176 June — How Virgil particularizes, 



that we love. Well, Virgil particularizes also, just like 

 a modern landscape-painter ; and I take time to make 

 this observation in passing, that when the pseudo- 

 classical school opposed itself so strongly to the dis- 

 tinction between the species of trees which the modern 

 school of landscape felt to be essential, it would have 

 been easy to reply that their own idol, Virgil, did ex- 

 actly the same thing in poetry that the new school 

 was humbly endeavoring to do in the sister art of 

 painting. Thus, in the seventh Eclogue, Thyrsis says, 

 just at the last : — 



* Fraxinus in silvis pulcherrima, pinus in hortis, 

 Populus in fluviis, abies in montibus altis : 

 Saepius at si me, Lycida formose, revisas, 

 Fraxinus in silvis cedat tibi, pinus in hortis.' 



This illustrates at the same time both the two quali- 

 ties that I have been speaking of, for not only are the 

 trees mentioned specially, but they are connected with 

 a human interest : — 



1 The ash is most beautiful in the woods, the pine in gar- 

 dens, the poplar by rivers, the fir on lofty mountains ; but 

 if thou earnest to see me oftener, beautiful Lycidas, the ash 

 would yield to thee in the woods, the pine in gardens.' 



Nor would our analysis of the Virgilian spirit in this 

 passage be complete without the observation, that it 

 affords evidence against the theory that the ancients 

 could see no beauty in Nature except such as was con- 

 nected with personal ease or physical enjoyment. The 

 allusion to gardens is brief and cursory in the extreme, 

 whilst there is no mention of what are popularly called 



