he reconciled himself to temporary lack of vogue. This might be
set down to an egotistic delusion. But such an easy explanation is
negatived by even a slight comparison of the opinions of his greatest
contemporaries. It is somewhat staggering to find that Scott, the
greatest Tory man of letters who had strong political sympathies, and
Fox, the greatest Whig politician who had keen literary tastes, enjoyed
his long poems enthusiastically. But it may be said that the eighteenth
century leaven which was so strong in each, and which is also noticeable
in Southey, conciliated them. What then are we to say of Macaulay, a
much younger man, a violent political opponent of Southey, and a by no
means indiscriminate lover of verse, who, admitting that he doubted
whether Southey's long poems would be read after half a century, had no
doubt that if read they would be admired? And what are we to say of the
avowals of admiration wrung as it were from Byron, who succeeded in
working himself up, from personal, political, and literary motives
combined, into a frantic hatred of Southey, lampooned him in print, sent
him a challenge (which luckily was not delivered) in private, and was
what the late Mr. Mark Pattison would have called "his Satan"?

The half century of Macaulay's prophecy has come, and that prophecy has
been fulfilled as to the rarity of Southey's readers as a poet. Has the
other part come true too? I should hesitate to say that it has. Esteem
not merely for the man but for the writer can never fail Southey
whenever he is read by competent persons: admiration may be less prompt
to come at call. Two among his smaller pieces--the beautiful "Holly
Tree," and the much later but exquisite stanzas "My days among the dead
are past"--can never be in any danger; the grasp of the
grotesque-terrific, which the poet shows in the "Old Woman of Berkley"
and a great many other places, anticipates the _Ingoldsby Legends_ with
equal ease but with a finer literary gift; some other things are really
admirable and not a little pleasing. But the longer poems, if they are
ever to live, are still dry bones. _Thalaba_, one of the best, is spoilt
by the dogged craze against rhyme, which is more, not less, needed in
irregular than in regular verse. _Joan of Arc_, _Madoc_, _Roderick_,
have not escaped that curse of blank verse which only Milton, and he not
always, has conquered in really long poems. _Kehama_, the only great
poem in which the poet no l