236 A Scottish Trout Stream. 



and sullen skies with leaden downlook ? He compares, 

 in this respect, the genius of Milton with that of Dante. 

 The latter he holds is the genius of exact, of powerful 

 description every object he describes could be mea- 

 sured you could draw it faithfully to scale if you had 

 but canvas enough ; he magnifies, but with definiteness 

 still ; while again Milton suggests to the imagination 

 what cannot be measured, great cloudy shapes, phan- 

 toms that move, misty, grand, sublime. He delights 

 in vague and measureless outlines and vast masses, 

 and thus gains grandeur and true sublimity which 

 Dante, after all, seldom or never does. And this De 

 Quincey ingeniously argues is attributable to the fact 

 that Milton had seen mists and fogs and cloud-capped 

 mountains, and had been deeply impressed by them ; 

 while Dante had seen natural objects always in clear 

 light, and had no conception of the misty and vague to 

 heighten, if indeed it is not essential to, the grandeur 

 of the sublime. 



Mr. Grant Allen may be inclined to press an idea 

 too far when he wishes to prove the presence of a 

 Celtic strain in all our great artists, whether in paint- 

 ing, music, or poetry ; but there can be no doubt that 

 power is in the hills, and that the power of the hills is 

 more or less on them, with their sense of shadow, depth, 

 and passing yet undying glory, which has done much 

 to give to the Celtic genius, nursed among the hills, its 

 inner sense of beauty, of sadness, and mournful change, 

 of lyric love and grief, regretful pathos, and of tragedy. 



In a letter received the other day from an invalid 

 friend at Hyeres, this point was very effectively indi- 

 cated : 



" It is curious that these southern climes, so beautiful 

 in some of their atmospheric effects, have nothing of 



