

DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREEKS. 375 



Neptune concealed under the significant names of mythical 

 characters. The Boeotian, and, indeed, all the ancient schools 

 of poetry, treat only of the phenomena of the external world, 

 under the personification of human forms. 



But if, as we have already remarked, natural descriptions, 

 whether they delineate the richness and luxuriance of tropical 

 vegetation, or pourtray the habits of animals, have only 

 become a distinct branch of literature in the most recent 

 times, this circumstance must not be regarded as a proof of 

 the absence of susceptibility for the beauties of nature, where 

 the perception of beauty was so intense,* nor must we sup- 

 pose that the animated expression of a spirit of poetic con- 

 templation was wanting to the Greeks, who have transmitted 

 to us such inimitable proofs of their creative faculty, alike in 

 poetry and in sculpture. All that we are led by the tendency 

 of our modern ideas to discover as deficient in this depart- 

 ment of ancient literature, is rather of a negative than of a 

 positive kind, being evinced less in the absence of suscepti- 

 bility than in that of the urgent impulse to give expression, 

 in words, to the sentiment awakened by the charms of nature. 

 Directed less to the inanimate world of phenomena than to 

 the realities of active life, and to the inner and spontaneous 

 emotions of the mind, the earliest, and, at the same time, the 

 noblest directions of the poetic spirit were epic and lyric. In 

 these artificial forms, descriptions of nature can only occur as 

 incidental accessories, and not as special creations of fancy. 

 As the influence of antiquity gradually disappeared, and as the 

 bright beauty of its blossoms faded, rhetorical figures became 

 more and more diffused through descriptive and didactic 

 poetry. This form of poetry, which in its earliest philosophical, 

 half-sacerdotal type, was solemn, grand, and devoid of orna- 

 ment as we see exemplified in the poem of Empedocles On 

 Nature by degrees lost its simplicity and earlier dignity, as 

 it became more strongly marked by a rhetorical character. 



I may be permitted here to mention a few particular 

 instances in illustration of these general observations. In 

 conformity with the character of the Epos, we find the most 

 attractive scenes of nature introduced in the Homeric songs 

 merely as secondary adjuncts. " The shepherd rejoices in 



* Compare Jacobs, Leben und Kunst der Alien, bd. i., abth. i. 

 i.vii. 



