March 4, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



107 



White, of Boston, suggested Primula obconica as the proba- 

 ble cause of an inflammation of the skin of the hands and 

 face of persons who had been handling it. In a later num- 

 ber he gave evidence to show that his original suspicion 

 was probably correct. Since that time experience has 

 abundantly established the fact that many persons are 

 subject to an irritation of the skin, more or less severe, 

 from contact with this Primrose. — En. 1 



The Owl and the Sparrow. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — I am glad to see criticism of M. Naudin's proposal to 

 send us an owl for the discouragement of the English spar- 

 row and the possible slaughter of our native sparrows, wrens, 

 bluebirds, yellow-birds and other insectivorous songsters. 

 Allow me to add an appeal to those school-boys and others 

 who are enthusiastic in collecting birds' eggs. A great deal 

 more knowledge of birds and their ways can be gained by ex- 

 amining the nest occasionally without touching it or the eggs, 

 and by quietly watching the old birds at their work ; and by this 

 method of study the unpleasant feeling which comes over 

 one after robbing a bird's nest will be avoided. 



Washington. H. B. A. 



Recent Publications. 



Among a number of interesting articles recently published 

 by Mr. John Addington Symonds in a book called "Essays 

 Speculative and Suggestive," are two "which should have 

 especial attraction for our readers. 



Even a slight acquaintance with the author's previous works 

 would justify the prediction that in the chapter called "Land- 

 scape" the subject would not be treated from the most obvious 

 point of view. No one will be surprised to find that it is not 

 an essay on landscape in itself, but on the way in which a feel- 

 ing for natural beauty has developed in mankind, as shown by 

 the art and the literature of successive periods. " It is an 

 error," says Mr. Symonds, "to believe that the ancients were 

 insensible to the charm and beauty of external nature. Much 

 has been written about their attitude toward landscape and the 

 parsimony of picturesque description in their poetry. Yet 

 sufficient stress is rarely laid upon the difference between the 

 Greeks and the Romans in this matter. Nor has it been made 

 clear enough that classical literature in its later stages exhibits 

 more of what we may call the modern feeling than we find in 

 Homer and the Attic writers." This position is substantially 

 the same as that which was taken by one of our contributors 

 in the series of articles we printed last year on the " History of 

 Gardening Art." However, there are some points of dissimi- 

 larity. The difference between the Greeks and the Romans in 

 their feeling for nature was not then explained as Mr. Symonds 

 explains it. But, on the other hand, Mr. Symonds does not 

 dwell upon the fact, then referred to, that descriptive writing 

 of any kind is almost absent from Greek literature. We think 

 that the cogency of the statements in the beginning of his 

 chapter would have been increased had he shown that, as the 

 Greeks, despite the unquestionable strength and acuteness of 

 their feeling for art, have left us no real descriptions of works 

 of art, so it is foolish to argue, from the paucity of their de- 

 scriptions of natural scenes, that they had no true feeling for 

 their beauty. But nothing could be more clear and charming 

 than the way in which he illustrates that abiding anthropo- 

 logical instinct of the Greek mind, which, leading it to personify 

 all natural phenomena and forces, hardly left a place in litera- 

 ture or in art for the painting of purely natural scenes ; and his 

 account of the development of a different frame of mind in the 

 later Latin poets is, in its scholarly quality, combined with its 

 lightness of touch, a passage such as no one else could have 

 written. Equally interesting is his exposition of the reasons 

 why, when Christianity had banished the old delight in terres- 

 trial things, together with the old vast company of imagined 

 beings inhabiting nature, " both literature and the plastic arts 

 decayed. Classical polytheism," he continues, "interpolated 

 a multitude of ideal personalities between the mind and 

 nature. All these were swept away. The soul was left face 

 to face with God." The material world was evil, and there was 

 nothing left but "infinity and fact. What would happen 

 should theology relax her grasp upon the intellect and men 

 once more begin to gaze around with curious delight on their 

 terrestrial dwelling-place ?" 



It was in the time of the Renaissance, Mr. Symonds believes, 

 that " the intellect of man came painfully and gladly to new 



life through the discovery of itself and nature." The Latin 

 songs of the thirteenth century, "in so far as these touch na- 

 ture, reveal a genial thawing of the spirit. They dwell on the 

 charm of spring-time in the country and connect the freedom 

 of the open air with pleasures of the senses. Classical litera- 

 ture is at work as a form-giving influence. The German 

 lyrics. of the Minnesingers, the Provencal lyrics of the Trouba- 

 dours, the Celtic romances of Arthur and his Knights, when 

 these touch nature are in like manner vernal. The magic of 

 the May pervades them ; the mystery of the woodlands enfolds 

 them. They are the utterances of generations for whom life- 

 has revived." Then comes Dante with his keen feeling for 

 natural beauty, and " contemporaneously with Dante — though 

 Dante hardly shared this movement — there began what is 

 known as the Revival of Learning: that resuscitation of clas- 

 sical literature and art which exercised so potent an influence 

 over the mind of Europe." Inspired by classic example, poets 

 and painters then began to express more plainly a love for 

 nature ; but it always was after the classic fashion, as a back- 

 ground for man and his acts, until the very close of the Renais- 

 sance period when five great painters gave landscape inde- 

 pendent life and importance. These, says Mr. Symonds, were 

 Rubens, Claude Lorraine, the two Poussins and Salvator Rosa ; 

 they were the first who " emancipated landscape from its tra- 

 ditional dependence upon human motives and proved that 

 Nature in herself is worthy of our sympathy and admiration." 

 With and after them came the great company of. Dutch land- 

 scape painters, while " in literature classic standards of taste 

 continued to prevail " until science brought her quota of influ- 

 ence, and, in our own century, poets took the same attitude 

 toward nature that painters had begun to take in the seven- 

 teenth century. 



It will be seen, even from this brief summary, that Mr. 

 Symonds does not adhere to the usual belief that the modern 

 love of nature is an inheritance from Teutonic ancestors ; that 

 the difference which, although it has been exaggerated, docs 

 really exist between the ancient world and our own in this re- 

 spect is a difference in blood, in natural, instinctive habits of 

 mind. He says, indeed, quite plainly, that when the Scandi- 

 navians and Teutons were Christianized and absorbed into the 

 fellowship of nations, they " brought with them nothing which 

 could constitute a new condition for the sense of natural 

 beauty. Like the Greeks, they looked at the world from the 

 standpoint of mythology. The cosmic forces were personi- 

 fied in their religous legends as ideal men and women. Norse 

 poetry was ill adapted to fostering that sympathy with nature 

 which had begun to germinate in the latter stages of Grajco- 

 Roman civilization." Moreover, he adds, "such as it was, the 

 dominant civilizing energy, that of the Latin Church, laid it 

 under strict interdict." There is no space here to give the 

 reasons why we must dissent from this belief and fall in with 

 the more commonly accepted one which regards the Teutonic 

 mind as more susceptible to the influence of nature, simply 

 and purely as nature, than the Greek or Latin mind. But we 

 think that Mr. Symonds unconsciously shows this very fact 

 when he cites the songs of the Minnesingers and the Celtic 

 romances as exhibiting a true and tender feeling for nature. 

 Undoubtedly, the influence of the classic world was felt in 

 northern Europe before the time which we are accustomed 

 to call the " dawn of the Renaissance "; but neither these poets, 

 nor even Dante, can be said to have been moulded, even if 

 they were touched by it. That there was a distinctively Teu- 

 tonic influence at work in literature and art all through the 

 middle ages, and that it affected even non-Teutonic nations, 

 seems to us a clearly proved fact ; and as clearly proved seems 

 the fact that it meant a new and stronger feeling for natural 

 beauty simply as such. To what, we wonder, would Mr. 

 Symonds attribute the development of architectural decoration 

 from the classic conventionalism of Romanesque times into 

 the often directly imitative, wholly realistic types of the end of 

 the thirteenth and of the fourteenth century ? 



The second chapter to which we have referred is called 

 "The Pathos of the Rose in Poetry," and again it recalls some- 

 thing that was recently written in Garden and Forest. This 

 time it is the whimsical complaint of Alphonse Karr, cited in 

 an article about him (vol. hi., p. 522), that the Greeks had said 

 one or two pretty things about the Rose, the Romans had 

 added one or two more, and then the world had gone on re- 

 peating them over and over until they had become worse than 

 commonplace. Mr. Symonds is not whimsical, and he does 

 not complain of this repetition of ideas or say that it has re- 

 sulted in commonplaces. He simply shows, in a very delight- 

 ful way, how two classic poems, one by Catullus. and one by 

 Ausonius, have been re-echoed in later days and in different 

 tongues. To quote from this essay would be like plucking off 



