56 DESCRIPTIONS OP NATURAL SCENERY, 



itself into the bay, I was astonished at the cool shade, the 

 crystal clear water, and the number of singing birds. It 

 seemed to me as if I could never quit a spot so delightful, 

 as if a thousand tongues would fail to describe it, as if the 

 spell-bound hand would refuse to write. (Para hacer relacion 

 a los Reyes de las cosas que vian, no bastaran mil lenguas a 

 referillo, ni la mano para lo escribir, que le par^ecia ques- 

 taba encantado.)" ( 85 ) 



We here learn from the journal of an unlettered seaman, 

 the power which the beauty of nature, manifested in her 

 individual forms, may exert on a susceptible mind. 

 Peelings ennoble language ; for the prose of the Admiral, 

 especially when, on his fourth voyage, at the age of 67, he 

 relates his wonderful dream on the coast of Yeragua ( 86 ), 

 is, if not more eloquent, yet far more moving than the 

 allegorical pastoral romance of Boccaccio and the two 

 Arcadias of Sannazaro and of Sydney; than Garcilasso's 

 Salicio y Nemoroso ; or than the Diana of Jorge de Monte- 

 mayor. The elegiac idyllic element was unhappily too long 

 predominant in Italian and Spanish literature ; it required 

 the fresh and living picture which Cervantes has drawn of 

 the adventures of the Knight of La Mancha, to efface the 

 Galatea of the same author. The pastoral romance, 

 however ennobled in the works of these great writers by 

 beauty of language and tenderness of feeling, is from it?, 

 nature, like the allegorical artifices of the intellect of the 

 middle ages, cold and wearisome. Individuality of observa- 

 tion alone leads to truth to nature; in the finest descriptive 

 stanzas of the " Jerusalem Delivered," impressions derived 

 from the poet' s recollection of the picturesque landscape of 

 Sorrento have been supposed to be recognised ( 87 .) 



