a traveller, who loses his way, owing to the thickness of the
“cloud-battalion,” and the want of “heaven-lamps, to beam their holy
light.” We have a description of a convicted felon, stolen from that
incomparable passage in Crabbe’s Borough, which has made many a rough
and cynical reader cry like a child. We can, however, conscientiously
declare that persons of the most excitable sensibility may safely
venture upon Mr. {206}Robert Montgomery’s version. Then we have the
“poor, mindless, pale-faced maniac boy,” who
Rolls his vacant eye,
To greet the glowing fancies of the sky.”
What are the glowing fancies of the sky? And what is the meaning of the
two lines which almost immediately follow?
“A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods,