While she assures him in naïve affection (though it might have bean suggested by a visit to Dr. Kahn's Anatomical exhibition),
You've such transparent sides, each casual eye
May see the heaving heart"—
}enough, surely to make a fellow box himself up, or live in plate armour, for the balance of his days. There is something uncomfortably Moses-and-Son-ish in
the fine pants and trembles of a line.
The "rosy ruin" effected by a sunset will make some people think of "blue rain," which is said to be anything but a refined composition. We suspect it was from the writings of his friend Mr. Gilfillan—to whom be honour due for his share in bringing forward the young poet, and to whom Sydney Yendys in the past tense, and J. Stanyan Bigg in the present, are similarly indebted—that Alexander Smith conceived a passion for such "idioms" as this,
'Tis not for me, ye Heavens! 'tis not for me
To fling a Poem, like a comet, out"—
or this—
Lady! he was as far 'bove common men
As a sun-steed, wild-eyed and meteor-maned,
Neighing the reeling stars, is 'bove a hack
With sluggish veins of mud.
One can guess Mr. Burchell's aside to that. Here again is an adventurous similitude:
Soul, alas! is unregarded; Brothers! it is closely shut:
All unknown as royal Alfred in the Saxon neatherd's hut,
In the Dark House of the Body, cooking victuals, lighting fires,
Swelters on the starry stranger, to our nature's base desires.
A "sunset's corpse, spit on, insulted by the brutal rains"—"a cataract of golden curls"—a sea "lashed by cruel winds to shrieks, mad spoomings the frighted stars"—"the swelled wombs of fleets, rich glutted, toiling wearily to vomit all their wealth on English strands"—all these may be very fine things, but have probably a better chance of being thought so when their "deliverance" dates from a Dundee pulpit, than when committed to London paper, print, and criticism. But we have few fears of seeing the same kind of "spooming" and "shrieking" and "sweltering" language so freely indulged in, when next Mr. Smith puts on his singing robes. Nor do we then expect to find so many traces of the poets he would seem chiefly to affect—of whom Keats, and Tennyson, and we may add that picturesque and impassioned minstrel Sydney Yendys, have apparently had large if indirect influence on the growth of these his first fruits. His own verses often contain hints and thoughts on the poetical art, which, if wrought by the verse-maker into a practical γνωθι σεαυτον, may go very far to refine and elevate and enrich his song. Thus:
Strive for the Poet's crown, but ne'er forget
How poor are fancy's blooms to thoughtful fruits;
That gold and crimson mornings, though more bright
Than soft blue days, are scarcely half their worth.
