190 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



*' Dreams to Eliza bend thy airy flight, 



Go, tell iny charmer all my tender fears, 



How love's fond woes alarm the silent night, 



And steep my pillow in unpitied tears." 



Unwilling as I am to extend this memoir, I must 

 give Miss Seward's criticism on the foregoing. 



" The second verse of this charming elegy affords an 

 instance of Dr. Darwin's too exclusive devotion to 

 distinct picture in poetry ; that it sometimes betrayed 

 him into bringing objects so precisely to the eye as to 

 lose in such precision their power of striking forcibly 

 on the heart. The pathos in the second verse is much 

 injured by the words * mimic lace,' which allude to the 

 perforated borders on the shroud. The expression is 

 too minute for the solemnity of the subject. Certainly 

 it cannot be natural for a shocked and agitated mind 

 to observe, or to describe with such petty accuracy. 

 Besides, the allusion is not sufficiently obvious. The 

 reader pauses to consider what the poet means by 

 ' mimic lace.' Such pauses deaden sensation and break 

 the course of attention. A friend of the doctor's 

 pleaded greatly that the line might run thus : 

 " On her wan brow the shadowy crape was tied ; " 



but the alteration was rejected. Inattention to the 

 rules of grammar in the first verse was also pointed out 

 to him at the same time. The dream is addressed : 



M Dread dream, that clasped my aching head," 



but nothing is said to it, and therefore the sense is left 

 unfinished, while the elegy proceeds to give a picture 

 of the lifeless beauty. The same friend suggested 



