414. Robert Southey. Poet Laureate.
[Born at Bristol, 1774. Died at Keswick, in Cumberland, 1843. Aged 69.]
An author who has earned imperishable renown in his own country, for the dignity with which he upheld the literary character, for his virtuous mind, for his patient, honest industry, and for his masculine prose writings. His poetical compositions—with the exception of the minor poems—are too laboured and too long, are too deliberately planned, and not sufficiently impassioned to be immortal; but they contain, nevertheless, many fine descriptive passages, abounding in strength and beauty: the subjects are chosen, and treated, with bold and free imagination. Southey read too much, and reflected too little; he was an insatiable devourer of books, and almost a prisoner to his study; hence he imbibed prejudices, and narrowed his intellectual sympathies: but his heart was of the soundest, and his feelings of the freshest. In the distribution of his hours he was most methodical. He had a surprising memory, a yearning towards the romantic in his literary pursuits, and an insuppressible vein of humour. He lived and died, comparatively poor, and he was always a day labourer. Yet he had ever a ready ear for the tale of distress, and an open hand for all who needed its grasp in the difficult journey of life. He never murmured at his own inevitable yoke, and he had self-command enough to refuse a baronetcy, when, towards the close of his career, he was offered the honour by the Minister of the day. It is sad to think that the mind of Southey gave way in the decline of life. When he could read no longer, he walked to his bookshelves with a vacant soul, and opened the volumes only to look at them, without being able to derive the least consolation from their pages. He died honoured, and literary men in England are proud to acknowledge, in him, one of the worthiest of their order.
[This is a posthumous Bust, by E. H. Baily, R.A., from the marble which forms a portion of the monument erected to the poet’s memory in Bristol. It was carved in 1847.]
415. Thomas Campbell. Poet.
[Born at Glasgow, 1777. Died at Boulogne, 1844. Aged 67.]
The poetical career of Thomas Campbell began when he was twenty years old, and was completed before he was thirty-three. He wrote nothing subsequently to this age worthy of his fame. His earliest work, the “Pleasures of Hope,” composed in youth, at once established his claim to be ranked amongst the foremost poets of his time. It brimmed with promise; and not the least singular circumstance in connexion with Thomas Campbell’s life is, that the excessive expectation raised by his first appeal was never satisfactorily fulfilled. The poetic faculty burned in the “Pleasures of Hope,” which was full of melody, pathos, animated description, and impassioned sentiment. All needful ardour was there. There were also to be noted the faults of a youthful pen—redundancy of diction and incorrectness. Ten years after the “Pleasures of Hope” he published “Gertrude of Wyoming.” The impulsive quality was already subdued by elaborate art; and although extreme beauty and tenderness were here and there in the poem, correctness was still wanting. Your spirit was entranced with verses, than which, in the English language, you could find none better, simpler, and sweeter. Yet for one such verse that was borne away from “Gertrude of Wyoming” a hundred were forgotten which were not its peers. Campbell had momentary, true, intense conceptions, and fineness of fancy; he exhibited felicities of thought and expression that fastened instantly on every memory; his, too, was an ear of poetical sensibility to the music of language; but woe to the verse if his poetic utterance came not of an inspiration—by a seizing theme. “Ye Mariners of England,” “The Soldier’s Dream,” “The Battle of Hohenlinden,” constituted such themes, and these small poems of Campbell are consequently abiding treasures in the literature of the nation.
[By E. H. Baily, R.A. Executed in 1827.]
416. Thomas Moore. Poet.
[Born at Dublin, 1780. Died in Wiltshire, 1852. Aged 72.]