CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Ill 



A modern Greek, gaffing on the scene 



" Where burning Sappho loved and sung," » 



could not feel more vivid delight than does our enthusiastic basket- 

 maker when speaking of the scenes hallowed by the muse of Chau- 

 cer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, which, in his eyes at least, 

 they have raised 



" Above all Greek, above all Roman fame." 



" Why should we envy sunny Italy, or the classic shores of Greece, while 

 our own green hills lift up their wood-crowned foreheads to heaven, and our 

 velvet valleys are musical with brooks ? Are we not rich in golden poetry ? 

 Old Chaucer has shed a glory over our plains, and Spenser has hallowed our 

 forests ; Shakspeare, the immortal, has " warbled his wood-notes wild," and 

 let loose an eternal music through our land, whose melody can never die, 

 and the god-like Milton hath struck a harp-string whose vibration shall never 

 cease while an echo haunts our lovely hills. Let us look with an eye of 

 love upon our country : the greenery of sweet groves invites us, the violet 

 and primrose call us forth with a still voice of music which our ancestors 

 heard — the daisy waves its white head as if beckoning us to the fragrant 

 fields. Up, and away, then, to the woodlands, to worship the month or love 

 and flowers. Chaucer confessed, nearly five hundred years since, that no- 

 thing but the daisied fields of spring could allure him from his books. How 

 sweetly does he describe his feelings at this season of the year !"* 



Burns and Scott have invested with a similar interest the scenes 

 of the northern part of our island, and spread over its heaths and 

 fields a spirit of undying power. To borrow the words ot Camp- 

 bell's splendid Ode to the Memory of Burns, 



" On Bannock-burn what thoughts arouse 

 The swain whom Burns's song inspires ! 

 Beat not his Caledonian veins, 

 As o'er the heroic turf he ploughs. 

 With all the spirit of his sires. 



And all their scorn of death and chains ?" 



The writer of the article '* Beauty" in the Penny Cyclopaedia 

 seems to think that no poet possesses such a power. " Beauty," he 

 says, "never arises from such a source as this. No man would 

 think a plain green field or an ordinary stream more beautiful than 

 any other such field or stream, simply because King John had 

 signed Magna Charta in the one, or Julius Caesar raised the stan- 

 dard of rebellion on the banks of the other." This averment is, 

 we think, abundantly contradicted by the testimony of both the 

 wise and the simple. A countryman who was conducting Wash- 

 ington Irving over Burns' farm in Ayrshire said " He thought the 

 country had grown more beautiful since Burns had written."t 



• *' May," in Miller's Beauties of the Country -p. 138. 



•)- See Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey. 



