Necessarian-like-speaking, it is correct. Page 98: "Dead
is the Douglas! cold thy warrior frame, illustrious Buchan," etc., are
of kindred excellence with Gray's "Cold is Cadwallo's tongue," etc. How
famously the Maid baffles the Doctors, Seraphic and Irrefragable, "with
all their trumpery!" Page 126: the procession, the appearances of the
Maid, of the Bastard Son of Orleans, and of Tremouille, are full of fire
and fancy, and exquisite melody of versification. The personifications
from line 303 to 309, in the heat of the battle, had better been
omitted; they are not very striking, and only encumber. The converse
which Joan and Conrade hold on the banks of the Loire is altogether
beautiful. Page 313: the conjecture that in dreams "all things are that
seem," is one of those conceits which the poet delights to admit into
his creed,--a creed, by the way, more marvellous and mystic than ever
Athanasius dreamed of. Page 315: I need only _mention_ those lines
ending with "She saw a serpent gnawing at her heart!" They are good
imitative lines: "he toiled and toiled, of toil to reap no end, but
endless toil and never-ending woe." Page 347: Cruelty is such as Hogarth
might have painted her. Page 361: all the passage about Love (where he
seems to confound conjugal love with creating and preserving love) is
very confused, and sickens me with a load of useless personifications;
else that ninth book is the finest in the volume,--an exquisite
combination of the ludicrous and the terrible.
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