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cumstance 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 I have read-often, and always with increased delight-Mr Alison's exquisite Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, and Lord Jeffrey's admirable exposition of the Theory-in statement so clear, and in illustration so rich-worth all the Esthetics of the Germans-Schiller excepted-in one Volume of Mist.

NORTH.

Mr Alison had an original as well as a fine mind; and here he seems to have been momentarily beguiled into mistake by unconscious deference to the judgment of men-in his province far inferior to himself whom in his modesty he admired. Mark. Virgil's main purpose is to describe the dangersthe losses to which the agriculturist is at all seasons exposed from wind and weather. And he sets them before us in plain and perspicuous language, not rising above the proper level of the didactic. Yet being a Poet he puts poetry into his description from the first and throughout. To say that the line "Et pluviâ," &c. is "defensible from the connexion of the imagery with the subject of the Poem" is not enough. It is necessitated. Strike it out and you abolish the subject. And just so with "implentur fossa." The "fossa" we know in that country were numerous and wide, and, when swollen, dangerous-and the "cava flumina" well follow instantly-for the "fossa" were their feeders-and we hear as well as see the rivers rushing to the sea-and we hear too, as well as see, the sea itself. There the description ends. Virgil has done his work. But his imagination is moved, and there arises a new strain altogether. He is done with the agriculturists. And now he deals with man at large-with the whole human race. He is now a Boanerges-a son of thunder-and he begins with Jove. The sublimity comes in a moment. "Ipse Pater, mediâ nimborum in nocte"-and is sustained to the close-the last line being great as the first-and all between accordant, and all true to nature. Without rain and wind, what would be a thunder-storm? The "densissimus imber" obeys the laws-and so do the ingeminanting Austriand the shaken woods and the stricken shores.

BULLER.

Well done, Virgil-well done, North.

NORTH.

I cannot rest, Buller-I can have no peace of mind but in a successful defence of these Ditches. Why is a Ditch to be despised? Because it is dug? So is a grave. Is the Ditch-wet or dry-that must be passed by the Volunteers of the Fighting Division before the Fort can be stormed, too low a word for a Poet to use? Alas! on such an occasion well might he say, as he looked after the assault and saw the floating tartans-implentur fossæ-the Ditch is filled!

BULLER.

Ay, Mr North, in that case the word Ditch-and the thing-would be dignified by danger, daring, and death. But here

NORTH.

The case is the same-with a difference, for there is all the Danger-all the Daring-all the Death-that the incident or event admits of and they are not small. Think for a moment. The Rain falls over the whole broad heart of the tilled earth-from the face of the fields it runs into the Ditches-the first unavoidable receptacles-these pour into the rivers-the rivers into the river mouths and then you are in the Sea.

Go on, sir, go on.

BULLER.

NORTH.

I am amazed-I am indignant, Buller. Ruit arduus æther. The steep or

high ether rushes down! as we saw it rush down a few minutes ago. What happens?

"Et pluviâ ingenti sata læta, boumque labores
Diluit!"

Alas! for the hopeful-hopeless husbandman now. What a multiplied and magnified expression have we here for the arable lands. All the glad seedtime vain vain all industry of man and oxen-there you have the true agricultural pathos-washed away-set in a swim-deluged! Well has the Poet -in one great line-spoke the greatness of a great matter. Sudden affliction--visible desolation---imagined dearth.

BULLER.

Don't stop, sir, you speak to the President of our Agricultural Society-go on, sir, go on.

NORTH.

Now drop in-in its veriest place, and in two words, the necessitated Implentur fossa. No pretence-no display-no phraseology-the nakedest, but quite effectual statement of the fact-which the farmer-I love that word farmer-has witnessed as often as he has ever seen the Coming-the Ditches that were dry ran full to the brim. The homely rustic fact, strong and impressive to the husbandman, cannot be dealt with by poetry otherwise than by setting it down in its bald simplicity. Seek to raise-to dress-to disguise -and you make it ridiculous. The Mantuan knew better-he says what must be said-and goes on

BULLER.

He goes on-so do you, sir-you both get on.

NORTH.

And now again begins Magnification,

"Et cava flumina crescunt Cum sonitu."

The "hollow-bedded rivers" grow, swell, visibly wax mighty and turbulent. You imagine that you stand on the bank and see the river that had shrunk into a thread getting broad enough to fill the capacity of its whole hollow bed. The rushing of arduous ether would not of itself have proved sufficient. Therefore glory to the Italian Ditches and glory to the Dumfriesshire Drains, which I have seen, in an hour, change the white murmuring Esk into a red rolling river, with as sweeping sway as ever attended the Arno on its way to inundate Florence.

BULLER.

Glory to the Ditches of the Vale of Arno-glory to the Drains of Dumfriesshire. Draw breath, sir. Now go on, sir.

NORTH.

"Cum sonitu." Not as Father Thames rises-silently-till the flow lapse over lateral meadow-grounds for a mile on either side. But "cum sonitu," with a voice-with a roar-a mischievous roar-a roar of-ten thousand Ditches.

BULLER.

And then the "flumina"-" cava" no more-will be as clear as mud.

NORTH.

You have hit it. They will be-for the Arno in flood is like liquid mud— by no means enamouring, perhaps not even sublime-but showing you that it comes off the fields and along the Ditches-that you see swillings of the "sata læta boumque labores."

Agricultural Produce!

BULLER.

NORTH.

For a moment-a single moment-leave out the Ditches, and say merely, "The rain falls over the fields-the rivers swell roaring." No picture at all. You must have the fall over the surface-the gathering in the narrower artifi

cial-the delivery into the wider natural channels-the fight of spate and surge at river mouth

"Fervetque fretis spirantibus æquor."

The Ditches are indispensable in nature and in Virgil.

BULLER.

Put this glass of water to your lips, sir-not that I would recommend water to a man in a fit of eloquence-but I know you are abstinent-infatuated in your abjuration of wine. Go on-half-minute time.

NORTH.

I swear to defend-at the pen's point-against all Comers-this position— that the line

"Diluit: implentur fossæ, cava flumina crescunt
Cum sonitu-"

is, where it stands and looking before and after-a perfect line; and that to strike out "implentur fossa" would be an outrage on it-just equal, Buller, to my knocking out, without hesitation, your brains-for your brains do not contribute more to the flow of our conversation-than do the Ditches to that other Spate.

That will do you may stop.

BULLER.

NORTH.

I ask no man's permission-I obey no man's mandate-to stop. Now Virgil takes wing-now he blazes and soars. Now comes the power and spirit of the Storm gathered in the Person of the Sire-of him who wields the thunderbolt into which the Cyclops have forged storms of all sorts-wind and rain together" Tres Imbri torti radios!" &c. You remember the magnificent mixture. And there we have VIRGILIUS versus HOMERUM.

You may sit down, sir.

BULLER.

NORTH.

I did not know I had stood up. Beg pardon.

BULLER.

I am putting Swing to rights for you, Sir.

NORTH.

Methinks Jupiter is twice apparent-the first time, as the President of the Storm, which is agreeable to the dictates of reason and necessity;-the second-to my fancy-as delighting himself in the conscious exertion of power. What is he splintering Athos, or Rhodope, or the Acroceraunians for? The divine use of the Fulmen is to quell Titans, and to kill that mad fellow who was running up the ladder at Thebes, Capaneus. Let the Great Gods find out their enemies now-find out and finish them-and enemies they must have not a few among those prostrate crowds-" per gentes humilis stravit pavor." But shattering and shivering the mountain tops-which, as I take it, is here the prominent affair-and, as I said, the true meaning of "dejicit"-is mere pastime-as if Jupiter Tonans were disporting himself on a holiday.

BULLER.

Oh! sir, you have exhausted the subject-if not yourself-and us;-I beseech you sit down ;-see, Swing solicits you-and oh! sir, you-we-all of us will find in a few minutes' silence a great relief after all that thunder.

You remember Lucretius?

NORTH.

BULLER.

No, I don't. To you I am not ashamed to confess that I read him with some difficulty. With ease, sir, do you?

NORTH.

I never knew a man who did but Bobus Smith; and so thoroughly was he imbued with the spirit of the great Epicurean, that Landor-himself the best Latinist living equals him with Lucretius. The famous Thunder passage is

very fine, but I cannot recollect every word; and the man who, in recitation, haggles and boggles at a great strain of a great poet deserves death without benefit of clergy. I do remember, however, that he does not descend from his elevation with such ease and grace as would have satisfied Henry Home and Hugh Blair-for he has so little notion of true dignity as to mention rain, as Virgil afterwards did, in immediate connexion with thunder.

"Quo de concussu sequitur gravis imber et uber,
Omnis utei videatur in imbrem vortier æther,
Atque ita præcipitans ad diluviem revocare."

BULLER.

What think you of the thunder in Thomson's Seasons?

NORTH.

What all the world thinks-that it is our very best British Thunder. He gives the Gathering, the General engagement, and the Retreat. In the Gathering there are touches and strokes that make all mankind shudder-the foreboding the ominous! And the terror, when it comes, aggrandises the premonitory symptoms. "Follows the loosened aggravated roar" is a line of power to bring the voice of thunder upon your soul on the most peaceable day. He, too-prevailing poet-feels the grandeur of the Rain. For instant on the words "convulsing heaven and earth," ensue,

"Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail,

Or prone-descending rain."

Thomson had been in the heart of thunder-storms many a time before he left Scotland; and what always impresses me is the want of method-the confusion, I might almost say-in his description. Nothing contradictory in the proceedings of the storm; they all go on obediently to what we know of Nature's laws. But the effects of their agency on man and nature are givennot according to any scheme-but as they happen to come before the Poet's imagination, as they happened in reality. The pine is struck first-then the cattle and the sheep below-and then the castled cliff-and then the

"Gloomy woods

Start at the flash, and from their deep recess

Wide-flaming out, their trembling inmates shake."

No regular ascending or descending scale here; but wherever the lightning chooses to go, there it goes-the blind agent of indiscriminating destruction.

Capricious Zig-zag.

BULLER.

NORTH.

Jemmy was overmuch given to mouthing in the Seasons; and in this description-matchless though it be-he sometimes out-mouths the big-mouthed thunder at his own bombast. Perhaps that is inevitable-you must, in confabulating with that Meteor, either imitate him, to keep him and yourself in countenance, or be, if not mute as a mouse, as thin-piped as a fly. In youth I used to go sounding to myself among the mountains the concluding lines of the Retreat.

"Amid Carnarvon's mountains rages loud

The repercussive roar; with mighty crush,
Into the flashing deep, from the rude rocks
Of Penmanmaur heap'd hideous to the sky,
Tumble the smitten cliffs, and Snowdon's peak,
Dissolving, instant yields his wintry load:

Far seen, the heights of heathy Cheviot blaze,
And Thule bellows through her utmost isles."

Are they good-or are they bad? I fear-not good. But I am dubious. The previous picture has been of one locality-a wide one-but within the visible horizon-enlarged somewhat by the imagination, which, as the schoolmen said,

inflows into every act of the senses-and powerfully, no doubt, into the senses engaged in witnessing a thunder-storm. Many of the effects so faithfully, and some of them so tenderly painted, interest us by their picturesque particularity.

"Here the soft flocks, with that same harmless look

They wore alive, and ruminating still

In fancy's eye; and there the frowning bull,
And ox half-raised."

We are here in a confined world-close to us and near; and our sympathies with its inhabitants-human or brute-comprehend the very attitudes or postures in which the lightning found and left them; but the final verses waft us away from all that terror and pity-the geographical takes place of the pathetic-a visionary panorama of material objects supersedes the heartthrobbing region of the spiritual-for a mournful song instinct with the humanities, an ambitious bravura displaying the power and pride of the musician, now thinking not at all of us, and following the thunder only as affording him an opportunity for the display of his own art.

BULLER.

Are they good-or are they bad? I am dubious.

NORTH.

Thunder-storms travel fast and far-but here they seem simultaneous; Thule is more vociferous than the whole of Wales together-yet perhaps the sound itself of the verses is the loudest of all-and we cease to hear the thunder in the din that describes it.

BULLER.

Severe-but just.

NORTH.

Ha! Thou comest in such a questionable shape

ENTRANT.

That I will speak to thee. How do you do, my dear sir? God bless you, how do you do?

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It is it is the voice of TALBOYS. Don't move an inch. Stand still for ter seconds on the very same site, that I may have one steady look at you, to make assurance doubly sure-and then let us meet each other half-way in a Cornish hug.

TALBOYS.

Are we going to wrestle already, Mr North?

NORTH.

Stand still ten seconds more. He is He-You are You-gentlemen-H. G. Talboys-Seward, my crutch-Buller, your arm—

TALBOYS.

Wonderful feat of agility! Feet up to the ceiling

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An involuntary feat-the fault of Swing-sole fault-but I always forget it when agitated

BULLER.

Some time or other, sir, you will fly backwards and fracture your skull.

NORTH.

There, we have recovered our equilibrium-now we are in grips, don't fear a fall-I hope you are not displeased with your reception.

VOL. LXVI.

NO. CCCCV.

B

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