Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849. Various
were not all-sufficient for our gaze.
BULLER.
Let me try my hand. No – no – no – I can see and feel, have an eye and a heart for Scenery, as it is called, but am no hand at a description. My dear, sweet, soft-breasted, fair-fronted, bright-headed, delightful Cruachan – thy very name, how liquid with open vowels – not a consonant among them all – no Man-Mountain Thou – Thou art the Lady of the Lake. I am in love with Thee – Thou must not think of retiring from the earth – Thou must not take the veil – off with it – off with it from those glorious shoulders – and come, in all Thy loveliness, to my long – my longing arms!
SEWARD.
Is that the singing of larks?
NORTH.
No larks live here. The laverock is a Lowland bird, and loves our brairded fields and our pastoral braes; but the Highland mountains are not for him – he knows by instinct that they are haunted – though he never saw the shadow nor heard the sugh of the eagle's wing.
SEWARD.
The singing from the woods seems to reach the sky. They have utterly forgotten their fear; or think you, sir, that birds know that what frightened them is gone, and that they sing with intenser joy because of the fear that kept them mute?
NORTH.
The lambs are frisking – and the sheep staring placidly at the Tents. I hear the hum of bees – returned – and returning from their straw-built Citadels. In the primal hour of his winged life, that wavering butterfly goes by in search of the sunshine that meets him; and happy for this generation of ephemerals that they first took wing on the afternoon of the day of the Great Storm.
BULLER.
How have the Poets, sir, handled thunder and lightning?
NORTH.
Sæpe ego, cum flavis messorem induceret arvis
Agricola, et fragili jam stringeret hordea culmo,
Omnia ventorum concurrere prælia vidi,
Quæ gravidam latè segetem ab radicibus imis
Sublimè expulsam eruerent: ita turbine nigro
Ferret hyems culmumque levem, stipulasque volantes.
Sæpe etiam immensum cœlo venit agmen aquarum,
Et fœdam glomerant tempestatem imbribus atris
Collectæ ex alto nubes: ruit arduus æther,
Et pluviâ ingenti sata læta, boumque labores
Diluit: implentur fossæ, et cava flumina crescunt
Cum sonitu, fervetque fretis spirantibus æquor.
Ipse Pater, mediâ nimborum in nocte, corusca
Fulmina molitur dextrâ: quo maxima motu
Terra tremit: fugêre feræ, et mortalia corda
Per gentes humilis stravit pavor: ille flagranti
Aut Atho, aut Rhodopen, aut alta Ceraunia telo
Dejicit: ingeminant Austri, et densissimus imber:
Nunc nemora ingenti vento, nunc littora plangunt.
BULLER.
You recite well, sir, and Latin better than English – not so sing-songy – and as sonorous: then Virgil, to be sure, is fitter for recitation than any Laker of you all —
NORTH.
I am not a Laker – I am a Locher.
BULLER.
Tweedledum – Tweedledee.
NORTH.
That means the Tweed and the Dee? Content. One might have thought, Buller, that our Scottish Critics would have been puzzled to find a fault in that strain —
BULLER.
It is faultless; but not a Scotch critic worth a curse but yourself —
NORTH.
I cannot accept a compliment at the expense of all the rest of my countrymen. I cannot indeed.
BULLER.
Yes, you can.
NORTH.
There was Lord Kames – a man of great talents – a most ingenious man – and with an insight —
BULLER.
I never heard of him – was he a Scotch Peer?
NORTH.
One of the Fifteen. A strained elevation – says his Lordship – I am sure of the words, though I have not seen his Elements of Criticism for fifty years —
BULLER.
You are a creature of a wonderful memory.
NORTH.
"A strained elevation is attended with another inconvenience, that the author is apt to fall suddenly, as well as the reader; because it is not a little difficult to descend sweetly and easily from such elevation to the ordinary tone of the subject. The following is a good illustration of that observation" – and then his Lordship quotes the passage I recited – stopping with the words, "densissimus imber," which are thus made to conclude the description!
BULLER.
Oh! oh! oh! That's murder.
NORTH.
In the description of a storm – continues his Lordship – "to figure Jupiter throwing down huge mountains with his thunderbolts, is hyperbolically sublime, if I may use the expression: the tone of mind produced by that image is so distinct from the tone produced by a thick shower of rain, that the sudden transition must be very unpleasant."
BULLER.
Suggestive of a great-coat. That's the way to deal with a great Poet. Clap your hand on the Poet's mouth in its fervour – shut up the words in mid-volley – and then tell him that he does not know how to descend sweetly and easily from strained elevation!
NORTH.
Nor do I agree with his Lordship that "to figure Jupiter throwing down huge mountains with his thunderbolts is hyperbolically sublime." As a part for a whole is a figure of speech, so is a whole for a part. Virgil says, "dejicit;" but he did not mean to say that Jupiter "tumbled down" Athos or Rhodope or the Acroceraunian range. He knew – for he saw them – that there they were in all their altitude after the storm – little if at all the worse. But Jupiter had struck – smitten – splintered – rent – trees and rocks – midway or on the summits – and the sight was terrific – and "dejicit" brings it before our imagination which not for a moment pictures the whole mountain tumbling down. But great Poets know the power of words, and on great occasions how to use them – in this case – one – and small critics will not suffer their own senses to instruct them in Poetry – and hence the Elements of Criticism are not the Elements of Nature, and assist us not in comprehending the grandeur of reported storms.
BULLER.
Lay it into them, sir.
NORTH.
Good Dr Hugh Blair again, who in his day had a high character for taste and judgment, agreed with Henry Home that "the transition is made too hastily – I am afraid – from the preceding sublime images, to a thick shower and the blowing of the south wind, and shows how difficult it frequently is to descend with grace, without seeming to fall." Nay, even Mr Alison himself – one of the finest spirits that ever breathed on earth, says – "I acknowledge, indeed, that the 'pluviâ ingenti sata læta, boumque labores diluit' is defensible from the connexion of the imagery with the subject of the poem; but the 'implentur fossæ' is both an unnecessary and a degrading circumstance when compared with the magnificent effects that are described in the rest of the passage." In his quotation, too, the final grand line is inadvertently omitted —
"Nunc nemora ingenti vento, nunc litora plangunt."
BULLER.
I never read Hugh Blair – but