machinery)--to the more sober beauties of the Madoc; and lastly, from
the Madoc to his Roderick, in which, retaining all his former
excellencies of a poet eminently inventive and picturesque, he has
surpassed himself in language and metre, in the construction of the
whole, and in the splendour of particular passages.

Here then shall I conclude? No! The characters of the deceased, like
the encomia on tombstones, as they are described with religious
tenderness, so are they read, with allowing sympathy indeed, but yet
with rational deduction. There are men, who deserve a higher record;
men with whose characters it is the interest of their contemporaries,
no less than that of posterity, to be made acquainted; while it is yet
possible for impartial censure, and even for quick-sighted envy, to
cross-examine the tale without offence to the courtesies of humanity;
and while the eulogist, detected in exaggeration or falsehood, must
pay the full penalty of his baseness in the contempt which brands the
convicted flatterer. Publicly has Mr. Southey been reviled by men,
who, as I would fain hope for the honour of human nature, hurled fire-
brands against a figure of their own imagination; publicly have his
talents been depreciated, his principles denounced; as publicly do I
therefore, who have known him intimately, deem it my duty to leave
recorded, that it is Southey's almost unexampled felicity, to possess
the best gifts of talent and genius free from all their characteristic
defects. To those who remember the state of our public schools and
universities some twenty years past, it will appear no ordinary praise
in any man to have passed from innocence into virtue, not only free
from all vicious habit, but unstained by one act of intemperance, or
the degradations akin to intemperance. That scheme of head, heart, and
habitual demeanour, which in his early manhood, and first
controversial writings, Milton, claiming the privilege of self-