18 PRESUMPTUOUS POETRY. 



our poet employs the wonderful language of the Scriptures. That 

 which is, in the highest degree, sublime, applied to the leviathan, is 

 made to appear ridiculous when transferred to the crocodile. The 

 whale does not swim like the sprat. Besides, there is no truth in the 

 passage. 



" with fiery eyes 



Like to the burnished eyelids of the morn, 

 Sporting along the deep, beneath him boil 

 The waves like to a cauldron, and the sea 

 Froths as with unguents ; while his brilliant path 

 Makes hoary the great waters wrought with foam." 



HERAUD. 



" He maketh the deep to boil like a pot ; he maketh the sea like a pot 'of 

 ointment. He maketh a path to shine after him ; one would think the deep 

 to be hoary." JOB. 



Mr. Heraud thus describes two war-horses : 



" Straightway these battle-horses reared their necks, 

 Doubting the trumpets' blare with scornful laugh, 

 Saying, ha ! ha ! and snuffed the distant strife, 

 The captain's thunder, and the shouting hosts." 



HERAUD. 



" He saith among the trumpets, Ha ! ha ! end he smelleth the battle afar 

 off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting." JOB. 



But now let us say a few words of Mr. Heraud's poem, viewed as 

 a whole. The great pervading fault of the ' ' Judgment of the Flood" 

 is its want of intelligibility in parts, and the extremely unskilful 

 manner in which it is conducted. We sometimes are unable to as- 

 certain who is speaking, whether the poet or the character, or which 

 of them ; and not seldom, wlien we have discovered the orator, we 

 know not what he is talking about. Again, several large portions of 

 the poem are occupied with the doings of characters which, in point 

 of fact, do not assist or in any manner belong to the main argument of 

 the poem. We are unable, for instance, to conjecture for what purpose 

 Samiasa was introduced, unless with the view of creating the worst 

 kind of vulgar melo-dramatic effect. Again, Japhet, the youngest son 

 of Noah, is introduced to us very pompously in the first book as a 

 great prophet-sculptor, but dwindles away as the poem proceeds, and 

 we only hear of him incidentally afterwards. Lastly, the several 

 parts are so loosely connected, if connected at all, there are so many 

 characters in whom we take no interest, and so entire an absence of 

 individuality in every one of them, that we not only find very little 

 pleasure, but lose our very great patience during the perusal of the 

 poem. 



But, although as an attempt to supplant, or if not to supplant, to 

 succeed Milton as an epic poet, we consider the " Judgment of the 

 Flood " a most woeful failure ; yet is it quite clear that Mr. Heraud 

 entertains no such opinion. Let us admire the modesty with which 

 he invokes the Almighty to assist his great theme : so worthy of 

 Milton the invocation so pious the presumption, that his prayer has 

 been listened to. 





