his tender, cheerful scenes. Titian loved to
+paint autumn; the sunny days of October with blue grapes, golden
+oranges, and melons; and evening with deep harmonies of colour over
+the sleeping earth. He was a great pioneer in the realm of landscape.
+With Michael Angelo not a blade of grass grew; his problem was man
+alone. Raphael's backgrounds, on the other hand, are life-like in
+detail: his little birds could fly out of the picture, the stems of
+his plants seem to curve and bend towards us, and we look deep into
+the flower they hold out.[3]
+
+In the German Renaissance too, the great masters limited themselves
+to charming framework and ingenious arabesques for their Madonnas and
+Holy Families. But, as Luebke says,[4] one soon sees that Duerer
+depended on architecture for borders and backgrounds far less than
+Holbein; he preferred landscape.
+
+'The charm of this background is so great, the inwardness of German
+feeling for Nature so strongly expressed in it, that it has a special
+value of its own, and the master through it has become the father of
+landscape painting.'[5]
+
+This must be taken with a grain of salt; but, at all events, it is
+true that Duerer combined 'keen and devoted study of Nature (in the
+widest sense of the word) with a penetration which aimed at tracing
+her facts up to their source.'[6] It is interesting to see how these
+qualities overcame his theoretical views on Nature and art.[7]
+Duerer's deep respect for Nature proved him a child of the new era.
+Melanchthon relates that he often regretted that he had been too much
+attracted in his younger days by variety and the fantastic, and had
+only understood Nature's simple truth and beauty later in life.
+
+His riper judgment preferred her to all other models. Nature, in his
+remarks on the theory of art, includes the animate and the inanimate,
+living creatures as well as scenery, and it is interesting to observe
+that his admiration of her as a divine thing was due to deep
+religious feeling. In his work on Proportion[8] he says:
+
+'Certainly art is hidden in Nature, and he who is able to separate it
+by force from Nature, he possesses it. Never imagine that you can or
+will surpass Nature's achievements; human effort cannot compare with
+the ability which her Creator has given her. Therefore no man can
+ever make a picture which excels Nature's; and when, through much
+copying, he has seized her spirit, it cannot be called original work,
+it is rather something received and learnt, whose seeds grow and bear
+fruit of their own kind. Thereby the gathered treasure of the heart,
+and the new creature which takes shape and form there, comes to light
+in the artist's work.'
+
+Elsewhere Duerer says 'a good painter's mind is full of figures,' and
+he repeatedly remarks upon the superabundant beauty of all living
+things which human intelligence rarely succeeds in reproducing.
+
+The first modern landscapes in which man was only accessory were
+produced in the Netherlands. Quiet, absorbed musing on the external
+world was characteristic of the nation; they studied the smallest and
+most trifling objects with care, and set a high value on minutiae.
+
+The still-life work of their prime was only possible to such an
+easy-going, life-loving people; the delightful animal pictures of
+Paul Potter and Adrian van de Velde could only have been painted in
+the land of Reineke Fuchs. Carriere says about these masters of genre
+painting[9]: 'Through the emphasis laid upon single objects, they not
+only revealed the national characteristics, but penetrated far into
+the soul of Nature and mirrored their own feelings there, so
+producing works of art of a kind unknown to antiquity. That divine
+element, which the Greek saw in the human form, the Germanic race
+divined in all the visible forms of Nature, and so felt at one with
+them and able to reveal itself through them.
+
+'Nature was studied more for her own sake than in her relation to
+man, and scenery became no longer mere background, but the actual
+object of the picture. Animals, and even men, whether bathing in the
+river, lying under trees, or hunting in the forest, were nothing but
+accessories; inorganic Nature was the essential element. The greatest
+Dutch masters did not turn their attention to the extraordinary and
+stupendous, the splendour of the high Alps or their horrible
+crevasses, or sunny Italian mountains reflected in their lakes or
+tropical luxuriance, but to common objects of everyday life. But
+these they grasped with a precision and depth of feeling which gave
+charm to the most trifling--it was the life of the universe divined
+in its minutiae. In its treatment of landscape their genre painting
+displayed the very characteristics which had brought it into
+being.'[10]
+
+The physical characters of the country favoured landscape painting
+too. No doubt the moist atmosphere and its silvery sheen, which add
+such freshness and brilliance to the colouring, influenced the
+development of the colour sense, as much as the absence of sharp
+contrasts in contour, the suggestive skies, and abundance of streams,
+woods, meadows, and dales.
+
+But it was in devotional pictures that the Netherlanders first tried
+their wings; landscape and scenes from human life did not free
+themselves permanently from religion and take independent place for
+more than a century later. The fourteenth-century miniatures shew the
+first signs of the northern feeling for Nature in illustrations of
+the seasons in the calendar pictures of religious manuscripts.
+Beginnings of landscape can be clearly seen in that threshold picture
+of Netherland art, the altar-piece at Ghent by the brothers Van Eyck,
+which was finished in 1432. It shews the most accurate observation:
+all the plants, grasses, flowers, rose bushes, vines, and palms, are
+correctly drawn; and the luxuriant valley in which the Christian
+soldiers and the knights are riding, with its rocky walls covered by
+undergrowth jutting stiffly forward, is very like the valley of the
+Maas.
+
+One sees that the charm of landscape has dawned upon the painters.
+
+Their skies are no longer golden, but blue, and flecked with
+cloudlets and alive with birds; wood and meadow shine in sappy green;
+fantastic rocks lie about, and the plains are bounded by low hills.
+They are drinking deep draughts from a newly-opened spring, and they
+can scarcely have enough of it. They would like to paint all the
+leaves and fruit on the trees, all the flowers on the grass, even all
+the dewdrops. The effect of distance too has been discovered, for
+there are blue hill-tops beyond the nearer green ones, and a
+foreground scene opens back on a distant plain (in the Ghent
+altar-piece, the scene with the pilgrims); but they still possess
+very few tones, and their overcrowded detail is almost all, from
+foreground to furthest distance, painted in the same luminous strong
+dark-green, as if in insatiable delight at the beauty of their own
+colour. The progress made by Jan van Eyck in landscape was immense.
+
+To the old masters Nature had been an unintelligible chaos of detail,
+but beauty, through ecclesiastical tradition, an abstract attribute
+of the Holy Family and the Saints, and they had used their best
+powers of imagination in accordance with this view. Hence they placed
+the Madonna upon a background of one colour, generally gilded. But
+now the great discovery was made that Nature was a distinct entity, a
+revelation and reflection of the divine in herself. And Jan van Eyck
+introduced a great variety of landscapes behind his Madonnas. One
+looks, for instance, through an open window to a wide stretch of
+country with fields and fortresses, and towns with streets full of
+people, all backed by mountains. And whether the scene itself, or
+only its background, lies in the open, the landscape is of the
+widest, enlivened by countless forms and adorned by splendid
+buildings.
+
+Molanus, the savant of Loewen, proclaimed Dierick Bouts, born like his
+predecessor Ouwater at Haarlem, to be the inventor of landscape
+painting (claruit inventor in describendo rare); but the van Eycks
+were certainly before him, though he increased the significance of
+landscape painting and shewed knowledge of aerial perspective and
+gradations of tone. Landscape was a distinct entity to him, and could
+excite the mood that suited his subject, as, for instance, in the
+side picture of the Last Supper, where the foreground is drawn with
+such exactness that every plant and even the tiny creatures crawling
+on the grass can be identified.
+
+The scenery of Roger van der Weyden of Brabant--river valleys
+surrounded by jagged rocks and mountains, isolated trees, and meadows
+bright with sappy green--is clearly the result of direct Nature
+study; it has a uniform transparent atmosphere, and a clear green
+shimmer lies over the foreground and gradually passes into blue haze
+further back.
+
+His pupil, Memling, shews the same fine gradations of tone. The
+composition of his richest picture, 'The Marriage of St Catherine,'
+did not allow space for an unbroken landscape, but the lines of wood
+and field converge to a vista in such a way that the general effect
+is one of unity.
+
+Joachim de Patenir, who appeared in 1515, was called a landscape
+painter by his contemporaries, because he reduced his sacred figures
+to a modest size, enlarged his landscape, and handled it with extreme
+care. He was very far from grasping it as a whole, but his method was
+synthetical; his river valleys, with masses of tree and bush and
+romantic rocks, fantastic and picturesque, with fortresses on the
+river banks, all shew this.
+
+Kerry de Bles was like him, but less accurate; with all the rest of
+the sixteenth-century painters of Brabant and Flanders, he did not
+rise to the idea of landscape as a whole.
+
+The most minute attention was given to the accurate painting of
+single objects, especially plants; the Flemings caring more for
+perfect truth to life, the Dutch for beauty. The Flemings generally
+sought to improve their landscape by embellishing its lines, while
+the Dutch gave its spirit, but adhered simply and strictly to Nature.
+The landscapes of Peter Brueghel the elder, with their dancing
+peasants surrounded by rocks, mills, groups of trees, are painful in
+their thoroughness; and Jan Brueghel carried imitation of Nature so
+far that his minutise required a magnifying-glass--it was veritable
+miniature work. He introduced fruit and flower painting as a new
+feature of art.
+
+Rubens and Brueghel often painted on each other's canvas, Brueghel
+supplying landscape backgrounds for Rubens' pictures, and Rubens the
+figures for Brueghel's landscapes. Yet Rubens himself was the best
+landscapist of the Flemish school. He was more than that. For
+Brueghel and his followers, with all their patience and industry,
+their blue-green landscape with imaginary trees, boundless distance
+and endless detail, were very far from a true grasp of Nature. It was
+Rubens and his school who really made landscape a legitimate
+independent branch of art. They studied it in all its aspects, quiet
+and homely, wild and romantic, some taking one and some the other:
+Rubens himself, in his large way, grasping the whole without losing
+sight of its parts. They all lifted the veil from Nature and saw her
+as she was (Falke).
+
+Brueghel put off the execution of a picture for which he had a
+commission from winter to spring, that he might study the flowers for
+it from Nature when they came out, and did not grudge a journey to
+Brussels now and then to paint flowers not to be had at Antwerp.
+There is a characteristic letter which he sent to the Archbishop of
+Milan with a picture:
+
+'I send your Reverence the picture with the flowers, which are all
+painted from Nature. I have painted in as many as possible. I believe
+so many rare and different flowers have never been painted before nor
+so industriously. It will give a beautiful effect in winter; some of
+the colours almost equal Nature. I have painted an ornament under the
+flowers with artistic medallions and curiosities from the sea. I
+leave it to your reverence to judge whether the flowers do not far
+exceed gold and jewels in colour.'
+
+He also painted landscapes in which people were only accessory, sunny
+valleys with leafage, golden cornfields, meadows with rows of dancing
+country folk or reapers in the wheat.
+
+Rubens, though he felt the influence of southern light and sunshine
+as much as his fellows who had been in Italy, took his backgrounds
+from his native land, from parts round Antwerp, Mechlin, and
+Brussels. Foliage, water, and undulating ground were indispensable to
+him--were, to a certain extent, the actual bearers of the impression
+he wished to convey.
+
+Brueghel always kept a childlike attitude, delighting in details, and
+proud of the clever brush which could carry imitation to the point of
+deception. Rubens was the first to treat landscape in a bold
+subjective way. He opened the book of Nature, so to speak, not to
+spell out the words syllable by syllable, but to master her secret,
+to descend into the depths of her soul, and then reflect what he
+found there--in short, he fully understood the task of the landscape
+painter. The fifty landscapes of his which we possess, contain the
+whole scale from a state of idyllic repose to one of dramatic
+excitement and tension. Take, for instance, the evening scene with
+the rainbow in the Louvre, marvellous in its delicate gradations of
+atmospheric tone, and the equally marvellous thunderstorm in the
+Belvedere at Vienna, where a rain-cloud bursts under sulphur
+lightning, and a mountain stream, swollen to a torrent and lashed by
+the hurricane, carries all before it--trees, rocks, animals, and men.
+
+In France, scarcely a flower had been seen in literature since the
+Troubadour days, not even in the classical poetry of Corneille and
+Racine. There were idyllic features in Fenelon's _Telemachus_, and
+Ronsard borrowed motives from antiquity; but it was pastoral poetry
+which blossomed luxuriantly here as in Italy and Spain.
+
+Honore d'Urfe's famous _Astree_ was much translated; but both his
+shepherds and his landscape were artificial, and the perfume of
+courts and carpet knights was over the whole, with a certain trace of
+sadness.
+
+The case was different with French painting. After the Netherlands,
+it was France, by her mediaeval illustrated manuscripts, who chiefly
+aided in opening the world's eyes to landscape. Both the Poussins
+penetrated below the surface of Nature. Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)
+painted serious stately subjects, such as a group of trees in the
+foreground, a hill with a classic building in the middle, and a chain
+of mountains in the distance, and laid more stress on drawing than
+colour. There was greater life in the pictures of his brother-in-law,
+Caspar Doughet, also called Poussin; his grass is more succulent, his
+winds sigh in the trees, his storm bends the boughs and scatters the
+clouds.
+
+It was Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) who brought the ideal style to its
+perfection. He inspired the very elements with mind and feeling; his
+valleys, woods, and seas were just a veil through which divinity was
+visible. All that was ugly, painful, and confused was purified and
+transfigured in his hands. There is no sadness or dejection in his
+pictures, but a spirit of serene beauty, free from ostentation,
+far-fetched contrast, or artificial glitter. Light breezes blow in
+his splendid trees, golden light quivers through them, drawing the
+eye to a bright misty horizon; we say with Uhland, 'The sky is
+solemn, as if it would say "this is the day of the Lord."'
+
+Artistic feeling for Nature became a worship with Claude Lorraine.
+
+The Netherlands recorded all Nature's phases in noble emulation with
+ever-increasing delight.
+
+The poetry of air, cloudland, light, the cool freshness of morning,
+the hazy sultriness of noon, the warm light of evening, it all lives
+and moves in Cuyp's pictures and Wynant's, while Aart van der Meer
+painted moonlight and winter snow, and Jan van Goyen the melancholy
+of mist shot by sunlight. He, too--Jan van Goyen--was very clever in
+producing effect with very small means, with a few trees reflected in
+water, or a sand-heap--the art in which Ruysdael excelled all others.
+The whole poetry of Nature--that secret magic which lies like a spell
+over quiet wood, murmuring sea, still pool, and lonely pasture--took
+form and colour under his hands; so little sufficed to enchant, to
+rouse thought and feeling, and lead them whither he would. Northern
+seriousness and sadness brood over most of his work; the dark trees
+are overhung by heavy clouds and rain, mist and dusky shadows move
+among his ruins. He had painted, says Carriere, the peace of woodland
+solitude long before Tieck found the word for it.
+
+Beechwoods reflected in a stream, misty cloud masses lighted by the
+rising sun; he moves us with such things as with a morning hymn, and
+his picture of a swollen torrent forcing its way between graves which
+catch the last rays of the sun, while a cloud of rain shrouds the
+ruins of a church in the background, is an elegy which has taken
+shape and colour.
+
+Ruysdael marks the culminating point of this period of development,
+which had led from mere backgrounds and single traits of Nature--even
+a flower stem or a blade of grass, up to elaborate compositions
+imbued by a single motive, a single idea.
+
+To conjure up with slight material a complete little world of its
+own, and waken responsive feeling, is not this the secret of the
+charm in the pictures of his school--in the wooded hill or peasant's
+courtyard by Hobbema, the Norwegian mountain scene of Albert van
+Everdingen, the dusky fig-trees, rugged crags, and foaming cataract,
+or the half-sullen, half-smiling sea-pieces of Bakhuysen and Van der
+Velde?
+
+All these great Netherlander far outstripped the poetry of their
+time; it was a hundred years later before mountain and sea found
+their painter in words, and a complete landscape picture was not born
+in German poetry until the end of the eighteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HUMANISM, ROCOCO, AND PIGTAIL
+
+
+Many decades passed before German feeling for Nature reached the
+heights attained by the Italian Renaissance and the Netherland
+landscapists. In the Middle Ages, Germany was engrossed with
+ecclesiastical dogma--man's relation, not only to God, but to the one
+saving Church--and had little interest for Science and Art; and the
+great achievement of the fifteenth century, the Reformation, called
+for word and deed to reckon with a thousand years of old traditions
+and the slavery of intellectual despotism. The new time was born amid
+bitter throes. The questions at issue--religious and ecclesiastical
+questions concerned with the liberty of the Christian--were of the
+most absorbing kind, and though Germany produced minds of individual
+stamp such as she had never known before, characters of original and
+marked physiognomy, it was no time for the quiet contemplation of
+Nature. Mental life was stimulated by the new current of ideas and
+new delight in life awakened: yet there is scarcely a trace of the
+intense feeling for Nature which we have seen in Petrarch and AEneas
+Sylvius.
+
+Largely as it was influenced by the Italian Renaissance, it is
+certainly a mistake to reckon the Humanist movement in Germany, as
+Geiger does,[1] as a 'merely imported culture, entirely lacking
+independence.' The germ of this great movement towards mental freedom
+was contained in the general trend of the time, which was striving to
+free itself from the fetters of the Middle Ages in customs and
+education as well as dogma. It was chiefly a polemical movement, a
+fight between contentious savants. The writings of the Humanists at
+this naively sensuous period were full of the joy of life and love of
+pleasure; but scarcely any simple feeling for Nature can be found in
+them, and there was neither poet nor poem fit to be compared with
+Petrarch and his sonnets.
+
+Natural philosophy, too, was proscribed by scholastic wisdom; the
+real Aristotle was only gradually shelled out from under mediaeval
+accretions. The natural philosopher, Conrad Summenhart[2] (1450-1501)
+was quite unable to disbelieve the foolish legend, that the
+appearance of a comet foretold four certain events--heat, wind, war,
+and the death of princes. At the same time, not being superstitious,
+he held aloof from the crazy science of astrology and all the fraud
+connected with it. Indeed, as an observer of Nature, and still more
+as a follower and furtherer of the scholastic Aristotelian natural
+philosophy, he shewed a leaning towards the theory of development,
+for, according to him, the more highly organized structures proceed
+from those of lower organization, and these again form the inorganic
+under the influence of meteors and stars. The poet laureate Conrad
+Celtes (_b_. 1459), a singer of love and composer of four books about
+it, was a true poet. His incessant wandering, for he was always
+moving from place to place, was due in part to love of Nature and of
+novelty, but still more to a desire to spread his own fame. He lacked
+the naivete and openness to impressions of the true child of Nature;
+his songs in praise of spring, etc., scatter a colourless general
+praise, which is evidently the result of arduous thought rather than
+of direct impressions from without; and his many references to
+ancient deities shew that he borrowed more than his phrases.
+
+Though geography was then closely bound up with the writing of
+history, as represented by Beatus Rhenanus (1485-1547) and Johann
+Aventinus, and patriotism and the accounts of new lands led men to
+wish to describe the beauties and advantages of their own, the
+imposing discoveries across the seas did not make so forcible an
+impression upon the German humanist as upon savants elsewhere,
+especially in Italy and Spain. A mystico-theosophical feeling for
+Nature, or rather a magical knowledge of her, flourished in Germany
+at this time among the learned, both among Protestants and those who
+were partially true to Catholicism. One of the strangest exponents of
+such ideas was Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim of Cologne[3] (1535).
+His system of the world abounded in such fantastic caprices as these:
+everything depends on harmony and sympathy; when one of Nature's
+strings is struck, the others sound with it: the analogical
+correspondences are at the same time magical: symbolic relations
+between natural objects are sympathetic also: a true love-bond exists
+between the elm and vine: the sun bestows life on man; the moon,
+growth; Mercury, imagination; Venus, love, etc. God is reflected in
+the macrocosm, gives light in all directions through all creatures,
+is adumbrated in man microcosmically, and so forth.
+
+Among others, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus
+von Hohenheim (1541), ranked Nature and the Bible, like Agrippa, as
+the best books about God and the only ones without falsehood.
+
+'One must study the elements, follow Nature from land to land, since
+each single country is only one leaf in the book of creation. The
+eyes that find pleasure in this true experience are the true
+professors, and more reliable than all learned writings.'
+
+He held man to be less God's very image than a microcosmic copy of
+Nature--the quintessence of the whole world. Other enthusiasts made
+similar statements. Sebastian Frank of Donauwoerth (1543) looked upon
+the whole world as an open book and living Bible, in which to study
+the power and art of God and learn His will: everything was His
+image, all creatures are 'a reflection, imprint, and expression of
+God, through knowledge of which man may come to know the true Mover
+and Cause of all things.'
+
+He shewed warm feeling for Nature in many similes and descriptions[4]--
+in fact, much of his pithy drastic writing sounds pantheistic. But he
+was very far from the standpoint of the great Italian philosophers,
+Giordano Bruno and Campanella. Bruno, a poet as well as thinker,
+distinguished Nature in her self-development--matter, soul, and
+mind--as being stages and phases of the One.
+
+  The material of all things issues from the original womb,
+  For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths;
+  She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind.
+  Which fashions its own material, not that of others,
+  And does not falter or doubt, but all by itself
+  Lightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles.
+  Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere,
+  Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one,
+  Orders and disposes of everything together.
+
+Campanella, even in a revolting prison, sang in praise of the wisdom
+and love of God, and His image in Nature. He personified everything
+in her; nothing was without feeling; the very movements of the stars
+depended on sympathy and antipathy; harmony was the central soul of
+all things.
+
+The most extraordinary of all German thinkers was the King of
+Mystics, Jacob Boehme. Theist and pantheist at once, his mind was a
+ferment of different systems of thought. It is very difficult to
+unriddle his _Aurora_, but love of Nature, as well as love of God, is
+clear in its mystical utterances:
+
+  God is the heart or source of Nature.
+  Nature is the body of God.
+
+'As man's mind rules his whole body in every vein and fills his whole
+being, so the Holy Ghost fills all Nature, and is its heart and rules
+in the good qualities of all things.'
+
+'But now heaven is a delightful chamber of pleasure, in which are all
+the powers, as in all Nature the sky is the heart of the waters.'
+
+In another place he calls God the vital power in the tree of life,
+the creatures His branches, and Nature the perfection and
+self-begotten of God.
+
+Nature's powers are explained as passion, will, and love, often in
+lofty and beautiful comparisons:
+
+'As earth always bears beautiful flowers, plants, and trees, as well
+as metals and animate beings, and these finer, stronger, and more
+beautiful at one time than another; and as one springs into being as
+another dies, causing constant use and work, so it is in still
+greater degree with the begetting of the holy mysteries[5] ...
+creation is nothing else than a revelation of the all-pervading
+superficial godhead ... and is like the music of many flutes combined
+into one great harmony.'
+
+But the most representative man, both of the fifteenth century and,
+in a sense, of the German race, was Luther. That maxim of Goethe's
+for teaching and ethics,' Cheerfulness is the mother of all virtues,
+might well serve as a motto for Luther;
+
+The two men had much in common.
+
+The one, standing half in the Middle Ages, had to free himself from
+mental slavery by strength of will and courage of belief.
+
+The other, as the prophet of the nineteenth century, the incarnation
+of the modern man, had to shake off the artificiality and weak
+sentimentality of the eighteenth.
+
+To both alike a healthy joy in existence was the root of being.
+Luther was always open to the influence of Nature, and,
+characteristically, the Psalter was his favourite book. 'Lord, how
+manifold are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them all!'
+
+True to his German character, he could be profoundly sad; but his
+disposition was delightfully cheerful and healthy, and we see from
+his letters and table-talk, that after wife and child, it was in
+'God's dear world' that he took the greatest pleasure. He could not
+have enough of the wonders of creation, great or small. 'By God's
+mercy we begin to see the splendour of His works and wonders in the
+little flowers, as we consider how kind and almighty He is; therefore
+we praise and thank Him. In His creatures we see the power of His
+word--how great it is. In a peach stone, too, for hard as the shell
+is, the very soft kernel within causes it to open at the right
+time.'[6] Again, 'So God is present in all creatures, even the
+smallest leaves and poppy seeds.'
+
+All that he saw of Nature inspired him with confidence in the
+fatherly goodness of God. He wrote, August 5th, 1530, to Chancellor
+Brneck:
+
+    I have lately seen two wonderful things: the first, looking from
+    the window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw
+    never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is
+    still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such
+    pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and
+    because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would
+    certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep
+    over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great
+    sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no vats in
+    which they were contained, yet they did not fall on us, but
+    greeted us with a frown and flew away. When they had gone, the
+    rainbow lighted both the ground and the roof which had held them.
+
+Luther often used very forcible images from Nature. 'It is only for
+the sake of winter that we lie and rot in the earth; when our summer
+comes, our grain will spring up--rain, sun, and wind prepare us for
+it--that is, the Word, the Sacraments, and the Holy Ghost.'
+
+His Bible was an orchard of all sorts of fruit trees; in the
+introduction to the Psalter, he says of the thanksgiving psalms:
+'There one looks into the hearts of the saints as into bright and
+beautiful gardens--nay, as into heaven itself, where pure and happy
+thoughts of God and His goodness are the lovely flowers.'
+
+His description of heaven for his little son John is full of simple
+reverent delight in Nature, quite free from platonic and mystical
+speculation as to God's relation to His universe; and Protestant
+divines kept this tone up to the following century, until the days of
+rationalism and pietism.
+
+Of such spontaneous hearty joy in Nature as this, the national songs
+of a nation are always the medium. They were so now; for, while a
+like feeling was nowhere else to be found, the Volkslieder expressed
+the simple familiar relationship of the child of Nature to wood,
+tree, and flower in touching words and a half-mythical,
+half-allegorical tone which often revealed their old Germanic origin.
+
+There is a fourteenth-century song, probably from the Lower Rhine,[7]
+which suggests the poems of the eighth and ninth centuries, about a
+great quarrel between Spring, crowned with flowers, and hoary-headed
+Winter, in which one praises and the other blames the cuckoo for
+announcing Spring.
+
+In this song, Summer complains to mankind and other friends that a
+mighty master is going to drive him away; this mighty master, Winter,
+then takes up the word, and menaces Spring with the approach of
+frost, who will slight and imprison him, and then kill him; ice and
+hail agree with Winter, and storm, rain, snow, and bitter winds are
+called his vassals, etc.
+
+There are naive verses in praise of Spring and Summer:
+
+  When that the breezes blow in May,
+  And snow melts from the wood away,
+  Blue violets lift their heads on high,
+  And when the little wood-birds sing,
+  And flow'rets from the ground up-spring,
+  Then everybody's glad.
+
+Others complaining of Winter, who must have leave of absence, and the
+wrongs it has wrought are poured out to Summer. The little birds are
+very human; the owlet complains:
+
+        Poor little owlet me!
+  I have to fly all alone through the wood to-night;
+  The branch I want to perch on is broken,
+  The leaves are all faded,
+  My heart is full of grief.
+
+The cuckoo is either praised for bringing good news, or made fun of
+as the 'Gutzgauch.'
+
+  A cuckoo will fly to his heart's treasure, etc.
+
+The fable songs[8] of animal weddings are full of humour. The fox
+makes arrangements for his wedding: 'Up with you now, little birds! I
+am going to take a bride. The starling shall saddle the horses, for
+he has a grey mantle; the beaver with the cap of marten fur must be
+driver, the hare with his light foot shall be outrider; the
+nightingale with his clear voice shall sing the songs, the magpie
+with his steady hop must lead the dances,' etc.
+
+The nightingale, with her rich tones, is beloved and honoured before
+all the winged things; she is called 'the very dear nightingale,' and
+addressed as a lady.
+
+'Thou art a little woodbird, and flyest in and out the green wood;
+fair Nightingale, thou little woodbird, thou shalt be my messenger.'
+
+It is she who warns the girl against false love, or is the silent
+witness of caresses.
+
+There were a great many wishing songs: 'Were I a little bird and had
+two wings, I would fly to thee,' or 'Were I a wild falcon, I would
+take flight and fly down before a rich citizen's house--a little maid
+is there,' etc. 'And were my love a brooklet cold, and sprang out of
+a stone, little should I grieve if I were but a green wood; green is
+the wood, the brooklet is cold, my love is shapely.' The betrayed
+maiden cries: 'Would God I were a white swan! I would fly away over
+mountain and deep valley o'er the wide sea, so that my father and
+mother should not know where I was.'
+
+Flowers were used symbolically in many ways; roses are always the
+flowers of love. 'Pretty girls should be kissed, roses should be
+gathered,' was a common saying; and 'Gather roses by night, for then
+all the leaves are covered with cooling dew.' 'The roses are ready to
+be gathered, so gather them to-day. He who does not gather in summer,
+will not gather in winter.' There is tenderness in this: 'I only know
+a little blue flower, the colour of the sky; it grows in the green
+meadow, 'tis called forget-me-not.'
+
+These are sadder:
+
+  There is a lime tree in this valley,
+  O God! what does it there?
+  It will help me to grieve
+  That I have no lover.
+
+'Alas! you mountains and deep valleys, is this the last time I shall
+see my beloved? Sun, moon, and the whole sky must grieve with me till
+my death.'
+
+Where lovers embrace, flowers spring out of the grass, roses and
+other flowers and grasses laugh, the trees creak and birds sing;[9]
+where lovers part, grass and leaves fade.[10]
+
+Most touching of all is the idea, common to the national songs of all
+nations, that out of the grave of two lovers, lilies and roses spring
+up, or climbing plants, love thus outliving death.
+
+We look in vain among the master singers of the fifteenth and
+sixteenth centuries for such fresh heartfelt tones as these, although
+honest Hans Sachs shews joy in Nature here and there; most charmingly
+in the famous comparison of 'the Wittenberg Nightingale, which every
+one hears everywhere now,' in praise of Luther:
+
+'Wake up, the dawn is nigh! I hear a joyous nightingale singing in
+the green hedge, it fills the hills and valleys with its voice. The
+night is stooping to the west, the day is rising from the east, the
+morning red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks through. The
+moon quenches her light; now she is pale and wan, but erewhile with
+false glamours she dazzled all the sheep and turned them from their
+pasture lands and pastor....'
+
+Fischart too, in his quaint description of a voyage on the Rhine in
+_Glueckhaft Schiff_, shews little feeling for Nature; but in
+_Simplicissimus_, on the other hand, that monument of literature
+which reflected contemporary culture to a unique degree, it is very
+marked; the more so since it appeared when Germany lay crushed by the
+Thirty Years' War.
+
+When the hero as a boy was driven from his village home and fled into
+the forest, he came upon a hermit who took care of him, and waking at
+midnight, he heard the old man sing:
+
+  Come, nightingale, comfort of the night,
+  Let your voice rise in a song of joy, come praise the Creator,
+  While other birds are sound asleep and cannot sing!...
+  The stars are shining in the sky in honour of God....
+  My dearest little bird, we will not be the laziest of all
+  And lie asleep; we will beguile the time with praise
+  Till dawn refreshes the desolate woods.
+
+_Simplicissimus_ goes on: 'During this song, methinks, it was as if
+nightingale, owl, and echo had combined in song, and if ever I had
+been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody
+on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to join in the
+melody, so beautiful it seemed; but I was asleep.'
+
+What was the general feeling for Nature in other countries during the
+latter half of the seventeenth century? In Italy and Spain it had
+assumed a form partly bucolic and idyllic, partly theosophically
+mystical; Shakespeare's plays had brought sympathy to maturity in
+England; the Netherlands had given birth to landscape painting, and
+France had the splendid poetic landscapes of Claude Lorraine. But the
+idealism thus reached soon degenerated into mannerism and
+artificiality, the hatching of empty effect.
+
+The aberrations of taste which found expression in the periwig style
+of Louis XIV., and in the pigtails of the eighteenth century,
+affected the feeling for Nature too. The histories of taste in
+general, and of feeling for Nature, have this in common, that their
+line of progress is not uniformly straightforward, but liable to
+zigzags. This is best seen in reviewing the different civilized races
+together. Moreover, new ideas, however forcible and original, even
+epoch-making, do not win acceptance at once, but rather trickle
+slowly through resisting layers; it is long before any new gain in
+culture becomes the common property of the educated, and hence
+opposite extremes are often found side by side--taste for what is
+natural with taste for what is artificial. Garden style is always a
+delicate test of feeling for Nature, shewing, as it does, whether we
+respect her ways or wish to impose our own. The impulse towards the
+modern French gardening came from Italy. Ancient and modern times
+both had to do with it. At the Renaissance there was a return to
+Pliny's style,[11] which the Cinque cento gardens copied. In this
+style laurel and box-hedges were clipt, and marble statues placed
+against them, 'to break the uniformity of the dark green with
+pleasant silhouettes. One looks almost in vain for flowers and turf;
+even trees were exiled to a special wilderness at the edge of the
+garden; but the great ornament of the whole was never missing, the
+wide view over sunny plains and dome-capt towns, or over the distant
+shimmering sea, which had gladdened the eyes of Roman rulers in
+classic days.'[12]
+
+The old French garden as Maitre Lenotre laid it out in Louis XIV.'s
+time at Versailles, St Germain, and St Cloud, was architectural in
+design, and directly connected, like Pliny's, with various parts of
+the house, by open halls, pavilions, and colonnades. Every part of
+it--from neat turf parterres bordered by box in front of the terrace,
+designs worked out in flowers or coloured stones, and double rows of
+orange spaliers, to groups of statues and fountains--belonged to one
+symmetrical plan, the focus of which was the house, standing free
+from trees, and visible from every point. Farther off, radiating
+avenues led the eye in the same direction, and every little
+intersecting alley, true to the same principle, ran to a definite
+object--obelisk, temple, or what not. There was no lack of bowers,
+giant shrubberies, and water-courses running canal-wise through the
+park, but they all fell into straight lines; every path was ruled by
+a ruler, the eye could follow it to its very end. Artifice was the
+governing spirit. As Falke says: 'Nature dared not speak but only
+supply material; she had to sacrifice her own inventive power to this
+taste and this art. Hills and woods were only hindrances; the
+straight lines of trees and hedges, with their medley of statues and
+"cabinets de verdure," demanded level ground, and the landscape eye
+of the period only tolerated woods as a finish to its cut and clipt
+artificialities.'[13]
+
+Trees and branches were not allowed to grow at their own sweet will;
+they were cut into cubes, balls, pyramids, even into shapes of
+animals, as the gardener's fancy or his principles decreed; cypresses
+were made into pillars or hearts with the apex above or below; and
+the art of topiary even achieved complete hunting scenes, with
+hunters, stags, dogs, and hares in full chase on a hedge. Of such a
+garden one could say with honest Claudius, ''Tis but a tailor's joke,
+and shews the traces of the scissors; it has nothing of the great
+heart of Nature.'
+
+It was Nature in bondage: 'green architecture,' with all its parts,
+walls, windows, roofs, galleries cut out of leafage, and theatres
+with stage and wings in which silk and velvet marquises with
+full-bottomed wigs and lace jabots, and ladies in hooped petticoats
+and hair in towers, played at private theatricals.
+
+Where water was available, water devices were added. And in the midst
+of all this unnaturalness Greek mythology was introduced: the story
+of Daphne and Apollo appeared in one alley, Meleager and Atalanta in
+another, all Olympus was set in motion to fill up the walls and
+niches. And the people were like their gardens both in dress and
+manners; imposing style was everything.
+
+Then came the Rococo period of Louis XV. The great periwig shrivelled
+to a pigtail, and petty flourish took the place of Lenotre's
+grandezza.
+
+'The unnatural remained, the imposing disappeared and caprice took
+its place,' says Falke. Coquetry too. All the artistic output of the
+time bears this stamp, painting included. Watteau's scenery and
+people were unnatural and affected--mere inventions to suit the
+gallant _fetes_. But he knew and loved Nature, though he saw her with
+the intoxicated eye of a lover who forgets the individual but keeps a
+glorified impression of her beauty, whereas Boucher's rosy-blue
+landscapes look as if he had never seen their originals. His world
+had nothing in common with Nature, and with reality only this, that
+its sensuousness, gaiety, falsity, and coquetry were true to the
+period. But in both Watteau and Boucher there was a faint glimmer of
+the idyllic--witness the dash of melancholy in Watteau's brightest
+pictures. Feeling for Nature was seeking its lost path--the path it
+was to follow with such increased fervour.
+
+German literature too, in the seventeenth century, stood under the
+sign manual of the Pigtail and Periwig; it was baroque, stilted,
+bombastic, affected, feeling and form alike were forced, not
+spontaneous. Verses were turned out by machinery and glued together.
+Martin Opitz,[14] the recognized leader and king of poets, had
+travelled far, but there is no distinct feeling for Nature in his
+poetry. His words to a mountain:
+
+'Nature has so arranged pleasure here, that he who takes the trouble
+to climb thee is repaid by delight,' scarcely admit the inference
+that he understood the charm of distance in the modern sense. He took
+warmer interest in the bucolic side of country life; rhyming about
+the delightful places, dwellings of peace, with their myrtles,
+mountains, valleys, stones, and flowers, where he longed to be; and
+his _Spring Song_, an obvious imitation of the classics (Horace's
+_Beatus ille_ was his model for _Zlatna_), has this conventional
+contrast between his heart and Nature.
+
+'The frosty ice must melt; snow cannot last any longer, Favonius; the
+gentle breeze is on the, fields again. Seed is growing vigorously,
+grass greening in all its splendour, trees are budding, flowers
+growing ...thou, too my heart, put off thy grief.'
+
+There is more nostalgia than feeling for Nature in this:
+
+'Ye birches and tall limes, waste places, woods and fields, farewell
+to you!
+
+'My comfort and my better dwelling-place is elsewhere!'
+
+But (and this Winter, strange to say, ignores) his pastorals have all
+the sentimental elegiac style of the Pigtail period.
+
+There had been German adaptations of foreign pastorals, such as
+Montreux, _Schaferei von der schoenen Juliana_, since 1595; Urfe's
+_Astree_ and Montemayor's _Diana_ appeared in 1619, and Sidney's
+_Arcadia_ ten years later.
+
+Opitz tried to widen the propaganda for this kind of poetry, and
+hence wrote, not to mention little pastorals such as _Daphne,
+Galatea, Corydon,_ and _Asteria_, his _Schaferei von der 'Nymphen
+Hercinie.'_
+
+His references to Nature in this are as exaggerated as everything
+else in the poem. He tells how he did not wake 'until night, the
+mother of the stars, had gone mad, and the beautiful light of dawn
+began to shew herself and everything with her....
+
+'I sprang up and greeted the sweet rays of the sun, which looked down
+from the tops of the mountains and seemed at the same time to comfort
+me.'
+
+He came to a spring 'which fell from a crag with charming murmur and
+rustle,' cut a long poem in the fir bark, and conversed with three
+shepherds on virtue, love, and travelling, till the nymph Hercynia
+appeared and shewed him the source of the Silesian stream. One of the
+shepherds, Buchner, was particularly enthusiastic about water: 'Kind
+Nature, handmaid of the Highest, has shewn her best handiwork in sea,
+river, and spring.'
+
+Fleming too, who already stood much higher as a lyrist and had
+travelled widely, lacked the power of describing scenery, and must
+needs call Oreads, Dryads, Castor and Pollux to his aid. He rarely
+reached the simple purity of his fine sonnet _An Sich,_ or the
+feeling in this: 'Dense wild wood, where even the Titan's brightest
+rays give no light, pity my sufferings. In my sick soul 'tis as dark
+as in thy black hollow.'
+
+In this time of decline the hymns of the Evangelical Church (to which
+Fleming contributed) were full of feeling, and brought the national
+songs to mind as nothing else did.
+
+A few lines of Paul Gerhardt's seem to me to out-weigh whole volumes
+of contemporary rhymes--lines of such beauty as the _Evening Song_:
+
+  Now all the woods are sleeping,
+  And night and stillness creeping
+  O'er field and city, man and beast;
+  The last faint beam is going,
+  The golden stars are glowing
+  In yonder dark-blue deep.
+
+And after him, and more like him than any one else, came Andreas
+Gryphius.
+
+There was much rhyming about Nature in the poet schools of Hamburg,
+Koenigsberg, and Nuremberg; but, for the most part, it was an idle
+tinkle of words without feeling, empty artificial stuff with
+high-flown titles, as in Philipp von Zesen's _Pleasure of Spring_,
+and _Poetic Valley of Roses and Lilies_.
+
+'Up, my thoughts, be glad of heart, in this joyous pleasant March;
+ah! see spring is reviving, earth opens her treasury,' etc.
+
+His romances were more noteworthy if not more interesting. He
+certainly aimed high, striving for simplicity and clearness of
+expressions in opposition to the Silesian poets, and hating foreign
+words.
+
+His feeling for Nature was clear; he loved to take his reader into
+the garden, and was enthusiastic about cool shady walks, beds of
+tulips, birds' songs, and echoes. Idyllic pastoral life was the
+fashion--people of distinction gave themselves up to country life and
+wore shepherd costume--and he introduced a pastoral episode into his
+romance, _Die adriatische Rosemund._[15]
+
+Rosemund, whose father places arbitrary conditions in the way of her
+marriage with Markhold, becomes a shepherdess.
+
+    Not far off was a delightful spot where limes and alders made
+    shade on hot summer days for the shepherds and shepherdesses who
+    dwelt around. The shady trees, the meadows, and the streams which
+    ran round it, and through it, made it look beautiful ... the
+    celestial Rosemund had taken up her abode in a little shepherd
+    hut on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded
+    by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning
+    and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more
+    than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel
+    her confused thoughts.
+
+She thought continually of Markhold, and spent her time cutting his
+name in the trees. The following description of a walk with her
+sister Stillmuth and her lover Markhold, gives some idea of the
+formal affected style of the time.
+
+    The day was fine, the sky blue, the weather everywhere warm. The
+    sun shone down on the globe with her pleasant lukewarm beams so
+    pleasantly, that one scarcely cared to stay indoors. They went
+    into the garden, where the roses had opened in the warmth of the
+    sun, and first sat down by the stream, then went to the grottos,
+    where Markhold particularly admired the shell decorations. When
+    this charming party had had enough of both, they finally betook
+    themselves to a leafy walk, where Rosemund introduced pleasant
+    conversation on many topics. She talked first about the many
+    colours of tulips, and remarked that even a painter could not
+    produce a greater variety of tints nor finer pictures than these,
+    etc.
+
+In describing physical beauty, he used comparisons from Nature; for
+instance, in _Simson_[16]:
+
+    The sun at its brightest never shone so brightly as her two eyes
+    ... no flower at its best can shew such red as blooms in the
+    meadow of her cheeks, no civet rose is so milk-white, no lily so
+    delicate and spotless, no snow fresh-fallen and untrodden is so
+    white, as the heaven of her brows, the stronghold of her mind.
+
+H. Anselm von Ziegler und Klipphausen also waxes eloquent in his
+famous _Asiatischen Banise_: 'The suns of her eyes played with
+lightnings; her curly hair, like waves round her head, was somewhat
+darker than white; her cheeks were a pleasant Paradise where rose and
+lily bloomed together in beauty--yea, love itself seemed to pasture
+there.' Elsewhere too this writer, so highly esteemed by the second
+Silesian school of poets, indulged in showy description and inflated
+rhetoric. Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbuettel tried more
+elaborate descriptions of scenery; so that Chovelius says:
+
+    The Duke's German character shews pleasantly in his delight in
+    Nature. The story often takes one into woods and fields; already
+    griefs and cares were carried to the running brook and mossy
+    stone, and happy lovers listened to the nightingale.
+
+His language is barely intelligible, but there is a pleasant breadth
+about his drawing--for example, of the king's meadow and the grotto
+in _Aramena_:
+
+    Very cold crystal streams flowed through the fields and ran
+    softly over the stony ground, making a pleasant murmur. Whilst
+    the ear was thus contented, a distant landscape delighted the
+    eye. No more delightful place, possessing all this at once, could
+    have been found, etc.
+
+    Looking through the numerous air-holes, the eye lost itself in a
+    deep valley, surrounded by nothing but mountains, where the
+    shepherds tended their flocks, and one heard their flutes
+    multiplied by the echo in the most delightful way.
+
+Mawkish shepherd play is mixed here with such verses as (Rahel):
+
+    Thou, Chabras, thou art the dear stream, where Jacob's mouth gave
+    me the first kiss. Thou, clear brook, often bearest away the
+    passionate words of my son of Isaac ... on many a bit of wounded
+    bark, the writing of my wounds is to be found.
+
+The most insipid pastoral nonsense of the time was produced by the
+Nuremberg poets, the Pegnitz shepherds Klaj and Harsdoerfer. Their
+strength lay in imitating the sounds of Nature, and they were much
+admired. What is still more astonishing, Lohenstein's writings were
+the model for thirty years, and it was the fashion for any one who
+wrote more simply to apologize for being unable to reach the level of
+so great a master! To us the bombast, artificiality, and hidden
+sensuality of his poetry and Hoffmannswaldan's, are equally
+repulsive.
+
+What dreary, manufactured stuff this is from Lohenstein's _Praise of
+Roses sung by the Sun_[17]:
+
+  This is the queen of flowers and plants,
+  The bride of heaven, world's treasure, child of stars!
+  For whom love sighs, and I myself, the sun, do pant,
+  Because her crown is golden, and her leaves are velvet,
+  Her foot and stylus emerald, her brilliance shames the ruby.
+
+  Other beings possess only single beauties,
+  Nature has made the rose beautiful with all at once.
+  She is ashamed, and blushes
+  Because she sees all the other flowers stand ashamed before her.
+
+In _Rose Love_ he finds the reflection of love in everything:
+
+  In whom does not Love's spirit plant his flame?
+  One sees the oil of love burn in the starry lamps,
+  That pleasant light can nothing be but love,
+  For which the dew from Phoebus' veil doth fall.
+  Heaven loves the beauteous globe of earth,
+  And gazes down on her by night with thousand eyes;
+  While earth to please the heaven
+  Doth clover, lilies, tulips in her green hair twine,
+  The elm and vine stock intertwine,
+  The ivy circles round the almond trees,
+  And weeps salt tears when they are forced apart.
+  And where the flowers burn with glow of Love,
+  It is the rose that shews the brightest flame,
+  For is the rose not of all flowers the queen,
+  The wondrous beauty child of sun and earth?
+
+Artificiality and bombast reached its highest pitch in these poets,
+and feeling for Nature was entirely absent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SYMPTOMS OF A RETURN TO NATURE
+
+
+It is refreshing to find, side by side with these mummified
+productions, the traces of a pure national poetry flowing clear as
+ever, 'breaking forth from the very heart of the people, ever
+renewing its youth, and not misled by the fashion of the day.'[1]
+
+The traces prove that simple primitive love for Nature was not quite
+dead. For instance, this of the Virgin Mary: 'Mary, she went across
+the heath, grass and flowers wept for grief, she did not find her
+son.' And the lines in which the youth forced into the cloister asks
+Nature to lament with him: 'I greet you all, hill and dale, do not
+drive me away--grass and foliage and all the green things in the wild
+forest. O tree! lose your green ornaments, complain, die with
+me--'tis your duty.'
+
+Then the Spring greetings:
+
+  Now we go into the wide, wide world,
+  With joy and delight we go;
+  The woods are dressing, the meadows greening,
+  The flowers beginning to blow.
+  Listen here! and look there! We can scarce trust our eyes,
+  For the singing and soaring, the joy and life everywhere.
+
+And:
+
+  What is sweeter than to wander in the early days of Spring
+  From one place to another in sheer delight and glee;
+  While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult around
+  Fair Nightingale, the foremost of them all?
+
+This has the pulse of true and naive feeling (the hunter is starting
+for the hunt in the early morning):
+
+  When I come into the forest, still and silent everywhere,
+  There's a look of slumber in it, but the air is fresh and cool.
+  Now Aurora paints the fir tops at their very tips with gold,
+  And the little finch sits up there launching forth his song of praise,
+  Thanking for the night that's over, for the day that's just awake
+  Gently blows the breeze of morning, rocking in the topmost twigs,
+  And it bends them down like children, like good children when they pray;
+  And the dew is an oblation as it drops from their green hair.
+  O what beauties in the forest he that we may see and know!
+  One could melt away one's heart before its wonders manifold!
+
+The sixth line in the original has a melody that reminds one of
+Goethe's early work.
+
+But even amidst the artificial poetry then in vogue, there were a few
+side streams which turned away from the main current of the great
+poet schools, from the unnaturalness and bombast affected especially
+by the Silesians. As Winter says, even the satirists Moscherosch and
+Logau were indirectly of use in paving the way for a healthier
+condition, through their severe criticisms of the corruption of the
+language; and Logau's one epigram on May, 'This month is a kiss which
+heaven gives to earth, that she may be a bride now, a mother
+by-and-by,' outweighs all Harsdoerfer's and Zesen's poetry about
+Nature.
+
+But even by the side of Opitz and Fleming there was at least one poet
+of real feeling, Friedrich von Spee.[2] With all his mystic and
+pietist Christianity, he kept an open eye for Nature. His poems are
+full of disdain of the world and joy in Nature,[3] longings for death
+and lamentations over sin; he delighted in personifications of
+abstract ideas, childish playing with words and feelings, and
+sentimental enthusiasm. But mawkish and canting as he was apt to be,
+he often shewed a fine appreciation of detail. He was even--a rare
+thing then--fascinated by the sea.
+
+  Now rages and roars the wild, wild sea,
+  Now in soft curves lies quietly;
+  Sweetly the light of the sun's bright glow
+  Mirrors itself in the water below.
+
+  Sad winter's past--the stork is here,
+  Birds are singing and nests appear;
+  Bowery homes steal into the day,
+  Flow'rets present their full array;
+  Like little snakes and woods about,
+  The streams go wandering in and out.
+
+His motives, like his diminutives, are constantly recurring. He uses
+many bold and poetic personifications; the sun 'combs her golden
+hair,' the moon is a good shepherd who leads his sheep the stars
+across the blue heath, blowing upon a soft pipe; the sun adorns
+herself in spring with a crown and a girdle of roses, fills her
+quiver with arrows, and sends her horses to gallop for miles across
+the smooth sky; the wind flies about, stopping for breath from time
+to time; shakes its wings and withdraws into its house when it is
+tired; the brook of Cedron sits, leaning on a bucket in a hollow,
+combing his bulrush hair, his shoulders covered by grass and water;
+he sings a cradle song to his little brooks, or drives them before
+him, etc.
+
+But the most gifted poet of the set, and the most doughty opponent of
+Lohenstein's bombast, was the unhappy Christian Guenther.[4]
+
+He vents his feelings in verse because he must. There is a foretaste
+of Goethe in his lyrics, poured put to free the soul from a burden,
+and melodious as if by accident. As we turn over the leaves of his
+book of songs, we find deep feeling for Nature mingled with his love
+and sorrows.[5]
+
+  Bethink you, flowers and trees and shades,
+  Of the sweet evenings here with Flavia!
+  'Twas here her head upon my shoulder pressed;
+  Conceal, ye limes, what else I dare not say.
+  'Twas here she clover threw and thyme at me,
+  And here I filled her lap with freshest flowers.
+  Ah! that was a good time!
+  I care more for moon and starlight than the pleasantest of days,
+  And with eyes and heart uplifted from my chamber often gaze
+  With an awe that grows apace till it scarcely findeth space.
+
+To his lady-love he writes:
+
+  Here where I am writing now
+  'Tis lonely, shady, cool, and green;
+  And by the slender fig I hear
+  The gentle wind blow towards Schweidnitz.
+  And all the time most ardently
+  I give it thousand kisses for thee.
+
+And at Schweidnitz:
+
+  A thousand greetings, bushes, fields, and trees,
+  You know him well whose many rhymes
+  And songs you've heard, whose kisses seen;
+  Remember the joy of those fine summer nights.
+
+To Eleanora:
+
+  Spring is not far away. Walk in green solitude
+  Between your alder rows, and think ...
+  As in the oft-repeated lesson
+  The young birds' cry shall bear my longing;
+  And when the west wind plays with cheek and dress be sure
+  He tells me of thy longing, and kisses thee a thousand times for me.
+
+In a time of despair, he wrote:
+
+  Storm, rage and tear! winds of misfortune, shew all your tyranny!
+  Twist and split bark and twig,
+  And break the tree of hope in two
+  Stem and leaves are struck by this hail and thunder,
+  The root remains till storm and rain have laid their wrath.
+
+Again:
+
+  The woods I'll wander through,
+  From men I'll flee away,
+  With lonely doves I'll coo,
+  And with the wild things stay.
+  When life's the prey of misery,
+  And all my powers depart,
+  A leafy grave will be
+  Far kinder than thy heart.
+
+True lyrist, he gave Nature her full right in his feelings, and found
+comfort in return; but, as Goethe said of him, gifted but unsteady as
+he was, 'He did not know how to restrain himself, and so his life and
+poetry melted away.'
+
+Among those who made use of better material than the Silesian poets,
+H. Barthold Brockes stood first. Nature was his one and only subject;
+but in this he was not original, he was influenced by England. While
+France was dictating a taste like the baroque, and Germany
+enthusiastically adopting it (every petty prince in the land copied
+the gardens at Versailles, Schwetzingen more closely than the rest),
+a revolution which affected all Europe was brought about by England.
+The order of the following dates is significant: William Kent, the
+famous garden artist, died in 1748, James Thomson in the same year,
+Brockes a year earlier; and about the same time the imitations of
+Robinson Crusoe sprang up like mushrooms.
+
+We have considered Shakespeare's plays; English lyrists too of the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shewed deep feeling for Nature, and
+invested scenery with their own feelings in a very delicate way.
+
+G. Chaucer (1400) praises the nightingale s song in _From the Floure
+and Leafe_:
+
+        So was I with the song
+  Thorow ravished, that till late and long
+  Ne wist I in what place I was ne where; ...
+  And at the last, I gan full well aspie
+  Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree
+  On the further side, even right by me,
+  That gave so passing a delicious smell
+  According to the eglentere full well....
+
+        On the sote grass
+  I sat me downe, for, as for mine entent,
+  The birddes song was more convenient,
+  And more pleasant to me by many fold
+  Than meat or drink or any other thing.
+
+Thomas Wyatt (1542) says of his lady-love:
+
+  The rocks do not so cruelly
+  Repulse the waves continually,
+  As she my suit and affection
+  So that I am past remedy.
+
+Robert Southwell (1595), in _Love's Servile Lott_, compares love to
+April:
+
+  May never was the month for love,
+  For May is full of floures,
+  But rather Aprill, wett by kinde,
+  For love is full of showers....
+  Like winter rose and summer yce,
+  Her joyes are still untymelye;
+  Before her hope, behind remorse,
+  Fayre first, in fyne unseemely.
+
+Edmund Spenser (1598) describes a garden in _The Faerie Queene_:
+
+  There the most daintie Paradise on ground
+  It selfe did offer to his sober eye,
+  In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,
+  And none does others' happinesse envye;
+  The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,
+  The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space,
+  The trembling groves, the christall running by,
+  And, that which all fair workes doth most aggrace,
+  The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.
+
+Mountain scenery was seldom visited or described.
+
+Michael Drayton (1731) wrote an ode on the Peak, in Derbyshire:
+
+  Though on the utmost Peak
+  A while we do remain,
+  Amongst the mountains bleak
+  Exposed to sleet and rain,
+  No sport our hours shall break
+  To exercise our vein.
+
+It is clear that he preferred his comfort to everything, for he goes
+on:
+
+  Yet many rivers clear
+  Here glide in silver swathes,
+  And what of all most dear
+  Buxton's delicious baths,
+  Strong ale and noble chear
+  T' assuage breem winter's scathes.
+
+Thomas Carew (1639) sings:
+
+  Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
+  When June is past, the fading rose,
+  For in your beauties' orient deep
+  These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
+  Ask me no more whither do stray
+  The golden atoms of the day,
+  For in pure love Heaven did prepare
+  Those powders to enrich your hair.
+  Ask me no more whither doth haste
+  The nightingale, when May is past,
+  For in your sweet dividing throat
+  She winters and keeps warm her note.
+  Ask me no more where these stars shine
+  That downwards fall in dead of night,
+  For in your eyes they sit, and there
+  Fixed become, as in their sphere.
+  Ask me no more if east or west
+  The phoenix builds her spicy nest,
+  For unto you at last she flies
+  And in your fragrant bosom dies.
+
+William Drummond (1746) avowed a taste which he knew to be very
+unfashionable:
+
+  Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove,
+  Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own
+  Though solitary, who is not alone,
+  But doth converse with that eternal love.
+  O how more sweet is birds' harmonious moan
+  Or the soft sobbings of the widow'd dove,
+  Than those smooth whisp'rings near a prince's throne....
+  O how more sweet is zephyr's wholesome breath
+  And sighs perfum'd, which new-born flowers unfold.
+
+Another sonnet, to a nightingale, says:
+
+  Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours
+  Of winters past or coming void of care,
+  Well pleased with delights which present are,
+  Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
+  To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
+  Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
+  And what dear gifts on thee He did not spare,
+  A stain to human sense in sin that lowers,
+  What soul can be so sick which by thy songs
+  Attir'd in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
+  Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs?
+
+He greets Spring:
+
+  Sweet Spring, thou turn'st with all thy goodly train
+  Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers;
+  The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
+  The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers.
+
+Robert Blair (1746) sings in _The Grave_:
+
+      Oh, when my friend and I
+  In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on,
+  Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down
+  Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd bank,
+  Where the pure limpid stream has slid along
+  In grateful errors through the underwood,
+  Sweet murmuring; methought the shrill-tongu'd
+      thrush
+  Mended his song of love, the sooty blackbird
+  Mellowed his pipe and soften'd every note,
+  The eglantine smell'd sweeter and the rose
+  Assum'd a dye more deep, whilst ev'ry flower
+  Vied with its fellow plant in luxury
+  Of dress. Oh! then the longest summer's day
+  Seem'd too, too much in haste, still the full heart
+  Had not imparted half; half was happiness
+  Too exquisite to last--Of joys departed
+  Not to return, how painful the remembrance!
+
+The great painter of Nature among the poets was James Thomson. He was
+not original, but followed Pope, who had lighted up the seasons in a
+dry, dogmatic way in _Windsor Forest_, and pastoral poems, and after
+the publication of his _Winter_ the taste of the day carried him on.
+His deep and sentimental affection for Nature was mixed up with piety
+and moralizing. He said in a letter to his friend Paterson:
+
+    Retirement and Nature are more and more my passion every day; and
+    now, even now, the charming time comes on; Heaven is just on the
+    point, or rather in the very act, of giving earth a green gown.
+    The voice of the nightingale is heard in our lane. You must know
+    that I have enlarged my rural domain ... walled, no, no! paled in
+    about as much as my garden consisted of before, so that the walk
+    runs round the hedge, where you may figure me walking any time of
+    day, and sometimes of the night.... May your health continue till
+    you have scraped together enough to return home and live in some
+    snug corner, as happy as the Corycius senex in Virgil's fourth
+    Georgic, whom I recommend both to you and myself as a perfect
+    model of the truest happy life.
+
+It is a fact that Solitude and Nature became a passion with him. He
+would wander about the country for weeks at a time, noting every
+sight and sound, down to the smallest, and finding beauty and divine
+goodness in all. His _Seasons_ were the result.
+
+There is faithful portraiture in these landscapes in verse; some have
+charm and delicacy, but, for the most part, they are only catalogues
+of the external world, wholly lacking in links with the inner life.
+
+Scene after scene is described without pause, or only interrupted by
+sermonizing; it is as monotonous as a gallery of landscape paintings.
+
+The human beings introduced are mere accessories, they do not live,
+and the undercurrent of all is praise of the Highest. His
+predilection is for still life in wood and field, but he does not
+neglect grander scenery; his muse
+
+  "Sees Caledonia, in romantic view:
+  Her airy mountains, from the waving main
+  Invested with a keen diffusive sky,
+  Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge,
+  Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand
+  Planted of old; her azure lakes between,
+  Poured out extensive and of watery wealth
+  Full; winding, deep and green, her fertile vales,
+  With many a cool translucent brimming flood
+  Washed lovely...."
+
+And in _A Hymn_ we read:
+
+  Ye headlong torrents rapid and profound,
+  Ye softer floods that lead the humid maze
+  Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
+  A secret world of wonders in thyself.
+
+It is the lack of human life, the didactic tone, and the wearisome
+detail which destroys interest in the _Seasons_--the lack of happy
+moments of invention. Yet it had great influence on his
+contemporaries in rousing love for Nature, and it contains many
+beautiful passages. For example:
+
+  Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
+  And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
+  While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
+  Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
+
+His most artistic poem is Winter:
+
+  When from the pallid sky the sun descends
+  With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb
+  Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks
+  Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds
+  Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet
+  Which master to obey; while rising slow,
+  Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon
+  Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns.
+  Seen through the turbid fluctuating air,
+  The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray;
+  Or frequent seem to shoot, athwart the gloom,
+  And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.
+  Snatched in short eddies plays the withered leaf,
+  And on the flood the dancing feather floats.
+  With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned,
+  The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale....
+  Retiring from the downs, where all day long
+  They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train
+  Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight
+  And seek the closing shelter of the grove,
+  Assiduous, in his bower, the wailing owl
+  Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high
+  Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.
+  Loud shrieks the soaring heron, and with wild wing
+  The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky skies.
+  Ocean, unequal pressed, with broken tide
+  And blind commotion heaves, while from the shore,
+  Eat into caverns by the restless wave
+  And forest-rustling mountains, comes a voice
+  That solemn-sounding bids the world prepare.
+
+The elaboration of detail in such painting is certain evidence, not
+only of a keen, but an enthusiastic eye for Nature. As he says in
+Winter:
+
+  Nature, great parent! whose unceasing hand
+  Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year!
+  How mighty, how majestic, are thy works!
+  With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul
+  That sees astonish'd, and astonish'd sings!
+
+Brockes was directly influenced by Pope and Thomson, and translated
+the _Seasons_, when he had finished his _Irdisches Vergnuegen in
+Gott_. This unwieldy work, insipid and prosaic as it is, was still a
+literary achievement, thanks to the dignity of the subject and the
+high seriousness of its aim, at a time when frivolity was the fashion
+in poetry. Its long pious descriptions of natural phenomena have none
+of the imposing flow of Thomson's strophes. It treats of fire in 138
+verses of eight lines each, of air in 79, water in 78, earth in 74,
+while flowers and fruit are dissected and analyzed at great length;
+and all this rhymed botany and physics is loosely strung together,
+but it shews a warm feeling for Nature of a moralizing and devotional
+sort. He says himself[7] that he took up the study of poetry first as
+an amusement, but later more seriously, and chose Nature as his
+theme, not only because her beauty moved him, but as a means 'whereby
+man might enjoy a permissible pleasure and be edified at the same
+time.'
+
+    So I resolved to sing the praises of the Creator to the best of
+    my powers, and felt the more bound to do it, because I held that
+    such great and almost inexcusable neglect and ingratitude was a
+    wrong to the Creator, and unbecoming in Christendom. I therefore
+    composed different pieces, chiefly in Spring, and tried my best
+    to describe the beauties of Nature, in order, through my own
+    pleasure, to rekindle the praise of the wise Creator in myself
+    and others, and this led at last to the first part of my
+    _Irdisches Vergnuegen_. (1721.)
+
+His evidence from animal and plant life for the teleological argument
+is very laughable; take, for example, the often-quoted chamois:
+
+    The fat is good for phthisis, the gall for the face, chamois
+    flesh is good to eat, and its blood cures vertigo--the skin is no
+    less useful. Doth not the love as well as the wisdom and
+    almightiness of the Creator shine forth from this animal?
+
+For the rest, the following lines from _Irdisches Vergnuegen in Gott_
+will serve to give an idea of his style; they certainly do honour to
+his laborious attempt to miss none of the charms of the wood:
+
+  Lately as I sat on the green grass
+  Shaded by a lime tree, and read,
+  I raised my eyes by chance and saw
+  Different trees here and there, some far, some near,
+  Some half, some all in light, and some in shade,
+  Their boughs bowed down by leaves.
+  I saw how beautifully both air and flowery mead
+  Were crowned and adorned.
+  To describe the green grace
+  And the landscape it makes so sweet,
+  And at the same time prolong my pleasure,
+  I took pencil and paper
+  And tried to describe the beautiful trees in rhyme,
+  To the glory of God their Creator.
+  Of all the beauty the world lays before our eyes,
+  There certainly is none which does not pale
+  Beside green boughs,
+  Nothing to compare for pure beauty with a wood.
+  The green roofing overhead
+  Makes me feel young again;
+  It hangs there, a living tapestry,
+  To the glory of God and our delight....
+  Beyond many trees that lay in shade
+  I often saw one in full light;
+  A human eye would scarce believe
+  How sweetly twilight, light and darkness
+  Meet side by side in leafy trees.
+  Peering through the leaves with joy
+  We notice, as we see the leaves
+  Lighted from one side only,
+  That we can almost see the sun
+  Mixing gold with the tender green, etc.
+
+and so on for another twenty lines.
+
+Yet this rich Burgomaster of Hamburg, for all that he dealt chiefly
+in rhymed prose, had his moments of rare elevation of thought and
+mystical rapture about Nature; for instance, in the introduction to
+_Ueber das Firmament_:
+
+  As lately in the sapphire depths,
+  Not bound by earth nor water, aim nor end,
+  In the unplumbed aerial sea I gazed,
+  And my absorbed glance, now here, now there,
+  But ever deeper sank--horror came over me,
+  My eye grew dizzy and my soul aghast.
+  That infinite vast vault,
+  True picture of Eternity,
+  Since without birth or end
+  From God alone it comes....
+  It overwhelmed my soul.
+  The mighty dome of deep dark light,
+  Bright darkness without birth or bound,
+  Swallowed the very world--burying thought.
+  My being dwindled to an atom, to a nought;
+  I lost myself,
+  So suddenly it beat me down,
+  And threatened with despair.
+  But in that salutary nothingness, that blessed loss,
+  All present God! in Thee--I found myself again.
+
+While English poetry and its German imitations were shewing these
+signs of reaction from the artificiality of the time, and science and
+philosophy often lauded Nature to the skies, as, for instance,
+Shaftesbury[8] (1671-1713), a return to Nature became the principle
+of English garden-craft in the first half of the eighteenth
+century.[9] The line of progress here, as in taste generally, did not
+run straightforward, but fluctuated. From the geometric gardens of
+Lenotre, England passed to the opposite extreme; in the full tide of
+periwig and hoop petticoat, minuets, beauty-patches and rouge,
+Addison and Pope were banishing everything that was not strictly
+natural from the garden. Addison would even have everything grow wild
+in its own way, and Pope wrote:
+
+  To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
+  To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
+  To swell the terrace or to sink the grot,
+  In all let Nature never be forgot.
+
+William Kent made allowance for this idea; but, as a painter, and
+looking at his native scenery with a painter's eye, he noted its
+characteristic features--the gentle undulations, the freshness of the
+green, the wealth of trees--and based his garden-craft on these.
+
+The straight line was banished; in its place came wide spaces of lawn
+and scattered groups of trees of different sorts--dark fir and alder
+here, silver birch and grey poplar there; and flowery fields with
+streams running through them stood out in relief against dark
+woodland.
+
+Stiff walls, balustrades, terraces, statues, and so forth,
+disappeared; the garden was not to contrast with the surrounding
+landscape, but to merge into it--to be not Art, but a bit of Nature.
+It was, in fact, to be a number of such bits, each distinct from the
+rest--waterfall, sheltered sunny nook, dark wood, light glade. Kent
+himself soon began to vary this mosaic of separate scenes by adding
+ruins and pavilions; but it was Chambers the architect who developed
+the idea of variety by his writings on the dwellings and manners of
+the Chinese.[10]
+
+The fundamental idea that the garden ought to be a sample of the
+landscape was common both to Kent and the Chinese; but, as China is
+far richer than England in varieties of scenery, her gardens included
+mountains, rocks, swamps, and deserts, as well as sunny fields and
+plains, while English gardens were comparatively monotonous. When the
+fashion for the Chinese style came in, as unluckily it did just when
+we were trying to oust the Rococo, so that one pigtail superseded the
+other, variety was achieved by groups of buildings in all sorts of
+styles. Stables, ice-houses, gardeners' cottages took the form of
+pavilions, pagodas, kiosks, and temples.
+
+Meanwhile, as a reaction against the Rococo, enthusiasm for Nature
+increased, and feeling was set free from restraint by the growing
+sentimentality. Richardson's novels fed the taste for the pleasures
+of weeping sensibility, and garden-craft fell under its sway. In all
+periods the insignificant and non-essential is unable to resist the
+general stamp, if that only shews a little originality.
+
+These gardens, with temples to friendship and love, melancholy,
+virtue, re-union, and death, and so forth, were suitable backgrounds
+for the sentimental scenes described in the English novels, and for
+the idyllic poets and moonshine singers of Germany. Here it was the
+fashion to wander, tenderly intertwined, shedding floods of tears and
+exchanging kisses, and pausing at various places to read the
+inscriptions which directed them what to feel. At one spot they were
+to laugh, at another to weep, at a third to be fired with devotion.
+
+Hermitages sprang up everywhere, with hermits, real or dummy. Any
+good house near a wood, or in a shady position, was called a
+hermitage, and dedicated to arcadian life, free from care and
+ceremony. Classic and romantic styles competed for favour in
+architecture; at one moment everything must needs be purely classic,
+each temple Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric; at another Gothic, with the
+ruins and fortresses of mediaeval romance. And not only English
+gardens, but those of Europe generally, though to a less degree,
+passed through these stages of development, for no disease is so
+infectious as fashion.
+
+It was not till the end of the eighteenth century that a healthy
+reaction set in in England, when Repton turned back to Kent's
+fundamental principle and freed it from its unnatural excrescences,
+with the formula: the garden should be an artistic representation of
+the landscape, a work of art whose materials are provided by Nature
+herself, whether grass, flowers, bushes, trees, water, or whatever it
+may be that she has to offer. Thus began our modern landscape
+gardening.
+
+In another region too, a change was brought about from the Rococo to
+a more natural style. It is true that Nature plays no direct _role_
+in _Robinson Crusoe_, and wins as little notice there as in its
+numberless imitations; yet the book roused a longing for healthier,
+more natural conditions in thousands of minds. It led the idyllic
+tendency of the day back to its source, and by shewing all the
+stages, from the raw state of Nature up to the culture of the
+community, in the life of one man, it brought out the contrast
+between the far-off age of innocence and the perverted present.
+
+The German _Simplicissimus_ closed with a Robinsonade, in which the
+hero, after long wandering, found rest and peace on an island in the
+ocean of the world, alone with himself and Nature. The readers of
+_Robinson Crusoe_ were in much the same position. Defoe was not only
+a true artist, but a man of noble, patient character, and his romance
+proved a healing medicine to many sick minds, pointing the way back
+to Nature and a natural fife, and creating a longing for the lost
+innocence of man.
+
+Rousseau, who was also a zealous advocate of the English gardens, and
+disgusted by the French Pigtail style, was more impressed by
+_Robinson Crusoe_ than by any other book. It was the first book his
+Emilia gave him, as a gospel of Nature and unspoilt taste.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SENSITIVENESS AND EXAGGERATION OF
+THE ELEGIAC IDYLLIC FEELING
+
+
+This longing to return to the lost paradise of Nature gradually
+produced a state of melancholy hyper-sensitiveness, an epidemic of
+world pain, quite as unnatural as the Rococo.
+
+The heart came into its rights again and laid claim to absolute
+dominion in its kingdom, and regret that it had lain so long deprived
+of its own, gave rise to a tearful pensiveness, which added zest to
+restitution. It was convalescence, but followed at once by another
+complaint. Feeling swung from one extreme to the other.
+
+German feeling in the first half of the eighteenth century was
+chiefly influenced, on the one hand, by Richardson's novels, which
+left no room for Nature, and by the poetry of Young and Thomson; on
+the other, by the pastoral idylls interspersed with anacreontic
+love-passages, affected by the French. At first description and
+moralizing preponderated.
+
+In 1729 Haller's _Alps_ appeared. It had the merit of drawing the
+eyes of Europe to Alpine beauty and the moral worth of the Swiss, but
+shewed little eye for romantic scenery. It is full of descriptive
+painting, but not of a kind that appeals: scene follows scene with
+considerable pathos, especially in dealing with the people; but
+landscape is looked at almost entirely from the moralizing or
+utilitarian standpoint.
+
+'Here, where the majestic Mount Gothard elevates its summit above the
+clouds, and where the earth itself seems to approach the sun, Nature
+has assembled in one spot all the choicest treasure of the globe. The
+deserts of Libya, indeed, afford us greater novelties, and its sandy
+plains are more fertile in monsters: but thou, favoured region, art
+adorned with useful productions only, productions which can satisfy
+all the wants of man. Even those heaps of ice, those frowning rocks
+in appearance so sterile, contribute largely to the general good, for
+they supply inexhaustible fountains to fertilize the land. What a
+magnificent picture does Nature spread before the eye, when the sun,
+gilding the top of the Alps, scatters the sea of vapours which
+undulates below! Through the receding vale the theatre of a whole
+world rises to the view! Rocks, valleys, lakes, mountains, and
+forests fill the immeasurable space, and are lost in the wide
+horizon. We take in at a single glance the confines of divers states,
+nations of various characters, languages, and manners, till the eyes,
+overcome by such extent of vision, drop their weary lids, and we ask
+of the enchanted fancy a continuance of the scene.
+
+'When the first emotion of astonishment has subsided, how delightful
+is it to observe each several part which makes up this sublime whole!
+That mass of hills, which presents its graceful declivity covered
+with flocks of sheep whose bleatings resound through the meadows;
+that large clear lake, which reflects from its level surface sunbeams
+gently curved; those valleys, rich in verdure, which compose by their
+various outlines points of perspective which contract in the distance
+of the landscape! Here rises a bare steep mountain laden with the
+accumulated snow of ages; its icy head rests among the clouds,
+repelling the genial rays of the moon and the fervid heat of the
+dog-star: there a chain of cultivated hills spreads before the
+delighted eye; their green pastures are enlivened by flocks, and
+their golden corn waves in the wind: yet climates so different as
+those are only separated by a cool, narrow valley. Behold that
+foaming torrent rushing from a perpendicular height! Its rapid waves
+dash among the rocks, and shoot even beyond their limits. Divided by
+the rapidity of its course and the depth of the abyss where it falls,
+it changes into a grey moving veil; and, at length scattered into
+humid atoms, it shines with the tints of the rainbow, and, suspended
+over the valley, refreshes it with plenteous dew. The traveller
+beholds with astonishment rivers flowing towards the sky, and issuing
+from one cloud, hide themselves in the grey veil of another.
+
+'Those desert places uncheered by the rays of the sun, those frozen
+abysses deprived of all verdure, hide beneath their sterile sands
+invaluable treasures, which defy the rigour of the seasons and all
+the injuries of time! 'Tis in dark and marshy recesses, upon the damp
+grottos, that crystal rocks are formed. Thus splendour is diffused
+through their melancholy vaults, and their shadowy depths gutter with
+the colours of the rainbow. O Nature, how various are thy operations,
+how infinite thy fertility!'
+
+We cannot agree with Frey[1] that 'these few strophes may serve as
+sufficient proof that Haller's poetry is still, even among the mass
+of Alpine poetry, unsurpassed for intense power of direct vision, and
+easily makes one forget its partial lack of flexibility of diction.'
+
+The truth is, flexibility is entirely lacking; but the lines do
+express the taste for open-air life among the great sublimities and
+with simple people. The poem is not romantic but idyllic, with a
+touch of the elegiac. It is the same with the poem _On the Origin of
+Evil_ (Book I.):
+
+  On those still heights whence constant springs flow down,
+  I paused within a copse, lured by the evening breeze;
+  Wide country lay spread out beneath my feet,
+  Bounded by its own size alone....
+  Green woods covered the hills, through which the pale tints of the fields
+  Shone pleasantly.
+  Abundance and repose held sway far as the eye could reach....
+  And yonder wood, what left it to desire
+  With the red tints upon the half-bare beeches
+  And the rich pine's green shade o'er whitened moss?
+  While many a sun-ray through the interstices
+  A quivering light upon the darkness shed,
+  Blending in varying hues green night with golden day
+  How pleasant is the quiet of the copse! ...
+  Yea, all I see is given by Providence,
+  The world itself is for its burgher's joy;
+  Nature's inspired with the general weal,
+  The highest goodness shews its trace in all.
+
+Friedrich von Hagedorn, too, praises country pleasures in _The
+Feeling of Spring_:
+
+  Enamelled meadows! freshly decked in green,
+  I sing your praises constantly;
+  Nature and Spring have decked you out....
+  Delightful quiet, stimulant of joy,
+  How enviable thou art!
+
+This idyllic taste for country life was common at the time,
+especially among the so-called 'anacreontists.' Gleim, for instance,
+in his _Praise of Country Life_: 'Thank God that I have fled from the
+bustle of the world and am myself again under the open sky.'
+
+And in _The Countryman_:
+
+    How happy is he who, free from cares, ploughs his father's
+    fields; every morning the sun shines on the grass in which he
+    lies.
+
+And Joh. Friedrich von Cronegk:
+
+    Fly from sordid cares and the proud tumult of cities ... here in
+    the peaceful valley shy wisdom sports at ease, where the smiling
+    Muse crowns herself with dewy roses.
+
+With this idyllic tone it is not surprising to find the religious
+feeling of many hymn writers; for instance, Gleim in _The Goodness of
+God_:
+
+    For whom did Thy goodness create the world so beautiful, O God?
+    For whom are the flowers on hill and dale? ... Thou gavest us
+    power to perceive the beauty.
+
+And above all, honest Gellert:
+
+    The skies, the globe, the seas, praise the eternal glory. O my
+    Creator, when I consider Thy might and the wisdom of Thy ways....
+    Sunshine and storm preach Thee, and the sands of the sea.
+
+Ewald von Kleist excelled Haller as much as Haller had excelled
+Brockes.
+
+Julian Schmidt says[3]: 'Later on, descriptive poetry, like didactic,
+fell into disgrace; but at that time this dwelling upon the minutiae
+of Nature served to enrich the imagination; Kleist's descriptions are
+thoughtful and interesting.' It is easy to see that his longer poems
+cost him much labour; they were not the pure songs of feeling that
+gush out spontaneously like a spring from the rock. But in eloquence
+and keenness of observation he excelled his contemporaries, although
+he, too, followed the fashion of eighteenth-century literature, and
+coquetted with Greek nymphs and deities, and the names of winds and
+maidens.
+
+The tendency to depression, increased by his failure to adapt himself
+to military life, made him incline more and more to solitude.
+
+_To Doris_ begins:
+
+  Now spring doth warm the flakeless air,
+  And in the brook the sky reflects her blue,
+  Shepherds in fragrant flowers find delight ...
+  The corn lifts high its golden head,
+  And Zephyr moves in waves across the grain,
+  Her robe the field embroiders; the young rush
+  Adorns the border of each silver stream,
+  Love seeks the green night of the forest shade,
+  And air and sea and earth and heaven smile.
+
+_Sighs for Rest_:
+
+  O silver brook, my leisure's early soother,
+  When wilt thou murmur lullabies again?
+  When shall I trace thy sliding smooth and smoother,
+  While kingfishers along thy reeds complain;
+  Afar from thee with care and toil opprest,
+  Thy image still can calm my troubled breast.
+
+  O ye fair groves and odorous violet valleys,
+  Girt with a garland blue of hills around,
+  Thou quiet lake, where, when Aurora sallies,
+  Her golden tresses seem to sweep the ground:
+  Soft mossy turf, on which I wont to stray,
+  For me no longer bloom thy flow'rets gay.
+  As when the chilly nights of March arise
+  And whirl the howling dust in eddies swift,
+  The sunbeams wither in the dimmer skies,
+  O'er the young ears the sand and pebbles drift:
+  So the war rages, and the furious forces
+  The air with smoke bespread, the field with corses.
+
+  The vineyard bleeds, and trampled is the com,
+  Orchards but heat the kettles of the camp....
+
+  As when a lake which gushing rains invade
+  Breaks down its dams, and fields are overflowed.
+  So floods of fire across the region spread,
+  And standing corn by crackling flames is mowed:
+  Bellowing the cattle fly; the forests burn,
+  And their own ashes the old stems in-urn.
+
+  He too, who fain would live in purity,
+  Feels nature treacherous, hears examples urge,
+  As one who, falling overboard at sea,
+  Beats with his arms and feet the buoyant surge,
+  And climbs at length against some rocky brink,
+  Only beneath exhausted strength to sink.
+
+  My cheek bedewed with holy tears in vain,
+  To love and heaven I vowed a spotless truth:
+  Too soon the noble tear exhaled again,
+  Example conquered, and the glow of youth
+  To live as live one's comrades seems allowed;
+  He who would be a man, must quit the crowd.
+
+He, too, wrote with hymn-like swing in praise of the Creator: 'Great
+is the Lord! the unnumbered heavens are the chambers of his fortress,
+storm and thunder-clouds his chariot.'
+
+The most famous of his poems, and the one most admired in his own
+day, was _Spring_. This is full of love for Nature. It describes a
+country walk after the muggy air of town, and conveys a vivid
+impression of fresh germinating spring, though it is overlaid by
+monotonous detail:
+
+  Receive me, hallowed shades! Ye dwellings of sweet buss!
+  Umbrageous arches full of sleeping dark delights ...
+  Receive me! Fill my soul with longing and with rest ...
+  And you, ye laughing fields,
+  Valleys of roses, labyrinths of streams,
+  I will inhale an ecstasy with your balsamic breath,
+  And, lying in the shade, on strings of gold
+  Sing your indwelling joys....
+  On rosy clouds, with rose and tulip crowned,
+  Spring has come down from heaven....
+  The air grew softer, fields took varied hues,
+  The shades were leafy, and soft notes awoke
+  And flew and warbled round the wood in twilight greenery.
+  Brooks took a silver tint, sweet odours filled the air,
+  The early shepherd's pipe was heard by Echo in the dale....
+  Most dear abode! Ah, were I but allowed
+  Down in the shade by yon loquacious brook
+  Henceforth to live! O sky! thou sea of love,
+  Eternal spring of health, will not thy waters succour me?
+  Must, my life's blossom wither, stifled by the weeds?
+
+Johann Peter Uz, who was undervalued because of his sickly style,
+wrote many little songs full of feeling for Nature, though within
+narrow limits. Their titles shew the pastoral taste[4]:--_Spring_,
+_Morning, Shepherd's Morning Song, The Muse with the Shepherds, The
+Meadow in the Country, Vintage, Evening, May, The Rose, Summer and
+Wine, Winter Night, Longing for Spring_, etc.
+
+Many are fresh and full of warm feeling, especially the Spring Songs:
+
+  See the blossoming of Spring!
+  Will't not taste the joys it showers?
+  Dost not feel its impulse thrill?
+  Friends! away our cares we'll fling!
+  In the joyous time of flowers,
+  Love and Bacchus have their will.
+
+and
+
+  O forest, O green shady paths,
+  Dear place of spring's display!
+  My good luck from the thronging town
+  Has brought me here away.
+
+  O what a fresh breeze flows
+  Down from the wooded hill,
+  How pleasantly the west wind flies
+  With rustling dewy wing
+  Across the vale,
+  Where all is green and blossoming.
+
+The personification is more marked in this:
+
+  Thou hast sent us the Spring in his gleaming robe
+  With roses round his head. Smiling he comes, O God!
+  The hours conduct him to his flowery throne
+  Into the groves he enters and they bloom; fresh green is on the plain,
+  The forest shade returns, the west wind lovingly unfurls
+  Its dewy plumes, and happy birds begin to sing.
+  The face of Nature Thou hast deckt with beauty that enchants,
+  O Thou rich source of all the beautiful ...
+  My heart is lifted up to Thee in purest love.
+
+His feeling for Nature was warm enough, although most of his writing
+was so artificial and tedious from much repetition of a few ideas,
+that Kleist could write to Gleim[5]: 'The odes please me more the
+more I read them. With a few exceptions, they have only one fault,
+too many laurel woods; cut them down a little. Take away the marjoram
+too, it is better in a good sausage than in a beautiful poem.'
+
+Joh. Georg Jacobi also belonged to the circle of poets gathered round
+Gleim; but in many respects he was above it. He imitated the French
+style[6] far less than the others--than Hagedorn, for example; and
+though the Anacreontic element was strong in him, he overcame it, and
+aimed at pure lyrical feeling. From his Life, written by a devoted
+friend, we see that he had all the sentimentality of the day,[7] but
+with much that was healthy and amiable in addition, and he touched
+Nature with peculiar freshness and genuineness.
+
+In a poem to his brother, about the Saale valley near Halle, he
+wrote:
+
+  Lie down in early spring on yon green moss,
+  By yon still brook where heart with heart we spoke,
+  My brother....
+  Will't see the little garden and the pleasant heights above,
+  So quiet and unspoilt? O friend, 'tis Nature speaks
+  In distant wood, near plain and careless glade,
+  Here on my little hill and in the clover....
+  Dost hear the rustle of the streamlet through the wood?
+
+Jacobi was one whose heart, as he said of Gleim, took a warm interest
+in all that breathed, even a violet, and sought sympathy and
+companionship in the whole range of creation.
+
+This is from his _Morning Song_:
+
+  See how the wood awakes, how from the lighted heights
+  With the soft waving breeze
+  The morning glory smiles in the fresh green....
+  Here by the rippling brook and quivering flower,
+  We catch Love's rustle as she gently sweeps
+  Like Spring's own breath athwart the plains.
+
+Another song is;
+
+  Tell me, where's the violet fled.
+  Late so gayly blowing.
+  Springing 'neath fair Flora's tread,
+  Choicest sweets bestowing?
+  Swain, the vernal scene is o'er,
+  And the violet blooms no more.
+
+  Say, where hides the blushing rose,
+  Pride of fragrant morning,
+  Garland meet for beauty's brows,
+  Hill and dale adorning?
+  Gentle maid, the summer's fled,
+  And the hapless rose is dead.
+
+  Bear me then to yonder rill,
+  Late so freely flowing,
+  Watering many a daffodil
+  On its margin glowing.
+  Sun and wind exhaust its store,
+  Yonder rivulet glides no more.
+
+  Lead me to the bowery shade,
+  Late with roses flaunting,
+  Loved resort of youth and maid,
+  Amorous ditties chanting.
+  Hail and wind with fury shower,
+  Leafless mourns the rifled bower!
+
+  Say, where bides the village maid,
+  Late yon cot adorning?
+  Oft I've met her in the glade
+  Fair and fresh as morning.
+  Swain, how short is beauty's bloom,
+  Seek her in her grassy tomb.
+
+  Whither roves the tuneful swain
+  Who, of rural pleasures,
+  Rose and violet, rill and plain,
+  Sang in deftest measures?
+  Maiden, swift life's vision flies,
+  Death has closed the poet's eyes.
+
+_To Nature_ runs thus:
+
+  Leaves are falling, mists are twining, and to winter sleep inclining
+  Are the trees upon the plain,
+  In the hush of stillness ere the snowflakes hide them,
+  Friendly Nature, speak to me again!
+  Thou art echo and reflection of our striving,
+  Thou art painter of our hopes and of our fears,
+  Thou art singer of our joys and of our sorrows,
+  Of our consolations and our groans....
+
+While feeling for Nature was all of this character, idyllic,
+sensitive, sympathetic, but within very narrow bounds, and the poets
+generally were wandering among Greek and Latin bucolics and playing
+with Damon, Myrtil, Chloe, and Daphnis, Salomon Gessner made a
+speciality of elegiac pastoral poetry. He was a better landscapist
+than poet, and his drawings to illustrate his idylls were better than
+the poems themselves. The forest, for instance, and the felling of
+the tree, are well drawn; whereas the sickly sweet Rococo verse in
+imitation of the French, and reminding one more of Longos than
+Theocritus, is lifeless. His rhapsody about Nature is uncongenial to
+modern readers, but his love was real.
+
+The introduction 'to the Reader'[8] is characteristic:
+
+    These Idylls are the fruits of some of my happiest hours; of
+    those hours when imagination and tranquillity shed their sweetest
+    influence over me, and, excluding all which belongs to the period
+    in which we live, recalled all the charms and delights of the
+    Golden Age. A noble and well-regulated mind dwells with pleasure
+    on these images of calm tranquillity and uninterrupted happiness,
+    and the scenes in which the poet delineates the simple beauties
+    of uncorrupted nature are endeared to us by the resemblance we
+    fancy we perceive in them to the most blissful moments that we
+    nave ourselves enjoyed. Often do I fly from the city and seek the
+    deepest solitudes; there, the beauties of the landscape soothe
+    and console my heart, and gradually disperse those impressions of
+    solicitude and disgust which accompanied me from the town;
+    enraptured, I give up my whole soul to the contemplation of
+    Nature, and feel, at such moments, richer than an Utopian
+    monarch, and happier than a shepherd of the Golden Age.
+
+This is a true picture of the time! Man knew that he was sick, and
+fled from town and his fellows into solitude, there to dream himself
+back to a happier past, and revel in the purity and innocence, the
+healing breath, of forest and field.
+
+The magic of moonlight began to be felt. Mirtilla
+
+    perceived his old father slumbering in the moonbeams.... Mirtilla
+    stood long contemplating him, and his eyes rested fondly on the
+    old man except when he raised them toward heaven through the
+    glistening leaves of the vine, and tears of filial love and joy
+    bedewed his cheeks.... How beautiful! how beautiful is the
+    landscape! How bright, how clear appears the deep blue of heaven
+    through the broken clouds! They fly, they pass away, these
+    towering clouds; but strew a shadow as they pass over the sunny
+    landscape.... Oh, what joy overwhelms my soul! how beautiful, how
+    excellent is all around, what an inexhaustible source of rapture!
+    From the enlivening sun down to the little plant that his mild
+    influence nourishes, all is wonderful! What rapture overpowers me
+    when I stand on the high hill and look down on the wide-spread
+    landscape beneath me, when I lay stretched along the grass and
+    examine the various flowers and herbs and their little
+    inhabitants; when at the midnight hour I contemplate the starry
+    heavens!... Wrapt in each other's arms, let us contemplate the
+    approach of morning, the bright glow of sunset, or the soft beams
+    of moonlight; and as I press thee to my trembling heart, let us
+    breathe out in broken accents our praises and thanksgivings. Ah!
+    what inexpressible joy, when with such raptures are blended the
+    transports of the tenderest love.
+
+Many prosaic writings of a different kind shew how universally
+feeling, in the middle of the eighteenth century, turned towards
+Nature.
+
+The aesthetic writer Sulzer (1750) wrote _On the Beauty of Nature_.
+Crugot's widely-read work of edification, _Christ in Solitude_
+(1761), shewed the same point of view among the mystical and pietist
+clergy; and Spalding's _Human Vocation_[9] (written with a warmth
+that reminds one of Gessner) among the rationalists, whom he headed.
+He says:
+
+    Nature contains numberless pleasures, which, through my great
+    sensitiveness, nourish my mind... I open eye and ear, and through
+    these openings pleasures flow into my soul from a thousand sides:
+    flowers painted by the hand of Nature, the rich music of the
+    forest, the bright daylight which pours life and light all round
+    me.... How indifferent, tasteless, and dead is all the fantastic
+    glamour of artificial splendour and luxuriance in comparison with
+    the living radiance of the real beautiful world of Nature, with
+    the joyousness, repose, and admiration I feel before a meadow in
+    blossom, a rustling stream, the pleasant awesomeness of night, or
+    of the majesty of innumerable worlds. Even the commonest and most
+    familiar things in Nature give me endless delight, when I feel
+    them with a heart attuned to joy and admiration.... I lose
+    myself, absorbed in delight, in the consideration of all this
+    general beauty, of which I hold myself to be a not disfigured
+    part.
+
+Klopstock, the torch-bearer of Germany's greatest poets, owed much of
+his power of the wing to religion. He introduced that new epoch in
+the literature of his country which culminated in Goethe. As so often
+happens in mental development, the reaction against prevailing
+conditions and the advance to higher ones, in the middle of the
+eighteenth century, led first of all to the opposite extreme--balance
+was only reached by degrees. What chiefly made Klopstock a literary
+reformer was the glowing enthusiasm and powerful imagination which
+compelled the stiff poetic forms, clumsy as they were, to new rhythm
+and melodious cadence. And although his style degenerated into
+mannerism in the _Messias_, for the youthful impetus which had
+carried his Pegasus over the clouds to the stars could not keep it
+there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence
+remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only
+of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and
+ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic
+raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development,
+and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the
+finest view in the world.
+
+A mind so intent upon the noble and beautiful was sure to be
+enthusiastic about Nature; his correspondence is the best witness to
+this, and at the same time throws side-lights upon the period.
+
+It is difficult to-day to understand the influence which the
+_Messias_ had upon its readers; even Friedenkende spent happy hours
+reading it with pious tears of delight, and young and old were of the
+same opinion.
+
+There is a pretty letter from Gustchen Stolberg[10] to Klopstock,
+which runs thus:
+
+    UETERSEN,
+    25 _April_ 1776.
+
+    In the garden. Yes, in the garden, dearest Klopstock! I have just
+    been walking about, it was so beautiful: the little birds were
+    singing, violets and other flowers wafted their fragrance to me,
+    and I began thinking very warmly of all whom I dearly, dearly
+    love, and so very soon came to my dear Klopstock, who certainly
+    has no truer friend than I am, though perhaps others express it
+    better ... Thanks, thanks, for your very delightful little
+    letter--how dear to me I don't tell you--can't tell you.
+
+C. F. Cramer was his enthusiastic panegyrist. It is not only what he
+says of the private life and special taste of his adored friend which
+is noteworthy, but the way in which he does it--the tone in which, as
+a cultivated man of the day, he judged him. 'He will paint and paint
+Nature. For this he must be acquainted with her. This is why he loves
+her so well. This is why he strays by the brook and weeps. This is
+why in spring he goes out into the fields of blossoms, and his eyes
+run over with tears. All creation fills him with yearning and
+delight. He goes from mountain to valley like a man in a dream. When
+he sees a stream, he follows its course; when a hill, he must climb
+it; when a river--oh! if only he could rush with it to the sea! A
+rock--oh! to look down from its crags to the land below! A hawk
+hovers over him--oh! to have its wings and fly so much nearer to the
+stars! He stands for hours looking at a flower or moss, throws
+himself down on the grass and decks his hat with ivy and cornflowers.
+He goes by moonlight to visit the graves and think of death,
+immortality, and eternal life. Nothing hinders his meditations. He
+sees everything in relation to something else. Every visible object
+has an invisible companion, so ardently, so entirely, so closely does
+he feel it all.'
+
+This, coming straight from life, tells us more than a volume of odes;
+it contains the real feeling of the time, sensitive, dreamy, elegiac.
+
+His friend goes on: 'He walks often and likes it, but generally looks
+for sunny places; he goes very slowly, which is fatal for me, for I
+run when I walk ... Often he stands still and silent, as if there
+were knots which he could not untie (in his thoughts). And truly
+there are unknown depths of feeling as well as thought.'
+
+In another place: 'He went out and gloated over the great scene of
+immeasurable Nature. Orion and the Pleiades moved over his head, the
+dear moon was opposite. Looking intently into her friendly face, he
+greeted her repeatedly: "Moon, Moon, friend of my thoughts; hurry not
+away, dear Moon, but stay. What is thy name? Laura, Cynthia, Cyllene?
+Or shall I call thee beautiful Betty of the Sky?" ... He loved
+country walks; we made for lonely places, dark fearsome thickets,
+lonely unfrequented paths, scrambled up all the hills, spied out
+every bit of Nature, came to rest at last under a shady rock ...
+Klopstock's life is one constant enjoyment. He gives himself up to
+feeling, and revels in Nature's feast ... Winter is his favourite
+time of year....[11] He preaches skating with the unction of a
+missionary to the heathen, and not without working miracles, ... the
+ice by moonlight is a feast of the Gods to him ... only one rule, we
+do not leave the river till the moon has gone.' Klopstock described
+this in his _Skating_:
+
+  O youth, whose skill the ice-cothurn
+  Drives glowing now, and now restrains,
+  On city hearths let faggots burn,
+  But come with me to crystal plains.
+  The scene is filled with vapouring light,
+  As when the winter morning's prime
+  Looks on the lake. Above it night
+  Scatters, like stars, the glittering rime.
+  How still and white is all around!
+  How rings the track with new sparr'd frost!
+  Far off the metal's cymbal sound
+  Betrays thee, for a moment lost ...
+
+Cramer tells how Klopstock paid a long-remembered visit to Count
+Bernstoff at Schloss Stintenburg:
+
+    It has a most romantic situation in a bewitching part of
+    Mecklenburg; 'tis surrounded by forest full of delightful gloom,
+    and a large lake, with a charming little island in the centre,
+    which wakes echoes. Klopstock is very fond of echoes, and is
+    always trying to find them in his walks.
+
+This illustrates the lines in _Stintenburg_:
+
+           Isle of pious solitude,
+  Loved playmate of the echo and the lake, etc.
+
+but in this ode, as in so many of his, simple personal feeling gives
+way to the stilted mannerism of the bard poetry.
+
+He wrote of Soroe,[12] one of the loveliest places in the Island of
+Zealand, as 'an uncommonly pleasant place'; where 'By a sacred tree,
+on a raised grass plot two hundred paces from the great alley, and
+from a view over the Friedensburg Lake towards a little wooded island
+... Fanny appeared to him in the silver evening clouds over the
+tree-tops.'
+
+The day on which he composed _The Lake of Zurich_ was one of the
+pleasantest in his life. Cramer says: 'He has often told me and still
+tells, with youthful fervour, about those delightful days and this
+excursion: the boat full of people, mostly young, all in good
+spirits; charming girls, his wife Herzel, a lovely May morning.'
+
+But, unlike St Preux, he 'seemed less impressed by our scenery than
+by the beauty of our girls,[13] and his letters bear out the
+remark.[14] Yet delight in Nature was always with him: Klopstock's
+lofty morality pours forth all through it. Nature, love, fame, wine,
+everything is looked at from an ennobling point of view.'
+
+  Fair is the majesty of all thy works
+  On the green earth, O Mother Nature fair!
+  But fairer the glad face
+  Enraptured with their view.
+  Come from the vine banks of the glittering lake,
+  Or--hast thou climbed the smiling skies anew--
+  Come on the roseate tip
+  Of evening's breezy wing,
+  And teach my song with glee of youth to glow,
+  Sweet joy, like thee--with glee of shouting youths,
+  Or feeling Fanny's laugh.
+
+  Behind us far already Uto lay.
+  At whose feet Zurich in the quiet vale
+  Feeds her free sons: behind--
+  Receding vine-clad hills.
+  Uncloud'd beamed the top of silver Alps,
+  And warmer beat the heart of gazing youths,
+  And warmer to their fair
+  Companions spoke its glow.
+  And Haller's Doris sang, the pride of song;
+  And Hirzel's Daphne, dear to Kleist and Gleim;
+  And we youths sang and felt
+  As each were--Hagedorn.
+
+  Soon the green meadow took us to the cool
+  And shadowy forest, which becrowns the isle.
+  Then cam'st thou, Joy; thou cam'st
+  Down in full tide to us;
+  Yes, goddess Joy, thyself; we felt, we clasp'd,
+  Best sister of humanity, thyself,
+  With thy dear innocence
+  Accompanied, thyself.
+
+  Sweet thy inspiring breath, O cheerful Spring;
+  When the meads cradle thee, and their soft airs
+  Into the hearts of youths
+  And hearts of virgins glide,
+  Thou makest feeling conqueror. Ah! through thee
+  Fuller, more tremulous, heaves each blooming breast;
+  With lips spell-freed by thee
+  Young love unfaltering pleads.
+  Fair gleams the wine, when to the social change
+  Of thought, or heart-felt pleasure, it invites,
+  And the 'Socratic' cup
+  With dewy roses bound,
+  Sheds through the bosom bliss, and wakes resolves,
+  Such as the drunkard knows not--proud resolves
+  Emboldening to despair
+  Whate'er the sage disowns.
+
+  Delightful thrills against the panting heart
+  Fame's silver voice--and immortality
+  Is a great thought....
+  But sweeter, fairer, more delightful, 'tis
+  On a friend's arm to know oneself a friend....
+  O were ye here, who love me though afar ...
+  How would we build us huts of friendship, here
+  Together dwell for ever.
+
+This is of Fredensborg on an August day:
+
+  Here, too, did Nature tarry, when her hand
+  Pour'd living beauty over dale and hill,
+  And to adorn this pleasant land
+  Long time she lingered and stood still....
+  The lake how tranquil! From its level brim
+  The shore swells gently, wooded o'er with green,
+  And buries in its verdure dim
+  The lustre of the summer e'en....
+
+The inner and outer life are closely blended in _The Early Grave_:
+
+  Welcome, O silver moon,
+  Fair still companion of the night!
+  Friend of the pensive, flee not soon;
+  Thou stayest, and the clouds pass light.
+
+  Young waking May alone
+  Is fair as summer's night so still,
+  When from his locks the dews drop down,
+  And, rosy, he ascends the hill.
+
+  Ye noble souls and true,
+  Whose graves with sacred moss are strawn.
+  Blest were I, might I see with you
+  The glimmering night, the rosy dawn.
+
+This is true lyric feeling, spontaneous, not forced. Many of his
+odes, and parts of the _Messias_, shew great love for Nature. There
+is a fine flight of imagination in _The Festival of Spring_:
+
+    Not into the ocean of all the worlds would I plunge--not hover
+    where the first created, the glad choirs of the sons of light,
+    adore, deeply adore and sunk in ecstasy. Only around the drop on
+    the bucket, only around the earth, would I hover and adore.
+    Hallelujah! hallelujah! the drop on the bucket flowed also out of
+    the hand of the Almighty.
+
+    When out of the hand of the Almighty the greater earth flowed,
+    when the streams of light rushed, and the seven stars began to
+    be--then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the Almighty.
+
+    When a stream of light rushed, and our sun began to be, a
+    cataract of waves of light poured, as adown the rock a
+    storm-cloud, and girded Orion, then flowedst thou, drop, out of
+    the hand of the Almighty. Who are the thousandfold thousands, who
+    all the myriads that inhabit the drop?...
+
+    But thou, worm of Spring, which, greenly golden, art fluttering
+    beside me, thou livest and art, perhaps, ah! not immortal....
+
+    The storm winds that carry the thunder, how they roar, how with
+    loud waves they stream athwart the forest! Now they hush, slow
+    wanders the black cloud....
+
+    Ah! already rushes heaven and earth with the gracious rain; now
+    is the earth refreshed....
+
+    Behold Jehovah comes no longer in storm; in gentle pleasant
+    murmurs comes Jehovah, and under him bends the bow of peace.
+
+In another ode, _The Worlds_, he calls the stars 'drops of the
+ocean.'
+
+Again, in _Death_ he shews the sense of his own nothingness, in
+presence of the overpowering greatness of the Creator:
+
+  Ye starry hosts that glitter in the sky,
+  How ye exalt me! Trancing is the sight
+  Of all Thy glorious works, Most High.
+  How lofty art Thou in Thy wondrous might;
+  What joy to gaze upon these hosts, to one
+  Who feels himself so little, God so great,
+  Himself but dust, and the great God his own!
+  Oh, when I die, such rapture on me wait!
+
+As regards our subject, Klopstock performed this function--he tuned
+the strings of feeling for Nature to a higher pitch, thereby
+excelling all his contemporaries. His poetry always tended to
+extravagance; but in thought, feeling, and language alike, he was
+ahead of his time.
+
+The idyllic was now cultivated with increased fervour, especially by
+the Goettingen Brotherhood of Poets. The artificial and conventional
+began to wane, and Nature's own voice was heard again. The songs of
+Claudius were like a breath of spring.[15] His peasant songs have the
+genuine ring; they are hail-fellow-well-met with Nature. Hebel is the
+only modern poet like him.
+
+  EVENING SONG
+
+  The lovely day-star's run its course....
+  Come, mop my face, dear wife,
+  And then dish up....
+  The silvery moon will look down from his place
+  And preside at our meal over dishes and grace.
+
+He hated artificiality:
+
+    Simple joy in Nature, free from artifice, gives as great a
+    pleasure as an honest lover's kiss.
+
+His _Cradle Song to be sung by Moonlight_ is delightful in its naive
+humour (the moon was his special favourite):
+
+  Sleep then, little one. Why dost thou weep?
+  Moonlight so tender and quiet so deep,
+  Quickly and easily cometh thy sleep.
+  Fond of all little ones is the good moon;
+  Girls most of all, but he even loves boys.
+  Down from up there he sends beautiful toys....
+  He's old as a raven, he goes everywhere;
+  Even when father was young, he was there.
+
+The pearl of his poems is the exquisite _Evening Song_:
+
+  The moon hath risen on high,
+  And in the clear dark sky
+  The golden stars all brightly glow;
+  And black and hushed the woods,
+  While o'er the fields and floods
+  The white mists hover to and fro.
+
+  How still the earth, how calm!
+  What dear and home-like charm
+  From gentle twilight doth she borrow!
+  Like to some quiet room,
+  Where, wrapt in still soft gloom,
+  We sleep away the daylight's sorrow.
+
+Boie's _Evening Song_ is in the same key. None of the moonshine poets
+of his day expressed night-fall like this:
+
+            How still it is! How soft
+            The breezes blow!
+  The lime leaves lisp in whisper and echo answers low;
+  Scarce audibly the rivulet running amid the flower
+  With murmuring ripple laps the edge of yonder mystic bower.
+  And ever darker grows the veil thou weavest o'er the land,
+  And ever quieter the hush--a hush as of the grave....
+  Listen! 'tis Night! she comes, unlighted by a star,
+  And with the slow sweep of her heavy wing
+  Awes and revives the timid earth.
+
+Buerger sings in praise of idyllic comfort in _The Village_, and
+Hoelty's mild enthusiasm, touched with melancholy, turned in the same
+direction.
+
+    My predilection is for rural poetry and melancholy enthusiasm;
+    all I ask is a hut, a forest, a meadow with a spring in it, and a
+    wife in my hut.
+
+The beginning of his _Country Life_ shews that moralizing was still
+in the air:
+
+  Happy the man who has the town escaped!
+  To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks,
+  The shining pebbles preach
+  Virtue's and wisdom's lore....
+  The nightingale on him sings slumber down;
+  The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet,
+  When shines the lovely red
+  Of morning through the trees.
+  Then he admires Thee in the plain, O God!
+  In the ascending pomp of dawning day,
+  Thee in Thy glorious sun.
+  The worm--the budding branch--
+  Where coolness gushes in the waving branch
+  Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests,
+  Inhales the breadth of prime
+  The gentle airs of eve.
+  His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun,
+  And play, and hop, invites to sweeter rest
+  Than golden halls of state
+  Or beds of down afford.
+  To him the plumy people
+  Chatter and whistle on his
+  And from his quiet hand
+  Peck crumbs or peas or grains
+
+His _Winter Song_ runs:
+
+  Summer joys are o'er,
+  Flow'rets bloom no more;
+  Wintry joys are sweeping,
+  Through the snow-drifts peeping;
+  Cheerful evergreen
+  Rarely now is seen.
+
+  No more plumed throng
+  Charms the woods with song;
+  Ice-bound trees are glittering,
+  Merry snow-birds twittering,
+  Fondly strive to cheer
+  Scenes so cold and drear.
+
+  Winter, still I see
+  Many charms in thee,
+  Love thy chilly greeting,
+  Snow-storms fiercely beating,
+  And the dear delights
+  Of the long, long nights.
+
+Hoeltz was the most sentimental of this group; Joh. Heinrich Voss was
+more robust and cheerful. He put his strength into his longer poems;
+the lyrics contain a great deal of nonsense. An extract from _Luise_
+will shew his idyllic taste:
+
+    Wandering thus through blue fields of flax and acres of barley,
+    both paused on the hill-top, which commands such a view of the
+    whole lake, crisped with the soft breath of the zephyr and
+    sparkling in sunshine; fair were the forests of white barked
+    birch beyond, and the fir-trees, lovely the village at the foot
+    half hid by the wood. Lovely Luise had welcomed her parents and
+    shewn them a green mound under an old beech tree, where the
+    prospect was very inviting. 'There we propose,' said she,  to
+    unpack and to spread the breakfast. Then we'll adjourn to the
+    boat and be rowed for a time on the water,' etc.
+
+We find the same taste, often expressed in a very original way, in
+both the brothers Stolberg. In Christian Stolberg's _Elegy to
+Hangwitz_, for instance, another poem has these lines:
+
+  Thither, where 'mong the trees of life,
+  Where in celestial bowers
+  Under your fig-tree, bowed with fruit
+  And warranting repose,
+  Under your pine, inviting shady joy,
+  Unchanging blooms
+  Eternal Spring!
+
+Friedrich Stolberg was a very prophet of Nature; in his ode _Nature_
+he says:
+
+  He who does not love Nature cannot be my friend.
+
+His prayer may serve as the motto of his day:
+
+  Holy Nature, heavenly fair,
+  Lead me with thy parent care;
+  In thy footsteps let me tread
+  As a willing child is led.
+  When with care and grief opprest,
+  Soft I sink me on thy breast;
+  On thy peaceful bosom laid,
+  Grief shall cease, nor care invade.
+  O congenial power divine,
+  All my votive soul is thine.
+  Lead me with thy parent care,
+  Holy Nature, heavenly fair!
+
+He, too, sang the moon; but Klopstock's influence seems to have
+carried him to higher flights than his contemporaries. He wrote in
+fine language of wild scenery, even sea and mountains, which had
+played no part in German poetry before.
+
+  TO THE SEA
+
+  Thou boundless, shining, glorious sea,
+  With ecstasy I gaze on thee;
+  Joy, joy to him whose early beam
+  Kisses thy lip, bright ocean stream.
+  Thanks for the thousand hours, old sea,
+  Of sweet communion held with thee;
+  Oft as I gazed, thy billowy roll
+  Woke the deep feelings of my soul.
+
+There are beautiful notes, reminding one of Goethe, in his
+_Unsterbliche Juengling, Ode to a Mountain Torrent_.
+
+  Immortal youth!
+  Thou streamest forth from rocky caves;
+  No mortal saw
+  The cradle of thy might,
+  No ear has heard
+  Thy infant stammering in the gushing Spring.
+  How lovely art thou in thy silver locks!
+  How dreadful thundering from the echoing crags!
+  At thy approach
+  The firwood quakes;
+  Thou easiest down, with root and branch, the fir
+  Thou seizest on the rock,
+  And roll'st it scornful like a pebble on.
+  Thee the sun clothes in dazzling beams of glory,
+  And paints with colours of the heavenly bow
+  The clouds that o'er thy dusky cataracts climb.
+  Why hasten so to the cerulean sea?
+  Is not the neighbourhood of heaven good?
+  Not grand thy temple of encircling rocks?
+  Not fair the forest hanging o'er thy bed?
+  Hasten not so to the cerulean sea;
+  Youth, thou art here,
+  Strong as a god,
+  Free as a god,
+  Though yonder beckon treacherous calms below,
+  The wavering lustre of the silent sea,
+  Now softly silvered by the swimming moon,
+  Now rosy golden in the western beam;
+  Youth, what is silken rest,
+  And what the smiling of the friendly moon,
+  Or gold or purple of the evening sun,
+  To him who feels himself in thraldom's bonds?
+  Here thou canst wildly stream
+  As bids thy heart;
+  Below are masters, ever-changeful minds,
+  Or the dead stillness of the servile main.
+  Hasten not so to the cerulean sea;
+  Youth, thou art here,
+  Strong as a god,
+  Free as a god.
+
+Here we have, with all Klopstock's pathos, a love for the wild and
+grandiose in Nature, almost unique in Germany, in this time of
+idyllic sentimentality. But the discovery of the beauty of romantic
+mountain scenery had been made by Rousseau some time before, for
+Rousseau, too, was a typical forerunner, and his romances fell like a
+bomb-shell among all the idyllic pastoral fiction of the day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE AWAKENING OF FEELING FOR THE ROMANTIC
+
+
+Rousseau was one of those rare men who bring about a complete change
+in the culture of their time by their revolutionary originality. In
+such beings the world's history, so to speak, begins again. Out of
+touch with their own day, and opposed to its ruling taste and mode of
+thought, they are a law unto themselves, and naturally tend to
+measure all things by themselves, while their too great subjectivity
+is apt to be increased by a morbid sophistry of passion and the
+conviction of the prophet.
+
+Of this type, unchecked by a broad sense of humanity, full of
+subversive wilfulness, and not only untrained in moderation, but
+degenerating into crass exaggeration, Rousseau was the first example.
+
+Hellenism, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, had only produced
+forerunners. What in Petrarch was a tendency, became an established
+condition in Rousseau: the acedia reached its climax. All that went
+on in his mind was so much grit for his own mill, subject-matter for
+his observation, and therefore of the greatest value to him. He lived
+in introspection, a spectator of his own struggles, his own waverings
+between an ideal of simple duty and the imperious demands of a
+selfish and sensuous ego. His passion for Nature partially atoned for
+his unamiable and doubtful character; he was false in many ways; but
+that feeling rang true--it was the best part of him, and of that
+'idealism of the heart' whose right of rule he asserted in an age of
+artificiality and petty formalism. Those were no empty words in his
+third letter to Malesherbes:
+
+'Which time of my life do you suppose I recall most often and most
+willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of youth; they were too
+few, too much mixed with bitterness, and they are too far away now.
+It is the time of my retreat, of my solitary walks--those fast-flying
+delicious days that I passed all alone by myself, with my good and
+simple Therese, my beloved dog, my old cat, with the wild birds and
+the roes of the forest, with all Nature and her inconceivable Maker.
+
+'When I got up early to go and watch the sunrise from my garden, when
+I saw a fine day begin, my first wish was that neither letters nor
+visitors might come to break its charm....
+
+'Then I would seek out some wild place in the forest, some desert
+spot where there was nothing to shew the hand of man, and so tell of
+servitude and rule--some refuge which I could fancy I was the first
+to discover, and where no importunate third party came between Nature
+and me....
+
+'The gold broom and the purple heather touched my heart; the majestic
+trees that shaded me, the delicate shrubs around, the astonishing
+variety of plants and flowers that I trod under foot, kept me
+alternately admiring and observing.'
+
+His writings shew that with him return to Nature was no mere theory,
+but real earnest; they condemned the popular garden-craft and carpet
+fashions, and set up in their place the rights of the heart, and free
+enjoyment of Nature in her wild state, undisturbed by the hand of
+man.
+
+It was Rousseau who first discovered that the Alps were beautiful.
+But to see this fact in its true light, we must glance back at the
+opinions of preceding periods.[1]
+
+Though the Alpine countries were the arena of all sorts of
+enterprise, warlike and peaceful, in the fifteenth century, most of
+the interest excited by foreign parts was absorbed by the great
+voyages of discovery; the Alps themselves were almost entirely
+omitted from the maps.
+
+To be just to the time, it must be conceded that security and comfort
+in travelling are necessary preliminaries to our modern mountain
+rapture, and in the Middle Ages these were non-existent. Roads and
+inns were few; there was danger from robbers as well as weather, so
+that the prevailing feelings on such journeys were misery and
+anxiety, not pleasure. Knowledge of science, too, was only just
+beginning; botany, geology, and geognosy were very slightly diffused;
+glacier theories were undreamt of. The sight of a familiar scene near
+the great snow-peaks roused men's admiration, because they were
+surprised to find it there; this told especially in favour of the
+idyllic mountain valleys.
+
+Felix Fabri, the preacher monk of Ulm, visited the East in 1480 and
+1483, and gave a lifelike description of his journeys through the
+Alps in his second account. He said[2]:
+
+'Although the Alps themselves seem dreadful and rigid from the cold
+of the snow or the heat of the sun, and reach up to the clouds, the
+valleys below them are pleasant, and as rich and fruitful in all
+earthly delights as Paradise itself. Many people and animals inhabit
+them, and almost every metal is dug out of the Alps, especially
+silver. 'Mid such charms as these men live among the mountains, and
+Nature blooms as if Venus, Bacchus, and Ceres reigned there. No one
+who saw the Alps from afar would believe what a delicious Paradise is
+to be found amid the eternal snow and mountains of perpetual winter
+and never-melting ice.'
+
+Very limited praise only extended to the valleys!
+
+In the sixteenth century we have the records of those who crossed the
+Alps with an army, such as Adam Reissner, the biographer of the
+Frundsberg, and mention their 'awe' at sight of the valleys, and of
+those who had travelled to Italy and the East, and congratulated
+themselves that their troublesome wanderings through the Alps were
+over. Savants were either very sparing of words about their travels,
+or else made rugged verses which shewed no trace of mountain
+inspiration. There were no outbursts of admiration at sight of the
+great snow-peaks; 'horrible' and 'dreadful' were the current
+epithets. The aesthetic sense was not sufficiently developed, and
+discount as we will for the dangers and discomforts of the road, and,
+as with the earlier travellers to the East, for some lack of power of
+expression, the fact remains that mountains were not appreciated. The
+prevalent notion of beautiful scenery was very narrow, and even among
+cultured people only meant broad, level country.
+
+B. Kiechel[3] (1585) was enthusiastic about 'the beautiful level
+scenery' of Lichfeld, and found it difficult to breathe among the
+Alps. Schickhart wrote: 'We were delighted to get away from the
+horrible tedious mountains,' and has nothing to say of the Brenner
+Pass except this poor joke: 'It did not burn us much, for what with
+the ice and very deep snow and horribly cold wind, we found no heat.'
+The most enthusiastic description is of the Lake of Como, by Paulus
+Jovius (1552), praising Bellagio,'[4] In the seventeenth century
+there was some admiration for the colossal proportions of the Alps,
+but only as a foil to the much admired valleys.
+
+J.J. Grasser wrote of Rhoetia[5]: 'There are marble masses
+projecting, looking like walls and towers in imitation of all sorts
+of wonderful architecture. The villages lie scattered in the valleys,
+here and there the ground is most fruitful. There is luxuriance close
+to barrenness, gracefulness close to dreadfulness, life close to
+loneliness. The delight of the painter's eye is here, yet Nature
+excels all the skill of art. The very ravines, tortuous foot-paths,
+torrents, alternately raging and meagre, the arched bridges, waves on
+the lakes, varied dress of the fields, the mighty trees, in short,
+whatever heaven and earth grant to the sight, is an astonishment and
+a pastime to the enraptured eye of the wanderer.'
+
+But this pastime depended upon the contrast between the charming
+valleys and the dreadful mountains.
+
+Joseph Furttenbach (1591) writing about the same district of Thusis,
+described 'the little bridges, under which one hears the Rhine
+flowing with a great roar, and sees what a horrible cruel wilderness
+the place is.' In Conrad Gessner's _De admiratione Montium_ (1541)[6]
+a passage occurs which shews that even in Switzerland itself in the
+sixteenth century one voice was found to praise Alpine scenery in a
+very different way, anticipating Rousseau. 'I have resolved that so
+long as God grants me life I will climb some mountains every year, or
+at least one mountain, partly to learn the mountain flora, partly to
+strengthen my body and refresh my soul. What a pleasure it is to see
+the monstrous mountain masses, and lift one's head among the clouds.
+How it stimulates worship, to be surrounded by the snowy domes, which
+the Great Architect of the world built up in one long day of
+creation! How empty is the life, how mean the striving of those who
+only crawl about on the earth for gain and home-baked pleasures! The
+earthly paradise is closed to them.'
+
+Yet, just as after Rousseau, and even in the nineteenth century,
+travellers were to be found who thought the Alps 'dreadful' (I refer
+to Chateaubriand's 'hideux'), so such praise as this found no echo in
+its own day.
+
+But with the eighteenth century came a change. Travelling no longer
+subserved the one practical end of making acquaintance with the
+occupations, the morals, the affairs generally, of other peoples; a
+new scientific interest arose, geologists and physicists ventured to
+explore the glaciers and regions of perpetual snow, and first
+admiration, and then love, supplanted the old feeling of horror.
+
+Modern methods began with Scheuchzer's (1672-1733) _Itinera Alpina_.
+Every corner of the Alps was explored--the Splugen, Julier, Furka,
+Gotthard, etc.--and glaciers, avalanches, ores, fossils, plants
+examined. Haller, as his verses shew, was botanist as well as
+theologian, historian, and poet; but he did not appreciate mountain
+beauty.
+
+Brockes to some extent did. He described the Harz Mountains in the
+Fourth Book of his _Earthly Pleasure in God (Irdisches Verguengen in
+Gott)_; and in his _Observations on the Blankenburg Marble_ he said:
+'In many parts the rough mountain heights were monstrously beautiful,
+their size delights and appals us'; and wound up a discussion of wild
+scenery in contrast to cultivated with: 'Ponder this with joy and
+reverence, my soul. The mountain heights wild and beautiful shew us a
+picture of earthly disorder.'[7] It was very long before expressions
+of horror and fear entirely disappeared from descriptions of the
+Alps. In Richardson's _Sir Charles Grandison_ we read: 'We bid adieu
+to France and found ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty
+and rocky mountains. We had left behind us a blooming Spring, which
+enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges on the road we
+passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers.... Every object
+which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' Savoy is 'one
+of the worst countries under Heaven.'
+
+Addison,[8] on the other hand, wrote of the Alps from Ripaille: 'It
+was the pleasantest voyage in the world to follow the windings of
+this river Inn through such a variety of pleasing scenes as the
+course of it naturally led us. We had sometimes on each side of us a
+vast extent of naked rocks and mountains, broken into a thousand
+irregular steps and precipices ... but, as the materials of a fine
+landscape are not always the most profitable to the owner of them, we
+met with but little corn or pasturage,' etc. Lady Mary Wortley[9]
+Montagu wrote from Lyons, Sept. 25, 1718: 'The prodigious aspect of
+mountains covered with eternal snow, clouds hanging far below our
+feet, and the vast cascades tumbling down the rocks with a confused
+roaring, would have been solemnly entertaining to me, if I had
+suffered less from the extreme cold that reigns here.'
+
+On the whole, Switzerland was little known at the beginning of the
+eighteenth century. Many travellers still measured the value of
+scenery entirely by fertility, like Keyssler,[10] who praised
+garden-like level country such as that round Mantua, in contrast to
+the useless wild Tyrolese mountains and the woods of Westphalia; and
+Lueneburg or Moser,[11] who observed ironically to Abbt (1763), after
+reading _Emilia_ and _La Nouvelle Heloise_: 'The far-famed Alps,
+about which so much fuss has been made.'
+
+Rousseau was the real exponent of rapture for the high Alps and
+romantic scenery in general. Isolated voices had expressed some
+feeling before him, but it was he who deliberately proclaimed it, and
+gave romantic scenery the first place among the beauties of Nature.
+He did not, as so many would have it--Du Bois Reymond, for
+example--discover our modern feeling for Nature; the great men of the
+Renaissance, even the Hellenic poets, fore-ran him; but he directed
+it, with feeling itself in general, into new channels.[12]
+
+In French literature he stood alone; the descriptions of landscape
+before him were either borrowed blossoms of antiquity or sentimental
+and erotic pastorals. He opened up again for his country the taste
+for wood and field, sunshine and moonlight, for the idyllic, and,
+above all, for the sublime, which had been lost under artificiality
+and false taste.
+
+The primitive freshness, the genuine ring of his enthusiasm for
+country life, was worth all the laboured pastorals and fables of
+previous periods of literature.
+
+His _Confessions_ opened not only the eyes of France, but the heart.
+
+A Swiss by birth, and living in one of the most beautiful parts of
+Europe, Rousseau was devotedly fond of his home on the Lake of
+Geneva. As a boy he loved to leave the city and rove in the country.
+
+He describes how once on a Sunday in 1728 he wandered about,
+forgetting the time. 'Before me were fields, trees, flowers; the
+beautiful lake, the hill country, and high mountains unfolded
+themselves majestically before my eyes. I gloated over the beautiful
+spectacle while the sun was setting. At last, too late, I saw that
+the city gates were shut.'
+
+From that time on he felt more drawn to Nature than to men. In the
+Fourth Book of the _Confessions_ he says, speaking of 1732:
+
+'A view of the Lake of Geneva and its beautiful banks has had even in
+my idea a particular attraction that I cannot describe, not arising
+merely from the beauty of the prospect, but something, I know not
+what, more interesting which affects and softens me. 'Every time I
+have approached the Vaudois country, I have experienced an impression
+composed of the remembrance of Mademoiselle de Warens, who was born
+there; of my father, who lived there; of Mademoiselle de Wulson, who
+had been my first love; and of several pleasant journeys I had made
+there in my childhood, mingled with some nameless charm, more
+powerfully attractive than all the rest. When that ardent desire for
+a life of happiness and tranquillity (which ever follows me, and for
+which I was born) inflames my mind, 'tis ever to the country of Vaud,
+near the lake, on those charming plains, that imagination leads me.
+An orchard on the banks of that lake, and no other, is absolutely
+necessary; a firm friend, an amiable woman, a cow, and a little boat;
+nor could I enjoy perfect happiness on earth without these
+concomitants.... On my way to Vevey I gave myself up to the soft
+melancholy ... I sighed and wept like a child.'
+
+He clung to Nature, and most of all when surrounded by human beings;
+a morbid impulse to flee from them was always present as a negative
+element in the background of his love for her. His Fifth Reverie, the
+most beautiful one, shews this.
+
+He had gone to the Peter Island on the Lake of Bienne. So far as he
+knew, no other traveller had paid any attention to the place; but
+that did not disturb his confidence in his own taste.
+
+'The shores of the Lake of Bienne are wilder and more romantic than
+those of the Lake of Geneva, because the rocks and woods come nearer
+to the water; but they are not less radiant. With less cultivation
+and fewer vineyards, towns, and houses, there are more green fields
+and shady sheltered spots, more contrasts and irregularities. As
+there are no good carriage roads on these happy shores, the district
+is little frequented by travellers; but it is interesting for the
+solitary contemplation of those who like to intoxicate themselves at
+their leisure with Nature's charms, and to retire into a silence
+unbroken by any sound but the eagle's cry, the intermittent warbling
+of birds, and the roar of torrents falling from the mountains,'
+
+Here he had a delightful Robinson Crusoe existence. The only other
+human beings were the Bernese manager with his family and labourers.
+He counted his two months among the happiest of his life, and would
+have liked to stay for ever. True to his character, he proceeded to
+analyze the charm of the episode, and decided that it was made up of
+the _dolce far niente_, solitude, absence of books and writing
+materials, dealing with simple folk, healthy movement in the open
+air, field labour, and, above all, intercourse with Nature, both in
+admiring and studying her. He was seized with a passion for
+botanizing, and planned a comprehensive Flora Petrinsularis, dividing
+the whole island into quarters, so that no part might escape notice.
+
+'There is nothing more strange than the ravishment, the ecstasy, I
+felt at each observation I made upon vegetable structure and
+organization.
+
+'I would go by myself, throw myself into a boat when the water was
+calm, and row to the middle of the lake, and then, lying full-length
+in the boat with my eyes to the sky, I would let myself drift,
+sometimes for hours, lost in a thousand confused but delicious
+reveries.... Often when the sunset reminded me that it was time to
+return, I found myself so far from the island that I was forced to
+pull with all my strength to get back before night-fall. At other
+times, instead of wandering about the lake, I amused myself by
+skirting the green shores of the island where the limpid water and
+cool shade often invited to a bathe.... When the lake was too rough
+for rowing, I would spend the afternoon scouring the island,
+botanizing right and left. I often sat down to dream at leisure in
+sunny, lonely nooks, or on the terraces and hillocks, to gaze at the
+superb ravishing panorama of the lake and its shores--one side
+crowned by near mountains, the other spread out in rich and fertile
+plains, across which the eye looked to the more distant boundary of
+blue mountains.... When evening fell, I came down from the higher
+parts of the mountains and sat by the shore in some hidden spot, and
+there the sound of the waves and the movements of the water, making
+me oblivious of all other distraction, would plunge me into delicious
+reverie. The ebb and flow of the water, and the sound of it,
+restrained and yet swelling at intervals, by striking eye and ear
+without ceasing, came to the aid of those inner movements of the mind
+which reverie destroys, and sufficed to make me pleasantly conscious
+of existence without the trouble of thinking.... There is nothing
+actual in all this to which the heart can attach itself; even in our
+most intense enjoyment there is scarcely a moment of which the heart
+can truly say "I should like it to stay for ever."'
+
+One thinks of Faust: 'O moment! tarry awhile, thou art so fair!'
+
+However, at the close of the Reverie he admits that he has often had
+such moments--moments free from all earthly passion--on the lake and
+on the island. His feeling was increased by botanical knowledge, and
+later on in life the world of trees and plants became his one safe
+refuge when pursued by delusions of persecution.
+
+The Seventh Reverie has a touching account of his pleasure in botany,
+of the effect of 'earth in her wedding-dress, the only scene in the
+world of which eyes and heart never weary,' the intoxicating sense
+that he was part of a great system in which individual detail
+disappears, and he only sees and hears the whole.
+
+'Shunning men, seeking solitude, no longer dreaming, still less
+thinking, I began to concern myself with all my surroundings, giving
+the preference to my favourites...brilliant flowers, emerald meadows,
+fresh shade, streams, thickets, green turf, these purified my
+imagination.... Attracted by the pleasant objects around, I note
+them, study them, and finally learn to classify them, and so become
+at one stroke as much of a botanist as one need be when one only
+studies Nature to find ever new reasons for loving her.
+
+'The plants seem sown in profusion over the earth like the stars in
+the sky, to invite man, through pleasure and curiosity, to study
+them; but the stars are far off; they require preliminary knowledge
+... while plants grow under our very feet--lie, so to speak, in our
+very hands.'
+
+He had a peaceful sense of being free from his enemies when
+he was pursuing his botany in the woods. He described one
+never-to-be-forgotten ramble when he lost himself in a dense thicket
+close to a dizzy precipice, where, save for some rare birds, he was
+quite alone. He was just feeling the pride of a Columbus in the
+discovery of new ground, when his eye fell upon a manufactory not far
+off. His first feeling was a flash of delight at finding himself
+again among men; but this gave way to the more lasting and painful
+one, that even among the Alps there was no escape from his
+tormentors.
+
+Years later, when he knew that he would never revisit the spot, the
+leaves in his herbarium would carry him back to it in memory.
+
+So strong a personal attachment to Nature, solitude, and retirement
+had not been known before; but it was thrown into this high relief by
+the morbid dread of man and hatred of culture, which formed a
+constant dark background to his mind. It was a state of mind which
+naturally led to intense dislike of formal French gardens and open
+admiration of the English park. He rejected all the garnish of
+garden-craft, even grafted roses and fruit trees, and only admitted
+indigenous plants which grew outdoors.[13] It is greatly due to his
+feeling for English Park style that a healthier garden-craft gained
+ground in Germany as well as France. The foremost maxim of his
+philosophy and teaching, that everything is good as it comes from the
+bosom of mother Nature, or rather from the hand of God, and that man
+and his culture are responsible for all the evil, worked out in his
+attitude towards Nature.
+
+He placed her upon a pedestal, worshipping her, and the Creator
+through her, and this made him the first to recognize the fact that
+study of Nature, especially of botany, should be an important factor
+in the education of children.
+
+His _Confessions_, the truest photographs of a human character in
+existence, shew at once the keenest introspection and intense love
+for Nature. No one before Rousseau had been so aware of his own
+individuality--that is, of himself, as a being--who in this
+particular state only exists once, and has therefore not only
+relative but absolute value. He gave this peculiarity its full value,
+studying it as a thing outside himself, of which every detail was
+important, watching with great interest his own change of moods, the
+fluctuations of that double self which now lifted him to the ideal,
+now cast him down to the lowest and commonest. His relation to Nature
+was the best thing about him, and when he was happy, as he was for
+the first time in the society of Mademoiselle de Warens, Nature
+seemed lovelier than ever.
+
+The scattered passages about Nature in the _Confessions_ have a
+youthful freshness:
+
+'The appearance of Aurora seemed so delightful one morning, that,
+putting on my clothes, I hastened into the country to see the rising
+of the sun. I enjoyed that pleasure to its utmost extent. It was one
+week after midsummer: the earth was covered with verdure and flowers;
+the nightingales, whose soft warblings were almost over, seemed to
+vie with each other, and, in concert with birds of various kinds, to
+bid adieu to spring and hail the approach of a beautiful summer's
+day.'
+
+He loved rambling over hill and dale, even by night; thus, when he
+was at Lyons:
+
+'It had been a very hot day, the evening was delightful, the dew
+moistened the parched grass, no wind was stirring; the air was fresh
+without chilliness, the setting sun had tinged the clouds with a
+beautiful crimson, which was again reflected by the water, and the
+trees bordering the terrace were filled with nightingales that were
+constantly answering each other's songs. I walked along in a kind of
+ecstasy, surrendering my heart and senses to the enjoyment of so many
+delights, and sighing only from regret at enjoying them alone.
+Absorbed in this pleasing reverie, I lengthened my walk till it grew
+very late, without perceiving I was tired. At length I threw myself
+on the steps of a kind of niche in a terrace wall. How charming was
+that couch! The trees formed a stately canopy, a nightingale sat
+directly over me, and with his soft notes lulled me to rest. How
+delicious my repose! my awakening more so. It was broad day; on
+opening my eyes, I saw the water, the verdure, and an adorable
+landscape before me.'
+
+At the end of the Fourth Book he states his idea of beautiful
+scenery:
+
+'I love to walk at my ease and stop at leisure ... travelling on foot
+in a fine country with fine weather ... and having an agreeable
+object to terminate my journey. It is already understood what I mean
+by a fine country; never can a flat one, though ever so beautiful,
+appear such to my eyes. I must have torrents, fir trees, black woods,
+mountains to climb or descend, and rugged roads with precipices on
+either side to alarm me. I experienced this pleasure to its utmost
+extent as I approached Chambery, not far from a mountain road called
+the Pas d'Echelle. Above the main road, hewn through the solid rock,
+a small river runs and rushes into fearful chasms, which it appears
+to have been millions of ages in forming. The road has been hedged by
+a parapet to prevent accidents, and I was thus enabled to contemplate
+the whole descent and gain vertigoes at pleasure, for a great part of
+my amusement in these steep rocks lies in their causing a giddiness
+and swimming in my head, which I am particularly fond of, provided I
+am in safety. Leaning therefore on the parapet, I remained whole
+hours, catching from time to time a glance of the froth and blue
+water whose rushing caught my ear, mingled with the cries of ravens
+and other birds of prey that flew from rock to rock and bush to bush
+at 600 feet below me.'
+
+His preference was for the wild and sublime, and he was glad that
+this was not a popular taste; but he could write glowing descriptions
+of more idyllic scenery and of village life.
+
+He said of a day at the Charmettes, a property near Chambery, with
+his beloved friend Madame de Warens, at the end of 1736:
+
+'I arose with the sun and was happy; I walked and was happy; I saw
+Madame de Warens and was happy; I quitted her and still was happy.
+Whether I rambled through the woods, over the hills, or strolled
+along the valley; read, was idle, worked in the garden, or gathered
+fruits, happiness continually accompanied me.'
+
+He offered his morning prayer from a hill-top, and in the evening,
+before he left, stooped to kiss the ground and the trees, gazing till
+they were out of sight at the places where he had been so happy.
+
+At the Hermitage with Therese there was a similar idyll.
+
+The most epoch--making event in European feeling for Nature was the
+appearance of _La Nouvelle Heloise_ (1761). The book overflows with
+Rousseau's raptures about the Lake of Geneva. St Preux says:
+
+'The nearer I drew to Switzerland, the greater were my emotions. That
+instant in which I discovered the Lake of Geneva from the heights of
+Jura, was a moment of ecstasy and rapture. The sight of my country,
+my beloved country, where a deluge of pleasure had overflowed my
+heart; the pure and wholesome air of the Alps, the gentle breeze of
+the country, more sweet than the perfumes of the East; that rich and
+fertile spot, that unrivalled landscape, the most beautiful that ever
+struck the eye of man, that delightful abode, to which I found
+nothing comparable in the vast tour of the globe; the mildness of the
+season, the serenity of the climate, a thousand pleasing
+recollections which recalled to my mind the pleasures I had
+enjoyed;--all these circumstances together threw me into a kind of
+transport which I cannot describe, and seemed to collect the
+enjoyment of my whole life into one happy moment.'
+
+_La Nouvelle Heloise_ shewed the world three things in quite a new
+light: the inner consciousness which was determined to give feeling
+its rights again, though well aware that 'a feeling heart is an
+unhappy gift from heaven'; the taste for solitude, 'all noble
+passions are formed in solitude'; and closely bound up with these,
+the love of romantic scenery, which it described for the first time
+in glowing language.
+
+Such expressions as these of St Preux were unheard of at that time:
+'I shall do my best to be free quickly, and able to wander at my ease
+in the wild places that to my mind make the charm of this country.'
+'I am of opinion that this unfrequented country deserves the
+attention of speculative curiosity, and that it wants nothing to
+excite admiration but a skilful spectator'; and 'Nature seems
+desirous of hiding her real charms from the sight of men, because
+they are too little sensible of them, and disfigure them when within
+their reach; she flies from public places; it is on the tops of
+mountains, in the midst of forests, on desert islands, that she
+displays her most affecting charms.'
+
+Rousseau certainly announced his views with all the fervour of a
+prophet proclaiming a newly-discovered truth. The sketch St Preux
+gives of the country that 'deserved a year's study,' in the
+twenty-third letter to Julia, is very poetic. He is ascending a rocky
+path when a new view breaks upon him:
+
+    One moment I beheld stupendous rocks hanging ruinous over my
+    head; the next, I was enveloped in a drizzling cloud, which arose
+    from a vast cascade that, dashing, thundered against the rocks
+    below my feet. On one side a perpetual torrent opened to my view
+    a yawning abyss, which my eyes could hardly fathom with safety;
+    sometimes I was lost in the obscurity of a hanging wood, and then
+    was greatly astonished with the sudden opening of a flowery
+    plain.
+
+He was always charmed by 'a surprising mixture of wild and cultivated
+Nature':
+
+    Here Nature seems to have a singular pleasure in acting
+    contradictory to herself, so different does she appear in the
+    same place in different aspects. Towards the east, the flowers of
+    spring; to the south, the flowers of autumn; and northwards, the
+    ice of winter. Add to that the illusions of vision, the tops of
+    the mountains variously illumined, the harmonious mixture of
+    light and shade....
+
+After climbing, he reflects:
+
+    Upon the top of mountains, the air being subtle and pure, we
+    respire with greater freedom, our bodies are more active, our
+    minds more serene, our pleasures less ardent, and our passions
+    much more moderate. Our meditations acquire a degree of sublimity
+    from the grandeur of the objects around us. It seems as if, being
+    lifted above all human society, we had left every low terrestrial
+    sentiment behind.
+
+He can find no words to express 'the amazing variety, magnitude, and
+beauty of a thousand stupendous objects, the pleasure of gazing at an
+entire new scene ... and beholding, as it were, another Nature and a
+new world.'
+
+Earlier in the year he wrote his letters to Julia upon a block of
+stone in his favourite wild spot, and the wintry landscape harmonized
+with his feelings:
+
+    I run to and fro, climb the rocks and explore my whole district,
+    and find everything as horrible without as I experienced it
+    within. There is no longer any verdure to be seen, the grass is
+    yellow and withered, the trees are stripped of their foliage, and
+    the north-east blast heaps snow and ice around me. In short, the
+    whole face of Nature appears as decayed to my outward senses as I
+    myself from within am dead to hope and joy.
+
+Julia, too, is enthusiastic about places, where 'no vestiges are seen
+of human toil, no appearance of studied and laborious art; every
+object presents only a view of the tender care of Nature, our common
+mother.'
+
+When St Preux knows that she returns his love, his sympathy for
+Nature overflows:
+
+    I find the country more delightful, the verdure fresher and
+    livelier, the air more temperate, and the sky more serene than
+    ever I did before; even the feathered songsters seem to tune
+    their tender throats with more harmony and pleasure; the
+    murmuring rills invite to love-inspiring dalliance, while the
+    blossoms of the vine regale me from afar with the choicest
+    perfumes ... let us animate all Nature, which is absolutely dead
+    without the genial warmth of love.
+
+St Preux escorts his old love to the Meillerie, and it was with his
+description of this that Rousseau unrolled the full charm of mountain
+scenery, and opened the eyes of his readers to see it.
+
+They were climbing a mountain top on the Savoy side of the lake:
+
+    This solitary spot formed a wild and desert nook, but full of
+    those sorts of beauties which are only agreeable to susceptible
+    minds, and appear horrible to others. A torrent, occasioned by
+    the melting of the snow, rolled in a muddy stream within twenty
+    paces of us, and carried dust, sand, and stones along with it,
+    not without considerable noise. Behind us, a chain of
+    inaccessible rocks divided the place where we stood from that
+    part of the Alps which they call the Ice house.... Forests of
+    gloomy fir trees afforded us a melancholy shade on the right,
+    while on the left was a large wood of oak, beyond which the
+    torrent issued; and beneath, that vast body of water which the
+    lake forms in the bay of the Alps, parted us from the rich coast
+    of the Pays de Vaud, crowning the whole landscape with the top of
+    the majestic Jura.
+
+Rousseau's influence upon feeling in general, and feeling for Nature
+in particular, was an extraordinary one, widening and deepening at
+once.
+
+By his strong personal impulse he impelled it into more natural
+paths, and at the same time he discovered the power of the mountains.
+
+He brought to flower the germ which had lain dormant in Hellenism and
+the Renaissance; and although his readers imbibed a sickly strain of
+morbid sentimentality with this passion for the new region of
+feeling, the total effect of his individuality and his idealism was
+to intensify their love for Nature. His feelings woke the liveliest
+echo, and it was not France alone who profited by the lessons he
+taught.
+
+He was no mountaineer himself, but he pointed out the way, and others
+soon followed it. Saussure began his climbing in 1760, exploring the
+Alps with the indomitable spirit of the discoverer and the
+scientist's craving for truth. He ascended Mont Blanc in 1787, and
+only too soon the valleys of Chamounix filled with tourists and
+speculators. One of the first results of Rousseau's imposing
+descriptions of scenery was to rouse the most ardent of French
+romance writers, Bernardin de St Pierre; and his writings, especially
+his beautiful pictures of the Ile de France, followed hard in the
+wake of _La Nouvelle Heloise_.
+
+In _Paul and Virginia_ vivid descriptions of Nature were interwoven
+with an idyllic Robinson Crusoe romance:
+
+    Within this enclosure reigns the most profound silence. The
+    waters, the air, all the elements are at peace. Scarcely does the
+    echo repeat the whispers of the palm trees spreading their broad
+    leaves, the long points of which are gently agitated by the
+    winds. A soft light illumines the bottom of this deep valley, on
+    which the sun shines only at noon. But even at break of day the
+    rays of light are thrown on the surrounding rocks, and their
+    sharp peaks, rising above the shadows of the mountain, appear
+    like tints of gold and purple gleaming upon the azure sky.
+
+Like Rousseau, St Pierre held that 'to take refuge in the wildest and
+most desert places is an instinct common to all feeling and suffering
+beings, as if rocks were ramparts against misfortune, and Nature's
+calm could appease the sorrows of the soul'[14]; but he differed in
+caring for Nature far more for her own sake, and not in opposition to
+culture and a detested world. He wrote too, not as a philosopher
+proclaiming a new gospel, but as a poet[15]; the poetry of Nature had
+been revealed to French literature.
+
+St Pierre drew the beauty of the tropics in a poem, and George
+Forster's _Voyage round the World_[16] shewed how quickly Rousseau's
+influence told upon travels. It was a far cry from the Crusaders and
+discoverers to the highly-cultured Forster, alive to everything that
+was good and beautiful, and able to express it. He was the first to
+describe countries and peoples from both the scientific and artistic
+standpoint--a style of writing which Humboldt perfected, and some
+later writers, Haeckel, for example, in _Indischen Briefen_, have
+carried on with success.
+
+To quote Forster:
+
+    The town of Santa Cruz in Madeira was abreast of us at six in the
+    afternoon. The mountains are here intersected by numerous deep
+    glens and valleys. On the sloping ground we observed several
+    country houses pleasantly situated amidst surrounding vineyards
+    and lofty cypresses, which gave the country altogether a romantic
+    appearance. Early on the 29th we were agreeably surprised with
+    the picturesque appearance of the city of Funchal....
+
+In October 1772, off South Africa:
+
+    The night was scarcely begun when the water all round us afforded
+    the most grand and astonishing sight that can be imagined. As far
+    as we could see, the whole ocean seemed to be in a blaze. Every
+    breaking wave had its summit illuminated by a light similar to
+    that of phosphorus, and the sides of the vessel, coming in
+    contact with the sea, were strongly marked by a luminous line....
+    There was a singularity and a grandeur in the display of this
+    phenomenon which could not fail of giving occupation to the mind,
+    and striking it with a reverential awe, due to omnipotence.
+
+    The ocean was covered to a great extent with myriads of
+    animalcules; these little beings, organized, alive, endowed with
+    locomotive power, a quality of shining whenever they please, of
+    illuminating every body with which they come in contact ... all
+    these ideas crowded upon us, and bade us admire the Creator, even
+    in His minutest works.... I hope I shall not have formed too
+    favourable an opinion of my readers, if I expect that the
+    generality will sympathize with me in these feelings.
+
+In Dusky Bay:
+
+    We glided along by insensible degrees, wafted by light airs past
+    numerous rocky islands, each of which was covered with wood and
+    shrubberies, where numerous evergreens were sweetly contrasted
+    and mingled with the various shades of autumnal yellow. Flocks of
+    aquatic birds enlivened the rocky shores, and the whole country
+    resounded with the wild notes of the feathered tribe.... The view
+    of rude sceneries in the style of Rosa, of antediluvian forests
+    which clothed the rock, and of numerous rills of water which
+    everywhere rolled down the steep declivity, altogether conspired
+    to complete our joy.
+
+Cascade Cove in New Zealand:
+
+    This waterfall at a distance of a mile and a half seems to be but
+    inconsiderable on account of its great elevation; but, after
+    climbing about 200 yards upwards, we ... found a view of great
+    beauty and grandeur before us. The first object which strikes the
+    beholder is a clear column of water eight or ten yards in
+    circumference, which is projected with great impetuosity from the
+    perpendicular rock at the height of 100 yards. Nearly at the
+    fourth part of the whole height this column meeting a part of the
+    same rock, which now acquires a little inclination, spreads on
+    its broad back into a limpid sheet of about twenty-five yards in
+    width. Here its surface is curled, and dashes upon every little
+    eminence in its rapid descent, till it is all collected in a fine
+    basin about sixty yards in circuit, included on three sides by
+    the natural walls of the rocky chasm, and in front by huge masses
+    of stone irregularly piled above each other. Between them the
+    stream finds its way, and runs foaming with the greatest rapidity
+    along the slope of the hill to the sea. The whole neighbourhood
+    of the cascade ... is filled with a steam or watery vapour.... We
+    ... were struck with the sight of a most beautiful rainbow of a
+    perfectly circular form, produced by the meridian rays of the sun
+    refracted in the vapour of the cascade.
+
+    The scenery on the left consists of steep brown rocks fringed on
+    the summits with overhanging shrubs and trees; the enchanting
+    melody of various birds resounded on all sides, and completed the
+    beauty of this wild and romantic spot.
+
+He described: 'A waterspout, a phenomenon which carried so much
+terrific majesty in it, and connected, as it were, the sea with the
+clouds, made our oldest mariners uneasy and at a loss how to behave.'
+
+He begins his diary of August 1773 with O'Taheite:
+
+    It was one of those beautiful mornings which the poets of all
+    nations have attempted to describe, when we saw the isle of
+    O'Taheite within two miles before us. The east wind, which had
+    carried us so far, was entirely vanished, and a faint breeze only
+    wafted a delicious perfume from the land, and curled the surface
+    of the sea. The mountains, clothed with forests, rose majestic in
+    various spiry forms, on which we already perceived the light of
+    the rising sun ... everything seemed as yet asleep; the morning
+    scarce dawned, and a peaceful shade still rested on the
+    landscape....
+
+    This spot was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, and
+    could not fail of bringing to remembrance the most fanciful
+    descriptions of poets, which it eclipsed in beauty; we had a
+    prospect of the plain below us, and of the sea beyond it. In the
+    shade of trees, whose branches hung over the water, we enjoyed a
+    pleasant gale, which softened the heat of the day; and, amidst
+    the solemn uniform noise of the waterfall, which was but seldom
+    interrupted by the whistling of birds, we sat down....
+
+    We could have been well pleased to have passed the whole day in
+    this retirement ... however, feasting our eyes once more with the
+    romantic scenery, we returned to the plain.
+
+It was such descriptions as these which stimulated Humboldt. There is
+a breath of poetry in his writings; his _Views of Nature_ and
+_Cosmos_ give ample proof that love of Nature and knowledge of Nature
+can condition and deepen each other.
+
+It is not surprising that in the flood of scientific 'Travels' which
+followed, especially in imitation of Forster, there were some that
+laid claim to a wonderful grade of feeling. For example, the
+description of a day at the Equator by von Spix and v. Martius in
+their Travels in Brazil in 1817 to 1820:
+
+    In these seas the sun rises from the ocean with great splendour,
+    and gilds the clouds accumulated in the horizon, which in grand
+    and various groups seem to present to the eye of the spectator
+    continents with high mountains and valleys, with volcanoes and
+    seas, mythological and other strange creations of fancy.
+
+    The lamp of day gradually rises in the transparent blue sky; the
+    damp grey fogs subside; the sea is calm or gently rises and
+    falls, with a surface smooth as a mirror, in a regular motion. At
+    noon a pale, faintly shining cloud rises, the herald of a sudden
+    tempest, which at once disturbs the tranquillity of the sea.
+    Thunder and lightning seem as if they would split our planet; but
+    a heavy rain of a salt taste, pouring down in the midst of
+    roaring whirlwinds, puts an end to the raging of the elements,
+    and several semi-circular rainbows, extended over the ocean like
+    gay triumphal arches, announce the peaceful termination of the
+    great natural phenomenon. As soon as the air and sea have
+    recovered their equilibrium, the sky again shews its transparent
+    azure.... As the sun gradually sinks in the clouded horizon, the
+    sea and sky assume a new dress, which is beyond description
+    sublime and magnificent. The most brilliant red, yellow, violet,
+    in infinite shades and contrasts, are poured out in profusion
+    over the azure of the firmament, and are reflected in still gayer
+    variety from the surface of the water. The day departs amid
+    continued lightning on the dusky horizon, while the moon in
+    silent majesty rises from the unbounded ocean into the cloudless
+    upper regions. Variable winds cool the atmosphere; numerous
+    falling stars, coming particularly from the south, shed a magic
+    light; the dark-blue firmament, reflected with the constellations
+    on the untroubled bosom of the water, represents the image of the
+    wholly starry hemisphere; and the ocean, agitated even by the
+    faintest breeze of the night, is changed into a sea of waving
+    fire.... The variety of the light and foliage of the trees, which
+    is seen in the forests, on the slopes of the mountains: the
+    blending of the most diverse colours, and the dark azure and
+    transparency of the sky, impart to the landscapes of the tropical
+    countries a charm to which even the pencil of a Salvator Rosa and
+    a Claude cannot do justice....
+
+    Except at noon, when all living creatures in the torrid zone seek
+    shade and repose, and when a solemn silence is diffused over the
+    scene, illumined by the dazzling beams of the sun, every hour of
+    the day calls into action another race of animals.... When the
+    sun goes down, most of the animals retire to rest ... myriads of
+    luminous beetles now begin to fly about like _ignes fatui_, and
+    the blood-sucking bats hover like phantoms in the profound
+    darkness of the night.... The traveller does not here meet with
+    the impressions of those sublime and rugged high Alps of Europe,
+    nor, on the other hand, those of a meaner nature; but the
+    character of these landscapes combines grandeur with simplicity
+    and softness....
+
+    He who has not personally experienced the enchantment of tranquil
+    moonlight nights in these happy latitudes can never be inspired,
+    even by the most faithful description, with those feelings which
+    scenes of such wondrous beauty excite in the mind of the
+    beholder.
+
+    A delicate transparent mist hangs over the country, the moon
+    shines brightly amid heavy and singularly grouped clouds, the
+    outlines of the objects illuminated by it are clear and well
+    defined, while a magic twilight seems to remove from the eye
+    those which are in shade. Scarce a breath of air is stirring, and
+    the neighbouring mimosas, that have folded up their leaves to
+    sleep, stand motionless beside the dark crowns of the manga, the
+    jaca, and the ethereal jambos; or sometimes a sudden wind arises
+    and the juiceless leaves of the acaju rustle, the richly flowered
+    grumijama and pitanga let drop a fragrant shower of snow-white
+    blossoms; the crowns of the majestic palms wave slowly over the
+    silent roof which they overshade, like a symbol of peace and
+    tranquillity.
+
+    Shrill cries of the cicada, the grasshopper, and tree frog make
+    an incessant hum, and produce by their monotony a pleasing
+    melancholy.... Every half-hour different balsamic odours fill the
+    air, and other flowers alternately unfold their leaves to the
+    night.... While the silent vegetable world, illuminated by scores
+    of fireflies as by a thousand moving stars, charms the night by
+    its delicate effluvia, brilliant lightnings play incessantly on
+    the horizon, and elevate the mind in joyful admiration to the
+    stars, which, glowing in solemn silence in the firmament above
+    the continent and ocean, fill the soul with a presentiment of
+    still sublimer wonders.
+
+Travels by sea were described at much greater length and with much
+more effusion than travels by land; one might infer from the silence
+of the people who moved about in Europe in the eighteenth century,
+that no love of Nature existed. The extreme discomfort of the road up
+to a hundred years ago may account for this silence within Germany.
+
+Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote in 1716 of Saxon Switzerland:
+
+    We passed by moonshine the frightful precipices that divide
+    Bohemia from Saxony, at the bottom of which runs the river Elbe
+    ... in many places the road is so narrow that I could not discern
+    an inch of space between the wheels and the precipice....
+
+and her husband declared that
+
+    he had passed the Alps five times in different places, without
+    having gone a road so dangerous.
+
+Scherr relates that in the late autumn of 1721 a citizen of
+Schwabisch-Gmuend travelled to Ellwangen, a distance of eight hours'
+posting.
+
+Before starting, he had a mass performed in St John's Church 'for the
+safe conclusion of the coming journey.' He set off one Monday with
+his wife and a maid in a two-horse vehicle called a small tilt waggon
+(_Planwaegelchen_), but in less than an hour the wheels stuck in mud,
+and the whole party had to get out and push the carriage, up to their
+knees in filth. In the middle of the village of Boebingen the driver
+inadvertently drove the front left wheel into a manure hole, the
+carriage was overturned, and the lady of the party had her nose and
+cheek badly grazed by the iron hoops.
+
+From Moeggelingen to Aalen they were obliged to use three horses, and
+yet it took fully six hours, so that they were obliged to spend the
+night there. Next morning they set off early, and reached the village
+of Hofen by mid-day without accidents. Here for a time the travelling
+ceased, for a hundred paces beyond the village the carriage fell into
+a puddle, and they were all terribly soiled; the maid's right
+shoulder was dislocated, and the manservant's hand injured. The axle
+of one of the wheels was broken, and a horse completely lamed in the
+left forefoot. They had to put up a second time for the night, leave
+horses, carriage, man, and maid in Hofen, and hire a rack waggon, in
+which at last, pitifully shaken, they reached the gates of Ellwangen
+on Wednesday at vesper bells.
+
+When Eva Koenig, Lessing's _fiancee_, was on her way from Brunswick to
+Nuremberg in 1772, she wrote to him from Rattelsdorf (two miles north
+of Bamberg), on February 28th, as follows:
+
+    You will certainly never in your life have heard of a village
+    called Rattelsdorf? We have been in it already twenty-four hours,
+    and who knows if we shall not have to stay four times as long! It
+    depends on the Maine, whether it falls or not; as it is now, one
+    could not cross it, even if one dared to. I have never in my life
+    met with so many hindrances, so many dangers and hardships, as on
+    this journey. I can hardly think of any misfortunes which we have
+    not already had.
+
+She goes on to describe that in thirty-eight hours two axles and two
+poles had been broken, the horses had bolted with them, one horse had
+fallen and died, and so on; on March 2nd they were still prisoners in
+the wretched village.
+
+In 1750 a day's journey was still reckoned at five miles, two hours
+to the mile; and when in July 1750 Klopstock travelled with Gleim
+from Halberstadt to Magdeburg in a light carriage drawn by four
+horses, at the rate of six miles in six hours, he thought this speed
+remarkable enough to merit comparison with the racing in the Olympian
+games. People of any pretensions shunned the discomforts of
+travelling on foot--the bad roads, the insecurity, the dirty inns,
+and the rough treatment in them; to walk abroad in good clothes and
+admire the scenery was an unknown thing. (G. Freytag.)
+
+It was only after the widening of thoroughfares, the invention of
+steamboats (the first was on the Weser 1827) and railways (1835),
+that travelling became commoner and more popular, and feeling for
+Nature was thereby increased.
+
+After the Swiss Alps had been discovered for them, people began to
+feel interest in their native mountains; Zimmermann led the way with
+his observations on a journey in the Harz 1775, and Gatterer in 1785
+published _A Guide to Travelling in the Harz_ in five volumes.
+
+In 1806 appeared Nicolas's _Guide to Switzerland_, in 1777 J.T.
+Volkmar's _Journey to the Riesengebirge_, and before long each little
+country and province, be it Weimar, Mecklenburg, or the Mark, had
+discovered a Switzerland within its own boundaries, with mountains as
+much like the Swiss Alps as a charming little girl is like a giant.
+
+It was the opening of men's eyes to the charms of romantic scenery at
+home.
+
+The Isle of Ruegen too, Swedish at that time, with its striking
+contrasts of deep blue bays and inlets, chalk rocks and beech woods,
+came into fashion with lovers of Nature, especially after the road
+from Sagard to Stubbenkamer had been improved[17]--so much so, in
+fact, that in 1805 Gruembke was complaining that many people only went
+there to feast, not to enjoy the scene:
+
+    You know I am no foe to pleasure, and appreciate my food and
+    drink after physical exertion as much as any one; but it is
+    desecration to make that the main object here. In this dreadfully
+    beautiful wilderness, under these green corridors of beeches, on
+    the battlements of this great dazzling temple, before this huge
+    azure mirror of the sea, only high and serious thoughts should
+    find a place--the whole scene, stamped as it is with majesty and
+    mystery, seems designed to attract the mind to the hidden life of
+    the unending world around it. For this, solitude and rest are
+    necessary conditions, hence one must visit Stubbenkamer either
+    alone or with intimate and congenial friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE UNIVERSAL PANTHEISTIC FEELING OF
+MODERN TIMES
+
+
+The eighteenth century, so proudly distinguished as the century of
+Frederic the Great and Maria Theresa, Kant and Lessing, Rousseau and
+Voltaire, the age of enlightenment, and, above all, of the
+Revolution, was the most sentimental period in history. Its feeling
+for Nature bore the same stamp. Many of the Anacreontists and
+Goettingen poets, as well as Klopstock, shewed genuine enthusiasm; but
+their horizon was narrow, and though F. Stolberg sang of the sea and
+his native mountains, most of them only rang the changes on moonlight
+and starlight, pastoral idylls, the joys of spring, and winter
+excursions on the ice. Even Rousseau, the prophet of high mountains,
+was the child of the same sentimental, self-adoring time; a morbid
+strain, call it misanthropy, melancholy, what you will, underlay all
+his passion for Nature. It was Goethe who dissolved the spell which
+lay over the world, and, although born into the days of beautiful
+souls, moonshine poets, seraphic heaven stormers, pastoral poems, and
+_La Nouvelle Heloise_, ennobled and purified the tone of the day and
+freed it from convention!
+
+It was by dint of his genius for expression, the gift of finding the
+one right word, that he became the world's greatest lyrist: what he
+felt became a poem, what he saw a picture.
+
+To see and to fashion into poetry were one with him, whereas his
+predecessors had called out the whole artillery of Olympus--nymphs,
+Oreads, Chloe, Phyllis, Damon, Aurora, Echo, and Zephyr--even the
+still heavier ordnance of the old Teutonic gods and half-gods, only
+to repeat stereotyped ideas, and produce descriptions of scenery,
+without lyric thought and feeling.
+
+But Goethe's genius passed through very evident stages of
+development, and found forerunners in Lessing and Herder.
+
+Lessing's mind was didactic and critical, not lyric, so that his
+importance here is a negative one. In laying down the limits of
+poetry and painting in _Laocoon_, he attacked the error of his day
+which used poetry for pictures, debasing it to mere descriptions of
+seasons, places, plants, etc.
+
+He was dealing with fundamental principles when he said:
+
+    Simonides called painting dumb poetry, and poetry speaking
+    painting; but ... many modern critics have drawn the crudest
+    conclusions possible from this agreement between painting and
+    poetry. At one time they confine poetry within the narrow limits
+    of painting, and at another allow painting to fill the whole wide
+    sphere of poetry.... This fault-finding criticism has partially
+    misled the virtuosos themselves. In poetry a fondness for
+    description, and in painting a fancy for allegory, has arisen
+    from the desire to make the one a speaking picture without really
+    knowing what it can and ought to paint, and the other a dumb poem
+    without having considered in how far painting can express
+    universal ideas without abandoning its proper sphere and
+    degenerating into an arbitrary method of writing.... Since the
+    artist can use but a single moment of ever-changing Nature, and
+    the painter must further confine his study of this one moment to
+    a single point of view, while their works are made not simply to
+    be looked at, but to be contemplated long and often, evidently
+    the most fruitful moment and the most fruitful aspect must be
+    chosen. Now that only is fruitful which allows free play to the
+    imagination. The more we see, the more we must be able to
+    imagine; and the more we imagine, the more we must think we see.
+
+And against descriptive poetry he said:
+
+    When a poetaster, says Horace, can do nothing else, he falls to
+    describing a grove, an altar, a brook winding through pleasant
+    meadows, a rushing river, or a rainbow. Pope expressly enjoined
+    upon every one who would not prove himself unworthy the name of
+    poet, to abandon as early as possible this fondness for
+    description. A merely descriptive poem he declared to be a feast
+    made up of sauces.
+
+Acute as his distinction was between poetry as the representative art
+of actions in time, and painting as the representative art of bodies
+in space, he did not give due value to lyric feeling or landscape
+painting.[1] They belong to a region in which his sharp, critical
+acumen was not at home.
+
+But his discussions established the position that external objects of
+any sort, including Nature in all her various shapes, are not proper
+subjects for poetry when taken as Thomson, Brockes, and Haller took
+them, by themselves alone, but must first be imbued with human
+feeling. And the same holds good of landscape painting. Goethe's
+lyrics are the most perfect examples of this blending of the outer
+and inner world.
+
+Lessing's criticisms had a salutary, emancipating effect upon
+prevalent taste; but a more positive influence came into play through
+Herder's warm predilection for the popular songs, which had been so
+long neglected, and for all that rises, as in the Psalms, Homer,
+Shakespeare, Ossian, from primitive sources of feeling, and finds
+spontaneous expression in poetry. The effect of his pioneering was
+marked, especially upon Goethe. Herder understood the revulsion of
+feeling from the unnatural restraint of the Pigtail period, and while
+holding up the mirror to his own day, he at the same time led its
+taste and the expression of it towards what was simple and natural,
+by disclosing the treasures which lay hidden in the poetry of the
+people. The lyric was freed from the artificiality and convention
+which had so long ruled it, and although he did not carry out his
+plan of a history of poetry, his collections and his profound remarks
+upon them were of great service, sowing a seed that bore fruit in
+succeeding days.
+
+The popular songs to him were children of the same mother as the
+plants and flowers. 'All the songs of such unlettered folk,'[2] he
+said, 'weave a living world around existing objects, actions, and
+events. How rich and manifold they all become! And the eye can
+actually see them, the mind realize them; they are set in motion. The
+different parts of the song are no more connected together than the
+trees and bushes in a wood, the rocks in a desert, or the scenes
+depicted.' In another place[3] he put the history of feeling for
+Nature very tersely: 'There is no doubt that the spirit of man is
+made gentler by studying Nature. What did the classics aim at in
+their Georgics, but under various shapes to make man more humane and
+raise him gradually to order, industry, and prosperity, and to the
+power to observe Nature?...' Hence, when poetry revived in the Middle
+Ages, she soon recollected the true land of her birth among the
+plants and flowers. The Provencal and the romantic poets loved the
+same descriptions. Spenser, for instance, has charming stanzas about
+beautiful wilds with their streams and flowers; Cowley's six books on
+plants, vegetables, and trees are written with extraordinary
+affection and a superfluity of imagination; and of our old Brockes,
+Gessner says: 'He observed Nature's many beauties down to their
+finest minutiae, the smallest things move his tender feelings; a
+dewdrop on a blade of grass in the sunshine inspires him. His scenes
+are often too laboured, too wide in scope, but still his poems are a
+storehouse of pictures direct from Nature. Haller's _Alps_, Kleist's
+poems and Gessner's, Thomson's _Seasons_, speak for themselves.'
+
+He delighted in Shaftesbury's praises of Nature as the good and
+beautiful in the _Moralists_, and translated it[4]; in fact, in
+Herder we have already an aesthetic cult of the beauties of Nature.
+
+After the moral disquisitions of Pope, Addison, Shaftesbury, etc.,
+Nature's influence on man, moral and aesthetic, became, as we have
+already seen, a favourite theme in Germany too, both in pious and
+rationalistic circles[5]; but there are few traces of any aesthetic
+analysis.
+
+The most important one was Kant's, in his _Observations on the
+Beautiful and Sublime_ in 1764. He distinguished, in the finer
+feeling for Nature, a feeling for the sublime and a feeling for the
+beautiful.
+
+    Both touch us pleasantly, but in different ways. The sight of a
+    mountain with a snowy peak reaching above the clouds, the account
+    of a storm ... these excite pleasure, but mixed with awe; while
+    flowery meadows, valleys with winding streams and covered by
+    browsing herds, a description of Elysium ... also cause pleasant
+    feelings, but of a gay and radiant kind. To appreciate the first
+    sensations adequately, we must have a feeling for the sublime; to
+    appreciate the second, a feeling for the beautiful.
+
+He mentioned tall oaks, lonely shades in consecrated groves, and
+night-time, as sublime; day, beds of flowers, low hedges, and trees
+cut into shapes, as beautiful.
+
+    Minds which possess the feeling for the sublime are inclined to
+    lofty thoughts of friendship, scorn of the world, eternity, by
+    the quiet stillness of a summer evening, when the twinkling
+    starlight breaks the darkness. The light of day impels to
+    activity and cheerfulness. The sublime soothes, the beautiful
+    stimulates.
+
+He goes on to subdivide the sublime:
+
+    This feeling is sometimes accompanied by horror or by dejection,
+    sometimes merely by quiet admiration, at other times by a sense
+    of wide-spread beauty. I will call the first the terrible, the
+    second the noble, the third the splendid sublime.
+
+    Profound solitude is sublime, but in a terrible way. This is why
+    great deserts, like the Desert of Gamo in Tartary, have always
+    been the supposed abode of fearful shades, hobgoblins, and
+    ghostly spectres. The sublime is always great and simple; the
+    beautiful may be small, elaborate, and ornamental.
+
+He tried, too, to define the romantic in Nature, though very vaguely:
+
+    The dreadful variety of the sublime, when quite unnatural, is
+    adventurous. When sublimity or beauty is excessive, it is called
+    romantic.
+
+In his _Kalligone_, which appeared in 1800, Herder quoted Kant in
+making one of the characters say, 'One calls day beautiful, night
+sublime,' and tried to carry the idea a step further; 'The sublime
+and beautiful are not opposed to each other, but stem and boughs of a
+tree whose top is the most sublimely beautiful of all,' that is the
+romantic. In the same book he attempted to analyze his impressions of
+Nature, calling a rugged place odious, an insignificant one without
+character tedious. 'In the presence of great mountains,' he says,
+'the spirit is filled with bold aspirations, whereas in gentle
+valleys it lies quiet.' Harmony in variety was his ideal, like the
+sea in storm and calm. 'An ocean of beautiful forms in rest and
+movement.'
+
+And in reference to the contrast between a place made 'dreadful and
+horrible' by a torrent dashing over rocks and a quiet and charming
+valley, he said: 'These changes follow unalterable laws, which are
+recognized by our minds, and in harmony with our feelings.' He saw
+the same order in variety among plants, from the highest to the
+lowest, from palm tree to moss. In the second part of the book he
+gave an enthusiastic description of the sublime in sky and sea.
+
+His beautiful words on the inspiration of Nature shew his insight
+into her relation to the poet soul of the people:
+
+    Everything in Nature must be inspired by life, or it does not
+    move me, I do not feel it. The cooling zephyr and the morning
+    sunbeam, the wind blowing through the trees, and the fragrant
+    carpet of flowers, must cool, warm, pervade us--then we feel
+    Nature. The poet does not say he feels her, unless he feels her
+    intensely, living, palpitating and pervading him, like the wild
+    Nature of Ossian, or the soft luxuriant Nature of Theocritus and
+    the Orientals. In Nature, the more varieties the better; for
+    instance, in a beautiful country I rustle with the wind and
+    become alive (and give life--inspire), I inhale fragrance and
+    exhale it with the flowers; I dissolve in water; I float in the
+    blue sky; I feel all these feelings.
+
+Herder touched the lyre himself with a skilful hand. Thought
+predominated with him, but he could make Nature live in his song.[7]
+'I greet thee, thou wing of heaven,' he sang to the lark; and to the
+rainbow, 'Beautiful child of the sun, picture and hope over dark
+clouds ... hopes are colours, are broken sun-rays and the children of
+tears, truth is the sun.'
+
+In _By the Sea at Naples_ he wrote:
+
+  A-weary of the summer's fiery brand,
+  I sat me down beside the cooling sea,
+  Where the waves heaving, rolled and kissed the strand
+  Of the grey shore, ...
+  And over me, high over in the air,
+  Of the blue skyey vault, rustled the tree ...
+  Queen of all trees, slender and beautiful,
+  The pine tree, lifting me to golden dreams.
+
+In _Recollections of Naples_:
+
+  Yes! they are gone, those happy, happy hours
+  Joyous but short, by Posilippo's bay!
+  Sweet dream of sea and lake, of rock and hill,
+  Grotto and island, and the mirrored sun
+  In the blue water--thou hast passed away!
+
+and
+
+  When the glow of evening softly fades
+  From the still sea, and with her gleaming host
+  The moon ascends the sky.
+
+_Night_ is very poetic:
+
+             And comest thou again,
+  Thou Mother of the stars and heavenly thoughts?
+  Divine and quiet Mother, comest thou?
+  The earth awaits thee, from thy chalice cup
+  But one drop of thy heavenly dew to quaff,
+  Her flowers bend low their heads;
+  And with them, satiate with vision, droops
+  My overcharged soul....
+  O starry goddess with the crown of gold,
+  Upon whose wide-spread sable mantle gleam
+  A thousand worlds ...
+  Silence divine, that filleth all the world,
+  Flowing so softly to the eternal shores
+  Of an eternal universe....
+
+And in _St John's Night_, he exclaims:
+
+  Infinite, ah! inexhaustible art thou, Mother Nature!
+
+Like the rest, Herder suffered from the over-sensitiveness of his
+day. His correspondence with his _fiancee_ shews this[8]; one sees
+Rousseau's influence:
+
+    My pleasantest hours are when, quite alone, I walk in a charming
+    wood close to Bueckeburg, or lie upon a wall in the shade of my
+    garden, or lastly, for we have had capital moonlight for three
+    nights, and the last was the best of all, when I enjoy these
+    hours of sweetly sleeping night with all the songs of the
+    nightingale.
+
+    I reckon no hours more delightful than those of green solitude. I
+    live so romantically alone, and among woods and churches, as only
+    poets, lovers, and philosophers can live.
+
+And his _fiancee_ wrote:
+
+    'Tis all joy within and around me since I have known thee, my
+    best beloved: every plant and flower, everything in Nature, seems
+    beautiful to me.
+
+and
+
+    I went early to my little room; the moon was quite covered by
+    clouds, and the night so melancholy from the croaking of the
+    frogs, that I could not leave the window for a long time: my
+    whole soul was dark and cloudy; I thought of thee, my dear one,
+    and that thought, that sigh, reduced me to tears.
+
+and
+
+    Do you like the ears of wheat so much? I never pass a cornfield
+    without stroking them.
+
+Goethe focussed all the rays of feeling for Nature which had found
+lyrical expression before him, and purged taste, beginning with his
+own, of its unnatural and sickly elements. So he became the
+liberating genius of modern culture. Not only did German lyric poetry
+reach its climax in him; but he was the most accurate, individual,
+and universal interpreter of German feeling for Nature.
+
+His wide original mind kept open house for the most diverse elements
+of feeling, and exercised an ennobling control upon each and all at
+will; Homer's naivete, Shakespeare's sympathy, Rousseau's enthusiasm,
+even Ossian's melancholy, found room there.
+
+While most love lyrics of his day were false in feeling, mere raving
+extravagances, and therefore poor in those metaphors and comparisons
+which prove sympathy between Nature and the inner life, it could be
+said of him that 'Nature wished to know what she looked like, and so
+she created Goethe.' He was the microcosm in which the macrocosm of
+modern times was reflected.
+
+He was more modern and universal than any of his predecessors, and
+his insight into Nature and love for her have been rarely equalled in
+later days. He did not live, like so many of the elegiac and idyllic
+poets of the eighteenth century, a mere dream-life of the
+imagination: Goethe stood firmly rooted among the actualities; from
+boyhood up, as he said in _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, he had 'a warm
+feeling for all objective things.'
+
+No poet, Klopstock not excepted, was richer in verbal invention, and
+many of the phrases and epithets which he coined form in themselves
+very striking evidence (which is lost in translation) of his close
+and original observation of Nature.
+
+He has many beautiful comparisons to Nature:
+
+His lady-love is 'brightly beautiful as morning clouds on yonder
+height.'
+
+'I was wont to look at thee as one looks at the stars and moon,
+delighting in thee without the most distant wish in my quiet breast
+to possess thee.'
+
+'I give kisses as the spring gives flowers.'
+
+'My feeling for thee was like seed, which germinates slowly in
+winter, but ripens quickly in summer.'
+
+The stars move 'with flower feet.'
+
+The graces are 'pure as the heart of the waters, as the marrow of
+earth.'
+
+A delicate poem is a rainbow only existing against a dark ground.
+
+In _Stella_:
+
+    Thou dost not feel what heavenly dew to the thirsty it is, to
+    return to thy breast from the sandy desert world.
+
+    I felt free in soul, free as a spring morning.
+
+In _Faust_:
+
+    The cataract bursting through the rocks is the image of human
+    effort; its coloured reflection the image of life.
+
+When Werther feels himself trembling between existence and
+non-existence, everything around him sinking away, and the world
+perishing with him:
+
+    The past flashes like lightning over the dark abyss of the
+    future.
+
+These are among his still more numerous metaphors:
+
+A sea of folly, an ocean of fragrance, the waves of battle, the
+stream of genius, the tiger claw of despair, the sun-ray of the past.
+Iphigenia says to Orestes:
+
+    O let the pure breath of love blow lightly on thy heart's flame
+    and cool it.
+
+and Eleonora complains about Tasso:
+
+    Let him go! But what twilight falls round me now! Formerly the
+    stream carried us along upon the light waves without a rudder.
+
+In Goethe we see very clearly how the inner life, under the pressure
+of its own intensity, will, so to speak, overflow into the outer
+world, making that live in its turn; and how this is especially the
+case when the amorous passion is present to add its impetus to
+feeling, and attribute its own fervour to all around.
+
+_May Song_, _On the Lake_, _Ganymede_, are instances of this.
+
+_Ganymede_:
+
+      Oh, what a glow
+      Around me in morning's
+      Blaze thou diffusest,
+      Beautiful spring!
+  With the rapture of love but intenser,
+  Intenser and deeper and sweeter,
+  Nestles and creeps to my heart
+      The sensation divine
+      Of thy fervour eternal,
+      Oh, thou unspeakably fair!
+
+Beautiful personifications abound:
+
+The sun is proudly throned in heaven.
+
+The glowing sun gazes at the rugged peak or charms it with fiery
+love,
+
+Or bathes like the moon in the ocean.
+
+The parting glance of Mother Sun broods on the grapes.
+
+'Morning came frightening away light sleep with its footsteps.'
+
+'The young day arose with delight.'
+
+The moon: 'Thou spreadest thy glance soothingly over my abode.'
+
+On a cloudy night: 'Evening already rocked earth, and night hung on
+the mountains; from a hill of clouds the moon looked mournfully out
+of the mist.'
+
+'The lofty stars turn their clear eyes down to me.'
+
+Even the rock lives: 'The hard rock opens its bosom, not envying
+earth its deep springs.'
+
+The stream: 'Thou hurriest on with joyful light mood; see the rock
+spring bright with the glance of the stars, yet no shady valley, no
+flowers make him tarry ... his course winds downwards to the plain,
+then he scatters in delightful spray, in cloud waves ... foams
+gloomily to the abyss.'
+
+  With gradual step from out the far-off grey,
+  Self-heralded draws on the storm.
+  Birds on the wing fly low across the water, weighted down,
+  And seamen hasten to reef in the sail
+  Before its stubborn wrath.
+
+His flowers are alive:
+
+  The beauteous snowdrops
+  Droop o'er the plain,
+  The crocus opens
+  Its glowing bud ...
+  With saucy gesture
+  Primroses flare,
+  And roguish violets
+  Hidden with care.
+
+But these are only examples. To obtain a clear idea of Goethe's
+attitude, we must take a more general survey of his work, for his
+poetic relationship to Nature, like his mental development in
+general, passed through various stages of growth. That it was a warm
+one even in youth is shewn by the letter in 1766 from Leipzig[9]:
+
+    You live contented in M. I even so here. Lonely, lonely,
+    altogether lonely. Dearest Riese, this loneliness has impressed
+    my soul with a certain sadness.
+
+  This solitary joy is mine,
+  When far apart from all mankind,
+  By shady brook-side to recline.
+  And keep my loved ones in my mind....
+
+He goes on with these lines:
+
+  Then is my heart with sorrow filled,
+  Sad is mine eye.
+  The flooded brook now rages by,
+  That heretofore so gently rilled.
+  No bird sings in the bushes now,
+  The tree so green is dry,
+  The zephyr which on me did blow
+  So cheering, now storms northerly,
+  And scattered blossoms bears on high.
+
+He was already in full sympathy with Nature. A few of his earlier
+poems[10] shew prevalent taste, the allusions to Zephyr and Lima, for
+instance, in _Night_; but they are followed by lines which are all
+his own.
+
+He had an incomparable way of striking the chords of love and Nature
+together.
+
+Where his lady-love dwells, 'there is love, and goodness is Nature.'
+He thinks of her
+
+  When the bright sunlight shimmers
+       Across the sea,
+  When the clear fountain in the moonbeam glimmers.
+
+  Thou art seductive and charming; flowers,
+  Sun, moon, and stars only worship thee.
+
+There is passionate feeling for Nature in the _May Song_ of his
+Sesenheimer period:
+
+  How gloriously gleameth
+  All Nature to me!
+  How bright the sun beameth,
+  How fresh is the lea!
+  White blossoms are bursting
+  The thickets among,
+  And all the gay greenwood
+  Is ringing with song!
+  There's radiance and rapture
+  That nought can destroy,
+  Oh earth, in thy sunshine,
+  Oh heart, in thy joy.
+  Oh love! thou enchanter
+  So golden and bright,
+  Like the red clouds of morning
+  That rest on yon height,
+  It is them that art clothing
+  The fields and the bowers,
+  And everywhere breathing
+  The incense of flowers.
+
+Looking back in old age to those happy days of youth, he saw in
+memory not only Frederica but the scenery around her. He said
+(_Wahrheit und Dichtung_): 'Her figure never looked more charming
+than when she was moving along a raised footpath; the charm of her
+bearing seemed to vie with the flowering ground, and the
+indestructible cheerfulness of her face with the blue sky.' In Alsace
+he wrote:
+
+    One has only to abandon oneself to the present in order to enjoy
+    the charms of the sky, the glow of the rich earth, the mild
+    evenings, the warm nights, at the side of one's love, or near
+    her.
+
+and one of the poems to Frederica says:
+
+  The world lies round me buried deep in mist, but
+  In one glance of thine lies sunshine and happiness.
+
+There is a strong pulse of life--life that overflows into Nature--in
+_The Departure_:
+
+  To horse! Away, o'er hill and steep,
+  Into the saddle blithe I spring;
+  The eve was cradling earth to sleep,
+  And night upon the mountains hung.
+  With robes of mist around him set,
+  The oak like some huge giant stood,
+  While, with its hundred eyes of jet,
+  Peer'd darkness from the tangled wood.
+  Amid a bank of clouds the moon
+  A sad and troubled glimmer shed;
+  The wind its chilly wings unclosed,
+  And whistled wildly round my head.
+  Night framed a thousand phantoms dire,
+  Yet did I never droop nor start;
+  Within my veins what living fire!
+  What quenchless glow within my heart!
+
+And very like it, though in a minor key, is the Elegy which begins,
+'A tender, youthful trouble.'
+
+He tells in _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ how he found comfort for his love
+troubles in Frankfort:
+
+    They were accustomed to call me, on account of wandering about
+    the district, the 'wanderer.' In producing that calm for the
+    mind, which I felt under the open sky, in the valleys, on the
+    heights, in the fields, and in the woods, the situation of
+    Frankfort was serviceable.... On the setting in of winter a new
+    world was revealed to us, since I at once determined to skate....
+    For this new joyous activity we were also indebted to Klopstock,
+    to his enthusiasm for this happy species of motion.... To pass a
+    splendid Sunday thus on the ice did not satisfy us, we continued
+    in movement late into the night.... The full moon rising from the
+    clouds, over the wide nocturnal meadows which were frozen into
+    fields of ice, the night breeze which rustled towards us on our
+    course, the solemn thunder of the ice which sunk as the water
+    decreased, the strange echo of our own movements, rendered the
+    scenes of Ossian just present to our minds.
+
+His attachment, to Lotte, stirred far deeper feelings than the
+earlier ones to Frederica and Lilli:
+
+    (If I, my own dear Lilli, loved thee not, How should I joy to
+    view this scene so fair! And yet if I, sweet Lilli, loved thee
+    not, Should I be happy here or anywhere?)
+
+and drew him correspondingly nearer to Nature.
+
+There is no book in any language which so lives and moves and has its
+being in Nature as _Werther_.[11] In _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ Goethe
+said of the 'strange element' in which _Werther_ was designed and
+written:
+
+    I sought to free myself internally from all that was foreign to
+    me, to regard the external with love, and to allow all beings,
+    from man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to act
+    upon me, each after its own kind. Thus arose a wonderful affinity
+    with the single objects of Nature, and a hearty concord, a
+    harmony with the whole, so that every change, whether of place or
+    region, or of the times of the day and year, or whatever else
+    could happen, affected me in the deepest manner. The glance of
+    the painter associated itself with that of the poet; the
+    beautiful rural landscape, animated by the pleasant river,
+    increased my love of solitude and favoured my silent observations
+    as they extended on all sides.
+
+The strong influence of _La Nouvelle Heloise_ upon _Werther_ was very
+evident, but there was a marked difference between Goethe's feeling
+for Nature and Rousseau's. Rousseau had the painter's eye, but not
+the keen poetic vision.
+
+Goethe's romances are pervaded by the penetrating quality peculiar to
+his nation, and by virtue of which in _Werther_, the outer world, the
+scenery, was not used as framework, but was always interwoven with
+the hero's mood. The contrast between culture and Nature is always
+marked in Rousseau, and his religion was deism; Goethe resolves
+Nature into feeling, and his religion was a growing pantheism. As a
+work of art, _Werther_ is excellent, _La Nouvelle Heloise_ is not.
+Goethe used his hero's bearing towards Nature with marvellous effect
+to indicate the turns and changes of his moods, just as he indicated
+the threatening calamity and the growing apprehension of it by
+skilful stress laid upon some of her little traits--a faculty which
+only Theodore Storm among later poets has caught from him.
+
+The growth of amorous passion is portrayed as an elementary force,
+and the revolutionary element in the book really consists in the
+strength of this passion and the assertion of its natural rights.
+Everything artificial, forced, conventional, in thought, act, and
+feeling--and what at that time was not?--was repugnant to Werther;
+what he liked most of all was the simplicity of children and
+uneducated people.
+
+    Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other;
+    particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season
+    of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in
+    quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is
+    too late to repair it.
+
+To such intense sympathy as this, all that had been sung ere now by
+German poets had to give place. Nature, which hitherto had played no
+_role_ at all in fiction, not even among the English, was Werther's
+truest and most intimate friend.
+
+Werther is sensitive and sentimental, though in a single-hearted way,
+with a sentimentality that reminds us more and more, as the story
+proceeds, of the gloomy tone of Ossian and Young. He is a thoroughly
+original character, who feels that he is right so to be; and although
+he falls a prey to his melancholy, yet there is much more force and
+thought in his outpourings than in all the moonshine tirades that
+preceded him. It is the work of a true poet, in the best days of a
+brilliant youth.
+
+Werther, like Rousseau, was happiest in solitude. Solitude, in the
+'place like paradise,' was precious balm to his feeling heart, which
+he considers 'like a sick child'; and the 'warm heavenly imagination
+of the heart' illuminates Nature round him--his 'favourite valley,'
+the 'sweet spring morning,' Nature's 'unspeakable beauty.' He was
+absorbed in artistic feeling, though he could not draw; 'I could not
+draw them, not a stroke, and have never been a greater artist than at
+that moment.' His power lay in imbuing his whole subject with
+feeling; he felt the heart of Nature beating, and its echo in his own
+breast.
+
+    When the lovely valley teems with vapour around me, and the
+    meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable
+    foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the
+    inner sanctuary, then I throw myself down in the tall grass by
+    the trickling stream; and as I lie close to the earth, a thousand
+    unknown plants discover themselves to me. When I hear the buzz of
+    the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the
+    countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I
+    feel the presence of the Almighty who formed us in His own image,
+    and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains
+    us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my
+    friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth
+    seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the idea of a
+    beloved mistress, then I often long and think: O that you could
+    describe these conceptions, that you could impress upon paper all
+    that lives so full and warm within you, that it might be the
+    mirror of your soul, as your soul is the mirror of the infinite
+    God!
+
+    O! my friend! but it is too much for my strength. I sink under
+    the weight of the grandeur of these visions.
+
+Werther could not express all his love for Nature, but the secret of
+it lay in the power to bring his own world of thought and feeling
+into communion with her, and so give her speech. He divined something
+immortal in her akin to himself. 'The true feeling of Nature,' he
+said, 'is love.' He poured 'the stream of his genius' over her, and
+she became 'dear and familiar' to him.... The simple homely scenery
+delighted him--the valley, the brook, the fine walnut trees.
+
+    When I go out at sunrise in the morning to Walheim, and with my
+    own hands gather the peas in the garden, which are to serve for
+    my dinner; when I sit down to shell them and read my Homer during
+    the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen,
+    fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up....
+    Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness
+    than those traits of patriarchal life, which, thank heaven, I can
+    imitate without affectation.
+
+With the growth of his love-passion his feeling for Nature increased;
+on July 24th he wrote:
+
+    I never felt happier, I never understood Nature better, even down
+    to the veriest stem or smallest blade of grass.
+
+Then Albert came on the scene, and love became a torment, and Nature
+a tormentor:
+
+    _August_ 18.--Must it ever be thus, that the source of our
+    happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and
+    ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of Nature,
+    overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all
+    paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a
+    demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. When in bye-gone
+    days I gazed from these rocks upon yonder mountains across the
+    river and upon the green flowery valley before me, and saw all
+    nature budding and bursting around--the hills clothed from foot
+    to peak with tall thick forest trees, the valleys in all their
+    varied windings shaded with the loveliest woods, and the soft
+    river gliding along amongst the lisping reeds, mirroring the
+    beautiful clouds which the soft evening breeze wafted across the
+    sky--when I heard the groves about me melodious with the music of
+    birds, and saw the million swarms of insects dancing in the last
+    golden beams of the sun, whose setting rays awoke the humming
+    beetles from their grassy beds, whilst the subdued tumult around
+    directed my attention to the ground, and I there observed the
+    arid rock compelled to yield nutriment to the dry moss, whilst
+    the heath flourished upon the barren sands below me--all this
+    displayed to me the inner warmth which animates all Nature, and
+    filled and glowed within my heart. I felt myself exalted by this
+    overflowing fulness to the perception of the Godhead, and the
+    glorious forms of an infinite universe became visible to my
+    soul.... From the inaccessible mountains across the desert, which
+    no mortal foot has trod, far as the confines of the unknown
+    ocean, breathes the spirit of the eternal Creator, and every atom
+    to which He has given existence finds favour in His sight. Ah!
+    how often at that time has the flight of a bird soaring above my
+    head inspired me with the desire of being transported to the
+    shores of the immeasurable waters, there to quaff the pleasure of
+    life from the foaming goblet of the infinite, and to partake, if
+    but for a moment, even with the confined powers of my soul, the
+    beatitude of the Creator, who accomplishes all things in himself
+    and through himself.... It is as if a curtain had been drawn from
+    before my eyes.... My heart is wasted by the thought of that
+    destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal
+    nature--Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself
+    and every object near it; so that, surrounded by earth, and air,
+    and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart,
+    and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring
+    its own offspring.... If in such moments I find no sympathy ... I
+    either wander through the country, climb some precipitous cliff,
+    or force a path through the trackless thicket, where I am
+    lacerated and torn by thorns and briars, and thence I find
+    relief.
+
+Then, as he was going away, he felt how sympathetic the place had
+been to him:
+
+    I was walking up and down the very avenue which was so dear to
+    me--a secret sympathy had frequently drawn me thither....
+
+the moon rose from behind a hill, increasing his melancholy, and
+Charlotte put his feeling into words, saying (like Klopstock):
+
+    _September_ 10.--Whenever I walk by moonlight, it brings to my
+    remembrance all my beloved and departed friends, and I am filled
+    with thoughts of death and futurity.
+
+Even in his misery he realises the [Greek: charisgoon] of Euripides,
+Petrarch's _dolendi voluptas_--the _Wonne der Wehmuth_.
+
+On September 4th he wrote:
+
+    It is even so! As Nature puts on her autumn tints, it becomes
+    autumn with me and around me. My leaves are sere and yellow, and
+    the neighbouring trees are divested of their foliage.
+
+It was due to this autumn feeling that he could say:
+
+    Ossian has superseded Homer in my heart. To what a world does the
+    illustrious bard carry me! To wander over pathless wilds,
+    surrounded by impetuous whirlwinds, where, by the feeble light of
+    the moon, we see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the
+    mountain tops, 'mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds
+    issuing from deep caverns.... And this heart is now dead; no
+    sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry, and my senses, no more
+    refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my
+    brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life,
+    that active sacred power which created worlds around me, and it
+    is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills and
+    behold the morning sun breaking through the mists and
+    illuminating the country round it which is still wrapt in
+    silence, whilst the soft stream winds gently through the willows
+    which have shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all
+    her beauties before me, and her wondrous prospects are
+    ineffectual to attract one tear of joy from my withered heart....
+
+On November 30th he wrote: 'About dinner-time I went to walk by the
+river side, for I had no appetite,' and goes on in the tone of
+Ossian:
+
+    Everything around me seemed gloomy: a cold and damp easterly wind
+    blew from the mountains, and black heavy clouds spread over the
+    plain.
+
+and in the dreadful night of the flood:
+
+    Upon the stroke of twelve I hastened forth. I beheld a fearful
+    sight. The foaming torrents rolled from the mountains in the
+    moonlight; fields and meadows, trees and hedges, were confounded
+    together, and the entire valley was converted into a deep lake
+    which was agitated by the roaring wind. And when the moon shone
+    forth and tinged the black clouds with silver, and the impetuous
+    torrent at my feet foamed and resounded with awful and grand
+    impetuosity, I was overcome by a mingled sensation of awe and
+    delight. With extended arms I looked down into the yawning abyss,
+    and cried 'Plunge!' For a moment my senses forsook me, in the
+    intense delight of ending my sorrows and my sufferings by a
+    plunge into that gulf.
+
+To his farewell letter he adds:
+
+    Yes, Nature! put on mourning. Your child, your friend, your
+    lover, draws near his end.
+
+The genuine poetic pantheism, which, for all his melancholy and
+sentimentality, was the spring of Werther's feeling, is seen in
+loftier and more comprehensive form in the first part of _Faust_,
+when Faust opens the book and sees the sign of macrocosmos:
+
+  How all things live and work, and ever blending,
+  Weave one vast whole from Being's ample range!
+  How powers celestial, rising and descending,
+  Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange.
+  Their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging,
+  From heaven to earth their genial influence bringing,
+  Through the wide whole their chimes melodious ringing.
+
+And the Earth spirit says:
+
+  In the currents of life, in action's storm,
+  I float and I wave
+  With billowy motion,--
+  Birth and the grave
+  A limitless ocean.
+
+Not only of knowledge of, but of feeling for, Nature, it is said:
+
+  Inscrutable in broadest light,
+  To be unveiled by force she doth refuse.
+
+But Faust is in deep sympathy with her; witness:
+
+  Thou full-orbed moon! Would thou wert gazing now
+  For the last time upon my troubled brow!
+
+and
+
+  Loos'd from their icy fetters, streams and rills
+  In spring's effusive, quick'ning mildness flow,
+  Hope's budding promise every valley fills.
+  And winter, spent with age, and powerless now,
+  Draws off his forces to the savage hills.
+
+and the idyllic evening mood, which gives way to a burst of longing:
+
+  In the rich sunset see how brightly glow
+  Yon cottage homes girt round with verdant green.
+  Slow sinks the orb, the day is now no more;
+  Yonder he hastens to diffuse new light.
+  Oh! for a pinion from the earth to soar,
+  And after, ever after him to strive!
+  Then should I see the world outspread below,
+  Illumined by the deathless evening beams,
+  The vales reposing, every height aglow,
+  The silver brooklets meeting golden streams....
+  Alas! that when on Spirit wing we rise,
+  No wing material lifts our mortal clay.
+  But 'tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong,
+  To rush aloft, to struggle still towards heaven,
+  When far above us pours its thrilling song
+  The skylark lost amid the purple even,
+  When on extended pinion sweeps amain
+  The lordly eagle o'er the pine-crowned height.
+  And when, still striving towards its home, the crane
+  O'er moor and ocean wings its onward flight.
+
+But the most complete expression of Goethe's attitude, not only in
+the period of _Werther_ and the first part of _Faust_, but generally,
+is contained in the _Monologue_, which was probably written not
+earlier than the spring of 1788:
+
+  Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all
+  For which I prayed. Not vainly hast thou turn'd
+  To me thy countenance in flaming fire;
+  Thou gav'st me glorious Nature for my realm,
+  And also power to feel her and enjoy;
+  Not merely with a cold and wond'ring glance,
+  Thou didst permit me in her depths profound,
+  As in the bosom of a friend, to gaze;
+  Before me thou dost lead her living tribes,
+  And dost in silent grove, in air and stream,
+  Teach me to know my kindred....
+
+His feeling was not admiration alone, nor reverence alone, but the
+sympathy of _Childe Harold_:
+
+  Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
+  Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
+  Is not the love of these deep in my heart
+  With a pure passion? Should I not contemn
+  All objects, if compared with these?
+
+and the very confession of faith of such poetic pantheism is in
+Faust's words:
+
+  Him who dare name,
+  And yet proclaim,
+  Yes, I believe?...
+  The All-embracer,
+  All-sustainer,
+  Doth he not embrace, sustain
+  Thee, me, himself?
+  Lifts not the heaven its dome above?
+  Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us rise?
+  And beaming tenderly with looks of love,
+  Climb not the everlasting stars on high?
+
+The poems which date directly after the Wetzlar period are full of
+this sympathetic pantheistic love for Nature--_Mahomet's Song_, for
+example, with its splendid comparison of pioneering genius to a
+mountain torrent:
+
+  Ho! the spring that bursts
+  From the mountain height
+  Joyous and bright,
+  As the gleam of a star....
+  Down in the vale below
+  Flowers bud beneath his tread ...
+  And woo him with fond eyes.
+  And the streamlets of the mountains
+  Shout to him, and cry out 'Brother'!
+  Brother! take thy brothers with thee,
+  With thee to thine ancient father,
+  To the eternal Ocean,
+  Who with outstretch'd arms awaits us....
+  And so beareth he his brothers
+  To their primal sire expectant,
+  All his bosom throbbing, heaving,
+  With a wild, tumultuous joy.
+
+We see the same pathos--the pathos of Pindar and the Psalms--in the
+comparison:
+
+  Like water is the soul of man,
+  From heaven it comes, to heaven it goes,
+  And back again to earth in ceaseless change.
+
+in the incomparable _Wanderer_, in _Wanderer's Storm Song,_ and,
+above all, in _Ganymede_, already given, of which Loeper remarks:
+
+    The poem is, as it were, a rendering of that letter (Werther's of
+    May 10th) in rhythm. The underlying pantheism had already shewn
+    itself in the _Wanderer's Storm Song_. It was not the delight in
+    God of a Brockes, not the adoration of a Klopstock, not sesthetic
+    enjoyment of Nature, not, as in later years, scientific interest;
+    it was rather a being absorbed in, identified with, Nature, a
+    sympathy carried so far that the very ego was surrendered to the
+    elements.
+
+On the Lake of Zurich he wrote, June 15th, 1775:
+
+  And here I drink new blood, fresh food,
+  From world so free, so blest;
+  How sweet is Nature and how good,
+  Who holds me to her breast.
+
+and Elmire sings in _Ermin and Elmire_:
+
+  From thee, O Nature, with deep breath
+  I drink in painful pleasure.
+
+One of the gems among his Nature poems is _Autumn Feelings_ (it was
+the autumn of his love for Lilli):
+
+  Flourish greener as ye clamber,
+  O ye leaves, to seek my chamber;
+  Up the trellised vine on high
+  May ye swell, twin-berries tender,
+  Juicier far, and with more splendour
+  Ripen, and more speedily.
+  O'er ye broods the sun at even,
+  As he sinks to rest, and heaven
+  Softly breathes into your ear
+  All its fertilizing fulness,
+  While the moon's refreshing coolness,
+  Magic-laden, hovers near.
+  And alas! ye're watered ever
+  By a stream of tears that rill
+  From mine eyes--tears ceasing never,
+  Tears of love that nought can still.
+
+The lyrical effect here depends upon the blending of a single
+impression of Nature with the passing mood--an occasional poem rare
+even for Goethe.
+
+In a letter to Frau von Stein he admitted that he was greatly
+influenced by Nature:
+
+    I have slept well and am quite awake, only a quiet sadness lies
+    upon my soul.... The weather agrees exactly with my state of
+    mind, and I begin to believe that it is the weather around me
+    which has the most immediate effect upon me, and the great world
+    thrills my little one with her own mood.
+
+Again, _To the Moon_, in the spring 1778, expresses perfect communion
+between Nature and feeling:
+
+  Flooded are the brakes and dells
+  With thy phantom light,
+  And my soul receives the spell
+  Of thy mystic night.
+  To the meadow dost thou send
+  Something of thy grace,
+  Like the kind eye of a friend
+  Beaming on my face.
+  Echoes of departed times
+  Vibrate in mine ear,
+  Joyous, sad, like spirit chimes,
+  As I wander here.
+  Flow, flow on, thou little brook,
+  Ever onward go!
+  Trusted heart and tender look
+  Left me even so!
+  Richer treasure earth has none
+  Than I once possessed--
+  Ah! so rich, that when 'twas gone
+  Worthless was the rest.
+  Little brook! adown the vale
+  Rush and take my song:
+  Give it passion, give it wail,
+  As thou leap'st along!
+  Sound it in the winter night
+  When thy streams are full,
+  Murmur it when skies are bright
+  Mirror'd in the pool.
+  Happiest he of all created
+  Who the world can shun,
+  Not in hate, and yet unhated,
+  Sharing thought with none,
+  Save one faithful friend, revealing
+  To his kindly ear
+  Thoughts like these, which o'er me stealing,
+  Make the night so drear.
+
+In January 1778, he wrote to Frau von Stein about the fate of the
+unhappy Chr. von Lassberg, who had drowned himself in the Ilm:
+
+    This inviting grief has something dangerously attractive about
+    it, like the water itself; and the reflections of the stars,
+    which gleam from above and below at once, are alluring.
+
+To the same year belongs _The Fisher_, which gave such melodious
+voice to the magic effect of a shimmering expanse of water, 'the
+moist yet radiant blue,' upon the mood; just as, later on, _The
+Erlking_, with the grey of an autumn evening woven ghostlike round
+tree and shrub, made the mind thrill with foreboding.
+
+Goethe was always an industrious traveller. In his seventieth year he
+went to Frankfort, Strassburg, the Rhine, Thuringia, and the Harz
+Mountains (Harzreise, 1777): 'We went up to the peaks, and down to
+the depths of the earth, and hammered at all the rocks.' His love for
+Nature increased with his science; but, at the same time, poetic
+expression of it took a more objective form; the passionate
+vehemence, the really revolutionary attitude of the _Werther_ period,
+gave way to one equally spiritual and intellectual, but more
+temperate.
+
+This transition is clearly seen in the Swiss letters. In his first
+Swiss travels, 1775, he was only just free from _Werther_, and his
+mind was too agitated for quiet observation:
+
+  Hasten thee, Kronos!...
+  Over stock and stone let thy trot
+  Into life straightway lead....
+  Wide, high, glorious the view
+  Gazing round upon life,
+  While from mount unto mount
+  Hovers the spirit eterne,
+  Life eternal foreboding....
+
+Far more significant and ripe--in fact, mature--are the letters in
+1779, shewing, as they do, the attitude of a man of profound mind, in
+the prime of his life and time. He was the first German poet to fall
+under the spell of the mountains--the strongest spell, as he held,
+which Nature wields in our latitudes. 'These sublime, incomparable
+scenes will remain for ever in my mind'; and of one view in
+particular, over the mountains of Savoy and Valais, the Lake of
+Geneva, and Mont Blanc, he said: 'The view was so great, man's eye
+could not grasp it.'
+
+He wrote of his feelings with perfect openness to Frau von Stein, and
+these letters extended farther back than those from Switzerland, and
+were partly mixed with them.
+
+From Selz:
+
+    An uncommonly fine day, a happy country--still all green, only
+    here and there a yellow beech or oak leaf. Meadows still in their
+    silver beauty--a soft welcome breeze everywhere. Grapes improving
+    with every step and every day. Every peasant's house has a vine
+    up to the roof, and every courtyard a great overhanging arbour.
+    The air of heaven soft, warm, and moist. The Rhine and the clear
+    mountains near at hand, the changing woods, meadows, fields like
+    gardens, do men good, and give me a kind of comfort which I have
+    long lacked.
+
+The pen remains as ever the pen of a poet, but he looks at
+Switzerland now with a mature, settled taste, analyzing his
+impressions, and studying mountains, glaciers, boulders,
+scientifically.
+
+Of the Staubbach Fall, near Lauterbrunnen (Oct. 9th, 1779):
+
+    The clouds broke in the upper air, and the blue sky came through.
+    Clouds clung to the steep sides of the rocks; even the top where
+    the Staubbach falls over, was lightly covered. It was a very
+    noble sight ... then the clouds came down into the valley and
+    covered all the foreground. The great wall over which the water
+    falls, still stood out on the right. Night came on.... In the
+    Munsterthal, through which we came, everything was lofty, but
+    more within the mind's power of comprehension than these. In
+    comparison with the immensities, one is, and must remain, too
+    small.
+
+And after visiting the Berne glacier from Thun (Oct. 14):
+
+    It is difficult to write after all this ... the first glance from
+    the mountain is striking, the district is surprisingly extensive
+    and pleasant ... the road indescribably beautiful ... the view
+    from the Lake of Brienz towards the snow mountains at sunset is
+    great.
+
+More eloquent is the letter of October 3rd, from the Munsterthal:
+
+    The passage through this defile roused in me a grand but calm
+    emotion. The sublime produces a beautiful calmness in the soul,
+    which, entirely possessed by it, feels as great as it ever can
+    feel. How glorious is such a pure feeling, when it rises to the
+    very highest without overflowing. My eye and my soul were both
+    able to take in the objects before me, and as I was preoccupied
+    by nothing, and had no false tastes to counteract their
+    impression, they had on me their full and natural effect. When we
+    compare such a feeling with that we are sensible of, when we
+    laboriously harass ourselves with some trifle, and strain every
+    nerve to gain as much as possible for it, and, as it were, to
+    patch it out, striving to furnish joy and aliment to the mind
+    from its own creation; we then feel sensibly what a poor
+    expedient, after all, the latter is....
+
+    When we see such objects as these for the first time, the
+    unaccustomed soul has to expand itself, and this gives rise to a
+    sort of painful joy, an overflowing of emotion which agitates the
+    mind and draws from us the most delicious tears.... If only
+    destiny had bidden me to dwell in the midst of some grand
+    scenery, then would I every morning have imbibed greatness from
+    its grandeur, as from a lonely valley I would extract patience
+    and repose.
+
+    One guesses in the dark about the origin and existence of these
+    singular forms.... These masses must have been formed grandly and
+    simply by aggregation. Whatever revolutions may subsequently have
+    up-heaved, rent, and divided them ... the idea of such nightly
+    commotions gives one a deep feeling of the eternal stability of
+    the masses.... One feels deeply convinced that here there is
+    nothing accidental, that here there is working an eternal law
+    which, however slowly, yet surely governs the universe.
+
+By the Lake of Geneva, where he thought of Rousseau, he went up the
+Dole:
+
+    The whole of the Pays de Vaux and de Gex lay like a plan before
+    us ... we kept watching the mist, which gradually retired ... one
+    by one we distinctly saw Lausanne ... Vevey.... There are no
+    words to express the beauty and grandeur of this view ... the
+    line of glittering glaciers was continually drawing the eye back
+    again to the mountains.
+
+From Cluse he wrote:
+
+    The air was as warm as it usually is at the beginning of
+    September, and the country we travelled through beautiful. Many
+    of the trees still green; most of them had assumed a
+    brownish-yellow tint, but only a few were quite bare. The crops
+    were rich and verdant, the mountains caught from the red sunset a
+    rosy hue blended with violet, and all these rich tints were
+    combined with grand, beautiful, and agreeable forms of the
+    landscape.
+
+At Chamouni, about effects of light:
+
+    Here too again it seemed to us as if the sun had first of all
+    attracted the light mists which evaporated from the tops of the
+    glaciers, and then a gentle breeze had, as it were, combed the
+    fine vapours like a fleece of foam over the atmosphere. I never
+    remember at home, even in the height of summer, to have seen any
+    so transparent, for here it was a perfect web of light.
+
+At the Col de Baume:
+
+    Whilst I am writing, a remarkable phenomenon is passing along the
+    sky. The mists, which are shifting about and breaking in some
+    places, allow you through their openings, as through skylights,
+    to catch a glimpse of the blue sky, while at the same time the
+    mountain peaks, rising above our roofs of vapour, are illuminated
+    by the sun's rays....
+
+At Leukertad, at the foot of the Gemmi, he wrote (Nov. 9th):
+
+    The clouds which gather here in this valley, at one time
+    completely hiding the immense rocks and absorbing them in a waste
+    impenetrable gloom, or at another letting a part of them be seen
+    like huge spectres, give to the people a cast of melancholy. In
+    the midst of such natural phenomena, the people are full of
+    presentiments and forebodings ... and the eternal and intrinsic
+    energy of his (man's) nature feels itself at every nerve moved to
+    forebode and to indulge in presentiments.
+
+On the way across the Rhine glacier to the Furka, he felt the
+half-suggestive, half-distressing sense of mountain loneliness:
+
+    It was a strange sight ... in the most desolate region of the
+    world, in a boundless monotonous wilderness of mountains
+    enveloped in snow, where for three leagues before and behind you
+    would not expect to meet a living soul, while on both sides you
+    had the deep hollows of a web of mountains, you might see a line
+    of men wending their way, treading each in the deep footsteps of
+    the one before him, and where, in the whole of the wide expanse
+    thus smoothed over, the eye could discern nothing but the track
+    they left behind them. The hollows, as we left them, lay behind
+    us grey and boundless in the mist. The changing clouds
+    continually passed over the pale disc of the sun, and spread over
+    the whole scene a perpetually moving veil.
+
+He sums up the impressions made on him with:
+
+    The perception of such a long chain of Nature's wonders, excites
+    within me a secret and inexpressible feeling of enjoyment.
+
+The most profound change in his mental life was brought about by his
+visit to Italy, 1786-87. The poetic expression of this refining
+process, this striving towards the classic ideal, towards Sophrosyne,
+was _Iphigenia_.
+
+Its effect upon his feeling for Nature appeared in a more
+matter-of-fact tone; the man of feeling gave way to the scientific
+observer.
+
+He had, as he said (Oct. 30th, 1887), lately 'acquired the habit of
+looking only at things, and not, as formerly, seeing with and in the
+things what actually was not there.'
+
+He no longer imputed his feelings to Nature, and studied her
+influence on himself, but looked at her with impersonal interest.
+Weather, cloud, mountain formation, the species of stone, landscape,
+and social themes, were all treated almost systematically as so much
+diary memoranda for future use. There was no artistic treatment in
+such jottings; meteorology, botany, and geology weighed too heavily.
+
+The question, 'Is a place beautiful?' paled beside 'Is its soil
+clay?' 'Are its rocks quartz, chalk, or mica schist?' The problem of
+the archetypal plant was more absorbing than the finest groups of
+trees. The years of practical life at Weimar, and, above all, the
+ever-growing interest in science, were the chief factors in this
+change, which led him, as he said in his _Treatise on Granite_,
+
+    from observation and description of the human heart, that part of
+    creation which is the most youthful, varied, unstable, and
+    destructible, to observation of that Son of Nature, which is the
+    oldest, deepest, most stable, most indestructible.
+
+The enthusiastic subjective realism of stormy youth was replaced by
+the measured objective realism of ripe manhood. Hence the difference
+between his letters from Switzerland and those from Italy, where this
+inner metamorphosis was completed; as he said, 'Between Weimar and
+Palermo I have had many changes.'
+
+For all that, he revelled in the beauty of Italy. As he once said:
+
+    It is natural to me to revere the great and beautiful willingly
+    and with pleasure; and to develop this predisposition day by day
+    and hour by hour by means of such glorious objects, is the most
+    delightful feeling.
+
+The sea made a great impression upon him:
+
+    I set out for the Lido...landed, and walked straight across the
+    isthmus. I heard a loud hollow murmur--it was the sea! I soon saw
+    it; it crested high against the shore as it retired, it was about
+    noon and time of ebb. I have then at last seen the sea with my
+    own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it
+    quitted it.
+
+But further on he only remarks: 'The sea is a great sight.'
+Elsewhere, too, it is only noticed very shortly.
+
+Rome stimulated his mind to increased productiveness, and, partly for
+this reason, he could not assimilate all the new impressions which
+poured in upon him from without, from ruins, paintings, churches,
+palaces, the life of the people. He drew a great deal too; from
+Frascati he wrote (Nov. 15th, 1786):
+
+    The country around is very pleasant; the village lies on the side
+    of a hill, or rather of a mountain, and at every step the
+    draughtsman comes upon the most glorious objects. The prospect is
+    unbounded. Rome lies before you, and beyond it on the right is
+    the sea, the mountains of Tivoli, and so on.
+
+In Rome itself (Feb. 2nd, 1787):
+
+    Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight it is
+    impossible to form a conception without having witnessed it.
+
+During Carnival (Feb. 21st):
+
+    The sky, so infinitely fine and clear, looked down nobly and
+    innocently upon the mummeries.
+
+In the voyage to Sicily:
+
+    At noon we went on board; the weather being extremely fine, we
+    enjoyed the most glorious of views. The corvette lay at anchor
+    near to the Mole. With an unclouded sun the atmosphere was hazy,
+    giving to the rocky walls of Sorrento, which were in the shade, a
+    tint of most beautiful blue. Naples with its living multitudes
+    lay in full sunshine, and glittered brilliantly with countless
+    tints.
+
+and on April 1st:
+
+    With a cloudy sky, a bright but broken moonlight, the reflection
+    on the sea was infinitely beautiful.
+
+At first, Italy, and especially Rome, felt strange to him, in
+scenery, sky, contour, and colour. It was only by degrees that he
+felt at home there.
+
+He refers to this during his second visit to Rome in a notable
+remark, which aptly expresses the faculty of apperception--the link
+between us and the unfamiliar, which enables mental growth.
+
+June 16th, 1787:
+
+    One remark more! Now for the first time do the trees, the rocks,
+    nay, Rome itself, grow dear to me; hitherto I have always felt
+    them as foreign, though, on the other hand, I took pleasure in
+    minor subjects having some resemblance to those I saw in youth.
+
+On August 18th, 1787, he wrote:
+
+    Yesterday before sunrise I drove to Acqua Acetosa. Verily, one
+    might well lose his senses in contemplating the clearness, the
+    manifoldness, the dewy transparency, the heavenly hue of the
+    landscape, especially in the distance.
+
+In October, when he heard of the engagement of a beautiful Milanese
+lady with whom he had fallen in love:
+
+    I again turned me instantly to Nature, as a subject for
+    landscapes, a field I had been meanwhile neglecting, and
+    endeavoured to copy her in this respect with the utmost fidelity.
+    I was, however, more successful in mastering her with my eyes....
+    All the sensual fulness which that region offers us in rocks and
+    trees, in acclivities and declivities, in peaceful lakes and
+    lively streams, all this was grasped by my eye more
+    appreciatively, if possible, than ever before, and I could hardly
+    resent the wound which had to such degree sharpened my inward and
+    outward sense.
+
+On leaving Rome, he wrote:
+
+    Three nights before, the full moon shone in the clearest heaven,
+    and the enchantment shed over the vast town, though often felt
+    before, was never felt so keenly as now. The great masses of
+    light, clear as in mild daylight, the contrast of deep shades,
+    occasionally relieved by reflexions dimly portraying details, all
+    this transported us as if into another, a simpler and a greater,
+    world.
+
+The later diaries on his travels are sketchy throughout, and more
+laconic and objective: for example, at Schaffhausen (Sept. 18th):
+
+    Went out early, 7.30, to see the Falls of the Rhine; colour of
+    water, green--causes of this, the heights covered by mist--the
+    depths clear, and we saw the castle of Laufen half in mist;
+    thought of Ossian. Love mist when moved by deep feeling.
+
+At Brunnen:
+
+    Green of the lake, steep banks, small size of boatman in
+    comparison to the enormous masses of rock. One saw precipices
+    grown over by trees, summits covered by clouds. Sunshine over the
+    scene, one felt the formless greatness of Nature.
+
+He was conscious of the great change in himself since his last visit
+there, and wrote to Schiller (Oct. 14th, 1797):
+
+    I remember the effect these things had upon me twenty years ago.
+    The total impression remained with me, but the details faded, and
+    I had a wonderful longing to repeat the whole experience and
+    correct my impressions. I had become another man, and therefore
+    it must needs appear different to me.
+
+In later years he travelled a great deal in the Harz Mountains, to
+Carlsbad, Toplitz, the Maine, Marienbad, etc. After the death of his
+great friends, Schiller and Carl August, he was more and more lonely,
+and his whole outlook, with increasing years, grew more impersonal,
+his attitude to Nature more abstract and scientific; the archetypal
+plant was superseded by the theory of colours. But he kept fresh eyes
+for natural beauty into ripe age; witness this letter from
+Heidelberg, May 4th, 1808, to Frau von Stein:
+
+    Yesterday evening, after finishing my work, I went alone to the
+    castle, and first scrambled about among the ruins, and then
+    betook myself to the great balcony from which one can overlook
+    the whole country. It was one of the loveliest of May evenings
+    and of sunsets. No! I have really never seen such a fine view!
+    Just imagine! One looked into the beautiful though narrow Neckar
+    valley, covered on both sides with woods and vineyards and fruit
+    trees just coming into flower. Further off the valley widened,
+    and one saw the setting sun reflected in the Rhine as it flowed
+    majestically through most beautiful country. On its further side
+    the horizon was bounded by the Vosges mountains, lit up by the
+    sun as if by a fire. The whole country was covered with fresh
+    green, and close to me were the enormous ruins of the old castle,
+    half in light and half in shade. You can easily fancy how it
+    fascinated me. I stood lost in the view quite half an hour, till
+    the rising moon woke me from my dreams.
+
+Goethe's true lyrical period was in the seventies, before his Italian
+journeys; during and after that time he wrote more dramatic and epic
+poetry, with ballads and the more narrative kind of epic. In sending
+_Der Juengling und der Muehlbach_ to Schiller from Switzerland in 1797,
+he wrote: 'I have discovered splendid material for idylls and
+elegies, and whatever that sort of poetry is called.'
+
+Nature lyrics were few during his Italian travels, as in the journey
+to Sicily, 1787; among them were _Calm at Sea_:
+
+  Silence deep rules o'er the waters,
+  Calmly slumbering lies the main.
+
+and _Prosperous Voyage_:
+
+  The mist is fast clearing,
+  And radiant is heaven,
+  Whilst AEolus loosens
+  Our anguish-fraught bond.
+
+The most perfect of all such short poems was the _Evening Song_,
+written one September night of 1783 on the Gickelhahn, near Ilmenau.
+He was writing at the same time to Frau von Stein: 'The sky is
+perfectly clear, and I am going out to enjoy the sunset. The view is
+great and simple--the sun down.'
+
+      Every tree top is at peace.
+      E'en the rustling woods do cease
+      Every sound;
+      The small birds sleep on every bough.
+      Wait but a moment--soon wilt thou
+      Sleep in peace.
+
+    The hush of evening, the stilling of desire in the silence of the
+    wood, the beautiful resolution of all discords in Nature's
+    perfect concord, the naive and splendid pantheism of a soul which
+    feels itself at one with the world--all this is not expressed in
+    so many words in the _Night Song_; but it is all there, like the
+    united voicesin a great symphony.                  (SCHURE.)
+
+The lines are full of that pantheism which not only brings subject
+and object, Mind and Nature, into symbolic relationship, but works
+them into one tissue. Taken alone with _The Fisher_ and _To the
+Moon_, it would suffice to give him the first place as a poet of
+Nature.
+
+He was not only the greatest poet, but the greatest and most
+universal thinker of modern times. With him feeling and knowledge
+worked together, the one reaching its climax in the lyrics of his
+younger days, the other gradually moderating the fervour of passion,
+and, with the more objective outlook of age, laying greater stress
+upon science. His feeling for Nature, which followed an unbroken
+course, like his mental development generally, stands alone as a type
+of perfectly modern feeling, and yet no one, despite the many
+intervening centuries, stood so near both to Homer and to
+Shakespeare, and in philosophy to Spinoza.
+
+But because with Goethe poetry and philosophy were one, his pantheism
+is full of life and poetic vision, whilst that of the wise man of
+Amsterdam is severely mathematical and abstract. And the postulate of
+this pantheism was sympathy, harmony between Nature and the inner
+life. He felt himself a part of the power which upholds and
+encompasses the world. Nature became his God, love of her his
+religion. In his youth, in the period of _Werther, Ganymede_, and the
+first part of _Faust_, this pantheism was a nameless, unquenchable
+aspiration towards the divine--for wings to reach, like the rays of
+light, to unmeasured heights; as he said in the Swiss mountains,
+'Into the limitless spaces of the air, to soar over abysses, and let
+him down upon inaccessible rocks.'
+
+After the Italian journeys science took the lead, the student of
+Nature supplanted the lover, even his symbolism took a more abstract
+and realistic form. But he never, even in old age, lost his love for
+the beauties of Nature, and, holding to Spinoza's fundamental ideas
+of the unchangeableness and eternity of Nature's laws, and the
+oneness of the Cosmos, he sought to think it out and base it upon
+scientific grounds, through the unbroken succession of animal and
+vegetable forms of life, the uniform 'formation and transformation of
+all organic Nature.' He wrote to Frau von Stein: 'I cannot express to
+you how legible the book of Nature is growing to me; my long spelling
+out has helped me. It takes effect now all of a sudden; my quiet
+delight is inexpressible; I find much that is new, but nothing that
+is unexpected--everything fits in and conforms, because I have no
+system, and care for nothing but truth for its own sake. Soon
+everything about living things will be clear to me.'[13]
+
+Poetic and scientific intuition were simultaneous with him, and their
+common bond was pantheism. This pantheism marked an epoch in the
+history of feeling. For Goethe not only transformed the unreal
+feeling of his day into real, described scenery, and inspired it with
+human feeling, and deciphered the beauty of the Alps, as no one else
+had done, Rousseau not excepted; but he also brought knowledge of
+Nature into harmony with feeling for her, and with his wonderfully
+receptive and constructive mind so studied the earlier centuries,
+that he gathered out all that was valuable in their feeling.
+
+As Goethe in Germany, so Byron in England led the feeling for Nature
+into new paths by his demoniac genius and glowing pantheism. Milton's
+great imagination was too puritan, too biblical, to allow her
+independent importance; he only assigned her a _role_ in relation to
+the Deity. In fiction, too, she had no place; but, on the other hand,
+we find her in such melancholy, sentimental outpourings as Young's
+_Night Thoughts_:
+
+  Night, sable Goddess! from her ebon throne
+  In rayless majesty now stretches forth
+  Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world...
+  Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse
+  Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
+  An awful pause, prophetic of her end...etc.
+
+There is a wealth of imagery and comparison amid Ossian's melancholy
+and mourning; clouds and mist are the very shadows of his struggling
+heroes. For instance:
+
+    His spear is a blasted pine, his shield the rising moon. He sat
+    on the shore like a cloud of mist on the rising hill.
+
+    Thou art snow on the heath; thy hair is the mist of Cromla, when
+    it curls on the hill, when it shines to the beam of the west. Thy
+    breasts are two smooth rocks seen from Branno of streams.
+
+    As the troubled noise of the ocean when roll the waves on high;
+    as the last peal of the thunder of heaven, such is the noise of
+    battle.
+
+    As autumn's dark storms pour from two echoing hills, towards each
+    other approached the heroes.
+
+    The clouds of night came rolling down, Darkness rests on the
+    steeps of Cromla. The stars of the north arise over the rolling
+    of Erin's waves; they shew their heads of fire through the flying
+    mist of heaven. A distant wind roars in the wood. Silent and dark
+    is the plain of death.
+
+Wordsworth's influence turned in another direction. His real taste
+was pastoral, and he preached freer intercourse with Nature, glossing
+his ideas rather artificially with a theism, through which one reads
+true love of her, and an undeniable, though hidden, pantheism.
+
+In _The Influence of Natural Objects_ he described how a life spent
+with Nature had early purified him from passion:
+
+  Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
+  With stinted kindness. In November days,
+  When vapours, rolling down the valleys, made
+  A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods
+  At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
+  When by the margin of the trembling lake
+  Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went
+  In solitude, such intercourse was mine.
+  'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,
+  And by the waters all the summer long,
+  And in the frosty season, when the sun
+  Was set, and visible for many a mile,
+  The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
+  I heeded not the summons....
+
+Like Klopstock, he delighted in sledging
+
+      while the stars
+  Eastward were sparkling bright, and in the west
+  The orange sky of evening died away.
+
+Far more characteristic of the man is the confession in _Tintern
+Abbey_:
+
+  Nature then
+  (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
+  And their glad animal movements all gone by)
+  To me was all in all. I cannot paint
+  What then I was. The sounding cataract
+  Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
+  The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
+  The colours and their forms, were then to me
+  An appetite, a feeling and a love
+  That had no need of a remoter charm
+  By thought supplied, or any interest
+  Unborrow'd from the eye.
+
+Beautiful notes, to be struck again more forcibly by the frank
+pantheism of Byron.
+
+What Scott had been doing for Scotland,[14] and Moore for Ireland,
+Wordsworth, with still greater fidelity to truth, tried to do for
+England and her people; in contrast to Byron and Shelley, who forsook
+home to range more widely, or Southey, whose _Thalaba_ begins with an
+imposing description of night in the desert:
+
+      How beautiful is night!
+  A dewy freshness fills the silent air,
+  No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain
+  Breaks the serene of heaven;
+  In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine
+  Rolls through the dark blue depths.
+  Beneath her steady ray
+  The desert-circle spreads
+  Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
+  How beautiful is night!
+
+But all that previous English poets had done seemed harmless and
+innocent in comparison with Byron's revolutionary poetry. Prophecy in
+Rousseau became poetry in Byron.
+
+There was much common ground between these two passionate aspiring
+spirits, who never attained to Goethe's serenity. Both were
+melancholy, and fled from their fellows; both strove for perfect
+liberty and unlimited self-assertion; both felt with the wild and
+uproarious side of Nature, and found idyllic scenes marred by
+thoughts of mankind.
+
+Byron's turbulence never subsided; and his love for Nature,
+passionate and comprehensive as it was, was always 'sickled o'er'
+with misanthropy and pessimism, with the 'world-pain.'
+
+He turned to her first through disdain of his kind and love of
+introspection, and later on, when he was spurned by the London world
+which had been at his feet, and disdain grew into hatred and disgust,
+from a wish to be alone. But, as Boettger says:
+
+    Though this heart, in which the whole universe is reflected, is a
+    sick one, it has immeasurable depths, and an intensified spirit
+    life which draws everything under its sway and inspires it,
+    feeling and observing everything only as part of itself.
+
+The basis of Byron's feeling for Nature was a revolutionary
+one--elementary passion. The genius which threw off stanza after
+stanza steeped in melody, was coupled with an unprecedented
+subjectivity and individualism. When the first part of _Childe
+Harold_ came out, dull London society was bewitched by the music and
+novelty of this enthusiastic lyric of Nature, with its incomparable
+interweaving of scenery and feeling:
+
+  The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew,
+  As glad to waft him from his native home....
+  But when the sun was sinking in the sea,
+  He seized his harp...
+  Adieu, adieu! my native shore
+  Fades o'er the waters blue;
+  The night winds sigh, the breakers roar,
+  And shrieks the wild sea-mew;
+  Yon sun that sets upon the sea
+  We follow in his flight;
+  Farewell awhile to him and thee,
+  My native land, good-night!
+
+He says of the beauty of Lusitania:
+
+  Oh Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
+  What Heaven hath done for this delicious land.
+  What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
+  What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand!...
+  The horrid crags, by toppling convent crown'd,
+  The cork trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
+  The mountain moss, by scorching skies imbrown'd,
+  The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep.
+  The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
+  The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
+  The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
+  The vine on high, the willow branch below,
+  Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.
+
+Yet his spirit drives him away, 'more restless than the swallow in
+the skies.'
+
+The charm of the idyllic is in the lines:
+
+  But these between, a silver streamlet glides....
+  Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook,
+  And vacant on the rippling waves doth look,
+  That peaceful still 'twixt bitterest foemen flow.
+
+The beauty of the sea and night in this:
+
+  The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve!
+  Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand....
+  How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
+  Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown
+  Distinct....
+
+  Bending o'er the vessel's laving side
+  To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere.
+
+He reflects that:
+
+  To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
+  To slowly trace the forest's shady scene....
+  To climb the trackless mountain all unseen
+  With the wild flock that never needs a fold,
+  Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean,--
+  This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold
+  Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.
+  But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
+  To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
+  And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
+  With none who bless us, none whom we can bless ...
+  This is to be alone--this, this is solitude.
+
+His preference for wild scenery shews here:
+
+  Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,
+  Though always changing, in her aspect mild;
+  From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
+  Her never-wean'd, though not her favour'd child.
+  O she is fairest in her features wild,
+  Where nothing polish'd dares pollute her path;
+  To me by day or night she ever smiled,
+  Though I have mark'd her when none other hath,
+  And sought her more and more, and loved her best in wrath.
+
+He observes everything--now 'the billows' melancholy flow' under the
+bows of the ship, now the whole scene at Zitza:
+
+  Where'er we gaze, around, above, below,
+  What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found!
+  Rock, river, forest, mountain, all abound,
+  And bluest skies that harmonize the whole;
+  Beneath, the distant torrent's rushing sound
+  Tells where the volumed cataract doth roll
+  Between those hanging rocks, that shock yet please the soul.
+
+This is full of poetic vision:
+
+  Where lone Utraikey forms its circling cove,
+  And weary waves retire to gleam at rest,
+  How brown the foliage of the green hill's grove,
+  Nodding at midnight o'er the calm bay's breast,
+  As winds come lightly whispering from the west,
+  Kissing, not ruffling, the blue deep's serene;--
+  Here Harold was received a welcome guest;
+  Nor did he pass unmoved the gentle scene,
+  For many a job could he from Night's soft presence glean.
+
+Feeling himself 'the most unfit of men to herd with man,' he is happy
+only with Nature:
+
+  Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
+  And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
+  That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!
+  Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead.
+
+  Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
+  Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
+  Where a blue sky and glowing clime extends,
+  He had the passion and the power to roam;
+  The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
+  Were unto him companionship; they spake
+  A mutual language, clearer than the tome
+  Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
+  For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake.
+
+Again:
+
+  I live not in myself, but I become
+  Portion of that around me, and to me
+  High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
+  Of human cities torture; I can see
+  Nothing to loathe in Nature save to be
+  A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
+  Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee,
+  And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
+  Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.
+
+  Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
+  Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
+  Is not the love of these deep in my heart
+  With a pure passion? Should I not contemn
+  All objects, if compared with these?
+
+Love of Nature was a passion with him, and when he looked
+
+  Upon the peopled desert past
+  As on a place of agony and strife,
+
+mountains gave him a sense of freedom.
+
+He praised the Rhine:
+
+  Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,
+  Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,
+  Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.
+
+and far more the Alps:
+
+      Above me are the Alps,
+  The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
+  Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
+  And throned eternity in icy halls
+  Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
+  The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow!
+  All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
+  Gather around these summits, as to shew
+  How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.
+
+On the Lake of Geneva:
+
+  Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven...
+  All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,
+  But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
+  And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep.
+  All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
+  Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast,
+  All is concenter'd in a life intense,
+  Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
+  But hath a part of being, and a sense
+  Of that which is of all Creator and defence.
+
+  And this is in the night. Most glorious night,
+  Thou wert not sent for slumber; let me be
+  A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,
+  A portion of the tempest and of thee!
+  How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
+  And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
+  And now again 'tis black--and now, the glee
+  Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth,
+  As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
+  But where of ye, oh tempests, is the goal?
+  Are ye like those within the human breast?
+  Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?
+
+  The morn is up again, the dewy morn
+  With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
+  Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
+  And living as if earth contained no tomb.
+
+In Clarens:
+
+  Clarens! sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love,
+  Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought,
+  Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above
+  The very glaciers have his colours caught,
+  And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought
+  By rays which sleep there lovingly; the rocks,
+  The permanent crags, tell here of Love.
+
+Yet
+
+  Ever and anon of griefs subdued
+  There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
+  Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;
+  And slight withal may be the things which bring
+  Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
+  Aside for ever; it may be a sound,
+  A tone of music, summer's eve or spring,
+  A flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall wound,
+  Striking the electric chain with which we are darkly bound.
+
+The unrest and torment of his own heart he finds reflected in Nature:
+
+  The roar of waters! from the headlong height
+  Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
+  The fall of waters! rapid as the light
+  The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss;
+  The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
+  And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
+  Of their great agony, wrung out from this
+  Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
+  That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
+  And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
+  Returns in an unceasing shower, which round
+  With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain
+  Is an eternal April to the ground,
+  Making it all one emerald; how profound
+  The gulf, and how the giant element
+  From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
+  Crushing the cliffs, which downward, worn and rent
+  With his fierce footsteps, yields in chasms a fearful rent....
+  Horribly beautiful! but, on the verge
+  From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
+  An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge,
+  Like Hope upon a deathbed.
+
+The 'enormous skeleton' of Rome impresses him most by moonlight:
+
+  When the rising moon begins to climb
+  Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
+  When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
+  And the low night breeze waves along the air!
+
+Underlying all his varying moods is this note:
+
+  There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
+  There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
+  There is society, where none intrudes,
+  By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
+  I love not man the less, but Nature more,
+  From these our interviews, in which I steal
+  From all I may be, or have been before,
+  To mingle with the Universe and feel
+  What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
+
+The sea, the sky with its stars and clouds, and the mountains, are
+his passion:
+
+  Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
+  Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
+  Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
+  Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
+  The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
+  A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
+  When, for a moment, like a drop of rain
+  He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
+  Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
+                                  (_Childe Harold_.)
+
+  The day at last has broken. What a night
+  Hath usher'd it! How beautiful in heaven!
+  Though varied with a transitory storm,
+  More beautiful in that variety!...
+               And can the sun so rise,
+  So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
+  Vapours more lovely than the unclouded sky,
+  With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,
+  And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
+  In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth.
+                              (_Sardanapalus.)_
+
+He had loved the Scotch Highlands in youth:
+
+  Amidst Nature's native scenes,
+  Loved to the last, whatever intervenes
+  Between us and our childhood's sympathy
+  Which still reverts to what first caught the eye.
+  He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue
+  Will love each peak that shews a kindred hue,
+  Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
+  And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace.
+                                (_The Island_.)
+
+and in _The Island_ he says:
+
+  How often we forget all time, when lone,
+  Admiring Nature's universal throne,
+  Her woods, her wilds, her waters, the intense
+  Reply of hers to our intelligence!
+  Live not the stars and mountains? Are the waves
+  Without a spirit? Are the dropping cares
+  Without a feeling in their silent tears?
+  No, no; they woo and clasp us to their spheres,
+  Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before
+  Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.
+                                 (_The Island_.)
+
+Byron's feeling was thus, like Goethe's in _Werther_ and _Faust_, a
+pantheistic sympathy. But there was this great difference between
+them--Goethe's mind passed through its period of storm and stress,
+and attained a serene and ripe vision; Byron's never did. Melancholy
+and misanthropy always mingled with his feelings; he was, in fact,
+the father of our modern 'world-pain.'
+
+Still more like a brilliant meteor that flashes and is gone was
+Shelley, the most highly strung of all modern lyrists. With him, too,
+love of Nature amounted to a passion; but it was with her remote
+aerial forms that he was most at home. His imagination, a cosmic one,
+revelling among the spheres, was like Byron's in its preference for
+the great, wide, and distant; but unlike his in giving first place to
+the serene and passionless. As Brandes says: 'In this familiarity
+with the great forms and movements of Nature, Shelley is like Byron;
+but like him as a fair genius is like a dark one, as Ariel is like
+the flame-bringing angel of the morning star.'
+
+We see his love for the sea, especially at rest, in the 'Stanzas
+written in dejection near Naples,' which contain the beautiful line
+which proved so prophetic of his death:
+
+  The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
+  The waves are dancing fast and bright;
+  Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
+  The purple noon's transparent might....
+  I see the deep's untrampled floor
+  With green and purple sea-weeds strewn;
+  I see the waves upon the shore
+  Like light dissolved, in star showers thrown....
+  Yet now despair itself is mild,
+  Even as the winds and waters are;
+  I could lie down like a tired child
+  And weep away the life of care
+  Which I have borne, and yet must bear,--
+  Till death like sleep might steal on me,
+  And I might feel in the warm air
+  My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
+  Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
+
+In his _Essay on Love_, speaking of the irresistible longing for
+sympathy, he says:
+
+    In solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by
+    human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the
+    flowers, the grass, and the water and the sky. In the motion of
+    the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a
+    secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the
+    tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the
+    rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable
+    relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a
+    dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious
+    tenderness to the eyes, like the voice of one beloved singing to
+    you alone.
+
+As Brandes says: 'His pulses beat in secret sympathy with Nature's.
+He called plants and animals his dear sisters and brothers, and the
+words which his wife inscribed upon his tombstone in Rome, "cor
+cordium," are true of his relation to Nature also.'
+
+_The Cloud_, with its marvellously vivid personification, is a
+perfect example of his genius.
+
+It gives the measure of his unlikeness to the more homekeeping
+imaginations of his contemporaries Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, and
+Moore; and at the same time to Byron, for here there are no morbid
+reflections; the poem is pervaded by a naive, childlike tone, such as
+one hears in the old mythologies.
+
+_The Cloud_:
+
+  I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
+  From the seas and the streams;
+  I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
+  In their noonday dreams.
+  From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
+  The sweet buds every one,
+  When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast
+  As she dances about the sun.
+  I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
+  And whiten the green plains under;
+  And then again I dissolve it in rain,
+  And laugh as I pass in thunder.
+
+  I sift the snow on the mountains below,
+  And their great pines groan aghast,
+  And all the night 'tis my pillow white
+  While I sleep in the arms of the Blast....
+  From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
+  Over a torrent sea,
+  Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
+  The mountains its columns be.
+  The triumphal arch through which I march,
+  With hurricane, fire, and snow,
+  When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
+  Is the million-coloured bow;
+  The Sphere-fire above its soft colours wove
+  While the moist earth was laughing below.
+  I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
+  And the nursling of the Sky.
+
+As Brandes puts it; When the cloud sings thus of the moon:
+
+                                               When
+  That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
+  Whom Mortals call the Moon,
+  Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor
+  By the midnight breezes strewn;
+  And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
+  Which only the angels hear,
+  May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
+  The Stars peep behind her and peer.
+
+or of--
+
+  The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
+
+the reader is carried back, by dint of the virgin freshness of the
+poet's imagination, to the time when the phenomena of Nature were
+first moulded into mythology.
+
+This kinship to the myth is very clear in the finest of all his
+poems, the _Ode to the West Wind_, when the poet says to the wind:
+
+  O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,...
+  Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
+  Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed.
+  Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean.
+  Angels of rain and lightning, there are spread
+  On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
+  Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
+  Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
+  Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
+  The locks of the approaching storm.
+
+He calls the wind the 'breath of Autumn's being,' the one
+
+  Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
+  The winged seeds.
+
+And cries to it:
+
+  If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
+  If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
+  A wave to pant beneath thy power and share
+  The impulse of thy strength, only less free
+  Than thou, O uncontrollable!...
+  0 lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
+  I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!
+  A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
+  One too like thee, tameless, and swift, and proud.
+  Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;
+  What if my leaves are falling like its own?
+  The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
+  Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
+  Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
+  My spirit. Be thou me, impetuous one!
+  Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
+  Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;
+  And by the incantation of this verse,
+  Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
+  Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
+  Be through my lips to unawakened earth
+  The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
+  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
+
+His poems are full of this power of inspiring all the elements with
+life, breathing his own feeling into them, and divining love and
+sympathy in them; for instance:
+
+  The fountains mingle with the river,
+  And the river with the ocean;
+  The winds of heaven mix for ever
+  With a sweet emotion....
+  See the mountains kiss high heaven,
+  And the waves clasp one another...
+  And the sunlight clasps the earth,
+  And the moonbeams kiss the sea.
+
+and:
+
+  I love all thou lovest,
+  Spirit of Delight;
+  The fresh earth in new leaves dressed,
+  And the starry night,
+  Autumn evening and the morn
+  When the golden mists are born.
+  I love snow and all the forms
+  Of the radiant frost;
+  I love waves and winds and storms--
+  Everything almost
+  Which is Nature's, and may be
+  Untainted by man's misery.
+
+To Goethe, Byron, and Shelley, this pantheism, universal love,
+sympathy with Nature in all her forms, was the base of feeling; but
+both of England's greatest lyrists, dying young, failed to attain
+perfect harmony of thought and feeling. There always remained a
+bitter ingredient in their poetry.
+
+Let us now turn to France.
+
+
+LAMARTINE AND VICTOR HUGO
+
+Rousseau discovered the beauty of scenery for France; St Pierre
+portrayed it poetically, not only in _Paul and Virginia_, but in
+_Chaumiere Indienne_ and _Etudes de la Nature_. The science which
+these two writers lacked, Buffon possessed in a high degree; but he
+had not the power to delineate Nature and feeling in combination: he
+lacked insight into the hidden analogies between the movements of the
+mind and the phenomena of the outer world. Chateaubriand, on the
+contrary, had this faculty to its full modern extent. It is true that
+his ego was constantly to the fore, even in dealing with Nature, but
+his landscapes were full of sympathetic feeling. He had Rousseau's
+melancholy and unrest, and cared nothing for those 'oppressive
+masses,' mountains, except as backgrounds; but he was enthusiastic
+about the scenery which he saw in America, the virgin forests, and
+the Mississippi--above all, about the sea. His Rene, that life-like
+figure, half-passionate, half-_blase_, measuring everything by
+himself, and flung hither and thither by the waves of passion, shewed
+a lover's devotion to the sea and to Nature generally.[15] 'It was
+not God whom I contemplated on the waves in the magnificence of His
+works: I saw an unknown woman, and the miracle of his smile, the
+beauties of the sky, seemed to me disclosed by her breath. I would
+have bartered eternity for one of her caresses. I pictured her to
+myself as throbbing behind this veil of the universe which hid her
+from my eyes. Oh! why was it not in my power to rend the veil and
+press the idealized woman to my heart, to spend myself on her bosom
+with the love which is the source of my inspiration, my despair, and
+my life?'
+
+In subjectivity and dreaminess both Chateaubriand and Lamartine were
+like the German romanticists, but their fundamental note was theism,
+not pantheism. The storm of the French Revolution, which made radical
+changes in religion, as in all other things, was followed by a
+reaction. Christianity acquired new power and inwardness, and Nature
+was unceasingly praised as the mirror of the divine idea of creation.
+
+In his _Genie du Christianisme_, Chateaubriand said:
+
+    The true God, in entering into His Works, has given his immensity
+    to Nature... there is an instinct in man, which puts him in
+    communication with the scenes of Nature.
+
+Lamartine was a sentimental dreamer of dreams, a thinker of lofty
+thoughts which lost themselves in the inexpressible. His
+_Meditations_ shew his ardent though sad worship of Nature; his love
+of evening, moonlight, and starlight. For instance, _L'Isolement_:
+
+  Ici gronde le fleuve aux vagues ecumantes,
+  Il serpente et s'enfonce en un lointain obscur:
+  La le lac immobile etend ses eaux dormantes
+  Oo l'etoile du soir se leve dans l'azur.
+  An sommet de ces monts couronnes de bois sombres,
+  Le crepuscule encore jette un dernier rayon;
+  Et le char vaporeux de la reine des ombres
+  Monte et blanchit deja les bords de l'horizon.
+
+_Le Soir_:
+
+  Le soir ramene le silence....
+  Venus se leve a l'horizon;
+  A mes pieds l'etoile amoureuse
+  De sa lueur mysterieuse
+  Blanchit les tapis de gazon.
+  De ce hetre au feuillage sombre
+  J'entends frissonner les rameaux;
+  On dirait autour des tombeaux
+  Qu'on entend voltiger une ombre,
+  Tout-a-coup, detache des cieux,
+  Un rayon de l'astre nocturne,
+  Glissant sur mon front taciturne,
+  Vient mollement toucher mes yeux.
+  Doux reflet d'un globe de flamme
+  Charmant rayon, que me veux-tu?
+  Viens-tu dans mon sein abattu
+  Porter la lumiere a mon ame?
+  Descends-tu pour me reveler
+  Des mondes le divin mystere,
+  Ces secrets caches dans la sphere
+  Ou le jour va te rappeler?
+
+In the thought of happy past hours, he questions the lake:
+
+  Un soir, t'en souvient-il, nous voguions en silence;
+  On n'entendait au loin, sur l'onde et sous les cieux,
+  Que le bruit des rameurs qui frappaient en cadence
+  Tes flots harmonieux.
+  O lac! rochers muets! grottes! foret obscure!
+  Vous que le temps epargne ou qu'il peut rajeunir
+  Gardez de cette nuit, gardez, belle nature,
+  Au moins le souvenir!...
+  Que le vent qui gemit, le roseau qui soupire
+  Que les parfums legers de ton air embaume,
+  Que tout ce qu'on entend, l'on voit, ou l'on respire,
+  Tout dise: 'ils out aimes!
+
+_La Priere_ has:
+
+  Le roi brillant du jour, se couchant dans sa gloire,
+  Descend avec lenteur de son char de victoire;
+  Le nuage eclatant qui le cache a nos yeux
+  Conserve en sillons d'or sa trace dans les cieux,
+  Et d'un reflet de pourpre inonde l'etendue.
+  Comme une lampe d'or dans l'azur suspendue,
+  La lune se balance aux bords de l'horizon;
+  Ses rayons affaiblis dorment sur le gazon,
+  Et le voile des nuits sur les monts se deplie.
+  C'est l'heure, ou la nature, un moment recueillie,
+  Entre la nuit qui touche et le jour qui s'enfuit
+  S'eleve au createur du jour et de la nuit,
+  Et semble offrir a Dieu dans son brillant langage,
+  De la creation le magnifique hommage.
+  Voila le sacrifice immense, universelle!
+  L'univers est le temple, et la terre est l'autel;
+  Les cieux en sont le dome et ses astres sans nombre,
+  Ces feux demi-voiles, pale ornement de l'ombre,
+  Dans la voute d'azur avec ordre semes,
+  Sont les sacres flambeaux pour ce temple allumes...
+  Mais ce temple est sans voix...
+
+  ...Mon coeur seul parle dans ce silence--
+  La voix de l'univers c'est mon intelligence.
+  Sur les rayons du soir, sur les ailes du vent,
+  Elle s'eleve a Dieu...
+
+_Le Golfe de Baia_:
+
+  Vois-tu comme le flot paisible
+  Sur le rivage vient mourir?
+  Mais deja l'ombre plus epaisse
+  Tombe et brunit les vastes mers;
+  Le bord s'efface, le bruit cesse,
+  Le silence occupe les airs.
+  C'est l'heure ou la Melancholie
+  S'assied pensive et recueillie
+  Aux bords silencieux des mers.
+
+The decay of autumn corresponds to his own dolorous feelings:
+
+  Oui, dans ces jours d'automne ou la nature expire,
+  A ses regards voiles je trouve plus d'attraits;
+  C'est l'adieu d'un ami, c'est le dernier sourire
+  Des levres que la mort va fermer pour jamais.
+
+This is from _Ischia_:
+
+  Le Soleil va porter le jour a d'autres mondes;
+  Dans l'horizon desert Phebe monte sans bruit,
+  Et jette, en penetrant les tenebres profondes,
+  Un voile transparent sur le front de la nuit.
+  Voyez du haut des monts ses clartes ondoyantes
+  Comme un fleuve de flamme inonder les coteaux,
+  Dormir dans les vallons on glisser sur les pentes,
+  Ou rejaillir au loin du sein brillant des eaux....
+  Doux comme le soupir d'un enfant qui sommeille,
+  Un son vague et plaintif se repand dans les airs....
+  Mortel! ouvre ton ame a ces torrents de vie,
+  Recois par tous les sens les charmes de la nuit....
+
+He sees the transitoriness of all earthly things reflected in Nature:
+
+  L'onde qui baise ce rivage,
+  De quoi se plaint-elle a ses bords?
+  Pourquoi le roseau sur la plage, pourquoi le ruisseau sous l'ombrage,
+  Rendent-ils de tristes accords?
+  De quoi gemit la tourterelle? Tout naist, tout paise.
+
+Such a depth of sympathy and dreamy dolorous reverie was new to
+France, but Rousseau had broken the ice, and henceforward feeling
+flowed freely. To Lamartine the theist, as to the pantheists Goethe,
+Shelley, and Byron, Nature was a friend and lover.
+
+Victor Hugo was of the same mind, but his poetry is clearer and more
+plastic than Lamartine's. We quote from his finest poems, the
+_Feuilles d'Automne_. He was a true lyrist, familiar both with the
+external life of Nature and the inner life of man. His beautiful 'Ce
+qu'on entend sur la montagne' has the spirit of _Faust_. He imagines
+himself upon a mountain top, with earth on one side, the sea on the
+other; and there he hears two voices unlike any ever heard before:
+
+  L'une venait des mers, chant de gloire! hymne heureux!
+  C'etait la voix des flots qui se parlaient entre eux....
+  Or, comme je l'ai dit, l'Ocean magnifique
+  Epandait une voix joyeuse et pacifique
+  Chantant comme la harpe aux temples de Sion,
+  Et louait la beaute de la creation.
+
+while from the other voice:
+
+  Pleurs et cris! L'injure, l'anatheme....
+  C'etait la terre et l'homme qui pleuraient!...
+  L'une disait, Nature! et l'autre, Humanite!
+
+The personifications in this poem are beautiful. He, too, like
+Lamartine, loves sea and stars most of all. These verses from _Les
+Orientales_ remind one of St Augustine:
+
+  J'etais seul pres des flots par une nuit d'etoiles,
+  Pas un nuage aux cieux; sur les mers pas de voiles,
+  Et les bois et les monts et toute la nature
+  Semblaient interroger dans confus murmure
+  Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel.
+  Et les etoiles d'or, legions infinies,
+  A voix haute, a voix basse, avec mille harmonies
+  Disaient en inclinant leurs couronnes de feu,
+  Et les flots bleus, que rien gouverne et n'arrete,
+  Disaient en recourbant l'ecume de leur crete:
+  C'est le Seigneur Dieu, le Seigneur Dieu!
+
+  Parfois lorsque tout dort, je m'assieds plein de joie
+  Sous le dome etoile qui sur nos fronts flamboie;
+  J'ecoute si d'en haut il tombe quelque bruit;
+  Et l'heure vainement me frappe de son aile
+  Quand je contemple emu cette fete eternelle
+  Que le ciel rayonnant donne au monde la nuit!
+  Souvent alors j'ai cru que ces soleils de flamme
+  Dans ce monde endormi n'echauffaient que mon ame;
+  Qu'a les comprendre seul j'etais predestine;
+  Que j'etais, moi, vaine ombre obscure et taciturne,
+  Le roi mysterieuse de la pompe nocturne;
+  Que le ciel pour moi seul s'etait illumine!
+
+The necessary condition of delight in Nature is very strikingly
+given:
+
+  Si vous avez en vous, vivantes et pressees,
+  Un monde interieur d'images, de pensees,
+  De sentimens, d'amour, d'ardente passion
+  Pour feconder ce monde, echangez-le sans cesse
+  Avec l'autre univers visible qui vous presse!
+  Melez toute votre ame a la creation....
+  Que sous nos doigts puissans exhale la nature,
+  Cette immense clavier!
+
+His lyrics are rich in fine scenes from Nature, unrolled in cold but
+stately periods, and the poetic intuition which always divines the
+spirit life brought him near to that pantheism which we find in all
+the greatest English and German poets of his time,[16] and which lay,
+too, at the root of German romanticism.
+
+
+THE GERMAN ROMANTICISTS
+
+Schiller did not possess the intrinsically lyrical genius of Goethe;
+his strength lay, not in song, but drama, and in a didactic form of
+epic--the song not of feeling, but of thought.
+
+Descriptions of Nature occur here and there in his epics and dramas;
+but his feeling for her was chiefly theoretic. Like his
+contemporaries, he passed through a sentimental period; _Evening_
+shews this, and _Melancholy, to Laura_:
+
+  Laura, a sunrise seems to break
+  Where'er thy happy looks may glow....
+  Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
+  Silver clear and sunbeam glassing,
+  Mays into blossom sad autumn by thee:
+  Night and desert, if they spy thee,
+  To gardens laugh--with daylight shine,
+  Lit by those happy smiles of thine!
+
+With such ecstatic extravagances contrast the excellent descriptions
+of Nature full of objective life in his longer poems--for instance,
+the tumult of Charybdis and the unceasing rain in _The Diver_,
+evening in _The Hostage_, and landscape in _William Tell_ and _The
+Walk_. In the last, as Julian Schmidt says, the ever varying scenery
+is made a 'frame for a kind of phenomenology of mankind.'
+
+    Flowers of all hue are struggling into glow
+  Along the blooming fields; yet their sweet strife
+  Melts into one harmonious concord. Lo!
+  The path allures me through the pastoral green
+  And the wide world of fields! The labouring bee
+  Hums round me, and on hesitating wing
+  O'er beds of purple clover, quiveringly
+  Hovers the butterfly. Save these, all life
+  Sleeps in the glowing sunlight's steady sheen--
+  E'en from the west no breeze the lull'd airs bring.
+  Hark! in the calm aloft I hear the skylark sing.
+  The thicket rustles near, the alders bow
+  Down their green coronals, and as I pass,
+  Waves in the rising wind the silvering grass;
+  Come! day's ambrosial night! receive me now
+  Beneath the roof by shadowy beeches made
+  Cool-breathing, etc.
+
+Schiller's interest in Nature was more a matter of reflection than
+direct observation; its real tendency was philosophical and ethical.
+He called Nature naive (he included naturalness in Nature); those who
+seek her, sentimental; but he overlooked (as we saw in an earlier
+chapter) the fact that antiquity did not always remain naive, and
+that not all moderns are sentimental.
+
+As Rousseau's pupil he drew a sharp distinction between Nature and
+Art, and felt happy in solitude where 'man with his torment does not
+come,' lying, as he says in _The Bride of Messina_, like a child on
+the bosom of Nature.
+
+In Schiller's sense of the word, perhaps no poet has been more
+sentimental about Nature than Jean Paul.
+
+He was the humorous and satirical idyllist _par excellence_, and laid
+the scenes of his romances in idyllic surroundings, using the
+trifling events of daily life to wonderful purpose. There is an
+almost oriental splendour in his pages, with their audacious
+metaphors and mixture of ideas. With the exception of Lake Maggiore
+in _Titan_, he gives no set descriptions of landscape; but all his
+references to it, all his sunrises and sunsets, are saturated with
+the temperament of his characters, and they revel in feeling. They
+all love Nature, and wander indefatigably about their own
+countryside, finding the reflection of their feelings in her. There
+is a constant interweaving of the human soul and the universe;
+therein lies his pantheistic trait. 'To each man,' he said,[17]
+'Nature appears different, and the only question is, which is the
+most beautiful? Nature is for ever becoming flesh for mankind; outer
+Nature takes a different form in each mind.' Certainly the nature of
+Jean Paul was different from the Nature of other mortals. Was she
+more beautiful? He wrote of her in his usual baroque style, with a
+wealth of thought and feeling, and everywhere the sparkle of genius;
+but it is all presented in the strangest motley, as exaggerated and
+unenjoyable as can be. For example, from _Siebenkas_:
+
+    I appeared again then on the last evening of the year 1794, on
+    the red waves of which so many bodies, bled to death, were borne
+    away to the ocean of eternity.
+
+    To the butterfly--proboscis of Siebenkaes, enough honey--cells
+    were still open in every blue thistle-blossom of destiny.
+
+    When they had passed the gate--that is to say, the
+    un-Palmyra-like ruins of it--the crystal reflecting grotto of the
+    August night stood open and shining above the dark green earth,
+    and the ocean-calm of Nature stayed the wild storm of the human
+    heart. Night was drawing and closing her curtain (a sky full of
+    silent suns, not a breath of breeze moving in it) up above the
+    world, and down beneath it the reaped corn stood in the sheaves
+    without a rustle. The cricket with his one constant song, and a
+    poor old man gathering snails for the snail pits, seemed to be
+    the only things that dwelt in the far-reaching darkness.
+
+When it was autumn in his heart:
+
+    Above the meadows, where all the flowers were withered and dead;
+    above the fields, where the corn ears waved no more, floated dim
+    phantom forms, all pale and wan, faint pictures of the past. Over
+    the grand eternal woods and hills a biting mist was draped in
+    clinging folds, as if all Nature, trembling into dust, must
+    vanish in its wreaths.... But one bright thought pierced these
+    dark fogs of Nature and the soul, turning them to a white
+    gleaming mist, a dew all glittering with rainbow colours, and
+    gently lighting upon flowers.
+
+When his married life grew more unhappy, in December:
+
+    The heart of our sorrowful Firmian grew sadder yet, as he stood
+    upon this cold, burnt-out hearth-place of Nature.
+
+and in spring
+
+    it seemed to him as if his life dwelt, not in a bodily heart, but
+    in some warm and tender tear, as if his heavy-laden soul were
+    expanding and breaking away through some chink in its prison, and
+    melting into a tone of music, a blue ether wave.
+
+And _Titan_ expresses that inner enfranchisement which Nature bestows
+upon us:
+
+    Exalted Nature! when we see and love thee, we love our fellow-men
+    more warmly, and when we must pity or forget them, thou still
+    remainest with us, reposing before the moist eye like a verdant
+    chain of mountains in the evening red. Ah! before the soul in
+    whose sight the morning dew of its ideals has faded to a cold,
+    grey drizzle ... thou remainest, quickening Nature, with thy
+    flowers and mountains and cataracts, a faithful comforter; and
+    the bleeding son of the gods, cold and speechless, dashes the
+    drop of anguish from his eyes, that they may rest, far and clear,
+    on thy volcanoes, and on thy springs and on thy suns.
+
+This is sunset in his abstruse artistic handling:
+
+    The sun sinks, and the earth closes her great eye like that of a
+    dying god. Then smoke the hills like altars; out of every wood
+    ascends a chorus; the veils of day, the shadows, float around the
+    enkindled transparent tree-tops, and fall upon the gay, gem-like
+    flowers. And the burnished gold of the west throws back a dead
+    gold on the east, and tinges with rosy light the hovering breast
+    of the tremulous lark--the evening bell of Nature.
+
+And this sunrise:
+
+    The flame of the sun now shot up ever nearer to the kindled
+    morning clouds; at length in the heavens, in the brooks and
+    ponds, and in the blooming cups of dew, a hundred suns rose
+    together, while a thousand colours floated over the earth, and
+    one pure dazzling white broke from the sky. It seemed as if an
+    almighty earthquake had forced up from the ocean, yet dripping, a
+    new-created blooming plain, stretching out beyond the bounds of
+    vision, with all its young instincts and powers; the fire of
+    earth glowed beneath the roots of the immense hanging garden, and
+    the fire of heaven poured down its flames and burnt the colours
+    into the mountain summits and the flowers. Between the porcelain
+    towers of white mountains the coloured blooming heights stood as
+    thrones of the Fruit-Goddess; over the far-spread camp of
+    pleasure blossom-cups and sultry drops were pitched here and
+    there like peopled tents; the ground was inlaid with swarming
+    nurseries of grasses and little hearts, and one heart detached
+    itself after another with wings, or fins, or feelers, from the
+    hot breeding-cell of Nature, and hummed and sucked and smacked
+    its little lips, and sung: and for every little proboscis some
+    blossom-cup of; joy was already open. The darling child of the
+    infinite mother, man, alone stood with bright joyful eyes upon
+    the market-place of the living city of the sun, full of
+    brilliance and noise, and gazed, delighted, around him into all
+    its countless streets; but his eternal mother rested veiled in
+    immensity, and only by the warmth which went to his heart did he
+    feel that he was lying upon hers.
+
+For very overflow of thought and imagery and ecstasy of feeling, Jean
+Paul never achieved a balanced beauty of expression.
+
+The ideal classic standard which Winckelmann and Lessing had laid
+down--simple and plastic, calm because objective, crystal-clear in
+thought and expression--and which Goethe and Schiller had sought to
+realize and imbue with modern ideas, was too strictly limited for the
+Romanticists. Hyperion's words expressed their taste more accurately:
+'O, man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he thinks!' and they
+laid stress upon restless movement, fantastic, highly-coloured
+effects, a crass subjectivity, a reckless licence of the imagination.
+
+Actual and visible things were disregarded; they did not accord with
+this claim for infinity and the nebulous, for exploring the secret
+depths of the soul.
+
+It was perhaps a necessary reaction from Goethe's classicism; but it
+passed like a bad dream, after tending, thanks to its heterogeneous
+elements, now to the mediaeval period, now to that of Storm and
+Stress, and now to Goethe, Herder, and Winckelmann. It certainly
+contained germs of good, which have grown and flourished in our own
+day.
+
+In keeping with its whole character, the Romantic feeling for Nature
+was subjective and fantastic to excess, mystically enthusiastic,
+often with a dreamy symbolism at once deep and naive; its inmost core
+was pantheistic, with a pantheism shading off imperceptibly into
+mysticism.
+
+After _Werther_, there is perhaps no work of modern fiction in which
+Nature plays so artistic a part as in Holderlin's _Hyperion_.
+
+Embittered by life's failure to realize his ideals, he cries: 'But
+thou art still visible, sun in the sky! Thou art still green, sacred
+earth! The streams still rush to the sea, and shady trees rustle at
+noon. The spring's song of joy sings my mortal thoughts to sleep. The
+abundance of the universe nourishes and satiates my famished being to
+intoxication.'
+
+This mystical pantheism could not be more clearly expressed than
+here:
+
+    O blessed Nature! I know not how it happens when I lift my eyes
+    to your beauty; but all the joy of the sky is in the tears which
+    I shed before you--a lover before the lady of his love. When the
+    soft waves of the air play round my breast, my whole being is
+    speechless and listens. Absorbed in the blue expanse, I often
+    look up to the ether and down to the holy sea; and it seems as if
+    a kindred spirit opened its arms to me, as if the pain of
+    loneliness were lost in the divine life. To be one with all that
+    lives, in blessed self-forgetfulness to return to the All of
+    Nature, that is the height of thought and bliss--the sacred
+    mountain height, the place of eternal rest, where noon loses its
+    sultriness and thunder its voice, and the rough sea is like the
+    waves in a field of wheat.
+
+To such feeling as this the actualities are but fetters, hindering
+aspiration.
+
+'O, if great Nature be the daughter of a father, is the daughter's
+heart not his heart? Is not he her deepest feeling? But have I found
+it? Do I know it?'
+
+He tries to discern the 'soul of Nature,' hears 'the melody of
+morning light begin with soft notes.' He says to the flower, 'You are
+my sister,' and to the springs, 'We are of one race': he finds
+symbolic resemblance between his heart and all the days and seasons:
+he feels the beauty of the 'land like paradise,' while scarcely ever,
+except in the poem _Heidelberg_, giving a clear sketch of scenery. A
+number of fine comparisons from Nature are scattered through his
+writings [18]:
+
+  The caresses of the charming breezes.
+
+  She light, clear, flattering sea.
+
+  Sacred air, the sister of the mind which moves and
+  lives in us with fiery force, present everywhere immortal.
+
+  Earth, 'one of the flowers of the sky.'
+
+  Heaven, 'the unending garden of life.'
+
+  Beauty, that 'which is one and all.'
+
+He describes his love in a mystical form:
+
+    We were but one flower, and our souls lived in each other as
+    flowers do, when they love and hide their joy within a closed
+    calyx.... The clear starry night had now become my element, for
+    the beautiful life of my love grew in the stillness as in the
+    depths of earth gold grows mysteriously.
+
+He delights 'thus to drink the joy of the world out of one cup with
+the lady of his love.'
+
+'Yea, man is a sun, seeing all and transfiguring all when he loves;
+and when he does not love, he is like a dark dwelling in which a
+little smelly lamp is burning.' All this is soft and feminine, but it
+has real poetic charm.
+
+Beautiful too, though sad and gloomy, is his _Song of Fate_:
+
+    Nowhere may man abide,
+  But painfully from hour to hour
+  He stumbles blindly on to the unknown,
+  As water falls from rock to rock
+    The long year through.
+
+His pantheism finds expression in the odes--in _To Nature_, for
+instance:
+
+  Since my heart turneth upward to the sun
+    As one that hears her voice,
+  Hailing the stars as brothers, and the spring
+    As melody divine;
+  Since in the breath that stirs the wood thy soul,
+    The soul of joy, doth move
+  On the still waters of my heart--therefore,
+    O Nature! these are golden days to me!
+
+Tieck, too, was keenly alive to Nature. Spring[19]:
+
+  Look all around thee how the spring advances!
+  New life is playing through the gay green trees!
+  See how in yonder bower the light leaf dances
+  To the bird's tread and to the quivering breeze!
+  How every blossom in the sunlight glances!
+  The winter frost to his dark cavern flees,
+  And earth, warm wakened, feels through every vein
+  The kindling influence of the vernal rain.
+  Now silvery streamlets, from the mountain stealing,
+  Dance joyously the verdant vales along;
+  Cold fear no more the songster's tongue is sealing,
+  Down in the thick dark grove is heard his song.
+  And all their bright and lovely hues revealing,
+  A thousand plants the field and forest throng;
+  Light comes upon the earth in radiant showers,
+  And mingling rainbows play among the flowers.
+
+All his writings seem intoxicated with Nature. The hero of his novel
+_William Lovell_, scamp though he is, a man of criminal egotism whose
+only law is licence, is deeply in love with Nature.
+
+He wrote from Florence:
+
+    Nature refreshes my soul with her endless beauty. I am often full
+    of enthusiasm at the thousand charms of Nature and Art ... at
+    last my longing to travel to wonderful distant places is
+    satisfied. Even as a child, when I stood outside my father's
+    country-house, and gazed at the distant mountains and discovered
+    a windmill on the very line of the horizon, it seemed to beckon
+    me as it turned, my blood pulsed more quickly, my mind flew to
+    distant regions, a strange longing often filled my eyes with
+    tears.
+
+    Often it seems to me as if the enigma in ourselves were about to
+    be unriddled, as if we were suddenly to see the transformation of
+    all our feelings and strange experiences. Night surrounded me
+    with a hundred terrors, the transparent moonlight sky was like a
+    crystal dome overhead--in this world the most unusual feelings
+    were as shadows.
+
+'Franz Sternbald' had the same intoxicated feeling for Nature:
+
+    I should like to fill the whole world with songs of love, to move
+    moonrise and sunrise to echo back my joys and sorrows; and trees,
+    twigs, leaves, grasses to catch the melody and all repeat my
+    music with a thousand tongues.[20]
+
+To the Romantic School, Music and Nature were a passion; they longed
+to resolve all their feelings, like Byron, at one flash, into music.
+'For thought is too distant.' Night and the forest, moonlight and
+starlight, were in all their songs.
+
+There is a background of landscape all through _Franz Sternbald's
+Wanderings_.
+
+In the novels of the eighteenth century landscape had had no place;
+Hermes once gave a few lines to sunset, but excused it as an
+extravagance, and begged readers and critics not to think that he
+only wanted to fill up the page.
+
+Rousseau altered this; Sophie la Roche, in her _Freundschaftlichen
+Frauenzimmerbriefen_, introduced ruins, moonlight scenery, hills,
+vales, and flowering hedges, etc., into scenes of thought and
+feeling; and most of all, Goethe in _Werther_ tunes scenery and soul
+to one key. In his later romances he avoided descriptions of scenery.
+Jean Paul, like Tieck in _Franz Sternbald_, never spares us one
+sunset or sunrise. Some of Tieck's concise descriptions are very
+telling, like Theodore Storm's at the present day:
+
+    Rosy light quivered on the blades of grass, and morning moved in
+    waves along them.
+
+    The redder the evening grew, the heavier became his dreams; the
+    darkened trees, the shadows lengthening across the fields, the
+    smoke from the roofs of a little village, and the stars coming
+    into view one by one in the sky--all this moved him deeply, moved
+    him to a wistful compassion for himself.
+
+As Franz wanders about the wood:
+
+    He observes the trees reflected in a neighbouring pond. He had
+    never looked at landscape with this pleasure, it had never been
+    given to him to discern the various colours and their shadows,
+    the charm of the stillness, the effect of the foliage, as now in
+    the clear water. Till now he had never drawn a landscape, only
+    looked at it as a necessary adjunct to many historical pictures,
+    had never felt that lifeless Nature could herself compose
+    something whole and complete in itself, and so worthy to be
+    represented.
+
+Tieck's shorter stories, fairy tales and others, shew taste for the
+mysterious and indefinite aspects of Nature--reflections in water,
+rays of light, cloud forms:
+
+    They became to him the most fitting characters in which to record
+    that indefinite inexpressible feeling which gave its special
+    colour to his spiritual life.[21]
+
+The pantheism of Boehme, with whom he was closely associated, always
+attracted him, and in Jena he came under the influence of Steffens,
+and also of Schelling, whose philosophy of Nature called Nature a
+mysterious poem, a dreaming mind. This mind it became the chief aim
+of Novalis, as well as Tieck, to decipher.
+
+From simple descriptions of Nature he went on to read mystic meanings
+into her, seeking, psychologically in his novels and mystically in
+his fairy tales, to fathom the connection between natural phenomena
+and elementary human feeling. _Blond Egbert_ was the earliest example
+of this:
+
+    Night looked sullenly through the windows, and the trees without
+    rustled in the wet cold ... the moon looked fitfully through
+    breaks in the driving clouds.[22]
+
+In the same book Bertha describes the horror of loneliness, the vague
+longings, and then the overwhelming delight in new impressions, which
+seized her when she fled from home as a child and lost herself among
+the mountains.
+
+_The Runenberg_ gives in a very powerful way the idea of the weird
+fascination which the subterranean powers were supposed to exert over
+men, alluring and befooling them, and rousing their thirst for gold.
+
+The demoniacal elements in mountain scenery, its crags and abysses,
+are contrasted with idyllic plains. The tale is sprinkled over with
+descriptions of Nature, which give it a fairy-like effect.[23]
+
+The most extraordinary product of this School was Novalis. With him
+everything resolved itself into presentiment, twilight, night, into
+vague longings for a vague distant goal, which he expressed by the
+search for 'the blue flower.' This is from _Heinrich von
+Ofterdingen_:
+
+'The cheerful pageant of the glorious evening rocked him in soft
+imaginings; the flower of his heart was visible now and then as by
+sheet lightning.' He looked at Nature with the mystic's eye, and
+described her fantastically:
+
+    I am never tired of looking minutely at the different plants.
+    Growing plants are the direct language of the earth; each new
+    leaf, each remarkable flower, is a mystery which projects itself,
+    and because it cannot move with love and longing, nor attain to
+    words, is a dumb, quiet plant. When in solitude one finds such a
+    flower, does it not seem as if all around it were brightened,
+    and, best of all, do not the little feathered notes around it
+    remain near? One could weep for joy, and there, far from the
+    world, stick hands and feet into the earth, to take root, and
+    never more leave so delightful a spot. This green mysterious
+    carpet of love is drawn over the whole earth.
+
+It is not surprising that night should attract this unnaturally
+excited imagination most of all:
+
+    Sacred, inexpressible, mysterious Night, delicious balsam drops
+    from thy hands, from the poppy sheaf; thou upliftest the heavy
+    wings of the Spirit.[24]
+
+Night and death are delight and bliss.
+
+The fairy-like tale of _Hyacinth and Little Rose,_ with its charming
+personifications, is refreshing after all this:
+
+    The violet told the strawberry in confidence, she told her friend
+    the gooseberry, who never ceased to jeer when Hyacinth went, so
+    the whole garden and wood soon knew it, and when Hyacinth went
+    out, voices from all sides cried out, 'Little Rose is my
+    favourite.' When he goes into the wide world to find the land of
+    Isis, he asks the way of the animals, and of springs, rocks, and
+    trees, and the flowers smile at him, the springs offer him a
+    fresh drink, and there is wonderful music when he comes home. 'O
+    that men could understand the music of Nature!' cries the
+    listener in the tale. Then follows a description of 'the sweet
+    passion for the being of Nature and her enchanting raptures,' and
+    the charm of the poetic imagination which finds 'a great sympathy
+    with man's heart' in all the external world. For example, in the
+    breath of wind, which 'with a thousand dark and dolorous notes
+    seems to dissolve one's quiet grief into one deep melodious sigh
+    of all Nature.'
+
+    'And am I myself other than the stream when I gaze gloomily down
+    into its waters and lose my thoughts in its flow?' And in ecstasy
+    the youth exclaims: 'Whose heart does not leap for joy, when he
+    feels Nature's innermost life in its fulness, when that powerful
+    feeling, for which language has no other name than love and
+    bliss, spreads like a vapour through his being, and he sinks,
+    palpitating, on the dark alluring breast of Nature, and his poor
+    self is lost in the overwhelming waves of joy?'[25]
+
+Here we have the key to the romantic feeling for Nature--communion of
+the soul with Nature in a twilight mood of dreamy absorption.
+
+Yet amidst all this, real delight in romantic scenery was not quite
+lacking: witness Hulsen's[26] _Observations on Nature on a Journey
+through Switzerland_; and the genuine lyric of Nature, untainted by
+mystic and sickly influences, was still to be heard, as in
+Eichendorff's beautiful songs and his _Tautgenichts_.
+
+The Romantic School, in fact, far as it erred from the path, did
+enlarge the life of feeling generally, and with that, feeling for
+Nature, and modern literature is still bound to it by a thousand
+threads.
+
+Our modern rapture has thus been reached by a path which, with many
+deviations in its course, has come to us from a remote past, and is
+still carrying us farther forward.
+
+Its present intensity is due to the growth of science, for although
+feeling has become more realistic and matter-of-fact in these days of
+electricity and the microscope, love for Nature has increased with
+knowledge. Science has even become the investigator of religion, and
+the pantheistic tendency of the great poets has passed into us,
+either in the idea of an all-present God, or in that of organic force
+working through matter--the indestructible active principle of life
+in the region of the visible. Our explorers combine enthusiasm for
+Nature with their tireless search for truth--for example, Humboldt,
+Haeckel, and Paul Guessfeldt; and though, as the shadow side to this
+light, travelling and admiration of Nature have become a fashion, yet
+who nowadays can watch a great sunset or a storm over the sea, and
+remain insensible to the impression?
+
+Landscape painting and poetry shew the same deviations from the
+straight line of development as in earlier times. Our garden craft,
+like our architecture, is eclectic; but the English park style is
+still the most adequate expression of prevalent taste: spaces of turf
+with tree groups, a view over land or sea, gradual change from garden
+to field; to which has been added a wider cultivation of foreign
+plants. In landscape painting the zigzag course is very marked:
+landscapes such as Bocklin's, entirely projected by the imagination
+and corresponding to nothing on earth, hang together in our galleries
+with the most faithful studies from Nature. It is the same with
+literature. In fiction, novels which perpetuate the sentimental
+rhapsodies of an early period, and open their chapters with forced
+descriptions of landscape, stand side by side with the masterly work
+of great writers--for example, Spielhagen, Wilhelmine von Hillern,
+and Theodore Storm.
+
+In poetry, the lyric of Nature is inexhaustible. Heine, the greatest
+lyrist after Goethe, though his poetry has, like the Nixie, an
+enchantingly fair body with a fish's tail, wrote in the _Travels in
+the Harz_: 'How infinitely blissful is the feeling when the outer
+world of phenomena blends and harmonizes with the inner world of
+feeling; when green trees, thoughts, birds' songs, sweet melancholy,
+the azure of heaven, memory, and the perfume of flowers, run together
+and form the loveliest of arabesques.'
+
+But his delight in Nature was spoilt by irony and straining after
+effect--for example, in _The Fig Tree_; and although _The Lotos
+Flower_ is a gem, and the _North Sea Pictures_ shew the fine eye of a
+poet who, like Byron and Shelley, can create myths, his
+personifications as a whole are affected, and his personal feeling is
+forced upon Nature for the sake of a witty effect.
+
+Every element of Nature has found skilled interpreters both in poetry
+and painting, and technical facility and truth of representation now
+stand on one level with the appreciation of her charms.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+[Footnote 1: _Kritische Gaenge_. Comp. Vischer, _Ueber den optischen
+Formsinn,_ and Carl du Prel, _Psychologie der Lyrik_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: As in elegy _Ghatarkarparam_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Comp. Humboldt, _Cosmos_. Schnaase, _Geschichte der
+bildenden Kuenste_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefuehls bei den Griechen
+und Roemern_, Biese.]
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+[Footnote 1: Lucos ac nemora consecrant deorumque nominibus adpellant
+secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident, Tac. Germ. Comp. Grimm,
+_Deutsche Mythologie_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Grimm. Simrock, _Handbuch der Mythologie_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Grimm.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Grimm.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Grimm.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Geschichte der bildenden Kuenste_. Comp. Grimm,
+_Deutsche Rechtsaltertuemer_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Grimm.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Carriere, _Die Poesie_.]
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+[Footnote 1: Clement of Rome, i _Cor._ 19, 20. Zoeckler, _Geschichte
+der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Comp. _Vita S. Basilii_.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Basilii opera omnia_. Parisus, 1730.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Cosmos_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Biese, _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefuehls bei den
+Griechen und Roemern_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Melanges philosophiques, historiques, et litteraires_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Homily_ 4.]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Homily_ 6.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Biese, _Die Entwickelung des Naturgefuehls bei den
+Griechen und Roemern_.
+
+'In spring the Cydmian apple trees give blossom watered by river
+streams in the hallowed garden of the nymphs; in spring the buds grow
+and swell beneath the leafy shadow of the vine branch. But my heart
+knoweth no season of respite; nay, like the Thracian blast that
+rageth with its lightning, so doth it bear down from Aphrodite's
+side, dark and fearless, with scorching frenzy in its train, and from
+its depths shaketh my heart with might.']
+
+[Footnote 10: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 11: _Deutsche Rundschau_, 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 13: Chrysostom was not only utilitarian, but praised and
+enjoyed the world's beauty. From the fifth to third century, Greek
+progress in feeling for Nature can be traced from unconscious to
+conscious pleasure in her beauty.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _De Mortalitate_, cap. 4.]
+
+[Footnote 15: _Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Literatur_.]
+
+[Footnote 16: When one thinks of Sappho, Simonides, Theocritus,
+Meleager, Catullus, Ovid, and Horace, it cannot be denied that this
+is true of Greek and Roman lyric.]
+
+[Footnote 17: As in the Homeric time, when each sphere of Nature was
+held to be subject to and under the influence of its special deity.
+But it cannot be admitted that metaphor was freer and bolder in the
+hymns; on the contrary, it was very limited and monotonous.]
+
+[Footnote 18: In _Cathemerinon_.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Comp. fragrant gardens of Paradise, Hymn 3.
+
+In Hamartigenia he says that the evil and ugly in Nature originates
+in the devil.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Ebert.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The Robinsonade of the hermit Bonosus upon a rocky
+island is interesting.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 23: Comp. _ad Paulinum_, epist. 19, _Monum. German._ v. 2.]
+
+[Footnote 24: _Carm. nat. 7._]
+
+[Footnote 25: _Ep._ xi.]
+
+[Footnote 26: _Migne Patrol_ 60.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Migne Patrol_ 59.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Ebert.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 30: Comp. Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Migne Patrol_ 58.]
+
+[Footnote 32: _Carm._ lib. i.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _Amoenitas loci_: Variorum libri Lugduni, 1677.]
+
+[Footnote 34: _Monum. Germ._, 4th ed., Leo, lib. viii.]
+
+[Footnote 35: _Deutsche Rundschau_, 1882.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Monum. German Histor., poet. lat. medii aevi_, I.
+Berlin 1881, ed. Duemmler.  Alcuin, _Carmen_ 23.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Zoeckler, _Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen
+Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_. 'On rocky crags by the sea, on
+shores fringed by oak or beech woods, in the shady depths of forests,
+on towering mountain tops, or on the banks of great rivers, one sees
+the ruins or the still inhabited buildings which once served as the
+dwellings of the monks who, with the cross as their only weapon, were
+the pioneers of our modern culture. Their flight from the life of
+traffic and bustle in the larger towns was by no means a flight from
+the beauties of Nature.' The last statement is only partly true. In
+the prime of the monastic era the beauties of Nature were held to be
+a snare of the devil. Still, in choosing a site, beauty of position
+was constantly referred to as an auxiliary motive. 'Bernhard loved
+the valley,' 'but Bernhard chose mountains,' are significant
+phrases.]
+
+[Footnote 38: Comp. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, on the old Germanic
+idea of a conflict between winter and spring.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Duemmler, vi. _Carolus et Leo papa._]
+
+[Footnote 40: Walahfridi Strabi, _De cultura hortorum_.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Comp. H. von Eichen, _Geschichte und System der
+mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung_. Stuttg. Cotta, 1887.]
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+[Footnote 1: Prutz, _Geschichte der Kreuzzuege_. Berlin, 1883.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Allatius, _Symmicta_. Coeln, 1653.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem heiligen Lande_,
+Roehricht und Meissner. Berlin, 1880.]
+
+[Footnote 4: For excellent bibliographical evidence see _Die
+geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter_ in supplement to
+_Muenchner Allgem. Zeitung_, January 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Comp. Oehlmann, _Die Alpenpaesse im Mittelalter, Jahrbuch
+fuer Schweizer_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 7: Fr. Diez, _Leben und Werke der Troubadours_. Zwickau,
+1829]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Des Minnesangs Fruehling_, von Lachmann-Haupt.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Geschichte der Malerei._ Woermann und Wottmann.]
+
+[Footnote 10: 'Detailed study of Nature had begun; but the attempt to
+blend the separate elements into a background landscape in
+perspective betrayed the insecurity and constraint of dilettante work
+at every point.' Ludwig Kaemmerer on the period before Van Eyck in
+_Die Landschaft in der deutschen Kunst bis zum Tode Albrecht Duerers_.
+Leipzig, 1880]
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+[Footnote 1: _Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien._]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Untersuchungen ueber die kampanische Wandmalerei._
+Leipzig, 1873.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Comp. Schnaase, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Argon_, ii. 219; iii. 260, 298. Comp. Cic. _ad Att._,
+iv. 18, 3.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland._
+Berlin, 1882. (Oncken, _Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstettungen_,
+ii. 8.)]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Itinerar. syr._, Burckhardt ii.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Loci specie percussus_, Burckhardt i.]
+
+[Footnote 8: In his paper 'Kulturgeschichte und Naturwissenschaft'
+(_Deutsche Rundschau_, vol. xiii.), which is full both of original
+ideas and of exaggerated summary opinions, Du Bois Reymond fails to
+do justice to this, and altogether misjudges Petrarch's feeling for
+Nature. After giving this letter in proof of mediaeval feeling, he
+goes on to say: 'Full of shame and remorse, he descends the mountain
+without another word. The poor fellow had given himself up to
+innocent enjoyment for a moment, without thinking of the welfare of
+his soul, and instead of gloomy introspection, had looked into the
+enticing outer world. Western humanity was so morbid at that time,
+that the consciousness of having done this was enough to cause
+painful inner conflict to a man like Petrarch--a man of refined
+feeling, and scientific, though not a deep thinker.' Even granting
+this, which is too tragically put, the world was on the very eve of
+freeing itself from this position, and Petrarch serves as a witness
+to the change.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Comp., too, _De Genealogia Deorum_, xv., in which he
+says of trees, meadows, brooks, flocks and herds, cottages, etc.,
+that these things 'animum mulcent,' their effect is 'mentem in se
+colligere.']
+
+[Footnote 10: Comp. Voigt, _Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini als Papst
+Pius II. und sein Zeitalter_.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Comp. Geiger and Ad. Wolff, _Die Klassiker aller Zeiten
+und Nationen_.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Quando mira la terra ornata e bella. Rime di V.
+Colonna.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Ombrosa selva che il mio duolo ascolti.]
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+[Footnote 1: Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen._
+Berlin, 1881. (_Allgem. Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen_, von
+Oncken.)  _Die neu Welt der Landschaften_, etc. Strasburg, 1534.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _De rebus oceanicis et novo orbi Decades tres Petri
+Martyris at Angleria Mediolanensis, Coloniae_, 1574.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Il viaggio di Giovan Leone e Le Navagazioni, di Aloise
+da Mosto. di Pietro, di Cintra. di Anxone, di un Piloto Portuguese e
+di Vasco di Gama quali si leggono nella raccolta di Giovambattista
+Ramusio._ Venezia, 1837.]
+
+[Footnote 4: For example, this from Ramusio: 'And the coast is all
+low land, full of most beautiful and very tall trees, which are
+evergreen, as the leaves do not wither as do those in our country,
+but a new leaf appears before the other is cast off: the trees extend
+right down into the marshy tract of shore, and look as if flourishing
+on the sea. The coast is a most glorious sight, and in my opinion,
+though I have cruised about in many parts both in the East and in the
+West, I have never seen any coast which surpassed this in beauty. It
+is everywhere washed by many rivers, and small streams of little
+importance, as big ships will not be able to enter them.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Ideler, _Examen critique_. Cosmos.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Coleccion de los viajes y decubrimientos que hicieron
+por mar los espanoles desde fines del siglo XV. con varios documentos
+ineditos ... co-ordinata e illustrada por Don Martin Fernandez de
+Navarrete._ Madrid, 1858.]
+
+[Footnote 7: _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen._]
+
+[Footnote 8: As he lay sick and despairing off Belem, an unknown
+voice said to him compassionately: 'O fool! and slow to believe and
+serve thy God.... He gave thee the keys of those barriers of the
+ocean sea which were closed with such mighty chains, and thou wast
+obeyed through many lands, and hast gained an honourable fame
+throughout Christendom.' In a letter to the King and Queen of Spain
+in fourth voyage.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Humboldt.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 11: Zoeckler, _Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen
+Theologie und Naturwissenschaft_.]
+
+[Footnote 12: F. Hammerich, _St Birgitta._]
+
+[Footnote 13: Zoeckler, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 14: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Comp. Wilkens' _Fray Luis de Leon_. Halle, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 18: Humboldt.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Comp. Carriere, _Die Poesie_.]
+
+[Footnote 20: Zoeckler, in Herzog's _Real-Encykl._, xxi., refers to
+'Le Solitaire des Indes ou la Vie de Gregoire Lopez.' Goerres, _Die
+christliche Mystik_; S. Arnold, _Leben der Glaeubigen_; French, _Life
+of St Teresa_.]
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+[Footnote 1: In _Shakespeare Studien_, chap. 4, Hense treats
+Shakespeare's attitude towards Nature very suggestively; but I have
+gone my own way.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Hamlet_, i. 3: 'The canker galls the infants of the
+spring too oft before their buttons be disclosed.' Comp. i. 1; _Romeo
+and Juliet_, i. 1; _Henry VI._, part 2, iii. 1; _Tempest_, i. 2.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Comp. Henkel, _Das Goethe'sche Gleichnis_; _Henry IV._,
+2nd pt., iv. 4; _Richard II._, i. i; _Othello_, iii. 3, and v. 2;
+_Cymbeline_, ii. 4; _King John_, ii. 2; _Hamlet_, iii. 1; _Tempest_,
+iv. 2.]
+
+[Footnote 4: See Hense for bucolic idyllic traits.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Poetische Personifikation in griechischen Dichtungen._]
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+[Footnote 1: Comp. Woermann, _Ueber den landschaftlichen Natursinn
+der Griechen und Roemer, Vorstudien zu einer Arckaeologie der
+Landschaftsmalerei_. Muenchen, 1871.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Comp. Schnaase, _Geschichte der bildenden Kuenste im 15
+Jahrhundert_, edited by Luebke. Stuttgart, 1879.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Falke, _Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks_. Leipzig,
+1880]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Geschichte der deutschen Renaissance_. Stuttgart,
+1873.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Comp. also Kaemmerer, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 6: Lubke, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 7: Lubke refers to A. von Zahn's searching work, _Durer's
+Kunstlehre und sein Verhaeltnis zur Renaissance_. Leipzig, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Proportion III., B.T. iii. b. Nuremberg, 1528.]
+
+[Footnote 9: _Op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 10: In what follows, I have borrowed largely from
+Rosenberg's interesting writings (_Greuzboten_, Nos. 43 and 44,
+1884-85), and still more from Schnaase, Falke, and Carriere, as I
+myself only know the masters represented at Berlin and Munich.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Kaemmerer, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 12: Kaemmerer, _op. cit._]
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+[Footnote 1: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und
+Deutschland._]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und
+Deutschland._]
+
+[Footnote 3: Zoeckler.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Comp. Hase, _Sebastian Frank von Woerd der
+Schwarmgeist_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Comp. Hubert, _Kleine Schriften_.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Zoeckler, etc.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Comp. Uhland, _Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und
+Sage_. Alte hoch und nieder deutsche Volkslieder, where plants, ivy,
+holly, box, and willow, represent summer and winter.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Uhland.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Uhland.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Wunderhorn.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Biese, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 12: Fred Cohn, '_Die Gaerten in alter und neuer Zeit,' D.
+Rundschau_ 18, 1879. In Italy in the sixteenth century there was a
+change to this extent, that greenery was no longer clipt, but allowed
+to grow naturally, and the garden represented the transition from
+palace to landscape, from bare architectural forms to the free
+creations of Nature. The passion for flowers--the art of the pleasure
+garden, flourished in Holland and Germany. (Falke.)]
+
+[Footnote 13: W.H. Riehl states (_Kulturstudien aus drei
+Jahrhunderten_) that Berlin, Augsburg, Leipzig, Darmstadt, and
+Mannheim were described in the seventeenth century as having 'very
+fine and delightful positions'; and the finest parts of the Black
+Forest, Harz and Thuringian mountains as 'very desolate,' deserted,
+and monotonous, or, at best, as not particularly pleasant scenery. If
+only a region were flat and treeless, a delicious landscape could be
+charmed out of it. Welcker, Court physician at Hesse Cassel,
+describing Schlangenbad in 1721, said that it lay in a desolate,
+unpleasing district, where nothing grew but foliage and grass, but
+that through ingenious planting of clipt trees in lines and cross
+lines, some sort of artistic effect had been produced. Clearly the
+principles of French garden-craft had become a widely accepted dogma
+of taste. Riehl contrasts the periwig period with the mediaeval, and
+concludes that the mediaeval backgrounds of pictures implied feeling
+for the wild and romantic. He says: 'In the Middle Ages the painters
+chose romantic jagged forms of mountains and rocks for backgrounds,
+hence the wild, bare, and arid counted as a prototype of beautiful
+scenery, while some centuries later such forms were held to be too
+rustic and irregular for beauty.' One cannot entirely agree with
+this. He weakens it himself in what follows. 'It was not a real scene
+which rose Alp-like before their mind's eye, but an imaginary and
+sacred one; their fantastic, romantic ideal called for rough and
+rugged environment': and adds, arguing in a circle, 'Their minds
+passed then to real portraiture of Nature, and decided the landscape
+eye of the period.' My own opinion is that the loftiness of the
+'heroic' mountain backgrounds seemed suitable for the sacred subjects
+which loomed so large and sublime in their own minds, and that these
+backgrounds did not reveal their ideal of landscape beauty, nor 'a
+romantic feeling for Nature,' nor 'a taste for the romantic,' nor yet
+a wondrous change of view in the periwig period.]
+
+[Footnote 14: In his _Harburg Program_ of 1883 _(Beitraege zur
+Geschichte des Naturgefuehls_), after an incomplete survey of ancient
+and modern writings on the subject, Winter sketches the development
+of modern feeling for Nature in Germany from Opitz to 1770, as shewn
+in the literature of that period, basing his information chiefly upon
+Goedeke's _Deutsche Dichtung._]
+
+[Footnote 15: Comp. Chovelius _Die bedeutendsten deutschen Romanz des
+17 Jahrhunderts_. Leipzig, 1866.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Chovelius.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Daniel Lohenstein's _Blumen_. Breslau, 1689.]
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+[Footnote 1: Freiherr von Ditfurth, _Deutsche Volks und
+Gesellschaftslieder des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts_, 1872.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Goedeke-Tittmannschen Sammlung, xiii.,
+_Trutz-Nachtigall._]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Tittmann's _Deutsche Dichter des 17 Jahrhunderts_, vol.
+vi.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Comp., too, iv. 5: 'Die ihr alles hoert und saget, Luft
+and Forst und Meer durchjaget; Echo, Sonne, Mond, und Wind, Sagt mir
+doch, wo steckt mein Kind?'
+
+21. 'Den sanften West bewegt mein Klagen, Es rauscht der Bach den
+Seufzern nach Aus Mitleid meiner Plagen; Die Voegel schweigen, Um nur
+zu zeigen Dass diese schoene Tyrannei Auch Tieren ueberlegen sei.'
+_Abendlied_ contains beautiful personifications: 'Der Feierabend ist
+gemacht, Die Arbeit schlaeft, der Traum erwacht, Die Sonne fuehrt die
+Pferde trinken; Der Erdkreis wandert zu der Ruh, Die Nacht drueckt ihm
+die Augen zu, Die schon dem suessen Schlafe winken.']
+
+[Footnote 6: Hettner, _Litteraturgeschichte des 18 Jahrhunderts_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Lappenberg in _Zeitschrift fuer Hamburgische Geschichte_,
+ii. Hettner, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 8: 'Ye fields and woods, my refuge from the toilsome world
+of business, receive me in your quiet sanctuaries and favour my
+Retreat and thoughtful Solitude. Ye verdant plains, how gladly I
+salute ye! Hail all ye blissful Mansions! Known Seats! Delightful
+Prospects! Majestick Beautys of this earth, and all ye rural Powers
+and Graces! Bless'd be ye chaste Abodes of happiest Mortals who here
+in peaceful Innocence enjoy a Life unenvy'd, the Divine, whilst with
+its bless'd Tranquility it affords a happy Leisure and Retreat for
+Man, who, made for contemplation and to search his own and other
+natures, may here best meditate the cause of Things, and, plac'd
+amidst the various scenes of Nature, may nearer view her Works. O
+glorious Nature! supremely fair and sovereignly good! All-loving and
+All-lovely All-Divine! Whose looks are so becoming, and of such
+infinite grace, whose study brings such Wisdom, and whose
+contemplation such Delight.... Since by thee (O Sovereign mind!) I
+have been form'd such as I am, intelligent and rational; since the
+peculiar Dignity of my Nature is to know and contemplate Thee; permit
+that with due freedom I exert those Facultys with which thou hast
+adorn'd me. Bear with my ventrous and bold approach. And since not
+vain Curiosity, nor fond Conceit, nor Love of aught save Thee alone,
+inspires me with such thoughts as these, be thou my Assistant, and
+guide me in this Pursuit; whilst I venture thus to tread the
+Labyrinth of wide Nature, and endeavour to trace thee in thy Works.']
+
+[Footnote 9: Comp. Jacob von Falke, '_Der englische Garten_' (_Nord
+und Sued_, Nov. 1884), and his _Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Dessins des edifices, meubles, habits, machines, et
+utensils des Chinois_, 1757.]
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+[Footnote 1: '_Die Alpen im Lichte verschiedener Zeitalter_,'
+_Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Vortraege_, Virchow und Holtzendorff.
+Berlin, 1877.]
+
+[Footnote 2:
+
+  Geschaefte Zwang und Grillen Entweihn nicht diese Trift;
+  Ich finde hier im Stillen Des Unmuts Gegengift.
+  Es webet, wallt, und spielet, Das Laub um jeden Strauch,
+  Und jede Staude fuehlet Des lauen Zephyrs Hauch.
+  Was mir vor Augen schwebet Gefaellt und huepft und singt,
+  Und alles, alles lebet, Und alles scheint verjuengt.
+  Ihr Thaeler und ihr Hoehen Die Lust und Sommer schmueckt!
+  Euch ungestoert zu sehen, Ist, was mein Herz erquickt.
+  Die Reizung freier Felder Beschaemt der Gaerten Pracht,
+  Und in die offnen Waelder Wird ohne Zwang gelacht....
+  In jaehrlich neuen Schaetzen zeigt sich des Landmanns Glueck,
+  Und Freiheit und Ergoetzen Erheitern seinen Blick....
+  Ihm prangt die fette Weide Und die betante Flur;
+  Ihm gruenet Lust und Freude Ihm malet die Natur.']
+
+[Footnote 3: _Litteratur geschichte_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Saemtliche poetische Werke_, J.P. Uz. Leipzig, 1786.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Saemtliche Werke_. Berlin, 1803.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Saemtliche Werke_, J.G. Jacobi, vol. viii. Zurich,
+1882.]
+
+[Footnote 7: He said of his garden at Freiburg, which was laid out in
+terraces on a slope, that all that Flora and Pomona could offer was
+gathered there. It had a special Poet's Corner on a hillock under a
+poplar, where a moss-covered seat was laid for him upon some
+limestone rock-work; white and yellow jasmine grew round, and laurels
+and myrtles hung down over his head. Here he would rest when he
+walked in the sun; on his left was a mossy Ara, a little artificial
+stone altar on which he laid his book, and from here he could gaze
+across the visible bit of the distant Rhine to the Vosges, and give
+himself up undisturbed to his thoughts.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Gessners _Schriften_. Zurich, 1770.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Spalding, _Die Bestimmung des Menschen_. Leipzig, 1768.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Klopstock's _Briefe_. Brunswick, 1867.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Comp. _Odes_, 'Die Kunst Tialfs' and 'Winterfreuden.']
+
+[Footnote 12: _Briefe_.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Julian Schmidt.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Comp. his letters from Switzerland, which contain
+nothing particular about the scenery, although he crossed the Lake of
+Zurich, and 'a wicked mountain' to the Lake of Zug and Lucerne.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Claudius, who, at a time when the lyric both of poetry
+and music was lost in Germany in conventional tea and coffee songs,
+was the first to rediscover the direct expression of feeling--that
+is, Nature feeling. (Storm's _Hausbuch_.)]
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+[Footnote 1: I have obtained much information and suggestion from
+'_Ueber die geographische Kenntnis der Alpen im Mittelalter_,' and
+'_Ueber die Alpine Reiselitteratur in fruherer Zeit_,' in _Allgem.
+Zeitung_. Jan. 11, 1885, and Sept. 1885, respectively.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Evagatorium 3, Bibliothek d. litterar. Vereins_.
+Stuttgart, 1849.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Bibliothek des litterar. Vereins_. Stuttgart, 1886.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Descriptio Larii lacus_. Milan, 1558.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Itinerarium Basil_. 1624.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Osenbrueggen, _Wanderungen in der Schweiz_, 1867;
+_Entwickelungsgeschichte des Schweizreisens_; Friedlaender, _Ueber die
+Entstehung und Entwickelung_.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Comp. Erich Schmidt, _Richardson, Rousseau, and Goethe_.
+Jena, 1875.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Remarks on several parts of Italy. London, 1761.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Letters of Lady M. Wortley Montagu, Sept. 25, 1718.]
+
+[Footnote 10: Friedlaender, _op. cit._]
+
+[Footnote 11: Schmidt. Moser's description of a sensitive soul in
+_Patriotischen Phantasien_ is most amusing.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Laprade adduces little of importance in his book _Le
+Sentiment de la Nature_ (2nd edition), the first volume of which I
+have dealt with elsewhere. I have little in common with Laprade,
+although he is the only writer who has treated the subject
+comprehensively and historically. His standpoint is that of Catholic
+theology; he never separates feeling for Nature from religion, and is
+severe upon unbelievers. The book is well written, and in parts
+clever, but only touches the surface and misses much. His position is
+thus laid down: 'Le vrai sentiment de la Nature, le seul poetique, le
+seul fecond et puissant, le seul innocent de tout danger, est celui
+qui ne separe jamais l'idee des choses visibles de la pensee de
+Dieu.' He accounts for the lack of any important expressions of
+feeling for Nature in French classics with: 'Le genie de la France
+est le genie de l'action.' and 'L'ame humaine est le but de la
+poesie.' He recognizes that even with Fenelon 'la Nature reste a ses
+yeux comme une simple decoration du drame que l'homme y joue, le
+poete en lui ne la regarde jamais a travers les yeux du mystique.' Of
+the treatment of Nature in La Fontaine's Fables, he says: 'Ce n'est
+pas peindre la Nature, c'est l'abolir'; and draws this conclusion:
+'Le sentiment de l'infini est absent de la poesie du dix-septieme
+siecle aussi bien que le sentiment de la Nature'; and again:
+'L'esprit general du dix-huitieme siecle est la negation meme de la
+poesie ... l'amour de la Nature n'etait guerre autre chose qu'une
+haine deguisee et une declaration de guerre a la societe et a la
+religion. Il n'y a pai trace du sentiment legitime et profond qui
+attire l'artiste et le poete vers les splendeurs de la creation,
+revelatrices du monde invisible. Ne demandez pas an dix-huiteme
+siecle la poesie de la Nature, pas plus que celle du coeur.' Buffon
+shews 'l'etat poetique des sciences de la Nature,' but his brilliant
+prose painting lacks 'la presence de Dieu, la revelation de l'infini
+les harmonies de l'ame et de la Nature n'existent pas pour Buffon....
+plus de la rhetorique que de vrai sentiment de la Nature.']
+
+[Footnote 13: Comp. the garden of Elysium in _La Nouvelle Heloise:_
+Where the gardener's hand is nowhere to be discerned, nothing
+contradicts the idea of a desert island, and I cannot perceive any
+footsteps of men ... you see nothing here in an exact row, nothing
+level, Nature plants nothing by the ruler.']
+
+[Footnote 14: _OEuvres de Jacques Bernardin Henri de Saint Pierre_.]
+
+[Footnote 15: 'B. de S. Pierre a plus que Rousseau les facultes
+propres du paysagiste, l'amour meme du pittoresque, la vive curiosite
+des sites, des animaux, et des plants, la couleur et une certaine
+magie speciale du pinceau,' Laprade adds the reproof: 'Sa pensee
+religieuse est au-dessous de son talent d'artiste et en abaisse le
+niveau.']
+
+[Footnote 16: _Voyage round the World_, 1772-1775.]
+
+[Footnote 17: Paul Lemnius, 1597, _Landes Rugiae_; Kosegarten,
+1777-1779; Rellstab, 1799, _Ausflucht noch der Insel Ruegen;_ Navest,
+1800, _Wanderungen durch die Insel Ruegen_; Gruembke, 1805; _Indigena,
+Streifzuege durch das Ruegenland_. J.P. Hackert in 1762, and K. D.
+Friedrichs in 1792, painted the scenery. Comp. E. Boll, _Die Inset
+Ruegen_, 1858.]
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+[Footnote 1: Comp. Gottschall, _Poetik_. Breslau, 1853.]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Ueber Ossian und die Lieder alter Voelker_, Saemtliche
+_Werke_, Teil 7.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Op. cit._, Teil 15.]
+
+[Footnote 4: _Zur Philosophie und Gesehichte,_ 2 Teil.]
+
+[Footnote 5: J.G. Sulzer's _Unterredungen ueber die Schoenheit der
+Naetur nebst desselben moralischen Betrachtungen ueber besondere
+Gegenstaende der Naturlehre_ is typical. Charites describes his
+conversion to the love of Nature by his friend Eukrates. Eukrates
+woke him at dawn and led him to a hill close by, as the sun rose. The
+fresh air, the birds' songs, and the wide landscape move him, and
+Eukrates points out that the love of Nature is the 'most natural of
+pleasures,' making the labourer so happy that he forgets servitude
+and misery, and sings at his work. 'This pleasure is always new to
+us, and the heart, provided it be not possessed by vanity or stormy
+passions, lies always open to it. Do you not know that they who are
+in trouble, and, above all, they who are in love, find their chief
+relief here? Is not a sick man better cheered by sunshine than by any
+other refreshment?' Then he points out Nature's harmonies and changes
+of colour, and warns Charites to avoid the storms of the passions.
+'Yonder brook is a picture of our soul; so long as it runs quietly
+between its banks, the water is clear and grass and flowers border
+it; but when it swells and flows tumultuously, all this ornament is
+torn away, and it becomes turbid. To delight in Nature the mind must
+be free.... She is a sanctity only approached by pure souls.... As
+only the quiet stream shews the sky and the objects around, so it is
+only on quiet souls that Nature's pictures are painted; ruffled water
+reflects nothing.' He waxes eloquent about birds' songs, flowers, and
+brooks, and wanders by the hour in the woods, 'all his senses open to
+Nature's impressions,' which are 'rays from that source of all
+beauty, the sight of which will one day bless the soul.' His friend
+is soon convinced that Nature cannot be overpraised, and that her art
+is endlessly great.]
+
+[Footnote 6: _Vorn Gefuehl des Schoenen und Physiologie ueberhaupt._
+Winter.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Comp. _Das Fluchtigste_. 'Tadle nicht der Nachtigallen,
+Bald verhallend suesses Lied,' oder 'Nichts verliert sich,' etc.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Herder's _Nachlass_, Duentzer und F.G. von Herder, 1857.]
+
+[Footnote 9: Bernay's _Der junge Goethe_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: _Die Sproedde, Die Bekehrte, Maerz, Lust und Qual, Luna,
+Gegenwart_.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Laprade is all admiration for the 'incomparable artiste
+et poete inspire du sentiment de la Nature, c'est qu'il excelle a
+peindre le monde exterieur et le coeur humain l'un par l'autre, qu'il
+mele les images de l'univers visible a l'expression des sentiments
+intimes, de maniere a n'en former qu'un seul tissu.... Tous les
+elements d'un objet d'une situation apparaissent a la fois, et dans
+leur harmonie, essentielle a cet incomparable esprit.' He is
+astonished at the symbolism in _Werthtr_: 'Chaque lettre repond a la
+saison ou elle est ecrite.... l'idee et l'image s'identifient dans un
+fait supreme, dans un cri; il se fait entre l'emotion intime et
+l'impression du dehors une sorte de fusion.' And despite Goethe's
+Greek paganism and pantheism, he declares: 'Le nom de Goethe marque
+une de ces grandes dates, une de ces grandes revolutions de la
+poesie--la plus grande, nous le croyons, depuis Homer.' ... 'Goethe
+est la plus haut expression poetique des tendances de notre siecle
+vers le monde exterieur et la philosophie de la Nature.']
+
+[Footnote 12: Comp. _Tagebucher und Briefe Goethe's aus Italien an
+Frau von Stein und Herder_. E. Schmidt, Weimar, 1886.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Julian Schmidt.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _The Lady of the Lake_ breathes a delightful freshness,
+the very spirit of mountain and wood, free alike from the moral
+preaching of Wordsworth, and from the storms of passion.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Laprade.]
+
+[Footnote 16: 'Sa formule religieuse, c'est une question; sa pensee,
+c'est le doute ... l'artiste divinise chaque detail. Son pantheisme
+ne s'applique pas seulement a l'ensemble des choses; Dieu tout entier
+est reellement present poor lui dans chaque fragment de matiere dans
+le plus immonde animal ... c'est une religion aussi vieille que
+l'humanite decline; cela s'appelle purement et simplement le
+fetichisme.' (Laprade.)]
+
+[Footnote 17: _Vorschule der AEsthetik_. Compare 'With every genius a
+new Nature is created for us in the further unveiling of the old.' 2
+Aufi. _Berlin Reimer_, 1827.]
+
+[Footnote 18: 'Like a lily softly swaying in the hushed air, so my
+being moves in its elements, in the charming dream of her.' 'Our
+souls rush forward in colossal plans, like exulting streams rushing
+perpetually through mountain and forest.' 'If the old mute rock of
+Fate did not stand opposing them, the waves of the heart would never
+foam so beautifully and become mind.' 'There is a night in the soul
+which no gleam of starlight, not even dry wood, illuminates,' etc.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Comp. Tieck's _Biographie von Koepke_. Brandes.]
+
+[Footnote 20: _Franz Sternbald_, I. Berlin, 1798.]
+
+[Footnote 21: Haym, _Die romantische Schule_. Berlin, 1870.]
+
+[Footnote 22: _Phantasus_, i. Berlin, 1812.]
+
+[Footnote 23: 'A young hunter was sitting in the heart of the
+mountains in a thoughtful mood beside his fowling-piece, while the
+noise of the water and the woods was sounding through the solitude
+... it grew darker ... the birds of night began to shoot with fitful
+wing along their mazy courses ... unthinkingly he pulled a straggling
+root from the earth, and on the instant heard with affright a stifled
+moan underground, which winded downwards in doleful tones, and died
+plaintively away in the deep distance. The sound went through his
+inmost heart; it seized him as if he had unwittingly touched the
+wound, of which the dying frame of Nature was expiring in its agony.'
+(Runenberg.)]
+
+[Footnote 24: _Hymnen an die Nacht_.]
+
+[Footnote 25: In _Die Lehrlinge von Sais_.]
+
+[Footnote 26: _Athenaeum_, iii., 1800.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Addison
+AEschylus
+Agrippa v. Nettesheim
+Alamanni
+Alberti, Leon
+Alcantara
+Alcuin
+Alexander
+Ambrose
+Angilbert
+Anno v. Coeln
+Apollonios Rhodios
+Apollonius Sidonius
+Apuleius
+Aquinus, Thomas
+Aribert v. Mailand
+Aribo
+Ariosto
+Aristophanes
+Aristotle
+Augustine
+Augustus
+Ausonius
+Aventinus
+Avitus
+
+Baccioli, Lucca
+Bakhuysen
+Basil
+Beauvais, V. v.
+Beda
+v. Bern
+Bernhard v. Clairvaux
+Bernhard v. Hildesheim
+Bernhard v. Ventadour
+Bertran de Born
+Birgitta
+Blair
+de Bles
+Boccaccio
+Boecklin
+Boehme
+Boetius
+Boie
+Bojardo
+Bonaventura
+Boucher
+Bouts
+Braunschweig-Wolfenbuettel, A. v.
+Brockes
+Brueghel, Peter and Jan
+Bruno
+Buffon
+Buerger
+Burkhard v. Monte Sion
+Byron,
+
+Calderon
+Calpernius
+Camoens
+Campanella
+Carew
+Cassiodorus
+Catullus
+Celtes
+Chambers
+Charlemagne
+Chateaubriand
+Chaucer
+Chlodwig
+Chlotaire
+Chrysostom
+Cicero
+Claudius
+Clement of Rome
+v. Clugny, Abbe M.
+Colonna, Vittoria
+Columbus
+Columella
+Corneille
+Cornelia
+Correggio
+Cowley
+Cramer
+Cronegk
+Crugot
+Cuyp
+Cyprian
+
+Dante
+Darius
+Defoe
+Dionisius da B.S. Sepolchro
+Domidius
+Dracontius
+Drayton
+Drummond
+du Bois-Reymond
+Duerer
+
+v. Eichendorff
+Eist, Deitmar v.
+Ekkehart
+Ennodius
+Epiphanius, M.H.
+Euripides
+Everdingen, A. v.
+v. Eyck
+
+Fabri
+Fenelon
+Fischart
+Fleming
+Forster
+Fortunatus,
+Francis of Assisi
+Frank, Sebastian
+Fredegar
+Frederic the Great
+Friedlander
+Fuerttenbach
+
+Gatterer
+Gellert
+Gerhard, Paul
+Gervinus
+Gessner, Conrad
+Gessner, Salomon
+Giorgione
+Gleim
+Goethe
+Gogen
+Gottfried v. Strassburg
+Gozzoli
+Grasser
+Gregory Nazianzen
+Gregory of Nyssa
+Gregory of Tours
+Gruembke
+Gryphius
+Guarini, G.
+Guenther, Christian
+Guenther d. Liguriner
+Guotenberg, U. v.
+Gussfeldt
+
+Hadrian
+Haeckel
+Hagedorn
+Haller
+Harsdoerfer
+Hartmann
+Hebel
+Hegel
+Heine
+Herder
+Hermes
+Hilary
+Hillern, W. v.
+Hobbema
+Hoffmannswaldau
+Hoelderlin
+Hoelty
+Homer
+Horace
+Hugo v. St. Victor
+Hugo, Victor
+Hulsen
+Humboldt
+
+Ibykos
+Isodore
+
+Jacob v. Bern
+Jacobi, Joh. G.
+Jerome
+Jovius
+
+Kalidasa
+Kallimachos
+Kant
+Kent
+Keyssler
+Kiechel
+Klaj
+Kleist, E. v.
+Klipphausen
+Klopstock
+Koenig, Eva
+Kuerenberg
+
+Lamartine
+Lamprecht
+Leman
+Lenotre
+Leon, Luis de
+Leonardo da Vinci
+Lessing
+Livy
+Logau
+Lohenstein
+Longos
+Lopez
+Lorraine, Claude
+Louis XIV.
+Louis XV.
+Lucretius
+Ludwig zu Nassau
+Luis de Leon
+Lueneberg
+Luther
+
+Maghas
+Mantegna
+Mareuil, A. v.
+Maria Theresa
+v. Martius
+Medici, Lorenzo de
+Meer, Aart v. d.
+Meleager
+Memling
+Menander
+Michael Angelo
+Milton
+Minucius Felix
+Molanus
+Montagu
+Montemayor
+Montreux
+Moore
+Morungen, H. v.
+
+Moscherosch
+Moeser
+Mosto, A. da
+Murdach
+
+Navarrete, F. de
+Nemesianus
+Nettesheim, C.A. v.
+Nicolas
+Nonnos
+Novalis
+
+Opitz
+Osorio
+Ossian
+Ouwater
+Ovid
+
+Paracelsus
+Patenir
+Paul, Jean,
+Paul, St
+Paulinus of Nola
+Perdiccas
+Peter Martyr
+Petrarch
+Pfintzing
+Phidias
+Philip of Macedon
+Phokas
+Pico della Mirandola
+Pierre, B. de St
+Pindar
+Pisanello
+Pius II. (Enea Silvio),
+Plato
+Pliny
+Polo, Marco
+Pope
+Potter, Paul
+Poussin
+Propertius
+Prudentius
+Ptolemaios
+
+Racine
+Radegunde
+Raphael
+Regensburg
+Reinmar
+Reissner
+Richardson
+Rickel, D. v.
+Roche, Sophie la
+Ronsard
+Rousseau,
+Rubens
+Rucellai
+Rueckert
+Rugge
+Ruysbroek
+Ruysdael
+
+Sabiende, R. v.
+Sachs, Hans
+Sannazaro
+Sappho
+Saussure
+v. Schachten
+Schaller
+Scherr
+Scheuchzer
+Schickhart
+Schiller
+Scipio Africanus
+Scott
+Seneca
+Shaftesbury
+Shakespeare,
+Shelley,
+Sidney
+Simonides
+Socrates
+Sophocles
+Southey
+Southwell
+Spalding
+Spee
+Spenser
+Spielhagen
+Spinoza
+Spix
+Stolberg
+Storm, Th.
+Sulzer
+Summenhart
+Suso
+
+Tasso
+Tauler
+Teresa v. Avila
+Theocritus
+Theodoric
+Theodulf
+Thomson
+Tiberius
+Tibullus
+Tieck
+Titian
+Toscanelli, Paolo
+
+Uhland
+d'Urfe
+Uz, Joh. P.
+
+Vasco da Gama
+Velde, Adrian v. d.
+Veldegge, H. v.
+Vespucci
+Virgil
+Vischer
+Vives, Luis
+Volkmar
+Voltaire
+Voss
+
+Wahlafried
+Walther v. d. Vogelweide
+Wandelbert
+Watteau
+Weyden, Roger v. d.
+William of Tours
+Winckelmann
+Wolfram v. Eschenbach
+Wordsworth
+Wyatt
+Wynant
+
+Young
+
+Zesen, P. v.
+Ziegler, A. v.
+Zimmermann
+Zweibruecken, A. v.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEELING FOR
+NATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES***
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