Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 1Wilson, John
General
Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 1
Wilson, John
Essays
Gray's, and Collins'--academics all; the works of them all showing a
delicate and exquisite colouring of classical art, enriching their own
English nature. Bowles's muse is always loth to forget--wherever she
roam or linger--Winchester and Oxford--the Itchin and the Isis. None
educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever forget them,
who can read Homer, and Pindar, and Sophocles, and Theocritus, and Bion,
and Moschus, in the original; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons
are those alone who pursued their poetical studies--in translations.
They never knew the nature of the true old Greek fire.
But has Bowles written a Great Poem? If he has, publish it, and we shall
make him a Bishop.
What shall we say of "The Pleasures of Hope?" That the harp from which
that music breathed, was an Æolian harp placed in the window of a high
hall, to catch airs from heaven when heaven was glad, as well she might
be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a
magnificent aurora-borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic
march--now it swells into a holy hymn--and now it dies away
elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain,
dream-like, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever
and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night--and
we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so?--In his youth Campbell
lived where "distant isles could hear the loud Corbrechtan roar;" and
sometimes his poetry is like that whirlpool--the sound as of the wheels
of many chariots. Yes, happy was it for him that he had liberty to roam
along the many-based, hollow-rumbling western coast of that
unaccountable county Argyllshire. The sea-roar cultivated his naturally
fine musical ear, and it sank too into his heart. Hence is his prime
Poem bright with hope as is the sunny sea when sailors' sweethearts on
the shore are looking out for ships; and from a foreign station down
comes the fleet before the wind, and the very shells beneath their
footsteps seem to sing for joy. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her
as if she were our own only daughter--filling our life with bliss, and
then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through
those giant woods! As for "Lochiel's Warning," there was heard the voice
of the Last of the Seers. The Second Sight is now extinguished in the
Highland glooms--the Lament wails no more,
"That man may not hide what God would reveal!"
The Navy owes much to "Ye Mariners of England." Sheer hulks often seemed
ships till that strain arose--but ever since in our imagination have
they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we say, after that, that
Campbell has never written a Great Poem? Yes--in the face even of the
Metropolitan!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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