cate the slave-trade, he does not arm Mr. Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority, he does not strain hard to deluge Ireland with blood. On such points, where humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has not passed into a by-word, Mr. Southey is still liberal and humane. The elasticity of his spirit is unbroken: the bow recoils to its old position. He still stands convicted of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. He was not regularly articled as a Government-tool!-Perhaps the most pleasing and striking of all Mr. Southey's poems are not his triumphant taunts hurled against oppression, are not his glowing effusions to Liberty, but those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems conscious of his own infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct by thought and time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May the quaint but affecting aspirauon expressed in one of these be fulfilled, that as he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may wear off, and he himself become

"Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree!"

Mr. Southey's prose-style can scarcely be too much praised. It is plain, clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with a grave and sparkling admixture of archaisms in its ornaments and occasional phraseology. He is the best and most natural prose-writer of any poet of the day; we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron, Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance. The manner is perhaps superior to the matter, that is, in his Essays and Reviews. There is rather a want of originality and even of impetus: but there is no want of playful or biting satire, of ingenuity, of casuistry, of learning and of information. He is "full of wise saws and modern" (as well as ancient) "instances." Mr. Southey may not always convince his opponents; but he seldom fails to stagger, never to gall them. In a word, we may describe his style by saying that it has not the body or thickness of port wine, but is like clear sherry with kernels of old authors thrown into it !-He also excels as an historian and prosetranslator. His histories abound in information, and exhibit proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. By no uncommon process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems willing to steady the ex

have defy seen Mr doutney 11 200 DR ↑ W Dpear to advantage, we mean an tar But certainly the same rutire d geruntur, DE BE wounding worse, but he makes up is the detaus ni by a stopous contemares of sayment le vir or zima.ry ý thought or mpetuous decanoaterm. bir Coverages souce are exquence, those at Alr Eva;Te, shrill, and dry. Mr. Coveridges forte and he is conscious of this Mr Boutbey endral V wrkog na ha strong-houd, and if graveled in an arguzwa loss for an explanation, refers to someth, ng be has w subject, or brings out his port-fona, doaturd down is a confirmation of sore fact. He is scb -laste and p ideas. He sets more value on what be wris says he is perhaps prouder of his library than of tone-themselves a library! He is more sumpar than his friend Mr Colervige; but at the same or concinating He is less vain, or has less bipe therefore lays himself less out to please. There is an descension in his ervility With a tall, loose figur, a Busterity of countenance, and no inclination to emp would say he has something puritanical, something ascete appearance He answers to Mandeville's descripti, a of "a parson in a tie-wig" He is not a boon companion,

he indulge in the pleasures of the table, nor in any other vice; nor are we aware that Mr. Southey is chargeable with any human frailty but-want of charity! Having fewer errors to plead guilty to, he is less lenient to those of others. He was born an age too late. Had he lived a century or two ago, he would have been a happy as well as blameless character. But the distraction of the time has unsettled him, and the multiplicity of his pretensions have jostled with each other. No man in our day (at least no man of genius) has led so uniformly and entirely the life of a scholar from boyhood to the present hour, devoting himself to learning with the enthusiasm of an early love, with the severity and constancy of a religious vow-and well would it have been for him if he had confined himself to this, and not undertaken to pull down or to patch up the State! However irregular in his opinions, Mr. Southey is constant, unremitting, mechanical in his studies, and the performance of his duties. There is nothing Pindaric or Shandean here. In all the relations and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just. We never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge; and if he has many enemies, few men can boast more numerous or stauncher friends. The variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking contrast to the mode in which they are produced. He rises early, and writes or reads till breakfast-time. He writes or reads after breakfast till dinner, after dinner till tea, and from tea till bed-time

"And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour to his grave—”

on Derwent's banks, beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study serves him for business, exercise, recreation. He passes from verse to prose, from history to poetry, from reading to writing, by a stopwatch. He writes a fair hand, without blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off when he comes to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for another, as opposite as the Antipodes.— His mind is after all rather the recipient and transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His passions do not

amount to more than irritability. With some rali mn ha coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness i Rash in his opinions, he is steady in his attachment

man, in many particulars admirable, in all respectabe—to pa cal inconsistency alone excepted

MR. WORDSWORTH.