Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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It is not conventionally that I have called Mr. Bullen’s work “vivid.” It is of writing such as his that we can say, and say truly:

I watch no longer—I myself am there.

He transports us to the very place he describes—does not merely hand us a stereoscopic glass in which to observe a well-defined photograph.

One other quality has always struck me in Mr. Bullen’s work. In spite of the fact that he knows so much science, and makes so keen and convincing a use of this knowledge, there is always an air of mystery and enchantment about his writing. De Quincey’s brother told De Quincey that all his arguments against the supernatural were perfectly sound here in England, but that they did not hold “to the suth’ard of the line.” In the Southern Seas were still to be found realms where pure reason was not supreme. But Mr. Bullen’s experiences and Idylls are “to the suth’ard of the line.” He deals as a rule with that region of romance, and hence it is, I suppose, that a sense of something strange and fateful, and so fascinating, haunts his pictures of the sea.