censor. RITSON VERSUS JOHN SCOTT THE QUAKER. Critics I read on other men, And Hypers upon them again.—Prior. I HAVE in my possession Scott's "Critical Essays on Some of the Poems of Several English Poets," a handsome octavo, bought at the sale of Ritson's books, and enriched (or deformed, as some would think it) with MS. annotations in the handwriting of that redoubted I shall transcribe a few which seem most characteristic of both the writers-Scott, feeble but amiable-Ritson, coarse, caustic, clever, and, I am to suppose, not amiable. But they have proved some amusement to me, and I hope will produce some to the reader, this rainy season, which really damps a gentleman's wings for any original flight, and obliges him to ransack his shelves and miscellaneous reading to furnish an occasional or makeshift paper. If the sky clears up and the sun dances this Easter (as they say he is wont to do), the town may be troubled with something more in his own way ELIA.1 the ensuing month from its poor servant to command, Scott. A superficial There is a very bold transposition in this passage. reader, not attending to the sense of the epithet ever, might be ready to suppose that the intervals intended were those between the falling of the waters, instead of those between the falling of the towers. and saddens us, for one part of our nature at least; but this expands the whole of our nature, and gives to the body a sort of ubiquity-a diffusion as far as the actions of its partner can have reach or influence. I have seen this passage smiled at, and set down as a quaint conceit of old Fuller. But what is not a conceit to those who read it in a temper different from that in which the writer composed it? The most pathetic parts of poetry to cold tempers seem and are nonsense, as divinity was to the Greeks foolishness. When Richard II., meditating on his own utter annihilation as to royalty, cries out "O that I were a mockery king of snow, if we had been going on pace for pace with the passion before, this sudden conversion of a strong-felt metaphor into something to be actual y realised in nature, like that of Jeremiah, "O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears!" is strictly and strikingly natural; but come unprepared upon it, and it is a conceit: and so is a "head" turned into "waters." 1 This was a hoax. The notes were by Lamb himself, Ritson. A beauty, as in Thomson's "Winter" -Cheerless towns, far distant, never blest A superficial person--Mr. Scott, for instance, would be apt to connect the last clause in this period with the line foregoing-" bends to the coast of Cathay with news," &c. But has a reader nothing to do but to sit passive, while the connection is to glide into his ears like oil? DENHAM'S "COOPER'S HILL." The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear, While he the bottom, not his face, had seen. Scott. The last two lines have more music than Denham's can possibly boast. Ritson. May I have leave to conjecture that in the very last line of all the word "the" has erroneously crept in? I am persuaded that the poet wrote "his." To my mind, at least, this reading in a surprising degree heightens the idea of the extreme clearness and transparency of the stream, where a man might see more than his face (as it were) in it. 66 Scott. The second of these little pieces, called "Hassan, or the Camel Driver," is of superior character. This poem contradicts history in one principal instance: the merchants of the East travel in numerous caravans, but Hassan is introduced travelling alone in the desert. But this circumstance detracts little from our author's merit; adherence to historical fact is seldom required in poetry. Ritson. It is always, where the poet unnecessarily transports you to the ends of the world. If he must plague you with exotic scenery, you 1 May I have leave to notice an instance of the same agreeable discontinuity in my friend Lloyd's admirable poem on Christmas? -Where the broad-bosomed hills, Swept with perpetual clouds, of Scotland rise, have a right to exact strict local imagery and costume. Why must I learn Arabic to read nothing after all but Gay's Fables in another language? Scott. Abra is introduced in a grove, wreathing a flowery chaplet for her hair. Shakespeare himself could not have devised a more natural and pleasing incident than that of the monarch's attention being attracted by her song Great Abbas chanced that fated morn to stray, Ritson. Ch-t? O stay thee, Agib, for my feet deny, Scott. From the pen of Cowley such an observation as Secander's, that "his feet were no longer friendly to his life," might have been expected; but Collins rarely committed such violations of simplicity. Ritson. Pen of Cowley! impudent goose-quill, how darest thou guess what Cowley would have written? The beetle was introduced into poetry by Shakespeare. Shakespeare has made the most of his description; indeed, far too much considering the occasion -To black Hecate's summons The shard-born beetle, with his drowsy hum, The imagination must be indeed fertile which could produce this ill-placed exuberance of imagery. The poet when composing this passage must have had in his mind all the remote ideas of Hecate, a heathen goddess, of a beetle, of night, of a peal of bells, and of that action of the muscles commonly called a gape or yawn. Ritson. Numbscull! that would limit an infinite head by the square contents of thy own numbscull. Scott. The great merit of a poet is not, like Cowley, Donne, and Denham, to say what no man but himself has thought, but what every man besides himself has thought, but no man expressed; or at least, expressed so well. Ritson. In other words, all that is poetry which Mr. Scott has thought as well as the poet; but that cannot be poetry which was not obvious to Mr. Scott as well as to Cowley, Donne, and Denham. Scott. Mr. Mason observes of the language in this part [the Epitaph], that it has a Doric delicacy. It has, indeed, what I should rather term a happy rusticity. Ritson. GOLDSMITH'S "DESERTED VILLAGE." No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; Scott. Our author's language in this place is very defective in correctness. After mentioning the general privation of the "bloomy flush of life,” the exceptionary "all but" includes, as a part of that "bloomy flush,” an aged decrepit matron; that is to say, in plain prose, "the bloomy flush of life is all fled but one old woman.' Yet Milton could write Ritson. Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth, Or the bell-man's drowsy charm and I dare say he was right. O never let a Quaker, or a woman, try their hand at being witty, any more than a Tom Brown affect to speak by the spirit! Scott. Aaron Hill, who, although in general a bombastic writer, produced some pieces of merit, particularly the "Caveat," an allegorical satire on Pope. Ritson. Say rather his verses on John Dennis, beginning “Adieu, unsocial excellence!" which are implicitly a finer satire on Pope than twenty "Caveats." All that Pope could or did say against Dennis, is there condensed; and what he should have said, and did not, for him, is there too. THOMSON'S "SEASONS." Address to the Angler to spare the young fish. If yet too young, and easily deceived, A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod, Scott. The praise bestowed on a preceding passage cannot be justly given to this. There is in it an attempt at dignity above the occasion. Pathos seems to have been intended, but affectation only is produced. Ritson. It is not affectation, but it is the mock heroic of pathos, introduced purposely and wisely to attract the reader to a proposal which, from the unimportance of the subject-a poor little fish-might else have escaped his attention-as children learn, or may learn, humanity to animals from the mock romantic "Perambulations of a Mouse." HAYMAKING. Trail the long rake; or, with the fragrant load Scott. "Kind oppression" is a phrase of that sort which one scarcely knows whether to blame or praise: it consists of two words directly opposite in their signification; and yet, perhaps, no phrase whatever could have better conveyed the idea of an easy uninjurious weight. Ritson. And yet he does not know whether to blame or praise it ! |