therefore, for Southey's "Joan of Arc," (which however should always be
regarded as a _juvenile_ effort,) that, precisely when her real glory
begins, the poem ends. But this limitation of the interest grew, no doubt,
from the constraint inseparably attached to the law of epic unity. Joanna's
history bisects into two opposite hemispheres, and both could not have been
presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity of theme,
or else by involving the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in the
latter;--this might have been done--it might have been communicated to a
fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself, in the same way that
Virgil has contrived to acquaint the reader, through the hero's mouth, with
earlier adventures that, if told by the poet speaking in his own person,
would have destroyed the unity of his fable. The romantic interest of the
early and _irrelate_ incidents (last night of Troy, &c.) is thrown as an
affluent into the general river of the personal narrative, whilst yet the
capital current of the _epos_, as unfolding ihe origin and _incunabula_ of
Rome, is not for a moment suffered to be modified by events so subordinate
and so obliquely introduced. It is sufficient, as concerns _this_ section
of Joanna's life to say--that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises,
the restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become a province of
England; and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be maintained.
Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused the English energy to droop; and
that critical opening _La Pucelle_ used with a corresponding felicity
of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves portentous) for
introducing the wedge of French native resources, for rekindling the
national pride, and for planting the Dauphin once more upon his feet. When
Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with
the English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of France.
She taught him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated Orleans,
that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then
beleaguered by the English with an elaborate application of engineering