400 ROGERS PATRIOT TRIUMPH, AND RETIREMENT. Lo, there the friend, who entering where he lay, Take thou my cloak - Nay, start not, but obey Would not be held but, bursting through the throng, Then turn'd and went- then sought him as before, -- In his own fields — breathing tranquillity – Thee, who wouldst watch a bird's nest on the spray, I saw the sun go down! Ah, then 'twas thine Shakespeare's or Dryden's- thro' the chequer'd shade And where we sate (and many a halt we made) Some splendid passage not to thee unknown, Thy bell has toll'd! But in thy place among us we behold One that resembles thee. -p. 52, 53. The scene of closing age is not less beautiful and attractive nor less true and exemplary. - ""Tis the sixth hour. The village-clock strikes from the distant tower. The ploughman leaves the field; the traveller hears, Her sweetest smile; the day-star in the west Yet hovering, and the thistle's down at rest. "And such, his labour done, the calm He knows, And from the Future too! Active in Thought SERENE CLOSE OF LIFE. He muses, turning up the idle weed; "At night, when all, assembling round the fire, A tale is told of India or Japan, Of merchants from Golcond or Astracan, 'Age has now Trees he has climb'd so oft, he sits and sees "Now in their turn assisting, they repay A feeling of enjoyment. In his walks, While they look up! Their questions, their replies, 401 We have dwelt too long, perhaps, on a work more calculated to make a lasting, than a strong impression on the minds of its readers—and not, perhaps, very well calculated for being read at all in the pages of a Miscel laneous Journal. We have gratified ourselves, however, in again going over it; and hope we have not much wearied our readers. It is followed by a very striking copy of verses written at Pæstum in 1816-and more 402 ROGERS-TEMPLES OF PESTUM. characteristic of that singular and most striking scene than any thing we have ever read, in prose or verse, on the subject. The ruins of Pæstum, as they are somewhat improperly called, consist of three vast and massive Temples, of the most rich and magnificent architecture; which are not ruined at all, but as entire as on the day when they were built, while there is not a vestige left of the city to which they belonged! They stand in a desert and uninhabited plain, which stretches for many miles from the sea to the mountains-and, after the subversion of the Roman greatness, had fallen into such complete oblivion, that for nearly nine hundred years they had never been visited or heard of by any intelligent person, till they were accidentally discovered about the middle of last century. The whole district in which they are situated, though once the most fertile and flourishing part of the Tyrrhene shore, has been almost completely depopulated by the Mal'aria; and is now, in every sense of the word, a vast and dreary desert. The following lines seem to us to tell all that need be told, and to express all that can be felt of a scene so strange and so mournful. 'They stand between the mountains and the sea; 66 'How many centuries did the sun go round Waiting the appointed time! All, all within This classic ground. And am I here at last? Wandering at will through the long porticoes, Mountains and mountain-gulphs! and, half-way up, Where once a slave withstood a world in arms. - And what within them? what but in the midst As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear, The volume ends with a little ballad, entitled "The Boy of Egremond"- which is well enough for a Lakish ditty, but not quite worthy of the place in which we meet it. 404 SOUTHEY'S RODERICK. (JUNE, 1815.) Roderick: The Last of the Goths. By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq., Poet-Laureate, and Member of the Royal Spanish Academy. 4to. pp. 477. London: 1814.* THIS is the best, we think, and the most powerful of all Mr. Southey's poems. It abounds with lofty sentiments, and magnificent imagery; and contains more rich and comprehensive descriptions more beautiful pictures of pure affection and more impressive representations of mental agony and exaltation than we have often met with in the compass of a single volume. A work, of which all this can be said with justice, cannot be without great merit; and ought not, it may be presumed, to be without great popularity. Justice, however, has something more to say of it: and we are not quite sure either that it will be very popular, or that it deserves to be so. It is too monotonous too wordy and too uniformly stately, tragical, and emphatic. Above all, it is now and then a little absurd — and pretty frequently not a little affected. The author is a poet undoubtedly; but not of the * I have, in my time, said petulant and provoking things of Mr. Southey: and such as I would not say now. But I am not conscious that I was ever unfair to his Poetry and if I have noted what I thought its faults, in too arrogant and derisive a spirit, I think I have never failed to give hearty and cordial praise to its beauties-and generally dwelt much more largely on the latter than the former. Few things, at all events, would now grieve me more, than to think I might give pain to his many friends and admirers, by reprinting, so soon after his death, any thing which might appear derogatory either to his character or his genius; and therefore, though I cannot say that I have substantially changed any of the opinions I have formerly expressed as to his writings, I only insert in this publication my review of his last considerable poem: which may be taken as conveying my matured opinion of his merits - and will be felt, I trust, to have done no scanty or unwilling justice to his great and peculiar powers. |