*
* Among things, which not only in our opinion, but in the opinion of
far wiser and better men, are to be ranked with the mere
prettinesses of the Muse, are the positive similes so abundant in
the writing of antiquity, and so much insisted upon by the critics
of the reign of Queen Anne.
It is by no means our intention to deny that in the Culprit Fay
are passages of a different order from those to which we have
objected- passages evincing a degree of imagination not to be
discovered in the plot, conception, or general execution of the
poem. The opening stanza will afford us a tolerable example.
Tis the middle watch of a summer's night-
The earth is dark but the heavens are bright
Naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cronest,
She mellows the shades of his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below,
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bow and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack.
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