titled "delicacy," which would exclude woman from the ranks of energetic, useful workers, and degrade the female aspirant to distinction into an idle, helpless, apathetic, useless drone; and this too, heaven save the mark! under the impudent pretext of honouring her ! "Oh what a country might this England become, did its Government but wisely direct the strength and wealth and activity of the people! Every profession, every trade is overstocked; there are more We have seen that Southey humorously adverted to those deficiencies in classic prosody for which Canning, Gifford, and Lord Byron ridiculed him. Yet, although occasionally chargeable with "false quantities," and unfortunate in the collocation of his "longs and shorts," he may justly claim to have restored "hexameters" to his native language, after the disuse or scornful negligence of upwards of two hundred years. Sir Philip Sydney, in his "Arcadia," has inadventurers in each than can possibly find employ- troduced specimens of almost all the classic ment; hence poverty and crime. Do not misun- metres, and amongst others several of " the hexderstand me as asserting this to be the sole cause, ameter,” “ ameter," "Englished," indifferently indeed, and but it is the most frequent one. A system of colo- so as partially to excuse, though by no means to nization that should offer an outlet for the super-justify Pope's sneering witticism, that his verse fluous activity of the country, would convert this into a cause of general good, and the blessings of civilization might be extended over the deserts that to the disgrace of man occupy so great a part of the world! Assuredly poverty, and the dread of poverty, are the great sources of guilt. THAT COUNTRY CANNOT BE WELL REGULATED WHERE MAR- Thus Southey speculated in January 1800: are his reasonings less applicable in our own day? Let conscience answer. We are unapt to wander into disquisitions on political economy; but these real, practical, accumulated, "wrongs of women" are keenly felt in every family throughout the empire. Our statists tell us, the laws of England recognize no wrong without a remedy; if so, the unaccountable inattention of our law makers to this insufferable domestic grievance, might justify and seems to call for a stout supplemental quarto to Augustine Caxton's History of Human Error," "halts ill on Roman feet." In the sixteenth century, Sydney incurred the shallow_ridicule of Nash, but he earned what he deserved, and could appreciate, the commendation of Sir Walter Raleigh. 66 "The hexameter verse I grant," says NashTom was the Peter Pindar of his own day-to be a gentleman of an ancient house, so is many an English beggar;-yet this clime of ours he cannot thrive in;-our speech is too craggy for him to get his plough in;-he goes twitching and hopping like a man running upon a quagmire; up the hill in one syllable, and down the dale in another, retaining no part of that strictly smooth gait which he vaunts himself with among the Greeks and Latins." Quaintly urged, friend Tom; thy smartness smacks of the ingenuity which devised "taking title-pages" just a century and a half too soon for Curll and Lintott, and prefixed Pape with a Hatchett,” “A figge for my God-son," and "Come cracke me thys Nutte," to controversial pamphlets labouring to "I was a Venetian before I was a Templar," prove modern Rome the ancient Babylon, and exclaimed a valiant soldier of the Cross, when each reigning Pontiff, in succession, Antichrist. urged to postpone patriotism to ecclesiastic ob- When Edmund Spencer writes on the same ligations. Southey felt that he too was a poet subject, observe the difference betwixt an enere he was a politician. Poetry is my pro-larged intellect and a flippant wit:-"I like vince!" he exclaimed to Rickman, and forthwith recurred to a long-cherished project of writing the life of Mahomet in hexameters. When we are informed that Coleridge was associated in this undertaking, we at once anticipate that his paulo-post-futurum habits deprived his brotherin-law of his promised aid, and the world-a far more serious misfortune-of a philosophic estimate of one of the mightiest intellects that for good or evil ever influenced the human mind. 66 In the east a saint, and in the west a demon, fanatic eulogists and fanatic adversaries have alike failed to render justice to the renowned Arabian Gibbon has indeed sketched with characteristic vigour and ability the rise and rapid progress of Mohammedanism in the 50th chapter of his history of the "Decline and Fall of Rome;" and the task has subsequently been twice or thrice attempted unsuccessfully. With all due respect, however, to his biographer, in the Family Library," and the well-earned fame of Washington Irving, we must with shame declare that a good English life of Mahomet has, in our opinion, never yet been written. 66 your English hexameter so well that I also enure my pen sometimes in that kind which I find indeed, as I have often heard you defend in words, neither so hard nor so harsh but that it will easily and fairly yield itself to our northern tongue. It is to be won with custom, and rough words must be subdued, for why may not we as the Greeks have the kingdom of our own language, and measure our accents by the sound, reserving the quantity of the verse?” * Southey's Hexameters were received with a perfect storm of ridicule; and in our own day the senseless clamour has been revived. All fools have still an itching to deride;" they find it easier to sneer than argue. Be it so; a generous critic will discern and cherish the first dawn of excellence; for what reformation in our laws or morals-what brave discoveries in science, or in literature, can be hoped for, when "the day of small things" is systematically despised? "The introduction of the classical metres into our language," says a distinguished * Edmund Spenser to Gabriel Harvey, "the inventor of the English hexameter." living writer, who unites graceful scholarship to the bold yet cautious enterprize of a philosopher, "can be attained only by something of that resolute enthusiasm which in all ages has been necessary to give, even to useful innovations, their first hold in public estimation. To attain this object, however, sacrifices must be made; present praise must be bartered for prospective benefit, neglect, contempt, and ridicule, the painful sense of the imperfection of first attempts, the certainty, nay, the hope that the more splendid success of others will ultimately eclipse and darken any little excellence which ourselves may attain. All this, and more in these cases, must be patiently undergone, in the firm and cheering confidence that the glorious consummation will more than recompense at last. This surely is the voice of reason-calm, dignified, and universal in its application; Domett's noble lyrics resounding from the antipodes, re-echo the soul-animating strain : "Shew man in each reverse the fuel For hope's more brightly starred renewal; A fragment, only of about one hundred lines, remains to us of Southey's "Mahomet;" we extract an average specimen ;-the point in the prophet's history is the sharpest crisis of his renowned "Hegira." "Baffled, and full of wrath, through Mecca they scatter the tidings, 'He has fled, has discovered our plans, has eluded "Where is the blasphemous fled ?—the lying dis turber of Mecca ?' Lashing their steeds they pursue;-to the East and the dwelling of Abbas, Hasten the thirsty for blood-to the North they hurry, to Yathreb; Some to the shore of the sea, lest haply a bark might await him, And the waves should become his protectors :— impetuously rushing, Drive they in fury along;-beneath the hoofs of their horses Sparkles the rock of the valley and rises the dust of the desert."* 66 the It was little likely that an epic, and at the of two bright yet widely differing intellects, same time an ethic poem, the joint production should have been successful. Even Southey's utmost tact could scarcely have concealed seaming." A few lines, apparently the exordium, were from the pen of Coleridge: we cite a portion, less for their sonorous and majestic melody, than for their author's noble and discriminating tribute to the memory and motives of the Hero-prophet "Utter the song, oh my soul, the flight and return of Mohammed, Prophet and priest, who scattered abroad both evil and blessing; Huge wasteful empires founded, and hallowed slow persecution, Soul withering-but crushed the blasphemous rites of the Pagan And idolatrous Christian-for veiling the gospel of Jesus, They the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest. Wherefore Heaven decreed the enthusiast warrior of Mecca, Choosing good from iniquity, rather than evil from goodness." Failing health, and an ardent wish to collect further materials for his projected history of Portugal, induced Southey to revisit Lisbon during the spring of 1800. Edith accompanied him, and he had the gratification of introducing her as his wife to his generous and exemplary relative, Mr. Hill. "Behold Naples, and die!" says the Italian; "To him who has seen Seville, there remains nothing more worth seeing," exclaims the Spaniard, and a Lusitanian proverb in the like spirit eulogises Lisbon. The 16th and 17th stanzas of the first canto of Childe Harold describe alternately and justly its pic "Hexametrical Experiments." Pickering. 4 to. turesque locality and disgusting filthiness. 1838: pp. 1-2. Southey's experience justified Lord Byron's censure; + VENICE, by Alfred Domett, Esq., formerly of St. John's, Cambridge, and "The fine-hearted Alfred Domett," of Blackwood; now Counsellor of State at Wellington, New Zealand. 12mo. 1839. Chapman and Hall. "Lisbon has been twice clean since the creation. Noah's flood washed it once, and the fire after the In our reference to the successful cultivators of *It may be desirable that our readers should be the English hexameter, we must not omit to notice apprised that these hexameters will not be found in with high commendation the "Acadie" of Professor any edition of their author's collected works; they Longfellow. Inferior in concentration of thought and appear in a little volume published by Longman energy of expression, perhaps to Southey, certainly and Co., in 1845, entitled "Oliver Newinan, a New to Coleridge, he we think surpasses both in versifi-England Tale (unfinished), with other poetical recation.-B. mains of the late Robert Southey."-B. earthquake purified it. When it will be clean again,, will be difficult to say; probably not till the general conflagration." **** We go on comfortably, as clean as an English house upstairs, as dirty as a Portuguese one below. Edith, like Mr. Pitt, is convinced of the impossibility of reform. Manuel will clean the kitchen, indeed; but immediately he will scrape the fish-scales all over it," &c. &c. 66 Amidst all this dirt and dinginess, Southey toiled con amore at Portuguese and Spanish literature. "On my History," he writes to Mr. Wynn, no labour shall be spared. Now I only heap marble, the edifice must be erected in England; but I must return again to the quarry. You will find my style plain and short, and of condensed meaning-plain as a Doric building, and I trust of eternal durability." Alas! he lived not to complete his task; yet his "Brazil" and " Peninsular War" remain to us as noble fragments of the gigantic structure he had planned. "Thalaba" was completed during his stay at Lisbon, and leisurely corrected for the press at Cintra. In June, 1801, after about a twelvemonth's absence, the travellers returned to take up their abode with Coleridge at Greta Hall, near Keswick. "The Lakes," says Southey, "at first disappointed me-they were diminutive to what I expected; the mountains little, compared to Monchique; and for beauty, all English, perhaps all existing scenery, must yield to Cintra." A consulship at Lisbon, which he much desired, was, fortunately for English literature, unattainable; and with some misgivings he became private secretary to the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Corry. He stayed, however, but a few months at Dublin; his duties, although little more than nominal, interfering with the pursuits he understood and loved, clogged though they never exercised his taste and imagination; while the Opposition sneered, and Peter Porcupine (the late William Cobbett) "civilly expressed a hope that the poet would make no false numbers in his new work." Southey felt, and scorned to feel himself degraded to a mere hackney scribe. our day seems unlikely to be fulfilled, "The Edinburgh will not keep its ground." In June, 1803, Messrs. Longman offered him the superintendence of a new Bibliotheca Britand direct their labours. Sharon Turner, Ricktannica, with full power to appoint auxiliaries man, Coleridge, were to have assisted him; but Coleridge, with his "seething brain," conceived the project not sufficiently extensive, and proposed to substitute a " History of British Literature, Bibliographical, Biographical, and Critical." To design is one thing, to execute another. The prospectus sketched by the author of " Christabel" is indeed magnificent, but betokens rather vivid imagination than mature sagacity. The design was never executed; the panic of 1803 induced the booksellers first to postpone, and afterwards to abandon it; and in September Southey took up his permanent abode at Keswick. "All the poet part of me," he tells his brother, "will be fed and fostered here. I feel already in tune, and shall proceed to my work with such a feeling of power as old Sampson had when he laid hold of the pillars of the temple of Dagon." His was, indeed, a genius fitted to grapple with whole libraries. "One half the day he devoted to his task-work for booksellers,-reviewed and criticized almost every conceivable variety of literature; and this done with redoubled ardour, and an unreproving conscience, devoted his remaining hours to poetry and the "History of Portugal." It was thus that Southey, like his friend Sir Walter, by mere change of labour, "freshened the machine." Fondly loving and beloved by his Edith and their infant family, and toiling earnestly to win their daily bread, conscious of merit, proud not unreasonably of his literary reputation, severely prudent, not penurious in his expenditure, and endowed with keen appreciation of the enchanting scenery which surrounded him, was Southey happy in his mountain solitude? Assuredly. He wrote Coleridge, and to him he ever opened his whole heart familiarly, "That I shall never be paid for my labour according to the current value of time and labour, is tolerably certain; but if any one should offer me £10,000 to forego that labour, I should bid him and his money go to the devil, for twice the sum could not purchase me half the enjoyment." The two main "On three subjects, Rickman, I am directed to read and research-corn laws, finance, tithes, according to their written order. Alas! they are heathen Greek to the scribe! He hath, indeed, in days of old, read Adam Smith, and remembereth the general principle established. He pre-requisites of felicity he had secured-an unsulsupposeth that about corn as about everything else, the fewer laws the better: of finance he is even more ignorant; concerning tithes, something knoweth he of the Levitical law," &c. &c. lied conscience, and unceasing occupation;-to these he added the calm but genial philosophy of the philanthropic and contented optimist. "It has long been my habit to look for the good that is to be found in everything, and that alone is worth more than the grand secrets of all the adepts." For his own comfort's sake he practised what he preached, and his affection for his friend Grosvenor Bedford prompted him to preach as he practised, earnestly. It was clear that Southey, admirably qualified for a critic or historian, was quite unfitted for his secretaryship; and when desired to add to its duties the tuition of Mr. Corry's son, he at once resigned, "a foolish office and a good salary," to throw himself upon his own resources and his booksellers. He translated, versified, and reviewed assiduously; but in Ja-morbid delicacy] is, that your metaphysics, as you "The plain English of all this [his correspondent's nuary, 1803, the Northern critics assailed his call them, are to your mind what a regular course favourite " Thalaba," and the "Reviewer Re- of drastic physic would be to your body-very disviewed" winced under his assailants' lash, yet agreeable and very weakening; that being neither a consoled himself with a prediction, which up to man of business, nor of fashion, nor of letters, you want object and occupation in the world; and that if | rials for thinking. A sketch of himself and his you would study Arabic, Welsh, or Chinese, or re-occupations, during the spring of 1804, drawn solve to translate "Tristram Shandy' into Hebrew, by his own pen, we must make room for :you would soon be a happy man.' Ponder this and profit by it, ye slothful cumberers of the ground; wretched in yourselves, contemptible in the eyes of all men-innoxious merely because too languid to do active mischief-idle in a busy world and useless. Useless! We retract the epithet: such degraded do-nothings may be servicable as moral scarecrows: their drunken Helots shamed the Spartans into sobriety. Unsatisfied with mere exhortations, Southey set to work to find his friend a task; Longman and Co. had contracted with him for a compilation of modern English poetry, with notes and short biographies, a work then much needed, now superseded by Campbell's specimens; he therefore summoned Grosvenor Bedford to his aid. 66 'By doing something to assist me, you may learn to love some pursuit for yourself." Southey was right; when Captain Clutterbuck, of Kennaquhair," spent three days in cleaning his gun and disposing it upon two hooks over his chimney-piece," he at least spent them, he himself avouches it, " very agreeably;" and when encouraged by the success of his experiment, he "took down and cleaned his landlady's cuckoo-clock, and in so doing silenced that companion of the spring for ever," even that amusement was preferable to sauntering in the church-yard, with no pursuit or occupation, save "to whistle till it was dinner-time." Meanwhile, the future laureate toiled lustily; "Madoc" progressed-3,600 lines were finished. "The remaining part," wrote Southey to his brother, "will be longer. As my guide once told me, in Portugal, We have got half way, for we have come two short leagues, and have two long ones to go.' Upon this calculation, I am half through the poem." Time and space would fail us, should we attempt even to enumerate the books reviewed, the opinions hazarded, the correspondents thanked, admonished, and sometimes severely reprehended by Southey's indefatigable pen. We by no means concur in all his criticisms; he lived to regret some few, to retract or modify very many of them; but we recommend his life, and more especially his letters, as in themselves most interesting and full freighted with mate * In March, 1804, he again remonstrates with the same valued friend: "A good man and a wise man may at times be angry with the world-at times grieved for it; but be sure no man was ever discontented with the world if he did his duty in it. If a man of education, who has health, eyes, hands, and leisure, wants an object, it is only because God Almighty has bestowed all these blessings upon a man who does not deserve them." During the incipient stages of a loiterer's career, Miss Edgeworth's Ennui' may perhaps be serviceable to the patient. It puts both bane and antidote before him. When habit has become disease, the only remedy we are aware of is suggested in the concluding stanzas of "The Castle of Indolence." "Imagine me, in this great study of mine, from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, and from tea till supper, in my old black coat, my corduroys alternately with the long worsted pantaloons and gaiters in one, and the green shade, and sitting at my desk, and you have my picture and my history. loves me as well as ever Cupid did, and the cat upI play with Dapper,' the dog, down stairs, who quietest in the house, has thought proper to share it stairs plays with me; for puss finding my room the Now and then I go down to the river, which runs at the bottom of the orchard, and throw stones, till my arms ache, and then saunter back again. ** I rouse the house to breakfast every morning, and qualify myself for a boatswain's place by this practice; and thus one day passes like another, and never did the days appear to pass so fast," &c., &c.—Vol. ii., p. 262. with me. In May, 1804, he was again, for a few weeks, in London, tormented by his tailors, while he in his turn tormented them; and wearied to death with dinner-invitations from would-be philosophers, who sought to lionize him. His faithful Edith was, as usual, the confidante of his calamities. "I have lost a grand triumph over you, Edith. Had you seen me in my hyde, you never would have sent me to a London hyde-maker again. The sleeves are actually as large as the thighs of my pantaloons, and cuffs to them like what old men wear in a comedy. I am sure if I were a country farmer, and caught such a barebones as myself, in such a black sack, I would stick him up for a scarecrow. *** On Thursday, Carlisle gives me a dinner. There must be one day for Turner; and as for all my half a thousand acquaintances, they may ask till they are blind, for I won't go." July beheld him once again at Greta Hall, ardent as ever in the pursuits of literature, and an active aidecamp in Edith's culinary campaigns. Tayloring excepted, he could turn his mind and hand to everything, from epic poetry to black currant jam! "We have been, or rather are, manufacturing black currant jam for my uncle, and black currant wine for ourselves. Harry and I, chief workmen, pounding them in a wooden bowl with a great stone, as the acid acts upon a metal mortar. We have completed a great work in bridging the river Greta at the bottom of the orchard, by piling heaps of stones so as to step from one to another. Many a hard hour's sport half knee-deep in the water. Davy has been here, stark mad for angling. This is our history." The study of the Dutch language, undertaken that he might peruse in the original the chronicles of the Dutch historians of their conquests over the Portuguese in Asia. A subscription ball at Keswick, "I, very I-your brotherRobert Southey!" And a plan-oh, had it but been carried out by Longman!—of editing Sir Philip Sydney, with a life, a dissertation on the Arcadia, and an essay on his imitations of the old classic metres, these, with daily doses of reviews and criticism, and his never-ceasing perquisitions into the history of Portugal and her head, Pale and shrivelled her cheeks, all her blushes are The golden laburnum seems wealthy no more, The short-lived forget-me-not lowers her leaf, she placed They are gone-that last bunch, which in friendship dependencies, filled up his time agreeably, and | The once blooming rosebud hangs down her fair at least aided him to fill his purse. In 1805 he visited Auld Reekie, saw young Roscius play Norval, encountered Brougham and Jeffrey, and visited Sir Walter, then engaged at Ashestiel upon his life of Dryden. Scott took his brother bard "a salmon spearing on the Tweed;" but Southey owned that he could make no hand of leistering. He, however, recompensed the "shirra's" hospitality, by communicating some metrical romances of extreme rarity and great antiquity. One precious MS., recorded "how Peter and Adam journeyed together to Babylon, and how Peter asked Adam a full great doubtful question, saying, Adam! Adam! why didst thou eat the apple unpared?' "This book,' says Scott, belongs to a lady; I would have given something valuable to have had a week of it.'" Mutually delighted with each other, Southey made out what his host was wont to call his three days,” videlicit, the rest day, the dressed day, and the pressed day. On the "dressed day," indeed, his outer man did little credit to the southron fashioners, he "having had neither new coat nor hat since the Edithling was born." He had, indeed, intended "to lay in new boots and pantaloons" at Edinburgh; but calling to mind good Doctor Watts's caveat "against pride in clothes," and " considering the really respectable appearance which my old ones made for a traveller," he laid out his money among the booksellers, and came home "to wear out his old wardrobe in the winter." "I am returned with much pleasant matter of remembrance, well-pleased with Walter Scott, with Johnny Armstrong's Castle on the Esk, with pleasant Tiviotdale, with the Tweed and the Yarrow; astonished with Edinburgh, delighted with Melrose, and, above all things, thankful that I am an Englishman, and not a Scotchman." --- The concluding thanksgiving, and his subsequent remark that the Scotch philosophers did certainly appear very pigmies, literatuli," we think originated in the severe reviews of "Thalaba" and "Madoc," in the Edinburgh. Southey, in his turn, retaliated, and for some years a war of extermination was carried on betwixt the northern critics and the Lakers. Into the history of that contest and its consequences we forbear just now to enter. It is our more agreeable duty to return warm thanks to the reverend editor for these most entertaining volumes, and to recommend them cordially to the best attention of our subscribers. (To be continued.) THE LAST FLOWERS. B. Nor brighten his heart, or give joy to his look. Let them sleep, let them fade, let them wither and die; Their slumber, their fading, their withering-I Compare with the hearts which in anguish have bled, Compare with the spirit so broken and dead! And the thorn, which still lives in the innocent rose, And the slime-track the slug on the blossom has Shall be as those souls, of all honour bereft, But still there's a perfume that never shall fade; For theirs is the odour diffused by Truth! Oh! would that our memories softly could sleep, repose As the perished laburnum, the dead withered rose. For then might we spring to a happier birth, But long shall each heart know its feeling of pain; Then slumber, ye flowers; I'll mourn ye no more, They are faded-those flowers that brightened the My sorrow may fly with the passage of time; scene, Decay is the tenant where freshness had been; Round the branch that is withered the ivy will climb; The flower-stems may bloom in a lovelier bed, |
