[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;