Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

dian, any more than Pope's to the lyric. But I grieve for the wounded feelings of so fine a spirit on occasions like these, and regret that he quitted, for a new inauspicious sphere, the bright tracks of his glory, as a lyric and didactic bard.

Sir BB the brilliant, was lately asked, in company, his opinion of Zeluco. He replied, "No great affair as to genius, and without any graces of style-however, Zeluco is a good rough novel."-So fastidious are these modern fine men, even where they have imagination and literature. Adieu! Yours faithfully.

LETTER XC.

DR DARWIN.

- Feb. 11, 1790.

GRATEFULLY do I thank you for this second delightful present from the* new edition of the Botanic Garden. No work of length can be so perfect, but that the genius, which produced, may improve it.

The Amaryllis, with its beautiful simile and

*The second.

its note-the poetic landscapes also, after Wright, are rich additions to the first canto-that graceful name, Orixa, improves the 184th line. In my translations of the Odes of Horace, I have often found the high-vowelled names of the Greek and Roman cities produce harmonious effect in the flow of the lines: as,

"Nor patient Lacedemon wakes my lyre,
That trains her sons to all the warrior's toil;
Nor me Larissa's airy graces fire,

Though round her hills the golden vallies smile;
But my lov'd mansion by the circling wood,
On the green bank of clear Albunea's flood,
Its walls resounding with the echo'd roar,
As Anio's torrents down the mountain pour."

The Dream of the Dormouse pleases me extremely, and the happy expression "Kernell'd groves;"-not so the alteration of the rhymes form and storm, in the Colchgeum, to air and hair, because, being succeeded by year and sphere, the continued jingle cloys my ear. But I now see why they are changed, and, to be sure, the added lines, to which the discarded rhymes are removed, make large recompense. It is well to have lessened by one, the plentitude of the epithet fair, on the 25th and 26th page. Shakespeare's sleeping moonlight has been happily adopted in the poetic mirror of Wright's pictures. On the

60th page, the epithet to the hand of the morning, which was "red hand," is judiciously exchanged to fair for a ludicrous equivoque is very undesirable. Nor am I less glad that tender, as applied to the yell of the young Upases, is altered to shriller. Above all, I rejoice that you have yielded to my persuasions, and rescued Ninon from the injustice you had done to her charms, by the epithet withered, and to her merits by that of harlot. Ninon had solid and generous virtues, to balance her amorous frailty, and, though not always constant, was at no time indiscriminately licentious. Never, surely, was Never, surely, was a striking and tragic incident so finely told, in so short a compass, as you have now told it.

I am not aware of any alteration in the second canto.

In the third, we are infinitely indebted to the Orchis, whose description has given birth to a simile of such perfect beauty, and to a pathetic story, told in your own wonderfully picturesque manner; yet is it not unphilosophical to mention the echoes of canvas walls, where no echo can in reality exist? Is it not false metaphor, to talk of the beating of an urn? And do you not, in the babe's bloody fingers, present an image, whose horror passes the bounds you prescribe to the excitement of that passion in the notes.

In the fourth canto, I do not see why the epithet calm, expressing the serene faith of the salamander cousins, Shadrach, Meshech, and Abeduego, was exchanged for slow, which expresses nothing of their intellectual feelings.

The portrait of the Cannabis is introduced by a fine landscape of China, and is in itself animated and graceful in the first degree. That allusion, which succeeds to the allegoric tissue of life, opens with a new and solemn idea, and beautifully brightens on its progress.

We find the Ocyma a great poetic acquisition; the description it introduces of Lot's wife is much improved, and its interest much heightened from the passage where we found her statue in the saline city, amidst the mines of Poland. People would be apt to wonder how the d- it got there." I confess, however, that I do not quite like that Lota should so distinctly perceive her own odd destiny. The preceding description of the ice-flower, forms a couplet that has no superior in grace and beauty, through this whole poem, where grace and beauty are sq bounteously bestowed.

Rejoicing most truly in your poetic glories, I remain, dear Sir, your obliged friend and servant,

[blocks in formation]

LETTER XCI.

HUMPHRY REPTON, ESQ.

Feb. 17, 1790.

FOR One of the most ingenious, easy, witty, graceful letters I ever received, it was my hope and expectation to have thanked you in person ere this time; but our strangely softened winter is passing swiftly away; December, the promising December, is already past, and you, or let me rather say the arbitrary claims of your new profession, made its pinion faithless. It shed mild gales, and light, which, while it lasted, was almost vernal; but it shed not effusions from the eye and spirit of my friend, which had been yet more welcome.

The glowing pages before me abound with Claude and Salvatorial sketches. My imagination eagerly fills up the outlines. Nor less was I pleased with the Alderman's Eden, his canal upon the hill, and the mount in the valley; but, as you observe, where the grass looks green and lawny, the water glitters, and the trees grow luxuriantly, the vulgar eye is sufficiently gratified.

« PredošláPokračovať »