' Then Dotty looked round the room; and I
had just poured some water out into the basin; and Dotty ran to
it, and got up on a chair, and dashed her hand through the water,
again and again; and cried, 'Oh, deep, deep sea! Send little Alice
back to me.'" On this, Ruskin remarks--"The whole heart of
Greek mythology is in that; the idea of a personal being in the
elemental power; of its being moved by prayer; and of its
presence everywhere, making the broken diffusion of the
element sacred." It would seem that Dotty did not definitely
personify the element, but was rather in the animistic stage. The
identifying of the natural element or object with a definite
personality is a further step taken, as Ruskin says, by the Greeks
preeminently. But the beauty and the suggestive quality of the
incident remain, whichever view be taken.
A still more deeply suggestive example is found in Wordsworth's
description of a boyish night adventure of his on Esthwaite
Lake. For it shows the inner workings of a mind impressed
by specially striking natural objects, and by the obscurely
realised powers which they dimly manifest.
"I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And as I rose upon the stroke my boat
Wont heaving through the waters like a swan;--
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again;
And, growing still in stature, the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own,
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me.
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