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 moralize;

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 show,

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, among 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."

It is a part of the history of Southey's mind, that, as he describes it, in his youth, when his stock of knowledge consisted of such an acquaintance with Greek and Roman history as is acquired in the course of a regular scholastic education, when his heart was full of poetry and romance, and Lucan and Akenside were at his tongue's end, he fell into the political opinions which the French Revolution was then scattering throughout Europe; at that time, and with those opinions or rather feelings-he wrote the dramatic piece entitled "Wat Tyler," which was so often and so reproachfully coupled with his name. It was assailed on the floor of the House of Commons as seditious, and in various ways gained a notoriety remarkable in literary history for the crude production of a boy. Written hastily in three mornings, it was never given by the author himself to publication, till recently he has placed it in the collection of his works, just as it was first printed, when a stolen copy found its way to the press. It detracts nothing from the truth of Southey's pure and high-spirited review of his long literary career, when he records an author's best pride:-"In all that I have written, whether in prose or verse, there has never been a line, which, for any compunctious reason, living or dying, I could wish to blot." "Wat Tyler" had been written under the influences of an enthusiasm which hoped that the immutable division of society into rich and poor might be abolished. The author had taken up revolutionary notions in his youth; conscientiously he wrote what he sincerely thought and felt; and when he outgrew them they were left behind and frankly disavowed, in the same straightforward and manly spirit.

Southey's young ardent genius was busy with poetical

plans as well as with schemes of political an neration. He was thus hurried into the exe early literary day-dreams when his powers have been gradually maturing by such cauti ment as the genius of his illustrious model, prescribed to itself. Southey first made hims a poet by a production in the fashion of an e his "Joan of Arc," the bold enterprise of a yo teen years of age, and composed in the sh six weeks. This poem, as Southey himself ha candidly described it, crudely conceived, rapid rashly prefaced, and prematurely hurried to was nevertheless favourably received,-a sud with equal candour and good sense, he attri to adventitious circumstances. It was a work pretensions than had appeared for some time, composed in somewhat of a political spirit, at political excitement, attracted more attention than usually falls to the share of juvenile pe Happily no one sooner discovered its deficiencie than the young poet himself; and his vigorous never suffered his early success to betray him in error of supposing that it gave him a dispens the careful cultivation of his natural endowme thoughtful study of the principles of his art. passage in the poem I wish briefly to notice, fo of a coincidence illustrative of the beauty-mak of imagination. The Maid of Orleans des death of a loved friend and playmate of her pea closing with these lines,

"I remember, as her bier Went to the grave, a lark sprung up aloft,

And soared amid the sunshine, carolling
So full of joy, that to the mourner's ear
More mournfully than dirge or passing bell
The joyous carol came, and made us feel
That, of the multitude of beings, none

But man was wretched."

At the opening of this course of lectures I had occasion to speak of what I have often since sought to illustrate,-imaginative truth,-such truth as poetry makes manifest,―better, brighter, and purer than what we commonly see around us, and therefore designed to elevate and refine our thoughts and feelings. That the product of imagination is still truth is sometimes forced upon our conviction when actual life presents that which equals the poet's inventions. I have just referred to an incident which existed only in Southey's imagination,—the caroling of the lark over the grave of one of the imaginary beings in his early poem.. At the burial of Mrs. Lockhart, the favourite child of Sir Walter Scott, precisely the same incident actually occurred, the notes of the jocund lark heard in the air above the mournful company, and mingling with the sounds of the solemn services for the dead. That which had been seen and heard by the imaginative sense of one poet was now witnessed by the bodily senses of another. One had recorded an imagination; the other has recorded a fact; but does not every one feel that each is a record of truth, and hold unimportant that one is imaginative and the other actual? The officiating clergyman over Mrs. Lockhart's grave was that chaste and excellent poet-deserving more than this casual allusion-Milman. He has told, in some stanzas as true in feeling as in poetry, of the incident, when the "Minstrel's darling child" was placed in earth:

"O thou light-loving and melodious bird!
At every sad and solemn fall

Of mine own voice, each interval
In the soul-elevating prayer, I heard
Thy quivering descant full and clear,
Discord not inharmonious to the ear!

I watched thee lessening, lessening to the sight,
Still faint and fainter winnowing

The sunshine with thy dwindling wing,-
A speck, a movement in the ruffled light,—
Till thou wert melted in the sky,

An undistinguished part of the bright infinity.

"Meet emblem of that lightsome spirit thou!
That still, wherever it might come,

Shed sunshine o'er that happy home,
Her task of kindliness and gladness now,

Absolved with the element above,

Hath mingled, and become pure light, pure joy, pure love."

To resume the poetry of Southey: his works are remarkable for including a greater number of elaborate poems than I remember in the volumes of any other of the English poets. "Joan of Arc," "Madoc," "Thalaba," "The Curse of Kehama," and "Roderic the Goth," are the five extended poems which Southey completed amid all his multifarious literary work. His fame would perhaps have been greater had he written less; for the estimate of his poetical character is almost distracted by these numerous works of such variety and scope, and the occurrence of passages deficient in imaginative animation has depreciated the real value of other portions of his writings, distinguished for many of the highest qualities of poetry. The least interesting of his long poems seems to me to be the poem of "Madoc," founded on the tradition of the early voyages of the Welsh to America; and its fail