After the audacious though brilliant
opening, and the unfortunately pungent reference to the poet's domestic
affairs, we find in the famous storm (c. ii.) a bewildering epitome of his
prevailing manner. Home-sickness, sea-sickness, the terror of the tempest,
"wailing, blasphemy, devotion," the crash of the wreck, the wild farewell,
"the bubbling cry of some strong swimmer in his agony," the horrors of
famine, the tale of the two fathers, the beautiful apparitions of the
rainbow and the bird, the feast on Juan's spaniel, his reluctance to dine
on "his pastor and his master," the consequences of eating Pedrillo,--all
follow each other like visions in the phantasmagoria of a nightmare, till
at last the remnant of the crew are drowned by a ridiculous rhyme--
Finding no place for their landing better,
They ran the boat ashore,--and overset her.
Then comes the episode of Haidee, "a long low island song of ancient
days," the character of the girl herself being like a thread of pure gold
running through the fabric of its surroundings, motley in every page;
e.g., after the impassioned close of the "Isles of Greece," we have the
stanza:--
Thus sang, or would, or could, or should, have sung,
The modern Greek, in tolerable verse;
If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young,
Yet in those days he might have done much worse--
with which the author dashes away the romance of the song, and then
launches into a tirade against Bob Southey's epic and Wordsworth's pedlar
poems.
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