[109]
It may indeed be thought that I am assuming too hastily that this was
the general view of the Greeks respecting landscape, because it was
Homer's. But I believe the true mind of a nation, at any period, is
always best ascertainable by examining that of its greatest men; and
that simpler and truer results will be attainable for us by simply
comparing Homer, Dante, and Walter Scott, than by attempting (what my
limits must have rendered absurdly inadequate, and in which, also,
both my time and knowledge must have failed me) an analysis of the
landscape in the range of contemporary literature. All that I can do,
is to state the general impression, which has been made upon me by my
desultory reading, and to mark accurately the grounds for this
impression in the works of the greatest men. Now it is quite true that
in others of the Greeks, especially in AEschylus and Aristophanes,
there is infinitely more of modern feeling, of pathetic fallacy, love
of picturesque or beautiful form, and other such elements, than there
is in Homer; but then these appear to me just the parts of them which
were not Greek, the elements of their minds by which (as one division
of the human race always must be with subsequent ones) they are
connected with the mediaevals and moderns.
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