24 COSMOS. 



the inanimate world of phenomena than to the realities of ac* 

 ive life, and to the inner and spontaneous emotions of the 

 mind, the earliest, and, at the same time, the noblest direc- 

 tions of the poetic spirit were epic and lyric. In these arti- 

 ficial forms, descriptions of nature can only occur as incidental 

 accessories, and not as special creations of fancy. As the in- 

 fluence of antiquity gradually disappeared, and as the bright 

 beauty of its blossoms faded, rhetorical figures became more 

 and more diffused through descriptive and didactic poetry. 

 This form of poetry, wliich in its earliest philosophical, half- 

 sacerdotal type, was solemn, grand, and devoid of ornament 

 — as we see exemplified in the poem of Empedocles On Na- 

 ture — by degrees lost its simplicity and earlier dignity as it 

 became more strongly marked by a rhetorical character. 



I may be permitted here to mention a few particular in- 

 stances in illustration of these general observations. In con- 

 formity with the character of tho Epos, we find the most at- 

 tractive scenes of nature introduced in the Homeric songs 

 merely as secondary adjuncts. " The shepherd rejoice?* in 

 the stillness of night, in the purity of the sky, and in the 

 starry radiance of the vault of heaven ; he hears from afar 

 the rush of the mountain torrent, as it pursues its foaming 

 course swollen with the trunks of oaks that have been borne 

 along by its turbid waters."* The sublime description of the 

 sylvan loneliness of Parnassus, with its somber, thickly- wooded 

 and rocky valleys, contrasts with the joyous pictures of the 

 many-fountained poplar groves in the Phseacian island of 

 Scheria, and especially of the land of the Cyclops, " where 

 meadows waving with luxuriant and succulent grass encircle 

 the hills of unpruned vines."t Pindar, in a dithyrambus in 

 praise of Spring, recited at Athens, sings of" the earth covered 

 with new-born flowers, when, in the Argive Nemsea, the first 

 opening shoot of the palm announces the coming of balmy 

 Spring." Then he sings of -^tna as "the pillar of heaven, 

 the fosterer of enduring snow ;" but he quickly turns away 



* Ilias, viii., 555-559; iv., 452-455; xi., 115-119. Compare, also, 

 the crowded but animated description of the animal world, which pre- 

 cedes the review of the array, ii., 458-475. 



t Od., xix., 431-445; vi.', 290; ix., 115-199, Compare, also, "the 

 verdant overshadowing of the grove" near Calypso's grotto, " whore 

 even an immortal would linger v^dth admiration, rejoicing in the beau- 

 tiful view," v. 55-73 ; the breaking of the surf on the shores of tha 

 Phaeacian Islands, v. 400-442; and the gardens of Alcinoiis, vii., 113- 

 130. On the vernal dithyrambus of Pindar, see BOckh, Pindari Opera, 

 t ii., part ii... p. 575-579. 



