MODERN TRAVELLERS. 437 



with delicate aesthetic feelings, and retaining a vivid impres- 

 sion of the pictures with which Tahiti and the other ther 

 happy islands of the Pacific had filled his imagination, as iij 

 recent times that of Charles Darwin,* George Forster was 

 the first to depict in pleasing colours the changing stages oi 

 vegetation, the relations of climate and of articles of food in 

 their influence on the civilisation of mankind, according to 

 differences of original descent and habitation. All that can give 

 truth, individuality, and distinctiveness to the delineation of 

 exotic nature is united in his works We trace not only in his 

 admirable description of Cook's second voyage of discovery, 

 but still more in his smaller writings, the germ of that richer 

 fruit which has since been matured. f But alas ! even to his 

 noble, sensitive, and ever hopeful spirit, life yielded no hap- 

 piness. 



If the appellation of descriptive and landscape poetry 

 have sometimes been applied, as a term of disparagement, to 

 those descriptions of natural objects and scenes, which in 

 recent times have so greatly embellished the literature of 

 Germany, France, England and America, its application, 

 in this sense, must be referred only to the abuse of the 

 supposed enlargement of the domain of art. Rhythmical 

 descriptions of natural objects, as presented to us by Delille, 

 at the close of a long and honourably spent career, cannot 

 be considered as poems of nature, using the term in its 

 strictest definition, notwithstanding the expenditure of refined 

 rules of diction and versification. They are wanting in poetic 

 inspiration, and consequently strangers to the domain of 

 poetry, and are cold and dry, as all must be that shines by 

 mere external polish. But when the so-called descriptive 

 poetry is justly blamed as an independent form of art, such 

 disapprobation does not certainly apply to an earnest endea- 

 vour to convey to the minds of others, by the force of well 

 applied words, a distinct image of the results yielded by the 

 richer mass of modern knowledge. Ought any means to be 



* See Journal and Remarks, by Charles Darwin, 1832-1836, in the 

 Narrative of the Voyages of Hie Adventure and Beagle, vol. iii. pp. 

 479-490, where there occurs an extremely beautiful description of Tahiti. 



t On the merit of George Forster as a man and a writer, see 

 Gervinus, Oesch. der poet. National- Litter atur acr Deutscher*, tb. v, 

 . 390-392. 



