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Cheap prices of grain are like the Amreeta cap in Kehama; the greatest of all blessings is the greatest of all curses, according as they arise from magnitude of domestic production, or magnitude of foreign importation.
Others that, like the broad banana growing, Raised their long wrinkled leaves of purple hue, Like streamers wide outflowing. KEHAMA, xvi. 5. "A hundred times you might fancy you saw the type, the very original of this description, tracing, line by line, and image by image, the details of the picture; and acknowledging, as you proceed, the minute truthfulness with which it has been drawn.
He has taken a seat on the dais without being challenged by a single seneschal. To oppose the progress of his fame is now almost a hopeless enterprise. Had he been reviewed with candid severity, when he had published only his first volume, his work would either have deserved its reputation, or would never have obtained it. "Then," as Indra says of Kehama, "then was the time to strike."
But, truly admirable as the bard of Florence is, I must not permit myself to give him more than his due share of my letter. I have likewise read Gil Blas, with unbounded admiration of the abilities of Le Sage. Malden and I have read Thalaba together, and are proceeding to the Curse of Kehama. Do not think, however, that I am neglecting more important studies than either Southey or Boccacio.
In the "Curse of Kehama," he strives to interest us in the monstrous fables of the Hindoo mythology, and in "Roderick, the Last of the Goths," the story contains circumstances that deform the fairest proof the author gave of the practicability of his poetic theory.
I think myself, though the opinion is not common among critics, that this touch is unmistakable even so early as Queen Mab. That poem is no doubt to a certain extent modelled upon Southey, especially upon Kehama, which, as has been observed above, is a far greater poem than is usually allowed. But the motive was different: the sails might be the same, but the wind that impelled them was another.
He wrote several long poems, the two best known perhaps are The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba, the one a Hindoo, the other a Mahometan story, but he is better remembered by his short poems, such as The Battle of Blenheim and The Inchcape Rock.
Kehama, the only great poem in which the poet no longer disdains the almost indispensable aid to poetry in our modern and loosely quantified tongue, is much better than any of the others.
In the Thalaba, the Madoc, and still more evidently in the unique Cid, in the Kehama, and, as last, so best, the Roderick; Southey has given abundant proof, se cogitare quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus hominum: nec persuadere sibi posse, non saepe tractandum quod placere et semper et omnibus cupiat. But on the other hand, I conceive, that Mr.
Southey's mind, and the force of old habits of independent and unbridled thinking, which cannot be kept down even in addressing his Sovereign! Look at Mr. Southey's larger poems, his Kehama, his Thalaba, his Madoc, his Roderic. Who will deny the spirit, the scope, the splendid imagery, the hurried and startling interest that pervades them?
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