Thus far I have ventured to conduct you to a "hill-side, whence you may discern the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming."[42]
With my best respects to Mr. Grierson, when you see him,
I remain, dear Sir, your obedient servant,
Elia.
April 1, 1823.
[42] Milton's Tractate on Education, addressed to Mr. Hartlib.
RITSON VERSUS JOHN SCOTT THE QUAKER
(1823)
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 Censor. 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 make-shift 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 the ensuing month from its poor servant to command.
Elia.
DYER'S RUINS OF ROME
——The pilgrim oft
At dead of night 'mid his oraison hears
Aghast the voice of time disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitate down-dashed,
Rattling around, loud-thund'ring to the moon;
While murmurs sooth each awful interval
Of ever-falling waters.
Scott
There is a very bold transposition in this passage. A superficial 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.
Ritson
A beauty, as in Thomson's Winter—
——Cheerless towns, far distant, never blest,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,
With news of human kind.[43] ——Where the broad-bosom'd hills, Swept with perpetual clouds, of Scotland rise, Me fate compels to tarry.
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 connexion is to glide into his ears like oil?
[43] May I have leave to notice an instance of the same agreeable discontinuity in my friend Lloyd's admirable poem on Christmas?
DENHAM'S COOPER'S HILL
The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear,
That, had the self-enamour'd youth gaz'd here,
So fatally deceived he had not been,
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.
COLLINS'S ORIENTAL ECLOGUES
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 desart. 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 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. Shakspeare 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,
By love conducted from the chace away.
Among the vocal vales he heard her song——
Ritson
Ch—t?
O stay thee, Agib, for my feet deny,
No longer friendly to my life, to fly——
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?
GRAY'S CHURCH-YARD ELEGY
Save where the beetle wheels——
Scott
The beetle was introduced in poetry by Shakspeare * * *. Shakspeare 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
Hath rung night's yawning peal.——
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