Page images
PDF
EPUB

LIII:

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

1774--1843.

ROBERT SOUTHEY, born 1774, died 1843, was one of the most voluminous writers of his time, both in verse and prose. His poems, though far less popular than those of several of his contemporaries, attracted considerable attention, and formed the subject of much literary controversy. They belong chiefly to the earlier period of his life, previous to his appointment, in 1813, to the office of Poet Laureate. His activity as a prose writer was more persistent. He wrote history and biography, edited early romances, published the works of other authors with critical and illustrative notices of his own, and contributed very largely to reviews, chiefly on political and literary topics. As a young man he was strongly infected by the enthusiasm of the revolutionary period in which he lived; afterwards he became a warm supporter of the existing constitution in Church and State, though his general sympathy with plans of social improvement remained unabated.

His peculiar characteristic as a writer is his command of easy, graceful, and vigorous English. He produced no great effect on his generation, either as a thinker or imaginative writer: his literary criticisms, though generally sensible, are seldom striking or profound. But his technical mastery over his own language was great; and, though he wrote incessantly, his style rarely degenerates into carelessness. In this one respect he contrasts favourably with the author who among his contemporaries may best be compared with him for facility of literary production, Sir Walter Scott.

[blocks in formation]

THE collections of our poets are either too scanty, or too copious. They reject so many, that we know not why half whom they retain should be admitted; they admit so many, that we know not why any should be rejected. There is a want of judgment in giving Bavius a place; but when a place has been awarded him, there is a want of justice in not giving Maevius one also. The sentence of Horace concerning middling poets is disproved by daily experience; whatever the gods may do, certainly the public and the booksellers tolerate them. When Dr. Aikin began to reedit Johnson's collection, it was well observed in the Monthly Magazine, 'that to our best writers there should be more commentary; and of our inferior ones less text.' But Johnson begins just where this observation is applicable, and just where a general collection should end. Down to the Restoration it is to be wished that every poet, however unworthy of the name, should be preserved. In the worst volume of elder date, the historian may find something to assist, or direct his enquiries; the antiquarian something to elucidate what requires illustration; the philologist something to insert in the margin of his dictionary. Time does more for books than for wine; it gives worth to what originally was worthless. Those of later date must stand or fall by their own merits, because the sources of information, since the introduction of newspapers, periodical essays, and magazines, are so numerous, that if they are not read for amusement, they will not be recurred to for anything else. The Restoration is the great epoch in our annals, both civil and literary: a new order of things was then established, and we look back to the times beyond, as the Romans under the Empire, to the age of the Republic.

2. The Evils of Half Knowledge.

WERE it not that the present state of popular knowledge is a necessary part of the process of society, a stage through which it must pass in its progress toward something better, it might reasonably be questioned whether the misinformation of these times be not worse than the ignorance of former ages. For a people who are ignorant and know themselves to be so, will often judge rightly when they are called upon to think at all, acting from common sense, and the unperverted instinct of equity. But there is a kind of half knowledge which seems to disable men even from forming a just opinion of the facts before them, a sort of squint in the understanding which prevents it from seeing straightforward, and by which all objects are distorted. Men in this state soon begin to confound the distinctions between right and wrong; farewell then to simplicity of heart, and with it farewell to rectitude of judgment! The demonstrations of geometry indeed retain their force with them, for they are gross and tangible: but to all moral propositions, to all finer truths they are insensible; the part of their nature which should correspond with these is stricken with dead palsy. Give men a smattering of law, and they become litigious; give them a smattering of physic, and they become hypochondriacs or quacks, disordering themselves by the strength of imagination, or poisoning others in the presumptuousness of conceited ignorance. But of all men, the smatterer in philosophy is the most intolerable and the most dangerous; he begins by unlearning his Creed and his Commandments; and in the process of eradicating what it is the business of all sound education to implant, his duty to God is discarded first, and his duty to his neighbour

presently afterwards. As long as he confines himself to private practice, the mischief does not extend beyond his private circle; there indeed it shews itself;-his neighbour's wife may be in some danger, and his neighbour's property also, if the distinctions between meum and tuum should be practically inconvenient to the man of free opinions. But when he commences professor of moral and political philosophy for the benefit of the public, the fables of old credulity are then verified; his very breath becomes venomous, and every page which he sends abroad carries with it poison to the unsuspecting reader.

LIV.

CHARLES LAMB.

1775-1834.

CHARLES LAMB was born in London in 1775, and educated at Christ's Hospital. Being prevented from taking Orders by an impediment in his speech, he obtained, in 1792, an appointment in the East India House, which he held for upwards of thirty years. He then retired upon a liberal pension, and died in 1834.

Charles Lamb still remains one of the foremost English humorists of the nineteenth century. He reconciles, to a greater degree than any of his contemporaries or successors, the quaintness of those older authors, whom no one has ever more fully appreciated, with the common sense of his own age. His thought, like his life, was, by his own confession, fragmentary; but the broken pieces that are left to us are like broken gold, they sparkle with wit while they glow with a rich and genial humanity.

1. A Quaker's Meeting.

READER, would'st thou know what true peace and quiet mean; would'st thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the multitude; would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; would'st thou possess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species; would'st thou be alone and yet accompanied; solitary yet not desolate; singular, yet not

Bb

« PreviousContinue »