doc, and especially in Roderick, 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.

Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear
How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread
The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path,
And quell'd barbaric power, and overthrew
The bloody altars of idolatry,

And planted on its fanes triumphantly

The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay."

Of all his chief Poems the conception and the execution are original; in much faulty and imperfect both; but bearing throughout the impress of original power; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest and someIt is easy to assert that he draws on his vast times even extravagant imaginings, that shall stores of knowledge gathered from books-and preserve them for ever from oblivion, embalmthat we have but to look at the multifarious ing them in the spirit of delight and of love. accumulation of notes appended to his great Fairy Tales-or tales of witchcraft and enPoems to see that they are not Inventions. chantment, seldom stir the holiest and deepest The materials of poetry indeed are there—often feelings of the heart; but Thalaba and Kehathe raw materials-seldom more; but the Ima-ma do so; "the still sad music of humanity" gination that moulded them into beautiful, or is ever with us among all most wonderful and magnificent, or' wondrous shapes, is all his wild; and of all the spells, and charms, and taown-and has shown itself most creative. lismans that are seen working strange effects Southey never was among the Arabians nor before our eyes, the strongest are ever felt to Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travel-be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures lers. But had he not been a Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen

"The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste," where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent

"How happily the years of Thalaba went by!"

of domestic affection and bliss! what sanctity and devotion! Meek as a child is Innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether matron or maid, mother or daughter-in joy or sorrow-as 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.

In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the Destroyer into the Domdaniel Caves? And who showed him the Swerga's Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with all its palaces that submarine City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial thunder of the sea? The greatness as well as the originality of Southey's genius The transition always seems to us, we is seen in the conception of every one of his scarcely know why, as natural as delightful Five Chief Works-with the exception of Joan from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the of Arc, which was written in very early youth, poets of the day have produced poems in which and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthu- are pictured and narrated, epicly, national chasiasm. They are one and all National Poems racters, and events, and actions, and catastro-wonderfully true to the customs and charac-phes. Southey has heroically invaded foreign ters of the inhabitants of the countries in which countries; Scott as heroically brought his are laid the scenes of all their various adven-power to bear on his own people; and both tures and enterprises-and the Poet has entirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each representative of a race. Thalaba is a true Arab-Madoc a true Briton-King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Kehama is a personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter confined himself in his poetry to Scotland-except in Rokeby-and his might then went not with him across the Border; though in his novels and romances he was at home when abroad and nowhere else more gloriously than with Saladin in the Desert. Lalla Rookh is full of Drilliant poetry; and one of the series-the Fire Worshippers-is Moore's highest effort; but the whole is too elaborately Oriental-and often in pure weariness of all that accumulation of the gorgeous imagery of the East, we shut up the false glitter, and thank Heaven that we are in one of the bleakest and barest corners of the West. But Southey's magic is more potent—and he was privileged to ex

claim

"Come, listen to a tale of times of old!
Come, for ye know me. I am he who framed
Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song.

have achieved immortal triumphs. But Scotland is proud of her great national minstreland 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 patriotism 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 brightestand 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 fifty characters, and each character not only an individual in himself or herself, but the representative-so we

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.

offer to prove if you be skeptical-of a distinct] and their Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish-of kings class or order of human beings, from the Mo- that fought for fame or freedom-of fatal Flod. narch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the den and bright Bannockburn-of the DEGipsy, from the Bruce to the Moniplies, from LIVERER. If that be not national to the teeth, Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennisoun. We shall Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtæus not sprung never say that Scott is Shakspeare; but we from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. shall say that he has conceived and created-Let Abbotsford, then, be cognomed by those you know the meaning of these words-as that choose it, the Ariosto of the North-we many characters-real living flesh-and-blood shall continue to call him plain Sir Walter. human beings-naturally, truly, and consistently, as Shakspeare; who, always transcendantly great in pictures of the passions-out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all rational being-was-nay, do not threaten to murder us-not seldom an imperfect 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 a while-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-minently and boldly out from the flat surface though more for Scotland than any other of her poets-except the Ploughman-and that it would not be much amiss to commence a New Century of Inventions. Hence the Prose Tales —Novels-and Romances-fresh floods of light pouring all over Scotland-and occasionally illuminating England, France, and Germany, and even Palestine-whatever land had been ennobled by Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue.

"What? Scott a greater genius than Byron!" Yes-beyond compare. Byron had a vivid and strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw things as they are, occasionally standing pro

of this world; and in general, when his soul was up, he described them with a master's might. We speak now of the external worldof nature and of art. Now observe how he dealt with nature. In his early poems he betrayed no passionate love of nature, though we do not doubt that he felt it; and even in the first two cantos of Childe Harold he was an unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at her shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarmUp to the era of Sir Walter, living people had ness; but simply stating a fact. He had somesome vague, general, indistinct notions about thing else to think of, it would appear; and dead people mouldering away to nothing cen- proved himself a poet. But in the third canto, turies ago, in regular kirkyards and chance "a change came over the spirit of his dream," burial-places, "mang muirs and mosses many and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and O," somewhere or other in that difficultly-dis- mountains. Unfortunately, however, for his tinguished and very debatable district called originality, that canto is almost a cento-his the Borders. All at once he touched their model being Wordsworth. His merit, whattombs with a divining rod, and the turf streamed ever it may be, is limited therefore to that of out ghosts, some in woodmen's dresses-most imitation. And observe, the imitation is not in warrior's mail: green arches leaped forth merely occasional or verbal; but all the dewith yew-bows and quivers-and giants stalked scriptions are conceived in the spirit of Wordsshaking spears. The gray chronicler smiled; worth, coloured by it and shaped-from it they worth, coloured by it and shaped-from it they and, taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light live, and breathe, and have their being; and the annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of that so entirely, that had the Excursion and auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for Lyrical Ballads never been, neither had any the first time, knew the character of its ances- composition at all resembling, either in contors; for those were not spectres-not they ception or execution, the third canto of Childe indeed-nor phantoms of the brain-but gaunt Harold. His soul, however, having been flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;-base- awakened by the inspiration of the Bard of born cottage churls of the olden time, because Nature, never afterwards fell asleep, nor got Scottish, became familiar to the love of the drowsy over her beauties or glories; and much nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high- fine description pervades most of his subseborn lineage of palace-kings. The worst of quent works. He afterwards made much of Sir Walter is, that he has harried all Scotland. what he saw his own-and even described it Never was there such a freebooter. He hurries after his own fashion; but a greater in that all men's cattle-kills themselves off hand, and domain was his instructor and guide-nor in makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he his noblest efforts did he ever make any close disturbed and illuminated all the land as with approach to those inspired passages, which he the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie had manifestly set as models before his imagiwith their islands distinct by midnight as by nation. With all the fair and great objects in mid-day; wide woods glow gloriously in the the world of art, again, Byron dealt like a poet gloom; and by the stormy splendour you even of original genius. They themselves, and not see ships, with all sails set, far at sea. His descriptions of them, kindled it up; and thus favourite themes in prose or numerous verse, "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," are still "Knights and Lords and mighty Earls," I do almost entirely compose the fourth cante

-a whim of Mahomet's, who thought but of their bodies-women are the sole spiritual beings that walk the earth not unseen; they alone, without pursuing a complicated and scientific system of deception and hypocrisy, are privileged from on high to write poetry. We-men we mean-may affect a virtue, though we have it not, and appear to be inspired by the divine afflatus. Nay, we sometimes-often-are truly so inspired, and write like Gods. A few of us are subject to fits, and in them utter oracles. But the truth is too glaring to be denied, that all male rational creatures are in the long run vile, corrupt, and polluted; and that the best man that ever died in his bed within the arms of his distracted wife, is wickeder far than the worst woman that was ever iniquitously hanged for murdering what was called her poor husband, who in all cases righteously deserved his fate. Purity of mind is incompatible with manhood; and a monk is a monster-so is every Fellow of a College, and every Roman Catholic Priest, from Father O'Leary to Dr. Doyle. Confessions, indeed! Why, had Joseph himself confessed all he ever felt and thought to Potiphar's wife, she would have frowned him from her presence in all the chaste dignity of virtuous indignation, and so far from tearing off his garment, would not have touched it for the whole world. But all women-till men by marriage, or by something, if that be possible, worse even than marriage, try in vain to reduce them nearly to their own level—are pure as dewdrops or moonbeams, and know not the meaning of evil. Their genius conjectures it; and in that there is no sin. But their genius loves best to image forth good, for 'tis the blessing of their life, its power, and its glory; and hence, when they write poetry, it is religious, sweet, soft, solemn, and divine.

which is worth, ten times over, all the rest. I sent to say, that so far from having no souls The impetuosity of his career is astonishing; never for a moment does his wing flag; ever and anon he stoops but to soar again with a more majestic sweep; and you see how he glories in his flight-that he is proud as Lucifer. The first two cantos are frequently cold, cumbrous, stiff, heavy, and dull; and, with the exception of perhaps a dozen stanzas, and these far from being of first-rate excellence, they are found wofully wanting in the true fire. Many passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, after all, was right in thinking-at first-but poorly of these cantos; and so was the friend, not Mr. Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon them in manuscript. True, they "made a prodigious sensation," but bitter-bad stuff has often done that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had they been suffered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no better than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most certainly damned. But, fortunately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing, stealing, and robbing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must have amazed the plundered; but intermingling with the spoil riches fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature, who loved her wayward, her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is Childe Harold, then, a Great Poem ? What! with one half of it little above mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in execution swarming with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his tales-the Giaour, Corsair, Lara, Bride of Abydos, Siege of Corinth, and so forththey are all spirited, energetic, and passionate | performances-sometimes nobly and sometimes meanly versified--but displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assuredly no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnificent--and in many of his smaller poems, pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhibits almost every kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect.

Observe, however-to prevent all mistakes that we speak but of British women-and of British women of the present age. Of the German Fair Sex we know little or nothing; but daresay that the Baroness la Motte Fouqué is a worthy woman, and as vapid as the Baron. Neither make we any allusion to Madame Genlis, or other illustrious Lemans of the French But there is another glory belonging to this school, who charitably adopted their own naage, and almost to this age alone of our poetry|tural daughters, while other less pious ladies, -the glory of Female Genius. We have heard and seen it seriously argued whether or not women are equal to men; as if there could be a moment's doubt in any mind unbesotted by sex, that they are infinitely superior; not in understanding, thank Heaven, nor in intellect, out in all other "impulses of soul and sense" that dignify and adorn human beings, and make them worthy of living on this delightful earth. Men for the most part are such worthless wretches, that we wonder how women condescended to allow the world to be carried on; and we attribute that phenomenon solely to the hallowed yearnings of maternal affec- Corinna and Sappho must have been women tion, which breathes as strongly in maid as in of transcendant genius so to move Greece. matron, and may be beautifully seen in the For though the Greek character was most imchild fondling its doll in its blissful bosom. pressible and combustible, it was so only to Philoprogenitiveness! But not to pursue that the finest finger and fire. In that delightful interesting speculation, suffice it for the pre-land dunces were all dumb. Where genius

who had become mothers without being wives, sent theirs to Foundling Hospitals. We restrict ourselves to the Maids and Matrons of this Island—and of this Age; and as it is of poetical genius that we speak we name the names of Joanna Baillie, Mary Tighe, Felicia Hemans, Caroline Bowles, Mary Howitt, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and the Lovely Norton; while we pronounce several other sweet-sounding Christian surnames in whispering undertones of affection, almost as inaudible as the sound of the growing of grass on a dewy evening.

alone spoke and sung poetry, how hard to ex- | imagination as his own. For, in the act of cel! Corinna and Sappho did excel-the one, imagination, he can suppress in his mind its it is said, conquering Pindar-and the other own peculiar feelings-its good and gracious all the world but Phaon. affections-call up from their hidden places But our own Joanna has been visited with those elements of our being, of which the seeds a still loftier inspiration. She has created were sown in him as in all-give them unnatragedies which Sophocles-or Euripides-tural magnitude and power-conceive the disnay, even Eschylus himself, might have fear-order of passions, the perpetration of crimes, ed, in competition for the crown. She is our the tortures of remorse, or the scorn of that Tragic Queen; but she belongs to all places as to all times; and Sir Walter truly said-let them who dare deny it-that he saw her Genius in a sister shape sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna loves to pace the pastoral mead; and then we are made to think of the tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, past among the tall cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lonesome heart of the dark Strathaven Muirs.

human weakness, from which his own gentle bosom and blameless life are pure and free. He can bring himself, in short, into an imaginary and momentary sympathy with the wicked, just as his mind falls of itself into a natural and true sympathy with those whose character is accordant with his own; and watching the emotions and workings of his mind in the spontaneous and in the forced sympathy, he knows and understands from himself what Plays on the Passions! How absurd!" passes in the minds of others. What is done said one philosophical writer. "This will ne- in the highest degree by the highest genius, is ver do. It has done-perfectly. What, pray, done by all of ourselves in lesser degree, and is the aim of all tragedy? The Stagyrite has unconsciously, at every moment, in our intertold us to purify the passions by pity and course with one another. To this kind of symterror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul-pathy, so essential to our knowledge of the till its atmosphere is like that of a calm, bright human mind, and without which there can be summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on neither poetry nor philosophy, are necessary a the Passions. And all that Joanna intended-largeness of heart which willingly yields itself and it was a great intention greatly effected-to conceive the feelings and states of others was in her Series of Dramas to steady her pur- whose character is utterly unlike its own, and poses by ever keeping one great end in view, freedom from any inordinate overpowering of which the perpetual perception could not passion which quenches in the mind the feelfail to make all the means harmonious, and ings of nature it has already known, and places therefore majestic. One passion was, there- it in habitual enmity to the affections and hapfore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each piness of its kind. To paint bad passions, is glorious tragedy-sovereign sometimes by di- not to praise them: they alone can paint them vine right—sometimes an usurper--generally well who hate, fear, or pity them; and therea tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid fore Baillie has done so-nay start not-better reign of Hate. But in his sister-the seraphic than Byron. sway of Love. Darkness and light sometimes Well may our land be proud of such women. opposed in sublime contrast-and sometimes None such ever before adorned her poetical the light swallowing up the darkness-or | annals. Glance over that most interesting "smoothing its raven down till it smiles." volume, "Specimens of British Poetesses," by Finally, all is black as night and the grave-that amiable, ingenious, and erudite man, the for the light, unextinguished, glides away into some far-off world of peace. Count Basil! A woman only could have imagined that divine drama. How different the love Basil feels for Victoria from Anthony's for Cleopatra! Pure, deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on it we see him borne away to shame, destruc-in clouds. Some of the sweet singers of those tion, and death. It is indeed his ruling passion. But up to the day he first saw her face his ruling passion had been the love of glory. And the hour he died by his own hand was troubled into madness by many passions; for are they not all mysteriously linked together, sometimes a dreadful brotherhood?

Reverend Alexander Dyce, and what effulgence begins to break towards the close of the eighteenth century! For ages on ages the genius of English women had ever and anon been shining forth in song; but faint though fair was the lustre, and struggling imprisonea

The

days bring tears to our eyes by their simple pathos-for their poetry breathes of their own sorrows, and shows that they were but too familiar with grief. But their strains are mere melodies "sweetly played in tune." deeper harmonies of poetry seem to have been beyond their reach. The The range of their power Do you wonder how one mind can have such was limited. Anne, Countess of Winchelsea vivid consciousness of the feelings of another, -Catherine Phillips, known by the name of while their characters are cast in such different Orinda-and Mrs. Anne Killigrew, who, as moulds? It is, indeed, wonderful-but the Dryden says, was made an angel, "in the last power is that of sympathy and genius. The promotion to the skies,”—showed, as they sang dramatic poet, whose heart breathes love to all on earth, that they were all worthy to sing in living things, and whose overflowing tender-heaven. But what were their hymns to those ness diffuses itself over the beauty even of unliving nature, may yet paint with his creative hand the steeled heart of him who sits on a throne of blood-the lust of crime in a mind polluted with wickedness-the remorse of acts which could never pass in thought through his

that are now warbled around us from many
sister spirits, pure in their lives as they, but
brighter far in their genius, and more fortunate
in its nurture. Poetry from female lips was
then half a wonder and half a reproach.
now 'tis no longer rare-not even the highest--

But

yes, the highest-for Innocence and Purity are | lar, and read by the same classes with a still of the highest hierarchies; and the thoughts and feelings they inspire, though breathed in words and tones, "gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman," are yet lofty as the stars, and humble too as the flowers beneath our feet.