| “Ah Fear! ah frantic Fear! I see, I see thee near.” |
The editor of these poems has met with nothing in the same species of poetry, either in his own, or in any other language, equal, in all respects, to the following description of Danger: 127
| “Danger whose limbs of giant mould What mortal eye can fix’d behold? Who stalks his round, an hideous form, Howling amidst the midnight storm, Or throws him on the ridgy steep Of some loose hanging rock to sleep.” |
It is impossible to contemplate the image conveyed in the two last verses, without those emotions of terror it was intended to excite. It has, moreover, the entire advantage of novelty to recommend it; for there is too much originality in all the circumstances, to suppose that the author had in his eye that description of the penal situation of Catiline in the ninth Æneid:
| “––––Te, Catilina, minaci Pendentem scopulo.” |
The archetype of the English poet’s idea was in Nature, and, probably, to her alone he was indebted for the thought. From her, likewise, he derived that magnificence of conception, that horrible grandeur of imagery, displayed in the following lines:
| “And those, the fiends, who, near allied, O’er Nature’s wounds and wrecks preside; While Vengeance in the lurid air Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare: On whom that ravening brood of fate, Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait.” |
That nutritive enthusiasm, which cherishes the 128 seeds of poetry, and which is, indeed, the only soil wherein they will grow to perfection, lays open the mind to all the influences of fiction. A passion for whatever is greatly wild or magnificent in the works of nature seduces the imagination to attend to all that is extravagant, however unnatural. Milton was notoriously fond of high romance and gothic diableries; and Collins, who in genius and enthusiasm bore no very distant resemblance to Milton, was wholly carried away by the same attachments.
| “Be mine to read the visions old, Which thy awakening bards have told: And, lest thou meet my blasted view, Hold each strange tale devoutly true.” “On that thrice hallow’d eve,” &c. |
There is an old traditionary superstition, that on St. Mark’s eve, the forms of all such persons as shall die within the ensuing year make their solemn entry into the churches of their respective parishes, as St. Patrick swam over the Channel, without their heads.