 | The Works of Thomas Love Peacock |  |
V. [THE BATHOS]
And vowed to be the master;
And still the louder Johnny sung,
Bold Proteus scraped the faster;
A song of moonlight foray,
Of bandits bold in days of old,
The Scott, the Kerr, the Murray.
To keep up rule and order,
Like trusty guardians, robbed, and fired,
And ravaged, all the border.
A champion bold and brawny,
Who loved good cheer, and killed his dear,
And threshed presumptuous Sawney.
The changing theme supplied;
And Maid, that paddled in a punt
Across Loch Katrine's tide:
Inspired the lively lay,
With ho! ieroe! and tallyho!
And yoicks! and harkaway!
Like human conscience changing;
And damsel bright, at dead of night,
With bold Hibernian ranging;
Who, though historians vary,
Did wondrous feats on tough buck's haunch,
And butt of old Canary.
Still louder, louder swelling,
Resounded till it shook the bower,
Grim Neptune's coral dwelling:
To prove his muse no craven,
Until he grew completely hoarse,
And croaked like any raven.
Of such unusual strain,
That Discord's very self was come,
With all her minstrel train,
Through ocean's breast to sweep,
To where Sir Bathos sits alone,
Majestic on his wire-wove throne,
Below the lowest deep.
Sir Proteus appears to borrow this part of his many-changing melody from the exordium of Mr. Scott's Rokeby, which is in manner and form following:
The moon is in her summer glow;But hoarse and high the breezes blow,
And, racking o'er her face, the cloud
Varies the tincture of her shroud.
On Barnard's towers, and Tees's stream,
She changes like a guilty dream,
When Conscience with remorse and fear
Goads sleeping Fancy's wild career.
Her light seemed now the blush of shame,
Seemed now fierce anger's darker flame,
Shifting that shade to come and go,
Like apprehension's hurried glow;
Then sorrow's livery dims the air,
And dies in darkness, like despair.
Such varied hues the warder sees
Reflected from the woodland Tees.
It would not be easy to find a minstrel strain more opposite, in every respect, to taste and nature than this. What is the summer glow of the moon? Glow is heat or the appearance of heat. But there is no heat in the moon's rays, nor do I believe that the face of that planet ever presented such an appearance. The cloud, which racks over the face of the moon, and varies the tincture of her shroud, is a very incomprehensible cloud indeed. By rack I presume Mr. Scott to understand the course of the clouds when in motion. This, Mr. Tooke has shewn, is not the true meaning of the word. Rack is merely that which is reeked: a vapour, a steam, an exhalation. It is the past participle of the Anglo-saxon verb, pecan, exhalare: but to talk of a cloud reeking or steaming over the face of the moon would be downright nonsense. But whether rack signify motion or vapour, what is the shroud of the moon, of which the cloud varies the tincture? It cannot be the cloud itself, for in that case the cloud would be said to vary its own tincture. It plainly implies something external to the moon and different from the cloud, and what is that something? Most assuredly nothing that ever came within the scope of meteorological observation. The moon, thus clouded and shrouded, reflects on her disk various mental phænomena, which are seen by the warder. Now it is most probable, that the warders of past days, like the centinels of the present, were in the habit of looking at nature with the eyes of vulgar mortals, and not of remarking mental phænomena in the disk of the moon. Had the poor little pitiful whining Wilfrid discovered these chimæras, it would at least have been more in character. The dark-red appearance, which would characterise the flame of anger and the glow of apprehension,the moon never assumes but when very near the horizon, and in that position her tincture does not vary. “Shifting a shade to come and go” will scarcely pass for good English on this side of the Tweed. The livery of sorrow, if it mean any thing, must mean a mourning coat, and what idea is conveyed to the mind, by the figure of a black livery dying in darkness?
| The Works of Thomas Love Peacock | |