Yet in these times he might have done much worse:

His strain display'd some feeling-right

or wrong;

And feeling, in a poet, is the source
Of others' feeling; but they are such liars,
And take all colors-like the hands of
dyers.

88 But words are things, and a small drop of ink,

Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces

That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;

'Tis strange, the shortest letter which

man uses

Instead of speech, may form a lasting link Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces

Frail man, when paper-even a rag like this,

Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his!

89 And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank,

His station, generation, even his nation,
Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank
In chronological commemoration,
Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank,

Or graven stone found in a barrack's
station

In digging the foundation of a closet,
May turn his name up, as a rare deposit.

90 And glory long has made the sages smile; "Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind

Depending more upon the historian's style
Than on the name a person leaves be-
hind:

Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to
Hoyle:

The present century was growing blind To the great Marlborough's skill in giving knocks,1

Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe.

91 Milton's the prince of poets-so we say; A little heavy, but no less divine: An independent being in his dayLearn'd, pious, temperate in love and wine;

But his life falling into Johnson's way2

1 He defeated the French in the Battle of Blenheim, in 1704. See Southey's The Battle of Blenheim (p. 400); also Addison's The Campaign.

Johnson wrote a Life of Milton, published in his Lives of the English Poets, 1779-80.

92

93

We're told this great high priest of all the Nine1

Was whipt at college-a harsh sire-odd spouse,

For the first Mrs. Milton left his house.

All these are, certes, entertaining facts, Like Shakspeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes ;3

Like Titus' youth, and Cæsar's earliest acts;

Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes);

Like Cromwell's pranks;5-but although truth exacts

These amiable descriptions from the scribes,

As most essential to their hero's story, They do not much contribute to his glory. All are not moralists, like Southey, when He prated to the world of "Pantisocrasy;'

The youthful Cromwell was noted for robbing orchards.

The name given to a scheme for an ideal community which Southey, Coleridge, and others planned in 1794 to establish in America.

7 Wordsworth was appointed Distributor of Stamps, but he never had any connection with the excise.

A reference to Wordsworth's Peter Bell, the hero of which is a pedlar.

Coleridge began his contributions to The Morning Post in 1798.

10 Coleridge married Sarah Fricker: Southey, her sister Edith. They were not milliners at the time of their marriage in 1795.

LORD BYRON

sion,1

Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

95 He there builds up a formidable dyke Between his own and others' intellect: But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like

Joanna Southcote's Shiloh,2 and her sect,

Are things which in this century don't strike

The public mind,-so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale virginities

Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

96 But let me to my story: I must own,

If I have any fault, it is digressionLeaving my people to proceed alone, While I soliloquize beyond expression: But these are my addresses from the throne,

Which put off business to the ensuing

session:

Forgetting each omission is a loss to
The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

97 I know that what our neighbors call "longueurs''

(We've not so good a word, but have the thing,

In that complete perfection which insures
An epic from Bob Southey every
spring),

Form not the true temptation which allures
The reader; but 'twould not be hard to

bring

Some fine examples of the epopée,1
To prove its grand ingredient is ennui.5

98 We learn from Horace, "Homer sometimes

sleeps;"

We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,

To show with what complacency he creeps, With his dear "Waggoners," around his lakes.

He wishes for "a boat" to sail the deepsOf ocean?-No, of air; and then he makes

Another outery for a "a little boat,"
And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

See p. 274.

Joanna Southcott was a visionary who propheWhen sied that she would give birth to a second Shiloh, or Messiah, on Oct. 19, 1814.

that time came, she fell into a trance and died ten days later.

* tedious passages Ars Poetica, 359.

epic

languid weariness

7 Peter Bell, st. 1.

100

101

plain,

gon,

T'our tale.-The feast was over, the slaves

The Arab lore and poet's song were done, And every sound of revelry expired;

The lady and her lover, left alone,

The rosy flood of twilight's sky admired;

Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea, That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee!

Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot, where I

so oft

Have felt that moment in its fullest power Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and

From a true lover,-shadow'd my mind's

103 Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer! Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love! Ave Maria! may our spirits dare

eye.

things

the moon's?

Sure my invention must be down at zero, And I grown one of many "wooden spoons"

Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs1 please

To dub the last of honors in degrees).

1 Cantabrigians-i. e., those associated with the University of Cambridge.