Toward a Political Economy of

Development Robert H. Bates (Editor)

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/toward-a-political-economy-of-development-robert-h-b
ates-editor/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Political Economy Of Capitalisms 1st Edition Robert

Boyer

https://ebookmeta.com/product/political-economy-of-
capitalisms-1st-edition-robert-boyer/

The Political Economy of Development Norman T. Uphoff

(Editor)

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-political-economy-of-
development-norman-t-uphoff-editor/

Global Political Economy Evolution and Dynamics Robert

O'Brien

https://ebookmeta.com/product/global-political-economy-evolution-
and-dynamics-robert-obrien/

Toward Restoration The Growth of Political

Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan H. D. Harootunian

https://ebookmeta.com/product/toward-restoration-the-growth-of-
political-consciousness-in-tokugawa-japan-h-d-harootunian/
A Political Economy of Free Zones in Gulf Arab States
1st Edition Robert Mogielnicki

https://ebookmeta.com/product/a-political-economy-of-free-zones-
in-gulf-arab-states-1st-edition-robert-mogielnicki/

Capitalism Development and Empowerment of Labour A

Heterodox Political Economy 1st Edition Hartmut
Elsenhans

https://ebookmeta.com/product/capitalism-development-and-
empowerment-of-labour-a-heterodox-political-economy-1st-edition-
hartmut-elsenhans/

The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal

Information 2nd Edition Oscar H. Gandy Jr.

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-panoptic-sort-a-political-
economy-of-personal-information-2nd-edition-oscar-h-gandy-jr/

The Gaza Strip The Political Economy of De development

Sara Roy

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-gaza-strip-the-political-
economy-of-de-development-sara-roy/

Sovereignty and the Sacred Secularism and the Political

Economy of Religion 1st Edition Robert A. Yelle

https://ebookmeta.com/product/sovereignty-and-the-sacred-
secularism-and-the-political-economy-of-religion-1st-edition-
robert-a-yelle/
Toward a Political
Economy of
Development
 California Series on Social Choice and Political Economy
Edited by Brian Barry, Robert H. Bates, and Samuel L. Popkin

1. Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural

Policies Robert H. Bates
2. Political Economics James E. Alt and K. Alec Chrystal
3. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood Kristin Luker
4. Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work, Career, and Motherhood
Kathleen Gerson
5. Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences Roger Noll, editor
6. Reactive Risk and Rational Action: Managing Moral Hazard in Insurance
Contracts Carol A. Heimer
7. Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class, and the Dilemmas of Agrarian
Policy Forrest D. Colburn
8. Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa Robert H. Bates
9. Peasants and King in Burgundy: Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism
Hilton L. Root
10. The Causal Theory ofJustice Karol Soitan
11. Principles of Group Solidarity Michael Hechter
12. Political Survival: Politicians and Public Policy in Latin America Barry
Ames
13. Of Rule and Revenue Margaret Levi
14. Toward a Political Economy of Development: A Rational Choice Perspective
Robert H. Bates, editor
Toward a Political
Economy of
Development
A Rational Choice
Perspective

Edited by
Robert H. Bates

U N I V E R S I T Y OF C A L I F O R N I A PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

© 1988 by
T h e Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Toward a political economy of development.

(California series on social choice and political
economy ; 14)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Developing countries—Economic policy.
2. Developing countries—Economic conditions.
3. Developing countries—Politics and government.
4. Social choice. I. Bates, Robert H. II. Series.
HC59.7.T7376 1988 338.9'009172'4 87-10870
ISBN 0-520-06051-2 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-520-06052-0 (pbk.)

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
To Jane
 Contents

Acknowledgments x
Introduction 1

Parti 5

T h e Political Economy o f International

Capital Markets Robert H. Bates 7
1. T h e International Organization o f Third
World Debt Charles Lipson 12
2. On Persuading a Leopard to Change His
Spots: Optimal Strategies for Donors and
Recipients o f Conditional Development Aid
Paul Mosley 47
3. T h e Political Economy o f Stabilization:
Commitment, Capacity, and Public Response
Joan Nelson 80

Partii 131

T h e State and Development: Taiwan,

Argentina, and Central America
Robert H.Bates 133
4. Taiwan's Economic History: A Case oiEtatisme
and a Challenge to Dependency Theory
Alice H. Amsden 142

5. State and Alliances in Argentina, 1 9 5 6 - 1 9 7 6

Guillermo O'Donnell 176
Vili CONTENTS

6. Fissures in the Volcano? Central

American Economic Prospects
Clark W. Reynolds 206

Part III

Toward a Political Economy of Development

Robert H. Bates 239
7. Public Choice and Peasant Organization
Samuel L. Popkin 245
8. The Development of Property Rights in
Land: A Comparative Study
David Feeny 272

9. Structure, Growth, and Power: Three

Rationalist Accounts Ronald Rogowski 300
10. Governments and Agricultural Markets in
Africa Robert H. Bates 331

Selected Readings 359

Contributors 381
Index 383
Acknowledgments

Toward a Political Economy of Development con-

sists of a series of papers that deal with the economics and politics
of development.
The idea for the volume was conceived jointly by myself and
Samuel L. Popkin, and it has received the help of numerous mem-
bers of the academic profession. In the spring of 1982, we sent a
letter to over two hundred fellow academics asking them to nomi-
nate the "ten best" articles on development that they had read in
"the past few years." We secured copies of the articles thus nomi-
nated, read and discussed them, and, over a succession of semes-
ters, taught them to students.
Many pieces that have had a significant impact on the profession
have had to be omitted from this collection. Limitations of space
restricted the number of pieces that could be republished, and ob-
vious complementarities between pieces also structured the selec-
tion process.
I wish to acknowledge the support of the National Science
Foundation (Grant no. SE-582-16870), the Social Science Re-
search Council, the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences of
the California Institute of Technology, and the Center for Ad-
vanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I owe special thanks to
the Haynes Foundation for helping to defray the costs of complet-
ing this work. While at the center, I was supported by Duke Uni-
versity, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Exxon Foundation, and
the National Science Foundation (Grant no. BNS-801-1495). The
project placed extraordinary demands on the librarians of the
California Institute of Technology, who responded with their usual
cheerful competence. It also posed special challenges to a succes-
sion of secretaries: Jill Irby, Chris Price, Catherine Heising, Leslie
Lindzey, and Gerald Florence. I thank them all.
X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks go to all who took the time to respond to the

letter that initiated this project: Barry Ames, David Becker, Bela
Belassa, Clive Bell, Roger Benjamin, Henry Bienen, Leonard
Binder, Gary Brewer, Valerie Bunce, Bruce Cain, David Cameron,
James Caporaso, Daniel Chirot, John Cohen, Wayne Cornelius, Pe-
ter Cowhey, A n n Craig, Bruce Cumings, Alfred Diamant, Carlos
Diaz-Alejandro, Jorge Dominguez, Raymond Duvall, Peter Evans,
Richard Fagan, David Feeny, John Ferejohn, Thomas Ferguson,
Morris Fiorina, John Freeman, Walter Goldfrank, Michael Hech-
ter, Ronald Herring, Douglas Hibbs, Albert Hirschman, Raymond
Hopkins, Samuel Huntington, Chalmers Johnson, Bruce John-
ston, Kenneth Jowett, Terry Karl, Robert Keohane, Stephen Kras-
ner, Nathaniel Leff, René Lemarchand, Margaret Levi, Ronald
Libby, Seymour Martin Lipset, Charles Lipson, Cynthia Mc-
Clintock, Jeffrey Paige, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Adam Przeworski, Lu-
cian Pye, Clark Reynolds, Ronald Rogowski, Carl Rosberg, Robert
Rotberg, Vernon Ruttan, Michael Schatzberg, Susan Shirk, Rich-
ard Sklar, T h e d a Skocpol, Duncan Snidai, Barbara Stallings, Rich-
ard Stryker, Sidney Tarrow, Gordon Tullock, Norman Uphoff, My-
ron Weiner, Miles Wolpin, Crawford Young, and Aristide Zolberg.
It should be noted that all the additional articles suggested by
these "coeditors" are listed in the bibliography of selected read-
ings.
I wish to thank Peter Cowhey, Robert Keohane, and Myron Wei-
ner for their incisive editorial criticisms, and Jane-Ellen Long and
Paulette Higgins for their superb assistance in preparing this man-
uscript for publication. A n d I wish to ofFer special thanks to the
students who have responded to different versions of this volume
over the last several years and thereby helped to shape it into its
final form.
Jane Danielson, to whom this book is dedicated, knows as well
as I the things I thank her for.
 Introduction

In no other field of the social sciences are

politics and economics so closely intertwined as in the study of de-
velopment. Despite the prominence given in each discipline to
forces that traditionally fall within the domain of the other, econ-
omists studying developing societies rarely train in political sci-
ence, while political scientists too often remain unschooled in eco-
nomics.
Economists fundamentally skeptical of government interven-
tion in markets treat politics as a source of economic "distortions."
While they acknowledge that peace and stability may be purchased
through the expenditure of scarce resources, they strongly convey
the impression that the developing areas would be better off with
"less politics." 1 T h e ethical stance of such economists is clear; far
less clear is their theory of politics. Why do politicians behave the
way they do? What drives them to make such costly choices? Why
do they not adopt policies that would achieve desired objectives at
less cost? T h e failure to address such questions underscores the
failure of such economists to develop a satisfactory theory of poli-
tics.
T h e deficiencies in the political analysis advanced by economists
who advocate less government is matched by the lack of sophisti-
cation on the part of those who endorse an activist role for govern-
ments. Particularly in societies where markets are held to be
underdeveloped, governments must take an active role in eco-
nomic life, they argue; the public sector must do the things private
agents fail to accomplish. Economists who advocate this position
are clearer in prescribing what governments should do than they

1. See, for example, Deepak Lai, The Poverty of"Development Economics" (London:
Institute of Economic Affairs, 1983).
2 INTRODUCTION

are in explaining why they expect governments to behave in the

ways they advocate. They fail to ask such obvious questions as:
Why would governments u n d e r t a k e the tasks they posit for them?
And when public officials make economic decisions, why should
their choices be in any sense superior to those made by economic
agents? C o n d e m n i n g political intervention on one side, endorsing
it on the other, economists debate the role of government while
lacking a sophisticated understanding of politics.
Political scientists, for their part, exhibit major deficiencies in
their understanding of economics. Too often they remain blind to
economic facts. Illustrative is that for a decade or more, political
scientists championed models of underdevelopment that related
foreign investment to economic decline and international trade to
economic stagnation—this d u r i n g a time that saw the rise of the
newly industrialized economies, which welcomed foreign invest-
ment and relied on foreign trade. Not only do political scientists
often fail to get their economic facts right, they also frequently fail
to c o m p r e h e n d how economies and markets work. Some c o n f o u n d
"nationalization" with "socialism," for example. Others blithely ar-
gue that government price controls "lower prices," thereby reveal-
ing their lack of even an elementary understanding of markets.
Clearly, then, materials are needed to educate economists who
study the developing areas in politics, and political scientists in eco-
nomics. This volume responds to that need. T h e book is composed
of a collection of essays, most of which have been published else-
where. T h e timeliness of the topics addressed by the articles f u r -
nished one criterion for selection: thus the emphasis given to the
analysis of T h i r d World debt, to the politics of economic adjust-
ment, to the political determinants of economic performance in
African agriculture, and to the economic origins of political vio-
lence in Central America. Even more important than the currency
of the topics, however, are the analytic approaches taken. Prefer-
ence was given to pieces that attacked problems of interest to de-
velopment specialists in ways f r o m which both political scientists
and economists could learn. T h e volume seeks, in short, to present
papers that teach ways of doing political economy.
T h e volume purposely fails to cover established forms of politi-
cal economy, be they of the "Warrenite," dependencia, or mode-of-
production persuasion. 2 In recent years these approaches have

2. Bill Warren, "Imperialism and Capitalist Industrialization," New Left Review

81 (September-October 1973): 3 - 4 4 . Good review essays are Gabriel Palma, "De-
 INTRODUCTION 3

tended to dominate development studies. They are familiar to a

broad audience and many of their leading articles have already
been assembled in published collections. 3 Instead, this volume
seeks to promote an approach to political economy that, while well
established in some portions of the social sciences, is poorly estab-
lished in development studies. T h e special focus here is on the
"collective choice" approach: one that recognizes that markets are
imperfect; that institutions other than markets allocate resources;
and that "economic reasoning" can be employed to explain the way
political processes and political institutions affect how individuals'
desires for valued but scarce resources aggregate into outcomes
for entire societies. 4

pendency," World Development 6 (1978): 8 8 1 - 9 2 4 , and Aidan Foster-Carter, " T h e

M o d e o f Production Controversy," New Left Review 107 (1978): 47—77.
3. S e e the s u p e r b volume edited by Charles K. Wilber: The Political Economy of
Development and Underdevelopment (New York: R a n d o m House, 1973).
4. S e e the discussion in Martin Staniland, What Is Political Economy? (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1985), a n d the conclusion to Robert H. Bates, Essays on the
Political Economy of Rural Africa (Cambridge, England: C a m b r i d g e University Press,
1983).
 The Political
Economy
of International
Capital Markets

Robert H. Bates

At least since the time of Lenin and Hob-

son, scholars have emphasized the importance of international
capital for the development of Third World nations. 1 Certainly
during the 1960s and 1970s, attention focused on the role of for-
eign investment, which acted as the prime mover in theories of
imperialism. During this period, scholars analyzed the impact on
development made by foreign firms, in particular, multinational
corporations. 2 More recently, attention has focused less on direct
investment and more on capital markets, and rather than examin-
ing the impact of foreign firms, scholars have instead analyzed the
impact of foreign debt. T h e articles in this section examine the
origins of international capital markets, their organization, and
their impact on the politics of developing countries.

1. J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: Allen and Unwin, 1938); V. I.

Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (London: Lawrence and Wisehart,
1948).
2. See, for example, Peter Evans, "Recent Research on Multinational Corpora-
tions," Annual Review of Sociology 7 (1981): 199-223.
8 ROBERT H. BATES

The section begins with a work by Charles Lipson. Lipson's ar-

ticle was published in 1981, and some of the language will there-
fore appear incongruous and some of the analysis anachronistic.
But it is an important article. For Lipson's study provides a history
of the origins of contemporary capital markets. It stresses the role
of government regulations and the financial incentives to com-
mence off-shore operations. It analyzes the shift of capital from
the developed world to the "petrodollar market," under the impact
of the OPEC-inspired j u m p in petroleum prices. The article is no-
table as well for its presentation of the institutional structure of the
international capital market: the interrelations among private
banks, the role of syndication, and the monitoring of relations be-
tween debtor and creditor nations by international agencies.
Analytically, Lipson's piece is important because it offers an al-
ternative to the tendency to transfer the command-and-control ap-
proach of political analysis to economic settings. Much of the rad-
ical literature on capital markets focuses on banks or bankers. It
approaches the problem of Third World debt as if the agents who
supply capital control the operation of capital markets. 3 Lipson, by
contrast, focuses not on agents but, rather, on markets. The rele-
vant factors, he assumes, are not the individual actors—the banks,
the bankers, or the firms—but the structure of the market envi-
ronments within which such agents make choices. There are ac-
tors, and Lipson educates us about them. There are outcomes, one
of which is Third World debt. But, Lipson demonstrates, the rela-
tionship between the preferences of actors and the nature of the
outcomes is mediated by markets. The relevant level of analysis is
that of the market.
Lipson is no conventional market economist, however, for his
concern is not so much with the operation of markets as with their
formation. Lying behind all credit markets is the problem of risk;
and this problem is particularly great in international markets,
where there is no government able to secure property rights and
thereby generate collateral for loans. It would be individually ra-
tional for a debtor to take a loan and then not repay it; and given
the absence of an international government to sanction such be-
havior, it would be feasible for a foreign debtor to do so. In such
circumstances, why would people offer loans? How can credit mar-

3. See, for example, Cheryl Payer, The Debt Trap: The IMF and the Third World
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).
 INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL MARKETS 9

kets be formed? By addressing such questions, Lipson pushes be-

yond conventional market economics and examines the ways ra-
tional agents compensate for potential market failures. 4
The oil price shock precipitated a recession in the developed
nations, leading to declines in imports from Third World coun-
tries. And because of the rise in oil prices, developing nations were
compelled to use increasing amounts of the foreign exchange to
import petroleum products. Development programs were there-
fore threatened with an inability to import capital goods, spare
parts, and equipment. To maintain their development programs,
Third World countries borrowed heavily in capital markets and
many rapidly reached the limit of their ability to repay their debts.
As Lipson makes clear, a major role of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) has been to manage the resultant debt crisis.
The World Bank has also become involved in the problem of
Third World debt. Through a program of structural adjustment
lending, the Bank offers credits which enable development pro-
grams to proceed; but it does so only if the debtor country agrees
to restructure its domestic policies in ways that enable it to generate
greater export earnings. Rather than seeking to "deflate" the do-
mestic economy so as to reduce the demand for imports and for-
eign balances, as the IMF does, the World Bank lends funds for
programs designed to promote increased exports and thereby
greater foreign earnings. 5 As a result of the debt crisis, then, both
the IMF and the World Bank undertake major roles in the for-
mulation of development policies and in the politics of Third
World nations.
The essay by Paul Mosley explores the process by which inter-
national lenders seek to exercise leverage over the domestic poli-
cies of developing nations. 6 Mosley's article is notable for both the

4. Lipson thus opens a line of inquiry later pursued by Robert Axelrod and
Robert Keohane, two scholars who seek to advance the application of rational choice
analysis to international relations. See Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation
(New York: Basic Books, 1981), and Robert Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984).
5. An excellent collection of essays is contained in Tony Killick, ed., Adjustment
and Finance in the Developing World: The Role of the International Monetary Fund (Wash-
ington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund in association with Overseas Develop-
ment Institute, 1982). See also M. B. Connolly and Alexander Swoboda, Interna-
tional Trade and Money: The Geneva Essays (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1973).
6. For additional materials, see the collection of papers in International Organi-
zation 39 (Summer 1985).
10 ROBERT H. BATES

quantity and the quality of the materials it presents. Examining the

history of structural adjustment lending by the World Bank, he
defines what is meant by conditionality—the policy requirements
placed on borrowers as a precondition for loans—and presents a
detailed portrayal of the conditions set for twenty-five loans to thir-
teen developing countries. By so doing, Mosley conveys a clear im-
age of just what policy issues f o r m the center of controversy be-
tween creditors and debtors in international capital markets.
Equally interesting is Mosley's analysis of the bargaining be-
tween the Bank and the debtor governments. H e defines a vari-
able, T, which stands for the "tightness" of the policy requirements
set as preconditions for Bank lending. T h e creditors, indexed as i,
are presumed to favor tighter conditions than are the borrowers,
indexed as j (T > T ) . Both the borrower and the lender encounter
risks. T h e level of each party's risk (which is labeled rt, r,), Mosley
argues, is determined by the difference between the a m o u n t it will
suffer as a result of the imposition of its opponent's conditions for
the loan and the a m o u n t if it fails to secure a mutually acceptable
loan package. Given a player's risk, its o p p o n e n t then chooses a
bargaining strategy (labeled 0, for the lender; 0} for the borrower)
in o r d e r to secure its p r e f e r r e d level of "tightness" in the condi-
tions for the loan.
Some of the determinants of the risks are measurable, and Mos-
ley uses that fact to evaluate his analysis. T h e borrower's vulner-
ability (that is, the degree to which it encounters risks) is greater
the higher its balance-of-payments deficit and the greater its debt-
service payments as a proportion of total exports. T h e lender's vul-
nerability is determined by the degree to which the borrower is
d e p e n d e n t on it for foreign assistance. Using data f r o m published
sources, Mosley tests his model, finding that the variables (save
one) that predict the level of "tightness" discriminate between the
"tightest" and "least tight" loan agreements. Mosley also examines
the degree of slippage in the actual implementation of loan con-
ditions, that is, the degree to which the debtors abide by the con-
ditions agreed upon.
Mosely focuses on the international dimension of the politics of
international capital markets. He largely omits f r o m consideration
the domestic political costs of economic adjustment. T h e third pa-
per in this section, written by Joan Nelson, concentrates on just this
issue.
Nelson's concern is with the political sustainability of economic
 INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL MARKETS 11

policies, and she focuses on those factors that affect governments'

willingness to initiate stabilization programs and their capacity to
implement such programs. She draws on the political experiences
of five countries—Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Ja-
maica—as they underwent the economic adjustments prescribed
by the IMF.
Nelson portrays the subjective factors affecting a government's
assessment of the risks of economic policies. Among the points she
makes with particular force is that those who bear the costs of eco-
nomic reform lack any means for assessing what their welfare
would have been in the absence of the changes in policy. In the
face of such uncertainty, disagreements inevitably arise; in addi-
tion, advocacy and persuasion play a major political role. And
given that in the short run those who benefit from the reforms are
not the ones who pay the costs, policy reform completely loses its
technical nature. Clouded by uncertainty and controversy, it be-
comes a matter of politics.
Nelson discusses the factors that shape the subsequent course of
political controversy. She stresses that the policies that lead to "ex-
cess demand" for foreign exchange tend to lead to rationing as
well, and thus create opportunities for patronage politics. And
where rationing by public bureaucracies replaces markets, she
notes, public-sector interests stand among those most likely to op-
pose the imposition of market methods for allocating scarce re-
sources. In the face of opposition by politicians with clients and
organized interests, technocrats initiating "economic reforms" face
strong political resistance. Nelson thus deftly introduces the polit-
ical considerations affecting governments' ability to change eco-
nomic policy.
It should be noted that those concerned with the politics of
structural adjustment will find other articles of value in this vol-
ume. Of particular interest is the work of Guillermo O'Donnell.
While not addressing the subject directly, Alice Amsden explores
the way the government of Taiwan imposes "market-conforming"
policies, and I discuss the political forces that promote "market-
distorting" policies in Africa. These three articles therefore give
further insight into the role of politics in influencing the behavior
of markets and, thus, into the domestic determinants of structural
adjustment in Third World nations.
 1
The International
Organization of
Third World Debt

Charles Lipson

Throughout the 1970s, Third World states

borrowed heavily from international banks. Faced with sharply in-
creased costs for energy and manufactured imports, many states
began to compete for commercial loans. The most creditworthy,
from Brazil to Korea and Taiwan, have used these funds to offset
their growing current-account deficits while maintaining relatively
strong economic growth. But with the world economy sagging and
interest payments rising, many less developed countries (LDCs)
must cope with enormous debt burdens.
The size of these debts and the financial trouble they pose can
be illustrated briefly. In 1970 the twelve largest nonoil LDC

Reprinted with permission from International Organization, volume 35, Charles Lip-
son, "The International Organization of Third World Debt." © 1981, T h e M.I.T.
Press.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1980 American Political
Science Association convention in Washington, D. C. I wish to thank Robert Z. Ali-
ber, Jonathan Aronson, Benjamin J. Cohen, Jeff Frieden, Peter Katzenstein, Robert
Keohane, Kenneth Oye, Susan Strange, John Zysman, and an anonymous reviewer
for their comments. This research was supported by a Rockefeller Foundation Fel-
lowship in International Relations.
 T H I R D WORLD DEBT 13

borrowers 1 paid $1.1 billion in interest on their external debt,

which amounted to slightly more than 6 percent of their export
earnings. In 1980, by contrast, their interest payments totaled
$18.4 billion and absorbed over 14 percent of export earnings. 2 As
early as 1982 or 1983, these still-mounting figures led some econ-
omists to warn of serious debt problems. Already some weaker
economies, from Zaire to Jamaica, have failed to meet repayment
schedules; the largest recent case was that of Turkey, whose $3 bil-
lion debt had to be rescheduled in 1980. Overhanging all these
cases are potential problems in much larger borrowers such as Bra-
zil, which owes over $60 billion and has interest payments equiva-
lent to one-third of its exports. 3
This mountain of debt was built mainly in the offshore capital
markets. The astounding growth of these markets is one of the
most striking developments in the modern world economy—
barely noticeable in 1960, two decades later they had a gross size
of nearly $1.5 trillion. Their rapid growth began in the mid-1960s
as depositors, borrowers, and major banks all learned to exploit
their unique advantages. Their main advantage is lower cost, due
mostly to less regulation. Domestic banks in the United States, for
instance, are required to hold some assets idle as reserves, but their
offshore branches and subsidiaries operate under no such restric-
tions. They can earn returns on all their assets. As a result, they
can profitably offer higher deposit rates and slightly lower loan
charges than their domestic counterparts. This near-absence of
costly regulations has proven a powerful attraction to most large
financial intermediaries and their customers.
By 1973, the year of OPEC's embargo, the offshore markets had
already become a prominent component of world capital markets.
Yet the embargo and subsequent oil price hike were to have a sub-
stantial impact on their growth: they stimulated the demand for
payments financing and led to a much larger role for Third World
borrowers.
Oil-importing states in the Third World faced immediate and
severe balance-of-payments problems as soon as oil prices quad-

1. Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, the Philippines, Chile, Thailand, Taiwan, Co-
lombia, Turkey, the Ivory Coast, Bolivia, and India. Until the recent oil discoveries
there, Mexico was grouped with these countries; with over $ 3 4 billion in outstand-
ing commercial loans, it is second only to Brazil as an LDC borrower.
2. Morgan Guaranty Trust, World Financial Markets (January 1981): table 6.
3. Ibid., table 5.
14 CHARLES UPSON

rupled. To elect to reduce imports swiftly by austerity measures

was a politically unattractive strategy that implied sharply lowered
growth. Many LDCs, especially those with ambitious development
programs, chose to adjust more slowly: they maintained that in-
dustrial growth financed the ensuring deficits in the lower-cost
credit markets. 4 This basic policy choice, combined with a shortage
of official financing for deficits, granted the offshore markets a
critical role in balance-of-payments financing.5
The huge payments imbalances of the mid-1970s and early
1980s meant, in effect, that oil producers had surplus revenues to
invest abroad while oil consumers needed substantial financing.
Between these surplus and deficit states stood the major commer-
cial banks, operating in the virtually unregulated Euromarket. 6 By
accepting massive short-term deposits (many from oil producers)
and making medium-term loans (many to oil consumers), these
banks "recycled petrodollar surpluses."
It was a booming business, and a quite profitable one. By the
late 1970s the largest banks were deriving as much as half of their
operating earnings from international activities. When oil prices
doubled again in 1979, the Eurobanks expanded their lending still
further, although this time they acted more cautiously, in recogni-
tion of the growing risks. Even so, it was commercial banks, not aid
donors or official multilateral lenders, that performed the basic re-
cycling function.

4. This strategy of indebted growth is discussed in detail in Jeff Frieden, "Third

World Indebted Industrialization: International Finance and State Capitalism in
Mexico, Brazil, Algeria, and South Korea," International Organization 35, no. 3 (Sum-
mer 1981): 407-31.
5. Much of this bank lending was not made to finance balance-of-payments def-
icits specifically, even though it released other funds for that purpose. Typically, the
credits were meant to finance corporate investments or the budgetary deficits of
parastatal enterprises. Thus, while Eurolending played a crucial role in financing
aggregate deficits, it is not always easy to distinguish resource flows from payments
financing. For a comprehensive analysis of these issues see Benjamin J. Cohen and
Fabio Basagni, Banks and the Balance of Payments: Private Lending in the International
Adjustment Process (Montclair, N. J.: Allenheld Osmun, 1981).
6. T h e term Euromarket is commonly, if somewhat inaccurately, used to refer to
all offshore credit markets. In this article, I shall use the two terms interchangeably.
T h e distinctive feature of these markets is that they deal in Eurocurrencies, which
can be defined as bank deposits denominated in any currency that is not native to
the country where the deposit is located. Dollar deposits in the Cayman Islands, for
example, are Eurodollars, Deutsche Marks on deposit in Luxembourg are Euro-
DMs, and so on for all the major convertible currencies. T h e market for these off-
shore currencies is based in London but stretches as far as the Asia-dollar markets
in Singapore and Hong Kong and includes a number of financial centers and tax
havens in between.
 T H I R D WORLD DEBT 15

In only a few years, then, the Euromarket had assumed a central

role in mediating international capital flows and financing world
trade. In the process, private banks had become major creditors of
sovereign states, not only in the Third World but also in eastern
and southern Europe. 7
The quality of these international loans has attracted increasing
attention from borrowers, lenders, central bankers, and aid offi-
cials. Bank economists, in particular, have looked closely at borrow-
ers' projected foreign-exchange earnings, at their debt ratios, and
at other macroeconomic data. Globally, they have considered the
growth of aggregate payment imbalances and the resulting de-
mands on credit markets and foreign-exchange reserves. Their
central aims are to forecast financing needs and debt-service ca-
pacity.
As important as these factors are, however, the soundness of
international debt depends on more than the financial condition
of the borrower—it depends equally on the willingness of sover-
eign states to repay. The debts, of course, are formal contractual
obligations. But it is commonplace to observe that in the interna-
tional arena the performance of all obligations and the enforce-
ment of all claims must be considered problematic. The reason is
fundamentally Hobbesian. There is no overarching sovereignty, no
sure enforcement of claims (judicial or otherwise), no "common
power," as Hobbes observed, "to keep them in awe." Yet the prin-
ciple of self-help and the metaphor of anarchy, so often used
to describe the underlying condition of international relations,
should not be interpreted as an absence of structures that con-
strain state behavior and give rise to stable expectations. What
must be explored in this particular case, then, is the character of
the international political structures that have thus far prompted
debt service by sovereigns, even when they have found it onerous
to continue payments.
What is most compelling about these structures is that sover-

7. Bank credits are not the only source of private international lending, but they
are by far the most important source of medium- and long-term credits. Interna-
tional bond markets have been much less receptive to underdeveloped states and
have remained the preserve of "name" borrowers from the United States and Eu-
rope. In recent years, nonoil LDCs have borrowed about $2.6 billion annually in
foreign bonds and Eurobonds. T h e y have borrowed ten times that amount in pub-
licized Eurocurrency bank credits (plus a small but growing amount in unpublicized
credits). In addition, suppliers' credits, which are frequently furnished by exporters
and sometimes subsidized by their governments, are a major source of short-term
trade financing.
16 CHARLES LIPSON

eigns are constrained less by other sovereigns than by sanctions

and incentives organized primarily by multinational banks and of-
ficial multilateral lenders. These structures include the deterrent
threat of effective economic sanctions and the incentive of contin-
ued access to credit.
Commercial banks are crucial actors here. Bank lending syndi-
cates are the source of powerful and virtually self-sufficient sanc-
tions against default by solvent borrowers. Because syndicates are
well organized, with an agent bank primarily responsible for col-
lection of the loan, and because there are extensive ties between
syndicates, willful default threatens to cut off all sources of com-
mercial credit. This implicit sanction stands behind all relations
between Eurobanks and their Third World borrowers. Its imple-
mentation, it should be noted, depends on the capacity of large
numbers of independent banks to take concerted action.
When the problem stems from insolvency rather than unwilling-
ness to pay, resolution may be more complicated. It may, for ex-
ample, require substantial new credits plus fiscal and monetary re-
straints by the debtor. In such cases, market-based sanctions and
incentives are typically supplemented by the International Mone-
tary Fund. Besides providing technical advice and some financing,
the Fund evaluates the debtor's proposed economic program and
monitors its implementation. The usual result, worked out jointly
by the debtor, the creditors, and the Fund, is a stabilization pro-
gram and a "work-out" package for the debt, including a delayed
repayment schedule and some new credit.
These structures of sanctions and incentives, built around non-
state actors, form the basis of a stable expectation that debts are to
be serviced promptly if there is any economic possibility of doing
so. Debts are to be honored even if economic conditions are hard,
even if the debts were incurred by defunct governments now in
disrepute.
This definition of obligations implies substantial constraints on
state action: debts are to be assumed and serviced by incumbent
governments; they are not to be repudiated (and they very seldom
are). 8 In practical terms, economic collapse by the debtor may re-
quire some readjustment of loan terms, and bargaining over the

8. O n e possible exception, so far untested, might be in the case of fraud or some

other clearly illegal act by lenders. As yet, debtors have not advanced such claims as
a way of escaping their debt burdens and that in itself is noteworthy.
 THIRD WORLD DEBT 17

new terms may be very tough indeed. T h e norm in such cases is

that renegotiations require mutual agreement; they are not to be
set unilaterally by the debtor. T h e broad acceptance of this behav-
ioral standard is demonstrated repeatedly in the careful statements
of impoverished debtors and even revolutionary governments. Ex-
ceptions, such as North Korea's unilateral suspension of debt ser-
vice after the oil embargo, 9 are quite rare. Much more common—
and indicative of the strength of the debt regime—are incidents
such as the refusal of the Sandinistas to repudiate Somoza's debts. 10
Iran u n d e r the Ayatollah Khomeini is another compelling ex-
ample of the strength and domain of these basic norms and related
rules, and their backing by effective sanctions and incentives. Ac-
cording to the New York Times, "Many European bankers . . . argue
that t h r o u g h o u t the revolution, Iran has sought to meet its finan-
cial obligations, within the limits imposed by the Carter freeze." 11
What is extraordinary is not that some Iranians wanted to disown
the debts but that key officials did not. T h e i r efforts to repay were
m a d e even t h o u g h the debts were contracted u n d e r the Shah, de-
spite questions about their legality u n d e r local law, despite Islamic
objections to interest payments, despite serious economic difficul-
ties, and despite the obvious failure of state sanctions to secure
Iran's compliance on other issues. T h e failure of state sanctions
also suggests that the rewards and punishments related to debt
service may be organized not by capital-exporting states but by the
private creditors themselves.
Indeed, the most distinctive element of the debt regime is the
peripheral role played by capital-exporting states. To understand
this role, and its limits, one must distinguish clearly between the
operation of offshore capital markets (which give rise to credit
flows) and the supervision of outstanding debt (a stock problem).
Advanced capitalist states, where the major banks are headquar-
tered, have unquestionably played a vital role in the growth of the
Euromarket. To begin with, their domestic regulations stimulated
the Euromarket as a less costly source of funds. Moreover, as the

9. "Pyongyang Buys More Time," Far Eastern Economic Review 7 (September

1979): 56, 59.
10. Steve Downer, "Nicaragua: T h e Recovery Is Only Just Beginning," Euro-
money (December 1980), especially p. 129; J o h n Dizard, "Why Bankers Fear the
Nicaraguan Solution," Institutional Investor!International Edition (November 1980), es-
pecially p. 54.
11. Paul Lewis, "Iran's Loan Status Seen Recovering," New York Times, 21 January
1981, p. 25.
18 CHARLES LIPSON

market developed, monetary authorities in the United States gen-

erally avoided actions that might have stunted its growth. If the
United States was concerned with its capital account, Britain was
concerned with London's role as an international financial center.
They welcomed the Euromarket's development in the City. In
these ways, state action and inaction shaped the institutional con-
text of credit flows.
But aiding the development of the Euromarket, or even regu-
lating the banks within it, is different f r o m supervising T h i r d
World debt. T h a t task has fallen largely to the commercial banks
and the International Monetary Fund. Together they have devel-
oped informal but effective means of ensuring debt service—even
when that involves domestic austerity or complex refinancing.
These two nonstate actors have played the central roles in devel-
oping rules and procedures related to troubled debt. These ar-
rangements, which currently center on ad hoc creditor confer-
ences, are still relatively new. They are likely to evolve as the
volume of debt grows, and they may be strained to the breaking
point if prospective defaults are widespread. Still, they have devel-
oped over more than a decade and now comprise a coherent and
distinctive regime f o r T h i r d World debt.

The Structure and Development of the

Euromarket
To clarify the basic features of this regime it is essential to
understand an antecedent p h e n o m e n o n , the buildup of sovereign
debt to private banks via the Euromarket. T h e development of the
Euromarket is important to o u r study for several reasons. First, it
was the privatization of balance-of-payments financing that re-
duced the role of official aid donors and elevated the importance
of commercial banks in debt negotiations. Second, some arrange-
ments for handling commercial debts are linked directly to Euro-
market lending procedures. Finally, to understand pressures for
change within the regime—especially pressures for institutional
changes at the IMF and World Bank—it is necessary to consider
the overall problem of deficits and their financing. If the debt re-
gime cannot be reduced to the credit markets, neither can it be
understood without paying close attention to them.
Although the Euromarket is virtually unregulated, its growth
has certainly been sensitive to state controls over domestic capital
 T H I R D WORLD DEBT 19

markets. In fact, the offshore markets began their rapid growth in

the mid-1960s after the United States limited capital exports for
balance-of-payments reasons. As American strictures were pro-
gressively tightened, multinational corporations were forced to
look beyond New York and Chicago for worldwide financing. They
found it when familiar money-market banks began producing
dollar-denominated deposits in their London branch offices.12
As the profit potential was recognized, the number of branch
banks in the City began to multiply. "Name" banks from the United
States and Europe were soon followed by their regional counter-
parts. Today, all but six of the world's one hundred largest banks
are represented in London. 13 This influx produced a highly com-
petitive capital market, led by some two dozen U. S. and European
banks but joined by over four hundred other banks, insurance
companies, and other private financial institutions. 14 As the market
grew, it also spread—to other financial centers and other curren-
cies. The result was a market for foreign currency liabilities that
doubled every three or four years, reaching a net size of $775 bil-
lion by December 1980.15
As the market grew, its functions expanded from simple com-
mercial lending to balance-of-payments financing. Offshore banks
confronted substantial new risks, for throughout the 1970s both
interest rates and currency movements were volatile. Borrowers
with major industrialization programs began seeking larger loans
for longer periods, typically packages of more than $50 million for
over seven years. Perhaps more important, many potential borrow-
ers were state agencies or parastatal enterprises. Unlike corporate
customers, these state enterprises traditionally claimed sovereign

12. For an examination of U. S. banks' entrance into the Euromarkets, see Janet
Kelly, Bankers and Borders: The Case of American Banks in Britain (Cambridge, Mass.:
Ballinger, 1977).
13. Eighty-nine banks are directly represented and five more participate
through shareholding in a consortium bank: Carol Parker, "Foreign Banks in Lon-
don: New Opportunities for Expansion," The Banker (November 1980): 97.
14. Some estimates of the number of Euromarket financial institutions run
much higher. Saeed Abtahi, for one, has put the number at around seven hundred.
See Abtahi, "Financial Flows to the Developing Countries: T h e Case of Eurodollar
Credits," D.B.A. dissertation, Harvard Business School, 1976, p. 86. As of 1980, 401
foreign banks were registered in London, according to The Banker (November
1980): 87. In addition, Singapore, o n e of the two centers of the Asiadollar market,
now has more than 100 licensed operators with total assets and liabilities of about
$ 3 9 billion. Wall Street Journal, 26 March 1980, p. 18.
15. World Financial Markets (April 1981): 13. Net size differs from gross size by
excluding cross-deposits a m o n g banks.
20 CHARLES LIPSON

immunity from foreign commercial laws. The novel character of

this loan demand and the risks it posed were serious obstacles to
greater commercial lending for balance-of-payments purposes.
Eurobanks responded by developing new procedures, which
were soon deeply imbedded in the markets' daily operations. To
begin with, standard loan agreements require that sovereign im-
munity be waived. Beyond that, two technical innovations helped
open the market to LDCs. The first, copied from equity and bond
underwriting, was credit syndication. Larger loans, instead of
being made by a single bank, were shared among several major
banks and scores of smaller ones. This technique was especially
useful in lending to sovereign borrowers, because lenders were less
experienced in that area, often knew little about the specific state
enterprises involved, and had no accurate way of judging the po-
litical and commercial risks. By using syndicated loans, essentially
unknowable default risks could be spread over large numbers of
banks.
The second important development came in 1969, when short-
term interest rates soared above long-term rates. This reversal of
the typical yield curve had a sharp impact on loan profits because
banks were using short-term liabilities to fund their medium-term
assets.16 Learning from the experience, they introduced floating-
rate loans, shifting to the borrower the uncertainty over interest
rates. After that, credits were committed to the borrower for sev-
eral years but their price changed every few months to reflect the
cost of short-term funds.
These innovations broadened lender participation and so facil-
itated sovereign borrowing on a truly massive scale. They still char-
acterize the market. LDC borrowing is overwhelmingly in the form
of syndicated Eurodollar credits with fluctuating rates, which in-
clude a base interest charge, a lending margin (or spread), and a
one-time syndication fee for the lead manager, which arranges the
credit. If it is a revolving credit instead of the more usual term
loan, a small commitment fee is paid for the unused portion of the
loan. T h e spread, usually between 0.25 percent and 2 percent, is
set for the life of the agreement. The base interest charge, on the
other hand, is recalculated every three or six months to match the
rate London banks pay for Eurocurrency deposits. This base rate

16. M . S . M e n d e l s o h n , Money on the Move: The Modern International Capital Market

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), p. 80.
 T H I R D WORLD DEBT 21

is widely known by its acronym LIBOR, for London Inter-Bank

Offer Rate. To supervise the repayment of the loan, the lead man-
ager usually takes on the additional role of agent, for which it is
paid a small annual fee. With these technical features in place and
with interest rates persistently more attractive (to both depositors
and borrowers) than those in domestic markets, 17 the supply of
Euromarket funds has expanded steadily.
The market's efficiency in attracting these deposits is noteworthy
because the sources have varied so markedly, and the shifting
sources of Euromarket funding illustrate the complexity of com-
mercial lending to Third World states. It is oversimple to reduce
these flows to petrodollar recycling, as important as that is. Actu-
ally, Third World borrowers (principally sovereign states, para-
statal enterprises, and private corporations with state guarantees)
are matched with a variety of ultimate savers via several layers of
cross-depositing among Eurobanks. Twice when OPEC ran large
surpluses, after the oil price rises of the mid-1970s and again more
recently, this banking system funneled credit from petroleum pro-
ducers to consumers—petrodollar recycling. At other times, when
advanced capitalist states were in surplus, they supplied much of
the market's funding and, in effect, provided credit for their own
industrial exports. For example, they supplied around three-
quarters of new Eurodeposits in 1978.18 For symmetry, we might
call this "metrodollar recycling."
Meanwhile, the Euromarket continues to play an entrepot role,
mediating between savers and investors from the same state (or
group of states). Eurobank deposits from Tanzania, for instance,

17. In 1978, for instance, Eurodollar deposit rates commanded a premium of

0.375 percent to 0.5 percent over U. S. certificates of deposit. That differential
moved slightly higher in 1979 and 1980: see Bank for International Settlements
(BIS), BIS 1979 Annual Report, pp. 127-28, and BIS 1980 Annual Report, p. 109.
Deposit rates in the two markets co-vary, with Euromarket premiums largely a func-
tion of U. S. reserve requirements, Federal Deposit insurance costs, and the non-
infinite elasticity of funds with respect to small interest-rate differentials. See Robert
Z. Aliber, "Monetary Aspects of Offshore Markets," Columbia Journal of World Busi-
ness 14 (Fall 1979): 8 - 1 6 , and Ian H. Giddy, "Why Eurodollars Grow," ibid., pp.
54-60.
18. IMF Survey, 3 September 1979, p. 274 (table). T h e Euromarket has thus
continued to grow rapidly despite significant redistributions of current-account sur-
pluses. T h e growth, however, does not mean that Euromarket size is unaffected by
the distribution of surpluses. It would be affected if savers in different countries had
different marginal propensities to buy Euromarket deposits. I am indebted to Rob-
ert Aliber for this point.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 It will be conceded to Mr. Ruskin that it is not the highest order of
poet who, as he looks out on Nature, is so overmastered by his
emotions as to be continually coloring it with his own mental hues. It
is higher to feel intensely and still think truly, than merely to feel
intensely without true thought. But Mr. Ruskin would allow that for
the poet, whether dramatic, epic, or other, to represent his
characters as coloring the world with their own excited feelings, is
neither falsity nor weakness, but is merely keeping true to a fact of
human nature. Numerous instances of this will occur to every one.
Take one from Shakespeare’s delineations of character. Ariel,
breaking through the elements and powers of Nature, quickens the
remorse of Alonso, king of Naples, for a crime committed twelve
years before, till the sounds of Nature become the voice of
conscience—

“Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;

The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass,
Therefore my son i’ the ooze is bedded, and
I’ll seek him deeper than e’er plummet sounded,
And with him there lie mudded.”

V.
Connected with this last mode of treating Nature, but connected in
the way of contrast, is what I may call the Inhuman and Infinite side
of Nature—that side which yields no response to man’s yearnings,
and refuses to make itself plastic under even the strongest power of
emotion. For as I have elsewhere said,[10] outside of and beyond
man, aloof from his warm hopes and fears, his joy and sorrow, his
strivings and aspirations, there lies the vast immensity of Nature’s
forces, which pays him no homage and yields him no sympathy. This
aspect of Nature may be seen even in the tamest landscape, if we
look to the clouds or the stars above us, or to the ocean-waves that
roar around our shores—
“Those clouds that far above us float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may control,
Those ocean-waves that, wheresoe’er they roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws.”

But nowhere is it so borne in upon man as in the wilderness where

no man is, in the presence of the great mountains which seem so
impassive and unchangeable. Their strength and permanence so
contrast with man, of few years and full of trouble—they are
altogether heedless of his feelings or his destiny. He may smile or
weep, he may live or die; they care not. They are the same in all
their ongoings, come what may to him. They respond to the sunrises
and the sunsets, but not to his emotions. All the same they fulfill their
mighty functions, careless though no human eye should ever look on
them. Man’s heart may be full of gladness, yet Nature frowns; he
goes forth from the death-chamber, and Nature affronts him with
sunshine and the song of birds—

“Nature, an infinite, unfeeling power

From some great centre moving evermore,
Keepeth no festal-day when man is born,
And hath no tears for his mortality.”

It seems as though she marched on, having a purpose of her own

inaccessible to man; she keeps her own secret, and drops no hint to
him. This side of things, whether philosophically or imaginatively
regarded, seems to justify the saying that “the visible world still
remains without its divine interpretation.” And though inexplicable,
perhaps for its very inexplicability, this mysterious silence, this
inexorable deafness, this inhuman indifference of Nature, has
oppressed the imagination of some of the greatest poets with a
vague but sublime awe. The sense of it lay heavy on Lucretius and
Shelley, sometimes on Wordsworth, and drew out of their souls
some of the profoundest music. At the present time, perhaps from
the increased scientific knowledge of Nature’s processes, this
contrast between the warm and tender human heart, and the cold
and impassive, almost relentless, elements, more than ever before
dominates the imaginations of men.

VI.
A sixth mode of poetically treating Nature is that which we meet
with in purely descriptive poetry. In Hesiod, in Theocritus, in the
Georgics of Virgil, among the ancients, we have examples of pure
description interwoven in didactic and idyllic poetry; but it is in
modern times that this kind of poetry has chiefly asserted itself. The
most striking example of it is Thomson’s “Seasons.” There we find
that man is quite subordinate, and only comes in to set off Nature
and its appearances, which form the main object of the poem. As it
may seem to be one of the simplest ways of treating Nature, merely
to describe it,—to picture what the eye sees and the ear hears,—
faithfully to reproduce the forms and colors of things, the movements
and the sounds which pervade them—perhaps some may think it
should have been the earliest method. But as a fact, this kind of
poetry, which seems so simple, is the product only of a late age.
Early poets hardly ever handle Nature except to interweave it with
human action and emotion, and as set-off against the life of man. To
regard it by itself, and as existing apart from man, is the mental
attitude of a late and cultivated time, even though the descriptions
may seem to be plain and unadorned.
Since writing these sentences, I have read in Mr. Stopford
Brooke’s admirable “English Literature Primer” a passage in which
he attributes the earliest efforts at poetry of natural description to
Scotch poets, and among these especially to Gawain Douglas, early
in the sixteenth century; and then he, in another place, points out
how, when this kind of poetry came prominently forward in more
modern times, it was a Scottish poet who led the way in it. This is
what he says:—
“Natural scenery had been hitherto only used as a background to
the picture of human life. It now (that is, in the first thirty years of the
eighteenth century) began to take a much larger place in poetry, and,
after a time, grew to occupy a distinct place of its own apart from
man. The best natural description we have before the time of Pope is
that of two Puritans, Marvell and Milton. But the first poem devoted
to natural description appeared while Pope was yet alive, in the very
midst of a vigorous town poetry. It was the “Seasons,” 1726-30; and
it is curious, remembering what I have said about the peculiar turn of
the Scotch for natural description, that it was the work of James
Thomson, a Scotchman. He described the scenery and country-life
of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. He wrote with his eye upon
their scenery, and, even when he wrote of it in his room, it was with
“a recollected love.” The descriptions were too much like catalogues,
the very fault of the previous Scotch poets; and his style was always
heavy, and often cold, but he was the first poet who led the English
people into that new world of nature in poetry, which has moved and
enchanted us in the works of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and
Tennyson, but which was entirely impossible for Pope to understand.
The impulse Thomson gave was soon followed.”
In our own day such poetic descriptions of Nature have burst the
bonds of metre altogether, and filled many a splendid page of poetic
or imaginative prose. Many instances of this will occur to every one.
Preëminent among these are Mr. Ruskin’s elaborate word-pictures of
natural scenery.
But of all poetic description of Nature, it may be said that if it is to
reach any high level it cannot proceed calmly and unexcitedly after
the manner of an inventory. No eye can see deeply into the meaning
of Nature unless it has also looked as deeply into the recesses of the
human heart, and felt the full gravity of man’s life and destiny. It is
only when seen over against these that Nature renders back her
profounder tones.

VII.
There is another way in which the poet deals with the external
world,—when he enters into the life and the movement of Nature by
a kind of imaginative sympathy, and brings it home to us by one
stroke, flashing upon our hearts by one touch, one inspired line, a
sense of the inner life of things, and a conviction that he has been
allowed for a moment to penetrate into their secret. This, which has
been called, in a special way, the interpretative power of Poetry, is
that in which it reaches its highest function, and exercises one of its
finest offices of mediation between the soul of man and Nature.
No one, as far as I know, has seen this aspect of Poetry more
truly, or expressed it so felicitously, as my friend Mr. Matthew Arnold.
If he has not been the first to notice it, he has certainly dwelt on it
with more emphasis than any previous writer, as far as I know. For
his views on this subject I would refer to his delightful Essay on
Maurice de Guérin, in his volume entitled “Essays on Criticism.”
As it is well to give a good thought in its best possible form, Mr.
Arnold will, I know, forgive me if I quote at length his own words. He
says:—
“The grand power of Poetry is its interpretative power, by which I
mean, not the power of drawing out in black and white an
explanation of the mystery of the Universe, but the power of so
dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and
intimate sense of them, and of our relations with them. When this
sense is awakened in us as to objects without us, we feel ourselves
to be in contact with the essential nature of those objects, to be no
longer bewildered and oppressed by them, but to have their secret,
and to be in harmony with them; and this feeling calms and satisfies
us as no other can.... Poetry indeed interprets in another way
besides this; but one of its two ways of interpreting is by awakening
this sense in us. The interpretations of Science do not give us this
intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of Poetry give it; they
appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man.”
Again Mr. Arnold says:—
“Poetry interprets in two ways: it interprets, by expressing with
magical felicity the physiognomy and movement of the outward
world, and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the
ideas and laws of the inward world of man’s moral and spiritual
nature. In other words, Poetry is interpretative by having natural
magic in it, and by having moral profundity. In both ways it
illuminates man; it gives him a satisfying sense of reality; it
reconciles him with himself and the Universe. The greatest poets
unite in themselves the faculty of both kinds of interpretation, the
naturalistic and the moral. But it is observable that in the poets who
unite both kinds, the latter (the moral) usually ends by making itself
the master. In Shakespeare the two kinds seem wonderfully to
balance each other; but even in him the balance leans; his
expression tends to become too little sensuous and simple, too
much intellectualized. The same thing may be yet more strongly
affirmed of Lucretius and of Wordsworth.”
It is not, however, with moral but with naturalistic interpretation that
we have now to do. And in this faculty of naturalistic interpretation,
perhaps no poet—certainly no modern poet—equals Keats. In him,
as Mr. Arnold says, “the faculty is overpoweringly predominant. The
natural magic is perfect; when he speaks of the outward world he
speaks almost like Adam naming, by Divine inspiration, the
creatures; his expression corresponds with the thing’s essential
reality.”
Does not Keats thus bring home to us the meaning—the inner
secret—of the ocean, and the impression it makes on the human
heart, when he speaks of

“The voice mysterious, which whoso hears

Must think on what will be, and what has been?”

It is he that interprets the meaning of the summer midnight among

the woods, when he says—

“Upon a tranced summer night

Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave.”

Or take one more instance. All know the stern, almost grim, feeling
of solitude about some little crag-engirdled lochan or tarn far up the
heart of a Highland mountain. Who has given this feeling of grim
solitude, so death-like that any living thing or sound startles you
there, as Wordsworth, by these two strokes?—

“There sometimes doth a leaping fish

Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven’s croak
In symphony austere.”

Or again, who has not felt as though he had a new revelation made
to him about the starry sky and the mountain-stillness after reading
for the first time these two well-known lines?—

“The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.”

Or once more: who has so called up the impression produced by

the sound of waters heard among the mountains as Wordsworth,
when he thus speaks?—

“In mute repose

To lie and listen to the mountain-flood
Murmuring from Glaramara’s inmost caves.”

But I have dwelt too long on this aspect of Poetry, its penetrating
power of naturalistic interpretation when the poet,

“With an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony and the deep power of joy,”

is given to see into the life of things, and seeing, makes us share his
insight, makes us partakers for a moment at least in

“That blessed mood

In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened.”
 Even if it be but a transient glance, a momentary lightening of the
burden that he lends us, it is one of the most intimate and delicate
services—one of the highest and rarest functions which the poet or
any man can perform.

VIII.
Once more: the last and highest way in which Nature ministers to
the soul and spirit of man is when it becomes to him a symbol
translucent with the light of the moral and spiritual world. Or, in other
words, the highest use to which Imagination can put this visible world
is, to gather from it some tidings of the world invisible.
This use is seen when the sights and sounds of Nature, coming in
through eye and ear to the soul, hint at and foreshow “a higher life
than this daily one, a brighter world than that we see.” It is Coleridge
who has said that “it has been the music of gentle and pious minds
in all ages, it is the poetry of all human life, to read the book of
Nature in a figurative sense, and to find therein correspondences
and symbols of the spiritual world.” That this is no mere fanciful use
to make of Nature, that in cultivating the habit of thus reading it we
are cultivating a power which is grounded in reason and the truth of
things, can hardly be doubted, if we believe that the things we see,
and the mind that sees them, have one common origin, come from
one Universal Mind, which gives being to and upholds both alike.
This seeing of spiritual truths mirrored in the face of Nature rests not
on any fancied, but in a real analogy between the natural and the
spiritual worlds. They are, in some sense which Science has not
ascertained, but which the vital and religious imagination can
perceive, counterparts the one of the other The highest authority for
this belief, as well as its truest exemplification, we have in the
Parables of our Lord. It was on this truth that He grounded a large
part of his teaching.
I need but allude to what is so familiar; only let us, before we pass
on, think of what is implied in this teaching, which we have all known
from our childhood,—the growth of the Divine life in the soul
represented by the growth of the corn seed in the furrow, the end of
the world or of this æon set forth by the reapers and the harvest.
Simple as this teaching is, level to the child’s capacity, it yet involves
a truth that lies deeper than any philosopher has yet penetrated,
even the hidden bond that connects things visible with things
invisible.
Archbishop Trench has said well on this subject:[11]—“On this
rests the possibility of a real and not a merely arbitrary teaching by
Parables—that the world of Nature is throughout a witness for the
world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of the
same root, and constituted for that very end. All lovers of truth readily
acknowledge these mysterious harmonies. To them the things on
earth are copies of the things in heaven. They know that the earthly
tabernacle is made after the pattern of things seen in the Mount, and
the question of the Angel in Milton often forces itself on their
meditations—

‘What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?’”

But to leave these heights of inspired teaching, we find everywhere

the more meditative poets deriving from visible Nature hints at that
which eye has not seen nor ear heard. One of the simplest and most
child-like instances of this that occurs to me is that beautiful thought
of Isaac Walton:—

“How joyed my heart in the rich melodies

That overhead and round me did arise!
The moving leaves—the waters’ gentle flow—
Delicious music hung on every bough.
Then said I, in my heart, If that the Lord
Such lovely music on the earth accord;
If to weak sinful man such sounds are given—
Oh! what must be the melody of Heaven!”

Something of the same thought comes out in a more reflective

way in many of the poems of Henry Vaughan,[12] a writer of the
same age as Walton, and one, like him, now less known and read
than he deserves to be. Take the following, in which Vaughan speaks
of the vivid insight of his childhood in a strain in which some have
thought that they overheard the first note of that tone which
Wordsworth has sounded more fully in his “Ode on the Intimations of
Immortality”. It is thus Vaughan speaks of his childhood:—

“Happy those early days when I

Shined in my angel-infancy;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of His bright face
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
And feel through all this fleshly dress
Bright shootes of everlastingness.”

Such thoughts may be deemed by some to be fanciful and not

practical. Certainly they are not much in vogue at the present time.
But as one has said, “I cannot conceive a use of our knowledge
more practical than to make it connect the sight of this world with the
thought of another.” Nor can any be more needed by us, or more
consolatory. For is it not the experience of each individual as he
grows more thoughtful, as well as the experience of the race, that
the visible, the outward, cannot satisfy? Is it not the very best
element in man that makes him feel forever after something higher,
deeper, more enduring than the things he sees? If we turn aside
from this tendency, and seek to quench it, we do so at the cost of
destroying that which is the best, the noblest inheritance of our
humanity,—the piece of divinity in us.
This suggestive power of Nature, and its unsufficingness, have
been felt by all men who have any glimpse of the ideal in them; by
none has it been more deeply felt, or more adequately expressed,
than by him, the great preacher—poet as well as preacher—of our
age. I mean, Dr. Newman. As the prose words in which he
expresses this feeling are in the highest sense poetry, I cannot, I
think, do better than give the thought in his own perfect language. He
is speaking in the opening of Spring:—
“Let these be your thoughts, especially in this Spring season,
when the whole face of Nature is so rich and beautiful. Once only in
the year yet once, does the world which we see show forth its hidden
powers, and in a manner manifest itself. Then there is a sudden rush
and burst outwardly of that hidden life which God has lodged in the
material world. Well, that shows you, as by a sample, what it can do
at his command, when He gives the word. This earth which now
buds forth in leaves and blossoms, will one day burst forth into a new
world of light and glory. Who would think, except from his experience
of former Springs all through his life, who could conceive two or
three months before that it was possible that the face of Nature,
which then seemed so lifeless, should become so splendid and
varied? How different is a prospect when leaves are on it, and off it!
How unlikely it would seem before the event that the dry and naked
branches should suddenly be clothed with what is so bright and so
refreshing! Yet in God’s good time leaves come on the trees. The
season may delay, but come it will at last.
“So it is with the coming of that eternal Spring for which all
Christians are waiting. Come it will, though it delay. Therefore we say
day by day, Thy kingdom come; which means, O Lord, show thyself
—manifest thyself. The earth that we see does not satisfy us; it is but
a beginning; it is but a promise of something beyond it; even when it
is gayest, with all its blossoms on, and shows most touchingly what
lies hid in it, yet it is not enough. We know much more lies hid in it
than we see.... What we see is the outward shell of an eternal
kingdom, and on that kingdom we fix the eyes of our faith.... Bright
as is the sun and sky and the clouds, green as are the leaves and
the fields, sweet as is the singing of the birds, we know that they are
not all, and we will not take up with a part for the whole. They
proceed from a centre of love and goodness, which is God himself,
but they are not his fullness; they speak of heaven, but they are not
heaven; they are but as stray beams and dim reflections of his
image; they are but crumbs from the table. We are looking for the
coming of the day of God, when all this outward world, fair though it
be, shall perish.... We can bear the loss, for we know it will be but
the removing of a veil. We know, that to remove the world which is
seen will be the manifestation of the world which is not seen. We
know that what we see is a screen hiding from us God and Christ,
and his saints and angels; and we earnestly desire and pray for the
dissolution of all that we see, from our longing after that which we do
not see.”
Such are the thoughts and longings which the sight of the vernal
earth can awaken in a spiritual mind well used to heavenly
meditations.
If some of us are so sense-bound that such thoughts seem
fantastic and unreal to them, all that can be said is, The more’s the
pity. Even the best among us will probably not venture to appropriate
such thoughts as if these were our habitual companions, but they
may have in some brighter moments known them. At all events they
know what they mean, and are assured that as they themselves
grow in spirituality, the beauty that clothes this visible world, while it
soothes, does not suffice, but becomes more and more the hint and
prophecy of a higher beauty which their heart longs for.
And now, in looking back on these several ways in which poets
have handled Nature, two thoughts suggest themselves:—
1. The ways I have noted are far from exhausting all the possible
or even actual modes in which poets deal with Nature, or, in other
words, in which Nature lends itself to the poet’s service. They are but
a few of the most prominent and obvious. It may interest some to
look for others, and to add them to the classification here given.
2. Though one mode may be more prominent in one poet, and one
in another, yet no poet is limited to only one, or even two, of these
several ways of adapting Nature to his purposes. In the works of the
greatest poets, those of largest and most varied range, perhaps
every one of these modes, and more besides, may be found. To find
out and arrange under heads all the ways in which say Shakespeare
and Milton deal with Nature, would be an interesting study for any
one who is young, and has leisure for it.
With one reflection I close this part of my subject. Any one who
has ever been brought to meditate on the relation which the
abstractions of mathematics bear to the Laws of Nature must have
felt how exceeding wonderful it is. A system of thought evoked out of
pure intelligence has been found reflected and, as it were, embodied
in the actual movements of the heavenly bodies, and bringing the
whole Physical Cosmos within the power of man’s thought—

“From star to star, from kindred sphere to sphere,

From system on to system, without end.”

Such a one, I say, must have been filled with wonder at this
marvelous adaptation and correspondence between the mind of
transitory man and the vast movements of the most remote and
permanent of material things.
A like, though a different, wonder must arise when we reflect how,
in the various modes above noted, and no doubt in many more,
outward Nature lends itself to be the material in which so many of
man’s highest thoughts and emotions can work and embody
themselves.
Of the poets and this visible world we may truly say,—

“They took the whole earth for their toy,

They played with it in every mood;
A cell for prayer, a hall for joy,
They treated Nature as they would.”

He who has once perceived the wonderful adaptation which exists

between the mind of man and the external world—how exquisitely
the individual mind, as well as the mind of the race, is fitted to the
world, and the external world fitted to the mind,—if he has once
vividly felt the reality of this adaptation, he must have paused in
wonder at himself, and at the world that encompasses him, and
become penetrated with an immediate conviction, deeper than all
arguments can reach, that the reasonable soul within him, and the
material world without him, which on so many sides is seen to be the
embodiment of reason, and which yields up its secret to man’s
intelligence, and is so plastic to his imagination and emotions,—that
these two existences so answering to each other, and so strangely
communing with each other, are both rooted in the one Central and
Universal Intelligence which embraces and upholds both Nature and
Man.
 CHAPTER IX.
NATURE IN HEBREW POETRY, AND IN HOMER.

The method pursued in this book has been, beginning with some
general views, from these to descend to special illustrations, in order
to exemplify what has been said of Poetry in a general way, by
pointing to the several methods which the poets have actually
followed in delineating Nature and her aspects.
It will be but to carry out somewhat more in detail the same
procedure if I now adduce a few samples of the way in which some
of the greatest poets of each age and country have in their works
shown their feeling towards Nature. To exhaust this subject would
require a large treatise. A chapter or two is all that can here be
afforded to it. In glancing thus, which is all we can do, at a few of the
great mountain-summits of song, many a lesser elevation in the long
line of poetry, that might well repay attention, must needs be passed
in silence. I shall begin with the earliest poets we know, and come
down to those near our own time. In such a survey it is to the East
that the eye naturally turns, and there especially to the singers of
Israel; for, as to the view of Nature which the Hindu Vedas may
contain, this is a subject on which I do not venture, since at best I
could but repeat at second-hand what others have said.
In considering the views of Nature presented by Hebrew poetry, it
is not to the account of the creation in Genesis that we turn, but to
the many passages in the Psalms, the Prophets, and the Book of
Job, in which the aspects of the outward world, as they appeared to
those old seers, are delineated. Humboldt and many others have
remarked that the description by the Hebrew Poets of the material
world everywhere reflects their faith in the unity of God, and in his
immediate presence in all creation. The world is described, not so
much in detail, but as a whole, in its vast expanses and great
movements; or, if individual objects are dwelt on, as in the Book of
Job, it is as the visible witnesses to the transcendent power of the
Invisible One. Nature is nowhere spoken of as an independent and
self-subsistent power, but rather as the outer chamber of an Unseen
Presence—a garment, a veil, which the Eternal One is ever ready to
break through. These characteristics, which pervade the entire
poetry of the Old Testament, are perhaps nowhere seen so
condensed as in that crowning hymn of the visible creation, the
104th Psalm.
This Psalm presents, as has often been remarked, a picture of the
entire Universe, which for completeness, for breadth, and for
grandeur, is unequaled in any other literature. Where else, in human
language, shall we find the whole Universe, the heavens and the
earth, and the ongoings of man in the midst of them, sketched, as
here, in a “few bold strokes”?—
“The Lord covereth himself with light as with a garment. He hath
stretched the heavens like a canopy. He laid the foundation of the
round world that it should not be removed forever. The waters
springing in the mountains descend into the valleys, unto the places
which the Lord hath appointed for them, that they may never pass
the bounds which He hath set them. He sendeth the springs into the
valleys, which run among the hills, to give drink to every beast of the
field, for the wild asses to quench their thirst.... Beside them the birds
of the air sing among the branches.” The fruits of the field, too, are
there; grass and green herb; the labors of man, wine and oil of olive;
all the creatures, the conies, the wild goats, the lions roaring after
their prey, and seeking their meat from God. There, too, is the great
and wide sea, and the wondrous creatures it contains, and the
heavenly bodies are rounding in the whole. And then that touching
contrast between the moving life of the elements and the quiet yet
laborious life of man, encompassed by these vast movements,
—“Man goeth forth unto his work and his labor until the evening.”
And all this picture of the Universe contained within thirty-five short
verses! Besides this, the special Psalm of the visible creation, there
is the 65th Psalm, and many another passage in the Psalms, which
describe so touchingly the way in which God deals with the earth
through natural processes.
 Again, I need hardly refer to the Book of Job, especially from the
37th to the 41st chapters, where both single appearances of the
world and the arrangement of the whole are depicted in language
which has graven itself on the heart of all nations: “The Lord walks
on the heights of the sea, on the ridges of the towering waves
heaped up by the storm.” Or again: “The morning dawn illumines the
border of the earth, and moulds variously the canopy of clouds as
the hand of man moulds the ductile clay.”
Or turn again to the great poet-prophet Isaiah. Here you find no
detailed descriptions, but all Nature fused and molten before the
intense fire, now of his indignation, now of his adoring awe, now of
his spiritual joy; one moment lifting his eyes to the midnight heavens
as the proof and witness of the Divine Omnipotence; another, in his
soul’s exultation over God’s redemptive mercy, calling aloud to the
heavens to sing, and the lower parts of the earth to shout for joy,
“Break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest and every tree
therein.”
But this transport comes from no mere love of Nature. It has a
deeper origin. It is for that Jehovah hath comforted his people, and
will have mercy upon his afflicted. This is the solemn spiritual joy in
which he calls on the heavens and the earth to sympathize.
The following seem to be some of the chief notes of Hebrew
poetry in its dealing with Nature:—
1. Nature, as we have seen, is never represented as an
independent power or as resplendent with her own beauty, but as
the direct creation, one might almost say, the garment of the great
Jehovah. In fact it is remarkable that the word Nature, in the sense
we now use it in, never occurs in the Bible. Neither the word nor the
thing, as a separate entity, seems ever to have been present to the
Hebrew mind. In everything they saw or heard God himself as
immediately present, ready as it were to rend the veil and manifest
himself.
2. The sober, truthful estimate of all things in the external world.
They are spoken of exactly as they are. There is no temptation to
make too much of them; for He who is behind them and who made
them is so much greater, so much more present to thought, that
reverence for Him precludes exaggeration. The accuracy of the Bible
descriptions of these things is quite unexampled in other literature.
[13] This faithfulness to fact, this veneration for natural truth, this
feeling that things are too sacred to be exaggerated or distorted, or
in any way trifled with, comes directly from the habit of regarding all
visible Nature as created and continually upheld by One
Omnipresent God. Habitual reverence for Him from whom they come
sobers the writers and makes them truthful.
3. Connected with this is the absence of all tendency to theorize or
frame hypotheses about Nature’s ongoings. This of course comes
from the pervading habit of referring all effects directly to the Divine
will; and yet there is no want of philosophic wonder, for, as Humboldt
remarks, the Book of Job proposes many questions about natural
things “which modern science enables us to propound more formally,
and to clothe in more scientific language, but not to solve
satisfactorily.” Lastly, there is a deep-hearted pathos, “a yearning
pensiveness,” as it has been called, in the Hebrew poetry, over
man’s mortal condition, as when in images straight from Nature it
describes his life here as “a wind that passeth away and cometh not
again,” or “as a flower of the field so he flourisheth, for the wind
passeth over it and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no
more.” Simple images, yet how true for all generations!

HOMER.
When we turn from the Hebrew to the Greek poetry, as
represented by the father of it, Homer, we find ourselves in another
atmosphere. It is not merely that in the regard which the great poet
casts on Nature, mythology, a fading and only half-alive mythology,
still lingered. It is not this only, but it is that in his thoughts of Nature
there is not the same awful reverence, the same profound pathos;
but there is more of the artistic sense of beauty, that artistic sense
which is only fully developed when the profounder feelings are
comparatively laid asleep.
 No land known to the ancients, perhaps I might say no land ever
known to men, has supplied such visual stimulus to the imagination
as Greece;—scenery so richly diversified, a land beyond all others
various in features and elements, mountains with their bases
plunged into the sea, valleys intersected by great rivers, rich plains
and meadows inlaid between the hill-ranges, deeply indented
shores, promontories wood-clad or temple-crowned looking out on
the many-islanded, Ægean;—around it, on every side, seas so
beautiful, above it such a canopy of sky, changing through every
hour and every season, and calling forth from sea and land every
color which sunlight and gloom can elicit.
If of all nations the Greeks were endowed with the keenest
sensibility to beauty, and if Homer was their chief and representative
poet, it could hardly be but that scenery so varied should melt into
his imagination and reflect itself in his poetry. And so it is. Homer
lived most probably on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, where he had
ever before his eye the island-studded Ægean, behind him the rich
valleys opening down to the coast, and eastward the great mountain
ranges where these rivers are cradled; could it be that of all this his
poetry should give no sign? I cannot agree with Mr. Ruskin’s criticism
of the Homeric scenery. You will find it in the third volume of his
“Modern Painters,” chapter xiii., on Classical Landscape. Like
everything which Mr. Ruskin writes, it is interesting and suggestive,
but I cannot think it adequate or wholly true. Of the Greeks he says:
“They shrank with dread or hatred from all the ruggedness of lower
nature—from the wrinkled forest bark and the jagged hill-crest, and
irregular inorganic storm of sky, looking to these for the most part as
adverse powers, and taking pleasure only in such portions of the
lower world as were at once conducive to the rest and health of the
human frame, and in harmony with the laws of its gentler beauty.”
Again he says: “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.” Again: “It is sufficiently
notable that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries,
dwells delightedly on all the flat bits; and so I think invariably the
inhabitants of mountainous countries do; but the inhabitants of the
plains do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on mountains.”
 Now, in this passage, the general assertion seems to be much too
sweeping, and, in the special instance of Homer, I think it is not true.
Mr. Ruskin backs his position by reference to various passages in
the Odyssey which seem to bear him out, but in any fair estimate we
must take in the Iliad as well as the Odyssey.
In the Iliad the descriptions of Nature are not so detailed as in the
Odyssey. Indeed, they occur almost entirely in similes; but these the
poet fetches from every realm and feature of Nature—from the
mountain, the forest, the sea, especially as seen darkening under
the coming of the western breeze; from the cloudy and the midnight
sky; from all kinds of wild animals, the lion, the fawn, the hawk, and
the boar. In his battle-scenes it is to all the sterner and fiercer
aspects of Nature, and habits of wild beasts, that he has recourse for
his comparisons. And would he have so often invoked the aid of
these wild forces and creatures of his imagination had not he
delighted in them?
So when Teucer slays Mentor, it is thus, as rendered by Lord
Derby:—

“Down he fell,
As by the woodman’s axe, on some high peak
Falls a proud ash, conspicuous from afar,
Leveling its tender leaves upon the ground.”

It is thus the charge of Hector is described when he beat back the

Greeks and penned them at their ships:—

“On poured the Trojan masses; in the van

Hector straight forward drove in full career.
As some huge bowlder, from its rocky bed
Detached, and by the wintry torrent’s force
Hurled down the steep cliff’s face, when constant rains
The massive rock’s firm hold have undermined;
With giant bounds it flies; the crashing wood
Resounds beneath it; still it hurries on,
Until, arriving at the level plain,
Its headlong impulse checked, it rolls no more.”