"A prophet may wrap himself up in austere and mysterious solitude: a
poet must come 'eating and drinking.' Thus came Shakspeare, Dryden,
Burns, Scott, Goethe; and thus have come in our day, _Dickens_, Hood,
and Longfellow."
Is the song of "The Ivy Green" in _Pickwick_ sufficient to justify this
appellation? I do not remember any other "Poem" by Charles Dickens.
3. Of Metaphors. Out of sixteen pages it is difficult to make a selection,
but the following are striking:
"If not a prophet, _torn by a secret burden, and uttering it_ in wild
tumultuous strains,... he has found inspiration ... in the legends of
other lands, whose _native vein_, in itself exquisite, has been _highly
cultivated_ and _delicately cherished_."
"Excelsion," we are told, "is one of those happy thoughts which seem to
drop down, like fine days, from some serener region, or _like moultings
of the celestial dove_, which _meet instantly the ideal_ of all minds,
_and run on afterwards_, and for ever, _in the current of the human
heart_."
Does not this almost come up to Lord Castlereagh's famous metaphor? It
certainly goes beyond Mr. Gilfillan's own praise of Longfellow, whose
sentiment is described as "never false, nor strained, nor mawkish. It is
_always mild_,... and _sometimes_ it _approaches the sublime_." Mr. G. goes
one step farther.