A blind man's offering.

  • Bowen, B. B. (Benjamin B.), 1819-1905
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A blind man's offering. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and phenomena of light, we are more deeply impressed than we could ever have been before, of the influence that blindness must ever exert in retarding intellectual progress, —and we involuntarily exclaim, what a pity that so great a man should be the victim of so terrible a misfortune! And in like manner, when we read the beautiful verses of Blacklock, especially those in which he attempts to depict the wonders of nature, forever veiled from his gaze, and that existed to him only in story, though we are greatly surprised at the correct- ness and even vividness of his pictures, still we are made to feel that when he was bereft of sight the world was deprived of a great descriptive poet, —of one who in his delineations of nature might have equalled Burns or even Byron. Still, the poetical productions of Blacklock possess great merit. For if he did not always succeed in describing as graphically as others have done the material world, he yielded to none in delineating the workings of the passions. He under- stood the nature and the power of love, and could speak of its effects on the heart and life with much greater ease and correctness than he could possibly describe the most common phenomenon of nature —as, for ex- ample, the reflection of the moonbeams upon the quiet waters, a gorgeous sunset, &c. It is worthy of remark, in this connection, that all the ideas which 2 man who is born blind can have of external nature are obtained through his other senses, or by association. It is by this latter method alone, that he can obtain a knowledge of colors. It is then evident that he could never succeed as a dramatic poet. And it will always be, at least, a partial failure, when- ever he attempts to illustrate his thoughts, in prose or verse, by images drawn from the external world. Not