272 LANDSCAPE 



developing a purely national style ; and this is perhaps one 

 reason why the difference between them and their Greek 

 masters, in the matter of landscape, was not made more 

 manifest. We are able, however, to perceive this difference 

 when we have once recognised that their employment of the 

 Greek mythology of metamorphosis remained conventional 

 and artificial. 



Virgil deserves Lord Tennyson's felicitous epithet of ' land- 

 scape-lover ' more than any of his predecessors. Before he 

 began to work, Greek art, in Sicilian idyls, and in mural 

 paintings, had entered on a new phase. This Virgil con- 

 tinued, adding a richness of colour, a variety of observation, 

 and a glow of emotion all his own, to the transcripts from 

 nature which abound in his poems. These pictures, however, 

 are suggestions rather than descriptions, exhibiting the finest 

 sense of what is right and fitting in the use of language for 

 pictorial effect. 



Horace joins with Persius, Juvenal, and Martial in his 

 keen appreciation of rural simplicity and homeliness, contrasted 

 with the luxuries and vices of the city. Epicurean, Stoic, 

 satirist, man of the world, they are alike true lovers of the 

 country. Their enthusiasm for the farm, the wholesome fare, 

 the rustic table, and the sturdy serving -lad who waits upon 

 them with the blush of honesty and healthful youth, is unaf- 

 fected. Their vignettes from Sabine or Tuscan hill-sides are 

 touched with the truth and sincerity which spring from real 

 appreciation and keen observation. The same may be said of 

 Ovid and tne elegiac poets, though the former, in his great 

 descriptive poem of the ' Metamorphoses,' was hampered and 

 overweighted by the burden of a mythology which had no 

 vital hold on his belief. 



Catullus freed himself more completely than any of these 

 poets from foreign influences. An Athenian or a Sicilian 

 could hardly have written the episode of Ariadne in the 

 Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, with its fresh and vigo- 

 rous sketches of scenery ; or the lines on Sirmium, with its 

 deep home-feeling ; or the address to the boat, with its affec- 

 tionate sympathy for the rock-pluming forests where tho 

 planks from which the skiff was built were hewn. 



