[196] Cf. Cicero: “Urbem, urbem, mi Rufe, cole et in ista luce vive.” (Ad Fam., II, 22.)
[197] March 23, 1646.
[198] It was especially easy for the poets to go for their landscapes to the painters because according to the current theory poetry was itself a form of painting (ut pictura poesis). Thus Thomson writes in The Castle of Indolence:
Sometimes the pencil, in cool airy halls,
Bade the gay bloom of vernal landskips rise,
Or autumn’s varied shades embrown the walls:
Now the black tempest strikes the astonish’d eyes;
Now down the steep the flashing torrent flies;
The trembling sun now plays o’er ocean blue,
And now rude mountains frown amid the skies;