seat in the stage-coach, about to start for Edinburgh." Is it any wonder
that such a gigantic specimen of human nature was thought by the
steady-going and saintly Edinburghers, who tried men by mathematics and
the catechism, to be preposterously unfit for the chair of ethics in
their hallowed university? They did not know then that the monster they
hunted was capable of producing a description of a fairy's funeral--one
of the most exquisite bits of prose composition in literature, which is
said to have so impressed Lord Jeffrey's mind that he never was tired of
repeating it. Read it, and say you if anybody but Christopher North
could have written it: "There it was, on a little river island, that
once, whether sleeping or waking we know not, we saw celebrated a
fairy's funeral. First we heard small pipes playing, as if no bigger
than hollow rushes that whisper to the night winds; and more piteous
than aught that trills from earthly instrument was the scarce audible
dirge! It seemed to float over the stream, every foam-bell emitting a
plaintive note, till the fairy anthem came floating over our couch, and
then alighting without footsteps among the heather. The pattering of
little feet was then heard, as if living creatures were arranging
themselves in order, and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn.
The harmony was like the melting of musical dew-drops, and sang, without
words, of sorrow and death. We opened our eyes, or rather sight came to
them when closed, and dream was vision. Hundreds of creatures, no taller
than the crest of the lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled heads,
stood in a circle on a green plat among the rocks; and in the midst was
a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers unknown to the Highland hills;
and on the bier a fairy lying with uncovered face, pale as a lily, and
motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter and fainter, and then
died quite away; when two of the creatures came from the circle, and
took their station, one at the head, the other at the foot of the bier.
They sang alternate measures, not louder than the twitter of the
awakened woodlark before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous and full
of the desolation of death. The flower-bier stirred; for the spot on
which it lay sank slowly down, and in a few moments the greensward was
smooth as ever, the very dews glittering above the buried fairy. A cloud
passed over the moon; and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop
sailed duskily away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight solitude
of the glen. Then the disenthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before,
through all her streams and falls; and at the sudden leaping of the
waters and outbursting of the moon, we awoke."
XI.
TYPES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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