t. I. 1. The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo. By Robert Southey;
Esq. Poet Laureate, Member of the Royal Spanish Academy, and
of the Royal Spanish Academy of History. 12mo. pp. 232.
B Plates. Price 10. 61.-Longman and Co. 1816.
Thanksgiving Ode, January 18, 1816. With other Short Pieces,
Chiefty referring to recent Public Events. By William Wordsworth,
Bro. pp. 10, 52. Price 4s.-Longman and Co. 1816.
ought to occasion no surprise, that modern poets bave
rarely succeeded in the attempt to please or to interest, when
ejects of present political concern have been their theme.
dom, very seldom are the feelings awakened by public events,
a nature to blend with the emotions of taste, or to admit
that pleasing exaggeration which it is the business of the
to produce. The poet himself, in venturing upon a political
me, finds it difficult to exercise the power of abstraction
ciently to enable him to select and combine the appropriate
zrials for poetry, and still more difficult to carry the en-
iasm of a cultivated mind into subjects, the familiar details
which are often mean, painful, or disgusting.
he time was, when the wreath of the victor was entwined
he hand of the bard; and when the poet alternately wielded
sword, and recited in rude melody the songs of heroes.
those times are gone by, we trust for ever.
We do not
ve that the poet exists, who could succeed in making war,
present event, interesting to the imagination. As to deeds
ther times -battles fought before the invention of gun-
Jer, -wars which have left us no legacy of taxes,-the
dens and the griefs of which we have never had to feel;
se it is very possible to render poetical enough; and by
sympathy with which genuine poetry inspires us, we may
far transported in imagination to those times, as to adopt
e moment the characteristic feelings of its heroes and
ors. But stronger sympathies than those awakened by
set, connect us with present events, and they are such as
ade the indulgence of the fancy
in scenes of modern war.
B