"Fathers of the holy Church,
If on these points abstruse a simple maid
Like me should err, impute not you the crime
To self-will'd reason, vaunting its own strength
Above eternal wisdom. True it is
That for long time I have not heard the sound
Of mass high-chaunted, nor with trembling lips
Partook the holy wafer: yet the birds
Who to the matin ray prelusive pour'd
Their joyous song, methought did warble forth
Sweeter thanksgiving to Religion's ear
In their wild melody of happiness,
Than ever rung along the high-arch'd roofs
Of man: ... yet never from the bending vine
Pluck'd I its ripen'd clusters thanklessly,
Or of that God unmindful, who bestow'd
The bloodless banquet. Ye have told me, Sirs,
That Nature only teaches man to sin!
If it be sin to seek the wounded lamb,
To bind its wounds, and bathe them with my tears,
This is what Nature taught! No, Fathers, no!
It is not Nature that doth lead to sin:
Nature is all benevolence, all love,
All beauty! In the greenwood's quiet shade
There is no vice that to the indignant cheek
Bids the red current rush; no misery there;
No wretched mother, who with pallid face
And famine-fallen hangs o'er her hungry babes,
With such a look, so wan, so woe-begone,
As shall one day, with damning eloquence
Against the oppressor plead!..."[1]
In this little harangue the attentive reader is conscious, not only of
the echo of the revolutionary cries on the other side of the Channel,
repeated in the language of English nature-worship, but also of the
young poet's want of ability to give his subject the proper local
colouring or to impart to it the spirit of the age. France and the
Middle Ages are to him here what the East and the world of legend were
to become--a costume in which his English and Protestant ideas figure.
Of one thing, however, there is no doubt, namely, that it required
courage to sing the praises of the French national heroine at a moment
when the animosity to France was so strong; and the poem, in spite of
its aridity both as regards feeling and colour, is a work which does
honour to a young poet. But the brave spirit which elevated his talent
was soon to disappear from his writings.
The lower the flood of unselfish enthusiasm for the great tasks and
dreams of humanity ebbed in Southey's soul, the stronger became
the impulse to remedy the aridity by pouring in a stream of purely
external Romanticism. He had by degrees attained to a certain mastery
over the resources of language, had acquired the art of writing
loosely constructed but melodious verse, expressive in spite of its
vagueness and monotony. Employing this melodious, flexible metre in the
representation of the superstitions of Arabia and the most fantastic
dreams of the Oriental races, he now produced his two principal works,
_The Curse of Kehama_ and _Thalaba the Destroyer_. The Oriental
tendency is common to Romanticism in every country. Oehlenschläger,
the Dane, displays it simultaneously with Southey; it reaches France
a little later, when Victor Hugo writes _Aly et Gulhyndi_ and _Les
Orientales_. But in the case of the English poets, the colourless,
Protestant life of their own country, with its severe, cold propriety,
must have invested the East with a peculiarly attractive charm. It
required an Irishman, however--Thomas Moore, a colourist with Celtic
blood in his veins--to arrive at anything resembling an understanding
of a race like the ancient Persians and of their legends, and to
reproduce the nature of the East in a style loaded with jewels and
barbaric ornaments. _Lalla Rookh_ is no masterpiece; its personages
and ideas are far too European and tame; but _Thalaba_, a work which
enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity in its day, is tame in comparison
with _Lalla Rookh_, and as moral as an English sermon. It suffers from
the sharp contrast between the gaudy tinsel of the scenery and the
sober modesty of the feelings represented. We are transplanted into a
world which is not less marvellous than that of the _Thousand and One
Nights_, but a world in which, nevertheless, love of our fellow-men
and faith in one God are perpetually inculcated. The hero's life is
presided over by the most special providence. When the fit time has
arrived for him to leave his foster-father's house, the flight of a
swarm of Syrian grasshoppers, pursued by a flock of birds, is directed
so as to pass above the house. A grasshopper which one of the birds
drops from its bill bears on its forehead in minute letters the
inscription:--
"When the sun shall be darkened at noon,
Son of Hodeirah, depart!"
But even though the poet employs such miraculous machinery as this, he
can no more refrain here than he did in _Joan of Arc_ from safeguarding
his reader against the erroneous religious ideas of the period and the
country. All his chief characters are rationalists in so far as their
Oriental religion is concerned, and do not fall far short of being
good Protestants. When the swarm of grasshoppers comes, Thalaba's
foster-father, Moath, says:--
"Deemest thou
The scent of water on some Syrian mosque
Placed with priest mummery and fantastic rites
Which fool the multitude, hath led them here
From far Khorassan? Allah who appoints
Yon swarms to be a punishment of man,
These also hath he doomed to meet their way."
A pure-bred Arabian could not well view things in a more rationalistic
light than this. And we have the same sort of thing throughout. Southey
piles up fantastic edifices, only to topple them over with the help of
some Gospel text when he is tired of them, or thinks that his reader
requires an admonition.
Upon his finger Thalaba wears a ring which is a talisman against evil
spirits. One day the evil spirit, Lobaba, who is determined to rob him
of it, tries to draw it off his finger while he is asleep. But one of
the good genii sends a wasp which stings Thalaba's finger close to the
edge of the ring, making it impossible for the evil one to slip the
ring over the swollen part. All Lobaba's plans are defeated in some
such manner. At last the dread sorcerer, Mohareb, succeeds in ensnaring
the youth. After Thalaba has defeated Mohareb repeatedly, the latter
jeers at him because he defeats his enemies, not in open conflict, but
with the aid of a talisman. He barbs his jeers so successfully that at
last Thalaba casts the ring into an abyss. Then the struggle begins
anew. We expect that Thalaba, now defenceless against the supernatural
power of his foes, will be overcome. Not at all! He conquers. How,
and why? A voice from heaven informs us. The ring was not the true
talisman: "The Talisman is Faith!" Why, then, all the machinery?
The poet conducts us into subterranean caves, where human heads have to
be thrown to the serpents who guard the entrances, where the taper can
only be carried in the hewn-off hand of a hanged murderer, &c, &c.--in
short, into a world which has no points of resemblance with Great
Britain. But the whole is nothing but a ballet; the scene suddenly
changes; the Oriental garments and trappings vanish, and the prompter
reads aloud one of the Thirty-nine Articles. After this the ballet
begins again. The scene represents a banquet, with costly dishes, with
delicious wines in golden goblets--"ruby and amber, rosy as rising
morn, or softer gleam of saffron like the sunny evening mist." But all
these temptations are of no avail. Thalaba is far too good a Mussulman
to allow himself to be led astray:--
"But Thalaba took not the draught;
For rightly he knew had the Prophet forbidden
That beverage, the mother of sins.
Nor did the urgent hosts
Proffer a second time the liquid fire,
When in the youth's strong eye they saw
No movable resolve."
He might be a member of an English Total Abstinence society, this
"Destroyer"--he will drink nothing but spring water; and along with it
he eats water melons.
"Anon a troop of females form'd a dance,
Their ancles bound with bracelet bells
That made the modulating harmony.
Transparent garments to the greedy eye
Exposed their harlot limbs,
Which moved, in every wanton gesture skill'd."
But there is no cause for alarm. Thalaba is a determined adversary of
the polygamy of his native country. Like a young Englishman travelling
abroad, he fortifies himself with the thought of the girl at home to
whom he is engaged:--
"And Thalaba, he gazed,
But in his heart he bore a talisman,
Whose blessed alchemy
To virtuous thoughts refined
The loose suggestions of the scene impure.
Oneiza's image swam before his sight.
His own Arabian maid."
Thalaba was born in England about the time when Aladdin saw the light
in Denmark. (_The Curse of Kehama_ was published in 1810, _Aladdin_ in
1804, Thalaba in 1801.) What a cold-blooded animal he is compared with
his Danish brother!
He attains the object of his desire; he is married to his "own Arabian
maid." That everything may be thoroughly edifying and pious, the
bride is made to die on the wedding night. To restore the Oriental
character to the proceedings, Thalaba is compelled by his fate to kill
an innocent young girl, named Laila. But that things may end in a
satisfactorily Christian manner, his last recorded act is to forgive
the sorcerer who has caused all his misfortunes--who proves to be the
man he has been in search of all his life for the purpose of avenging
the death of his father--and who is now unable to escape from him. In
the course of a pompous funeral oration--
"'Old Man, I strike thee not!' said Thalaba;
'The evil thou hast done to me and mine
Brought its own bitter punishment.'"
Thalaba! you speak like a book--but like one of the books we open only
to close again.
Let us close _Thalaba_, then, and give a parting glance at its author.
Even Thackeray, who cannot say enough in praise of Southey as a man, is
obliged, in writing of his chief works, to allow the possibility that,
in the struggle between Thalaba the Destroyer and the destroyer Time,
the latter will remain master of the field. It would be interesting
to know how many living Englishmen have read the poem. To our own
generation Southey's name is chiefly known, as it will be to posterity,
by his hysteric assaults on Byron, and Byron's inimitable retorts.
We have Southey's _Vision of Judgment_ to thank for Byron's--and for
this service we are ready to forgive him both the _Curse of Kehama_
and _Thalaba_. We observe, however, in these poems, what is not to be
observed in the works of the German Romanticists, namely, that the
empty fantasticalness gives place to something better, when it is
nature that is described. In the midst of all the Romantic confusion
the Englishman's quiet realism asserts itself. Undeniably beautiful is
the very first stanza of _Thalaba_, with its description of night in
the desert, the sweet cadences of which the youthful Shelley imitated
in his _Queen Mab_.
"How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain
Breaks the serene of heaven.
In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert-circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!"
This rivals the description of moonlight falling on the desert sands
given in The Caravan Song in the fifth act of _Aladdin_. And many such
pictures are to be found in Southey's poems. When he describes the
timid antelope, hearing the wanderers' steps, and standing, doubtful
where to turn in the dim light; and the ostrich which, blindly
hastening, meets them full; and the deep, moveless mist which mantles
all (Book I v., Canto 19), we are aware that this is not scenery in the
German Romantic style, but a picture of the East which is faithful to
nature, a picture which we owe to the English habit of observation.
It would be difficult to find another man of the same doubtful
political and literary reputation whose friends and contemporaries have
borne such high testimony to his personal character as did Southey's.
He was Wordsworth's trusted friend; he was Coleridge's chief and most
unwearied benefactor; and, a fact which carries as much weight as any,
Walter Savage Landor honoured him, in spite of their diametrically
opposite political opinions, with a friendship which was only put an
end to by death, and of which there are many reminiscences in Landor's
_Imaginary Conversations_. On the 15th of May 1833, Emerson wrote: "I
dined with Landor. He pestered me with Southey; but who is Southey?" So
we see that Landor tried to make friends for his friend. And Thackeray,
when in search of a typical English gentleman, did not hesitate to take
as his model the poor, industrious, generously helpful Robert Southey.
But no testimony in favour of Southey's personal character can clear
his literary reputation. It is stained by his eulogies of the English
royal family and his denunciation of Byron. That he, like the other
members of the Lake School, should assume a cold and hostile attitude
to this new and alarming literary phenomenon was natural. But that
he, himself a poet, should inflame the educated mob against another
poet, an infinitely greater one than himself, by a mean accusation of
immorality and irreligion, is a crime which history cannot forgive, and
which it punishes by recording Southey's name only in an appendix to
Byron's life.
At the time of the publication of _Don Juan_, Southey wrote:--"I am
well aware that the public are peculiarly intolerant of literary
innovations. Would that this literary intolerance were under the
influence of a saner judgment, and regarded the morals more than the
manners of a composition! Would that it were directed against these
monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery, lewdness and impiety,
with which English poetry has, in our days, first been polluted! For
more than half a century English literature had been distinguished
by its moral purity, the effect, and, in its turn, the cause of an
improvement in national manners. A father might, without apprehension
of evil, have put into the hands of his children any book which
issued from the press, if it did not bear, either in its title-page
or frontispiece, manifest signs that it was intended as furniture
for the brothel. There was no danger in any work which bore the name
of a respectable publisher, or was to be procured at any respectable
bookseller's. This was particularly the case with regard to our poetry.
It is now no longer so; and woe to those by whom the offence cometh!
The greater the talents of the offender, the greater is his guilt, and
the more enduring will be his shame. Whether it be that the laws are
in themselves unable to abate an evil of this magnitude, or whether it
be that they are remissly administered, and with such injustice that
the celebrity of an offender serves as a privilege whereby he obtains
impunity, individuals are bound to consider that such pernicious works
would neither be published nor written if they were discouraged as they
might, and ought to be, by public feeling; every person, therefore,
who purchases such books or admits them into his house promotes the
mischief, and thereby, as far as in him lies, becomes an aider and
abettor of the crime.
"The publication of a lascivious book is one of the worst offences
which can be committed against the well-being of society. It is a sin,
to the consequences of which no limits can be assigned, and those
consequences no after-repentance in the writer can counteract. Whatever
remorse of conscience he may feel when his hour comes (and come it
must!) will be of no avail. The poignancy of a deathbed repentance
cannot cancel one copy of the thousands which are sent abroad....
Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a
system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have
rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hate
that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes,
they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others as
miserable as themselves by infecting them with a moral virus that
eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be
called the Satanic school; for though their productions breathe the
spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch
in those loathsome images of atrocities and horror which they delight
to represent, they are more especially characterised by a Satanic
spirit of pride and audacious impiety, which still betrays the wretched
feeling of hopelessness wherewith it is allied."
It was necessary to give this long specimen of Southey's Biblical
eloquence, because it is so typical of him and of men of his
description; besides, every passionate outbreak of a strong
party-spirit possesses historical interest. But Nemesis was not asleep.
In 1821, the same year in which Southey discharged this volley of
abuse, an unauthorised edition of his own old revolutionary work, _Wat
Tyler_, was brought out by a bookseller who thought it might be a
profitable speculation. Southey went to law, hoping to have the edition
suppressed and the publisher punished. But Nemesis struck again, harder
than before. Lord Eldon discharged the appeal, on the ground that it
was illegal to grant any author right of property in works calculated
to do injury to public morality! It was in this same year that Southey,
on the occasion of the death of the old, deranged King, George III,
wrote his long, dull _Vision of Judgment_, a poem in hexameters, which
it is interesting (not only because of the resemblance in subject,
but also because of the employment of the supernatural element in
both) to compare with Victor Hugo's loyal poem, _La Vision_. Southey
characteristically apotheosised poor old George III. on the ground of
his possessing the virtues which were the only ones the poet himself
understood--and, indeed, the only ones George did possess--the domestic
and bourgeois virtues; he was a faithful husband, a kind father, &c.,
qualities which no more make a man a good king than they make him a
good poet. Byron could stand no more. The insulted Apollo rose in his
wrath, seized the wretched Marsyas by the ear, and flayed him alive
with merciless satire in his _Vision of Judgment_.
[1] _Joan of Arc_, Book iii.
X