28 COSMOS. 



On account of the renown attached from ancient times to 

 the spot, I would not omit to mention the description of the 

 wooded valley of Tempe, as given by ./Elian,* probably in im- 

 itation of some earlier notice by Dicseajrchus. It is the most 

 detailed description of natural scenery by any of the Greek 

 prose writers that we possess ; and, although topographical 

 it is also picturesque, for the shady vale is animated by the 

 Pythian procession (theoria), " which breaks from the sacred 

 laurel the atoning bough." In the later Byzantine epoch, 

 about the close of the fourth century, we meet more frequently 

 with descriptions of scenery interwoven in the romances of the 

 Greek prose writers, as is especially manifested in the pastor- 

 al romance of Longus.t in which, however, the tender scenes 

 taken from life greatly excel the expression of the sensations 

 awakened by the aspect of nature. 



It is not my object in the present work to extend these ref- 

 erences beyond what my own special recollection of particular 

 forms of art may enable me to add to these general consider- 

 ations of the poetic conception of the external world. I should 

 here quit the flowery circle of Grecian antiquity, if,, in a work 

 to which I have ventured to prefix the title of Cosmos, I could 

 pass over in silence the description of nature with which the 

 pseudo- Aristotelian book of Cosmos, or Order of the Universe, 

 begins. It describes " the earth as adorned with luxuriant 

 vegetation, copiously watered, and (as the most admirable of 

 all) inhabited by thinking beings. "$ The rhetorical color of 

 this rich picture of nature, so totally unlike the concise and 

 purely scientific mode of treatment characteristic of the Stag- 

 irite, is one of the many indications by which it has been 

 judged that this work on the Cosmos is not his composition. 

 It may, in fact, be the production of Apuleius, or of Chrysip- 



* sEliani Var. Hist, et Fragm., lib. iii., cap. 1, p. 139, Ktilm. Com- 

 pare A. Buttmauu, Qnasst. de Diccsarcho (Nuumb., 1832, p. 32), and 

 Gengr. Gr. Min., ed. Gail, vol. ii., p. 140-145. We observe iu the tragic 

 poet Chisremon a remarkablfe love of nature, and especially a predilec- 

 tion for flowers, which has been compared by Sir William Joues to the 

 sentiments evinced in the Indian poets. See Welcker, Griechische Tra- 

 godien, abth. iii., s. 1088. 



t Longi Pastoralia (Daphnis et Chloe, ed. Seller, 1843), lib. i., 9; 

 iii., 12, and iv., 1-3; p. 92, 125, 137. Compare Villemaine, SurlesRo 

 mans Grecs, in his Melanges de Litterature, t. ii., p. 435-448, where 

 Longus is compared with Bernardin de St. Pierre. 



t Pseud o-Aristot., de Mundo, cap. 3, 14-20, p. 392, Bekker. 



See Stahr, Aristoteles bei den Romern, 1834, s. 173-177. Osann, 

 Beitrage zur Griech. und Rom. Litteraturgeschichte, bd. i., 1835, s. 165- 

 192. Stahr (s. 172) supposes, like Heumann, that the present Greek i 



