summoned to read, could he, inveterate scribbler as well as insatiable bookworm, resist the cacoëthes scribendi to which the original sin of this paper is imputable?
Mr. Gilfillan is quite aware of the fallacy of overdoing the splendid, at least in the pages of others. Sensibly he condemns that kind of writing which consists in a succession of hops, steps, and jumps, as being in general productive of a feeling of tedium, "It teases and fatigues the mind of the reader. It is like crying perpetually upon a hearer, who is attending with all his might, to attend more carefully. It at once wearies and provokes, insults the reader, and betrays a fear of conscious weakness on the part of the author."[1] Can we laud, as a heaven-born judge, the "Daniel come to judgment" who ignores the heaven descended Γνωθι σεαυτον; or worship as an impeccable sovereign the David who needs a monitor to whisper, "Thou art the man"—de te fabula narratur? Jean Paul, at the opening of a chapter in one of his novels,[2] entreats his readers to be indulgent for once, if they find in it an inordinate supply of metaphors and impassioned sentences; some such prefatory apology might be stereotyped for Mr. Gilfillan's use in his opera or opuscula omnia. For few of them but bristle
with terms unsquared,
Which from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd,
Would seem hyperboles.[3]
Southey compares exuberance of ornament to the style of French engravers, who take off the attention from the subject of their prints by the flowers and trappings of the foreground, "You think," he writes, to Ebenezer Elliott, "you can never embroider your drapery too much; and that the more gold and jewels you can fasten on it the richer its effect must be. The consequence is, that there is a total want of what painters call breadth and keeping, and therefore the effect is lost.[4] A cornucopœia of imagery often contains ill-assorted fruitage and flowers, and suggests by its heedless outpourings not a few yawns and smiles. To practise the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous is hazardous—yet too soon meets with success; for here too ce' n'est que le premier pas qui coute., By Pope's doctrine, it is only the cloud-compelling Queen of Dulness whom such performances delight:
Here motley images her fancy strike,
Figures unpair'd and similes unlike;
She sees a Mob of Metaphors advance,
Pleas'd with the madness of the mazy dance;
How Tragedy and Comedy embrace;
How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race.[5]
And one of Mr. Gilfillan’s transatlantic critics is fain to avow, that such a perpetual straining after the introduction of prettinesses and gorgeous imagery and inflated metaphors—such an inundation of rhapsodical phrases and transcendental fancies, as characterise that author, had never before occurred to his (the critic's) literary experience. "What a desperate passion for flowers one must have who will not only cull roses, and pinks,
- ↑ Second Gallery of "Literary Portraits."
- ↑ "The Invisible Lodge."
- ↑ "Troilus and Cressida." Act I.
- ↑ "Life of Southey. A. D. 1809 and 1819."
- ↑ "Dunciad." Book i., l. 65–70.
