fallen short of it: but Mr. Southey resembles Acestes, who shot merely to shew the strength of his bow, and the height to which he could send his arrow.

Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo
Signavitque viam flammis.'

In this point of view, it is impossible to read the Curse of Kehama without conceiving the highest opinion of the author's force of imagination and power of expression. The passages which we have quoted will bear us out in asserting that no bard of modern days possesses a more abundant share of imagination, the highest of poetic qualities. There is a glow, an exuberancy even in his descriptions, indicating a richness of fancy adequate to supply the waste not of use only, but of extravagance: and perhaps it is a natural consequence of such attributes, that, like Collins, he loves fairies, genii, giants and monsters; delights to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, and to repose by the water-falls of Elysian gardens. To this taste we owe the wild and wondrous tale' of Thalaba, and the still more wild and wondrous Curse of Kehama. If we compare these extraordinary poems, we shall find that though they bear the same relation to each other as those paintings which are termed companions, their leading features are nevertheless different. The mythology of Thalaba is drawn from a source with which we became early acquainted. Turbans and scymitars, caliphs and visirs, dervises and calendars, mosques and minarets, the practice and almost the theory of the Moslem religion, are familiar to us, from those delightful days when awakening fancy first rioted on the banquet of fictitious narrative. But what the Curse of Kehama wants in the charm of early prepossession, it enjoys in the more important quality of edification. The Hindoo religion, of which Europeans, nay Indo-Europeans, know little, excepting from the ponderous labours of a few literati, is not only curious, as one of the most ancient existing superstitions, but particularly interesting, as regulating the religious belief and moral practice of millions whom treaty or conquest has united to the British empire.

But it must not be understood, while we are thus expressing our thanks for the form in which so much instruction is conveyed to us, that we consider Mr. Southey as having employed the energies of his genius, and the treasures of his knowledge, in constructing a tale which should have no higher object than to introduce to the world, The Hindoo mythology made plain and easy to the meanest capacity. The poet, we apprehend, had discovered that on this mythology he could raise such a fabric as he now presents to usthat he could reduce its unwieldy and disjointed parts into some

kind of form; and divesting of extravagance what he found in it of sublimity, employ the means which a particular superstition offered to his hands, in the production of a work which should excite an interest as universal as that of the most probable fable. And here we feel that our highest tribute of praise is due to Mr. Southey as a poet and a man. In whatever degree the cause of virtue and of morals (and we must be blind indeed not to discover his uniform exertions on their side) has been indebted to him heretofore, it has now to acknowledge far more splendid services. His heroine does not owe her triumph to supernatural interpositions, founded on principles of which the developement can neither increase our interest nor admiration. From the gods she could derive but little assistance; for till the final incident of the poem takes place, the victrix causa seems to be that of their enemy. Heaven itself stands in need of Ladurlad; and, together with him, she is identified with the interests of its inhabitants. Whence, then, springs this union ultimately so effectual in baffling the ambitious purposes of Kehama? The answer is obvious: from the moral character of Kailyal, which is perpetually opposed to the inordinate attempts, and almost omnipotent wickedness of the Rajah. His persecutions serve only to increase her patience and piety, and to turn her mind into itself in search of means of defence against her singular calamities. To the moral agency of this principle the poem owes its grandeur, at once splendid and severe.

A work which combines with circumstances of this nature a powerful imaginative character, has certainly advanced far towards perfection in one of the chief objects of poetry-the elevation of the human mind; which is thus for a time lifted above the sphere of common life, its low pursuits and passions, and carried into an empyreum of fancy, where it may rove at will through blissful regions of its own creation. It is impossible for a reader of feeling to rise from such a poem without being sensible of this abstraction; without a consciousness that he has at least enjoyed a glimpse of virtue, that his heart has been warmed by her influence; and, that, however transient this influence might be, it brought with it a conviction of the existence of that divine original from which it sprung. Poetry, indeed, cannot create a soil for virtue to take root in; but whenever it appears in its loftier character, it seldom fails to invigorate and enrich that in which it is already implanted.

Some remarks upon the conduct of the work will naturally be expected from us. In this Mr. Southey had to struggle with two great difficulties. The poem being entirely mythological, and the agents, generally speaking, having little in common with humanity, it must at first sight seen difficult to preserve that interest in the action of the piece which forms the principal charm of

narrative. The poet, whose heart is always true to moral feeling, has overcome this disadvantage by the beautiful picture of filial affection exhibited in the amiable and virtuous Kailyal. It is this secret charm which gives interest to t adventures of the persecuted pair, remote as they are from all resemblance to possibility. The purity, simplicity, and self-devotion of this injured female sanctify her, as it were, in our fancy; nor can we consider as overstrained the beautiful passage in which her virtue like that of Spencer's Una, is described as subjugating brute ferocity.

And

A charm was on the Leopard when he came
Within the circle of that mystic glade;

Submiss he crouch'd before the heavenly Maid, And offered to her touch his speckled side; Or with arch'd back erect, and bending head, eyes half-clos'd for pleasure, would he stand, Courting the pressure of her gentle hand. p. 138. The portrait of Ladurlad is also interesting, though in a less degree. The imagination is unable to receive the idea of intolerable torture existing for such a length of time; and although the poet has judiciously broken the spell by intervals of repose, yet when we consider the exertions made in the delivery of the Glendoveer, we are led to suspect that the pain had become sufferable by endurance. The love of the Glendoveer reminded us of the Compte de Gabalis, and of Pope, who adapted to comic machinery the attachment of his airy beings. It is, perhaps, less fitted to serious poetry; for so inseparable are our ideas even of sentimental affection, from the pangs of jealousy and the tumults of desire, that we can hardly conceive love, in the sense usually affixed to the word, existing between two beings of different natures, any more than between two persons of the same sex. But as Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost, so Kehama, partaking of his haughty and ambitious character, and exceeding him in power, is far the most prominent figure in the poem. a Mr. Southey has happily embodied his conception of au human being approaching in power to a divinity, in malignity to the evil principle. Severer critics however censure the passage in the seventeenth section, where Baly carries off Arvalan; and where the Rajah, instead of attempting his rescue, proposes himself as a suitor to Kailyal, and thus altogether changes the motive of her persecution. Even when Kehama had subdued the God of hell, we hear nothing of his releasing Arvalan, although his affection for him is the main cause of the curse of Ladurlad. But we are more inclined to censure the conclusion of Kehama's career, as inconsistent with the dignity of his character and the extent of his powers.

3

of the talmething like the same incident is to be found in one

of the Genii, where the waters of oblivion prove the waters of death: but this is more ingenious than the expedient

VOL. V. NO. IX.

8

by which Seeva humbles Kehama in the very height of his triumph. After all, a similar objection would probably have occurred to any manner in which the tale could be concluded: for as Kehama had been almost raised to a level with Omnipotence, it would not be easy to devise any adequate mode of accomplishing his overthrow.

A second difficulty which Mr. Southey had to encounter, is that of adapting the vast and clumsy fabric of Indian mythology to the purposes of English poetry. We have observed the advantages which this presented; and the inconveniences are pointed out by the poet himself, when he acknowleges the anti-picturesque exterior of the Hindoo deities, and the frantic extravagance of the fables in which they are agents. Neither does he disguise the obvious objection, that the English reader may be startled by being plunged at once into a new and unknown system. The last difficulty Mr. Southey has removed by a list of those deities who occupy a place among his dramatis personæ, and by distinguishing the character and functions of each. The other inconvenience was not so easily parried. Mr. Southey has indeed, generally speaking, chosen the most pleasing of the Hindoo traditions. But while plunging into such an abyss of monstrous and outrageous fictions, the poet, perhaps, became more familiarized with the eastern stile than was quite consistent with the necessary severity of selection, and we have been not a little startled at some of the topics which he has chosen to celebrate. We have already stated our objections to the eight-days combat of Ladurlad with the sea-monster, and to the self-multiplication of Kehama, on his storming Padalon. We would have included in our expurganda, Indra's elemental palace, built partly of fire, partly of water, had not the poetry been so exquisitely beautiful as to excuse extravagance itself: but a globe which the sorceress Lorrinite composed of the pupils of human eyes, we must condemn without mercy. We would also send to the Remise a certain infernal car, which as it only moved on one wheel, must have been a precarious vehicle, even if it had traversed a road broader than the edge of a scymetar. The description of Mount Calasay, a silver hill, with seven silver ladders, is too much like a tale of Madame D'aunois; and we cannot help remarking, that Yamen-pur, the metropolis of the infernal regions, being made of a single diamond, is the more brilliant habitation of the two. Accustomed as we are to the Grecian Cupid, we cannot reconcile ourselves to Camdeo's bowstring, which being composed of live bees, must have been singularly ill adapted to the purposes of archery; nor are we at all pleased with the bees breaking off upon one occasion, and hiving upon Kailyal's head. These and similar imperfections, however, were almost inseparable from a plan laid in the wildest regions of fiction. The Greeks alone

have contrived to reconcile to grace, and to a decent probability, their mythological fables, while the Hindoos have, of all nations, run farthest into the extremes of tumid and unimaginable absurdity.

We can the more readily pardon Mr. Southey for following, in a few instances, the bad taste of his model; because one of his principal beauties is derived from the uncommon art with which he has maintained the character of a poet of Hindostan. We have scarcely been able to find a passage, in which we are reminded that the bard is an European. The ornaments, the landscape, the animals, the similies, the language, the sentiments, are oriental; selected, indeed, and arranged with more art than any eastern poet could have displayed; but still composed of the very materials which he must necessarily have employed. This observation of manners and costume, is carried still farther than in Madoc. There the poet established among his imaginary Atzeucas, various rites observed in different parts of America; but here, where materials were more amply supplied, his manners and sentiments are not merely oriental, but so distinctly and exclusively Hindoo, that they could be properly ascribed to no other Indian faith, and would be misplaced, had the story respected Mahometans, Thibetians, or Parsees. The genius and moral feeling of the author are, indeed, visibly superior to the colours with which he works; yet this superiority cannot be perceived from the Englishman breaking forth in any particular passage; but from the general light diffused over the whole picture, like that communicated by the sun to nature upon those days

in which his orb is not visible.

Weighing, therefore, the beauties, and the imperfections connected with the author's plan, the former will be found to preponderate in a very great degree. But could not Mr. Southey have selected some subject, admitting all that is excellent, and excluding all that is extravagant in his poem? We should be deficient indeed in our art, if we could not answer in the affirmative. As Mr. Southey himself, however, was to write the poem, it is only reverence for the reader's leisure, which prevents our demanding that he shall chuse for his next theme one which will allow him to display the sublimity of Homer, the majesty of Virgil, the fancy of Ariosto, the chaste taste of Tasso, the solemnity of Dante, and all the attributes of all the first poets. But would our advice be reasonable? Or rather would it not resemble the resolution of the mad monarch, the execution of which he wisely commits to his ministers? He shall have chariots easier than air,

Which I will have invented

And thou shalt ride before him, on a horse
Cut out of an entire diamond,