Sir Walter has said—"Perhaps there are no verses in our language of happier descriptive power than the two stanzas which characterise the Clitumnus."
TALBOYS.
Then I am right.
NORTH.
Perhaps you are. Scott loved Byron—and it is ennobling to hear one great Poet praising another: yet the stanzas which so delighted our Minstrel may not be so felicitous as they seemed to be to his moved imagination.
TALBOYS.
Possibly not.
NORTH.
In the First Stanza what do we find?, An apostrophe—"Thou Clitumnus," not yet quite an Impersonation—a few lines on, an Impersonation of the Stream—
"——the purest God of gentlest waters!
And most serene of aspect, and most clear."