into the sickly whine of a mendicant, as though Isaiah had become an old Jew clothesman." A Mr. Anderson, of Glasgow, of pulpit-prowess, "so paints perdition, that you seem to hear the roar of its sleepless fires, and the tossing of the victims on the unmade beds of despair." Michael Angelo, "pious as he was, would have broken up the true cross for pencils, and studied chiaroscuro at Calvary." "The idea of Doctor Milton is ludicrous. As well speak almost of Dr. Isaiah, Professor Melchisedec, orEzekiel, Esq." "We can well fancy Adam Black, or John Murray, saying to Milton, 'Splendid poem, sir—great genius in it; but it won't sell we fear—far too long—too many learned words in it—odd episode that on Sin and Death. If you could rub it down into a tragedy, and secure Macready for Satan, and Helen Faucett for Eve, it might take; or, if you could write a few songs on the third French Revolution, or something in the style of Dombey and Son. Good morning, Mr. Milton.'" Swedenborg's intellect "kept him cool amid the most fiery and horrible details of damnation; he was a mere meter to the gas of the ever-lasting fire." Æschylus was the laureate of that fallen house, "the Stuarts of the skies—till a dying cockney-boy, with power projected from eternity, with hectic heat and unearthly beauty, sang Hyperion." Shelley "was a hectic hero; a Titan in a deep decline." In his "Prometheus," the "thought is often drowned in a diarrhœa of words;" and the "last act is to us a mere dance of darkness." St. Peter is the "Oliver Goldsmith of the New Testament." And, to conclude,—what thinks the worthy peripatetic custos in the Nineveh room of the British Museum, of the following éloge of his department:—"You could talk under the dome of the Crystal Palace—the Ninevehtic remains, which seemed the fragments of the blast of the breath of God;s nostrils, made you silent. … What could you do but gasp for breath, and cling convulsively to your seat," &c., &c., &c.
But enough. It is a solace to know how impervious Mr. Gilfillan is to the criticisms of "puny, passing malignants," to which category he will doubtless consign us—and how sublimely impenetrable he must be to their disposition to hint a fault and hesitate dislike. Yet he does now and then evince a susceptibility to be "riled" a little; and this fact creates in us some apprehension lest even our obscurity should be assailed by a pitiless storm of the "fragments of the blast of the breath" of his vengeance. Mr. Macaulay has already incurred his personal displeasure, from some incapacity on the historian's part to appreciate his brilliancy. The North American Review criticised his "Bards on the Bible" in a manner "which did vex him;" and he waxes irate about "that stupidest of all 'Old Granny's' effusions. … She has lost all her teeth, poor body; and her tongue is not very clean. I fear the worst for her." And because the Athenæum saw reason to speak slightly of Mr. Gilfillan, he denounces that journal as containing only "dry and sapless critiques … where ill-temper, spite, and mean jealousy are mistaken for honesty and truth; and the clique-connected with which are, as a whole, destitute alike of insight, heart, and enthusiasm." Probably, we are fathoms and fathoms below Mr. Gilfillan's contempt; but if he should call us bad names, and meditate the ruin of the Magazine, we shall soothe ourselves with remembering the good company with which his anathema associates us.
Meanwhile, we have "nothing exaggerated," and are certain we have "set down nought in malice."
