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قراءة كتاب The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 Volume 23, Number 1
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The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 Volume 23, Number 1
which we mention any common occurrence.
Thomson accomplishes his purpose by portraying his own feelings; not indeed in so many words, but by the use of those expressions, and by those transitions of thought, which mark a state of emotion. The epithet ‘boding,’ to which we have referred, is an example. It is an indirect disclosure of the mood of his own mind. At another time it is not improbable that an epithet of a directly opposite meaning would have been selected. The reader is affected by it, because by a law of sympathy, we are affected by whatever reveals the presence of passion in another. It influences us precisely as the tones of the voice of a person in distress influence us. Both are expressive of emotion, and we cannot remain unaffected by them.
This is the main source of the pleasure we feel in reading Thomson's description. It conveys to us but a very indistinct idea of the subject matter. Different readers, according to their mental peculiarities, will be differently affected by it. He does not paint to the bodily eye, but to the eye of the mind; and he will feel most pleasure who puts himself in the same position as the poet, and sees with his eyes and hears with his ears. Unless he can do this, he will derive but little gratification from the perusal.
Less minute than Irving, and more picturesque than Thomson, Scott will probably to most readers give more pleasure than either of them. In conveying lively impressions of natural objects he is unsurpassed, but he is scarcely less successful in inspiring the mind of the reader with the same emotions that fill his own breast. There is ever between the thought and its expression a perfect harmony. It is only when agitated by passion that he uses the language of passion. Hence we never find that timid phraseology which so often disgusts us in Thomson; vox et præterea nihil. No one delights more in the use of figurative language, nor employs metaphors that more appropriately convey the sentiment that pervades his mind. In the passage we have quoted are the following lines:
‘Aloft the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock.’
The poet looking up at the trees firmly rooted in the rifts of the rock, defying the tempest and storm, felt an emotion of pleasure which the sight of their lofty position, and the apparent danger of their being hurled headlong at the first blast of wind, contrasted with the sense of their real security, produced. To express this pleasurable emotion, he fastens upon the resemblance between a root of the tree and an anchor; a resemblance not between the things themselves, but between their uses. Neglecting all the points of difference, and confining his attention to this single point of similarity, he presents an image which all admit to be highly forcible and poetical.
The great merit of all descriptive poetry consists in the unity of feeling which pervades it. Unlike the epic, or the drama, it has none of the interest which arises from a connected narrative, or the development of individual character in reference to a certain end. The poet confines himself to the expression of those feelings which are awakened by the sight of the beauty and sublimity of nature. Passing, as he necessarily must, from one object to another, each fitted to excite in his bosom conflicting emotions, his attention is so much diverted, that none of them produces upon him its legitimate effect. There is wanting some central object of interest to which all others are subordinate. Hence is explained the listlessness of which every one is conscious in the continuous perusal of the Seasons. We find the greatest pleasure by reading a page here and a page there, according to the state of our feelings.
It is never in short poems that the descriptive poets succeed best. L’Allegro and Le Penseroso are gems; but all Milton’s genius could not have made the Paradise Lost readable, were it deprived of its unity as an epic, and broken up into a series of detached pictures. The Deserted Village of Goldsmith is the longest poem of this class that we now remember, having all its parts so pervaded by a common spirit that a succession of new objects does not impair the designed effect. Sweet Auburn as it was in its palmy days, and as it is in its desolation, presents two distinct pictures, yet so closely connected that each heightens the effect of the other by the contrast. Nothing can exceed the exquisite art with which Goldsmith has seized upon those circumstances that tend to make the desired impression, and rejected all others. How perfect are each of the following descriptions, and how much would their beauty be marred by the transfer of a single circumstance from one to the other:
‘How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm;
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighb’ring hill;
The hawthorn-bush with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made.
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‘The dancing pair that simply sought renown,
By holding out to tire each other down;
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the place;
The bashful virgin’s sidelong looks of love,
The matron’s glance, that would those looks reprove.
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‘No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But choked with sedges works its weedy way;
Along thy glade, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires the echoes with unvaried cries;
Sunk are thy bowers, in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o’ertops the mouldering wall.’
It is by the selection of such objects as have in themselves no common bond of union, but which combine to raise a certain emotion, that the essential distinction is to be found between the descriptions of the poet and the prose-writer. The latter joins objects together as they are joined in nature, following a principle of association which is simple and obvious. His resemblances are usually such as are cognizable by the senses; a likeness in the sensible qualities of things. The poet’s principle of association is in the effect produced on his imagination. Things which have not in themselves a single point of similarity, are connected together, because they produce the same emotions of pleasure, or pain, or hope, or melancholy. A beautiful illustration of this is found in the opening stanzas of Gray’s Elegy:
‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.’
A summer evening in the country is associated in most minds with images of mirth and joy. Thus Goldsmith has described it:
‘Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening’s close,
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There as I passed with careless steps, and slow,
The mingling notes came softened from below;
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung,
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o’er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school,