The Antique landscapes must sometimes have resembled these, or they would have been unsuitable to the subjects to which they formed backgrounds. Rocky, wild, and terrible must have been the island, and lurid the colour of the sea and sky, in which Apollodorus placed his Ajax. When gayer subjects peopled the scene, such as the young Satyrs watching the sleeping Cyclops, we learn that woody scenery was imitated, and painting for the theatre had accustomed the ancients to represent buildings and open country. In the Imaginative, or poetic landscape, Titian claims the first place. It is enough to name the Feast of the Gods, began by John Bellini, but finished, and the whole landscape added, by Titian[204], or the landscape of the Bacchus and Ariadne[205], and those of the fine pictures in the Bridgewater Gallery, impressed as they are with the grandeur of the wild forests and bold mountains of his native province. Poussin follows him closely in this department, but his excellences are owing to careful choice and study, combining much of antique feeling with the rich sources he found in nature. His Calisto[206] is a very fine example: his Arcadia[207] another, and so, generally speaking, are all those where he has introduced Bacchanalian subjects. Where the landscape itself without accompanying figures is considered, Claude Lorraine is unrivalled, whether he chooses the sober hue of the Enchanted Castle[208], or the glowing sunsets seen from the shores of Italy, with all the riches of architecture and shipping, or softened by inland landscape such as only Italy can suggest[209]. Highly imaginative also are the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, who is among painters, like the writers of romance among poets, bold, wild, and interesting. But I must only name Gaspar Poussin, Annibale Caracci, and Domenichino among the Italian landscape painters, and then hasten to Rembrandt, whose grand and characteristic landscapes equal in sentiment and effect his historical works and his portraits. Nor is Rubens less remarkable: witness his Saint George[210], and the landscapes of the Munich Gallery. Cuyp, whether representing the cattle and grazing grounds, or the busy river and canal scenes of his native country, is inimitable; and Ruysdael and Vanderveldt each stand at the head of a class far above the painters of mere views. Yet views in some hands acquire value, if not dignity. The very truth of Canaletti’s Venice becomes poetical. And now and then Vernet has made a seaport fit to gratify the vanity of his master, Louis XIII., in more senses than one. Thus have I endeavoured to distribute into classes that charming department of the art which the poet loved who hung his bower of enchantment with Whate’er Lorraine light touch’d with soft’ning hue, Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew.