FROM ACCESSION OF FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 325 



studies, when for many years he was engaged in botanical clas- 

 sifications, and the description and registration of phenomena ; 

 by this means he became accustomed to view natural objects as 

 inanimate forms of existence. How often in ' Cosmos ' does he 

 not repeat the assertion that of the processes of formation, the 

 true essence of existence, we know nothing ! By the true poet, 

 however, this is divined by instinct ; he unconsciously invests 

 the inanimate with the life it once had, while the observation 

 of the investigator never strays beyond the facts apparent at 

 the moment ; in a true poetic description expended forces are 

 represented as still in action : attention is directed neither to 

 the ' greenness ' of the leaf, nor yet to the 6 gold ' of the orange, 

 but both seem to spring into life as we are called to notice 

 how they ' glow.' In the descriptive passage by Humboldt, 

 ' Thousands of insects shed their rosy phosphoric light over the 

 soft carpeted earth,' how completely is the power of the verb 

 destroyed by the oppressive load of adjectives ! 



It will be admitted that this peculiarity of Humboldt's style- 

 deserves far more to be called rhetorical than poetic. It is 

 just in the kind of minute portraiture denied to the true poet 

 in the ' Laokoon ' that Humboldt felt most at home ; where 

 circumstantial descriptions are called for he never provokes- 

 censure, but the continuation of such a mannerism cannot fail 

 to become wearisome to the reader. We have already cited the 

 passage where Humboldt confessed to be in search of ' graphic 

 and suggestive expressions ; ' in another place he admits that 

 ' the skilful employment of a language, so rich in its descriptive 

 terms and so remarkable for its flexibility and harmonising 

 power,' was with him an object only secondary to the claims of 

 ' composition the masterly arrangement of carefully constructed 

 members of sentences.' l To the care he bestowed upon the 

 choice of terms, he himself attributed in great part the success 

 of ' Cosmos.' 6 How is one to account,' he modestly inquires, 

 * for the unexpected success of " Cosmos " ? It is to be attri- 

 buted, in part, to the ideas it suggests, and to the flexibility of 

 the Grerman language, which renders it so easy to embody an 

 idea and paint a picture in words.' 2 He was himself so little 



1 'Briefe an Varnhagen,' No. 120. 2 Ibid. No. 103. 



