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are jealous gods; and, as our old women say, turn the house out of windows.

Southey. A current of rich and bright thoughts runs through the poem. Pindar himself would not on that subject have braced one to more vigor, nor Euripides have breathed into it more tenderness and passion. The first part of the stanza you have just now quoted might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the regions it describes.

Porson. I am not insensible to the warmly chaste morality which is the soul of it, nor indifferent to the benefits that literature on many occasions has derived from Christianity. But poetry is a luxury to which, if she tolerates and permits it, she accepts no invitation: she beats down your gates and citadels, levels your high places, and eradicates your groves. For which reason I dwell more willingly with those authors who cannot mix and confound the manners they represent. The hope that we may rescue at Herculaneum a great number of them hath, I firmly believe, kept me alive. Reasonably may the best be imagined to exist in a library of some thousands. It will be recorded to the infamy of the kings and princes now reigning, or rather of those whose feet put into motion their rocking horses, that they never have made a common cause in behalf of learning; but, on the contrary, have made a common cause against it. The Earth opened her bosom before them, conjuring them to receive again, while it was possible, the glories of their species; and they turned their backs. They pretended that it is not their business or their duty to interfere in. the internal affairs of other nations. This is not an internal affair of any; it interests all; it belongs to all: and these scrupulous men have no scruple to interfere in giving their countenance and assistance when a province is to be invaded or a people to be enslaved.

Southey. To neglect what is recoverable in the authors of antiquity is like rowing away from a crew that is making its escape from shipwreck.

Porson. The most contemptible of the Medicean family did more for the advancement of letters than the whole body of existing potentates. If their delicacy is shocked or alarmed at the idea of a proposal to send scientific and learned men to Naples, let them send a brace of pointers as internuncios, and the property is their own. Twenty scholars in seven

years might retrieve the worst losses we experience from the bigotry of popes and caliphs. I do not intend to assert that every Herculanean manuscript might within that period be unfolded; but the three first legible sentences might be, which is quite sufficient to inform the intelligent reader whether a farther attempt on the scroll would repay his trouble. There are fewer than thirty Greek authors worth inquiring for: they exist beyond doubt; and beyond doubt they may, by attention, patience, and skill, be brought to light.

Southey. You and I, Mr. Porson, are truly and sincerely concerned in the loss of such treasures; but how often have we heard much louder lamentations than ours, from gentlemen who, if they were brought again to light, would never cast their eyes over them, even in the bookseller's window! I have been present at homilies on the corruption and incredulity of the age, and principally on the violation of the Sabbath, from sleek clergymen, canons of cathedrals, who were at the gaming-table the two first hours of that very day; and I have listened to others on the loss of the classics, from men who never took the trouble to turn over half that is remaining to us of Cicero and Livius.

Porson. The Greek language is almost unknown out of England and northern Germany: in the rest of the world, exclusive of Greece, I doubt whether fifty scholars ever read one page of it without a version.

Southey. Give fifteen to Italy, twelve to the Netherlands, as many to France: the remainder will hardly be collected in Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Austria. In regard to Spain and Portugal, we might as well look for them among the Moors and Negroes.

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Porson. You are too prodigal to Italy and France. Matthiæ, in his preface to the Greek grammar, speaks of Germany, of England, of Holland; not a word of France, country of Stephanus, Budæus, and the Scaligers. Latterly we have seen only Villoison and Larcher fairly escape from the barbarous ignorance around them. Catholic nations in general seem as averse to the Greek language as to the Greek ritual.

Southey. The knowledge of books written in our own is extending daily.

Porson. Although the knowledge too of Greek is extending in England, I doubt whether it is to be found in such large masses as formerly. Schools and universities, like rills and torrents, roll down some grains of it every season; but the lumps have been long stored up in cabinets. I delight in the diffusion of learning; yet, I must confess it, I am most gratified and transported at finding a large quantity of it in one place: just as I would rather have a solid pat of butter at breakfast than a splash of grease upon the table-cloth, that covers half of it. Do not attempt to defend the idle and inconsiderate knaves who manage our affairs for us; or defend them on some other ground. Prove, if you please, that they have, one after another, been incessantly occupied ir. rendering us more moral, more prosperous, more free; but abstain, sir, from any allusion to their solicitude on the improvement of our literary condition. With a smaller sum than is annually expended on the appointment of some silly and impertinent young envoy, we might restore all or nearly all those writers of immortal name, whose disappearance has been the regret of Genius for four entire centuries. In my opinion, a few thousand pounds laid out on such an undertaking would be laid out as creditably as on a Persian carpet or a Turkish tent; as creditably as on a collar of rubies and a ball-dress of Brussels lace for our Lady in the manger, or as on gilding for the adoration of princesses and their capuchins, the posteriors and anteriors of Saint Januarius.

SECOND CONVERSATION.

Porson. Many thanks, Mr. Southey, for this visit in my confinement. I do believe you see me on my last legs; and perhaps you expected it.

Southey. Indeed, Mr. Professor, I expected to find you unwell, according to report; but as your legs have occasionally failed you, both in Cambridge and in London, the same event may happen again many times before the last. The cheerfulness of your countenance encourages me to make this remark.

Porson. There is that soft and quiet and genial humor. about you, which raises my spirits and tranquillizes my infirmity. Why (I wonder) have we not always been friends?

Southey. Alas, my good Mr. Professor, how often have the worthiest men asked the same question, not indeed of each other, but of their own hearts, when age and sickness have worn down their asperities, when rivalships have grown languid, animosities tame, inert, and inexcitable, and when they have become aware of approaching more nearly the supreme perennial fountain of benevolence and truth!

Porson. Am I listening to the language and to the sentiments of a poet? I ask the question with this distinction ; for I have often found a wide difference between the sentiments and the language. Generally nothing can be purer or more humane than what is exhibited in modern poetry; but I may mention to you, who are known to be exempt from the vice, that the nearest neighbors in the most romantie scenery, where every thing seems peace, repose, and harmony, are captious and carping one at another. When I hear the song of the nightingale, I neglect the naturalist; and in vain does he remind me that its aliment is composed of grubs and worms. Let poets be crop-full of jealousy; let them only sing well: that is enough for me.

Southey. I think you are wrong in your supposition, that the poet and the man are usually dissimilar.

Porson. There is a race of poets, — not however the race of Homer and Dante, Milton and Shakspeare, but a race of poets there is, which Nature has condemned to a Siamese twinship. Wherever the poet is, there also must the man obtrude obliquely his ill-favored visage. From a drunken connection with Vanity this surplus offspring may always be expected. In no two poets that ever lived do we find the fact so remarkably exemplified as in Byron and Wordsworth. But higher power produces an intimate consciousness of itself; and this consciousness is the parent of tranquillity and repose. Small poets (observe, I do not call Wordsworth and Byron small poets) are as unquiet as grubs, which in their boneless and bloodless flaccidity struggle and wriggle and die the moment they tumble out of the nutshell and its comfortable drouth. Shakspeare was assailed on every side by rude and beggarly rivals, but he never kicked them out of his way.

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Southey. Milton was less tolerant; he shrivelled up the lips of his revilers by the austerity of his scorn. In our last conversation, I remember, I had to defend against you the weaker of the two poets you just now cited, before we came to Milton and Shakspeare. I am always ready to undertake the task. Byron wants no support or setting off, so many workmen have been employed in the construction of his throne, and so many fair hands in the adaptation of his cushion and canopy. But Wordsworth, in his poetry at least, always aimed at

Porson. My dear Mr. Southey, there are two quarters in which you cannot expect the will to be taken for the deed: I mean the women and the critics. Your friend inserts parenthesis in parenthesis, and adds clause to clause, codicil to codicil, with all the circumspection, circuition, wariness, and strictness of an indenture. His client has it hard and fast. But what is an axiom in law is none in poetry. You cannot say in your profession, plus non vitiat; plus is the worst vitiator and violator of the Muses and the Graces.

Be sparing of your animadversions on Byron. He will always have more partisans and admirers than any other in your confraternity. He will always be an especial favorite with the ladies, and with all who, like them, have no opportunity of comparing him with the models of antiquity. He possesses the soul of poetry, which is energy; but he wants that ideal beauty which is the sublimer emanation, I will not say of the real, for this is the more real of the two, but of that which is ordinarily subject to the senses. With much that is admirable, he has nearly all that is vicious; a large grasp of small things, without selection and without cohesion. This likewise is the case with the other, without the long hand and the strong fist.

Southey. I have heard that you prefer Crabbe to either. Porson. Crabbe wrote with a twopenny nail, and scratched rough truths and rogues' facts on mud walls. There is however much in his poetry, and more in his moral character, to admire. Comparing the smartnesses of Crabbe with Young's, I cannot help thinking that the reverend doctor must have wandered in his Night Thoughts rather too near the future vicar's future mother, so striking is the resemblance. But the vicar, if he was fonder of low company, has greatly more