CHAPTER IX. ROBERT SOUTHEY. [Born at Bristol, August 12th, 1774. Became Poet-Laureate, 1813 Died at Greta Hall, Keswick, March 21st, 1843.] WH HEN we speak of those who have wrought most nobly in the field of modern English, it is impossible altogether to ignore Robert Southey. That there should be any temptation to do so may seem somewhat strange. But the reasons are not far to seek. Southey belongs to the great brotherhood of the Lake Poets by force of friendship, but scarcely by force of genius. To write of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and say nothing of Southey, would be invidious and unjust, yet his claims as an English master are not to be mentioned in the same breath as theirs. The man who was the friend of Lamb, the true and faithful counsellor of Coleridge in his difficult life, and his most efficient helper, the first man of his time to recognise at its proper worth the transcendent genius of Wordsworth, and to maintain his cause through evil and through good report, and in like manner the generous critic of Scott, at least deserves a record. among those who have done so much to render the literature of their time illustrious. But the point of divergence between these men and Southey is that, while he was the more perfect specimen of the man of letters, and has produced the most various work, they were his superiors in all that constitutes real genius. Indeed it may be well doubted if Southey possessed genius at all. He possessed great talents, and he used them with wonderful aptitude and industry. He always wrote well, but rarely with that supreme touch and inspiration which give immortality to literature. He presented to his age a noble spectacle of a life of unsurpassed literary industry, dominated by admirable. purposes, and free from faults of conduct such as disfigure the fame of some of his great contemporaries. Byron has used all the resources of his wicked wit in holding Southey up to ridicule, but even Byron recognised his true character when he said, "He is the only existing entire man of letters." There is nothing in burlesque poetry more bitter in its humour than the picture Byron draws of Southey, in the "Vision of Judgment," offering to write the life of Satan since he had written the life of Wesley, and describing how he would publish it In two octavo volumes nicely bound, With notes and preface, all that most allures And it must be confessed that the political changes of Southey gave an unscrupulous antagonist like Byron only too good ground for the still bitterer stanzas— 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. When Byron took to controversy any weapons were good enough: there was no man more adroit in throwing mud, or more careful to select the most unfragrant qualities of that peculiarly unwelcome missile. The result of Byron's attacks on Southey is that, for vast numbers of readers, Southey is only known through the medium of Byron's burlesque. They see the mudspattered renegade of Byron's verse: they do not know the loyal friend of Coleridge, and the perfect biographer of Nelson. It was as a poet Southey first challenged the attention of his countrymen, and he died wearing the bays of laureateship. How is it then that his poetry has so wholly fallen into desuetude to-day? The main cause lies in the fact that his poetry has no true relation to human life and experience. The qualities which give permanence to poetry are various. Poems may be expositions of Nature, summaries of experience, lessons in philosophy, vivid and ardent pictures of human emotion, the quintessence of passionate hopes or still more passionate sorrows. Or, even if they can hardly be ranked under one or other of these heads, they may still live by some curious felicity of phrase which lingers on the memory and stimulates the fancy or imagination. Southey's poetry has none of these qualities. He has no power of phrase, none of those concentrated and intense epithets which cannot easily be forgotten. He has no true insight into Nature; he does not know her at first hand, and is therefore unable to depict her with fidelity-a curious lack in the writings of a man who was the close friend of Wordsworth, and who knew how to recognise at its proper worth Wordsworth's power of revealing Nature when most of his contemporaries saw nothing in his poems but idiotic. ence. simplicity and unrestrained egoism. Nor does Southey strike any true vibrating chord of deep human experiThere is no passion in his voice; or, if there be, it is histrionic passion-shallow, stagey, and simulated. He teaches nothing, he reveals nothing. His whole theory of poetry was hopelessly wrong. His themes, for the most part, are utterly remote from human life, and his method was a loose, rambling, rhymeless metrical arrangement; occasionally, indeed, striking a note. of real melody, but for the most part little better than poor prose run mad. When he would be impressive he becomes bombastic; when he aims at description he attains only diffuseness. He pours out an immense stream of descriptive and semi-descriptive verse, as in such a poem as "Thalaba," in which there is scarcely one striking epithet, one gleam of real imagination, one note of true poetic power. In later life Coleridge read again, at the request of Thomas Hood, Southey's "Joan of Arc," and this is the crushing verdict which he pronounces on a poem for some of whose lines at least he himself was responsible. "I was really astonished," says Coleridge, "(1) at the schoolboy, wretched, allegoric machinery; (2) at the transmogrification of the fanatic virago into a modern novel-pawing proselyte of the Age of Reason,' a Tom Paine in petticoats, but 'so lovely and in love more dear,' 'on her rubied cheek hung pity's crystal gem;' (3) at the utter want of all rhythm in its verse, the monotony and dead plumb of its pauses, and the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew in the single lines." The latter clause of this criticism may be fairly applied to all the more ambitious poems of Southey. There is no virility in them. We read them with an overwhelming sense of wonder at their former popularity, and we have We cheerfully no desire to re-read or possess them. acquiesce in the fate that has consigned them to oblivion, and we feel that no worse disservice could be done to Southey's memory than to disinter them. However much we may regret the spirit of Byron's brilliant invective, we cannot help agreeing with him in the criticism which writes down as trash the gouty hexameters, the "spavined dactyls," and the "foundered. verse" of Southey's multitudinous attempts in poetry. The chief interest of Southey's poetry, from a literary point of view, is that with all its novelties of rhythm it is a survival of the past. It is a curious example of poetry which is modern in form, but is wholly at variance with the modern spirit. It is an interruption, the interpolation of a worn-out ideal, in the full current of new thoughts, and new ideals of poetry, which marked the beginning of the century. Southey received the Laureateship on the death of Pye in 1813, and although in all that concerns mere form there could not be greater variance than between Pye and Southey, yet essentially the poetic traditions of Pye are reproduced in Southey. It was not altogether a stroke of malicious satire, it was a genuine critical instinct, that led Byron to identify Southey with Pye, and exclaim Pye come again? No more-no more of that. There is the same lack of depth and freshness, the same barren platitude, the same stereotyped way of treating Nature, and entire deficiency of any real instinct for her interpretation. To Southey Nature is once more a mere collection of properties for the adornment of his verse. He is always on the look-out for grandiose effects. If an immense collection of adjectives |