74 COSMOS. 



er, iu ^ing Lf^ai', ^\lle^e the seemingly mad Edgar reprciiciits 

 to hw himd father, Gloucester, while on the plain, that ihcy 

 are ascoiiding Dover Cliff. The description of the view, od 

 looking into the depths below, actually excites a fueling of 

 giddiness."* 



If, in ShaksDeare, the inward animation of the feelings and 

 the grand simplicity of the language gave such a wonderful 

 degree of life-like truth and individuality to the expression oi 

 nature, in Milton's exalted poem of Paradise Lost the de- 

 scriptions are, fi'om the very nature of the subject, more mag- 

 nificent than graphic. The whole richness of the poet's fancy 

 and diction is lavished on the descriptions of the luxuriant 

 beauty of Paradise, but, as in Thomson's charming didactic 

 poem of The Seaso?is, vegetation could only be sketched in 

 general and more indefii^ite outlines. According to the judg- 

 ment of critics deeply versed in Indian poetry, Kalidasa's 

 poem on a similar subject, the Ritusanhara, which was writ- 

 ten more than fifteen hundred vears earlier, individualizes, 

 with greater vividness, the powerlul vegetation of tropical re- 

 gions, but it wants the charm w^hich, in Thomson's work, 

 springs from the more varied division of the year in northern 

 latitudes, as the transition of the autumn rich in fruits to the 

 winter, and of the winter to the reanimating season of Sprina: . 

 and from the images which may thus be drawn of the labors 

 or pleasurable pursuits of men in each part of tne year. 



If we proceed to a period nearer our ov.n time, we observa 

 that, since the latter half of the eighteenth century, aelmea- 

 tive prose especially has developed itself with peculiar vigor 

 Although the general mass of knowledge has been so exceca- 

 ively enlarged from the universally-extended study of nature 

 it does not appear that, in those susceptible of a higher de 

 gree of poetic inspiration, intellectual contemplation lias sun> 

 under the weight of accumulated knowledge, but rather thai 

 as a result of poetic spontaneity, it has gained in comprehep 

 siveness and elevation ; and, learning how to penetrate deep 

 er into the structure of the earth's crust, has explored in th* 

 mountain masses of our planet the stratified sepulchers of ex 

 tinct organisms, and traced the geographical distribution oi 

 animals and plants, and the mutual connection of races 

 Thus, among those who were the first, by an exciting appeal 

 to the imaginative faculties, powerfully to animate the senti- 



* I have taken the passages distinguished in the text by mark^ of 

 quotation, and relating to Calderon and Shnkspeare, from ui. published 

 letters addressed to myself by Lndwi^ Tieck. 



