“Vidi the
Review of Edinburgh. The first part is
designed evidently as an answer to Wordsworth’s Preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads; and, however
relevant to me, quoad Robert Southey, is certainly utterly irrelevant to Thalaba. In their account of
the story they make some blunders of negligence: they ask how Thalaba knew that he was to be the Destroyer,
forgetting that the Spirit told him so in the text; they say that the
inscription of the locust’s forehead teaches him to read the ring, which
is not the case; and that Mohareb tries to
kill him at last, though his own life would be destroyed at the same
time,—without noticing that that very ‘though’ enters into
the passage, and the reason why is given. I added all the notes for the cause
| Ætat. 28. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 197 |
“The general question concerning my system and taste is
one point at issue; the metre, another. These gentlemen who say that the metre
of the Greek choruses is difficult to understand at a first reading, have,
perhaps, made it out at last, else I should plead the choruses as precedent,
and the odes of Stolberg in German, and
the Ossian of Cesarotti in Italian; but this has been done
in the M. Magazine’s review of
Thalaba. For the
question of taste, I shall enter into it when I preface Madoc. I believe we are both classics in our
taste; but mine is of the Greek, theirs of the Latin school. I am for the
plainness of Hesiod and Homer, they for the richness and ornaments of
Virgil. They want periwigs placed upon
bald ideas, a narrative poem must have its connecting parts; it cannot be all
interest and incident, no more than a picture all light, a tragedy all pathos.
. . . . The review altogether is a good one, and will be better than any London
one, because London reviewers always know something of the authors who appear
before them, and this inevitably affects the judgment. I, myself, get the
worthless poems of some good-natured person whom I know; I am aware of what
review-
| 198 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 28. |
“But when any Scotchman’s book shall come to be reviewed, then see what the Edinburgh critics will say. . . . . Their philosophy appears in their belief in Hindoo chronology! and when they abuse Parr’s style, it is rather a knock at the dead lion, old Johnson. A first number has great advantages; the reviewers say their say upon all subjects, and lay down the law: that contains the Institutes; by and by they can only comment.
