14 DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY 



fourth century, we find descriptions of scenery frequently 

 introduced in the romances of the Greek prose writers ; as 

 in the pastoral romance of Longus ( 16 ), in which, however, 

 the author is much more successful in the tender scenes 

 taken from life, than in the expression of sensibility to the 

 beauties of nature. 



It is not the object of these pages to introduce more than 

 such few references to particular forms of poetic art, as may 

 tend to illustrate general considerations respecting the poetic 

 conception of the external world ; and I should here quit 

 the flowery circle of Hellenic antiquity, if, in a work to which 

 I have ventured to give the name of " Cosmos," I could 

 pass over in silence the description of nature, with which the 

 pseudo Aristotelian book of the Cosmos (or " Order of the 

 Universe") commences. This description shews us "the 

 terrestrial globe adorned with luxuriant vegetation, abun- 

 dantly watered, and, which is most worthy of praise, inha- 

 bited by thinking beings" ( l7 ). The rhetorical colouring 

 of this rich picture of nature, so unlike the concise and 

 purely scientific manner of the Stagirite, is one of the many 

 indications by which it has been judged not to have been 

 his composition. Conceding this point, and ascribing it to 

 Appuleius ( 18 ), or to Chrysippus ( 19 ), or to any other author, 

 its place is fully supplied by a brief but genuine fragment 

 which Cicero has preserved to us from a lost work of 

 Aristotle ( 20 ). "If there were beings living in the depths 

 of the earth, in habitations adorned with statues and paint- 

 ings, and every thing which is possessed in abundance by 

 those whom we call fortunate, and if these beings should 

 receive tidings of the dominion and power of the gods, and 

 should then be brought from their hidden dwelling 



