"
--p.38.
Indeed, the general adaptation of the style to the immediate matter,
the alternation of the poetic and the familiar, with a certain
mixture even of classical phrase and allusion, is highly appropriate,
and may almost be termed constant, except in occasional instances
where more poetry, and especially more conception and working out of
images, is introduced than squares with a strict observance of
nature. Thus the lines quoted where Elspie applies to herself the
incident of "the high new bridge" and "the great key-stone in the
middle" are succeeded by others (omitted in our extract) where the
idea is followed into its details; and there is another passage in
which, through no less than seventeen lines, she compares herself to
an inland stream disturbed and hurried on by the mingling with it of
the sea's tide. Thus also one of the most elaborate descriptions in
the poem,--an episode in itself of the extremest beauty and finish,
but, as we think, clearly misplaced,--is a picture of the dawn over a
great city, introduced into a letter of Philip's, and that, too,
simply as an image of his own mental condition. There are but few
poets for whom it would be superfluous to reflect whether pieces of
such-like mere poetry might not more properly form part of the
descriptive groundwork, and be altogether banished from discourse and
conversation, where the greater amount of their intrinsic care and
excellence becomes, by its position, a proportionally increasing load
of disregard for truthfulness.
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