CHAPTER I

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