At heart, then, Southey’s poems are in the main the outcome of his moral nature; this we recognize through all disguises—Mohammedan, Hindoo, or Catholic. He planned and partly wrote a poem—_Oliver Newman_—which should associate his characteristic ideal with Puritan principles and ways of life. The foreign material through which his ethical idea was set forth went far, with each poem, to determine its reception by the public. Coleridge has spoken of “the pastoral charm and wild, streaming lights of the _Thalaba_.” Dewy night moon-mellowed, and the desert-circle girdled by the sky, the mystic palace of Shedad, the vernal brook, Oneiza’s favourite kidling, the lamp-light shining rosy through the damsel’s delicate fingers, the aged Arab in the tent-door—these came with a fresh charm into English narrative poetry eighty years ago. The landscape and the manners of Spain, as pictured in _Roderick_, are of marked grandeur and simplicity. In _Kehama_, Southey attempted a bolder experiment; and although the poem became popular, even a well-disposed reader may be allowed to sympathize with the dismay of Charles Lamb among the monstrous gods: “I never read books of travels, at least not farther than Paris or Rome. I can just endure Moors, because of their connexion as foes with Christians; but Abyssinians, Ethiops, Esquimaux, Dervises, and all that tribe I hate. I believe I fear them in some manner. A Mohammedan turban on the stage, though enveloping some well-known face, ... does not give me unalloyed pleasure. I am a Christian, Englishman, Londoner, Templar. God help me when I come to put off these snug relations, and to get abroad into the world to come.”