I only allude to the controversy for the sake of a very admirable remark of Pope, in his Preface -that circumstances swiftly rising up to the eye of Homer, had their impressions taken off at a heat. That dilation and spreading abroad of description, which is known to taste under the appellation of " circumstance," forms an important element of poetic art. We see it in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales; the Prioress, her coral on her arm; the Frère, in semi-cope of double worsted; the Poor Scholar; the wife of Bath,each has the distinctiveness of Vandyck. Reynolds condemns this minuteness. But who was more observant than Titian of each separate colour and shade, even in a velvet or stuff? "Circumstance" is found most abundantly in that poet to whom Pope's criticism applied. It comes out with startling vividness in the dress and weapons of his chieftains. He tries the temper of a sword with the delight of an armourer. We notice the same military feeling in Ariosto; yet the Paladins of the Orlando do not charm us like the heroes of the Iliad. The Italian wanted seriousness; he had not the undoubting mind of Homer. When he girds on a sword, he turns aside to conceal a smile. Spenser, with his pausing, earnest step, approaches nearer to his Greek ancestor. Look at Tristram (F. Q., b.

vi. canto 2, stanza 39) bending over the dead knight:

Long fed his greedy eyes with the fair sight
Of the bright metal, shining like sun-rays,
Handling and turning them a thousand ways.

This is in the truest spirit of Ajax plundering a Trojan. The taking of "impressions off at a heat" is also conspicuous in the Homeric battles and wounds. In the sixteenth book of the Iliad, Patroclus, leaping from his chariot, seized a stone, which his hand covered.

It is in the nature of "circumstance" to attract every little thing towards it. Nothing is too common. Mr. Keble, in one of his Prælections (ix.), suggests a happy illustration from the history of Madame de la Rochejacqueline, so famous in the sad story of La Vendée. Overwhelmed by grief, plundered of her property, and flying from cruel enemies, she nevertheless adds, that while following the litter of her wounded husband, her feet were pinched by tight shoes.

The descriptions which are natural in Homer, become picturesque in his successors. He indicates they delineate. He hastily touches a figure into the picture-they bestow skill and toil upon the background and accessories. He produces his effect by single strokes. The slender tongue of his wolves is the one

scratch of the Master. They work out their design by composition and costume, light and shade. Thus, to call a description Homeric, is to say that it is real; to call it picturesque, is to say that it is artistic. The following specimens, from two most dissimilar writers, will show the latter quality of the poetical mind in its elements:

MATERIALS FOR

LANDSCAPE.

DARWIN.

The rush-thatch'd cottage on
the purple moor,
Where ruddy children frolic

round the door;
The moss-grown antlers of
the aged oak,

The shaggy locks that fringe

the colt unbroke, The bearded goat, with

nimble eyes, that glare Through the long tissue of

his hoary hair,

As with quick foot he climbs

some ruin'd wall,

And crops the ivy which pre

vents its fall,—

With rural charms the tran

quil mind delight, And form a picture to th' admiring sight.

CIRCUMSTANCE.

TENNYSON.

Two children in two neigh

bour villages

Playing mad pranks along

the heathy leas;

Two strangers meeting at a festival;

Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall;

Two lives bound fast in one

with golden ease; Two graves grass-green be

side a gray church-tower, Wash'd with still rains, and daisy-blossomed ;

Two children in one hamlet born and bred;

So runs the round of life from hour to hour.

I think that Gilpin's definition of the Picturesque is sufficiently accurate;—that it includes

all objects which please from some quality capable of being illustrated in painting. The suggestion of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that "Picturesque is somewhat synonymous to the word taste," I am quite unable to understand; although his remark is obviously just, that Michael Angelo and Raffaelle have nothing of it; while Rubens and the Venetian painters exhibit it in every variety of shape and combination. That the Picturesque is distinct from the sublime or beautiful, cannot be questioned. A certain roughness and irregularity are necessary to its existence. An old mill, with intricate wood-work, clinging mosses, weather-stains, and

The dark round of the dripping wheel;

the dim broken lights of a cathedral; the glimmering hollows and shattered branches of trees; rough-hewn park-pales,-Each and all of these are features of the Picturesque. Salvator Rosa and Rubens may represent it in painting Spenser and Akenside in poetry. If classic literature be included, Virgil would stand at the head of the school. Taking, therefore, Picturesque to mean any object, or group, susceptible of representation by pencil or colour, the following, added to the preceding specimens, will display it under its most striking manifestations!