Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 110

——By many a dog

Compell'd——

The clamour much of men, and boys, and dogs——

Scott

The mention of dogs twice was superfluous; it might have been easily avoided.

Ritson

Very true—by mentioning them only once.

Scott

Nature is rich in a variety of minute but striking circumstances; some of which engage the attention of one observer, and some that of another.

Ritson

This lover of truth never uttered a truer speech. Give me a lie wth a spirit in it.

Air, earth, and ocean, smile immense.——

Scott

The bombastic "immense smile of air, &c.," better omitted.

Ritson

Qute Miltonic—"enormous bliss"—and both, I presume, alike caviare to the Quaker.

He comes! he comes! in every breeze the power

Of philosophic melancholy comes!

His near approach, the sudden-starting tear,

The glowing cheek, the mild dejected air,

The soften'd feature, and the beating heart,

Pierced deep with many a virtuous pang, declare.

Scott

This fine picture is greatly injured by a few words. The power should have been said to come "upon the breeze;" not "in every breeze;" an expression which indicates a multiplicity of approaches. If he came "in every breeze," he must have been always coming—

Ritson

—and so he was.

——The branching Oronoque

Rolls a brown deluge, and the native drives

To dwell aloft on life-sufficing trees,

At once his dome, his robe, his food, and arms.

Swell'd by a thousand streams, impetuous hurl'd

From all the roaring Andes, huge descends

The mighty Orellana. Scarce the Muse Dares stretch her wing o'er this enormous mass Of rushing water: scarce she dares attempt The sea-like Plata; to whose dread expanse, Continuous depth, and wond'rous length of course, Our floods are rills. With unabated force In silent dignity they sweep along, And traverse realms unknown, and blooming wilds, And fruitful desarts, worlds of solitude, Where the sun smiles, and seasons teem, in vain, Unseen and unenjoy'd. Forsaking these, O'er peopled plains they fair-diffusive flow, And many a nation feed, and circle safe In their fair bosom many a happy isle, The seat of blameless Pan, yet undisturb'd By Christian crimes, and Europe's cruel sons. Thus pouring on, they proudly seek the deep, Whose vanquish'd tide, recoiling from the shock, Yields to this liquid weight of half the globe, And Ocean trembles for his green domain.

Scott

Poets not unfrequently aim at aggrandising their subject, by avowing their inability to describe it. This is a puerile and inadequate expedient. Thomson has here, perhaps inadvertently, descended to this feeble art of exaggeration.

Ritson

A magnificent passage, in spite of Duns Scotus! The poet says not a word about his "inability to describe," nor seems to be thinking about his readers at all. He is confessing his own feelings, awe-struck with the contemplation of such o'erwhelming objects; in the same spirit with which he designates the den of the "green serpent" in another place—

—Which ev'n imagination fears to tread——

——A dazzling deluge reigns, and all

From pole to pole is undistinguish'd blaze.——

Scott

From pole to pole, strictly speaking, is improper. The poet meant, "from one part of the horizon to the other."

Ritson

From his pole to thy pole was a more downward declension than "from the centre thrice," &c.

Ohe! jam satis.