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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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twenty pollard willows ; and sundry flowers , cla& fNAztendrm , order moiiogynm . It could not be complained of Cowper ' s landscapes , an it was of Mrs . Radcliffe ' * , that for aught that appears they might be in the moon , for nobody could identify them upon
earth \ he gave specific marks by which their recognition is easy ; but it is in the same manner as a runaway may be identified by consulting the description of his person in the * Hue and Cry' of the police-office , with as much idea of character in the one case as in the other . It is in landscape painting as in benevolence ,
God loves from whole to parts , but human soul Must rise from individual to the whole . Mrs , Radcliffe attempted to give the effect of the Whole without condescending to particulars ; Cowper expatiates on particulars , without harmonizing them so as to produce the general impression ; Scott is the true * human soul , ' who , through the means of minute accuracy , works out the comprehensiveness and enjoyment of the general impression . Instances of this faculty are
especially to be found in his longer poems and his earlier novels * The best specimens , perhaps , of ail he has produced , are in : ' The Lady of the Lake . ' It is no degradation , it is part of the excellence of this beautiful composition that , with all its grace , and tenderness , and power , it is yet one of the best guide books that evef was produced . The traveller has only to take it in his hand when he leaves Callander , and not an inch of ground is there from Coilantosle Ford to the end of Loeh Katrine , that he will
not recognize as an old acquaintance , with as perfect a conviction : of its identity as when he gazed upon the royal towers of Stirling . Little of imagination nas the reader of the poem who does not feel as if he had lived before in all that scenery ; upon whom it does not come like the dim recollections of infancy . And there is an additional enjoyment imparted to these and similar descriptions in his other writings by the peculiar manner in which they
are interwoven with the narrative . The particular character of the scene is usually involved in the construction of the story . It is not a mere back-ground , the better to exhibit the actors in front of the stage , but is the real world in which they live and move . To any one who has visited the localities of Scott's poems and tales , the idea cannot fail to suggest itself that the story was * ~ framed upon the spot ; that it grew out of the scenery ; and that
the features of the landscape generated the incidents of the romance . His personages are the true Autochthones . They are born of the soil . He must have had a keen eye and a true feeling for capabilities and fitnesses . The story and the scene always ^ , harmonize so perfectly , that one must have been as a mould in which the other was cast . He toolt nature for his partner , and they played into one anofchWs hands . Hence the scenery and
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 723, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/3/
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