VI. Among the Latin descriptive poets, Lucretius occupies the first rank; Virgil the second; Italicus the third; Statius the fourth; and Lucan the fifth. Some of the French writers, too, indicate a lively sense of natural beauty. Fontaine affords some highly animated scenes; particularly in the fable of the Oak and the Reed. He adds, indeed, a landscape to every fable. What fine passages are there in De Lille! How beautiful are the descriptions of Fenelon and St. Pierre! While those of Rousseau combine the richness of Claude, with the grace, splendour, and magnificence of Titian. Chaucer, But to confine ourselves to British writers. active, ardent, and gay; a lover of wine, fond of society, and well qualified to charm, by the elasticity of his spirits, the agreeableness of his manners, and the native goodness of his heart, was a lover of that kind of cheerful scenery, which amuses in the fields, or delights us in the garden. The rising sun, the song of the sky-lark, and a clear day, had peculiar charms for him. His descriptions, therefore, are animated and gay, full of richness, and evidently the result of having studied for himself. Spenser, the wild, the fascinating Spenser,-delineates, with force and simplicity, the romantic and enchanting. Milton,-born, as Richardson finely observes, two thousand years after his time,—was a lover of the beautiful in Nature, as he was of the sublime in poetry. For, though his Il Penseroso abounds in those images, which excite the most sombre reflections, the general character of his delineations is of an animated cast. In his minor poems,-which afforded him an opportunity of consulting his natural taste, unconnected with epic gravity,we find him, almost universally, sketching with a light, elegant, and animated pencil. What can be more cheerful, than his song on May morning; or his Latin poem, on the coming of Spring? And can any thing be more rich, than the scenery of Comus; or more abounding in all, that renders imagery delightful, than his lyric of L'Allegro? And beyond all this, what shall we compare with his garden of Eden? Nothing in the Odyssey; nothing in the descriptions, we have received, of the Groves of Antioch', or the Valley of Tempé; neither the Gardens of Armida, or the Hesperides; the Paradise of Ariosto3; Claudian's Garden of Venus*; the Elysium of Virgil and Ovid; or the Cyprus of Marino; neither the enchanted Garden of Boyardo; the Island of Camöens'; or Spenser's Garden of Adonis, have any thing to compare with it. Rousseau's Verger de Clarens is alone superior ! Alluded to in P. L. b. 4. 272 and in Julian; and described by Strabo, lib. xvi. Tasso, cant. xvi. 9. The best principles of a garden are comprised in the following line : Arte che tutto fa, nulla se scopre. 3 Orl. Fur. xxxiv. Garden of Alcina, b. vi. 4 Nupt. Hon. et Mariæ, v. 49. 5 Cant. ix. 6 Faerie Queene, b. iii. c. 6. Chaucer and Sylvester have curious and not inelegant descriptions: the former in his Assembly of Fowles; and the latter in his translation of Du Bartas.-W. ii. D. i. VII. . The poet's province is to copy Nature; such, also, is the province of the historian; and it is a subject of regret, that ancient historical writers had not been more observant of the rule. How far more interesting had their pages been, for instance, had they enlivened the progress of their armies, with descriptions of the countries, through which they marched, rather than have encumbered them with so much military detail! Something of this kind may be observed in Xenophon, Quintus Curtius, and Cesar's Commentaries: yet they are but sketches: strongly lined, in some instances, it is true; yet still sketches, and most of them imperfect. But, however well a scene may be described, every landscape, so exhibited, does not necessarily become a subject for the pallet of the painter. Some descriptions embrace objects too minute; some are too humble and familiar; others too general; and some there are too faithful to be engaging. This poet delights in the familiar; that in the beautiful; some in the picturesque; and others in the sublime. These may be styled the four orders of landscape. In the first we may class Cowper; in the second Pope; in the third Thomson; in the fourth Ossian. The descriptions of Cowper are principally from humble and domestic life; including objects, seen every day and in every country. The gipsy group is almost the only picturesque sketch, he affords. Highly as this has been extolled, how much more interesting had the subject become, in the hands of a Dyer, a Thomson, or a Beattie!-Pope excels in the beautiful; yet he is so general, that his vales and plains flit before the imagination, leaving on the memory few traces of existence. Thomson's pictures are principally adapted to the latitude of Richmond. Some, however, are sublime to the last degree. They present themselves to the eye in strong and well-defined characters; the keeping is well preserved, and the outlines boldly marked. Dyer tinted like Ruysdale; and Ossian with the force and majesty of Salvator Rosa. In describing wild tracks, pathless solitudes, dreary and craggy wildernesses, with all the horrors of savage deserts, partially peopled with a hardy, but not inelegant race of men, Ossian is unequalled. In night-scenery he is above all imitation, for truth, solemnity, and pathos; since no one more contrasts the varied aspects of Nature with the mingled emotions of the heart. What can be more admirable, than his address to the evening star, in the songs of Selma; to the moon in Darthula; or that fine address to the sun in his poem of Carthon?-passages almost worthy the sacred pen of the prophet Isaiah. The uniformity, that has been observed in the imagery of Ossian, is not the uniformity of dulness. Local description only aids the memory: for a scene must be actually observed by the eye, before the mind can form a just and adequate idea of it. No epicure can judge a ragout by the palate of another;—a musician must hear the concert, he presumes to criticise;—and the reader will gain but a very imperfect idea of the finest landscape in the universe, by reading or hearing it described. For we can neither taste, hear, smell, feel, nor see by proxy. Thus, when Ossian describes vales, rocks, mountains, and glens, the words he uses are the same; and the images, they respectively suggest, would appear to be the same; but the scenes themselves are dressed in an infinite variety of drapery. It is not that the poet is poor, but that language is indigent. A superficial reader, possessing no play of fancy, when the sun is represented as going down, and the moon as rising; when a cataract is said to roar, and the ocean to roll; can only figure to himself the actual representations of those objects, without any combinations. A man of an enlarged and elegant mind, however, immediately paints to himself the lovely tints, that captivate his fancy in the rising and setting of those glorious luminaries; he already sees the tremendous rock, whence the cataract thunders down; and thrills with agreeable horror, at the distant heavings of an angry ocean. Possessing a mind, that fancy never taught to soar, the one perceives no graces in a tint; a broad and unfinished outline only spreads upon his canvas; while, by the creating impulses of genius, the outline is marked by many a matchless shade, and the foreground occupied by many a bold, or interesting group. CHAPTER VII. GIFTED with an accomplished mind, the poet walks at large, amid the fair creations of the material world; and, imbibing images, at every step, to form his subjects and illustrate his positions, he turns every object into an in |