I cannot accept a compliment at the expense of all the rest of my countrymen. I cannot indeed.
There was Lord Kames--a man of great talents--a most ingenious man--and with an insight----
I never heard of him--was he a Scotch Peer?
One of the Fifteen. A strained elevation--says his Lordship--I am sure of the words, though I have not seen his Elements of Criticism for fifty years----
You are a creature of a wonderful memory.
"A strained elevation is attended with another inconvenience, that the author is apt to fall suddenly, as well as the reader; because it is not a little difficult to descend sweetly and easily from such elevation to the ordinary tone of the subject. The following is a good illustration of that observation"--and then his Lordship quotes the passage I recited--stopping with the words, "_densissimus imber_," which are thus made to conclude the description!
In the description of a storm--continues his Lordship--"to figure Jupiter throwing down huge mountains with his thunderbolts, is hyperbolically sublime, if I may use the expression: the tone of mind produced by that image is so distinct from the tone produced by a thick shower of rain, that the sudden transition _must be very unpleasant_."
Suggestive of a great-coat. That's the way to deal with a great Poet. Clap your hand on the Poet's mouth in its fervour--shut up the words in mid-volley--and then tell him that he does not know how to descend sweetly and easily from strained elevation!
Nor do I agree with his Lordship that "to figure Jupiter throwing down huge mountains with his thunderbolts is hyperbolically sublime." As a part for a whole is a figure of speech, so is a whole for a part. Virgil says, "dejicit;" but he did not mean to say that Jupiter "tumbled down" Athos or Rhodope or the Acroceraunian range. He knew--for he saw them--that there they were in all their altitude after the storm--little if at all the worse. But Jupiter had struck--smitten--splintered--rent--trees and rocks--midway or on the summits--and the sight was terrific--and "dejicit" brings it before our imagination which not for a moment pictures the whole mountain tumbling down. But great Poets know the power of words, and on great occasions how to use them--in this case--one--and small critics will not suffer their own senses to instruct them in Poetry--and hence the Elements of Criticism are not the Elements of Nature, and assist us not in comprehending the grandeur of reported storms.