GENERAL ESTIMATE. 193 866 To-morrow let us do or die! But when the bolt of death is hurl'd, Its echoes, and its empty tread, Would sound like voices from the dead! "But hark, the trump! - to-morrow thou From Outalissi's soul! Because I may not stain with grief The death-song of an Indian chief!”— p. 70—73. It is needless, after these extracts, to enlarge upon the beauties of this poem. They consist chiefly in the feeling and tenderness of the whole delineation, and the taste and delicacy with which all the subordinate parts are made to contribute to the general effect. Before dismissing it, however, we must say a little of its faults, which are sufficiently obvious and undeniable. In the first place, the narrative is extremely obscure and imperfect; and has greater blanks in it than could be tolerated even in lyric poetry. We hear absolutely nothing of Henry, from the day the Indian first brings him from the back country, till he returns from Europe fifteen years thereafter. It is likewise a great oversight in Mr. Campbell to separate his lovers, when only twelve years of age-a period at which it is utterly inconceiv able that any permanent attachment could have been formed. The greatest fault, however, of the work, is the occasional constraint and obscurity of the diction, proceeding apparently from too laborious an effort at emphasis or condensation. The metal seems in several places to have been so much overworked, as to have lost VOL. II. 194 CAMPBELL'S GERTRUDE not only its ductility, but its lustre; and, while there are passages which can scarcely be at all understood after the most careful consideration, there are others which have an air so elaborate and artificial, as to destroy all appearance of nature in the sentiment. Our readers may have remarked something of this sort, in the first extracts with which we have presented them; but there are specimens still more exceptionable. In order to inform us that Albert had lost his wife, Mr. Campbell is pleased to say, that "Fate had reft his mutual heart;" and in order to tell us something else - though what, we are utterly unable to conjecture - he concludes a stanza on the delights of mutual love, with these three lines: "Roll on, ye days of raptur'd influence, shine! Nor, blind with ecstasy's celestial fire, Shall love behold the spark of earth-born time expire !' The whole twenty-second stanza of the first part is extremely incorrect; and the three concluding lines are almost unintelligible. "But where was I when Waldegrave was no more? And thou didst pale thy gentle head extend, In woes, that ev'n the tribe of deserts was thy friend!'" If Mr. Campbell had duly considered the primary necessity of perspicuity- especially in compositions which aim only at pleasing we are persuaded that he would never have left these and some other passages in so very questionable a state. There is still a good deal for him to do, indeed, in a new edition: and working as he must work in the true spirit and pattern of what is before him, we hope he will yet be induced to make considerable additions to a work, which will please those most who are most worthy to be pleased; and always seem most beautiful to those who give it the greatest share of their attention. Of the smaller pieces which fill up the volume, we have scarce left ourselves room to say any thing. The greater part of them have been printed before; and AND OTHER POEMS. 195 there are probably few readers of English poetry who are not already familiar with the Lochiel and the Hohinlinden - the one by far the most spirited and poetical denunciation of coming woe, since the days of Cassandra; the other the only representation of a modern battle, which possesses either interest or sublimity. The song to "the Mariners of England," is also very generally known. It is a splendid instance of the most magnificent diction adapted to a familiar and even trivial metre. Nothing can be finer than the first and the last stanzas. "Ye mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle, and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe! And sweep through the deep," &c.-p. 101. "The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn; Till danger's troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. When the storm has ceas'd to blow; When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceas'd to blow."-p. 103, 104. "The Battle of the Baltic," though we think it has been printed before, is much less known. Though written in a strange, and we think an unfortunate metre, it has great force and grandeur, both of conception and expression—that sort of force and grandeur which results from the simple and concise expression of great events and natural emotions, altogether unassisted by any splendour or amplification of expression. The characteristic merit, indeed, both of this piece and of Hohinlinden, is, that, by the forcible delineation of one or two great circumstances, they give a clear and most energetic representation of events as complicated as they are impressive and thus impress the mind of the reader with all the terror and sublimity of the subject, while they rescue him from the fatigue and perplexity of its 196 CAMPBELL'S POEMS. details. Nothing in our judgment can be more impressive than the following very short and simple description of the British fleet bearing up to close action:"As they drifted on their path, There was silence deep as death! The description of the battle itself (though it begins with a tremendous line) is in the same spirit of homely sublimity; and worth a thousand stanzas of thunder, shrieks, shouts, tridents, and heroes. 66 6 'Hearts of oak,' our captains cried! when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships! Like the hurricane eclipse Of the sun. "Again! again! again! And the havoc did not slack, Till a feebler cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back ; Their shots along the deep slowly boom : Then cease!—and all is wail, As they strike the shatter'd sail; Or, in conflagration pale, Light the gloom.-" There are two little ballad pieces, published for the first time, in this collection, which have both very considerable merit, and afford a favourable specimen of Mr. Campbell's powers in this new line of exertion. The longest is the most beautiful; but we give our readers the shortest, because we can give it entire. "O heard ye yon pibrach sound sad in the gale, SONGS AND BALLADS. "And tell me, I charge you! ye clan of my spouse, "I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud,' Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and loud; "O! pale grew the cheek of that chieftain, I ween, 'I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her grief, In dust low the traitor has knelt to the ground, Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn!"-p. 105–107. 197 We close this volume, on the whole, with feelings of regret for its shortness, and of admiration for the genius of its author. There are but two noble sorts of poetry-the pathetic and the sublime; and we think he has given very extraordinary proofs of his talents for both. There is something, too, we will venture to add, in the style of many of his conceptions, which irresistibly impresses us with the conviction, that he can do much greater things than he has hitherto accomplished; and leads us to regard him, even yet, as a poet of still greater promise than performance. It seems to us, as if the natural force and boldness of his ideas were habitually checked by a certain fastidious timidity, and an anxiety about the minor graces of correct and chastened composition. Certain it is, at least, that his greatest and most lofty flights have been made in those smaller pieces, about which, it is natural to think, he must have felt least solicitude; and that he has succeeded most splendidly where he must have been most free from the fear of failure. We wish any praises or exhortations of ours had the power to give him con |