Historical Odes and Other Poems. By Richard Watson Dixon, M.A.
(Smith, Elder, and Co.)—The first of these odes is on Wellington, and. Revolution is apostrophized as follows :— "Blind, self-tormenting, raging, fiend of Dante, In force of furious scope, in vision scanty, She struck at friends as foes, but most abhorred The homes of freedom on the hills and seas ; Heroic Reding fell beneath her sword, And England watched her on the breeze."
We quote this passage because some correspondent may kindly solve the doubts we feel as to the exact meaning of the vigorous image in the last lino. Was it Revolution or England who was "on the breeze," and. why ? Or is breeze used in the sense of a quarrel, and England re- presented as watching Revolution "on the quarrel," just as we say, "on the spree "? But Mr. Dixon's muse often bears him on her lofty pinion far above correctness, as when he makes "Pyrenees" rhyme to "knees," " thunderbolts " to " Soult's," and " this " to " Cadiz," or when he gives us such words as " aggrandisive," and such phrases as "he arrived the rift." Yet correctness at least we have a right to. To ask for poetry would be too much.
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