and unremitting diligence on his books. He was made Poet Laureate in 1813. For the last two years of his life his mind gave way under the pressure of work and domestic affliction. He died in 1843.

Southey was one of the most voluminous writers of his time

both in verse and prose. His poems, though far less popular than those of several of his contemporaries, attracted considerable attention, and formed the subject of much literary controversy. They belong chiefly to the earlier period of his life, previous to his appointment, to the office of Poet Laureate. His activity as a prose writer was more persistent. He wrote history and biography, edited early romances, published the works of other authors with critical and illustrative notices of his own, and contributed very largely to reviews, chiefly on political and literary topics. As a young man he was strongly infected by the enthusiasm of the revolutionary period in which he lived; afterwards he became a warm supporter of the existing constitution in Church and State, though his general sympathy with plans of social improvement remained unabated.

Southey's peculiar characteristic as a writer is his command of easy, graceful, and vigorous English. He produced no great effect on his generation, either as a thinker or imaginative writer: his literary criticisms, though generally sensible, are seldom striking or profound. But his technical mastery over his own language was great; and, though he wrote incessantly, his style rarely degenerates into carelessness. In this one respect he contrasts favourably with the author who among his contemporaries may best be compared with him for facility of literary production, Sir Walter Scott.

1. Collections of English Poets.

THE Collections of our poets are either too scanty, or too copious. They reject so many, that we know not why half whom they retain should be admitted; they admit so many, that we know not why any should be rejected. There is a

want of judgment in giving Bavius a place; but when a place has been awarded him, there is a want of justice in not giving Maevius one also. The sentence of Horace concerning middling poets is disproved by daily experience; whatever the gods may do, certainly the public and the booksellers tolerate them. When Dr. Aikin began to reedit Johnson's collection, it was well observed in the Monthly Magazine, that to our best writers there should be more commentary; and of our inferior ones less text.' But Johnson begins just where this observation is applicable, and just where a general collection should end. Down to the Restoration it is to be wished that every poet, however unworthy of the name, should be preserved. In the worst volume of elder date, the historian may find something to assist, or direct his enquiries; the antiquarian something to elucidate what requires illustration; the philologist something to insert in the margin of his dictionary. Time does more for books than for wine; it gives worth to what originally was worthless. Those of later date must stand or fall by their own merits, because the sources of information, since the introduction of newspapers, periodical essays, and magazines, are so numerous, that if they are not read for amusement, they will not be recurred to for anything else. The Restoration is the great epoch in our annals, both civil and literary a new order of things was then established, and we look back to the times beyond, as the Romans under the Empire, to the age of the Republic.-Preface to Specimens of Later English Poets.

2. The Evils of Half Knowledge.

WERE it not that the present state of popular knowledge is a necessary part of the process of society, a stage through which it must pass in its progress toward something better,

it might reasonably be questioned whether the misinformation of these things be not worse than the ignorance of former ages. For a people who are ignorant and know themselves to be so, will often judge rightly when they are called upon to think at all, acting from common sense, and the unperverted instinct of equity. But there is a kind of half knowledge which seems to disable men even from forming a just opinion of the facts before them,—a sort of squint in the understanding which prevents it from seeing straightforward, and by which all objects are distorted. Men in this state soon begin to confound the distinctions between right and wrong; farewell then to simplicity of heart, and with it farewell to rectitude of judgment! The demonstrations of geometry indeed retain their force with them, for they are gross and tangible: but to all moral propositions, to all finer truths they are insensible; the part of their nature which should correspond with these is stricken with dead palsy. Give men a smattering of law, and they become litigious; give them a smattering of physic, and they become hypochondriacs or quacks, disordering themselves by the strength of imagination, or poisoning others in the presumptuousness of conceited ignorance. But of all men, the smatterer in philosophy is the most intolerable and the most dangerous; he begins by unlearning his Creed and his commandments; and in the process of eradicating what it is the business of all sound education to implant, his duty to God is discarded first, and his duty to his neighbour presently afterwards. As long as he confines himself to private practice, the mischief does not extend beyond his private circle; there indeed it shews itself;-his neighbour's wife may be in some danger, and his neighbour's property also, if the distinctions between meum and tuum should be practically inconvenient to a man of free opinions. But

when he commences professor of moral and political philosophy for the benefit of the public, the fables of old credulity are then verified; his very breath becomes venomous, and every page which he sends abroad carries with it poison to the unsuspecting reader.-Essays.

3. Advice to Young Readers.

ALL Readers however, thank Heaven, and what is left among us of that best and rarest of all senses called Common Sense, all Readers however are not critical. There are still some who are willing to be pleased, and thankful for being pleased; and who do not think it necessary that they should be able to parse their pleasure, like a lesson, and give a rule or a reason why they are pleased, or why they ought not to be pleased. There are still readers who have never read an Essay upon Taste;-and if they take my advice they never will; for they can no more improve their taste by so doing, than they could improve their appetite or their digestion by studying a cookery book.

I have something to say to all classes of Readers: and therefore having thus begun to speak of one, with that class I will proceed. It is to the youthful part of my lectors— (why not lectors as well as auditors?) it is virginibus puerisque that I now address myself. Young Readers, you whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted by the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you!

Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and

that that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the controul of others; and disposed you to relax in that self government, without which both the laws of God and man tell us there can be no virtue -and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country and your fellow creatures? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous ? Has it disturbed the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul? If so-if you are conscious of all or any of these effects,- or if having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, throw the book in the fire whatever name it may bear in the title page! Throw it in the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend!-young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture of a rose-wood book case!-The Doctor.

4. School Friendships.

SCHOOL friendships arise out of sympathy of disposition at an age when the natural disposition is under little controul and less disguise; and there are reasons enough, of a less melancholy kind than Cowper contemplated, why so few of these blossoms set, and of those which afford a promise of fruit, why so small a proportion should bring it to maturity. The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily unite ;' and even when not thus dissolved, the mutual attachment