I have seen as many mountains as most men, and more fleets than the generality of landsmen; and, to my mind, a large convoy with a few sail of the line to conduct them is as noble and as poetical a prospect as all that inanimate nature can produce. I prefer the "mast of some great ammiral," with all its tackle, to the Scotch fir or the alpine tannen; and think that _more_ poetry _has been_ made out of it. In what does the infinite superiority of "Falconer's Shipwreck" over all other shipwrecks consist? In his admirable application of the terms of his art; in a poet-sailor's description of the sailor's fate. These _very terms_, by his application, make the strength and reality of his poem. Why? because he was a poet, and in the hands of a poet, _art_ will not be found less ornamental than nature. It is precisely in general nature, and in stepping out of his element, that Falconer fails; where he digresses to speak of ancient Greece, and "such branches of learning."
In Dyer's Grongar Hill, upon which his fame rests, the very appearance of nature herself is moralised into an artificial image:
"Thus is nature's _vesture_ wrought, To instruct our wandering thought; Thus she _dresses green and gay_, To disperse our cares away."
And here also we have the telescope; the misuse of which, from Milton, has rendered Mr. Bowles so triumphant over Mr. Campbell:--
"So we mistake the future's face, Eyed through Hope's deluding _glass_."
And here a word en passant to Mr. Campbell:--
"As yon summits, soft and fair Clad in colours of the air, Which to those who journey near Barren, brown, and rough appear, Still we tread the same coarse way-- The present's still a cloudy day."
Is not this the original of the far-famed--
"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue?"
To return once more to the sea. Let any one look on the long wall of Malamocco, which curbs the Adriatic, and pronounce between the sea and its master. Surely that Roman work (I mean _Roman_ in conception and performance), which says to the ocean, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no further," and is obeyed, is not less sublime and poetical than the angry waves which vainly break beneath it.