No. II.
“I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what
confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up, catching
the idea, even sometimes before it half-way reaches me.
----I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought,
which Heaven intended for another man.”--_Tristram Shandy._
Reader;
Lest, from the fact that we have hitherto drawn our mottos from “The
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,” the suspicion may be festering
in your brain that poor Nescio Quod has confined his reading among
the older English writers to this single work, it may not be amiss to
adduce such evidence, as shall set at rest so unjust and injurious a
surmise.
For instance--had he wished to be sarcastical upon himself, and thus,
by a common artifice, predispose his critics to clemency, he might,
in reference to the multitudinous array of _shadowy_ jests--flitting
around the brightness of the reader’s fancy, like moths around a
candle, to their own destruction--have cited this keen retort of
Fuller--“It is good to make a jest, but not to make a trade of jesting.”
Or, in allusion to the somewhat pedantic display of information,
varied, but worthless, he might have adopted from the same author
a complaint at the frivolous attainments of the idle and riotous
student--“Yet, _perchance_, he may get some _alms_ of learning, here a
snap, there a piece of knowledge, but nothing to purpose.”
Or, in a mood of preeminent self-complacency, he might have imagined
that the reader’s feelings towards him, maugre his faults and his
prolixity, might be fitly expressed in the language of the Spectator
(after Martial.)
“In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,
Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.”
Or, in defense of his desultory style--half-way between the frisking
pirouettes of Harlequin, and the staid pace of the moraliser, he might
have borrowed a circumlocutory sentence from the bungling Locke--“I
would have him try whether he can keep one unvaried, single idea in his
mind without any other, for any considerable length of time.”
Or, having in his mind the stolidity of those, who condescended gravely
to condemn so trifling a _jeu d’esprit_, he might have taken to his aid
a sarcasm from Smollett--“Some formidable critics declared that the
work was void of humor, character, and sentiment.”
Or, revolving in his thoughts the mystery attending the appearance
of the first number, and the pining curiosity excited to unveil its
paternity, with flattered pride, he might have quoted a splendid
sentence from Count Fathom--“Over and above this important secret,
under which he was begotten, other particularities attended his birth,
and seemed to mark him out as uncommon among the sons of men.”--These
“_ancient_ instances” will suffice, my reader, if you are in a yielding
mood, to convince you that, if Tristram is called upon somewhat often,
it is less a matter of necessity, than of choice. I am doubting whether
it would not be a most Machiavelian stroke of diplomatic wisdom, to
persuade you that I perceive all my failings. Surely your admiration at
my frankness would outweigh your anger at the repetition of my sins. I
am sometimes affected, and, now and then, I perpetrate a _verbicide_. I
like to make new words--I feel for them the affection of a father. I am
slightly tinctured with the sin mentioned by Boileau. (L’Art Poetique.
Chant Troisieme.)
“Souvent, sans y penser, un écrivain qui s’aime,
Forme tous ses héros semblables à soi-meme.”
Which lines the _Il_-literati are to know mean, “A self-complacent
writer often inadvertently draws his heroes like himself.” Thus I,
forgetting the precise terms of the _conversators_, (there _ought_ to
be such a word,) make them parley in a brogue very like my own. I am,
moreover, somewhat vain, though less so than Ovid, or Horace, (Vide
Metam. lib. 15. in fine. and Hor. 2.20 3.30.) or than that Etrurian
Spurinna, whom Valerius Maximus cites as an instance of modesty, though
he was rather an example of uncommon self-inflation; since he thought
himself so _killing_, that he disfigured his face, lest he should
unwittingly seduce his fair country-women!
I would that I could affirm with Falstaff in the play, “I am not only
witty in myself, but I am likewise the cause that wit is in other men.”
But the protasis will, I fear, be doubted by the judicious, and my
own observation tells me that the apodosis is false. I am naturally
neither contemptuous nor malicious, but when I look around me, and
behold so many with but two ideas, “one for superfluity and one for
use,” and reflect that I may myself rank among that soulless number,
I become almost a misanthrope, and quite a scorner. “Les diseurs des
bons mots,” says Pascal, “sont mauvais caractères.” “The perpetrators
of witticisms are bad men.” Yet the same author observes, that silence
is the severest punishment, and, since novelty is all that can gain one
notoriety at the present day, I know not why I should not attempt to
be new, at least, if not witty. I sometimes think I would rather give
utterance to a brilliant error than a stupid truth, and, like Tully,
espouse falsehood with a Plato, rather than be right with the rabble.
“Had the nose of Cleopatra been shorter,” remarks an eminent writer,
“the face of the world had been altered.” (_Her_ face would have been,
at any rate.) Had I, too, been born at an earlier era, before the
fingers of a million had compressed every square inch of this vast
globe’s surface, till it is as dry and hopeless as the peel of an
eviscerated orange, I, too, might have been at once original and wise.
But all truths have of late become _truisms_, and to reiterate them
would be like praising Shakspeare. Sufficient be it for me, (you will
find the thought somewhere in Irving,) if, like a skillful physician,
who gives you a pill enveloped in some palate-tickling sauce, I now and
then, under the guise of folly, pop down your throat a sound moral,
or a wholesome truth. My writings, if less grave in appearance, will
be more healthful in effect than Bellamy’s learned computation of the
earth’s inhabitants during the millennium, (whom he makes so numerous
that they would be compelled to lie in _strata_,) or the labored
inquiry of the ingenious Spaniard, whether it be more certain that a
_cause_ will produce an _effect_, or that an _effect_ must spring from
a _cause_. Pardon these patch-work prolegomena--remembering that it is
my fashion to place my thoughts in _Mosaic_--and pass on to my compeers
of the club.
_Apple._ “Well, Pulito, time flies, or,” (looking learnedly,) “_tempus
fugit_, as the Latins would say. If Quod and you are coming to the
point, I’ll e’en light my cigar, and listen with elongated and _patent_
ears.” (Here, after a series of wicked bantering, Apple was forced
to explain that _patent_ meant _open_--he then continued pettishly,)
“I really thought you could see through a joke sooner--but if you
are not about to discuss, I’ll read to Tristo a few chapters of my
Psychological Autobiography, in which I have shown by induction that
_punning_ may become a second nature, and that in numerous consecutive
instances--”
_Tristo._ “Enough, good Apple; I perceive the plan of your work, and
doubt not that it is profoundly amusing, and amusingly profound. But
why wish to read it to me, rather than to Nescio, or Pulito?”
_Apple._ “Because you are melancholy, and something light and trifling
might--”
_Tristo._ “No, Apple, no! When I am sad, which is but too often, I
find no relief from the ludicrous, or the gay. I should sooner look
for an antidote to melancholy in the deep thought and earnest style
of Coleridge, than in the levities of Swift, or the whimsicalities
of Sterne. And an evening walk in the solemn starlight would quicker
soothe me than a merry ramble among the green hills in the brightness
of the morning. When the soul wanders through its airy chambers in
solitary sadness, let it not flee for refuge to the comic page, to
laughter, or the song. Let it dwell upon scenes and objects, more
wretched than itself, till the sigh of sorrow burst into the tear of
pity. The descriptions of Crabbe, so gloomy, so powerful, and so true,
bear me away from sadness to solemnity, and the deep conceptions of
Foster lift me from solemnity to a high and tender elevation.”
_Apple._ “Fool as I am, these bright spring mornings always make even
me serious.”
_Tristo._ “Fools as we _all_ are, there are times when the cup of
pleasure is as nauseous to the soul, as is wine to the sated palate of
the morning reveler. Why is it, Apple, why is it that the first gay
breath of spring is so saddening in its influence? Nature seems then to
burst from her winter’s sleep, like a resurrection from the grave. The
jocund earth puts on her brightest robes, as if soon to celebrate her
nuptials with heaven. The pulse of existence beats high with new-born
vigor, and the warm, bright blood runs riot through the renovated
veins. Alike in the open fields, and the crowded city, throughout the
glorious works of God, and the petty creations of man, there is a
newness of life, which, it would seem, _must_ fill every heart with
bounding ecstacy. And so it may be, for aught I know, with the busy
and the riotous. But with the idle and the thoughtful, the approach of
spring produces, I am persuaded, far different effects.”
_Apple._ “Physicians would tell us that the balmy breeze bears on
its wings a subtle, penetrating fluid, which dampens the spirits and
enfeebles the energies.”
_Tristo._ “No. While I allow that these early gales of spring, which
breathe life and vigor into all the rest of animated nature, unbrace
_our_ nerves, and through those media of sensation, lower the tone, and
lessen the elasticity of the feelings, yet, for the main cause would
I look deeper--even in the mind. There are certain periods, as we all
know, when we are _forced to reflect_. Such periods are, every serious
change in the world without--the recurrence of a birth-day, or the
revisiting of home; and sometimes the sight of a long-neglected volume,
through whose pages I have strayed in pleasant intercourse with an
absent, or a buried friend, has brought paleness to my lip, and sadness
to my heart. And such an occasion, preeminently, are the early days of
spring; for spring (as the Germans say) is the cradle-time of the year.”
_Apple._ “The calendar, though, says otherwise. But go on.”
_Tristo._ “Then are we summoned to look forward to _another_ year,
with hopes less wild and free than they were at the commencement of
the last; and we look backward, also, with a longer and a sadder
retrospect: and you know, Apple, that the memory of a student is but a
shadowy maze, where the forms, which, in _prospect_, were gilded with
glory, and girded with magnificence, to his _backward_ gaze, seem airy
nothings, or shapes, palpable, indeed, but unsightly--fiends, mocking
at the vanity of his hopes, and the folly of his grief. And thus the
bland breath of the reviving year becomes, through the mysterious
principle of association, an instrument of keenest anguish to the
sensitive mind. This annual birth of nature is a mile-stone, that
notches our progress from the cradle to the grave: the figures are
surrounded by bloom and greenness, but they are graven by the finger of
Death.”
_Apple._ “I think such brilliant days make us feel _too_ well.”
_Tristo._ “They do. They kindle sensations too delightful for
continuance--our systems are too coarse, too frail--it seems as if an
electric finger were laid invisibly upon each shrinking nerve--a balm
circumfuses and permeates the heart, strange, ecstatic, overpowering.
The change, too, is often so abrupt as to cause an unpleasant
revulsion--the process (so far as regards the action of the mind) is
not unlike that by which we pass from the stern winter of our existence
here, to the bright and unending summer of the future life.”
_Apple._ “Well, Tristo, though I could not succeed in making you merry,
you have well nigh rendered me as sad as yourself. And Quod and Pulito
have stopped their wrangling to listen to your melancholy.”
_Pulito._ “Yes, Tristo, you are unwontedly depressed to-night, and
Dumpling has scarcely made a _pun_ since we came together. However, the
coffee is ready, that will revive you both.”
The first cup sufficed to set Apple on his _legs_, (speaking
intellectually,) which he evinced by commencing a _running_ fire
of puns and jests, too rapid for transcription; while Tristo, more
slowly, but not less surely, owned the mild, exhilarating influence.
In the mean time conversation lagged, and finally ceased, while they
gave themselves up to the more _sensible_ pleasures of the palate.
After a while, Pulito, who appeared to have been collecting all his
energies for the onset, seized a moment, when Apple was poring over his
Autobiography, Tristo with a pleased smile was dipping into Little’s
poems, and Quod, as _magister morum_ for the evening, was resettling
the coffee pot on its uneasy bed, and broke forth in a most oratorical
tone with the following introduction to the debate.
_Pulito._ “On whatever principle you may compare the writings of the
older novelists with the works of Bulwer and his school, whether as
to their effect, in instructing the mind, or improving the heart,
quickening the moral sense, or conveying useful information, or even
for mere interest, or whiling away the time in rational amusement,
(which last is but the lowest commendation of a good novel): in any of
these points of comparison, I maintain that the older writers have a
decided and manifest superiority. I might appeal, for the support of
this position, to the concurrent testimony of literary men, to the fact
that they have outlived contemporary criticism, and are still classics
in this fastidious age, and furthermore”--
_Apple_, (looking up from his manuscript.) “What book is that you’re
reading out of, Pulito?”
“The book of my own intellect, as yet unpublished, Mr. Impertinence,”
said Pulito, somewhat disconcerted.
_Apple._ “Indeed! As I was looking down, I thought from the rapid
and mellifluous flow of words, the elegance and profoundness of the
thought, that you were reading loud from some one of the British
Essayists. No insinuations, however,” and he chuckled at the effect,
while the others smiled at the harmlessness of his sarcasm.
_Nescio._ “Don’t suppose, Pulito, that because I prefer the modern to
the ancient school among the English novelists, I therefore deny all
merit to the latter. It would be strange, indeed, if men, who were
admitted _unâ voce_ to be the wits and geniuses of their age, should
not have displayed many, and great, and varied excellencies. But won’t
you allow that the incongruous mass, The Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy, has gained its greenest laurels from its outrageous oddity?
Its eccentricity is so astounding, so far beyond anomaly itself, that
criticism pauses aghast, as at ‘the quills of the fretful porcupine,’
unknowing where to strike. You might as soon trace ‘the path of a
serpent on a rock,’ or reduce to rule the movements of the wild ass of
the desert. It is a mere chaos--a “rudis indigestaque moles.”
_Pulito._ “But, my dear fellow, such the author intended to have it.”
_Nescio._ “Well, and what then? Suppose he had made it dull, (as in
fact much of it _is_, at least, to me,) would it be the more pleasing,
that the author had simply fulfilled his intentions? I like a good
conceit in my heart, and the more I like it, the more do I hate to see
it spoiled.”
_Pulito._ “Do you assert that Sterne has spoiled his plan? If you do,
the world is against you.”
_Nescio._ “I beg your pardon. Those few are against me, who copy their
sentiments from one another, and who, I’ll be sworn, never had the
patience to read through what they so extravagantly admire. There
are many good judges, who have the taste to perceive the unrivalled
beauties of Sterne in particular passages, his fine strokes of humor,
his felicitous touches of character, and, therefore, indiscriminately
extol the whole.”
_Pulito._ “Well, and I think they are about right.”
_Nescio._ “So they are, except in Tristram Shandy. But _there_ I
maintain, that while uncle Toby, and Yorick, and in fact all the
actors, are among the most perfect pictures in the English language,
the scenes are yet, many of them, _unbearably_ wearisome. I would
rather undertake to thread the labyrinth of Minos.”
_Pulito._ “Now, in my view, this same rambling style constitutes his
great charm.”
_Nescio._ “Not at all. This attraction consists in the exquisite
fidelity of his characters, and the wit that gleams along his zigzag
path. His roving, if properly restrained, would be pleasing. But, in
the very nature of things, we cannot heartily like an author whom we
cannot keep in sight. He seems to have thought that _any_ thing would
_take_, provided only it were irrelevant. If, indeed, these _disjecta
membra_ were all brilliant or weighty, it would repay the labor of
putting them together. But when you have done this, and find much of it
absolute nonsense, you must feel spent, disappointed, and angry.”
_Pulito._ “Say what you will, and there is some truth in your words,
Sterne will always remain inimitable.”
_Nescio._ “I deny it not, and I hope he may. One such specimen, however
beautiful, of utter lawlessness, is quite enough, and the fame of
Sterne has already drawn many a weak-winged aspirant from sober truth
into erratic nonsense. That style, which, in _him_, if affected, was,
at least, original, in an _imitator_ would be stale and intolerable. By
the way, have you ever read his Sermons and Letters?”
_Pulito._ “Yes, and they are beautiful, are they not?”
_Nescio._ “Surpassingly. But what say you to the older novelists,
Fielding, Richardson and Smollett?”
_Pulito._ “Why, I say that their language is as much stronger and
purer, as their thoughts are better, and their characters more natural,
than those of Bulwer, and his tawdry tribe.”
_Nescio._ “Well, I must admire your modesty, to speak thus of a man,
whom the spontaneous and infallible voice of a million has applauded,
till praise itself grows weary.”
_Pulito._ “The infallible voice of the million! Phoebus! their words
_are_ oracular! It has not been a fact, then, has it, since the stars
first sang together, that whatever the _lions_ of the day have done,
or written, these infallible judges have followed with their praise?
They did not shout ‘_te deum_’ to Cowley, when that worshipper of the
‘dim obscure’ was the star of a voluptuous court, as vicious in taste
as it was depraved in morals? Each spectacled ‘mother in Israel’ was
not enraptured by Hervey’s magniloquent meditations among the tombs?
The horrors of Walpole, and the mysteries of Radcliffe, the sorrows of
Porter, with the bravery of her superhuman Wallace, and the streaming
eyes of her immaculate Amanda, have not _all_ been worshipped in their
day as lords of the ascendant--have not _all_ risen, and shone, and
set, in the April sky of popular applause? Why, Quod, I am astonished
that you should for a moment adduce the opinion of the rabble as
authority.”
_Nescio._ “Out, aristocrat! where else _would_ you look for natural and
unbiassed feeling? I tell you, that when the voice of a people bursts
forth in simultaneous applause, a work _must_ be good.”
_Pulito._ “And I tell you, that if at this moment our meretricious
press should bring forth the Letters of Junius, and the scribblings
of Jack Downing, the people, if left to themselves, would choose the
latter to reign over them, because the latter is most like themselves.
Besides, upon one of these fashionable novels you do not get the free
popular voice. Some giant critic, from prejudice, or false taste,
sends forth his _imprimatur_, and the groundlings catch and repeat the
cry,--as a mountain shakes the thunder from its cliffs, and the little
bills reverberate its voice.”
_Apple._ “But the people have no interest to sway their opinion.”
_Pulito._ “Neither have they any judgment to guide it.”
_Apple._ “To what, then, shall we resort? For criticism has always
shifted with the shifting taste of the age, and it may be shown that
the learned, and the polished, have fluctuated in their sentiments as
much as the ignorant and the coarse. Did not the voices of the educated
prefer Cowley and Dryden to Milton, until Addison took Milton on his
wing, and bore him far into the heaven of fame? The critics of every
age have followed the prevailing style of the writers of their time;
and, indeed, they have constituted a large portion of those writers.
Every thirty years has a style peculiar to itself--soft or strong,
plain or mystical, brief or diffuse, moralizing or descriptive, simple
or turgid; and the critics have set up no barrier, and constituted no
law.”
_Pulito._ “What you have said, _was_ true, but _is_ not. There are
now so many perfect specimens from every literary mine, that dross or
counterfeit is instantly detected. Criticism has become stable, or, if
ever influenced by prejudice, or local feeling, you have only to take
the average--cast them together into the alembic, and truth will come
forth. And indeed the _general_ and _long-continued_ opinion of the
multitude on a literary work, is always correct, partly because nature
speaks within them, and partly because they have been told what to
think by their superiors.”
_Nescio._ “Don’t suppose I prefer the flimsy modern copyists, to the
eloquent Old English prose writers--the thinkers of the seventeenth
century. But what says your Criticism to the novelists of the present
age, as compared with those of eighty years since?”
_Pulito._ “I speak not of Scott; for I admit, as must all, that to
the rest of story tellers, he is the sun in heaven. I likewise except
Edgeworth, and Marryatt, and, perhaps, James and Cooper. But the
Bulwerian is the prevailing style; and of him enlightened criticism
says, that, with much brilliancy, and some philosophy, there is a great
deal that is vicious in style, and false in sentiment, shallow in
reasoning, and depraving in tendency. It says that his aphorisms are
merely antitheses, striking, but untrue. His characters are too strong
contrasts to be natural; they are foils to one another.”
_Nescio._ “And where will you find a more glaring instance of this,
than in Scott’s Quentin Durward, where he introduces tragedy and
comedy--the executioners to Lewis, that subtle king?”
_Pulito._ “I allow it, and always considered the picture overcharged:
it is broad farce, and not real life.”
_Nescio._ “Well, I will tell you what _I_ think of Smollett. When he
is himself, he is coarse; and when he rises to the tender, he speaks
in language, which true lover and true poet never employed. His
sentimentality is to me disgusting, and his sketches, though laughable,
are many of them caricatures. He had a strong sense of the ludicrous,
but no taste for the refined. His sea-characters are admirable; but
when, in the History of England, were oaths and exclamations, which I
repeat not, so common in the mouths of _refined ladies_ even, as he
would represent? When I close a volume of Smollett, I rise with a sense
of weariness--there is a something, which I sought, and found not--his
characters appear before me in bold prominence, and they are consistent
with themselves, but I doubt me whether all of them are consistent with
human nature.”
_Pulito._ “There is something in what you say. Smollett fails in some
points: but his mind was powerful, and his language is strong, and
idiomatically pure. But in regard to poetry, and to love-scenes, the
taste of the age was wrong: yet he simply accorded with that taste,
and you cannot blame him for drifting with a race that thought Johnson
a poet! As for Fielding, though too diffuse in style of remark, he is
still immeasurably above Bulwer and his countless spawn. And so is
Richardson, maugre his epistolary prolixity; and Goldsmith, with his
quiet beauty and truth to nature, transcends them all. But Bulwer,
instead of the apotheosis his admirers would bestow, deserves to do
penance in purgatory for his literary sins. As obscure as Coleridge,
without his deep philosophy, as glittering as Voltaire, without his
sparkling wit, as seductive as Byron, without his amazing strength,
his wisdom is founded in a few heartless maxims, and his poetry is
comprized in a Rhyming Dictionary.”
_Tristo._ “No! Pulito, you are wrong there. I have heard your
discussion with interest, and allow me to draw the line, which, in
cooler moments, you would both approve. Bulwer is a scholar, and a
genius, and essentially a poet. That he is a scholar, and a ripe one,
no one that has read his Ambitious Student, and, above all, his Last
Days of Pompeii, can doubt for an instant. When I look at the fact
that he has founded a new school in romance; that he has written eight
or ten novels, all different, all original, all _creative_ in their
kind; that we follow his characters from their entrance to their
exit, with feverish and untiring interest; that in his own path no
one approaches him, and that for eight years he has supported his
reputation, I see not how he can be denied many of the attributes of
genius. And that he is, _in heart_, a poet, despite his Siamese Twins,
is equally evident to me. He is certainly fertile in invention, rich in
expression, and powerful in pathos. I know not where to find any thing
more poetic, more moving, than the character of Lucy Brandon, and
her twilight interview with Clifford at the lattice, the beautifully
simple portraiture of Mydia, and, above all, the crossed love, and
shattered hopes of the Ambitious Student. I say that he _does_ possess
wit and humor, and poetry, and talent, and that in large abundance.
Yet his power is more in the _manner_ than the _matter_; for he is
often superficial, and his pictures of the world, though faithful and
clear in parts, are false and confused as a whole. Their coloring is
too high. He strains for effect. His views in politics, in ethics,
and religion, are all shifting. If a brilliant thought occurs,
he pauses little upon its truth or consistency with his previous
sentiments. Because red and blue are _both_ beautiful, he lays them on
together. You view his pictures as in a glass, and depart, ‘straitway
forgetting what manner of man he is.’ He makes all his heroes think
and act splendidly for the moment; but their thoughts and actions are
incongruous as a whole--they war among themselves. A man cannot at
once be patient and resentful, thoughtful and careless, or learned
and an idler. Again--his style is as bad as it is brilliant--it is
affected--sometimes tawdry. His novels are bad, _very_ bad, in their
tendency. He marries vice and virtue; he joins nobleness to sin; he
makes man the puppet of fate or circumstance; around the desperate
offender he weaves a spell of enchantment; we follow his heroes with
wonder and pity and love, through all their paths of crime and glory,
and we close the book with a sigh that ourselves were not born with
natures so high, and destinies so splendid, even at the price of all
their wretchedness, and all their guilt. Bulwer may talk, and talk of
virtue and religion, till his hair is gray--but his principles are
poison. And if he be dangerous, his imitators are contemptible. Without
a tithe of his power, they are more corrupt. Their works are prolific
as the rod of Aaron, and lean as the kine of Pharaoh. In regard to
talent, making allowance for the greater freshness of his novels,
and that sympathy which we feel for every thing of our own day, and
remembering that he had all _their_ excellencies to build upon, and
imitate, I should place him far below both Fielding and Smollett in
mental power. Those older writers, though freer in language, are far
less corrupt and enervate in thought, than these modern profligates.
In _those_, there is a style simple, vigorous, and clear, and
reflection solid, rational, and just--in _these_ there is a continual
reaching forth after singularity and power. _Those_ draw faithful
figures, though larger, perhaps, than life--but _these_ present
distortions--wicked daubs--gross flatteries, or else vile libels upon
human nature. _There_ is thought--_here_, sentiment--_there_, rough
gold--_here_, spangled tinsel. _Those_ are chalybeate streams, which
come tumbling from mountains of iron, with waves dark, but salubrious:
while _these_ are rivulets from mercurial mines, that dance swiftly
along their shining bed, with waters bright, but destructive.”
Ego.