412 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



they were genuine and they expressed what the average man was 

 beginning to feel. Touches like the ' secret delight ' in recalling 

 mountain landscapes and the longing to return to them ring true. 

 Haller dates the commencement of a transition, the approach of 

 a new era. Snowy mountains had hitherto been looked on by 

 the crowd as blots on the face of creation. At best they had been 

 tolerated, at a distance, for their practical uses in acting as frontiers, 

 feeding rivers, and providing dairy produce. There was already, 

 doubtless, no lack of sham sentiment. A rustic glade might serve 

 as a background for amateur shepherdesses a la Watteau, or as 

 a framework for a tableau of idealised pastoral life. But nature 

 in her more austere moods was still repellent to the orthodox 

 taste of the day, and was consequently neglected both in its litera- 

 ture and art . Haller anticipated Rousseau and de Saussure in cele- 

 brating the mountains as the cradle of an uncorrupted peasantry, 

 of a race who had exchanged the savage for a civilised state, with- 

 out having lost its primitive simplicity. 1 But he went beyond 

 Rousseau when he proclaimed the picturesque charm of the 

 scenery of the Bernese Oberland, and dwelt on the feelings snowy 

 mountains excite in a mind sensitive to their appeal. In recognis- 

 ing in his poem on The Alps, the snowy wastes as ' the palaces of 

 nature,' he prepared the way for Byron. 



Haller gave out that one of his objects in writing poetry was to 

 prove to the European public that the German language was not 

 inferior to the English as a vehicle for serious verse. His success 

 was amazing, and extended far beyond his own country and 

 Germany. In forty-five years his poem had run through thirty 

 editions, and been translated into French, English, Italian, and 

 Latin. It brought to the young poet at least one start ling honour. 

 Prince Radziwill sent him a commission as major-general in the 

 Polish army. ' Habent sua fata libelli/ a single edition of a thou- 

 sand copies of Wordsworth's Excursion sufficed the British public 

 for thirteen years. 



In 1728 Haller returned to his native city and set up in prac- 

 tice as a surgeon and physician. His leisure was devoted to the 

 study of botany, which was to be the chief occupation of his life. 

 His ' sincere but heavy ' fellow-citizens the epithets are Addison's 



1 ' Hommes assez civilis6s pour n'etre pas f 6roces et assez naturels pour n'etre 

 pas corrompus.' De Saussure in Preface to Voyages. 



