An' it's many's the one can remimber right well Now, Shamus, look back on the beautiful moon, An' farewell to the friends that will think of you still; And farewell to the girl that would die for your sake. An' twelve sodgers brought him to Maryborough gaol, An' the turnkey resaved him, refusin' all bail. The fleet limbs wor chained, an' the sthrong hands wor bound, An' he laid down his length on the could prison ground. An' the dreams of his childhood kem over him there, As gentle an' soft as the sweet summer air; An' happy remembrances crowding on ever, As fast as the foam-flakes dhrift down on the river, Well, as soon as a few weeks was over and gone, There was sich a crowd there was scarce room to stand, An' the jury sittin' up in their box over head; With his gown on his back, and an illigant new wig; The court was as still as the heart of the dead. For one minute he turned his eye round on the throng, A chance to escape, nor a word to defend : And they read a big writin', a yard long at laste, An' all held their breath in the silence of dhread, An' Shamus O'Brien made answer, and said, “My lord, if you ask me, if in my life time I thought any treason, or did any crime That should call to my cheek, as I stand alone here, If in the rebellion I carried a pike, An' fought for ould Ireland from the first to the close, I answer you, yes, an' I tell you again, Though I stand here to perish, its my glory that then He was foolish, he didn't know what he was doin' You don't know him, my lord, oh, don't give him to ruin— Don't part us for ever, we that's so long parted. Judge, mavourneen, forgive him, forgive him, my lord, And God knows it's betther than wandering in fear On the bleak, trackless mountains among the wild deer, VOL. XXXVI.—NO. CCXI. Oh! Shamus O'Brien pray fervent and fast, last; May the saints take your soul, for this day is your Like the sound of the lonesome wind blowin' thro' trees. An' the divil's in the dice if you catch him again. An' the sheriffs wor both of them punished severely, LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY.* SECOND NOTICE. WE resume our notice of the memoir and correspondence of the late poet-laureat, which his son continues with unabated interest, leaving very little to be desired of the vivid distinctness with which Southey himself would have pictured the events of his life, had he completed the autobiography in which he had intended to leave them behind him. He was now in his thirty-second year, an author of established reputation, having evinced, both in prose and verse, powers of a very high order, but marked by peculiarities which provoked, and gave some colourable justification to, uncandid, acrimonious, and malevolent criticism, which long retarded, although it could not finally prevail against, his rising fame. "AIthough these fellows," he writes, speaking of the Edinburgh reviewers (we think, in a letter to Miss Seward), "cannot blight a leaf of laurel, they can damage a field of corn." The" Edinburgh Review" was, at that time, in the zenith of its fame. Jeffrey, its conductor, was no ordinary man; but remarkable more for the pol sh, than the power of his mind; and for a cold, keen, sarcastic wit, than for those generous susceptibilities which would have enabled him either to appreciate the excellencies, or make due allowance for the errors, of such a man as Robert Southey; and all his stores of ridicule were accordingly opened upon the poet, which, while they made the unreflecting laugh, could not but make the judicious grieve. For these severe strictures we by no means deny that Mr. Southey's early productions afforded some ex cuse. There was too naked a disclosure of delicate susceptibilities, which might easily have been been mistaken for a puling sentimentality. In Canning's "Needy Knife-grinder," this is most happily, although extravagantly, caricatured. And there was also a daring departure from established rules of composition, which, although justified by the poet's genius, it would have been prudent to repress, until time had matured his mind, and given him a command over the public sympathies which would have made even his eccentricities respected. But he had early felt his mission, and looked upon himself as one called to the office of a poetical reformer. Nor can it be denied that, in his day, such a reformation was much needed. Of poetry, as it was understood by Chaucer and Shakspeare, by Spencer and Milton, much of the freshness and vigour was gone. These great masters looked to nature without, for their models, and derived from within their prompting inspirations. An instrument of thought, rough-hewn and unpolished, under the plastic influences of their genius, assumed form and symmetry, until it presented, to a tribe of imitators, facilities of metrical combination temptingly and dangerously delusive. Hence, much of what was poetry to the eye and to the ear; little to the soul and to the imagination. Hence, with an affluence of language, a restricted variety of metre; until the old heroic couplet, the octosyllabic verse, and one or two other kinds, constituted the whole stock of which the poet could avail himself, without a startling departure from established rules. While all this was favourable to the mere versifier, it was, in a corresponding degree, adverse to the man whose promptings were the result of genuine inspiration. Such was the state of things when Southey became a candidate for public favour; and with such a state of things he was resolved not to be content. "The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey." Edited by his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, M.A. Volumes III. and IV. London: Longman, Brown, Greene, and Longmans. 1850. Had the reviewers, men of power and genius, looked with a kindly eye upon the young poet, they might have found a good excuse for this in his peculiar cast of thought, in the ardour of his temperament, in the creative facilities of his richly-gifted mind. But they were despotic sovereigns in the critical world; and besides, were not pleased with him for what they deemed his political tergiversation; and resolved to endure no departure from customs and usages which all men had hitherto regarded with a sort of traditional respect. We are far from believing that there was any insincerity in the unsparing severity with which Jeffrey lashed what he deemed in the late laureat eccentricity and infatuation. He was a thorough-paced disciple of the old school. Dryden and Pope were his models. Any departure from the measured grandeur of the one, or the chaste and stately elegance of the other, must have appeared to him fantastical and revolting; although the former, in his "Alexander's Feast," and the latter, in his "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," had given evidence of the unfettered freedom with which either could fling the reins on the neck of his Pegasus, and be "a law to himself" in his careerings through the regions of imagination. Collins, also, and Gray, had dared successfully to snatch at graces beyond the reach of art; and others there were, Aikenside and Cowper, for instance, upon whom new lights had dawned, and who were the precursors of that other school which was soon to vindicate for itself both "a local habitation and a name in our poetical annals. But these were exceptional cases, by which "the ancient solitary reign of the old heroic couplet was undisturbed. And it was not until innovations were made which threatened its ascendency, and Southey, with a poet's license, transferred to whole poems the varieties of metre which were admissible in the ode, and constructed his "wild and wondrous tale," more with reference to picturesque effect than to established usage, that the reviewers found, or feigned, an excuse for pouring out all the vials of their wrath upon him as an incorrigible poetical delinquent. 39 That Jeffrey was not only under the influence of prejudices, but that he was blind of a faculty which would have enabled him rightly to appreciate such a man as Robert Southey, we believe. So far his prepossessions and deficiencies were scarcely so much faults as misfortunes. But there is, unfortunately for him, positive evidence of his dishonesty in dealing with the productions of the poet, which implies a moral deficiency for which the same excuse cannot be made; and he has recourse to expedients for the purpose of giving plausibility to his censure and point to his ridicule, which cannot be too severely condemned. allude to the specimens of the metres in "Thalaba," given in detached extracts of two or three lines each, which, to be judged of aright, should be seen, or rather read, with the context. A few bars selected here and there, in which discord had an appropriate place, might as well be called a fair specimen of a piece of music.* We But if there be some evidence that the reviewer, even if he could do justice to the poet, would not, there is abundance to prove that even if he would, he could not. Both, in their views of life and their principles of action, were essentially contradistinguished. As society advances, there are influences at work which materially modify human character, and, by exalting the innate powers, and drawing out the latent virtues, render man as different from what he was under processes of mere human culture, as these processes had rendered him different from what he had been in the savage state. And of this truth Mr. Jeffrey, and the whole materialistic school to which he belonged, seemed totally oblivious. Hence their utter disbelief in any new sources of poetry, or new topics for the development of poetical powers, different from those which had been known from the earliest ages. "We," they say, "have no faith in such discoveries. The elements of poetical interest are necessarily obvious and universal: they are within and about all men; and the topics by which they are suggested are proved to have been the same in every age and country in the world. Poetry," they add, "is, in "The Edinburgh Review," vol. i. p. 73. |