1825.J 
* And where he was he knew, the time, 
the place,... 
All circumstantial things to him were clear ; 
‘His own heart undisturb’d. His Mo- 
ther’s face . 
How could he chuse but know ; or knowing 
fear 
Her presence and that Maid’s, to him more 
dear > 
Than all that had been left him now below ? 
Their love had drawn them from their 
happy sphere ; 
That dearest love unchanged they came 
to show; ‘ 
And he-must be baptized, and then he too 
might go.” 
The Jesuit finds him upon minute exa- 
mination perfectly sane [in every other 
respect]. ‘ Mark of passion there was 
none; none of derangement.” There 
was a strange brightness in his eyes; 
but his pulse was regular ; and “ nothing 
troubled him in mind” — 
“ But he must be baptized: he could not 
tarry here.”” 
So baptized he was. 
“The day, in its accustomed course, passed 
on; 
The Indian mark’d him ere to rest he went, 
How o’er his beads, as he was wont, he 
bent ; 
_ And then, like one who casts all care aside, 
Lay down. The old man fear’d noill event, 
When, ‘ Yeare come for me!’ Yeruti cried ; 
* Yes, I am ready now!’ and instantly he 
died.” 
We take the poet’s own shewing of 
the case. What were the results of the 
conversion of these poor Indians but in- 
ward pining and consumptive grief, (un- 
der the semblance, from a sense of duty 
assumed, of cheerful resignation,) which 
dug the graves of all:—in the shape 
of bodily disease for the mother and 
daughter ; but for the son, by that morbid 
derangement of the spirit which sustains 
with preternatural buoyancy the out- 
ward frame and faculties, till the crisis 
arrive, or the object of diseased desire 
be obtained, and then submits at once to 
that mortality to which it’ had already 
consigned every other faculty by which 
vital function can be sustained. 
But this, though an exposure of the 
sophisticating superstition, is no censure 
to the poet: to his opinions it may be ; 
but for these he is not responsible at the 
Parnassian bar. He has clothed his sen- 
timents poetically, and has rendered his 
incidents interesting. He has soothed 
the ear with his plaintive melody, and 
touched the heart with the tenderness of 
feeling. In one respect, perhaps, even 
his subject has not- been unhappily cho- 
News from Parnassus. 
215 
‘sen; it is in accordance with the cha- 
racter of his mind, and the instinct of 
his style: for the genius of Southey is 
naturally rather placid than towering, 
and characterized, like his rhythm, by 
smoothness, not by energy. He can 
melt, but he cannot burn—his fancy is 
picturesque, but his imagination is not 
creative. He has yividly delineated, and 
sometimes brilliantly coloured, many of 
the splendid incoherencies of oriental 
fable in his Kehama, and has run wild in 
the rambling prose of Thaliba : but when- 
ever he has aimed at the impassioned 
sublime, he has failed in his effect, and 
found it easier to be preternatural than 
supernatural ; and, straining at the great, 
has fallen into the extravagant. His 
language wants that rich and pregnant 
conciseness which should sustain: the 
high heroic * ; and he appears, therefore, 
tomost advantagein themes and thoughts 
andimages that will bear dilation. How 
Mr. Southey can dilate we have a strik- 
ing instance in the poem before us. 
Dr. Dodd (we think it was), in his Poem 
on the Death of the Prince of Wales 
(the late King’s father), apologizing for 
the tardy appearance of his effusion from 
the exeess of his sorrow, says 
** Deep streams glide silent, small brooks 
babbling flow.”’+ bine 
The thought has been re-echoed by suc- 
cessive poets; but never, if we recollect 
rightly, with equally expressive concise- 
ness. It was reserved for Mr. Southey 
to dilate this one nervous line into two 
and a half: 
“Waters that babble on their way proclaim _ 
A shallowness: but in their strength deep 
streams 
Flow silently.” 
But we will not take leave of this poem 
with the dregs of any thing that looks 
like censure on our pen. We will present 
our readers, therefore, with a farewell 
quotation, selected from the beautiful 
description of the first interview between 
the venerable missionary and Mooma, 
and trust it will be sufficient to induce 
our readers to join with us in the wish, 
that Mr. Southey may send us occasion- 
ally more “ News from Parnassus.” 
The holy father (who had heard the 
rumour 
* His Joan of Arc, in the first edition, 
was a beautiful heroic pastoral. It was not 
epic; and by endeavouring afterwards to 
make it so, he only made it flat. ; 
+ The original may be traced to Sir W.. 
Raleigh. 
«« Passions are likened best to floods and streams 5 
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb. 
