Essays Moral and Political. By Robert Southey, Esq. LL.D. Poet Laureate, &c. now first collected. In two volumes.

The time is past when criticism might be called upon to form an estimate of the literary character of the distinguished individual whose name stands at the head of this brief notice of a portion of his labours, now first collected into two rather unsightly volumes, but the contents of which, in a separate and anonymous form, have been long before the public. As a poet, biographer, and historian, Dr. Southey is unquestionably one of the first writers of the age. Had he attempt. ed less, even in these departments of literature; had he confined himself, for instance, to poetry, his name would have shone brighter in the annals of his country, and he might have taken his place beside Scott, and Wordsworth, and Byron. But comparatively indifferent to fame, and regarding the more substantial rewards of intellectual employment, he has chosen the less splendid path of the profession, and placed himself as far as genius and independence of spirit rendered it possible, on a level with the day and piece labourers who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, who look to pelf rather than praise, and who, if they secure the comforts of the present hour, are not over anxious to obtain posthumous renown. Dr. Southey has long been known to the trade as an author of all work; and original writing, compilations, and editorial superintendence have, in turn, called forth the powers of his intellect and the resources of his varied and comprehensive knowledge. We would not, by any means, insinuate, that in this diversified application of his talents he has compromised his principles or sacrificed his honour. Far from it: we conscientiously believe that he has sedulously en deavoured to maintain both. A partizan where it is natural that party feeling should exist, he has undoubtedly been, and not one of the mildest or most tolerant. But this has arisen rather from the constitution of his mind than the circumstances in which he has been placed, or the interests which, at different periods of his life, he had pledged himself to uphold. He is the very last man that ought to have troubled himself or the world with politics; and yet, if we may judge from the motto prefixed to these volumes, it is on his profound and just views on this intricate and most unpoetical topic that he thinks himself most at home. And we much question if, among all the volumes which he has published, be does not regard these Moral and Political Essays as the most valuable of his performances. "Here shalt thou have the service of my pen, the tongue of my best thoughts." On this point we differ from him "toto cœlo," and could we be surprised at the weakness of a strong mind, this would be sufficient to excite our astonishment. Whatever may be the merits of these Essays (and as compositions merely they are worthy of their Author) as specimens of political science, of enlarged views of society and government, they are, in our opinion, far below mediocrity. No man can be a political writer of the highest eminence who is remarkably deficient in that power which metaphysicians have denominated abstraction, and which a modern writer has well described as the

faculty and disposition to discern in every fact or event, not so much its single import, as its universal meaning, and its relation to general principles, which fills the mind always with the most enlarged conceptions, which leads on from the less perfect towards the more perfect; from the accidental and adjunctive to the universal; or from the exterior to the interior; from the specious to the real; which not merely gives the reasoning faculty its proper and necessary advantage, but dispels and pats out of view a thou. sand destructive motives. Calmness and intellectual courage, not less than perspicacity, are the fruit of the power of abstraction.

Had this first quality of human intellect been combined with the imaginative faculty which Dr. Southey possesses in a higher degree than most of his species, these Essays would never have been written; at least, the good principles which they contain could not have been neutralized and rendered almost useless by amalgamation with so much that is false, delusive, and injurious. Writers like Dr. Southey, who have more imagination than judgment, have no clear perceptions of abstract science. A sense of beauty, of harmony, of richness, of magnificence, of sublimity, where there is little of the antagonist power of abstruse reasoning and an insight into first prin. ciples, always generates an ardour of feeling nearly allied to enthusiasm, and hurries the individual into extremes, sometimes carrying him from one point of the compass to its opposite; and this, without impugning his sincerity, or exposing the changeling to the imputation of being a renegado or an apostate. Hard measure bas been dealt out to Dr. Southey on account of his ultra-Radicalism and his ultra-Toryism. We are willing to believe that be has always been an honest man, and on this account entitled to our respect, but not to our confidence. And we should have liked him better if he had displayed towards those who now hold his former opinions less bitterness, and if he had been contented to regard his present associates as somewhat tarnished with the failings of our common humanity. The complacency which dictated the following sentence in the Dedication to Sir Robert Inglis would be simply amusing if it did not indicate a feeling of contempt towards those who are at this moment only what he was himself thirty years ago. If no virtuous man can be a Reformer, and Dr. Southey, in his own person, is competent to form an adequate judgment on the subject, are we quite sure that because he is an Anti-Reformer he must of necessity be so?

"The part which I have taken," says the Laureate, has obtained for me, and in a large measure, the esteem and good-will of those by whom it is a comfort as well as an honour to be approved; and, on the other hand, the obloquy of men whose declared enmity is sufficient proof that the approbation which I desired has been deserved." "Maximum namque est bonitatis argumentum malis ignavisque hominibus displicere."

The avowed design of the present collection is to aid the Conservatives in their present violent struggle to retain the corruptions and abuses which have so long rendered the British Constitution

little better than a name. Yet it is some comfort to reflect, that Dr. Southey is a declared Reformer-whether of the bit by-bit school he does not say but he tells Sir Robert Inglis that he has "Pleaded against the growing errors of the times, not more earnestly opposing evil designs and perilous experiments upon our social system, than urging the necessity of those efficient measures and those only real and radical reforms by which alone it can be supported."

What are his specific notions of Reform, and how far he would be willing to extend it, we are not in these Essays distinctly informed.

That he dislikes the profligacy and debauchery which are inseparable from popular elections, he takes no pains to conceal; and what he thinks of nomination boroughs we are at no loss to guess. For Dr. Southey, the following language on so sacred a subject is rather strong:-"The real evil of our representation lies not in the influence of the Treasury, but in the power of a few great landholders-in that power which enables one of these political Behemoths to demand for himself an office, or at least to exercise an influence in the government, though he should have no pretensions to it on the score of abilities or character."

We entirely approve of Dr. Southey's exposé of the Malthusian philosophy, and of much that he has written on the subject of manufactories and machinery. It is mixed up with some virulence, and is marred by the spirit of Toryism; but it exhibits, in general, enlightened views of domestic policy, and breathes a spirit of benevolence worthy of the Author of " Roderick."

In the following paragraph the Laureate discloses views which we hope, under the new system of Reform, to see realized, but which would never, have been adequately attempted by his favourite Tories: and yet what is their amount ?— "The methods of Reform by which great and effectual good may be accomplished are these: institute parochial schools for training up the people in the way they should go, and not only will crimes then become less frequent, but the poor-rates also will soon be diminished; extend your system of colonization, as the wisest people of antiquity did, restless spirits will then find their proper sphere abroad, and sufficient employment will be left for all at home; establish the principle of limited service in your fleets and armies, and make the reward of service adequate and certain; volunteers will then never be wanting."

Of the Church, as by law established, Dr. Southey is a devout and staunch supporter. He hates the sectaries. Religion and the hierarchy are with him identical; and yet he has too much holy enthusiasm in his nature not to loathe certain abominations which even he admits deform its character, and lessen its influence. He quotes Bishop Latimer's sermons, and a poem by Withers, which go far beyond any thing that the veriest Radicals of modern days could venture to indulge, denouncing pluralities, and patronage, and other essential evils of the Unholy Alliance. Indeed we may state as a general observation, that the Laureate often vitiates the premises of his reasoning by admissions which his honourable and just feelings would not suffer him to withhold. We could adduce some marvellous instances of sim

plicity, where the Christian gets the better of the logician, and the friend of human nature throws the Tory into the shade. These volumes occasionally display fine specimens of good writing, and whatever be their faults, they are interesting throughout. One of the passages peculiarly worthy of notice is that in which the writer makes the amende honorable as an apology for his early Jacobinism:

"There was a wild cosmopolite character about the democracy of the last generation; old men of warm hearts and sanguine spirits sang their nunc dimittis, and young men of ardent mind and generous inexperience became enthusiastic disciples of a political faith which ushered itself into the world with the lying annunciation of Peace on earth, good will to men.' The better spirits who were thus led astray by the prospects which the French Revolution seemed, as they thought at its commencement, to open for human kind, mingled their crude politics with principles as crude, but which both were too generous and too wild ever to become popular. Their talk was not merely of the rights of man, but of the hopes and destinies of the human race-of rapid improvement, and indefinite progression. The populace were incapable of entering into such views; they beheld nothing in these visionaries but their direct political bearing; and finding them hostile to the anti-Jacobin war, regarded them as men who preferred France to England, and therefore as enemies to their country. At the same time, the baser crew of democrats, who aped the follies of the French, and felt no horror at their crimes, shocked their countrymen by open professions of profligate impiety. That this was the feeling of the popu lace twenty years ago is notorious to every one who remembers that stirring season. Time passed on; the character of the French Revolution developed itself; that which had been fondly worshipped at its uprise as the day-star of liberty,'-the star in the East, guiding us to political redemption, proved to be a baleful comet, shedding pestilence and destruction over the nations. Jacobinism fell under the sword of military despotism in France, the fate which universally must terminate its success. Of its partizans in England, some sunk into contempt; some were cooled by years; others sobered by experience; their dreams were dis sipated; their philosophy grew out of fashion; their irreligion was hooted out of sight; the great experiment to which they appealed had failed.”

Dr.

Among those who had been the dupes of this vain-glorious experiment, were Mr. Southey and the Rev. Mr. Winterbottom-the latter of whom having rendered himself obnoxious to the Ministry, was most iniquitously charged with having uttered sedition in the pulpit, and was condemned to three years' incarceration in Newgate. Southey speaks cautiously of this gentleman's guilt, and avows something like a conviction in his mind that he was unjustly accused, and that he suffered innocently. He tells his readers that so great was the feeling of sympathy in favour of Mr. Winterbottom, that many visited him in prison; but he has not stated one fact which, perhaps, he did not know, and another which it would have been only ingenuous and manly for him to avow, and which ought to have prevented his writing a sentence in his letter to Mr. Wm. Smith on the sore subject of bis Wat Tyler. The

fact of which he was probably ignorant was thisthat some years after his liberation, Mr. Winterbottom received an anonymous letter desiring him to call at a certain banking-house in London, where he would receive a sum of money amounting, we believe, to three thousand pounds, on the express condition that he should take the money and make no inquiries. The other fact which Dr. Southey ought to have stated is, that one of the visitors of Mr. Winterbottom in Newgate was Mr. Southey himself, and that his errand was for the express purpose of presenting him with the manuscript of "Wat Tyler" which he had just written -that Mr. Winterbottom was to publish it for his own benefit, and that the gift was accompanied by these remarkable expressions:-" silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I unto thee." Let the reader couple this with the following printed statement by Dr. Southey, addressing Mr. Smith-" Yon knew that this poem had been written very many years ago in his early youth-you knew that a copy of it had been surreptitiously obtained and made public by some skulking scoundrel, who had found booksellers not more honourable than himself to undertake the publication." The work was not Mr. Southey's, but was the property of Mr. Winterbottom, who allowed his friends to take copies of it. It was not surreptitiously obtained, and was published, not as a political Poem, but as a piece of pleasantry to be set in juxta-position with some of Mr. Southey's bitter vituperations against the Reformers, which had then recently appeared in the Quarterly Review." The poem, as the mottoes clearly indicated, was intended to neutralize the virulence of the critique by raising a langh at the expense of the author: surely a very harmless retaliation for an offence which merited grave and severe rebuke. We suppose the present volumes will be a Text Book for the Anti-Reformers, and may help to keep up their spirits. Be it so! they have abundant need of consolation.

School and College Classics.-Four Dialogues of Plato.

The benefits conferred upon students of Greek literature by Mr. Valpy, in his publication of some of the most popular authors in that language, accompanied by useful and comprehensive notes in English, are already generally known and acknowledged. To the list are now to be added "The Crito" and " Hippias Major" of Plato, together with the spurious Dialogues, known by the titles of" The Second Alcibiades" and "Sisyphus." Of all the classic writers extant, none to a greater extent than Plato requires the labours of a diligent and accurate annotator to render his language intelligible to those who, for the first time, are encountering its intricacies; and none assuredly is better deserving of the utinost attention which the learned in any age can bestow, whether the sublime character of his speculations is considered, or the exquisite finish of that Attic eloquence in which his philosophy is conveyed. It is principally owing to the erudition and research of the present Editor, that his "Dialogues," to a certain extent, may now be pronounced no longer a sealed book, which none but scholars, who had both time and patience to an indefinite extent at their command, could ever hope, even imperfectly, to understand. The nu

merous manuscripts, collated by Immanuel Bekker for the restoration of the true text, have been widely and successfully consulted, and wherever an obscurity exists, a satisfactory explanation has been tendered, or the new but highly beneficial expedient adopted of marking it at once as capable of very little elucidation, a plan that will be found, in the present instance, far more advantageous than presenting the reader with the opposing and futile explanations of a score of commentators, determined upon making even the errors of transcribers, naturally abundant in so metaphysical a writer, wear, notwithstanding their obstinate resistance, the stamp and impress of divine philosophy. The principal fault we have to find is with certain absurd translations in the excursuses, and an uncouthness of language in the Preface, together with the indications of a consciousness of superior aptitude for his task, which the Editor has taken care to display under an ill-affected modesty of expression, which reminds us strongly of the well known" Si quid est in me ingenii Judices quod sentio quam sit exiguum" of Cicero. Again: although by no means inclined to regret the insertion of the Crito and Hippias, we cannot help thinking that some other part of the writings of Plato might have been substituted for the treatises of his imitators; and after perusing the two former Dialogues with pleasure, the student, we suspect, will be inclined to ask, "Where is the celebrated Phædon?" One more remark, and we have done with objections. In a note upon "The Crito," Paley is stated to have proved, that the general doctrine of rendering good for evil, inculcated in the Gospel, is to be taken in a limited sense. This is either a mistake or a misrepresentation, and whichever it may be, ought to be corrected. Neither would the work be injured if comparisons between the divine precepts of the blessed Saviour and the moral apophthegms of the Grecian sages, were either omitted altogether, or, if expressed, so worded that nothing like a similarity of character between their authors might for a moment be suspected of being implied. We are sure the Editor will agree with ns in allowing, that when the ill effect which has followed such comparisons is considered, the possibility of its recurrence cannot be too strongly guarded against. We must now, however, conclude our notice. That Plato has been hitherto an author much inore talked of than read, and much more frequently read than understood, even among those who constitute what has, perhaps, been unjustly termed the learned world, is principally, we imagine, owing to the previous want of an edition of his works, executed upon the plan at present so judiciously adopted. Now that the principal dif ficulties are in the course of being removed, we hope that an ardour for availing themselves of their favourable opportunities will exist in a proportionate degree among students of the classics in general. The Editor has done all in his power to smooth the path to an acquaintance with the most poetic of ancient philosophers; and those of the present day, who are crossing the threshold of the literæ humaniores, may consider themselves fortunate in having that information presented them at the price of a very moderate quantity of attention and study, which it would formerly have demanded years of severe mental labour to acquire.

A Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testament; or a Dictionary and Alphabetical Index to the Bible. In two Parts. To which is added a Concordance

one of the most agreeable and instructive books it has ever been our fortune to peruse. Few have a more enviable tact at communicating knowledge. He has not alone skimmed the surface of

the Bible, and a Brief Account of its History and Excellence. By Alexander Cruden, M.A. with a Sketch of the Life and Character of the Author. By William Youngman.

The original work of Cruden bas been before the public for nearly a century. The preface to the first edition gives an historical account of preceding similar undertakings, and the author states very clearly the advantages of the great work on which he exerted the energies of his mind, and employed the most active portion of his life. The numerous editions which have been published, and the innumerable copies which have been sold, prove its excellence, and its perfect adaptation to the wants of those who delight to read and study the Holy Scriptures. As, however, the value of such a work is greatly dependant upon its correctness, much labour has been bestowed in every succeeding edition to obtain this result. With what degree of success this difficult task has been attended may be judged from the fact, that in the first fifty pages of the last quarto edition, have been discovered nearly one hundred typographical errors. The present is not only, in point of paper, size, letter, and execution, far the most complete and beautiful that has ever been published, but the proprietors assure us that they have exhausted the resources of their art in producing a clear and legible page, and they have adopted every precaution for the attainment of the highest possible degree of accuracy. The Life of Cruden by Youngman is a very interesting and affecting me. moir. "Few of those," says the biographer," who consult a Concordance, will think of seeking for entertainment from a Life of the Author; and fewer still would imagine that a man, who could confine himself for years to such an employment, could be the subject of that waywardness of mind which frequently attends the higher powers of genius, and excites the sympathies of mankind? Yet Alexander Cruden was one of those

Or crazed by care, or crossed by hopeless love,' who trod the path of life on the verge of that awful abyss, where the hopes and happiness of so many great minds have been engulfed. And if madness was in his case softened into eccentricity, or directed to the correction and amendment of the generation in which he lived, he was probably indebted for his escape to that absorption of mind which such a work as this must have occasioned. What would have been to others intolerable drudgery, was a sedative to his agitated mind; and the labour which would have wasted the energies of a happier man, was the balm of his wounded spirit."

This, which is far the best, is also the cheapest edition of Cruden's Concordance that was ever published. The spirited proprietors richly deserve the most extensive patronage.

Fragments of Voyages and Travels, Second Series. By Capt. Basil Hall, R.N.

With Captain Hall's well-known political opinions we have no desire to meddle in reviewing

ture, although it would at first appear that he satisfies himself, and seeks to satisfy his readers, by detailing only such as are amusing and possess interest. He is thus a very profitahle acquaintance, from whose long experience and eventful life rational enjoyment and useful information may be derived. There is perhaps no writer who tells an anecdote more pleasantly, or with more graphic power. We extract one that, though of an appalling character, affords a fine and striking proof of the resolute courage and fortitude of the brave men to whom we are mainly indebted for the national glory of which we have been so long and so justly proud. Captain Hall has been describing a gallant but a harsh officer, whose severity towards his crew was awfully avenged:

"The frigate under command of this energetic officer, when in company with another ship, chased two French frigates off the Isle of France. As his ship sailed much faster than her consort, he soon outstripped her, and closed with the enemy single-handed. The Frenchmen, seeing only one ship near them, and the other far astern, shortened sail, and prepared for the attack, which, however, they could hardly suppose would be undertaken by one ship. In this expectation, however, they underrated the gallant spirit of her commander, who unquestionably was one of the bravest officers in the service. It is said, also, that he deemed himself, at this critical moment of his fate, one of the most fortunate of men, to possess such an opportunity for distinction. Seeing the enemy's frigates within his reach, and well knowing what his men could execute if they chose, never dreaming for a moment that they would fail him at this pinch-he exclaimed, in the greatest rapture, We shall take them both! steer right for them! and now, my brave lads, stand to your guns, and show what you are made of !'

"This was the last order be ever gave! The men obeyed, and stood to their guns, like gallant fellows as they were: but they stood there only to be shot to death. They folded their arms, and neither loaded nor fired a single shot, in answer to the pealing broadsides which the unresisted and astonished enemy were pouring fast in upon them! Now had arrived the dreadful moment of revenge for them as their captain, who was soon struck down like the rest, lived only long enough to see the cause of his failure, and to witness the shocking sight of his gallant and self-devoted crew cut to pieces, rather than move their hands to fire one gun to save the credit of their commander-all consideration for their own lives, or for the honour of their country, appearing to be absorbed in their desperate determination to prove at last how completely they had it in their power to show their sense of the unjust treatment they had received."

The volumes abound with characteristic anecdotes; and while we recommend them to all, we do so more peculiarly to the young, to whom they may prove a source of considerable benefit while they amuse and interest to the highest degree.