Like his own Rasselas, "his business was with man; he travelled not to measure fragments of temples, or trace choked aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes of the present world[1]." The journey should be perused together with his letters to Mrs. Thrale, written on his route, which may be safely pronounced to afford models for elegant epistolary communication on travelling and its incidents. They, as well as the journey, abound with descriptions conveyed in unaffected language, but awakening emotions almost exclusively under the dominion of poetry.
His plaintive and simple phrase, "and paradise was opened in the wild," as illustrative of the softening effect of the evening services of religion, performed in a domestic group on the rugged island of Inch Kenneth, has, perhaps, been seldom surpassed.—We need scarcely allude to his heart-thrilling meditations among the ruins of Iona, nor to his exquisite picture of the scene where his first design to give his narrative to the world was conceived. "We would invoke the winds of the Caledonian mountains," exclaim the critical reviewers of the journey, "to blow for ever with their softest breezes on the bank where our author reclined; and request of Flora that it might be perpetually adorned with the gayest and most fragrant productions of the year."
Their taste is poor indeed who can peruse the passages to which we have referred, and have their minds so little enthralled thereby, as to have leisure to search whether the writer hated a Scotchman. We dismiss the unworthy inquiry.
- ↑ Rasselas, chap. xxx.
