380 COSMOS. 



wooded valley of Tempe, as given by ^Elian,* probably in 

 imitation of some earlier notice by Dicsearchus. It is the 

 most detailed description of natural scenery by any of the Greek 

 prose writers that we possess ; arud although topographical, it 

 is also picturesque, for the shady vale is animated by the 

 Pythian procession (theoria,} " which breaks from the sacred 

 laurel the atoning bough." In the later Byzantine epoch, 

 about the close of the fourth century, we meet more frequently 

 with descriptions of scenery interwoven in the romances of 

 the Greek prose writers, as is especially manifested in the 

 pastoral romance of Longus,f in which, however, the tender 

 scenes taken from life greatly excel the expression of the sen- 

 sations awakened by the aspect of nature. 



It is not my object in the present work, to extend these 

 references beyond what my own special recollection of par- 

 ticular forms of art may enable me to add to these general 

 considerations of the poetic conception of the external world. 

 I should here quit the flowery circle of Grecian antiquity, 

 if, in a work to which I have ventured to prefix the title 

 of Cosmos, I could pass over in silence the description of 

 nature with which the pseudo- Aristotelian book of Cosmos, 

 or, Order of the Universe, begins. It describes " the earth as 

 adorned with luxuriant vegetation, copiously watered, and (as 

 the most admirable of all) inhabited by thinking beings. "J 

 The rhetorical colour of this rich picture of nature, so totally 

 unlike the concise and purely scientific mode of treatment 

 characteristic of the Stagirite, is one of the many indications 

 by which it has been judged that this work on the Cosmos is 

 not his composition. It may, in fact, be the production of 



* JEliani Var. Hist, et Fragm., lib. iii. cap. 1. p. 139, Kuhn. 

 Compare A. Buttmann, Qucest. de Diccearcho (Naumb., 1832, p. 32,) 

 and Oeogr. gr. min., ed. Gail, vol. ii. pp. 140-145. We observe in the 

 tragic poet Chaeremon a remarkable love of nature, and especially a pre- 

 dilection for flowers which has been compared by Sir William Jones to 

 the sentiments evinced in the Indian poets. See Welcker, Griechisclie 

 Tra?ddien, abth. iii. s. 1088. 



f Longi Pastoralia (Daphnis et Chloe, ed. Seiler, 1843,) lib. i. 9; iiL 

 12, and iv. 1--3; pp. 92, 125, 137. Compare Villemaine, Sur let 

 Romans grecs, in his Melanges de Litterature, t. ii. pp. 485-448, where 

 Longus is compared with Bernardin de St. Pierre. 



t Pseudo- Aristot., de Mundo, cap. 3, 14-20, p. 392, Bekker. 



