SOUTHEY. Robert Southey is among the most distinguished of living authors, in the various departments of Poetry, History, and Biography. His poetic talent has been chiefly displayed in the Epic.— Thalaba, Madoc, the Curse of Kehama, and Roderick, the Last of the Goths, are his principal poems. The last mentioned of these is the greatest favourite of the public, and deserves to be so. The poem of Roderick, &c. is founded, as the name imports, upon the history of the last Gothic King of Spain. Upon the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, Hispania, the modern Spain, was taken by those northern barbarians called Goths. The Goths established there a regal government, which subsisted from A. D. 411 to A. D. 712. Roderick, the Last of the Goths, had a private quarrel with a distinguished nobleman of his court, and the latter, indignant against the king, conspired with the Moors, a nation of the opposite shores of Africa, to dethrone Roderick and surrender the sovereignty to the Moors. The authenticity of this statement of the origin of the Moorish conquest of Spain is disputed—but it is the tradition of the Moors and Spaniards, and upon the assumed fact Mr. Southey has founded his poem. Many of Roderick's subjects remained faithful to him, but multitudes rebelled, and after a battle with the Moors and the rebels, Roderick is said to have disappeared, and never to have been found again, A. D. 712. The most faithful adherent of Roderick was Pelayo, a prince of his blood, who became the founder of a new kingdom, that of Asturia. Pelayo seeking liberty, and preferring a desert to a state of bondage, led a few faithful followers to a sequestered spot enclosed by rocks in the interior of Asturia. Being a man of talent and integrity, he acquired an absolute ascendency over his friends, and they appointed him their king. His subjeets were few, and his territory barren rocks; but the men were faithful and courageous. Their asylum was discovered and invaded by the Moors, but the refugees defended themselves; and from this commencement originated the kingdom of Asturia, long one of the most powerful in Spain. Pelayo died in A. D. 737. It may here be remarked that under the Moors, Spain was divided into several sovereignties. Kings of Asturia, of Oviedo, of Aragon, of Castile and Leon, were numbered among the Princes of Spain. Mr. Southey supposes that immediately after his defeat Roderick sought a profound solitude, and in this situation he describes him. Roderick was accompanied in his concealment by Romano, an old man, who died and left the unhappy king alone.. Roderick had been guilty of a crime, and self-reproach aggravated his affliction." RODERICK IN SOLITUDE. The fourth week of their painful pilgrimage And a rude cross, and at its foot a grave, Where better could they rest than here, where faith Had blest the spot, and brought good angels down, As in perpetual jubilee, proclaimed The wonders of the Almighty filling thus The pauses of their fervent orisons. Where better could the wanderers rest than here? To sing his requiem, and with prayer and psalm He lay on the bare earth which long had been Two graves are here. And Roderick transverse at their feet began To break the third. In all his intervals Of prayer, save only when he search'd the woods And fill'd the water-cruise, he labour'd there; And when the work was done, and he had laid And measured it, he shook his head to think They saw his coming; and their whirring wings Had lost its rank, and the prerogative Of mai vas done away. For his lost crown And sceptre had he never felt a thought Oh for a voice Of comfort, for a ray of hope from heaven! A hand that from these billows of despair May reach and snatch him ere he sink engulphed ! Father! he cried; companion, only friend, * Despair hath laid the nets To take my soul, and Memory, like a ghost, Romano! Father! let me hear thy voice Thus he cried, Easing the pressure of his burthened heart With passionate prayer; thus poured his spirit forth Till the long effort had exhausted him, His spirit failed, and laying on the grave His weary head, as on a pillow, sleep Fell on him. He had prayed to hear a voice Had opened, and Romano, visible So patiently; which soothed his childish griefs; PELAYO AND HIS CHILDREN. The ascending vale, Long straitened by the narrowing mountains, here The everlasting springs of Deva gushed. Upon a smooth and grassy plat below, By nature there as for an altar drest, They joined their sister stream, which from the earth Welled silently. In such a scene rude man With pardonable error might have knelt, Feeling a present Deity, and made His offering to the fountain nymph devout. The arching rock disclosed above the springs That e'er of old in forest of romance 'Gainst knights and ladies waged discourteous war, Erect within the portal might have stood. No holier spot than Covadonga, Spain Boasts in her wide extent, though all her realms In elder or in latter days enriched, |