But this is not all. A peculiar aus- then holds them up to the admiration terity marks almost all Mr. Southey's of mankind. This is the spirit of judgments of men and actions. We Thalaba, of Ladurlad, of Adosinda, of are far from blaming him for fixing Roderick after his conversion. It is on a high standard of morals, and for the spirit which, in all his writings, applying that standard to every case. Mr. Southey appears to affect. “I do But rigour ought to be accompanied well to be angry," seems to be the by discernment; and of discernment predominant feeling of his mind. AlMr. Southey seems to be utterly desti- most the only mark of charity which tute. His mode of judging is monkish. he vouchsafes to his opponents is to It is exactly what we should expect pray for their reformation; and this from a stern old Benedictine, who had he does in terms not unlike those in been preserved from many ordinary which we can imagine a Portuguese frailties by the restraints of his situa- priest interceding with Heaven for a tion. No man out of a cloister ever Jew, delivered over to the secular arm wrote about love, for example, so after a relapse. coldly and at the same time so grossly. His descriptions of it are just what we should hear from a recluse who knew the passion only from the details of the confessional. Almost all his heroes make love either like Seraphim or like cattle. He seems to have no notion of any thing between the Platonic passion of the Glendoveer who gazes with rapture on his mistress's leprosy, and the brutal appetite of Arvalan and Roderick. In Roderick, indeed, the two characters are united. He is first all clay, and then all spirit. He goes forth a Tarquin, and comes back too ethereal to be married. The only love scene, as far as we can recollect, in Madoc, consists of the delicate attentions which a savage, who has drunk too much of the Prince's excellent metheglin, offers to Goervyl. It would be the labour of a week to find, in all the vast mass of Mr. Southey's poetry, single passage indicating any sympathy with those feelings which have consecrated the shades of Vaucluse and the rocks of Meillerie.

We have always heard, and fully believe, that Mr. Southey is a very amiable and humane man; nor do we intend to apply to him personally any of the remarks which we have made on the spirit of his writings. Such ars the caprices of human nature. Even Uncle Toby troubled himself very little about the French grenadiers who fell on the glacis of Namur. And Mr. Southey, when he takes up his pen, changes his nature as much as Captain Shandy, when he girt on his sword. The only opponents to whom the Laureate gives quarter are those in whom he finds something of his own character reflected. He seems to have an instinctive antipathy for calm, moderate men, for men who shun extremes, and who render reasons. He has treated Mr. Owen of Lanark, for example, with infinitely more respect than he has shown to Mr. Hallam or to Dr. Lingard; and this for no reason that we can discover, except that Mr. Owen is more unreasonably and hopelessly in the wrong than any speculator of our time.

Indeed, if we except some very pleasing images of paternal tenderness Mr. Southey's political system is and filial duty, there is scarcely any just what we might expect from a man thing soft or humane in Mr. Southey's who regards politics, not as matter of poetry. What theologians call the science, but as matter of taste and spiritual sins are his cardinal virtues, feeling. All his schemes of governhatred, pride, and the insatiable thirst ment have been inconsistent with themof vengeance. These passions he dis- selves. In his youth he was a repubguises under the name of duties; he lican; yet, as he tells us in his preface purifies them from the alloy of vulgar to these Colloquies, he was even then interests; he ennobles them by uniting opposed to the Catholic Claims. He is them with energy, fortitude, and a now a violent Ultra-Tory. Yet, while severe sanctity of manners; and he he maintains, with vehemence ap

Mr. Southey has not been fortunate

proaching to ferocity, all the sterner | Southey would have agreed with himand harsher parts of the Ultra-Tory self in opposing. He has passed from theory of government, the baser and one extreme of political opinion to andirtier part of that theory disgusts other, as Satan in Milton went round him. Exclusion, persecution, severe the globe, contriving constantly to punishments for libellers and dema-"ride with darkness." Wherever the gogues, proscriptions, massacres, civil thickest shadow of the night may at war, if necessary, rather than any con- any moment chance to fall, there is cession to a discontented people; these Mr. Southey. It is not every body are the measures which he seems in- who could have so dexterously avoided clined to recommend. A severe and blundering on the daylight in the course gloomy tyranny, crushing opposition, of a journey to the antipodes. silencing remonstrance, drilling the minds of the people into unreasoning in the plan of any of his fictitious obedience, has in it something of narratives. But he has never failed grandeur which delights his imagina- so conspicuously as in the work betion. But there is nothing fine in the fore us; except, indeed, in the wretched shabby tricks and jobs of office; and Vision of Judgement. In November Mr. Southey, accordingly, has no tole- 1817, it seems the Laureate was sitting ration for them. When a Jacobin, he over his newspaper, and meditating did not perceive that his system led about the death of the Princess Charlogically, and would have led prac-lotte. An elderly person of very tically, to the removal of religious dis-dignified aspect makes his appeartinctions. He now commits a similar ance, announces himself as a stranerror. He renounces the abject and ger from a distant country, and apopaltry part of the creed of his party, without perceiving that it is also an essential part of that creed. He would have tyranny and purity together; though the most superficial observation might have shown him that there can be no tyranny without corruption.

logizes very politely for not having provided himself with letters of introduction. Mr. Southey supposes his visiter to be some American gentleman who has come to see the lakes and the lake-poets, and accordingly proceeds to perform, with that grace, It is high time, however, that we which only long practice can give, all should proceed to the consideration of the duties which authors owe to the work which is our more immediate starers. He assures his guest that subject, and which, indeed, illustrates some of the most agreeable visits in almost every page our general re- which he has received have been from marks on Mr. Southey's writings. In Americans, and that he knows men the preface, we are informed that the among them whose talents and virtues author, notwithstanding some state- would do honour to any country. In ments to the contrary, was always op- passing we may observe, to the honour posed to the Catholic Claims. We of Mr. Southey, that, though he evifully believe this; both because we dently has no liking for the American are sure that Mr. Southey is incapable institutions, he never speaks of the of publishing a deliberate falsehood, people of the United States with that and because his assertion is in itself pitiful affectation of contempt by probable. We should have expected which some members of his party have that, even in his wildest paroxysms of done more than wars or tariffs can do democratic enthusiasm, Mr. Southey to excite mutual enmity between two would have felt no wish to see a simple communities formed for mutual friendremedy applied to a great practical ship. Great as the faults of his mind evil. We should have expected that are, paltry spite like this has no place the only measure which all the great in it. Indeed it is scarcely conceivstatesmen of two generations have agreed with each other in supporting would be the only measure which Mr.

able that a man of his sensibility and his imagination should look without pleasure and national pride on the

vigorous and splendid youth of a great has learned to talk modern English. people, whose veins are filled with He has read all the new publications, our blood, whose minds are nourished and loves a jest as well as when he with our literature, and on whom is jested with the executioner, though we entailed the rich inheritance of our cannot say that the quality of his wit civilisation, our freedom, and our has materially improved in Paradise. glory. His powers of reasoning, too, are by But we must return to Mr. Southey's no means in as great vigour as when study at Keswick. The visiter informs he sate on the woolsack; and though he the hospitable poet that he is not an boasts that he is "divested of all those American but a spirit. Mr. Southey, passions which cloud the intellects and with more frankness than civility, tells warp the understandings of men," we him that he is a very queer one. The think him, we must confess, far less stranger holds out his hand. It has stoical than formerly. As to revelaneither weight nor substance. Mr. tions, he tells Mr. Southey at the outSouthey upon this becomes more) e- set to expect none from him. The rious; his hair stands on end; and he ad- Laureate expresses some doubts, which jures the spectre to tell him what he is assuredly will not raise him in the and why he comes. The ghost turns out opinion of our modern millennarians, to be Sir Thomas More. The traces of Es to the divine authority of the Apomartyrdom, it seems, are worn in the calypse. But the ghost preserves an other world, as stars and ribands are impenetrable silence. As far as we worn in this. Sir Thomas shows the remember, only one hint about the empoet a red streak round his neck, ployment of disembodied spirits escapes brighter than a ruby, and informs him him. He encourages Mr. Southey that Cranmer wears a suit of flames in to hope that there is a Paradise Press, Paradise, the right hand glove, we suppose, of peculiar brilliancy.

Sir Thomas pays but a short visit on this occasion, but promises to cultivate the new acquaintance which he has formed, and, after begging that his visit may be kept secret from Mrs Southey, vanishes into air.

at which all the valuable publications of Mr. Murray and Mr. Colburn are reprinted as regularly as at Philadelphia; and delicately insinuates that Thalaba and the Curse of Kehama are among the number. What a contrast does this absurd fiction present to those charming narratives which Plato and The rest of the book consists of Cicero prefixed to their dialogues! conversations between Mr. Southey What cost in machinery, yet what poand the spirit about trade, currency, verty of effect! A ghost brought in to Catholic emancipation, periodical lite- say what any man might have said! rature, female nunneries, butchers, The glorified spirit of a great statessnuff, book-stalls, and a hundred other man and philosopher dawdling, like a subjects. Mr. Southey very hospi- bilious old nabob at a watering place, tably takes an opportunity to escort over quarterly reviews and novels, the ghost round the lakes, and directs dropping in to pay long calls, making his attention to the most beautiful excursions in search of the picturesque! points of view. Why a spirit was to The scene of St. George and St. Denbe evoked for the purpose of talking nis in the Pucelle is hardly more ridiover such matters and seeing such culous. We know what Voltaire sights, why the vicar of the parish, a meant. Nobody, however, can suppose blue-stocking from London, or an that Mr. Southey means to make game American, such as Mr. Southey at of the mysteries of a higher state of first supposed the aerial visiter to be, existence. The fact is that, in the work might not have done as well, we are before us, in the Vision of Judgement, unable to conceive. Sir Thomas tells and in some of his other pieces, his Mr. Southey nothing about future mode of treating the most solemn subevents, and indeed absolutely dis- jects differs from that of open scoffers claims the gift of prescience. He only as the extravagant representations

of sacred persons and things in some | duced into those counties. The returns grotesque Italian paintings differ from for the years ending in March 1825, the caricatures which Carlile exposes in the front of his shop. We interpret the particular act by the general character. What in the window of a convicted blasphemer we call blasphemous, we call only absurd and ill judged in an altar-piece.