The land that has given birth to Shakspeare and Milton has no
reason to complain of the want of warmth of imagination. Klopstock and
Goethe,--the latter now allowed to be first of the living poets,--are
instances of the wide range of the spirit of poetry. Shall we, who have
seen Byron writing, as it were, in the midst of us, yield assent to
calling Greece and Italy the countries of imagination, _par excellence_,
because they have produced Homer and Dante? Assuredly not. We cannot even
admit, as a general proposition, that the languages of the south are
always the smoothest and most melodious, and the northern ones harsh, and
not adapted for music. The liquid, smooth, and effeminate language of
modern Italy is totally different from the strong, energetic, and harsh
Latin used by the ancient Romans. The Arabic will be immediately admitted,
by any who has heard a page of it read, to be extremely uncouth and
disagreeable. The Russian, on the contrary, is soft and musical. And to
recur to a more familiar instance, we shall find the Welsh tongue, on
examination, to be in fact very poetic, and peculiarly capable of giving
force and expression--whether of grandeur, of terror, or of melody--to
the idea the words are intended to convey. Let the reader who understands
the Welsh pronunciation, judge whether the following distich is not an
echo to, and as it were a picture of, the sense of the majestic sound of
thunder:--
"Tan a dwr y'n ymwriaw,
Yw'r taranau dreigiau draw.
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