THE RAINBOW. Triumphal arch, that fill'st the sky, To teach me what thou art Still seem, as to my childhood's sight, Betwixt the earth and heaven. Can all that optics teach, unfold When science from creation's face Enchantment's veil withdraws, To cold material laws? And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams, When o'er the green undeluged earth And when its yellow lustre smiled O'er mountain, tower and town, As young thy beauties seem, Heaven still rebuilds thy span, Now here, it must be admitted, are to be found brilliant imagery, ingenious reflection, learned allusion, tradition, theology; but not, we dare to say, a solitary sentiment of those which such an object and scene would most naturally inspire, and which would, therefore, be the most proper to reproduce the like in others. The opening verses turn upon the trite conceit that science and experience spoil the illusions of ignorance and youth; and the staple of the rest is the traditional rainbow of the Bible. As philosophy, this may be excellent; as theology, unexceptionable: but with due respect to the former and all reverence to the latter, we contend that it is not, on this account, the better Poetry. The versification is easy and the diction (perhaps the best part of Campbell) of classic elegance, the images often and richly varied. But there are compositions, without any serious pretensions to Poetry, of which as much might be said with justice:— for example Sir William Jones' mockheroics, on the game of chess, and Swift's ballad on the" South Sea Bubbles." Were we captious, there might, moreover, be some exceptions, slight indeed, to even this restricted praise. Some of the thoughts seem to us false, or at the least exaggerated. For instance, in the first line the phrase, "fill'st the sky" we doubt that the rainbow ever gives any such impression. Then, the "dream of gems and gold" in the third stanza; is this a dream for childhood? Children are wont to know little and think less of gold, and especially gems, which are rarely known at that age. Certainly, none in the shape of a rainbow and figure is well understood to have more influence than color, in forming the suggestive principle in children. Attributed to the jaundiced fancy of a Jew or other miser, the reflection were appropriate. It may be indeed that the national instinct is precociously developed in the country of Campbell. But we insist, that (supposing it any where natural) it is merely a Scotch dream-the dream of a Scotch childand, at all events, less fit for poetry than for political economy. "And yet" &c. (5th stanza). The adversative force of this "yet," we do not perceive. But this you will deem more than compensated by the far-famed "robe of beams," which follows it-" woven in the sky." Now, with submission, "robe," we ask, to whom or to what? For a robe hav ing no reference to a wearer, corporeal, or imaginary, or so much as imaginable, as it is without use in fact, so must it be without aptness in figure. It might be hypercritical to add, that the word robe denotes no garment bearing the most fanciful resemblance to a rainbow. A cincture (if the measure permitted), or a scarf of beams would have improved the propriety of the image, though hardly the dignity of the expression. Then, as to its being "woven," we submit that the soft, ungrained surface of the rainbow presents nothing to suggest an impression of tissue; unless to the eye of reflection, which we have denied to be the eye of Poetry. The truth we suspect is, that this same "robe of beams"-like so many others of the modern fabric from the loom of the Muses-has dazzled too much to allow of any very nice inspection into its texture. And so we might proceed to the end, if such were not more strictly objections to the writer than the poet. As a poem, we must repeat of this production, that we do not trace in it, from the first to the last line, one natural and spontaneous emotion, one characteristic image: :-we would except (in the 9th verse) the "singing lark," the "freshened fields" and the snowy mushrooms." It might have been written by one who had his idea of a rainbow from a view or a landscape. It is a brilliant and cold crystallization of esprit. It discovers nothing of the simplicity, the life, the awe, in a word the nature, with which that most glorious of meteoric phenomena inspires the impassionable soul and the pictured page of the genuine poet. A soul of this complexion, if we are not much mistaken, will, on the contrary, be found to live in every line of the following effusion. We shall venture to mark by italics a few of the most prominent of its beauties. To designate them all, were to destroy the means of distinction. THE RAINBOW. BY AMELIA. The green earth was moist with the late fallen showers, As I threw back my tresses to catch the cool breeze, And fair as an angel, it floated as free, With a wing on the earth and a wing on the sea. How calm was the ocean, how gentle its swell! Like a woman's soft bosom it rose and it fell, While its light sparkling waves, stealing laughingly o'er, How wide was the sweep of its beautiful wings! There are moments, I think, when the spirit receives Yes, these are the thoughts which that grand spectacle will awaken in every feeling bosom; though how few are there who can thus translate them into the language of men! These are the sentiments natural to the situation, the incidents proper to the scene: not optical philosophy, Biblical lore and Wall street visions of gems and gold! We have, for brevity, omitted the closing stanza, (with half the opening one,) which is occupied with some moral reflections, irrelevant to our subject, though very appropriate to the poem. With the few mute indications already offered, and the guidance of the principle above established, this poem is now commended to the consideration of the reader. No exposition of its merits will be here attempted, since our space will not permit it in the requisite detail. Indeed, we should be loth to do so under any circumstances; warned by the fate of the beautiful phenomenon it so worthily sings, which is spoiled (as Campbell tells us) by cold, critical analysis. Only a few words, then, with regard to its conformity with, or corroboration of, our own principle of Poetry. It has been remarked that Campbell's poem is, every line, drawn from the Jaboratory of memory or of thought. The reverse is true, and to the like extent, of "Amelia's" which is not disfigured, we believe, by a single instance of philosophical reflection, or historical allusion. Like the passages cited from Byron, it is simply a record of feelings, the natural suggestions of vivid impression and enraptured emotion. Let the reader note how skillfully-no, that is not the word, execution like this was never the result of art with what an instinctive felicity, rather, he is introduced to the Rainbow of " Amelia," in the opening lines. The freshened face of nature is before youthe rain-drops fall around you from the breeze-shaken boughs. For our part, we can forget ourselves back into many a such scene. We can, too, appreciate the girlish toss of the tresses, although we have, ourselves, (not having enjoyed the privilege of Teresias,) never worn this graceful appendage-no, not even to the fashionable length of the neuter sex! But, in especial, that "breeze fluttering DOWN," is what none would ever note but an exquisite observer of nature. And this, indeed, is the characteristic of this gifted woman. Or rather she seems organized to some mystical sympathy with inanimate objects and appearances. But it may be the result of an intense love of nature-a love usually deepened by a certain humor, which, we think, is traceable in the writings of the gentle " Amelia," we mean a leaven of misanthropy: a caprice as rare, it is thought, among women as that of the vertical breeze is among winds. Her descriptions of seascenery, in particular, are unequaled. Were our population not so migratory, we should be surprised to find Mrs. Welby in the interior of the country. She must have been brought up " along the shore of the hoarse-sounding sea," to talk Homerically; probably on the banks of some of our ocean lakes. Of the excellence alluded to, we will presently notice an instance from another of her poems. In this before us, we would revert the reader's attention to the waves kneeling down on the shore," in reverence to the rainbow. The exquisite propriety of this image would probably escape most of its readers-many who have never seen a sea-shore, and still more who have not the faculty of perceiving all they see. But rarely has there been a happier conception, unless, perhaps, the following, from a piece of her own, entitled, (if we remember,) MUSINGS: "The twilight hours, like birds, flew by, That LEAPED UPON THE AIR, "I heard the laughing wind behind How cool and moist they were!" Her expression is not less happy even in mere description. Take this, upon a rose-stem entwined in a woman's hair : "Looped lightly up its dark redundancy." How picturesque the term "lightly" yet how unassignable, how aerial, the attribute it depicts! The "dark redundancy" may be considered transcendental by some worthy successors of that professor who asked what all that proved? on having heard a recitation of the Berenice of Racine. And this felicity is, in fact, what the Transcendentalists aspire to imitate; but, like Ixion, they only seize a cold, shapeless, watery cloud, instead of the living and majestic Juno, accessible alone to the godhead of genius. We regret not having at hand-having been quoting partly from memory-the collected poems of " Amelia," in order to add a few more of those felicities, both of feeling, and phrase, which seem to us to constitute her distinctive merit, and of the latter of which one would have thought our stubborn language incapable. They are impressions stamped, as it were, by the face itself of the things denoted, like the filmy images thrown off from the surface of objects, according to the peripatetic theory of vehicular vision. It is that "Amelia" writes as she feels; that she feels naturally; that her very thoughts bubble forth impregnated with the affections of a virgin soul, like streams that take color and savor from the mineral veins which they had traversed in their course: in one word, it is that she is a poet. We would not be understood as setting Mrs. Welby above the author of the Pleasures of Hope, and the Gertrude of Wyoming, upon the ordinary principle of poetic rank. Far otherwise. We have endeavored to explain the qualified sense of this rank which has governed us in the comparison; and, moreover, have declared the superiority only in reference to a single composition of each. For the rest, we do not flinch from avowing our general opinion of Campbell; it is, that his poetry-much of it--has been greatly overrated, judging it even upon the established standard. He has written some lyrics, spirited really, but which, perhaps, owe their fame no less to the circumstance of having been addressed to the strongest of national prejudices, and at a crisis when a succession of victories had inflamed these prejudices into national enthusiasm. Conjunctures of this kind, sagaciously seized, have often made the fortune of worthless books, as well as of worthless men. And reputation once obtained, right or wrong-but especially when the latter, because of the very inanity-will, we know, be almost as irreversable as a Persian law, so long as nineteen-twentieths of mankind are no better than an echo of the residue. Campbell was a man of fair capacity-of finelycultivated taste-of uncommon diligence of application; but, above all, who economized his parts and timed his projects, (of which we have just seen an instance,) with that singular shrewdness of his nation, over which even the proverbial thriftlessness of the poet has been never known, we believe, to prevail. Poor Burns is no exception; for nature, doubtless, meant him for a neighboring and more congenial island. The lima labor of Campbell, as well as his mediocrity of talent, is manifest in his remarkable inequality; in those lines or coupletsthose mottoes, not "of the heart," but of the head-so frugally sprinkled through his pages, which have passed, indeed, into newspaper maxims and patriotic epigrams, but which, to us, seem, notwithstanding, to smell rather strongly of the common-place book. Byron did not speak the whole of his mind respecting Campbell's barrenness, in saying that his Hippocrene was somewhat droughty: and this Campbell, himself, was well aware of. We see how, accordingly, he was disposed to retaliate, from the conversations recently published in the Dublin Magazine-conversations which, aside from the poetical resentment just alluded to, bear the most characteristic marks of their infamous genuineness, and for which the only palliation we have seen suggested, cannot be allowed by the moralist in extenuation of calumny, as it is not admitted by the law, in excuse for crime. But our affair is with the poet. And as, respecting Campbell in this quality, we have ventured thus to express a very wide dissent from the common estimate, it may be proper (as far as our nearly exhausted space will permit) to offer something more satisfactory than assertion, and fairer than the example already before the reader, in justification of so bold a heresy; if but to show that our judgment is, at least, not rash, however it may still be considered not reasonable. Our instances will be taken from the most considerable poems of the author, the two upon which he has rested, and upon which rests, in fact, his fame. Our purpose might be suited, almost at random, from any page of "The Pleasures of Hope." We quote the opening lines as being naturally the most elaborated: At summer eve, when heaven's ethereal bow Spans with bright arch the glittering HILLS BELOW, Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye, Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky? Is this description natural? Are certain features of the scene-the "hills below," and the "mountain yonder,”— not somewhat incongruous or confused? Does not the one pre-suppose the poet in the rainbow, the other on the earth? Be this as it will, we are very confident that some of the epithets are what the French term oiseuses, to say no worse. These are blemishes, however, from which few, perhaps, are free, except poets of the first class; and freedom from them may, for this reason, be relied upon as among the surest signs of that class. Search even the most purely descriptive of the poems of Byron, for example: you will not find a half-dozen epithets, in as many thousand verses, which do not contribute either to the significance, the light, or the color of the picture. Again to descend to grammar. The preposition "at," &c., is not English. We say, at sunrise, at noon, at ten o'clock; but not, at morning, at evening, at tomorrow. In, or on, (the) is the proper particle in the latter cases, because the words morning, evening, &c., denote a continuous portion; whereas, "at" is applicable only to an individual point of time. Mingle" is, too, an incorrect metaphor. 66 And these are the lines-a fair if not a favorable sample, we aver-which introduce a composition known to have been re-written at least a dozen times! In pursuance of our mode of appreciation by comparison, let us now set in juxta-position with the above lines an equal number, and descriptive of a scene quite similar, from the opening lines of the "Corsair"-a poem of equal or greater Jength than Campbell's-and of which, also, we know that, unlike Campbell's, it was thrown off in a few nights by a brain still dizzy from the whirl of fashionable dissipation: we above suggested,) with the parting of Conrad and Medora, that we select for our last extract, the analogous scene between Waldegrave and the dying Gertrude. But we are engaged to justify our depreciation of Campbell, also, from the production of his which contains that celebrated scene; and think it best, for equity's sake as well as brevity's, in lieu of a multiplicity of proofs, for which only room is wanted, to commit the issue upon a single passage, which is deemed by all, and justly, to be the most finished of the poem, both in sentiment and expression. Gertrude, expiring of her wounds, is represented as making an allocution, which, besides being as long as a "Congress speech," seems to us to be, much of it, not very feminine to say-however natural it may be to feel-in this at least, or indeed on any, occasion. As, for example: "Clasp me a little longer on the brink Of fate! while I can feel thy dear caress," &c. this, all-voluptuous as he was accounted; Byron would have been shocked at which serves to show how much more delicately, as well as skillfully—skilltreated by the voluptuousness of the man fully because delicately-these things are of genius than by the prudery of the pedant. Farther on, however, Gertrude proceeds: "And must this parting be our very last? No! I will love thee still when death itself is past." "Half could I bear, methinks, to leave this earth, And thee, more loved than aught beneath the sun, "Slow sinks, more lovely e'er its race be If I had lived to smile but on the birth Of one dear pledge ;-but shall there then be none, run, Along Morea's hills, the setting sun; Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, But one unclouded blaze of living light." This is description! This is Poetry! Here we have, as it were, by a few masterly strokes of the pencil, presented us in the utmost precision of outline and vividness of coloring, one of the most glorious views upon the earth. Mark the bold elegance of the word "obscurely!" But it is, perhaps, unfair towards Campbell himself-though not so towards those who will not abate a jot of the highest claims for him-to be set in even qualified contrast with Byron. It is not, therefore, to contrast it, (as In future times-no gentle little one, To clasp thy neck, and look resembling me," &c., &c. The pathos and perfection of this turn has been lauded in all the superlatives of critical panegyric. It has not been always remembered, perhaps, that the thought is borrowed literally; nor sufficiently reflected, that it has suffered very materially in the transplantation. Upon the former point we are not disposed to dwell; the second admits of less leniency. Virgil assuredly has not relaxed from his characteristic decorum (in the Latin amplitude of the term) in making Dido say to the departing Æneas: |