And grandsires bade their children treasure up
The precious sight, for it would be a tale,
The which in their old age
Would make their children's children gather round,
Intent all ears to hear."
Southey's Ode on the King's Visit to Ireland.
Who would not have believed that this was some virtuous monarch, the father of his people? What had the Irish to bless this king for? What ears now are intent to hear of this vaunted boon of this great and good king's visit sung by this paid poet, the pious Southey? What a much more healthy though terrible truth exists in the Irish Avater, by Lord Byron!
It is a circumstance that redeems the age, that when despotism was making its most hardy attempts in England, when too many of our literary men were disposed to flatter and follow in its train, and when such a man as Southey was the loudest to hymn the follies and crimes of the despots, Lord Byron, the very man who was accused of corrupting the public morals, should still have been the man to denounce, with all the powers of poetry, wit, and withering sarcasm, the nefarious attempt. What a fall was that of Southey, from the poet of liberty to the laudator of crime, tyranny, and carnage! What a position in which to see him stand, crying for a continuance of religious slavery, for the slavery of the press, and advancing beyond all former example of fanatic bigotry, assuming the office of the Deity himself, and dooming those who differed in opinion from him to perdition in the next world! If Robert Southey, as he wrote the epitaph to Algernon Sidney, or the sonnet to Mary Wollstoncraft, could have been shown himself, writing his Vision of Judgment, representing Junius as afraid to speak in his own defense, and George IV. lauded as good, and wise, and "treading in the steps of his father," with what horror would he have regarded himself. With what shame would he have seen Lord Byron, like his avenger, ever ready at hand to turn his solemn adulation to ridicule, and to lash him with a merciless scourge of immortal indignation.
It is with deepest sorrow that I view Southey in this light; but the lesson to future poets should never be withheld. Truth is of eternal interest to mankind, and it can never be too often impressed on youth, that no temporary favor or emolument can make a millionth part of amends for the loss of the glorious reputation of the patriot. Allowing that Southey became sincerely convinced that he was right in his adopted political creed, his own private opinion can not alter the eternal nature of things, and the fact is not the less a fact that his change was a mischievous and an unworthy one. If, while he lived in dread of public opinion, as evinced in his Colloquies, "First the Sword governs; then the Laws; next in succession is the government of Public Opinion. To this we are coming. Already its claims are openly and boldly advanced … timidly, and therefore feebly resisted!" (vol. ii. p. 114) he could have seen to what a pitch this government of public opinion has now arrived, and how peacefully and beneficially all advances under it, with what regret must he have looked back on his own acts and counsels. How much he must have deplored the terms of factionists, seditionists, schismatics, and "lying slanderers," which he had heaped on all who dared to utter an independent opinion. See, especially, his Vision of Judgment. And that the laureate's feelings were very keen, circumstances always showed; for though he declares in his Colloquies that his enemies might as well shoot their arrows at a rhinoceros as at him, yet on every occasion when an able antagonist adverted to his peculiar career, he writhed and turned in bitterest resentment; as on William Smith, of Norwich, for his remarks on Wat Tyler in parliament, and on Lord Byron. That outward policy, and a regard for the position which he had assumed, tended to make him write in a more church and state strain than he otherwise would, is rendered more than probable by the freedom of opinion which he allowed himself in The Doctor, where he was shielded by his incognito.
Deploring the grand error of Southey's life—for we bear no resentment to the dead—more especially as England has gone on advancing and liberalizing, spite of his slavish dogmas, and thus rendered his most zealous advocacy of narrow notions perfectly innoxious—we would ask, whether this peculiar change of his original opinions may not have had a peculiar effect on his poetry? Much and beautifully as he has written, yet, if I may be allowed the expression, he never seems to be at home in his poetry, any more than in the country which, with his new opinions, he adopted. We can read once, especially in our youth, his poems, even the longest—but it is rarely more than once. We are charmed, sometimes a little wearied, but we never wish to recur to them again. There are a few of his smaller poems, as the Penates, the Bee, Blenheim, and a few others, which are exceptions, with some exquisite passages, as that often quoted one on love in Kehama. But, on the whole, we are quite satisfied with one reading. There is a want, somehow, of the spiritual in his writing. Beautiful fancy, and tender feeling, and sometimes deep devotion, there are; but still there lacks that spirit, that essence of the soul which makes Wordsworth and many of the poems of Lord Byron, a never satiating aliment and refreshment—a divine substance on which you live and grow, and by its influence seem to draw nearer to the world of mind and of eternity. Southey's poetry seems a beautiful manufacture; not a part of himself. He carries you in it, as in an enchanted cloud, to Arabia, India, or America; to the celestial Meru, to the dolorous depths of Padalon, or to the Domdaniel caves under the roots of the ocean; but he does not seem to entertain you at home; to take you down into himself. He does not seem to be at rest there, or to have there "his abiding city."