eclogue is laid, had been recently torn in pieces by the depredations of
its savage neighbours, when Mr. Collins so affectingly described its
misfortunes. This ingenious man had not only a pencil to portray, but a
heart to feel for the miseries of mankind; and it is with the utmost
tenderness and humanity he enters into the narrative of Circassia's
ruin, while he realizes the scene, and brings the present drama before
us. Of every circumstance that could possibly contribute to the tender
effect this pastoral was designed to produce, the poet has availed
himself with the utmost art and address. Thus he prepares the heart to
pity the distresses of Circassia, by representing it as the scene of the
happiest love:
"In fair Circassia, where, to love inclined,
Each swain was blest, for every maid was kind."
To give the circumstance of the dialogue a more affecting solemnity, he
makes the time midnight, and describes the two shepherds in the very
act of flight from the destruction that swept over their country:
"Sad o'er the dews, two brother shepherds fled,
Where wildering fear and desperate sorrow led."
There is a beauty and propriety in the epithet wildering, which strikes
us more forcibly, the more we consider it.
The opening of the dialogue is equally happy, natural, and unaffected;
when one of the shepherds, weary and overcome with the fatigue of
flight, calls upon his companion to review the length of way they had
passed. This is certainly painting from nature, and the thoughts,
however obvious, or destitute of refinement, are perfectly in character.
But as the closest pursuit of nature is the surest way to excellence in
general, and to sublimity in particular, in poetical description, so we
find that this simple suggestion of the shepherd is not unattended with
magnificence. There is a grandeur and variety in the landscape he
describes:
"And first review that long extended plain,
And yon wide groves, already past with pain!
Yon ragged cliff, whose dangerous path we tried!
And, last, this lofty mountain's weary side!"
There is, in imitative harmony, an act of expressing a slow and
difficult movement by adding to the usual number of pauses in a verse.
This is observable in the line that describes the ascent of the
mountain:
And last || this lofty mountain's || weary side ||.
Here we find the number of pauses, or musical bars, which, in an heroic
verse, is commonly two, increased to three.
The liquid melody, and the numerous sweetness of expression, in the
following descriptive lines, is almost inimitably beautiful:
"Sweet to the sight is Zabran's flowery plain,
And once by nymphs and shepherds loved in vain!
No more the virgins shall delight to rove
By Sargis' banks, or Irwan's shady grove;
On Tarkie's mountain catch the cooling gale,
Or breathe the sweets of Aly's flowery vale."
Nevertheless, in this delightful landscape there is an obvious fault;
there is no distinction between the plain of Zabran and the vale of Aly;
they are both flowery, and consequently undiversified. This could not
proceed from the poet's want of judgment, but from inattention: it had
not occurred to him that he had employed the epithet flowery twice
within so short a compass; an oversight which those who are accustomed
to poetical, or, indeed, to any other species of composition, know to be
very possible.
Nothing can be more beautifully conceived, or more pathetically
expressed, than the shepherd's apprehensions for his fair countrywomen,
exposed to the ravages of the invaders:
"In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves,
For ever famed for pure and happy loves:
In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair,
Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair!
Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief shall send;
Those hairs the Tartar's cruel hand shall rend."
There is certainly some very powerful charm in the liquid melody of
sounds. The editor of these poems could never read or hear the following
verse repeated, without a degree of pleasure otherwise entirely
unaccountable:
"Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair."
Such are the Oriental Eclogues, which we leave with the same kind of
anxious pleasure we feel upon a temporary parting with a beloved
friend.
OBSERVATIONS
ON THE ODES, DESCRIPTIVE AND ALLEGORICAL.
The genius of Collins was capable of every degree of excellence in lyric
poetry, and perfectly qualified for that high province of the muse.
Possessed of a native ear for all the varieties of harmony and
modulation, susceptible of the finest feelings of tenderness and
humanity, but, above all, carried away by that high enthusiasm which
gives to imagination its strongest colouring, he was at once capable of
soothing the ear with the melody of his numbers, of influencing the
passions by the force of his pathos, and of gratifying the fancy by the
luxury of description.
In consequence of these powers, but, more particularly, in consideration
of the last, he chose such subjects for his lyric essays as were most
favourable for the indulgence of description and allegory; where he
could exercise his powers in moral and personal painting; where he could
exert his invention in conferring new attributes on images or objects
already known, and described by a determinate number of characteristics;
where he might give an uncommon éclat to his figures, by placing them in
happier attitudes, or in more advantageous lights, and introduce new
forms from the moral and intellectual world into the society of
impersonated beings.
Such, no doubt, were the privileges which the poet expected, and such
were the advantages he derived from the descriptive and allegorical
nature of his themes.
It seems to have been the whole industry of our author, (and it is, at
the same time, almost all the claim to moral excellence his writings can
boast,) to promote the influence of the social virtues, by painting them
in the fairest and happiest lights.
"Melior fieri tuendo"
would be no improper motto to his poems in general; but of his lyric
poems it seems to be the whole moral tendency and effect. If, therefore,
it should appear to some readers, that he has been more industrious to
cultivate description than sentiment, it may be observed, that his
descriptions themselves are sentimental, and answer the whole end of
that species of writing, by embellishing every feature of virtue, and by
conveying, through the effects of the pencil, the finest moral lessons
to the mind.
Horace speaks of the fidelity of the ear in preference to the
uncertainty of the eye; but if the mind receives conviction, it is
certainly of very little importance through what medium, or by which of
the senses it is conveyed. The impressions left on the imagination may
possibly be thought less durable than the deposits of the memory, but it
may very well admit of a question, whether a conclusion of reason, or an
impression of imagination, will soonest make it sway to the heart. A
moral precept, conveyed in words, is only an account of truth in its
effects; a moral picture is truth exemplified; and which is most likely
to gain upon the affections, it may not be difficult to determine.
This, however, must be allowed, that those works approach the nearest to
perfection which unite these powers and advantages; which at once
influence the imagination, and engage the memory; the former by the
force of animated and striking description, the latter by a brief, but
harmonious conveyance of precept: thus, while the heart is influenced
through the operation of the passions or the fancy, the effect, which
might otherwise have been transient, is secured by the coöperating power
of the memory, which treasures up in a short aphorism the moral of the
scene.
This is a good reason, and this, perhaps, is the only reason that can be
given, why our dramatic performances should generally end with a chain
of couplets. In these the moral of the whole piece is usually conveyed;
and that assistance which the memory borrows from rhyme, as it was
probably the original cause of it, gives it usefulness and propriety
even there.
After these apologies for the descriptive turn of the following odes,
something remains to be said on the origin and use of allegory in
poetical composition.
By this we are not to understand the trope in the schools, which is
defined aliud verbis, aliud sensu ostendere; and of which Quintilian
says, usus est, ut tristia dicamus melioribus verbis, aut bonæ rei
gratia quædam contrariis significemus, &c. It is not the verbal, but the
sentimental allegory, not allegorical expression (which, indeed, might
come under the term of metaphor), but allegorical imagery, that is here
in question.
When we endeavour to trace this species of figurative sentiment to its
origin, we find it coeval with literature itself. It is generally
agreed, that the most ancient productions are poetical; and it is
certain that the most ancient poems abound with allegorical imagery.
If, then, it be allowed that the first literary productions were
poetical; we shall have little or no difficulty in discovering the
origin of allegory.
At the birth of letters, in the transition from hieroglyphical to
literal expression, it is not to be wondered if the custom of
expressing ideas by personal images, which had so long prevailed, should
still retain its influence on the mind, though the use of letters had
rendered the practical application of it superfluous. Those who had been
accustomed to express strength by the image of an elephant, swiftness by
that of a panther, and courage by that of a lion, would make no scruple
of substituting, in letters, the symbols for the ideas they had been
used to represent.
Here we plainly see the origin of allegorical expression, that it arose
from the ashes of hieroglyphics; and if to the same cause we should
refer that figurative boldness of style and imagery which distinguish
the oriental writings, we shall, perhaps, conclude more justly, than if
we should impute it to the superior grandeur of eastern genius.
From the same source with the verbal, we are to derive the sentimental
allegory, which is nothing more than a continuation of the metaphorical
or symbolical expression of the several agents in an action, or the
different objects in a scene.
The latter most peculiarly comes under the denomination of allegorical
imagery; and in this species of allegory, we include the impersonation
of passions, affections, virtues, and vices, &c. on account of which,
principally, the following odes were properly termed, by their author,
allegorical.
With respect to the utility of this figurative writing, the same
arguments that have been advanced in favour of descriptive poetry will
be of weight likewise here. It is, indeed, from impersonation, or, as it
is commonly termed, personification, that poetical description borrows
its chief powers and graces. Without the aid of this, moral and
intellectual painting would be flat and unanimated, and even the scenery
of material objects would be dull, without the introduction of
fictitious life.
These observations will be most effectually illustrated by the sublime
and beautiful odes that occasioned them; in those it will appear how
happily this allegorical painting may be executed by the genuine powers
of poetical genius, and they will not fail to prove its force and
utility by passing through the imagination to the heart.
ODE TO PITY.
"By Pella's bard, a magic name,
By all the griefs his thoughts could frame,
Receive my humble rite:
Long, Pity, let the nations view
Thy sky-worn robes of tenderest blue,
And eyes of dewy light!"
The propriety of invoking Pity, through the mediation of Euripides, is
obvious.--That admirable poet had the keys of all the tender passions,
and therefore could not but stand in the highest esteem with a writer of
Mr. Collins's sensibility.--He did, indeed, admire him as much as Milton
professedly did, and probably for the same reasons; but we do not find
that he has copied him so closely as the last mentioned poet has
sometimes done, and particularly in the opening of Samson Agonistes,
which is an evident imitation of the following passage in the
Phoenissæ:
~Hêgou paroithe, thygater, hôs typhlô podi
Ophthalmos ei su, nautiloisin astron hôs?
Deur' eis to leuron pedon ichnos titheis' emon,
Probaine------~
Act. III. Sc. I.
The "eyes of dewy light" is one of the happiest strokes of imagination,
and may be ranked among those expressions which
"--give us back the image of the mind."
"Wild Arun too has heard thy strains,
And Echo, 'midst my native plains,
Been soothed by Pity's lute."
"There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head."
Sussex, in which county the Arun is a small river, had the honour of
giving birth to Otway as well as to Collins: both these poets,
unhappily, became the objects of that pity by which their writings are
distinguished. There was a similitude in their genius and in their
sufferings. There was a resemblance in the misfortunes and in the
dissipation of their lives; and the circumstances of their death cannot
be remembered without pain.
The thought of painting in the temple of Pity the history of human
misfortunes, and of drawing the scenes from the tragic muse, is very
happy, and in every respect worthy the imagination of Collins.
ODE TO FEAR.
Mr. Collins, who had often determined to apply himself to dramatic
poetry, seems here, with the same view, to have addressed one of the
principal powers of the drama, and to implore that mighty influence she
had given to the genius of Shakespeare:
"Hither again thy fury deal,
Teach me but once like him to feel:
His cypress wreath my meed decree,
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee!"
In the construction of this nervous ode, the author has shown equal
power of judgment and imagination. Nothing can be more striking than the
violent and abrupt abbreviation of the measure in the fifth and sixth
verses, when he feels the strong influence of the power he invokes:
"Ah Fear! ah frantic Fear!
I see, I see thee near."
The editor of these poems has met with nothing in the same species of
poetry, either in his own, or in any other language, equal, in all
respects, to the following description of Danger:
"Danger whose limbs of giant mould
What mortal eye can fix'd behold?
Who stalks his round, an hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm,
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep."
It is impossible to contemplate the image conveyed in the two last
verses, without those emotions of terror it was intended to excite. It
has, moreover, the entire advantage of novelty to recommend it; for
there is too much originality in all the circumstances, to suppose that
the author had in his eye that description of the penal situation of
Catiline in the ninth Æneid:
"------Te, Catilina, minaci
Pendentem scopulo."
The archetype of the English poet's idea was in Nature, and, probably,
to her alone he was indebted for the thought. From her, likewise, he
derived that magnificence of conception, that horrible grandeur of
imagery, displayed in the following lines:
"And those, the fiends, who, near allied,
O'er Nature's wounds and wrecks preside;
While Vengeance in the lurid air
Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare:
On whom that ravening brood of fate,
Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait."
That nutritive enthusiasm, which cherishes the seeds of poetry, and
which is, indeed, the only soil wherein they will grow to perfection,
lays open the mind to all the influences of fiction. A passion for
whatever is greatly wild or magnificent in the works of nature seduces
the imagination to attend to all that is extravagant, however unnatural.
Milton was notoriously fond of high romance and gothic diableries; and
Collins, who in genius and enthusiasm bore no very distant resemblance
to Milton, was wholly carried away by the same attachments.
"Be mine to read the visions old,
Which thy awakening bards have told:
And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true."
"On that thrice hallow'd eve," &c.
There is an old traditionary superstition, that on St. Mark's eve, the
forms of all such persons as shall die within the ensuing year make
their solemn entry into the churches of their respective parishes, as
St. Patrick swam over the Channel, without their heads.
ODE TO SIMPLICITY.
The measure of the ancient ballad seems to have been made choice of for
this ode, on account of the subject; and it has, indeed, an air of
simplicity, not altogether unaffecting:
"By all the honey'd store
On Hybla's thymy shore,
By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear,
By her whose lovelorn woe,
In evening musings slow,
Sooth'd sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear."
This allegorical imagery of the honeyed store, the blooms, and mingled
murmurs of Hybla, alluding to the sweetness and beauty of the Attic
poetry, has the finest and the happiest effect: yet, possibly, it will
bear a question, whether the ancient Greek tragedians had a general
claim to simplicity in any thing more than the plans of their drama.
Their language, at least, was infinitely metaphorical; yet it must be
owned that they justly copied nature and the passions, and so far,
certainly, they were entitled to the palm of true simplicity; the
following most beautiful speech of Polynices will be a monument of
this, so long as poetry shall last:
~--------polydakrys d' aphikomên
Chronios idôn melathra, kai bômous theôn,
Gymnasia th' oisin enetraphên, Dirkês, th' hydôr,
Hôn ou dikaiôs apelatheis, xenên polin
Naiô, di' ossôn nam echôn dakryrrhooun.
All' ek gar algous algos au, se derkomai
Kara xyrêkes, kai peplous melanchimous
Echousan.~
Eurip. Phoeniss. ver. 369.
22 "But staid to sing alone
33 To one distinguish'd throne."
The poet cuts off the prevalence of simplicity among the Romans with the
reign of Augustus; and, indeed, it did not continue much longer, most of
the compositions, after that date, giving into false and artificial
ornament.
"No more, in hall or bower,
The passions own thy power,
Love, only love, her forceless numbers mean."
In these lines the writings of the Provençal poets are principally
alluded to, in which simplicity is generally sacrificed to the
rhapsodies of romantic love.
ODE ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER.
Procul! O! procul este profani!
This ode is so infinitely abstracted and replete with high enthusiasm,
that it will find few readers capable of entering into the spirit of it,
or of relishing its beauties. There is a style of sentiment as utterly
unintelligible to common capacities, as if the subject were treated in
an unknown language; and it is on the same account that abstracted
poetry will never have many admirers.
The authors of such poems must be content with the approbation of those
heaven-favoured geniuses, who, by a similarity of taste and sentiment,
are enabled to penetrate the high mysteries of inspired fancy, and to
pursue the loftiest flights of enthusiastic imagination. Nevertheless,
the praise of the distinguished few is certainly preferable to the
applause of the undiscerning million; for all praise is valuable in
proportion to the judgment of those who confer it.
As the subject of this ode is uncommon, so are the style and expression
highly metaphorical and abstracted: thus the sun is called "the
rich-hair'd youth of morn," the ideas are termed "the shadowy tribes of
mind," &c. We are struck with the propriety of this mode of expression
here, and it affords us new proofs of the analogy that subsists between
language and sentiment.
Nothing can be more loftily imagined than the creation of the cestus of
Fancy in this ode: the allegorical imagery is rich and sublime: and the
observation, that the dangerous passions kept aloof during the
operation, is founded on the strictest philosophical truth: for poetical
fancy can exist only in minds that are perfectly serene, and in some
measure abstracted from the influences of sense.
The scene of Milton's "inspiring hour" is perfectly in character, and
described with all those wild-wood appearances of which the great poet
was so enthusiastically fond:
"I view that oak, the fancied glades among,
By which as Milton lay, his evening ear,
Nigh sphered in heaven, its native strains could hear."
ODE,
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1746.
ODE TO MERCY.
The Ode written in 1746, and the Ode to Mercy, seem to have been written
on the same occasion, viz. the late rebellion; the former in memory of
those heroes who fell in defence of their country, the latter to excite
sentiments of compassion in favour of those unhappy and deluded wretches
who became a sacrifice to public justice.
The language and imagery of both are very beautiful; but the scene and
figures described, in the strophe of the Ode to Mercy, are exquisitely
striking, and would afford a painter one of the finest subjects in the
world.
ODE TO LIBERTY.
The ancient states of Greece, perhaps the only ones in which a perfect
model of liberty ever existed, are naturally brought to view in the
opening of the poem:
"Who shall awake the Spartan fife,
And call in solemn sounds to life,
The youths, whose locks divinely spreading,
Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue."
There is something extremely bold in this imagery of the locks of the
Spartan youths, and greatly superior to that description Jocasta gives
us of the hair of Polynices:
~Bostrychôn te kyanochrôta chaitas
Plokamon------~
"What new Alcæus, fancy-blest,
Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest," &c.
This alludes to a fragment of Alcæus still remaining, in which the poet
celebrates Harmodius and Aristogiton, who slew the tyrant Hipparchus,
and thereby restored the liberty of Athens.
The fall of Rome is here most nervously described in one line
"With heaviest sound, a giant statue, fell."
The thought seems altogether new, and the imitative harmony in the
structure of the verse is admirable.
After bewailing the ruin of ancient liberty, the poet considers the
influence it has retained, or still retains, among the moderns; and here
the free republics of Italy naturally engage his attention.--Florence,
indeed, only to be lamented on account of losing its liberty under those
patrons of letters, the Medicean family; the jealous Pisa, justly so
called, in respect to its long impatience and regret under the same
yoke; and the small Marino, which, however unrespectable with regard to
power or extent of territory, has, at least, this distinction to boast,
that it has preserved its liberty longer than any other state, ancient
or modern, having, without any revolution, retained its present mode of
government near fourteen hundred years. Moreover the patron saint who
founded it, and from whom it takes its name, deserves this poetical
record, as he is, perhaps, the only saint that ever contributed to the
establishment of freedom.
"Nor e'er her former pride relate
To sad Liguria's bleeding state."
In these lines the poet alludes to those ravages in the state of Genoa,
occasioned by the unhappy divisions of the Guelphs and Gibelines.
"----When the favour'd of thy choice,
The daring archer heard thy voice."
For an account of the celebrated event referred to in these verses, see
Voltaire's Epistle to the King of Prussia.
"Those whom the rod of Alva bruised,
Whose crown a British queen refused!"
The Flemings were so dreadfully oppressed by this sanguinary general of
Philip the Second, that they offered their sovereignty to Elizabeth;
but, happily for her subjects, she had policy and magnanimity enough to
refuse it. Desormeaux, in his Abrégé Chronologique de l'Histoire
d'Espagne, thus describes the sufferings of the Flemings: "Le duc d'Albe
achevoit de réduire les Flamands au désespoir. Après avoir inondé les
échafauds du sang le plus noble et le plus précieux, il faisoit
construire des citadelles en divers endroits, et vouloit établir
l'Alcavala, ce tribute onéreux qui avoit été longtems en usage parmi les
Espagnols."--_Abrég. Chron. tom. iv._
"------Mona,
Where thousand elfin shapes abide."