Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 108

Address to the Angler to spare the young fish

If yet too young, and easily deceived,

A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,

Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space

He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven,

Soft disengage, and back into the stream

The speckled infant throw.——

Scott

The praise bestowed on a preceding passage, cannot be justly given to this. There is in it an attempt at dignity above the occasion. Pathos seems to have been intended, but affectation only is produced.

Ritson

It is not affectation, but it is the mock heroic of pathos, introduced purposely and wisely to attract the reader to a proposal, which from the unimportance of the subject—a poor little fish—might else have escaped his attention—as children learn, or may learn, humanity to animals from the mock romantic "Perambulations of a Mouse."