through his faithful though secret efforts to redeem the past, secure to him, justly blighted and world-forsaken as he is, not only our sorrowing love, but our respect;—this Southey alone has done, perhaps alone could do. As a scene of unrivalled excellence, both for its meaning and its manner, I would mention that of Florinda’s return with “Roderic,” (who is disguised as a monk, and whom she does not know,) to her father; when after such a strife of heart-rending words and heart-broken tears, they, exhausted, seat themselves on the bank of the little stream, and watch together the quiet moon. Never has Christianity spoken in accents of more penetrating tenderness since the promise was given to them that be weary and heavy-laden.
Of Coleridge I shall say little. Few minds are capable of fathoming his by their own sympathies, and he has left us no adequate manifestation of himself as a poet by which to judge him. For his dramas, I consider them complete failures, and more like visions than dramas. For a metaphysical mind like his to attempt that walk, was scarcely more judicious than it would be for a blind man to essay painting the bay of Naples. Many of his smaller pieces are perfect in their way, indeed no writer could excel him in depicting a single mood of mind, as Dejection, for instance. Could Shakspeare have surpassed these lines?
| “A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear |
| A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, |
| Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, |
| In word, or sigh, or tear. |
| O Lady, in this wan and heartless mood, |
| To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed, |
| All this long eve, so balmy and serene, |
| Have I been gazing on the western sky |
| And its peculiar tint of yellow green: |
| And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye! |
| And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, |
| That give away their motion to the stars; |
