youth nodding to himself and saying,-" True, there is great wisdom in what my uncle says. I must live, and so no more Wat Tylers, nor Botany Bay Eclogues. I will adhere to the powers that be, but I will still endeavor to infuse liberal and generous views into these powers." Very good, but then comes the transplanting to a new soil, and into new influences. Then come the hearing of nothing but a new set of opinions, and the feeling of a very different tone in all around him. Then comes the facilis descensus Averni, and the sed revocare gradum hoc opus, hic labor est. The metamorphosis goes on insensibly-Nemo repentè fuit turpissimus; but the end is not the less such as, if it could have been seen from the beginning, would have made the startled subject of it exclaim, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?"

Allowing Dr. Southey the full benefit of all these operating influences, so as to clear his conscience in the metamorphosis as much as possible, yet what a metamorphosis that was! The man who set out in a career that augured the life of a second Milton, ending as the most thorough, though probably unconscious tool of tyranny and state corruption. The writer of Wat Tyler lauding George IV. and Castlereagh! The author of The Battle of Blenheim, singing hymns to the allied sovereigns, and hosannas over the most horrible war and carnage, and for the worst purposes in history. The advocate of the pauper and the mill operative, supporting the power and the system which made pauperism universal, and manufacturing oppressive to the artisan. And last, and worst, the man who justly lashed Lord Byron for his licentious pen, being subjected to the necessity of slurring over the debaucheries of such a monster as George IV., and singing his praises, as a wise, and just, and virtuous prince. While Southey congratulated himself on never having prostituted his pen to the cause of vice, he forgot that to prostitute it to the praise of those who were the most libidinous and vicious characters of their age, was only

the same thing in another form. No greater dishonor could have befallen a man of Southey's private character, than to have so fully justified the scarifying strictures of his aristocratic satirist :

"He said-I only give the heads-he said

He meant no harm in scribbling; 'twas his way
Upon all topics; 'twas beside his bread,

Of which he buttered both sides; 'twould delay
Too long the assembly, he was pleased to dread,
And take up rather more time than a day,
To name his works-he would but cite a few-
Wat Tyler-Rhymes on Blenheim-Waterloo.
"He had written praises of a regicide;

He had written praises of all kings whatever;
He had written for republics far and wide,
And then against them bitterer than ever:
For pantisocracy he once had cried

Aloud, a scheme less moral than 'twas clever;

Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin

Had turned his coat-and would have turned his skin.

"He had sung against all battles, and again

In their high praise and glory; he had called
Reviewing, the ungentle craft,' and then

Become as base a critic as e'er crawl'd

Fed, paid, and pampered by the very men

By whom his muse and morals had been mauled.
He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,
And more of both than any body knows."

BYRON, The Vision of Judgment.

Spite of the indecencies of Byron's muse, and the orthodox character of Southey's, it must be confessed that the former is much less mischievous than the latter. Everywhere, Byron speaks out boldly his opinion of men and things. Everywhere, he hates despotism, and laughs to scorn cant and hypocrisy. If he be too free in some of his sentiments, he is equally free where he ought to be so. The world will never have to complain that the liberties of mankind have been curtailed through the inculcations of Lord Byron; or that he has endeavored to confound all just sense

of morals, by heaping incense on the vilest of princes. What an impressive contrast is there between the Laureate's hymning of the bloated George IV. into Dublin, and the Irish Avater of Byron:

"Oh, what a joy was there!
In loud huzzas prolonged.
Surge after surge the tide
Of popular welcome rose;

And in the interval alone

Of that tumultuous sound of glad acclaim
Could the deep cannon's voice

Of duteous gratulation, though it spake
In thunder, reach the ear.

From every tower the merry bells rung round,
Peal hurrying upon peal,

Till with the still reverberating din

The walls and solid pavement seem to shake,
And every bosom with the tremulous air
Inhaled a dizzy joy.

Age, that came forth to gaze

That memorable day,

Felt in its quickened veins a pulse like youth;
And lisping babes were taught to bless their king,
And grandsires bade their children treasure up
The precious sight, for it would be a tale,
The which in their old age

Would make their children's children gather round,
Intent all ears to hear."

Southey's Ode on the King's Visit to Ireland. Who would not have believed that this was some virtuous

monarch, the father of his people? What had the Irish to bless this king for? What ears now are intent to hear of this vaunted boon of this great and good king's visit sung by this paid poet, the pious Southey? What a much more healthy though terrible truth exists in the Irish Avater, by Lord Byron !

It is a circumstance that redeems the age, that when despotism was making its most hardy attempts in England, when too many of our literary men were disposed to flatter and follow in its train, and when such a man as Southey

was the loudest to hymn the follies and crimes of the despots, Lord Byron, the very man who was accused of corrupting the public morals, should still have been the man to denounce, with all the powers of poetry, wit, and withering sarcasm, the nefarious attempt. What a fall was that of Southey, from the poet of liberty to the laudator of crime, tyranny, and carnage! What a position in which to see him stand, crying for a continuance of religious slavery, for the slavery of the press, and advancing beyond all former example of fanatic bigotry, assuming the office of the Deity himself, and dooming those who differed in opinion from him to perdition in the next world! If Robert Southey, as he wrote the epitaph to Algernon Sidney, or the sonnet to Mary Wolstancraft, could have been shown himself, writing his Vision of Judgment, representing Junius as afraid to speak in his own defense, and George IV. lauded as good, and wise, and "treading in the steps of his father," with what horror would he have regarded himself. With what shame would he have seen Lord Byron, like his avenger, ever ready at hand to turn his solemn adulation to ridicule, and to lash him with a merciless scourge of immortal indignation.

It is with deepest sorrow that I view Southey in this light; but the lesson to future poets should never be withheld. Truth is of eternal interest to mankind, and it can never be too often impressed on youth, that no temporary favor or emolument can make a millionth part of amends for the loss of the glorious reputation of the patriot. Allowing that Southey became sincerely convinced that he was right in his adopted political creed, his own private opinion can not alter the eternal nature of things, and the fact is not the less a fact that his change was a mischievous and an unworthy one. If, while he lived in dread of public opinion, as evinced in his Colloquies, "First the Sword governs; then the Laws; next in succession is the government of Public Opinion. To this we are coming. Already

its claims are openly and boldly advanced..... timidly, and therefore feebly resisted!" (vol. ii. p. 114) he could have seen to what a pitch this government of public opinion has now arrived, and how peacefully and beneficially all advances under it, with what regret must he have looked back on his own acts and counsels. How much he must have deplored the terms of factionists, seditionists, schismatics, and "lying slanderers," which he had heaped on all who dared to utter an independent opinion. See, especially, his Vision of Judgment. And that the laureate's feelings were very keen, circumstances always showed; for though he declares in his Colloquies that his enemies might as well shoot their arrows at a rhinoceros as at him, yet on every occasion when an able antagonist adverted to his peculiar career, he writhed and turned in bitterest resentment; as on William Smith, of Norwich, for his remarks on Wat Tyler in parliament, and on Lord Byron. That outward policy, and a regard for the position which he had assumed, tended to make him write in a more church and state strain than he otherwise would, is rendered more than probable by the freedom of opinion which he allowed himself in The Doctor, where he was shielded by his incognito.

Deploring the grand error of Southey's life-for we bear no resentment to the dead-more especially as England has gone on advancing and liberalizing, spite of his slavish dogmas, and thus rendered his most zealous advocacy of narrow notions perfectly innoxious-we would ask, whether this peculiar change of his original opinions may not have had a peculiar effect on his poetry? Much and beautifully as he has written, yet, if I may be allowed the expression, he never seems to be at home in his poetry, any more than in the country which, with his new opinions, he adopted. We can read once, especially in our youth, his the longest-but it is rarely more than once. charmed, sometimes a little wearied, but we never wish to recur to them again. There are a few of his smaller poems,

VOL. II.-M

poems,

even

We are