and Roderick, a tale of the last of the Goths.  All these, and many more, although containing some excellent passages, are on the whole exaggerated and unreal, both in manner and in matter.  Southey wrote far better prose than poetry, and his admirable Life of Nelson is still often read.  Besides these are his Lives of British Admirals, his lives of Cowper and Wesley, and his histories of Brazil and of the Peninsular War.

Southey was made Poet Laureate in 1813, and was the first to raise that office from the low estate into which it had fallen since the death of Dryden.  The opening lines of Thalaba, beginning,

    How beautiful is night! 
    A dewy freshness fills the silent air,

are still sometimes quoted; and a few of his best known short poems, like “The Scholar,” “Auld Cloots,” “The Well of St. Keyne,” “The Inchcape Rock,” and “Lodore,” will repay the curious reader.  The beauty of Southey’s character, his patience and helpfulness, make him a worthy associate of the two greater poets with whom he is generally named.

WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)

We have already called attention to two significant movements of the eighteenth century, which we must for a moment recall if we are to appreciate Scott, not simply as a delightful teller of tales, but as a tremendous force in modern literature.  The first is the triumph of romantic poetry in Wordsworth and Coleridge; the second is the success of our first English novelists, and the popularization of literature by taking it from the control of a few patrons and critics and putting it into the hands of the people as one of the forces which mold our modern life.  Scott is an epitome of both these movements.  The poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge was read by a select few, but Scott’s Marmion and Lady of the Lake aroused a whole nation to enthusiasm, and for the first time romantic poetry became really popular.  So also the novel had been content to paint men and women of the present, until the wonderful series of Waverley novels appeared, when suddenly, by the magic of this “Wizard of the North,” all history seemed changed.  The past, which had hitherto appeared as a dreary region of dead heroes, became alive again, and filled with a multitude of men and women who had the surprising charm of reality.  It is of small consequence that Scott’s poetry and prose are both faulty; that his poems are read chiefly for the story, rather than for their poetic excellence; and that much of the evident crudity and barbarism of the Middle Ages is ignored or forgotten in Scott’s writings.  By their vigor, their freshness, their rapid action, and their breezy, out-of-door atmosphere, Scott’s novels attracted thousands of readers who else had known nothing of the delights of literature.  He is, therefore, the greatest known factor in establishing and in popularizing that romantic element in prose and poetry which has been for a hundred years the chief characteristic of our literature.