does Lochnagar stand in the presence of his neighbour giants, Ben-mac-Dhui, and Ben-y-boord, less lofty, but more fiercely eloquent in its jagged outline, reminding us of the via of the forked lightning, which it seems dumbly to mimic, projecting its cliffs like quenched batteries against earth and heaven, with the cold of snow in its heart, and with a coronet of mist round its gloomy brow. No poet, since Homer and Ida, has thus, everlastingly, shot his genius into the heart of one great mountain, identifying himself and his song with it. Not Horace with Socrate-not Wordsworth with Helvellyn-not Coleridge with Mont Blanc-not Wilson with the Black Mountnot even Scott with the Eildons-all these are still common property, but Lochnagar is Byron's own-no poet will ever venture to sing it again. In its dread circle none durst walk but he. His allusions to it are not numerous, but its peaks stood often before his eye: a recollection of its grandeur served more to colour his line than the glaciers of the Alps, the cliffs of Jura, or the "thunder hills of fear," which he heard in Chimari; even from the mountains of Greece he was carried back to Morven, and "Lochnagar, with Ida, looked o'er Troy." Hence the severe Dante-like monumental, mountainous cast of his better poetry; for we firmly believe that the scenery of one's youth gives a permanent bias and colouring to the genius, the taste, and the style, i. e., if there be an intellect to receive an impulse, or a taste to catch a tone. Many, it is true, bred in cities, or amid common scenery, make up for the lack by early travel; so did Milton, Coleridge, and Wilson. But who may not gather, from the tame tone of Cowper's landscapes, that he had never enjoyed such opportunities? And who, in Pollok's powerful but gloomy poem, may not detect the raven hue which a sterile moorland scenery had left upon his mind? Has not, again, the glad landscape of the Howe of the Mearns, and the prospect from the surmounting Hill of Garvock, left a pleasing trace upon the mild pages of Beattie's "Minstrel?" Did not Coila colour the genial soul of its poet? Has not the scenery of his "own romantic town" made much of the prose and poetry of Sir Walter Scott what it is? So, is it mere fancy which traces the stream of Byron's poetry in its light and its darkness, its bitterness and its brilliance, to this smitten rock in the wilderness to the cliffs of Lochnagar? GEORGE CRABBE. To be the poet of the waste places of Creation-to adopt the orphans of the mighty mother-to wed her dowerless daughters—to find out the beauty which has been spilt in tiny drops in her more unlovely regions-to echo the low music which arises from even her stillest and most sterile spots-was the mission of Crabbe, as a descriptive poet. He preferred the Leahs to the Rachels of nature: and this he did not merely that his lot had cast him amid such scenes, and that early associations had taught him a profound interest in them, but apparently from native taste. He actually loved that beauty which stands shivering on the brink of barrenness-loved it for its timidity and its loneliness. Nay, he seemed to love barrenness itself; brooding over its dull page till there arose from it a strange lustre, which his eye distinctly sees, and which in part he makes visible to his readers. It was even as the darkness of cells has been sometimes peopled to the view of the solitary prisoner, and spiders seemed angels in the depths of his dungeon. We can fancy, too, in Crabbe's mind, a feeling of pity for those unloved spots, and those neglected glories. We can fancy him saying, "Let the gay and the aspiring mate with nature in her towering altitudes, and flatter her more favoured scenes; I will go after her into her secret retirements, bring out her bashful beauties, praise what none are willing to praise, and love what there are few to love." From his early circumstances, besides, there had stolen over his soul a shade of settled though subdued gloom. And for sympathy with this, he betook himself to the sterner and sadder aspects of nature, where he saw, or seemed to see, his own feelings reflected, as in a sea of melancholy faces, in dull skies, waste moorlands, the low beach, and the moaning of the waves upon it, as if weary of their eternal wanderings. Such, too, at moments, was the feeling of Burns, when he strode on the scaur of the Nith, and saw the waters red and turbid below; or walked in a windy day by the side of a plantation, and heard the "sound of a going" upon the tops of the trees; or when he exclaimed, with a calm simplicity of bitterness which is most affecting "The leafless trees my fancy please, Their fate resembles mine." Oh! where, indeed, can the unhappy repair, to escape from their own sorrows, or worse, from the unthinking glee or constitutional cheerfulness of others, more fitly than into the wastes and naked places of nature? She will not then and there seem to insult them with her laughing luxuriance -her foliage fluttering, as if in vain display, with the glossy gilding of her flowers, or the sunny sparkle and song of her streamlets. But she will uplift a mightier and older voice. She will soothe them by a sterner ministry. She will teach them "old truths, abysmal truths, awful truths." She will answer their sighs by the groans of the creation travelling in pain; suck up their tears in the sweat of her great agonies; reflect their tiny wrinkles in those deep stabs and scars on her forehead, which speak of struggle and contest; give back the gloom of their brows in the frowns of her forests, her mountain solitudes, and her waste midnight darkness; infuse something, too, of her own sublime expectancy into her spirits; and dismiss them from her society, it may be sadder, but certainly wiser men. How admirably is nature suited to all moods of all men! In spring, she is gay with the light-hearted; in summer, gorgeous as its sun to those fiery spirits who seem made for a warmer day; in autumn, she spreads over all hearts a mellow and unearthly joy; and even in winter—when her temple is deserted of the frivolous and the timid, who quit it along with the smile of the sun-she attracts her own few but faithful votaries, who love her in her naked sculpture, as well as in her glowing pictorial hues, and who enjoy her solemn communion none the less that they enjoy it by themselves. To use the words of a forgotten poet, addressing spring "Thou op'st a storehouse for all hues of men. To hardihood thou, blustering from the north, Roll'st dark-hast sighs for them that would complain; And melody for those that follow mirth; Clouds for the gloomy; tears for those that weep; Untimely sorrow o'er; and skies where sweep Fleets of a thousand sail for them that plough the deep." Crabbe, as a descriptive poet, differs from other modern masters of the art, alike in his selection of subjects, and in his mode of treating the subjects he does select. Byron moves over nature with a fastidious and aristocratic step -touching only upon objects already interesting or ennobled, upon battle fields, castellated ruins, Italian palaces, or Alpine peaks. This, at least, is true of his "Childe Harold," and his earlier pieces. In the later productions of his pen, he goes to the opposite extreme, and alights, with a daring yet dainty foot, upon all shunned and forbidden things-reminds us of the raven in the Deluge, which found rest for the sole of her foot upon carcasses, where the dove durst not stand-rushes in where modesty and reserve alike have forbidden entrance-and ventures, though still not like a lost archangel, to tread the burning marl of hell, the dim gulf of Hades, the shadowy ruins of the pre-Adamitic world, and the crystal pavement of heaven. Moore practises a principle of more delicate selection, resembling some nice fly which should alight only upon flowers, whether natural or artificial, if so that flowers they seem to be; thus, from sunny bowers, and moonlit roses, and gardens, and blushing skies, and ladies' dresses, does the Bard of Erin extract his finest poetry. Shelley and Coleridge attach themselves almost exclusively to the great -understanding this term in a wide sense, as including much that is grotesque and much that is homely, which the magic of their genius sublimates to a proper pitch of keeping with the rest. Their usual walk is swelling and buskined: their common talk is of great rivers, great forests, great seas, great continents: or else of comets, suns, constellations, and firmaments—as that of all half-mad, wholly miserable, and opium-fed genius is apt to be. Sir Walter Scott, who seldom grappled with the gloomier and grander features of his country's scenery (did he ever describe Glencoe or Foyers, or the wildernesses around Ben-macDhui?), had (need we say?) the most exquisite eye for all picturesque and romantic aspects, in sea, shore, or sky; and in the quick perception of this element of the picturesque lay his principal, if not only descriptive power. Wordsworth, again, seems always to be standing above, though not stooping over, the objects he describes. He seldom looks up in wrapt admiration of what is above him; the bending furze-bush and the lowly broom-the nest lying in the level clover-field-the tarn sinking away seemingly before his eye into darker depths-the prospect from the mountain summit cast far beneath him: at highest, the star burning low upon the mountain's ridge, like an "untended watchfire:" these are the objects which he loves to describe, |