gh
in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he
follows the leading of Fancy and Imagination, and walks in a world of
wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same Poet exhibited such power
in such different kinds of Poetry--in Truth a Master, and in Fiction a
Magician.

It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast stores of knowledge
gathered from books--and that we have but to look at the multifarious
accumulation of notes appended to his great Poems to see that they are
not Inventions. The materials of poetry indeed are there--often the raw
materials--seldom more; but the Imagination that moulded them into
beautiful, or magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his own--and has
shown itself most creative. Southey never was among the Arabians nor
Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travellers. But had he not been a
Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen

"The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste,"

where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent

"How happily the years of Thalaba went by!"

In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the
Destroyer into the Domdaniel Caves? And who showed him the Swerga's
Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with all its palaces that submarine
City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial
thunder of the sea? The greatness as well as the originality of
Southey's genius is seen in the conception of every one of his Five
Chief Works--with the exception of "Joan of Arc," which was written in
very early youth, and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthusiasm.
They are one and all National Poems--wonderfully true to the customs and
characters of the inhabitants of the countries in which are laid the
scenes of all their various adventures and enterprises--and the Poet has
entirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each
representative of a race. Thalaba is a true Arab--Madoc a true
Briton--King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Kehama is a
personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter
confined himself in his poetry to Scotland--except in "Rokeby"--and his
might then went not with him across the Border; though in his novels and
romances he was at home when abroad--and nowhere else more gloriously
than with Saladin in the Desert. "Lalla Rookh" is full of brilliant
poetry; and one of the series--the "Fire-Worshippers"--is Moore's
highest effort; but the whole is to