MODERN TRAVELERS. 81 



But when the so-called descriptive poetry is justly blamed aa 

 an independent form of art, such disapprobation does not cer- 

 tainly apply to an earnest endeavor to convey to the minds of 

 others, by the force of well-applied words, a distinct image of 

 the results yielded by the richer mass of modern knowledge. 

 Ought any means to be left unemployed by which an ani- 

 mated picture of a distant zone, untraversed by ourselves, may 

 be presented to the mind with all the vividness of truth, en- 

 abling us even to enjoy some portion of the pleasure derived 

 from the immediate contact with nature ? The Arabs ex- 

 press themselves no less truly than metaphorically when they 

 say that the best description is that by which the ear is con- 

 verted into an eye.* It is one of the evils of the present day 

 that an unhappy tendency to vapid poetic prose and to senti- 

 mental effusions has infected simultaneously, in different coun- 

 tries, even the style of many justly celebrated travelers and 

 writers on natural history. Extravagances of this nature are 

 so much the more to be regretted, where the style degenerates 

 into rhetorical bombast or morbid sentimentality, either from 

 want of literary cultivation, or more particularly from the ab- 

 sence of all genuine emotion. 



Descriptions of nature, I would again observe, may be de- 

 fined with sufficient sharpness and scientific accuracy, without 

 on that account being deprived of the vivifying breath of im- 

 agination. The poetic element must emanate from the in- 

 tuitive perception of the connection between the sensuous and 

 the intellectual, arid of the universality and reciprocal limita- 

 tion and unity of all the vital forces of nature. The more 

 elevated the subject, the more carefully should all external 

 adornments of diction be avoided. The true effect of a picture 

 of nature depends on its composition ; every attempt at an ar- 

 tificial appeal from the author must therefore necessarily ex- 

 ert a disturbing influence. He who, familiar with the great 

 works of antiquity, and secure in the possession of the riches 

 of his native language, knows how to represent with the sim- 

 plicity of individualizing truth that which he has received 

 from his own contemplation, will not fail in producing the im- 

 pression he seeks to convey ; for, in describing the boundless- 

 ness of nature, and not the limited circuit of his own mind, 

 he is enabled to leave to others unfettered freedom of feeling. 



It is not, however, the vivid description of the richly-adorned 

 lands of the equinoctial zone, in which intensity of light and 

 of humid heat accelerates and heightens the development of 

 * Freytag's Darstellung der Arabischen Verskvnst, 1830, s. 402. 



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