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plete poetical works. The task has been well fulfilled, with becoming modesty and an equally-becoming manly spirit of self-assurance. More than forty years had passed over some of the early poems; and, with the memory of the distant days revived and the present thought of the approach of the evening of his life, truly does he exclaim, "What is this task but to bring in review before me the dreams and aspirations of my youth and the feelings whereto I had given that free utterance, which by the usages of the world is permitted to us in poetry, and in poetry alone? Well may it be called a serious task thus to resuscitate the past. But, serious though it may be, it is not painful to one who knows that the end of his journey cannot be far distant, and by the blessing of God looks on its termination with sure and certain hope." The honourable ambition of occupying a permanent place in the literature not only of his own country, but of all lands where the English language is spoken, could not fail to animate the breast of one whose gratitude was as deep as Southey's to the wise and good of other ages who had bequeathed their recorded thoughts and inspirations. The strong and placid feelings of the true-hearted man of letters were never better told than by him :

"My days among the dead are past:

Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old:

My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.

"With them I take delight in weal
And seek relief in woe;

And, while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,

My cheeks have often been bedewed
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

"My thoughts are with the dead; with then
I live in long-past years;

Their virtues loye, their faults condemn,
Partake their hopes and fears,

And from their lessons seek and find
Instruction with an humble mind.

"My hopes are with the dead; anon
My place with them will be;
And I with them shall travel on
Through all futurity,

Yet leaving here a name, I trust,

That will not perish in the dust."

That trust will not be frustrated: the name of Southey will not perish in the dust, whatever clouds may have gathered round the evening of his days. If his strength has departed from him, it has not been wasted by slothful neglect or by unworthy uses. A life of unwearied and unintermitted industry and of pure and honourable aim has been his; he has done a giant's work in his generation; and it is a very sad thing to think that now, when he has not quite reached the limit of his threescore years and ten, powers so well cultivated and so well employed should, by an inscrutable visitation, be impaired. I do not know of any piece of literary intelligence that has grieved me more than that the faculties of Southey's fine mind have been shattered.

"What sight can sorrow find

Sad as the ruins of the human mind?'

The poetical fire inborn in Southey's heart began to make the motions of its first flames very early. Ardent in his feelings, and of a happy, buoyant temper, literary ambitions began very early to cross his mind. His passion for poetry happily took a fortunate and safe direction. At an age when it was thought the antiquated diction of the "Fairy Queen" must be unintelligible to him, he obtained a copy of that poem, on which his imagination at once fastened as most congenial; and from that early day Spenser was the acknowledged master of his poetic life. The taste thus acquired was confirmed by the reading of Chaucer and Shakspeare and the old ballads, and the study of Homer and the Bible. He is well justified in adding, significantly, "It was not likely to be corrupted afterwards."

Southey's poetic impulses were strong in childhood, and the quickness of his apprehensions raised high and flattering hopes of his success in life, as he tells us in the lines on his miniature-picture taken in very early life:

"They augured happily

That thou didst love each wild and wondrous tale

Of fairy fiction, and thine infant tongue

Lisped with delight the godlike deeds of Greece

And rising Rome; therefore they deemed, forsooth,
That thou shouldst tread preferment's pleasant paths.
Ill-judging ones! They let thy little feet

Stray in the pleasant paths of poesy,

And when thou shouldst have prest amid the crowd,
There didst thou love to linger out the day,
Loitering beneath the laurel's barren shade.
Spirit of Spenser, was the wanderer wrong?"

There is scattered throughout Southey's poetry much of that personal interest which is communicated when the

poet employs his imagination to express his own individual thoughts and feelings, speaking in his own person, and not with the more purely-imaginative voice of his creations. There is one of his smaller poems-a pleasing one, entitled the "Retrospect"-full of this kind of personal interest. It was suggested by a visit to the village of Corston, where he had spent some part of his boyhood, under the harsh tyranny of a boarding-school clouding the rightful gayety of those blithe early years. The stern look and voice of his old teacher rise up to his memory, and the recollections of the dismal feelings of his entrance into the school:

"Even now, through many a long, long year, I trace
The hour when first with awe I viewed his face;

Even now recall my entrance at the dome:

'Twas the first day I ever left my home!

Years intervening have not worn away

The deep remembrance of that wretched day."

But what I chiefly notice this poem for is an expression of the fine satirical power which is a trait of Southey's genius, well chastened, however, for it never tempted him into the indulgence of a vicious mockery. He is describing the interview between his parents and the proprietors of the school, and closes it with a significant allusion to the master's short-lived civility to his pupil :

"Methinks even now the interview I see,

The mistress's glad smile, the master's glee.
Much of my future happiness they said,
Much of the easy life the scholars led,

Of spacious play-ground and of wholesome air,
The best instruction and the tenderest care;
And when I followed to the garden door
My father, till through tears I saw no more,

How civilly they soothed my parting pain!
And never did they speak so civilly again."

Some sad feelings come over him, as after the lapse of some years he finds the spot the same, yet different, and the people estranged,—himself unknowing and unknown; but, after yielding to a momentary depression, he bids his spirit rise to worthier feelings, and closes the poem with a self-admonition, which, considering it was an effusion of his early manhood, is a fine indication of that upright manliness which has honourably characterized Southey's whole life ::

"Thy path is plain and straight; that light is given.
Onward in faith, and leave the rest to heaven."

This deep, confiding spirit seems never to have deserted him. Living in one unbroken mood of faith, he carried forward with him as he grew older not only the buoyancy of boyish years, but a steadier cheerfulness, forever brightening his own heart and his own home. In one of his early pieces, conceived quite in the spirit of old George Herbert's poetical moralizing, and with somewhat of its sound, he touches very pleasingly on the moral discipline of his temperament:—

"O reader! hast thou ever stood to see

The holly-tree?

The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves,

Ordered by an intelligence so wise

As might confound the atheist's sophistries.

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

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