A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 165 



think we do not on the whole give due place to the 

 purely descriptive parts of great verse ; do not suffi- 

 ciently note the height touched in Homeric and 

 Virgilian similes ; or such instances of spiritual power 

 conveyed in little more than exquisite description as 

 Christabel and the Ancient Mariner ; most strangely 

 neglect the tremendous painting power of Dante, 

 more particularly shown in touches of landscape 

 feeling that we are mostly pleased to confine to later 

 periods touches as accurate and as magnificent as 

 Turner's. (The storm on Pratomagno is perhaps the 

 finest sustained description ; sometimes a phrase is 

 almost as pregnant il tremolar delta marina, si 

 muova bruno bruno.) And matters of this kind are, 

 it is to be feared, beyond the reach of the Education 

 Code ; as yet beyond the reach, it seems, of University 

 Extensions, of shilling manuals, of the whole art of 

 Learning at Second-Hand. 



Thus we propound harmonious theories, pacing up 

 and down the darkening alleys. Gervase, I notice, 

 as the argument becomes a little involved, tears to 

 pieces a rose carnation he plucked in an abstracted 

 moment ; and I myself only at the last moment 

 come to sense of the lovely evening sky behind us 

 no fierce glories of colour or energy of motion, but 

 a clear pale green, barred with one narrow streak of 



