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preface , is really the weak point . Nos . 1 , and 3 , which are entirely free from allegory , are decidedl y the most beautiful , poetical , and impressive . Nos . 2 , and o , which are the most allegorical , have the least power over sense or soul . How could Mrs . Jameson , with so much perception and appreciation as she has displayed , confound things so different as an allegory and a lyric poem ! It is by the latter that Retzsch succeeds , and that any artist must succeed in the attempt to address the moral sentiments , and the imagination , through the medium of design . ' She observes truly , that many of these fancies may bear more than one construction ; which , if they be really allegories , would make them the most intolerable species : for double , treble , or
quadruple , is m exact proportion , so much worse than simple allegory . Parallel lines are the representatives of allegory ; running along side by side , like the go and return rail-road . The poetry of design has as little as any other poetry of these infinitely producibles . It is simple and single in conception , and germinates with the expansiveness of vegetation . * The Fate of the Poet , ' is no more an allegory , than the two very dissimilar legendary subjects to both of which , unlike as they are , it bears some
resemblance . We mean Orpheus and the Bacchantes ,, and Tam O'Shanter and the Witches . They are all suggestive , and that most abundantly . But not at all by somebody representing something , and something representing somebody . So far to corporealize a feeling , as to make it an object of sense which shall become a stimulus to imagination , is the province of graphic poetry , as displayed in this sketch , and in ' Hope deceived /
When this is done ^ it is a pity that even the poet himself , should bind up the infinite suggestiveness of his subject by his own particular applications of it . He thereby conveys something to the meanest capacities , but he hedges up the path of those \ ^ &k € r ca pacities , whose host he is , and who should freely wander over his spacious domain . When a really poetical object has once been sketched by pen or pencil , there should it be left , instead of €
going on to say , ' such is the man , ' such is the maiden / * such is the lover , * c such is the chieftain , &c . &c . which is only drawing so many parallel lines . Burns should have left the daisy to wither when once his ploughshare had again demolished it in verse . It would have grown again , in every heart that was a fit
sod for the seeds of poetry . Our old poets , whom Retzsch is said to resemble , did sometimes , for a fancy , work a little while with a double ruler , but they never could hold it long . The vitality within was too mighty , it animated all they touched ; and if they were so false to their art , which is nature , as to attempt to stick straight sticks in the ground at equal distances , those sticks put forth shoots , and one branched out this way , and another that
way , and some looked brightly green in the sun , and others looked darkly green in the shade ; and one stem was gracefully
Untitled Article
RelzscKs Fancier 683
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1834, page 683, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2638/page/7/
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