While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields, or mourned along the gloom
Of pathless woods, or, down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled flood.
The obvious idea in these last lines is, that, hurled down into a pool, battlemented, or mantled about, he swam with pain, seeing no egress up the craggy or precipitous rocks: a use of the word "mantled," which is justified by instances in many of the best ancient and modern writers. But Mr. Boyd reduces the lines to the poorest stuff by the following
Note. Mantled: Expanded, spread out, as a mantle.
An instance of his prosaic feebleness occurs on page 86.
Thought, busy thought, too busy for my peace.
Through the dark postern of long time elapsed,
Led softly, by the stillness of the night....
In quest of wretchedness perversely strays,
And finds all desert now, and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys, a numerous train.
Note. Ghosts of my departed days: The bare recollection of them!
This is a new exhibition of the "art of sinking." The whole commentary suggests the idea of making a noble poem contemptible, by covering it over with diminutive conceits and bungling impertinences.
"Injustice to the South," is everywhere a fruitful subject of discussion. In politics, in religion, in letters, our friends beyond Washington will not believe us in the North capable of treating them with fairness. In literature we have constantly heard it alleged that success should never be dreamed of by an author who had the misfortune to be born the wrong side of Mason and Dixon's line. The superstition is not without its uses. It affords abundant consolation to a vast number of young gentleman whose books produce no profits. Yet we are inclined to believe it is altogether without any foundation in reason; that The Scarlet Letter would have been as popular from Charleston as from Concord. We have an amusing illustration of the feeling on this point, in the last Southern Literary Messenger. The amiable and eminently accomplished editor of that work counts among his personal friends as many northern gentlemen as have had ever opportunity to know him, yet he honestly believes us incapable of appreciating the genius of a poet from one of the tobacco, sugar, or cotton states. Introducing some pretty verses entitled The Marriage of the Sun and Moon, "by the late H. S. Ellenwood, of North Carolina," into his last number, he says:
"Had the gifted author been a native of Massachusetts, his name would be familiar as household words; as it is, we doubt whether one in ten of our readers has ever heard of it."