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ROBERT SOUTHEY was born in Bristol, on the 12th of August, 1774. Having given early tokens of that genius which has since placed his name foremost among British Worthies, his friends resolved that the advantages of a liberal education should be added to those which Nature had bestowed upon him, and sent him in 1788, to Westminster School. In 1792, he was entered at Baliol College, Oxford. During his residence in the University, he became infected with Jacobinical principles; but if some of his earlier productions contributed to disseminate pernicious doctrines, he has amply compensated mankind by the labours of a long life in the cause of Virtue. In 1796, his first great poem, " Joan of Arc," appeared; and his fame was completely established, when, in 1801, the romance of "Thalaba" issued from the press. He has since been continually before the world; and there is scarcely a branch of literature to which he has not contributed,-a list of his publications would fill this page. In 1813, Southey accepted the office of Poet Laureat, on the death of Pye,-and for nearly the first time, during at least a century, the office, instead of conferring, received dignity.

Southey is tall and handsome, with a clear and noble forehead; an aquiline nose; a profusion of hair; and uncommonly bright eyes: his voice is musical, full of gentleness and persuasion, and his smile is as winning as it is sweet. His hair, once a curling and glossy black, curls still, but is white as snow; and his step has lost some of its elasticity, but his eyes are as bright, and his smile as winning, as ever. He is rarely seen in the great world. His distaste of the turmoils of life induced him to decline the offer of a seat in the House of Commons, to which he had been elected ;-apart from the bustle and feverish excitement of a city, he pursues his gentle and useful course from year to year:

"And to his mountains and his forests rude
Chaunts in sweet melody his classic song."

He has led the life of a scholar with as much steadiness of purpose and devotion, as if he had bound himself to his books by a religious vow. His works are sufficient to form a library; they are proofs of his amazing industry, not less than his vast and comprehensive learning. His wonderful genius may excite our admiration; but the extent of his "profitable labour" is, indeed, prodigious. There is nothing like it we believe in the history of the human mind. His character is as unspotted as that of any public man-living or dead. The world is aware that he has had some enemies : no one ever deserved them less. His friends are numerous, devoted, and firm. ever earned them better, or merited them more:

"We soon live down

Evil or good report, if undeserved."

No one

His political opponents have tendered evidence to the estimable character of both his head and heart. One of the harshest arraigners of what he calls the inconsistency of Dr. Southey-as if that were inconsistency which induces to leave a path after it is known to be the wrong one-states, that "in all the relations and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just." He is one of the leading critics of the age; and, although there is abundant proof of his generous zeal in aiding young talent, there has never attached to him the suspicion of depressing it. The career of Southey is the best answer to the absurd, but too generally received opinion, that a critic is of necessity acrimonious or unjust.

Of late years, the prose of Southey has been preferred to his poetry. It rarely happens that there is a preference without a disparagement. No Poet in the present or the past century, has written three such poems as Thalaba, Kehama, and Roderic. Others have more excelled in DELINEATING what they find before them in life; but none have given such proofs of extraordinary power in CREATING. He has been called diffuse, because there is a spaciousness and amplitude about his poetry-as if concentration was the highest quality of a writer. He lays all his thoughts before us; but they never rush forth tumultuously. He excels in unity of design and congruity of character; and never did Poet more adequately express heroic fortitude, and generous affections. He has not, however, limited his pen to grand paintings of epic character. Among his shorter productions will be found some light and graceful sketches, full of beauty and feeling, and not the less valuable because they invariably aim at promoting virtue.

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I MARVEL not, O Sun! that unto thee

In adoration man should bow the knee,

And pour his prayers of mingled awe and love; For like a God thou art, and on thy way

Of glory sheddest with benignant ray,

Beauty, and life, and joyance from above.

No longer let these mists thy radiance shroud,These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless day; But shed thy splendour through the opening cloud

And cheer the earth once more. The languid flowers Lie odourless, bent down with heavy rain,

Earth asks thy presence, saturate with showers!

O lord of light! put forth thy beams again,

For damp and cheerless are the gloomy hours.

REMEMBRANCE.

MAN hath a weary pilgrimage
As through the world he wends,
On every stage from youth to age
Still discontent attends;

With heaviness he casts his eye
Upon the road before,

And still remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.

To school the little exile goes,
Torn from his mother's arms,-
What then shall soothe his earliest woes,
When novelty hath lost its charms?
Condemn'd to suffer through the day
Restraints which no rewards repay,
And cares where love has no concern:
Hope lengthens as she counts the hours
Before his wish'd return.

From hard controul and tyrant rules,
The unfeeling discipline of schools,
In thought he loves to roam,
And tears will struggle in his eye
While he remembers with a sigh
The comforts of his home.

Youth comes; the toils and cares of life Torment the restless mind;

Where shall the tired and harass'd heart
Its consolation find?

Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells,
Life's summer prime of joy?
Ah no! for hopes too long delay'd,
And feelings blasted or betray'd,
The fabled bliss destroy;
And Youth remembers with a sigh
The careless days of Infancy.

Maturer Manhood now arrives,
And other thoughts come on,

But with the baseless hopes of Youth
Its generous warmth is gone;

Cold calculating cares succeed,
The timid thought, the wary deed,
The dull realities of truth;
Back on the past he turns his eye;
Remembering with an envious sigh
The happy dreams of Youth.

So reaches he the latter stage
Of this our mortal pilgrimage,
With feeble step and slow;
New ills that latter stage await,
And old Experience learns too late
That all is vanity below.
Life's vain delusions are gone by,
Its idle hopes are o'er,

Yet Age remembers with a sigh
The days that are no more.

HANNAH.

PASSING across a green and lonely lane
A funeral met our view. It was not here
A sight of every day, as in the streets
Of some great city, and we stopt and ask'd
Whom they were bearing to the grave. A girl,
They answer'd, of the village, who had pined
Through the long course of eighteen painful months
With such slow wasting, that the hour of death
Came welcome to her. We pursued our way
To the house of mirth, and with that idle talk
Which passes o'er the mind and is forgot,
We wore away the time. But it was eve
When homewardly I went, and in the air
Was that cool freshness, that discolouring shade
Which makes the eye turn inward: hearing then
Over the vale the heavy toll of death

Sound slow, it made me think upon the dead;
I question'd more, and learnt her mournful tale.
She bore unhusbanded a mother's pains,
And he who should have cherish'd her, far off
Sail'd on the seas. Left thus a wretched one,
Scorn made a mock of her, and evil tongues

E

Were busy with her name.

She had to bear

The sharper sorrow of neglect from him
Whom she had loved so dearly. Once he wrote,
But only once that drop of comfort came

To mingle with her cup of wretchedness;

And when his parents had some tidings from him,
There was no mention of poor Hannah there,
Or 'twas the cold inquiry, more unkind
Than silence. So she pined and pined away,
And for herself and baby toil'd and toil'd;
Nor did she, even on her death-bed, rest
From labour, knitting there with lifted arms,
Till she sunk with very weakness. Her old mother
Omitted no kind office, working for her,
Albeit her hardest labour barely earn'd
Enough to keep life struggling, and prolong
The pains of grief and sickness. Thus she lay
On the sick bed of poverty, worn out

With her long suffering and those painful thoughts
Which at her heart were rankling, and so weak,
That she could make no effort to express
Affection for her infant; and the child,
Whose lisping love perhaps had solaced her,
Shunn'd her as one indifferent. But she too
Had grown indifferent to all things of earth;
Finding her only comfort in the thought
Of that cold bed wherein the wretched rest.
There had she now, in that last home been laid,
And all was over now,-sickness and grief,
Her shame, her suffering, and her penitence:

Their work was done. The school-boys as they sport
In the church-yard, for awhile might turn away
From the fresh grave till grass should cover it;
Nature would do that office soon; and none
Who trod upon the senseless turf would think
Of what a world of woes lay buried there!

THE EBB TIDE.

Slowly thy flowing tide

Came in, old Avon! scarcely did mine eyes,
As watchfully I roam'd thy green-wood side,
Behold the gentle rise.

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