The office of a bridge is prolific of metaphor, whereof an amusing
instance is Boswell's comparison of himself, when translating Paoli's
talk to Dr. Johnson, to a "narrow isthmus connecting two continents." It
has been aptly said of Dante's great poem, that, in the world of
letters, it is a mediaeval bridge over that vast chasm which divides
classical from modern times. All concliating authors bridge select
severed intelligences, and even national feeling: as Irving's writings
brought more near to each other the alienated sympathies of England and
America, and Carlyle made a trysting-place for British and German
thought; as Sydney Smith's talk threw a suspension-bridge from
Conservative to Reformer, and Lord Bacon's (in the hour of bitter
alienation between Crown and Commons) "reconciling genius spanned the
dividing stream of party."
How isolated and bewildered are villagers, when, after a tempest, the
news spreads that a freshet has carried away the bridge! Every time we
shake hands, we make a human bridge of courtesy or love; and that was a
graceful fancy of one of our ingenious writers to give expression to his
thoughts in "Letters from under a Bridge.
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