And raised the curtain of his tent, and call’d
His herald to his side, and went abroad.”
Now, supposing that Mr Arnold had to describe the uprising of a modern, would he consider it necessary to favour us with a description of the emergence from the blankets, the deposition of the nightcap, the wrestle into the nether integuments, the shaving-jug, the razor, and all the rest of it? We beg to assure him that this passage, so far from being vigorous, is pure slip-slop; and we are convinced that, on reflection, he will admit the justice of the stricture. For example; how infinitely more terse and satisfactory is the one line which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of poor Ophelia—
“Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes!”
What the mischief do we care for the texture of the stockings, or the peculiar method of investiture? Is it necessary to enter into details regarding the boots, and to specify whether they were Wellingtons or Bluchers? That there are, in this episode, some fine, and one or two noble passages, we are very glad to acknowledge, but it is by no means perfect as a whole. Indeed, even if the bulk of it had been faultless, the termination would have spoiled it as a poem; for Mr Arnold has been induced, through some extraordinary hallucination, to destroy the effect of the catastrophe, by superadding a needless piece of description. We sincerely regret this; because the catastrophe, when it does come (and it ought to have arrived sooner) is very fine; and no artist could have desired a better termination than the picture of Rustum watching by his dead son—
“And night came down over the solemn waste,
And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair,
And darken’d all; and a cold fog, with night,
Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose,
As of a great assembly loosed, and fires