Raphael in the Garden of Eden. You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for awhile, than you would a river that "" imposes silence with a stilly sound." Whether you understand two consecutive sentences, we shall not stop too curiously to inquire; but you do something better, you feel the whole just like any other divine music. And tis your own fault if you do not "A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." Reason is said to be one faculty, and imagination another but there cannot be a grosser mistake; they are one and indivisible; only in most cases, like man and wife, they live like cat and dog, in mutual worrying, or haply sue for a divorce; whereas in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as well as one flesh, and keep billing and cooing in a perpetual honey-moon. Then his mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians as well as the Greeks and Romans; and though we have heard simpletons say that he knows nothing of science, we have heard him on chemistry puzzle Sir Humphry Davy-and prove to our entire satisfaction, that Leibnitz and Newton, though good men, were but indifferent astronomers. Besides, he thinks nothing of inventing a new science, with a complete nomenclature, in a twinkling-and should you seem sluggish of apprehension, he endows you with an additional sense or two, over and above the usual seven, till you are no longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music of fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy piece of poetry. All the faculties, both of soul and sense, seem amicably to interchange their functions and their provinces; and you fear not that the dream may dissolve, convinced that you are in a future state of permanent enjoyment. Nor are we now using any exaggeration; for if you will but think how unuttreably dull are all the ordinary sayings and doings of this life, spent as it is with ordinary people, you may imagine how, in sweet delirium, you may be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that has fed since first it lisped on "honey dews," and by lips that have "breathed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic language, which all the while that it is English, is as grand as Greek, and as soft as Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is the alchymist that in his crucible melts down hours to moments -and lo! diamonds sprinkled on a plate of gold. What a world would this be were all its inhabitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do every thing else in a style of equal perfection! But, pray, how does the man write poetry with a pen upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring it from his inspired lips? Read the Ancient Mariner, the Nightingale, and Genevieve. In the first, you shudder at the superstition of the sea-in the second, you slumber in the melodies of the woods-in the third, earth is like heaven; -for you are made to feel that "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Has Coleridge, then, ever written a great poem? No; for besides the regions of the fair, the wild and the wonderful, there is another, up to which his wing might soar; for the plumes are strong as soft. But why should he who loveth to take the wings of a dove that he may flee away" to the bosom of beauty, though there never for a moment to be at rest-why should he, like an eagle, soar into the storms that roll above this visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual thunder? Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remonstrates, rather angrily, with the public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into one class himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the art poetical, and among his lyrical ballads, he admitted the three finest compositions of his illustrious compeer. The public therefore is not to blame in taking him at his word, even if she had discerned no family likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less than Coleridge does-but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphilosophical though pensive public that link of connexion should be allowed to be sufficient, even were there no other less patent and material than the macadamized turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our living poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory." For he alone of them all has adventured to illustrate, in poems of magnitude, the different characters, customs, and manners of nations. Joan of Arc is an English and French story-Thalaba an Arabian one -Kehama is Indian-Madoc Welsh and American-and Roderic Spanish and Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was a very youthful work) in which of these noble poems Mr. Southey has most successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any but the highest genius. In Madoc, and especially in Roderic, he has relied on the truth of nature as it is seen in the history of great national transactions and events. In Thalaba and in Kehama, though in them too he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he follows the leading of fancy and imagination, and walks in a world of wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same poet exhibited such power in such different kinds of poetry, in truth a master, and in fiction a magician. Of all these poems the conception and the execution are original; in much faulty and imperfect both; but bearing throughout the impress of highest genius; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest and sometimes even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them for ever from oblivion, and embalm them in the spirit of love and of delight. Fairy tales-or tales of witchcraft and enchantment, seldom stir the holiest and deepest feelings of the heart; but Thalaba and Kehama do so; "the still sad music of humanity" is ever with us among all most wonderful and wild; and among all the spells, and charms, and talismans that are seen working strange effects before our eyes, the strongest of them all are ever felt to be piety and virtue. What exquisite pictures of domestic affection and bliss! what sanctity and devotion! Meek as a child is innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. How "Like a spirit, still and bright, With something of an angel light," matron or maid, mother or daughter-in joy or sorrowas they appear before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and dutiful," with Faith, Hope, and Charity their guardian angels, nor fear ever once crossing their path! We feel in perusing such pictures" Purity! thy name is woman!" and are not these great poems? We are silent. But should you answer "yes," from us, in our present mood, you shall receive no contradiction. The transition always seems to us, we scarcely know why, as natural as delightful from Southey to Scott. We intend some happy hour or other to draw parallel characters of these two chiefs, not exactly after the manner of Plutarch. For the present let it suffice-for nothing can be more sketchy than this outline of an article—that we suggest to you that they alone of all the poets of the day have produced poems in which are pictured and narrated, epicly, national characters, and events, and actions, and catastrophes. Southey has heroically invaded foreign countries; Scott as heroically brought his power to bear on his own people; and both have achieved immortal triumphs. But Scotland is proud of her great national minstrel and as long as she is Scotland, will wash and warm the laurels round his brow, with rains and winds that will for ever keep brightening their glossy verdure. Whereas England, ungrateful ever to her men of genius, already often forgets the poetry of Southey, while Little Britain abuses his patrotism in his politics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten her own history till Sir Walter burnished it all up till it glowed again-it is hard to say whether in his poetry or in his prose the brightest-and the past became the present. We know now the character of our own people as it showed itself in war and peace, in palace, castle, hall, hut, hovel, and shieling, through centuries of advancing civilization, from the time when Edinburgh was first ycleped Auld Reekie, down to the period when the bright idea first occurred to her inhabitants to call her the modern Athens. This he has effected by means of about one hundred volumes, each exhibiting to the life about thirty characters, and each character not only an individual in himself or herself, but the representative-so we offer to prove if you be sceptical—of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the monarch to the mendicant, from the queen to the gipsy-as for example, from the Bruce to Sir Richard Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Meg Merrilies. We shall never say that Scott is Shakspeare; but we shall say that he has conceived and created-you know the meaning of these words-a far greater number of characters-of real living flesh-andblood human beings-and that more naturally, truly, and consistently, than Shakspeare; who was sometimes transcendently great in pictures of the passions-but out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all rational being-was-nay, do not threaten to murder us—a confused and irregular delineator of human life. All the world believed that Sir Walter had not only exhausted his own genius in his poetry, but that he had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life-he and Burns together-and that no more ground unturned up lay on this side of the Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for awhile-and shared in the general and natural delusion. But one morning before breakfast it occurred to him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothing-though more for Scotland than any other of her poets-or perhaps than all put together-and that it would not be much amiss to commence a new series of inventions. Hence the prose tales-novels-and romances-not yet at an end-fresh floods of light pouring all over Scotland-and occasionally illumining England, France, and Germany, and even Palestine-whatever land had been ennobled by Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue. Now, we beg leave to decline answering our own question-has he ever written a great poem? We do not care one straw whether he has or not; for he has done this he has exhibited human life in a greater variety of forms and lights, all definite and distinct, than any other man whose name has reached our ears-and therefore, without fear or trembling, we tell the world to its face, that he is, out of all sight, the greatest genius of the age, not forgetting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr. Faustus. "What? Scott a greater genius than Byron !" Yes |