The friendly wound was given; th'obstructing film
Drawn artfully aside; and on his sight
Burst the full tide of day. Surprised he stood,
Not knowing where he was, nor what he saw.
The skilful artist first, as first in place,
He view'd, then seized his hand, then felt his own,
Then mark'd their near resemblance, much perplex'd,
And still the more perplex'd the more he saw.
Now silence first th' impatient mother broke,
And, as her eager looks on him she bent,
"My son (she cried), my son!" On her he gazed
With fresh surprise. "And what!" he cried, "art thou
My mother? for thy voice bespeaks thee such,
Though to my sight unknown."—"Thy mother I
(She quick replied); thy sister, brother, these."—
"O! 'tis too much (he said); too soon to part,
Ere well we meet! But this new flood of day
O'erpowers me, and I feel a death-like damp
Chill all my frame, and stop my faltering tongue."
Now Lydia, so they call'd his gentle friend,
Who, with averted eye, but in her soul
Had felt the lancing steel, her aid applied,
"And stay, dear youth (she said), or with thee take
Thy Lydia, thine alike in life or death!"
At Lydia's name, at Lydia's well known voice,
He strove again to raise his drooping head
And ope his closing eye, but strove in vain,
And on her trembling bosom sunk away.
Now other fears distract his weeping friends:
But short their grief! for soon his life return'd,
And, with return of life, return'd their peace.—(B. iii.)
The country which he has undertaken to describe in this poem is fertile and tame. There was little left to him, except to enlarge on its antiquities, to speak of the habitations that were scattered over it, and to compliment the most distinguished among their possessors. Every day must detract something from the interest, such as it is, that arises from these sources. A poet should take care not to make the fund of his reputation liable to be affected by dilapidations, or to be passed away by the hands of a conveyancer.
It would seem as if he had never visited a tract of land much wilder than that in which he was bred and born. In speaking of "embattled walls, raised on the mountain precipice," he particularises "Beaudesert; Old Montfort's seat;"[2]—a place, which, though it is pleasantly diversified with hill and dale, has no pretensions of so lofty a kind. This, he tells us, was "the haunt of his youthful steps;" and here he met with Somerville, the poet of the Chase, to whom both the subject and the title of his poem might have been suggested by that extensive common, known by the name of Cannock Chase,[3] on the border of which Beaudesert is situated.
The digressions, with which he has endeavoured to enliven the monotony of his subject, are sometimes very far-fetched. He has scarcely finished his exordium, when he goes back to the third day of the creation, and then passes on to the deluge. This reminds one of the Mock Advocate in the Plaideurs of Racine, who, having to defend the cause of a dog that had robbed the pantry, begins,
Avant la naissance du monde——
on which the judge yawns and interrupts him,
Avocat, ah! passons an deluge.
Of his shorter pieces, the three Elegies on Birds are well deserving of notice. That entitled the Blackbirds is so prettily imagined, and so neatly expressed, that it is worth a long poem. Thrice has Shenstone mentioned it in his Letters, in such a manner as to show how much it had pleased him. The Goldfinches is only less excellent. He has spoiled the Swallows by the seriousness of the moral.
Nunc non erat his locus.
The first half of Peytoe's Ghost has enough in it to raise a curiosity, which is disappointed by the remainder.