"BULLS."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"] SIR,—Are "bulls," even unconscious "bulls," always censur- able and always things merely to laugh at ? are their authors merely men to despise amusedly with a consciousness on the despiser's part of intellectual superiority ? Such flowers of speech seem to me often to be rather the rare blossoming of a
magnificent romantic extravagance of imagination than such blunders as the cold-blooded suppose. I would quote you some splendid " bulls" that come confusedly to me from the old Greeks were I a sounder scholar and remembered my way better among the accents. The later med;seval poets are full of " bulls." " Andnva combattendo ed era morto!"
is the merest " bull," but was a more striking thing of its kind ever written ?
Here is a ewmplet, with a fine example of the "bull" in it, from a littl--known poet of Spain whose whole poem is as full of " bulls and blunders as many a Home-ruler's speech of the same charming commodities
" (limas passe, muds constellaciones, Golfos inavegablos navegando !"
A man needs to have a little Irish or Southern blood in hie veins to see the surprising merit of these lines. The merely logical critic says,—" If these gulfs were really innavigable, how came this gentleman's ship to sail through them ? "—I am,
Previous page
