Campbell was a great lover of submarine prospects. “Often in my
boyhood,” says the poet, “when the day has been bright and the sea
transparent, I have sat by the hour on a Highland rock admiring the
golden sands, the emerald weeds, and the silver shells at the bottom of
the bay beneath, till, dreaming about the grottoes of the Nereids, I
would not have exchanged my pleasure for that of a connoisseur poring
over a landscape by Claude or Poussin. Enchanting nature! thy beauty is
not only in heaven and earth, but in the waters under our feet. How
magnificent a medium of vision is the pellucid sea! Is it not like
poetry, that embellishes every object that we contemplate?”
“FELON LITERATURE.”
One of the most stinging reproofs of perverted literary taste, evidently
aimed at Newgate Calendar literature, appeared in the form of a
valentine, in No. 31 of _Punch_, in 1842.
The valentine itself reminds one of Churchill’s muse; and it needs no
finger to tell where its withering satire is pointed:--
“THE LITERARY GENTLEMAN.
“Illustrious scribe! whose vivid genius strays
’Mid Drury’s stews to incubate her lays,
And in St. Giles’s slang conveys her tropes,
Wreathing the poet’s lines with hangmen’s ropes;
You who conceive ’tis poetry to teach
The sad bravado of a dying speech;
Or, when possessed with a sublimer mood,
Show “Jack o’Dandies” dancing upon blood!
Crush bones--bruise flesh, recount each festering sore--
Rake up the plague-pit, write--and write in gore!
Or, when inspired to humanize mankind,
Where doth your soaring soul its subjects find?
Not ’mid the scenes that simple Goldsmith sought,
And found a theme to elevate his thought;
But you, great scribe, more greedy of renown,
From Hounslow’s gibbet drag a hero down.
Imbue his mind with virtue; make him quote
Some moral truth before he cuts a throat.
Then wash his hands, and soaring o’er your craft--
Refresh the hero with a bloody draught:
And, fearing lest the world should miss the act,
With noble zeal _italicize_ the fact.
Or would you picture woman meek and pure,
By love and virtue tutor’d to endure,
With cunning skill you take a felon’s trull,
Stuff her with sentiment, and scrunch her skull!
Oh! would your crashing, smashing, mashing pen were mine,
That I could “scorch your eyeballs” with my words,
“MY VALENTINE.”