Regions of the Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is another up to
which his wing might not soar; though the plumes are strong as soft. But
why should he who loveth to take "the wings of a dove that he may flee
away" to the bosom of beauty, though there never for a moment to be at
rest--why should he, like an eagle, soar into the storms that roll above
this visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual thunder?
Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remonstrates, rather angrily, with the
Public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into
one class himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that
not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he
elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the
Art Poetical; and among his Lyrical Ballads he admitted the three finest
compositions of his illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, is not
to blame in taking him at his word, even if she had discerned no family
likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less
than Coleridge does; but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen
miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphilosophical though pensive
Public that link of connection should be allowed to be sufficient, even
were there no other less patent and material than the Macadamised
turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our
living Poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory;" for he alone of
them all has adventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, the
different characters, customs, and manners of nations. "Joan of Arc" is
an English and French story--"Thalaba," Arabian--"Kehama,"
Indian--"Madoc," Welsh and American--and "Roderick," Spanish and
Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was
a very youthful work) in which of these noble poems Mr Southey has most
successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any
but the highest genius. In "Madoc," and especially in "Roderick," he has
relied on the truth of nature--as it is seen in the history of great
national transactions and events. In "Thalaba" and in "Kehama," though
in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he
follows the leading of Fancy and Imagination, and walks in a world of
wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same Poet exhibited such power
in such different kinds of Poetry--in Truth a Master, and in Fiction a
Magician.
It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast stores of knowledge
gathered from books--and that we have but to look at the multifarious
accumulation of notes appended to his great Poems to see that they are
not Inventions. The materials of poetry indeed are there--often the raw
materials--seldom more; but the Imagination that moulded them into
beautiful, or magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his own--and has
shown itself most creative. Southey never was among the Arabians nor
Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travellers. But had he not been a
Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen
"The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste,"
where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent
"How happily the years of Thalaba went by!"
In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the
Destroyer into the Domdaniel Caves? And who showed him the Swerga's
Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with all its palaces that submarine
City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial
thunder of the sea? The greatness as well as the originality of
Southey's genius is seen in the conception of every one of his Five
Chief Works--with the exception of "Joan of Arc," which was written in
very early youth, and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthusiasm.
They are one and all National Poems--wonderfully true to the customs and
characters of the inhabitants of the countries in which are laid the
scenes of all their various adventures and enterprises--and the Poet has
entirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each
representative of a race. Thalaba is a true Arab--Madoc a true
Briton--King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Kehama is a
personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter
confined himself in his poetry to Scotland--except in "Rokeby"--and his
might then went not with him across the Border; though in his novels and
romances he was at home when abroad--and nowhere else more gloriously
than with Saladin in the Desert. "Lalla Rookh" is full of brilliant
poetry; and one of the series--the "Fire-Worshippers"--is Moore's
highest effort; but the whole is too elaborately Oriental--and often in
pure weariness of all that accumulation of the gorgeous imagery of the
East, we shut up the false glitter, and thank Heaven that we are in one
of the bleakest and barest corners of the West. But Southey's magic is
more potent--and he was privileged to exclaim--
"Come, listen to a tale of times of old!
Come, for ye know me. I am he who framed
Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song.
Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear
How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread
The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path,
And quell'd barbaric power, and overthrew
The bloody altars of idolatry,
And planted on its fanes triumphantly
The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay."
Of all his chief Poems the conception and the execution are original;
in much faulty and imperfect both; but bearing throughout the impress of
original power; and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest
and sometimes even extravagant imaginings, that shall preserve them for
ever from oblivion, embalming them in the spirit of delight and of love.
Fairy Tales, or tales of witchcraft and enchantment, seldom stir the
holiest and deepest feelings of the heart; but "Thalaba" and "Kehama" do
so; "the still sad music of humanity" is ever with us among all most
wonderful and wild; and of all the spells, and charms, and talismans
that are seen working strange effects before our eyes, the strongest are
ever felt to be Piety and Virtue. What exquisite pictures of domestic
affection and bliss! what sanctity and devotion! Meek as a child is
Innocence in Southey's poetry, but mightier than any giant. Whether
matron or maid, mother or daughter--in joy or sorrow--as they appear
before us, doing or suffering, "beautiful and dutiful," with Faith, Hope
and Charity their guardian angels, nor Fear ever once crossing their
path! We feel, in perusing such pictures--"Purity! thy name is woman!"
and are not these Great Poems? We are silent. But should you answer
"yes," from us in our present mood you shall receive no contradiction.
The transition always seems to us, we scarcely know why, as natural as
delightful from Southey to Scott. They alone of all the poets of the day
have produced poems in which are pictured and narrated, epicly, national
characters, and events, and actions, and catastrophes. Southey has
heroically invaded foreign countries; Scott as heroically brought his
power to bear on his own people; and both have achieved immortal
triumphs. But Scotland is proud of her great national minstrel--and as
long as she is Scotland, will wash and warm the laurels round his brow,
with rains and winds that will for ever keep brightening their glossy
verdure. Whereas England, ungrateful ever to her men of genius, already
often forgets the poetry of Southey; while Little Britain abuses his
patriotism in his politics. The truth is, that Scotland had forgotten
her own history till Sir Walter burnished it all up till it glowed
again--it is hard to say whether in his poetry or in his prose the
brightest--and the past became the present. We know now the character of
our own people as it showed itself in war and peace--in palace, castle,
hall, hut, hovel, and shieling--through centuries of advancing
civilisation, from the time when Edinburgh was first ycleped Auld
Reekie, down to the period when the bright idea first occurred to her
inhabitants to call her the Modern Athens. This he has effected by means
of about one hundred volumes, each exhibiting to the life about fifty
characters, and each character not only an individual in himself or
herself, but the representative--so we offer to prove if you be
sceptical--of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the
Monarch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the Gypsy, from the Bruce to
the Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennison. We shall never say
that Scott is Shakespeare: but we shall say that he has conceived and
created--you know the meaning of these words--as many characters--real
living flesh-and-blood human beings--naturally, truly, and consistently,
as Shakespeare; who, always transcendently great in pictures of the
passions--out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all
rational being--was--nay, do not threaten to murder us--not seldom an
imperfect delineator of human life. All the world believed that Sir
Walter had not only exhausted his own genius in his poetry, but that he
had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life--he and Burns
together--and that no more ground unturned-up lay on this side of the
Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for a while--and shared in the general
and natural delusion. But one morning before breakfast it occurred to
him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothing--though more
for Scotland than any other of her poets, except the Ploughman--and that
it would not be much amiss to commence a New Century of Inventions.
Hence the Prose Tales--Novels--and Romances--fresh floods of light
pouring all over Scotland--and occasionally illumining England, France,
and Germany, and even Palestine--whatever land had been ennobled by
Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue.
Up to the era of Sir Walter, living people had some vague, general,
indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing
centuries ago, in regular kirkyards and chance burial-places,
"'mang muirs and mosses many O," somewhere or other in that
difficultly-distinguished and very debatable district called the
Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a divining-rod, and the
turf streamed out ghosts--some in woodmen's dresses--most in warrior's
mail: green archers leaped forth with yew-bow and quivers--and giants
stalked shaking spears. The grey chronicler smiled; and, taking up his
pen, wrote in lines of light the annals of the chivalrous and heroic
days of auld feudal Scotland. The nation then, for the first time, knew
the character of its ancestors; for those were not spectres--not they
indeed--nor phantoms of the brain--but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad
and glorious;--base-born cottage churls of the olden time, because
Scottish, became familiar to the love of the nation's heart, and so to
its pride did the high-born lineage of palace-kings. The worst of Sir
Walter is, that he has _harried_ all Scotland. Never was there such a
freebooter. He harries all men's cattle--kills themselves off-hand, and
makes bonfires of their castles. Thus has he disturbed and illuminated
all the land as with the blazes of a million beacons. Lakes lie with
their islands distinct by midnight as by mid-day; wide woods glow
gloriously in the gloom; and by the stormy splendour you even see ships,
with all sails set, far at sea. His favourite themes in prose or
numerous verse are still "Knights and Lords and mighty Earls," and their
Lady-loves, chiefly Scottish--of kings that fought for fame or
freedom--of fatal Flodden and bright Bannockburn--of the DELIVERER. If
that be not national to the teeth, Homer was no Ionian, Tyrtaeus not
sprung from Sparta, and Christopher North a Cockney. Let Abbotsford,
then, be cognomed by those that choose it, the Ariosto of the North--we
shall continue to call him plain Sir Walter.
Now, we beg leave to decline answering our own question--has he ever
written a Great Poem? We do not care one straw whether he has or not;
for he has done this--he has exhibited human life in a greater variety
of forms and lights, all definite and distinct, than any other man whose
name has reached our ears; and therefore, without fear or trembling, we
tell the world to its face, that he is, out of all sight, the greatest
genius of the age, not forgetting Goethe, the Devil, and Dr Faustus.
"What? Scott a greater genius than Byron!" Yes--beyond compare. Byron
had a vivid and strong, but not a wide, imagination. He saw things as
they are, occasionally standing prominently and boldly out from the flat
surface of this world; and in general, when his soul was up, he
described them with a master's might. We speak now of the external
world--of nature and of art. Now observe how he dealt with nature. In
his early poems he betrayed no passionate love of nature, though we do
not doubt that he felt it; and even in the first two cantos of "Childe
Harold" he was an unfrequent and no very devout worshipper at her
shrine. We are not blaming his lukewarmness; but simply stating a fact.
He had something else to think of, it would appear; and proved himself a
poet. But in the third canto, "a change came over the spirit of his
dream," and he "babbled o' green fields," floods, and mountains.
Unfortunately, however, for his originality, that canto is almost a
cento--his model being Wordsworth. His merit, whatever it may be, is
limited therefore to that of imitation. And observe, the imitation is
not merely occasional or verbal; but all the descriptions are conceived
in the spirit of Wordsworth, coloured by it and shaped--from it they
live, and breathe, and have their being; and that so entirely, that had
"The Excursion" and "Lyrical Ballads" never been, neither had any
composition at all resembling, either in conception or execution, the
third canto of "Childe Harold." His soul, however, having been awakened
by the inspiration of the Bard of Nature, never afterwards fell asleep,
nor got drowsy over her beauties or glories; and much fine description
pervades most of his subsequent works. He afterwards made much of what
he saw his own--and even described it after his own fashion; but a
greater in that domain was his instructor and guide--nor in his noblest
efforts did he ever make any close approach to those inspired passages,
which he had manifestly set as models before his imagination. With all
the fair and great objects in the world of art, again, Byron dealt like
a poet of original genius. They themselves, and not descriptions of
them, kindled it up; and thus "thoughts that breathe, and words that
burn," do almost entirely compose the fourth canto, which is worth, ten
times over, all the rest. The impetuosity of his career is astonishing;
never for a moment does his wing flag; ever and anon he stoops but to
soar again with a more majestic sweep; and you see how he glories in his
flight--that he is proud as Lucifer. The first two cantos are frequently
cold, cumbrous, stiff, heavy, and dull; and, with the exception of
perhaps a dozen stanzas, and these far from being of first-rate
excellence, they are found woefully wanting in the true fire. Many
passages are but the baldest prose. Byron, after all, was right in
thinking--at first--but poorly of these cantos; and so was the friend,
not Mr Hobhouse, who threw cold water upon them in manuscript. True,
they "made a prodigious sensation," but bitter-bad stuff has often done
that; while often unheeded or unheard has been an angel's voice. Had
they been suffered to stand alone, long ere now had they been pretty
well forgotten; and had they been followed by other two cantos no better
than themselves, then had the whole four in good time been most
certainly damned. But, fortunately, the poet, in his pride, felt himself
pledged to proceed; and proceed he did in a superior style; borrowing,
stealing, and robbing, with a face of aristocratic assurance that must
have amazed the plundered; but intermingling with the spoil riches
fairly won by his own genius from the exhaustless treasury of nature,
who loved her wayward her wicked, and her wondrous son. Is "Childe
Harold," then, a Great Poem? What! with one-half of it little above
mediocrity, one quarter of it not original in conception, and in
execution swarming with faults, and the remainder glorious? As for his
tales--the "Giaour," "Corsair," "Lara," "Bride of Abydos," "Siege of
Corinth," and so forth--they are all spirited, energetic, and passionate
performances--sometimes nobly and sometimes meanly versified--but
displaying neither originality nor fertility of invention, and assuredly
no wide range either of feeling or of thought, though over that range a
supreme dominion. Some of his dramas are magnificent--and in many of his
smaller poems pathos and beauty overflow. Don Juan exhibits almost every
kind of talent; and in it the degradation of poetry is perfect.
But there is another glory belonging to this age, and almost to this age
alone of our poetry--the glory of Female Genius. We have heard and seen
it seriously argued whether or not women are equal to men; as if there
could be a moment's doubt in any mind unbesotted by sex, that they are
infinitely superior; not in understanding, thank Heaven, nor in
intellect, but in all other "impulses of soul and sense" that dignify
and adorn human beings, and make them worthy of living on this
delightful earth. Men for the most part are such worthless wretches,
that we wonder how women condescend to allow the world to be carried
on; and we attribute that phenomenon solely to the hallowed yearnings of
maternal affection, which breathes as strongly in maid as in matron, and
may be beautifully seen in the child fondling its doll in its blissful
bosom. Philoprogenitiveness! But not to pursue that interesting
speculation, suffice it for the present to say, that so far from having
no souls--a whim of Mahomet's, who thought but of their bodies--women
are the sole spiritual beings that walk the earth not unseen; they
alone, without pursuing a complicated and scientific system of deception
and hypocrisy, are privileged from on high to write poetry. We--men we
mean--may affect a virtue, though we have it not, and appear to be
inspired by the divine afflatus. Nay, we sometimes--often--are truly so
inspired, and write like gods. A few of us are subject to fits, and in
them utter oracles. But the truth is too glaring to be denied, that all
male rational creatures are, in the long run, vile, corrupt, and
polluted; and that the best man that ever died in his bed within the
arms of his distracted wife, is wickeder far than the worst woman that
was ever iniquitously hanged for murdering what was called her poor
husband, who in all cases righteously deserved his fate. Purity of mind
is incompatible with manhood; and a monk is a monster--so is every
Fellow of a College, and every Roman Catholic Priest, from Father
O'Leary to Dr Doyle. Confessions, indeed! Why, had Joseph himself
confessed all he ever felt and thought to Potiphar's wife, she would
have frowned him from her presence in all the chaste dignity of virtuous
indignation, and so far from tearing off his garment, would not have
touched it for the whole world. But all women--till men by marriage, or
by something, if that be possible, worse even than marriage, try in vain
to reduce them nearly to their own level--are pure as dewdrops or
moonbeams, and know not the meaning of evil. Their genius conjectures
it; and in that there is no sin. But their genius loves best to image
forth good, for 'tis the blessing of their life, its power, and its
glory; and hence, when they write poetry, it is religious, sweet, soft,
solemn, and divine.
Observe, however--to prevent all mistakes--that we speak but of British
women--and of British women of the present age. Of the German Fair Sex
we know little or nothing; but daresay that the Baroness la Motte Fouque
is a worthy woman, and as vapid as the Baron. Neither make we any
allusion to Madame Genlis, or other illustrious Lemans of the French
school, who charitably adopted their own natural daughters, while other
less pious ladies, who had become mothers without being wives, sent
theirs to Foundling Hospitals. We restrict ourselves to the Maids and
Matrons of this Island--and of this Age; and as it is of poetical genius
that we speak--we name the names of Joanna Baillie, Mary Tighe, Felicia
Hemans, Caroline Bowles, Mary Howitt, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and the
Lovely Norton; while we pronounce several other sweet-sounding Christian
surnames in whispering under-tones of affection, almost as inaudible as
the sound of the growing of grass on a dewy evening.
Corinna and Sappho must have been women of transcendant genius so to
move Greece. For though the Greek character was most impressible and
combustible, it was so only to the finest finger and fire. In that
delightful land dunces were all dumb. Where genius alone spoke and sung
poetry, how hard to excel! Corinna and Sappho did excel--the one, it is
said, conquering Pindar--and the other all the world but Phaon.
But our own Joanna has been visited with a still loftier inspiration.
She has created tragedies which Sophocles--or Euripides--nay, even
Aeschylus himself, might have feared, in competition for the crown. She
is our Tragic Queen; but she belongs to all places as to all times; and
Sir Walter truly said--let them who dare deny it--that he saw her Genius
in a sister shape sailing by the side of the Swan of Avon. Yet Joanna
loves to pace the pastoral mead; and then we are made to think of the
tender dawn, the clear noon, and the bright meridian of her life, passed
among the tall cliffs of the silver Calder, and in the lonesome heart of
the dark Strathaven Muirs.
Plays on the Passions! "How absurd!" said one philosophical writer.
"This will never do!" It has done--perfectly. What, pray, is the aim of
all tragedy? The Stagyrite has told us--to purify the passions by pity
and terror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul--till its atmosphere is
like that of a calm, bright summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on
the Passions. And all that Joanna intended--and it was a great intention
greatly effected--was in her Series of Dramas to steady her purposes by
ever keeping one great end in view, of which the perpetual perception
could not fail to make all the means harmonious, and therefore majestic.
One passion was, therefore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each
glorious tragedy--sovereign sometimes by divine right--sometimes an
usurper--generally a tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid reign of
Hate. But in his sister--the seraphic sway of Love. Darkness and light
sometimes opposed in sublime contrast--and sometimes the light
swallowing up the darkness--or "smoothing its raven down till it
smiles." Finally, all is black as night and the grave--for the light,
unextinguished, glides away into some far-off world of peace. Count
Basil! A woman only could have imagined that divine drama. How different
the love Basil feels for Victoria from Antony's for Cleopatra! Pure,
deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on it we see him borne away to
shame, destruction, and death. It is indeed his ruling passion. But up
to the day he first saw her face his ruling passion had been the love of
glory. And the hour he died by his own hand was troubled into madness by
many passions; for are they not all mysteriously linked together,
sometimes a dreadful brotherhood?