74 COSMOS. 



er, ill ^tnp; Lear, where the seemingly mad Edgar represents 

 to hw hJmd father, Gloucester, while on the plain, that they 

 are ascexidijig Dover ClifF. The description of the view, on 

 looking into the depths below, actually excites a fueling of 

 giddiness."* 



If, in Shakspeare, the inward animation of the feelings and 

 the grand simolicity of the language gave such a wonderful 

 degree of life-like truth and individuality to the expression of 

 nature, in Milton's exalted poem of Paradise Lost the de- 

 scriptions are, from the very nature of the subject, more mag- 

 nificent than graphic. The whole richness of the poet's fancy 

 and diction is lavished on the descriptions of the luxuriant 

 beauty of Paradise, but, as in Thomson's charming didactic 

 poem of The Seasons, vegetation could only be sketched in 

 general and more indefinite outlines. According to the judg- 

 ment of critics deeply versed in Indian poetry, Kahdasa's 

 poem on a similar subject, the llitusanhara, which was writ- 

 ten more than fifteen hundred vears earlier, individualizes, 

 with greater vividness, the powerlul vegetation of tropical re- 

 gions, but it wants the charm which, in Thomson's work, 

 springs from the more varied division of the year in northern 

 latitudes, as the transition of the autumn rich in fruits to the 

 winter, and of the winter to the reanimating season of Spring: , 

 and from the images which may thus be drawn of the labors 

 or pleasurable pursuits of men in each part of tne year. 



If we proceed to a period nearer our ovi^n time, we observe 

 that, since the latter half of the eighteenth century, aelmea- 

 tive prose especially has developed itself with peculiar vigor- 

 Although the general mass of knowledge has been so excess- 

 ively enlarged from the universally-extended study of nature- 

 it does not appear that, in those susceptible of a higher da 

 gree of poetic inspiration, intellectual contemplation has suo> 

 under the weight of accumulated knowledge, but rather thai 

 as a result of poetic spontaneity, it has gained in comprehen- 

 siveness and elevation ; and, learning how to penetrate deep- 

 er into the structure of the earth's crust, has explored in X\i^ 

 mountain masses of our planet the stratified sepulchers of ex 

 tinct organisms, and traced the geographical distribution ol 

 animals and plants, and the mutual connection of races 

 Thus, among those who were the first, by an exciting appeal 

 to the imaginative faculties, powerfully to animate the senti- 



* I have taken the passages distinguished in the text by mark« of 

 quotation, and relating to Calderon and Shakspeare, fi-om ur.publisUeA 

 letters addressed to myself by Ludwig Tieck. 



