[94] The likeness to the poplars by the
streams of Amiens is more marked still in the _Iliad_, where the young
Simois, struck by Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has
grown in an irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots
springing from its top, which some coach-making man has cut down with
his keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it
lies parching by the side of the stream."[95] It is sufficiently
notable that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries, dwells
thus delightedly on all the _flat_ bits; and so I think invariably the
inhabitants of mountain countries do, but the inhabitants of the
plains do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on mountains. The
Dutch painters are perfectly contented with their flat fields and
pollards;[96] Rubens, though he had seen the Alps, usually composes
his landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards and willows, a
distant spire, a Dutch house with a moat about it, a windmill, and a
ditch. The Flemish sacred painters are the only ones who introduce
mountains in the distance, as we shall see presently; but rather in a
formal way than with any appearance of enjoyment. So Shakspere never
speaks of mountains with the slightest joy, but only of lowland
flowers, flat fields, and Warwickshire streams.
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