LANDSCAPE 289 



to the development of science which has given such ideas a 

 foundation of probability. Whether we call ourselves idealists 

 or materialists signifies little. What remains indisputable is 

 that man's interest in the world around him has been enor- 

 mously developed by the decline of mediaeval theology and 

 the progressive expansion of scientific curiosity. That alone 

 constitutes a new sphere of thought for art to work in, preg- 

 nant with ideality denied to Greece and Borne, to the Middle 

 Ages and the Renaissance. It helps to account for the im- 

 portance of landscape in the present century, and en- 

 courages a belief that there remains a wide scope for it in 

 the future. 



Poetry, being the most articulate of the arts, the most sus- 

 ceptive and expressive of pure thought, is the first to indicate 

 the entrance of formative ideas into the aesthetic region. We 

 must therefore interrogate the poets of this century at its 

 commencement, in order to understand the change in our 

 emotional attitude towards nature. For this purpose it will 

 suffice to select Goethe, Wordsworth, and Shelley. When we 

 compare the fervour of their verses with the colder utterance 

 of Virgil or of Pope, it becomes evident that the venerable 

 conception of Spirit immanent in the Universe has acquired a 

 fuller certainty, a deeper glow, a warmer passion of enthu- 

 siasm. This conception now rests on inferences from the 

 discoveries of physical science, and is inflamed with a hope 

 that the cosmos shall be found at length to be an animated 

 organism. It has passed from the realm of philosophical 

 suggestion or rhetorical exposition into the region of religious 

 conviction. Spirit gazing upon nature finds spirit there. The 

 intellect is warmed with the vision of infinity made vital, 

 instead of being refrigerated by a mere mechanical void. At 

 the same time, by comparing the purely descriptive passages 

 of these poets with those of their immediate predecessors 

 Thomson, Gray, Cowper we shall discern how this modern 

 metaphysical intuition has given a new touch and tone to art. 

 Writers of the last century regarded nature as outside them, as 

 a group of objects to be observed and catalogued, moralised 

 perhaps, enjoyed, but never with the sense of spiritual affinity, 



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