"Praeceps aërii specula de montis in undas
Deferar; extremum hoc munus morientis habeto."
As we have given Johnson's criticism on _The Progress of Poesy_, we
append his comments on this "Sister Ode:"
"'The Bard' appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and
others have remarked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus.
Algarotti thinks it superior to its original; and, if preference
depends only on the imagery and animation of the two poems, his
judgment is right. There is in 'The Bard' more force, more thought,
and more variety. But to copy is less than to invent, and the copy
has been unhappily produced at a wrong time. The fiction of Horace
was to the Romans credible; but its revival disgusts us with apparent
and unconquerable falsehood. _Incredulus odi_.
"To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant's bulk by
fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions, has little
difficulty; for he that forsakes the probable may always find the
marvellous. And it has little use; we are affected only as we
believe; we are improved only as we find something to be imitated or
declined. I do not see that 'The Bard' promotes any truth, moral or
political.
"His stanzas are too long, especially his epodes; the ode is finished
before the ear has learned its measures, and consequently before it
can receive pleasure from their consonance and recurrence.
"Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but
technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the
power of any man to rush abruptly upon his subject, that has read the
ballad of 'Johnny Armstrong,'
'Is there ever a man in all Scotland--'
"The initial resemblances, or alliterations, 'ruin, ruthless, helm or
hauberk,' are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at
sublimity.
"In the second stanza the Bard is well described; but in the third we
have the puerilities of obsolete mythology. When we are told that
'Cadwallo hush'd the stormy main,' and that 'Modred made huge
Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head,' attention recoils from the
repetition of a tale that, even when it was first heard, was heard
with scorn.
"The _weaving_ of the _winding-sheet_ he borrowed, as he owns, from
the Northern Bards; but their texture, however, was very properly the
work of female powers, as the act of spinning the thread of life is
another mythology. Theft is always dangerous; Gray has made weavers
of slaughtered bards by a fiction outrageous and incongruous. They
are then called upon to 'Weave the warp, and weave the woof,' perhaps
with no great propriety; for it is by crossing the _woof_ with the
_warp_ that men weave the _web_ or piece; and the first line was
dearly bought by the admission of its wretched correspondent, 'Give
ample room and verge enough.' He has, however, no other line as bad.
"The third stanza of the second ternary is commended, I think, beyond
its merit. The personification is indistinct. _Thirst_ and _Hunger_
are not alike; and their features, to make the imagery perfect,
should have been discriminated. We are told, in the same stanza, how
'towers are fed.' But I will no longer look for particular faults;
yet let it be observed that the ode might have been concluded with an
action of better example; but suicide is always to be had, without
expense of thought."
[Illustration: "Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame!"]
[Illustration: HEAD OF OLYMPIAN JOVE.]