62 DESCRIPTIONS OP NATURAL SCENERY. 



descriptions of natural scenes,, does yet so paint them by 

 occurrences, by allusions, and by the emotions of the acting 

 personages, that we seem to see them before our eyes, and 

 to live in them. "We thus live in the midsummer-night in 

 the wood; and in the latter scenes of the Merchant of 

 Yenioe we see the moonshine brightening the warm summer 

 night, without direct descriptions. An actual and elaborate 

 description of a natural scene occurs, however, in King Lear, 

 where Edgar, who feigns himself mad, represents to his 

 blind father, Gloucester, while on the plain, that they are 

 mounting to the summit of Dover Cliff. The picture drawn 

 of the downward view into the depths below actually turns 

 one giddy" ( 10 ). 



If in Shakspeare the inward life of feeling, and the grand 

 simplicity of the language, animate thus wonderfully the in- 

 dividual expression of nature, and render her actually present 

 to our imagination; in Milton' s sublime poem of Paradise 

 Lost, on the other hand, such descriptions are, from the very 

 nature of the subject, magnificent rather than graphic. All 

 the riches of imagination and of language are poured forth 

 in painting the loveliness of Paradise; but the descrip- 

 tion of vegetation could not be otherwise than general 

 and undefined. This is also the case in Thomson's pleasing 

 didactic poem of The Seasons. Kalidasa's poem on the same 

 subject, the Kitusanhara, which is more ancient by above 

 seventeen centuries, is said by critics deeply versed in 

 Indian literature to individualise more vividly the vigorous 

 nature of the vegetation of the tropics ; but it wants the 

 charm which, in Thomson, arises from the more varied 

 division of the seasons which is proper to the higher 

 latitudes; the transition from fruit-bringing autumn to 



