Should fix him, stiffened at the monstrous sight,
A stony image in eternal night.”
These are the themes of surest and most powerful effect: It is by these that we are most truely moved; and it is the choice of such subjects, if ably conducted, which chiefly stamps the poet—
“Humanæ Dominum mentis, cordisque Tyrannum.”
So strongly, indeed, and so universally, has this been felt, that in the second species of poetry, the Descriptive, our sympathy must be occasionally awakened by the actions or passions of human beings; and, to ensure success, the poet must describe the effects of the appearance of nature on our sensations. “In the poem of the Shipwreck,” says Lord Byron, “is it the storm or the ship which most interests?—Both much, undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for the tempest[433]?” Virgil had early felt, that without Lycoris, the gelidi fontes and mollia prata would seem less refreshing and less smooth—he had found that the grass and the groves withered at the departure, but revived at the return of Phyllis. The most soothing and picturesque of the incidents of a woodland landscape,—the blue smoke curling upwards from a cottage concealed by the trees, derives half its softening charm, by reminding us—
“That in the same did wonne some living wight.”
Of all the three species above enumerated, Philosophical poetry, which occupies the mind with minute portions of external nature, is the least attractive. Mankind will always prefer books which move to those which instruct—ennui being more burdensome than ignorance. In philosophic poetry, our imagination cannot be gratified by the desert isles, the boundless floods, or entangled forests, with all the marvels they conceal, which rise in such rapid and rich succession in the fascinating narrative of the sea tost Ulysses[434]; nor can we there have our curiosity roused, and our emotions excited, by such lines as those with which Ariosto awakens the attention of his readers—
“Non furo iti duo miglia, che sonare
Odon la selva, che gli cinge intorno,
Con tal rumor et strepito che pare