LANDSCAPE 297 



If we were aiming at completeness, now would be the time 

 to analyse the feeling for nature expressed by other poets of 

 this century : in England by Byron, Scott, Coleridge, Keats ; 

 by Tennyson, Eossetti, Swinburne, Arnold, Boden Noel, 

 Browning, Morris. This is not necessary. The result would 

 hardly repay us for the tedium of the process. It will suffice 

 to bear in mind that, during the nineteenth century, a special 

 sensitiveness to landscape, varying in kind according to the 

 temperament of each individual, has been the note of all 

 our poets good, bad, and indifferent. The exaltation of 

 enthusiasm which distinguishes Goethe, Wordsworth, Shelley, 

 appears rarely in their contemporaries and successors. Only 

 perhaps in Roden Noel does the cult of nature rise to the 

 fervour-point of philosophical and religious inspiration. 

 Many critics will maintain that the poet is the better artist 

 when he does not philosophise his emotions ; that Scott and 

 Keats stand on a superior ground as landscape-painters to 

 Shelley and Wordsworth. Yet, however this point may be 

 settled, no one will deny the fact that literature in our age is 

 penetrated through and through with a sympathy for nature 

 which we do not find in the work of the last century, and 

 which culminates in the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, 

 Roden Noel. 



To what extent painting has been directly influenced by 

 this enthusiasm admits of much debate. It cannot, however, 

 be doubted that the curiosity from which science sprang, and 

 which so powerfully stimulated our poets, affected painting 

 and controlled its practice. Artists, though they may not 

 be self-conscious with regard to the main currents of con- 

 temporary thought, are subject to its stress. They enjoy 

 one privilege denied to men of letters. Their vehicle of 

 expression excludes reasoning ; it offers them no inducement 

 to formulate vague longings and emotions which escape too 

 easily through language. Having to solve problems of com- 

 position, to study the forms of objects in their physical pre- 

 sentment, to grapple with technical difficulties of execution, 



