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Gentleman's Magazine 1850 part 2 p.259
this portion of our notice by extracting a short passage in
which Southey has given a few touches of his own portrait,
and that of another poet of the age:
"I am no Methodist, no sectarian, no bigot, no formalist. My
natural spirits are buoyant, beyond those of any other
person, - man, woman, or child, - whom I ever saw or heard
of.They have had enough to try them and to sink them, and it
is by religion alone that I shall be enabled to pass the
remainder of my days in cheerfulness and hope. Without
hope there can be no happiness, and without religion
no hope but such as deceives us. Your heart seems to want an
object, and this would satisfy it, and if it has been needed
this and only this can be the cure. ... ... Scott is
very ill: he suffers dreadfully, but bears his sufferings
with admirable equanimity, and looks on to the probable
termination of them with calmness and well-founded hope. God
grant that he may recover! He is a noble and
generous-hearted creature, whose like we shall not look upon
again."
Notes. P.59. "Some unkown author has sent a me a poem called
'The Missionary,' not well arranged, but written with great
feeling and beauty."
Was not this unknown author the Rev. Mr. Lisle Bowles?
P.192. "Your comments upon the 'Castle of Indolence' express
the feeling of every true poet. The second part must always
be felt as injuring the first. I agree with you also as
respecting the Minstrel. Beautiful and delightful as
it is, it still wants that imaginative charm which Thomson
has caught from Spenser, but which no poet has ever so
entirely possessed as Spenser himself."
As regards the Castle of Indolence, Professor Dugald Stuart
says, quoting a letter of Gray's, "Thomson has lately
published a poem called The Castle of Indolence, in which
there are some good stanzas.' Who could have expected this
sentence from the pen of Gray? In an ordinary critic,
possessed of one-hundredth part of Gray's sensibility and
taste, such total indifference to the beauties of this
exquisite performance would be utterly impossible." See
Philosophical Essays, p.513. 8vo. But had Gray written,
several or many good stanzas, instead of
some, we should be inclined to agree with his
judgment against his critic. It is not generally known that
Mr. Mathias translated this poem into Italian, under the
following title;- "Thomson (James) Il Castello dell Ozio,
poema in due canti, recento in verso Italiano detto ottava
rima da Tommaso Jacopo Mathias. Napoli. 1826." (Privately
printed.) There is a very interesting letter on Thomson from
Dr. Murdoch in Dr. Wool's Memoir of Joseph Warton, p.252.
The style of the "Seasons" was ridiculed in Martinus
Scriblerus. Mr. Hazlitt says, "Berni's description of
himself and his friend in the last canto of the Orlando
Innamorato, seems to have been the origin of the general
idea of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and the personal
introdcution of himself into poetry, as exemplified in that
delightful little work." See Round Table, i. p.184. On
Gray's opinion of Beattie's Minstrel, see Forbes's Life of
Beattie, vo.i. p.197. Let. xlv. 4to. Beattie is said to have
taken his first idea of the poem from Dr, Percy's Ancient
Ballads. See a letter from Mr. Forbes to Dr. Percy, in
Nichols's Illustrations of Literature, vol.viii. p.376.
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