considerable length and beauty. He has also published hymns and other poems. He prepared an edition of Pope's works, which, being attacked by Campbell in his Specimens of the Poets, led to a literary controversy, in which Lord Byron and others took a part. Bowles insisted strongly on descriptive poetry forming an indispensable part of the poetical character; every rock, every leaf, every diversity of hue in nature's variety.' Campbell, on the other hand, objected to this Dutch minuteness and perspicacity of colouring, and claimed for the poet (what Bowles never could have denied) nature, moral as well as external, the poetry of the passions, and the lights and shades of human manners. In reality, Pope occupied a middle position, inclining to the artificial side of life. Mr Bowles has outlived most of his poetical contemporaries, excepting Rogers. He was born at King's-Sutton, Northamptonshire, in the year 1762, and was educated first at Winchester school, and subsequently at Trinity college, Oxford. He has long held the rectory of Bremhill, in Wiltshire. Sonnets. To Time. O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay And think when thou hast dried the bitter tear Winter Evening at Home. Fair Moon! that at the chilly day's decline Of sharp December, through my cottage pane Dost lovely look, smiling, though in thy wane; In thought, to scenes serene and still as thine, Wanders my heart, whilst I by turns survey Thee slowly wheeling on thy evening way; And this my fire, whose dim, unequal light, Just glimmering bids each shadowy image fall Sombrous and strange upon the darkening wall, Ere the clear tapers chase the deepening night! Yet thy still orb, seen through the freezing haze, Shines calm and clear without; and whilst I gaze, I think around me in this twilight gloom, I but remark mortality's sad doom; Whilst hope and joy, cloudless and soft, appear In the sweet beam that lights thy distant sphere. Hope. As one who, long hy wasting sickness worn, [South American Scenery.] Beneath aërial cliffs and glittering snows, There, through the trunks, with moss and lichens white, Sun-Dial in a Churchyard. So passes, silent o'er the dead, thy shade, And like a summer vapour steal away. Nor thought it fled-how certain and how fast? I heard the village bells, with gladsome sound Weary has watched the lingering night, and heard, While still the lapse of time thy shadow tells, Heartless, the carol of the matin bird Salute his lonely porch, now first at morn He the green slope and level meadow views, Or marks the clouds that o'er the mountain's head, Or turns his ear to every random song Sweet Hope! thy fragrance pure and healing incense steal. And strangers gaze upon my humble stone! Enough, if we may wait in calm content The hour that bears us to the silent sod; Blameless improve the time that Heaven has lent, And leave the issue to thy will, O God. The Greenwich Pensioners. When evening listened to the dripping oar, By the green banks, where Thames, with conscious pride, Reflects that stately structure on his side, Within whose walls, as their long labours close, Whilst some to range the breezy hill are gone, The other fixed his gaze upon the light ROBERT SOUTHEY. One of the most voluminous and learned authors of this period was ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D., the poet-laureate. A poet, scholar, antiquary, critic, and historian, Mr Southey wrote more than even Scott, and he is said to have burned more verses between his twentieth and thirtieth year than he published during his whole life. His time was entirely devoted to literature. Every day and hour had its appropriate and select task; his library was his world within which he was content to range, and his books were his most cherished and constant companions. In one of his poems, he says My days among the dead are passed; It is melancholy to reflect, that for nearly three years preceding his death, Mr Southey sat among his books in hopeless vacuity of mind, the victim of disease. This distinguished author was a native of Bristol, the son of a respectable shopkeeper, and was born on the 12th of August 1774. He was indebted to a maternal uncle for most of his education. Having passed with credit through Westminster school, he was, in 1792, entered of Baliol college, Oxford. His friends designed him for the church; but the poet became a Jacobin and Socinian, and his academic career was abruptly closed in 1794. Robert Southey The same year he published a volume of poems in conjunction with Mr Robert Lovell, under the names of Moschus and Bion. About the same time he composed his poem of Wat Tyler, a revolutionary brochure, which was long afterwards published surreptitiously by a knavish bookseller to annoy its author. In my youth,' he says, 'when my stock of knowledge consisted of such an acquaintance with Greek and Roman history as is acquired in the course of a scholastic education; when my heart was full of poetry and romance, and Lucan and Akenside were at my tongue's end, I fell into the political opinions which the French revolution was then scattering throughout Europe; and following those opinions with ardour wherever they led, I soon perceived that inequalities of rank were a light evil compared to the inequalities of property, and those more fearful distinctions which the want of moral and intellectual culture occasions between man and man. At that time, and with those opinions, or rather feelings (for their root was in the heart, and not in the understanding), I wrote Wat Tyler,' as one who was impatient of all the oppressions that are done under the sun. The subject was injudiciously chosen, and it was treated, as might be expected, by a youth of twenty in such times, who regarded only one side of the question.' The poem, indeed, is a miserable production, and was harmless from its very inanity. Full of the same political sentiments and ardour, Southey composed his Joan of Arc, an epic poem, displaying fertility of language and boldness of imagination, but at the same time diffuse in style, and in many parts wild and incoherent. In imitation of Dante, the young poet conducted his heroine in a dream to the abodes of departed spirits, and dealt very freely with the 'murderers of mankind,' from Nimrod the mighty hunter, down to the hero conqueror of Agincourt A huge and massy pile- They entered there a large and lofty dome, He might be called young Ammon. In this court As gazing round, The Virgin marked the miserable train, A deep and hollow voice from one went forth : Thy power hath rendered vain. Lo! I am here, In the second edition of the poem, published in 1798, the vision of the Maid of Orleans, and everything miraculous, was omitted. When the poem first appeared, its author was on his way to Lisbon, in company with his uncle, Dr Herbert, chaplain to the factory at Lisbon. Previous to his departure in November 1795, Mr Southey had married Miss Fricker of Bristol, sister of the lady with whom Coleridge united himself; and, according to De Quincy, the poet parted with his wife immediately after their marriage at the portico of the church, to set out on his travels. In 1796 he returned to England, and entered himself of Gray's Inn. He afterwards made a visit to Spain and Portugal, and published a series of letters descriptive of his travels. In 1801 he accompanied Mr Foster, chancellor of the Exchequer, to Ireland in the capacity of private secretary to that gentleman; and the same year witnessed the publication of a second epic, Thalaba the Destroyer, an Arabian fiction of great beauty and magnificence. The style of verse adopted by the poet in this work is irregular, without rhyme; and it possesses a peculiar charm and rhythmical harmony, though, like the redundant descriptions in the work, it becomes wearisome in so long a poem. The opening stanzas convey an exquisite picture of a widowed mother wandering over the sands of the east during the silence of night : In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine The desert-circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. II. Who, at this untimely hour, Nor palm-grove islanded amid the waste. The widowed mother and the fatherless boy, III. Alas! the setting sun The fruitful mother late, Whom, when the daughters of Arabia named, She wanders o'er the desert sands The fruitful mother of so fair a race; She wanders o'er the wilderness. IV. No tear relieved the burden of her heart; · At length, collecting, Zeinab turned her eyes The Lord our God is good!' The metre of 'Thalaba,' as may be seen from this specimen, has great power, as well as harmony, in skilful hands. It is in accordance with the subject of the poem, and is, as the author himself remarks, the Arabesque ornament of an Arabian tale.' Southey had now cast off his revolutionary opinions, and his future writings were all marked by a somewhat intolerant attachment to church and state. He established himself on the banks of the river Greta, near Keswick, subsisting by his pen, and a pension which he had received from government. In 1804 he published a volume of Metrical Tales, and in 1805 Madoc, an epic poem, founded on a Welsh story, but inferior to its predecessors. In 1810 appeared his greatest poetical work, The Curse of Kehama, a poem of the same class and structure as 'Thalaba,' but in rhyme. With characteristic egotism, Mr Southey prefixed to 'The Curse of Kehama' a declaration, that he would not change a syllable or measure for any one- Pedants shall not tie my strains To our antique poets' veins. Kehama is a Hindoo rajah, who, like Dr Faustus, obtains and sports with supernatural power. His adventures are sufficiently startling, and afford room for the author's striking amplitude of description. The story is founded,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'upon the Hindoo mythology, the most gigantic, cumbrous, and extravagant system of idolatry to which temples were ever erected. The scene is alternately laid in the terrestrial paradise, under the sea-in the heaven of heavens-and in hell itself. The principal actors are, a man who approaches almost to omnipotence; another labouring under a strange and fearful malediction, which exempts him from the ordinary laws of nature; a good genius, a sorceress, and a ghost, with several Hindostan deities of different ranks. The only being that retains the usual attributes of humanity is a female, who is gifted with immortality at the close of the piece.' Some of the scenes in this strangely magnificent theatre of horrors are described with the power of Milton, and Scott has said that the following account of the approach of the mortals to Padalon, or the Indian Hades, is equal in grandeur to any passage which he ever perused: Far other light than that of day there shone A glow, as of a fiery furnace light, A thing of comfort; and the sight, dismayed, Arched the long passage; onward as they ride, The world of wo before them opening wide, Girding the realms of Padalon around. A sea of flame, it seemed to be Sea without bound; For neither mortal nor immortal sight Could pierce across through that intensest light. Besides its wonderful display of imagination and invention, and its vivid scene-painting, the Curse of Kehama' possesses the recommendation of being in manners, sentiments, scenery, and costume, distinctively and exclusively Hindoo. Its author was too diligent a student to omit whatever was characteristic in the landscape or the people. Passing over his prose works, we next find Mr Southey appear in a native poetical dress in blank verse. In 1814 he published Roderick, the Last of the Goths, a noble and pathetic poem, though liable also to the charge of redundant description. The style of the versification may be seen from the following account of the grief and confusion of the aged monarch, when he finds his throne occupied by the Moors after his long absence: The sound, the sight Of turban, girdle, robe, and scimitar, And tawny skins, awoke contending thoughts The unaccustomed face of human kind Confused him now-and through the streets he went In broken Gothic speech, the moonstruck man A Christian woman, spinning at her door, Or the following description of a moonlight scene:- Of yonder sapphire infinite, are seen, Draw on with elevating influence Towards eternity the attempered mind. Mr Southey, having, in 1813, accepted the office of poet-laureate, composed some courtly strains that tended little to advance his reputation. His Carmen Triumphale, and The Vision of Judgment, 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 volume of narrative verse, All for Love, and The Pilgrim of Compostella. 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.' Paralysis at length laid prostrate his powers. He sank into a state of insensibility, not even recognising those who ministered to his wants; and it was a matter of satisfaction rather than regret, that death at length stept 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. Mr Southey had, a few years before his death, lost the early partner of his affections, and contracted a second marriage with Miss Caroline Bowles, the poetess. He left, at his death, a sum of about L.12,000 to be divided among his children, and one of the most valuable private libraries in the kingdom. So much had literature, unaided but by prudence and worth, accomplished for its devoted follower! The following inscription for a tablet to the memory of Mr Southey, to be placed in the church of Crosthwaite, near Keswick, is from the pen of the venerable Wordsworth : 'Sacred to the memory of Robert Southey, whose Few authors have written so much and so well, with so little real popularity, as Mr 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. A late attempt to revive them, by the publication of the whole poetical works in ten uniform and cheap volumes, has only shown 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 Mr Southey's Hindoo 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 expres sion also marred the effect of his conceptions, and the stately and copious flow of his versification, unrelieved by bursts of passion or eloquent sentiment, sometimes becomes heavy and monotonous in its uniform smoothness and dignity. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. He was educated at This gentleman, the representative of an ancient family, was born at Ipsley Court, Warwickshire, on the 30th of January 1775. Rugby school, whence he was transferred to Trinity college, Oxford. His first publication was a small volume of poems, dated as far back as 1793. 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. On succeeding to the family estate, Mr Landor sold it off, and purchased two others in Monmouthshire, where it is said he expended nearly £70,000 in improvements. The ill conduct of some of his tenants mortified and exaspe rated the sensitive land-owner to such a degree, that he pulled down a fine house which he had erected, and left the country for Italy, where he has chiefly resided since the year 1815. Mr Landor's works consist of Gebir, a poem; dramas entitled Andrea of Hungary, Giovanni of Naples, Fra Rupert, Pericles and Aspasia, &c. His principal prose work is a series of Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, three volumes of which were published in 1824, and three more in 1836. In Gebir' there is a fine passage, amplified by Mr Wordsworth in his Excursion, which describes the sound which sea-shells seem to make when placed close to the ear: And I have sinuous shells of pearly hue; And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 1 |