JOHN HOME is known to every schoolboy by two lines in the play of 'Douglas': 'My name is Norval: on the Grampian Hills They occur in the second act, and are said in answer to the request: Blush not, flower of modesty As well as valour, to declare thy birth.' The lines are typical of a dramatist who, in his time, made theatrical successes in London and Edinburgh, and, by some strange delusion, led his contemporaries into an admiration which seems to us now unmerited and unintelligible. He shares with Joanna Baillie the doubtful honour of being compared with Shakespeare: she by Scott and he by Burns. DR. ERASMUS DARWIN (1731-1802)2 In one of his notes to 'The Feast of the Poets' Leigh Hunt says: "The late Dr. Darwin, whose notion of poetical music, in common with that of Goldsmith and others, was of the school of Pope, though his taste was otherwise different, was perhaps the first who, by carrying it to its extreme pitch of sameness, and ringing it affectedly in one's ears, gave the public at large a suspicion that there was something wrong (1) Douglas, 1757. (2) Agis, Douglas, The Siege of Aquileia, 1760. (3) Collected Works, 3 vols. 1822. 2 (1) The Loves of the Plants, 1789. (2) The Economy of Vegetation, 1792 (the two parts of The Botanic Garden). (3) The Temple of Nature, 1803. (4) Poetical Works, 1807. in its nature.' No more deliberate endeavour of a prose mind to produce poetry of a formally accomplished kind has been seen than that of Dr. Darwin in his 'Botanic Garden,' who tells us that 'the general design of the following sheets is to enlist Imagination under the banner of Science.' In a prose 'interlude' to the second part of the poem, 'The Loves of the Plants' (in which he professes to contend with Ovid, and metamorphose 'by similar art' his trees and flowers, 'after having remained prisoners so long in their respective vegetable mansions,' back into men and women), he gives us his theory of poetry, which is so identical with his practice that we cannot doubt of his satisfaction with his own work as a poet. 'The Muses are young Ladies,' he tells us; 'we expect to see them dressed; though not like some modern beauties, with so much gauze and feather, that "the Lady herself is the least part of her." But art is not to confine itself to nature: 'the further the artist recedes from nature, the greater novelty he is likely to produce.' The poet, it appears, 'writes principally to the eye'; and to prove his principle Darwin gives this instance: 'Mr. Pope has written a bad verse in the "Windsor Forest": "And Kennet swift for silver eels renowned.' The word renowned does not present the idea of a visible object to the mind, and is thence prosaic. But change the line thus: "And Kennet swift, where silver graylings play," and it becomes poetry, because the scenery is then brought before the eye.' So easy, and so plain a matter of rule, did it seem to the scientific poet to convert prose into poetry. Turn from the sections in his 'argument,' as for instance 'Pumps explained -Charities of Miss Jones - Departure of the Nymphs like water spiders,' to the statements in verse, and it will be seen that he is always striving to trace the passage of light over an object, which is his only notion of the property of imagination illuminating science. Thus, treating of electricity, he bids his nymphs 'Beard the bright cylinder with golden wire, And circumfuse the gravitating fire'; while in a statue of Lotta (or Lot's wife) in the salt-mines of Cracow he observes how Elsewhere 'Cold dews condense upon her pearly breast, 'His cubic forms phosphoric Fluor prints,' and some unpleasant personification is seen with 'The maudlin tear-drop glittering in her eyes.' This steady mechanical glitter is I suppose what Hayley meant when he praised the 'radiant lays' of one whom he united with Cowper in praising. Of this praise he declared: 'Time verifies it daily; Trust it, dear Darwin, on the word But the 'Anti-Jacobin was to come with its 'Loves of the Triangles,' text and notes inextricably moulded upon the text and notes of Darwin; and the reader of to-day is puzzled to know whether he is reading the original or the parody as he turns from to 'Soft Sighs responsive whisper to the chords, 'The obedient Pulley strong Mechanics ply, |