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." What is gained by this Impersonation? Nothing. For the qualities here attributed to the River-God are the very same that had already been attributed to the water--purity--serenity--clearness. "Sweetest wave of the most living crystal"--affects us just as much--here I think more than the two lines about the God. And observe, that no sooner is the God introduced than he disappears. His coming and his going are alike unsatisfactory--for his coming gives us no new emotion, and his going is instantly followed by lines that have no relation to his Godship at all. TALBOYS. Why--why--I really don't know. NORTH. I have mildly--and inoffensively to all the world--that is, to all us Four--shown one imperfection; and I think--I feel there is another--in this Stanza. "The sweetest wave of the most living crystal" is visioned to us in the opening lines as the haunt "of river nymph, to gaze and lave her limbs where nothing hid them,"--and we are pleased; it is visioned to us, in the concluding line, as "the mirror and the bath for Beauty's youngest daughters "--and we are not pleased; or if we are, but for a moment--for it is, as nearly as may be, the same vision over again--a mirror and a bath! TALBOYS. But then, sir-- NORTH. Well? TALBOYS. Go on, sir. NORTH. I am not sure that I understand "Beauty's youngest daughters." TALBOYS. Why, small maidens from ten to twelve years old, who in their innocent beauty may bathe without danger, and in their innocent self-admiration may gaze without fear. NORTH. Then is the expression at once commonplace and obscure. TALBOYS. Don't say so, sir. NORTH. Think you Byron means the Graces? TALBOYS. He does--he does--the Graces sure enough--the Graces. NORTH. Whatever it means--it means no more than we had before. A descriptive Stanza should ever be progressive, and at the close complete. To my feeling, "slaughters" had better been kept far away from the imagination as from the eyes. I know Byron alludes here to the Sanguinetto of the preceding Stanza. But he ought not to have alluded to it--the contrast is complete without such reference--between the river we are delighting in and the blood-named torrent that has passed away. Why, then, force such an image back, upon us--when of ourselves we should never have thought of it, and it is the last image we should desire to see? TALBOYS. Allow me a few minutes to consider---- NORTH.