ISABELLA (_hotly_). "Love _rides_ upon a thought,
And stays not dully to _inquire the way_,
But right _o'erleaps the fence_ unto the _goal_."
To appreciate the splendour of this image, the reader must conceive Love
booted and spurred, mounted upon a _thought_, saddled and bridled. He
starts. _Yo-hoiks_! what a pace! He stops not to "inquire the
way"--whether he is to take the first turning to the right, or the second
to the left--but on, on he rushes, clears the fence cleverly, and wins by
a dozen lengths!
What soul, what mastery, what poetical skill is here! We triumphantly put
forth this passage as an instance of the sublime art of sinking in poetry
not to be matched by Dibdin Pitt or Jacob Jones. Love is sublimed to a
jockey, Thought promoted to a race-horse!--"Magnificent!"
But splendid as this is, Mr. Stephens can make the force of bathos go a
little further. The passage continues ("_a pause_" intervening, to allow
breathing ime, after the splitting pace with which Love has been riding
upon Thought) thus:--
"Are your lips free? A smile will make no noise.
What ignorance! So! Well! _I'll to breakfast straight_!"
Again:--
ISABELLA. "Ha! ha! These forms are air--mere counterfeits
Of my _imaginous_ heart, _as are the whirling
Wainscot and trembling floor_!"
The idea of transferring the seat of imagination from the head to the
heart, and causing it to exhibit the wainscot in a pirouette, and the
floor in an ague, is highly _Shakesperesque_, and, as the _Courier_ is
made to say at page 3 of the _Opinions_, "is worthy of the best days of
that noble school of dramatic literature in which Mr.
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