LANDSCAPE IN LITERATURE 



The descriptions were of famous landscapes 

 which he had admired. A good many of 

 the books on landscape gardening and most 

 of those on landscape come in this scientific 

 class, presenting landscape in the form of 

 didactic, descriptive, measured-and-cut 

 pictures. 



Professor Bailey dropped a wise ob- 

 servation when he said that there are two 

 interpretations of nature (including the 

 landscape, of course) — the scientific and 

 the poetic. The poetic is apt to be the 

 better. In fact, it is bound to be the more 

 artistic, because it is expressed in aesthetic 

 terms; and since the value of landscape is 

 almost wholly aesthetic, such an expression 

 is the only one which can be even measur- 

 ably satisfactory. 



In poetry, even in the best poetry, 

 the feeling for landscape varies between 

 limits almost infinitely separated. If we 

 take two popular prose poets whose work 

 is often compared — Burroughs and Thoreau 

 — we shall see this fact beautifully illus- 

 trated. Burroughs is a naturalist, and fills 

 our eyes with all sorts of birds and cun- 

 ning beasts and tiny flowers. Thoreau is 

 a man of landscape and weather, and he 



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