And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail!
Still would her touch the strain prolong;
And from the rocks, the woods, the vale,
She call'd on echo still, through all her song:
And where her sweetest theme she chose,
A soft reponsive voice was heard at ev'ry close;
And Hope enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair!"
Statuary—Painting—and Poetry!
Scotland! thou, too, hast thy Bard of Hope—and in imagination's hallowed ground we hear his song ascending heavenwards like the sound of a silver trumpet. Do not these lines equalize Campbell with Collins?
"Auspicious Hope! in thy sweet garden grow,
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe;
Won by their sweets, in Nature's languid hour
The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower.
There, as the wild-bee murmurs on the wing,
What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring!
What viewless forms the Æolian organ play,
And sweep the furrow'd lines of anxious thought away!"
They who say that they do not understand these exquisite verses—and there are such persons yet alive—must not dare to say that they understand one single line of Collins. Again:—
"With thee, sweet Hope! resides the heavenly light,
That pour remotest rapture on the sight;
Thine is the charm of life's bewilder'd way,
That calls each slumbering passion into play.
Waked by thy touch, I see the sister band,
On tip-toe watching, start at thy command;
And fly where'er thy mandate bids them steer,
To pleasure's path, or glory's bright career"
How different the imagery in these two pictures yet how congenial! The one all astir, the other all asleep —yet visionary both with dreams like realities, and realities like dreams! You have by heart the glorious opening of the Poem. Gaze on it, along with these two pictures—and know with what wondrous facility genius can brighten and shadow forth the lights and glooms of life by those of nature—a union in which the Beautiful is felt to be the Sublime.
Fear not that we are about to indite a critique on Campbell. You know that we never in all our days indited a critique on any great Poet. No philosophical critic, thank Heaven! are we; though we have read the Stagyrite. But from the golden urn of the Inspired we devoutly seek to draw light; and have no higher aim than to let it fall at times on the pages of Maga, in illustration of the Fair, the Good, and the True.
Therefore, bear with us for a time, while we animadvert, in a kindly spirit, on a critique on the Collected Works of Campbell, indited by a philosophical critic in the highest of our Periodicals—the Quarterly Review.
"Mr Campbell," he says, "has here comprised, within the modest compass of a single volume, the whole of his poetical works. When the writings of a well-known author are thus collected and republished, the question naturally arises, not how they will be received by a contemporaneous public—for this has already been decided—but what respect they are likely to obtain at the hand of posterity—what place will be allotted to them in the abiding literature of the country? In an honest attempt to determine this question, the critic cannot do otherwise than judge by the highest standard of excellence. Calling to mind whatever is of old and acknowledged repute in the kind of literature in which the new aspirant for fame has laboured, he must submit his writer, not to a comparison with living rivals, but to a competition with the picked champions—the laurelled victors—of all preceding ages. He must applaud as if within hearing of a jealous antiquity. He must be permitted to escape from the glare which falls on present reputation. In criticism, as in higher matters, it is only by receding into the shadows of the past, that the eye becomes susceptible to the faint outlines which futurity extends."
