It is easy to assert that he draws on his vast stores of knowledge gathered from books--and that we have but to look at the multifarious accumulation of notes appended to his great Poems to see that they are not Inventions. The materials of poetry indeed are there--often the raw materials--seldom more; but the Imagination that moulded them into beautiful, or magnificent, or wondrous shapes, is all his own--and has shown itself most creative. Southey never was among the Arabians nor Hindoos, and therefore had to trust to travellers. But had he not been a Poet he might have read till he was blind, nor ever seen "The palm-grove inlanded amid the waste," where with Oneiza in her Father's Tent "How happily the years of Thalaba went by!" In what guidance but that of his own genius did he descend with the Destroyer into the Domdaniel Caves? And who showed him the Swerga's Bowers of Bliss? Who built for him with all its palaces that submarine City of the Dead, safe in its far-down silence from the superficial thunder of the sea? The greatness as well as the originality of Southey's genius is seen in the conception of every one of his Five Chief Works--with the exception of "Joan of Arc," which was written in very early youth, and is chiefly distinguished by a fine enthusiasm. They are one and all National Poems--wonderfully true to the customs and characters of the inhabitants of the countries in which are laid the scenes of all their various adventures and enterprises--and the Poet has entirely succeeded in investing with an individual interest each representative of a race. Thalaba is a true Arab--Madoc a true Briton--King Roderick indeed the Last of the Goths. Kehama is a personage whom we can be made to imagine only in Hindostan. Sir Walter confined himself in his poetry to Scotland--except in "Rokeby"--and his might then went not with him across the Border; though in his novels and romances he was at home when abroad--and nowhere else more gloriously than with Saladin in the Desert. "Lalla Rookh" is full of brilliant poetry; and one of the series--the "Fire-Worshippers"--is Moore's highest effort; but the whole is too elaborately Oriental--and often in pure weariness of all that accumulation of the gorgeous imagery of the East, we shut up the false glitter, and thank Heaven that we are in one of the bleakest and barest corners of the West. But Southey's magic is more potent--and he was privileged to exclaim-- "Come, listen to a tale of times of old! Come, for ye know me. I am he who framed Of Thalaba the wild and wondrous song. Come listen to my lay, and ye shall hear How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread The adventurous sail, explored the ocean path, And quell'd barbaric power, and overthrew The bloody altars of idolatry, And planted on its fanes triumphantly The Cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay."