Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849

BULLER.

He goes on – so do you, sir – you both get on.

NORTH.

And now again begins Magnification,

The "hollow-bedded rivers" grow, swell, visibly wax mighty and turbulent. You imagine that you stand on the bank and see the river that had shrunk into a thread getting broad enough to fill the capacity of its whole hollow bed. The rushing of arduous ether would not of itself have proved sufficient. Therefore glory to the Italian Ditches and glory to the Dumfriesshire Drains, which I have seen, in an hour, change the white murmuring Esk into a red rolling river, with as sweeping sway as ever attended the Arno on its way to inundate Florence.

BULLER.

Glory to the Ditches of the Vale of Arno – glory to the Drains of Dumfriesshire. Draw breath, sir. Now go on, sir.

NORTH.

"Cum sonitu." Not as Father Thames rises – silently – till the flow lapse over lateral meadow-grounds for a mile on either side. But "cum sonitu," with a voice – with a roar – a mischievous roar – a roar of – ten thousand Ditches.

BULLER.

And then the "flumina" – "cava" no more – will be as clear as mud.

NORTH.

You have hit it. They will be – for the Arno in flood is like liquid mud – by no means enamouring, perhaps not even sublime – but showing you that it comes off the fields and along the Ditches – that you see swillings of the "sata læta boumque labores."

BULLER.

Agricultural Produce!

NORTH.

For a moment – a single moment – leave out the Ditches, and say merely, "The rain falls over the fields – the rivers swell roaring." No picture at all. You must have the fall over the surface – the gathering in the narrower artificial – the delivery into the wider natural channels – the fight of spate and surge at river mouth —

The Ditches are indispensable in nature and in Virgil.

BULLER.

Put this glass of water to your lips, sir – not that I would recommend water to a man in a fit of eloquence – but I know you are abstinent – infatuated in your abjuration of wine. Go on – half-minute time.

NORTH.

I swear to defend – at the pen's point – against all Comers – this position – that the line is, where it stands – and looking before and after – a perfect line; and that to strike out "implentur fossæ" would be an outrage on it – just equal, Buller, to my knocking out, without hesitation, your brains – for your brains do not contribute more to the flow of our conversation – than do the Ditches to that other Spate.

BULLER.

That will do – you may stop.

NORTH.

I ask no man's permission – I obey no man's mandate – to stop. Now Virgil takes wing – now he blazes and soars. Now comes the power and spirit of the Storm gathered in the Person of the Sire – of him who wields the thunderbolt into which the Cyclops have forged storms of all sorts – wind and rain together – " Tres Imbri torti radios! " &c. You remember the magnificent mixture. And there we have Virgilius versus Homerum.

BULLER.

You may sit down, sir.

NORTH.

I did not know I had stood up. Beg pardon.

BULLER.

I am putting Swing to rights for you, Sir.

NORTH.

Methinks Jupiter is twice apparent – the first time, as the President of the Storm, which is agreeable to the dictates of reason and necessity; – the second – to my fancy – as delighting himself in the conscious exertion of power. What is he splintering Athos, or Rhodope, or the Acroceraunians for? The divine use of the Fulmen is to quell Titans, and to kill that mad fellow who was running up the ladder at Thebes, Capaneus. Let the Great Gods find out their enemies now – find out and finish them – and enemies they must have not a few among those prostrate crowds – "per gentes humilis stravit pavor." But shattering and shivering the mountain tops – which, as I take it, is here the prominent affair – and, as I said, the true meaning of "dejicit" – is mere pastime – as if Jupiter Tonans were disporting himself on a holiday.

BULLER.

Oh! sir, you have exhausted the subject – if not yourself – and us; – I beseech you sit down; – see, Swing solicits you – and oh! sir, you – we – all of us will find in a few minutes' silence a great relief after all that thunder.

NORTH.

You remember Lucretius?

BULLER.

No, I don't. To you I am not ashamed to confess that I read him with some difficulty. With ease, sir, do you?

NORTH.

I never knew a man who did but Bobus Smith; and so thoroughly was he imbued with the spirit of the great Epicurean, that Landor – himself the best Latinist living – equals him with Lucretius. The famous Thunder passage is very fine, but I cannot recollect every word; and the man who, in recitation, haggles and boggles at a great strain of a great poet deserves death without benefit of clergy. I do remember, however, that he does not descend from his elevation with such ease and grace as would have satisfied Henry Home and Hugh Blair – for he has so little notion of true dignity as to mention rain, as Virgil afterwards did, in immediate connexion with thunder.

BULLER.

What think you of the thunder in Thomson's Seasons?

NORTH.

What all the world thinks – that it is our very best British Thunder. He gives the Gathering, the General engagement, and the Retreat. In the Gathering there are touches and strokes that make all mankind shudder – the foreboding – the ominous! And the terror, when it comes, aggrandises the premonitory symptoms. "Follows the loosened aggravated roar" is a line of power to bring the voice of thunder upon your soul on the most peaceable day. He, too – prevailing poet – feels the grandeur of the Rain. For instant on the words "convulsing heaven and earth," ensue,

Thomson had been in the heart of thunder-storms many a time before he left Scotland; and what always impresses me is the want of method – the confusion, I might almost say – in his description. Nothing contradictory in the proceedings of the storm; they all go on obediently to what we know of Nature's laws. But the effects of their agency on man and nature are given – not according to any scheme – but as they happen to come before the Poet's imagination, as they happened in reality. The pine is struck first – then the cattle and the sheep below – and then the castled cliff – and then the

No regular ascending – or descending scale here; but wherever the lightning chooses to go, there it goes – the blind agent of indiscriminating destruction.

BULLER.

Capricious Zig-zag.

NORTH.

Jemmy was overmuch given to mouthing in the Seasons ; and in this description – matchless though it be – he sometimes out-mouths the big-mouthed thunder at his own bombast. Perhaps that is inevitable – you must, in confabulating with that Meteor, either imitate him, to keep him and yourself in countenance, or be, if not mute as a mouse, as thin-piped as a fly. In youth I used to go sounding to myself among the mountains the concluding lines of the Retreat.