In what blind paths, what pits of fear
Will plunge the chargers in their mad career?
Drive well, O mind, use all thy art,
Thou charioteer! – O feeling Heart,
Be thou a bridle firm and strong!
For the Lord rideth and the way is long.
186
See Brandes: The Romantic School in Germany, ch. XI.
187
Alfred de Musset saw his double in the stress of his affair with George Sand (see Nuit de Décembre), Jean Valjean (Les Misérables) sees his double in the stress of his conversion. Peter Bell also sees his double at the emotional crisis in Wordsworth’s poem of that name.
188
Thus Spake Zarathustra, LXIX.
189
F. Schlegel: Lyceumfragment, no. 42.
190
E.g., canto III, CVII-CXI.
191
Confessions, Livre XII (1765).
192
Cf. Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, I, 402.
193
Wordsworth: Miscellaneous Sonnets, XII.
194
In much the same spirit the Japanese hermit, Kamo Chōmei (thirteenth century), expresses the fear that he may forget Buddha because of his fondness for the mountains and the moon. – See article on nature in Japan by M. Revon in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.
195
Confessions, Bk. X, ch. IX.
196
Cf. Cicero: “Urbem, urbem, mi Rufe, cole et in ista luce vive.” (Ad Fam., II, 22.)
197
March 23, 1646.
198
It was especially easy for the poets to go for their landscapes to the painters because according to the current theory poetry was itself a form of painting (ut pictura poesis). Thus Thomson writes in The Castle of Indolence:
Sometimes the pencil, in cool airy halls,
Bade the gay bloom of vernal landskips rise,
Or autumn’s varied shades embrown the walls:
Now the black tempest strikes the astonish’d eyes;
Now down the steep the flashing torrent flies;
The trembling sun now plays o’er ocean blue,
And now rude mountains frown amid the skies;
Whate’er Lorrain light touch’d with softening hue,
Or savage Rosa dash’d, or learned Poussin drew.
(C. I, st. 38.)
199
Disparaissez, monuments du génie,
Pares, jardins immortels, que Le Nôtre a plantés;
De vos dehors pompeux l’exacte symmétrie,
Etonne vainement mes regards attristés.
J’aime bien mieux ce désordre bizarre,
Et la variété de ces riches tableaux
Que disperse l’Anglais d’une main moins avare.
Bertin, 19e Elégie of Les Amours.
200
Pt. IV, Lettre XI.
201
Nouvelle Héloïse, Pt. IV, Lettre XI.
202
Ibid.
203
Ibid., Pt. IV, Lettre XVII.