The sound, the sight

Of turban, girdle, robe, and scimitar,

And tawny skins, awoke contending thoughts
Of anger, shame, and anguish in the Goth;
The unaccustomed face of humankind
Confused him now-and through the streets he went
With haggard mien, and countenance like one
Crazed or bewildered. All who met him turned,
And wondered as he passed. One stopped him short,
Put alms into his hand, and then desired,
In broken Gothic speech, the moon-struck man
To bless him. With a look of vacancy,
Roderick received the alms; his wandering eye
Fell on the money, and the fallen king,
Seeing his royal impress on the piece,
Broke out into a quick convulsive voice,
That seemed like laughter first, but ended soon
In hollow groan suppressed: the Mussulman
Shrunk at the ghastly sound, and magnified
The name of Allah as he hastened on.
A Christian woman, spinning at her door,
Beheld him-and with sudden pity touched,
She laid her spindle by, and running in,
Took bread, and following after, called him back-
And, placing in his passive hands the loaf,
She said, 'Christ Jesus for his Mother's sake
Have mercy on thee!' With a look that seemed
Like idiocy, he heard her, and stood still,
Staring a while; then bursting into tears,
Wept like a child.

Or the following description:

A Moonlight Scene in Spain.

How calmly, gliding through the dark-blue sky,
The midnight moon ascends! Her placid beams,
Through thinly scattered leaves, and boughs grotesque,
Mottle with mazy shades the orchard slope;
Here o'er the chestnut's fretted foliage, gray
And massy, motionless they spread; here shine
Upon the crags, deepening with blacker night
Their chasms; and there the glittering argentry
Ripples and glances on the confluent streams.
A lovelier, purer light than that of day
Rests on the hills; and oh! how awfully,
Into that deep and tranquil firmament,
The summits of Auseva rise serene !
The watchman on the battlements partakes
The stillness of the solemn hour; he feels
The silence of the earth; the endless sound
Of flowing water soothes him; and the stars,
Which in that brightest moonlight well-nigh quenched,
Scarce visible, as in the utmost depth
Of yonder sapphire infinite, are seen,
Draw on with elevating influence
Towards eternity the attempered mind.
Musing on worlds beyond the grave, he stands,
And to the Virgin Mother silently
Breathes forth her hymn of praise.

Southey having in 1813, accepted the office of poet-laureate, composed some courtly strains that tended little to advance his reputation. His Carmen Triumphale (1814) and The Vision of Judgment (1821) provoked much ridicule at the time, and would have passed into utter oblivion, if Lord Byron had not published another Vision of Judgment-one of the most powerful, though wild and profane, of his productions, in which the laureate received a merciless and witty castigation, that even his admirers admitted to be not unmerited. The latest of our author's poetical works was a

Pilgrim of Compostella (1829). He continued his ceaseless round of study and composition, writing on all subjects, and filling ream after ream of paper with his lucubrations on morals, philosophy, poetry, and politics. He was offered a baronetcy and a seat in parliament, both of which he prudently declined. His fame and his fortune, he knew, could only be preserved by adhering to his solitary studies; but these were too constant and uninterrupted. The poet forgot one of his own maxims, that 'frequent change of air is of all things that which most conduces to joyous health and long life.' From the year 1833 to 1837 he was chiefly engaged in editing the works of Cowper, published in fifteen volumes. About the year 1834, his wife, the early partner of his affections, sank into a state of mental imbecility, 'a pitiable state of existence,' in which she continued for about three years, and though he bore up wonderfully during this period of affliction, his health was irretrievably shattered. In about a year and a half afterwards, however, he married a second time, the object of his choice being Miss Caroline Bowles, the poetess. My spirits,' he says, would hardly recover their habitual and healthful cheerfulness, if I had not prevailed upon Miss Bowles to share my lot for the remainder of our lives. There is just such a disparity of age as is fitting; we have been well acquainted with each other more than twenty years, and a more perfect conformity of disposition could not exist. Some members of the poet's grown-up family seem to have been averse to this union, but the devoted attentions of the lady, and her exemplary domestic virtues, soothed the few remaining years of the poet's existence. Those attentions were soon painfully requisite. Southey's intellect became clouded, his accustomed labours were suspended, and though he continued his habit of reading, the power of comprehension was gone. 'His dearly prized books,' says his son, were a pleasure to him almost to the end, and he would walk slowly round his library looking at them, and taking them down mechanically.' Wordsworth, writing to Lady Frederick Bentinck in July 1840, says, that on visiting his early friend, he did not recognise him till he was told. his eyes flashed for a moment with their former brightness, but he sank into the state in which I had found him, patting with both hands his books affectionately like a child.' Three years were passed in this deplorable condition, and it was a matter of satisfaction rather than regret that death at length stepped in to shroud this painful spectacle from the eyes of affection as well as from the gaze of vulgar curiosity. He died in his house at Greta on the 21st of March 1843. He left at his death a sum of about £12,000, to be divided among his children, and one of the most valuable private libraries in the kingdom. The life and correspondence of Southey have been published by his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, in six volumes. His son-in-law, the Rev. J. Wood Warter, published his Commonplace Book, 4 vols., and Selections from his Letters, 4 vols. In these works the amiable private life of Southey-his indefatigable application, his habitual cheerfulness and lively fancy, and his steady friendships and true generosity, are strikingly displayed. The only drawback is the poet's egotism, which was inordinate, and the hasty uncharitable judgments

Then

sometimes passed on his contemporaries, the result partly of temperament and partly of his seclusion from general society. Southey was interred in the churchyard of Crosthwaite, and in the church is a marble monument to his memory, a full-length recumbent figure, with the following inscription by Wordsworth on the base of the monument:

Wordsworth's Epitaph on Southey.

Ye vales and hills, whose beauty hither drew
The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you

His eyes have closed; and ye, loved books, no more
Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,
To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown,
Adding immortal labours of his own;
Whether he traced historic truth with zeal
For the state's guidance, or the church's weal;
Or Fancy, disciplined by studious Art,
Informed his pen, or Wisdom of the heart,
Or Judgments sanctioned in the patriot's mind
By reverence for the rights of all mankind.
Large were his aims, yet in no human breast
Could private feelings find a holier nest.
His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud
From Skiddaw's top; but he to Heaven was vowed
Through a life long and pure, and steadfast faith
Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death.

Few authors have written so much and so well, with so little real popularity, as Southey. Of all his prose works, admirable as they are in purity of style, the Life of Nelson alone is a general favourite. The magnificent creations of his poetry-piled up like clouds at sunset, in the calm serenity of his capacious intellect-have always been duly appreciated by poetical students and critical readers; but by the public at large they are neglected. An attempt to revive them, by the publication of the whole poetical works in ten uniform and cheap volumes, has only shewn that they are unsuited to the taste of the present generation. The reason of this may be found both in the subjects of Southey's poetry, and in his manner of treating them. His fictions are wild and supernatural, and have no hold on human affections. Gorgeous and sublime as some of his images and descriptions are, they come like shadows, so depart.' They are too remote, too fanciful, and often too learned. The Grecian mythology is graceful and familiar; but Southey's Hindu superstitions are extravagant and strange. To relish them requires considerable previous reading and research, and this is a task which few will undertake. The dramatic art or power of vivid delineation is also comparatively unknown to Southey, and hence the dialogues in Madoc and Roderick are generally flat and uninteresting. His observation was of books, not nature. Some affectations of style and expression also marred the effect of his conceptions, and the copious flow of his versification, unrelieved by bursts of passion or eloquent sentiment, sometimes becomes heavy and monotonous in its uniform smoothness and dignity.

The Battle of Blenheim.

It 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.'

'Now tell us what 'twas 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 killed each other for.'

It was the English,' Kaspar cried,
'Who put the French to rout;
But what they killed each other for,
I could not well make out.
But everybody said,' quoth he,
'That 'twas a famous victory.

'My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by ;
They burned 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, 'twas a very wicked thing!' Said little Wilhelmine. 'Nay-nay-my little girl,' quoth he, 'It was a famous victory.

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 shew,

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. Some of the youthful ballads of Southey were extremely popular. His Lord William, Mary the Maid of the Inn, The Well of St Keyne, and The Old Woman of Berkeley, were the delight of most young readers seventy years since. He loved to sport with subjects of diablerie; and one satirical piece of this kind, The Devil's Thoughts, the joint production of Southey and Coleridge, had the honour of being ascribed to various persons. The conception of the piece was Southey's, who led off with the following opening stanzas :

From his brimstone bed at break of day
A-walking the devil is gone,

To visit his snug little farm the earth,
And see how his stock goes on.

Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain,

And backward and forward he switched his long
tail,

As a gentleman switches his cane.

But the best and most piquant verses are by Coleridge one of these has passed into a proverb:

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;

And the devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

This gentleman, the representative of an ancient family, was born at Ipsley Court, Warwickshire, on the 30th of January 1775. He was educated

at Rugby School, whence he was transferred to Trinity College, Oxford. His first publication was a small volume of poems, dated as far back as 1795. The poet was intended for the army, but, like Southey, he imbibed republican sentiments, and for that cause declined engaging in the profession of arms. His father then offered him an allowance of £400 per annum, on condition that he should study the law, with this alternative, if he refused, that his income should be restricted to one-third of the sum. The independent poet preferred the smaller income with literature as his companion. He must soon, however, have succeeded to the family estates, for in 1806, exasperated by the bad conduct of some of his tenants, he is said to have sold possessions in Warwickshire and Staffordshire, and pulled down a handsome house he had built. This rash impulsiveness will be found pervading his literature as well as his life. In 1808, Mr Landor joined the Spaniards in their first insurrectionary movement, raising a troop at his own expense, and contributing 20,000 reals to aid in the struggle. In 1815, he took up his residence in Italy, having purchased a villa near Florence. There he lived for many years, cultivating art and literature, but he again returned to England and settled in Bath. The early poetical works of Landor were collected and republished in 1831. They consist of Gebir, a sort of epic poem, originally written in Latin (Gebirus, 1802), which De Quincey said had for some time 'the sublime distinction of having enjoyed only two readers-Southey and himself;' Count Julian, a tragedy, highly praised by Southey; and various miscellaneous poems, to which he continued almost every year to make additions. He also cultivated private renown,' as Byron said, in the shape of Latin verses and essays, for which the noble poet styled him the 'deep-mouthed Boeotian, Savage Landor.' This satire, however, was pointless; for as a ripe scholar, imbued with the spirit of antiquity, Mr Landor transcended most of his contemporaries. His acquirements and genius Conversations, a series of dialogues published at. were afterwards fully displayed in his Imaginary intervals between 1824 and 1846, by which time they had amounted to one hundred and twenty-five in number, ranging over all history, all times, and. almost all subjects. Mr Landor's poetry is inferior to his prose. In Gebir there is a fine passage,. amplified by Wordsworth in his Excursion, which describes the sound which sea-shells seem to make when placed close to the ear:

But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed

In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave :
Shake one and it awakens, then apply

Its polished lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

In Count Julian, Mr Landor adduces the follow-ing beautiful illustration of grief:

Wakeful he sits, and lonely and unmoved,
Beyond the arrows, views, or shouts of men ;
As oftentimes an eagle, when the sun
Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray,
Stands solitary, stands immovable,

Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased,
In the cold light.

His smaller poems are mostly of the same meditative and intellectual character. An English scene is thus described :

Clifton, in vain thy varied scenes invite

The mossy bank, dim glade, and dizzy height;
The sheep that starting from the tufted thyme,
Untune the distant churches' mellow chime;
As o'er each limb a gentle horror creeps,
And shake above our heads the craggy steeps,
Pleasant I've thought it to pursue the rower,
While light and darkness seize the changeful oar,
The frolic Naiads drawing from below
A net of silver round the black canoe.
Now the last lonely solace must it be

To watch pale evening brood o'er land and sea,
Then join my friends, and let those friends believe
My cheeks are moistened by the dews of eve,

The Maid's Lament is a short lyrical flow of picturesque expression and pathos, resembling the effusions of Barry Cornwall:

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,
I feel I am alone.

I checked him while he spoke ; yet could he speak,
Alas! I would not check.

For reasons not to love him once I sought,

And wearied all my thought

To vex myself and him: I now would give
My love could he but live

Who lately lived for me, and when he found
'Twas vain, in holy ground

He hid his face amid the shades of death!
I waste for him my breath,
Who wasted his for me; but mine returns,
And this lone bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,

And waking me to weep

Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years
Wept he as bitter tears!

'Merciful God!' such was his latest prayer,
'These may she never share!'

Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold
Than daisies in the mould,

Where children spell athwart the churchyard gate
His name and life's brief date.

Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er ye be,

And oh! pray, too, for me!

We quote one more chaste and graceful fancy :

this time he contributed largely to the columns of the Examiner weekly journal. Though living the life of a recluse, he was an acute observer of public events, and an eager though inconsistent and impracticable politician. In 1853, he issued a volume of essays and poetical pieces, entitled The Last Fruit off an Old Tree; and in 1858, another volume of the same kind, called Dry Sticks fagoted by Walter Savage Landor. For certain grossly indecent verses and slanders in this work, directed against a lady in Bath, the author underwent the indignity of a trial for defamation, was convicted, and amerced in damages to the amount of £1000. Shortly before this, Mr Landor had published a declaration that of his fortune he had but a small sum left, with which he proposed to endow the widow of any person who should assassinate the Emperor of the French! Thus poor, old, and dishonoured, Mr Landor again left England-a spectacle more pitiable, considering his high intellectual endowments, his early friendships, and his once noble aspirations, than any other calamity recorded in our literary annals. After some months of wretchedness at Fiesole,' says a memoir of Landor in the English Cyclopædia, 'his friends came to his rescue. A plain but comfortable lodging was found for him at Florence, his surviving brothers undertook to supply an annuity of £200, which Robert Browning generously saw duly employed as long as he remained in Florence. And thus one more gleam of sunshine seemed to settle on the "old man eloquent." Though deaf and ailing, he continued to find solace in his pen. He wrote and published occasional verses, and two or three more Imaginary Conversations, in which the old fire burned not dimly; collected some earlier scraps, which appeared as Heroic Idylls, and was still working in his 90th year at new Conversations, when, on the 17th of September 1864, death ended his labours and sorrows.' biography of Landor by John Forster, was published in 1869.

A

The writings of Walter Savage Landor have been said to bear the stamp of the old mocking paganism.' A moody egotistic nature, ill at ease with the common things of life, had flourished up in his case into a most portentous crop of crotchets and prejudices, which, regardless of the reprobation of his fellow-men, he issued forth in prodigious confusion, often in language offensive in the last degree to good taste. Eager to contradict whatever is generally received, he never stops to consider how far his own professed opinions may be consistent with each other: hence he contradicts himself almost as often as he does others. Jeffrey, in one of his most brilliant papers, has characterised in happy terms the class of minds to which Mr Landor belongs. 'The work before us,' says he, is an edifying example of the spirit of literary Jacobinism-flying at all game, running a-muck at all opinions, and at continual cross-purposes with its own. This spirit admits neither of equal nor superior, follower nor precursor: "it travels in a road so narrow, where but one goes abreast." It claims a monopoly of sense, wit, and wisdom. All their ambition, all their endeavour is, to seem wiser than the whole world besides. They hate whatever falls short of, whatever goes beyond, their favourite theories. In the one case, they hurry on before to get the start of you; in the other, they suddenly turn back to hinder you, and

defeat themselves. An inordinate, restless, incorrigible self-love is the key to all their actions and opinions, extravagances and meannesses, servility and arrogance. Whatever soothes and pampers this, they applaud; whatever wounds or interferes with it, they utterly and vindictively abhor. A general is with them a hero, if he is unsuccessful or a traitor; if he is a conqueror in the cause of liberty, or a martyr to it, he is a poltroon. Whatever is doubtful, remote, visionary in philosophy, or wild and dangerous in politics, they fasten upon eagerly, "recommending and insisting on nothing less;" reduce the one to demonstration, the other to practice, and they turn their backs upon their own most darling schemes, and leave them in the lurch immediately.' When the reader learns that Mr Landor justifies Tiberius and Nero, speaks of Pitt as a poor creature, and Fox as a charlatan, declares Alfieri to have been the greatest man in Europe, and recommends the Greeks, in their struggles with the Turks, to discard firearms, and return to the use of the bow, he will not deem this general description far from inapplicable in the case of Landor. And yet his Imaginary Conversations and other writings are amongst the most remarkable prose productions of our age, written in pure nervous English, and full of thoughts which fasten themselves on the mind and are a joy for ever.' It would require many specimens from these works to make good what is here said for and against their author; we subjoin a few passages affording both an example of his love of paradox, and of the extraordinary beauties of thought and expression by which he leads us captive.

Conversation between Lords Chatham and Chesterfield. Chesterfield. It is true, my lord, we have not always been of the same opinion, or, to use a better, truer, and more significant expression, of the same side in politics; yet I never heard a sentence from your lordship which I did not listen to with deep attention. I understand that you have written some pieces of admonition and advice to a young relative; they are mentioned as being truly excellent; I wish I could have profited by them when I was composing mine on a similar occasion.

Chatham. My lord, you certainly would not have done it, even supposing they contained, which I am far from believing, any topics that could have escaped your penetrating view of manners and morals; for your lordship and I set out diversely from the very threshold. Let us, then, rather hope that what we have written, with an equally good intention, may produce its due effect; which indeed, I am afraid, may be almost as doubtful, if we consider how ineffectual were the cares and exhortations, and even the daily example and high renown, of the most zealous and prudent men on the life and conduct of their children and disciples. Let us, however, hope the best rather than fear the worst, and believe that there never was a right thing done or a wise one spoken in vain, although the fruit of them may not spring up in the place designated or at the time expected. Chesterfield. Pray, if I am not taking too great a freedom, give me the outline of your plan.

Chatham. Willingly, my lord; but since a greater man than either of us has laid down a more comprehensive one, containing all I could bring forward, would it not be preferable to consult it? I differ in nothing from Locke, unless it be that I would recommend the lighter as well as the graver part of the ancient classics, and the constant practice of imitating them in early youth. This is no change in the system, and no larger an addition than a woodbine to a sacred grove.

Chesterfield. I do not admire Mr Locke. Chatham. Nor I-he is too simply grand for admiration-I contemplate and revere him. Equally deep and clear, he is both philosophically and grammatically the most elegant of English writers.

Chesterfield. If I expressed by any motion of limb or feature my surprise at this remark, your lordship, I hope, will pardon me a slight and involuntary transgression of my own precept. I must entreat you, before we move a step further in our inquiry, to inform me whether I am really to consider him in style the most elegant of our prose authors.

Chatham. Your lordship is capable of forming an opinion on this point certainly no less correct than mine. Chesterfield. Pray assist me.

Chatham. Education and grammar are surely the two driest of all subjects on which a conversation can turn; yet if the ground is not promiscuously sown, if be covered is not bare, and, above all, if the plants are what ought to be clear is not covered, if what ought to choice ones, we may spend a few moments on it not unpleasantly. It appears then to me, that elegance in prose composition is mainly this: a just admission of topics and of words; neither too many nor too few of either; enough of sweetness in the sound to induce us to enter and sit still; enough of illustration and reflection to change the posture of our minds when they would tire; and enough of sound matter in the complex to repay us for our attendance. I could perhaps be more logical in my definition and more concise; but am I at all erroneous?

Chesterfield. I see not that you are.

find nothing idle or redundant in him. Chatham. My ear is well satisfied with Locke: I

Chesterfield. But in the opinion of you graver men would not some of his principles lead too far?

Chatham. The danger is, that few will be led by them far enough: most who begin with him stop short, and, pretending to find pebbles in their shoes, throw themselves down upon the ground, and complain of their guide.

Chesterfield. What, then, can be the reason why Plato, so much less intelligible, is so much more quoted and applauded?

Chatham. The difficulties we never try are no difficulties to us. Those who are upon the summit of a mountain know in some measure its altitude, by comparing it with all objects around; but those who stand at the bottom, and never mounted it, can compare it with few only, and with those imperfectly. Until a short time ago, I could have conversed more fluently about Plato than I can at present; I had read all the titles to his dialogues, and several scraps of commentary; these I have now forgotten, and am indebted to long attacks of the gout for what I have acquired instead.

Chesterfield. A very severe schoolmaster! I hope he allows a long vacation.

Chatham. Severe he is indeed, and although he sets no example of regularity, he exacts few observances, and teaches many things. Without him I should have had less patience, less learning, less reflection, less leisure; in short, less of everything but of sleep.

Chesterfield. Locke, from a deficiency of fancy, is not likely to attract so many listeners as Plato.

Chatham. And yet occasionally his language is both metaphorical and rich in images. In fact all our great philosophers have also this property in a wonderful degree. Not to speak of the devotional, in whose writings one might expect it, we find it abundantly in Bacon, not sparingly in Hobbes, the next to him in range of inquiry and potency of intellect. And what would you think, my lord, if you discovered in the records of Newton a sentence in the spirit of Shakspeare?

Chesterfield. I should look upon it as upon a wonder, not to say a miracle: Newton, like Barrow, had no feeling or respect for poetry.