made in a similar manner. At dinner, the plates may have devices given by electrotype engravings, and the salt-spoons gilt by the galvanic fluid. All these, and many other applications, we may have at present; but we must still look forward to the most important properties of the electric current derived from the galvanic battery: for, although great and glorious are the triumphs of science detailed in this work, yet the prospect of obtaining a power which shall supersede steam, exceeds in value all these applications." -Smee, pp. 295-300. Mr. Smee's raptures are excessive; but the subject is unquestionably one of considerable interest. The applications of voltaic electricity are of great practical utility; and the principles of the science, when ripened and expanded, will form a valuable addition to the ever-growing body of physical truth. The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, collected by Himself. In 10 vols. London: Longman, & Co. 1838. To thinking minds, time is seldom so impressively marked, its clock seldom tolls so sadly and solemnly, as by the successive removal of the great men of an age. The constellation which ushered in the present epoch, is going out one by one. Goëthe, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Lamb, have departed, and now Southey has gone after them. after them. Wordsworth, indeed, remains yet a little while, but he is now bereft of all his great companions; of all those with whom his name is for ever associated. There is something, we say, singularly sad and solemn in these departures. Its great men seem the essential features of an age, and when they are removed, a chill comes over us, the ground seems taken from under our feet, we feel as though a change of dispensation were at hand, an untried and unknown future opening before us. There are few men to whose death more of this interest attaches itself than to him whom we have just lost. If Southey was not the foremost man of his time, he was perhaps the most bound up with that time, of all our men of letters. No man of intellectual pursuits in our day shared so largely in its feelings and struggles, and as the term of his life spanned its principal events and changes, he became a partaker in its most striking vicissitudes. There is nothing for a serious mind to scoff at, nothing that can furnish a legitimate sneer at Southey, in a comparison of his early Jacobinism and subsequent Toryism. In his case the whole process and progress was that of an earnest and noble mind, equally unworldly, though not equally temperate and far-seeing at its commencement and at its termination; and therefore, in the whole, we only read a deep and interesting lesson. In respect of intellect, Southey was nearly as great as is possible for a man not absolutely first-rate. His reputation for genius has suffered more from his own unrivalled and inconceivable industry than from any other cause. Not only did people think it impossible for a great poet to be capable of such hard work and such business-like punctuality in its executionto be equally ready to write an Indian Tale and a History of Brazil-to narrate the exploits of a Thalaba and a Wesley-to sing the first great Spanish war against the Moor, and to record the last one against the Frenchman-to indite a ballad and an article for the Quarterly Review; not only did all this obscure and perplex the popular conception of a poet, but by directing men's attention to a much greater variety of topics than they had room in their minds for, diverted it from those which each might have found congenial to himself, on which he might also have found Southey speaking to him in strains to which he would have delighted to listen. For, although he, the same man, was equally willing to write, no one of us is equally willing and ready to read a life of Nelson and a History of Brazil, an Epic Poem, and a sketch of Methodism: and when a man's works comprehend all these, and much more besides, we are deterred, to some extent, from looking at any one of them. So connected with life is all really interesting literature, that we are attracted to books by our conception of the author, and where that takes no marked form, and points in no one direction, we are not greatly allured to the works themselves. No very delightful mind is encyclopædic-no very original one unboundedly various. Wherefore his extraordinary copiousness and variety, both in prose and verse, while it kept Southey before the public eye, kept him further away from the human heart than he would otherwise have been. Not only would he have spoken more thrillingly and impassionedly had he spoken less; not only would his words have come from greater deeps of his own heart, and reached to greater in the hearts of others, had they been fewer and rarer, and more uniform in their direction; not only would he have gained in tension and concentration, by confining his aims, but in point of fact his great works, as they are, would have more justice done to them. For the surprising thing is, not that such a writer should, with all his powers, have indicated what may be called a laxity in art, or a want of that wistful earnestness, that deep-mouthed utterance with which the very greatest geniuses speak, but that this should not have been much more the case than it actually was. First-rate a man could not have been, who had his fixed hours for epic poetry, for reviewing and for history, and who passed from one to the other at the stroke of the clock; but it is astonishing that he was so great a second-rate man-that his genius showed itself so powerful and original. Desiderate in them what you will, Thalaba, the Curse of Kehama, and Roderick, are wonderful poems; and while we find it hard to imagine that posterity will, any more than the present generation, familiarize itself with all the contents of the ten volumes of Southey's poetical works, in addition to the whole library of his prose ones, we think, that these three performances will stand forth as English classics, at once the property of all subsequent ages, and illustrious monuments of that which produced them. Yet, great as they are, they have not received the attention due to them in our time. They have, indeed, been abundantly noticed by reviewers, and they were delighted in by their author's great contemporaries, but their contents are not familiar to the general reader. There exists an impression, most unjust as regards them, but not to be wondered at under the circumstances, that though fine in parts, they are bores on the whole. Yet most unjust such an impression is, for not only are they rife with beauty, but never were three works more interesting throughout. One of their author's especial gifts was the construction of a story. In the three poems before us, as well as in Madoc, the whole fabric of the tale was woven out of his own brain; for hardly an incident within the action of Roderick is historical, and we need not vouch for the fictitious character of the others. And yet how interesting they are. We read with breathless suspense, even when the scene, the agency, and the events are most removed from the sphere of humanity, of nature, or of possibility. It is strange that such a master of machinery, such a constructor of a tale, was not tempted in the present day to write a novel. "The Doctor," though a most delightful book, can hardly be accounted one; and though a work of fiction, has nothing that can well be called a plot. But Southey's powers of invention and disposition were such as must have enabled him to rival Mrs. Radcliffe, or even Schiller's Ghost Seer. Had he undertaken a serial, he must have harrowed us as much as we believe the last-mentioned work harrowed the author's countrymen, coming out as it did in numbers. Southey, however, confined the exercise of this gift to his poetical tales, and wonderful indeed is its exercise there. Of these we propose now to consider the three eminent ones, which we almost wish had stood alone among his poetical works, and of which, in that case, the public must have taken a more undistracted view. Of all his poems, Thalaba is the one most calculated to be popular. An Arabian tale as such has always a fair chance of favour; our earliest imaginative associations hang round the empire of Ishmael; and the affinity between the Arabian mind and the Hebrew makes us feel at home, to some extent, among Mussulmen and their sentiments. In Thalaba we have all this pleasure undisturbed. The tale is thoroughly Arabian, accord ing at least to untravelled notions of Arabia. The machinery, though supernatural, is both consistent with Mahommedan, and not abhorrent to Christian Theism; and though on a vast scale, it never disturbs our interest in Thalaba. The exquisite music of the verse, of which the uncertain movement is not aided in its impression by rhyme, attests the author's ear and his skill. We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting the exquisite opening "How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; In full-orb'd glory yonder Moon divine The desert-circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. The story of the destruction of Ad, which almost immediately follows, is very fine and impressive; and nothing can be more charming in their way than the happy scenes of Thalaba's boyhood and youth around the tent of Moath. Let those who dread Southey as a tedious writer set out with the Destroyer in his great enterprise. Our space only permits us to quote some of the verses which usher in its tremendous consummation, nearly as bright and elastic as can be found in the language. "Then did the Damsel say to Thalaba, Thou knowest not the water's way; Through fearful perils thou must pass, . Thou wilt embark with me!' She smiled in tears upon the youth; "He sate him on the single seat, By fragrant fir-groves now it past, The flag-flower blossom'd on its side, The flowing current furrow'd round "But many a silent spring meantime, 'Sail on, sail on,' quoth Thalaba, "A broader and yet broader stream, The Cormorant stands upon its shoals, The Sun goes down, the crescent Moon That sinking now, and swelling now, But evermore increasing, And the great Ocean opens on their way. 'Sail on, sail on!' quoth Thalaba, "The moon is bright, the sea is calm, Across the ocean waves; The line of moonlight on the deep |