Ruskin says about Coleridge, but, in its _bizarre_
way, it may be beautiful.
The author, by a curious analogy with Theophile Gautier, was, in these
days, a humourist as well as a poet. In the midst of his mad fancies
and rare melodies he is laughing at himself, as Theophile mocked at
_Les Jeunes France_. The psychological position is, therefore, one of
the rarest. Mr. Stoddart was, first of all and before all, a hardy and
enthusiastic angler. Between 1830 and 1840 he wrote a few beautiful
angling songs, and then all the poetry of his character merged itself
in an ardent love of Nature: of hill, loch and stream--above all, of
Tweed, the fairest of waters, which he lived to see a sink of
pollution. After 1831 we have no more romanticism from Mr. Stoddart.
The wind, blowing where it listeth, struck on him as on an AEolian
harp, and "an uncertain warbling made," in the true Romantic manner.
He did write a piece with the alluring name of _Ajalon of the Winds_,
but not one line of it survives. The rest is not silence, indeed, for,
in addition to his lays of trout and salmon, of Tweed and Teviot, Mr.
Stoddart wrote a good deal of prose, and a good deal of perfectly
common and uninspired verse.
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