1825. 
tuents of rhythmical quantity and accent, 
evinced in his hobbling imitations of the 
classical measures, and the harem-sca- 
rem of his Kehama and Thaliba,) an ap- 
peal to his less affected measures, lyrical 
and heroic, will satisfy an} reader who 
has an unprejudiced taste for the ge- 
nuine music of poetic eloquence. We 
hail, therefore, the ‘re-appearance of 
Southey, in his unsophisticated charac- 
ter as a poet. 
Independently of these considera- 
tions, after the volumes of splash-dash 
and tinsel pretension we have of late 
been obliged to wade through — the 
jingling prose run mad—the stilted in- 
anities and creeping heroics—the frothy 
ribaldry in the plumes of wit, and dul- 
ness_made fine by affected metaphor— 
and all that wreck of crabbed, or of glit- 
tering verbiage, which comes floating 
on the muddy torrent of our modern 
Helicon; it is some relief to come to a 
green spot that we can rest upon, even 
though it have not all the luxuriance of 
another Eden, or though a few weeds 
should be scattered here and there, 
which taste and criticism might have 
eradicated. And such a spot we find in 
the “ Tale of Paraguay.” 
We think, indeed, that Mr. Southey 
would have been more a poet if he had 
been less a preacher ; and that, without 
departing from that strict adherence to 
historic fact, in which he prides himself, 
or the simplicity which accords with his 
subject, his story might have been some- 
what more adorned with the colourings 
and embellishments of poetic imagina- 
tion. Neither do we maintain, that the 
style of the composition is entirely free 
from affected mannerisms : the passage 
we have already quoted exhibits one of 
these; and the pedantic straining after 
primative etymology in the use of the 
verb, to resent, ina sense in which it is 
never used in our language; in the fol- 
lowing otherwise beautiful description 
of the widowed and maternal feelings of 
Monnema, after the posthumous birth © 
- of Mooma,—is another :— 
** The tears which o’er her infancy were shed 
Profuse, resented not of grief alone : 
Maternal love their bitterness allay’d, 
And with a strength and virtue all its own 
Sustain’d the breaking heart. A look, a 
, tone, 
A gesture of that innocent babe, in eyes 
With saddest recollections overflown, © >’ 
Would sometimes make a tender smile arise, 
Like, sunshine breaking’ through a shower 
\. |. in vernal skies.” 
But wethink the present less exception- 
News from Parnassus. 
211 
able, in this respect, than any of his former 
compositions. We meet not with those 
frequent occurrences of affirmation, by 
multiplied negatives—those appeals’ to 
the solecism of our idiom, that two’ ne 
gatives make an affirmative — which 
have, herefore, so frequently revolted 
our critical feelings; nor do we meet 
at every turn with that literary dandy- 
ism, the substantive use of the numeral 
one (the beauteous one—the almighty one 
—the silly one / &c,;) or with that affec- 
tation of strained inversion, which 
throws a terminative emphasis upon 
the qualifying syllable. Of this last, 
however, we meet with at least one in- 
stance (the worse, because it is evi- 
dently appealed to for the sake of the 
rhyme) in the following eulogy on the 
Jesuit establishment, already alluded 
to, in Paraguay. 
“ Yes; for in history’s mournful map, the 
eye 
On Paraguay, as on a sunny spot, 
May rest complacent: to humanity, 
There, and there only, hath a peaceful lot ’ 
Been granted, by Ambition troubled not, 
By Avarice undebased, exemptfrom care, 
By perilous passions undisturbed. And 
what 
If Glory never rear’d her standard there, 
Nor with her -clarion’s- blast awoke .the 
slumbering air ?”’ 
But upon the whole, there is, with 
these few exceptions, a simplicity with- 
out simpleness, a sedate correctness not 
usual with Mr. Southey, in the lan- 
guage and versification of this poem; 
and a sweetness of pathetic harmony 
(of which he was always, when he:chose, 
a master) running, with few interrup- 
tions, throughout the whole, which 
gives a placid charm to his Spenserian 
stanza. Et 
On the subject of sentiment (his am- 
biguous theology out of the question !) 
it is scarcely necessary to speak. -Sou- 
they is the poet of sentiment. His 
heart is the last thing we \shall quarrel ° 
with ; and in all that relates to domes- 
tic or social feeling he is never wrong 
—except that he sometimes introduces 
it rather too egotistically, and where it 
is out of place. Thus, the present 
volume is ushered in, by a poetical de- 
dication to his daughter, Edith May 
Southey, a child of ten years old’; for 
whose perusal, therefore, it never could 
have been written; and, at any rate,’an 
odd sort of patron to appeal to.” In 
this he tells a pretty sentimental story, 
about kissing her with tears in his eyes, 
and about the May-day of ‘her birth, 
2E2 and 
