Landscape in Poetry [31]
[31] Landscape in Poetry from Homer to Tennyson. By Francis T. Palgrave.
It would be scarcely possible for a critic of Mr. Palgrave's taste and learning to produce a treatise on any aspect of poetry, which would not be full of interest and instruction, and the present volume is a contribution, and in some respects a memorable contribution, to a particularly attractive subject of critical inquiry. Its purpose is to trace the history of descriptive poetry in its relation, that is to say, to natural objects and more particularly to landscape, by illustrating its characteristics at different periods, and among different nations. Beginning with the Homeric poems, Mr. Palgrave reviews successively the "landscape" of the Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrews, the mediæval Italians, the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, and of our own poets, from the predecessors of Chaucer to Lord Tennyson. That a work, covering an area so immense, should be far less satisfactory in some portions than in others is no more than what might be expected, and Mr. Palgrave would probably be himself the first to admit that, except when he is dealing with the classical poetry of Hellas, of ancient and mediæval Italy, and of our own country, his treatise has no pretension to adequacy. Even within these bounds there is much which is irrelevant, and much which is surprisingly defective. Where, as in a subject like this, the material at the author's disposal is necessarily so superabundant, surely the utmost care should have been taken both to keep within the limits of the theme proposed, and to select the most pertinent and typical illustrations. But when Mr. Palgrave illustrates "Homeric landscape" by the simile describing the heifers frisking about the drove of cows in the fold-yard, and the "Sophoclean landscape" by the simile of the blast-impelled wave rolling up the shingle, he lays himself open to the imputation of drawing at random on his commonplace book. Indeed, the pleasure with which lovers of classical poetry will read this book cannot fail to be mingled with the liveliest surprise and disappointment. Take the Homeric poems. If a reader, tolerably well versed in the Iliad and Odyssey, were asked for illustrations of the power with which natural phenomena are described, to what would he turn? Certainly not to Mr. Palgrave's meagre and trivial examples, three of which alone have any title to pertinence. He would turn to the winter landscape in Iliad, xii. 278-286, to the lifting of the cloud from the landscape in Iliad, xvi. 296:—
ὡς δ' ὁτ' αφ' ὑψηλης κορυφης ορεος μεγαλοιο
κινηση πυκινην νεφελην στεροπηγερετα Ζευς,
εκ τ' εφανεν πασαι σκοπιαι και πρωονες ακροι
και ναπαι, ουρανοθεν δ' αρ' ὑπερῥαγη ασπετος αιθηρ.
"As when Zeus, the gatherer of the lightning, moves a thick cloud from the high head of some mighty mountain, and all the cliffs and the jutting crags and the dells start into light, and the immeasurable heaven breaks open to its highest";
to the descent of the wind on the sea, Ib. xi. 305-308:—
ὡς ὁποτε Ζεφυρος νεφεα στυφελιξη
αργεσταο Νοτοιο, βαθειη λαιλαπι τυπτων;
πολλον δε τροφι κυμα κυλινδεται, ὑψοσε δ' αχνη
σκιδναται εξ ανεμοιο πολυπλαγκτοιο ιωης.
"As when the west wind buffets the cloudlets of the brightening south wind, lashing them with furious squall, and the big wave swells up and rolls along, and the spray is scattered on high by the blast of the careering gale";
or to the pictures of the billow-buffeted headland, and the wave bursting on the ship in Iliad, xv. 618-628; or to the storm-cloud coming over the sea in Iliad, iv. 277; or to the descent of the wind on the standing corn, Iliad, ii. 147. He would point, above all, to the description of Calypso's grotto, in Odyssey, v. 63-74; to that of the harbour of Phorcys, in Odyssey, xiii. 97-112; to the fountain in the grove, xvii. 205-211. Mr. Palgrave comments justly on Homer's minute observation of nature; but he only gives one illustration, where it is noticed in Odyssey, vi. 94, that the sea, in beating on the coast, "washed the pebbles clean." He might have added with propriety many others: as the "earth blackening behind the plough," in Iliad, xviii. 548; the bats in the cave, Odyssey, xxiv. 5-8; the birds escaping from the vultures, Iliad, xxii. 304, 305; the wasps "wriggling as far as the middle," σφηκες μεσον αιολοι, Iliad, xii. 167; the dogs and the lions, Iliad, xviii. 585, 586.
Mr. Palgrave observes that Homer "was not only familiar with the sea, but loved it with a love somewhat unusual in poets." We venture to submit that there is not a line in Homer indicating that he "loved" the sea, except for poetical purposes; like most of the Greeks he probably dreaded it; his real feeling towards it is no doubt indicated in his own words:—
ου γαρ εγω γε τι φημι κακωτερον αλλο θαλασσης
ανδρα γε συγχευαι.
—nothing crushes a man's spirit more than the sea. Mr. Palgrave justly points out that Hesiod's rude prosaic style and matter are not congenial to the poetic landscape, yet it is only fair to Hesiod to say, that his poetry is not without vivid touches of natural description, as the winter scene in Works and Days, 504 sqq., and his description of the beginning of spring, 565-569, show. Professor Palgrave next glances at the treatment of nature in the lyric poets, and very properly cites the lovely fragment of Alcman:
βαλε δη βαλε κηρυλος ειην
ὁς τ' επι κυματος ανθος ἁμ' αλκυονεσσι ποτηται,
ηλεγες ητορ εχων, ἁλιπορφυρος ειαρος ορνις,—
but in translating it makes a truly extraordinary blunder.
"Would I were the kingfisher, as he flies, with his mates in his feeble age, between wind and water."
νηλεγες ητορ meaning, as we need hardly say, "reckless heart"; it is exactly Byron's, "With all her reckless birds upon the wing." In the quotations from Sappho, Ibycus, and Pindar, Mr. Palgrave has been judicious and happy, but surely he ought to have found place for the lovely flower cradle of Iamus in the sixth Olympic Ode, and for the moonlight evening in the third Olympian,—only seven words, but what a picture!—while, in the popular poetry, the omission of the Swallow Song is inexplicable.[32] Nor can we forgive him the omission of the magnificent simile of the spring wind clearing away the clouds, in the thirteenth of the fragments attributed to Solon.
But it is in dealing with the Greek dramatists that Mr. Palgrave is most defective in illustration. It is not to the opening of the Prometheus, or to the conclusion, or, indeed, to any of the passages from this poet which Mr. Palgrave cites, that we must turn for Æschylean landscape, or for illustration of this poet's power of natural description. It is to his brief picture—his pictures of scenery, though singularly vivid, are always brief—of the airy seat "against which the watery clouds drift into snow,"
λισσας αιγιλιψ απροσδεικτος οιοφρων κρεμας
γυπιας πετρα (Supplices, 772-3),
where almost every word is a perfect picture, literally beggaring mere translation; it is to his description, so magical in its rhythm, of the mid-day sea slumbering in summer calm (Agamemnon, 548-50),
η θαλπος, ευτε ποντος εν μεσημβριναις
κοιταις ακυμων νηνεμοις ευδοι πεσων,
to his picture of the keen brisk wind, clearing the clouds away, to bring into relief against the sky the dark masses of waves tossing on the horizon (Agamemnon, 1152-54), to his world-famous
ποντιων κυματων
ανηριθμον γελασμα.
"The multitudinous laughter of the ocean waves."
—Prometheus, 89-90.
Mr. Palgrave has, of course, cited with reference to Sophocles the great chorus in the Œdipus Coloneus, but he has omitted to notice that, if Sophocles has not elsewhere given us so elaborate a piece of natural description, innumerable touches in the dramas, and more particularly in the fragments, show that he observed nature almost as minutely as Shakespeare. Nothing could be more vivid than the touches of description in the Philoctetes. From Euripides Mr. Palgrave cites nothing, observing that he rarely goes beyond somewhat conventional phrases. Surely Mr. Palgrave must have forgotten the magnificent description of Parnassus, as seen from the plain, in the Phœnissæ, the glorious description of a moonlight night, as represented on the tapestry, in the Ion, the vivid touches of natural description in the Bacchæ, that of the meadow in the Hippolytus, and the chorus about Athens in the Medea, to say nothing of the charming rural picture in the fragments of the Phaeton.[33] To say of Aristophanes that, in his treatment of nature, he rarely goes beyond somewhat common phrases, is to say what is refuted, not merely in the chorus referred to by Mr. Palgrave, but in the Frogs and in the Birds. He stands next to Homer in his keen sensibility to the charm of nature. Shelley himself might have written the choruses referred to. In dealing with the Alexandrian poets Mr. Palgrave passes over Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus entirely, and yet the fine picture of Delos given by Callimachus in the Hymn to Delos is one of the gems of ancient description, and Apollonius Rhodius abounds with the most graphic and charming delineations of scenery and natural objects. What a beautiful description of early morning is this!—
ημος δ' ουρανοθεν χαροπη ὑπολαμπεται ηως
εκ περατης ανιουσα, διαγλαυσσουσι δ' αταρποι,
και πεδια δροσοεντα φαεινη λαμπεται αιγλη.
Argon. i. 1280-1283.
"What time from heaven the bright glad morn coming up from the East begins to shine, and path and road are all agleam, and the dew-bespangled plains are flashing with the radiant light."
How vivid too, and with the vividness of modern poetry, are his descriptions of the cave of Hades and its neighbourhood (ii. 729-750), and the Great Syrtis (iv. 1230-1245)! In his selections from the Greek Anthology Mr. Palgrave is much happier; but here again he has many omissions, and among them the most remarkable illustration of Greek nature-painting to be found in that collection—namely, Meleager's idyll giving an elaborate description of a spring day, which might have been written by Thomson (Pal. Anthology, ix. 363). It may be observed in passing that ουρεσιφοιτα κρινα (Pal. Anth., v. 144) can hardly mean "lilies that wander over the hills," but lilies "that haunt the hills," and that ξουθαι μελισσαι in Theocritus, vii. 142, probably means "buzzing" bees, not "tawny."
In dealing with the Roman poets Mr. Palgrave is, with one exception, most unsatisfactory. From the poets preceding Lucretius, amply as the fragments would serve his purpose, he gives only one illustration. We should have expected the vivid picture given by Accius in his Œnomaus of the early morning:
"Forte ante Auroram, radiorum ardentum indicem,
Cum e somno in segetem agrestis cornutos cient,
Ut rorulentas terras ferro rufidas
Proscindant, glebasque arvo ex molli exsuscitent."
"Perchance before the dawn that heralds the burning rays, what time rustics bring forth the oxen from their sleep into the cornfields, to break up the red dew-spangled soil with the ploughshare, and turn up the clods from the soft soil";
or the wonderfully graphic description of a sudden storm at sea, in the fragments of the Dulorestes of Pacuvius:
"Profectione læti piscium lasciviam
Intuentur, nec tuendi capere satietas potest.
Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare,
Tenebræ conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbum occæcat nigror,
Flamma inter nubes coruscat, cælum tonitru contremit,
Grando mixta imbri largifico subita præcipitans cadit,
Undique omnes venti erumpunt, sævi existunt turbines,
Fervit æstu pelagus."
"Glad at heart when they set out they gaze at the sporting fish, and are never weary of looking at them. Meanwhile, hard upon sunset, the sea ruffles, darkness gathers thick, the blackness of the storm-clouded night hides everything, flame flashes between the clouds, heaven shakes with thunder, hail, mingled with streaming rain, dashes suddenly down, from every quarter all the winds tear forth, wild whirlwinds rise, the sea boils with the seething waters."
With Lucretius, indeed, he deals fully, and this portion of his work leaves little to be desired. But a reference to the lines to Sirmio and one illustration from the Peleus and Thetis exhaust his examples from Catullus. We should have expected the picture of the stream leaping from the mossy rock into the valley beneath, in the Epistle to Manlius, of the morning chasing away the shadows in the Attis, and the lovely flower pictures in the Epithalamia. In dealing with Virgil most of Mr. Palgrave's citations are practically irrelevant; scarcely any of the passages which best illustrate Virgil's power of landscape painting being even referred to. "The Æneid," says Mr. Palgrave, "may be briefly dismissed. Natural description can have but little place in an epic." And yet what are the passages to which any one, who wishes to illustrate the charm and power of Virgil's pictures of scenery, would naturally turn? Surely to these: the description of the rocky recess which sheltered Æneas's ships (Æneid, i. 159-168), a picture worthy of Salvator; the picture of Ætna (iii. 570-582), which rivals the picture of it given by Pindar, a picture praised so justly by Mr. Palgrave himself; the description of a calm night (iv. 522-527); the wave-buffeted, gull-haunted rock (v. 124-128); and, above all, the scenery at the mouth of the Tiber, bathed in the rays of the morning sun, a picture unexcelled even by Tennyson. Nor even in the Georgics is any reference made to the superb description of a storm in harvest time (i. 216-334), or to the magnificent winter piece (iii. 349-370).
The remarks about the indifference of Propertius to natural scenery are most unjust. What a charming picture is this!—
"Grata domus Nymphis humida Thyniasin,
Quam supra nullæ pendebant debita curæ
Roscida desertis poma sub arboribus;
Et circum irriguo surgebant lilia prato
Candida purpureis mixta papaveribus."
El., I. xx. 35-39.
It may be conceded that Ovid is conventional and commonplace in his treatment of nature; but why is Valerius Flaccus, with his bold, vivid touches, left unnoticed? Why does one citation suffice for the many exquisite cameos which ought to have been given from Statius? Another inexplicable omission in Mr. Palgrave's work is the poem entitled Rosæ, attributed to Ausonius—a lovely poem, infinitely more beautiful than the epigram quoted by Mr. Palgrave from the Latin Anthology, and rivalling the fragment given by him from Tiberianus. Most readers would agree with him in his estimate of Claudian, but he might have added the fine description of Olympus in the De Consulatu Theodori, 200-210:
"Ut altus Olympi
Vertex, qui spatio ventos hiemesque relinquit,
Perpetuum nullâ temeratus nube serenum
Celsior exsurgit pluviis, auditque ruentes
Sub pedibus nimbos, et rauca tonitrua calcat;"
which Goldsmith, by the way, has borrowed and paraphrased in the Deserted Village, together with its sublime application:
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles round its head.
Space does not serve to follow Mr. Palgrave through his chapters on Italian, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon poetry, in all of which his omissions are as remarkable as his citations; so we must content ourselves with making a few remarks on his treatment of the English poets. It is pleasing to see that, guided by Gray, he has done justice to Lydgate, but he has not noticed the distinguishing peculiarity of this poet in his description, his extraordinary sensitive appreciation of colour.
Among the Scotch poets of the fifteenth century a prominent place should have been given to Henryson who is not even mentioned. Mr. Palgrave hurries over the Elizabethan poets with too much expedition, and the poets of the eighteenth century fare even worse. Great injustice is done to Thomson. Why did not Mr. Palgrave, instead of citing what he calls Thomson's "cold" tropical landscape, for the purpose of contrasting it unfavourably with Tennyson's picture in Enoch Arden, give us instead the Summer morning—
"At first faint gleaming in the dappled East
... Young day pours in apace,
And opens all the lawny prospect wide,
The dripping rock, the mountain's misty tops
Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn,
Blue through the dusk the smoking currents shine,"
or
"The clouds that pass,
For ever flushing round a summer sky";
or the rainbow in the Lines to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton? Dyer may be somewhat prosaic, but he is not a poet to be despatched in a treatise on descriptive poetry, without citation, in a few contemptuous lines: how vivid is his picture of a calm in the tropics!—
"The dewy feather, on the cordage hung,
Moves not; the flat sea shines, like yellow gold
Fused in the fire";
or his
"Rocks in ever-wild
Posture of falling";
or the charming landscape in Grongar Hill with such touches as these:
"The windy summit wild and high
Roughly rushing on the sky";
or
"Rushing from the woods the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires."
As Wordsworth said, "Dyer's beauties are innumerable and of a high order." It is very surprising that nothing should have been said about Shenstone and the Wartons, about Scott of Amwell, Jago, Crowe and Bowles, all of whom are, in various ways, remarkable as descriptive poets. And certainly Mr. Palgrave does scant justice to Cowper; his touch may be prosaic, but he always had his eye on the object, and his landscape lives. Surely, by the way, Mr. Palgrave is mistaken in supposing that Shelley apparently understood Alastor to mean a "wanderer"; he understood it, as the preface shows, to mean, what it means so often in Greek, "one under the spell of an avenging deity."
Here we must break off. Mr. Palgrave's is an important work, and it is the duty, therefore, of a critic to review it seriously, in the hope that, should it reach a second edition, which may be confidently anticipated, Mr. Palgrave may be disposed to do a little more justice to his most interesting subject.
Since this article was written Mr. Palgrave's lamented death has unhappily rendered all hope of what was anticipated in the last paragraph, vain. But the review has been reprinted, and with some additions, in the hope that it may not be unacceptable as a contribution, however slight and imperfect, to a subject of great interest to lovers of poetry.
Footnotes:
[32] See Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Carm. Pop. xxix.
[33] Nauck, Trag. Græc. Frag., p. 473.