subject, but the narrative flags. Military topics were unsuited to Southey. His language is devoid of that martial impetuosity which stirs the blood like the sound of the trumpet; nor does he make up in accuracy what is wanting in spirit. Soldiers pronounce that he is unlucky in his conceptions of their craft-that he misses the point of actions and the purpose of campaigns; and even civilians must observe that a battle of his consists of separate onsets without connexion or plan. But everything is tolerable compared to the abstracts of parliamentary debates, and the old habit of rendering tedious what belonged to his theme by the addition of what did not. A siege is the signal to relate the origin and fortunes of the town, to talk of its cathedrals and monasteries, its pretended relics and the wonders they wrought. He must have gone to the Peninsula itself for his model, and emulated chroniclers such as Sandoval, who commences the History of Charles V. by deducing his genealogy from Adam and Eve. Excellent as are portions of Southey's record, the interest goes on decreasing with the progress, and what pleased at the beginning gets too flat to be endured. The Naval History of England, though published in a more popular form, had even less success; nor, in spite of many striking pages, can we say that the public was unjust. The Letters of Don Manuel Espriella on England, published in 1807, showed a great advance from the Peninsular Letters of 1796; the style is now quite Southeian, and the subjects treated are in great part those which to the end most fixed his attention. The pictures of English life in the middle sphere are true and graceful; but it is evident that he had seen very little of higher society. What is not least interesting is the contrast which his statements often present to the actual condition of matters after the lapse of only forty years; for example, the imaginary Don hears with astonishment that some London newspapers circulate 5000 copies daily (iii. 25);-Portman Square, 'on the outskirts of the town,' is approached on one side by a road unlit, unpaved, inaccessible to carriages' (i. 93);-and clergymen are wholly indistinguishable from other gentlemen by anything in their style of dress (i. 137). The Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society contain a wider and more solemn exposition of Southey's views on the evils of our social state. Alas! he is not seldom more successful in detecting disease than in prescribing remedies. Richelieu and Father Joseph were arranging a campaign. There,'-said Joseph, putting his finger upon the map, there the troops must cross the river.'-'You forget,' replied the Minister, that your finger is not a bridge.' Few theorists, in their paper plans, have the scrupulous regard to consequences VOL. LXXXVIII. NO. CLXXV. R which which distinguished my Uncle Toby when, demolishing his fortifications in obedience to the conditions of peace, he forbore to commence by a breach in the ramparts, because, if the French were treacherous, the garrison would be left exposed. The charm of the Colloquies is the same as in so many of Southey's writings-the graceful expression of sentiments which find an echo in every uncorrupted heart. The privilege to be colloquial has encouraged him to be even more paraphrastic than ordinary, or many of the passages would be among the best he has penned. The idea of summoning Sir Thomas More to be the leader in the dialogue was not over-felicitous. He is as much the pupil as the master of Montesinos; or, rather, he leaves behind him his supernatural wisdom and fills his pitcher at Southey's cistern. We believe we shall not be singular in venturing to say that his articles on similar topics in this Review are calculated to inspire a higher notion of him as a practical reformer. He was the better for writing under a degree of check, and feeling that he must carry in limine the assent of a more arithmetical mind. The subject of pauperism had engaged him from a very early period-it fills a large space in Espriella. The cognate one of General Education was considered with equal care and philanthropy, and handled with equal fulness and elegance. In fact, Southey gave the first effective impulse to not a few of the most marked ameliorations of recent years. His verse, like his prose, was injured by prolixity. His idea of poetry was almost the same that the old actor had of Hercules, when he insisted that he should be represented tall and thin, without the pithy massiveness assigned him by vulgar tradition. This disposition to linger over his theme-to prolong his notes till the sweetness of the melody is lost in the weariness of monotony-he had caught from Spenser, whom from youth to age he loved and studied above all the masters of song. The Tale of Paraguay-written in Spenser's stanza-shows with what fatal fidelity he copied this defect of his original. Pope used to say that poets lost half the credit they deserved, from the world being ignorant how much judgment rejected of what genius conceived. Southey was an unsparing blotter of verse, but crossed out less than he put in. Much,' he says, speaking of the revision of Thalaba, was pruned off, and more was ingrafted.' 'I am correcting Madoc,' he writes to William Taylor, 'with ́merciless vigilance-shortening and shortening-distilling wine into alcohol. Yet a few months later, when he had gone through 1800 lines of the MS., he announced to his brother that they had grown to 2530. He was never sufficiently sensible that in the currency of Parnassus two-and-forty sixpences are not equivalent to a guinea. This diffuseness assumes various forms. In the Tale of Paraguay he repeats an idea half a dozen times over, as if aiming to display the richness of a stage wardrobe, which for every actor has a profusion of dresses. In his minor poems the besetting error is mostly shown by pursuing a conception through its minutest ramifications, or in devoting stanza upon stanza to the expression of trifles not worthy to be expressed. His larger poems abound in passages beautiful in themselves, but utterly misplaced. He is for ever stopping to expatiate upon scenes, and declaim upon ethics, when it would have pleased the reader to see the action proceed and quicken its pace. His language, in all his verse, is usually the opposite of terse and condensed. He has Doric simplicity, but wants Doric strength. He relates that he read Cowper's Odyssey to cure his poetry of its 'wheyishness.' This he did on the principle that to live with the talkative is the way to learn silence, which proves his having at last become aware of the fault, though he never overcame it. His first epic was a juvenile production, which his maturer judgment on the whole condemned-and perhaps we have already said more than enough about it. Madoc he believed (as we have seen) would stand and flourish, but acknowledged the story to be uninteresting and the passion deficient. The greater part, in truth, is a cento of travels, and little raised above prose in thought, or even in phrase. Battles and combats abound, but want the fire and animation which agitate and hurry on the mind. None of the characters have the strongly-marked traits which create an intense sympathy, and make them live in the memory. They are personifications of virtues and vices rather than women and men. The virtuous, who are the majority, preach with a monotony of moral sentiment, and act with a monotony of heroic devotion, more insipid than winning. But a reperusal reveals numerous beauties which escaped our notice while cutting open leaf after leaf-touches of nature and tenderness, strokes of eloquence, and, above all, fine specimens of descriptive power. He is only not in the very highest class of descriptive poets, because he descends to particulars where it had been better to give a few bold strokes, and by them enable the imagination to fill up the details ;-and because, by the elaborate distinctness' with which he isolates his picture, he betrays the artifice of a mind not itself thoroughly heated. Coleridge, we remember, contrasted him. in this respect with Homer, to whom he so often likened himself. The modern artist,' said he, 'takes you into a gallery where brilliant canvasses are carefully arranged in costly frames-the divine ancient carries the key of a rolling panorama.' R 2 Roderick Roderick was a great improvement upon Madoc. There is still a meagre fable, of which the catastrophe is foreseen; a loitering narrative, unseasonable description, an excess of pulpit eloquence, a too prevailing uniformity of tone and conduct; but there is far more passion, and for once a character which arrests attention. Roderick is the poem, and the other personages merely touch us through their relation to him. The worst defect is the total disregard of the spirit of the age, and of the contending factions, which should have coloured the story as the dye the woof, and would have made it picturesque in the extreme. The historic outline apart, and the Epic is redolent of England in the nineteenth century instead of Spain in the eighth. The two lyrical tales-Thalaba and Kehama-were portions of a scheme for making each of the principal mythologies the basis of a poem. His purpose was not to display the influence of different creeds upon the actions of men, but to develop the wild absurdities of the mythologies themselves. Neither was historic accuracy a part of his plan. He avowedly rejected what he pleased, exalted what he took, and added much in the same exaggerated strain. He infused the soul of Christianity into the skeleton of heathenism. Instead of their natural fruits these false religions produce the virtues of the poet's faith; grapes grow on thorns and figs on thistles. No skill could overcome the vices inherent in the design, which was the offspring of private predilection, and not of a consideration of what would interest mankind. The book of Revelations was his favourite part of the Bible when a boy, and whatever bore a resemblance to the visions of the Apocalypse had a charm for his fancy. Upon a foundation so unpromising he reared what is probably his masterpiece in verse. The story of Thalaba will not bear criticism; it must be judged by the poetry to which it gives birth; and this, taken as a whole, is the most vigorous, elastic, and picturesque that ever came from his pen. The scenes he creates show a strong, if not a luxuriant imagination; and the unadorned language equally proclaims that a command of imagery, which depends on a facility of detecting resemblances, was not among his gifts. If it had been in the fountain it would have flowed in the aqueduct. What little ornament of this class lies scattered through his poetry is trite and commonplace. Kehama has admirable passages, but they bear a slender proportion to those which are feeble and grotesque. It would be difficult to define the limits of supernatural machinery-to say where it begins to revolt the imagination which it aims to lead captive. But Southey was himself aware that the subject of Kehama was beyond the sphere of general sympathy, and the wonder wonder is that it could engage his own. Sancho Panza hung an entire night by the roots of a bush which grew on a declivity, and discovered when day broke that his feet were within a couple of inches of the ground. The situation would have seemed awful to any who partook his delusion, and supposed him suspended over a precipice ;-it only amuses us whom Cid Hamet has made aware of the fact. A Hindoo might very possibly think the marvels of Kehama sublime. Southey's feeling of the fitness between the verse and story of Thalaba seems really well founded, but his management of his lyrics is open to objection. He has carried his irregularity to such an extent that the ear continually misses the repetition of the metre; and in poetry, as in music, a recurrence of similar rhythm is essential to harmony. The transitions too are as violent as they are frequent. He repeatedly passes in the middle of a sentence from a solemn measure to jig and singsong, and shocks by the incongruity of the parts, where his intention, no doubt, was to charm by variety. In place of the undulations of hill and dale we have the jolts of a rugged road. The melody is often exquisite, but it is fitful and ill combined. Kehama exhibits the same disposition to push liberty to licence. The author's decision that its metre united, in a manner peculiar to itself, the advantages of rhyme with the strength and freedom of blank verse,' will appear strange to any one who compares the far greater strength and freedom of Dryden's tales with entire sections of the Curse of Kehama, which are little removed above nursery jingle. In another particular he was somewhat capricious ;-he interposed throughout his poems lines which either no other mouth could make musical, or no other ear would approve. The sublimities of religion were not the only attractions for him in theological themes. He had a particular love for all the perversities of belief and practice which have disgraced mankind. The lying legends of fraud, and the fantastic freaks of fanaticism, were sought with avidity and retailed with glee. These pious aberrations were provocatives to mirth, and incidents and language too sacred for such use are tricked out in sportive rhymes for the amusement of the world. One piece of profanity should not be cured by another. But Southey in his gravest moods trod hallowed ground with a daring step. In his Vision of Judgment he assumed the office of the Creator, and pronounced decisions which are veiled from every mortal eye. The grounds upon which he admits his elect to heaven are as mistaken as the attempt. Wolfe is there for his generalship, Handel for his music, Reynolds for his painting, Chatterton for his poetry. He always spoke of his own latter end without any of the qualifica |