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ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Peninsular War, The Book of the Church, Vindicia Ecclesiæ Anglicana, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, The Life of Nelson, The Life of Wesley, The Life of Cowper, editions, with memoirs of the au-' thors, of The Pilgrim's Progress, The Works of Chatterton, and The Works of Henry Kirke White, numerous contributions to the Quarterly Review, and that remarkable book, The Doctor.

On the death of Mr. PYE, in 1813, SOUTHEY was appointed poet laureate; and in 1821 he received the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Oxford. In the spring of 1839 he contracted a second marriage with CAROLINE ANNE, daughter of Mr. CHARLES BoWLES, and one of the most pathetic and natural of the living writers of her sex.

DR. SOUTHEY was the son of a linen draper | The History of Brazil, The History of the in Bristol, where he was born on the twelfth of August, 1774. In his sixteenth year he was placed at the Westminster School, and in 1792 at Baliol College, with the design of his entering the church. His career at Oxford was a brief one; his tendency toward Socinianism made the plan marked out for him disagreeable; and he returned to Bristol, where in 1794 he published, in conjunction with ROBERT LOVELL, his first collection of poems. In the autumn of the following year he was married to a sister of the wife of his friend COLERIDGE, and soon after, while he was on his way to Lisbon, appeared his Joan of Arc. It was about this time that he wrote, in three days, his notable drama of Wat Tyler, which was surreptitiously printed some twenty-three years afterward. In the summer of 1796 he returned to England, removed to London, and entered Gray's Inn. A portion of the years 1800 and 1801 were passed in the Peninsula, whence he sent home his romance of Thalaba the Destroyer, which permanently established his reputation as a poet. At the end of a short residence in Dublin, as secretary to the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, he went to Keswick, where he lived the rest of his life. In 1805 he published Madoc, which had been brought to a close in 1799; in 1810 the Curse of Kehama, in 1814 Roderick the last of the Goths, in 1821 The Vision of Judgment, and in 1825 The Tale of Paraguay, the latest of his longer poems. Beside these he wrote numerous briefer pieces, all of which are included in the ten volume edition of his poetical works which appeared in London under his own supervision in 1837, and was reprinted by Appleton and Company, in New York, in 1839.

In addition to his poems, Mr. SOUTHEY produced numerous prose works, of which the principal are Amadis de Gaul, from the Spanish; Palmerin of England, from the Portuguese; Letters from England, written under the fictitious name of Espriella; the Chroniele of the Cid, from the Spanish; Omniana,

Intense labour in every department of literature-in poetry, philosophy, history, biography and criticism-continued for so many years, at length obscured SOUTHEY's genius, and reduced him to a state of mental darkness. For three years before his death his intellect was nearly gone, and in the last year of his life he could not recognise the dearest members of his family. He died at Keswick on the twenty-first of March, 1843, in the sixtyeighth year of his age.

SOUTHEY'S prose is hardly exceeded in the English language. English language. It is clear, vigorous, manly, and graceful, worthy of the elder and greatest writers. In his poems, especially his longer ones, we rather admire the author than the works; his energy seems rather force of character than of mind, and we are more struck by the resistless daring of his temper than the boldness of his faculties. His effusions are not instinctive or spontaneous; he does not seem to have "fed on thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers:" he urges his genius rather than is mastered by it. The goal perhaps is reached in good time, but it is by application of the spur. His poems unquestionably have that pulchritude which bars dispraise; the dulcia sunto which should kindle enthusiasm is lacking. Yet, after every

abatement, his name will remain one of the these, in exclusion of the rest; and the popugreatest in modern poetry.

To master and wield the colossal forms of oriental superstition, to animate them with human and familiar interests, to render them ductile to all the demands of art, was a task which only the extravagance of youth would have undertaken, and only the rarest and most remarkable genius could accomplish. This SOUTHEY did, and with entire success. With the exception of BECKFORD, he was the first to invade the gorgeous East: and no man has followed him in any new attempt to construct epics from materials derived only from dictionaries and bibliothèques, and to inspire modern poetry with the faith, the fears and passions of a people extinct for thousands of years.

The influence of these extraordinary works upon the literature and taste of England has been much greater than is generally acknowledged. They shattered the sceptre of that bastard empire of decency and imbecility which POPE's successors had set up. If WORDSWORTH has been called the poet of poets in respect to feeling, SOUTHEY may more truly be termed the study of artists in respect to imagination. It was a spark from SOUTHEY'S ardour which kindled in ScoTT the ambition to reconstruct the crumbled temple of Scottish chivalry; and he led BYRON and MOORE to the orient. While the languid tints of HAYLEY and DARWIN and BEATTIE were gathering in the evening of its glory over the once splendid sky of British literature, his spirit suddenly arose above the horizon, and streamed over the scene like "a thunderstorm against the wind." From that time the aspect and the elements of English poetry were changed. We should feel that a man wanted something to a complete insight into the character of modern art who had not read Thalaba and Kehama.

When we look at the great poets who commonly appear about the time that a nation is passing from the dominion of sense to that of reason, to Homer, Dante, Spenser,—we find them in possession of all the faculties of art,-invention, construction, decoration, passion, sentiment, moral sense. Their successors, severally, have some one or two of

larity of any poet will depend upon which quality he possesses. But it by no means follows that this popularity will be a test of the value and dignity of the order of the gift which the poet has; for some of the rarest and highest capacities of the artist are those which are not the most highly appreciated by the multitude. SOUTHEY had, in an eminent degree, a power which, with the exception of SCOTT, almost all his contemporaries wanted, construction,—the power of giving form to a work,—the architectural faculty of the mind. This is the most uncommon of the poet's powers, and is in itself a great merit, without which there is no art. It is almost the only faculty which JONSON had; and while the lower benches of critics have held JONSON cheap, those in the highest seats have always deemed that his title to a place among the great authors of his country was unquestionable.

SOUTHEY'S Smaller poems, written generally at a later period of life, are very different from the longer ones; and the difference is characteristic of the great and singular change which took place in him in his progress from youth to age. In them he delights chiefly to illustrate and beautify the domestic affections. The spirit that once soared almost beyond following, here loves to nestle in the very bosom of social feeling. Humanity in its genuine sympathies, in its truest and most native interests, in its most sincere and deepborn sentiments, is the sphere around which his fancy makes its willing yet controlled and gentle circuit. Those subjects which most other writers have felt as a dead weight upon their powers, as duty, piety, temperance, and fidelity, seemed to inspire him. To the last his genius always warmed into the beauty of its youthful ardour whenever a good affection was to be expressed, a friend to be commemorated, or a virtue to be praised.

These poems, indeed, possess a charm beyond the scope of criticism. They belong to the now justified excellence of one of the loveliest characters of which literary history bears record. They show us the heart of one of the best men that modern England has contained.

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ODE,

WRITTEN DURING THE NEGOTIATIONS WITH BONAPARTE, IN JANUARY, 1814.

WHO Counsels peace at this momentous hour, When God hath given deliverance to the oppress'd, And to the injured power?

Who counsels peace, when vengeance, like a flood, Rolls on, no longer now to be repress'd; When innocent blood

From the four corners of the world cries out

For justice upon one accursed head;

When freedom hath her holy banners spread
Over all nations, now in one just cause
United; when, with one sublime accord,
Europe throws off the yoke abhorr'd,

And loyalty, and faith, and ancient laws
Follow the avenging sword!

Wo, wo to England! wo and endless shame,
If this heroic land,

False to her feelings and unspotted fame,
Hold out the olive to the tyrant's hand!
Wo to the world, if Bonaparte's throne
Be suffer'd still to stand!

For by what name shall right and wrong be known,

What new and courtly phrases must we feign For falsehood, murder, and all monstrous crimes, If that perfidious Corsican maintain Still his detested reign,

And France, who yearns even now to break her chain,

Beneath his iron rule be left to groan?

No! by the innumerable dead, Whose blood hath for his lust of power been shed,

Death only can for his foul deeds atone;
That peace which death and judgment can bestow,
That peace be Bonaparte's,-that alone!
For sooner shall the Ethiop change his skin,
Or from the leopard shall her spots depart,
Than this man change his old, flagitious heart.
Have ye not seen him in the balance weigh'd,
And there found wanting? On the stage of blood
Foremost the resolute adventurer stood;
And when, by many a battle won,
He placed upon his brow the crown,
Curbing delirious France beneath his sway,
Then, like Octavius in old time,
Fair name might he have handed down,
Effacing many a stain of former crime.
Fool! should he cast away that bright renown!
Fool! the redemption proffer'd should he lose!
When Heaven such grace vouchsafed him that the
way

To good and evil lay
Before him, which to choose.

But evil was his good,

For all too long in blood had he been nursed, And ne'er was earth with verier tyrant cursed. Bold man and bad,

Remorseless, godless, full of fraud and lies, And black with murders and with perjuries, Himself in hell's whole panoply he clad;

No law but his own headstrong will he knew, No counsellor but his own wicked heart. From evil thus portentous strength he drew, And trampled under foot all human ties, All holy laws, all natural charities.

O France! beneath this fierce barbarian's sway Disgraced thou art to all succeeding times; Rapine, and blood, and fire have mark'd thy way, All loathsome, all unutterable crimes. A curse is on thee, France! from far and wide It hath gone up to heaven. All lands have cried For vengeance upon thy detested head! All nations curse thee, France! for wheresoe'er, In peace or war, thy banner hath been spread, All forms of human woe have follow'd there. The living and the dead

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Cry out alike against thee! They who bear, Crouching beneath its weight, thine iron yoke, Join in the bitterness of secret prayer The voice of that innumerable throng, Whose slaughter'd spirits day and night invoke The everlasting Judge of right and wrong, How long, O Lord! Holy and Just, how long!

A merciless oppressor hast thou been, Thyself remorselessly oppress'd meantime; Greedy of war, when all that thou couldst gain Was but to dye thy soul with deeper crime, And rivet faster round thyself the chain. Oh! blind to honour, and to interest blind,

When thus in abject servitude resign'd To this barbarian upstart, thou couldst brave God's justice, and the heart of human-kind! Madly thou thoughtest to enslave the world, Thyself the while a miserable slave. Behold, the flag of vengeance is unfurl'd! The dreadful armies of the North advance; While England, Portugal, and Spain combined, Give their triumphant banners to the wind, And stand victorious in the fields of France.

One man hath been for ten long, wretched years The cause of all this blood and all these tears;

One man in this most awful point of time Draws on thy danger, as he caused thy crime. Wait not too long the event, For now whole Europe comes against thee bent; His wiles and their own strength the nations know: Wise from past wrongs, on future peace intent, The people and the princes, with one mind, From all parts move against the general foe; One act of justice, one atoning blow, One execrable head laid low, Even yet, O France! averts thy punishment. Open thine eyes!-too long hast thou been blind; Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind!

France! if thou lovest thine ancient fame, Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame! By the bones which bleach on Jaffa's beach; By the blood which on Domingo's shore Hath clogg'd the carrion-birds with gore; By the flesh which gorged the wolves of Spain, Or stiffen'd on the snowy plain

of frozen Moscovy;

By the bodies, which lie all open to the sky, Tracking from Elbe to Rhine the tyrant's flight; By the widow's and the orphan's cry; By the childless parent's misery; By the lives which he hath shed; By the ruin he hath spread;

By the prayers which rise for curses on his head,-Redeem, O France! thine ancient fame,

Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame, Open thine eyes!--too long hast thou been blind; Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind!

By those horrors which the night Witness'd when the torches' light To the assembled murderers show'd Where the blood of Condé flow'd; By thy murder'd Pichegru's fame; By murder'd Wright--an English name; By murder'd Palm's atrocious doom; By murder'd Hofer's martyrdom,-Oh! by the virtuous blood thus vilely spilt, The villain's own peculiar, private guilt, Open thine eyes!-too long hast thou been blind; Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind!

THE HOLLY-TREE.

O READER! hast thou ever stood to see
The holly-tree?

The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves

Order'd by an intelligence so wise,
As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;

No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;

But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize;

And in this wisdom of the holly-tree

Can emblem 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 amid 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.

THE DEAD FRIEND.

NoT to the grave, not to the grave, my soul,
Descend to contemplate

The form that once was dear!

The spirit is not there
Which kindled that dead eye,
Which throbb'd in that cold heart,
Which in that motionless hand
Hath met thy friendly grasp.
The spirit is not there!
It is but lifeless, perishable flesh
That moulders in the grave;

Earth, air, and water's ministering particles
Now to the elements

Resolved, their uses done.

Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul,
Follow thy friend beloved;

The spirit is not there!

Often together have we talk'd of death;
How sweet it were to see

All doubtful things made clear;
How sweet it were with powers
Such as the Cherubim,
To view the depth of heaven!
O Edmund! thou hast first
Begun the travel of eternity!
I look upon the stars,
And think that thou art there,
Unfetter'd as the thought that follows thee.
And we have often said how sweet it were
With unseen ministry of angel power,
To watch the friends we loved.
Edmund! we did not err!

Sure I have felt thy presence! Thou hast given
A birth to holy thought,

Hast kept me from the world unstain'd and pure. Edmund! we did not err !

Our best affections here,

They are not like the toys of infancy;
The soul outgrows them not;
We do not cast them off;

O, if it could be so,

It were indeed a dreadful thing to die!

Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul,
Follow thy friend beloved!
But in the lonely hour,
But in the evening walk,

Think that he companies thy solitude;
Think that he holds with thee
Mysterious intercourse;
And though remembrance wake a tear,
There will be joy in grief.

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In was a summer evening,

Old Kaspar's work was done
And he before his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet

In playing there had found; He came to ask what he had found, That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head, And with a natural sigh, "'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory. "I find them in the garden,

For there's many here about; And often, when I go to plough,

The ploughshare turns them out! For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory."

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Now tell us what 't was all about," Young Peterkin he cries; While little Wilhelmine looks up, With wonder-waiting eyes; "Now tell us all about the war, And what they kill'd each other for." "It was the English," Kaspar cried,

"Who put the French to rout; But what they kill'd each other for, I could not well make out. But everybody said," quoth he, "That 't was a famous victory. "My father lived at Blenheim then,

Yon little stream hard by ;

They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;

So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

"With fire and sword the country round

Was wasted far and wide;
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born baby died;

But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won;

For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun;

But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, And our good prince Eugene." "Why, 't was a very wicked thing!" Said little Wilhelmine.

"Nay-nay-my little girl," quoth he, "It was a famous victory.

"And everybody praised the Duke

Who this great fight did win." "And what good came of it at last?". Quoth little Peterkin. "Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 't was a famous victory."

REMEMBRANCE.

The remembrance of youth is a sigh.-Ali.

MAN hath a weary pilgrimage
As through the world he wends;
On every stage, from youth to age,
Still discontent attends;
With heaviness he casts his eye

Upon the road before,
And still remembers with a sigh

The days that are no more.
To school the little exile goes,
Torn from his mother's arms,—
What then shall soothe his earliest woes,
When novelty hath lost its charms?
Condemn'd to suffer through the day

Restraints which no rewards repay, And cares where love has no concern, Hope lengthens as she counts the hours Before his wish'd return. From hard control and tyrant rules, The unfeeling discipline of schools,

In thought he loves to roam,
And tears will struggle in his eye,
While he remembers with a sigh
The comforts of his home.
Youth comes; the toils and cares of life
Torment the restless mind;
Where shall the tired and harass'd heart
Its consolation find?
Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells,
Life's summer prime of joy?
Ah no! for hopes too long delay'd
And feelings blasted or betray'd,

Its fabled bliss destroy;
And Youth remembers with a sigh
The careless days of Infancy.
Maturer Manhood now arrives,
And other thoughts come on,
But with the baseless hopes of Youth
Its generous warmth is gone;
Cold, calculating cares succeed,
The timid thought, the wary deed,
The dull realities of truth;
Back on the past he turns his eye,
Remembering, with an envious sigh,

The happy dreams of Youth.
So reaches he the latter stage
Of this our mortal pilgrimage,
With feeble step and slow;
New ills that latter stage await,
And old Experience learns too late
That all is vanity below.

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