Just that shade of brown! Still less, in describing circumstances or feelings of a pathetic nature, does any one use a metaphor decidedly grotesque. Yet Mr Bailey, in alluding to the most pathetic of all topics, the hour when two lovers parted for ever, can describe it as—
"Making a black blank on one side of life,
Like a blind eye."
We hope we shall not be accused of putting fetters upon genius, by refusing to admire this use of metaphorical language. Neither can we approve of a very manifest incongruity of ideas, as when night "blushes" to hear her praises, or when "clouds" are endowed with "fibres." We protest, too, against that class of cases where the metaphor becomes a species of conundrum. We are told that one thing is like another, and have to puzzle ourselves, as in a riddle, why it is like: as when, in a passage already quoted, the words of men of genius are said to be "like wind in rain," and we ask ourselves why like wind in rain, any more than like rain in wind? In the same passage we are told that men of genius, disseminating truth, are like the soldiers who "lotted the garb of God." Here the simile seems to be as unlike as possible, for the lot could fall only upon one.
We require, also, that when the metaphor is extended into an allegory, that the meaning of the allegory be apparent; and this we more particularly insist upon, when the allegorical detail or circumstance, viewed by itself, without reference to the meaning it typifies, is monstrous and absurd. As, for example, when Mr Bailey marries the sun and the moon, and, for what hidden purpose we know not, conducts them through the wedding ceremony.
"In golden he,
In silver car came she, down the blue skies,
But on return they clomb the clouds in one."
And we are told—
"It was the world's All-sire gave the bride."
We have already alluded to the strange caprice and incongruity of representing Lucifer at one time as the grand Personification of the Principle of Evil, and, at another, confining him down, a very slave to the passions of an amorous swain. Here, too, there may be some profound meaning symbolised. But we see it not. To the reader it seems as if Mr Bailey had here brought upon the scene all the powers and prerogatives of Satan, merely to emblazon the triumph of love; just as Dryden, and the French tragedians whom he imitated, delighted to represent an amorous monarch, because they could throw him, with his crown and kingdom, at the feet of beauty. Those who have not read the poem will scarce credit our account of this portion of it, without seeing some extracts. They are the last we shall give to show the extreme wildness and extravagance which deface the drama of Festus.
We first see Lucifer as the happy lover, speaking to his Elissa just as other happy lovers:—
"Lucifer. To me there is but one place in the world,
And that where thou art; for where'er I be,
Thy love doth seek its way into my heart,
As will a bird into her secret nest."