Spirit of the English Magazines

going on at home, and was glad, when the conversation led to the mention of persons and topics of the day, by which he could obtain any information, without directly asking for it.

Such was my interview with one of the most celebrated characters of the present age, in which, as is generally the case, most of my anticipations were disappointed. There was nothing eccentric in his manner-nothing

beyond the level of ordinary clever
men in his remarks or style of con-
versation, and certainly not anything
to justify the strange things that have
been said of him by many, who, like
the French rhapsodist, would describe
him as half angel and half devil.

Toi, dont le monde encore ignore le vrai nom,
Esprit mysterieux, mortel, ange, ou demon,
Qui que tu sois, Byron, bon ou fatal genie;
La nuit est ton sejour, l'horreur est ton domain.

COTEMPORARY AUTHORS.-MR. SOUTHEY.
(Extracted from Blackwood's Magazine.)

THE
HE worthy Laureate is one of those
men of distinguished talents and
industry, who have not attained to the
praise or the influence of intellectual
greatness, only because they have been
so unfortunate as to come too late into
the world. Had Southey flourished
forty or fifty years ago, and written
half as well as he has written in our
time, he might have ranked nem. con.
with the first of modern critics, of
modern historians, perhaps even of
modern poets. The warmth of his
feelings and the flow of his style would
have enabled him to throw all the
prosers of that day into the shade-
His extensive erudition would have
won him the veneration of an age in
which erudition was venerable-His
imaginative power would have lifted
him like an eagle over the versifiers
who then amused the public with their
feeble echoes of the wit, the sense, and
the numbers of Pope. He could not
have been the Man of the Age; but,
taking all his manifold excellences and
qualifications into account, he must
have been most assuredly Somebody,
and a great deal more than some-
body.

How different is his actual case! As a poet, as an author of imaginative works in general, how small is the space he covers, how little is he talked or thought of! The Established Church of Poetry will hear of nobody but Scott, Byron, Campbell: and the Lake Methodists themselves will scarcely permit him to be called a burning and shining light in the same day with their Wordsworth-even their Coleridge.

In point of fact, he himself is now the only man who ever alludes to Southey's poems. We can suppose youngish readers start when they come upon some note of his in the Quarterly, or in his new books of history, referring to "the Madoc," or "the Joan," as to something universally known and familiar. As to criticism and politics of the day, he is but one of the Quarterly reviewers, and scarcely one of the most influential of them. He puts forth essays half antiquarianism, half prosing, with now and then a dash of a sweet enough sort of literary mysticism in them-and more frequently a display of pompous self-complacent simplicity, enough to call a smile into the most iron physiognomy that ever grinned.

But these lucubrations produce no effect upon the spirit of the time. A man would as soon take his opinions from his grandmother as from the Doctor. The whole thing looks as if it were made on purpose to be read to some antediluvian village club-The fat parson-the solemn leech-the gaping schoolmaster, and three or four simpering Tabbies. There is nothing in common to him and the people of this world. We love himwe respect him, we admire his diligence, his acquisitions, his excellent manner of keeping his note-books-If he were ip orders, and one had an advowson to dispose of, one could not but think of him. But good, honest, worthy man, only to hear him telling us his opinion of Napoleon Buonaparte !--and then the quotations from Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Lan

dor, Withers, old Fuller, and all the rest of his favourites-and the little wise-looking maxims, every one of them as old as the back of Skiddaw and the delicate little gleams of pathos -and the little family stories and allusions and all the little parentheses of exultation-well, we really wonder after all, that the Laureate is not more popular.

The first time Mr. Southey attempted regular historical composition he succeeded admirably. His Life of Nelson is truly a master-piece ;-a brief-animated--glowing--straightforward-manly English work, in two volumes duodecimo. That book will be read three hundred years hence by every boy that is nursed on English ground. All his bulky historical works are, comparatively speaking, failures. His History of Brazil is the most unreadable production of our time. Two or three elegant quartos about a single Portuguese colony! Every little colonel, captain, bishop, friar, discussed at as much length as if they were so many Cromwells or Loyolas -and why?—just for this one simple reason, that Dr. Southey is an excellent Portugueze scholar, and has an excellent Portugueze library. The whole affair breathes of one sentiment, and but one.-Behold, O British Pub lic! what a fine thing it is to understand this tongue--fall down and worship me! I am a member the Lisbon Academy,and yet I was born in Bristol, and am now living at Keswick. This inordinate vanity is an admirable condiment in a small work, and when the subject is really possessed of a strong interest. It makes one read with more earnestness of attention and sympathy. But carried to this height, and exhibited in such a book as this, it is utter nonsense. It is carrying the

joke a great deal too far.-People do at last, however good-natured, get weary of seeing a respectable man walking his hobby-horse.

Melancholy to say, the History of the Peninsular War, in spite of an intensely interesting theme, and copious materials of real value, is little better than another Caucasus of lumber, after all. If the campaigns of Buonaparte were written in the same style, they would make a book in thirty or forty quarto volumes, of 700 pages. He is overlaying the thing completely-he is smothering the Duke of Wellington. The underwood has increased, is increasing, and ought without delay to be smashed. Do we want to hear the legendary history of every Catholic saint, who happens to have been buried or worshipped near the scene of some of General Hill's skirmishes? What, in the devil's name, have we to do with all these old twelfth century miracles and visions, in the midst of a history of Arthur Duke of Wellington, and his British army? Does the Doctor mean to write his Grace's Indian campaigns in the same style, and to make the pin whereon to hang all the wreck and rubbish of his commonplace book for Kehama, as he has here done with the odds and ends that he could not get stuffed into the notes on Roderick and My Cid? Southey should have lived in the days of 2600 page folios, triple columns, and double indexes-He would then have been set to a corpus of something at once, and been happy for life. Never surely was such a mistake as for him to make his appearance in an age of restlessly vigorous thought, disdainful originality of opinion, intolerance for long-windedness, and scorn of mountains in, labour -Glaramara and Penmanmaur among the rest.

GERMAN EPIGRAMS.

OBEDIENCE.

Into the fire a struggling drunkard fell:
"Help! help!" the servants cry. His Jezebel,
Foaming with rage, commands them to be still:
"Your master, sluts, may lie where'er he will!"

Three things give every charm to life,

And every grief controul

A mellow wine, a smiling wife,

And an untainted soul.

THE IMPROVISATRICE, AND OTHER POEMS.

(Lond. Lit. Gaz.)

And music from that cage is breathing,

A low song from a lonely dove, A song such exiles sing and love,

N our Review of this exquisite pro- Round which a jasmine braid is wreathing, duction last week, the beauties we had marked out for quotation so far overstepped our limits, that we were Breathing of fresh fields, summer skies— reluctantly compelled to abridge our extracts even after they were printed. Thus the following Moorish Romance got excluded; and we are sure that every reader of taste and admirer of with sun-rays from within; yet now genius will thank us for now restoring the omission.

SOFTLY through the pomegranate groves
Came the gentle song of the doves;
Shone the fruit in the evening light,
Like Indian rubies, blood-red and bright;
Shook the date-trees each tufted head,
As the passing wind their green nuts shed ;
And, like dark columns amid the sky
The giant palms ascended on high;
And the mosque's gilded minaret
Glistened and glanced as the daylight set.
Over the town a crimson haze

Gathered and hung of the evening's rays;
And far beyond, like molten gold,
The burning sands of the desert rolled.
Far to the left, the sky and sea
Mingled their gay immensity;

And with the flapping sail and idle prow
The vessels threw their shades below.
Far down the beach, where a cypress grove
Casts its shade round a little cove,
Darkling and green, with just a space
For the stars to shine on the water's face,
A small bark lay, waiting for night
And its breeze to waft and hide its flight.
Sweet is the burthen, and lovely the freight,
For which those furled-up sails await,
To a garden, fair as those

Where the glory of the rose
Blushes, charmed from the decay
That wastes other blooms away;
Gardens of the fairy tale
Told, till the wood-fire grows pale,
By the Arab tribes, when night,
With its dim and lovely light,
And its silence, suiteth well
With the magic tales they tell.
Through that cypress avenue,
Such a garden meets the view,
Filled with flowers-flowers that seem
Lighted up by the sunbeam;
Fruits of gold and gems, and leaves
Green as Hope before it grieves
O'er the false and broken-hearted,
All with which its youth has parted,
Never to return again,
Save in memories of pain!

There is a white rose in yon bower,
But holds it yet a fairer flower:

Now to be breathed of but in sighs!
But fairer smile and sweeter sigh
Are near when LEILA'S step is nigh!
With eyes dark as the midnight time,
Yet lighted like a summer clime

Lingers a cloud upon that brow,-
Though never lovelier brow was given
To Houri of an Eastern heaven !
Her eye is dwelling on that bower,
As every leaf and every flower
Were being numbered in her heart;
There are no looks like those which dwell
On long remembered things, which soon
Must take our first and last farewell!

Day fades apace; another day,
That maiden will be far away,

A wanderer o'er the dark-blue sea,
And bound for lovely Italy,

Her mother's land! Hence, on her breast
The cross beneath a Moorish vest;

And hence those sweetest sounds, that seem
Like music murmuring in a dream,
When in our sleeping ear is ringing
The song the nightingale is singing;
When by that white and funeral stone,
Half hidden by the cypress gloom,
The hymn the mother taught her child

Is sung each evening at her tomb.
But quick the twilight time has past,
Like one of those sweet calms that last
A moment and no more, to cheer
The turmoil of our pathway here.

The bark is waiting in the bay,
Night darkens round :-LEILA, away!
Far, ere to-morrow, o'er the tide,
Or wait and be-ABDALLA'S bride!

She touched her lute-never again
Her ear will listen to its strain!

She took her cage, first kissed the breast--
Then freed the white dove prisoned there :

It paused one moment on her hand,

Then spread its glad wings to the air.
She drank the breath, as it were health,
That sighed from every scented blossom;

And taking from each one a leaf,

Hid them, like spells, upon her bosom. Then sought the secret path again

She once before had traced, when lay
A Christian in her father's chain;

And gave him gold, and taught the way
To fly. She thought upon the night,
When, like an angel of the ight,
She stood before the prisoner's sight,
And led him to the cypress grove,
And showed the bark and hidden cove;

And bade the wandering captive flee,
In words he knew from infancy!

And then she thought how for her love
He had braved slavery and death,
That he might only breathe the air

Made sweet and sacred by her breath. She reached the grove of cypresses,— Another step is by her side: Another moment, and the bark

Bears the fair Moor across the tide !

'Twas beautiful, by the pale moonlight,
To mark her eyes,—now dark, now bright,
[day.
As now they met, now shrank away,
From the gaze that watched and worshipped their
They stood on the deck, and the midnight gale
Just waved the maiden's silver veil—
Just lifted a curl, as if to show

The cheek of rose that was burning below:
And never spread a sky of blue

More clear for the stars to wander through!
And never could their mirror be
A calmer or a lovelier sea!

For every wave was a diamond gleam:
And that light vessel well might seem
A fairy ship, and that graceful pair

Young Genii, whose home was of light and air!

Another evening came, but dark;
The storm clouds hovered round the bark
Of misery :-they just could see
The distant shore of Italy,

As the dim moon through vapours shone
A few short rays, her light was gone.
O'er head a sullen scream was heard,
As sought the land the white sea-bird,
lier pale wings like a meteor streaming,
Upon the waves a light is gleaming-
Ill-omened brightness, sent by Death,
To light the night-black depths beneath.
The vessel rolled amid the surge;

The winds bowled round it, like a dirge
Sung by some savage race. Then came
The rush of thunder and of flame:
It showed two forms upon the deck,-
One clasped around the other's neck,
As there she could not dream of fear-
In her lover's arms could danger be near?
He stood and watched her with the eye
Of fixed and silent agony.
The waves swept on; he felt her heart
Beat close and closer yet to his !
They burst upon the ship!-the sea
Has closed upon their dream of bliss!
Surely theirs is a pleasant sleep,

Beneath that ancient cedar tree,
Whose solitary stem has stood

For years alone beside the sea!
The last of a most noble race,
That once had there their dwelling-place,
Long past away! Beneath its shade,
A soft green couch the turf had made -
And glad the morning sun is shining
On those beneath the boughs reclining.
Nearer the fisher drew. He saw

The dark bair of the Moorish maid,
Like a veil, floating o'er the breast,

Where tenderly her head was laid ;

And yet her lover's arm was placed
Clasping around the graceful waist!
But then he marked the youth's black curls
Were dripping wet with foam and blood;
And that the maiden's tresses dark

Were heavy with the briny flood!
Woe for the wind!-woe for the wave!
They sleep the slumber of the grave!
They buried them beneath that tree !
It long had been a sacred spot.
Soon it was planted round with flowers
By many who had not forgot;
Or yet lived in those dreams of truth,
The Eden birds of early youth,
That make the loveliness of love;
And called the place "THE MAIDEN'S COVE,"
That she who perished in the sea
Might thus be kept in memory.

The Improvisatrice, a poem of about fifteen or sixteen hundred lines, is followed by a number of miscellaneous pieces, which display the greatversatility of the author. Two or three only are of a playful kind; for descriptive power, pathos, and imagination, are unquestionably her chief characteristics. And though Love has always been, as the mighty northern minstrel has finely expressed it,

The noblest theme

That ever waked the poet's dream; our fair bard has, in several of these minor pieces, shown that nearly an equal degree of tenderness, fancy, and feeling, can be thrown into subjects of a different order. St. George's Hospital, the Deserter, the Covenanters, Gladesmuir, The Soldier's Funeral, The Female Convict, Crescentius, Home, The Soldier's Grave, and others, are forcible and admirable examples: While Rosalie, The Bayadere, The Minstrel of Portugal, The Guerilla Chief, the Legend of the Rhine,&c. are more or less connected with the master passion of the human soul, and with tales founded on its influence. The Bayadere is an Oriental Romance; and we do not detract from Lalla Rookh, when we say it is the only composition in the English language which may bear a close comparison with that popular poem. Rosalie is, on the contrary, a domestic story of hapless affection, and full of the We will cite most touching passages.

a few brief instances which are the
It
with this
opens
easiest detached.
bold yet sweet exordium:

'Tis a wild tale-and sad, too, as the sigh
That young lips breathe when Love's first dream-
ings fly;

When blights and cankerworms,and chilling showers,
Come withering, o'er the warm heart's passion-
flowers.

Love! gentlest spirit! I do tell of thee,

Of all thy thousand hopes, thy many fears, Thy morning blushes, and thy evening tears; What thou hast ever been, and still will be,Life's best, but most betraying witchery !

To this succeeds a landscape, on which Claude might look with delight

It is a night of summer, and the sea
Sleeps, like a child, in mute tranquillity.
Soft o'er the deep-blue wave the moonlight breaks;
Gleaming, from out the white clouds of its zone,
Like beauty's changeful smile, when that it seeks
Some face it loves yet fears to dwell upon.
The waves are motionless, save where the oar,
Light as Love's anger, and as quickly gone,
Has broken in upon their azure sleep.

Odours are on the air :-the gale has been
Wandering in groves where the rich roses weep-
Where orange, citron, and the soft lime-flowers
Shed forth their fragrance to night's dewy hours.
Afar the distant city meets the gaze,

Where tower and turret in the pale light shine, Seen like the monuments of other daysMonuments Time half shadows, half displays.

Yet her infatuation is all-powerful. Still she

- - pledged the magic cup—

The maddening cup of pleasure and of love! There was for her one only dream on earth! There was for her one only star above !-

The scene, however, changes under the heart-subduing spell of the poet, and Rosalie, deserted, is seen on her repentant pilgrimage to and arrival at her natal Cot

How very desolate that breast must be,
Whose only joyance is in memory!

that heart-so

[weak,

And what must woman suffer, thus betrayed ?-
Her heart's most warm and precious feelings made
But things wherewith to wound
So soft-laid open to the vulture's beak!
Its sweet revealings given up to scorn
It burns to bear, and yet that must be borne !
And, sorer still, that bitterer emotion,

To know the shrine which had our soul's devotion
Is that of a false deity ?-to look

Upon the eyes we worshipped, and brook
Their cold reply! Yet, these are all for her!--
The rude world's outcast, and love's wanderer!
Alas! that love, which is so sweet a thing,
Should ever cause guilt, grief, or suffering!
Yet she upon whose face the sunbeams fall-
That dark-eyed girl-had felt their bitterest thrall!

The very air

Seemed as it brought reproach! there was no eye
To look delighted, welcome none was there!

She felt as feels an outcast wandering by
Where every door is closed!

She strayed

This is the very soul of poesy. How many charming similies in a few short lines! The sleeping sea like a child; the breaking moonlight like Beauty's changeful smile; the oar light and transient as Love's anger; and all the other delicious images which are raised within so small a compass of song, meet with not many parallels even among our greatest masters of the lyre. is the portrait of the lovers introduced How very desolate must that one be, into this Neapolitan scene less beautiful:

There was a bark a little way apart

Nor

From all the rest, and there two lovers leant:--
One with a blushing cheek, and beating heart,
And bashful glance, upon the sea-wave bent;
She might not meet the gaze the other sent
Upon her beauty ;-but the half-breathed sighs,
The deepening colour, timid smiling eyes,
Told that she listened Love's sweet flatteries.
Then they were silent :-words are little aid
To Love, whose deepest vows are ever made
By the heart's beat alone. Oh, silence is
Love's own peculiar eloquence of bliss!—

Music passes and awakes in the breast of Rosalie the memory of her distant home and widowed mother, whose age she had left

-- to weep

When that the tempter flattered her and wiled
Her steps away.

Through a small grove of cypresses, whose shade
Hung o'er a burying-ground, where the low stone
And the gray cross recorded those now gone!
There was a grave just closed. Not one seemed
To pay the tribute of one long-last tear!

Whose more than grave has not a memory!

(near,

Then ROSALIE thought on her mother's age,
Just such her end would be with her away:
No child the last cold death-pang to assuage-
No child by her neglected tomb to pray!
She asked-and like a hope from Heaven it came !---
To bear them answer with a stranger's name.

She reached her mother's cottage; by that gate
She thought how her once lover wont to wait
To tell ber honied tales!—and then she thought
On all the utter ruin he had wrought!
The moon shone brightly, as it used to do
Ere youth, and hope, and love, had been untrue;
But it shone o'er the desolate! The flowers
Were dead; the faded jessamine, unbound,
Trailed, like a heavy weed, upon the ground;

And fell the moonlight vainly over trees,
Which had not even one rose,-although the breeze,
Almost as if in mockery, had brought

Sweet tones it from the nightingale had caught!

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