for the tidings of thy might;" "Steer, helmsman, till you steer our way by stars beyond the line: we go to found a realm, one day, like England's self to shine," are a few examples of the many which might be quoted to prove that, in Campbell's verse, his individuality as a Scotchman is almost always merged in his nationality as an Englishman. But Scott, on the contrary, never forgets he is a Scotchman. "It is the harp of the North" which he desires to waken. It is of the old times and old manners, before "a stranger filled the Stuarts' throne," that the latest minstrel sung. He cannot avoid the passing wish that "Flodden had been Bannockburn." The hero of his first novel is an Englishman, but an Englishman who, amidst Scotch surroundings, strikes a blow for Prince Charlie at Prestonpans. In his noble lines on the death of Pitt and Fox, he cannot resist saying

This distinction between the two authors was the inevitable consequence of their different dispositions. A Scotchman who was a Conservative was sure to dwell upon the old rivalries of the Scotch and English; while a Scotchman who was a Liberal was as certain to remember that the thoughts and interests of the two nations had become identical. Scott, to the end of his life, was never able to free himself entirely from the old Scotch feeling. George IV., indeed, won his heart; but then George IV. put on a Stuart tartan in Edinburgh. The only occasion on which Scott seriously attempted to interfere with politics was on the attempt of Parliament to extend to Scotland a measure of currency reform which it was applying to England.

The intense love of his own country which is perceptible in all of Scott's works accounts, however, for much of their beauty and much of their popularity. He saw Scotland as no one had ever seen it before. Up to the time at which he wrote there was no general taste for scenery. It is a striking observation of a forgotten writer, which has been reproduced

by Mackintosh, that "there is no single term in Greek or Latin for prospect." "So recent is the taste for scenery," wrote Mackintosh on another occasion, "that a tour through Great Britain, published in 1762, speaks of Westmoreland as remarkable only for wildness, notices Winandermere only for its size, Ulleswater for char, and at Keswick passes the poor lake entirely."1 There is hardly a line in Burns to show that he had any appreciation for the grander features of his native land: his most exquisite imagery is taken from objects found in lowland as well as in upland—a mountain daisy, a mouse, a field of poppies. Scott, on the contrary, forgets the daisy in looking at the bolder features in the landscape. He is the Turner among poets. His heroes and heroines move among the lovely valleys of his native land, or sail along the sublime coast of Western Scotland; but they are only the accompaniments to the landscape, the figures in the foreground of the painter. Scott's works have, in consequence, become a guide-book to Scotland, and have taken thousands of visitors to the borderland in which he lived and wrote.

Scott's antiquarian tastes saved him from feeling the shock of the Revolution so acutely as other writers. He may be said to have represented all that was best in the Conservatism of the period in which he wrote. Three other writers, his friends and contemporaries, were moved by the remarkable reaction to which Burke and Mackintosh succumbed.

Southey is the Southey. most prominent example of the effects of this reaction. He had begun life as a Radical; he had written a short drama, "Wat Tyler," in which he had openly advocated Radical principles. "Curse on these taxes!" says Hob Carter, in this play: one succeeds another":

66

"Our ministers, panders of a king's will,

Drain all our wealth away, to fill their armies

And feed the crows of France. Year follows year,
And still we madly prosecute the war:

Draining our wealth, distressing our poor peasants,
Slaughtering our youths—and all to crown our chiefs
With glory!-I detest the hell-sprung name."

1 Mackintosh, vol. ii. pp. 97, 126.

This wild declamation was written in 1794, when Britain was at war with France. About four years afterwards, Southey composed the much better known lines on the battle of Blenheim :

It is evident, from these extracts, that, up to the close of the eighteenth century, Southey still retained his earlier opinions, and detested the French war. But, in the nineteenth century, Instead of counselling peace, he

all his opinions were altered.
desired the prolongation of the struggle.

"Who counsels peace at this momentous hour?"

he exclaimed in 1814.

"Woe, woe to England! woe and endless shame,
If this heroic land,

False to her feelings and unspotted fame,
Hold out the olive to the tyrant's hand."

Hob Carter's reasoning and little Wilhelmine's objections were both forgotten: Napoleon's victories had done more than all the Revolutionary excesses, and had made the poet of peace-atany-price the fiery advocate of the war. His old friends, the

Radicals, still retained their former opinions, and desired peace. Southey, therefore, had no alternative but to join the Tory party. The violence of his earlier Radicalism was soon effaced by the fury of his later Toryism. His language towards

Napoleon was simply brutal :

"Too cold upon the road was he;

Too hot had he been at Moscow;
But colder and hotter he may be,

For the grave is colder than Muscovy;

And a place there is to be kept in view,

Where the fire is red and the brimstone blue."

The indecency of these lines is, however, less marked than the profanity of the "Vision of Judgment."

Southey's contemporaries had no words to express their scorn for his conversion to Toryism.

"And now, my epic renegade, what are ye at ? "

says Byron, in "Don Juan."

"He had written praises of a regicide;

He had written praises of all kings whatever;

He had written for republics far and wide,
And then against them bitterer than ever.

He had sung against all battles, and again
In their high praise and glory."

So Byron wrote on another occasion. In one sense this charge
was unjust. Southey, in passing over from the extreme of
Radicalism to the Tory party, was in reality only a type of the
reaction which affected many others of his contemporaries.
Vainer than most of them, his conversion was later than theirs.
More violent than most of them, it was much more thorough.
Southey's name is usually associated with that of the two
other lake poets-as they are called-Wordsworth and Cole-
ridge. The career of the three authors was, in
many respects, very similar. All three began life as
Liberals. All three were induced, either by the effects of the
Revolution or by the results of the war, to change their opinions
and become Tories. Coleridge, who was closely connected
with Southey by marriage, seems to have passed through the

Coleridge.

same phases of thought as his kinsman. But it is less easy to follow Coleridge than to follow Southey, because it is more difficult to appreciate the full meaning of his conclusions. He loved to be mysterious and obscure; and this mystery and obscurity is constantly visible in his most beautiful poetry. Why was the Ancient Mariner to be doomed to perpetual misery because he had shot an albatross? Why was the exquisitely pure Lady Christabel to be cursed for the performance of an act of Christian charity? The argument offends the reason as much as the language charms the sense. The same mystery which pervades the writer's poetry is to be found in his political writings. In the course of 1817 Southey and Coleridge both wrote to the Prime Minister to protest against the seditious writings of the time. Southey's letter was characteristically plain. "Make transportation the punishment" of seditious writings was the advice of the author of "Wat Tyler." Coleridge apparently meant to say the same thing. For he told Lord Liverpool that "the fan is still in the hand," and went on, instead of concluding the text, to pray God that his lordship might carry out "the necessary process in meekness." But the minister confessed that he could not "well understand" the poet's long letter; and probably every one, who has since read Lord Liverpool's memoirs, has equally failed to understand it.1 The mystery, then, in Coleridge's language makes it difficult to follow his changes of opinion; but amidst all the mystery it is evident that, like Southey, he began life as a Liberal, and that, like Southey, he abandoned his old friends, and altered his old principles.

Wordsworth.

It ought to be possible to follow the growth of Wordsworth's mind much more accurately than that of either Southey or Coleridge. In the "Prelude " the author has related the story of his life, and has examined the various phases of his thoughts. He was born in the Lake Country; and in due course was sent to Cambridge. He visited London, he made a tour in France, and felt—as far as his calm temperament was capable of feeling-the stir of the Revolution. The

1 For the letter see Liverpool, vol. ii. pp. 298-307.