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kind." As Mr. Southey stood in the foremost ranks of those who denunciated all such doctrines as totally subversive of government, and law, and order, and even of general security and liberty, and as he never desisted from speaking boldly what he strongly felt, and using terms fitted to the necessities of the occasion, he was marked out for peculiar enmity, and, as the hatred of party is not conducted or guided by any principles but such as will best effect its immediate purpose, so the means were now adopted of annoying his feelings, injuring his character, and if possible of neutralising the effect of his writings by evidence of his inconsistency and want of principle, by the republication of a youthful work called Wat Tyler, written in 1794. The whole affair was disgraceful only to those who schemed it; it gave Southey some uneasiness; it caused a temporary excitement; and it died away, leaving no path behind it; but no less than 60,000 copies were sold at the time. Such is the disposition of society to batten upon unwholesome food. Among whom these copies went it would be curious to inquire. Mr. William Smith, the member for Norwich, went out of his way to attack him in the House of Commons, and, with Mr. Southey's animated reply, the matter may be said to close.

In

the autumn of 1817 he took a tour on the continent, visiting Switzerland and the Italian lakes. On his return he writes:

"The Life of Wesley is my favourite employment just now, and a very curious book it will be, looking at Methodism abroad as well as at home, and comprehending our religious history for the last hundred years. I am sure I shall treat the subject with moderation. I hope I come to it with a sober judgment, a mature mind, and perfect freedom from all unjust prepossessions of any kind. There is no party which I am desirous of pleasing, none which I am fearful of offending; nor am I aware of any possible circumstance which might tend to bear me one way or the other from the straight line of impartial truth. For the bigot I shall be far too philosophical, for the libertine far too serious. The ultra-Churchman will think me little better than a Methodist, and the Methodists will wonder what I am. "Ayia ȧyious will be my motto."

Poor laws, police, and politics, and

the libels of the press seemed to have occupied at this time most of Southey's attention. He declined the office of Librarian to the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, with a salary of 4007. a-year, because he disliked great cities, and was free, as he supposed, from pecuniary anxieties. His picture of Mr. Wilberforce and his family, as he met them about this time, is amusing:

"Wilberforce has been here with all his household; and such a household! The principle of the family seems to be, that, provided the servants have faith, good works are not to be expected from them, and the utter discord that prevails in consequence is truly farcical. The old coachman would figure upon the stage. Upon making some complaint about the horses, he told his master and mistress that since they had been in this country they had been so lake, and river, and mountain, and valley mad, that they had thought of nothing which they ought to think of. I have seen nothing in such pell-mell, topsyturvy, and chaotic confusion as Wilberforce's apartments, since I used to see a certain breakfast table in Skeleton Corner. His wife sits in the midst of it like Patience on a monument, and he frisks about as if every vein in his body was filled with quicksilver; but withal there is such a constant hilarity in every look and motion, such a sweetness in all his tones, such a benignity in all his thoughts, words, and actions, that all sense of his grotesque appearance is presently overcome, and you can feel nothing but love and admiration for a creature of so happy and blessed a nature."

In a letter dated in 1808 to his friend Mr. May, he mentions his being expelled Westminster School for the fifth number of a periodical paper he wrote against flogging, "proving it to be an invention of the devil, and therefore unfit to be practised at schools;" and on the same account he was refused admission at Christchurch, where otherwise he would not have been refused a studentship. He seemed, however, to retain more enmity to his old master, Dr. Vincent, than the latter did to him; or at least to believe that the pedagogue looked at the matter more as a personal offence, than as a breach of discipline which could not be overlooked. We knew Dr. Vincent sufficiently to vouch for the amiableness of his temper, and the liberality of his opinions. We shall now close

this portion of our notice by extracting a short passage in which Southey has given a few touches of his own portrait, and that of another poet of the age:

"I am no Methodist, no sectarian, no bigot, no formalist. My natural spirits are buoyant, beyond those of any other person,-man, woman, or child,-whom I ever saw or heard of. They have had enough to try them and to sink them, and it is by religion alone that I shall be enabled to pass the remainder of my days in cheerfulness and hope. Without hope there can be no happiness, and without religion no hope but such as deceives us. Your heart seems to want an object, and this would satisfy it, and if it has been needed this and this only can be the cure.

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Scott is very ill: he suffers dreadfully, but bears his sufferings with admirable equanimity, and looks on to the probable termination of them with calmness and well-founded hope. God grant that he may recover! He is a noble and generous-hearted creature, whose like we shall not look upon again."

Notes. P. 59. "Some unknown author has sent me a poem called 'The Missionary,' not well arranged, but written with great feeling and beauty."

Was not this unknown author the Rev. Mr. Lisle Bowles?

P. 192. "Your comments upon the 'Castle of Indolence' express the feeling of every true poet. The second part must always be felt as injuring the first. I agree with you also as respecting the Minstrel. Beautiful and delightful as it is, it still wants that imaginative charm which Thomson has caught from Spenser, but which no poet has ever so entirely possessed as Spenser himself."

As regards the Castle of Indolence, Professor Dugald Stuart says,

quoting a letter of Gray's, "Thomson has lately published a poem called The Castle of Indolence, in which there are some good stanzas.' Who could have expected this sentence from the pen of Gray? In an ordinary critic, possessed of one-hundredth part of Gray's sensibility and taste, such total indifference to the beauties of this exquisite performance would be utterly impossible." See Philosophical Essays, p. 513. 8vo. But had Gray written, several or many good stanzas, instead of some, we should be inclined to agree in his judgment against his critic. It is not generally known that Mr. Mathias translated this poem into Italian, under the following title:"Thomson (James) Il Castello dell' Ozio, poema in due canti, recento in verso Italiano detto ottava rima da Tommaso Jacopo Mathias. Napoli. 1826." (Privately printed.) There is a very interesting letter on Thomson from Dr. Murdoch in Dr. Wool's Memoir of Joseph Warton, p. 252. The style of the "Seasons" was ridiculed in Martinus Scriblerus. Mr. Hazlitt says, "Berni's description of himself and his friend in the last canto of the Orlando Innamorato, seems to have been the origin of the general idea of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and the personal introduction of himself into poetry, as exemplified in that delightful little work.'

See Round Table, i. p. 184. On Gray's opinion of Beattie's Minstrel see Forbes's Life of Beattie, vol. i. p. 197, Let. xlv. 4to. Beattie is said to have taken his first idea of the poem from Dr. Percy's Ancient Ballads. See a letter from Mr. Forbes to Dr. Percy, in Nichols's Illustrations of Literature, vol. viii. p. 376.

ON THE PRINCIPAL MONUMENTS IN THE CATHEDRAL AT OXFORD. BY MATTHEW HOLBECHE BLOXAM, ESQ. (Illustrated with two Plates.)

[THIS paper was prepared for the recent meeting of the Archæological Institute at Oxford, and was to have been read in the Architectural Section, on Friday the 21st of June, immediately before the lecture, by Professor Willis, on the Cathedral. Time, however, did not allow of its being brought forward. We are much pleased to have it in our power to add to our previous report of the proceedings at Oxford the following summary of its contents, which has been kindly furnished by the author.]

After observing that Mr. Britton, in his history of the cathedral of Oxford, has given a very brief notice of

the ancient sepulchral monuments; that in the account of Christ Church in the "Memorials of Oxford" the

deficiency was unfortunately not supplied; and that the older writers on the cathedral, Antony Wood, Browne Willis, and Gutch, had preserved the inscriptions extant in their times, and some heraldic notices, but that their attempts to describe the monuments themselves were meagre and unsatisfactory, and that they have never yet been treated of in detail with that particularity which they deserve;-Mr. Bloxam proceeds to state that the ancient scptured monuments, though few in number, are of a class which might reasonably be expected to be found in an ancient conventual church. He should chiefly confine himself to the description of three, namely, 1. the monument of a prior of St. Frideswide, of apparently the early part of the reign of Edward the Third; 2. that of the Lady Montacute, of the latter part of the reign of Edward the Third; and 3. the recumbent armed effigy of a knight, of apparently the reign of Henry the Fourth. These are all disposed under the arches which divide the north chapel from the north aisle of the choir.

The monument of the prior (Plate I.) the most ancient in the cathedral, consists of a plain high tomb, with a recumbent effigy on the top, surmounted by a vaulted canopy. The recumbent effigy represents the prior vested with the amice, with its apparels about the neck; in the alb, the apparels of which appear in front of the skirt and round the close-fitting sleeves at the wrists; with the stole and dalmatic or tunic, which, it is somewhat difficult to say. The stole and dalmatic or tunic are not sculptured, but merely painted on the effigy, so as to be perceptible only on close examination. Over these vestments the chesible appears; this is ornamented with orfreys round the borders, over the shoulders, and straight down in front. The maniple hangs over the left arm, and the boots are pointed at the toes. The head is bare, and tonsured, with flowing locks of hair by the sides of the face. There is no indication of any pastoral or abbatial staff, and the hands are conjoined on the breast. This effigy has been assigned both o Guymond, the first prior of St. Frideswide, who died A.D. 1149, and to Philip the third prior, who died 1190. It is, however, clearly

a sculptured effigy of the fourteenth century, executed with the breadth and freedom prevalent in that era. The face also is close shaven; had this been an effigy of the twelfth century, it would have been sculptured with the moustache and short crisp beard. It has been very elaborately painted. Mr. Bloxam does not assign it to any particular prior.

The canopy over the tomb is a rich specimen of architectural design in the style of the fourteenth century. Each of the sides, north and south, presents an elevation of three open pointed arches, cinquefoiled within the heads, springing from clustered shafts, the caps of which are sculptured with vine-leaves, and surmounted by three crocketed pediments, with intervening and flanking pinnacles, which latter form the finish to lozenge-shaped or angularfaced buttressets, which are carried from the base of the tomb upwards. The hollow mouldings of the arches and pediments are enriched with the ball-flower disposed at intervals. At each angle of the canopy, but placed diagonally, is a small niche for a statuette, but the sculptured figures are much mutilated. The internal vaulting of this canopy is in three bays, octopartite, the cells being divided by small moulded ribs, with sculptured bosses in the centre of each bay. Raised on the tomb, and immediately over or westward of the head of the effigy, is a canopy or housing, ogeearched on the top and sides, which arches are foliated within and crocketed externally.

The next monument noticed by Mr. Bloxam is that of Elizabeth Lady Montacute, the wife of William Lord Montacute, by whom she had four sons and six daughters. She died A.D. 1353. This is a high tomb (Plate II.) with panelled recesses on each side containing small statuettes 18 inches high, representing the ten children of the deceased. At the head and foot are bas-reliefs in quatrefoil compartments. That at the head represents the blessed Virgin bearing in her arms the divine Infant, with the evangelistic symbols of St. Matthew and St. John, which latter are sculptured outside the quatrefoil; that at the foot represents a female clad in a gown and mantle, and with long flowing hair, with evangelistic symbols

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Monument of Lady Montacute, in Christ Church, Oxford.

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