author. But I am at a loss to conceive by what perversity of judgment, these relaxations of his genius could be employed to diminish his fame as the writer of Gulliver, or the Tale of a Tub. Had Mr. Southey written twice as many poems of inferior merit, or partial interest, as have enlivened the journals of the day, they would have added to his honor with good and wise men, not merely or principally as proving the versatility of his talents, but as evidences of the purity of that mind, which even in its levities never dictated a line which it need regret on any moral account.

I have in imagination transferred to the future biographer the duty of contrasting Southey's fixed and well-earned fame, with the abuse and indefatigable hostility of his anonymous critics from his early youth to his ripest manhood. But I can not think so ill of human naturé as not to believe, that these critics have already taken shame to themselves, whether they consider the object of their abuse in his moral or his literary character. For reflect but on the variety and extent of his acquirements! He stands second to no man, either as an historian or as a bibliographer; and when I regard him as a popular essayist (for the articles of his compositions in the reviews are, for the greater part, essays on subjects of deep or curious interest rather than criticisms on particular works)-I look in vain for any writer, who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with so many just and original reflections, in a style so lively and poignant, yet so uniformly classical and perspicuous; no one, in short, who has combined so much wisdom with so much wit; so much truth and knowledge with so much life and fancy. His prose is always intelligible and always entertaining. In poetry he has attempted almost every species of composition known before, and he has added new ones; and if we except the highest lyric-(in which how few, how very few even of the greatest minds have been fortunate)—he has attempted every species Successfully;-from the political song of the day, thrown off in the playful overflow of honest joy and patriotic exultation, to the wild ballad; from epistolary ease and graceful narrative, to austere and impetuous moral declamation; from the pastoral charms and wild streaming lights of the Thalaba, in which sentiment and imagery have given permanence even to the excitement of curiosity; and from the full blaze of the Kehama-(a gallery of finished pictures in one splendid fancy piece, in which, notwith

standing, the moral grandeur rises gradually above the brilliance of the coloring and the boldness and novelty of the machinery)to the more sober beauties of the Madoc; and lastly, from the Madoc to his Roderick, in which, retaining all his former excellencies of a poet eminently inventive and picturesque, he has surpassed himself in language and metre, in the construction of the whole, and in the splendor of particular passages.

Here then shall I conclude? No! The characters of the deceased, like the encomia on tombstones, as they are described with religious tenderness, so are they read, with allowing sympathy indeed, but yet with rational deduction. There are men, who deserve a higher record; men with whose characters it is the interest of their contemporaries, no less than that of posterity, to be made acquainted; while it is yet possible for impartial censure, and even for quick-sighted envy, to cross-examine the tale without offence to the courtesies of humanity; and while the eulogist, detected in exaggeration or falsehood, must pay the full penalty of his baseness in the contempt which brands the convicted flatterer. Publicly has Mr. Southey been reviled by men, who, as I would fain hope for the honor of human nature, hurled fire-brands against a figure of their own imagination; publicly have his talents been depreciated, his principles denounced; as publicly do I therefore, who have known him intimately, deem it my duty to leave recorded, that it is Southey's almost unexampled felicity, to possess the best gifts of talent and genius free from all their characteristic defects. To those who remember the state of our public schools and universities some twenty years past, it will appear no ordinary praise in any man to have passed from innocence into virtue, not only free from all vicious habit, but unstained by one act of intemperance, or the degradations akin to intemperance. That scheme of head, heart, and habitual demeanor, which in his early manhood, and first controversial writings, Milton, claiming the privilege of self-defence, asserts of himself, and challenges his calumniators to disprove ;* this will his school-mates, his fellow

* [Ad me quod attinet, te testor, Deus, mentis intima cogitationumque omnium indagator, me nullius rei (quanquam hoc apud me sæpius et, quam maxime potui, serio quæsivi, et recessus vitæ omnes excussi,) nullius vel recens vel olim commnissi mihimet conscium esse, cujus atrocitas hanc mihi præ cæteris calamitatem creare, aut accersisse merito potuerit.-Def. Sec.

Tu senties eam esse vitæ meæ et apud me conscientiam, et apud bonos ex

collegians, and his maturer friends, with a confidence proportioned to the intimacy of their knowledge, bear witness to, as again realized in the life of Robert Southey. But still more striking to those, who by biography or by their own experience are familiar with the general habits of genius, will appear the poet's matchless industry and perseverance in his pursuits; the worthiness and dignity of those pursuits; his generous submission to tasks of transitory interest, or such as his genius alone could make otherwise; and that having thus more than satisfied the claims of affection or prudence, he should yet have made for himself time and power, to achieve more, and in more various departments, than almost any other writer has done, though employed wholly on subjects of his own choice and ambition. But as Southey possesses, and is not possessed by, his genius, even so is he master even of his virtues. The regular and methodical tenor of his daily labors, which would be deemed rare in the most mechanical pursuits, and might be envied by the mere man of business, loses all semblance of formality in the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the spring and healthful cheerfulness of his spirits. Always employed, his friends find him always at leisure. No less punctual in trifles, than steadfast in the performance of highest duties, he inflicts none of those small pains and discomforts which irregular men scatter about them, and which in the aggregate so often become formidable obstacles both to happiness and utility; while on the contrary he bestows all the pleasures, and inspires all that ease of mind on those around him or connected with him, which perfect consistency, and (if such a word might be framed) absolute reliability, equally in small as in great concerns, can not but inspire and bestow; when this too is softened without being weakened by kindness and gentleness. I know few men who so well deserve the character which an ancient attributes to Marcus Cato, namely, that he was likest virtue, in as much as he seemed to act aright, not in obedience to any law or outward motive, but by the necessity of a happy nature, which could not act otherwise.* As son, brother, husband, father, masistimationem, eam esse et præterita fiduciam et reliquæ spem bonam, ut nihil impedire me, dut absterrere possit, quo minus flagitia tua, si pergis lacessere, etiam liberius adhuc et diligentius persequar.-Def. cont. Alex. Morum.-Ed.] * [——homo virtuti simillimus, et par omnia ingenio Diis quam hominibus propior, qui nunquam recte fecit, ut facere videretur, sed quia aliter facere non poterat.-Vell. Paterc. II. 35.-Ed.]

ter, friend, he moves with firm, yet light steps, alike unostentatious, and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and of liberty, of national independence and of national illumination. When future critics shall weigh out his guerdon of praise and censure, it will be Southey the poet only, that will supply them with the scanty materials for the latter. They will likewise not fall to record, that as no man was ever a more constant friend, never had poet more friends and honorers among the good of all parties; and that quacks in education, quacks in politics, and quacks in criticism were his only ene mies.*

*It is not easy to estimate the effects which the example of a young man as highly distinguished for strict purity of disposition and conduct, as for intellectual power and literary acquirements, may produce on those of the same age with himself, especially on those of similar pursuits and congenial minds. For many years, my opportunities of intercourse with Mr. Southey have been rare, and at long intervals; but I dwell with unabated pleasure on the strong and sudden, yet I trust not fleeting, influence, which my moral being underwent on my acquaintance with him at Oxford, whither I had gone at the commencement of our Cambridge vacation on a visit to an old school-fellow.* Not indeed on my moral or religious principles, for they had never been contaminated; but in awakening the sense of the duty and dignity of making my actions accord with those principles, both in word and deed. The irregularities only not universal among the young men of my standing, which I always knew to be wrong, I then learned to feel as degrading; learned to know that an opposite conduct, which was at that time considered by us as the easy virtue of cold and selfish prudence, might originate in the noblest emotions, in views the most disinterested and imaginative. It is not, however, from grateful recolléetions only, that I have been impelled thus to leave these my deliberate sentiments on record; but in some sense as a debt of justice to the man, whose name has been so often connected with mine for evil to which he is a stranger. As a specimen 1 subjoin part of a note, from The Beauties of the Anti-jacobin, in which hav ing previously informed the public that I had been dishonored at Cambridge for preaching Deism, at a time when, for my youthful ardor in defence of Christianity, I was decried as a bigot by the proselytes of French phi-(or to speak more truly, psi-)-losophy, the writer concludes with these words: "since this time he has left his native country, commenced citizen of the world, left his poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex his

* [ Mr. Coleridge first became acquainted with Mr. Southey, then an under-graduate at Baliol College, in June, 1794.-Ed.]

CHAPTER IV.

THE LYRICAL BALLADS WITH THE PREFACE-MR. WORDSWORTH'S EARLIER POEMS-ON FANCY AND IMAGINATION-THE INVESTIGATION OF THE DISTINCTION IMPORTANT TO THE FINE ARTS.

I HAVE wandered far from the object in view, but as I fancied to myself readers who would respect the feelings that had tempted me from the main road; so I dare calculate on not a few, who will warmly sympathize with them. At present it will be sufficient for my purpose, if I have proved, that Mr. Southey's wridisce his friends, LAMB and SOUTHEY."* With severest truth it may be asserted, that it would not be easy to select two men more exemplary in their domestic affections than those whose names were thus printed at full length as in the same rank of morals with a denounced infidel and fugitive, who had left his children fatherless, and his wife destitute! Is it surprising, that many good men remained longer than perhaps they otherwise would have done adverse to a party, which encouraged and openly rewarded the authors of such atrocious calumnies? Qualis es, nescio; sed per quales agis, scio et doleo.

* [Of this now harmless injustice Mr. Talfourd speaks as follows, in his interesting sketch of the life, accompanying the delightful Letters of Charles Lamb. 66 'It was surely rather too much, even for partisans, when denoun. cing their political opponents,"-(in the poem of the New Morality' published in the Anti-Jacobin,')—" as men who dirt on private worth and virtue threw,' thus to slander two young men of the most exemplary character-one of an almost puritanical exactness of demeanor and conductand the other persevering in a life of noble self-sacrifice, chequered only by the frailties of a sweet nature, which endeared him even to those who were not admitted to the intimacy necessary to appreciate the touching example of his severer virtues." Vol. i p. 120.

This passage I quote not, of course, for the sake of refuting The AntiJacobin of 1798, but for its warm testimony to the virtues of my father's friend, Mr. Lamb. Having quoted it, I can not but observe, as regards the terms in which it speaks of Mr. Southey (my revered uncle), that his purity,―a pureness of heart and spirit far beyond any that mere exactitude of demeanor and conduct could evidence or express,- -was utterly unmixed, as to me it seems, with puritanism, either in opinion or in spirit.