This incident is highly natural, and introduced with the greatest judgment, as it gives another opportunity of exhibiting Mr. ROLLE, and in a situation, where he always appears with conspicuous pre-eminence.
Great ROLLO look’d, amaz’d; nor without fears,
His hands applied by instinct to his ears:
He look’d, and lo! amid the wild acclaim
Discern’d the future glory of his name;
O’er this new Babel of the noisy croud,
More fierce than all, more turbulent, more loud.
Him yet he heard, with thund’ring voice contend,
“Him first, him last, him midst, him without end.”
This concluding line our author has condescended to borrow from Milton; but how apposite and forcible is the application! How emphatically does it express the noble perseverance with which the Member for Devonshire has been known to persist on these occasions, in opposition to the Speaker himself.
ROLLO, however, is at length wearied, as the greatest admirers of Mr. ROLLE have sometimes been, with the triumphs of his illustrious descendant.
But ROLLO, as he clos’d his ears before,
Now tired, averts his eyes to see no more.
Observant MERLIN, while he turn’d his head,
The lantern shifted, and the vision fled.
To understand this last line, our reader must recollect, that though the characters introduced in this vision are preternaturally endowed with seeming powers of speech, yet the forms or shadows of them are shewn by means of a magic lantern.
Having now concluded our observations upon this part of the Poem—we shall close them with remarking, that as our author evidently borrowed the idea of this vision, in which the character of future times are described, from Virgil, he has far surpassed his original; and as his description of the present House of Commons, may not improbably have called to his mind the Pandæmonium of Milton, we do not scruple to assert, that in the execution of his design, that great master of the sublime has fallen infinitely short of him.
[1] More particularly in their two famous orations, which, are entitled “On the Crown.”
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