the scene, has been discarded by good taste ever since the publication of Addison's Campaign. The approach of the Gallic army is beautifully described.

"And is it now a goodly sight,
Or dreadful to behold,

The pomp of that approaching fight,
Waving ensigns, pennons light,
And gleaming blades and bayonets bright,
And Eagles winged with gold;
And warrior bands of many a hue,
Scarlet and white and green and blue,
Like rainbows o'er the morning dew,
Their various lines unfold:

While cymbal clang and trumpet strain,
The knell of battle toll'd;

And trampling squadrons beat the plain,
'Till the clouds echoed back again,

As if the thunder rolled."

Our bounds will not permit us to quote the opening of the battle, though it contains some passages of great merit. Realizing his narrative with an art, which has been thought almost irreconcilable with poetry, the author next undertakes to give us a distinct idea of those manœuvres and movements upon which the success of the day depended; and by clothing them with the striking circumstances which hide the otherwise technical and somewhat familiar detail of the Gazette, he has succeeded at once in preserving the form and leading circumstances, and "all the current of the heady fight;" and, generally speaking, in presenting them to the fancy in a manner as poetical as they are clear to the understanding. In treading, however, upon a line so very narrow, he has sometimes glided into bombast on the one hand, or into flat, bald, and vulgar expression upon the other. Although, for instance, the word "firelocks," be used technically, and somewhat pedantically, to express the men who bear them, we cannot permit a poet to speak with impunity of

"Full fifty thousand muskets bright
Led by old warriors trained to fight."

Spears, we know, is used for spearmen; but this is a license sanctioned by antiquity, and not to be extended to modern implements of war. In other places, the ardour of the poet is expressed in language too turgid and inflated. But the following stanza may safely be quoted as avoiding, under

very difficult circumstances, the extremes of simplicity and bombast; and describing the celebrated charge of the British cavalry with a spirit worthy of those whose gallantry was so memorable on that memorable day.

"Three columns of the flower of France,
With rapid step and firm, advance,

At first through tangled ground,
O'er fence and dell and deep ravine-
At length they reach the level green,
The midnight battle's murderous scene,
The valley's eastern bound.
There in a rapid line they form,
Thence are just rushing to the storm,
By bold Belluno led.

When sudden thunders shake the vale,
Day seems, as in eclipse, to fail,
The light of heaven is fled.

A dusty whirlwind rides the sky,
A living tempest rushes by

With deafening clang and tread-
'A charge, a charge,' the British cry,
'And Seymour at its head.'"

The miscarriage of this gallant body of cavalry amid the broken ground in which the French again formed their column, its causes and consequences, the main battle itself, and all its alternations of success, are described in the same glowing and vivid language; which we will venture to say is not that of one who writes with a view to his own distinction as a poet, but who feels that living fire glow within him which impels him to fling into verse his animated and enthusiastic feelings of exultation on contemplating such a subject as the battle of Talavera. The following description of a circumstance new to the terrors of battle, we shall insert, ere we take our leave of Talavera.

"But shooting high and rolling far,
What new and horrid face of war
Now flushes on the sight?

'Tis France as furious she retires,
That wreaks in desolating fires,

The vengeance of her flight.
The flames the grassy vale o'errun,
Already parch'd by summer's sun;
And sweeping turbid down the breeze
In clouds the arid thickets sieze,
And climb the dry and withered trees
In flashes long and bright.

Oh! 'twas a scene sublime and dire,
To see that billowy sea of fire,

VOL. I.-15

Rolling its fierce and flaky flood,
O'er cultured field and tangled wood,
And drowning in the flaming tide,
Autumn's hope and summer's pride.
From Talavera's wall and tower

And from the mountain's height,
Where they had stood for many an hour,
To view the varying fight,
Burghers and peasants in amaze

Behold their groves and vineyards blaze!
Trembling they viewed the bloody fray,
But little thought, ere close of day,
That England's sigh and France's groan
Should be re-echoed by their own!
But ah! far other cries than these-
Are wafted on the dismal breeze-

Groans, not the wounded's lingering groan-
Shrieks, not the shriek of death alone-
But groan and shriek and horrid yell
Of terror, torture, and despair,
Such as 'twould freeze the tongue to tell,
And chill the heart to hear,
When to the very field of fight,
Dreadful alike in sound and sight,

The conflagration spread,
Involving in the fiery wave,

The brave and reliques of the brave-
The dying and the dead!"

We have shunned, in the present instance, the unpleasant task of pointing out, and dwelling upon individual inaccura cies. There are several hasty expressions, flat lines, and deficient rhymes, which prove to us little more than that the composition was a hurried one. These, in a poem of a different description, we should have thought it our duty to point out to the notice of the author. But, after all, it is the spirit of a poet that we consider as demanding our chief attention; and upon its ardour or rapidity must finally hinge our applause or condemnation. We care as little (comparatively that is to say) for the minor arts of composition and versification as Falstaff did for the thews and sinews, and outward composition of his recruits. It is "the heart, the heart," that makes the poet as well as the soldier; and while we shall not withhold some applause even from the ordinary statuary who executes a common figure, our wreath must be reserved for the Prometheus who shall impregnate his statue with fire from heaven.

SOUTHEY'S CURSE OF KEHAMA.*

[Quarterly Review, February, 1811.]

EVER since the revival of letters, the learned world has been agitated by dissensions between two of its most distinguished classes, the poets and the critics, and each has in its turn made a plausible appeal to the public. The poets have urged, and with much appearance of justice, that their peculiar talent being of a nature singularly capricious and evanescent, it is not in the power even of the possessors to prescribe its exertions. That for this reason it has almost in every language borne a name implying inspiration, as if poetry were less the work of the author in his ordinary and imperturbed state of mind, than the effusion of a moment of enthusiasm, when the ideas are sublimed, and the imagination kindled by an impulse which he can neither guide nor withstand. They have proceeded in pathetic strains to state the hardship of a profession in which their exertions, if successful, are uniformly dogged by calumny, and, if other. wise, by contempt and disgrace. It is but fair, they allege, that in so disadvantageous a combat they should he allowed to choose their own ground, to make such experiments upon the public taste, and the principles of their own art, as change of times appears to demand; and that it is the height of injustice to confine their efforts to the subjects chosen by their predecessors, which have now lost the gloss of novelty, and are become in a manner exhausted. They contend that themselves alone can be judges of the force and faculties of their own mind, and consequently of the most advantageous mode of employing their powers; and that urging them to a style of composition, which, however excellent in itself, is alien from their temper and studies, is as absurd as to compel David to use the armour which he had not proved, instead

*The Curse of Kehama. By ROBERT SOUTHEY. London: 1810.

of his own pastoral stone and sling. The object of poetry is pleasure; and if the old track has ceased to guide us towards it, fresh avenues must be opened. Nay, conceding that the style of their predecessors is more pure and excellent than their own, modern authors still plead that, like a popular melody “which the carmen whistle," it has in some degree lost its effect by repeated and dull imitation. Let us, say they, yield to the usual revolutions of taste, and indulge the public with some variety in poetical composition. Those who succeed us, more fortunate than ourselves, may again resort to the imitation of purer models, and their efforts will not only have the renewed grace of novelty, but all the advantages which can be gained by a contrast with our own.

The critics are not without their answers to these charges. They plead that poetry, like all the other fine arts, has its general rules, which, though strictly observed, will still leave endless scope for variety. That as the musician consents that his notes shall be arranged by the general laws of harmony, it does not become the poet to assume the license of framing his effusions according to the fantastic dictates of his own imagination. If, in a long succession of ages, the legitimate subjects of verse lose the charm of absolute novelty, the loss had better be supplied by an attempt to throw over them a polish and a grace to which the ancient models were strangers, than by capricious excursions into the realms of fancy. The form of a Grecian temple, they say, no longer boasts to our eyes the charm of novelty; yet that is no reason for supplying its place by the grotesque and puerile singularities of a Chinese pagoda. The plea of hardship they refute by an appeal to the experience of every other profession, where long study and early apprenticeship are as indispensable to success as genius and talent. To the personal objection against their judgment, they reply that the poet is seldom the best judge of his own compositions, or the most impartial arbiter of those of others; that in the glow of enthusiastic feeling he is apt to misuse his own talents and mislead the public taste; and that in all nations there has arisen, with the general diffusion of literature, a separate class of men neither professing to be poets themselves, nor to read poetry upon the usual motives of interest and amusement, but for the sake of justice to the dead and candour to the living, to mark the progress of the art itself, to correct