SOUTHEY'S CONCEIT.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1587, 2 November 1912, Page 9

SOUTHEY'S CONCEIT.

'A' lack of'humour neutralises most of • tho virtues. Many a greater "man than; Mr.' Churchill has injured his career' by, the mere inability to understand his own foibles* Robert Southey, for instance, could never see himself in a fair, and just relation to'the rest of tho world. He was totally.without that sense of proportion that is-tho essence of humour, and ■he has come down to.us in a'far. different guise from that which would' have been his, ifc ho had not too gravely considered his pretensions. Ho could not, if' ho' would, take himself other than seriously. He compared'himself, in prose and'verse— and he loved' comparisons—only with the highest. In his estimation there, was only one thing in the world greater than his poetry, and that- was' his prose. " 'Thalaba,'" said lie. to one confiding correspondent, "has. certainly and inevitably the faults of''Samson Agonistes.' . .-..( Such as it is, I know no poem which can claim a placo between it and the .'Orlando.' Let it he weighed with 'Oberori'; perhaps, were I to speak out, I should I'otl'drcad' a trial with Ariosto." .That is .well' enough,- but ■ there is better to follow. .' "Nothing: can' be more' absurd," says.ho at ,a later date*.''than thinking, of'comparing'any of my poems with the 'Paradise Lost.' With-Tas'so, with Virgil, with Holmer, there may be fair grounds of comparison; but my'mind is wholly unlike Milton's." Indeed, it was, and no., less unlike the mind of Spenser, with whom Southey _was also ready to compete. "Now! will avow myself confident to ask you," he wrote to a friend, "if .you know any other poem of equal originality, except the •'Fairy/ Queen'?" This question was of "Thalaba," and as you read, you wonder how it was that a writer thus wanting in self-criticism should have produced the excellent work' | that Southey produced.—"Blackwood's Magazine." '