we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling sense of the
inappropriate. In "The Skeleton in Armor" we find a pure and perfect
thesis artistically treated. We find the beauty of bold courage and
self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of reckless adventure,
and finally the life-contemning grief. Combined with all this, we have
numerous points of beauty apparently insulated, but all aiding the
main effect or impression. The heart is stirred, and the mind does not
lament its malinstruction. The metre is simple, sonorous,
well-balanced, and fully adapted to the subject. Upon the whole, there
are few truer poems than this. It has not one defect- an important
one. The prose remarks prefacing the narrative are really necessary.
But every work of art should contain within itself all that is
requisite for its own comprehension. And this remark is especially
true of the ballad. In poems of magnitude the mind of the reader is
not, at all times, enabled to include, in one comprehensive survey,
the proportions and proper adjustment of the whole. He is pleased,
if at all with particular passages; and the sum of his pleasure is
compounded of the sums of the pleasurable sentiments inspired by these
individual passages in the progress of perusal. But, in pieces of less
extent, the pleasure is unique, in the proper acceptation of this
term- the understanding is employed, without difficulty, in the
contemplation of the picture as a whole; and thus its effect will
depend, in great measure, upon the perfection of its finish, upon
the nice adaptation of its constituent parts, and especially, upon
what is rightly termed by Schlegel the unity or totality of
interest.
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