The public, we believe, has
now supped full of this sort of horrors; or, if any effect is still to
be produced by their exhibition, it may certainly be produced at too
cheap a rate, to be worthy the ambition of a poet of original
imagination.
In the third place, we object to the extreme and monstrous improbability
of almost all the incidents which go to the composition of this fable.
We know very well that poetry does not describe what is ordinary; but
the marvellous, in which it is privileged to indulge, is the marvellous
of performance, and not of accident. One extraordinary rencontre or
opportune coincidence may be permitted, perhaps, to bring the parties
together, and wind up matters for the catastrophe; but a writer who gets
through the whole business of his poem, by a series of lucky hits and
incalculable chances, certainly manages matters in a very economical way
for his judgment and invention, and will probably be found to have
consulted his own ease, rather than the delight of his readers. Now,
the whole story of Marmion seems to us to turn upon a tissue of such
incredible accidents.
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