Richmond enquirer. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1815-1867, 1821-06-15

vase. They miesi have heard the poe,ichl wind;
bowling through The chials of pgsy, or the garnet
window they might have seen the sun shining on n
footman's livery, or on a brass warming pan but
could the |" calm water or the Wind or the
&c sun make all, or any of these "pooticaI: :" |
think not MIR. Bowlcs admits the Ship to be
poctical, but only from those accessories now II
they confer poetry to make one thing pocticol
they would make other things pociical the more
so, Mr. Bowlcs calls ship of the line without
them, that is to say its masts and sails and stream
crs. blue bunting" and "coarse canvas, and
tall poles So they are; and porcelain is clay,
and man IS dust, and flesh is grass, and yet the
two latter at least are the subjects of much poesy.
Did MIR. Bowles ever gaze upon the sea? L
presume that he has, at least upon n sea-pecc. Did
any painter paint the only, without the addi-
ton OF ship, boat, wreck, some such adjunct?
Is the sea itself more attractive, moro moral,
more pocucal object, with or without vessel,
breaking its vast but fatiguing nono,ony? Is a
storm more poetical without ship or in the poem
OF the Shipwrcck is it the or the ship which
| most interests both much undoubtedly /; but with
out the vessel, what should for the cmpcst'
Ii would sink into mere descriptive poesy, which in
itself was never esteemed high order of that art
look upon myself entitled TO talk OF naval
matters, nj least TO poets with the exception of
Walter Scott, Moore, and Southey, perhaps, who
have been voyagers, have more miles than
all the rest of them together living ever sailed
and have lived for months and months on ship
board and, during the whole period of my life
abroad, have scarcely ever passed month out of
two years till ten the brink of it. recollect,
when anchored off Cape Sgcum in 1910, in an En-
glish frgate, violent squall coming on sunset so
violent as to make us imagine that the ship would
part cable, drive from her anchorage. Mr.. Hob
house and MYSELF and some officers, had been up
the Dardanelca to Abydos, and were Just returned
| in time. The aspect of n storm in the Archipelago
IS rs poetcal as need be, the sea beng particularly
short, dashing, and dangerous, and the navigation
intricate and broken by the isles and currents.
Cape Sigeum, the tumult Of the Troad, Lemnos,
Icnedos, all added to tho associations of the time.
But what seemed the most poeficoi" of all at the
moment wore the numbers (about two hundred) of
Greek and Turkish craft, which obliged TO
6 cut and run" before the wind, from their unsafe
anchorage, some for Tenc,os some for other isles,
some for the main, and some it might be for cterni-
~. The sight OF these little scudding vessels, dart
| ing over the foam in tho twilight now appearing
and now disappearing between the waves in the
cloud of night with their peculiarly ciite sails Che
Levant sails not being of 4" coarse cm,ras' but OF
white cotton) skimming along as quickly, but less
safely than the seamcws which lowered over them
their evident distress, their reduction fiutterng
specks in the distance, their crowded succession,
| their htfeaess, as contendng with the giant ele-
ment, which made our stout forty-fours tcuk tim
bers, (she was built in Inca) crcak again their as
| pect and their motion, all struck as something
far more poetical" than the mere broad brawlinc
shipless sea, and the sullen winds, could possibly
| have been without them
| ITO be continnedJ