SOURCE: “The Thematic Structure of Southey's Epic Poetry,” in Wordsworth Circle, Vol. 6, No. 4, Autumn, 1975, pp. 240-48.

[In the following essay, Hoffpauir investigates Southey's epic poetry and points out the three major themes that run through them: the necessity to eliminate evil in the world, the importance of family ties, and the intrinsic benevolence that is found in nature.]

A persistent refrain which sounds through criticism of Robert Southey's five epic poems is the lack of narrative unity. In The Spirit of the Age (1825), when Hazlitt compared the structures to “the unweeded growth of a luxuriant and wandering fancy” (p. 177), he was summing up the charge by most reviewers: the epics did not “adhere to ‘strict rules of harmonious composition’”; there was “no dependency of parts” (Monthly Review, 39 [Nov., 1802], 240, 250); they were “composed of scraps … much like the pattern of … patch-work drapery” (Edinburgh Review, 1 [Oct., 1802], 77). Francis Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh, led this attack, proceeding on the assumption stated in his review of Marmion in April, 1808: “No long poem … can maintain its interest without a connected narrative” (p. 8). The principle of connection, however, was narrowly defined as a “rational” or cause-and-effect relationship between juxtaposed episodes, a succession of incidents which imitates “nature and probability” (Oct., 1802, p. 75).

This charge has been echoed by later critics, from John Dennis in Studies in English Literature (p. 265) in 1876, to Oliver Elton in A Survey of English Literature (I, 7) in 1912 and Werner W. Beyer in The Enchanted Forest (p. 243) in 1963. Even Southey's apologists have either inadvertently agreed by praising only the many incidental beauties of individual passages¹ or generalized about Southey's “constructive imagination” without analyzing particular structures.² Brian Wilkie in Romantic Poets and Epic Tradition (1965) was quite right to argue that “Southey's approach to narrative and epic poetry is in many ways the ground base on which his greater contemporaries were to build their modern harmonies” (p. 31), but he overlooked Southey's innovations in the area of plot construction.

It is my purpose here to reinforce Wilkie's contention by investigating the structural alternative to causal principles of unification which Southey experimented with as early as 1793 when he composed Joan of Arc and, as his other narrative talents developed, which he came near perfecting in his last epic poem, Roderick, The Last of the Goths, in 1814. A review of the themes which obsessed him and of the progressively more sophisticated ways in which he gave narrative form and epic scope to them is helpful not only in more accurately evaluating his accomplishment but also in approaching the more readable epics of his contemporaries.

An intense desire to explain is perhaps the strongest motivating force behind Southey's voluminous output. It is the enormous, and perhaps audacious, confidence in the sanctity and scope of his message which makes him such an important figure in the development of the Romantic epic. The message which Southey wished so ardently to propagate is simple and straightforward. To the complex upheavals of his age he responded with uncomplex alternatives. All five of his epic poems are based upon three interrelated themes. The first theme, and that which most dictated the nature of his epic structures, is the necessity for the purgation of evil. All his epic protagonists, from Joan to Roderick, act as God's appointed agents on earth, a role in which Southey, in a less active way, saw himself. In 1796, he made an extremely perceptive confession to Grosvenor Bedford: “I saw five or six men on Sunday stoning a dog to death—and I heard the dog's cries—and I wished I had been the Exterminating Angel. Also—how are we hurried into vice by the indignation of virtue! I cannot tell how I got here. For certainly I am made of very different stuff from the mob of human beings. Perhaps I was created in some better planet and kicked out for sedition. This I am very sure of—that I feel out of element in this.”³ He maintained and even strengthened his self-righteous separatism as he grew older. In his late fifties, he was described by Carlyle as “betokening rather keenness than depth either of intellect or character; a serious, human, honest, but sharp, almost fierce-looking, thin man, with very much the militant in his aspect—in the eyes especially was visible a mixture of sorrow and anger, or of angry contempt, as if his indignant fight with the world had not yet ended in victory, but also never should in defeat.”⁴ But Southey, as evident in his letter to Bedford (“how are we hurried into vice by the indignation of virtue!”), was aware of the dilemma to a basically pacifist temperament posed by the necessity of purgation. This dilemma was answered by a specifically Romantic and not uncommonly epic hope in a future retreat from heroic and moral duty—for Southey they were often the same. Like his greater contemporaries, he looked to the benevolence of nature and the quietistic refuge it offered. This is the second theme which runs consistently through his works. All of his moral warriors hope for pastoral retreat, but for all except one, Madoc, death offers the only true refuge. The hope is always there, but it never adequately materializes. As in Spenser's world, the very nature of heroism denies the realization of the pastoral ideal.

The third principal theme of Southey's longer narratives concerns the sanctity of family relations, a theme closely allied with the ideal of retreat. It is the disruption of domestic order which compels his heroes and heroines to begin their moral quests for personal purification and social purgation. This theme, as we shall see, gives structural coherency to the historical action of Joan of Arc and accounts partly for the structural dualism of Madoc. Thalaba and The Curse of Kehama begin with the death of a father and son, respectively; and the revenge of each controls the action of the narrative. And it is the banishment of his wife and the rape of Florinda which set Roderick on the course of penance which determines the direction of that poem.

For Southey, then, the epic mode was useful primarily as a propagandistic vehicle for his very stern religious beliefs, for his stoical confidence in Faith and the resulting self-reliance which is able to scorn the disillusioning and often tragic course of external events. Unlike Wordsworth, he was unable to subordinate his doctrinal concerns to those of psychology and its processes. Only in Roderick, his last epic, did he come close to a sensitive portrayal of internal purgation; all the other long poems are almost totally concerned with external purgation, the characters being little more than two-dimensional embodiments of either the good which must triumph or the evil which must fail.

Before looking at the specific poems to see how these beliefs were structurally employed, we must briefly deal with the problem of definition. Southey himself seemed somewhat confused (or perhaps simply unconcerned) about how to classify his longer narratives. After finishing Joan, which, at least in the first edition, was titled “an Epic poem,” he told Bedford of his plan to write “another epic poem, and then another, and so on.”⁵ By 1801, however, he was referring to Thalaba and the planned Kehama as “romances” (Letters, pp. 42-48). But two years later, in a letter to Wynn, he spoke of Thalaba in the same breath as the epics of Homer (New Letters, I, 304-5) and, in 1808, compared Kehama with Paradise Lost (Letters, p. 139). In the 1838 Preface to Madoc he wrote that this poem was not to be given “the degraded title of Epic,” while only a few paragraphs before likening it to Tasso's Jerusalem; soon after it was published he instructed John Rickman to compare it with the Odyssey.⁶Kehama and Roderick he claimed to be works sui generis, but the latter is described in different places as “tragic,” “heroic,” and “epic” (New Letters, I, 536; II, 105; Letters, pp. 145, 231; “Preface,” [The Poetical Works of Robert Southey hereafter] PW, IX, xvii). The issue is clarified somewhat if we remember that one of the paramount taboos in his poetic theory was imitation. We are safe in referring to the five poems as epic-like, or what he saw as modern equivalents of an outdated form. The question, he wrote in the Preface to the first edition of Madoc “is not whether the story is formed upon the rules of Aristotle, but whether it be adapted to the purposes of poetry” (PW, V, xx-xxi). While the poems employ different verse forms and different machineries, they are all part of a grandiose plan to express from different perspectives a uniform set of beliefs. And in all the poems “heroism” is redefined to suit contemporary attitudes (and also the changing concerns of the aging Southey): “Heroic poems have usually been things of mere imitation and therefore worthless. But as times change what delighted one age would no longer delight another … if Homer were living now, he would write very differently. … In this age Homer would address himself more to our feelings and reflecting faculties” (New Letters, II, 105).

It is helpful, however, to differentiate between the basically historical “epics” (Joan of Arc, Madoc, and Roderick) and the mythological “epics” (Thalaba and Kehama)—a distinction which Southey himself suggested. The historical poems are much closer to the epic tradition. Out of possible deference to Milton, whose Paradise Lost Southey considered the greatest poem in English (Letters, pp. 139, 238), he wrote all three in blank verse. But while acknowledging that regular blank verse is the “noblest measure … of which our admirable language is capable,” he thought an irregular free verse form more appropriate for Thalaba “because it suits the varied subject; it is the Arabesque ornament of an Arabian tale” (Preface, 4th ed., PW, IV, xv). The reason for introducing rhymes in Kehama is equally relative to the subject: while the spirit of the poem remained oriental, the rhymes served to control the sentiments and make them more available to an audience almost totally unfamiliar with Indian mythology, a mythology, which, as Southey explained in the Preface to that poem, “would appear monstrous if its deformities were not kept out of sight” (PW, VII, xvi-xvii).

The subjects of the historical epics are also very close to the European tradition, especially that of Lucan's Pharsalia and, more recently, Glover's Leonidas: they all deal with the theme of national unity and recount the struggles of a people rising to oppose some form of tyranny. Since they were all based upon actual events, Southey had less control over the structure of the narrative. In each poem he emphasized the authenticity of these historical examples of his moral creed by tampering as little as possible with chronology and validating each episode with voluminous notes. Each of these epics also deals with the confrontation in war of a recognizably European and “civilized” system of religion with an exotic and threatening alien belief: natural religion versus the corrupt French church, Welsh Christianity versus Aztec paganism, and Spanish Catholicism versus Moorish Mohammedanism.

The mythological epics, on the other hand, deal exclusively with the purification from within of single religious systems, and, because they are more imaginative in subject matter, the action is subject to more thematic control. While the values in each are more English than Mohammedan or Hindu, in giving these moral struggles such backgrounds, Southey reflected and advanced the late eighteenth-century interest in non-classical mythologies. Behind him were the poems of Gray, Mason's studies of British and Saxon mythology, and Sayer's Dramatic Sketches (which, Southey confessed, was “the first book I was ever master of money enough to order at a country bookseller's” [Haller, p. 78]). Generally this interest was due to the renewed respect for the imagination. English deism and common sense theology attempted to explain away the mysteries of life by devaluating the imaginative faculties and making religion “reasonable.” Poets began to look to un-Christian and un-classical religious fables to find analogues of their private faith in intuitive morality. Southey's motives were perhaps overly didactic. While it is very significant that he felt that in order to give total validity to his moral scheme he had to show how fable as well as history, the imaginative as well as the real, supported his beliefs, he failed to render these alien myths intrinsically vital and meaningful. So while he made unorthodox excursions into various styles and systems of belief, the vision he wished each to portray remained the same, narrow and severe.

Given his antagonism to mere imitation of epic ornaments, his relativistic use of style (concerned almost more with geography than established rules), and his uninspired experimentation with alien machineries, it is necessary to focus upon the structural properties of each poem—for it is here that the true “epic” nature of these narratives is displayed and advanced.

Southey's first attempt at epic statement was almost solely motivated by ideological concerns. He took a decidedly pedagogical approach to the selection and arrangement of events within the narrative, spending just as much time setting up intellectual and emotional justifications for waging war against the English as he did describing the war itself. The first five books of Joan of Arc consist of a series of persuasions. First, in Book I, Joan herself is persuaded of her divine mission by the tragic example of Madelan and Armand, the arguments of Conrade, and, of course, the vision in the forest. Then in Book III she proceeds to convince Dunois, Charles, and the court prelates that she is, indeed, God's appointed agent. Finally, her arguments in Book IV—“A time like this is not for gentler feelings” (PW, IV, 359-60)—and the pathetic story of Isabel in Book V convince Conrade that he too must fight the English. The last five books (VI-X) describe the conquest of Orleans, the series of retreats by the English, and the final victory of the French at Patay. But even these martial actions are interspersed with frequent debates on the value of mercy and lawful justice. These debates seem to serve two functions: to introduce the new order which will hopefully be established, and to convince the reader that the cause was indeed a just one.

A more subtle structure exists, however, within this basically chronological pattern. And this substructure—a rhythmic series of qualifying debates—reveals Southey's more Romantic tendencies. While the poem's central theme is the primacy of active, national commitment to attain liberal reforms, Southey was uncomfortable (at least in this youthful poem) with the necessary sacrifice of personal feelings and ideals which such commitment demanded. So throughout the poem he balanced arguments which celebrate the traditionally heroic virtues with arguments which stress gentler, more humane values, thereby continually qualifying, hoping to render more palatable, to himself as well as his audience, an essentially harsh preachment.

The first debate occurs at the end of Book I. The lone warrior, Conrade, belittles the escapist attitude of Theodore. No one has the right, argues Conrade, to dwell in happiness

When Desolation royally careers
Over thy wretched country …
                    My heart is human: I must feel
For what my brethren suffer.

(I, 368-69, 373-74)

Patriotic duty takes precedence in time of war over filial obligation. And he goes on to assert, responding to Joan's pacifist arguments, that extreme times demand extreme actions. The next debate, in Book III, serves to qualify the commitment which Conrade so forcefully proposed and which Joan subsequently adopted. Appearing before the court priests, she eloquently argues the case for natural religion. Nature is benevolence and love, she claims, and does not, as the priests say, lead to sin. The poem seems indirectly to be suggesting that violence, when accepted by someone holding these ideas, must be justified. In Book IV the first debate is repeated, but this time the roles are reversed. Joan tries to convince Conrade, now disillusioned in his love for Charles' Queen, Agnes, and therefore threatening retreat, that “a holy cause” demands their devotion. So, while Southey dismissed the Renaissance ideal of the courtly knight doing battle in the service of his lady, just as he had devalued the medieval concept of “A God of Terrors” in the previous debate, he nonetheless sustained that sacrificial theme which runs through classical as well as Christian epics:

There is a cause, a holy cause, that needs
The brave man's aid. Live for it, and enjoy
Earth's noblest recompense, thine own esteem;
Or die in that good cause, and thy reward
Shall sure be found in Heaven.

(IV, 363-67)

This “holy cause” will not be conducted, however, in a spirit of vengeance, as so many other crusades have been. Mercy shall guide their actions, Joan tells the disgruntled Granville, who wants to kill all prisoners. “God is with us,” she exclaims, and God-like mercy “mitigates” and “ennobles dreadful war” (VIII, 491-511). Again the war is made more acceptable to the humanistic sensibilities of Southey's generation. The last set of balanced arguments appears in Book IX. Joan instructs her troops to celebrate and not to mourn the deaths of their comrades. Again there is an echo of an earlier argument—that used against Conrade in Book IV:

Glory to those who in their country's cause
Fall in the field of battle! …
                                                            boldly they
Fought the good fight, and that Eternal One,
Who bade the Angels harbinger his Word
With ‘Peace on earth,’ rewards them.

(IX, 371-72, 410-13)

The severity of this attitude is qualified by Joan's second renunciation of the even severer doctrines of the established church. A prelate asks her to become a nun. (His argument is very close to that used by Despair in the deleted passage, republished under the title “The Vision of the Maid of Orleans,” which took the place of this exchange in the first edition. In the earlier passage Despair tries to coax her into committing suicide.) Joan again proclaims her faith and joy in Nature—she will not sepulchre herself alive:

                    far more valued is the vine that bends
Beneath its swelling clusters, than the dark
And joyless ivy, round the cloister's wall
Wreathing its barren arms.

(IX, 197-200)

A third structural device is discernible within this pattern of echoing and qualifying debates. It is the recurring motif of unnatural domestic relations—a sort of thematic refrain, which gives emotional force to the cumulatively defined intellectual position. It is especially evident in the first half of the poem. Almost every character that is introduced has experienced or is experiencing a disruption of the family union. Joan herself, we learn in the first book, was scorned and unloved by her parents, and only finds happiness in the pastoral home of her Uncle Claude. Her village playmate, Madelon, dies of grief after her young husband is killed in the war. In the next book, Bertram tells Joan how his family starved to death after being ordered out of the besieged city of “Roan.” Even Charles' relations with his wife are far from orderly, as we see in Book III, and their very union is tainted by the Queen's former relationship with Conrade. Then we have the sad tale of Isabel, who was forced to separate from her family and her betrothed because of the advancing English army. All of these characters, except Joan, Charles, and Agnes, are fictional creations, and all serve the same function of emphasizing the domestic disruption which reflects, and is caused by, the lack of a just and stable political order.

We begin to see then how Southey altered the traditional ordeal pattern of epic to suit his early political beliefs. Explaining the deletion of Joan's vision of Hades from Book IX in the second edition, Southey said that this passage “no longer accorded with the general design” (PW, I, 304). In revising the poem he not only eliminated most of the exterior machinery, but also altered the few passages which emphasized Joan's personal sufferings. The Vision passage portrays her being personally tested first by Despair's offer of death, then by Theodore's offer of knowledge of the future; even though she hardly wavers from her firm moral stance, and undergoes no change in perspective, at least she is seen at close range and thus evokes some sympathy.

It was the general suffering and ordeals of the French people which Southey was most interested in. It is the process, and the justification of the process, by which Joan helps them purge the external enemy which gives the poem its structural unity. The French people suffer because of the English oppression and also because of the war. But in order for them to be rid of the former, they must go through the equally painful, but much shorter, ordeal of the latter. This Messianic doctrine reveals the intensely Christian basis of Southey's beliefs—it is clearly stated in “The Vision:”

There is a morning to the tomb's long night.
A dawn of glory, a reward in heaven,
He shall not gain who never merited.

(I, 242-44)

But there is a hint at the end of the poem of the more personal ordeal with which his subsequent epics deal. After the war has been won and Charles reinstated, Joan fervently implores him to be a just king, to purge himself of all corrupt habits he may have acquired at his corrupt court during the occupation, to learn justice and mercy and moral discipline. After the external enemy is exterminated, one must then turn to the internal one. And this is what Southey increasingly did in his later epics—not, however, because he felt that the social order had reached a state of perfection, but because he grew more and more disillusioned with idealistic schemes for social reform and came to accept the less than perfect stability offered by “good conservative government.” He became more religious and less political in his poetry and consequently focused more on the individual process of edification.

Despite the radically different style and setting, the themes of Thalaba are very similar to those of Joan of Arc. Southey himself confirmed William Taylor's observation of his “perpetual tendency to copy a favourite ideal perfection”; “Thalaba,” he replied, “is a male Joan of Arc” (Haller, p. 240). Both protagonists are “missioned” agents of God's (or Allah's) will. Both are made powerful and therefore fit for their extra-human tasks by intuitive faith. Both are parentless and educated by simple, peasant folk. And both stress the virtuous influence of nature and solitude.

But here we begin to notice a difference. While retreat is impossible for both Joan and Thalaba, in Joan the longing for rest is continually in tension with (if never victorious over) her sense of public duty. There is very little of this dilemma left in Thalaba. The hero is almost enthusiastically resigned to his task, for, unlike Joan, he is motivated by revenge. Although he comes to learn the value of mercy, it is of little narrative importance. For we are not shown a society oppressed by tyrants; indeed, there is very little social scope to the poem at all. Most of the action takes place in isolated deserts and icy wastelands. There may be a thin allegory working in the poem, with Thalaba representing Intuitive Faith and the Dom Daniel witches representing Lockean Rationalism (the modern sorcery), but we never witness the social consequences of that rationalism, and the destruction of the Dom Daniel at the end of the poem is still narratively justified by the massacre of Hodeirah and his race. Thalaba is acting as Allah's agent on earth, so his motives are not entirely personal, but they are still based upon revenge, if only in a theological sense: the witches must also be destroyed because they have spurned the teachings of Allah.

Another thematic difference concerns the portrayal of evil. In both poems evil is external and blatant. The good characters are very good and the bad characters are very bad; the evil is extreme and always recognizable. But Thalaba does once, for a very short time, succumb to temptation and wander from the straight path of duty. Although he is quickly righted, the incident does reveal a gradual maturing of Southey's outlook and poetic skill. He began to realize, poetically, that evil can be internal, subtly disguised, and potentially present in the most virtuous of men, just as he began to acknowledge, politically, the distortions present in his youthful, and simplistic, view of human nature. Although Thalaba is given the correct weapon by which to carry out his task, that is, the weapon of Faith, it is not enough. He must first purge himself of all earthly attractions, he must go through the process of loss and experience the consequent despair before he can be fully cleansed and totally fit to accomplish his task of purging the external evil.

The only time Joan comes even close to despair is in the “Vision” sequence which was deleted after the first edition. The action of Thalaba, to a great extent, follows the pattern of temptation presented in that short fragment. We note, together with this new (if still slight) concern with the individual hero, a maturation of Southey's narrative abilities. The fanciful nature of the subject matter allowed him more freedom in manipulating the sequence of events. As he said, the poem “has certainly and inevitably the fault of Samson Agonistes,—its parts might change place” (Letters, p. 42). But while many of the episodes lack a cause and effect relationship to the preceding and following episodes, there is an attempt to balance certain episodes around a central, pivotal action. The pattern lacks the clarity of its classical predecessors, and many minor incidents do not find a place in the scheme. But for Southey it does mark a definite advancement in narrative skill. Instead of simply stating his ideas in set speeches, he began to embody them more effectively in actions. There are still many static debates in Thalaba, but in a few instances we note the subtle suggestion of thematic development by means of paralleled episodes.

The pivotal incident takes place in Books VI and VII. Thalaba rescues Oneiza from a lusty pursuer and together they destroy the paradise of sensual pleasure, which is in accord with Southey's severe moral theme: they cannot simply avoid this temptation, they must actually destroy it. Upon emerging from the garden they are presented with a second and more powerful temptation—the Sultan's offer of power and wealth. Thalaba, the formerly steadfast crusader, readily accepts. While it is refreshing to have Southey show some psychological interest in the human qualities of his hero, this sudden softening of Thalaba's inhuman resolve is inconsistent with his character portrayed before and after this incident. But then the interest is probably less psychological than thematic, for Southey wanted to stress the necessity of despair and inner purification. Oneiza dies on her wedding night and Thalaba forsakes himself and his religion, becoming a “madman among the tombs.” But he is revived by a vision of Oneiza, who instructs him to continue his quest. Before this cleansing process, he had only come to know the nature of his quest and the weapon of faith necessary to carry it out. Only after it is he given direction—heavenly guides (the star, the old Dervise, the green bird, and the Simorg) lead him, with only a few minor diversions, directly to the Dom Daniel.

Around this central incident, paired actions echo one another. The poem opens with the death of Thalaba's father and the young boy's vow of revenge, and ends with the fulfillment of that vow and his own wished-for death. As in all of Southey's epic poems, death and the heavenly paradise beyond are the only true victories available to these perfected heroes. Also in the opening and closing books we have two stories which, if considered separately, seem only vaguely relevant to the immediate action. But, if considered together, especially with regard to their relative placement, they seem less digressive. The first story is Aswad's recounting the tragic consequences of a people's attempt to outdo nature's work by building an unnatural paradise of art. The second, told by Othatha's mistress, is also a sort of parable, on the danger of allowing love to divert one from one's moral duty. Both art and love, then, are classified together as selfish and prideful activities in which moral men, under different circumstances, can ill-afford to participate. The primacy of nature is, more specifically, the very concept which directs the education of the young Thalaba, isolated from the corrupting artifacts of society, as described two books later. And the reiteration of the importance of the dedication to duty sums up, just before that duty is fulfilled, the lesson which the older Thalaba comes painfully to realize through mature personal experience. Thalaba's acceptance, in Book II, of the magic powers derived from Abdaldar's ring is balanced by his rejection of such an exterior aid, when, at the beginning of Book XII, he casts off the ring with the cry, “Thou art my shield, my trust, my hope, O God!” Having learned in the interval that “the true Talisman is faith,” he proceeds unaided to the final act of revenge.

The final sets of paired actions, in Books III and X, IV and IX, and V and VII, all involve the clarification of certain concepts which before the crucial experience of internal purification remained vague and perhaps even deceptive. In Book III, Thalaba is informed of his destiny to revenge his father's death, but in Book X the humane limitations on that destiny are defined, as he refuses to oblige Fate and kill the innocent Leila in order that he himself might live to carry out his task. In Book IV, Lobaba tries to undermine the young man's belief in intuitive guidance by pragmatic arguments: nothing in itself, says the sorcerer, “is good or evil, / But only in its use” (IV, sec. 15). The true nature of this pragmatism is revealed in Book IX as Mohareb taunts his captive:

                                                            Evil and Good …
What are they, Thalaba; but words? in the strife
          Of Angels, as of Men, the weak are guilty;
Power must decide.

(IX, sec. 14)

And finally, in Book V, the faith in Allah which Thalaba is instructed to keep is redefined in Book VIII as he nears the accomplishment of his mission: he is instructed to have faith in himself and in the sanctity of that mission.⁷

Notes

1. Jack Simmons, Southey (1945), p. 209; William Haller, The Early Life of Robert Southey (1966).

2. W. Macneille Dixon, English Epic and Heroic Poetry (1912; rpt. 1964), p. 293.

3. New Letters of Robert Southey, ed. Kenneth Curry (1965), I, 114. Hereafter cited in text as New Letters.

4. Thomas Carlyle, Reminiscences, ed. James A. Froude (1881), p. 516.

5. Letters of Robert Southey, ed. Maurice Fitzgerald (1912), p. 4. Hereafter cited in text as Letters.

6. “Preface,” The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, collected by himself (1837-38), V, xi; New Letters, I, 388. All citations are to this edition; hereafter cited in text as PW.

7. Another, minor, structural device, which supports this pattern, might be mentioned. In the first half of the poem Thalaba is presented with three divine messages, all of which instruct him in the necessary preparations for his task. In the last half of the poem, he receives three more messages; these, however, direct him straight to the Dom Daniel.