Of this conventionalism, however, we have detected
two instances; the first, an allusion to "shy Dian's horn" in
"breathless glades" of the days we live, peculiarly inappropriate in
a sonnet addressed "To George Cruikshank on his Picture of 'The
Bottle;'" the second a grave call to Memory to bring her tablets,
occurring in, and forming the burden of, a poem strictly personal,
and written for a particular occasion. But the author's partiality is
shown, exclusively of such poems as "Mycerinus" and "The Strayed
Reveller," where the subjects are taken from antiquity, rather in the
framing than in the ground work, as in the titles "A Modern Sappho,"
"The New Sirens," "Stagyrus," and "_In utrumque paratus_." It is
Homer and Epictetus and Sophocles who "prop his mind;" the immortal
air which the poet breathes is "Where Orpheus and where Homer are;"
and he addresses "Fausta" and "Critias."
There are four narrative poems in the volume:--"Mycerinus," "The
Strayed Reveller," "The Sick King in Bokhara," and "The Forsaken
Merman." The first of these, the only one altogether narrative in
form, founded on a passage in the 2nd Book of Herodotus, is the story
of the six years of life portioned to a King of Egypt succeeding a
father "who had loved injustice, and lived long;" and tells how he
who had "loved the good" revels out his "six drops of time.
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