Gents Mag 1850 part 1 p.358
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Gentleman's Magazine 1850 part 1 p.358
disposed to be pleased, and the first impression remained. Indeed I think it not above mediocrity. I cannot trace the author of the Task in one line." The editor has not thought it necessary to tell us the poem to which his father alluded; but by the date, 1797, we presume he means the "Lines on the Yardley Oak," first printed by Hayley. While speaking of Cowper, we may as well mention a slight mistake, which has remained, we believe, undiscovered and uncorrected to the present edition. In his "Retirement," - I praise the Frenchman - his remark was shrewd, How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude; But grant me still a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper - solitude is sweet. The name of La Bruyàre is put as the name of the Frenchman, but it ought to have been Balzac. In the Entretiens de Balzac, p.62, ed. Elzevir, "La solitude est certainement une belle chose, mais il y a plaisir d'avoir quelqu'un qui sache respondre a qui on puisse dire de temps en temps, que c'est une belle chose." Vol.ii. p.24. Of Mr. W. Savage Landor's poem Mr. Southey always spoke in terms of the highest eulogy. "There is a poem called Gebir, of which I know not whether my review be yet printed (in the Critical), but in that review you will find some of the most exquisite poetry in the language. The poem is such as Gilbert,* if he were only half as mad as he is, could have written. I would go an hundred miles to see the anonymous author."Again he says, p.56, "I like Gebir more and more; if you ever meet its author, tell him I took it with me on a voyage." P.64. "I read Gebir again; he grows upon me;" and in a letter published in the memoirs of Mr. Taylor of Norwich, he writes, p.352, "I have Gebir with me, and read it daily." P.26. Of that genuine though neglected poet, Bampfylde,† a very interesting notice occurs, which, however, is too long for us to insert; it seems but a partial extract, and yet we do not know where so full an account of his most melancholy story is told. P.153. "Pye's Alfred, to distinguish him from Alfred the Pious (Cottle's Alfred), I have not yet inspected, nor the wilful murder of Bonaparte by Anna Matilda, nor the high treason committed by Sir James Bland Burgess, Bart. against our lion-hearted Richard. Davy is fallen stark mad with a play called the 'Conspiracy of Gowrie,' which is by Rough,‡ an imitation of Gebir, with some poetry, but miserably and hopelessly deficient in all else, every character reasoning and metaphorising and metaphysicing the reader most nauseously," &c. P.172. "Last evening we talked of Davy. Rickman also fears for him. Sometimes he thinks he has (and excusably, surely) been hurt by the attentions of the great; a worse fault is that vice of metaphysicians - that habit of translating right and wrong into a jargon which confounds them - which allows everything and justifies everything. I am afraid, and it makes me very melancholy when I think of it, that Davy will never |
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* William Gilbert was author of a poem called "The
Hurricane, a Theosophical and Western Eclogue," published in
1796. "The poem," Southey says, "contains passage of
exquisite beauty." Soon after this time he placarded London
with long bills announcing the Law of Fire. His madness was
of the most incomprehensibe kind, as may be seen in the
notes on the Hurricane. See concerning him Southey's Life of
Wesley, ii. p.467; Sir Egerton Brydges' Autobiography, ii.
p.293; Retrospective Review, vol.x. p.160.
† On Bampfylde, see Southey's Specimens of English Poets, vol.iii. p.414; Censura Literaria, vol.iv. p.301. We suppose the Stanzas to a Lady in Bampfylde's Poems were addressed to Miss Palmer, the niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, with whom he was madly in love, and with which passion commenced his madness. He was twenty years in confinement, when he recovered his senses, to die then of a rapid decline. "In hac habitavit platea, quae est in nostra urbe primaria omnium amoeissima, et quae nomen honorandum adhuc retinet fundatoris Sir Hans Sloane." ‡ By the late Mr. Serjeant Rough. We read the play many years ago, and think Southey's criticism correct. We possess a MS. poem called "The Holy Land," composed by him, we believe, for the Seatonian Prize at Cambridge in 1800; in his writings the poetry is, in its beauties and faults, much as Southey describes the play. |
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