The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair and Falconer | Page 8

as that of his hero--but the "dream is one," it is consistent with itself, and is painted with trembling truth of touch and delicate tenderness of feeling. We feel it to be destitute of profound suggestiveness and massive thought, but its verse is solemnly dignified, its imagery is chastely grand, and a rich chiaroscuro rests like a tropical night upon the whole. Besides the stanzas we have already alluded to, it has some of those brief touches which show the master's hand: such as--
"Some deem'd him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad;"
or in his curse upon the Cock, the line--
"And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear;"
or the burst of description, how like the scene when the clouds suddenly disperse, and show us
"the evening star.?And from embattled clouds emerging slow,?Cynthia came riding in her silver car:?And hoary mountain cliffs shone faintly from afar."
His smaller poems possess many felicitous lines. The "Ode to Peace" closes splendidly, and the "Hermit" is little inferior to Gray's "Elegy." Its burden is the doctrine of the Resurrection, and it breathes a more evangelical spirit than Gray. It begins in gloom, but ends in glory--a glory reflected from the revealed truth of Scripture, which, once believed, seems then to the poet corroborated by those analogies of nature which had previously ministered despair instead of hope--such as the monthly death and resurrection of the moon, and the nightly darkening and morning revelation of the beauties of the landscape. The stanza commencing with "'Tis night," may be called perfectly beautiful; and we shall not soon forget that Dr Thomas Brown never quoted it without tears, and that he quoted it, in tones of deep and tremulous pathos, in the last lecture he ever delivered to his students.
On the whole, Beattie may be ranked beside, or near, Campbell, Collins, Gray, and Akenside. Deficient in thought and passion, in creative power, and copious imagination, he is strong in sentiment, in mild tenderness, and in delicate description of nature. Whatever become of his Essay on Truth, or even of his less elaborate and more pleasing Essays on Music, Imagination, and Dreams, the world can never, at any stage of its advancement, forget to read and admire the "Minstrel" and the "Hermit," or to cherish the memory of their warm-hearted and sorely-tried author.
We now bid the author of the "Minstrel" farewell! We love to think of him wandering in youth through the black plantations of firs, which border on his birthplace, or climbing grey Garvock Hill, and fixing his dark pensive eyes on the distant white sails, hovering like rare wings over the rounded blue-green German deep, or crossing those dreary moors which lie between Stonehaven and Aberdeen, a solitary pedestrian, in search of learning and distinction, in that noble old city--or teaching his son to "consider the cresses of the garden 'how they grow,'" and to find in them something worth a thousand homilies or elaborate arguments for the being of a God--or taking his last look of the dead body of his last son, Montague, and saying, "Now I have done with the world." He had many of the powers, all the virtues, and scarcely one of the faults generally supposed to be connected with the character, mind, and temperament of a poet.
BEATTIE'S POEMS.
THE MINSTREL;
OR,
THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS.
PREFACE.
The design was, to trace the progress of a Poetical Genius, born in a rude age, from the first dawning of fancy and reason, till that period at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a MINSTREL, that is, as an itinerant poet and musician:--a character which, according to the notions of our forefathers, was not only respectable, but sacred.
I have endeavoured to imitate Spenser in the measure of his verse, and in the harmony, simplicity, and variety of his composition. Antique expressions I have avoided; admitting, however, some old words, where they seemed to suit the subject: but I hope none will be found that are now obsolete, or in any degree not intelligible to a reader of English poetry.
To those who may be disposed to ask what could induce me to write in so difficult a measure, I can only answer, that it pleases my ear, and seems from its Gothic structure and original, to bear some relation to the subject and spirit of the poem. It admits both simplicity and magnificence of sound and of language, beyond any other stanza I am acquainted with. It allows the sententiousness of the couplet, as well as the more complex modulation of blank verse. What some critics have remarked, of its uniformity growing at last tiresome to the ear, will be found to hold true only when the poetry is faulty in other respects.
BOOK I.
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,?Quarum sacra fero, ingenti perculsus amore,?Accipiant--
VIRGIL
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Ah!