DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREER.3. 27 



diion. The preponderance of the descriptive element shuwt 

 itself in the forty-eight cantos of the Dio7iysiaca of the Egyj* 

 lian Nonnus, which are remarkable lor their skillfully artist 

 ical versification. The poet dwells with pleasure on the de 

 lineation of great convulsions of nature ; he makes a fire kin 

 died by lightning on the woody banks of the Hydaspes bum 

 up even the fishes in the bed of the river ; and he shows how 

 ascending vapors occasion the meteorological processes of th^- 

 storm and electric rain. Although capable of writing roman' 

 tic poetry, Nonnus of Panopolis is remarkably unequal in hia 

 style, being at one time animated and exciting, and at another 

 tedious and verbose. 



A deeper feeling for nature and a greater delicacy of sensi 

 bility is manifested in some portions of the Greek Anthology, 

 which has been transmitted to us in such various ways and 

 from such different epochs. In the graceful translation of 

 Jacobs, every thing that relates to animal and vegetable forms 

 has been collected in one section — these passages being small 

 pictures, consisting, in most cases, of mere allusions to indi- 

 vidual forms. The plane-tree, which " nourishes amid its 

 branches the grape swelling with juice," and which, in the 

 time of Dionysius the Elder, first penetrated from Asia Minor 

 throu<?h the Island of Diomedes to the shores of the Sicilian 

 Anapus, is perhaps too often introduced ; still, on the whole, 

 the ancient mind shows itself more inclined, in these songs 

 and epigrams, to dwell on the animal than on the vegetable 

 world. The vernal idyl of Meleager of Gadara, in Coelo-Syr- 

 ia, is a noble, and, at the same time, a more considerable com- 

 position.* 



* Meleagri Rdiquice, ed. Mauso, p. 5. Compare Jacobs, Lehen vtia 

 Kunst der Alien, bd. i., abth. i., s. xv. ; abth. ii., s. 150-190. Zeiiobetti 

 believed himself to have been the first to discover Meleager's poem ou 

 Spring, in llie middle of the eighteeuth century {Mel. Gadareni in Ver 

 Idyllioti, 1759, p. 5). See Brunckii Anal., t. iii., p. 105. There are 

 two fine sylvan poems of Marianos in the Anthol. Grceca, ii., 511 and. 

 5V2. Meleager's poem contrasts well with the praise of Spring in the 

 eclogues of Himerius, a Sophist, who was teacher of rhetoric at Athens 

 under Julian. The style, on the whole, is cold and profusely ornate ', 

 but in some j)arts, especially in the descriptive portions, this writer 

 sometimes ap})roximates closely to the modei-n way of considering na- 

 ture. Himerii Sophisice Eclogce et Declamationes, ed. Wernsdorf, 1790. 

 (Oratio iii., 3-6, and xxi., 5.) It seems extraordinary that the lovely 

 situation of Constantinople should not have inspired the Sophists. 

 (Orat. vii., 5-7 ; xvi., 3-8.) The passages of Nonnus, referred to in the 

 text, occur in Dionys., ed. Petri Cunaei, 1610, lib. ii., p. 70; vi.,p. 199 i 

 xxiii., p. 16 and G19 ; xxvi., p. 694. Compare, also, Ouwarotf, Ncniiuk 

 loow Panopolis, der Dichter, 1817, s. 3, 16. 21. 



