Lock,' Windsor Forest,' and the Epistle of Eloisa' are of themselves sufficient proof.*

One of the most noted of our descriptive poems is DYER'S 'Grongar Hill'; an elaborate attempt at the picturesque rendering of a rich and complicated scene, with a view to emotional effects and moral lessons. The material is good, but the treatment is confusing.

A poet may simply quote or adduce striking features of the external world; elevating them by emotional epithets, and seeking only to arouse agreeable or other feelings, The plan does not require much attention to order, although, even for pure emotional effect, certain juxtapositions are always preferable to others.

It is a higher aim to place us in a scene where we realize all the parts in their actual arrangement. The result is not a purely intellectual one. If it succeeds, each separate feature is made more conceivable by collateral support, and if our emotions are at all dependent on realizing a picture, they are so much the more powerfully stimulated.

There is scarcely a middle course between detached or scattered allusions and the full picture. In order to the picture, however, method and continuity are requisite. To separate the scenic parts by narrative circumstances, reflections or moral applications, however interesting these may be, is a mistake in every view.

Dyer commences—

Silent nymph, with curious eye,
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man;
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale ;
Come, with all thy various hues,
Come and aid thy sister Muse;

*In Campbell's Poets (Introduction), a controversy is maintained as to whether Pope had an eye for external nature; Wordsworth and Southey being cited as authorities on the negative side. Pope certainly did not evoke from scenery those wonderful varieties of emotion that we are now familiar with in our poets; and accordingly, did not lay himself out to compose elaborate views of external nature in picturesque stillness. The labour would not have repaid either himself or his reader, and, in his highest flights of imagination, he preserved a clear sense of the intelligible and the congruous. Hence we need not search in his poems for the failures in description, from attempting too much, or from want of method and lucidity of arrangement. In the department of action, so much easier than still life, Pope is never wanting in picturesque brilliancy of illustration.

DYER'S GRONGAR HILL.

Now, while Phoebus, riding high
Gives lustre to the land and sky;
Grongar Hill invites my song,
Draw the landscape bright and strong
Grongar, in whose mossy cells,
Sweetly musing, Quiet dwells.

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A preliminary flourish of this kind, while contributing nothing to the intended picture, does not interfere with it. Mere outbursts of admiring emotion are best placed, either in advance, or at the end, of the description proper. In advance they may be a preparation of mind for the arduous part; while, at the close, they take full advantage of what has preceded.

The poet supposes himself ascending the hill, and gives the succession of appearances in the course of the ascent. This, well managed, is a contribution and support to the prospect from the top. He begins

About his chequer'd sides I wind,

And leave his brooks and meads behind,
And groves, and grottoes where I lay,
And vistas, shooting beams of day.

It cannot be said that these particulars fall into a welldefined whole; they are rather traced out at random, with merely the difference due to the successive stages of the ascent. We pass on to the prospect itself.

Now I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapours intervene ;
But the gay, the open scene,
Does the face of nature show,
In all the hues of heaven's bow;
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight.

This is still the language of emotion, with only a vague approach to the picturesque; yet the vagueness is a safeguard against confusion. The enumeration of the objects

now commences

Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies!
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires !
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain heads!
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks!

It is at once apparent that the poet does not mean to proceed by giving a comprehensive plan. What he does is so far well; he selects, to begin with, some of the largest and boldest features of the scene-the old castles, the spires (of churches and dwellings), the mountain summits, yellowed by the sun; with which he connects the flocks of sheep and the rocks, a conjunction casually formed out of the comuon link of the sun.

He now passes to the trees.

Below me trees unnumber'd rise,
Beautiful in various dyes;

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew,
The slender fir that taper grows,

The sturdy oak, with broad-spread boughs.
And beyond the purple grove,

Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love!
Gaudy as the opening dawn,

Lies a long and level lawn,

On which a dark hill, steep and high,
Holds and charms the wandering eye!

To start with a detail of individual kinds of trees is not the way to picture the scene as a whole. The merit of the first six lines lies in the choice of epithets, partly picturesque, partly emotional, for some of our distinctive forest trees. Leaving these, the poem turns to general sketches. A fine lawn ends in a dark hill, and to this is devoted an interesting detail.

Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,

His sides are clothed with waving wood,

And ancient towers crown his brow,

That cast an awful look below.

We are now curious to know whether these are the same as the old castles on the cliffs, which were first selected out of the conspicuous objects of the landscape.

Many more lines are devoted to these castles; their ruins are the haunts of the raven, the fox and the adder. A long-drawn moral on the vanity of human grandeur is superadded.

A new start takes up the rivers.

And see the rivers, how they run

Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go

A various journey to the deep.

BATTLE OF SHERIFF-MUIR.

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The profusion of rivers is quite remarkable, and, if a fact, should be differently managed. One river can be pictured, or two, as in Milton's 'Temptation,' but an indefinite plurality overpowers us; and we simply accept the vague suggestions as isolated touches, each carrying a certain emotional association.

The author now makes a fresh commencement.

Ever charming, ever new,

When will the landscape tire the view!
The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!

The pleasant seat, the ruin'd tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give each a double charm,

As pearls upon an Æthiop's arm.

We have had most of these particulars already; and the repetition, while confusing the picture, contributes little to the feeling. The last line but one is an admirable expression of what may be gained by picturesque description, when both full and intelligible; each part increasing the charm of its neighbour: a beautiful valley heightens the interest of the streams that flow in it, and is itself repaid with increase.

The poet next turns to the southern side, and proceeds in the same style.

The poetry of battles has descended from Homer, and may have flourished long before him. The picturesque is aimed at by the usual arts-felicitous snatches, with more or less of comprehensiveness. Campbell's 'Hohenlinden,' as we saw, depends on broad effects, and gives little attention to the opposite sides and the changing phases of the fight. When more closely viewed, a battle belongs to the class of active ongoings that present a wide area to the eye at the same moment; while the changing phases involve the narrative of succession. The 'Battle of Sheriff-Muir' (included among BURNS's poems, though only an improved version of an older form), is illustrative of the successes and failures of description in one of the most difficult of subjects.

I saw the battle sair and tough,
And reekin' red ran mony a sheugh,
My heart, for fear, gaed sough for sough,
To hear the thuds, and see the cluds,
O' clans frae woods, in tartan duds,

Wha glaum'd at kingdoms three, man.

The personality of the spectator, well introduced, is a help to the picture, as well as to the emotion. The phrase, 'clans frae woods, in tartan duds,' helps us to conceive the gathering and aspect of the highlanders; the thuds' and 'cluds' (clouds) are suggestive aids to the picture. The other side is given in the next stanza.

The red-coat lads, wi' black cockades,
To meet them were na slaw, man;

They rush'd and push'd, and blude outgush'd,
And mony a bouk did fa', man;

The great Argyle led on his files,

I wat they glanced for twenty miles;

They hack'd and hash'd, while broad swords clash'd,
And thro' they dash'd, and hew'd and smash'd,

Till fey men died awa, man.

The Argyle force is given on the large scale by the line 'glanced twenty miles,' and the picturesque detail by the first line. The action is represented by 'rush'd and push'd,' with the suggestive accessories, blude outgush'd,' and 'mony a bouk (body) did fa". The three last lines are merely a repetition of the foregoing; the hand-to-hand fight being pretty well exhausted in a few leading circumstances. The succeeding stanza returns to the side of the highlanders, and is still more effective in combining a comprehensive view with energetic particulars.

In lines extended lang and large,

When bayonets o'erpowered the targe,
And thousands hastened to the charge,
Wi' Highland wrath they frae the sheath
Drew blades o' death, till, out o' breath,
They fled like frighted doos, man.

This does more to make us conceive the battle than either of the foregoing stanzas. The poet keeps steadily to the pictorial representation, while the emotional details are aids and not hindrances to the effect. What follows is the rout, and is not illustrative of the picturesque to the same degree.