If there is any one who illustrates this remark, it is Gibbon; I seem to trace his vigorous condensation and peculiar rhythm at every turn in the literature of the present day. Pope, again, is said to have tuned our versification. Since his time, any one, who has an ear and turn for poetry, can with little pains throw off a copy of verses equal or superior to the poet’s own, and with far less of study and patient correction than would have been demanded of the poet himself for their production. Compare the choruses of the Samson Agonistes with any stanza taken at random in Thalaba: how much had the language gained in the interval between them! Without denying the high merits of Southey’s beautiful romance, we surely shall not be wrong in saying, that in its unembarrassed eloquent flow, it is the language of the nineteenth century that speaks, as much as the author himself.
I will give an instance of what I mean: let us take the beginning of the first chorus in the Samson:—
Just are the ways of God. And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all; If any be, they walk obscure, For of such doctrine never was there school, But the heart of the fool, And no man therein doctor but himself. But men there be, who doubt His ways not just, As to His own edicts found contradicting, Then give the reins to wandering thought, Regardless of His glory’s diminution; Till, by their own perplexities involved, They ravel more, still less resolved, But never find self-satisfying solution.
And now take the opening stanza of Thalaba:—
How beautiful is night A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven. In full-orb’d glory yonder Moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths. Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads, Like the round ocean girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night!
Does not Southey show to advantage here? yet the voice of the world proclaims Milton pre-eminently a poet; and no one can affect a doubt of the delicacy and exactness of his ear. Yet, much as he did for the language in verse and in prose, he left much for other artists to do after him, which they have successfully accomplished. We see the fruit of the literary labours of Pope, Thomson, Gray, Goldsmith, and other poets of the eighteenth century, in the musical eloquence of Southey.
