ods--in the
third, earth is like heaven;--for you are made to feel that

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame!"

Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great Poem? No; for besides the
Regions of the Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is another up to
which his wing might not soar; though the plumes are strong as soft. But
why should he who loveth to take "the wings of a dove that he may flee
away" to the bosom of beauty, though there never for a moment to be at
rest--why should he, like an eagle, soar into the storms that roll above
this visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual thunder?

Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remonstrates, rather angrily, with the
Public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into
one class himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that
not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he
elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the
Art Poetical; and among his Lyrical Ballads he admitted the three finest
compositions of his illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, is not
to blame in taking him at his word, even if she had discerned no family
likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less
than Coleridge does; but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen
miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphilosophical though pensive
Public that link of connection should be allowed to be sufficient, even
were there no other less patent and material than the Macadamised
turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our
living Poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory;" for he alone of
them all has adventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, the
different characters, customs, and manners of nations. "Joan of Arc" is
an English and French story--"Thalaba," Arabian--"Kehama,"
Indian--"Madoc," Welsh and American--and "Roderick," Spanish and
Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was
a very youthful work) in which of these noble poems Mr Southey has most
successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any
but the highest genius. In "Madoc," and especially in "Roderick," he has
relied on the truth of nature--as it is seen in the history of great
national transactions and events. In "Thalaba" and in "Kehama," thou