Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/162

152 If these freezing remarks be false, as we believe they are, the surest way to thaw them is to quote the whole passage, and well known as it is, it delights us to do so, for a copy of Campbell is not on all parlour tables, though on many thousands.

What better could our excellent friend, if he will allow us to call him so—had he his heart's content—possibly desire? We feel assured that he is willing to eat his words and to pronounce—with us—the passage perfectly beautiful. The poet has not given us here "a collection of topics gathered from remote sources"—you must not say so—you must not indeed—for were that dog to overhear you finding fault with his master, he would bite the calf of your leg—and though not mad he—you might happen to die of the phoby.

Had Coleridge written these two lines, Heavens! how the Quarterly would have extolled them to the skies—and Maga rejoiced to join her—for their imitative harmony—that is howling—and what not while all the ears in the neighbourhood would have been deafened with perpetual mouthings of—"." Bless "the wolf's long howl" to the ghastly moon—for the sailor—as he shuddered to hear it—thought of his far-away faithful dog "whining a welcome home"—and his "heart was in heaven."

In a note, the reviewer says of the three lines above about Andes, "This passage, we believe, is a general favourite. The last line deserves applause; a mountain, viewed from a distance, may be visible above as well as below the clouds, and the expression

is as just as bold. But the passage is disfigured, to our taste, by the introduction of too many points of similitude with human grandeur. 'The giant of the Western Star, shall be allowed to pass in all its vague magniloquence; but the 'meteor-standard to the winds unfurl'd,' inevitably suggests ideas of military pomp, if not of military office, which accord but ill with the mountain's solitary and severe