Chapter IX: Part 9

Where are we now? There is not on this round green earth a lovelier Loch than Achray. About a mile above Loch Vennachar, and as we approach the Brigg of Turk, we arrive at the summit of an eminence, whence we descry the sudden and wide prospect of the windings of the river that issues from Loch Achray--and the Loch itself reposing--sleeping--dreaming on its pastoral, its sylvan bed. Achray, being interpreted, signifies the "Level Field," and gives its name to a delightful farm at the west end. On "that happy, rural seat of various view," could we lie all day long; and as all the beauty tends towards the west, each afternoon hour deepens and also brightens it into mellower splendour. Not to keep constantly seeing the lovely Loch is indeed impossible--yet its still waters soothe the soul, without holding it away from the woods and cliffs, that, forming of themselves a perfect picture, are yet all united with the mountainous region of the setting sun. Many long years have elapsed--at our time of life ten are many--since we passed one delightful evening in the hospitable house that stands near the wooden bridge over the Teith, just wheeling into Loch Achray. What a wilderness of wooded rocks, containing a thousand little mossy glens, each large enough for a fairy's kingdom! Between and Loch Katrine is the Place of Roes--nor need the angler try to penetrate the underwood; for every shallow, every linn, every pool is overshaded by its own canopy, and the living fly and moth alone ever dip their wings in the checkered waters. Safe there are all the little singing-birds from hawk or gled--and it is indeed an Aviary in the wild. Pine-groves stand here and there amid the natural woods--and among their tall gloom the cushat sits crooning in beloved solitude, rarely startled by human footstep, and bearing at his own pleasure through the forest the sound of his flapping wings.

But let us rise from the greensward, and before we pace along the sweet shores of Loch Achray, for its nearest murmur is yet more than a mile off, turn away up from the Brigg of Turk into Glenfinlas. A strong mountain-torrent, in which a painter, even with the soul of Salvator Rosa, might find studies inexhaustible for years, tumbles on the left of a ravine, in which a small band of warriors might stop the march of a numerous host. With what a loud voice it brawls through the silence, freshening the hazels, the birches, and the oaks, that in that perpetual spray need not the dew's refreshment. But the savage scene softens as you advance, and you come out of that sylvan prison into a plain of meadows and cornfields, alive with the peaceful dwellings of industrious men. Here the bases of the mountains, and even their sides high up, are without heather--a rich sward, with here and there a deep bed of brackens, and a little sheep-sheltering grove. Skeletons of old trees of prodigious size lie covered with mosses and wildflowers, or stand with their barkless trunks and white limbs unmoved when the tempest blows. Glenfinlas was anciently a deer-forest of the Kings of Scotland; but hunter's horn no more awakens the echoes of Benledi.

A more beautiful vale never inspired pastoral poet in Arcadia, nor did Sicilian shepherds of old ever pipe to each other for prize of oaten reed, in a lovelier nook than where yonder cottage stands, shaded, but scarcely sheltered, by a few birch-trees. It is in truth not a cottage--but a very SHIELING, part of the knoll adhering to the side of the mountain. Not another dwelling--even as small as itself--within a mile in any direction. Those goats, that seem to walk where there is no footing along the side of the cliff, go of themselves to be milked at evening to a house beyond the hill, without any barking dog to set them home. There are many footpaths, but all of sheep, except one leading through the coppice-wood to the distant kirk. The angler seldom disturbs those shallows, and the heron has them to himself, watching often with motionless neck all day long. Yet the Shieling is inhabited, and has been so by the same person for a good many years. You might look at it for hours, and yet see no one so much as moving to the door. But a little smoke hovers over it--very faint if it be smoke at all--and nothing else tells that within is life.

It is inhabited by a widow, who once was the happiest of wives, and lived far down the glen, where it is richly cultivated, in a house astir with many children. It so happened, that in the course of nature, without any extraordinary bereavements, she outlived all the household, except one, on whom fell the saddest affliction that can befall a human being--the utter loss of reason. For some years after the death of her husband, and all her other children, this son was her support; and there was no occasion to pity them in their poverty, where all were poor. Her natural cheerfulness never forsook her; and although fallen back in the world, and obliged in her age to live without many comforts she once had known, yet all the past gradually was softened into peace, and the widow and her son were in that shieling as happy as any family in the parish. He worked at all kinds of work without, and she sat spinning from morning to night within--a constant occupation, soothing to one before whose mind past times might otherwise have come too often, and that creates contentment by its undisturbed sameness and invisible progression. If not always at meals, the widow saw her son for an hour or two every night, and throughout the whole Sabbath-day. They slept, too, under one roof; and she liked the stormy weather when the rains were on--for then he found some ingenious employment within the shieling, or cheered her with some book lent by a friend, or with the lively or plaintive music of his native hills. Sometimes, in her gratitude, she said that she was happier now than when she had so many other causes to be so; and when occasionally an acquaintance dropt in upon her, her face gave a welcome that spoke more than resignation; nor was she averse to partake the sociality of the other huts, and sat sedate among youthful merriment, when summer or winter festival came round, and poverty rejoiced in the riches of content and innocence.

But her trials, great as they had been, were not yet over; for this her only son was laid prostrate by fever--and, when it left his body, he survived hopelessly stricken in mind. His eyes, so clear and intelligent, were now fixed in idiocy, or rolled about unobservant of all objects living or dead. To him all weather seemed the same, and if suffered, he would have lain down like a creature void of understanding, in rain or on snow, nor been able to find his way back for many paces from the hut. As all thought and feeling had left him, so had speech, all but a moaning as of pain or woe, which none but a mother could bear to hear without shuddering--but she heard it during night as well as day, and only sometimes lifted up her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer was made to send him to a place where the afflicted were taken care of; but she beseeched charity for the first time for such alms as would enable her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to keep her son in the shieling; and the means were given her from many quarters to do so decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes observed, but of which the poor object himself was insensible and unconscious. Henceforth, it may almost be said, she never more saw the sun, nor heard the torrents roar. She went not to the kirk, but kept her Sabbath where the paralytic lay--and there she sung the lonely psalm, and said the lonely prayer, unheard in Heaven as many repining spirits would have thought--but it was not so; for in two years there came a meaning to his eyes, and he found a few words of imperfect speech, among which was that of "Mother." Oh! how her heart burned within her, to know that her face was at last recognised! To feel that her kiss was returned, and to see the first tear that trickled from eyes that long had ceased to weep! Day after day, the darkness that covered his brain grew less and less deep--to her that bewilderment gave the blessedness of hope; for her son now knew that he had an immortal soul, and in the evening joined faintly and feebly and erringly in prayer. For weeks afterwards he remembered only events and scenes long past and distant--and believed that his father, and all his brothers and sisters, were yet alive. He called upon them by their names to come and kiss him--on them, who had all long been buried in the dust. But his soul struggled itself into reason and remembrance--and he at last said, "Mother! did some accident befall me yesterday at my work down the glen?--I feel weak, and about to die!" The shadows of death were indeed around him; but he lived to be told much of what had happened--and rendered up a perfectly unclouded spirit into the mercy of his Saviour. His mother felt that all her prayers had been granted in that one boon--and, when the coffin was borne away from the shieling, she remained in it with a friend, assured that in this world there could for her be no more grief. And there in that same shieling, now that years have gone by, she still lingers, visited as often as she wishes by her poor neighbours--for to the poor sorrow is a sacred thing--who, by turns, send one of their daughters to stay with her, and cheer a life that cannot be long, but that, end when it may, will be laid down without one impious misgiving, and in the humility of a Christian's faith.

The scene shifts of itself, and we are at the head of Glenetive. Who among all the Highland maidens that danced on the greenswards among the blooming heather on the mountains of Glenetive--who so fair as Flora, the only daughter of the King's Forester, and grandchild to the Bard famous for his songs of Fairies in the Hill of Peace, and the Mermaid-Queen in her Palace of Emerald floating far down beneath the foam-waves of the sea? And who, among all the Highland youth that went abroad to the bloody wars from the base of Benevis, to compare with Ranald of the Red-Cliff, whose sires had been soldiers for centuries, in the days of the dagger and Lochaber axe--stately in his strength amid the battle as the oak in a storm, but gentle in peace as the birch-tree, that whispers with all its leaves to the slightest summer-breath? If their love was great when often fed at the light of each other's eyes, what was it when Ranald was far off among the sands of Egypt, and Flora left an orphan to pine away in her native glen? Beneath the shadow of the Pyramids he dreamt of Dalness and the deer forest, that was the dwelling of his love--and she, as she stood by the murmurs of that sea-loch, longed for the wings of the osprey, that she might flee away to the war-tents beyond the ocean, and be at rest!

But years--a few years--long and lingering as they might seem to loving hearts separated by the roar of seas--yet all too too short when 'tis thought how small a number lead from the cradle to the grave--brought Ranald and Flora once more into each other's arms. Alas! for the poor soldier! for never more was he to behold that face from which he kissed the trickling tears. Like many another gallant youth, he had lost his eyesight from the sharp burning sand--and was led to the shieling of his love like a wandering mendicant who obeys the hand of a child. Nor did his face bear that smile of resignation usually so affecting on the calm countenances of the blind. Seldom did he speak--and his sighs were deeper, longer, and more disturbed than those which almost any sorrow ever wrings from the young. Could it be that he groaned in remorse over some secret crime?

Happy--completely happy, would Flora have been to have tended him like a sister all his dark life long, or, like a daughter, to have sat beside the bed of one whose hair was getting fast grey, long before its time. Almost all her relations were dead, and almost all her friends away to other glens. But he had returned, and blindness, for which there was no hope, must bind his steps for ever within little room. But they had been betrothed almost from their childhood, and would she--if he desired it--fear to become his wife now, shrouded as he was, now and for ever, in the helpless dark? From his lips, however, her maidenly modesty required that the words should come; nor could she sometimes help wondering, in half-upbraiding sorrow, that Ranald joyed not in his great affliction to claim her for his wife. Poor were they to be sure--yet not so poor as to leave life without its comforts; and in every glen of her native Highlands, were there not worthy families far poorer than they? But weeks, months, passed on, and Ranald remained in a neighbouring hut, shunning the sunshine, and moaning, it was said, when he thought none were near, both night and day. Sometimes he had been overheard muttering to himself lamentable words--and, blind as his eyes were to all the objects of the real world, it was rumoured up and down the glen, that he saw visions of woeful events about to befall one whom he loved.

One midnight he found his way, unguided, like a man walking in his sleep--but although in a hideous trance, he was yet broad awake--to the hut where Flora dwelt, and called on her, in a dirge-like voice, to speak a few words with him ere he died. They sat down together among the heather, on the very spot where the farewell embrace had been given the morning he went away to the wars; and Flora's heart died within her, when he told her that the Curse under which his forefathers had suffered, had fallen upon him; and that he had seen his wraith pass by in a shroud, and heard a voice whisper the very day he was to die.

And was it Ranald of the Red-Cliff, the bravest of the brave, that thus shuddered in the fear of death like a felon at the tolling of the great prison-bell? Ay, death is dreadful when foreseen by a ghastly superstition. He felt the shroud already bound round his limbs and body with gentle folds, beyond the power of a giant to burst; and day and night the same vision yawned before him--an open grave in the corner of the hill burial-ground without any kirk.

Flora knew that his days were indeed numbered; for when had he ever been afraid of death--and could his spirit have quailed thus under a mere common dream? Soon was she to be all alone in this world; yet when Ranald should die, she felt that her own days would not be many, and there was sudden and strong comfort in the belief that they would be buried in one grave.

Such were her words to the dying man; and all at once he took her in his arms, and asked her "If she had no fears of the narrow house?" His whole nature seemed to undergo a change under the calm voice of her reply; and he said, "Dost thou fear not then, my Flora, to hear the words of doom?" "Blessed will they be, if in death we be not disunited." "Thou too, my wife--for my wife thou now art on earth, and mayest be so in heaven--thou too, Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." It was a gentle and gracious summer night--so clear, that the shepherds on the hills were scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And there at earliest daylight, were Ranald and Flora found, on the greensward, among the tall heather, lying side by side, with their calm faces up to heaven, and never more to smile or weep in this mortal world.

AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY.

Ours is a poetical age; but has it produced one Great Poem? Not one.

Just look at them for a moment. There is "The Pleasures of Memory"--an elegant, graceful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, which it does one's eyes good to gaze on--one's ears good to listen to--one's very fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove paper. Never will "The Pleasures of Memory" be forgotten till the world is in its dotage. But is it a Great Poem? About as much so as an ant-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a mountain purple with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection--in the shape of a cone--and the apex points heavenwards; but 'tis not a sky-piercer. You take it at a hop--and pursue your journey. Yet it endures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs and the sunshine, love the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and delightfully; you hardly know whether a work of art or a work of nature.

Then there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not very popular. If so, then neither is human life. For of all our poets, he has most skilfully woven the web and woven the woof of all his compositions with the materials of human life--homespun indeed; but though often coarse, always strong--and though set to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently exceeding fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay--hold up the product of his loom between your eye and the light, and it glows and glimmers like the peacock's back or the breast of the rainbow. Sometimes it seems to be but of the "hodden grey;" when sunbeam or shadow smites it, and lo! it is burnished like the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger ever produce a Great Poem? You might as well ask if he built St Paul's.

Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No wonder that his old eyes are still so lustrous; for they possess the sacred gift of beautifying creation, by shedding over it the charm of melancholy. "Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past"--is the text we should choose were we about to preach on his genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, does his spirit now breathe over the still receding Past. But time-sanctified are all the shows that arise before his pensive imagination; and the common light of day, once gone, in his poetry seems to shine as if it had all been dying sunset or moonlight, or the new-born dawn. His human sensibilities are so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his Sonnets have been dear to poets--having in them "more than meets the ear"--spiritual breathings that hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, too, have they been beloved by all natural hearts who, having not the "faculty divine," have yet the "vision"--that is, the power of seeing and of hearing the sights and the sounds which genius alone can awaken, bringing them from afar out of the dust and dimness of evanishment.

Mr Bowles has been a poet for good fifty years; and if his genius do not burn quite so bright as it did some lustres bygone--yet we do not say there is any abatement even of its brightness: it shines with a mellower and also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he was perhaps rather too pensive--too melancholy--too pathetic--too woe-begone--in too great bereavement. Like the nightingale, he sang with a thorn at his breast--from which one wondered the point had not been broken off by perpetual pressure. Yet, though rather monotonous, his strains were most musical as well as melancholy; feeling was often relieved by fancy; and one dreamed, in listening to his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, and of the yellow sands of dim-imaged seas murmuring round "the shores of old Romance." A fine enthusiasm too was his--in those youthful years--inspired by the poetry of Greece and Rome; and in some of his happiest inspirations there was a delightful and original union--to be found nowhere else that we can remember--of the spirit of that ancient song,--the pure classical spirit that murmured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus, with that of our own poetry, that like a noble Naiad dwells in the "clear well of English undefiled." In almost all his strains you felt the scholar; but his was no affected or pedantic scholarship--intrusive most when least required; but the growth of a consummate classical education, of which the career was not inglorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles was a pupil of the Wartons--Joe and Tom--God bless their souls!--and his name may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs--and with Mason's, and Gray's, and Collins'--academics all; the works of them all showing a delicate and exquisite colouring of classical art, enriching their own English nature. Bowles's muse is always loth to forget--wherever she roam or linger--Winchester and Oxford--the Itchin and the Isis. None educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever forget them, who can read Homer, and Pindar, and Sophocles, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, in the original; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons are those alone who pursued their poetical studies--in translations. They never knew the nature of the true old Greek fire.

But has Bowles written a Great Poem? If he has, publish it, and we shall make him a Bishop.

What shall we say of "The Pleasures of Hope?" That the harp from which that music breathed, was an Aeolian harp placed in the window of a high hall, to catch airs from heaven when heaven was glad, as well she might be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a magnificent aurora-borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic march--now it swells into a holy hymn--and now it dies away elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, dream-like, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night--and we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so?--In his youth Campbell lived where "distant isles could hear the loud Corbrechtan roar;" and sometimes his poetry is like that whirlpool--the sound as of the wheels of many chariots. Yes, happy was it for him that he had liberty to roam along the many-based, hollow-rumbling western coast of that unaccountable county Argyllshire. The sea-roar cultivated his naturally fine musical ear, and it sank too into his heart. Hence is his prime Poem bright with hope as is the sunny sea when sailors' sweethearts on the shore are looking out for ships; and from a foreign station down comes the fleet before the wind, and the very shells beneath their footsteps seem to sing for joy. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if she were our own only daughter--filling our life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through those giant woods! As for "Lochiel's Warning," there was heard the voice of the Last of the Seers. The Second Sight is now extinguished in the Highland glooms--the Lament wails no more,

"That man may not hide what God would reveal!"

The Navy owes much to "Ye Mariners of England." Sheer hulks often seemed ships till that strain arose--but ever since in our imagination have they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we say, after that, that Campbell has never written a Great Poem? Yes--in the face even of the Metropolitan!

It was said many long years ago in the _Edinburgh Review_, that none but maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed that James Montgomery was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner--and Christopher North a sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in his own belief, yet in ours. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are the most simple-minded, pure-hearted, and high-souled--and these qualities shine serenely in "The Pelican Island." In earnestness and fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away, neither shall it moulder--not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a fair form laid asleep in immortality--its face wearing, day and night, summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly--a celestial smile. That is a true image; but is "The Pelican Island" a Great Poem? We pause not for a reply.

Lyrical Poetry, we opine, hath many branches--and one of them, "beautiful exceedingly" withbud, blossom, and fruit of balm and brightness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward when the air is calm, and ever and anon, when blow the fitful breezes, it is uplifted in the sunshine, and glows wavingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the loftiest region of the Tree which is Amaranth. That is a fanciful, perhaps foolish form of expression, employed at present to signify Song-writing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever warbled, or chanted, or sung, the best, in our estimation, is verily none other than Thomas Moore. True that Robert Burns has indited many songs that slip into the heart, just like light, no one knows how, filling its chambers sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing more to desire for perfect contentment. Or let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird in the brake, a laverock in the sky. They sing in the fulness of their joy, as nature teaches them--and so did he; and the man, woman, or child, who is delighted not with such singing, be their virtues what they may, must never hope to be in Heaven. Gracious Providence placed Burns in the midst of the sources of Lyrical Poetry--when he was born a Scottish peasant. Now, Moore is an Irishman, and was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, and translated--after a fashion--Anacreon. And Moore has lived much in towns and cities--and in that society which will suffer none else to be called good. Some advantages he has enjoyed which Burns never did--but then how many disadvantages has he undergone, from which the Ayrshire Ploughman, in the bondage of his poverty, was free! You see all that at a single glance in their poetry. But all in humble life is not high--all in high life is not low; and there is as much to guard against in hovel as in hall--in "auld clay-bigging" as in marble palace. Burns sometimes wrote like a mere boor--Moore has too often written like a mere man of fashion. But take them both at their best--and both are inimitable. Both are national poets--and who shall say, that if Moore had been born and bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland had been such a land of knowledge, and virtue, and religion as Scotland is--and surely, without offence, we may say that it never was, and never will be--though we love the Green Island well--that with his fine fancy, warm heart, and exquisite sensibilities, he might not have been as natural a lyrist as Burns; while, take him as he is, who can deny that in richness, in variety, in grace, and in the power of art, he is superior to the ploughman. Of "Lalla Rookh" and "The Loves of the Angels," we defy you to read a page without admiration; but the question recurs, and it is easily answered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a Great Poem?

Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of Trinity. Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, moon, and stars, but

"To murmur by the living brooks
A music sweeter than their own."

What has been the result? Seven volumes (oh! why not seven more?) of poetry, as beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and of Apollo. The earth--the middle air--the sky--the heaven--the heart, mind, and soul of man--are "the haunt and main region of his song." In describing external nature as she is, no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworth--not even Thomson; in imbuing her and making her pregnant with spiritualities, till the mighty mother teems with "beauty far more beauteous" than she had ever rejoiced in till such communion--he excels all the brotherhood. Therein lies his especial glory, and therein the immortal evidences of the might of his creative imagination. All men at times "muse on nature with a poet's eye,"--but Wordsworth ever--and his soul has grown more and more religious from such worship. Every rock is an altar--every grove a shrine. We fear that there will be sectarians even in this Natural Religion till the end of time. But he is the High Priest of Nature--or, to use his own words, or nearly so, he is the High Priest "in the metropolitan temple built in the heart of mighty poets." But has he--even he--ever written a Great Poem? If he has--it is not "The Excursion." Nay, "The Excursion" is not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, all swimming in the light of poetry; some of them sweet and simple, some elegant and graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some of "strength and state," some majestic, some magnificent, some sublime. But though it has an opening, it has no beginning; you can discover the middle only by the numerals on the page; and the most, serious apprehensions have been very generally entertained that it has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary breathe the vital air, may "The Excursion," stop where it will, be renewed; and as in its present shape it comprehends but a Three Days' Walk, we have but to think of an Excursion of three weeks, three months, or three years, to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life of man is not always limited to the term of threescore and ten years. What a Journal might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion till the land overflowed; but whether in one volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, not a Great Poem--nay, not a Poem at all--nor ever to be so esteemed, till the principles on which Great Poets build the lofty rhyme are exploded, and the very names of Art and Science smothered and lost in the bosom of Nature from which they arose.

Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he be alive and hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and subjected for a few minutes to the ethereal influence of that wonderful man's monologue, and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The barren wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will seem, or rather feel to do so, under the lustre of an imagination exhaustless as the sun. You may have seen perhaps rocks suddenly so glorified by sunlight with colours manifold, that the bees seek them, deluded by the show of flowers. The sun, you know, does not always show his orb even in the daytime--and people are often ignorant of his place in the firmament. But he keeps shining away at his leisure, as you would know were he to suffer eclipse. Perhaps he--the sun--is at no other time a more delightful luminary than when he is pleased to dispense his influence through a general haze, or mist--softening all the day till meridian is almost like the afternoon, and the grove, anticipating gloaming, bursts into "dance and minstrelsy" ere the god go down into the sea. Clouds too become him well--whether thin and fleecy and braided, or piled up all round about him castle-wise and cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of temples and other metropolitan structures; nor is it reasonable to find fault with him, when, as naked as the hour he was born, "he flames on the forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur too of his appearance on setting, has become quite proverbial. Now in all this he resembles Coleridge. It is easy to talk--not very difficult to speechify--hard to speak; but to "discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mortal man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is discoursing, the world loses all its commonplaces, and you and your wife imagine yourself Adam and Eve listening to the affable archangel Raphael in the Garden of Eden. You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for a while, than you would a river that "imposes silence with a stilly sound." Whether you understand two consecutive sentences, we shall not stop too curiously to inquire; but you do something better, you feel the whole just like any other divine music. And 'tis your own fault if you do not

"A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn."

Reason is said to be one faculty, and Imagination another--but there cannot be a grosser mistake; they are one and indivisible; only in most cases they live like cat and dog, in mutual worrying, or haply sue for a divorce; whereas in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as well as one flesh, and keep billing and cooing in a perpetual honeymoon. Then his mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and Romans; and though we have heard simpletons say that he knows nothing of science, we have heard him on chemistry puzzle Sir Humphrey Davy--and prove to his own entire satisfaction, that Leibnitz and Newton, though good men, were but indifferent astronomers. Besides, he thinks nothing of inventing a new science, with a complete nomenclature, in a twinkling--and should you seem sluggish of apprehension, he endows you with an additional sense or two, over and above the usual seven, till you are no longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music of fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy piece of poetry. All the faculties, both of soul and sense, seem amicably to interchange their functions and their provinces; and you fear not that the dream may dissolve, persuaded that you are in a future state of permanent enjoyment. Nor are we now using any exaggeration; for if you will but think how unutterably dull are all the ordinary sayings and doings of this life, spent as it is with ordinary people, you may imagine how in sweet delirium you may be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that has fed since first it lisped on "honey-dew," and by lips that have "breathed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic language, which, all the while that it is English, is as grand as Greek and as soft as Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is the alchymist that in his crucible melts down hours to moments--and lo! diamonds sprinkled on a plate of gold.

What a world would this be were all its inhabitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do everything else in a style of equal perfection! But pray, how does the man write poetry with a pen upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring it from his inspired lips? Read "The Ancient Mariner," "The Nightingale," and "Genevieve." In the first, you shudder at the superstition of the sea--in the second, you thrill with the melodies of the woods--in the third, earth is like heaven;--for you are made to feel that

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame!"

Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great Poem? No; for besides the 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.