ECLOGUE IV.
The beautiful but unfortunate country where the scene of this pathetic eclogue is laid, had been recently torn in pieces by the depredations of its savage neighbours, when Mr. Collins so affectingly described its misfortunes. This ingenious man had not only a pencil to portray, but a heart to feel for the miseries of mankind; and it is with the utmost tenderness and humanity he enters into the narrative of Circassia’s ruin, while he realizes the scene, and brings the present drama before us. Of every circumstance that could possibly contribute to the tender effect this pastoral was designed to produce, the poet has availed himself with the utmost art and address. Thus he prepares the heart to pity the distresses of Circassia, by representing it as the scene of the happiest love:
| “In fair Circassia, where, to love inclined, Each swain was blest, for every maid was kind.” |
To give the circumstance of the dialogue a more affecting solemnity, he makes the time midnight, 115 and describes the two shepherds in the very act of flight from the destruction that swept over their country:
| “Sad o’er the dews, two brother shepherds fled, Where wildering fear and desperate sorrow led.” |
There is a beauty and propriety in the epithet wildering, which strikes us more forcibly, the more we consider it.
The opening of the dialogue is equally happy, natural, and unaffected; when one of the shepherds, weary and overcome with the fatigue of flight, calls upon his companion to review the length of way they had passed. This is certainly painting from nature, and the thoughts, however obvious, or destitute of refinement, are perfectly in character. But as the closest pursuit of nature is the surest way to excellence in general, and to sublimity in particular, in poetical description, so we find that this simple suggestion of the shepherd is not unattended with magnificence. There is a grandeur and variety in the landscape he describes:
| “And first review that long extended plain, And yon wide groves, already past with pain! Yon ragged cliff, whose dangerous path we tried! And, last, this lofty mountain’s weary side!” |
There is, in imitative harmony, an act of expressing a slow and difficult movement by adding to 116 the usual number of pauses in a verse. This is observable in the line that describes the ascent of the mountain:
| And last || this lofty mountain’s || weary side ||. |
Here we find the number of pauses, or musical bars, which, in an heroic verse, is commonly two, increased to three.
The liquid melody, and the numerous sweetness of expression, in the following descriptive lines, is almost inimitably beautiful:
| “Sweet to the sight is Zabran’s flowery plain, And once by nymphs and shepherds loved in vain! No more the virgins shall delight to rove By Sargis’ banks, or Irwan’s shady grove; On Tarkie’s mountain catch the cooling gale, Or breathe the sweets of Aly’s flowery vale.” |
Nevertheless, in this delightful landscape there is an obvious fault; there is no distinction between the plain of Zabran and the vale of Aly; they are both flowery, and consequently undiversified. This could not proceed from the poet’s want of judgment, but from inattention: it had not occurred to him that he had employed the epithet flowery twice within so short a compass; an oversight which those who are accustomed to poetical, or, indeed, to any other species of composition, know to be very possible.
Nothing can be more beautifully conceived, or more pathetically expressed, than the shepherd’s 117 apprehensions for his fair countrywomen, exposed to the ravages of the invaders:
| “In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves, For ever famed for pure and happy loves: In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair, Their eyes’ blue languish, and their golden hair! Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief shall send; Those hairs the Tartar’s cruel hand shall rend.” |
There is certainly some very powerful charm in the liquid melody of sounds. The editor of these poems could never read or hear the following verse repeated, without a degree of pleasure otherwise entirely unaccountable:
| “Their eyes’ blue languish, and their golden hair.” |
Such are the Oriental Eclogues, which we leave with the same kind of anxious pleasure we feel upon a temporary parting with a beloved friend.