Note 226 — III. CONVERSATIONS AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF WORDSWORTH.
Reading edition
Leonidus, an epic poem, by R. Glover, first appeared in May, 1737: in the fifth edition, published in 1770, it was corrected and extended from nine books to twelve. Glover was the author of Boadicea and Medea, tragedies, which had some success on the stage. I believe that Leonidas has more merit in the conduct of the design, and in the delineation of character, than as poetry.
'He write an epic poem,' said Thomson, 'who never saw a mountain!' Glover had seen the sun and moon, yet he seems to have looked for their poetical aspects in Homer and Milton, rather than in the sky. 'There is not a single simile in Leonidas,' says Lyttleton, 'that is borrowed from any of the ancients, and yet there is hardly any poem that has such a variety of beautiful comparisons.' The similes of Milton come so flat and dry out of Glover's mangle, that they are indeed quite another thing from what they appear in the poems of that Immortal: ex. gr.
Like wintry clouds, which, opening for a time, Tinge their black folds with gleams of scattered light:—
Is not this Milton's 'silver lining' stretched and mangled?
The Queen of Night Gleam'd from the centre of th' etherial vault, And o'er the raven plumes of darkness shed Her placid light.
This is flattened from the well-known passage in Comus.
Soon will savage Mars Deform the lovely ringlets of thy shrubs.
A genteel improvement upon Milton's 'bush with frizzled hair implicit.' Then we have
——delicious to the sight Soft dales meand'ring show their flowery laps Among rude piles of nature,
spoiled from
——the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread its store.
Thus does this poet shatter and dissolve the blooming sprays of another man's plantation, instead of pushing through them some new shoots of his own to crown them with fresh blossoms.
Milton himself borrowed as much as Glover. Aye, ten times more; yet every passage in his poetry is Miltonic,—more than anything else. On the other hand, his imitators Miltonize, yet produce nothing worthy of Milton, the important characteristic of whose writings my father well expressed, when he said 'The reader of Milton must be always on his duty: he is surrounded with sense.' A man must have his sense to imitate him worthily. How we look through his words at the Deluge, as he floods it upon us in Book xi. l. 738-53!—The Attic bees produce honey so flavoured with the thyme of Hymettus that it is scarcely eatable, though to smell the herb itself in a breezy walk upon that celebrated Mount would be an exceeding pleasure; thus certain epic poems are overpoweringly flavoured with herbs of Milton, while yet the fragrant balm and fresh breeze of his poetry is not to be found in them. S.C.