.
Of Mr. Southey's larger epics, I have but a faint recollection at
this distance of time, but all that I remember of them is mechanical and
extravagant, heavy and superficial. His affected, disjointed style is
well imitated in the Rejected Addresses. The difference between him and
Sir Richard Blackmore seems to be, that the one is heavy and the other
light, the one solemn and the other pragmatical, the one phlegmatic and
the other flippant; and that there is no Gay in the present time to give
a Catalogue Raisonne of the performances of the living undertaker of
epics. Kehama is a loose sprawling figure, such as we see cut out of
wood or paper, and pulled or jerked with wire or thread, to make sudden
and surprising motions, without meaning, grace, or nature in them. By
far the best of his works are some of his shorter personal compositions,
in which there is an ironical mixture of the quaint and serious, such as
his lines on a picture of Gaspar Poussin, the fine tale of Gualberto,
his Description of a Pig, and the Holly-tree, which is an affecting,
beautiful, and modest retrospect on his own character. May the
aspiration with which it concludes be fulfilled! [11]--But the little
he has done of true and sterling excellence, is overloaded by the
quantity of indifferent matter which he turns out every year, "prosing
or versing," with equally mechanical and irresistible facility. His
Essays, or political and moral disquisitions, are not so full of
original matter as Montaigne's. They are second or third rate
compositions in that class.
___
[11]
"O reader! hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly Tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves,
Ordered by an intelligence so wise
As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.
Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;
No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;
But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear.
I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize;
And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree
Can emblems see
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,
Such as may profit in the after time.
So, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere,
To those who on my leisur
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