333, to a halter; and,
as expressive of general objectionableness and unpleasantness, to all
high, dangerous, or peaked mountains, as the Maleian promontory (a
much-dreaded one), the crest of Parnassus, the Tereian mountain, and a
grim or untoward, though, by keeping off the force of the sea,
protective, rock at the mouth of the Jardanus; as well as habitually
to inaccessible or impregnable fortresses built on heights.
In all this I cannot too strongly mark the utter absence of any
trace of the feeling for what we call the picturesque, and the
constant dwelling of the writer's mind on what was available,
pleasant, or useful: his ideas respecting all landscape being not
uncharacteristially summed, finally, by Pallas herself; when, meeting
Ulysses, who after his long wandering does not recognize his own
country, and meaning to describe it as politely and soothingly as
possible, she says:[108]--"This Ithaca of ours is, indeed, a rough
country enough, and not good for driving in; but, still, things might
be worse: it has plenty of corn, and good wine, and _always rain_,
and soft nourishing dew; and it has good feeding for goats and oxen,
and all manner of wood, and springs fit to drink at all the year
round."
We shall see presently how the blundering, pseudo-picturesque,
pseudo-classical minds of Claude and the Renaissance landscape-painters,
wholly missing Homer's practical common sense, and equally incapable
of feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness of his asphodel
meadows, tender aspen poplars, or running vines,--fastened on his
_ports_ and _caves_, as the only available features of his scenery;
and appointed the type of "classical landscape" thenceforward to
consist in a bay of insipid sea, and a rock with a hole through
it.
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