major and minor epics, &c., of many
Christian poets. The drawings of the monks, splendid in colouring and
beautiful in finish, are mostly ludicrous in design, from glaring
anachronisms, erroneous perspective, &c. I saw a print in Montfaucon,
where fish were gamboling like porpusses on the surface of the sea,
and one or two were visible _through the paddles_ of a boat. In the
same volume was a print of the apotheosis of St. Louis, from
an illumination. The holy prince was represented dying in the
fore-ground, but over head were a couple of angels flying away with
his soul, (under the figure of a wretched infant, skinny and naked,
save the glory that covered his head,) in a kind of sheet, or rather
sack.

But to detail all the absurdities and indecencies of these revered
artists, whether limners, or carvers in wood, were endless. Their
anachronisms, however, have been of considerable service to the
antiquary. Sculpture has its monstrosities, architecture its
incongruities, though not so palpable as those of painting, because
the art is less generally understood by the common observer, or rather
pictorial errors are in general easily detected by the eye alone,
and sometimes by the most commonly informed mind; but architectural
defects are only recognisable by those who have studied the principles
of this fine art. Poetry, I am sorry to say, is not exempt from bulls
and blunders, of various kinds and degrees of enormity; many of which
have been, from time to time, exposed in a very amusing manner. I
shall therefore, in conclusion, crave the liberty of producing one
which has lately come under my own cognizance. A modern poet, whose
compositions are fraught with beauty and genius, sings:--

"Then swooped the winds, that hurl the _giant oak_
From _Snowdon's altitude_."

And another, in stanzas of extreme strength and eloquent description,
describes a storm at night "among the mountains of Snowdon," with
these expressions:--

----"The bird of night
Screams from her straw-built nest, as from the womb
Of infant death, and wheels her drowsy flight
Amid _the pine-clad rocks_, with wonder and afright."

----"The night-breeze dies
Faint, on _the mountain-ash leaves that surround
Snowdon's dark peaks_."

Now, a painful pilgrimage of eleven hours, up Snowdon and back again,
enables me to declare that had oaks, pines, and service-trees adorned
that appalling and volcanic chaos, five or six years since, some