92 But, ridiculous as Mr Southey's conduct certainly was, it furnishes no sort of excuse for Lord Byron's attacks upon him in the last cantos of Don Juan, and here in these Notes. Mr Southey blamed Lord Byron's poetry for being of an immoral tendency now and then-which all the world knows it to be; but did this give Lord Byron any right to compose, and deliberately -most deliberately-publish a set of contumelious verses about the circumstances of Mr Southey's marriage, and the character of Mr Southey's wifeor to lash Mr Southey himself for making money by the use of his pen? The first of these offences against Mr Southey's feelings is of such a kind that we could not comment upon it without increasing the injury inflicted. We may also add, that it is a sort of thing calculated to excite no feeling in the mind of any man (excepting only Mr Southey himself and his family friends), but those of perfect loathing, disgust, contempt, and profound sorrow, for the shocking wilful degradation of majestic genius. The second-the sarcasm about Mr As for Lord Byron's grand and so- likely to be improved, in consequence To conclude, Lord Byron very mo- mean to say, that he has given away As for Mr Southey, as all the world knows him to be a man of splendid genius and admirable learning, and of the purest possible character as a man, a citizen, and writer; we dare to say, there is no risk of his making himself at all unhappy about any thing which the genius, even of Byron, can inflict coming, as it does, with the name of Lord Byron attached to it. There is something very healing in the effect of such a signature, applied on such an occasion. Just as this article was going to press, THE COURIER, containing Mr Southey's Answer to Lord Byron, came to hand. We think it proper to insert it here. SIR, MR SOUTHEY'S REPLY TO LORD BYRON. HAVING seen in the newspapers a note relating to myself, extracted from a recent publication of Lord Byron's, I request perinission to reply, through the medium of your Journal. I come at once to his Lordship's charge against me, blowing away the abuse with which it is frothed, and evaporating a strong acid in which it is suspended. The residuum then appears to be, that "Mr Southey, on his return from Switzerland, (in 1817,) scattered abroad calumnies, knowing them to be such, against Lord Byron and others." To this I reply with a direct and positive denial. If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk, or Monk of La Trappe that he had furnished a harem, or endowed an hospital, I might have thought the account, whichever it had been, possible, and repeated it accordingly; pass ing it, as it had been taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this manner I might have spoken of him, as of Baron Gerambe, the Green Man, the Indian Jugglers, or any other figurante of the time being. There was no reason for any particular delicacy on my part, in speaking of his Lord ship: and, indeed, I should have thought any thing which might be reported of him, would have injured his character as little as the story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guildford, that he had ridden a rhinoceros. He may ride a rhinoceros, and though every body would stare, no one would wonder. But making no inquiry concerning him when I was abroad, because I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends and acquaintance on my return, it was of the flying-tree at Alpuacht, and the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne-not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than St Ursula. Once, and only once, in connexion with Switzerland, I have alluded to his Lordship; and, as the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review, speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau, I said, "it was the scene where Lord Byron's Manfred met the devil and bullied himthough the devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world, or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself, than his advocate, in a cause of canonization, ever pleaded for him." With regard to the "others," whom his Lordship accuses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends, whose names I found written in the Al bum, at Mont-Auvert, with an avowal of Atheism annexed, in Greek, and an indignant comment, in the same language, un derneath it. Those names, with that avowal and the comment, I transcribed in my note-book, and spoke of the circumstance on my return. If I had published it, the gentleman in question would not have The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed upon me, I leave as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon himself. How easily is a noble spirit discern'd But I am accustomed to such things; and, so far from irritating me are the enemies who use such weapons, that, when I hear of their attacks, it is some satisfaction to think they have thus employed the malignity which must have been employed somewhere, and could not have been directed' against any person whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The viper, however venomous in purpose, is harmless in effect, while it is biting at the file. It is seldom, indeed, that I waste a word, or a thought, upon those who are perpetually assailing me. But abhorring, as I do, the personali. ties which disgrace our current literature, and averse from controversy as I am, both by principle and inclination, I make no profession of non-resistance. When the offence and the offender are such as to call for the whip and the branding-iron, it has been both seen and felt that I can inflict them. Lord Byron's present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind-not by hearsay reports of my conversation, four years ago, transmitted him from England. The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic school of poetry, contained in my preface to the Vision of Judgment. Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings, with as much satis. faction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, and parents especially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that honourable feeling by which his criticisms are so peculiarly dis tinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part. I give him, in this instance, full credit for sincerity: I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse; and, as I have never condescended to expose, in any instance, his pitiful malevolence, I thank him for having, in this, stript it bare himself, and exhibited it in its bald, naked, and undisguised deformity. Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventured to bring the matter of those animadversions into view. He conceals the fact, that they are directed against the authors of blasphemous and lascivious books; against men who, not content with indulging their own vices, labour to make others the slaves of sensuality, like themselvesagainst public panders, who, mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, and to carry profanation and pollution into private families, and into the hearts of individuals. His Lordship has thought it not unbe coming in him to call me a scribbler of all work. Let the word scribbler pass; it is not an appellation which will stick, like that of the Satanic School. But, if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? I will tell Lord Byron what I have not scrib, bled-what kind of work I have not done. I have never published libels upon my friends and acquaintance, expressed my sorrow for those libels, and called them in during a mood of better mind—and then re-issued them, when the evil spirit, which for a time has been cast out, had returned and taken possession, with seven others, more wicked than himself.-I have never abused the power, of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character of a man, or the heart of a woman. I have never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare affix my name; or which I feared to claim in a court of justice, if it were pirated by a knavish bookseller.-I have never manufactured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I done; none of the foul work by which literature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My hands are clean; there is no "damned spot" upon them-no taint, which "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten." Of the work which I have done, it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic School, and its Coryphous, the author of Don Juan. I have held up that school to public detestation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and the domestic morals of the country. I have given them a designation to which their founder and leader answers. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliah in the forehead. I have fastened his name upon the gibbet, for reproach and ignominy, as long as it shall endure. Take it down who can! One word of advice to Lord Byron before I conclude. When he attacks me again, let it be in rhyme. For one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep tune. And while he may still indulge in the same rankness and virulence of insult, the metre will, in some degree, seem to lessen its vulgarity. ROBERT SOUTHEY, Keswick, January 5, 1822. VALERIUSA ROMAN STORY.* THE novel of Valerius, is the story of a sojourn in Rome, during a portion of the reign of Trajan. The present popularity of novels, was probably the author's inducement to exert, on a fictitious tale, the powers and the lite rature which might have distinguished him as the historian of a period among the most eventful, interesting, and magnificent of all history. Yet, with a great example before him, he has not followed it implicitly; he may have been a worshipper, he is not a slave. The multitude haye trod with feeble frequency in the very track levelled by the triumph of the Scottish Novellist. The writer of Valerius has trod fresh ground, and turned away from the common illustration of life, within his own shores, to the remote and stately record of manners among the imperial people of the Old World. This he has done with force and with fidelity; and the reader of Valerius will find himself led on through the public and private habits of Rome, with the elegance of romance, and the vigour of history. Works of this kind have been not unusual in Germany, but they have either wandered into extravagant fiction, or oppressed the fancy by la borious prolixity. Translations and imitations have occasionally appeared in English literature, but they had no internal strength, they appealed to none of the feelings that give life and * Valerius—a Roman Story, 3 vol. living honour to fiction, and they went down to the common oblivion of useless industry. Valerius is the son of a Roman officer, settled in the Roman colony in Britain, near, what is now, Winchester. His father had died, and left him to the tutelage of his mother, who ex¬ ercises her trust as becomes a Roman matron. But a lawsuit for a rich inheritance, compels the young Briton to leave "his woodland, through which the enormous deer stalked undisturb ed, except by the adder of the grass, or the obscene fly of the thicket, its little patches of corn and meadow laboriously rescued from the domain of the wild beast, and the scattered hamlets of his own valley," for the crowd, the vices, and the gorgeousness of Rome. He bids farewell to his mother with filial tenderness, and with something like an anticipation, on her part, of its being a last farewell. With his spirits confused between the ardour of novelty and the melancholy of parting, he looks back on his paternal roof, embarks, and reaches the mouth of the Tiber.The voyage is briefly told. The au thor was capable of giving it a higher interest, but probably was reluctant to retard the more important narrative, to be created on the soil of Italy. Yet the first voyage of an accomplished and and vivid mind, over the strange and 12mo. Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1821. mighty ocean, the classic memories which haunted its sullen cliffs and giant promontories,-her capes and shores made famous by ages of Phonician adventure and Roman war,were all so fit for the food of noble fancies, that even in the luxuriant description of the Tiber, and its banks, we regretted the abandonment of the grand and austere region which he had just traversed with so swift a keel. On the voyage he makes a useful acquaintance with an officer of the Prætorian Guard; arrives at Ostia; is astonished at the first displays of Roman architectural magnificence; leaves his bark, is driven about among the motley and struggling multitude of that great sea-port of all nations,-is extricated by the superior experience of his military friend,-embarks again, and sails up the Tiber. "When the heat of the sun was greatest, we pushed our bark into a little creek, where the boatmen rested themselves for a space from their labours; and we, along with the master, made an end of the provisions we had brought along with us. Having halted as long as we deemed expedient, we resumed our seats on the vessel; but the fervour of the atmosphere being much diminished, our canopy was no longer upheld. By degrees the shades of evening began to spread themselves over the east; but we did not see the sun for a long time previous to his setting, by reason of the hugeness of the trees, and their impervious foliage. Trees, and temples, and gardens, and meadows, and towns and villages, were, ere long, lost in one uniform sobrie ty of twilight; and it was already quite dark, when the Centurion, pointing to the left bank, said, Behold these gigantic willows, which dip their long boughs down into the water-these are the Gardens of Cæsar beyond, is the Portian Gate, and the street of the Rural Lares. In a few moments we shall see the lights of the Sublician Bridge, and be in the city.' "At these words I started up, and gazing forward, could already penetrate through the mists of evening into the busy glare of a thousand streets and lanes, open. ing upon the river. The old city wall, on the left side, was visible; where, after having swept round the region towards the Vatican and Janicular Hills, it brings the last of its turrets close down to the Tiber, over against the great dock-yards by the field of Brutus. "Its shadow lay in frowning darkness, far out upon the stream, and we glided for some minutes in silence beneath the influence of the venerable rampart. Through a forest of triremes, galleys, and all sorts of craft, we then shot on to the bridge-be neath the centre arch of which, our steersman conducted us. Beyond, such was the hum of people on the quays, and such the starlike profusion of lights reflected in the water, that we doubted not we had already reached the chief seat of the bustle of Rome. the huge bulk of the theatre of Marcellus On, however, we still held our course, till rose like a mountain on our right. It was there that we ran our bark into the shore, not far from the little bridge-the third as you ascend the river-which conducts to the Island and the Temple of Esculapius. While our friend was settling matters with the master, and the boatmen were bringing out our baggage, I stood for a little space by myself, in silence, on the elevated quay. Below me lay the bark, in which Boto and the Centurion were still engaged. Here am the greatest city of the world-not one of I alone, I might almost say to myself, in whose inhabitants I have ever, so far as I know, conversed with. Up and down, whereever my eye fell, it rested on some bright spot in the river, answering to some light in bark, or edifice, kindled by hands, and for purposes, to which I was equally a stranger. Here a long tier of reflected radiance bespoke, it may be, the vicinity of some splendid portico of palace, or temple, or bath, or theatre; there a broad and steady blaze of burning red, indicated the abode of artizans, resolved, as it seemed, on carrying their toil into the bosom of the night. Between--some small single speck of tinier lustre, betrayed, perhaps, the lamp of the solitary student, or the sober social hour of some peaceful family, assembled around the hearth of their own modest lares. Behold me, then, said I, in the capital of the globe. Alas! were I to be swallowed up this moment in the waves of Tiber, not one of all these lights would be dimmed by reason of my calamity." After this striking night-glance at the glories of the Imperial City, we are introduced to one of its living characters, Licinius, the pleader, to whom the conduct of the lawsuit had been entrusted. The description of this eloquent and ambitious personage is admirably graphic. "I found him in a small upper chamber, lighted by a single silver lamp, suspended from the roof, enjoying, as it appeared, repose and relaxation after the exertions which he had been making during the anterior part of the day. He was reclining at table when I entered; and although supper was long over, some fruits and other trifling things still remained on the board. At table with him there was no one present, excepting a certain rhetorician or philosopher, whom he introduced to me as the superintendant of his son's education, and the young Sextus himself, a modest and ingenuous youth, who sat at the lower extremity of his father's couch. He was indeed a very mild and amiable young man, and I had more pleasure, after a space, in surveying his aspect, than the more marked lineaments of the other two. At first, however, nothing rivetted my attention so much as the fiery and energetic physiognomy of the pleader himself. The fore-part of his head was already quite bald, although the darkness of the short curls behind testified that age was not the cause of this de. formity. His eyes were black and rapid, and his eye-brows vibrated upwards and downwards in a remarkable manner, not only when he spoke, but even when he was silent; indicating, as it appeared by their transitions, every new train of thought and imagination within his mind. His style of conversation was quick and fervid, and his gestures vehement as he spake; it being apparent, that, from restlessness and vanity of disposition, he was continually exercising a needless measure of mental activity and anxiety. Not satisfied with his own more than sufficient richness of ideas, no thought could be expressed by any other person which he did not immediately seize for his own, and explain, even to him by whom it had been first suggested, with much fluency and earnestness of illustration. On the other hand, the hired philosopher, who wore a long beard reaching down even unto his girdle, preserved in all things an uncommon demureness of manner, restraining every salient movement of his own mind, and watching, with the gravity of a Numa, the glancing eyes and sharp features of his patron. A roll of yellow parchment graced the left hand of this dealer in wisdom, while the other was employed in selecting from the table such articles as were most agreeable to his palate. Licinius, although meagre in person, and at that time parched with long declamation, seemed to live in such a state of intellectual excitement, that he thought little either of eating or drinking; therefore, the venerable stoic, resigning for the most part his share of the conversation, amused himself, in exchange, with the more trivial gratifications abandoned to him by the pleader, Nor, if one might draw any conclusion from the rosiness of his complexion, and the portliness of his whole figure, was this the first occasion on which he had exercised that species of humility. Partly fatigued by my travel, partly confounded by the novelties I had seen and heard, and was now seeing and hearing, I myself did not disdain from time to time to taste of the fine old Chian of Licinius; a huge flagon of which, that stood on the board, already rose light in my hand, by reason of the eager, though not very frequent familiarities of the disciple of Zeno." The improved taste in description is among the most remarkable and advantageous changes of modern writing. The old style of handling was absolutely intolerable. A building was detailed as the detail was drawn up by its own bricklayer, and a landscape as by the tiller of the ground. Mrs Radcliffe's fine poetic pencil was wasted in a languid and general picturing; all her descriptions wore the same features, and all their features were obscured by the same lavish and absorbing colour. She looked on sea' and mountain, forest and valley, through the same Claude Lorraine glass. Latter times have taught better conceptions; the distinct and the picturesque now supersede the graceless and the confused. We have already given a sketch of this writer's powers in nightscenery, we now give, yet less for the sake of contrast than of its own strength, reality and beauty, his day-light view of Kome. "Licinius then shewed me the way to my sleeping-room, to which I was glad to retire, being in fact quite worn out by the number of objects which had that day tasked my sight. My sleep was sound and sweet; nevertheless, when the morning began to dawn, I was awakened by the first glimmerings of light, and found that my thoughts became at once too busy to admit of a return to slumber. I therefore arose, and went to walk in an open gallery, with which my chamber was connected. This gallery commanded a prospect of a great part of the city, which at that hour appeared no less tranquil than stately, nothing being in motion except a few small boats gliding here and there upon the river. Neither as yet had any smoke begun to darken the atmosphere; so that all things were seen in a serene and steady light, the shadows falling broadly westward over streets and squares-but pillars, and porticoes, and obelisks, and arches, rising up every where with unsullied and undisturbed magnificence, into the bright air of the morning. The numerous poplars and alders, and other lofty trees of the gardens, also, seemed to be rejoicing in the hour of dew and silence; of their green branches among the surrounding piles of white and yellow marble. Near at hand, over the groves of the Philoclean the Pantheon, all burnished with living gold Mansion, I could see the kingly dome of nian Circus, loaded with armies of brazen --and the proud colonnades of the Flamistatues. Between these and the river, the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus, and I visible, each surpassing the other in chaste know not how many beautiful temples, were and solemn splendour. Across a more crowded region, to the westward, my eye ascended to the Capitol, there to be lost tress of the World; while, still further reamong the central magnificence of the Mismoved from me, (although less elevated in natural situation), the gorgeous mansion of the Emperor was seen, lifted up, like some new and separate city, upon its enormous so fresh and cheerful was the intermixture |