going on at home, and was glad, when the conversation led to the mention of persons and topics of the day, by which he could obtain any information, without directly asking for it. Such was my interview with one of the most celebrated characters of the present age, in which, as is generally the case, most of my anticipations were disappointed. There was nothing eccentric in his manner-nothing beyond the level of ordinary clever Toi, dont le monde encore ignore le vrai nom, COTEMPORARY AUTHORS.-MR. SOUTHEY. THE How different is his actual case! As a poet, as an author of imaginative works in general, how small is the space he covers, how little is he talked or thought of! The Established Church of Poetry will hear of nobody but Scott, Byron, Campbell: and the Lake Methodists themselves will scarcely permit him to be called a burning and shining light in the same day with their Wordsworth-even their Coleridge. In point of fact, he himself is now the only man who ever alludes to Southey's poems. We can suppose youngish readers start when they come upon some note of his in the Quarterly, or in his new books of history, referring to "the Madoc," or "the Joan," as to something universally known and familiar. As to criticism and politics of the day, he is but one of the Quarterly reviewers, and scarcely one of the most influential of them. He puts forth essays half antiquarianism, half prosing, with now and then a dash of a sweet enough sort of literary mysticism in them-and more frequently a display of pompous self-complacent simplicity, enough to call a smile into the most iron physiognomy that ever grinned. But these lucubrations produce no effect upon the spirit of the time. A man would as soon take his opinions from his grandmother as from the Doctor. The whole thing looks as if it were made on purpose to be read to some antediluvian village club-The fat parson-the solemn leech-the gaping schoolmaster, and three or four simpering Tabbies. There is nothing in common to him and the people of this world. We love himwe respect him, we admire his diligence, his acquisitions, his excellent manner of keeping his note-books-If he were ip orders, and one had an advowson to dispose of, one could not but think of him. But good, honest, worthy man, only to hear him telling us his opinion of Napoleon Buonaparte !--and then the quotations from Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Lan dor, Withers, old Fuller, and all the rest of his favourites-and the little wise-looking maxims, every one of them as old as the back of Skiddaw and the delicate little gleams of pathos -and the little family stories and allusions and all the little parentheses of exultation-well, we really wonder after all, that the Laureate is not more popular. The first time Mr. Southey attempted regular historical composition he succeeded admirably. His Life of Nelson is truly a master-piece ;-a brief-animated--glowing--straightforward-manly English work, in two volumes duodecimo. That book will be read three hundred years hence by every boy that is nursed on English ground. All his bulky historical works are, comparatively speaking, failures. His History of Brazil is the most unreadable production of our time. Two or three elegant quartos about a single Portuguese colony! Every little colonel, captain, bishop, friar, discussed at as much length as if they were so many Cromwells or Loyolas -and why?—just for this one simple reason, that Dr. Southey is an excellent Portugueze scholar, and has an excellent Portugueze library. The whole affair breathes of one sentiment, and but one.-Behold, O British Pub lic! what a fine thing it is to understand this tongue--fall down and worship me! I am a member the Lisbon Academy,and yet I was born in Bristol, and am now living at Keswick. This inordinate vanity is an admirable condiment in a small work, and when the subject is really possessed of a strong interest. It makes one read with more earnestness of attention and sympathy. But carried to this height, and exhibited in such a book as this, it is utter nonsense. It is carrying the joke a great deal too far.-People do at last, however good-natured, get weary of seeing a respectable man walking his hobby-horse. Melancholy to say, the History of the Peninsular War, in spite of an intensely interesting theme, and copious materials of real value, is little better than another Caucasus of lumber, after all. If the campaigns of Buonaparte were written in the same style, they would make a book in thirty or forty quarto volumes, of 700 pages. He is overlaying the thing completely-he is smothering the Duke of Wellington. The underwood has increased, is increasing, and ought without delay to be smashed. Do we want to hear the legendary history of every Catholic saint, who happens to have been buried or worshipped near the scene of some of General Hill's skirmishes? What, in the devil's name, have we to do with all these old twelfth century miracles and visions, in the midst of a history of Arthur Duke of Wellington, and his British army? Does the Doctor mean to write his Grace's Indian campaigns in the same style, and to make the pin whereon to hang all the wreck and rubbish of his commonplace book for Kehama, as he has here done with the odds and ends that he could not get stuffed into the notes on Roderick and My Cid? Southey should have lived in the days of 2600 page folios, triple columns, and double indexes-He would then have been set to a corpus of something at once, and been happy for life. Never surely was such a mistake as for him to make his appearance in an age of restlessly vigorous thought, disdainful originality of opinion, intolerance for long-windedness, and scorn of mountains in, labour -Glaramara and Penmanmaur among the rest. GERMAN EPIGRAMS. OBEDIENCE. Into the fire a struggling drunkard fell: Three things give every charm to life, And every grief controul A mellow wine, a smiling wife, And an untainted soul. IN THE IMPROVISATRICE, AND OTHER POEMS. (Lond. Lit. Gaz.) And music from that cage is breathing, A low song from a lonely dove, A song such exiles sing and love, N our Review of this exquisite pro- Round which a jasmine braid is wreathing, duction last week, the beauties we had marked out for quotation so far overstepped our limits, that we were Breathing of fresh fields, summer skies— reluctantly compelled to abridge our extracts even after they were printed. Thus the following Moorish Romance got excluded; and we are sure that every reader of taste and admirer of with sun-rays from within; yet now genius will thank us for now restoring the omission. SOFTLY through the pomegranate groves Gathered and hung of the evening's rays; And with the flapping sail and idle prow Where the glory of the rose There is a white rose in yon bower, Now to be breathed of but in sighs! Lingers a cloud upon that brow,- Day fades apace; another day, A wanderer o'er the dark-blue sea, Her mother's land! Hence, on her breast And hence those sweetest sounds, that seem Is sung each evening at her tomb. The bark is waiting in the bay, She touched her lute-never again She took her cage, first kissed the breast-- It paused one moment on her hand, Then spread its glad wings to the air. And taking from each one a leaf, Hid them, like spells, upon her bosom. Then sought the secret path again She once before had traced, when lay And gave him gold, and taught the way And bade the wandering captive flee, And then she thought how for her love Made sweet and sacred by her breath. She reached the grove of cypresses,— Another step is by her side: Another moment, and the bark Bears the fair Moor across the tide ! 'Twas beautiful, by the pale moonlight, The cheek of rose that was burning below: More clear for the stars to wander through! For every wave was a diamond gleam: Young Genii, whose home was of light and air! Another evening came, but dark; As the dim moon through vapours shone The winds bowled round it, like a dirge Beneath that ancient cedar tree, For years alone beside the sea! The dark bair of the Moorish maid, Where tenderly her head was laid ; And yet her lover's arm was placed Were heavy with the briny flood! The Improvisatrice, a poem of about fifteen or sixteen hundred lines, is followed by a number of miscellaneous pieces, which display the greatversatility of the author. Two or three only are of a playful kind; for descriptive power, pathos, and imagination, are unquestionably her chief characteristics. And though Love has always been, as the mighty northern minstrel has finely expressed it, The noblest theme That ever waked the poet's dream; our fair bard has, in several of these minor pieces, shown that nearly an equal degree of tenderness, fancy, and feeling, can be thrown into subjects of a different order. St. George's Hospital, the Deserter, the Covenanters, Gladesmuir, The Soldier's Funeral, The Female Convict, Crescentius, Home, The Soldier's Grave, and others, are forcible and admirable examples: While Rosalie, The Bayadere, The Minstrel of Portugal, The Guerilla Chief, the Legend of the Rhine,&c. are more or less connected with the master passion of the human soul, and with tales founded on its influence. The Bayadere is an Oriental Romance; and we do not detract from Lalla Rookh, when we say it is the only composition in the English language which may bear a close comparison with that popular poem. Rosalie is, on the contrary, a domestic story of hapless affection, and full of the We will cite most touching passages. a few brief instances which are the 'Tis a wild tale-and sad, too, as the sigh When blights and cankerworms,and chilling showers, Love! gentlest spirit! I do tell of thee, Of all thy thousand hopes, thy many fears, Thy morning blushes, and thy evening tears; What thou hast ever been, and still will be,Life's best, but most betraying witchery ! To this succeeds a landscape, on which Claude might look with delight It is a night of summer, and the sea Odours are on the air :-the gale has been Where tower and turret in the pale light shine, Seen like the monuments of other daysMonuments Time half shadows, half displays. Yet her infatuation is all-powerful. Still she - - pledged the magic cup— The maddening cup of pleasure and of love! There was for her one only dream on earth! There was for her one only star above !- The scene, however, changes under the heart-subduing spell of the poet, and Rosalie, deserted, is seen on her repentant pilgrimage to and arrival at her natal Cot How very desolate that breast must be, that heart-so [weak, And what must woman suffer, thus betrayed ?- To know the shrine which had our soul's devotion Upon the eyes we worshipped, and brook The very air Seemed as it brought reproach! there was no eye She felt as feels an outcast wandering by She strayed This is the very soul of poesy. How many charming similies in a few short lines! The sleeping sea like a child; the breaking moonlight like Beauty's changeful smile; the oar light and transient as Love's anger; and all the other delicious images which are raised within so small a compass of song, meet with not many parallels even among our greatest masters of the lyre. is the portrait of the lovers introduced How very desolate must that one be, into this Neapolitan scene less beautiful: There was a bark a little way apart Nor From all the rest, and there two lovers leant:-- Music passes and awakes in the breast of Rosalie the memory of her distant home and widowed mother, whose age she had left -- to weep When that the tempter flattered her and wiled Through a small grove of cypresses, whose shade Whose more than grave has not a memory! (near, Then ROSALIE thought on her mother's age, She reached her mother's cottage; by that gate And fell the moonlight vainly over trees, Sweet tones it from the nightingale had caught! |