THE LOVE OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE MORE EMINENTLY DEVELOPED IN MODERN LITERATURE THAN IN THE CLASSICAL.  
One of the most conspicuous features of English literature, is that intense love of the sublime and beautiful in Nature, which pervades, with a living spirit, the works of our poets; gives so peculiar a charm to the writings of our naturalists; possesses great prominence in our travellers; is mingled with the fervent breathings of our religious treatises; and even finds its way into the volumes of our philosophy. If we look into the literature of the continental nations, we find it existing there, more or less, but in a lower tone than in our own; if we look back into that of the ancients, we find it there too, but still fainter, more confined in its scope, and scattered, as it were, into distant and isolated spots. I think nothing[306] can be more striking than the truth of this; and it is a curious matter of observation, that there should be this great distinction, and of inquiry whence it has arisen. The love of the beauty and sublimity of Nature is an inherent principle in the human soul; but like all other of our finer qualities, it is later in its development than the common ones, and requires, not repression, but fostering and cultivation. It is like the love of the fine arts; it slumbers in the bosom that passes through life in its native rudeness. It lies in the unploughed ground of the human mind,—a seed buried below the influence that alone can call it into activity.
Yes, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea;
Like the man’s thoughts, dark in the infant brain;
Like aught that is, which wraps what is to be;
there it lies, deep in the soil of common events and cares, and untouched by the divine atmosphere of knowledge which a more easy and advanced condition brings with it. In others, it is partially vivified, but cannot flourish; it is choked with the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches; but in minds that are fed with substantial knowledge, and have their intellectual power reached, and their affections kindled by the blessedness of refined and Christian culture,—then it grows with their growth and strengthens with their strength. It daily enlarges its grasp, and its appetite; it expands perpetually the circle of its horizon. The love of the fine arts is but a modification of this great passion. Their objects are the same—the sublime and the beautiful; and the same purity and elevation of taste accompany them both. This is the original and legitimate passion. In our love of the fine arts, our attention is occupied with human imitations of what is beautiful in nature;—in this, we fix our admiration at once on the magnificent works of the Great Artist of the Universe.
We might, therefore, reasonably expect to find in the literature of the ancients, what is actually the case, a less refined, less expanded, less penetrating and absorbing existence of this affection. Everywhere the love of nature must exist. In all ages and all countries, so is the outward universe framed to influence the inward, that men must be impressed by the grandeur of creation, and attracted by its beauty, so far as the human is at all advanced[307] beyond the limits of mere animal existence. But in the ancient world education was never popular; it extended only to a few; and of these few a majority were occupied in the pursuits of art, or the speculations of philosophy; and poetry, and especially the poetry of nature, had scanty followers. The great poets of all ages, even of those but semi-civilized, must necessarily have minds so sensitive to the influence of all kinds of beauty that they could not help being alive to that of nature; and this was the case with the great poets of Greece. We put out of the present question the dramatic and lyrical ones; for to them the passions and interests of men were the engrossing objects; but in Homer, Hesiod, and Theocritus, we may fairly expect to discover the amount of the ancients’ perception of natural beauty, and their love of it. But in these how far is it behind what it is in the moderns. They were often enraptured with the pleasantness of nature, but it was seldom with more than its pleasantness. Their Elysian Fields are composed of flowery meads, with pleasant trees and running waters, where the happy spirits led a life of luxurious repose. Their celebrated Arcadia is faithfully described in such Idyllia as those of Bion and Moschus;—youths and damsels feeding their flocks amid the charms of a pastoral country, to whose beauties they were alive in proportion as they ministered to luxurious enjoyment. Beyond this they seldom looked;—seldom describe the sublime aspects and phenomena of the universe. Homer, indeed, is the greatest exception,—his soul was cast in a mighty mould. His beautiful description of a moonlight night is known to all readers. He speaks, too, of the splendour of the starry heavens; and he describes tempests with great majesty; but this rather as they are terrible in their effects on men, than as sublime in themselves. Minds even of the noblest class had not arrived at that full comprehension of nature which sees sublimity in the gloom and terror of tempests, independent of their effects; the grandeur of beauty in desolation itself; in splintered mountains, wild wildernesses, and the awfulness of solitude. They had not become tremblingly alive to all the lesser traces and shades of beauty in the face of nature, for they had not reached either of the extremities of perception—the vast on one hand—minute perfection on the other. They did not pursue the forms of beauty into leaf and flower; into the[308] cheerful culture of the field, or the brown tinges of the desert. They did not watch the growing or fading lights of the sky, and the colours, as they lived or died on the distant mountain tops;—the passing of light and shadow over earth and ocean. Their acquaintance with the subtle spirit of the universe had not become so intimate. They abode most in the general; they admired in the mass; for they had not arrived at the refinement of very delicate, or extensive analysis; and they did not go out to admire as the moderns; their admiration of nature was not advanced, as with us, into an art and a passion. Beauty rather fell upon their senses than was inquired after. They were pleased, and did not always seek out the operative causes of their sensations. Their mention of their delight was, therefore, generally incidental. They were in the condition and state of mind of the old man in Wordsworth’s ballad, who says—
Think you, mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
That Homer had an eye for the sublime features of earth, the nobler forms of animal life, and phenomena of nature,—his bold and beautiful similes, scattered all through the Iliad, of storms, of overflowing rivers, of forests on flame, of the lion, the horse, and others, sufficiently testify; that he had a most exquisite sense of the picturesque, is shewn in almost every page of the Odyssey; in the cave of Polypheme; in good old king Laertes occupied in his farm; and in the whole episode of Ulysses at the lodge of Eumeus, the goatherd. But yet it is, after all, only in contemplating some scene of delicious rural beauty, something akin to Arcadian sweetness, that he breaks out into anything like a rapture. The abode of Calypso, as seen by Hermes on his approach to it, is an exact instance.
Then, swift ascending from the azure wave,
He took the path that winded to the cave.
Large was the grot in which the nymph he found,
The fair-haired nymph, with every beauty crowned.
She sate and sung; the rocks resound the lays;
The cave was brightened with the rising blaze;
Cedar and frankincense, an odorous pile,
Flamed on the hearth, and wide perfumed the isle,
While she with work and song the time divides,[309]
And through the loom the golden shuttle guides.
Without the grot a various sylvan scene
Appeared around, and groves of living green;
Poplars and alders, ever quivering, played,
And nodding cypress formed a grateful shade;
On whose high branches, waving with the storm,
The birds of broadest wing their mansion form;
The chough, the sea-mew, and loquacious crow,
And scream aloft, and skim the deeps below.
Depending vines the delving caverns screen,
With purple clusters blushing through the green.
Four limpid fountains from the clefts distil;
And every fountain forms a separate rill,
In mazy, winding wanderings down the hill:
Where bloomy meads with vivid greens were crowned,
And glowing violets threw odours round—
A scene, where if a god should cast his sight,
A god might gaze and wander with delight!
Joy touched the messenger of heaven; he stayed
Entranced, and all the blissful haunt surveyed.
Odyssey, B. v.
 
In Hesiod, the perception of even the delights of the summer field were far fainter. Though he fed his flock at the foot of Mount Helicon, he has little to say in praise of its aspect; and though he gives you great insight into the state of agriculture, and the simple mode of life of the country people, a very few verses furnish almost all the praise of nature which he had to bestow. His mind seemed occupied in tracing the genealogy of the gods, and framing grave maxims for the regulation of human conduct.
Of all the Greek writers, Theocritus is the one that luxuriates most in natural beauty. His sense of the picturesque is keen, and his penciling of such subjects is most vigorous and graphic. His two fishermen remind us of Crabbe; nothing can be more exquisite.
Two ancient fishers in a straw-thatched shed—
Leaves were their walls, and sea-weed was their bed,
Reclined their weary limbs; hard by were laid
Baskets and all their implements of trade;
Rods, hooks, and lines composed of stout horse-hairs,
And nets of various sorts, and various snares,
The seine, the cast-net, and the wicker maze,
To waste the watery tribe a thousand ways;[310]
A crazy boat was drawn upon a plank;
Mats were their pillow, wove of osiers dank;
Skins, caps, and coats, a rugged covering made;
This was their wealth, their labour and their trade.
No pot to boil, no watch-dog to defend,
Yet blessed they lived with penury their friend;
None visited their shed, save, every tide,
The wanton waves that washed its tottering side.
Idyl. xxi.
 
Then again, nothing can be more picturesque, nothing more boldly graphic and solemnly poetical, than the situation in which he makes Castor and Pollux find Anycus, the king of Bebrycia; nothing more striking than the image of that chief.
Meanwhile, the royal brothers devious strayed
Far from the shore, and sought the cooling shade.
Hard by, a hill with waving forests crowned,
Their eyes attracted; in the dale they found
A spring perennial in a rocky cave:
Full to the margin flowed the lucid wave;
Below small fountains gushed, and murmuring near,
Sparkled like silver, and as silver clear.
Above, tall pines and poplars quivering played,
And planes and cypress in dark greens arrayed;
Around balm-breathing flowers of every hue,
The bees’ ambrosia, in the meadows grew.
There sate a chief, tremendous to the eye,
His couch the rock, his canopy the sky;
The gauntlet’s strokes his cheeks and ears around,
Had marked his face with many a desperate wound.
Round as a globe, and prominent his chest,
Broad was his back, but broader was his breast;
Firm was his flesh, with iron sinews fraught,
Like some Colossus on an anvil wrought.
Id. xxii.
 
His description of an ancient drinking-cup appears to me to have no rival in all the round of literature, ancient or modern, except Keats’ description of an antique vase. It is life and beauty itself. The figures stand out in bold relief, cut with an energy and precision most wonderful, and with a grace that makes itself felt to the very depths of the spirit.
A deep, two-handled cup, whose brim is crowned
With ivy, joined with helichryse around;[311]
Small tendrils with close-clasping arms uphold
The fruit rich speckled with the seeds of gold.
Within, a woman’s well-wrought image shines,
A vest her limbs, her locks a cawl confines;
And near, two neat-curled youths in amorous strains,
With fruitless strife communicate their pains;
Smiling, by turns she views the rival pair;
Grief swells their eyes, their heavy hearts despair.
Hard by, a fisherman, advanced in years,
On the rough margin of a rock appears;
Intent he stands to enclose the fish below,
Lifts a large net, and labours with the throw;
Such strong expression rises on the sight,
You’d swear the man exerted all his might;
For his round neck with turgid veins appears—
In years he seems, yet not impaired by years.
A vineyard next with intersected lines,—
And red, ripe clusters load the bending vines.
To guard the fruit a boy sits idly by,
In ambush near two skulking foxes lie;
This, plots the branches of ripe grapes to strip,
And that, more daring, meditates the scrip;
Resolved, ere long, to seize the savoury prey,
And send the youngster dinnerless away;
Meanwhile on rushes all his art he plies,
In framing traps for grashoppers and flies;
And earnest only on his own designs,
Forgets his satchel, and neglects his vines.
Id. i.
 
What a glorious subject would this be for one of our modern sculptors.
But in Theocritus, as in Homer, they are Arcadian amenities that engross almost all his passion for nature. They are flowery fields, running waters, summer shades, and the hum of bees; all the elements of voluptuous dreaming and indolent entrancement; the most delicious of all idleness, lying abroad with the blue sky above you, and the mossy turf beneath you, and the bubble of running waters, and the whisper of forest branches near, to lull you to repose. Is it not so? When is it that he invites you to out-of-door enjoyment?
Now when meridian beams inflame the day;
Now when green lizards in the hedges lie;
And crested larks forsake the fervid sky.
Id. vii.
 
[312]
And whither would he lead you at this sultry, blazing hour? Ah! hear him!
Here rest we: lo! cyperus decks the ground,
Oaks lend their shade, and sweet bees murmur round
Their honeyed hives; here, two cool fountains spring;
Here merrily the birds on branches sing;
Here pines in clusters more umbrageous grow,
Wave high their heads, and scatter cones below.
Id. v.
 
Ah! cunning Sicilian! well didst thou know where life shed its most delicious dreams. Anacreon at his wine, and Tibullus in the rapture of one of his sweetest love-visions, was a novice in true enjoyment to thee. Hark! to the very sounds which he conjures up! There is nothing startling—nothing exciting.—No! there is enough of excitement already in the climate, in the summer heat, in the very scenes and persons from whose city revels he has just withdrawn. The true secret now is, to summon up only images of luxurious rest; of calm beauty; of refreshing coolness; that the blood, already running riot, may flow in the veins like the nectar of the gods, and send up to the brain images and trains of images of the very poetry of Elysium. Hark to the sounds about you!
Sweet low the herds along the pastured ground;
Sweet is the vocal reed’s melodious sound;
Sweet pipes the jocund herdsman.
But I will give one more extract from him, which seems to combine all the fascinations he loved to paint as existing in the summer woodlands.
He courteous bade us on soft beds recline,
Of lentesch and young branches of the vine;
Poplars and elms above their foliage spread,
Lent a cool shade, and waved the breezy head.
Below, a stream, from the nymphs’ sacred cave,
In free meanders led its murmuring wave;
In the warm sunbeams, verdant shrubs among,
Shrill grashoppers renewed their plaintive song;
At distance far, concealed in shades alone,
The nightingale poured forth her tuneful moan:
The lark, the goldfinch, warbled lays of love,
And sweetly pensive cooed the turtle-dove;
While honey-bees, for ever on the wing,
Hummed round the flowers, and sipped the silver spring.[313]
The rich, ripe season gratified the sense
With summer’s sweets and autumn’s redolence.
Apples and pears lay strewed in heaps around,
And the plum’s loaded branches kissed the ground.
Id. vii.
 
Well, we must pass over from the Greeks to the Romans, and I have found it so difficult to escape from Theocritus, that we must make short work of it here. Of Cicero, Seneca, the Plinys,—I will say nothing. We all know how they delighted in their country villas and gardens. We all know how Cicero, in his Treatise on Old Age, has declared his fondness for farming; and how, between his pleadings in the Forum, he used to seek the refreshment of a walk in a grove of plane-trees. We know how, during the best ages of the Commonwealth, their generals and dictators were brought from the plough and their country retreats—a fine feature in the Roman character, and one which may, in part, account for their so long retaining the simplicity of their tastes, and that high tone of virtue which generally accompanies a daily intercourse with the spirit of nature. All this we know; but what is still more remarkable is, that Horace and Virgil, two of the most courtly poets that ever existed, yet were both passionately fond of the country, and perpetually declare in their writings that there is nothing in the splendour and fascinations of city life, to compare with the serene felicity of a rural one. Horace is perpetually rejoicing over his Sabine farm; and Virgil has, in his Georgics, described all the rural economy of the age with a gusto that is felt in every line. His details fill us with admiration at the great resemblance of the science of these matters at that time, and at this. With scarcely an exception, in all modes of rural management, in all kinds of farming stock—sheep, cattle, and horses, he would be now pronounced a consummate judge; and his rules for the culture of fields and gardens, would serve for studies here, notwithstanding the difference of the Italian and English climates. But it is only in that celebrated passage beginning—
O fortunatos nimiùm, sua si bona n?rint,
Agricolas!
in his second Georgic, so often quoted, that he seems to get into a[314] rapture when contemplating the charms of a country life. We may take this as a sufficient example, and as very delightful in itself.
Oh happy, if he knew his happy state,
The swain who free from business and debate,
Receives his easy food from Nature’s hand,
And just returns of cultivated land.
No palace with a lofty gate he wants,
To admit the tide of early visitants,
With eager eyes, devouring as they pass,
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass;
No statues threaten from high pedestals,
No Persian arras hides his homely walls
With antic vests, which, through their shadowy fold,
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold.
He boasts no wool where native white is dyed
With purple poison of Assyrian pride.
No costly drugs of Araby defile,
With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,
With home-bred plenty the rich owner bless,
And rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvexed with quarrels, undisturbed by noise,
The country king his peaceful realm enjoys.
****
Ye sacred Muses! with whose beauty fired,
My soul is ravished, and my brain............