"Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

"Save that from yonder ivy-mantled

tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign."

Lord Brougham-that universal genius-does not approve of these stanzas and criticises them in his Inaugural Discourse. He has been wisely commending the great Greek orators for their "abstinent use of their prodigious faculties of expression. A single phrase-sometimes a word-and the work is done--the desired impression is made, as it were, with one stroke, there being nothing superfluous interposed to weaken the blow, or break its fall." And after some striking illustrations, he goes on to praise "the great poet of Modern Italy, Dante, for having approached in this

his finest passages you rarely find an epithet; hardly ever more than one, and never two efforts to embody one idea. A guisa di leon quando si posa,' is the single trait by which he compares the dignified air of a stern personage to the expression of the lion slowly laying him down. It is remarkable that Tasso copies the verse entire, but he destroys its whole effect by filling up the majestic idea, adding this line, Girando gli occhi e non movendo il passo.' A better illustration could not easily be found of the difference between the ancient and medern style. Another is furnished by a later imitator of the same great master. I know no passage of the Divina Comedia more excursive than the description of evening in the Purgatorio; yet the poet is content with somewhat enlarging on a single thought -the tender recollections which that hour of meditation gives the traveller at the fall of the first night he is to pass away from home-when he hears the distant knell of the expiring day. Gray adopts the idea of the knell in nearly the words of the original, and adds eight other circumstances to it, presenting a kind of ground-plan, or,

at least, a catalogue, an accurate enumeration (like a natural historian's) of every one particular belonging to nightfall, so as wholly to exhaust the subject, and leave nothing to the imagination of the reader. Dante's six verses, too, have but one epithet, dolci, applied to amici. Gray has thirteen or fourteen, some of them mere repetitions of the same idea which the verb or the substantive conveys, as drowsy tinkling lulls-the moping owl complains the ploughman plods his weary way. Surely, when we contrast the simple and commanding majesty of the ancient writers with the superabundance and diffusion of the exhaustive method, we may be tempted to feel that there lurks some alloy of bitterness in the excess of sweets."

But

Dante's image of the lion is worthy of all Brougham's admiration. we beg to tell his Lordship that he "destroys its whole effect," more inexcusably than Tasso. Dante says nothing of "the expression of the lion

slowly laying him down." "Expression" is verily a pauper version of "a guisa;" and "slowly laying him down," is a pompous paraphrase of "si posa." It is as bad, in another way, as Tasso's "non movendo il passo." But how could his Lordship have blinded himself to the essential difference between Dante's and Gray's condition, aim, object, and feeling, when composing each his celebrated and immortal lines? A few words did the business, and Dante had other fish to fry. Gray had his time at his own disposal-he hurried no man's cattle and the evening being calm he enjoyed it. 'Twas pity he mentioned

the curfew at all-for there was noneand had there been, it would not have tolled till honest people had supped and undressed for bed. But he could not resist the temptation of borrowing an image from the great Florenting whom he reverenced; and, after all, faulty as it is, that opening line has an imposing effect on the imagination, which, when taken by surprise, believes any thing that is solemn, unquestioning of the truth. Let that pass, and all that follows is as good as can be both in sentiment and expression. So far from natural, in his placid mood, would it have been to describe the coming on of the evening by some single stroke or touch, that the beauty of the picture is felt to lie in the completeness gradually effected by the natural succession of images-each with its characteristic epithetwhich were you to delete, the charm would be broken and the vision gone. It is not true that some of the epithets -which his Lordship has counted and found to be fourteen-are mere

"repetitions of the same idea which the verb or substantive conveys;" they all intensify the feelings accom. panying the ideas; they all deepen the repose, not excepting the moping owl, whose complaint to the newrisen moon-for we add an epithet to the long dozen-surely disturbs it not -her fine ear open to every footfalleven the poet's-though he enters the churchyard almost as noiselessly as a ghost.

Here is the famous opening of the Eighth Canto of the Purgatorio, with three translations :

ODE TO LIBERTY.

STROPHE.

"Who shall awake the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life, The youths, whose locks divinely spreading,

Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue,

At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding,

Applauding Freedom lov'd of old to view?

What new Alceus, fancy-blest,

Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest, At Wisdom's shrine a while its flame concealing,

(What place so fit to seal a deed renown'd?)

Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing,

It leap'd in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound!

O goddess, in that feeling hour, When most its sounds would 'court thy ears,

Let not my shell's misguided power E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears. No, Freedom, no, I will not tell, How Rome, before thy face, With heaviest sound, a giant-statue, fell, Push'd by a wild and artless race, From off its wide ambitious base, When Time his northern sons of spoil

How in the great, the labour'd whole, Each mighty master pour'd his soul; For sunny Florence, seat of Art, Beneath her vines preserv'd a part, Till they, whom Science lov'd to name, (Oh, who could fear it!) quench'd her flame.

And, lo, an humbler relic laid

In jealous Pisa's olive shade!
See small Marino joins the theme,
Though least, not last in thy esteem;
Strike, louder strike th' ennobling strings
To those, whose merchants' sons were
kings;

To him, who, deck'd with pearly pride,
In Adria weds his green-hair'd bride:
Hail, port of glory, wealth, and pleasure,
Ne'er let me change this Lydian measure:
Nor e'er her former pride relate
To sad Liguria's bleeding state.
Ah, no more pleas'd thy haunts I seek,
On wild Helvetia's mountain bleak:
(Where, when the favour'd of thy choice,
The daring archer heard thy voice;
Forth from his eyrie rous'd in dread,
The ravening eagle northward fled.)
Or dwell in willow'd meads more near,
With those to whom thy stork is dear:
Those whom the rod of Alva bruis'd,
Whose crown a British queen refus'd!
The magic works, thou feel'st the strains,
The holier name alone remains;
One perfect spell shall then avail,
Hail, nymph, ador'd by Britain, hail!

ANTISTROPHE.

"Beyond the measure vast of thought, The works, the wizard Time has wrought! The Gaul, 'tis held of antique story, Saw Britain link'd to his now adverse strand,

No sea between, nor cliff sublime and hoary,

He pass'd with unwet feet through all our land.

To the blown Baltic then, they say,
The wild waves found another way,

Where Orcas howl, his wolfish mountains rounding;

There on the walls the patriot's sight May ever hang with fresh delight,

rise,

A wide wild storm e'en Nature's self confounding,

Withering her giant sons with strange uncouth surprise.

This pillar'd earth so firm and wide,

By winds and inward labours torn,
In thunders dread was push'd aside,
-And down the shouldering billows
borne.

And see, like gems, her laughing train,
The little isles on every side,

Mona, once hid from those who search the

main,

Where thousand elfin shapes abide, And Wight, who checks the westering tide,

"Ye forms divine, ye laureate band,
That near her inmost altar stand!
Now soothe her, to her blissful train
Blithe Concord's social form to gain :
Concord, whose myrtle wand can steep
E'en Anger's blood-shoot eyes in sleep!
Before whose breathing bosom's balm,
Rage drops his steel, and storms grow
calm;

Her let our sires and matrons hoar
Welcome to Britain's ravag'd shore,
Our youths, enamour'd of the fair,
Play with the tangles of her hair,
Till, in one loud applauding sound,
The nations shout to her around,
'O, how supremely art thou blest,

bestow'd,

A fair attendant on her sovereign pride: To thee this blest divorce she ow'd, For thou hast made her vales thy lov'd, thy last abode !

SECOND EPODE.

"Then too, 'tis said, an hoary pile,
'Midst the green navel of our isle,
Thy shrine in some religious wood,
O sóul enforcing goddess, stood !
There oft the painted native's feet
Were wont thy form celestial meet :
Though now with hopeless toil we trace
Time's backward rolls, to find its place;
Whether the fiery-tressed Dane,
Or Roman's self-o'erturn'd the fane,
Or in what heaven-left age it fell,
'Twere hard for modern song to tell.
Yet, still, if truth those beams infuse,
Which guide at once, and charm the Muse,
Beyond yon braided clouds that lie,
Paving the light embroider'd sky;
Amidst the bright pavilion'd plains,
The beauteous model still remains,
There happier than in islands blest,
Or bowers by Spring or Hebe drest,
The chiefs who fill our Albion's story,
In warlike weeds, retir'd in glory,
Hear their consorted Druids sing
Their triumphs to th' immortal string.
"How may the poet now unfold,
What never tongue or numbers told?
How learn delighted, and amaz'd,
What hands unknown that fabric rais'd?
Een now, before his favour'd eyes,
In Gothic pride it seems to rise!
Yet Grecia's graceful orders join,
Majestic, through the mix'd design;
The secret builder knew to chuse,
Each sphere found gem of richest hues:
Whate'er Heaven's purer mould contains,
When nearer suns emblaze its veins ;

Let no man presume to soliloquize a comment on that Ode. But it sets us to dissert a little on poetical language.

Its

That the mind in a state of emotion is liable to suggestions of analogy, is well stated by Dr Thomas Brown in one of his Lectures; and indeed the language of poetry, which either is, or ought to be that of passion, is full of all such analogies, and so is the language of ordinary life when the mind is under emotion. But what is the reason of this fact? It is this: The mind under the influence of passion or emotion, is wholly and vividly possessed by one feeling. It lives in one warm, bright, entire state. whole discernment, therefore-power and wish of discernment-is confined to one emotion. Whatever thoughts or conceptions, therefore, do naturally belong to that emotion, crowd in upon it and "possess it merely." In this overcharged and heightened condition of emotion, it must happen, that when the mind looks abroad over external nature, or for a moment glances inwardly on other conceptions not exactly the same as those or that one which rule predominantly over it, that it will behold these in the light of its chief emotion, and diffuse over them the qualities, as it were, of that emotion. It will thus bestow on external nature qualities which exist only in itself—and where certain acknowledged analogies do absolutely exist, it will earnestly seize upon these, and then burst forth vehe

we

mently and ardently in figurative and metaphorical language. Now know that by such natural tendency of the mind, all languages are full of figures and metaphors, expressive of analogies between qualities or states of mind and mere appearances of external nature. Accordingly, when, language has been so formed, the mind under the influence of emotion has no longer these analogies to seek or find -but has them ready prepared for it in language. But we know that language itself is full of those causes of association or suggestion, which the mind obeys. Accordingly when the mind, under the influence of emotion, begins to clothe its emotion in words, its first analogical expressions do of themselves continue to suggest others, and thus to feed the emotion, whatever it may be, and to lead the mind on in a continued strain of what may be called poetical language. The first tendency of the mind under emotion is to transfuse itself into whatever it beholds or conceives, and when it does so not only in thought but in expression, then the very language which it employs for that purpose, having been originally formed by minds similarly situated or affected, begins to act as a new power upon its associations-and carries it on, even perhaps after the strength of the original emotion has ceased, into the wide field of analogy. If, agreeably to those views, the mind under emotion were to remain hushed and silent, and to confine itself to the one single emotion or passion that possessed it, then one of two effects would follow: either the passion would die away altogether, or it would become a sort of blind, brooding disease, in which all the other emotions and faculties of the soul were lost and swallowed up. For either the emotion would languish and die, being denied that food which, in other cases, the mind supplies to it from its excursive thoughts, or it would grow to such excess from being agitated entirely, and at all times, by a few deep, black, and gloomy thoughts, repelling from them every suggested thought which did not closely and grimly coalesce with it, that the mind would be kept in a condition approaching to that of insanity. Now this happens in nature. When, for example, grief is so intense as to prostrate the heart-as

when a widow mother loses her only child-that grief, silent, and almost thoughtless, eats away like a cancer into her heart, and she dies-as many have died-of grief. Or quite an opposite effect may follow. After a while this silent, quiet, and deep grief sinks into resignation-religion tells her that it is impious-and accordingly all those trains of thought, which otherwise the mind would have suggested, being stopt, arrested, or at least modified, the heart is restored to itself. But if an intermediate state of mind exists-one neither perfectly calmed by resignation, nor yet utterly abandoned to despair, then the passion of grief finds food for itself in every thing submitted to the eyes of the mourner; and mournful resemblances and analogies are found in all living things to the dead; a coffin, a procession, and a funeral are alike seen in the embers on the hearth and in the clouds of heaven.

It should be added, that the mind, when under the strong power of passion of various kinds, is also under the power of high Imagination. In such excited and elevated moods, it is impossible to set any bounds to the analogies which it will discern between its own feelings and all created nature. It then feels itself, as it were, the ruling spiritual essence of this scene of existence; and sees in the sky, the earth, and the ocean-its clouds, storms, mountains, and waves, only the reflection of its own power and greatness. Indeed, it is the theory of Mr Alison, that all beauty and sublimity in external nature are but the reflections of mental qualities, and that the pleasures of the imagination consist of those emotions which arise in us during our association of mental qualities with lifeless things. This theory, so beautifully illustrated by Mr Alison, is certainly, in a great measure, true; and therefore almost every word we use and every feeling which we express is a proof of the discernment by the mind, in a state of imagination, of analogies subsisting between the objects of the external world and the attributes of our moral and intellectual being.

We said that Mr Alison's theory is in a great measure true. The principle is true-but we suspect that there is something fallacious in its applica