an obiter dictum, from its context, which in Horace referred to the appropriate distance of a beholder/reader from a picture/text.

In English literature, the Neo-Classical cult of the Ancients straddling the year 1700 produced a spate of translations of Horace´s Ars poetica, and the translators´ accompanying comments suggest a wide range of idiosyncratic applications of the Latin poet´s maxim. One form of poetical expression of the parallel particularly favoured by English Neo-Classical poets was landscape description. However,´landscapes´ had to fight opposition on two fronts, viz. the rigid Neo-Classical canon, and the prevalent mould of the description of outdoor scenery as seen in eg pastorals.

This book traces the development of the maxim ut pictura poesis from a topos to a genre, viz. the Neo-Classical landscape poem. The typical poem belonging to that genre, which is given a detailed analysis in the pages of this book, contains a number of stock ingredients that meet the eyes of a beholder, who is also the narrator. Underneath the scene is a low-key social analogy, an intimation of a virtually unspoilt utopian society. At the same time, an undertone of anxiety for the preservation of this summum bonum is perceptible, and in James Thomson´s landscapes, dating from the 1720s, the reader feels the approach of the attitude to the items of natura naturata that we find in Wordsworth and Keats.