Landscape in Poetry from Homer to Tennyson
Landscape in Lucretius, Virgil, and other Augustan poets is then taken up. The contrast between Lucretius and Virgil is vast, "hardly less than the transit in imagination from Siberia to Italy." "To Lucretius impassive, feelingless law sways the world, dead to mankind, who can only accept their fate. Virgil for this substitutes a vision of Providential rule, which teaches man by its constant order. Unlike Lucretius, he lived when the world was at length 'lapt in universal law. Yet a 'pathetic undertone, a "sad earnestness, as Cardinal Newman has beautifully remarked, almost everywhere underlies his verse. He has the note of yearning." He delights in "the soft sweet freshness of Italy," and describes it with a melody whose cadences, as Hamerton says of the line "Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae," in the first Eclogue, are "soft almost as the falling of the shadows themselves." (By the way, why does Mr. Palgrave translate this line, "And larger shadows fall on the lofty mountains"?). To sum up the matter, "whilst Lucretius scientifically interrogates Nature, Virgil, though longing to investigate, embraces her." The illustrations from Virgil are exclusively from the "Eclogues" and the "Georgics." The "Æneid" is dismissed with a brief mention of "two bright pictures from insect life; the bees whose toil is compared with that of the builders from [at] Carthage, and the ants as they store grain for winter." Yet there are lovely little landscape sketches in the "Æneid," like that of the landing place of the Trojans in book i., lines 159-169 ("Est in secessu longo locus," etc.), to refer to a single instance which we have always admired.

-The Critic, Vol. 30
1100152314
Landscape in Poetry from Homer to Tennyson
Landscape in Lucretius, Virgil, and other Augustan poets is then taken up. The contrast between Lucretius and Virgil is vast, "hardly less than the transit in imagination from Siberia to Italy." "To Lucretius impassive, feelingless law sways the world, dead to mankind, who can only accept their fate. Virgil for this substitutes a vision of Providential rule, which teaches man by its constant order. Unlike Lucretius, he lived when the world was at length 'lapt in universal law. Yet a 'pathetic undertone, a "sad earnestness, as Cardinal Newman has beautifully remarked, almost everywhere underlies his verse. He has the note of yearning." He delights in "the soft sweet freshness of Italy," and describes it with a melody whose cadences, as Hamerton says of the line "Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae," in the first Eclogue, are "soft almost as the falling of the shadows themselves." (By the way, why does Mr. Palgrave translate this line, "And larger shadows fall on the lofty mountains"?). To sum up the matter, "whilst Lucretius scientifically interrogates Nature, Virgil, though longing to investigate, embraces her." The illustrations from Virgil are exclusively from the "Eclogues" and the "Georgics." The "Æneid" is dismissed with a brief mention of "two bright pictures from insect life; the bees whose toil is compared with that of the builders from [at] Carthage, and the ants as they store grain for winter." Yet there are lovely little landscape sketches in the "Æneid," like that of the landing place of the Trojans in book i., lines 159-169 ("Est in secessu longo locus," etc.), to refer to a single instance which we have always admired.

-The Critic, Vol. 30
10.04 In Stock
Landscape in Poetry from Homer to Tennyson

Landscape in Poetry from Homer to Tennyson

by Francis T. Palgrave
Landscape in Poetry from Homer to Tennyson

Landscape in Poetry from Homer to Tennyson

by Francis T. Palgrave

Overview

Landscape in Lucretius, Virgil, and other Augustan poets is then taken up. The contrast between Lucretius and Virgil is vast, "hardly less than the transit in imagination from Siberia to Italy." "To Lucretius impassive, feelingless law sways the world, dead to mankind, who can only accept their fate. Virgil for this substitutes a vision of Providential rule, which teaches man by its constant order. Unlike Lucretius, he lived when the world was at length 'lapt in universal law. Yet a 'pathetic undertone, a "sad earnestness, as Cardinal Newman has beautifully remarked, almost everywhere underlies his verse. He has the note of yearning." He delights in "the soft sweet freshness of Italy," and describes it with a melody whose cadences, as Hamerton says of the line "Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae," in the first Eclogue, are "soft almost as the falling of the shadows themselves." (By the way, why does Mr. Palgrave translate this line, "And larger shadows fall on the lofty mountains"?). To sum up the matter, "whilst Lucretius scientifically interrogates Nature, Virgil, though longing to investigate, embraces her." The illustrations from Virgil are exclusively from the "Eclogues" and the "Georgics." The "Æneid" is dismissed with a brief mention of "two bright pictures from insect life; the bees whose toil is compared with that of the builders from [at] Carthage, and the ants as they store grain for winter." Yet there are lovely little landscape sketches in the "Æneid," like that of the landing place of the Trojans in book i., lines 159-169 ("Est in secessu longo locus," etc.), to refer to a single instance which we have always admired.

-The Critic, Vol. 30

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781663555076
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date: 08/22/2020
Pages: 316
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Francis Turner Palgrave (28 September 1824 – 24 October 1897) was a British critic, anthologist and poet. His Landscape in Poetry (1897) showed wide knowledge and critical appreciation of one of the most attractive aspects of poetic interpretation. But Palgrave's principal contribution to the development of literary taste was contained in his Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics (1861), an anthology of the best poetry in the language constructed upon a plan sound and spacious, and followed out with a delicacy of feeling which could scarcely be surpassed. Palgrave followed it with a Treasury of Sacred Song (1889), and a second series of the Golden Treasury (1897), including the work of later poets, but in neither of these was quite the same exquisiteness of judgment preserved. Among his other works were The Passionate Pilgrim (1858), a volume of selections from Robert Herrick entitled Chrysomela (1877), a memoir of Arthur Hugh Clough (1862) and a critical essay on Sir Walter Scott (1866) prefixed to an edition of his poems. He published a small collection of hymns in 1867 which ran to three editions, each slightly enlarged.
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