On poetic interpretation of natureShairp, John Campbell
Philosophy
On poetic interpretation of nature
Shairp, John Campbell
Nature in literature; Poetry -- History and criticism
[15] To this assertion I must make one exception. Since these remarks
were written, my attention has been kindly drawn by Professor Campbell of
St. Andrews to a passage in the ninth book of _Paradise Lost_, in which
Milton for a moment reverts to the old rural freshness in something of
the manner of his youth. It is the place where the Tempter first catches
sight of Eve:—
“Much he the place admired, the person more.
As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer’s morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;
If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,
She most, and in her look seems all delight:
Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold
This flowery flat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone.”
[16] From Dr. Clerk’s new translation of Ossian.
[17] How greatly to be desired is an edition of Wordsworth’s entire
works, in which the poems should be printed in the exact chronological
order of their composition, along with those notes on them which the
poet dictated late in life. Such an arrangement of them is absolutely
essential to a right understanding of their meaning, and those who desire
to attain such an understanding are obliged to make the chronological
arrangement for themselves, at great trouble, and at best very
imperfectly. The time when such an edition can be made, with the fullest
means for accuracy, is fast passing, if it is not already past. Is there
no hope that those in whose hands the thing lies will still render this
great and much-needed service to the great poet’s memory?
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