The Rev. Dr. Opimian. The old Greek poetry is always true to Nature, and will bear any degree of critical analysis. I must say I take no pleasure in poetry that will not.
Mr. MacBorrowdale. No poet is truer to Nature than Burns, and no one less so than Moore. His imagery is almost always false. Here is a highly-applauded stanza, and very taking at first sight—
The night-dew of heaven, though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the sod where he sleeps;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.
But it will not bear analysis. The dew is the cause of the verdure: but the tear is not the cause of the memory: the memory is the cause of the tear.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. There are inaccuracies more offensive to me than even false imagery. Here is one, in a song which I have often heard with displeasure. A young man goes up a mountain, and as he goes higher and higher, he repeats Excelsior: but excelsior is only taller in the comparison of things on a common basis, not higher, as a detached object in the air. Jack's bean-stalk was excelsior the higher it grew: but Jack himself was no more celsus at the top than he had been at the bottom.
Mr. MacBorrowdale. I am afraid, doctor, if you look for profound knowledge in popular poetry, you will often be disappointed.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. I do not look for profound knowledge. But I do expect that poets should understand what they talk of. Burns was not a scholar, but he was always master of his subject. All the scholarship of the world would not have produced Tarn o' Shanter: but in the whole of that poem there is not a false image nor a misused word. What do you suppose these lines represent?
I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,
One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled:
A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes,
Brow-bound with burning gold.
Mr. MacBorrowdale. I should take it to be a description of the Queen of Bambo.
The Rev. Dr, Opimian, Yet thus one of our most popular poets describes Cleopatra: and one of our most popular artists has illustrated the description by a portrait of a hideous grinning Æthiop. Moore led the way to this perversion by demonstrating that the Ægyptian women must have been beautiful, because they were 'the countrywomen of Cleopatra.' {1} 'Here we have a sort of counter-demonstration, that Cleopatra must have been a fright because she was the countrywoman of the Ægyptians. But Cleopatra was a Greek, the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, and a lady of Pontus. The Ptolemies were Greeks, and whoever will look at their genealogy, their coins, and their medals, will see how carefully they kept their pure Greek blood uncontaminated by African intermixture. Think of this description and this picture applied to one who Dio says —and all antiquity confirms him—was 'the most superlatively beautiful of women, splendid to see, and delightful to hear.'{2} For she was eminently accomplished: she spoke many languages with grace and facility. Her mind was as wonderful as her personal beauty. There is not a shadow of intellectual expression in that horrible portrait.