Note 298 — No. XXXIII.[291]

[The following are Dr. Darwin’s instructions for the transportation of Ice Islands:—

“There, Nymphs! alight, array your dazzling powers,

With sudden march alarm the torpid hours;

On ice-built isles expand a thousand sails,

Hinge the strong helms, and catch the frozen gales.

The winged rocks to feverish climates guide,

Where fainting zephyrs pant upon the tide;

Pass, where to Ceuta Calpé’s thunder roars,

And answering echoes shake the kindred shores;

Pass, where with palmy plumes, Canary smiles,

And in her silver girdle binds her isles;

Onward, where Niger’s dusky Naiad laves

A thousand kingdoms with prolific waves,

Or leads o’er golden sands her threefold train

In steamy channels to the fervid main;

While swarthy nations crowd the sultry coast,

Drink the fresh breeze, and hail the floating frost:

Nymphs! veil’d in mist, the melting treasure steer,

And cool with arctic snows the tropic year.”

“If the nations who inhabit this hemisphere of the globe, instead of destroying their seamen and exhausting their wealth in unnecessary wars, could be induced to unite their labours to navigate these immense masses of ice into the more southern oceans, two great advantages would result to mankind, the tropic countries would be much cooled by their solution, and our winters in this altitude would be rendered much milder, for perhaps a century or two, till the masses of ice became again enormous.”—Ed.]

[Dr. Thomas Beddoes, born at Shiffnal in 1760, was a scientific Physician far in advance of his age; his Popular Essay on Consumption, 1779, his tracts entitled Hygeia, 1801, &c., may still be studied with profit. He paid particular attention to the medical use of the permanently Elastic Fluids, and avows that as “one rash experiment on a patient would demolish a plan on which the hope of relieving mankind from much of their misery is founded,” he made preliminary experiments on himself in the case of Oxygene and Consumption, as alluded to in the text, À propos of the artificial distribution of disease, it may be mentioned that in The Batchelor, p. 189, is a method for “discharging the Plague”.

He wrote much on the political topics of the day, always taking the liberal side, and attacking Pitt with great virulence and eloquence. The principles of the French Revolution were at first advocated by him with the utmost enthusiasm, but he was soon disgusted by the excesses committed. He was a student of German literature, and much admired by Immanuel Kant. He was also an intimate friend of Darwin’s, whose political opinions he shared, and whose works were intrusted to his revision in manuscript. A few months after the publication of Darwin’s Botanic Garden, its magnificent imagery and harmonious versification inspired some admirers to say that the style of this work was a style sui generis, and that it defied imitation. Dr. Beddoes maintained an opposite opinion. Much as he admired the poem in question, he thought that the Darwinian structure of verse might be imitated by a writer possessed of inferior poetical powers, and in a few days he produced in the same circle part of the manuscript of Alexander’s Expedition to the Indian Ocean as an unpublished work of the author of the Botanic Garden. The deception completely succeeded, and some enthusiastic admirers of the latter work pointed out with triumph “certain passages as proofs of the position that the author in his happier efforts defied imitation”. Beddoes’s success was the more extraordinary, as in the “Introduction” to a considerable extract from his poem which he printed in the Annual Anthology for 1796, he states that he had never before written twice as many lines of verse as the composition under notice consisted of.

As Beddoes’s imitation of Darwin is seldom met with, it may not be out of character in a work of the present nature to give a specimen of it.

AN IMITATION OF DARWIN.

“Now the new Lord of Persia’s wide domain,

Down fierce Hydaspes seeks the Indian main;

High on the leading prow the Conqueror stands,

Eyes purer skies and marks diverging strands.

A thousand sails attendant catch the wind,

And yet a thousand press the wave behind;

Two veteran hosts, outstretched on either hand,

Wide wave their wings and sweep the trembling land.

Each serried phalanx Terror stalks beside,

And shakes o’er crested helms his blazing pride;

While Victory, still companion of his way,

Sounds her loud trump and flaunts her banners gay.”

Further on, the Hero’s attention is attracted to the surrounding landscape, which he thus apostrophizes:—

“Ye fields for ever fair! Thou mighty stream!

Bright regions! blessed beyond the muse’s dream!

Thou fruitful womb of ever-teeming earth!

Ye fostering skies that rear each beauteous birth!

Trees, that aloft uprear your stately height,

Whose sombrous branches shed a noontide night!

Groves, that for ever wear the smile of spring!

Gay birds that wave the many-tinted wing!

Of reptiles, fishes, brutes, stupendous forms!

And ye, of nameless insects glittering swarms!

Sons of soft toil, whose shuttle beauty throws,

Whose tints the Graces’ earnest hands dispose,

Whose guileless bosom Care avoid and Crime,

Gay as your groves, and cloudless as your clime!

Primæval piles, that rose in massive pride,

Ere Western Art her first faint efforts tried!

Ye Brachmans old, whom purer æras bore,

Ere Western Science lisped her infant lore!

How will your wonders flush the Athenian sage?

How ray with glory my historic page?”

In a letter to Hannah More, Horace Walpole says: “The poetry is most admirable; the similes beautiful, fine, and sometimes sublime; the author is a great poet, and could raise the passions, and possesses all the requisites of the art.” In another lively epistle to the Misses Berry (28th April, 1789), he says: “I send you the most delicious poem upon earth. I can read this Second Part over and over again for ever; for though it is so excellent, it is impossible to remember anything so disjointed, except you consider it as a collection of short enchanting Poems. ‘The Triumph of Flora,’ beginning at the fifty-ninth line, is most beautifully and enchantingly imagined, and the twelve verses that by miracle describe and comprehend the creation of the universe out of chaos, are, in my opinion, the most sublime passage in any author, or in any of the few languages with which I am acquainted.”—Ed.]

[Darwin was acquainted with Rousseau. He was a man of great bodily and intellectual vigour, irascible and imperious, a strong advocate of temperance, and for many years an almost total abstainer. His professional fame was such that George III. said he would take him as his physician if he would come to London. He formed a botanical garden at Lichfield, about which Miss Seward wrote some verses which suggested his Botanic Garden. The Loves of the Plants had a singular success, and was praised in a joint poem by Cowper and Hayley. It was translated into French, Portuguese, and Italian. Darwin himself is said by Edgeworth to have admired the parody (Monthly Magazine, June and Sept., 1802, p. 115). Coleridge (Biographia Literaria, 1817, p. 19) speaks of the impression which it made even upon good judges.

In the Anti-Jacobin Review, vol. i. (1799), pp. 718–721, appear some Latin verses [by Ben. Frere] which are thus introduced: “Among the copies of verses which are annually produced as a public exercise called Tripos, at Cambridge, we have selected the following as a beautiful composition. The subject is Dr. Beddoes’s Factitious Air applied to the Case of Consumptions.”—Ed.]