CHAPTER XXXVIII

ROBERT SOUTHEY

LIKE almost every writer of verse accepted by the world as poetry, Robert Southey wrote a fine prose.

It is not impossible that his prose works will ultimately survive his poetry, which, though highly popular when it was published, has for the most part fallen into neglect.

Only the most stalwart students can now face undaunted the Curse of Kehama, filling eighty pages of small print in double column, and other similarly vast and verbose compositions.

For thirty-six years every kind of literary work poured from his pen at Keswick, where he settled down in 1803.

He wrote two great biographies, that of John Wesley and that of Nelson. The latter is one of the finest and most satisfying lives ever written.

The following passage on the death of the hero has long taken its place among the masterpieces of literature:

"The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a public calamity; men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us, and it seemed as if we had never, till then, known how deeply we loved and reverenced him.

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What the country had lost in its great naval herothe greatest of our own, and of all former times-was

scarcely taken into the account of grief. So perfectly, indeed, had he performed his part, that the maritime war, after the Battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end; the fleets of the enemy were not merely defeated, but destroyed; new navies must be built, and a new race of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their invading our shores could again be contemplated.

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It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him; the general sorrow was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, public monuments and posthumous rewards, were all which they could now bestow upon him whom the king, the legislature, and the nation, would alike have delighted to honour; whom every tongue would have blessed; whose presence in every village through which he might have passed would have wakened the church bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children from their sports to gaze upon him, and old men from the chimney corner to look upon Nelson ere they died.

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"The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual forms of rejoicing, but they were without joy; for such already was the glory of the British Navy through Nelson's surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the seas; and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength, for while Nelson was living to watch the combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they were no longer in existence.

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There was reason to suppose from the appearances upon opening the body, that in the course of nature he might have attained, like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to be lamented, who died so full of honours, and at the height of human fame. The most triumphant death is that of a martyr; the most awful, that of the martyred patriot; the most splendid, that of the hero in the hour of victory; and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's

translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory.

"He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example which are at this hour inspiring hundreds of the youth of England; a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength."

The Battle of Trafalgar left England the Queen of the sea, and she remains regnant upon her throne in spite of the attempts of the Germans to dispossess her.

The fleet with which that insolent adventure was essayed now lies at the bottom of the sea at Scapa Flow; and the blocking of Zeebrugge must have taught those sinkers of hospital ships that the less they meddle with English sailors the better for their safety.

CHAPTER XXXIX

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

SELDOM was a man and his writings so dissimilar as in the case of Walter Savage Landor.

A man of birth and fortune whose stormy life was full of combats, estrangements, and enmities, who at the age of eighty-three had to pay a thousand pounds in a libel action brought against him for publishing Dry Sticks Fagoted by Walter Savage Landor; he yet displayed in most of his writings a sweet serenity, and a most lovable and gentle spirit.

Nothing can be more filled with the peace of God than his imaginary conversations between Æsop and Rhodope.

Esop. Breathe, Rhodopè, breathe again those painless sighs they belong to thy vernal season. May thy summer of life be calm, thy autumn calmer, and thy winter never come.

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Rhodope. I must die then earlier.

Esop. Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall.

We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note of music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave there are no voices, O Rhodopè, that are not soon mute, however tuneful; there is no name, with

whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last.”

Rhodope's description of how her father, in the great famine, starved that she might lack nothing, and sold her in the market-place that she might live, is an exquisite piece of work, and places Landor among the masters of perfect prose:

"Rhodope. Never shall I forget the morning when my father, sitting in the coolest part of the house, exchanged his last measure of grain for a chlamys of scarlet cloth, fringed with silver. He watched the merchant out of the door, and then looked wistfully into the corn-chest. I, who thought there was something worth seeing, looked in also, and finding it empty, expressed my disappointment, not thinking, however, about the corn. A faint and transient smile came over his countenance at the sight of mine. He unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, and then cast it over my shoulders. I looked down on the glittering fringe and screamed with joy. He then went out; and I know not what flowers he gathered, but he gathered many; and some he placed in my bosom, and some in my hair. But I told him with captious pride, first that I could arrange them better, and again that I would have only the white. However, when he had selected all the white and I had placed a few of them according to my fancy, I told him (rising in my slipper) he might crown me with the remainder.

"The splendour of my apparel gave me a sensation of authority. Soon as the flowers had taken their station on my head, I expressed a dignified satisfaction at the taste displayed by my father, just as if I could have seen how they appeared! But he knew that there was at least as much pleasure as pride in it, and perhaps we divided the latter (alas! not both) pretty equally.

"He now took me into the market-place, where a concourse of people were waiting for the purchase of slaves. Merchants came and looked at me; some commending, others disparaging; but all agreeing that I was slender and delicate, that I could not live long, and that I should give much trouble. Many would have bought the chlamys,