178 June — Affectionate Comparison of Species. 



'Phyllis amat corylosl — Phyllis loves hazels, and so 

 long as Phyllis shall love hazels neither the myrtle nor 

 Apollo's laurel shall surpass them. 



This comparison of species is full of affection, and 

 not a narrow affection either ; for though the poet may 

 have had an especial liking for the olive, and probably 

 for the hazel also (there is reason to suppose that 

 Phyllis expresses a taste of the poet himself), he frankly 

 tells us that other trees have been preferred by other 

 personages, and gives each the honor that is its due. 

 This largeness is strikingly different from a bigoted 

 narrowness on this very subject, which is not unfre- 

 quently met with in our own time, and of which I have 

 lately given a very striking example. Here is evi- 

 dence sufficient, though in laconic passages, that the 

 Roman poet had a love for sylvan Nature, which if not 

 so cultivated by attention to minute detail as that of 

 a modern botanist, or a landscape-painter of the botani- 

 cal school, still paid far more attention to detail than 

 the wilfully ignorant criticism of the false modern clas- 

 sical school, which held the almost inconceivable the- 

 ory that trees were to be regarded simply as trees, 

 without distinguishing their species. I well know that 

 we are strongly tempted, on the faith of a word here 

 and there, to give credit to an ancient author for much 

 more knowledge and much keener perception than he 

 probably ever possessed ; and that it is one of the com- 

 monest illusions of our complex intellectual civilization 

 to forget the simplicity of sight and thought in which 

 men Kved long ago, and to attribute to them our own 



