Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/234

220 whose father, regardless of the hamadryad's entreaties, cut down her ancient trunk, and in himself and in his off- spring suffered her dire vengeance. The ethnographic student finds a curious interest in transformation-myths like Ovid's, keeping up as they do vestiges of philosophy of archaic type — Daphne turned into the laurel that Apollo honours for her sake, the sorrowing sisters of Phae- thon changing into trees, yet still dropping blood and crying for mercy when their shoots are torn. Such episodes mediæval poetry could still adapt, as in the path- less infernal forest whose knotted dusk-leaved trees re- vealed their human animation to the Florentine when he plucked a twig,

'Allor porti la mano un poco avante, colsi un ramoscel da un gran pruno: 'E' l tronco suo gridò: Perchè mi schiante?'

or the myrtle to which Ruggiero tied his hippogriff, who tugged at the poor trunk till it murmured and oped its mouth, and with doleful voice told that it was Astolfo, enchanted by the wicked Alcina among her other lovers,

'D' entrar o in fera o in fonte o in legno o in sasso.'

If these seem to us now conceits over quaint for beauty, we need not scruple to say so. They are not of Dante and Ariosto, they are sham antiques from classic models. And if even the classic originals have become unpleasing, we need not perhaps reproach ourselves with decline of poetic taste. We have lost something, and the loss has spoiled our appreciation of many an old poetic theme, yet it is not always our sense of the beautiful that has dwindled, but the old animistic philosophy of nature that is gone from us, dissipating from such fancies their meaning, and with

1 Apollon. Rhod. Argonautica, ii. 476. See Welcker, 'Griech. Götterl.' vol. iii. p. 57.

2 Ovid. Metamm. i. 452, ii. 345, xi. 67.

3 Dante, 'Divina Commedia,' 'Inferno,' canto xiii.

4 Ariosto, 'Orlando Furioso,' canto vi.