When the fleet of Æneas enters the mouth of the Tiber, he sees

A mighty grove of glancing trees.
Embowered amid the silvan scene
Old Tiber winds his banks between,
And in the lap of ocean pours

His gulfy stream, his sandy stores.

To which the poet adds, like Homer in the cave of Calypso, the presence of the birds, fluttering and singing.

The muster of the Latin tribes, in the seventh Æneid, is the picturesque of action in its full swing, the exemplar of innumerable subsequent poets, among whom Scott and Macaulay are not the least notable.

Ausonia, all inert before,

Takes fire and blazes to the core:

And some on foot their march essay,
Some, mounted, storm along the way;
To arms! cry one and all :

With unctuous lard their shields they clean,
And make their javelins bright and sheen,
Their axes on the whetstone grind;
Look how that banner takes the wind!
Hark to yon trumpet's call !

Five mighty towns, with anvils set,
In emulous haste their weapons whet:
Crustumium, Tibur the renowned,
And strong Atina there are found,
And Ardea, and Antemnæ crowned
With turrets round her wall.

Splendid touches could be found among the many poetic effects in Horace. How effective his Lalage, melodious alike in her laugh and in her talk (dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem)!

Short descriptions of considerable picturesqueness are frequent. For example, the following stanza in the serenading Ode to Lyce→

Only hark how the doorway goes straining and creaking,

And the piercing wind pipes through the trees that surround
The court of your villa, while black frost is streaking
With ice the crisp snow that lies thick on the ground.
-Theodore Martin.

Or this description of a river

All else which may by time be bred
Is like a river of the plain,

Now gliding gently o'er its bed

Along to the Etruscan main,

Now whirling onwards, fierce and fast,
Uprooted trees and boulders vast,

And flocks, and houses, all in drear
Confusion tossed from shore to shore,
While mountains far, and forests near,
Reverberate the rising roar,

When lashing rains among the hills
To fury wake the quiet rills.

Longer descriptions may be found in the picture of the Islands of the Blessed (Epodes XVI.), consisting of a series of features aiming chiefly at emotional harmony, or the journey to Brundusium (Satires, I. 5), described with many touches of picturesque humour.

CHAUCER'S mastery of the picturesque has already come. into view. His graphic similitudes are not his only art. His selection of points is equally notable. Not often does any poet venture upon the full details of a human countenance : Chaucer has elaborated two very different pictures of heads -the prioress and the miller. The iniller's wart is an example of a suggestive feature: it carries with it to the mind a good deal besides. In the Wife of Bath,' the deafness is a well-chosen particular, among various others in that wonderful personation.

The poetic invention of SPENSER supplies innumerable strokes of the picturesque; any want of effectiveness being referable to his diffuseness, exuberance and want of lucidity. It is not his purpose to elaborate scenic pictures, either of still-life or of action, further than as they serve to excite emotion; and he depends for ease of comprehension more upon his poetic invention than upon method. The first example is purely scenic

A little lowly Hermitage it was,

Downe in a dale, hard by a forest's side,
Far from resort of people that did pas
In travell to and froe; a little wyde
There was an holy chappell edifyde,
Wherein the Hermite dewly wont to say
His holy things each morne and eventyde:
Thereby a christall streame did gently play,

Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway.

The best order for pictorial effect would be the following:-'Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side, far from people, was a little lowly hermitage; near which was a holy chapel; and by it a fountain welled forth a gentle crystal stream'. It is better not to interrupt the descriptive

SPENSER. -SHAKESPEARE.

289

particulars, by an action that gives no support to the description. The hermit's morn and even prayers can be recounted separately. The circumstance 'far from people' is suggestive and supporting; but there is no necessity for the addition—that did pass in travel to and fro'.

The exuberance of Spenser's style is better typified by the following

And over him, not striving to compair

With nature, did an arber greene dispred,
Framed of wanton yvie, flouring faire,

Through which the fragrant eglantine did spred
His prickling armes, entrayld with roses red,
Which daintie odours round about them threw
And all within with flowers were garnished,

That, when myld Zephyrus emongst them blew,

Did breath out boundless smell, and painted colors show.

There is no picturesque method observed in this instance. The same poet is distinguished for his power of personal descriptions. They have the author's characteristic of poetic force. See his Mammon' in Book II., Canto VII. 3.

An uncouth, salvage, and uncivile wight

Of griesly hew and fowle ill-favour'd sight;

His face with smoke was tand, and eyes were bleard,

His head and beard with sout were ill-bedight,

His cole-blacke hands did seeme to have been reard

In smithes fire-spitting forge, and nayles like clawes appeard.

Being short, this is more conceivable than Spenser's pictures generally are.

The picturesqueness of SHAKESPEARE is on a level with all his other arts. Epithets are in the highest profusion. The 'Seven ages' is an example of what may be called picturing by representative or typical circumstances. The first question for the critic is-Are these well chosen ?-the next, Are they vividly rendered?

-'the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail, Unwillingly to school;'

6

is one view of the age of boyhood, supported by graphically chosen circumstances; the shining morning face' being powerfully suggestive. Equally typical would have been the digressions and stoppages for play. The most powerful

passage, for picturesque and mutually supporting details, is probably the sixth age. Yet the poet's choice of circumstances is really less suggestive than the commonplace epithets bowed' and 'tottering'. The shrunk limbs cannot be given as fully representative; obesity being equally attendant on decay of constitution. The big manly voice turning to treble' is not an invariable characteristic, and would rather mark the extremity of weakness pictured in the seventh age.

MILTON Sustains the grandeur of his style by picturesque groupings, as well as splendid similes. His greatest effort at description is the Mount of Temptation'; where he realizes comprehensiveness, along with selected circumstances and supporting figures.

It was a mountain, at whose verdant feet
A spacious plain, outstretched in circuit wide,
Lay pleasant.

Here we have comprehensive phrases spacious plain, outstretched in circuit wide,' and the situation, with a picturesque epithet, 'at whose verdant feet'. 'Lay pleasant,' gives an associated circumstance, (' pleasant,') but too general to assist in the picture.

-from its side two rivers flow'd,

The one winding, the other straight, and left between
Fair champaign, with less rivers intervein'd,

Then meeting, joined their tribute to the sea.

Poets are apt to make very free with the derivation of rivers, and describe a mode of origin that, not having been actually witnessed, is difficult to realize.* It would take a good many mountains to furnish Milton's two rivers. Their

*The true origin of rivers is occasionally, but rarely, given in poetry. The emergence of a full-bodied stream from a single source is what is most generally assumed, although it is only by an exception to the usual order that this can occur. The caverns of the limestone formation allow water to gather into a considerable volume before emerging in open streams. The usual rise of rivers, as we have all observed it in our ordinary experience, is by innumerable trickling rivulets gradually combining to form a main stream. Gray has given expression to this view in his Progress of Poesy

From Helicon's harmonious springs

A thousand rills their mazy progress take.

So, in Scott's St. Mary's Lake,

--though these steep hills

Send to the lake a thousand rills.

Tennyson's' many-fountained Ida' is to the same effect.

MILTON'S MOUNT OF TEMPTATION.

291

twofold course along the plain is sufficiently conceivable; but an actual view would give a variety of effects, not merely more truthful, but more poetical. A mountain prospect is not a bird's eye view; the rivers might be visible in very large portions, but they would necessarily become hidden at points; the interveining, being cross to the view, would be but partially visible.

With herds the pastures throng'd, with flocks the hills.

This is the filling in, and is sufficiently conceivable, although the inserting of hills, if it is not inconsistent with the spacious plain, at least interferes with the prospect, as at first supposed. The mountain would need to be as high as Mont Blanc. So with the remainder

Huge cities and high tower'd, that well might seem
The seats of mightiest monarchs; and so large
The prospect was, that here and there was room
For barren desert, fountainless and dry.

The expression is beautiful in the extreme: and the addition of cities and deserts is in proper form; the completion of the details of the comprehensive sketch. All that can be said is, that from an actual position so lofty as to command the view here described, effects would be attained, in comparison with which Milton's particulars would appear tame.

In 'Paradise Lost,' description is foiled by the nature of the subject; hell being altogether indescribable: yet Milton gives partial pictures of the sublime and terrible, making large use of the suggestiveness of sound. The language is necessarily more emotional than picture-giving.

POPE has the power of picturesqueness, both by figures and by choice of circumstance. Enough to cite the fatal moment in the 'Rape of the Lock'

The meeting-points the sacred hair dissever
From the fair head, for ever and for ever.

In the single-stroke picturesqueness, Pope is equal to the greatest poets. Without this power, he could not have been the translator of Homer. When he extends his compass to complicated description, he takes care to be intelligible. The examples in the Temple of Fame,' the Rape of the