89). Lightning does not singe the tops of trees
(_P.L._ i. 613), but either shivers them, or cuts a groove down the
stem to the ground. These and other such like inaccuracies must be set
down partly to conventional language used without meaning, the vice
of Latin versification enforced as a task, but they are partly due to
real defect of natural knowledge.
Other objections of the critics on the same score, which may be met
with, are easily dismissed. The objector, who can discover no reason
why the oak should be styled "monumental," meets with his match in
the defender who suggests, that it may be rightly so called because
monuments in churches are made of oak. I should tremble to have to
offer an explanation to critics of Milton so acute as these two. But
of less ingenious readers I would ask, if any single word can be found
equal to "monumental" in its power of suggesting to the imagination
the historic oak of park or chase, up to the knees in fern, which has
outlasted ten generations of men; has been the mute witness of the
scenes of love, treachery, or violence enacted in the baronial hall
which it shadows and protects; and has been so associated with man,
that it is now rather a column and memorial obelisk than a tree of the
forest?
These are the humours of criticism.
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