Famous Reviews by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

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The author, however, entertains a different opinion of it. So far from
apprehending that it may cost his readers some trouble to convince
themselves that the greater part of the book is not mere prose, written
out into the form of verse, he is persuaded that its melody is more
obvious and perceptible than that of our vulgar measures. "One
advantage," says Mr. Southey, "this metre _assuredly_ possesses; the
dullest reader cannot distort it into discord: he may read it with a
_prose mouth_, but its flow and fall will still be perceptible." We are
afraid, there are duller readers in the world than Mr. Southey is aware
of.

* * * * *

The subject of this poem is almost as ill chosen as the diction; and the
conduct of the fable as disorderly as the versification. The corporation
of magicians, that inhabit "the Domdaniel caverns, under the roots of
the ocean," had discovered, that a terrible _destroyer_ was likely to
rise up against them from the seed of Hodeirah, a worthy Arab, with
eight fine children. Immediately the murder of all those innocents is
resolved on; and a sturdy assassin sent with instructions to destroy the
whole family (as Mr. Southey has it) "root and branch." The good man,
accordingly, and seven of his children, are dispatched; but a cloud
comes over the mother and the remaining child; and the poem opens with
the picture of the widow and her orphan wandering, by night, over the
desarts of Arabia. The old lady, indeed, might as well have fallen under
the dagger of the Domdanielite; for she dies, without doing anything for
her child, in the end of the first book; and little Thalaba is left
crying in the wilderness. Here he is picked up by a good old Arab, who
takes him home, and educates him like a pious mussulman; and he and the
old man's daughter fall in love with each other, according to the
invariable custom in all such cases. The magicians, in the meantime, are
hunting him over the face of the whole earth; and one of them gets near
enough to draw his dagger to stab him, when a providential _simoom_ lays
him dead on the sand. From the dead sorcerer's finger, Thalaba takes a
ring, inscribed with some unintelligible characters, which he is enabled
to interpret by the help of some other unintelligible characters that he
finds on the forehead of a locust; and soon after takes advantage of an
eclipse of the sun, to set out on his expedition against his father's
murderers, whom he understands (we do not very well know how) he has
been commissioned to exterminate. Though they are thus seeking him, and
he seeking them, it is amazing what difficulty they find in meeting:
they do meet, however, every now and then, and many sore evils does the
Destroyer suffer at their hands. By faith and fortitude, however, and
the occasional assistance of the magic implements he strips them of, he
is enabled to baffle and elude their malice, till he is conducted, at
last, to the Domdaniel cavern, where he finds them assembled, and pulls
down the roof of it upon their heads and his own; perishing, like
Samson, in the final destruction of his enemies.

From this little sketch of the story, our readers will easily perceive,
that it consists altogether of the most wild and extravagant fictions,
and openly sets nature and probability at defiance. In its action, it is
not an imitation of anything; and excludes all rational criticism, as to
the choice and succession of its incidents. Tales of this sort may amuse
children, and interest, for a moment, by the prodigies they exhibit, and
the multitude of events they bring together: but the interest expires
with the novelty; and attention is frequently exhausted, even before
curiosity has been gratified. The pleasure afforded by performances of
this sort, is very much akin to that which may be derived from the
exhibition of a harlequin farce; where, instead of just imitations of
nature and human character, we are entertained with the transformation
of cauliflowers and beer-barrels, the apparition of ghosts and devils,
and all the other magic of the wooden sword. Those who can prefer this
eternal sorcery, to the just and modest representation of human actions
and passions, will probably take more delight in walking among the holly
griffins, and yew sphinxes of the city gardener, than in ranging among
the groves and lawns which have been laid out by a hand that feared to
violate nature, as much as it aspired to embellish her; and disdained
the easy art of startling by novelties, and surprising by impropriety.

Supernatural beings, though easily enough raised, are known to be very
troublesome in the management, and have frequently occasioned much
perplexity to poets and other persons who have been rash enough to call
for their assistance. It is no very easy matter to preserve consistency
in the disposal of powers, with the limits of which we are so far from
being familiar; and when it is necessary to represent our spiritual
persons as ignorant, or suffering, we are very apt to forget the
knowledge and the powers with which we had formerly invested them. The
ancient poets had several unlucky rencounters of this sort with Destiny
and the other deities; and Milton himself is not a little hampered with
the material and immaterial qualities of his angels. Enchanters and
witches may, at first sight, appear more manageable; but Mr. Southey has
had difficulty enough with them; and cannot be said, after all, to have
kept his fable quite clear and intelligible. The stars had said, that
the Destroyer might be cut off in that hour when his father and brethren
were assassinated; yet he is saved by a special interposition of heaven.
Heaven itself, however, had destined him to extirpate the votaries of
Eblis; and yet, long before this work is done, a special message is sent
to him, declaring, that, if he chooses, the death-angel is ready to take
him away instead of the sorcerer's daughter. In the beginning of the
story, too, the magicians are quite at a loss where to look for him; and
Abdaldar only discovers him by accident, after a long search; yet, no
sooner does he leave the old Arab's tent, than Lobaba comes up to him,
disguised and prepared for his destruction. The witches have also a
decoy ready for him in the desart; yet he sups with Okba's daughter,
without any of the sorcerers being aware of it; and afterwards proceeds
to consult the simorg, without meeting with any obstacle or molestation.
The simoom kills Abdaldar, too, in spite of that ring which afterwards
protects Thalaba from lightning, and violence, and magic. The
Destroyer's arrow then falls blunted from Lobaba's breast, who is
knocked down, however, by a shower of sand of his own raising; and this
same arrow, which could make no impression on the sorcerer, kills the
magic bird of Aloadin, and pierces the rebellious _spirit_ that guarded
the Domdaniel door. The whole infernal band, indeed, is very feebly and
heavily pourtrayed. They are a set of stupid, undignified, miserable
wretches, quarrelling with each other, and trembling in the prospect of
inevitable destruction. None of them even appears to have obtained the
price of their self-sacrifice in worldly honours and advancement, except
Mohareb; and he, though assured by destiny that there was one death-blow
appointed for him and Thalaba, is yet represented, in the concluding
scene, as engaged with him in furious combat, and aiming many a deadly
blow at that life on which his own was dependent. If the innocent
characters in this poem were not delineated with more truth and feeling,
the notoriety of the author would scarcely have induced us to bestow so
much time on its examination.

Though the tissue of adventures through which Thalaba is conducted in
the course of this production, be sufficiently various and
extraordinary, we must not set down any part of the incidents to the
credit of the author's invention. He has taken great pains, indeed, to
guard against such a supposition; and has been as scrupulously correct
in the citation of his authorities, as if he were the compiler of a true
history, and thought his reputation would be ruined by the imputation of
a single fiction. There is not a prodigy, accordingly, or a description,
for which he does not fairly produce his vouchers, and generally lays
before his readers the whole original passage from which his imitation
has been taken. In this way, it turns out, that the book is entirely
composed of scraps, borrowed from the oriental tale books, and travels
into the Mahometan countries, seasoned up for the English reader with
some fragments of our own ballads, and shreds of our older sermons. The
composition and harmony of the work, accordingly, is much like the
pattern of that patch-work drapery that is sometimes to be met with in
the mansions of the industrious, where a blue tree overshadows a
shell-fish, and a gigantic butterfly seems ready to swallow up Palemon
and Lavinia. The author has the merit merely of cutting out each of his
figures from the piece where its inventor had placed it, and stitching
them down together in these judicious combinations.

It is impossible to peruse this poem, with the notes, without feeling
that it is the fruit of much reading, undertaken for the express purpose
of fabricating some such performance. The author has set out with a
resolution to make an oriental story, and a determination to find the
materials of it in the books to which he had access. Every incident,
therefore, and description--every superstitious usage, or singular
tradition, that appeared to him susceptible of poetical embellishment,
or capable of picturesque representation, he has set down for this
purpose, and adopted such a fable and plan of composition, as might
enable him to work up all his materials, and interweave every one of his
quotations, without any _extraordinary_ violation of unity or order.
When he had filled his common-place book, he began to write; and his
poem is little else than his common-place book versified.

It may easily be imagined, that a poem constructed upon such a plan,
must be full of cumbrous and misplaced description, and overloaded with
a crowd of incidents equally unmeaning and ill assorted. The tedious
account of the palace of Shedad, in the first book--the description of
the Summer and Winter occupations of the Arabs, in the third--the
ill-told story of Haruth and Maruth--the greater part of the occurrences
in the island of Mohareb--the paradise of Aloadin, etc., etc.--are all
instances of disproportioned and injudicious ornaments, which never
could have presented themselves to an author who wrote from the
suggestions of his own fancy; and have evidently been introduced, from
the author's unwillingness to relinquish the corresponding passages in
D'Herbelot, Sale, Volney, etc., which appeared to him to have great
capabilities for poetry.

This imitation, or admiration of Oriental imagery, however, does not
bring so much suspicion on his taste, as the affection he betrays for
some of his domestic models. The former has, for the most part, the
recommendation of novelty; and there is always a certain pleasure in
contemplating the _costume_ of a distant nation, and the luxuriant
landscape of an Asiatic climate. We cannot find the same apology,
however, for Mr. Southey's partiality to the drawling vulgarity of some
of our old English ditties.

* * * * *

From the extracts and observations which we have hitherto presented to
our readers, it will be natural for them to conclude, that our opinion
of this poem is very decidedly unfavourable; and that we are not
disposed to allow it any sort of merit. This, however, is by no means
the case. We think it written, indeed, in a very vicious taste, and
liable, upon the whole, to very formidable objections: But it would not
be doing justice to the genius of the author, if we were not to add,
that, it contains passages of very singular beauty and force, and
displays a richness of poetical conception, that would do honour to more
faultless compositions. There is little of human character in the poem,
indeed; because Thalaba is a solitary wanderer from the solitary tent of
his protector: But the home group, in which his infancy was spent, is
pleasingly delineated; and there is something irresistibly interesting
in the innocent love, and misfortunes, and fate of his Oneiza. The
catastrophe of her story is given, it appears to us, with great spirit
and effect, though the beauties are of that questionable kind, that
trespass on the border of impropriety, and partake more of the character
of dramatic, than of narrative poetry. After delivering her from the
polluted paradise of Aloadin, he prevails on her to marry him before his
mission is accomplished. She consents with great reluctance; and the
marriage feast, with its processions, songs, and ceremonies, is
described in some joyous stanzas. The book ends with these verses--

And now the marriage feast is spread,
And from the finished banquet now
The wedding guests are gone.
* * * * *
Who comes from the bridal chamber?
It is Azrael, the Angel of Death.

The next book opens with Thalaba lying distracted upon her grave, in the
neighbourhood of which he had wandered, till "the sun, and the wind,
and the rain, had rusted his raven locks"; and there he is found by the
father of his bride, and visited by her ghost, and soothed and
encouraged to proceed upon his holy enterprise. He sets out on his
lonely way, and is entertained the first night by a venerable dervise:
As they are sitting at meal, a _bridal procession_ passes by, with
dance, and song, and merriment. The old dervise blessed them as they
passed; but Thalaba looked on, "and breathed a low deep groan, and hid
his face." These incidents are skilfully imagined, and are narrated in a
very impressive manner.

Though the _witchery_ scenes are in general but poorly executed, and
possess little novelty to those who have read the Arabian Nights
Entertainments, there is, occasionally, some fine description, and
striking combination. We do not remember any poem, indeed, that
presents, throughout, a greater number of lively images, or could afford
so many subjects for the pencil.

* * * * *

All the productions of this author, it appears to us, bear very
distinctly the impression of an amiable mind, a cultivated fancy, and a
perverted taste. His genius seems naturally to delight in the
representation of domestic virtues and pleasures, and the brilliant
delineation of external nature. In both these departments, he is
frequently very successful; but he seems to want vigour for the loftier
flights of poetry. He is often puerile, diffuse, and artificial, and
seems to have but little acquaintance with those chaster and severer
graces, by whom the epic muse would be most suitably attended. His
faults are always aggravated, and often created, by his partiality for
the peculiar manner of that new school of poetry, of which he is a
faithful disciple, and to the glory of which he has sacrificed greater
talents and acquisitions, than can be boasted of by any of his
associates.

ON SOUTHEY'S LAUREATE LAYS

[From _The Edinburgh Review_, June, 1816]

_The Lay of the Laureate. Carmen Nuptiale_. By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq.,
Poet Laureate, &c., &c. 12mo. pp. 78. London, 1816.

A poet laureate, we take it, is naturally a ridiculous person: and has
scarcely any safe course to follow, in times like the present, but to
bear his faculties with exceeding meekness, and to keep as much as
possible in the shade. A stipendiary officer of the Royal household,
bound to produce two lyrical compositions ever year, in praise of his
Majesty's person and government, is undoubtedly an object which it is
difficult to contemplate with gravity; and which can only have been
retained in existence, from that love of antique pomp and establishment
which has embellished our Court with so many gold-sticks and white rods,
and such trains of beef-eaters and grooms of the stole--though it has
submitted to the suppression of the more sprightly appendages of a
king's fool, or a court jester. That the household poet should have
survived the other wits of the establishment, can only be explained by
the circumstance of his office being more easily converted into one of
mere pomp and ceremony, and coming thus to afford an antient and
well-sounding name for a moderate sinecure. For more than a century,
accordingly, it has existed on this footing; and its duties, like those
of the other personages to whom we have just alluded, have been
discharged with a decorous gravity and unobtrusive quietness, which has
provoked no derision, merely because it has attracted no notice.

The present possessor, however, appears to have other notions on the
subject; and has very distinctly manifested his resolution not to rest
satisfied with the salary, sherry, and safe obscurity of his
predecessors, but to claim a real power and prerogative in the world of
letters, in virtue of his title and appointment. Now, in this, we
conceive, with all due humility, that there is a little mistake of fact,
and a little error of judgment. The laurel which the King gives, we are
credibly informed, has nothing at all in common with that which is
bestowed by the Muses; and the Prince Regent's warrant is absolutely of
no authority in the court of Apollo. If this be the case, however, it
follows, that a poet laureate has no sort of precedency among poets,--
whatever may be his place among pages and clerks of the kitchen;--and
that he has no more pretensions as an author, than if his appointment
had been to the mastership of the stag-hounds. When he takes state upon
him with the public, therefore, in consequence of his office, he really
is guilty of as ludicrous a blunder as the worthy American _Consul_, in
one of the Hanse towns, who painted the Roman _fasces_ on the pannel of
his buggy, and insisted upon calling his foot-boy and clerk his
_lictors_. Except when he is in his official duty, therefore, the King's
house-poet would do well to keep the nature of his office out of sight;
and, when he is compelled to appear in it in public, should try to get
through with the business as quickly and quietly as possible. The brawny
drayman who enacts the Champion of England in the Lord Mayor's show, is
in some danger of being sneered at by the spectators, even when he paces
along with the timidity and sobriety that becomes his condition; but if
he were to take it into his head to make serious boast of his prowess,
and to call upon the city bards to celebrate his heroic acts, the very
apprentices could not restrain their laughter,--and "the humorous man"
would have but small chance of finishing his part in peace.

Mr. Southey could not be ignorant of all this; and yet it appears that
he could not have known it all. He must have been conscious, we think,
of the ridicule attached to his office, and might have known that there
were only two ways of counteracting it,--either by sinking the office
altogether in his public appearances, or by writing such very good
verses in the discharge of it, as might defy ridicule, and render
neglect impossible. Instead of this, however, he has allowed himself to
write rather worse than any Laureate before him, and has betaken himself
to the luckless and vulgar expedient of endeavouring to face out the
thing by an air of prodigious confidence and assumption:--and has had
the usual fortune of such undertakers, by becoming only more
conspicuously ridiculous. The badness of his official productions indeed
is something really wonderful,--though not more so than the amazing
self-complacency and self-praise with which they are given to the world.
With the finest themes in the world for that sort of writing, they are
the dullest, tamest, and most tedious things ever poor critic was
condemned, or other people vainly invited, to read. They are a great
deal more wearisome, and rather more unmeaning and unnatural, than the
effusions of his predecessors, Messrs. Pye and Whitehead; and are
moreover disfigured with the most abominable egotism, conceit and
dogmatism, than we ever met with in any thing intended for the public
eye. They are filled, indeed, with praises of the author himself, and
his works, and his laurel, and his dispositions; notices of his various
virtues and studies; puffs of the productions he is preparing for the
press, and anticipations of the fame which he is to reap by their means,
from a less ungrateful age; and all this delivered with such an oracular
seriousness and assurance, that it is easy to see the worthy Laureate
thinks himself entitled to share in the prerogatives of that royalty
which he is bound to extol, and has resolved to make it

--his great example as it is his theme.

For, as sovereign Princes are permitted, in their manifestoes and
proclamations, to speak of their own gracious pleasure and royal wisdom,
without imputation of arrogance, so, our Laureate has persuaded himself
that he may address the subject world in the same lofty strains, and
that they will listen with as dutiful an awe to the authoritative
exposition of his own genius and glory. What might have been the success
of the experiment, if the execution had been as masterly as the design
is bold, we shall not trouble ourselves to conjecture; but the contrast
between the greatness of the praise and the badness of the poetry in
which it is conveyed, and to which it is partly applied, is abundantly
decisive of its result in the present instance, as well as in all the
others in which the ingenious author has adopted the same style. We took
some notice of the _Carmen Triumphale_, which stood at the head of the
series. But of the Odes which afterwards followed to the Prince Regent,
and the Sovereigns and Generals who came to visit him, we had the
charity to say nothing; and were willing indeed to hope, that the
lamentable failure of that attempt might admonish the author, at least
as effectually as any intimations of ours. Here, however, we have him
again, with a _Lay of the Laureate_, and a _Carmen Nuptiale_, if
possible still more boastful and more dull than any of his other
celebrations. It is necessary, therefore, to bring the case once more
before the Public, for the sake both of correction and example; and as
the work is not likely to find many readers, and is of a tenor which
would not be readily believed upon any general representation, we must
now beg leave to give a faithful analysis of its different parts, with a
few specimens of the taste and manner of its execution.

Its object is to commemorate the late auspicious marriage of the
presumptive Heiress of the English crown with the young Prince of
Saxe-Cobourg; and consists of a Proem, a Dream, and an Epilogue--with a
L'envoy, and various annotations. The Proem, as was most fitting, is
entirely devoted to the praise of the Laureate himself; and contains an
account, which cannot fail to be very interesting, both to his Royal
auditors and to the world at large, of his early studies and
attainments--the excellence of his genius--the nobleness of his views--
and the happiness that has been the result of these precious gifts. Then
there is mention made of his pleasure in being appointed Poet Laureate,
and of the rage and envy which that event excited in all the habitations
of the malignant. This is naturally followed up by a full account of all
his official productions, and some modest doubts whether his genius is
not too heroic and pathetic for the composition of an _Epithalamium,_--
which doubts, however, are speedily and pleasingly resolved by the
recollection, that as Spenser made a hymn on his own marriage, so, there
can be nothing improper in Mr. Southey doing as much on that of the
Princess Charlotte. This is the general argument of the Proem. But the
reader must know a little more of the details. In his early youth, the
ingenious author says he aspired to the fame of a poet; and then Fancy
came to him, and showed him the glories of his future career, addressing
him in these encouraging words--

Thou whom rich Nature at thy happy birth
Blest in her bounty with the largest dower
That Heaven indulges to a child of earth!

Being fully persuaded of the truth of her statements, we have then the
satisfaction of learning that he has lived a very happy life; and that,
though time has made his hair a little grey, it has only matured his
understanding; and that he is still as habitually cheerful as when he
was a boy. He then proceeds to inform us, that he sometimes does a
little in poetry still; but that, of late years, he spends most of his
time in writing histories--from which he has no doubt that he will one
day or another acquire great reputation.

Thus in the ages which are past I live,
And those which are to come my sure reward will give....

We come next, of course, to the Dream; and nothing more stupid or heavy,
we will venture to say, ever arose out of sleep, or tended to sleep
again. The unhappy Laureate, it seems, just saw, upon shutting his eyes,
what he might have seen as well if he had been able to keep them open--a
great crowd of people and coaches in the street, with marriage favours
in their bosoms; church bells ringing merrily, and _feux-de-joie_ firing
in all directions. Eftsoons, says the dreaming poet, I came to a great
door, where there were guards placed to keep off the mob; but when they
saw my Laurel crown, they made way for me, and let me in!--