heaves, over certain passages; but over lyre of judgment, he strikes some brief the rest you yawn portentously. Its mo- strong notes, but recoils from the sounds ral pictures are repeated till you sicken, he himself has made; and from an atand spun out till you weary. Sometimes tempt to lift up his hand to the last they are too general to be true, and are trembling cords, he falls back exhausted always painted in a chiaro-scuro, which, and helpless. In fact, the poet reaches though true to principles, is false to fact. his climax at the sixth book. After Often he states common truths with this, he sinks down, struggling sore, but ridiculous emphasis, and heaps strong vainly, to break his fall. The last six words, like too much fuel on a little fire, books might almost have been spared. till it is utterly quenched. His imagina- The subject, like strong sunlight, presses tion has force, but little richness; his in- too heavily on his eye. He has a “vision tellect strength, but not subtlety; his lan- of his own," but it is not, on the whole, guage pith, but no melting beauty. He a happy vision. It does not fill and can command terror, but seldom tears. satisfy his own imagination, and how His genius has grasp, but no refinement. can it satisfy his reader's? Indeed, the His tone, in reference to sinners, is far theme is too majestic for pencil or for too harsh and exulting. He seems some- pen. We felt this strongly when looking times to insult and trample on their eter- at Danby's grand but glaring "Opennal sepulchre, as if the pressure of Al- ing of the Sixth Seal." Notwithstandmighty vengeance were not enough with- ing the prodigality of blazing colour, the out the makeweight of his tread. His energy of some of the figures, and the flames are fiercer than those of Dante mingled modesty and daring of the design, and Milton; and he leaves none of their we not only felt a sense of oppressive lingering touches of beauty and pathos splendour, but an overpowering sense of on the surface of the lurid lake. Though the unfitness of the topic for any pictowriting in the nineteenth century, he has rial representation. Danby very properly, not sought to grapple with the grand it is true, ventures not to draw the feamoral aspects of punishment-never ven- tures of that face from which heaven and tured beyond the familiar images of ma- earth are fleeing away; a small quiet terial pain-never tried to paint the suc-cross alone, surrounded by the divine cessive descending stages of degradation glory, gives the meaning and moral of in a spiritual being, given up to itself, as the picture; but how feeble a simulainto the hands of a dire tormentor. This crum, even of the other features of the is a task which lies over for some pro- scene, is, after all, presented! What founder artist. He is better, too, at idea does that one wave of volcanic fire sounding the key-note than at finishing give of a world in "fiery deluge and the melody. His prefatory flourishes are without an ark?"-that flash of lightstartling, but the anthem is not always ning splitting the rocks, of the thousand worthy of the prelude. Had he ventured thunders on which the Judge shall be to describe the Flood, he would have ex- enthroned?-those scattered groups of pended his strength in the gathering of surprised men and women, of the inthe animals and the elements: his pen habitants of the whole earth arrested by had faltered in describing the unchained the crash of doom?-that city toppling, deluge the darkened sun-the torrents of the capitals of the world reeling into of rain cleaving the gloom-the varied ruin?-that one slave lifting up his arms groups of drowning wretchedness-the to the morning of liberty which is dawnark riding in melancholy grandeur on ing, of Ethiopia stretching out her hands the topmost billow of an ocean planet. unto God? Nor, in the compass of poetry, As it is, he sweeps the stage nobly, for do we know anything, save the Dies the great vision of the guarded" iræ, entirely worthy of the overwhelming Throne; he excites a thrill of shud- subject. Prose-pictures of it are comdering expectation; on the tremendous mon in sermons; and, when well de

livered, they may tell in the pulpit, but the sun, nor Ceres with Sirius. Place it are perfectly powerless in print. Even even in the second file of poetical masterin the pulpit, it is ridiculous enough to pieces-with the "Manfred," the "Cenci," see a well-dressed youth, in gown and the "Paradise Regained," and the "Excurbands, with elaborately-arranged hair, sion"-we dare not, so long as "Jove's and elaborately-balanced periods, and satellites are less than Jove." But let "start theatric practised at the glass," it have its praise as belonging to the setting about the destruction of the uni- order which we may call "third among verse deliberately snuffing out its stars, the sons of light," and its place on a like tapers-applying his match to the sloping perch, at the top of which shines, pillars of the globe-springing a mine in its starry lustre, the "Night Thoughts:" under its cities, wiping away its oceans, «Like some dark beauteous bird, whose as easily as, with cambric handkerchief, he does the sweat-drops from his ladylike brow; and closing, with a smile of supreme complacency, by quoting the words of Robert Montgomery:"Creation shudders with sublime dismay, And, in a blazing tempest, whirls away"

Poets, too, and poetasters, have here alike signally failed. Young flutters toward it like a bird whose strong wing has been broken. The author of Satan rushes up, at first, with screams of ambitious agony; but, in fine, subsides and falls flat as a log. Pollok, as we have seen, gives the subject the slip, shrinking back, paralysed by its sublimity. Had Byron been a believer, he might have done it in the style of his "Darkness." But not till another Milton arise can we hope to see the epic of

plume

Is sparkling with a thousand eyes."

Robert Pollok was himself a remarkable man. All the anecdotes we have heard of him leave the impression of a strong-minded, courageons, determined, sarcastic, earnest, and somewhat dogmatic spirit; with a thoroughly formed and fledged opinion of himself-with a hectic heat in his blood-holy contempt, rather than love, the element of his soul; and with a gay and bitter principle alternating in his mind and talk, now eliciting stormy glee, and now severe and pungent sarcasm. At college he scarcely signalised himself at all; how could he, whose thoughts were already consecrated to the "Course of Time?" He was no great prizeman; none of those who effloresce early and die away soon-who sell the chance of immortality for a gilded book

"That day of wrath-that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away."-who leave college loaded with laurels,

and are never heard of more. For this Upon the whole, this poem, though it he was at once too modest and too proud. be no finished piece of art, and no impe- Yet, during his curriculum, he wrote those tuous sunburst of nature-though its little tales, "Helen of the Glen," &c., blemishes outnumber its beauties-must which, though full of fine descriptive yet be admitted a powerful production, touches, are hardly equal to "Arcades" full of "things which the world will not and "Lycidas;" and will never, even in willingly let die," and which, separated, the deep wake of the "Course of Time," possibly, from their context, and floating on the waters into which the volume itself shall have gone down, may long preserve the memory of the ambitious and resolute spirit whence they emanated. Class it with the highest productions of the human mind-with the "Iliad," the "Prometheus Vinctus," the "Lear," and the "Paradise Lost"-we may not, as long as the moon may not be ranked with

sail on to posterity. Every one has heard the fate of his first sermon in the Hallthe loud and silly laughter with which that boyish burst was received-the fierce retort which broke from his lips, and the lofty indignation with which he drew back the first feeler of his poem into the den, and sheathed, for years, the bright weapon of his imagination. Every one knows, too, the effect which the buzzing

announcement of a great forthcoming able, roused Pollok's ire, and terminated work made, in Secession circles especi- their friendship. Meanwhile the arrow ally, and all the particulars of its after of death had fixed itself deeply in his history. The despised of the Hall "awoke vitals. He resolved on many plans of one morning and found himself famous." works never to be accomplished; among He was straightway fawned on, and others, a huge review of the ancient heacrouched to, by many who had derided then world, which he wanted the learning him before. He bore ill the strictures to have executed, and which would have of honest and sincere friends. A review been the grave of his reputation. He died of the poem appeared in "Blackwood," at length, in a strange land, unknowing written by a friend of our own, which, and unknown; but the "Course of Time" though by many thought too favour- has secured his immortality as a poet.

ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D.

ALAS, now, for the glories of the Lake at all." There Southey pursued his incountry! Some score of years ago, proudly defatigable labours, under the sting of did it lift its head above the cham- that long impulse which was so characpaign of England to the south, and even teristic of him. There Wilson, De Quintoss northwards defiance from its Skid- cey, Lloyd, and Hartley Coleridge, to say daw and Saddleback towards stately nothing of Bishop Watson, &c., were Edinborough throned on crags," and the content and proud to be Dii Minorum waving outline of the Grampian giants. Gentium. And now, where is all this Not only did it enclose, in its fine sweep, illustrious company? Coleridge is dead, peaceful lakes, valleys "flat as the floor and died far from the murmur of Grasof a temple," tarns of austere beauty, mere springs, and the rustle of the heath forces flashing amid greenest umbrage, of Helvellyn. Wilson's princely figure is or bedewing grim rocks with an everlast-seen no more among the woods of Elleray, ing baptism; mountains, carrying off and and is consigned to the sepulchre. De up, by fine gradation (as if the one grew Quincey is now a denizen of the sweet into the other while you gazed), beauty village of Lasswade. Bishop Watson has into grandeur; but it had attracted to left the plantations of Calgarth for ever. its bosom a cluster of the wisest and Lloyd is dead—a maniac. Hartley Colerarest spirits then breathing in Britain. ridge, too, is departed. And, for some Sheltering the most of them from the years, Wordsworth was left absolutely non-appreciation or contempt of the alone, Southey, first sending his mind critics of the era―an era which was before him, having at last sighed out his "neither light nor dark," but lying be- animal breath, and "returned to God twixt the gross darkness of Darwin and who gave him." Long did the world Hayley, and the broad and blood-red up-sympathise with that mysterious obscurise of Byron-they had sought a refuge ration which rested on his powers; and from the mountains and the woods, which was not denied them. There stalked or sat, as it suited his quaint humour, and "murmured to the running brooks a music sweeter than their own," Wordsworth, the quiet tune of his verse not yet become a harmony to which nations listened in reverence. There Coleridge "talked like an angel, and did nothing

when the trembling hand of his wife drew half aside the curtain of his malady, many were the tears shed; but now the eclipse has passed away, and the orb with it. It were idle, and worse than idle, to grieve. More entirely, perhaps, than any man of his generation, except Wordsworth, Scott, and Goethe, had Southey done the work allotted to his

hand. While the premature departure years ago, drew our higher poetical geof a Schiller, a Byron, and a Keats, gives nius towards the East, as if the font of you emotions similar to those wherewith Castalia were a travelling spring, and you would behold the crescent moon had thither transferred its waters. And snatched away, as by some "insatiate there are in that region very potent atarcher," up into the Infinite, ere it grew tractions to the imagination. Its associinto its entire glory, Southey, with his ations—as the cradle of the human race; three great contemporaries, was permit- as the seat of the primeval Paradise; as ted to fill his full sphere, as broad, if not the throne of defunct empires; as the so bright, as theirs. scene of miracles at which the cheek of It was given to this illustrious man to man still turns pale; as the stage on unite powers usually deemed incompa- which angels, prophets, and sages played tible-a wild and daring fancy, a clear their parts; as the fountain of the three and ample intellect, unequalled persever- Faiths (how diverse in character!) which ance of pursuit, attainments marvellous have principally swayed the minds of infor variety, and minute mastery of their telligent man- -Judaism, Mahometanism details, a flaming genius, and a patient and Christianity-as the parent, besides, research, a tone of mind the most ethe- of those enormous superstitions, which real, and habits of action the most me- appear indigenous as its tigers and repchanical; the utmost exaggeration, as a tiles, immense effluvia springing from the poet, to the utmost propriety, and ele- heat of its imagination, as these from the gance, and minute grace, as a writer of heat of its climate; as the land of the prose. As an author, he was at once sun, who casts over it all a glare of sethe most eccentric and the most indus- vere appropriation, from Jerusalem to Jatrious. He is now as lawless as Shelley, pan; as swarming with vices and crimes, and now as graceful as Addison; now which surround it with a haze of moral erratic as Coleridge, and now plodding as horror; as teeming with wild and wonBlackmore. His castles in the clouds drous poetry; as the source of almost all are of solid masonry; his very abortions pestilence and sweeping judgments; as have marks of care and elaboration. abounding in barbaric wealth, "from its This probably has injured our concep- earth coming bread, and under it, turned tion of his power. We hate to see a up, as it were, fire-the stones of it sapwizard for ever astride on his broom-phires, and the dust thereof gold;" and, stick. We wish piles of magic to rise above all, as nurturing a gorgeous scenmagically, and not by slow and laborious ery of widespread jungle, great sweeping accumulation. We hear of the building rivers, deserts naked and bare, vast loneof the Ark, but not of that of Jacob's ly plains, large tracts of territory stripped ladder. That was let down, flashing of their cities, peeled of their verdure, suddenly its spiritual light across the sucked dry of their rivers, and given up desert and the brow of the sleeping pa- to eternal barrenness; and of mountains, triarch. Southey's supernaturalisms smell every name of which is a poem, from too much of the oil-there's "magic in where Lebanon looks down through his the web;" but the web is so vast, that cedars to Calvary, to where Caucasus the witchery thins away, by diffusion, gazes on the Caspian, with his eye of into shadow; he forgets that tedium is snow; and to where, again, the Himalayan the antithesis of terror, that it is the hills, supreme in height, withdrawn, as if etiquette of ghosts to make short calls; in scorn, into their own inaccessible sumthat, when they stay too long, we think mits, carry up the outline of our planet them bores, and that a yawn is more nearest to the heavens. Associations of effectual in remanding them to limbo this kind have invested the East with a than even the crowing of the cock. In varied charm, and drawn toward it Byron, several of his poems his mind follows Moore, Southey, Croly, Beckford, the authat stream of tendency which, some thor of " Anastasius," and a host of others,

in search of the inspiration still supposed and we could have wished that the shade to linger about its sparkling waters and of Columbus had appeared (like that dire its golden groves. And while Moore has figure in Scott's noble picture of Vasco caught its sunny spirit, its effervescent di Gama passing the Cape) to his slumliveliness of fancy, its elegance of costume, bering spirit, and warned him off the forits profusion of colour, and its voluptu- bidden shores. "Wat Tyler" is a feverousness of tone; and Byron bathed in its ish effusion of youth, love, and revoludarker fountains of passion, and revived tionary mania. "Joan of Arc" we have its faded blasphemies, and sucked poison never read. Many of his smaller poems from its brilliant flowers, Southey has as- are fine, particularly the "Holly Tree." pired to mate with the mightier and Ah! he foresaw not that the high smooth elder shapes of its superstition; to reani- leaves on its top were to be withered and mate the cold idols of its worship; to blackened where they grew ! But "Roclimb its Swerga, to dive into its dreary derick, the last of the Goths," is perhaps Domdaniel caves, to rekindle the huge the main pillar of his poetical reputation. heaps of its ashes, or to rear over them a It is a deep, sober, solemn narrative, less mausoleum, proud, large, and elaborate as ambitious and more successful than his their own forms. In this attempt he has others. A shade of pensive piety hovers had little sympathy. Hindooism is too meekly over it. It is written all in a far gone in dotage and death, to bleed the quiet under-tone, which were monotogenerous life-blood of poetry to any lancet. nous, but for the varied and picturesque Its forms are too numerous, capricious, story it tells. And behind it, in noble and ugly, its mythology too intricate, its background, lies the scenery of Spain, mummeries too ridiculous, its colouring with its mountain mosses, cork-tree of blood too uniform. Byron and Moore groves, orange tints, and dancing fireknew this; and while the former, except flies-the country of Cervantes and Don in one instance, where he bursts into the Quixote, where they still sing, as they neighbourhood of Eden, has never gone go forth to labour, the "ancient ballad of farther east than Turkey, the other flits Roncesvalles.” His laureate odes are about the fire-summits of Persia, and in general failures. Who can write seeks to collect in his crystal goblet no poems any more than "yield reasons element more potent or hazardous than upon compulsion, Hal?" It is an inthe poetical essence of the faith of Ma- cubus of obligation, under which the homet. Yet "The Curse of Kehama" is wings of genius higher than Southey's a very grand poem, and its close reaches might succumb. We have sometimes the most terrible shape of the sublime. figured to ourselves the horrible plight In "Madoc," again, Southey has gone to of one who was compelled to produce the opposite quarter of the globe, has two poems in a week, as a minister has leaped into the New World, disturbed by to preach two sermons. Scarce inferior his foot a silence unbroken from the cre- to such a slavery, is that of a laureate ation, and led us amid those abysses of who must sweat poetry out of every primeval darkness into which a path for birth, baptism, burial, and battle, that the sunbeams had to be hewn, and amid occurs in the circle of the royal housewhich the lightning, sole visiter since the hold or in the public history of the coundeluge, entered trembling, and withdrew try. "The Vision of Judgment" brings in haste. Tearing, without remorse, the this deplorable bondage to a point. We crown of discovery from the head of Co- know not whether its design or its exlumbus, he guides the bark of Madoc, a ecution, its spirit or its versification, be Welsh prince, through silent seas, to the more unworthy of the writer. It is half American continent, and recounts many ludicrous, half melancholy, to see it now strange adventures which befell him there. inserted among the notes of Byron's There is much boldness, some poetry, parody. There, degraded as if to the and more tediousness in the attempt; kitchen of that powerful but wicked jeu