Perhaps the most pleasing and striking of all Mr. Southey's poems are not
his triumphant taunts hurled against oppression, are not his glowing
effusions to Liberty, but those in which, with a mild melancholy, he seems
conscious of his own infirmities of temper, and to feel a wish to correct
by thought and time the precocity and sharpness of his disposition. May
the quaint but affecting aspiration expressed in one of these be
fulfilled, that as he mellows into maturer age, all such asperities may
wear off, and he himself become
"Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree!"
Mr. Southey's prose-style can hardly be too much praised. It is plain,
clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with a
grave and sparkling admixture of _archaisms_ in its ornaments and
occasional phraseology. He is the best and most natural prose-writer of
any poet of the day; we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron, Mr.
Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance. The manner is perhaps superior
to the matter, that is, in his Essays and Reviews. There is rather a want
of originality and even of _impetus_: but there is no want of playful or
biting satire, of ingenuity, of casuistry, of learning and of information.
He is "full of wise saws and modern" (as well as ancient) "instances." Mr.
Southey may not always convince his opponents; but he seldom fails to
stagger, never to gall them. In a word, we may describe his style by
saying that it has not the body or thickness of port wine, but it is like
clear sherry, with kernels of old authors thrown into it!--He also excels
as an historian and prose-translator. His histories abound in information,
and exhibit proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. By no
uncommon process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems willing to steady the
extreme levity of his opinions and feelings by an appeal to facts. His
translations of the Spanish and French romances are also executed _con
amore_, and with the literary fidelity of a mere linguist. That of the
_Cid_, in particular, is a masterpiece. Not a word could be altered for
the better in the old scriptural style which it adopts in conformity to
the original. It is no less interesting in itself, or as a record of high
and chivalrous feelings and manners, than it is worthy of perusal as a
literary curiosity.
Mr. Southey's conversation has a little resemblance to a common-place
book; his habitual deportment to a piece of clock-work. He is not
remarkable either as a reasoner or an observer: but he is quick,
unaffected, replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading,
and exceedingly happy in his play upon words, as most scholars are who
give their minds this sportive turn. We have chiefly seen Mr. Southey in
company where few people appear to advantage, we mean in that of Mr.
Coleridge. He has not certainly the same range of speculation, nor the
same flow of sounding words, but he makes up by the details of knowledge
and by a scrupulous correctness of statement for what he wants in
originality of thought, or impetuous declamation. The tones of Mr.
Coleridge's voice are eloquence: those of Mr. Southey are meagre, shrill,
and dry. Mr. Coleridge's _forte_ is conversation, and he is conscious of
this: Mr. Southey evidently considers writing as his stronghold, and if
gravelled in an argument, or at a loss for an explanation, refers to
something he has written on the subject, or brings out his port-folio,
doubled down in dog-ears, in confirmation of some fact. He is scholastic
and professional in his ideas. He sets more value on what he writes than
on what he says: he is perhaps prouder of his library than of his own
productions--themselves a library! He is more simple in his manners than
his friend Mr. Coleridge; but at the same time less cordial or
conciliating. He is less vain, or has less hope of pleasing, and therefore
lays himself less out to please. There is an air of condescension in his
civility. With a tall, loose figure, a peaked austerity of countenance,
and no inclination to _embonpoint_, you would say he has something
puritanical, something ascetic in his appearance. He answers to
Mandeville's description of Addison, "a parson in a tye-wig." He is not a
boon companion, nor does he indulge in the pleasures of the table, nor in
any other vice; nor are we aware that Mr. Southey is chargeable with any
human frailty but--_want of charity_! Having fewer errors to plead guilty
to, he is less lenient to those of others. He was born an age too late.
Had he lived a century or two ago, he would have been a happy as well as
blameless character. But the distraction of the time has unsettled him,
and the multiplicity of his pretensions have jostled with each other. No
man in our day (at least no man of genius) has led so uniformly and
entirely the life of a scholar from boyhood to the present hour, devoting
himself to learning with the enthusiasm of an early love, with the
severity and constancy of a religious vow--and well would it have been for
him if he had confined himself to this, and not undertaken to pull down or
to patch up the State! However irregular in his opinions, Mr. Southey is
constant, unremitting, mechanical in his studies, and the performance of
his duties. There is nothing Pindaric or Shandean here. In all the
relations and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary,
generous, just. We never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge;
and if he has many enemies, few men can boast more numerous or stauncher
friends.--The variety and piquancy of his writings form a striking
contrast to the mode in which they are produced. He rises early, and
writes or reads till breakfast-time. He writes or reads after breakfast
till dinner, after dinner till tea, and from tea till bed-time--
"And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour to his grave.--"
on Derwent's banks, beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study serves him for
business, exercise, recreation. He passes from verse to prose, from
history to poetry, from reading to writing, by a stop-watch. He writes a
fair hand without blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off when he
comes to the bottom of the page, and changes the subject for another, as
opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient and
transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly grasp
of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His passions do
not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his pen, and
coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his heart. Rash
in his opinions, he is steady in his attachments--and is a man, in many
particulars admirable, in all respectable--his political inconsistency
alone excepted!