iiESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREEKS. 23 



proDably, to express the delight of man at the termination of 

 the discomforts of winter. A natural description of winter is 

 interwoven (perhaps by the hand of some Ionian rhapsodist) 

 in the Works and Days of Hesiod.* This poem, which is 

 composed with noble simplicity, although in accordance with 

 the rigid didactic form, gives instructions regarding agriculture, 

 directions for different kinds of trade and labor, and ethic pre- 

 cepts for a blameless course of life. It is only elevated to the 

 dignity of a lyric poem when the poet clothes the miseries of 

 mankind, or the exquisite mythical a^Vgory of Epimetheus 

 and Pandora, in an anthropomorphic garb. In the theogony 

 of Hesiod, which is composed of many ancient and dissimilar 

 elements, we frequently find, as, for instance, in the enumer- 

 ation of tiie Nereides,! natural descriptions of the realm of 

 Neptune tsoncealed under the significant names of mythical 

 characters. The Boeotian, and, indeed, all the ancient schools 

 of poetry, treat only of the phenomena of the external world, 

 under the personification of human forms. 



But if, as we have already remarked, natural descriptions, 

 whether they delineate the richness and luxuriance of tropical 

 vegetation, or portray the habits of animals, have .only become 

 a distinct branch of literature in the most recent times, thif 

 circumstance must not be regarded as a proof of the absence 

 of susceptibility for the beauties of nature, where the percep- 

 tion of beauty was so intense,^ nor must we suppose that the 

 animated expression of a spirit of poetic contemplation was 

 wanting to the Greeks, who have transmitted to us such in- 

 imitable proofs of their creative faculty alike in poetry and in 

 sculpture. All that we are led by the tendency of our modern 

 ideas to discover as deficient in this department of ancient lit- 

 erature is rather of a negative than of a positive kind, being 

 evinced less in the absence of susceptibility than in that of 

 the urgent impulse to give expression in words to the senti 

 raent awakened by the charms of nature. Directed less to 



* Hesiodi Opera et Dies, v. 502-5G1. GSttling, in Hcs. Carm., 1831, 

 p. xix. ; Ulrici, Oesch. der Hellenischen Dichtkunst, th. i., 1835, s. 337. 

 Bernhardy, Grundriss der Oriech, Litteratur, th. ii., s. 176. According 

 to the opinion of Gottfr. Hermann ( Opuscula, vol. vi., p. 239), " the 

 picturesque description given by Hesiod of winter bears all the evi- 

 dence of great antiquity." 



t Hes., Theog., v. 233-264. The Nereid Mera (Of, xi., 326; H., 

 xviii., 48) may perhaps be indicative of the phosphoric light seen on 

 the surface of the sea, in the same manner as the same word fialpa des- 

 ir^nates the sparkling dog-star Sirius. 



X Compare Jacobs, Leben und Kunsi i.er Alien, bd. i., abth. i., s. vii. 



