[83]

THE

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE,

OR

LITERARY MISCELLANY,

FOR AUGUST, 1799.

FOR THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

The GLEANER, No. X.

Say, from Affection's various fource
Do none but turbid waters flow?
And cannot Fancy clear their course?
For Fancy is the friend of woe.

Say, mid that grove, in love-born state,
Where yon poor ringdove mourns her mate,
Is all that meets the fhepherd's ear

Improv'd by anguish and defpair?

Ah! no fair Fancy rules the fong,

She fwells her throat, fhe guides her tongue;
She bids the wavering afpin fpray

Quiver in cadence to her lay;
She bids the fringed oziers bow
And ruftle round the lake below.

To fuit the tenor of her gurgling fighs,

And foothe her throbbing breaft with folemn fympathies.

THE
HE effect of natural objects on
the mind, depends not more on
their characteristic qualities, than on
the temper and the turn of thinking
with which they are furveyed. We
eftimate every thing by comparing it
with fome other, and our ftandards
of comparison are always the objects
with which we are beft acquainted.
If these are fuch as naturally tend to
excite emotions of gaiety and plea-
fure, the characteristic qualities of an
oppofite nature, which any object
poffeffes, will have their proper ef-
fect greatly diminished, while, on the
contrary, its gay and pleafant quali-
ties will not only produce their pro-
per effect, but act on the mind with
an adventitious power. When ex
quifite fenfibility is united, as it ge-

MASON.

nerally is, with great benevolence of heart, not only the wrongs, but the evils of the world, produce the most painful emotions, a diseased irritability of the foul, that is not only unknown but inconceivable to minds of a harder and lefs fufceptible texture. Thofe who cannot conceive how trivial incidents fhould produce fo great emotions, those who cannot underftand how circumftances, whence they derive neither plea fure nor pain, should effect others with all the extravagance of forrow, laugh at their idle griefs, and mock the querulous egotism of their fenfibility. But (as Coleridge obferves in the preface to the first edition of his Poems) egotism is not difgufting except when it offends againft place and time. We defire to L 2

know

know how others feel in fituations better known as the author of a fe

that have excited our own fenfibility; we watch with minute attention, not, only the emotions of their minds, but the expreffions in which these affections are delineated-the bodily form and colour of the feelings of the mind. Some modern writers of pow. erful talents, who have attained equal excellence in pathetic fimplicity, and wild grandeur of imagination, have indulged this penfive humour in a querulous monotony, which has excited the farcafms of their critics, who declared they could not fympathize with their childish lullabies of forrow. They ought not, however, to be rash ly cenfured for the plaintive stile of their poetry; for though the ftile be frequently quaint and affected, this is by no means the cafe with their fentiments.

BOWLES, the elegant author of the low-defcriptive poem COOMBE ELLEN,

ries of beautiful fonnets, is alfo a poet of the plaintive clafs. All his performances are characterized by an exquifite union of pathetic fentiment, with picture fque defcriptions of nature, The minutenefs and accuracy of his fketches, equally free from tritenefs and inelegance, the penfive but tender caft of reflection which never degenerates into an unmanlyor whining tone, the dignity which always intermingles with his fadness, render COOMBE ELLEN one of his moft pleafing productions. COOMBE ELLEN is fituated among the most romantic mountains of Radnor hire, about five miles from Rhayd'r. The Poem commences in a train of vivid enthufiafm, which impreffes more deeply on the mind, the ftriking and aweinfpiring effect of grand and romantic mountain fcenery than any species. of defcription could have conveyed.

Call the strange spirit that abides unfeen
In wilds, and wastes, and fhaggy folitudes,

And bid his dim hand lead thee through thefe fcenes
That burst immense around! by mountains, glens,
And folitary cataracts, that dafh

Through dark ravines; and trees whofe wreathed roots
O'erhang the torrent's channell'd courfe; and ftreams,
That far below, along the narrow vale,
Upon their rocky way wind musical.

This paffage almoft rivals, in deep folemnity, the fublime ode of Gray, which delineates in fo ftriking a manner the characteristic effect of the Alpine fcenery upon a mind deeply impregnated with poetical enthufiafm. In the fame manner, the rocking that fweeps its murmuring and moffy boughs, above the head of the folitary mufer, and the wind which, at times, ftirs its deep filence round him, while the fhower falls on the fighing foliage, are prefented with the fame ftrength of imagery and felicity of diction which characterize the defcriptions of Gray, whe thus marks the effect of the melan choly fighing of the gale which pre

fages a florm, upon a fufceptible mind. "There is nothing fo like "the voice of a spirit, as that paufe, "when the gut is recollecting itself,

and rifing npon the ear in a fhrill

and plaintive note like the fwell of "an Eolian harp." The ftile of Bowles, even in his defcriptive sketches, is that of a continued monody. He paufes and views objects minutely, and purfues the different reflections which they excite; but the attentive obferver of nature is equally apparent with the man of tafte and knowledge. The futility of the. following defcription is not more re markable than its picturesque beauty:

High o'er thy head, amidst the shiver'd state,
Behold a fapling yet, the wild afh bend
Its dark red berries clustering, as it with'd
In the clear liquid mirror, ere it fell,
To trace its beauties o'er the prone cafcade,
Airy, and light, and elegant, the birch
Difplays its gloffy ftem, amidft the gloom
Of alders and jagged fern, and evermore
Waves her light penfile foliage, as the woo'd
The paffing gale to whisper flatteries.
The tranfition from the fcathed
eak, to the chain of moral reflections
which its ruin fuggefts, is in the pe-
culiar file of Bowles.

1

That minute and graphical delineation, which brings into notice circumftances which the carelefs eye

would easily overlook, that peculiar
felicity of language which pencils
objects to the mind, diftinguishes the
following picture. The effect of which
is much enhanced by the defcription
of the courfe of a veffel through the
South Sea.

-Now through the whispering wood
We fteal, and mark the old and moffy oaks
Imbofs the mountain flope; or the wild ash,
With rich red clufters mantling, or the birch
In lonely glens light-wavering; till behold
The rapid river, fhooting through the gloom
Its lucid line along; and on its fide

The bordering pastures green, where the twink'd ox
Lies dreaming, heedlefs of the numerous flies,

That in the tranfitory funfhine hum

Round his broad breast; and farther up the cot

With blue light smoke afcending.

Her dreary tract, (the veffel's)

Still Fancy follows, and at dead of night

Hears, with ftrange thunder, the huge fragments fall
Crashing from mountains of high-drifting ice,
That o'er her bows gleam fearful; till at last
She hails the gallant fhip in fome still bay
Safe moor'd or of delightful Tinian
Smiling, like fairy ifle amid the wafte;
Or of New Zealand, where from sheltering rocks
The clear cafcades gufh beautiful, and high
The woodland fcenery tow'rs above the mast,
Whofe long and wavy enfign freams beneath.
Far inland, clad in fnow the mountains lift
Their fpiry fummits, and endear the more
The fylvan fcene around; the healing air

Breathes o'er green myrtles, and the Poe-bird fits
Amid the fhade of aromatic fhrubs,

With filver neck, and blue-burnish'd wing.

Amid the most picturefque groups ly prefented with ideas that are frikof images, overshadowed with a ten- ing and fublime.

der melancholy hue, we are frequent

-Ancient ftream

That murmur'ft through the mountain folitudes,

The

The time has been when no eye mark'd thy courfe,
Save His who made the world! Fancy might dream,
She faw thee thus bound on from age to age

Unfeen of man, whilft awful Nature fat

On the rent rocks, and faid, "These haunts be mine."-
How many ages mult have swept to duft,
The fill fucceeding multitudes that “fret
Their little hours" upon this reftlefs fcene,
Or ere the fweeping waters could have cut
The folid rock fo deep: as now its roar
Comes hollow from below, methinks we hear
The voice of generations as they pass,
O'er the frail arch of earthly vanity,
To filence and oblivion.

The laft image feems to have been fuggefted by the vifion of Mirza in the Spectator.

The fenfibility of Bowles is that of a heart chaftifed but not embit tered by forrow. There is no paffion that has more uniformity in its operation than grief, but that tender melancholy which receives pleasure from objects of a congenial cast, of confiderable diverfification in its ap

pearance.

The fonnets of Bowles, with moft of his other poems, are of a fad and fombre caft; but they poflefs fuch a tenderne fs and fimplicity of thought, fuch a minutenefs and propriety of defcription, and fuch a judicious felection of imagery, that they will always clafs with the first productions in this fpecies of writing.

L.

[Obfervations on Gisborne's WALKS in a FOREST in our next.]

SIR,

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

WHEN looking over the table of

contents prefixed to your last Number, I was furprized to find an article entitled Detection of Plagiarifm in the Encyclopædia Britannica!! My furprife however vanifhed as foon as I had read the article fo denomi nated; for I perceived at once the object of Philaleibes's letter, and eafily gueffed the motive which had indu ced him to give to it fo extraordinary a title. Though he writes of me in terms of apparent civility, I do not think that he meant to ferve me, by publishing what he is ple-fed to call his detection; but I mult acknowledge that he has in fact rendered me a very effential fervice, by affording me an opportunity of wiping from my own character, and the character of my friend, an afperfion as falfe as it is illiberal, which, but for his

interference, I might never have

seen.

In the body of his letter, he inferts an extract from an upstart review, which begins thus: The article "Grammar, in the Encyclopædia Bri"tannica, contains many original and "profound views on the fubject of "language, derived from the prelec"tions of the learned Dr Hunter, Pro"feffor of Humanity in the University "of St Andrews; but the mode of "their publication merits the feve"reft reprehenfion.”

That the article contains many original views on the fubject of language, derived from the Profeffor's prelections, is not true; and whether the mode of publifhing what was derived from them, be deferving reprehenfion, your readers will judge from a fair flatement of the cafe. To the

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