Who led'st the bard, with Joan of Arc, Until ye were, I dare be bound, And, after mighty perils past, moans melancholy mournful to her" (Joan of Arc's) " ear, as ever by the dungeon'd wretch was heard howling at evening, round the embattled towers of that hell-house of France!" Examine this female more minutely (if you are not already frightened out of your senses) and you will perceive that "wan her face is, and her eyes hollow, and her sunk cheeks are furrowed deep, channelled, by tears; a few grey locks, hang down beneath her hood; and the night breeze passing, lifting her tattered mantle, discloses a serpent gnawing at her heart." Then, if pleased with this specimen of the horrible, your worships, the right honourable the members of the royal college of physicians, may step into the "crazy vessel" aforesaid, and proceed with BARD, HAG, and JOAN aforesaid, and, you will soon be introduced to giant " DESPAIR," with " eye large and rayless; blue flames on his face, with a death cold touch, &c." But as for myself, however honoured I should feel, on all other occasions, with your worships company, after wishing your good worships a stiff breeze, I must beg leave to be off. Didst dub thy jacobin toad eater 15 The Thalaba of English metre. Mr. Southey, in his work with the title of "Thalaba or the Destroyer," has given us a fine example of a pleasing dreadful performance, which is neither prose, rhyme, nor reason. Indeed, nothing but the inspiration of the gas which we have seen him inhale in the first canto could have generated the following effusions. "A Teraph stood against the cavern side, That Khawla at his hour of death had seized, It stood upon a plate of gold, An unclean spirit's name inscribed beneath : Dark the dead skin upon the hairless skull; They gleamed with demon light." Again he towers in book v. "There where the narrowing chasm Rose loftier in the hill, Book ii. Stood Zohak, wretched man, condemned to keep His cave of punishment. His was the frequent scream Which far away the prowling Chacal heard, And howled in terrour back. Far from his shoulders grew And set the bard to brew a mess Of horrour in a wilderness, That ever at his head Aimed eager their keen teeth And howl for agony, Feeling the pangs he gave, for of himself Now, if in this age of turmoils your worships should have occasion to educate a school of assassins, to be employed as Talleyrand employs his agents, for the purpose of promoting modern philanthropy and French projects of universal empire, I should advise you to prepare them intellectual food from such descriptions as we have quoted above. By accustoming your pupils to meditate on such horrible descriptions you will soon enable them to inflict without compunction or remorse sufferings like those, which they have been in the habit of contemplating. We are sorry to see, however, that our friend, Dr. Darwin, has been pleased to express his disapprobation of this species of the terrible in style, without which your small poets can never become conspicuous. We shall, however, quote one of his sentiments on the subject merely to let the world know that we great wits do not always tally upon every point. The doctor tells us in his Botanick Garden, p. 115, that there is a " line of boundary between the tragick and the horrid; which line, however, will veer a little this way or that, according to the prevailing manners of the So wondrous horrible, indeed it Thence sent him under " rooted waves" 16 age or country, and the peculiar association of ideas, or idiosyncrasy of mind, of individuals." ! Now I am apprehensive that doctor Darwin would have adjudged the greater part of Mr. Southey's sublimity to be of the "horrid" rather than the tragick or sublime kind. Such an opinion, however, would not only greatly tarnish the reputation of the critick who should venture to pronounce it; but would entirely put down many pretty good poets, who, as the Edinburgh reviewers say, must have a " qu'il mourut," and a " let there be light" in every line; and all their characters must be in agonies and ecstacies, from their entrance to their exit.* 16 Adown through vast Domdaniel caves. That is, as Southey says, through the Domdaniel caves, "at the roots of the ocean." Thalaba, having leaped into a "little car” which appears to have been drawn by " four living pinions, headless, bodyless, sprung from one stem that branched below, in four down arching limbs, and clenched the carrings endlong and aside, with claws of griffin grasp ;" "Down-down, it sank-down-down- * See Edinburgh review of Southey's Thalaba, October, 1802. Hh In which the metre man and Thalaba, But were translated in a trice Give me in proper tone to tell, There's the bathos to perfection! Now, if we could in any way have prevailed on Mr. Southey to have stopped this side of the centre of gravity, we should have been happy to have hired his "car" for this our dreadful rencontre. But as it appears that the Domdaniel cave soon after fell in, I fancy it would cost more to dig out this vehicle than to get Mr. Southey to make us a new one. 17 To monsieur Mahomet's paradise. "Thalaba knew that his death-hour was come, Hilt deep he drove the sword. Welcomed her husband to eternal bliss." |