(I say young, begging to be understood By looks, not years; and should be very sorry To state, they were not older than St. Peter, But merely that they seem'd a little sweeter). XXXI. The cherubs and the saints bow'd down before Of essences angelical, who wore The aspect of a god; but this ne'er nursed Pride in his heavenly bosom, in whose core No thought, save for his Maker's service, durst Intrude, however glorified and high; He knew him but the viceroy of the sky. But here they were in neutral space: we know And that" the sons of God," like those of clay, Of Good and Evil- but 't would take up hours. XXXIV. And this is not a theologic tract, To prove with Hebrew and with Arabic, If Job be allegory or a fact, But a true narrative; and thus I pick From out the whole but such and such an act, XXXV. The spirits were in neutral space, before The gate of heaven; like eastern thresholds is The place where Death's grand cause is argued o'er, And souls despatch'd to that world or to this; And therefore Michael and the other wore A civil aspect: though they did not kiss, The Archangel bow'd, not like a modern beau, The heart in good men is supposed to tend. But kindly; Satan met his ancient friend With more hauteur, as might an old Castilian Poor noble meet a mushroom rich civilian. XXXVII. He merely bent his diabolic brow An instant; and then raising it, he stood 1"No saint in the course of his religious warfare was more sensible of the unhappy failure of pious resolves than Dr. Johnson: he said one day, talking to an acquaintance on In act to assert his right or wrong, and show Eternal, more than other kings, endued With better sense and hearts, whom history mentions, Who long have "paved hell with their good intentions." 1 XXXVIII. Michael began: "What wouldst thou with this man, He hath been greatly failing to fulfil And he is thine; if not, let him have way." "Michael!" replied the Prince of Air, " even here, Before the Gate of him thou servest, must I claim my subject: and will make appear So shall he be in spirit, although dear To thee and thine, because nor wine nor lust XL. "Look to our earth, or rather mine; it was, I think few worth damnation save their kings, — "And these but as a kind of quit-rent, to I such an inclination, 't were (as you Well know) superfluous; they are grown so bad, That hell has nothing better left to do Than leave them to themselves: so much more mad And evil by their own internal curse, Heaven cannot make them better, nor I worse. XLII. "Look to the earth, I said, and say again : When this old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm Began in youth's first bloom and flush to reign, Of ocean call'd him king: through many a storm XLIII. "He came to his sceptre young; he leaves it old: Look to the state in which he found his realm, And left it; and his annals too behold, How to a minion first he gave the helm ; How grew upon his heart a thirst for gold, The beggar's vice, which can but overwhelm The meanest hearts; and for the rest, but glance Thine eye along America and France. this subject, Sir, hell is paved with good intentions.'" Boswell, vol. v. p. 305. ed. 1835.] 2 [ [George III.'s determination against the Catholic claims.] "From the opposite region, Heavy and sulphurous clouds roil'd on, and completed the circle. So it abstracted the sense, might be deem'd a reinission of torment. Than see this royal Bedlam bigot range The azure fields of heaven, of that be sure! "Saint!" replied Satan, "you do well to avenge The wrongs he made your satellites endure; 1 And if to this exchange you should be given, I'll try to coax our Cerberus up to heaven." LI. Here Michael interposed: "Good saint! and devil! Pray, not so fast; you both outrun discretion. Saint Peter! you were wont to be more civil: Satan! excuse this warmth of his expression, And condescension to the vulgar's level: Even saints sometimes forget themselves in session. Have you got more to say?"—"No."—"If you please, I'll trouble you to call your witnesses." LII. Then Satan turn'd and waved his swarthy hand, In all the planets, and hell's batteries This was a signal unto such damn'd souls Of worlds past, present, or to come; no station Is theirs particularly in the rolls Of hell assign'd; but where their inclination They are proud of this. -as very well they may, I borrow my comparisons from clay, Being clay myself. Let not those spirits be Offended with such base low likenesses; We know their posts are nobler far than these. LV. When the great signal ran from heaven to hell- How much time it takes up, even to a second, For every ray that travels to dispel The fogs of London, through which, dimly beacon'd, The weathercocks are gilt some thrice a year, If that the summer is not too severe : 4 — LVI. I say that I can tell-'t was half a minute: At the edge of the cloud, the Princes of Darkness were marshall'd; 3 [A gold or gilt key, peeping from below the skirts of the coat, marks a lord chamberlain.] 4 [An allusion to Horace Walpole's expression in a letter"The summer has set in with its usual severity."] And if they ran a race, they would not win it Upon the verge of space, about the size Like an aërial ship it tack'd, and steer'd, Of the last phrase, which makes the stanza stammer; LVIII. But take your choice); and then it grew a cloud; And so it was a cloud of witnesses. 1 But such a cloud! No land e'er saw a crowd Of locusts numerous as the heavens saw these ; They shadow'd with their myriads space; their loud And varied cries were like those of wild geese (If nations may be liken'd to a goose), And realised the phrase of "hell broke loose." LIX. Here crash'd a sturdy oath of stout John Bull, Who damn'd away his eyes as heretofore: There Paddy brogued "By Jasus!"-" What's your wull ? [swore The temperate Scot exclaim'd: the French ghost In certain terms I sha'n't translate in full, As the first coachman will; and 'midst the war, The voice of Jonathan was heard to express, "Our president is going to war, I guess.” LX. Besides there were the Spaniard, Dutch, and Dane; Of all climes and professions, years and trades, When Michael saw this host, he first grew pale, 1 ["On the cerulean floor by that dread circle surrounded, And with numberless mouths which were fill'd with lies as with arrows. [In reference to this part of Mr. Southey's poem, the Eclectic Reviewer, we believe the late Rev. Robert Hall, said - Mr. Southes's Vision of Judgment is unquestionably a profane poem. The assertion will stagger those only who do not consider what is the import of the word. Profineness is the irreverent use of sacred names and things. A burlesque of things sacred, whether intentional or not, is pro‘aneness. To apply the language of Scripture in a ludicrous connection is to profane it. The mummery of prayer on the stage, though in a serious pay, is a gross profanation of sacred things. And all acts which come under the taking of God's name in vain are acts of profaneness. According to this definition of the word, the Laureate's Vision of Judgment' is a poem grossly and unpardonably profane. Mr. Southey's intention was, we are well persuaded, very far He turn'd all colours-as a peacock's tail, Or sunset streaming through a Gothic skylight In some old abbey, or a trout not stale, Or distant lightning on the horizon by night, Then he address'd himself to Satan: "Why- Trust that, whatever may occur below, LXIII. "Why, my dear Lucifer, would you abuse Our time, nay, our eternity, between LXIV. Satan replied, "To me the matter is Indifferent, in a personal point of view: I can have fifty better souls than this Late majesty of Britain's case with you Thus spoke the Demon (late call'd "multifaced" Around our congress, and dispense with all The rest," quoth Michael: "Who may be so graced As to speak first? there's choice enough — who shall It be?" Then Satan answer'd, "There are many; But you may choose Jack Wilkes as well as any." LXVI. A merry, cock-eyed, curious-looking sprite Upon the instant started from the throng, 2 [ "But when he stood in the Presence, Then was the Fiend dismay'd, though with impudence clothed as a gar ment; And the lying tongues were mute, and the lips, which had scatter'd Accusation and slander, were still. No time for evasion This, in the Presence he stood: no place for light; for dissembling from being irreligious; and, indeed, the profaneness of the poem partly arises from the ludicrous effect prounced by the bad taste and imbecilits of the performance, for which his intentions are clearly not answerable. Whatever liberties a poet may claim to take, in representations partly allegorical, with the invisible realities of the world to come, the ignis fatuus of political zeal has, in this instance, carried Mr. Southey far be yond any assignable bounds of poetical license. It would have been enough to celebrate the apotheosis of the monarch; but, when he proceeds to travestie the final judgment, and to convert the awful tribunal of Heaven into a drawing-room levee, where he, the Poet Laureate, takes upon humself to play the part of a lord in waiting, presenting one Georgian worthy after another to kiss hands on promotion, what should be grave is, indeed, turned to farce."] Dress'd in a fashion now forgotten quite; 1 All the costumes since Adam's, right or wrong, LXVII. The spirit look'd around upon the crowds Assembled, and exclaim'd, " My friends of all The spheres, we shall catch cold amongst these clouds; So let's to business: why this general call? If those are freeholders I see in shrouds, And 't is for an election that they bawl, Behold a candidate with unturn'd coat! Saint Peter, may I count upon your vote?" LXVIII. "Sir," replied Michael, "you mistake; these things Are of a former life, and what we do Above is more august; to judge of kings Is the tribunal met: so now you know." "Then I presume those gentlemen with wings," Said Wilkes," are cherubs; and that soul below Looks much like George the Third, but to my mind A good deal older-Bless me! is he blind?" LXIX. "He is what you behold him, and his doom Said Wilkes," don't wait to see them laid in lead, For such a liberty- and I, for one, Have told them what I thought beneath the sun." LXX. "Above the sun repeat, then, what thou hast To urge against him," said the Archangel. "Why," Replied the spirit, "since old scores are past, With all his Lords and Commons: in the sky LXXI. "Foolish, no doubt, and wicked, to oppress "Beholding the foremost, *["Our new world has generally the credit of having first lighted the torch which was to illuminate, and soon set in a blaze, the finest part of Europe; yet I think the first flint was struck, and the first spark celicited, by the patriot John Wilkes, a few years before. In a time of profound "However, I knew what to think of it, When I beheld you in your jesting way, His pupil; I knew what to think, I say: "Call Junius!" 3 From the crowd a shadow stalk'd, But were all ramm'd, and jamm'd (but to be balk'd, LXXV. The shadow came-a tall, thin, grey-hair'd figure, Now it wax'd little, then again grew bigger, With now an air of gloom, or savage mirth; But as you gazed upon its features, they Changed every instant-to what, none could say. LXXVI. The more intently the ghosts gazed, the less Could they distinguish whose the features were; The Devil himself seem'd puzzled even to guess; They varied like a dream-now here, now there; And several people swore from out the press, They knew him perfectly; and one could swear He was his father: upon which another Was sure he was his mother's cousin's brother: 2 [For the political history of John Wilkes, who died chamberlain of the city of London, we must refer to any history of the reign of George III. His prodigate personal character is abundantly displayed in the collection of his letters, published by his daughter! since his death.] 3 ["Who might the other be, his comrade in guilt and in suffering, Soon or late to conscious guilt is the eye of the injured."-SOUTHEY.] peace, the restless spirit of men, deprived of other objects of public curiosity, seized with avidity on those questions which were then agitated with so much violence in England, touching the rights of the people and of the government, and the nature of power. The end of the political drama was in favour of what was called, and in some respects was, the liberty of the people. Encouraged by the success of this great comedian, the curtain was no sooner dropped on the scene of Europe, than new actors hastened to raise it again in America, and to give the world a new play, infinitely more interesting and more brilliant than the first."-M. SIMOND.] LXXVII. Another, that he was a duke, or knight, An orator, a lawyer, or a priest, A nabob, a man-midwife : but the wight LXXVIII. The moment that you had pronounced him one, Have known, he shifted so from one to t'other; LXXIX. For sometimes he like Cerberus would seem"Three gentlemen at once" (as sagely says Good Mrs. Malaprop); then you might deem That he was not even one; now many rays Were flashing round him; and now a thick steam Hid him from sight-like fogs on London days: Now Burke, now Tooke, he grew to people's fancies, And certes often like Sir Philip Francis. 4 LXXX. I've an hypothesis-'t is quite my own; And injuring some minister or peer, On whom the stigma might perhaps be blown : LXXXI. I don't see wherefore letters should not be Written without hands, since we daily view [Among the various persons to whom the Letters of Junius have been attributed we find the Duke of Portland, Lord George Sackville, Sir Philip Francis, Mr. Burke, Mr. Dunning, the Rev. John Horne Tooke, Mr. Hugh Boyd, Dr. Wilmot, &c.] 2 ["I don't know what to think. Why should Junius be dead? If suddenly apoplexed, would he rest in his grave without sending his owλe to shout in the ears of posterity, Junius was X. Y. Z., Esq. buried in the parish of ****** Repair his monument, ye churchwardens ! Print a new edition of his Letters, ye booksellers! Impossible, - the man must be alive, and will never die without the disclosure. I like him; he was a good hater."-Byron Diary, Nov. 23. 1813. Sir Philip Francis died in Dec. 1818.] 3 [The mystery of "l'homme au masque de fer," the everlasting puzzle of the last century, has at length, in general opinion, been cleared up, by a French work published in 1825, and which formed the basis of an entertaining one in English by Lord Dover. See Quarterly Review, vol. xxxiv. p. 19.] [That the work entitled "The identity of Junius with a distinguished Living Character established" proves Sir Philip Francis to be Junius, we will not atfirm; but this we can safely assert; that it accumulates such a mass of circumstantial evidence as renders it extremely difficult to believe he is not, and that, if so many coincidences shall be found to have misled us in this case, our faith in all conclusions drawn from proofs of a similar kind may henceforth be shaken. - MACKINTOSH.] [The well-known motto of Junius is," Stat nominis umbra."] 6 ["Caitiffs, are ve dumb cried the multifaced Demon in anger; Think ye then by shame to shorten the term of your penance ? Back to your penal dens! And with horrible grasp gigantic 7 [ Seizing the guilty pair, he swung them aloft, and in vengeance Ceased, and all sounds were hush'd, till again from the gate adamantine Some were there then who advanced; and more from the skirts of the meeting, Spirits who had not yet accomplish'd their purification, Here then at the Gate of Heaven we are met!' said the Spirit; When that Spirit withdrew, the Monarch around the assembly |