Fourthly, the smoke—
'Et coelum subtexere fumo.'
Fifthly, the fire shower—
|
'Scopulos avulsaque viscera montis Erigit erucatans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras Cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exae tuat imo.' |
Sixthly the column of ash—
'Atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem
Turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla.'
And this is within the limits of twelve lines. Modern poetry has its own merits, but the conveyance of information is not, generally speaking, one of them. What would Virgil have thought of authors publishing poems with explanatory notes (to illustrate is a different matter), as if they were so many books of conundrums? Indeed this vice is of very late years."
The entire description, of which this is but an extract, is very effective and animated, and gives with great vividness the first impressions of a mind susceptible to the grand and imposing aspects of nature.
"After Etna," says Mr. Gladstone in his diary, "the temples are certainly the great charm and attraction of Sicily. I do not know whether there is any one among them which, taken alone, exceeds in beauty that of Neptune, at Paestum; but they have the advantage of number and variety, as well as of highly interesting positions. At Segesta the temple is enthroned in a perfect mountain solitude, and it is like a beautiful tomb of its religion, so stately, so entire; while around, but for one solitary house of the keeper, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to disturb the apparent reign of Silence and of Death.... The temples enshrine a most pure and salutary principle of art, that which connects grandeur of effect with simplicity of detail; and, retaining their beauty and their dignity in their decay, they represent the great man when fallen, as types of that almost highest of human qualities—silent yet not sullen, endurance."
While sojourning at Rome Mr. Gladstone met Lord Macaulay. Writing home from Rome in the same year, Lord Macaulay says: "On Christmas Eve I found Gladstone in the throng, and I accosted him, as we had met, though we had never been introduced to each other. He received my advances with very great empressement indeed, and we had a good deal of pleasant talk." And again he writes: "I enjoyed Italy immensely; far more than I had expected. By-the-by, I met Gladstone at Rome. We talked and walked together in St. Peter's during the best part of an afternoon. He is both a clever and an amiable man."