1825. 
place:—except, perhaps, on the Royal, 
or at the Stock Exchange! 
But now the poet—the dual-colloquist 
in this’ dialogue between himself !—be- 
gins to find out who, or what it was (as 
if he could ever have doubted the na- 
tute or character of that prepossession 
which filled his imagination with dreams 
of long days of bliss !—could he have 
suspected for a moment that it was 
Despair—Revenge—Remorse —Hatred 
—Fear, &c.), that suggested such 
dreams? Yes, he did doubt. But the 
sphynx has ceased; and now C&dipus 
expounds the riddle.* 
| ?Twas the voice of Hope! 
Of love and social scenes it seem’d to speak 
Of truth, of friendship, of affection meek—”’ 
Seem’d to speak? What, did the voice 
of Hope only seem to speak of truth, 
friendship, and meek affection? In 
other words—Did it only seem to be 
truth, friendship and affection that the 
poet was hoping for—while, in reality, 
he was hoping for something else? 
But let us see what these seeming 
objects of his hope were seemingly ex- 
pected to do. 
“That, oh! poor friend, might to life’s 
downward slope 
Lead us in peace, and bless our latest 
hours.” 
What, only to the slope ?—Was there 
no hope that affection, truth and friend- 
ship should accompany them through 
the whole of their journey ?—should 
lead them in peace down the slope as 
well as to it? Or was it a part of the 
hope so softly and musically whispered, 
that the heur in which they got to the 
edge of the slope should be their latest 
hour, and that there, with the benedicite 
of their three conductors, they should 
lay themselves down and die? Mark 
how much more poetically (because 
more naturally), without any of this 
extra-poetic pomp of allegorical ma- 
chinery, Burns’s Dame Anderson ex+ 
presses herself — 
“ John Anderson, my jo! John, 
We clamb the hill thegither, 
And many a canty day, John, 
We’ve had with ane anither; 
Now we must totter down, John, 
Yet hand in hand we’ll go, 
And rest thegither at the foot, 
’ John Anderson, my jo!” 
*.A viddle almost as inexplicable as that 
of the clown in Gay’s Shepherd’s Week— 
** This riddle, Cuddy, if thou canst explain: 
This wily riddle puzzles evéry swain !— 
What flower is that thatsbeats the virgin’s name, 
The richest metal joined to thesame?” , 
Bowles’s Sonnets. 
415 
But let us proceed to the pathos of the 
close of Mr. Bowles’s Sonnet. And 
certainly the subject is pathetic enough. 
The only marvel is that it should have 
been so spoiled. A lover awakened 
from the dream of hope by the dismal 
toll of the death-bell, starting from his 
trance of expected felicity, and behold- 
ing the corpse of the expected partner 
of his joys pale and breathless before 
him! What incident could be more 
heart-wringing ? How could it ever 
have occurred to any one smarting with 
the agonized feeling of such a catas- 
trophe—or the recollection of such a 
feeling—to mingle with such sensations 
the conceits of fancy ?—to deck out such 
a spectacle with the cold and artificial 
embellishment of puerile allegory ? 
“Ah me! the prospect sadden’d as she 
sung; 
Loud on my startled ear the death-bell 
rung ; 
Chill darkness wrapt the pleasurable bowers, 
Whilst Horror, pointing to yon breathless 
clay, 
“ No peace he thine’ exclaim’d—‘ away, 
away !” 
For what purpose, except of the metre 
and the rhyme, this warning exclamation 
of the turgid demon, Horror, was intro- 
duced, I am at-a lost to conceive. It 
certainly does not deepen the pathos. 
Nor can I find any but a metrical rea- 
son for the four-syllable epithet plea- 
surable bowers—bowers able to please, 
or to be pleased! A “vile word” plea- 
surable/ neither soothing to the ear, 
nor taking the shortest road to the 
meaning. Why not pleasing or plea- 
sant bowers ? cheerful bowers? joyous 
bowers ? or any other of the multitude 
of dissyllabic, or, perhaps, monosyllabic 
epithets, which would have expressed 
the whole sense? Why, but that the 
verse wanted four syllables? And (even 
if the syllables had flowed smoothly off) 
what would this dilution have been but 
sugared cream and water ? 
But, to shew the extent of this dilu- 
tion, let us (dismissing all that is un- 
meaning and superfluous) set down the 
meaning (such as it is) of these fourteen 
lines of ten syllables each, in plain in- 
telligible prose ; and, for the facility of 
comparison, in the same type, with the 
poetic quotations, and with the same 
number of syllables in a line: 
‘‘ Whose gentle voice was it which, sweet 
as soft 
music that soothes sad and gloomy thoughts, 
whis- 
per’d deceitful tales of long days of bliss? 
"T'was 
