who read the poem with all the help he could give to the measure; and his hearers complained, (familiar too with poetry and numbers,) that they could not know what measure he was reading, and supposed it to be the regular blank heroic verse, but badly and inharmoniously written. However, "Verse," proceeds Mr. SOUTHEY, "is not enough favored by the English reader. [Granted.] Perhaps this is owing to the obtrusiveness, the regular Jews-harp twing-twang, [see again his own verses above.] of what has been foolishly called heroic measure." WORTH. Here again, have we the repetition of that abuse of POPE, which sits with so little grace upon both Mr. SOUTHEY and Mr. WORDS. The very tone in which it is conveyed, shows the irritation under which it was written; and we perceive that when Mr. SOUTHEY falls foul of POPE's "fop-finery," it is in the same spirit which Mr. WORDSWORTH displays, the spirit of the man who, as BYRON says, with a happy adaptation of the story to this very case, was tired of hearing ARISTIDES for ever called the Just. If the reader would be convinced of this, let him but turn to those verses, which Mr. SOUTHEY has himself written in the foolishly-calledheroic measure; he will find that they are an imitation of GOLDSMITH, that they have the sweetness of ROGERS, and his mediocrity, nor ever rise to that condensed energy which has made POPE preeminent in numbers. BYRON has somewhere said, that on comparing his own and the compositions of other modern poets with POPE's he was always struck with their vast inferiority. Let the reader, adopting this plan, contrast the best poetry of either SOUTHEY OF WORDSWORTH with any of the compositions of POPE, and he will at once be struck with the disproportion. He will see that while POPE shall say in two lines what either of these poets would expand to ten, and one of them (WORDSWORTH) to a hundred, he possesses more energy and graphic power in individual expressions, more melody of phrase, more harmony in metre, more variety, and more fancy. Add to these (mere charms and powers of style) the strong goodsense, the wit, the observation of POPE, and how suddenly the author of Mador and of the old Woman of Berkley, and the author of the Excursion and of the Wagoner, sink into insignificance ! II. Preface to Joan of Arc. Mr. SOUTHEY, who prefers STATIUS to VIRGIL, whom he allows only good taste, finds fault with all epic poems but HOMER's, and thus, like Mr. WORDSWORTH, prepares us to find something better in his own. "I have," he says, "avoided what seems useless and wearying in other poems, and my readers will find no descriptions of armor, no muster-rolls, no geographical catalogues, lion, tiger, bull, bear, and boar similes, Phœbuses or Auroras. And where in battle I have particularized the death of an individual, it is not I hope like the common lists of killed and wounded." Yet, in the Seventh Book, (which is as far as I could read in his bald blank verses,) we have this very fine lion simile: "Not with more dismay, When over wild Caffraria's wooded hills Echoes the lion's roar, the timid herd Fly the death-boding wound." And in the same Book we have the following specimen of a duel, which, it will be allowed, is indeed "not like the common lists of killed and wounded," doubtless in HOMER, VIRGIL, and their imitators : "Upon her shield the martial maiden bore An English warrior's blow, and in his side Pierc'd him. (1) That instant Salisbury sped his sword, That arm'd her neck, and making there its way, What can equal the critical insolence of this mistaking versifier, save his enormous self-complacency? and where shall we parallel either, unless it be in the parallel vulgarities of WILLIAM WORDSWORTH? (1) By the by, this is one of the disagreeable peculiarities of Mr. SOUTHEY'S style, the commencing of a verse with a word of two syllables, or with two monosyllabic words, which are disconnected altogether from the sense of that verse, and belong inseparably to the verse preceding. In the present case it is unquestionably an attempt to imitate, by endeavouring to accommodate the language to the action attempted to be described, the very poet whose greatness Mr. SOUTHEY affects to despise. III. Preface or Advertisement of the Eclogues. "With bad eclogues I am sufficiently acquainted, from Tityrus and Corydon down to our Strephons and Thirsisses. No kind of poetry can boast of more illustrious names, or is more distinguished by the servile dulness of imitated nonsense. [Imitated dulness has usually been thought a cause of less reproach than the dulness which is original; and of this latter kind Mr. SOUTHEY'S Eclogues are a very fair specimen.] Pastoral writers, more silly than their sheep,' have, like their sheep, gone on in the same track one after another. Gay stumbled into a new path. His eclogues were the only ones which interested me when I was a boy, and did not know they were burlesque." [If the reader has never seen these pieces of GAY's, I need but mention that the name of one of the heroines is Blouzelind, to satisfy him of the early delicacy of taste which we have seen at a later day expanded and fully fragrant in Joan of Arc and the Old Woman of Berkley.] However, these observations on pastoral writing are in the same spirit in which the author of Mador has noticed VIRGIL with contemptuous levity, and blackguarded POPE's translation of the Iliad. They are in the same spirit with which the same modest and amiable writer has said of BONAPARTE: "But evil was his good, For all too long in blood had he been nurst, Bold man and bad, Remorseless, godless, FULL OF FRAUD AND LIES, And TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT ALL HUMAN TIES, All holy laws, all natural charities." "Ode written during the Negotiations with Bonaparte in January, 1814." The exaggeration in either case is about equal, and equally honorable to the head and heart of the writer. If it little became a BRITON, the subject of a government which has been, and is, guilty of as much tyranny and oppression as BONAPARTE ever exercised over sovereigns weaker than himself, if it little became a British subject to use this language towards the Emperor of FRANCE, SO did it little become the writer of dialogues which do not rise above mediocrity, to speak with levity of the Eclogues of VIRGIL, or to insinuate contempt of the Pastorals of POPE. I do not mean to extenuate the offence against nature into which POPE certainly fell in those juvenile compositions, (though, faulty as they are, who that has ears, who that has fancy, who that has a soul, would not rather be the author of them than of Mr. SOUTHEY's so called Eclogues ?) but I protest against the disrespect with which Mr. SOUTHEY has presumed to speak of a greater name than his own is, or ever will be. Surely, it is in bad taste, if nothing worse, to affect a scorn of a poet so highly honored in his time, and since, as ALEXANDER POPE. But, leaving this to the just judgment of posterity, whose indignation will be not less than my own, let me ask for what cause Mr. SOUTHEY gave the name of Eclogues to his rustic dialogues? Should he not have been ashamed to imitate, without reason, a title which cannot, that I see, apply to his own pieces, when he affects to despise an imitation of the beauties in style and in matter of him who first gave that title to a pastoral ? Hoping that these remarks, although in parts greatly digressive, have not failed of some instruction, nor been altogether without entertainment for the candid reader, I proceed once more with the matter promised in my title-page. ODES. ODE I. THE DEATH OF GENERAL PIKE, AT THE TAKING OF YORK, THE CAPITAL OF UPPER CANADA. APRIL 27TH, 1813. 'T WAS on the glorious day From the walls of the town Its defenders had forsaken. The gallant PIKE had mov'd A hurt foe to a spot A little more remov'd From the death-shower of the shot; And he himself was seated On the fragment of an oak, And to a captive spoke, Of the troops he had defeated. (1) The troops that landed to the attack were in three divisions. |