482 LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 



I now produce a volume wliich is, iii a two-fold way, a special 

 memorial of tlie kind which we are reviewing. It is The Parochial 

 History of Bremhill, in the County of Wilts, by W. L. Bowles, 

 Prebendary of Sarum, and endowed Vicar of the said Parish. 

 Within it the author has Avritten with his own hand, " To Robert 

 Southey, in testimony of the highest respect. W. L. B." And at the 

 foot of the title-page Robert Southey has written in his usual minute 

 and beautiful style : " Robert Southey, London, 26 May, 1828, 

 from the Author." The work itself contains a capital account of 

 the Celtic, Roman and Monastic remains in the Pai-ish of BremhUl. 

 Byron satirised Bowles in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 

 A dictum of Bowles had at a later period again offended Byron, viz., 

 that "all images drawn from what is beautiful or sublime in the works 

 of nature, are more beautiful and sublime than any images drawn 

 from art, and that they are therefore more poetical. This idea Bjron 

 pretended to controvert. After sixty years of a more propitious 

 period than that which immediately preceded their publication, the 

 sonnets of Bowles '' still preserve for their author a highly respectable 

 position amongst our poets." So Hallam has said in an Address to 

 the Royal Society of Literature. Of Southey's place in our literature 

 we need not be told. The following brief sentence of criticism how- 

 ever, in relation to him, from an Edinburgh Review of 1839, is 

 doubtless just: " The true character of Southey is not to be sought in 

 his greater poems, nor in the set tasks of his laureate workmanship. 

 These are elaborate studies — exercises of literary skill. The spirit 

 of the poet is to be found in his minor pieces, the more vigorous and 

 less-trained offspring "of his genius. First and foremost amongst these 

 are his ballads. In them he is really an origmal and creative writer.' 

 But irrespective of Southey as the author, Southey as the man will 

 be long a delightful study for English readers. His Life and Corres 

 pondence-by Warter, like the parallel book on Sir "Walter Scott by 

 Lockhart, will afford to future generations wholesome and noble 

 subjects of thought. 



I h^ve something that represents favourably and well the remain- 

 ing one of the so-called Lake Poets — Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is 

 a brief note, undated, addressed apparently to an editor, probably the 

 editor of the Courier, in which paper Coleridge wrote in 1814 and 

 earlier. It relates to a lecture — one of the lectures possibly which 

 Coleridge delivered at Bristol in 1814. He refers also to some bene- 

 volent movement in favour of " poor Cotton Factory children." — 



