L898] NOTES AND COMMENTS 77 



Si enery and the Poets 



The Romanes Lecture, for 1898 was delivered in the Sheldonian 

 Theatre at Oxford on June 1, by Sir Archibald (Jeikie, who took for 

 his subject " Types of Scenery and their influence on Literature." 

 This has now been published, at the price of two shillings, by 

 Messrs Macmillan & Co. The subject of the lecture is less than its 

 title. Scenery is limited to Great Britain ; its types are denned as 

 Lowlands, Uplands, and Highlands ; and by ' literature ' we are for 

 the nonce to understand ' poetry.' Even within these somewhat 

 narrow bounds, we are not sure that Sir Archibald has made the 

 most of his theme. It was a delightful lecture, full of pretty word- 

 painting and apt quotation, with a geological flavour deftly introduced 

 so as to make the listener think that there was a foundation of 

 abstruse science, and that this particular branch of science was 

 perfectly charming. But as an essay, as a contribution to serious 

 thought on the subject, its tenuity approaches transparency. A 

 poet, we gather from the lecture, describes what he sees, and draws 

 his images from his surroundings. Cowper depicts the valley of the 

 Ouse ; Thomson turns from " the living stream, the airy mountain, 

 and the hanging rock " of his native Border to Hagley Park and the 

 " sleep-soothing groves " of the south of England ; Burns sings the 

 " banks and braes o' bonnie Doon " and "the bonnie banks of Ayr"; 

 Wordsworth, fortunately for English literature, lived in the high- 

 lands of the Lake District, and introduced to us mountains and 

 lakes and sounding cataracts, " clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks 

 and emerald turf." But all this, though we may not have heard it 

 expressed in such felicitous language, we knew before. 



The most striking and original passage in the essay is that 

 which applies the scenic method of criticism to Macpherson's 

 " Ossian." " The landscape," we are told, "belongs unmistakably 

 to "Western Argyleshire. Its union of mountain, glen, and sea 

 removes it at once from the interior to the coast. Even if it had 

 been more or less inaccurately drawn, its prominence and consist- 

 ency all through the poems would have been remarkable in the 

 productions of a lad of four-and-twenty, who had spent his youth 

 in the inland region of Badenoch, where the scenery is of another 

 kind." " It is not that in Ossian, highland landscape was deliberately 

 described, but it formed a continually visible and changing back- 

 ground. The prevalent character of the whole range of scenery in 

 the region, and the general impression made by it on the eye and 

 mind, were so vividly conveyed that no one familiar with the 

 country can fail to recognise how faithfully the innermost spirit of 

 the West Highlands is rendered." This is strong as well as new 

 t-vidence in favour of the authenticity of at least a large proportion 



