"Nunc nemora ingenti vento, nunc litora plangunt."
BULLER.
I never read Hugh Blair—but I have read—often, and always with increased delight—Mr Alison's exquisite Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, and Lord Jeffrey's admirable exposition of the Theory—in statement so clear, and in illustration so rich—worth all the Æsthetics of the Germans—Schiller excepted—in one Volume of Mist.
NORTH.
Mr Alison had an original as well as a fine mind; and here he seems to have been momentarily beguiled into mistake by unconscious deference to the judgment of men—in his province far inferior to himself—whom in his modesty he admired. Mark. Virgil's main purpose is to describe the dangers—the losses to which the agriculturist is at all seasons exposed from wind and weather. And he sets them before us in plain and perspicuous language, not rising above the proper level of the didactic. Yet being a Poet he puts poetry into his description from the first and throughout. To say that the line "Et pluviâ" &c. is "defensible from the connexion of the imagery with the subject of the Poem" is not enough. It is necessitated. Strike it out and you abolish the subject. And just so with "implentur fossæ." The "fossæ" we know in that country were numerous and wide, and, when swollen, dangerous—and the "cava flumina" well follow instantly—for the "fossæ" were their feeders—and we hear as well as see the rivers rushing to the sea—and we hear too, as well as see, the sea itself. There the description ends. Virgil has done his work. But his imagination is moved, and there arises a new strain altogether. He is done with the agriculturists. And now he deals with man at large—with the whole human race. He is now a Boanerges—a son of thunder—and he begins with Jove. The sublimity comes in a moment. "Ipse Pater, mediâ nimborum in nocte"—and is sustained to the close—the last line being great as the first—and all between accordant, and all true to nature. Without rain and wind, what would be a thunder-storm? The "densissimus imber" obeys the laws—and so do the ingeminanting Austri—and the shaken woods and the stricken shores.
BULLER.
Well done, Virgil—well done, North.
NORTH.
I cannot rest, Buller—I can have no peace of mind but in a successful defence of these Ditches. Why is a Ditch to be despised? Because it is dug? So is a grave. Is the Ditch—wet or dry—that must be passed by the Volunteers of the Fighting Division before the Fort can be stormed, too low a word for a Poet to use? Alas! on such an occasion well might he say, as he looked after the assault and saw the floating tartans—implentur fossæ—the Ditch is filled!
BULLER.