meaning is always clear, and the force and vigour of his expressions are remarkable. In estimating his poetical powers, however, it should be remembered, that nearly all his Poems were written before he was nineteen; and that they are, in truth, but the germs of future excellence, and ought not to be criticized as if they were the fruits of an intellect on which time and education had bestowed their advantages. It is, however, in his prose works, and especially in his correspondence, that the versatility of his talents, his acquirements, his piety, and his moral excellence are most conspicuous.

A question arises with respect to him which, in the history of a young Poet, is always interesting, but which Mr. Southey has not touched. Abundance of proof exists in his writings of the susceptibility of his heart; but it is not stated that he ever formed an attachment. In many of his pieces he speaks with tenderness of a female whom he calls Fanny; and in one of them, from which it appears that she was dead, he expresses his regard in no equivocal manner; but there are other grounds for concluding that his happiness was affected by disappointed affection. To his friend Mr. Maddock, in July, 1804, he observed:

"I shall never, never marry. It cannot, must not be. As to affections, mine are already engaged as much as they ever will be, and this is one reason why I believe my life will be a life of celibacy. I love too ardently to make love innocent, and therefore I say farewell to it."

With this passage one of his Sonnets singularly agrees:

CONTENTS

When I sit musing on the chequer'd past (A term much darken'd with untimely woes), My thoughts revert to her, for whom still flows The tear, though half disowned; and binding fast Pride's stubborn cheat to my too yielding heart, I say to her, she robb'd me of my rest, When that was all my wealth. 'T is true my breast Received from her this wearying, lingering smart; Yet, ah! I cannot bid her form depart; Though wrong'd, I love her—yet in anger love, For she was most unworthy. Then I prove Vindictive joy: and on my stern front gleams, Throned in dark clouds, inflexible.... The native pride of my much injured heart.

Was the subject of this Sonnet wholly imaginary, or was there some unfortunate story which, for sufficient reasons, his biographers have suppressed? It is true, that in his letters, written at a much later period, he speaks of marriage in a manner not to be reconciled with the idea that he was then suffering from 

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