[186] Pope, “Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.” [187] Dryden, “Works,” XV, 231. [188] Compare especially Gay’s “Monday,” Pope’s “Spring,” and Virgil’s “Third Eclogue.” Also Gay’s “Thursday,” and Virgil’s “Eighth Eclogue.” [189] Addison, “Letter from Italy” (1701). [190] Tickell, “Oxford” (1707). [191] Pope, “January and May,” l. 454. [192] Pope, “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” l. 149. [193] William Thomson, “To the Author of Leonidas.” [194] Pope, “Essay on Criticism,” i, 350. [195] Gray, “Ode.” [196] In this connection see the following passages from Ruskin, Humboldt, and Veitch on Nature in the poetry of the ancients: “Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception, every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very interestingly marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth book of the Odyssey; when Mercury himself stops for a moment, though on a message, to look on a landscape ‘which even an immortal might be gladdened to behold.’... Now the notable things in this description are, first, the evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the foot, the taste, or the smell; and, secondly, that throughout the passage there is not a single figurative word expressive of the things being in any wise other than plain grass, fruit, or flower.... If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which occur in other parts of the Odyssey, we shall always be struck by this quiet subjection of their every feature to human service, and by the excessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps the spot intended, after this, to be most perfect, may be the garden of Alcinous, where the principal ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry, and fruitfulness.”--Ruskin, “Modern Painters,” chapter on “Classical Landscape.” “Homer looks on nature as it affects man--its power of sustaining life, its subserviency to our physical wants. Hence the side of nature which is lovingly regarded by him is not mountain, or rock, or wild sea--all fruitless and barren--but flat soft meadow-land, diversified, it may be, with tree and fountain, filled with waving grass--good pasture-land for nourishing the useful ox, or cow, or sheep.... In Theocritus ... we do not go beyond the softer side ... the accessories of the shepherd’s life faithfully noted.... The aspect of nature which Virgil loved was the soft and pastoral side of Italian scenery. In so far as he has depicted free nature, it is seen almost wholly from the human side, and in its relation to man’s works, life and action.”--Veitch, “The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry,” I, 88–91.