London Magazine
, that the finest parts of the
Shipwreck
are not those in which he appears to versify parts of his own
Marine Dictionary
, or in which he makes vain efforts to describe the vestiges of Grecian grandeur, but those in which, as in the above passage, he mates with the sublime and terrible
natural
phenomena he meets in his voyage—the gathering of the storm—the treacherous lull of the sea, breathing itself like a tiger for its fatal spring—the ship, now walking the calm waters of the glassy sea, and now wrestling like a demon of kindred power and fury with the angry billows—the last fearful onset of the maddened surge—and the secret stab given by the assassin rock from below, which completes the ruin of the doomed vessel, and scatters its fragments o'er the tide, growling in joy—these, as the poet describes them, constitute the poetical glory of
The Shipwreck
, and these have little connexion with art, and much with nature.