Nothing can be plainer than that he really held
his intimate friend, Joanna Baillie, a very great dramatic poet, a
much greater poet than himself, for instance; one fit to be even
mentioned as following--at a distance--in the track of Shakespeare. He
supposes Erskine to exhort him thus:--
"Or, if to touch such chord be thine,
Restore the ancient tragic line,
And emulate the notes that rung
From the wild harp which silent hung
By silver Avon's holy shore,
Till twice a hundred years roll'd o'er,--
When she, the bold enchantress, came
With fearless hand and heart on flame,
From the pale willow snatch'd the treasure,
And swept it with a kindred measure,
Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove
With Montfort's hate and Basil's love,
Awakening at the inspired strain,
Deem'd their own Shakespeare lived again."
Avon's swans must have been Avon's geese, I think, if they had deemed
anything of the kind. Joanna Baillie's dramas are "nice," and rather
dull; now and then she can write a song with the ease and sweetness
that suggest Shakespearian echoes.
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