Poems on various subjects - Page 355 |
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359 Civilization and regular polity succeed so soon to the heroic age (which, after all, is a melancholy and precarious state of life) that it is very difficult to trace the fleeting images of the characters that adorn, or the events that diversify it. What, then, do we owe to the revered personage, at once a Poet, a Prince, and a Hero, who delineated in unfading colours a faithful picture of this short yet interesting interval; who sung the loves, the wars, the woes of his contemporary heroes, and arrayed them in such truth of character, and beauty of diction, as cannot fail to attract and delight through every age? Thc frequent recurrence of the same images and incidents may tire and disgust a taste refined to nicety; the stile of the translator may perhaps at times be justly accused of swelling into tumidity; but wisdom and learning, after having long sat in council upon the nature of poetical excellence, and laid down rules innumerable for attaining it, have at length come to this conclusion, that as it is the province of poetry to delight the imagination and affect the heart, what pleases and affects very many, and continues to please and affect very long, must needs be poetry of no inferiour kind, however obvious, or however numerous, its blemishes; and daily observation evinces, that the most correct and faultless poetry, formed on the purest classical models, if it fails in these great pre-requisites, if it can neither fix the attention or affect the heart, sinks into sudden oblivion. THE Translator of OSSIAN, though he has on many occasions forfeited the praise due to literary integrity, has al- Y4
Object Description
Title | Poems on Various Subjects |
Creator | Anne MacVicar Grant |
Date | 1803 |
Physical Description | 10, 17-447 p.; 24 cm. |
Publisher | Edinburgh: Printed for the author by J. Moir... : Sold by Longman and Rees... and J. Hatchard... London: by Mundell and Son, Manners and Miller, and Arch. Constable, Edinburgh... [and 5 others], 1803. |
Resource Type | Text |
Call Number | PR4728.G113 P6 |
Identifier | pr4728_g113_p6 |
Language | English |
Custodian | Baylor University - Armstrong Browning Library |
Rights | http://www.baylor.edu/lib/digitization/digitalrights |
Digital Collection | 19th Century Women Poets Collection |
Note | "List of subscribers": p. 415-447. |
Format | Books |
Description
Title | Poems on various subjects - Page 355 |
Resource Type | Text |
Rights | http://www.baylor.edu/lib/digitization/digitalrights |
Digital Collection | 19th Century Women Poets Collection |
Full Text | 359 Civilization and regular polity succeed so soon to the heroic age (which, after all, is a melancholy and precarious state of life) that it is very difficult to trace the fleeting images of the characters that adorn, or the events that diversify it. What, then, do we owe to the revered personage, at once a Poet, a Prince, and a Hero, who delineated in unfading colours a faithful picture of this short yet interesting interval; who sung the loves, the wars, the woes of his contemporary heroes, and arrayed them in such truth of character, and beauty of diction, as cannot fail to attract and delight through every age? Thc frequent recurrence of the same images and incidents may tire and disgust a taste refined to nicety; the stile of the translator may perhaps at times be justly accused of swelling into tumidity; but wisdom and learning, after having long sat in council upon the nature of poetical excellence, and laid down rules innumerable for attaining it, have at length come to this conclusion, that as it is the province of poetry to delight the imagination and affect the heart, what pleases and affects very many, and continues to please and affect very long, must needs be poetry of no inferiour kind, however obvious, or however numerous, its blemishes; and daily observation evinces, that the most correct and faultless poetry, formed on the purest classical models, if it fails in these great pre-requisites, if it can neither fix the attention or affect the heart, sinks into sudden oblivion. THE Translator of OSSIAN, though he has on many occasions forfeited the praise due to literary integrity, has al- Y4 |
Format | Books |