at all worthy of the name, there yet is one trait, we confess, in which they discover a truly honourable resemblance to the race who originally bore it. We allude to the patronage which, in the instance before us, they have bestowed on a learned and ingenious man; a patronage justified on the whole by the work of which we are now taking our leave. And we shall consider it as one example of good educed from evil, if they should still farther exercise their liberality in the same quarter, and if that liberality should again be similarly justified,―previously to their final expulsion. ART. II. The Curse of Kehama. By Robert Southey. 4to. pp. 592. London. Longman. 1810. E VER since the revival of letters, the learned world has been agitated by dissensions between two of its most distinguished classes, the poets and the critics, and each has in its turn made a plausible appeal to the public. The poets have urged, and with much appearance of justice, that their peculiar talent being of a nature singularly capricious and evanescent, it is not in the power even of the possessors to prescribe its exertions. That for this reason it has almost in every language borne a name implying inspiration, as if poetry were less the work of the author in his ordinary and unperturbed state of mind, than the effusion of a moment of enthusiasm, when the ideas are sublimed, and the imagination kindled by an impulse which he can neither guide nor withstand. They have proceeded in pathetic strains to state the hardship of a profession in which their exertions, if successful, are uniformly dogged by calumny, and, if otherwise, by contempt and disgrace. It is but fair, they allege, that in so disadvantageous a combat they should be allowed to chuse their own ground, to make such experiments upon the public taste, and the principles of their own art, as change of times appears to demand; and that it is the height of injustice to confine their efforts to the subjects chosen by their predecessors which have now lost the gloss of novelty, and are become in a manner exhausted. They contend that themselves alone can be judges of the force and faculties of their own mind, and consequently of the most advantageous mode of employing their powers; and that urging them to a style of composition, which, however excellent in itself, is alien from their temper and studies, is as absurd as to compel David to use the armour which he had not proved, instead of his own pastoral stone and sling. The object of poetry is pleasure; and if the old track has ceased to guide us towards it, fresh avenues must be opened. Nay, conceding that the style of their predecessors is more pure and excellent than their own, modern authors still plead that, like a popular melody which the carmen whistle,' it has in some degree lost its effect by repeated and dull imitation. Let us, say they, yield to the usual revolutions of taste, and indulge the public with some variety in poetical composition. Those who succeed us, more fortunate than ourselves, may again resort to the imitation of purer models, and their efforts will not only have the renewed grace of novelty, but all the advantages which can be gained by a contrast with our own. The critics are not without their answers to these charges. They plead that poetry, like all the other fine arts, has its general rules, which, though strictly observed, will still leave endless scope for variety. That as the musician consents that his notes shall be arranged by the general laws of harmony, it does not become the poet to assume the license of framing his effusions according to the fantastic dictates of his own imagination. If, in a long succession of ages, the legitimate subjects of verse lose the charm of absolute novelty, the loss had better be supplied by an attempt to throw over them a polish and a grace to which the ancient models were strangers, than by capricious excursions into the realms of fancy, The form of a Grecian temple, they say, no longer boasts to our eyes the charm of novelty; yet that is no reason for supplying its place by the grotesque and puerile singularities of a Chinese pagoda, The plea of hardship they refute by an appeal to the experience of every other profession, where long study and early apprenticeship are as indispensable to success as genius and talent. To the personal objection against their judgment, they reply that the poet is seldom the best judge of his own compositions, or the most impartial arbiter of those of others; that in the glow of enthusiastic feeling he is apt to misuse his own talents and mislead the public taste; and that in all nations there has arisen, with the general diffusion of literature, a separate class of men neither professing to be poets themselves, nor to read poetry upon the usual motives of interest and amusement, but for the sake of justice to the dead and candour to the living, to mark the progress of the art itself, to correct the exuberances of its professors, to point out their excellencies, to whisper to them the advice which they can never collect from the thunder of applause. Amid these contending pretensions, it appears to us that the critic rests too much upon usage and authority, and that the poet allows too little to the general principles of taste. The former would tie down an author to the rules of Scaliger and Bossu, the latter claims an 6 VOL. V. NO. IX. . indemnity from all critical regulation whatsoever. It requires little acquaintance with poetry to know how few good epics have appeared; and we fear that of those which retain the greatest share of popularity, very few will be found to be written by poets who have left the beaten track, and endeavoured to produce something new and original. The ingenuity of critics has been strained to discover common rules, which should at once apply to the Iliad and Paradise Lost; but whoever will fairly take a view of the subject, must be satisfied that although the talents of the two authors did in many material points resemble each other, yet the nature of their themes, the object of their poetry, the rules upon which it is conducted, differ as widely as possible; and if they had not both been called epic poets, scarcely another point of resemblance would be found between them. Virgil, it is true, has followed Homer more closely, reducing however to line and measure the exuberances of his model, and thus presenting the graces of regularity instead of the bold front of originality. But although this attenipt was crowned with success, and was in fact rather the introduction of a new species of writing, grounded upon the Grecian epic, than a strict imitation of Homer, the various bards who attempted to follow in the same path have been less fortunate.— Tasso indeed is an exception; but they who read him attentively will find they owe much of their pleasure to those passages in which the Æneid and Iliad are withdrawn from our recollection. The beautiful episode of Arminia is an incident of a pastoral nature, and the adventure of the enchanted forest a chapter in a metrical romance. To most Italians, and indeed to many other readers of poetry, Ariosto is more pleasing than Tasso; which certainly can only arise from the fatiguing corollary which the Jerusalem Delivered forms to the siege of Troy. Of later writers it is needless and would be invidious to speak. They load our shelves indeed, and are recorded in our catalogues; but who can say that the learned labours of Bossu, so admirably ridiculed by Pope, have added one readable poem to the literature of France or England? The harp of Mincio has made miserable music in the hands of Voltaire, Blackmore, and later worthies; and we may well use the expostulation of a living poet,— 'Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Here therefore is one road to the temple of fame, not indeed blockaded, but broken up and rendered impassable by the numbers who have trodden it. Similar changes have happened in other professions; and as popularity is at present sought by varying from the classic subjects of the ancients, by describing gothic castles, modern cottages, and, as we shall presently see, Indian pagodas; so the painter who can no longer succeed by imitations of Raphael and Guido, gains the public applause by groupes of peasants, fishers, and smugglers. This may cost the antiquary a sigh, and draw from the critic a stern rebuke: but, after all, it is but a specimen of the eternal operation of change, to which literature, like the globe itself, is necessarily subjected. 'What man that sees the ever-whirling wheel Of change, the which all mortal things doth sway, Her cruel sports, to many men's decay?" There are however, as the same poet proceeds to inform us, laws by which mutability herself is regulated in her various and capricious movements, and which therefore may supply the critic with a code independent of her influence. Such laws indeed are to be drawn, not from the mechanical jargon of French criticism, but from an accurate consideration of the springs and movements of the human heart. These doubtless are changed and modified in the different stages of society, as the outward figure is disguised or altered by the progressive change of dress: but the nature of the human mind in the one case, as the conformation of the limbs in the other, remains in fact unaltered; and (making allowance always for the particular stage of society) it is that to which we must finally appeal in censuring or approving poetical composition. The writings of the ancients may be then properly consulted, not as containing the authority by which their successors must be regulated, but as affording the happiest illustration of those general principles upon which poetry ought to be written. We can only slightly glance at this subject at present; but should we ever recur to it, it may not be difficult to prove that the elder critics, in their pedantic veneration for the ancients, totally overlooked the real advantage to be derived from studying them, and thus, to speak the language of the schools, confounding the accidental and formal qualities with those which were essential to their poetry, drew the canons of criticism from the former, instead of resorting to the latter, which it is no easy matter to analyze and define. Hence it has been laid down as a rule that a modern should imitate Homer and Virgil in the subject, incident, and conduct of the story, instead of requiring him to emulate their spirit upon a theme adapted to his own times, studies, and peculiar bent of genius. We have been unavoidably led into this general line of reflection, by the volume before us. The verses prefixed announce a determination in the author to step out of the common road of composition, and to put himself upon his country for the issue of if there be one. his trespass, For I will for no man's pleasure This bold avowal is followed by a narrative poem, in twentyfour sections, of a nature powerfully interesting, and at the same time the most wild and uncommon which has hitherto fallen under our observation. The story is founded upon the Hindoo mythology, the most gigantic, cumbrous, and extravagant system of idolatry to which temples were ever erected.The scene is alternately laid in the terrestrial paradise---under the sea in the heaven of heavens, and in hell itself. The principal actors are a man who approaches almost to omnipotence, another labouring under a strange and fearful malediction, which exempts him from the ordinary laws of nature, a good genius, a sorceress, and a ghost, with several Hindostan deities of different ranks. The only being that retains the usual attributes of humanity is a female who is gifted with immortality at the close of the piece. That nothing in this extraordinary poem might resemble what had been written before, the measure is of a kind absolutely new in narrative poetry. It resembles that of Thalaba in structure; but being in rhyme, although the coincidences are of irregular occurrence, it may be best compared to the pindarics of Donne and Cowley, a measure which, if it sometimes disappoints the ear, does at others unexpectedly form the happiest and most beautiful combinations of harmony, and is, upon the whole, by its very wildness, excellently suited to the strange and irregular magnificence of the descriptions which it is employed to convey. But we hasten to give a sketch of the story. It is necessary first to notice a peculiarity of the Hindoo religion, upon which Mr. Southey has founded his poem. It is thus described in the preface: Prayers, penances, and sacrifices, are supposed to possess an inherent and actual value, in no degree depending upon the disposi tion or motive of the person who performs them. They are drafts upon Heaven, for which the Gods cannot refuse payment. The worst men, bent upon the worst designs, have in this manner obtained power which has made them formidable to the Supreme Deities themselves, and rendered an Avatar, or Incarnation of Vishnoo the Preserver, necessary. Pref. pp. vii. viii. The reader then is to suppose that Kehama, a mighty rajah, |