Coleridge chafes; and Landor, we may be sure, sniffs, and swears, with a great roar of voice, at what looks so like to sycophancy. To this time belongs that ode whose vengeful lines, after the fall of Napoleon, whip round the Emperor’s misdeeds in a fury of Tory Anglicanism, and call on France to avenge her wrongs:-- “By the lives which he hath shed, By the ruin he hath spread, By the prayers which rise for curses on his head-- Redeem, O France, thine ancient fame! Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame! Open thine eyes! Too long hast thou been blind! Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind!” This seems to me only the outcry of a tempestuous British scold; and yet a late eulogist has the effrontery to name it in connection with the great prayerful burst of Milton upon the massacre of the Waldenses:-- “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.” No, no; Southey was no Milton--does not reach to the height of an echo of Milton. Yet he was a rare and accomplished man of books--of books rather than genius, I think. An excellent type of the very clever and well-trained professional writer, working honestly and steadily in the service to which he has put himself. Very politic, too, in his personal relations. Even Carlyle--for a wonder--speaks of him without lacerating him. In a certain sense he was not insincere; yet he had none of that out-spoken exuberant sincerity which breaks forth in declaratory speech, before the public time-pieces have told us how to pitch our voices. Landor had this: so had Coleridge. Southey never would have run away from his wife--never; he might dislike her; but Society’s great harness (if nothing more) would hold him in check; there were conditions under which Coleridge might and did. Southey would never over-drink or over-tipple; there were conditions (not rare) under which Coleridge might and did. Yet, for all this, I can imagine a something finer in the poet of the _Ancient Mariner_--that felt moral chafings far more cruelly; and for real poetic unction you might put _Thalaba_, and _Kehama_, and _Madoc_ all in one scale, and only _Christabel_ in the other--and the Southey poems would be bounced out of sight. But how many poets of the century can put a touch to verse like the touch in _Christabel_? _The Doctor and Last Shadows._