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boldness of imagination, but at the same time-one of the many generous and affectionate acts diffuse in style, and in many parts wild and incoherent. In imitation of Dante, the young poet conducted his heroine in a dream to the abodes of departed spirits, and dealt very freely with the 'murderers of mankind,' from Nimrod the mighty | hunter, down to the hero conqueror of Agincourt

A huge and massy pile

Massy it seemed, and yet with every blast
As to its ruin shook. There, porter fit,
Remorse for ever his sad vigils kept.
Pale, hollow-eyed, emaciate, sleepless wretch,
Inly he groaned, or, starting, wildly shrieked,
Aye as the fabric, tottering from its base,
Threatened its fall-and so, expectant still,
Lived in the dread of danger still delayed.

They entered there a large and lofty dome,
O'er whose black marble sides a dim drear light
Struggled with darkness from the unfrequent lamp.
Enthroned around, the Murderers of Mankind-
Monarchs, the great! the glorious! the august!
Each bearing on his brow a crown of fire-
Sat stern and silent. Nimrod, he was there,
First king, the mighty hunter; and that chief
Who did belie his mother's fame, that so

He might be called young Ammon. In this court
Cæsar was crowned-accursed liberticide;
And he who murdered Tully, that cold villain
Octavius-though the courtly minion's lyre
Hath hymned his praise, though Maro sung to him,
And when death levelled to original clay
The royal carcass, Flattery, fawning low,
Fell at his feet, and worshipped the new god.
Titus was here, the conqueror of the Jews,
He, the delight of humankind misnamed;
Cæsars and Soldans, emperors and kings,
Here were they all, all who for glory fought,
Here in the Court of Glory, reaping now
The meed they merited.

As gazing round,

The Virgin marked the miserable train,
A deep and hollow voice from one went forth :
'Thou who art come to view our punishment,
Maiden of Orleans! hither turn thine eyes;
For I am he whose bloody victories

Thy power hath rendered vain. Lo! I am here,
The hero conqueror of Agincourt,
Henry of England!'

'My

In the second edition of the poem, published in 1798, the vision of the Maid of Orleans, and everything miraculous, was omitted. When the poem first appeared, its author was on his way to Lisbon, in company with his uncle, Dr Herbert, chaplain to the factory at Lisbon. Previous to his departure in November 1795, Southey had married Miss Edith Fricker of Bristol, sister of the lady with whom Coleridge united himself; and immediately after the ceremony they parted. mother,' says the poet's son and biographer, 'wore her wedding-ring hung round her neck, and preserved her maiden name until the report of the marriage had spread abroad.' Cottle, the generous Bristol bookseller, had given Southey money to purchase the ring. The poet was six months with his uncle in Lisbon, during which time he had applied himself to the study of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, in which he afterwards became a proficient. The death of his brotherin-law and brother-poet, Lovell, occurred during his absence abroad, and Southey on his return set about raising something for his young friend's widow. She afterwards found a home with Southey

of his busy life. In 1797 he published his Letters from Spain and Portugal, and took up his residence in London, in order to commence the study of the law. A college-friend, Mr C. W. W. Wynn, gave him an annuity of £160, which he continued to receive until 1807, when he relinquished it on obtaining a pension from the crown of £200. The study of the law was never a congenial pursuit with Southey; he kept his terms at Gray's Inn, but his health failed, and in the spring of 1800 he again visited Portugal. After a twelvemonth's residence in that fine climate, he returned to England, lived in Bristol a short time, and then made a journey into Cumberland, for the double purpose of seeing the lakes and visiting Coleridge, who was at that time residing at Greta Hall, Keswick-the house in which Southey himself was henceforth to spend the greater portion of his life. A short trial of official life also awaited him. He was offered and accepted the appointment of private secretary to Mr Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland; the terms, prudently limited to one year, being a salary of about £350, English currency. His official duties were more nominal than real, but Southey soon got tired of the light bondage, and before half of the stipulated period of twelve months was over, he had got, as he said, unsecretaryfied, and entered on that course of professional authorship which was at once his business and delight. In the autumn of 1803, he was again at Greta Hall, Keswick. While in Portugal, Southey had finished a second epic poem, Thalaba, the Destroyer, an Arabian fiction of great beauty and magnificence. For the copyright of this work he received a hundred guineas, and it was published in 1801. The sale was not rapid, but three hundred copies being sold by the end of the year, its reception, considering the peculiar style of the poem, was not discouraging. The form of verse adopted by the poet in this work is irregular, without rhyme; and it possesses a peculiar charm and rhythmical harmony, though, like the redundant descriptions in the work, it becomes wearisome in so long a poem. The opening stanzas convey an exquisite picture of a widowed mother wandering over the sands of the East during the silence of night:

Night in the Desert.

I.

How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven :

In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark-blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray

The desert-circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

II.

Who, at this untimely hour,
Wanders o'er the desert sands?
No station is in view,

Nor palm-grove islanded amid the waste.
The mother and her child,
The widowed mother and the fatherless boy,
They, at this untimely hour,
Wander o'er the desert sands.

III.

Alas! the setting sun

Saw Zeinab in her bliss,

Hodeirah's wife beloved, The fruitful mother late,

Whom, when the daughters of Arabia named,
They wished their lot like hers:
She wanders o'er the desert sands

A wretched widow now,

The fruitful mother of so fair a race;
With only one preserved,
She wanders o'er the wilderness.

IV.

No tear relieved the burden of her heart;
Stunned with the heavy woe, she felt like one
Half-wakened from a midnight dream of blood.
But sometimes, when the boy
Would wet her hand with tears,
And, looking up to her fixed countenance,
Sob out the name of Mother, then did she
Utter a feeble groan.

At length, collecting, Zeinab turned her eyes
To heaven, exclaiming: Praised be the Lord!
He gave, he takes away!

The Lord our God is good!'

The metre of Thalaba, as may be seen from this specimen, has great power, as well as harmony, in skilful hands. It is in accordance with the subject of the poem, and is, as the author himself remarks, 'the Arabesque ornament of an Arabian tale.' Southey had now cast off his revolutionary opinions, and his future writings were all marked by a somewhat intolerant attachment to church and state. He established himself on the banks of the river Greta, near Keswick, subsisting by his pen and a pension which he had received from government. In 1804, he published a volume of Metrical Tales, and in 1805, Madoc, an epic poem, founded on a Welsh story, but inferior to its predecessors. In 1810, appeared his greatest poetical work, The Curse of Kehama, a poem of the same class and structure as Thalaba, but in rhyme. With characteristic egotism, Southey prefixed to The Curse of Kehama a declaration that he would not change a syllable or measure for anyone :

Pedants shall not tie my strains
To our antique poets' veins.

Kehama is a Hindu rajah, who, like Dr Faustus, obtains and sports with supernatural power. His adventures are sufficiently startling, and afford room for the author's striking amplitude of description. The story is founded,' says Sir Walter Scott, upon the Hindu mythology, the most gigantic, cumbrous, and extravagant system of idolatry to which temples were ever erected. The scene is alternately laid in the terrestrial paradise -under the sea-in the heaven of heavens-and in hell itself. The principal actors are, a man who approaches almost to omnipotence; another labouring under a strange and fearful malediction, which exempts him from the ordinary laws of nature; a good genius, a sorceress, and a ghost, with several Hindustan deities of different ranks. The only being that retains the usual attributes of humanity is a female, who is gifted with immortality at the close of the piece.' Some of the scenes in this strangely magnificent theatre of

horrors are described with the power of Milton; and Scott has said that the following account of the approach of the mortals to Padalon, or the Indian Hades, is equal in grandeur to any passage which he ever perused:

Far other light than that of day there shone
Upon the travellers, entering Padalon.
They, too, in darkness entering on their way,
But far before the car

A glow, as of a fiery furnace light,
Filled all before them. 'Twas a light that made
Darkness itself appear

A thing of comfort; and the sight, dismayed,
Shrank inward from the molten atmosphere.
Their way was through the adamantine rock
Which girt the world of woe: on either side
Its massive walls arose, and overhead
Arched the long passage; onward as they ride,
With stronger glare the light around them spread-
And, lo! the regions dread-

The world of woe before them opening wide,
There rolls the fiery flood,

Girding the realms of Padalon around.
A sea of flame, it seemed to be
Sea without bound;

For neither mortal nor immortal sight
Could pierce across through that intensest light.

When the curse is removed from the sufferer, Ladurlad, and he is transported to his family in the Bower of Bliss, the poet breaks out into that apostrophe to Love which is so often quoted, but

never can be read without emotion:

Love.

They sin who tell us Love can die.
With life all other passions fly,

All others are but vanity.
In heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
Nor Avarice in the vaults of hell;
Earthly these passions of the earth,
They perish where they had their birth.
But Love is indestructible:
Its holy flame for ever burneth,
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
At times deceived, at times oppressed,
It here is tried and purified,
Then hath in heaven its perfect rest :
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of Love is there.
Oh! when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then, for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrows, all her tears,

An over-payment of delight?

Besides its wonderful display of imagination and invention, and its vivid scene-painting, The Curse of Kehama possesses the recommendation of being, in manners, sentiments, scenery, and costume, distinctively and exclusively Hindu. Its author was too diligent a student to omit whatever was characteristic in the landscape or the people. Passing over his prose works, we next find Southey appear in a native poetical dress, in blank verse. In 1814 he published Roderick, the Last of the Goths, a noble and pathetic poem, though liable also to the charge of redundant description. The style of the versification may be seen from the following account of the grief and confusion of the aged monarch,

when he finds his throne occupied by the Moors volume of narrative verse, All for Love, and The after his long absence:

The sound, the sight

Of turban, girdle, robe, and scimitar,

And tawny skins, awoke contending thoughts
Of anger, shame, and anguish in the Goth;
The unaccustomed face of humankind
Confused him now-and through the streets he went
With haggard mien, and countenance like one
Crazed or bewildered. All who met him turned,
And wondered as he passed. One stopped him short,
Put alms into his hand, and then desired,
In broken Gothic speech, the moon-struck man
To bless him. With a look of vacancy,
Roderick received the alms; his wandering eye
Fell on the money, and the fallen king,
Seeing his royal impress on the piece,
Broke out into a quick convulsive voice,
That seemed like laughter first, but ended soon
In hollow groan suppressed: the Mussulman
Shrunk at the ghastly sound, and magnified
The name of Allah as he hastened on.

A Christian woman, spinning at her door,
Beheld him—and with sudden pity touched,
She laid her spindle by, and running in,
Took bread, and following after, called him back-
And, placing in his passive hands the loaf,
She said, 'Christ Jesus for his Mother's sake
Have mercy on thee!' With a look that seemed
Like idiocy, he heard her, and stood still,
Staring a while; then bursting into tears,
Wept like a child.

Or the following description:

A Moonlight Scene in Spain.

How calmly, gliding through the dark-blue sky,
The midnight moon ascends! Her placid beams,
Through thinly scattered leaves, and boughs grotesque,
Mottle with mazy shades the orchard slope;
Here o'er the chestnut's fretted foliage, gray
And massy, motionless they spread; here shine
Upon the crags, deepening with blacker night
Their chasms; and there the glittering argentry
Ripples and glances on the confluent streams.
A lovelier, purer light than that of day
Rests on the hills; and oh! how awfully,
Into that deep and tranquil firmament,
The summits of Auseva rise serene !

The watchman on the battlements partakes
The stillness of the solemn hour; he feels
The silence of the earth; the endless sound
Of flowing water soothes him; and the stars,
Which in that brightest moonlight well-nigh quenched,
Scarce visible, as in the utmost depth
Of yonder sapphire infinite, are seen,
Draw on with elevating influence
Towards eternity the attempered mind.
Musing on worlds beyond the grave, he stands,
And to the Virgin Mother silently
Breathes forth her hymn of praise.

Southey having in 1813, accepted the office of poet-laureate, composed some courtly strains that tended little to advance his reputation. His Carmen Triumphale (1814) and The Vision of Judgment (1821) provoked much ridicule at the time, and would have passed into utter oblivion, if Lord Byron had not published another Vision of Judgment-one of the most powerful, though wild and profane, of his productions, in which the laureate received a merciless and witty castigation, that even his admirers admitted to be not unmerited. The latest of our author's poetical works was a

Pilgrim of Compostella (1829). He continued his ceaseless round of study and composition, writing on all subjects, and filling ream after ream of paper with his lucubrations on morals, philosophy, poetry, and politics. He was offered a baronetcy and a seat in parliament, both of which he prudently declined. His fame and his fortune, he knew, could only be preserved by adhering to his solitary studies; but these were too constant and uninterrupted. The poet forgot one of his own maxims, that 'frequent change of air is of all things that which most conduces to joyous health and long life.' From the year 1833 to 1837 he was chiefly engaged in editing the works of Cowper, published in fifteen volumes. About the year 1834, his wife, the early partner of his affections, sank into a state of mental imbecility, ‘a pitiable state of existence, in which she continued for about three years, and though he bore up wonderfully during this period of affliction, his health was irretrievably shattered. In about a year and a half afterwards, however, he married a second time, the object of his choice being Miss Caroline Bowles, the poetess. My spirits,' he says, 'would hardly recover their habitual and healthful cheerfulness, if I had not prevailed upon Miss Bowles to share my lot for the remainder of our lives. There is just such a disparity of age as is fitting; we have been well acquainted with each other more than twenty years, and a more perfect conformity of disposition could not exist. Some members of the poet's grown-up family seem to have been averse to this union, but the devoted attentions of the lady, and her exemplary domestic virtues, soothed the few remaining years of the poet's existence. Those attentions were soon painfully requisite. Southey's intellect became clouded, his accustomed labours were suspended, and though he continued his habit of reading, the power of comprehension was gone. His dearly prized books,' says his son, were a pleasure to him almost to the end, and he would walk slowly round his library looking at them, and taking them down mechanically.' Wordsworth, writing to Lady Frederick Bentinck in July 1840, says, that on visiting his early friend, he did not recognise him till he was told. his eyes flashed for a moment with their former brightness, but he sank into the state in which I had found him, patting with both hands his books affectionately like a child.' Three years were passed in this deplorable condition, and it was a matter of satisfaction rather than regret that death at length stepped in to shroud this painful spectacle from the eyes of affection as well as from the gaze of vulgar curiosity. He died in his house at Greta on the 21st of March 1843. He left at his death a sum of about £12,000, to be divided among his children, and one of the most valuable private libraries in the kingdom. The life and correspondence of Southey have been published by his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, in six volumes. His son-in-law, the Rev. J. Wood Warter, published his Commonplace Book, 4 vols., and Selections from his Letters, 4 vols. In these works the amiable private life of Southey-his indefatigable application, his habitual cheerfulness and lively fancy, and his steady friendships and true generosity, are strikingly displayed. The only drawback is the poet's egotism, which was inordinate, and the hasty uncharitable judgments

Then

sometimes passed on his contemporaries, the result partly of temperament and partly of his seclusion from general society. Southey was interred in the churchyard of Crosthwaite, and in the church is a marble monument to his memory, a full-length recumbent figure, with the following inscription by Wordsworth on the base of the monument:

Wordsworth's Epitaph on Southey.

Ye vales and hills, whose beauty hither drew
The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you

His eyes have closed; and ye, loved books, no more
Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,
To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown,
Adding immortal labours of his own;
Whether he traced historic truth with zeal
For the state's guidance, or the church's weal
Or Fancy, disciplined by studious Art,
Informed his pen, or Wisdom of the heart,
Or Judgments sanctioned in the patriot's mind
By reverence for the rights of all mankind.
Large were his aims, yet in no human breast
Could private feelings find a holier nest.
His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud
From Skiddaw's top; but he to Heaven was vowed
Through a life long and pure, and steadfast faith
Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death.

Few authors have written so much and so well, with so little real popularity, as Southey. Of all his prose works, admirable as they are in purity of style, the Life of Nelson alone is a general favourite. The magnificent creations of his poetry-piled up like clouds at sunset, in the calm serenity of his capacious intellect-have always been duly appreciated by poetical students and critical readers; but by the public at large they are neglected. An attempt to revive them, by the publication of the whole poetical works in ten uniform and cheap volumes, has only shewn that they are unsuited to the taste of the present generation. The reason of this may be found both in the subjects of Southey's poetry, and in his manner of treating them. His fictions are wild and supernatural, and have no hold on human affections. Gorgeous and sublime as some of his images and descriptions are, they come like shadows, so depart.' They are too remote, too fanciful, and often too learned. The Grecian mythology is graceful and familiar; but Southey's Hindu superstitions are extravagant and strange. To relish them requires considerable previous reading and research, and this is a task which few will undertake. The dramatic art or power of vivid delineation is also comparatively unknown to Southey, and hence the dialogues in Madoc and Roderick are generally flat and uninteresting. His observation was of books, not nature. Some affectations of style and expression also marred the effect of his conceptions, and the copious flow of his versification, unrelieved by bursts of passion or eloquent sentiment, sometimes becomes heavy and monotonous in its uniform smoothness and dignity.

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The Battle of Blenheim.

It was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage-door
Was sitting in the sun :

And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round Which he beside the rivulet,

In playing there, had found;
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,

"'Tis some poor fellow's skull,' said he,
Who fell in the great victory.

'I find them in the garden,

For there's many here about; And often, when I go to plough,

The ploughshare turns them out!
For many thousand men,' said he,
'Were slain in that great victory.'

'Now tell us what 'twas all about,'
Young Peterkin he cries:
While little Wilhelmine looks up,

With wonder-waiting eyes;
'Now tell us all about the war,
And what they killed each other for.'

'It was the English,' Kaspar cried,
'Who put the French to rout;
But what they killed each other for,
I could not well make out.
But everybody said,' quoth he,
'That 'twas a famous victory.

'My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by ;
They burned his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly ;

So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.
'With fire and sword, the country round
Was wasted far and wide;
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born baby, died;
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;

But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

'Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, And our good prince, Eugene.' 'Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!' Said little Wilhelmine. 'Nay-nay-my little girl,' quoth he, 'It was a famous victory.

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Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen

Wrinkled and keen;

No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;

But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.
I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralise:

And in this wisdom of the holly tree

Can emblems see

Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, One which may profit in the after-time.

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere,

To those who on my leisure would intrude
Reserved and rude,

Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be
Like the high leaves upon the holly tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know,
Some harshness shew,

All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the holly tree.
And as, when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,

The holly leaves a sober hue display
Less bright than they,

But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the holly tree?

So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng,

So would I seem amid the young and gay
More grave than they,

That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the holly tree. Some of the youthful ballads of Southey were extremely popular. His Lord William, Mary the Maid of the Inn, The Well of St Keyne, and The Old Woman of Berkeley, were the delight of most young readers seventy years since. He loved to sport with subjects of diablerie; and one satirical piece of this kind, The Devil's Thoughts, the joint production of Southey and Coleridge, had the honour of being ascribed to various persons. The conception of the piece was Southey's, who led off with the following opening stanzas:

From his brimstone bed at break of day
A-walking the devil is gone,

To visit his snug little farm the earth,
And see how his stock goes on.

Over the hill and over the dale,

And he went over the plain,

And backward and forward he switched his long tail,

As a gentleman switches his cane.

But the best and most piquant verses are by Coleridge: one of these has passed into a proverb:

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;

And the devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

This gentleman, the representative of an ancient family, was born at Ipsley Court, Warwickshire, on the 30th of January 1775. He was educated

at Rugby School, whence he was transferred to Trinity College, Oxford. His first publication was a small volume of poems, dated as far back as 1795. The poet was intended for the army, but, like Southey, he imbibed republican sentiments, and for that cause declined engaging in the profession of arms. His father then offered him an allowance of £400 per annum, on condition that he should study the law, with this alternative, if he refused, that his income should be restricted to one-third of the sum. The independent poet preferred the smaller income with literature as his companion. He must soon, however, have succeeded to the family estates, for in 1806, exasperated by the bad conduct of some of his tenants, he is said to have sold possessions in Warwickshire and Staffordshire, and pulled down a handsome house he had built. This rash impulsiveness will be found pervading his literature as well as his life. In 1808, Mr Landor joined the Spaniards in their first insurrectionary movement, raising a troop at his own expense, and contributing 20,000 reals to aid in the struggle. In 1815, he took up his residence in Italy, having purchased a villa near Florence. There he lived for many years, cultivating art and literature, but he again returned to England and settled in Bath. The early poetical works of Landor were collected and republished in 1831. They consist of Gebir, a sort of epic poem, originally written in Latin (Gebirus, 1802), which De Quincey said had for some time 'the sublime distinction of having enjoyed only two readers-Southey and himself;' Count Julian, a tragedy, highly praised by Southey; and various miscellaneous poems, to which he continued almost every year to make additions. He also shape of Latin verses and essays, for which the cultivated private renown,' as Byron said, in the noble poet styled him the 'deep-mouthed Boeotian, Savage Landor.' This satire, however, was pointless; for as a ripe scholar, imbued with the spirit of antiquity, Mr Landor transcended most of his contemporaries. His acquirements and genius Conversations, a series of dialogues published at were afterwards fully displayed in his Imaginary intervals between 1824 and 1846, by which time they had amounted to one hundred and twenty-five in number, ranging over all history, all times, and almost all subjects. Mr Landor's poetry is inferior to his prose. In Gebir there is a fine passage, amplified by Wordsworth in his Excursion, which describes the sound which sea-shells seem to make when placed close to the ear:

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But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:
Shake one and it awakens, then apply

Its polished lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

In Count Julian, Mr Landor adduces the following beautiful illustration of grief :

Wakeful he sits, and lonely and unmoved,
Beyond the arrows, views, or shouts of men;
As oftentimes an eagle, when the sun
Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray,
Stands solitary, stands immovable,

Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased,
In the cold light.

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