their only defect is their too universally laudatory tone; for Scott, who never had an enemy, seems incapable of saying a harsh thing. No man-and certainly no literary man-ever passed so long and so illustrious a life without a single personal enmity. His character was as amiable, generous, manly, and social, as his genius was varied and sublime.

The life of Robert Southey, extending from 1774 to 1843, was a rare instance of unremitting literary activity; and the immense collection of miscellaneous works which he left behind him is highly honourable to his learning and his talents, though it is only as a prose writer that he is likely to descend to posterity. He began life as a violent partisan of the principles of the French Revolution; and in his earlier works-the ridiculous drama of 'Wat Tyler,' and the extravagant and tedious epic, 'Joan of Arc'-he devotes all his powers to the support of extreme liberal opinions. He soon, however, abandoned his early principles, and became one of the most thoroughgoing supporters of monarchical and conservative doctrines; was named, in 1813, laureate, and exhibited in the maintenance of his new political creed as much fervour, virulence, unscrupulousness, and, it is but just to say, sincerity also, as he had shown for the Utopian theories of a republican millennium. To give some idea of the uncompromising and extreme character of his political predilections, we need only mention that in 'Joan of Arc' he has painted as the blackest of tyrants our heroic sovereign Henry V., and placed the Emperor Titus among the "murderers of mankind,” while, in the later stage of his political transformation, he has raised the more than almost morbid obstinacy of George III. to the honours of an absolute canonisation !

In 1801 was published Thalaba,' and in 1810 the Curse of Kehama,' two works of a narrative character, which have many points of resemblance. They are both, in their subject, wild, extravagant, unearthly, full of supernatural machinery, but of a kind as difficult to manage with effect as at first sight splendid and attractive. 'Thalaba' is a tale of Arabian enchantment, full of magicians, dragons, hippogriffs, and monsters. In 'Kehama' the poet has selected for his groundwork the still more unmanageable mythology of the Hindoos a vast, incoherent and clumsy structure of superstition, more hopelessly unadapted to the purposes of poetry than even the Fetishism of the savages of Africa. The poems are written in an irregular and wandering species of rhythm-the 'Thalaba' altogether without rhyme; and the language abounds ir an affected simplicity and perpetual obtrusion of vulgar and puerile phraseology. The works have a most painful air of laxity and want of intellectual bone and muscle. There are many passages of gorgeous description, and many proofs of powerful fancy and imagination; but the persons and adventures are so supernatural, so com

pletely out of the circle of human sympathies both in their triumphs and sufferings, and they are so scrupulously divested of all the passions and circumstances of humanity, that these gorgeous and ambitious works produce on us the impression of a splendid but unsubstantial nightmare: they are agri somnia, the vast disjointed visions of fever and delirium. In Thalaba' we have a series of adventures, encountered by an Arabian hero, who fights with demons and enchanters, and finally overthrows the dominion of the powers of Evil in the Domdaniel caverns, "under the roots of the ocean." It is more extravagant than anything in the 'Thousand and One Nights;' indeed it is nothing but a quintessence of all the puerile and monstrous fictions of Arabian fancy. In the Oriental legends these extravagances are pardonable, and even characteristic, for in them we take into the account the childish and wonder-loving character of the audience to which such fantastic inventions were addressed, and we remember that they are scattered, in the books of the East, over a much greater surface, so to say, whereas here we have them all consolidated into one mass of incoherent monstrosity. We miss, too, the exquisite glimpses afforded us by those tales in the common and domestic life in the East. Kehama' is founded upon one of the most monstrous superstitions of Hindoo belief, viz. that a man, by persisting in an almost incredible succession of voluntary penances and self-torture, can acquire a control over the divinities themselves: and in this poem a wicked enchanter goes near to overthrow the dominion of Brahma, Vishnoo, and Seeva. The poem is full of demons, goblins, terrific sacrifices, and pictures of supernatural existence; and the slender thread of human (or half-human) interest is too feeble to unite them into a whole. These poems, like everything of Southey's, exhibit an incredible amount of multifarious learning; but it is learning generally rather curious than valuable, and it is not vivified by any truly genial, harmonising power of originality.

In the interval between the publication of these poems appeared a volume of metrical tales and the historical epic of 'Madoc.' In the tales, as in general in his minor poems, Southey exhibits a degree of vigour and originality of thought for which we look in vain in his longer works. Some of his legends, translated from the Spanish and Portuguese (in which languages Southey was a proficient), or from the obscurer stores of the Latin chronicles of the Middle Ages, or the monkish legends of the saints, are very vigorous and characteristically written. The author's spirit was strongly legendary; and he has caught the true accent, not of heroic and chivalric tradition, but of the religious enthusiasm of monastic times: and some of his minor original poems have great tenderness and simple dignity of thought, though often injured by a studied meanness and creepingness of expression; for the fatal error of the school to which he

belonged was a theory that the real everyday phraseology of the common people was better adapted to the purposes of poetry than the language of cultivated and educated men; and thus the writers of this class often labour as industriously to acquire the language of the workshop and the nursery as the poets of Louis XIV. after an artificial dignity and elevation.

'Madoc' is founded on one of the most absurd legends connected with the early history of America. Madoc is a Welsh prince of the twelfth century, who is represented as making the discovery of the Western world; and his contests with the Mexicans, and ultimate conversion of that people from their cruel idolatry, form the main action of the poem, which, like 'Joan of Arc,' is written in blank verse. The poet thus had at his disposal the rich store of picturesque scenery, manners, and wonderful adventure to be found in the Spanish narratives of the exploits of Columbus, Pizarro, Cortes, and the Conquestadors. But the victories which are so wonderful when related as gained over the Mexicans by the comparatively well-armed Spaniards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are perfectly incredible when attributed to a band of savages little superior in civilization and the art of war to the people they invaded. Though the poem is crowded with scenes of more than possible splendour, of more than human cruelty, courage, and superstition, the effect is singularly languid; and the exaggeration of prowess and suffering produces the same effect upon the mind as the extravagance of fiction in the two Oriental poems. There is nothing that requires so firm and steady a hand to manage as the extraordinary; the modesty of nature, the boundary of the possible, once overstepped, the reader's curiosity grows more insatiable as it is more liberally fed. When we have had a giant twenty feet high, we require one of sixty; if the hero conquers a dragon which vomits poison, we soon want him to overthrow a monster which belches fire; and so on in an infinite series, till all is extravagance, monstrosity, and childish gaping folly.

'Kehama' was followed at an interval of four years, by Roderick, the Last of the Goths,' a poem in blank verse, and of a much more modest and credible character than its predecessors. The subject is the punishment and repentance of the last Gothic king of Spain, whose vices, oppressions, and in particular an insult offered to the virtue of Florinda, daughter of Count Julian, incited that noble to betray his country to the Moors. The general insurrection of the Spaniards against their Moslem oppressors, the exploits of the illustrious Pelayo, and the reappearance of Roderick at the great battle which put an end to the infidel dominion, form the materials of the action. The king, in the disguise of a hermit, figures in most of the scenes; and his agonizing repentance for his past crimes, and humble trust in the mercy of God, is the keynote or prevailing tone of the work. Though free from the injudicious employment of

supernatural machinery, and though containing some descriptions of undeniable merit, and several scenes of powerful tenderness and pathos, there is the same want of reality and human interest which characterises Southey's poems in general, and the tone is too uniformly ecstatic and agonizing. His personages, like his scenes, have something unreal, phantomlike, dreamy: they are often beautiful, but it is the beauty not of the earth, or even of the clouds, but of the mirage and the Fata Morgana. His robe of inspiration sits gracefully and majestically upon him, but it is too voluminous in its folds, and too heavy in its gorgeous texture, for the motion of real existence : he is never "succinct for speed," and his flowing drapery obstructs and embarrasses his steps. He has power, but not force-his genius is rather passive than active.

On being appointed poet laureate he paid his tribute of court adulation with an eagerness and regularity which showed how complete was his conversion from the political faith of his youthful days. A convert is generally a fanatic; and Southey's laureate odes exhibit a fierce, passionate, controversial hatred of his former liberal opinions which gives interest even to the ambitious monotony, the convulsive mediocrity of his official lyrics. In one of them, the 'Vision of Judgment,' he has essayed to revive the hexameter in English verse. This experiment, tried in so many languages, and with such indifferent success, had been attempted by Gabriel Harvey in the reign of Elizabeth, and the universal ridicule which hailed Southey's attempt was excited quite as much by the absurdity of the metre as by the extravagant flattery of the poem itself. The deification, or rather beatification of George III. drew from Byron some of the severest strokes of his irresistible ridicule, and gave him the opportunity of severely revenging upon Southey some of the latter's attacks upon his principles and poetry.

Southey was a man of indefatigable industry; his prose works are very numerous and valuable for their learning and sincerity, but the little Life of Nelson,' written to furnish young seamen with a simple narrative of the exploits of England's greatest naval hero, has perhaps never been equalled for the perfection of its style. In his other works the principal of which are 'The Book of the Church,' The Lives of the British Admirals,' that of Wesley, a 'History of Brazil,' and of the Peninsular War-we find the same admirable art of clear vigorous English, and no less that strong prejudice, violent political and literary partiality, and a tone of haughty, acrimonious, arrogant self-confidence, which so much detract from his many excellent qualities as a writer, and as a man, his sincerity, his learning, his conscientiousness, and his natural benevolence of character.

In his innumerable critical and historical essays, chiefly contributed to the 'Quarterly Review,' in the 'Colloquies' (a book of imaginary

conversations composed on a most absurd plan), and in the strange miscellaneous work entitled 'The Doctor,' we see a gross ignorance of the commonest principles of political and economic science, and an arrogant, dictatorial, persecuting tone, which render these works melancholy examples of the truth that intolerance is not always naturally associated with weakness of intellect or with malignity of heart.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MOORE, BYRON, AND SHELLEY.

Moore: Translation of Anacreon, and Little's Poems-Political Satires-The Fudge Family-Irish Melodies - Lalla Rookh - Epicurean - Biographies. Byron: Hours of Idleness, and English Bards-Romantic Poems-The Dramas-Childe Harold-Don Juan-Death of Byron. Shelley: Poems and Philosophy-Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, Alastor, &c.-The Cenci -Minor Poems and Lyrics.

WE have seen how the name of Walter Scott was the type, sign, or measure of the first step in literature towards romanticism, or rather of the first step made in modern times from classicism-from the regular, the correct, the established.

The next step in this new career was made by Thomas Moore, who broke up new and fresh fountains of original life, first in the inexhaustible East, and secondly in his native Ireland. In the former field, indeed, it may be thought that he was perhaps anticipated by Southey, so many of whose poems are on Oriental subjects; but these two poets are sufficiently dissimilar to absolve the author of 'Lalla Rookh' from the charge of servilely copying, or, indeed, of following, the writer of 'Thalaba' and 'Kehama :' in the latter and more valuable quality, of a national Irish lyrist, he stands absolutely alone and unapproachable.

Thomas Moore, the Anacreon and Catullus, perhaps in some sense the Petronius and the Apuleius also, of the nineteenth century, was born in Dublin in the year 1780. Belonging essentially to the middle class, and a Roman Catholic besides, it may be easily conceived how he must have sympathised in the deep discontent which pervaded his country at that agitated period. Moore passed some time at the university of his native city, and soon after gave proof that he had made a more than ordinary progress in at least the elegant department of classical scholarship. His first work was a translation into