would result from employing Latin universally in works of taste and imagination. Upon this latter amazing paradox he wasted wonderful pains and ingenuity; and for its extraordinary mastery over the language, its free and daring criticism of classics both ancient and modern, and its varied reading not alone in Greek and Latin but in Italian and English literature, it would justify a mention in greater detail than can be given to it here.* I use it here only as an illustration of character. It was written under a persuasion, absolute while it lasted, that he might thus obtain an audience for what he had to say not only greatly wider but far more enduring than if he continued to write in his native tongue; and though he soon repented of this purpose to put forth nothing more in English that was either critical or imaginative, he had a lurking belief to the very last, that he should live to be recognized as a poet by reason of his Latin writings, when not only his, but all the English poems contemporary with his, should with the language itself have drifted hopelessly away. Nor were the eccentric turns of his temper on this point without some advantage in the end. Never till he was making that preposterous engagement to use the brave old speech no longer, had he made himself so thoroughly acquainted with its masterpieces even in tracks quite apart from his ordinary reading. What the character of his studies had been in past days of leisure he has already related in his letter to the Chancellor Eldon,† and his silent companions at Llanthony were his later heroes in many an imaginary conversation; but besides this large acquaintance with other than English writers, the latter also had recently become more variously familiar to him. Until he lived abroad, he used to say he did not know what a library was; and very generally he had now enlarged the circle of the authors with whom he was in the habit of passing great portions of his time. "You surprised me," wrote Walter Birch ‡ to him just before he quitted Pistoia, "by the familiarity you displayed with the literature of our-old divines in the letter I had from you almost a year ago." Another remark from the same letter may be added. Landor had been writing to his old school-fellow of the Latin Essay he had in hand, and of the eulogy it would contain of Wordsworth; and "would you believe it," Birch replies, "I inquired for the Excursion at Upham's last year, and found that they did not even know that such a book had been published." The poem had been out nearly five years when this letter was written.

With some changes and many additions it will be found at the close of his Poemata et Inscriptiones (1847).

† Ante, p. 210.

In the same letter Birch announces to Landor his marriage, and tells him he has become "rusticated and country-parson-fied) upon a living in Wiltshire which Lord Pembroke had given him. This he changed three years later for a better living in Essex given him by his college, and which he held to his death.

1815-21

V. AGAIN AT PISA.

A BIRTHDAY LETTER TO SOUTHEY: 30TH JANUARY, 1820.

"It appears to me an age since I heard from you, nor have I yet received the new poem of Wordsworth. A poem given by him, as I have just been telling my friend Walter Birch, is like a kingdom given by Alexander or Cyrus. As I myself have been confined by a bilious and nervous fever, I fancied that something of the kind must have happened to you. God forbid. Neither my time nor my life are worth anything; but yours are very precious, and, like the mines of Mexico, have many proprietors. I think my last letter contained a long extract from a poem I have written called 'Catillus and Salia'; but I have not begun the necessary custom of taking any note of what I write about, so that some favorite thought may occur two or three times, and another, more necessary, drop altogether. I suppose the intelligence has reached England that Cicero's book De Republicâ has been discovered at Rome by Angelo Mai. I read Cicero with indescribable delight; but I would rather either read or have written almost any one of Wordsworth's later poems than the most celebrated work of Cicero. I have often turned both to his and to yours, sometimes to make my heart, sometimes my spirits, and sometimes my body better; for good poetry and perfect solitude I have always found the best nurses. My brother Robert informs me that he has sent, addressed to you at Longman's, my poem, Sponsalia Polyxenœ;* and, what is of more importance, that he has heard from Mr. Senhouse that you are well. But his letter is dated above three months ago. I sent the poem in June, and wrote either in May or April. You told me in your last that Mrs. Southey had just recovered from a very severe and dangerous illness. I am extremely anxious to hear how she does; and pray give your little boy a kiss for me. This is my birthday; and as I never, as far as I can recollect, slept soundly on its anniversary, do not flatter myself that I shall to-night. Gray talks of

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'Slumbers light that fly the approach of morn.' Mine are and always were light enough, but instead of 'flying the approach of morn,' they wait for it. I sometimes amuse myself with writing Latin poetry or correcting what I have written, but I read little. Some time or other I propose to finish Dante, which I began about eleven years ago, but wanted perseverance. A twentieth or thirtieth part of what I read was excellent. You cannot say the same of Ariosto. He is a Carnival poet; but he is never very bad. When shall we see your Quaker? Do not let the times make any impression on your writings, and as little as possible on your mind. I think of England as if I were in another world and had lost all personal interest in it. I foresaw and predicted the whole of these calamities when that madman Pitt united the French of all parties by hostility. Men reduced to poverty must be discontented. We wither the tree and complain that it becomes touchwood and catches fire. I shall remain here all the winter, all the spring, and perhaps the summer. So that I cherish the hope of hearing from you more than once before my departure. Pisa, January 30."

Southey replies with renewed lamentation over the misfortune of his friend's predilection for Latin verse, of which he never thinks but

Ante, p. 267. It is the same "little poem" to which he refers in his last-quoted letter, and which he had now privately printed.

as of a great loss to English literature; speaks of Byron's imitations of Frere in Beppo and Don Juan, the last of which he denounces as "a foul blot in the literature of his country, an act of high treason in English poetry, for which the author deserves damnation"; and gives news of Wordsworth's doings and his own.

"Wordsworth's 'Peter Bell' has not been sent to you yet, because I have been waiting for other things to accompany it; by itself it would neither be worth carriage nor have any chance of reaching you, unless an opportunity had offered of sending it by a private hand. It will have in company now as many other of his smaller pieces as suffice, with it, to form a third volume of his poems. The last of these portions is now in the press, and my Life of Wesley' will be forthcoming nearly at the same time, - in the course of three or four weeks. He desires me to send the whole, having as just a sense of your powers as a poet as you have of his. Wesley and the third volume of Brazil will give form and weight to the parcel; I do not however mean to undervalue them. You will find some very interesting matter in both. I hope also that I shall be able to send some verses of my own upon the king's death. My taste for ex-officio verses is not very unlike your own. But you will not be apprehensive that I shall debase myself by the matter; and the manner will interest you as an experiment in versification."

In the same letter, dated March, 1820, there is a sharp protest against Landor's recent praise of one of the South American leaders. "You must have seen some exaggerated accounts of Artigas. He is merely one of the ruffians whom circumstances have brought forward in that miserable part of the world: those of Buenos Ayres being only not so bad as those of Venezuela because they have not had an opportunity as yet of committing as many crimes. A deluge

that should sweep those countries clean would be a merciful visitation such is the character of their present inhabitants, and such the atrocity with which they carry on an internecine warfare."

:

To this Landor rejoined in May.

"In a few days I shall have despatched for England a volume of Latin poems, which will be printed at the close of the ensuing week. Longman will send you a couple of copies, together with one for Wordsworth. I beg that one of the copies may be presented with my compliments to your uncle Mr. Hill, of whom I have often thought since I had the pleasure of meeting him at Bristol, and to whom the literary world is so much indebted for the strength with which he has supplied you for the History of Brazil. Yet I wish that cursed country had never been discovered, since it withdraws your attention from poetry. The English consider the Portuguese and the negroes in nearly the same point of interest, and all the genius in the world will never make your History a popular work. Now about Artigas. I never read anything about him except in the newspapers; but I conversed one day with an ignorant but acute Swiss who had resided four months at Monte Video and a year at Buenos Ayres. He assured me that A. was more dreaded by the latter city than all the Spaniards and Portuguese united; that while he was at Monte Video A. had destroyed nearly a whole regiment lately arrived from Portugal, and obliged four thousand Portuguese to retreat. Yet he had no money except what arose from the

1815-21.

confiscation of Portuguese property and the sale of licenses to capture their vessels, the whole amount of which in a year could not amount to 20,000 dollars. The greatest force he ever collected was 2,800. Surely then whatever may be the moral character, whatever the political views, of this man, in war no age has produced his superior except J. Cæsar and Sertorius. He appears to possess a surprising influence over the near tribes in all directions, particularly about Buenos Ayres and Monte Video. The troops he has beaten and destroyed fought under Lord Wellington and are equal to our own. He has killed of Spanish Americans and Portuguese from seven to ten thousand at different times, with the loss of about 2,000, and was never beaten. The Portuguese are unwilling to attack him when he commands in person, but he is often forced to be absent to collect troops and encourage the provinces in his favor. This man (the Swiss) was intercepted and plundered by his soldiers, but supplied with provisions, a horse, a guide, and allowed to go to Buenos Ayres. I hope the government of Buenos Ayres will conciliate an enemy so formidable: if not, that he will overturn it and exterminate the Portuguese government, than which nothing ever was more iniquitous in its whole system. Foller (the Swiss) corroborates all that Koster says of the mode of levying troops, and the taxes have since been much increased. Floreat quercus Guernica. Adieu. I have a few books which I want to send you. Did not you say that, if directed to the Austrian ambassador, books came to you free? Give me the direction."

Southey's next letter (19th of August) announced that the books so long promised by himself had been despatched: Wordsworth's Peter Bell and Sonnets on the River Duddon, with his own last volume of the History of Brazil and his Life of Wesley. It told also of his other labors in history and poetry, the Peninsular War and the Tale of Paraguay; the last retarded by the Spenser stanza, but now resumed once more. It related some of the incidents of the new reign; Scott's baronetcy; his own doctorate at Oxford, where nobody even at his own college remembered him, except the old porter and his wife; the proceedings begun a month before against "the modern Messalina," with the support given her by the devilish newspapers, the moral pestilence of the age; and the beautification of London, which his friend will scarcely know when he returns to it, if the Catilines should not first have burnt it down. Finally it told of a Series of Dialogues which he proposed to write upon a plan suggested by Boethius; and this announcement, as it turned out, was a very memorable one for Landor, whose reply was written in September, and begins with allusion to the books he in the foregoing letter had promised his friend.

A BATCH OF OLD BOOKS FOR SOUTHEY.

"My anxiety to receive your last volume of the Brazilian History, the Life of Wesley, and Wordsworth's poems, is sharpened if possible by the letter I receive to-day. . . . Two of the books I proposed sending to you are folios and heavy. One is Vincentii Speculum Historiæ, praised highly by Scaliger, and in which he says things are found which are found nowhere else. I have read a great deal of the book with surprise and satis

faction. Tell me if you have it; and if not, whether you think it worth the duty. The other folio is Paul Hoste's Treatise on Naval Tactics, which perhaps may amuse your brother. The French pretend that it has taught us everything we know of such matters. It certainly is a scientific work, and contains some pretty vignettes: commendations which the French would naturally place together. The other books are small, and valueless in all other respects than that I have found few of them in the public libraries. They are chiefly modern Latinists, of which some persons, I hear, begin to make collections, among others Mr. Heber."

BRAZIL AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.

"I am reading a second time your History of Brazil, a totally new world to all the literary men in Europe, whatever may be their pretensions. If you had not undertaken the work, it never could have been performed. If my opinion is correct, that barbarism is constituted of three principal things, filth, cruelty, and superstition, the difference is hardly anything between the discoverers and the discovered. But the spirit of discovery, you will argue, proves the superiority. I do not see that. The spirit that induced the American to search for wild animals to eat is more natural, more laudable, and more sagacious than that which propelled the Spaniard and Portuguese to hazard his life and lose his comforts in search of what was more difficult to find and more unsatisfactory when found. The Roman Catholic superstition appears to me infinitely worse than any other species of idolatry, because it has every evil inherent in it which any one of those has, and in addition is more propense to intolerance and idleness. Everything can be done by proxy. Men in Catholic countries pray to God and get children by proxy, and by proxy are damned or saved. The priest even eats and drinks for you at supper, and helps you to a slice of meat by putting into his mouth a piece of bread. A cannibal eats you because he is hungry or because he hates you; a Catholic kills you upon a full stomach for your own good and to please God. How very few men are not barbarous! how very few are free from cruel actions even towards those whom they would be the happier for loving!"

Next he speaks with no more thought of Childe Harold, and of the mastery of the Spenser stanza exhibited by its writer, than if there had been no such poem or poet in that century

OF THE SPENSER STANZA AND OF WORDSWORTH.

"You delight me by saying that you must take up the poems which have been so long on hand. The stanza of Spenser is less difficult to you than to any one. It has made poets, and ought not to deter one. How infinitely more pure is Thomson in his admirable Castle of Indolence than elsewhere and Shenstone in his Schoolmistress! How greatly has Wordsworth surpassed the noblest passages of Spenser himself in his Laodamia! The stanza is not new to you, and you possess a copiousness and richness of language such as few poets have possessed. I hope Wordsworth will write no more short poems until he has finished his Recluse. If our country must fall, let her expire in the arms of genius. France, in all her troubles, has produced no writers fit to compose the title-page of an almanac, and the period has been thirty years. Athens had her Demosthenes and her Aristoteles, Rome her Cicero. Modern ages indeed have produced no great prose-writers, but in poets we far surpass the ancients: a position which half a century ago