The Poetical Works of William Collins; With a Memoir Part 19

These observations will be most effectually ill.u.s.trated 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sions, 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 pa.s.sage in the Phnissae:

H???? pa????e, ???ate?, ?? t?f?? p?d?

?f?a??? e? s?, ?a?t????s?? ast??? ??; ?e??' e?? t? ?e???? ped?? ????? t??e??' e??, ???a??e Act. III. Sc. I.

~Hegou paroithe, thygater, hos typhlo podi Ophthalmos ei su, nautiloisin astron hos?

Deur' eis to leuron pedon ichnos t.i.theis' 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."

Suss.e.x, in which county the Arun is a small river, had the honour of giving birth to Otway as well as to Collins: both these pts, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ptry, seems here, with the same view, to have addressed one of the princ.i.p.al 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 circ.u.mstances, to suppose that the author had in his eye that description of the penal situation of Catiline in the ninth aeneid:

"------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 pa.s.sion 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 superst.i.tion, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sions, and so far, certainly, they were ent.i.tled 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:

p???da???? d' af?????

??????? ?d?? e?a??a, ?a? ???? ?e??, G??as?a ?' ??s?? e?et?af??, ??????, ?' ?d??, H?? ?? d??a??? ape?a?e??, ?e??? p????

?a??, d?' ?ss?? ?a e??? da?????????.

???' e? ?a? a????? a???? a?, se de???a?

?a?a ?????e?, ?a? pep???? e?a??????

????sa?.

Eurip. Phniss. ver. 369.

~--------polydakrys d' aphikomen Chronios idon melathra, kai bomous theon, Gymnasia th' oisin enetraphen, Dirkes, th' hydor, Hon ou dikaios apelatheis, xenen polin Naio, di' osson nam echon dakryrrhooun.

All' ek gar algous algos au, se derkomai Kara xyrekes, kai peplous melanchimous Echousan.~ Eurip. Phniss. 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 pa.s.sions own thy power, Love, only love, her forceless numbers mean."

In these lines the writings of the Provencal poets are princ.i.p.ally alluded to, in which simplicity is generally sacrificed to the rhapsodies of romantic love.