|
|
Gentleman's Magazine 1850 part 2 p.257
most delicate exercise in impartial judgment whereof I am
capable - when I declare my full conviction that posterity
will rank him with Milton."
He says, in a following page, "that Wordsworth is a poet of
the same class with Milton, and of equal powers!"
Soon after he writes to Sir Walter Scott:
"Jeffrey I hear has written what his admirers call a
crushing review of The Excursion. He might as well
seat himself on Skiddaw, and fancy that he crushed the
mountain." I heartily wish Wordsworth may one day meet with
him, and lay him alongside, yard-arm and yard-arm, in
argument, &c."
In 1815 we find Southey has begun his Quaker's Poem, in
irregular rhyme; the principal character being a Seeker (in
the language of the day) rather than Quaker, a son of Goffe
the King's judge, a godson of Cromwell, a friend of Milton,
and a companion of William Penn. The plan, he says, is
sufficiently made out.
"But I have no longer that ardour of execution, which I
possessed twenty years ago. I have the disheartening
conviction that my best is done, and that to add to the bulk
of my works will not be to add to their estimation.
Doubtless I shall go on with the poem and complete it if I
live; but it will be to please others, not myself, and will
be so long in progress, that in all likelihood I shall never
begin another."
Whatever might become of his poetical talent, his
prose powers at least were in full vigour. He was
writing at once a History of the Spanish War, a History of
Brazil, and projecting a History of Portugal, which last was
to be "the most interesting of his historical works."
Indeed, he adds, "for thorough research, and a range of
materials, I do not believe that the History of Portugal
will ever have been surpassed." He also intended writing the
Age of George the Third, "the most promising project which
occurred to him," being nothing less than "a view of the
world during the most eventful half-century of its annals;
not the history, but a philosophical summary with
reference to the causes and consequences of all these mighty
revolutions. There never was a more splendid subject, and I
have full confidence in my own capacity." In the autumn of
1815 he made a short tour in Belgium, and then visited the
field of Waterloo, "red with Gallic blood." His journal has
not been printed, but his poetical pilgrimage to Waterloo is
well known. In 1816 he writes to thank Sir Walter Scott for
his Lord of the Isles, in which he says, "There are portions
which are not surpassed in any of your poems, and, in the
first part especially, a mixture of originality, and
animation, and beauty, which is seldom found." For his
religious opinions we may refer to another passage in a
letter at nearly the same period.
"Christianity exists no where in so pure a form as in our
Church; but even there it is mingled with much alloy, from
which I know not how it will be purified. I have an
instinctive abhorrence of bigotry. When Dissenters
talk of the Establishment, they make me feel like a high
churchman; and when I get among high churchmen I am ready to
take shelter in dissent."
list, We must here pass over with a soft and light footstep
the melancholy loss of his son, in his tenth year, "the head
and flower of his earthly happiness, the central jewel of
the ring, and the pure blossom of his bones," and rejoin the
poet as he again enters into the business of life. By
nature, he says, he was a poet, by deliberate choice
anhistorian, and a political writer by
accident or the course of events; and, as a political
writer, his articles in the Qtrly Review had drawn the
attention of Lord Liverpool, who entertained a wish to see
him, it is supposed, for the purppose of hearing his
sentiments or securing his assistance as a writer on the
side of authority, and order, and legal government, for it
was truly said there was muchun-English spirit abroad
then, as there is now. Such was Hazlitt, whom even Mr.
Justice Talfourd's kindly pen describes as "staggering under
the blow of Waterloo," and as "hardly able to forgive the
valour of the conquerors." "Such was my father's friend,
William Taylor of Norwich, who called Waterloo a victory
justly admired, but not in its tendency and consequences
satisfactory to a cosmopolitan philosophy, and says,
that liberty, toleration, and art have rather reason to
bewail than to rejoice at the presence of trophies
oppressive to the interests of man-
|
