mind is poetical, not philosophical. He is more the creature of ima pulse, than he is of reflection. He invents the unreal, he embellishes the false with glosses of fancy, but pays little attention to “ the words of truth and soberness." His impressions are accidental, immediate, personal, 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.

• We must say that “we relish Mr. Southey more in the Reformer" than in his lately acquired, but by no means natural or becoming character of poet-laureat and courtier. He may rest assured that a garland of wild flowers suits him better than the laureat.wreath; that his pastoral odes and popular inscriptions were far more adapted to his genius than his presentation-poenis. He is nothing akin to birthday suits and drawing-room fopperies. “ He is nothing, if not fan

, tastical.” In his figure, in his movements, in his sentiments, he is sharp and angular, quaint and eccentric. Mr. Southey is not of the court, courtly. Every thing of him and about him is trom the people. He is not classical, he is not legitimate. He is not a man cast in the mould of other men's opinions : he is not shaped on any model: he bows to no authority: be yields only to his own wayward peculi. arities. He is wild, irregular, singular, extreme. He is no formalist, not he! All is crude and chaotic self-opiniated, vain. He wants proportion, keeping, system, standard rules. He is not teres et rotundus. Mr. Southey 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 de

With him every thing is projecting, starting from its place, an episode, a digression, 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 every thing a-new, wiser than his betters, judging for himself, dictating to others. He is decidedly revolutionary. He may have given up the reform of the State; but depend upon it, he has some other hobby of the same kind. Does he not dedicate to his present Majesty that extraordinary poem on the death of his father, called The Vision of Judgment, as a specimen of what might be done in English hexameters? In a court-poem all should be trite and on an approved model. He might as well have presented himself at the levée in a fancy or masquerade dress. Mr. Southey 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 humour, the assumption of infallibility and even of the voice of Heaven in this poem, are pointed instances of what we have said. They shew the singular state of over-excitement of Mr. Southey's mind, and the force of old habits of independent and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even in addressing his Sovereign!'.....

. We are to declare that we think his articles in the Quarterly Review, notwithstanding their virulence and the talent they display, have a tendency to qualify its most pernicious

corum.

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effects. They have redeeming traits in them. "A little leaven

. leaveneth the whole lump:” and the spirit of humanity (thanks to Mr. Southey) is not quite expelled from the Quarterly Review. At the corner of his

pen,

“ there hangs a vapourous 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 difterence between writers whose hearts are naturally callous to truth, and whose understandings are hermetically sealed against all impressions but those of self-interest, and a man like Mr. Southey. Once a, philanthropist and always a philanthropist. No man can entirely baulk his nature : it breaks out in spite of hiin. In all those questions, where the spirit of contradiction does not interfere, on which he is not sore from old bruises, or sick from the extravagance of youthful intoxication, as from a last night's debauch, our “ laureate",

" is still bold, free, candid, open to conviction, a reformist without knowing it. He does not advocate the slave-trade, he does not arm Mr. Malthus's revolting ratios with his authority, he does not strain hard to deluge Ireland with blood. On such points, where humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has not passed into a byword, Mr. Southey is still liberal and humane. "The elasticity of his spirit is unbroken : the bow recoils to its old position. He still, stands convicted of his early passion for inquiry and improvement, He was not regularly articled as a Government tool !

Mr. Southey's prose style can 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 prosewriter of any poet of the day.

• He also excels as an historian and prose translator. His histories abound in information, and exhibit proofs of the most indefatigable patience and industry. By no uncommon process of the mind, Mr. Southey seems 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 also executed con amore, and with the literal fidelity and care of a mere linguist. That of the Cid, in particular, is a master-piece. 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 manners, than it is worthy of perusal as a literary curiosity:

* We have chiefly seen Mr. Southey in company where few people appear to advantage, we mean in that of Mr. Coleridge. He has not certainly the same range of speculation, nor the same flow of sounding words, but he makes up by the details of knowledge, and by a scrupulous correctness of statement, for what he wants in originality of thought, or impetuous declamation. The tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice are eloquence: those of Mr. Southey are meagre, shrill, and dry. Mr. Coleridge's forte is conversation, and he is conscious of this: Mr. Southey evidently considers writing as his strong-hold, and if gravelled in an argument, or at a loss for an Vol. XXIII. N.S

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explanation, refers to something he has written on the subject, 6P brings out his port-folio, doubled down in dog-ears, in confirmation of some fact. He is scholastic and professional in his ideas. He sets more value on what he writes than on what he says: he is perhaps prouder of his library than of his own productions-themselves a library! He is more simple in his manners than his friend Mr. Coleridge; but at the same time less cordial or conciliating. He is less vain, or has less hope of pleasing, and therefore lays himself less out to please.'

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 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, Mr. Southey is constant, unremitting, mechanical in his studies, and the performance of his duties. There is nothing Pindaric or Shandean here. In all the relations and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just. We never heard a single impropriety laid to his charge; and if he has many enemies, few men can boast more 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, and from tea till bed-time

"And follows so the ever-running year

With profitable labour to his grave—”

on Derwent's banks, beneath the foot of Skiddaw. Study 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, without blots, sitting upright in his chair, leaves off 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 grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His passions do not amount to more than irritability. With 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 excepted!'

The portrait of Mr. Irving will please many persons by its coarse humour and ill-nature, but it betrays an angry feeling. While one cannot deny that there is much truth as well as cleverness in the picture, the hand of the caricaturist is too visible; and the Writer seems more intent in saying a good thing about the Hatton Garden Orator, than on fairly esti

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mating his character. The portrait of Mr. Gifford offends us in like manner by the personal feeling which is still more conspicuous in the treatment he meets with. We are inclined to suspect that we detect here another hand. It was unworthy of the Author to deviate from his purpose and to descend so far into the particulars of criticism, as to make the articles against Keats and Hazlitt the main part of his indictment. We do not say that Mr. Gifford can complain of any treatment, that he meets with, since he was the first to wage critical war on the principle of giving ro quarter. But nothing is ever gained by scurrility. Mr. Jeffrey is as unfairly and partially be praised as his opponent is abused. Does the Writer expect his reward in the next Number of the Edinburgh Review? It may be perfectly true, that the severest of critics is the best natured of men ;' but we looked for a fair portrait of the Reviewer. Contrasting him, in this character, with the Translator of Juvenal, he might have compared the one to a buccaneer, the other to an Inquisitor; the one reminding us of the tomahawk, the other, of the thumb-screw. But how dares this portrait-painter meddle with Reviewers ? Back to your easel, friend, or

As a portrait, one of the finest things in the volume is the character of Sir Walter Scott: we hope it is not a likeness. He is contrasted with Lord Byron as a poet, with admirable discrimination. To sum up the distinction in one word,' says this critic, · Sir Walter Scott is the most dramatic writer now Jiving: and Lord Byron the least so.' Here, to make good the antithesis, the latter assertion is carried too far; but the criticism we cannot but deem substantially just, since we long ago expressed a similar opinion. We could have wished that our Satirist had refrained from his attack on Mr. Wilberforce. Twenty years ago, it might have been all fair, but it is now almost dastardly and unfeeling. We do not charge the Writer, however, with personality or malignity here. Indeed, he bears, in one sentence, an honourable testimony to the character which he represents to be a double-entendre.

• Mr. Wilberforce is far from being a hypocrite; but he is, we think, as fine a specimen of moral equivocation as can well be con, ceived. A hypocrite is one who is the very reverse of, or who de. spises the character he pretends to be: Mr. Wilberforce would be all that he pretends to be.' Perhaps, human sincerity in virtue cannot go much further.

Our readers will perceive that there is more in this volume to admire, than to commend. It is very unequal, full of faults

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and beauties. Yet, what would we not give for just such an account of the poets, statesmen, and critics of other days?

Art. VII. Memoirs, Anecdotes, Facts, and Opinions, collected and

preserved by Lætitia Matilda Hawkins. 2 vols. small 8vo. pp. 790.

London, 1824. 'I

WISH,' is the exclamation of Miss Hawkins, I could re

collect the many stories I have heard of Roubiliac;' and we are parties to that wish for more reasons than one. Roubiliac was a man of great abilities, fertile and original in invention, and masterly in execution; though the former was sometimes injured by the effects of a false and finical taste, less chargeable on the artist himself, than characteristic of the times in which he lived. But if his conception was occasionally defective in simplicity and vigour, the manner in which he realized his ideas is altogether admirable. If the conception and attitudes of his fine monument to the memory of Mrs. Nightingale be liable to censure as savouring more of theatrical effect than of natural character, it is at least exquisite of its class; and if not of the highest style of art, it is at least incomparably superior to the sterile repetitions of many a popular artist whom we shall abstain from naming. Roubiliac's training was in an inferior school, and he felt, all his life-time, the disadvantages of his early instruction: if he had been born within our own times, and had his genius been kindled by the study of the Elgin marbles, he would have been second to none since the days of Agesander. It was a fine illustration at once of his ingenuousness and his high feeling as an artist, that, having in after life visited Italy, and contemplated the master-pieces of ancient art, when he went into Westminster Abbey for the purpose of again inspecting his own compositions, he turned away, exclaiming that they looked like tobaccopipes. The criticism, though essentially just, was by far too unqualified, but it speaks volumes in praise of the intellectual and moral energy of the man who could thus deal with himself. We are not sufficiently acquainted with his history as a sculptor, to know whether any change in his style was subsequently visible. It is deeply to be regretted, that the few and fleeting traces which remain of such men as Roubiliac are not collected and preserved. Something has been recently done, though in a very clumsy way, for Wilson; but there have been many clever men in the English school, during the latter half of the last century, of whom valuable anecdotes might still be obe tained. We wish some qualified person would get up a scrap