contrasting Southey's fixed and well-earned fame, with the abuse and
indefatigable hostility of his anonymous critics from his early youth
to his ripest manhood. But I cannot think so ill of human nature as
not to believe, that these critics have already taken shame to
themselves, whether they consider the object of their abuse in his
moral or his literary character. For reflect but on the variety and
extent of his acquirements! He stands second to no man, either as an
historian or as a bibliographer; and when I regard him as a popular
essayist,--(for the articles of his compositions in the reviews are,
for the greater part, essays on subjects of deep or curious interest
rather than criticisms on particular works)--I look in vain for any
writer, who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such
recondite sources, with so many just and original reflections, in a
style so lively and poignant, yet so uniformly classical and
perspicuous; no one, in short, who has combined so much wisdom with so
much wit; so much truth and knowledge with so much life and fancy. His
prose is always intelligible and always entertaining. In poetry he has
attempted almost every species of composition known before, and he has
added new ones; and if we except the highest lyric,--(in which how
few, how very few even of the greatest minds have been fortunate)--he
has attempted every species successfully; from the political song of
the day, thrown off in the playful overflow of honest joy and
patriotic exultation, to the wild ballad; from epistolary ease and
graceful narrative, to austere and impetuous moral declamation; from
the pastoral charms and wild streaming lights of the Thalaba, in which
sentiment and imagery have given permanence even to the excitement of
curiosity; and from the full blaze of the Kehama,--(a gallery of
finished pictures in one splendid fancy piece, in which,
notwithstanding, the moral grandeur rises gradually above the
brilliance of the colouring and the boldness and novelty of the