Il voudrait le priver d’une seconde vie:
Mais l’ombre glorieuse échappant à ses coups,
Redouble dans son cœur les tourments de l’envie.’
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
| The Champion.] | [December 25, 1814. |
The story of a poem is seldom worth a long description. It may be sufficient to say in the present case, that the danger to which the church was exposed, and from which it was afterwards delivered, arose from the second marriage of Charlemagne with Armelie, the daughter of Didier, the King of the Lombards, who was exerting himself to depose Pope Adrian. Charlemagne had divorced his first wife, Adelinde, but he is warned in a vision to take her again to his bosom. He does so, and Didier and his daughter consequently become the enemies of this Christian Emperor, who takes arms to defend the Holy See. After the usual casualties and fluctuations of fortune, the son of Pepin finally triumphs.
On a more careful examination, we see no reason to alter our first opinion of this poem. It has given us no strong impulse, nor left any permanent trace on our minds. It opens no new and rich vein of poetry, though certainly great talents are shewn in the use which is made of existing materials. Perhaps it may be said that this is all that can be done in a modern poem: if so, that all is hardly worth the doing. There is no one who has borrowed his materials more than Milton, or who has made them more completely his own: there is hardly a line which does not breathe the same lofty spirit, hardly a thought or image which he has not clothed with the majesty of his genius. It is the same in reading other great poets. The informing mind is every where present to us. Who is there that does not know and feel sensibly the majestic copiousness of Homer, the polished elegance of Virgil, enamoured of its own workmanship,—the severe grandeur of Dante, the tender pathos of Tasso, the endless voluptuousness of Spenser, and the unnumbered graces of Ariosto? Even the mysterious solemnity of Ossian, and the wild romantic interest of Walter Scott, are something gained to the imagination. But in the present instance, we do not feel the same participation with the author’s mind, nor accession of strength to our own. So little is it in the power even of the most accomplished art to counterfeit nature. The true Florimel did not differ more from the Florimel which was made for the witches’ son, than true genius from the most successful and elaborate imitation of it.
We shall close these remarks with extracting two passages which in the opinion of our readers will perhaps be thought to amount to a complete refutation of our objections. The first is the description of the funeral rites of Orlando, in the thirteenth canto.
‘Gaiffre a suivi son guide au fond du précipice,
Un clocher solitaire a frappé ses regards: