Let us close _Thalaba_, then, and give a parting glance at its author. Even Thackeray, who cannot say enough in praise of Southey as a man, is obliged, in writing of his chief works, to allow the possibility that, in the struggle between Thalaba the Destroyer and the destroyer Time, the latter will remain master of the field. It would be interesting to know how many living Englishmen have read the poem. To our own generation Southey's name is chiefly known, as it will be to posterity, by his hysteric assaults on Byron, and Byron's inimitable retorts. We have Southey's _Vision of Judgment_ to thank for Byron's--and for this service we are ready to forgive him both the _Curse of Kehama_ and _Thalaba_. We observe, however, in these poems, what is not to be observed in the works of the German Romanticists, namely, that the empty fantasticalness gives place to something better, when it is nature that is described. In the midst of all the Romantic confusion the Englishman's quiet realism asserts itself. Undeniably beautiful is the very first stanza of _Thalaba_, with its description of night in the desert, the sweet cadences of which the youthful Shelley imitated in his _Queen Mab_. "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!" This rivals the description of moonlight falling on the desert sands given in The Caravan Song in the fifth act of _Aladdin_. And many such pictures are to be found in Southey's poems. When he describes the timid antelope, hearing the wanderers' steps, and standing, doubtful where to turn in the dim light; and the ostrich which, blindly hastening, meets them full; and the deep, moveless mist which mantles all (Book I v., Canto 19), we are aware that this is not scenery in the German Romantic style, but a picture of the East which is faithful to nature, a picture which we owe to the English habit of observation.