August 19, 2025 • 24 mins
In Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits, William Hazlitt masterfully captures the essence of his era through insightful monographs on a constellation of literary luminaries. Meet the likes of Jeremy Bentham, the architect of utilitarian philosophy, and William Godwin, who elevated morality beyond human reach. Delve into the minds of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Irving, and Sir Walter Scott, as Hazlitt reveals their distinct contributions to literature and society. From the eloquence of Thomas Campbell, known for Pleasures of Hope, to the impactful thoughts of William Wordsworth and Thomas Malthus, Hazlitt provides a vivid portrayal of his contemporaries. Engaging comparisons between the works of Charles Lamb and Washington Irving further enrich this collection, making it a fascinating exploration of the literary landscape of his time. Summary by Craig Campbell.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter sixteen of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Hazlitt. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Rol Roblay, Chapter sixteen, Robert Salvee. Mister Southe, as we
(00:27):
formerly remember to have seen him, had a hectic flush
upon his cheek, a roving fire in his eye of
falcon glands, a look at once aspiring and dejected. It
was the look that had been impressed upon his face
by the events that marked the outset of his life.
It was the dawn of liberty that still tinged his cheek,
(00:47):
a smile betwixt hope and sadness that still played upon
his quivering lip. Mister Souee's mind is essentially sanguine, even
to overweeningness. It is prophetic of good good. It cordially
embraces it. It casts a longing, lingering look after it,
even when it's gone forever. He cannot bear to give
(01:09):
up the thought of happiness, his confidence in his fellow man,
when all else despare. It is the very element where
he must live or have no life at all, while
he supposed it possible that a better form of society
could be introduced than any that had hitherto existed, while
the light of the French Revolution beamed into his soul,
(01:32):
and long after it was seen reflected on his brow,
like the light of setting suns on the peak of
some high mountain, or a lonely range of clouds floating
in purer either. While he had this hope, this faith
in man left, he cherished it with childlike simplicity. He
clung to it with the fondness of a lover. He
(01:54):
was an enthusiast, a fanatic, a leveler. He stuck at
nothing that he thought would banish all pain and misery
from the world. In his impatience of the smallest error
or injustice, he would have sacrificed himself in the existing
generation a holocaust to his devotion to the right cause.
(02:14):
But when he once believed, after many staggering doubts and
painful struggles, that this was no longer possible, when his
chimeras and golden dreams of human perfectibility vanished from him,
he turned suddenly round and maintained that whatever is is right,
mister Southy has not fortitude of mind, has not patience
(02:36):
to think that evil is inseparable from the nature of things.
His irritable sense rejects the alternative altogether, as a weak
stomach rejects the food that is distasteful to it. He
hopes on against hope. He believes in all unbelief. He
must either repose on actual or imaginary good. He missed
(02:58):
his way in utopia. He has found it at old Sarum.
His generous ardor no cold medium knows. His eagerness admits
of no doubt or delay. He is ever in extremes
and ever in the wrong. The reason is that not
truth but self opinion is the ruling principle of mister
(03:21):
Southey's mind. The charm of novelty, the applause of the multitude,
the sanction of power, the venerableness of antiquity, pique, resentment,
the spirit of contradiction have a good deal to do
with his preferences. His inquiries are partial and hasty, his
conclusion raw and unconcocted, and with a considerable infusion of
(03:44):
whim and humor and a monkish spleen. His opinion are
like certain wines warm and generous when new, but they
will not keep and soon turn flatter sour, for want
of a stronger spirit of the understanding to give a
body to them. He wooed liberty as a youthful lover,
but it was perhaps more as a mistress than a bride,
(04:08):
and he has since wedded with an elderly and not
very reputable lady called legitimacy. A wilful man, according to
the Scotch proverb, must have his way. If it were
the cause to which he was sincerely attached, he would
adhere to it through good report and evil report. But
it is himself to whom he does homage, and would
(04:29):
have others to do so, And he therefore changes sides
rather than to submit to apparent defeat or temporary mortification.
Abstract principle has no rule but the understood distinction between
right and wrong. The indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or
prejudice is regulated by the convenience or bias of the moment.
(04:51):
The temperature of our politician's mind is poetical, not philosophical.
He is more the creature of impulse than he is
of reflection. He invents the unreal, He embellishes the falls
with the glosses of fancy, but pays little attention to
the words of truth and soberness. His impressions are accidental, immediate, personal,
(05:13):
instead of being permanent and universal. Of all mortals, he
is surely the most impatient of contradiction, even when he
has completely turned the tables on himself. Is not this
very inconsistency the reason? Is he not tenacious of his
opinions in proportion as they are brittle and hastily formed.
Is he not jealous of the grounds of his belief
(05:35):
because he fears they will not bear inspection, or is
conscious he has shifted them? Does he not confine others
to the strict line of orthodoxy because he has himself
taken every liberty? Is he not afraid to look to
the right or the left lest he should see the
ghosts of his former extravagances staring him in the face.
(05:55):
Does he not refuse to tolerate the smallest shade of difference
in others because he feels that he wants the utmost
latitude of construction for differing so widely from himself? Is
he not captised, dogmatical petulant in delivering his sentiments, according
as he has been inconsistent, rash, and fanciful in adopting them.
(06:17):
He maintains that there can be no possible ground for
differing from him, because he looks only at his own
sight of the question. He sets up his own favorite
notions as the standard of reason and honesty because he
has changed from one extreme to the other. He treats
his opponents with contempt because he is afraid of meeting
with disrespect. He says that a reformer is a worse
(06:40):
character than a housebreaker. In order to stifle the recollection
that he himself once was one, we must say that
we relish mister Southey Moore in the Reformer than in
his lately acquired but by no means natural or becoming
character of poet, laureate and courtier. He may rest assured
that a garland of wild flowers suits him better than
(07:04):
the laureate wreath, that his pastoral odes and popular inscriptions
were far more adapted to his genius than his presentation poems.
He is nothing akin to birthday suits and drawing room fopperies.
He is nothing if not fantastical in his figure, in
his movements, in his sentiments, He is sharp and angular,
(07:26):
quaint and eccentric. Mister Southey is not of the court courtly.
Everything of him and about him is from the people.
He is not classical, He is not legitimate. He is
not a man cast in the mold of other men's opinions.
He is not shaped on any model. He bows to
(07:47):
no authority. He yields only to his own wayward particularities.
He is wild, irregular, singular extreme. He is no formalist,
not He is crude and chaotic, self opinionated, vain. He
wants proportion keeping system, standard rules. He is not detes
(08:10):
et rotundos. Mister Souvie walks with his chin erect through
the streets of London and with an umbrella sticking out
under his arm in the finest weather. He has not
sacrificed to the graces nor studied decorum. With him. Everything
is projecting, starting from its place, an episode, a digression,
(08:32):
a poetic license. He does not move in any given orbit,
but like a falling star, shoots from his sphere. He
is pragmatical, restless, unfixed, full of experiments, beginning everything anew
wiser than his better's judging for himself, dictating to others.
He is decidedly revolutionary. He may have given up on
(08:55):
the reform of the state, but depend on it he
has some other of some kind. Does he not dedicate
to his present majesty that extraordinary poem on the death
of his father, called the Vision of Judgment a specimen
of what might be done in English exameters in a
court poem. All should be trite and on an approved model.
(09:17):
He might as well have presented himself at the levee
in a fancy or masquerade dress. Mister Souvie was not
to try conclusions with Majesty still less on such an occasion.
The extreme freedoms with departed greatness, the party petulance carried
to the throne of grace, the unchecked indulgence of private humor,
(09:38):
the assumption of infallibility, and even of the voice of Heaven.
In this poem are pointed instances of what we have said.
They show the singular state of over excitement of mister
Souley's mind, and the force of old habits of independent
and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even in
addressing his sovereign. Look at mister Southey's larger poems, his Kaehemma,
(10:03):
his Thaliba, his Mattock, Hisroderic. Who will deny the spirit,
the scope, the splendid imagery, the hurried and startling interest
that pervades them. Who will say that they are not
sustained on fictions wilder than his own? Glendeverr that they
are not the daring creations of a mind curved by
no law, tained by no fear, That they are not
(10:25):
rather like the trances than the waking dreams of genius,
that they are not the very paradoxes of poetry. All
this is very well, very intelligible, and very harmless. If
we regard the rank excrescencies of mister Souvie's poetry, like
the red and blue flowers in corn, as the unweeded
growth of a luxuriant and wandering fancy, or if we
(10:49):
allow the yeasty workings of an ardent spirit to ferment
and boil over the variety. The boldness, the lively stimulus
given to the mind may then atone for the violation
of rules and the offenses to bedrid authority. But not
if our poetic libertine sets up for a lawgiver and judge,
or an apprehender of vagrance in the regions, either of
(11:12):
taste or of opinion, our motley gentleman deserves the straight
waistcoat if he's setting others in the stocks of servility,
or condemning them to the pillary for a new mode
of rhyme or reason. Or if a composer of sacred
dramas or in classic models, or a translator of an
old Latin author that will hardly bear translation, or a
(11:34):
vamper up of vapid cantos and odes set to music,
were to turn pander to prescription and palliator of every dull,
incorrigible abuse, it would not be much to be wondered at,
or even regretted. But in mister Southey it was a
lamentable falling off. It is indeed to be deplored. It
is a stain on genius, a blow to humanity, that
(11:57):
the author of Joan of Arc, that work in which
the love of liberty is exhaled like the breath of spring, mild,
bonny heaven born, that is full of tears and virgin
size and yearnings of affection after truth or good, gushing
warm and crimsoned from the heart, should ever after turn
to folly or become the advocate of a rotten cause,
(12:21):
after giving up his heart to that subject, he ought
not whatever others might do. Ever to have set his
foot within the threshold of a court, he might be
sure that he would not gain forgiveness or favor by it,
nor obtain a single cordial smile from greatness. All that
mister Southey is, or that he does best, is independent, spontaneous, free,
(12:45):
as the vital air he draws. When he affects the
courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a
constraint on himself to hold in his breath. He loses
his genius and offers a violence to his nature. His
characteristic faults are the excess of a lively, unguarded temperament. Oh,
(13:06):
let them not degenerate into cold blooded, heartless vices. If
we speak, or have ever spoken, of mister Southy with severity,
it is with the malice of old friends. For we
count ourselves among his sincerest and heartiest well wishers. But
while he himself is anomalous, incalculable, eccentric from youth to age,
(13:28):
the watt tyler and the vision of judgment are the
alpha and omega of his disjointed career, full of salies
of humour, of ebullitions, of spleen making ghedo cascades, fountains
and water works of his idle opinions. He would shut
up the wits of others in leaden cisterns, to stagnate
and corrupt, or bury them underground, far from sun and
(13:52):
summer gale. He would suppress the freedom of wit and
humour of which he has set the example, and claim
a privilege for playing antics. He would introduce a uniformity
of intellectual ways and measures, of irregular meters and settled opinions,
and enforce it with a high hand. This has been
(14:13):
judged hard by some and has brought down a severity
of recrimination, perhaps disproportion to the injury done. Because he
is virtues, it has been asked, are there to be
no more cakes and ale because he is loyal? Are
we to take all our notions from the quarterly review?
Because he is Orthodox? Are we to do nothing but
(14:35):
read the Book of the Church. We declare we think
his former poetical skepticism was not only more amiable, but
had more of the spirit of religion in it. Implied
a more heartfelt trust in nature and providence than his
present brigotry. We are at the same time free to
declare that we think his articles in the Quarterly Review,
(14:56):
notwithstanding the virulence and talent they disp display, have a
tendency to qualify its most pernicious effects. They have regeeming
traits in them. A little leaven leveneth the whole lump,
and the spirit of humanity, thanks to mister Souvie, is
not quite expelled from the Quarterly Review. At the corner
(15:16):
of his pen their hands a vaporous drop profound of
independence and liberality, which falls upon its pages and oozes
out through the pores of the public mind. There is
a fortunate difference between writers whose hearts are naturally callous
to truth, and whose understandings are hermetically sealed against all
(15:38):
impressions but those of self interest, and a man like
mister Souvee, once a philanthropist and always a philanthropist. No
man can entirely balkis nature. It breaks out in spite
of him in all those questions where the spirit of
contradiction does not interfere, on which he is not sore
(15:58):
from old bruses or sick from the extravagance of youthful intoxication.
As from last night's debauche. Our laureate is still bold,
free candidate, open to conviction, a reformist without knowing it.
He does not advocate the slave trade, nor does he
r mister Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority. He does
(16:21):
not strain heart to deluge Ireland with blood. On such
points where humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has
not passed into a byword, mister Southey is still illiberal
and humane. The elasticity of his spirit is unbroken. The
bow recoils to its old position. He still stands convicted
(16:42):
of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. He was
not regularly articled as a government tool. Perhaps the most
pleasing and striking of all mister Southey's poems are not
his triumphant taunts hurled against oppression, are not his glowing
effusions of liberty, but those in which, with a mild melancholy,
he seems conscious of his own infirmities of temper and
(17:06):
to feel a wish to correct by thought and time.
The precocity and sharpness of his disposition, may the quaint
but affecting inspiration expressed in one of these be fulfilled,
that as he mellows into mature age, all such asperities
may wear off, and he himself become like the high
leaves upon a holly tree. Mister Southey's prose style can
(17:31):
scarcely be too much praised. It is plain, clear, pointed, familiar,
perfectly modern in its texture, but with a grave and
sparkling admixture of archaisms in its ornaments and occasional phraseology.
He is the best and most natural prose writer of
any poet of the day. We mean that he is
(17:52):
far better than Lord Byron, mister Wordsworth, or mister Coleridge,
for instance. The manner is perhaps a pure to the
matter that is in his essays and reviews. There is
rather a want of originality, and even of impetus, But
there is no want of playful or abiding satire, of ingenuity,
(18:12):
of casuistry, of learning, and of information. He is full
of wise sauce, and modern as well as atient as
well as ancient instances. Mister Southey may not always convince
his opponents, but he seldom fails to stagger never to
gall them. In a word, we may describe his style
(18:33):
by saying that he is not the body or thickness
of port wine, but is like the clear sherry with
kernels of old authors thrown into it. He also excels
as a historian and prose translator. His stories abound in
information and exhibit proofs of the most indefatigable patients and industry.
(18:54):
By no uncommon process of the mind, mister Souvie seems
a way willing to steady the extreme levity of his
opinions and feelings by an appeal to facts. His translations
of the Spanish and French romances are executed conamore and
with their literal fidelity and care of a mere linguist.
(19:16):
That of the sid in particular, is a masterpiece. Not
a word could be altered for the better in the
old scriptural style which it adopts in conformity to the original.
It is no less interesting in itself or as a
record of high and chivalrous feelings and manner that it
is worthy of perusal as a literary curiosity. Mister Southey's
(19:38):
conversation has little resemblance to a commonplace book. His habitual
deportment to a piece of clockwork. He is not remarkable
either as a reasoner or an observer. But he is quick, unaffected,
replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading, and
exceedingly happy to play upon words, as most scholars are
(20:01):
who give their minds the sportive turn. We have chiefly
seen mister Southey in company where few people appear to advantage.
We mean in that of mister Coleridge. He has not
certainly the same range of speculation nor the same flow
of sounding words, but he makes up by the details
(20:22):
of knowledge and by scrupulous correctness of statement for what
he wants, in originality of thoughts or impetuous declamation. The
tones of mister Coleridge's voice are eloquence. Those of mister
or Southey are meager, shrill and dry. Mister Coleridge's forte
is conversation, and he is conscious of this. Mister Southey
(20:43):
evidently considers writing as his stronghold, and if graveled in
an argument or at a loss for an explanation, refers
to something he has written on the subject, or brings
out his portfolio double down in dogg Ears, in confirmation
of some fact. He is scholastic and professional in his ideas.
He sets more value on what he writes than on
(21:06):
what he says. He is perhaps prouder of his library
than of his productions themselves a library. He is more
simple in his manners than his friend mister Coleridge, but
at the same timeless, cordial or conciliating. He is less vain,
or has less hope of pleasing, and therefore lays himself
less out to please. There is an air of condescension
(21:29):
in his civility, with a tall, loose figure, a piqued
austerity of countenance, and no inclination to en bonboin, you
would say he has something puritanical, something ascetic in his appearance.
He answers to Mandeville's description of Addison a parson in
a tie wig. He is not a boon companion. Nor
(21:52):
does he indulge in the pleasures of the table, nor
in any other vise. Nor are we aware that mister
Southey is charged with any human frailty but want of charity.
Having fewer errors to plead guilty to, he is less
lenient to those of others. He was born an age
too late, had he lived a century or two year ago,
(22:14):
he would have been a happy as well as blameless character.
But the distraction of the time has unsettled him, and
the multiplicity of his pretensions have jostled with each other.
No man in our day, at least, no man of genius,
has led so uniformly and entirely the life of a scholar,
from boyhood to the present hour, devoting himself to learning
(22:36):
with the enthusiasm of an early love, with the severity
and constancy of a religious vow. And well would it
have been for him if he had confined himself to this,
and not undertaken to pull down or patch up the state.
However irregular in his opinions, mister Southey is constant, unremitting,
(22:57):
mechanical in his studies and the performance of his duties.
There's nothing Pindaric or Shandian here. In all the relations
and charities of private life. He is correct, exemplary, generous,
just He never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge.
And if he has many enemies, few can boast more
(23:18):
numerous or stauncher friends. The variety and piquancy of his
writings form a striking contrast to the mode in which
they are produced. He rises early and writes or reads
till breakfast time. He writes or reads after breakfast till dinner,
after dinner till tea, from tea till bedtime, and follows
(23:39):
so the ever running year, with profitable labor to his
grave on Derwent's banks beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study
never serves him for business, exercise, recreation. He passes from
verse to prose, from history to poetry, from reading to
writing by a stopwatch. He writes a fair hand with
the other blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off
(24:03):
when he comes to the bottom of the page, and
changes the subject for another as opposite as the antipodes.
His mind is, after all, rather the recipient and transmitter
of knowledge than the originator of it. He has hardly
grasped of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth.
His passions do not amount to more than irritability. With
(24:26):
some gall in his pen and coldness in his manner,
he has a great deal of kindness in his heart,
rash in his opinions. He is steady in his attachments,
and is a man in many particulars admirable in all
respectable his political inconsistency alone accepted. End of Chapter sixteen,
Chapter sixteen of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Hazlitt. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Rol Roblay, Chapter sixteen, Robert Salvee. Mister Southe, as we
(00:27):
formerly remember to have seen him, had a hectic flush
upon his cheek, a roving fire in his eye of
falcon glands, a look at once aspiring and dejected. It
was the look that had been impressed upon his face
by the events that marked the outset of his life.
It was the dawn of liberty that still tinged his cheek,
(00:47):
a smile betwixt hope and sadness that still played upon
his quivering lip. Mister Souee's mind is essentially sanguine, even
to overweeningness. It is prophetic of good good. It cordially
embraces it. It casts a longing, lingering look after it,
even when it's gone forever. He cannot bear to give
(01:09):
up the thought of happiness, his confidence in his fellow man,
when all else despare. It is the very element where
he must live or have no life at all, while
he supposed it possible that a better form of society
could be introduced than any that had hitherto existed, while
the light of the French Revolution beamed into his soul,
(01:32):
and long after it was seen reflected on his brow,
like the light of setting suns on the peak of
some high mountain, or a lonely range of clouds floating
in purer either. While he had this hope, this faith
in man left, he cherished it with childlike simplicity. He
clung to it with the fondness of a lover. He
(01:54):
was an enthusiast, a fanatic, a leveler. He stuck at
nothing that he thought would banish all pain and misery
from the world. In his impatience of the smallest error
or injustice, he would have sacrificed himself in the existing
generation a holocaust to his devotion to the right cause.
(02:14):
But when he once believed, after many staggering doubts and
painful struggles, that this was no longer possible, when his
chimeras and golden dreams of human perfectibility vanished from him,
he turned suddenly round and maintained that whatever is is right,
mister Southy has not fortitude of mind, has not patience
(02:36):
to think that evil is inseparable from the nature of things.
His irritable sense rejects the alternative altogether, as a weak
stomach rejects the food that is distasteful to it. He
hopes on against hope. He believes in all unbelief. He
must either repose on actual or imaginary good. He missed
(02:58):
his way in utopia. He has found it at old Sarum.
His generous ardor no cold medium knows. His eagerness admits
of no doubt or delay. He is ever in extremes
and ever in the wrong. The reason is that not
truth but self opinion is the ruling principle of mister
(03:21):
Southey's mind. The charm of novelty, the applause of the multitude,
the sanction of power, the venerableness of antiquity, pique, resentment,
the spirit of contradiction have a good deal to do
with his preferences. His inquiries are partial and hasty, his
conclusion raw and unconcocted, and with a considerable infusion of
(03:44):
whim and humor and a monkish spleen. His opinion are
like certain wines warm and generous when new, but they
will not keep and soon turn flatter sour, for want
of a stronger spirit of the understanding to give a
body to them. He wooed liberty as a youthful lover,
but it was perhaps more as a mistress than a bride,
(04:08):
and he has since wedded with an elderly and not
very reputable lady called legitimacy. A wilful man, according to
the Scotch proverb, must have his way. If it were
the cause to which he was sincerely attached, he would
adhere to it through good report and evil report. But
it is himself to whom he does homage, and would
(04:29):
have others to do so, And he therefore changes sides
rather than to submit to apparent defeat or temporary mortification.
Abstract principle has no rule but the understood distinction between
right and wrong. The indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or
prejudice is regulated by the convenience or bias of the moment.
(04:51):
The temperature of our politician's mind is poetical, not philosophical.
He is more the creature of impulse than he is
of reflection. He invents the unreal, He embellishes the falls
with the glosses of fancy, but pays little attention to
the words of truth and soberness. His impressions are accidental, immediate, personal,
(05:13):
instead of being permanent and universal. Of all mortals, he
is surely the most impatient of contradiction, even when he
has completely turned the tables on himself. Is not this
very inconsistency the reason? Is he not tenacious of his
opinions in proportion as they are brittle and hastily formed.
Is he not jealous of the grounds of his belief
(05:35):
because he fears they will not bear inspection, or is
conscious he has shifted them? Does he not confine others
to the strict line of orthodoxy because he has himself
taken every liberty? Is he not afraid to look to
the right or the left lest he should see the
ghosts of his former extravagances staring him in the face.
(05:55):
Does he not refuse to tolerate the smallest shade of difference
in others because he feels that he wants the utmost
latitude of construction for differing so widely from himself? Is
he not captised, dogmatical petulant in delivering his sentiments, according
as he has been inconsistent, rash, and fanciful in adopting them.
(06:17):
He maintains that there can be no possible ground for
differing from him, because he looks only at his own
sight of the question. He sets up his own favorite
notions as the standard of reason and honesty because he
has changed from one extreme to the other. He treats
his opponents with contempt because he is afraid of meeting
with disrespect. He says that a reformer is a worse
(06:40):
character than a housebreaker. In order to stifle the recollection
that he himself once was one, we must say that
we relish mister Southey Moore in the Reformer than in
his lately acquired but by no means natural or becoming
character of poet, laureate and courtier. He may rest assured
that a garland of wild flowers suits him better than
(07:04):
the laureate wreath, that his pastoral odes and popular inscriptions
were far more adapted to his genius than his presentation poems.
He is nothing akin to birthday suits and drawing room fopperies.
He is nothing if not fantastical in his figure, in
his movements, in his sentiments, He is sharp and angular,
(07:26):
quaint and eccentric. Mister Southey is not of the court courtly.
Everything of him and about him is from the people.
He is not classical, He is not legitimate. He is
not a man cast in the mold of other men's opinions.
He is not shaped on any model. He bows to
(07:47):
no authority. He yields only to his own wayward particularities.
He is wild, irregular, singular extreme. He is no formalist,
not He is crude and chaotic, self opinionated, vain. He
wants proportion keeping system, standard rules. He is not detes
(08:10):
et rotundos. Mister Souvie walks with his chin erect through
the streets of London and with an umbrella sticking out
under his arm in the finest weather. He has not
sacrificed to the graces nor studied decorum. With him. Everything
is projecting, starting from its place, an episode, a digression,
(08:32):
a poetic license. He does not move in any given orbit,
but like a falling star, shoots from his sphere. He
is pragmatical, restless, unfixed, full of experiments, beginning everything anew
wiser than his better's judging for himself, dictating to others.
He is decidedly revolutionary. He may have given up on
(08:55):
the reform of the state, but depend on it he
has some other of some kind. Does he not dedicate
to his present majesty that extraordinary poem on the death
of his father, called the Vision of Judgment a specimen
of what might be done in English exameters in a
court poem. All should be trite and on an approved model.
(09:17):
He might as well have presented himself at the levee
in a fancy or masquerade dress. Mister Souvie was not
to try conclusions with Majesty still less on such an occasion.
The extreme freedoms with departed greatness, the party petulance carried
to the throne of grace, the unchecked indulgence of private humor,
(09:38):
the assumption of infallibility, and even of the voice of Heaven.
In this poem are pointed instances of what we have said.
They show the singular state of over excitement of mister
Souley's mind, and the force of old habits of independent
and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even in
addressing his sovereign. Look at mister Southey's larger poems, his Kaehemma,
(10:03):
his Thaliba, his Mattock, Hisroderic. Who will deny the spirit,
the scope, the splendid imagery, the hurried and startling interest
that pervades them. Who will say that they are not
sustained on fictions wilder than his own? Glendeverr that they
are not the daring creations of a mind curved by
no law, tained by no fear, That they are not
(10:25):
rather like the trances than the waking dreams of genius,
that they are not the very paradoxes of poetry. All
this is very well, very intelligible, and very harmless. If
we regard the rank excrescencies of mister Souvie's poetry, like
the red and blue flowers in corn, as the unweeded
growth of a luxuriant and wandering fancy, or if we
(10:49):
allow the yeasty workings of an ardent spirit to ferment
and boil over the variety. The boldness, the lively stimulus
given to the mind may then atone for the violation
of rules and the offenses to bedrid authority. But not
if our poetic libertine sets up for a lawgiver and judge,
or an apprehender of vagrance in the regions, either of
(11:12):
taste or of opinion, our motley gentleman deserves the straight
waistcoat if he's setting others in the stocks of servility,
or condemning them to the pillary for a new mode
of rhyme or reason. Or if a composer of sacred
dramas or in classic models, or a translator of an
old Latin author that will hardly bear translation, or a
(11:34):
vamper up of vapid cantos and odes set to music,
were to turn pander to prescription and palliator of every dull,
incorrigible abuse, it would not be much to be wondered at,
or even regretted. But in mister Southey it was a
lamentable falling off. It is indeed to be deplored. It
is a stain on genius, a blow to humanity, that
(11:57):
the author of Joan of Arc, that work in which
the love of liberty is exhaled like the breath of spring, mild,
bonny heaven born, that is full of tears and virgin
size and yearnings of affection after truth or good, gushing
warm and crimsoned from the heart, should ever after turn
to folly or become the advocate of a rotten cause,
(12:21):
after giving up his heart to that subject, he ought
not whatever others might do. Ever to have set his
foot within the threshold of a court, he might be
sure that he would not gain forgiveness or favor by it,
nor obtain a single cordial smile from greatness. All that
mister Southey is, or that he does best, is independent, spontaneous, free,
(12:45):
as the vital air he draws. When he affects the
courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a
constraint on himself to hold in his breath. He loses
his genius and offers a violence to his nature. His
characteristic faults are the excess of a lively, unguarded temperament. Oh,
(13:06):
let them not degenerate into cold blooded, heartless vices. If
we speak, or have ever spoken, of mister Southy with severity,
it is with the malice of old friends. For we
count ourselves among his sincerest and heartiest well wishers. But
while he himself is anomalous, incalculable, eccentric from youth to age,
(13:28):
the watt tyler and the vision of judgment are the
alpha and omega of his disjointed career, full of salies
of humour, of ebullitions, of spleen making ghedo cascades, fountains
and water works of his idle opinions. He would shut
up the wits of others in leaden cisterns, to stagnate
and corrupt, or bury them underground, far from sun and
(13:52):
summer gale. He would suppress the freedom of wit and
humour of which he has set the example, and claim
a privilege for playing antics. He would introduce a uniformity
of intellectual ways and measures, of irregular meters and settled opinions,
and enforce it with a high hand. This has been
(14:13):
judged hard by some and has brought down a severity
of recrimination, perhaps disproportion to the injury done. Because he
is virtues, it has been asked, are there to be
no more cakes and ale because he is loyal? Are
we to take all our notions from the quarterly review?
Because he is Orthodox? Are we to do nothing but
(14:35):
read the Book of the Church. We declare we think
his former poetical skepticism was not only more amiable, but
had more of the spirit of religion in it. Implied
a more heartfelt trust in nature and providence than his
present brigotry. We are at the same time free to
declare that we think his articles in the Quarterly Review,
(14:56):
notwithstanding the virulence and talent they disp display, have a
tendency to qualify its most pernicious effects. They have regeeming
traits in them. A little leaven leveneth the whole lump,
and the spirit of humanity, thanks to mister Souvie, is
not quite expelled from the Quarterly Review. At the corner
(15:16):
of his pen their hands a vaporous drop profound of
independence and liberality, which falls upon its pages and oozes
out through the pores of the public mind. There is
a fortunate difference between writers whose hearts are naturally callous
to truth, and whose understandings are hermetically sealed against all
(15:38):
impressions but those of self interest, and a man like
mister Souvee, once a philanthropist and always a philanthropist. No
man can entirely balkis nature. It breaks out in spite
of him in all those questions where the spirit of
contradiction does not interfere, on which he is not sore
(15:58):
from old bruses or sick from the extravagance of youthful intoxication.
As from last night's debauche. Our laureate is still bold,
free candidate, open to conviction, a reformist without knowing it.
He does not advocate the slave trade, nor does he
r mister Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority. He does
(16:21):
not strain heart to deluge Ireland with blood. On such
points where humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has
not passed into a byword, mister Southey is still illiberal
and humane. The elasticity of his spirit is unbroken. The
bow recoils to its old position. He still stands convicted
(16:42):
of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. He was
not regularly articled as a government tool. Perhaps the most
pleasing and striking of all mister Southey's poems are not
his triumphant taunts hurled against oppression, are not his glowing
effusions of liberty, but those in which, with a mild melancholy,
he seems conscious of his own infirmities of temper and
(17:06):
to feel a wish to correct by thought and time.
The precocity and sharpness of his disposition, may the quaint
but affecting inspiration expressed in one of these be fulfilled,
that as he mellows into mature age, all such asperities
may wear off, and he himself become like the high
leaves upon a holly tree. Mister Southey's prose style can
(17:31):
scarcely be too much praised. It is plain, clear, pointed, familiar,
perfectly modern in its texture, but with a grave and
sparkling admixture of archaisms in its ornaments and occasional phraseology.
He is the best and most natural prose writer of
any poet of the day. We mean that he is
(17:52):
far better than Lord Byron, mister Wordsworth, or mister Coleridge,
for instance. The manner is perhaps a pure to the
matter that is in his essays and reviews. There is
rather a want of originality, and even of impetus, But
there is no want of playful or abiding satire, of ingenuity,
(18:12):
of casuistry, of learning, and of information. He is full
of wise sauce, and modern as well as atient as
well as ancient instances. Mister Southey may not always convince
his opponents, but he seldom fails to stagger never to
gall them. In a word, we may describe his style
(18:33):
by saying that he is not the body or thickness
of port wine, but is like the clear sherry with
kernels of old authors thrown into it. He also excels
as a historian and prose translator. His stories abound in
information and exhibit proofs of the most indefatigable patients and industry.
(18:54):
By no uncommon process of the mind, mister Souvie seems
a way willing to steady the extreme levity of his
opinions and feelings by an appeal to facts. His translations
of the Spanish and French romances are executed conamore and
with their literal fidelity and care of a mere linguist.
(19:16):
That of the sid in particular, is a masterpiece. Not
a word could be altered for the better in the
old scriptural style which it adopts in conformity to the original.
It is no less interesting in itself or as a
record of high and chivalrous feelings and manner that it
is worthy of perusal as a literary curiosity. Mister Southey's
(19:38):
conversation has little resemblance to a commonplace book. His habitual
deportment to a piece of clockwork. He is not remarkable
either as a reasoner or an observer. But he is quick, unaffected,
replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading, and
exceedingly happy to play upon words, as most scholars are
(20:01):
who give their minds the sportive turn. We have chiefly
seen mister Southey in company where few people appear to advantage.
We mean in that of mister Coleridge. He has not
certainly the same range of speculation nor the same flow
of sounding words, but he makes up by the details
(20:22):
of knowledge and by scrupulous correctness of statement for what
he wants, in originality of thoughts or impetuous declamation. The
tones of mister Coleridge's voice are eloquence. Those of mister
or Southey are meager, shrill and dry. Mister Coleridge's forte
is conversation, and he is conscious of this. Mister Southey
(20:43):
evidently considers writing as his stronghold, and if graveled in
an argument or at a loss for an explanation, refers
to something he has written on the subject, or brings
out his portfolio double down in dogg Ears, in confirmation
of some fact. He is scholastic and professional in his ideas.
He sets more value on what he writes than on
(21:06):
what he says. He is perhaps prouder of his library
than of his productions themselves a library. He is more
simple in his manners than his friend mister Coleridge, but
at the same timeless, cordial or conciliating. He is less vain,
or has less hope of pleasing, and therefore lays himself
less out to please. There is an air of condescension
(21:29):
in his civility, with a tall, loose figure, a piqued
austerity of countenance, and no inclination to en bonboin, you
would say he has something puritanical, something ascetic in his appearance.
He answers to Mandeville's description of Addison a parson in
a tie wig. He is not a boon companion. Nor
(21:52):
does he indulge in the pleasures of the table, nor
in any other vise. Nor are we aware that mister
Southey is charged with any human frailty but want of charity.
Having fewer errors to plead guilty to, he is less
lenient to those of others. He was born an age
too late, had he lived a century or two year ago,
(22:14):
he would have been a happy as well as blameless character.
But the distraction of the time has unsettled him, and
the multiplicity of his pretensions have jostled with each other.
No man in our day, at least, no man of genius,
has led so uniformly and entirely the life of a scholar,
from boyhood to the present hour, devoting himself to learning
(22:36):
with the enthusiasm of an early love, with the severity
and constancy of a religious vow. And well would it
have been for him if he had confined himself to this,
and not undertaken to pull down or patch up the state.
However irregular in his opinions, mister Southey is constant, unremitting,
(22:57):
mechanical in his studies and the performance of his duties.
There's nothing Pindaric or Shandian here. In all the relations
and charities of private life. He is correct, exemplary, generous,
just He never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge.
And if he has many enemies, few can boast more
(23:18):
numerous or stauncher friends. The variety and piquancy of his
writings form a striking contrast to the mode in which
they are produced. He rises early and writes or reads
till breakfast time. He writes or reads after breakfast till dinner,
after dinner till tea, from tea till bedtime, and follows
(23:39):
so the ever running year, with profitable labor to his
grave on Derwent's banks beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study
never serves him for business, exercise, recreation. He passes from
verse to prose, from history to poetry, from reading to
writing by a stopwatch. He writes a fair hand with
the other blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off
(24:03):
when he comes to the bottom of the page, and
changes the subject for another as opposite as the antipodes.
His mind is, after all, rather the recipient and transmitter
of knowledge than the originator of it. He has hardly
grasped of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth.
His passions do not amount to more than irritability. With
(24:26):
some gall in his pen and coldness in his manner,
he has a great deal of kindness in his heart,
rash in his opinions. He is steady in his attachments,
and is a man in many particulars admirable in all
respectable his political inconsistency alone accepted. End of Chapter sixteen,
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