Romance: Two LecturesRaleigh, Walter Alexander, Sir
History
Romance: Two Lectures
Raleigh, Walter Alexander, Sir
English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Romanticism -- England
All these gardeners and aesthetic critics who busied themselves with wild
nature were aiming at an ideal which had been expressed in many painted
landscapes, and had been held up as the top of admiration by one of the
greatest English poets. The influence of Milton on the new landscape
interest must be held to be not less than the influence of his
contemporaries, Salvator Rosa and Claude. His descriptions of Paradise
did more than any painting to alter the whole practice of gardening. They
are often appealed to, even by the technical gardeners. In garden-lore
Milton was a convinced Romantic. He has two descriptions of the Garden
of Eden; the slighter of the two occurs on the occasion of Raphael's
entry, and merely resumes the earlier and fuller account:
Their glittering tents they passed, and now is come
Into the blissful field, through Groves of Myrrhe,
And flowering Odours, Cassia, Nard, and Balme;
A Wilderness of Sweets; for Nature here
Wantoned as in her prime and plaid at will
Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet,
Wilde above rule or art; enormous bliss.
Coleridge has some remarks, in his _Table Talk_, on Milton's disregard of
painting. There are only two pictures, he says, in Milton; Adam bending
over the sleeping Eve, and the entrance of Dalilah, like a ship under
full sail. Certainly the above lines are no picture; but they are more
exciting than any clear delineation could be; they are full of scent, and
air, and the emotions of ease and bliss. The other passage has more of
architectural quality in it, and describes what first met Satan's gaze,
when he entered the Garden and sat, perched like a cormorant, upon the
Tree of Life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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