Page:Scotish Descriptive Poems - Leyden (1803).djvu/155

thor. These particular descriptions are not arranged with an attention to philosophical accuracy, nor even with that negligent and graceful ease which poetry admits: They seem rather to have been carelessly selected; and sometimes, from the order in which they occur, they exhibit too violent a contrast. The topics are such as would be naturally suggested to a young, ardent, and enthusiastic mind, by the perusal of the common histories and descriptions of Scotland; and the impropriety of their selection is rather to be attributed to unformed taste, than to the defect of poetical spirit. The personification of Albania, or the Genius of Scotland, is not accurately preserved. Sometimes she is a goddess, sometimes a country; sometimes she is a land of bow-men, a state unconquered by the fire of war; sometimes a goddess throned on the beryl flood, and beloved by the softening fur. Some of the topics of description, as salt and coal, and the minute enumeration of the different kinds of fish which frequent the coasts of Scotland, are deficient in dignity; and occasionally passages of merit are marred by the introduction of undignified and ungraceful lines. These defects, however, are compensated by the patriotic enthusiasm which glows through the poem, and confers on it a species of unity; by the vigorous masculine style of description in some passages, as in the address to Albania, the address to the land of bow-men, and the description of the invisible hunting in the wilds of Ross. Some passages, too, are not defective either in beauty of delineation, or harmony of versification, as those which describe the Scotish fair, and the lingering of the sun-