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diff --git a/old/61983-0.txt b/old/61983-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b1d3688..0000000 --- a/old/61983-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6258 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Southey, by Edward Dowden - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: Southey - No. 134 of 'Harper's Handy Series', 'English Men of Letters' - -Author: Edward Dowden - -Editor: John Morley - -Release Date: April 30, 2020 [EBook #61983] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTHEY *** - - - - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - - _No. 134_ _25 Cts._ - - HARPER’S HANDY SERIES - - [Illustration] - - Issued Weekly - - Copyright, 1885, - by HARPER & BROTHERS - - JUNE 3, 1887 - - Subscription Price - per Year, 52 Numbers, $15 - - Entered at the Post-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail - Matter - - English Men of Letters - EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY - - SOUTHEY - - BY - EDWARD DOWDEN - - _Books you may hold readily in your hand are the most useful, - after all._ - DR. JOHNSON - - NEW YORK - HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS - 1887 - - - - -HARPER’S HANDY SERIES. - -_Latest Issues._ - - - NO. CENTS. - - 101. THE CHAPLAIN’S CRAZE. A Novel. By G. Manville Fenn. 25 - - 102. BETWEEN TWO LOVES. A Tale of the West Riding. By Amelia E. - Barr. 25 - - 103. THAT WINTER NIGHT; OR, LOVE’S VICTORY. A Novel. By Robert - Buchanan. 25 - - 104. THE BRIGHT STAR OF LIFE. A Novel. By B. L. Farjeon. 25 - - 105. THE GUILTY RIVER. A Novel. By Wilkie Collins. 25 - - 106. GOLDEN BELLS. A Peal in Seven Changes. By R. E. Francillon. 25 - - 107. THE NINE OF HEARTS. A Novel. By B. L. Farjeon. 25 - - 108. A MODERN TELEMACHUS. A Novel. By Charlotte M. Yonge. 25 - - 109. CASHEL BYRON’S PROFESSION. A Novel. By George Bernard Shaw. 25 - - 110. BRITTA. A Shetland Romance. By George Temple. Illustrated. 25 - - 111. A CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION. A Novel. By the Author of “The - Atelier du Lys.” Illustrated. 25 - - 112. A STRANGE INHERITANCE. A Novel. By F. M. F. Skene. 25 - - 113. LOCKSLEY HALL SIXTY YEARS AFTER, Etc. By Alfred, Lord - Tennyson. 25 - - 114. REGIMENTAL LEGENDS. By John Strange Winter. 25 - - 115. YEAST. A Problem. By Charles Kingsley. 25 - - 116. CRANFORD. By Mrs. Gaskell. 25 - - 117. LUCY CROFTON. A Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant. 25 - - 118. MIGNON’S SECRET, and WANTED—A WIFE. By John Strange Winter. 25 - - 119. SAMUEL JOHNSON. By Leslie Stephen. 25 - - 120. EDWARD GIBBON. By James Cotter Morison. 25 - - 121. SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Richard H. Hutton. 25 - - 122. SHELLEY. By John A. Symonds. 25 - - 123. HUME. By Professor Huxley. 25 - - 124. GOLDSMITH. By William Black. 15 - - 125. DANIEL DEFOE. By William Minto. 20 - - 126. SHE. A History of Adventure. By H. Rider Haggard. Profusely - Illustrated. 25 - - 127. MACHINE POLITICS AND MONEY IN ELECTIONS IN NEW YORK CITY. - By William M. Ivins. 25 - - 128. ROBERT BURNS. By Principal J. C. Shairp. 25 - - 129. SPENSER. By R. W. Church. 25 - - 130. THACKERAY. By Anthony Trollope. 25 - - 131. BURKE. By John Morley. 25 - - 132. MILTON. By Mark Pattison. 25 - - 133. HAWTHORNE. By Henry James, Jr. 20 - - 134. SOUTHEY. By Edward Dowden. 25 - -_Other volumes in preparation._ - -☞ _HARPER & BROTHERS will send any of the above works by mail, postage -prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the -price._ - - - - -English Men of Letters - -EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY - - - - - SOUTHEY - - BY - EDWARD DOWDEN. - - [Illustration] - - NEW YORK - HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS - FRANKLIN SQUARE - - - - -ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. - -EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. - - - JOHNSON Leslie Stephen. - GIBBON J. C. Morison. - SCOTT R. H. Hutton. - SHELLEY J. A. Symonds. - HUME T. H. Huxley. - GOLDSMITH William Black. - DEFOE William Minto. - BURNS J. C. Shairp. - SPENSER R. W. Church. - THACKERAY Anthony Trollope. - BURKE John Morley. - MILTON Mark Pattison. - HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jr. - SOUTHEY E. Dowden. - CHAUCER A. W. Ward. - BUNYAN J. A. Froude. - COWPER Goldwin Smith. - POPE Leslie Stephen. - BYRON John Nichol. - LOCKE Thomas Fowler. - WORDSWORTH F. Myers. - DRYDEN G. Saintsbury. - LANDOR Sidney Colvin. - DE QUINCEY David Masson. - LAMB Alfred Ainger. - BENTLEY R. C. Jebb. - DICKENS A. W. Ward. - GRAY E. W. Gosse. - SWIFT Leslie Stephen. - STERNE H. D. Traill. - MACAULAY J. Cotter Morison. - FIELDING Austin Dobson. - SHERIDAN Mrs. Oliphant. - ADDISON W. J. Courthope. - BACON R. W. Church. - COLERIDGE H. D. Traill. - SIR PHILIP SIDNEY J. A. Symonds. - -12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume. - -PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. - -☞ _Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any -part of the United States, on receipt of the price._ - - - - -NOTE. - - -I am indebted throughout to _The Life and Correspondence of Robert -Southey_, edited by the Rev. C. C. Southey, six volumes, 1850, and to -_Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey_, edited by J. W. Warter, -B.D., four volumes, 1856. Many other sources have been consulted. I thank -Mr. W. J. Craig for help given in examining Southey manuscripts, and Mr. -T. W. Lyster for many valuable suggestions. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - - CHAPTER I. - - CHILDHOOD 1 - - CHAPTER II. - - WESTMINSTER, OXFORD, PANTISOCRACY, AND MARRIAGE 19 - - CHAPTER III. - - WANDERINGS, 1795-1803 44 - - CHAPTER IV. - - WAYS OF LIFE AT KESWICK, 1803-1839 80 - - CHAPTER V. - - WAYS OF LIFE AT KESWICK, 1803-1839 (_continued_) 112 - - CHAPTER VI. - - CHANGES AND EVENTS, 1803-1843 142 - - CHAPTER VII. - - SOUTHEY’S WORK IN LITERATURE 187 - - - - -SOUTHEY. - - - - -CHAPTER I - -CHILDHOOD. - - -No one of his generation lived so completely in and for literature as did -Southey. “He is,” said Byron, “the only existing entire man of letters.” -With him literature served the needs both of the material life and of -the life of the intellect and imagination; it was his means of earning -daily bread, and also the means of satisfying his highest ambitions and -desires. This, which was true of Southey at five-and-twenty years of age, -was equally true at forty, fifty, sixty. During all that time he was -actively at work accumulating, arranging, and distributing knowledge; no -one among his contemporaries gathered so large a store from the records -of the past; no one toiled with such steadfast devotion to enrich his -age; no one occupied so honourable a place in so many provinces of -literature. There is not, perhaps, any single work of Southey’s the loss -of which would be felt by us as a capital misfortune. But the more we -consider his total work, its mass, its variety, its high excellence, the -more we come to regard it as a memorable, an extraordinary achievement. - -Southey himself, however, stands above his works. In subject they are -disconnected, and some of them appear like huge fragments. It is the -presence of one mind, one character in all, easily recognizable by him -who knows Southey, which gives them a vital unity. We could lose the -_History of Brazil_, or the _Peninsular War_, or the _Life of Wesley_, -and feel that if our possessions were diminished, we ourselves in our -inmost being had undergone no loss which might not easily be endured. But -he who has once come to know Southey’s voice as the voice of a friend, -so clear, so brave, so honest, so full of boyish glee, so full of manly -tenderness, feels that if he heard that voice no more a portion of his -life were gone. To make acquaintance with the man is better than to study -the subjects of his books. In such a memoir as the present, to glance -over the contents of a hundred volumes, dealing with matters widely -remote, would be to wander upon a vast circumference when we ought to -strike for the centre. If the reader come to know Southey as he read and -wrote in his library, as he rejoiced and sorrowed among his children, as -he held hands with good old friends, as he walked by the lake-side, or -lingered to muse near some mountain stream, as he hoped and feared for -England, as he thought of life and death and a future beyond the grave, -the end of this small book will have been attained. - -At the age of forty-six Robert Southey wrote the first of a series -of autobiographic sketches; his spirit was courageous, and life had -been good to him; but it needed more than his courage to live again -in remembrance with so many of the dead; having told the story of his -boyhood, he had not the heart to go farther. The autobiography rambles -pleasantly into by-ways of old Bath and Bristol life; at Westminster -School it leaves him. So far we shall go along with it; for what lies -beyond, a record of Southey’s career must be brought together from a -multitude of letters, published or still remaining in manuscript, and -from many and massy volumes in prose and verse, which show how the -industrious hours sped by. - -Southey’s father was a linen-draper of Bristol. He had left his native -fields under the Quantock hills to take service in a London shop, but -his heart suffered in its exile. The tears were in his eyes one day when -a porter went by carrying a hare, and the remembrance suddenly came to -him of his rural sports. On his master’s death he took a place behind -the counter of Britton’s shop in Wine Street, Bristol; and when, twelve -years later, he opened a shop for himself in the same business, he had, -with tender reminiscence, a hare painted for a device upon his windows. -He kept his grandfather’s sword which had been borne in Monmouth’s -rebellion; he loved the chimes and quarter-boys of Christ Church, -Bristol, and tried, as church-warden, to preserve them. What else of -poetry there may have been in the life of Robert Southey the elder is -lost among the buried epics of prosaic lives. We cannot suppose that as a -man of business he was sharp and shrewd; he certainly was not successful. -When the draper’s work was done, he whiled away the hours over Felix -Farley’s Bristol Journal, his only reading. For library some score -of books shared with his wine-glasses the small cupboard in the back -parlour; its chief treasures were the _Spectator_, the _Guardian_, some -eighteenth-century poems, dead even then, and one or two immortal plays. - -On Sundays Mr. Southey, then a bachelor, would stroll to Bedminster to -dine at the pleasant house of Mrs. Hill—a substantial house to which -Edward Hill, gentleman, brought his second wife, herself a widow; a house -rich in old English comfort, with its diamond-tiled garden-way and -jessamine-covered porch, its wainscoted “best kitchen,” its blue room and -green room and yellow room, its grapes and greengages and nectarines, its -sweet-williams and stocks and syringas. Among these pleasant surroundings -the young draper found it natural, on Sabbath afternoons, to make love to -pleasant Margaret Hill. “Never,” writes her son Robert Southey—“never was -any human being blessed with a sweeter temper or a happier disposition.” -Her face had been marred by the seams of small-pox, but its brightness -and kindness remained; there was a charm in her clear hazel eyes, so good -a temper and so alert an understanding were to be read in them. She had -not gone to any school except one for dancing, and “her state,” declares -Southey, “was the more gracious;” her father had, however, given her -lessons in the art of whistling; she could turn a tune like a blackbird. -From a mother, able to see a fact swiftly and surely, and who knew both -to whistle and to dance, Southey inherited that alertness of intellect -and that joyous temper, without which he could not have accomplished his -huge task-work, never yielding to a mood of rebellion or _ennui_. - -After the courtship on Sunday afternoons came the wedding, and before -long a beautiful boy was born, who died in infancy. On the 12th of -August, 1774, Mrs. Southey was again in the pain of childbirth. “Is it a -boy?” she asked the nurse. “Ay, a great ugly boy!” With such salutation -from his earliest critic the future poet-laureate entered this world. -“God forgive me,” his mother exclaimed afterwards, in relating the -event, “when I saw what a great red creature it was, covered with rolls -of fat, I thought I should never be able to love him.” In due time the -red creature proved to be a distinctively human child, whose curly -hair and sensitive feelings made him a mother’s darling. He had not yet -heard of sentiment or of Rousseau, but he wept at the pathos of romantic -literature, at the tragic fate of the “Children sliding on the ice all -on a summer’s day,” or the too early death of “Billy Pringle’s pig,” and -he would beg the reciters not to proceed. His mother’s household cares -multiplied, and Southey, an unbreeched boy of three years, was borne away -one morning by his faithful foster-mother Patty to be handed over to -the tender mercies of a schoolmistress. Ma’am Powell was old and grim, -and with her lashless eyes gorgonized the new pupil; on the seizure of -her hand he woke to rebellion, kicking lustily, and crying, “Take me to -Pat! I don’t like ye! you’ve got ugly eyes! take me to Pat, I say!” But -soft-hearted Pat had gone home, sobbing. - -Mrs. Southey’s one weakness was that of submitting too meekly to the -tyranny of an imperious half-sister, Miss Tyler, the daughter of -Grandmother Hill by her first marriage. For this weakness there were -excuses; Miss Tyler was an elder sister by many years; she had property -of her own; she passed for a person of fashion, and was still held to be -a beauty; above all, she had the advantage of a temper so capricious and -violent that to quarrel with her at all might be to lose her sisterly -regard for ever. Her struggling sister’s eldest son took Aunt Tyler’s -fancy; it was a part of her imperious kindness to adopt or half-adopt -the boy. Aunt Tyler lived in Bath; in no other city could a gentlewoman -better preserve health and good looks, or enjoy so much society of -distinction on easy but not too ample means; it possessed a charming -theatre, and Miss Tyler was a patron of the drama. To Bath, then, she -had brought her portrait by Gainsborough, her inlaid cabinet of ebony, -her cherry-wood arm-chair, her mezzotints after Angelica Kaufmann, her -old-maid hoards of this and of that, the woman servant she had saved -from the toils of matrimony, and the old man, harmless as one of the -crickets which he nightly fed until he died. To Bath Miss Tyler also -brought her nephew; and she purchased a copy of the new gospel of -education, Rousseau’s _Emilius_, in order to ascertain how Nature should -have her perfect work with a boy in petticoats. Here the little victim, -without companions, without play, without the child’s beatitudes of -dirt and din, was carefully swathed in the odds and ends of habits and -humours which belonged to a maiden lady of a whimsical, irrational, -and self-indulgent temper. Miss Tyler, when not prepared for company, -wandered about the house—a faded beauty—in the most faded and fluttering -of costumes; but in her rags she was spotless. To preserve herself and -her worldly gear from the dust, for ever floating and gathering in this -our sordid atmosphere, was the business of her life. Her acquaintances -she divided into the clean and the unclean—the latter class being much -the more numerous. Did one of the unclean take a seat in her best room, -the infected chair must be removed to the garden to be aired. But did -he seat himself in Miss Tyler’s own arm-chair, pressing his abominable -person into Miss Tyler’s own cushion, then passionate were her dismay -and despair. To her favourites she was gracious and high-bred, regaling -them with reminiscences of Lady Bateman, and with her views on taste, -Shakspeare, and the musical glasses. For her little nephew she invented -the pretty recreation of pricking play-bills; all capital letters -were to be illuminated with pin-holes; it was not a boisterous nor an -ungenteel sport. At other times the boy would beguile the hours in the -garden, making friends with flowers and insects, or looking wistfully -towards that sham castle on Claverton Hill, seat of romantic mystery, -but, alas! two miles away, and therefore beyond the climbing powers of -a refined gentlewoman. Southey’s hardest daily trial was the luxurious -morning captivity of his aunt’s bed; still at nine, at ten that lady lay -in slumber; the small urchin, long perked up and broad awake, feared by -sound or stir to rouse her, and would nearly wear his little wits away in -plotting re-arrangements of the curtain-pattern, or studying the motes at -mazy play in the slant sunbeam. His happiest season was when all other -little boys were fast asleep; then, splendid in his gayest “jam,” he -sat beside Miss Tyler in a front row of the best part of the theatre; -when the yawning fits had passed, he was as open-eyed as the oldest, and -stared on, filling his soul with the spectacle, till the curtain fell. - -The “great red creature,” Robert Southey, had now grown into the lean -greyhound of his after-life; his long legs wanted to be stirring, and -there were childish ambitions already at work in his head. Freedom became -dearer to him than the daintiest cage, and when at six he returned to -his father’s house in Wine Street, it was with rejoicing. Now, too, his -aunt issued an edict that the long-legged lad should be breeched; an -epoch of life was complete. Wine Street, with its freedom, seemed good; -but best of all was a visit to Grandmother Hill’s pleasant house at -Bedminster. “Here I had all wholesome liberty, all wholesome indulgence, -all wholesome enjoyments; and the delight which I there learnt to take -in rural sights and sounds has grown up with me, and continues unabated -to this day.” And now that scrambling process called education was to -begin. A year was spent by Southey as a day-scholar with old Mr. Foot, a -dissenting minister, whose unorthodoxy as to the doctrine of the Trinity -was in some measure compensated by sound traditional views as to the uses -of the cane. Mr. Foot, having given proof on the back of his last and his -least pupil of steadfastness in the faith according to Busby, died; and -it was decided that the boy should be placed under Thomas Flower, who -kept school at Corston, nine miles from Bristol. To a tender mother’s -heart nine miles seemed a breadth of severance cruel as an Atlantic. Mrs. -Southey, born to be happy herself, and to make others happy, had always -heretofore met her son with a smile; now he found her weeping in her -chamber; with an effort, such as Southey, man and boy, always knew how to -make on like occasions, he gulped down his own rising sob, and tried to -brighten her sorrow with a smile. - -A boy’s first night at school is usually not a time of mirth. The heart -of the solitary little lad at Corston sank within him. A melancholy hung -about the decayed mansion which had once known better days; the broken -gateways, the summer-houses falling in ruins, the grass-grown court, -the bleakness of the schoolroom, ill-disguised by its faded tapestry, -depressed the spirits. Southey’s pillow was wet with tears before he -fell asleep. The master was at one with his surroundings; he, too, was -a piece of worthy old humanity now decayed; he, too, was falling in -untimely ruins. From the memory of happier days, from the troubles of -his broken fortune, from the vexations of the drunken maid-servant who -was now his wife, he took refuge in contemplating the order and motions -of the stars. “When he came into his desk, even there he was thinking of -the stars, and looked as if he were out of humour, not from ill-nature, -but because his calculations were interrupted.” Naturally the work of -the school, such as it was, fell, for the most part, into the hands -of Charley, Thomas Flower’s son. Both father and son knew the mystery -of that flamboyant penmanship admired by our ancestors, but Southey’s -handwriting had not yet advanced from the early rounded to the decorated -style. His spelling he could look back upon with pride: on one occasion -a grand spelling tournament between the boys took place; and little -Southey can hardly have failed to overthrow his taller adversaries with -the posers, “crystallization” and “coterie.” The household arrangements -at Corston, as may be supposed, were not of the most perfect kind; Mrs. -Flower had so deep an interest in her bottle, and poor Thomas Flower in -his planets. The boys each morning washed themselves, or did not, in -the brook ankle-deep which ran through the yard. In autumn the brook -grew deeper and more swift, and after a gale it would bring within -bounds a tribute of floating apples from the neighbouring orchard. That -was a merry day, also in autumn, when the boys were employed to pelt -the master’s walnut-trees; Southey, too small to bear his part in the -battery, would glean among the fallen leaves and twigs, inhaling the -penetrating fragrance which ever after called up a vision of the brook, -the hillside, and its trees. One schoolboy sport—that of “conquering” -with snail-shells—seems to have been the special invention of Corston. -The snail-shells, not tenantless, were pressed point against point -until one was broken in. A great conqueror was prodigiously prized, was -treated with honourable distinction, and was not exposed to danger save -in great emergencies. One who had slain his hundreds might rank with -Rodney, to see whom the boys had marched down to the Globe inn, and for -whom they had cheered and waved their Sunday cocked hats as he passed -by. So, on the whole, life at Corston had its pleasures. Chief among -its pains was the misery of Sunday evenings in winter; then the pupils -were assembled in the hall to hear the master read a sermon, or a portion -of Stackhouse’s _History of the Bible_. “Here,” writes Southey, “I sat -at the end of a long form, in sight but not within feeling of the fire, -my feet cold, my eyelids heavy as lead, and yet not daring to close -them—kept awake by fear alone, in total inaction, and under the operation -of a lecture more soporific than the strongest sleeping dose.” While the -boys’ souls were thus provided for, there was a certain negligence in -matters unspiritual; an alarm got abroad that infection was among them. -This hastened the downfall of the school. One night disputing was heard -between Charley and his father; in the morning poor Flower was not to be -seen, and Charley appeared with a black eye. So came to an end the year -at Corston. Southey, aged eight, was brought home, and underwent “a three -days’ purgatory in brimstone.”[1] - -What Southey had gained of book-lore by his two years’ schooling was -as little as could be; but he was already a lover of literature after -a fashion of his own. A friend of Miss Tyler had presented him, as -soon as he could read, with a series of Newbery’s sixpenny books for -children—_Goody Twoshoes_, _Giles Gingerbread_, and the rest—delectable -histories, resplendent in Dutch-gilt paper. The true masters of his -imagination, however, were the players and playwrights who provided -amusement for the pleasure-loving people of Bath. Miss Tyler was -acquainted with Colman, and Sheridan, and Cumberland, and Holcroft; her -talk was of actors and authors, and her nephew soon perceived that, -honoured as were both classes, the authors were awarded the higher place. -His first dreams of literary fame, accordingly, were connected with the -drama. “‘It is the easiest thing in the world to write a play,’ said I -to Miss Palmer (a friend of Aunt Tyler’s), as we were in a carriage on -Redcliffe Hill one day, returning from Bristol to Bedminster. ‘Is it, my -dear?’ was her reply. ‘Yes,’ I continued, ‘for you know you have only to -think what you would say if you were in the place of the characters, and -to make them say it.’” With such a canon of dramatic authorship Southey -began a play on the continence of Scipio, and actually completed an act -and a half. Shakespeare he read and read again; Beaumont and Fletcher -he had gone through before he was eight years old. Were they not great -theatrical names, Miss Tyler reasoned, and therefore improving writers -for her nephew? and Southey had read them unharmed. When he visited his -aunt from Corston, she was a guest with Miss Palmer at Bath; a covered -passage led to the playhouse, and every evening the delighted child, -seated between the two lady-patronesses of the stage, saw the pageantry -and heard the poetry. A little later he persuaded a schoolfellow to write -a tragedy; Ballard liked the suggestion, but could not invent a plot. -Southey gave him a story; Ballard approved, but found a difficulty in -devising names for the _dramatis personæ_. Southey supplied a list of -heroic names: they were just what Ballard wanted—but he was at a loss to -know what the characters should say. “I made the same attempt,” continued -Southey, “with another schoolfellow, and with no better success. It -seemed to me very odd that they should not be able to write plays as well -as to do their lessons.” - -The ingenious Ballard was an ornament of the school of William Williams, -whither Southey was sent as a day-boarder after the catastrophe of -Corston. Under the care of this kindly, irascible, little, bewigged old -Welshman, Southey remained during four years. Williams was not a model -schoolmaster, but he was a man of character and of a certain humorous -originality. In two things he believed with all the energy of his -nature—in his own spelling-book printed for his own school, and in the -Church Catechism. Latin was left to the curate; when Southey reached -Virgil, old Williams, delighted with classical attainments rare among -his pupils, thought of taking the boy into his own hands, but his little -Latin had faded from his brain; and the curate himself seemed to have -reached his term in the _Tityre tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi_, -so that to Southey, driven round and round the pastoral paddock, the -names of Tityrus and Melibœus became for ever after symbols of _ennui_. -No prosody was taught: “I am,” said Southey, “at this day as liable to -make a false quantity as any Scotchman.” The credit, however, is due -to Williams of having discovered in his favourite pupil a writer of -English prose. One day each boy of a certain standing was called upon -to write a letter on any subject he pleased: never had Southey written -a letter except the formal one dictated at Corston which began with -“Honoured Parents.” He cried for perplexity and vexation; but Williams -encouraged him, and presently a description of Stonehenge filled his -slate. The old man was surprised and delighted. A less amiable feeling -possessed Southey’s schoolfellows: a plan was forthwith laid for his -humiliation—could he tell them, fine scholar that he was, what the -letters _i. e._ stand for? Southey, never lacking in courage, drew a bow -at a venture: for John the Evangelist. - -The old Welshman, an original himself, had an odd following of friends -and poor retainers. There was the crazy rhymester known as “Dr. Jones;” -tradition darkly related that a dose of cantharides administered by -waggish boys of a former generation had robbed him of his wits. “The most -celebrated _improvisatore_ was never half so vain of his talent as this -queer creature, whose little figure of some five-feet-two I can perfectly -call to mind, with his suit of rusty black, his more rusty wig, and his -old cocked hat. Whenever he entered the schoolroom he was greeted with a -shout of welcome.” There was also Pullen, the breeches-maker—a glorious -fellow, brimful of vulgarity, prosperity, and boisterous good-nature; -above all, an excellent hand at demanding a half-holiday. A more graceful -presence, but a more fleeting, was that of Mrs. Estan, the actress, who -came to learn from the dancing-master her _minuet de la cour_ in _The -Belle’s Stratagem_. Southey himself had to submit to lessons in dancing. -Tom Madge, his constant partner, had limbs that went every way; Southey’s -limbs would go no way: the spectacle presented by their joint endeavours -was one designed for the pencil of Cruikshank. In the art of reading -aloud Miss Tyler had herself instructed her nephew, probably after the -manner of the most approved tragedy queens. The grand style did not -please honest Williams. “Who taught you to read?” he asked, scornfully. -“My aunt,” answered Southey. “Then give my compliments to your aunt, and -tell her that my old horse, that has been dead these twenty years, could -have taught you as well”—a message which her nephew, with the appalling -frankness of youth, delivered, and which was never forgotten. - -While Southey was at Corston, his grandmother died; the old lady with the -large, clear, brown, bright eyes, seated in her garden, was no more to be -seen, and the Bedminster house, after a brief occupation by Miss Tyler, -was sold. Miss Tyler spoke of Bristol society with a disdainful sniff; -it was her choice to wander for a while from one genteel watering-place -to another. When Williams gave Southey his first summer holidays, he -visited his aunt at Weymouth. The hours spent there upon the beach were -the most spiritual hours of Southey’s boyhood; he was for the first -time in face of the sea—the sea vast, voiceful, and mysterious. Another -epoch-making event occurred about the same time; good Mrs. Dolignon, his -aunt’s friend, gave him a book—the first which became his very own since -that present of the toy-books of Newbery. It was Hoole’s translation of -Tasso’s _Gerusalemme Liberata_; in it a world of poetical adventure was -opened to the boy. The notes to Tasso made frequent reference to Ariosto; -Bull’s Circulating Library at Bath—a Bodleian to Southey—supplied him -with the version, also by Hoole, of the _Orlando Furioso_; here was a -forest of old romance in which to lose himself. But a greater discovery -was to come; searching the notes again, Southey found mention made of -Spenser, and certain stanzas of Spenser’s chief poem were quoted. “Was -the _Faerie Queene_ on Bull’s shelves?” “Yes,” was the answer; “they -had it, but it was in obsolete language, and the young gentleman would -not understand it.” The young gentleman, who had already gone through -Beaumont and Fletcher, was not daunted; he fell to with the keenest -relish, feeling in Spenser the presence of something which was lacking in -the monotonous couplets of Hoole, and charming himself unaware with the -music of the stanza. Spenser, “not more sweet than pure, and not more -pure than wise,” - - “High-priest of all the Muses’ mysteries,”[2] - -was henceforth accepted by Southey as his master. - -When Miss Tyler had exhausted her friends’ hospitality, and had grown -tired of lodgings, she settled in a pleasant suburban nook at Bristol; -but having a standing quarrel with Thomas Southey, her sister’s -brother-in-law, she would never set foot in the house in Wine Street, -and she tried to estrange her nephew, as far as possible, from his -natural home. Her own brother William, a half-witted creature, she -brought to live with her. “The Squire,” as he was called, was hardly -a responsible being, yet he had a sort of _half-saved_ shrewdness, -and a memory stored with old saws, which, says Southey, “would have -qualified him, had he been born two centuries earlier, to have worn -motley, and figured with a cap and bells and a bauble in some baron’s -hall.” A saying of his, “Curses are like young chickens, they always -come home to roost,” was remembered by Southey in after-years; and when -it was turned into Greek by Coleridge, to serve as motto to _The Curse -of Kehama_, a mysterious reference was given—Αποφθ. Ανεκ. του Γυλίελ. -του Μητ. With much beer-swilling and tobacco-chewing, premature old age -came upon him. He would sit for hours by the kitchen fire, or, on warm -days, in the summer-house, his eyes intently following the movements of -the neighbours. He loved to play at marbles with his nephew, and at loo -with Miss Tyler; most of all, he loved to be taken to the theatre. The -poor Squire had an affectionate heart; he would fondle children with -tenderness, and at his mother’s funeral his grief was overwhelming. -A companion of his own age Southey found in Shadrach Weekes, the boy -of all work, a brother of Miss Tyler’s maid. Shad and his young master -would scour the country in search of violet and cowslip roots, and the -bee and fly orchis, until wood and rock by the side of the Avon had -grown familiar and had grown dear; and now, instead of solitary pricking -of play-bills, Southey set to work, with the help of Shad, to make and -fit up such a theatre for puppets as would have been the pride even of -Wilhelm Meister. - -But fate had already pronounced that Southey was to be poet, and not -player. Tasso and Ariosto and Spenser claimed him, or so he dreamed. By -this time he had added to his epic cycle Pope’s _Homer_ and Mickle’s -_Lusiad_. That prose romance, embroidered with sixteenth-century -affectations, but with a true chivalric sentiment at its heart, Sidney’s -_Arcadia_, was also known to him. He had read Arabian and mock-Arabian -tales; he had spent the pocket-money of many weeks on a Josephus, and he -had picked up from Goldsmith something of Greek and Roman history. So -breathed upon by poetry, and so furnished with erudition, Southey, at -twelve years old, found it the most natural thing in the world to become -an epic poet. His removal from the old Welshman’s school having been -hastened by that terrible message which Miss Tyler could not forgive, -Southey, before proceeding to Westminster, was placed for a year under a -clergyman, believed to be competent to carry his pupils beyond Tityrus -and Melibœus. But, except some skill in writing English themes, little -was gained from this new tutor. The year, however, was not lost. “I do -not remember,” Southey writes, “in any part of my life to have been so -conscious of intellectual improvement ... an improvement derived not -from books or instruction, but from constantly exercising myself in -English verse.” “Arcadia” was the title of his first dream-poem; it was -to be grafted upon the _Orlando Furioso_, with a new hero, and in a new -scene; this dated from his ninth or tenth year, and some verses were -actually composed. The epic of the Trojan Brutus and that of King Richard -III. were soon laid aside, but several folio sheets of an _Egbert_ came -to be written. The boy’s pride and ambition were solitary and shy. One -day he found a lady, a visitor of Miss Tyler’s, with the sacred sheets of -_Egbert_ in her hand; her compliments on his poem were deeply resented; -and he determined henceforth to write his epics in a private cipher. -Heroic epistles, translations from Latin poetry, satires, descriptive and -moral pieces, a poem in dialogue exhibiting the story of the Trojan war, -followed in rapid succession; last, a “Cassibelan,” of which three books -were completed. Southey, looking back on these attempts, notices their -deficiency in plan, in construction. “It was long before I acquired this -power—not fairly, indeed, till I was about five or six and thirty; and -it was gained by practice, in the course of which I learnt to perceive -wherein I was deficient.” - -One day in February, 1788, a carriage rumbled out of Bath, containing -Miss Palmer, Miss Tyler, and Robert Southey, now a tall, lank boy -with high-poised head, brown curling hair, bright hazel eyes, and an -expression of ardour and energy about the lips and chin. The ladies were -on their way to London for some weeks’ diversion, and Robert Southey -was on his way to school at Westminster. For a while he remained an -inconvenient appendage of his aunt’s, wearying of the great city, longing -for Shad and the carpentry, and the Gloucester meadows and the Avon -cliffs, and the honest eyes and joyous bark of poor Phillis. April the -first—ominous morning—arrived; Southey was driven to Dean’s Yard; his -name was duly entered; his boarding-house determined; his tutor chosen; -farewells were said, and he found himself in a strange world, alone. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -WESTMINSTER, OXFORD, PANTISOCRACY, AND MARRIAGE. - - -Of Southey during his four years at Westminster we know little; his -fragment of autobiography, having brought him to the school, soon comes -to an untimely close; and for this period we possess no letters. But we -know that these were years which contributed much to form his intellect -and character; we know that they were years of ardour and of toil; and -it is certain that now, as heretofore, his advance was less dependent on -what pastors and masters did for him than on what he did for himself. -The highest scholarship—that which unites precision with breadth, and -linguistic science with literary feeling—Southey never attained in -any foreign tongue, except perhaps in the Portuguese and the Spanish. -Whenever the choice lay between pausing to trace out a law of language, -or pushing forward to secure a good armful of miscellaneous facts, -Southey preferred the latter. With so many huge structures of his own -in contemplation, he could not gather too much material, nor gather it -too quickly. Such fortitude as goes to make great scholars he possessed; -his store of patience was inexhaustible; but he could be patient only in -pursuit of his proper objects. He could never learn a language in regular -fashion; the best grammar, he said, was always the shortest. Southey’s -acquaintance with Greek never goes beyond that stage at which Greek, -like fairy gold, is apt to slip away of a sudden unless kept steadfastly -in view, nearly all the Greek he had learnt at Westminster he forgot -at Oxford. A monkish legend in Latin of the Church or a mediæval Latin -chronicle he could follow with the run of the eye; but had he at any -season of his manhood been called on to write a page of Latin prose, it -would probably have resembled the French in which he sometimes sportively -addressed his friends by letter, and in which he uttered himself -valiantly while travelling abroad. - -Southey brought to Westminster an imagination stored with the marvels -and the beauty of old romance. He left it skilled in the new sentiment -of the time—a sentiment which found in Werther and Eloisa its dialect, -high-pitched self-conscious, rhapsodical, and not wholly real. His bias -for history was already marked before he entered the school; but his -knowledge consisted of a few clusters of historical facts grouped around -the subjects of various projected epics, and dotting at wide distances -and almost at random the vast expanse of time. Now he made acquaintance -with that book which, more than any other, displays the breadth, the -variety, and the independence of the visible lives of nations. Gibbon’s -_Decline and Fall_ leaves a reader cold who cares only to quicken his own -inmost being by contact with what is most precious in man’s spiritual -history; one chapter of Augustine’s _Confessions_, one sentence of the -_Imitation_—each a live coal from off the altar—will be of more worth to -such an one than all the mass and laboured majesty of Gibbon. But one who -can gaze with a certain impersonal regard on the spectacle of the world -will find the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, more than almost -any other single book, replenish and dilate the mind. In it Southey -viewed for the first time the sweep, the splendour, the coils, the mighty -movement, of the stream of human affairs. - -Southey’s ambition on entering Westminster was to have the friendship of -the youths who had acted in the last Westminster play, and whose names -he had seen in the newspaper. Vain hope! for they, already preparing to -tie their hair in tails, were looking onward to the great world, and -had no glance to cast on the unnoted figures of the under-fourth. The -new-comer, according to a custom of the school, was for a time effaced, -ceasing to exist as an individual entity, and being known only as -“shadow” of the senior boy chosen to be “substance” to him during his -noviciate. Southey accepted his effacement the more willingly because -George Strachey, his substance, had a good face and a kindly heart; -unluckily—Strachey boarding at home—they were parted each night. A mild -young aristocrat, joining little with the others, was head of the house; -and Southey, unprotected by his chief, stood exposed to the tyranny of a -fellow-boarder bigger and brawnier than himself, who would souse the ears -of his sleeping victim with water, or on occasions let fly the porter-pot -or the poker at his head. Aspiring beyond these sallies to a larger and -freer style of humour, he attempted one day to hang Southey out of an -upper window by the leg; the pleasantry was taken ill by the smaller boy, -who offered an effectual resistance, and soon obtained his remove to -another chamber. Southey’s mature judgment of boarding-school life was -not, on the whole, favourable; yet to Westminster he owed two of his best -and dearest possessions—the friendship of C. W. W. Wynn, whose generous -loyalty alone made it possible for Southey to pursue literature as his -profession, and the friendship, no less precious, of Grosvenor Bedford, -lasting green and fresh from boyhood until both were white-haired, -venerable men. - -Southey’s interest in boyish sports was too slight to beguile him from -the solitude needful for the growth of a poet’s mind. He had thoughts -of continuing Ovid’s Metamorphoses; he planned six books to complete -the Faery Queen, and actually wrote some cantos; already the subject -of _Madoc_ was chosen. And now a gigantic conception, which at a later -time was to bear fruit in such poems as _Thalaba_ and _Kehama_, formed -itself in his mind “When I was a schoolboy at Westminster,” he writes “I -frequented the house of a schoolfellow who has continued till this day -to be one of my most intimate and dearest friends. The house was so near -Dean’s Yard that it was hardly considered as being out of our prescribed -bounds; and I had free access to the library, a well-stored and pleasant -room ... looking over the river. There many of my truant hours were -delightfully spent in reading Picart’s _Religious Ceremonies_. The book -impressed my imagination strongly; and before I left school I had formed -the intention of exhibiting all the more prominent and poetical forms of -mythology, which have at any time obtained among mankind, by making each -the groundwork of an heroic poem.” Southey’s huge design was begotten -upon his _pia mater_ by a folio in a library. A few years earlier -Wordsworth, a boy of fourteen, walking between Hawkshead and Ambleside, -noticed the boughs and leaves of an oak-tree intensely outlined in black -against a bright western sky. “That moment,” he says, “was important in -my poetical history, for I date from it my consciousness of the infinite -variety of natural appearances which had been unnoticed by the poets of -any age or country, so far as I was acquainted with them; and I made -a resolution to supply in some degree the deficiency.” Two remarkable -incidents in the history of English poetry, and each with something in it -of a typical character. - -At Westminster Southey obtained his first literary profits—the guerdon -of the silver penny to which Cowper alludes in his _Table-Talk_. -Southey’s penny—exchanged for current coin in the proportion of six -to one by the mistress of the boarding-house—was always awarded for -English composition. But his fame among his schoolfellows was not of an -early or sudden growth. In the year of Southey’s entrance, some of the -senior boys commenced a weekly paper called _The Trifler_. It imitates, -with some skill, the periodical essay of the post-Johnsonian period: -there is the wide-ranging discussion on the Influence of Liberty on -Genius; there is the sprightly sketch of Amelia, a learned Lady; there -is the moral diatribe on Deists, a Sect of Infidels most dangerous to -Mankind; there are the letters from Numa and from Infelix; there is the -Eastern apologue, beginning, “In the city of Bassora lived Zaydor, the -son of Al-Zored.” Southey lost no time in sending to the editor his -latest verses; a baby sister, Margaretta, had just died, and Southey -expressed in elegy a grief which was real and keen. “The Elegy signed -B. is received”—so Mr. Timothy Touchstone announced on the Saturday -after the manuscript had been dropped into the penny post. The following -Saturday—anxiously expected—brought no poem, but another announcement: -“The Elegy by B. must undergo some Alterations; a Liberty I must request -all my Correspondents to permit me to take.” “After this,” says Southey, -“I looked for its appearance anxiously, but in vain.” Happily no one -sought to discover B., or supposed that he was one with the curly-headed -boy of the under-fourth. - -If authorship has its hours of disappointment, it has compensating -moments of glory and of joy. _The Trifler_, having lived to the age of -ten months, deceased. In 1792 Southey, now a great boy, with Strachey, -his sometime “substance,” and his friends Wynn and Bedford, planned a -new periodical of ill-omened name, _The Flagellant_. “I well remember -my feelings,” he writes, “when the first number appeared.... It was -Bedford’s writing, but that circumstance did not prevent me from feeling -that I was that day borne into the world as an author; and if ever my -head touched the stars while I walked upon the earth, it was then.... In -all London there was not so vain, so happy, so elated a creature as I -was that day.” From that starry altitude he soon descended. The subject -of an early number of _The Flagellant_ was flogging; the writer was -Robert Southey. He was full of Gibbon at the time, and had caught some of -Voltaire’s manner of poignant irony. Rather for disport of his wits than -in the character of a reformer, the writer of number five undertook to -prove from the ancients and the Fathers that flogging was an invention of -the devil. During Southey’s life the devil received many insults at his -hands; his horns, his hoofs, his teeth, his tail, his moral character, -were painfully referred to; and the devil took it, like a sensible -fiend, in good part. Not so Dr. Vincent; the preceptorial dignity was -impugned by some unmannerly brat; a bulwark of the British Constitution -was at stake. Dr. Vincent made haste to prosecute the publisher for -libel. Matters having taken unexpectedly so serious a turn, Southey -came forward, avowed himself the writer, and, with some sense of shame -in yielding to resentment so unwarranted and so dull, he offered his -apology. The head-master’s wrath still held on its way, and Southey was -privately expelled. - -All Southey’s truant hours were not passed among folios adorned with -strange sculptures. In those days even St. Peter’s College, Westminster, -could be no little landlocked bay—silent, secure, and dull. To be in -London was to be among the tides and breakers of the world. Every post -brought news of some startling or significant event. Now it was that -George Washington had been elected first President of the American -Republic; now that the States-General were assembled at Versailles; now -that Paris, delivered from her nightmare towers of the Bastille, breathed -free; now that Brissot was petitioning for dethronement. The main issues -of the time were such as to try the spirits. Southey, who was aspiring, -hopeful, and courageous, did not hesitate in choosing a side; a new dawn -was opening for the world, and should not his heart have its portion in -that dawn? - -The love of our own household which surrounds us like the air, and -which seems inevitable as our daily meat and drink, acquires a strange -preciousness when we find that the world can be harsh. The expelled -Westminster boy returned to Bristol, and faithful Aunt Tyler welcomed him -home; Shad did not avert his face, and Phillis looked up at him with her -soft spaniel eyes. But Bristol also had its troubles; the world had been -too strong for the poor linen-draper in Wine Street; he had struggled to -maintain his business, but without success; his fortune was now broken, -and his heart broke with it. In some respects it was well for Southey -that his father’s affairs gave him definite realities to attend to; for, -in the quiet and vacancy of the days in Miss Tyler’s house, his heart -took unusual heats and chills, and even his eager verse-writing could -not allay the excitement nor avert the despondent fit. When Michaelmas -came, Southey went up to Oxford to matriculate; it was intended that he -should enter at Christ Church, but the dean had heard of the escapade at -Westminster; there was a laying of big-wigs together over that adventure, -and the young rebel was rejected; to be received, however, by Balliol -College. But to Southey it mattered little at the time whether he were of -this college or of that; a summons had reached him to hasten to Bristol -that he might follow his father’s body to the grave, and now his thoughts -could not but cling to his mother in her sorrow and her need. - -“I left Westminster,” says Southey, “in a perilous state—a heart full of -poetry and feeling, a head full of Rousseau and Werther, and my religious -principles shaken by Gibbon: many circumstances tended to give me a wrong -bias, none to lead me right, except adversity, the wholesomest of all -discipline.” The young republican went up to chambers in Rat Castle—since -departed—near the head of Balliol Grove, prepared to find in Oxford the -seat of pedantry, prejudice, and aristocracy; an airy sense of his own -enlightenment and emancipation possessed him. He has to learn to pay -respect to men “remarkable only for great wigs and little wisdom.” He -finds it “rather disgraceful at the moment when Europe is on fire with -freedom—when man and monarch are contending—to sit and study Euclid -and Hugo Grotius.” Beside the enthusiasm proper in Southey’s nature, -there was at this time an enthusiasm prepense. He had learnt from his -foreign masters the language of hyper-sensibility; his temperament was -nervous and easily wrought upon; his spirit was generous and ardent. -Like other youths with a facile literary talent before finding his true -self, he created a number of artificial selves, who uttered for him -his moralizings and philosophizings, who declaimed for him on liberty, -who dictated long letters of sentimental platitudes, and who built up -dream-fabrics of social and political reforms, chiefly for the pleasure -of seeing how things might look in “the brilliant colours of fancy, -nature, and Rousseau.” In this there was no insincerity, though there -was some unreality. “For life,” he says, “I have really a very strong -predilection,” and the buoyant energy within him delayed the discovery -of the bare facts of existence; it was so easy and enjoyable to become -in turn sage, reformer, and enthusiast. Or perhaps we ought to say that -all this time there was a real Robert Southey, strong, upright, ardent, -simple; and although this was quite too plain a person to serve the -purposes of epistolary literature, it was he who gave their cues to the -various ideal personages. This, at least, may be affirmed—all Southey’s -unrealities were of a pure and generous cast; never was his life emptied -of truth and meaning, and made in the deepest degree phantasmal by a -secret shame lurking under a fair show. The youth Milton, with his -grave upbringing, was happily not in the way of catching the trick of -sentimental phrases; but even Milton at Cambridge, the lady of his -College, was not more clean from spot or blemish than was Southey amid -the vulgar riot and animalisms of young Oxford. - -Two influences came to the aid of Southey’s instinctive modesty, and -confirmed him in all that was good. One was his friendship with Edmund -Seward, too soon taken from him by death. The other was his discipleship -to a great master of conduct. One in our own day has acknowledged the -largeness of his debt to - - “That halting slave, who in Nicopolis - Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son - Clear’d Rome of what most shamed him.” - -Epictetus came to Southey precisely when such a master was needed; other -writers had affected him through his imagination, through his nervous -sensibility; they had raised around him a luminous haze; they had plunged -him deeper in illusion. Now was heard the voice of a conscience speaking -to a conscience; the manner of speech was grave, unfigured, calm; above -all, it was real, and the words bore in upon the hearer’s soul with -a quiet resistlessness. He had allowed his sensitiveness to set up -what excitements it might please in his whole moral frame; he had been -squandering his emotions; he had been indulging in a luxury and waste of -passion. Here was a tonic and a styptic. Had Southey been declamatory -about freedom? The bondsman Epictetus spoke of freedom also, and of how -it might be obtained. Epictetus, like Rousseau, told of a life according -to nature; he commended simplicity of manners. But Rousseau’s simplicity, -notwithstanding that homage which he paid to the will, seemed to heat the -atmosphere with strange passion, seemed to give rise to new curiosities -and refinements of self-conscious emotion. Epictetus showed how life -could be simplified, indeed, by bringing it into obedience to a perfect -law. Instead of a quietism haunted by feverish dreams—duty, action, -co-operation with God. “Twelve years ago,” wrote Southey in 1806, “I -carried Epictetus in my pocket till my very heart was ingrained with it, -as a pig’s bones become red by feeding him upon madder. And the longer -I live, and the more I learn, the more am I convinced that Stoicism, -properly understood, is the best and noblest of systems.” Much that -Southey gained from Stoicism he kept throughout his whole life, tempered, -indeed, by the influences of a Christian faith, but not lost. He was no -metaphysician, and a master who had placed metaphysics first and morals -after would hardly have won him for a disciple; but a lofty ethical -doctrine spoke to what was deepest and most real in his nature. To trust -in an over-ruling Providence, to accept the disposal of events not in our -own power with a strenuous loyalty to our Supreme Ruler, to hold loose by -all earthly possessions even the dearest, to hold loose by life itself -while putting it to fullest use—these lessons he first learnt from the -Stoic slave, and he forgot none of them. But his chief lesson was the -large one of self-regulation, that it is a man’s prerogative to apply the -reason and the will to the government of conduct and to the formation of -character. - -By the routine of lectures and examinations Southey profited little; he -was not driven into active revolt, and that was all. His tutor, half a -democrat, surprised him by praising America, and asserting the right -of every country to model its own forms of government. He added, with -a pleasing frankness which deserves to be imitated, “Mr. Southey, you -won’t learn anything by my lectures, sir; so, if you have any studies of -your own, you had better pursue them.” Of all the months of his life, -those passed at Oxford, Southey declared, were the most unprofitable. -“All I learnt was a little swimming ... and a little boating.... I never -remember to have dreamt of Oxford—a sure proof how little it entered -into my moral being; of school, on the contrary, I dream perpetually.” -The miscellaneous society of workers, idlers, dunces, bucks, men of -muscle and men of money, did not please him; he lacked what Wordsworth -calls “the congregating temper that pervades our unripe years.” One -or two friends he chose, and grappled them to his heart; above all, -Seward, who abridged his hours of sleep for sake of study—whose drink was -water, whose breakfast was dry bread; then, Wynn and Lightfoot. With -Seward he sallied forth, in the Easter vacation, 1793, for a holiday -excursion; passed, with “the stupidity of a democratic philosopher,” the -very walls of Blenheim, without turning from the road to view the ducal -palace; lingered at Evesham, and wandered through its ruined Abbey, -indulging in some passable mediæval romancing; reached Worcester and -Kidderminster. “We returned by Bewdley. There is an old mansion, once -Lord Herbert’s, now mouldering away, in so romantic a situation, that -I soon lost myself in dreams of days of yore: the tapestried room—the -listed fight—the vassal-filled hall—the hospitable fire—the old baron -and his young daughter—these formed a most delightful day-dream.” The -youthful democrat did not suspect that such day-dreams were treasonable—a -hazardous caressing of the wily enchantress of the past; in his pocket he -carried Milton’s _Defence_, which may have been his amulet of salvation. -Many and various elements could mingle in young brains a-seethe with -revolution and romanticism. The fresh air and quickened blood at least -put Southey into excellent spirits. “We must walk over Scotland; it will -be an adventure to delight us all the remainder of our lives: we will -wander over the hills of Morven, and mark the driving blast, perchance -bestrodden by the spirit of Ossian!” - -Among visitors to the Wye, in July, 1793, were William Wordsworth, -recently returned from France, and Robert Southey, holiday-making from -Oxford; they were probably unacquainted with each other at that time even -by name. Wordsworth has left an undying memorial of his tour in the poem -written near Tintern Abbey, five years later. Southey was drawing a long -breath before he uttered himself in some thousands of blank verses. The -father of his friend Bedford resided at Brixton Causeway, about four -miles on the Surrey side of London; the smoke of the great city hung -heavily beyond an intervening breadth of country; shady lanes led to the -neighbouring villages; the garden was a sunny solitude where flowers -opened and fruit grew mellow, and bees and birds were happy. Here Southey -visited his friend; his nineteenth birthday came; on the following -morning he planted himself at the desk in the garden summer-house; -morning after morning quickly passed; and by the end of six weeks _Joan -of Arc_, an epic poem in twelve books, was written. To the subject -Southey was attracted primarily by the exalted character of his heroine; -but apart from this it possessed a twofold interest for him: England, -in 1793, was engaged in a war against France—a war hateful to all who -sympathized with the Republic; Southey’s epic was a celebration of the -glories of French patriotism, a narrative of victory over the invader. -It was also chivalric and mediæval; the sentiment which was transforming -the word Gothic, from a term of reproach to a word of vague yet mastering -fascination, found expression in the young poet’s treatment of the story -of Joan of Arc. Knight and hermit, prince and prelate, doctors seraphic -and irrefragable with their pupils, meet in it; the castle and the -cathedral confront one another: windows gleam with many-coloured light -streaming through the rich robes of saint and prophet; a miracle of -carven tracery branches overhead; upon the altar burns the mystic lamp. - -The rough draft of _Joan_ was hardly laid aside when Southey’s sympathies -with the revolutionary movement in France, strained already to the utmost -point of tension, were fatally rent. All his faith, all his hope, were -given to the Girondin party; and from the Girondins he had singled out -Brissot as his ideal of political courage, purity and wisdom. Brissot, -like himself, was a disciple of Jean Jacques; his life was austere; he -had suffered on behalf of freedom. On the day when the Bastille was -stormed its keys were placed in Brissot’s hands; it was Brissot who had -determined that war should be declared against the foreign foes of the -Republic. But now the Girondins—following hard upon Marie Antoinette—were -in the death-carts; they chanted their last hymn of liberty, ever growing -fainter while the axe lopped head after head; and Brissot was among the -martyrs (October 31, 1793). Probably no other public event so deeply -affected Southey. “I am sick of the world,” he writes, “and discontented -with every one in it. The murder of Brissot has completely harrowed up -my faculties.... I look round the world, and everywhere find the same -spectacle—the strong tyrannizing over the weak, man and beast.... There -is no place for virtue.” - -After this, though Southey did not lose faith in democratic principles, -he averted his eyes for a time from France: how could he look to -butchers who had shed blood which was the very life of liberty, for the -realization of his dreams? And whither should he look? Had he but ten -thousand republicans like himself, they might repeople Greece and expel -the Turk. Being but one, might not Cowley’s fancy, a cottage in America, -be transformed into a fact: “three rooms ... and my only companion some -poor negro whom I have bought on purpose to emancipate?” Meanwhile he -occupied a room in Aunt Tyler’s house, and, instead of swinging the axe -in some forest primeval, amused himself with splitting a wedge of oak in -company with Shad, who might, perhaps, serve for the emancipated negro. -Moreover, he was very diligently driving his quill: “I have finished -transcribing _Joan_, and have bound her in marble paper with green -ribbons, and am now copying all my remainables to carry to Oxford. Then -once more a clear field, and then another epic poem, and then another.” -Appalling announcement! “I have accomplished a most arduous task, -transcribing all my verses that appear worth the trouble, except letters. -Of these I took one list—another of my pile of stuff and nonsense—and a -third of what I have burnt and lost; upon an average 10,000 verses are -burnt and lost; the same number preserved, and 15,000 worthless.” Such -sad mechanic exercise dulled the ache in Southey’s heart; still “the -visions of futurity,” he finds, “are dark and gloomy, and the only ray -that enlivens the scene beams on America.” - -To Balliol Southey returned; and if the future of the world seemed -perplexing, so also did his individual future. His school and college -expenses were borne by Mrs. Southey’s brother, the Rev. Herbert Hill, -chaplain to the British Factory at Lisbon. In him the fatherless youth -found one who was both a friend and a father. Holbein’s portrait of Sir -Thomas More in his best years might have passed for that of Mr. Hill; -there was the same benign thoughtfulness in his aspect, the same earnest -calm, the same brightness and quietness, the same serene and cheerful -strength. He was generous and judicious, learned and modest, and his -goodness carried authority with it. Uncle Hill’s plan had been that -Southey, like himself, should become an English clergyman. But though -he might have preached from an Unitarian pulpit, Southey could not take -upon himself the vows of a minister of the Church of England. It would -have instantly relieved his mother had he entered into orders. He longed -that this were possible, and went through many conflicts of mind, and -not a little anguish. “God knows I would exchange every intellectual gift -which He has blessed me with, for implicit faith to have been able to do -this;” but it could not be. To bear the reproaches, gentle yet grave, of -his uncle was hard; to grieve his mother was harder. Southey resolved to -go to the anatomy school, and fit himself to be a doctor. But he could -not overcome his strong repugnance to the dissecting-room; it expelled -him whether he would or no; and all the time literature, with still yet -audible voice, was summoning him. Might he not obtain some official -employment in London, and also pursue his true calling? Beside the desire -of pleasing his uncle and of aiding his mother, the Stoic of twenty had -now a stronger motive for seeking some immediate livelihood. “I shall -joyfully bid adieu to Oxford,” he writes, “ ... and, when I know my -situation, unite myself to a woman whom I have long esteemed as a sister, -and for whom I now indulge a warmer sentiment.” But Southey’s reputation -as a dangerous Jacobin stood in his way; how could his Oxford overseers -answer for the good behaviour of a youth who spoke scornfully of Pitt? - -The shuttles of the fates now began to fly faster, and the threads to -twist and twine. It was June of the year 1794. A visitor from Cambridge -was one day introduced to Southey; he seemed to be of an age near his -own; his hair, parted in the middle, fell wavy upon his neck; his face, -when the brooding cloud was not upon him, was bright with an abundant -promise—a promise vaguely told in lines of the sweet full lips, in the -luminous eyes, and the forehead that was like a god’s. This meeting of -Southey and Coleridge was an event which decided much in the careers of -both. In the summer days and in youth, the meeting-time of spirits, -they were drawn close to one another. Both had confessions to make, -with many points in common; both were poets; both were democrats; both -had hoped largely from France, and the hopes of both had been darkened; -both were uncertain what part to take in life. We do not know whether -Coleridge quickly grew so confidential as to tell of his recent adventure -as Silas Titus Comberbatch of the 15th Light Dragoons. But we know that -Coleridge had a lively admiration for the tall Oxford student—a person -of distinction, so dignified, so courteous, so quick of apprehension, so -full of knowledge, with a glance so rapid and piercing, with a smile so -good and kind. And we know that Coleridge lost no time in communicating -to Southey the hopes that were nearest to his heart. - -Pantisocracy, word of magic, summed up these hopes. Was it not possible -for a number of men like themselves, whose way of thinking was liberal, -whose characters were tried and incorruptible, to join together and leave -this old world of falling thrones and rival anarchies, for the woods and -wilds of the young republic? One could wield an axe, another could guide -a plough. Their wants would be simple and natural; their toil need not -be such as the slaves of luxury endure; where possessions were held in -common, each would work for all; in their cottages the best books would -have a place; literature and science, bathed anew in the invigorating -stream of life and nature, could not but rise reanimated and purified. -Each young man should take to himself a mild and lovely woman for his -wife; it would be her part to prepare their innocent food, and tend -their hardy and beautiful race. So they would bring back the patriarchal -age, and in the sober evening of life they would behold “colonies of -independence in the undivided dale of industry.” All the arguments -in favour of such a scheme could not be set forth in a conversation, -but Coleridge, to silence objectors, would publish a quarto volume on -Pantisocracy and Aspheterism. - -Southey heartily assented; his own thoughts had, with a vague -forefeeling, been pointing to America; the unpublished epic would serve -to buy a spade, a plough, a few acres of ground; he could assuredly split -timber; he knew a mild and lovely woman for whom he indulged a warmer -sentiment than that of a brother. Robert Lovell, a Quaker, an enthusiast, -a poet, married to the sister of Southey’s Edith, would surely join them; -so would Burnett, his college friend; so, perhaps, would the admirable -Seward. The long vacation was at hand. Being unable to take orders or to -endure the horrors of the dissecting-room, Southey must no longer remain -a burden upon his uncle; he would quit the university and prepare for the -voyage. - -Coleridge departed to tramp it through the romantic valleys and mountains -of Wales. Southey joined his mother, who now lived at Bath, and her he -soon persuaded—as a handsome and eloquent son can persuade a loving -mother—that the plan of emigration was feasible; she even consented to -accompany her boy. But his aunt—an _esprit borné_—was not to hear a -breath of Pantisocracy; still less would it be prudent to confess to -her his engagement to Miss Edith Fricker. His Edith was penniless and -therefore all the dearer to Southey; her father had been an unsuccessful -manufacturer of sugar-pans. What would Miss Tyler, the friend of Lady -Bateman, feel? What words, what gestures, what acts, would give her -feelings relief? - -When Coleridge, after his Welsh wanderings, arrived in Bristol, he was -introduced to Lovell, to Mrs. Lovell, to Mrs. Lovell’s sisters, Edith -and Sarah, and Martha and Elizabeth. Mrs. Lovell was doubtless already -a pantisocrat; Southey had probably not found it difficult to convert -Edith; Sarah, the elder sister, who was wont to look a mild reproof on -over-daring speculations, seriously inclined to hear of pantisocracy from -the lips of Coleridge. All members of the community were to be married. -Coleridge now more than ever saw the propriety of that rule; he was -prepared to yield obedience to it with the least possible delay. Burnett, -also a pantisocrat, must also marry. Would Miss Martha Fricker join the -community as Mrs. George Burnett? The lively little woman refused him -scornfully; if he wanted a wife in a hurry, let him go elsewhere. The -prospects of the reformers, this misadventure notwithstanding, from day -to day grew brighter. “This Pantisocratic scheme,” so writes Southey, -“has given me new life, new hope, new energy; all the faculties of my -mind are dilated.” Coleridge met a friend of Priestley’s. But a few days -since he had toasted the great doctor at Bala, thereby calling forth a -sentiment from the loyal parish apothecary: “I gives a sentiment, gemmen! -May all republicans be gulloteened!” The friend of Priestley’s said -that without doubt the doctor would join them. An American land-agent -told them that for twelve men 2000_l._ would do. “He recommends the -Susquehanna, from its excessive beauty and its security from hostile -Indians.” The very name—Susquehanna—sounded as if it were the sweetest of -rippling rivers. Money, it is true, as Southey admits, “is a huge evil;” -but now they are twenty-seven, and by resolute men this difficulty can be -overcome. - -It was evening of the 17th of October, a dark and gusty evening of -falling rain and miry ways. Within Aunt Tyler’s house in College -Green, Bristol, a storm was bursting; she had heard it all at -last—Pantisocracy, America, Miss Fricker. Out of the house he must march; -there was the door; let her never see his face again. Southey took his -hat, looked for the last time in his life at his aunt then stepped out -into the darkness and the rain. “Why sir, you ben’t going to Bath at -this time of night and in this weather?” remonstrated poor Shadrach. -Even so; and with a friendly whisper master and man parted. Southey had -not a penny in his pocket, and was lightly clad. At Lovell’s he luckily -found his father’s great-coat; he swallowed a glass of brandy and set off -on foot. Misery makes one acquainted with strange road-fellows. On the -way he came upon an old man, drunk, and hardly able to stumble forward -through the night: the young pantisocrat, mindful of his fellow-man, -dragged him along nine miles amid rain and mire. Then, with weary feet, -he reached Bath and there was his mother to greet him with surprise, and -to ask for explanations. “Oh, Patience, Patience, thou hast often helped -poor Robert Southey, but never didst thou stand him in more need than on -Friday, the 17th of October, 1794.” - -For a little longer the bow of hope shone in the West somewhere over -the Susquehanna, and then it gradually grew faint and faded. Money, -that huge evil, sneered its cold negations. The chiefs consulted, and -Southey proposed that a house and farm should be taken in Wales where -their principles might be acted out until better days enabled them to -start upon their voyage. One pantisocrat at least, could be happy with -Edith, brown bread, and wild Welsh raspberries. But Coleridge objected; -their principles could not be fairly tested under the disadvantage of an -effete and adverse social state surrounding them; besides, where was the -purchase-money to come from? how were they to live until the gathering -of their first crops? It became clear that the realization of their plan -must be postponed. The immediate problem was, How to raise 150_l._? With -such a sum they might both qualify by marriage for membership in the -pantisocratical community. After that, the rest would somehow follow. - -How, then, to raise 150_l._? Might they not start a new magazine and -become joint editors? The _Telegraph_ had offered employment to Southey. -“Hireling writer to a newspaper! ’Sdeath! ’tis an ugly title; but -_n’importe_. I shall write truth, and only truth.” The offer, however, -turned out to be that of a reporter’s place; and his troublesome guest, -honesty, prevented his contributing to _The True Briton_. But he and -Coleridge could at least write poetry, and perhaps publish it with -advantage to themselves; and they could lecture to a Bristol audience. -With some skirmishing lectures on various political subjects of immediate -interest, Coleridge began; many came to hear them, and the applause -was loud. Thus encouraged, he announced and delivered two remarkable -courses of lectures—one, _A Comparative View of the English Rebellion -under Charles I. and the French Revolution_; the other, _On Revealed -Religion: its Corruptions and its Political Views_. Southey did not feel -tempted to discuss the origin of evil or the principles of revolution. -He chose as his subject a view of the course of European history from -Solon and Lycurgus to the American War. His hearers were pleased by the -graceful delivery and unassuming self-possession of the young lecturer, -and were quick to recognize the unusual range of his knowledge, his just -perception of facts, his ardour and energy of conviction. One lecture -Coleridge begged permission to deliver in Southey’s place—that on the -Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Roman Empire. Southey consented, and -the room was thronged but no lecturer appeared; they waited; still no -lecturer. Southey offered an apology, and the crowd dispersed in no happy -temper. It is likely, adds that good old gossip Cottle, who tells the -story, “that at this very moment Mr. Coleridge might have been found at -No. 48 College Street, composedly smoking his pipe, and lost in profound -musing on his divine Susquehanna.” - -The good Cottle—young in 1795, a publisher, and unhappily a poet—rendered -more important service to the two young men than that of smoothing down -their ruffled tempers after this incident. Southey, in conjunction with -Lovell, had already published a slender volume of verse. The pieces by -Southey recall his schoolboy joys and sorrows, and tell of his mother’s -tears, his father’s death, his friendship with “Urban,” his love of -“Ariste,” lovely maid! his delight in old romance, his discipleship -to Rousseau. They are chiefly of interest as exhibiting the diverse -literary influences to which a young writer of genius was exposed in -the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Here the couplet of Pope -reappears, and hard by the irregular ode as practised by Akenside, the -elegy as written by Gray, the unrhymed stanza which Collins’s _Evening_ -made a fashion, the sonnet to which Bowles had lent a meditative -grace and the rhymeless measures imitated by Southey from Sayers, and -afterwards made popular by his _Thalaba_. On the last page of this -volume appear “Proposals for publishing by subscription _Joan of Arc_;” -but subscriptions came slowly in. One evening Southey read for Cottle -some books of _Joan_. “It can rarely happen,” he writes “that a young -author should meet with a bookseller as inexperienced and as ardent as -himself.” Cottle offered to publish the poem in quarto, to make it the -handsomest book ever printed in Bristol, to give the author fifty copies -for his subscribers, and fifty pounds to put forthwith into his purse. -Some dramatic attempts had recently been made by Southey, _Wat Tyler_, of -which we shall hear more at a later date, and the _Fall of Robespierre_, -undertaken by Coleridge, Lovell, and Southey, half in sport—each being -pledged to produce an act in twenty-four hours. These were now forgotten, -and all his energies were given to revising and in part recasting _Joan_. -In six weeks his epic had been written; its revision occupied six months. - -With summer came a great sorrow, and in the end of autumn a measureless -joy. “He is dead,” Southey writes, “my dear Edmund Seward! after six -weeks’ suffering.... You know not, Grosvenor, how I loved poor Edmund: -he taught me all that I have of good.... There is a strange vacancy -in my heart.... I have lost a friend, and such a one!” And then -characteristically come the words: “I will try, by assiduous employment, -to get rid of very melancholy thoughts.” Another consolation Southey -possessed: during his whole life he steadfastly believed that death is -but the removal of a spirit from earth to heaven; and heaven for him -meant a place where cheerful familiarity was natural, where, perhaps, -he himself would write more epics and purchase more folios. As Baxter -expected to meet among the saints above Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym, so -Southey counted upon the pleasure of having long talks with friends, -of obtaining introductions to eminent strangers; above all, he looked -forward to the joy of again embracing his beloved ones: - - “Often together have we talked of death; - How sweet it were to see - All doubtful things made clear; - How sweet it were with powers - Such as the Cherubim - To view the depth of Heaven! - O Edmund! thou hast first - Begun the travel of eternity.” - -Autumn brought its happiness pure and deep. Mr. Hill had arrived from -Lisbon; once again he urged his nephew to enter the church; but for one -of Southey’s opinions the church-gate “is perjury,” nor does he even find -church-going the best mode of spending his Sunday. He proposed to choose -the law as his profession. But his uncle had heard of Pantisocracy, -Aspheterism, and Miss Fricker, and said the law could wait; he should -go abroad for six months, see Spain and Portugal, learn foreign -languages, read foreign poetry and history, rummage among the books and -manuscripts his uncle had collected in Lisbon, and afterwards return to -his Blackstone. Southey, straightforward in all else, in love became -a Machiavel. To Spain and Portugal he would go; his mother wished it; -Cottle expected from him a volume of travels; his uncle had but to name -the day. Then he sought Edith, and asked her to promise that before he -departed she would become his wife: she wept to think that he was going, -and yet persuaded him to go; consented, finally, to all that he proposed. -But how was he to pay the marriage fees and buy the wedding-ring? Often -this autumn he had walked the streets dinnerless, no pence in his pocket, -no bread and cheese at his lodgings, thinking little, however, of dinner, -for his head was full of poetry and his heart of love. Cottle lent him -money for the ring and the license—and Southey in after-years never -forgot the kindness of his honest friend. He was to accompany his uncle, -but Edith was first to be his own; so she may honourably accept from -him whatever means he can furnish for her support. It was arranged with -Cottle’s sisters that she should live with them, and still call herself -by her maiden name. On the morning of the 14th of November, 1795—a day -sad, yet with happiness underlying all sadness—Robert Southey was married -in Redcliffe Church, Bristol, to Edith Fricker. At the church door there -was a pressure of hands, and they parted with full hearts, silently—Mrs. -Southey to take up her abode in Bristol, with the wedding-ring upon her -breast, her husband to cross the sea. Never did woman put her happiness -in more loyal keeping. - -So by love and by poetry, by Edith Fricker and by Joan of Arc, Southey’s -life was being shaped. Powers most benign leaned forward to brood over -the coming years and to bless them. It was decreed that his heart should -be no homeless wanderer; that, as seasons went by, children should be in -his arms and upon his knees: it was also decreed that he should become -a strong toiler among books. Now Pantisocracy looked faint and far; the -facts plain and enduring of the actual world took hold of his adult -spirit. And Coleridge complained of this, and did not come to bid his -friend farewell. - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -WANDERINGS, 1795-1803. - - -Through pastoral Somerset, through Devon amid falling leaves, then -over rough Cornish roads, the coach brought Southey—cold, hungry, and -dispirited—to Falmouth. No packet there for Corunna; no packet starting -before December 1st. The gap of time looked colourless and dreary, nor -could even the philosophy of Epictetus lift him quite above “the things -independent of the will.” After a comfortless and stormy voyage, on the -fifth morning the sun shone, and through a mist the barren cliffs of -Galicia, with breakers tumbling at their feet, rose in sight. Who has -not experienced, when first he has touched a foreign soil, how nature -purges the visual nerve with lucky euphrasy? The shadowy streets, the -latticed houses, the fountains, the fragments of Moorish architecture, -the Jewish faces of the men, the lustrous eyes of girls, the children -gaily bedizened, the old witch-like women with brown shrivelled parchment -for skin, told Southey that he was far from home. Nor at night was he -permitted to forget his whereabouts; out of doors cats were uttering soft -things in most vile Spanish; beneath his blanket, familiars, bloodthirsty -as those of the Inquisition, made him their own. He was not sorry when -the crazy coach, drawn by six mules, received him and his uncle, and the -journey eastward began to the shout of the muleteers and the clink of a -hundred bells. - -Some eighteen days were spent upon the road to Madrid. Had Southey not -left half his life behind him in Bristol, those December days would -have been almost wholly pleasurable. As it was, they yielded a large -possession for the inner eye, and gave his heart a hold upon this new -land which, in a certain sense, became for ever after the land of -his adoption. It was pleasant when, having gone forward on foot, he -reached the crest of some mountain road, to look down on broken waters -in the glen, and across to the little white-walled convent amid its -chestnuts, and back to the dim ocean; there, on the summit, to rest with -the odour of furze blossoms and the tinkle of goats in the air, and, -while the mules wound up the long ascent, to turn all this into hasty -rhymes, ending with the thought of peace, and love, and Edith. Then the -bells audibly approaching, and the loud-voiced muleteer consigning his -struggling team to Saint Michael and three hundred devils; and then on to -remoter hills, or moor and swamp, or the bridge flung across a ravine, -or the path above a precipice, with mist and moonlight below. And next -day some walled city, with its decaying towers and dim piazza; some -church, with its balcony of ghastly skulls; some abandoned castle, or -jasper-pillared Moorish gateway and gallery. Nor were the little inns and -baiting-houses without compensations for their manifold discomforts. The -Spanish country-folk were dirty and ignorant, but they had a courtesy -unknown to English peasants; Southey would join the group around the -kitchen fire, and be, as far as his imperfect speech allowed, one with -the rustics, the carriers, the hostess, the children, the village barber, -the familiar priest, and the familiar pigs. When chambermaid Josepha -took hold of his hair and gravely advised him never to tie it or to -wear powder, she meant simple friendliness, no more. In his recoil from -the dream of human perfectibility, Southey allowed himself at times to -square accounts with common-sense by a cynical outbreak; but, in truth, -he was a warm-hearted lover of his kind. Even feudalism and Catholicism -had not utterly degraded the Spaniard. Southey thanks God that the pride -of chivalry is extinguished; his Protestant zeal becomes deep-dyed in -presence of our Lady of Seven Sorrows and the Holy Napkin. “Here, in -the words of Mary Wollstonecraft,” he writes, “‘the serious folly of -Superstition stares every man of sense in the face.’” Yet Spain has -inherited tender and glorious memories; by the river Ezla he recalls -Montemayor’s wooing of his Diana; at Tordesillas he muses on the spot -where Queen Joanna watched by her husband’s corpse, and where Padilla, -Martyr of Freedom, triumphed and endured. At length the travellers, -accompanied by Manuel, the most vivacious and accomplished of barbers, -drew near Madrid, passed the miles of kneeling washerwomen and outspread -clothes on the river banks, entered the city, put up at the Cruz de -Malta, and were not ill-content to procure once more a well-cooked supper -and a clean bed. - -Southey pursued with ardour his study of the Spanish language, and could -soon talk learnedly of its great writers. The national theatres, and -the sorry spectacle of bullock-teasing, made a slighter impression upon -him than did the cloisters of the new Franciscan Convent. He had been -meditating his design of a series of poems to illustrate the mythologies -of the world; here the whole portentous history of St. Francis was -displayed upon the walls. “Do they believe all this, sir?” he asked Mr. -Hill. “Yes, and a great deal more of the same kind,” was the reply. “My -first thought was ... here is a mythology not less wild and fanciful -than any of those upon which my imagination was employed, and one which -ought to be included in my ambitious design.” Thus Southey’s attention -was drawn for the first time to the legendary and monastic history of the -Church. - -His Majesty of Spain, with his courtesans and his courtiers, possibly -also with the Queen and her gallants, had gone westward to meet the -Portuguese court upon the borders. As a matter of course, therefore, -no traveller could hope to leave Madrid, every carriage, cart, horse, -mule, and ass being embargoed for the royal service. The followers of -the father of his people numbered seven thousand, and they advanced, -devouring all before them, neither paying nor promising to pay, leaving a -broad track behind as bare as that stripped by an army of locusts, with -here a weeping cottager, and there a smoking cork-tree, for a memorial of -their march. Ten days after the king’s departure, Mr. Hill and his nephew -succeeded in finding a buggy with two mules, and made their escape, -taking with them their own larder. Their destination was Lisbon, and -as they drew towards the royal party, the risk of embargo added a zest -to travel hardly less piquant than that imparted by the neighbourhood -of bandits. It was mid-January; the mountains shone with snow; but -olive-gathering had begun in the plains; violets were in blossom, and in -the air was a genial warmth. As they drove south and west, the younger -traveller noted for his diary the first appearance of orange-trees, the -first myrtle, the first fence of aloes. A pressure was on their spirits -till Lisbon should be reached; they would not linger to watch the sad -procession attending a body uncovered upon its bier; they left behind -the pilgrims to our Lady’s Shrine, pious bacchanals half naked and half -drunk, advancing to the tune of bagpipe and drum; then the gleam of -waters before them, a rough two hours’ passage, and the weary heads were -on their pillows, to be roused before morning by an earthquake, with its -sudden trembling and cracking. - -Life at Lisbon was not altogether after Southey’s heart. His uncle’s -books and manuscripts were indeed a treasure to explore, but Mr. Hill -lived in society as well as in his study, and thought it right to give -his nephew the advantage of new acquaintances. What had the author of -_Joan of Arc_, the husband of Edith Southey, the disciple of Rousseau, of -Godwin, the Stoic, the tall, dark-eyed young man with a certain wildness -of expression in his face, standing alone or discoursing earnestly on -Industrial Communities of Women—what had he to do with the _inania -regna_ of the drawing-room? He cared not for cards nor for dancing; he -possessed no gift for turning the leaves on the harpsichord, and saying -the happy word at the right moment. Southey, indeed, knew as little as -possible of music; and all through his life acted on the principle that -the worthiest use of sound without sense had been long ago discovered -by schoolboys let loose from their tasks; he loved to create a chaos of -sheer noise after those hours during which silence had been interrupted -only by the scraping of his pen. For the rest, the sallies of glee from a -mountain brook, the piping of a thrush from the orchard-bough, would have -delighted him more than all the trills of Sontag or the finest rapture -of Malibran. It was with some of the superiority and seriousness of a -philosopher just out of his teens that he unbent to the frivolities of -the Lisbon drawing-rooms. - -But if Lisbon had its vexations, the country, the climate, the mountains -with their streams and coolness, the odorous gardens, Tagus flashing -in the sunlight, the rough bar glittering with white breakers, and the -Atlantic, made amends. When April came, Mr. Hill moved to his house at -Cintra, and the memories and sensations “felt in the blood and felt -along the heart,” which Southey brought with him to England, were -especially associated with this delightful retreat. “Never was a house -more completely secluded than my uncle’s: it is so surrounded with -lemon-trees and laurels as nowhere to be visible at the distance of ten -yards.... A little stream of water runs down the hill before the door, -another door opens into a lemon-garden, and from the sitting-room we have -just such a prospect over lemon-trees and laurels to an opposite hill -as, by promising a better, invites us to walk.... On one of the mountain -eminences stands the Penha Convent, visible from the hills near Lisbon. -On another are the ruins of a Moorish castle, and a cistern, within its -boundaries, kept always full by a spring of purest water that rises in -it. From this elevation the eye stretches over a bare and melancholy -country to Lisbon on the one side, and on the other to the distant -Convent of Mafra, the Atlantic bounding the greater part of the prospect. -I never beheld a view that so effectually checked the wish of wandering.” - -“Lisbon, from which God grant me a speedy deliverance,” is the heading of -one of Southey’s letters; but when the day came to look on Lisbon perhaps -for the last time, his heart grew heavy with happy recollection. It was -with no regretful feeling, however, that he leaped ashore, glad, after -all, to exchange the sparkling Tagus and the lemon groves of Portugal for -the mud-encumbered tide of Avon and a glimpse of British smoke. “I intend -to write a hymn,” he says, “to the Dii Penates.” His joy in reunion -with his wife was made more rare and tender by finding her in sorrow; -the grief was also peculiarly his own—Lovell was dead. He had been taken -ill at Salisbury, and by his haste to reach his fireside had heightened -the fever which hung upon him. Coleridge, writing to his friend Poole -at this time, expresses himself with amiable but inactive piety: “The -widow is calm, and amused with her beautiful infant. We are all become -more religious than we were. God be ever praised for all things.” Southey -also writes characteristically: “Poor Lovell! I am in hopes of raising -something for his widow by publishing his best pieces, if only enough -to buy her a harpsichord.... Will you procure me some subscribers?” No -idle conceit of serving her; for Mrs. Lovell with her child, as well -as Mrs. Coleridge with her children, at a later time became members of -the Southey household. Already—though Coleridge might resent it—Southey -was willing to part with some vague enthusiasms which wandered in the -inane of a young man’s fancy, for the sake of simple loyalties and manly -tendernesses. No one was more boyish-hearted than Southey at fifty; but -even at twenty-two it would not have been surprising to find grey hairs -sprinkling the dark. “How does time mellow down our opinions! Little -of that ardent enthusiasm which so lately fevered my whole character -remains. I have contracted my sphere of action within the little circle -of my own friends, and even my wishes seldom stray beyond it.... I want -a little room to arrange my books in, and some Lares of my own.” This -domestic feeling was not a besotted contentment in narrow interests; no -man was more deeply moved by the political changes in his own country, -by the national uprising in the Spanish peninsula, than Southey. While -seated at his desk, his intellect ranged through dim centuries of the -past. But his heart needed an abiding-place, and he yielded to the -bonds—strict and dear—of duty and of love which bound his own life to the -lives of others. - -The ambitious quarto on which Cottle prided himself not a little was now -published (1796). To assign its true place to _Joan of Arc_, we must -remember that narrative poetry in the eighteenth century was of the -slenderest dimensions and the most modest temper. Poems of description -and sentiment seemed to leave no place for poems of action and passion. -Delicately finished cabinet pictures, like Shenstone’s _Schoolmistress_ -and Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_, had superseded fresco. The only -great English epic of that century is the prose Odyssey of which Mr. -Tom Jones is the hero. That estimable London merchant, Glover, had -indeed written an heroic poem containing the correct number of Books; -its subject was a lofty one; the sentiments were generous, the language -dignified; and inasmuch as Leonidas was a patriot and a Whig, true Whigs -and patriots bought and praised the poem. But Glover’s poetry lacks the -informing breath of life. His second poem, _The Athenaid_, appeared -after his death, and its thirty books fell plumb into the water of -oblivion. It looked as if the narrative poem _à longue haleine_ was dead -in English literature. Cowper had given breadth, with a mingled gaiety -and gravity, to the poetry of description and sentiment; Burns had made -the air tremulous with snatches of pure and thrilling song; the _Lyrical -Ballads_ were not yet. At this moment, from a provincial press, _Joan -of Arc_ was issued. As a piece of romantic narrative it belongs to the -new age of poetry; in sentiment it is revolutionary and republican; its -garment of style is of the eighteenth century. Nowhere, except it be in -the verses which hail “Inoculation, lovely Maid!” does the personified -abstraction, galvanized into life by printer’s type and poet’s epithet, -stalk more at large than in the unfortunate ninth book, the Vision of the -Maid, which William Taylor, of Norwich, pronounced worthy of Dante. The -critical reviews of the time were liberal in politics, and the poem was -praised and bought. “Brissot murdered” was good, and “the blameless wife -of Roland” atoned for some offences against taste; there was also that -notable reference to the “Almighty people” who “from their tyrant’s hand -dashed down the iron rod.” The delegated maid is a creature overflowing -with Rousseauish sensibility; virtue, innocence, the peaceful cot, -stand over against the wars and tyranny of kings, and the superstition -and cruelty of prelates. Southey himself soon disrelished the youthful -heats and violences of the poem; he valued it as the work which first -lifted him into public view; and, partly out of a kind of gratitude, he -rehandled the _Joan_ again and again. It would furnish an instructive -lesson to a young writer to note how its asperities were softened, its -spasm subdued, its swelling words abated. Yet its chief interest will -be perceived only by readers of the earlier text. To the second book -Coleridge contributed some four hundred lines, where Platonic philosophy -and protests against the Newtonian hypothesis of æther are not very -appropriately brought into connexion with the shepherd-girl of Domremi. -These lines disappeared from all editions after the first.[3] - -The neighbourhood of Bristol was for the present Southey’s home. The -quickening of his blood by the beauty, the air and sun, of Southern -Europe, the sense of power imparted by his achievement in poetry, the -joy of reunion with his young wife, the joy, also, of solitude among -rocks and woods, combined to throw him into a vivid and creative mood. -His head was full of designs for tragedies, epics, novels, romances, -tales—among the rest, “My Oriental poem of The Destruction of the Dom -Daniel.” He has a “Helicon kind of dropsy” upon him; he had rather leave -off eating than poetizing. He was also engaged in making the promised -book of travel for Cottle; in what leisure time remained after these -employments he scribbled for _The Monthly Magazine_, and to good purpose, -for in eight months he had earned no less than “seven pounds and two pair -of breeches,” which, as he observes to his brother Tom, “is not amiss.” -He was resolved to be happy, and he was happy. Now, too, the foolish -estrangement on Coleridge’s part was brought to an end. Southey had -been making some acquaintance with German literature at second hand. He -had read Taylor’s rendering of Bürger’s _Lenore_, and wondered who this -William Taylor was; he had read Schiller’s _Cabal and Love_ in a wretched -translation, finding the fifth act dreadfully affecting; he had also read -Schiller’s _Fiesco_. Coleridge was just back after a visit to Birmingham, -but still held off from his brother-in-law and former friend. A sentence -from Schiller, copied on a slip of paper by Southey, with a word or -two of conciliation, was sent to the offended Abdiel of Pantisocracy: -“Fiesco! Fiesco! thou leavest a void in my bosom, which the human race, -thrice told, will never fill up.” It did not take much to melt the faint -resentment of Coleridge, and to open his liberal heart. An interview -followed, and in an hour’s time, as the story is told by Coleridge’s -nephew, “these two extraordinary youths were arm in arm again.” - -Seven pounds and two pair of breeches are not amiss but pounds take -to themselves wings, and fly away: a poet’s wealth is commonly in the -_paulo-post-futurum_ tense; it therefore behoved Southey to proceed with -his intended study of the law. By Christmas he would receive the first -instalment of an annual allowance of 160_l._ promised by his generous -friend Wynn upon coming of age; but Southey, who had just written his -_Hymn to the Penates_—a poem of grave tenderness and sober beauty—knew -that those deities are exact in their demand for the dues of fire and -salt, for the firstlings of fruits, and for offerings of fine flour. A -hundred and sixty pounds would not appease them. To London, therefore, -he must go, and Blackstone must become his counsellor. But never did -Sindbad suffer from the tyrannous old man between his shoulders as Robert -Southey suffered from Blackstone. London in itself meant deprivation -of all that he most cared for; he loved to shape his life in large and -simple lines, and London seemed to scribble over his consciousness with -distractions and intricacies. “My spirits always sink when I approach it. -Green fields are my delight. I am not only better in health, but even in -heart, in the country.” Some of his father’s love of rural sights and -sounds was in him, though hare-hunting was not an amusement of Southey -the younger; he was as little of a sportsman as his friend Sir Thomas -More: the only murderous sport, indeed, which Southey ever engaged in -was that of pistol-shooting, with sand for ammunition, at the wasps in -Bedford’s garden, when he needed a diversion from the wars of Talbot and -the “missioned Maid.” Two pleasures of a rare kind London offered—the -presence of old friends, and the pursuit of old books upon the stalls. -But not even for these best lures proposed by the Demon of the place -would Southey renounce - - “The genial influences - And thoughts and feelings to be found where’er - We breathe beneath the open sky, and see - Earth’s liberal bosom.” - -To London, however, he would go, and would read nine hours a day at law. -Although he pleaded at times against his intended profession, Southey -really made a strenuous effort to overcome his repugnance to legal -studies, and for a while Blackstone and _Madoc_ seemed to advance side -by side. But the bent of his nature was strong. “I commit wilful murder -on my own intellect,” he writes, two years later, “by drudging at law.” -And the worst or the best of it was that all his drudgery was useless. -Southey’s memory was of that serviceable, sieve-like kind which regains -everything needful to its possessor, and drops everything which is mere -incumbrance. Every circumstance in the remotest degree connected with -the seminary of magicians in the Dom Daniel under the roots of the -sea adhered to his memory, but how to proceed in the Court of Common -Pleas was always just forgotten since yesterday. “I am not indolent; I -loathe indolence; but, indeed, reading law is laborious indolence—it is -thrashing straw.... I have given all possible attention, and attempted -to command volition; ... close the book and all was gone.” In 1801 there -was a chance of Southey’s visiting Sicily as secretary to some Italian -Legation. “It is unfortunate,” he writes to Bedford, “that you cannot -come to the sacrifice of one law-book—my whole proper stock—whom I design -to take up to the top of Mount Etna, for the express purpose of throwing -him straight to the devil. Huzza, Grosvenor! I was once afraid that I -should have a deadly deal of law to forget whenever I had done with it; -but my brains, God bless them, never received any, and I am as ignorant -as heart could wish. The tares would not grow.” - -As spring advanced, impatience quickened within him; the craving for a -lonely place in sight of something green became too strong. Why might not -law be read in Hampshire under blue skies, and also poetry be written? -Southey longed to fill his eyesight with the sea, and with sunsets over -the sea; he longed to renew that delicious shock of plunging in salt -waves which he had last enjoyed in the Atlantic at the foot of the -glorious Arrabida mountain. Lodgings were found at Burton, near Christ -Church (1797); and here took place a little Southey family-gathering, -for his mother joined them, and his brother Tom, the midshipman, just -released from a French prison. Here, too, came Cottle, and there were -talks about the new volume of shorter poems. Here came Lloyd, the friend -of Coleridge, himself a writer of verse; and with Lloyd came Lamb, -the play of whose letters show that he found in Southey not only a -fellow-lover of quaint books, but also a ready smiler at quips and cranks -and twinklings of sly absurdity. And here he found John Rickman, “the -sturdiest of jovial companions,” whose clear head and stout heart were -at Southey’s service whenever they were needed through all the future -years. - -When the holiday at Burton was at an end Southey had for a time no fixed -abode. He is now to be seen roaming over the cliffs by the Avon, and now -casting a glance across some book-stall near Gray’s Inn. In these and -subsequent visits to London he was wistful for home, and eager to hasten -back. “At last, my dear Edith, I sit down to write to you in quiet and -something like comfort.... My morning has been spent pleasantly, for it -has been spent alone in the library; the hours so employed pass rapidly -enough, but I grow more and more homesick, like a spoilt child. On the -29th you may expect me. Term opens on the 26th. After eating my third -dinner, I can drive to the mail, and thirteen shillings will be well -bestowed in bringing me home four-and-twenty hours earlier: it is not -above sixpence an hour, Edith, and I would gladly purchase an hour at -home now at a much higher price.” - -A visit to Norwich (1798) was pleasant and useful, as widening the circle -of his literary friends. Here Southey obtained an introduction to William -Taylor, whose translations from the German had previously attracted his -notice. Norwich, at the end of the last century and the beginning of -the present, was a little Academe among provincial cities, where the -_belles-lettres_ and mutual admiration were assiduously cultivated. -Southey saw Norwich at its best. Among its “superior people” were several -who really deserved something better than that vague distinction. Chief -among them was Dr. Sayers, whom the German critics compared to Gray, -who had handled the Norse mythology in poetry, who created the English -monodrame, and introduced the rhymeless measures followed by Southey. -He rested too soon upon his well-earned reputation, contented himself -with touching and retouching his verses; and possessing singularly -pleasing manners, abounding information and genial wit, embellished -and enjoyed society.[4] William Taylor, the biographer of Sayers, was -a few years his junior. He was versed in Goethe, in Schiller, in the -great Kotzebue—Shakspeare’s immediate successor, in Klopstock, in -the fantastic ballad, in the new criticism, and all this at a time -when German characters were as undecipherable to most Englishmen as -Assyrian arrow-heads. The whirligig of time brought an odd revenge when -Carlyle, thirty years later, hailed in Taylor the first example of “the -natural-born English Philistine.” In Norwich he was known as a model -of filial virtue, a rising light of that illuminated city, a man whose -extraordinary range pointed him out as the fit and proper person to be -interrogated by any blue-stocking lady upon topics as remote as the -domestic arrangements of the Chinese Emperor, Chim-Cham-Chow. William -Taylor had a command of new and mysterious words: he shone in paradox, -and would make ladies aghast by “defences of suicide, avowals that snuff -alone had rescued him from it; information, given as certain, that ‘God -save the King’ was sung by Jeremiah in the Temple of Solomon;”[5] with -other blasphemies borrowed from the German, and too startling even for -rationalistic Norwich. Dr. Enfield, from whose _Speaker_ our fathers -learnt to recite “My name is Norval,” was no longer living; he had just -departed in the odour of dilettantism. But solemn Dr. Alderson was here, -and was now engaged in giving away his daughter Amelia to a divorced -bridegroom, the painter Opie. Just now Elizabeth Gurney was listening -in the Friends’ Meeting-House to that discourse which transformed her -from a gay haunter of country ball-rooms to the sister and servant -of Newgate prisoners. The Martineaus also were of Norwich, and upon -subsequent visits the author of _Thalaba_ and _Kehama_ was scrutinized -by the keen eyes of a little girl—not born at the date of his first -visit—who smiled somewhat too early and somewhat too maliciously at the -airs and affectations of her native town, and whose pleasure in pricking -a windbag, literary, political, or religious, was only over-exquisite. -But Harriet Martineau, who honoured courage, purity, faithfulness, and -strength wherever they were found, reverenced the Tory Churchman, Robert -Southey.[6] - -Soon after his return from Norwich, a small house was taken at Westbury -(1797), a village two miles distant from Bristol. During twelve happy -months this continued to be Southey’s home. “I never before or since,” -he says in one of the prefaces to his collected poems, “produced so much -poetry in the same space of time.” William Taylor, by talks about Voss -and the German idylls, had set Southey thinking of a series of English -Eclogues; Taylor also expressed his wonder that some one of our poets -had not undertaken what the French and Germans so long supported—an -Almanack of the Muses, or Annual Anthology of minor poems by various -writers. The suggestion was well received by Southey, who became editor -of such annual volumes for the years 1799 and 1800. At this period were -produced many of the ballads and short pieces which are perhaps more -generally known than any other of Southey’s writings. He had served his -apprenticeship to the craft and mystery of such verse-making in the -_Morning Post_, earning thereby a guinea a week, but it was not until -_Bishop Bruno_ was written at Westbury that he had the luck to hit off -the right tone, as he conceived it, of the modern ballad. The popularity -of his _Mary the Maid of the Inn_, which unhappy children got by heart, -and which some one even dramatized, was an affliction to its author, for -he would rather have been remembered as a ballad writer in connexion with -_Rudiger_ and _Lord William_. What he has written in this kind certainly -does not move the heart as with a trumpet; it does not bring with it -the dim burden of sorrow which is laid upon the spirit by songs like -those of Yarrow crooning of “old, unhappy, far-off things.” But to tell -a tale of fantasy briefly, clearly, brightly, and at the same time with -a certain heightening of imaginative touches, is no common achievement. -The spectre of the murdered boy in _Lord William_ shone upon by a -sudden moonbeam, and surrounded by the welter of waves, is more than a -picturesque apparition; readers of good-will may find him a very genuine -little ghost, a stern and sad justicer. What has been named “the lyrical -cry” is hard to find in any of Southey’s shorter poems. In _Roderick_ and -elsewhere he takes delight in representing great moments of life when -fates are decided; but such moments are usually represented as eminences -on which will and passion wrestle in a mortal embrace, and if the cry -of passion be heard, it is often a half-stifled death cry. The best of -Southey’s shorter poems, expressing personal feelings, are those which -sum up the virtue spread over seasons of life and long habitual moods. -Sometimes he is simply sportive, as a serious man released from thought -and toil may be, and at such times the sportiveness, while genuine as a -schoolboy’s, is, like a schoolboy’s, the reverse of keen-edged; on other -occasions he expresses simply a strong man’s endurance of sorrow; but -more often an undertone of gravity appears through his glee, and in his -sorrow there is something of solemn joy. - -All this year (1799) _Madoc_ was steadily advancing, and _The Destruction -of the Dom Daniel_ had been already sketched in outline. Southey was -fortunate in finding an admirable listener. The Pneumatic Institution, -established in Bristol by Dr. Beddoes, was now under the care of a youth -lately an apothecary’s apprentice at Penzance, a poet, but still more -a philosopher, “a miraculous young man.” “He is not yet twenty-one, -nor has he applied to chemistry more than eighteen months, but he has -advanced with such seven-leagued strides as to overtake everybody. His -name is Davy”—Humphry Davy—“the young chemist, the young everything, -the man least ostentatious, of first talent that I have ever known.” -Southey would walk across from Westbury, an easy walk over beautiful -ground, to breathe Davy’s wonder-working gas, “which excites all possible -mental and muscular energy, and induces almost a delirium of pleasurable -sensations without any subsequent dejection.” Pleased to find scientific -proof that he possessed a poet’s fine susceptibility, he records that -the nitrous oxide wrought upon him more readily than upon any other of -its votaries. “Oh, Tom!” he exclaims, gasping and ebullient—“oh, Tom! -such a gas has Davy discovered, the gaseous oxyde!... Davy has actually -invented a new pleasure for which language has no name. I am going for -more this evening; it makes one strong, and so happy! so gloriously -happy!... Oh, excellent air-bag!” If Southey drew inspiration from Davy’s -air-bag, could Davy do less than lend his ear to Southey’s epic? They -would stroll back to Martin Hall—so christened because the birds who -love delicate air built under its eaves their “pendant beds”—and in the -large sitting-room, its recesses stored with books, or seated near the -currant-bushes in the garden, the tenant of Martin Hall would read aloud -of Urien and Madoc and Cadwallon. When Davy had said good-bye, Southey -would sit long in the window open to the west, poring on the fading -glories of sunset, while about him the dew was cool, and the swallows’ -tiny shrieks of glee grew less frequent, until all was hushed and another -day was done. And sometimes he would muse how all things that he needed -for utter happiness were here—all things—and then would rise an ardent -desire—except a child. - -Martin Hall was unhappily held on no long lease; its owner now required -possession, and the Southeys, with their household gods, had reluctantly -to bid it farewell. Another trouble, and a more formidable one, at the -same time threatened. What with Annual Anthologies, Madoc in Wales, Madoc -in Aztlan, the design for a great poem on the Deluge, for a Greek drama, -for a Portuguese tragedy, for a martyrdom play of the reign of Queen -Mary—what with reading Spanish, learning Dutch, translating and reviewing -for the booksellers—Southey had been too closely at work. His heart began -to take fits of sudden and violent pulsation; his sleep, ordinarily as -sound as a child’s, became broken and unrefreshing. Unless the disease -were thrown off by regular exercise, Beddoes assured him, it would fasten -upon him, and could not be overcome. Two years previously they had spent -a summer at Burton, in Hampshire; why should they not go there again? In -June, 1799, unaccompanied by his wife, whose health seemed also to be -impaired, Southey went to seek a house. Two cottages, convertible into -one, with a garden, a fish-pond, and a pigeon-house, promised a term of -quiet and comfort in “Southey Palace that is to be.” Possession was -not to be had until Michaelmas, and part of the intervening time was -very enjoyably spent in roaming among the vales and woods, the coombes -and cliffs of Devon. It was in some measure a renewal of the open-air -delight which had been his at the Arrabida and Cintra. “I have seen the -Valley of Stones,” he writes: “Imagine a narrow vale between two ridges -of hills somewhat steep; the southern hill turfed; the vale which runs -from east to west covered with huge stones and fragments of stones among -the fern that fills it; the northern ridge completely bare, excoriated -of all turf and all soil, the very bones and skeleton of the earth; rock -reclining upon rock, stone piled upon stone, a huge and terrific mass. A -palace of the Preadamite kings, a city of the Anakim, must have appeared -so shapeless and yet so like the ruins of what had been shaped, after -the waters of the flood subsided. I ascended with some toil the highest -point; two large stones inclining on each other formed a rude portal on -the summit: here I sat down; a little level platform about two yards long -lay before me, and then the eye fell immediately upon the sea, far, very -far below. I never felt the sublimity of solitude before.” - -But Southey could not rest. “I had rather leave off eating than -poetizing,” he had said; and now the words seemed coming true, for he -still poetized, and had almost ceased to eat. “Yesterday I finished -_Madoc_, thank God! and thoroughly to my own satisfaction; but I have -resolved on one great, laborious, and radical alteration. It was my -design to identify Madoc with Mango Capac, the legislator of Peru: in -this I have totally failed; therefore Mango Capac is to be the hero of -another poem.” There is something charming in the logic of Southey’s -“therefore;” so excellent an epic hero must not go to waste; but when, -on the following morning, he rose early, it was to put on paper the first -hundred lines, not of Mango Capac, but of the Dom Daniel poem which we -know as _Thalaba_. A _Mohammed_, to be written in hexameters, was also -on the stocks; and Coleridge had promised the half of this. Southey, -who remembered a certain quarto volume on Pantisocracy and other great -unwritten works, including the last—a Life of Lessing, by Samuel Taylor -Coleridge—knew the worth of his collaborateur’s promises. However, it -matters little; “the only inconvenience that his dereliction can occasion -will be that I shall write the poem in fragments, and have to seam them -together at last.” “My Mohammed will be what I believe the Arabian was in -the beginning of his career—sincere in enthusiasm; and it would puzzle -a casuist to distinguish between the belief of inspiration and actual -enthusiasm.” A short fragment of the _Mohammed_ was actually written by -Coleridge, and a short fragment by Southey, which, dating from 1799, have -an interest in connexion with the history of the English hexameter. Last -among these many projects, Southey has made up his mind to undertake one -great historical work—the History of Portugal. This was no dream-project; -Mango Capac never descended from his father the Sun to appear in -Southey’s poem; Mohammed never emerged from the cavern where the spider -had spread his net; but the work which was meant to rival Gibbon’s great -history was in part achieved. It is a fact more pathetic than many others -which make appeal for tears, that this most ambitious and most cherished -design of Southey’s life, conceived at the age of twenty-six, and kept -constantly in view through all his days of toil, was not yet half wrought -out when, forty years later, the pen dropped from his hand, and the -worn-out brain could think no more. - -The deal shavings had hardly been cleared out of the twin cottages at -Burton, when Southey was prostrated by a nervous fever; on recovering, -he moved to Bristol, still weak, with strange pains about the heart, and -sudden seizures of the head. An entire change of scene was obviously -desirable. The sound of the brook that ran beside his uncle’s door at -Cintra, the scent of the lemon-groves, the grandeur of the Arrabida, -haunted his memory; there were books and manuscripts to be found in -Portugal which were essential in the preparation of his great history -of that country. Mr. Hill invited him; his good friend Elmsley, an old -schoolfellow, offered him a hundred pounds. From every point of view it -seemed right and prudent to go. Ailing and unsettled as he was, he yet -found strength and time to put his hand to a good work before leaving -Bristol. Chatterton always interested Southey deeply; they had this much -at least in common, that both had often listened to the chimes of St. -Mary Redcliffe, that both were lovers of antiquity, both were rich in -store of verse, and lacked all other riches. Chatterton’s sister, Mrs. -Newton, and her child were needy and neglected. It occurred to Southey -and Cottle that an edition of her brother’s poems might be published for -her benefit. Subscribers came in slowly, and the plan underwent some -alterations; but in the end the charitable thought bore fruit, and the -sister and niece of the great unhappy boy were lifted into security and -comfort. To have done something to appease the moody and indignant spirit -of a dead poet, was well; to have rescued from want a poor woman and her -daughter, was perhaps even better. - -Early in April, 1800, Southey was once more on his way from Bristol, -by Falmouth, to the Continent, accompanied by his wife, now about to be -welcomed to Portugal by the fatherly uncle whose prudence she had once -alarmed. The wind was adverse, and while the travellers were detained -Southey strolled along the beach, caught soldier-crabs, and observed -those sea-anemones which blossom anew in the verse of Thalaba. For -reading on the voyage, he had brought Burns, Coleridge’s poems, the -Lyrical Ballads, and a poem, with “miraculous beauties,” called _Gebir_, -“written by God knows who.” But when the ship lost sight of England, -Southey, with swimming head, had little spirit left for wrestling with -the intractable thews of Landor’s early verse; he could just grunt out -some crooked pun or quaint phrase in answer to inquiries as to how he -did. Suddenly, on the fourth morning, came the announcement that a French -cutter was bearing down upon them. Southey leaped to his feet, hurriedly -removed his wife to a place of safety, and, musket in hand, took his -post upon the quarter-deck. The smoke from the enemy’s matches could be -seen. She was hailed, answered in broken English, and passed on. A moment -more, and the suspense was over; she was English, manned from Guernsey. -“You will easily imagine,” says Southey, “that my sensations at the -ending of the business were very definable—one honest, simple joy that -I was in a whole skin!” Two mornings more, and the sun rose behind the -Berlings; the heights of Cintra became visible, and nearer, the silver -dust of the breakers, with sea-gulls sporting over them; a pilot’s boat, -with puffed and flapping sail, ran out; they passed thankfully our Lady -of the Guide, and soon dropped anchor in the Tagus. An absence of four -years had freshened every object to Southey’s sense of seeing, and now he -had the joy of viewing all familiar things as strange through so dear a -companion’s eyes. - -Mr. Hill was presently on board with kindly greeting; he had hired a -tiny house for them, perched well above the river, its little rooms cool -with many doors and windows. Manuel the barber, brisk as Figaro, would -be their factotum, and Mrs. Southey could also see a new maid—Maria -Rosa. Maria by-and-by came to be looked at, in powder, straw-coloured -gloves, fan, pink-ribands, muslin petticoat, green satin sleeves; she -was “not one of the folk who sleep on straw mattresses;” withal she was -young and clean. Mrs. Southey, who had liked little the prospect of -being thrown abroad upon the world, was beginning to be reconciled to -Portugal; roses and oranges and green peas in early May were pleasant -things. Then the streets were an unending spectacle; now a negro going -by with Christ in a glass case, to be kissed for a petty alms; now some -picturesque, venerable beggar; now the little Emperor of the Holy Ghost, -strutting it from Easter till Whitsuntide, a six-year-old mannikin with -silk stockings, buckles, cocked hat, and sword, his gentlemen ushers -attending, and his servants receiving donations on silver salvers. News -of an assassination, from time to time, did not much disturb the tranquil -tenor of ordinary life. There were old gardens to loiter in along -vine-trellised walks, or in sunshine where the grey lizards glanced and -gleamed. And eastward from the city were lovely by-lanes amid blossoming -olive-trees or market-gardens, veined by tiny aqueducts and musical with -the creak of water-wheels, which told of cool refreshment. There was also -the vast public aqueduct to visit; Edith Southey, holding her husband’s -hand, looked down, hardly discovering the diminished figures below of -women washing in the brook of Alcantara. If the sultry noon in Lisbon -was hard to endure, evening made amends; then strong sea-winds swept the -narrowest alley, and rolled their current down every avenue. And later, -it was pure content to look down upon the moonlighted river, with Almada -stretching its black isthmus into the waters that shone like midnight -snow. - -Before moving to Cintra, they wished to witness the procession of the -Body of God—Southey likes the English words as exposing “the naked -nonsense of the blasphemy”—those of St. Anthony, and the Heart of Jesus, -and the first bull-fight. Everything had grown into one insufferable -glare; the very dust was bleached; the light was like the quivering of -a furnace fire. Every man and beast was asleep; the stone-cutter slept -with his head upon the stone; the dog slept under the very cart-wheels; -the bells alone slept not, nor ceased from their importunate clamour. -At length—it was near mid-June—a marvellous cleaning of streets took -place, the houses were hung with crimson damask, soldiers came and lined -the ways, windows and balconies filled with impatient watchers—not a -jewel in Lisbon but was on show. With blare of music the procession -began; first, the banners of the city and its trades, the clumsy bearers -crab-sidling along; an armed champion carrying a flag; wooden St. George -held painfully on horseback; led horses, their saddles covered with rich -escutcheons; all the brotherhoods, an immense train of men in red or grey -cloaks; the knights of the orders superbly dressed; the whole patriarchal -church in glorious robes; and then, amid a shower of rose-leaves -fluttering from the windows, the Pix, and after the Pix, the Prince. On a -broiling Sunday, the amusement being cool and devout, was celebrated the -bull-feast. The first wound sickened Edith; Southey himself, not without -an effort, looked on and saw “the death-sweat darkening the dun hide”—a -circumstance borne in mind for his _Thalaba_. “I am not quite sure,” he -writes, “that my curiosity in once going was perfectly justifiable, but -the pain inflicted by the sight was expiation enough.” - -After this it was high time to take refuge from the sun among the -lemon-groves at Cintra. Here, if ever in his life, Southey for a brief -season believed that the grasshopper is wiser than the ant; a true -Portuguese indolence overpowered him. “I have spent my mornings half -naked in a wet room dozing upon the bed, my right hand not daring to -touch my left.” Such glorious indolence could only be a brief possession -with Southey. More often he would wander by the streams to those spots -where purple crocuses carpeted the ground, and there rest and read. -Sometimes seated sideways on one of the sure-footed _burros_, with a boy -to beat and guide the brute, he would jog lazily on, while Edith, now -skilled in “ass-womanship,” would jog along on a brother donkey. Once and -again a fog—not unwelcome—came rolling in from the ocean, one huge mass -of mist, marching through the valley like a victorious army, approaching, -blotting the brightness, but leaving all dank and fresh. And always the -evenings were delightful, when fireflies sparkled under the trees, or in -July and August, as their light went out, when the grillo began his song. -“I eat oranges, figs, and delicious pears—drink Colares wine, a sort of -half-way excellence between port and claret—read all I can lay my hands -on—dream of poem after poem, and play after play—take a siesta of two -hours, and am as happy as if life were but one everlasting today, and -that tomorrow was not to be provided for.” - -But Southey’s second visit to Portugal was, on the whole, no season of -repose. A week in the southern climate seemed to have restored him to -health, and he assailed folio after folio in his uncle’s library, rising -each morning at five, “to lay in bricks for the great Pyramid of my -history.” The chronicles, the laws, the poetry of Portugal, were among -these bricks. Nor did he slacken in his ardour as a writer of verse. Six -books of _Thalaba_ were in his trunk in manuscript when he sailed from -Falmouth; the remaining six were of a southern birth. “I am busy,” he -says, “in correcting _Thalaba_ for the press.... It is a good job done, -and so I have thought of another, and another, and another.” As with -_Joan of Arc_, so with this maturer poem the correction was a rehandling -which doubled the writer’s work. To draw the pen across six hundred lines -did not cost him a pang. At length the manuscript was despatched to his -friend Rickman, with instructions to make as good a bargain as he could -for the first thousand copies. By _Joan_ and the miscellaneous _Poems_ -of 1797, Southey had gained not far from a hundred and fifty pounds; he -might fairly expect a hundred guineas for _Thalaba_. It would buy the -furniture of his long-expected house. But he was concerned about the -prospects of Harry, his younger brother; and now William Taylor wrote -that some provincial surgeon of eminence would board and instruct the lad -during four or five years for precisely a hundred guineas. “A hundred -guineas!” Southey exclaims; “well, but, thank God, there is _Thalaba_ -ready, for which I ask this sum.” “_Thalaba_ finished, all my poetry,” -he writes, “instead of being wasted in rivulets and ditches, shall flow -into the great Madoc Mississippi river.” One epic poem, however, he -finds too little to content him; already _The Curse of Kehama_ is in -his head, and another of the mythological series which never saw the -light. “I have some distant view of manufacturing a Hindoo romance, -wild as _Thalaba_; and a nearer one of a Persian story, of which I -see the germ of vitality. I take the system of the Zendavesta for my -mythology, and introduce the powers of darkness persecuting a Persian, -one of the hundred and fifty sons of the great king; an Athenian captive -is a prominent character, and the whole warfare of the evil power ends -in exalting a Persian prince into a citizen of Athens.” From which -catastrophe we may infer that Southey had still something republican -about his heart. - -Before quitting Portugal, the Southeys, with their friend Waterhouse and -a party of ladies, travelled northwards, encountering very gallantly -the trials of the way; Mafra, its convent and library, had been -already visited by Southey. “Do you love reading?” asked the friar -who accompanied them, overhearing some remark about the books. “Yes.” -“And I,” said the honest Franciscan, “love eating and drinking.” At -Coimbra—that central point from which radiates the history and literature -of Portugal—Southey would have agreed feelingly with the good brother of -the Mafra convent; he had looked forward to precious moments of emotion -in that venerable city; but air and exercise had given him a cruel -appetite; if truth must be told, the ducks of the monastic poultry-yard -were more to him than the precious finger of St. Anthony. “I _did_ long,” -he confesses, “to buy, beg, or steal a dinner.” The dinner must somehow -have been secured before he could approach in a worthy spirit that most -affecting monument at Coimbra—the Fountain of Tears. “It is the spot -where Inez de Castro was accustomed to meet her husband Pedro, and weep -for him in his absence. Certainly her dwelling-house was in the adjoining -garden; and from there she was dragged, to be murdered at the feet of the -king, her father-in-law.... I, who have long planned a tragedy upon the -subject, stood upon my own scene.” While Southey and his companions gazed -at the fountains and their shadowing cedar-trees, the gownsmen gathered -round; the visitors were travel-stained and bronzed by the sun; perhaps -the witty youths cheered for the lady with the squaw tint; whatever -offence may have been given, the ladies’ protectors found them “impudent -blackguards,” and with difficulty suppressed pugilistic risings. - -After an excursion southwards to Algarve, Southey made ready for his -return to England (1801). His wife desired it, and he had attained the -main objects of his sojourn abroad. His health had never been more -perfect; he had read widely; he had gathered large material for his -History; he knew where to put his hand on this or that which might -prove needful, whenever he should return to complete his work among the -libraries of Portugal. On arriving at Bristol, a letter from Coleridge -met him. It was dated from Greta Hall, Keswick; and after reminding -Southey that Bristol had recently lost the miraculous young man, Davy, -and adding that he, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had experiences, sufferings, -hopes, projects to impart, which would beguile much time, “were you on a -desert island and I your _Friday_,” it went on to present the attractions -of Keswick, and in particular of Greta Hall, in a way which could not be -resisted. Taking all in all—the beauty of the prospect, the roominess -of the house, the lowness of the rent, the unparalleled merits of the -landlord, the neighbourhood of noble libraries—it united advantages not -to be found together elsewhere. “In short”—the appeal wound up—“for -situation and convenience—and when I mention the name of Wordsworth, for -society of men of intellect—I know no place in which you and Edith would -find yourselves so well suited.” - -Meanwhile Drummond, an M.P. and a translator of Persius, who was going -as ambassador, first to Palermo and then to Constantinople, was on the -look-out for a secretary. The post would be obtained for Southey by his -friend Wynn, if possible; this might lead to a consulship; why not to the -consulship at Lisbon, with 1000_l._ a year? Such possibilities, however, -could not prevent him from speedily visiting Coleridge and Keswick. -“Time and absence make strange work with our affections,” so writes -Southey; “but mine are ever returning to rest upon you. I have other and -dear friends, but none with whom the whole of my being is intimate.... -Oh! I have yet such dreams. Is it quite clear that you and I were not -meant for some better star, and dropped by mistake into this world of -pounds, shillings, and pence?” So for the first time Southey set foot in -Keswick, and looked upon the lake and the hills which were to become a -portion of his being, and which have taken him so closely, so tenderly, -to themselves. His first feeling was one not precisely of disappointment, -but certainly of remoteness from this northern landscape; he had not -yet come out from the glow and the noble _abandon_ of the South. “These -lakes,” he says, “are like rivers; but oh for the Mondego and the Tagus! -And these mountains, beautifully indeed are they shaped and grouped; but -oh for the grand Monchique! and for Cintra, my paradise!” - -Time alone was needed to calm and temper his sense of seeing; for -when, leaving Mrs. Southey with her sister and Coleridge, he visited -his friend Wynn at Llangedwin, and breathed the mountain air of his -own Prince Madoc, all the loveliness of Welsh streams and rivers sank -into his soul. “The Dee is broad and shallow, and its dark waters -shiver into white and silver and hues of amber brown. No mud upon the -shore—no bushes—no marsh plants—anywhere a child might stand dry-footed -and dip his hand into the water.” And again a contrasted picture: “The -mountain-side was stony, and a few trees grew among its stones; the other -side was more wooded, and had grass on the top, and a huge waterfall -thundered into the bottom, and thundered down the bottom. When it had -nearly passed these rocky straits, it met another stream. The width of -water then became considerable, and twice it formed a large black pool, -to the eye absolutely stagnant, the froth of the waters that entered -there sleeping upon the surface; it had the deadness of enchantment; yet -was not the pool wider than the river above it and below it, where it -foamed over and fell.” Such free delight as Southey had among the hills -of Wales came quickly to an end. A letter was received offering him the -position of private secretary to Mr. Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer -for Ireland, with a salary of four hundred pounds a year. Rickman was -in Dublin, and this was Rickman’s doing. Southey, as he was in prudence -bound to do, accepted the appointment, hastened back to Keswick, bade -farewell for a little while to his wife, and started for Dublin in no -cheerful frame of mind. - -At a later time, Southey possessed Irish friends whom he honoured and -loved; he has written wise and humane words about the Irish people. But -all through his career Ireland was to Southey somewhat too much that -ideal country—of late to be found only in the region of humorous-pathetic -melodrama—in which the business of life is carried on mainly by the -agency of bulls and blunder-busses; and it required a distinct effort -on his part to conceive the average Teague or Patrick otherwise than -as a potato-devouring troglodyte, on occasions grotesquely amiable, -but more often with the rage of Popery working in his misproportioned -features. Those hours during which Southey waited for the packet were -among the heaviest of his existence. After weary tackings in a baffling -wind, the ship was caught into a gale, and was whirled away, fifteen -miles north of Dublin, to the fishing-town of Balbriggan. Then, a drive -across desolate country, which would have depressed the spirits had it -not been enlivened by the airs and humours of little Dr. Solomon, the -unique, the omniscient, the garrulous, next after Bonaparte the most -illustrious of mortals, inventor of the Cordial Balm of Gilead, and -possessor of a hundred puncheons of rum. When the new private secretary -arrived, the chancellor was absent; the secretary, therefore, set -to work on rebuilding a portion of his _Madoc_. Presently Mr. Corry -appeared, and there was a bow and a shake of hands; then he hurried away -to London, to be followed by Southey, who, going round by Keswick, was -there joined by his wife. From London Southey writes to Rickman, “The -chancellor and the scribe go on in the same way. The scribe hath made -out a catalogue of all books published since the commencement of ’97 -upon finance and scarcity; he hath also copied a paper written by J.R. -[John Rickman] containing some Irish alderman’s hints about oak-bark; -and nothing more hath the scribe done in his vocation. Duly he calls at -the chancellor’s door; sometimes he is admitted to immediate audience; -sometimes kicketh his heels in the antechamber; ... sometimes a gracious -message emancipates him for the day. Secrecy hath been enjoined him as to -these State proceedings. On three subjects he is directed to read and -research—corn-laws, finance, tythes, according to their written order.” -The independent journals meanwhile had compared Corry and Southey, the -two State conspirators, to Empson and Dudley; and delicately expressed a -hope that the poet would make no false _numbers_ in his new work. - -Southey, who had already worn an ass’s head in one of Gillray’s -caricatures, was not afflicted by the newspaper sarcasm; but the vacuity -of such a life was intolerable; and when it was proposed that he should -become tutor to Corry’s son, he brought his mind finally to the point of -resigning “a foolish office and a good salary.” His notions of competence -were moderate; the vagabondage between the Irish and English headquarters -entailed by his office was irksome. His books were accumulating, and -there was ample work to be done among them if he had but a quiet library -of his own. Then, too, there was another good reason for resigning. A new -future was opening for Southey. Early in the year (1802) his mother died. -She had come to London to be with her son; there she had been stricken -with mortal illness; true to her happy, self-forgetful instincts, she -remained calm, uncomplaining, considerate for others. “Go down, my dear; -I shall sleep presently,” she had said, knowing that death was at hand. -With his mother, the last friend of Southey’s infancy and childhood was -gone. “I calmed and curbed myself,” he writes, “and forced myself to -employment; but at night there was no sound of feet in her bedroom, to -which I had been used to listen, and in the morning it was not my first -business to see her.” The past was past indeed. But as the year opened, -it brought a happy promise; before summer would end, a child might be in -his arms. Here were sufficient reasons for his resignation; a library and -a nursery ought, he says, to be stationary. - -To Bristol husband and wife came, and there found a small furnished -house. After the roar of Fleet Street, and the gathering of distinguished -men—Fuseli, Flaxman, Barry, Lamb, Campbell, Bowles—there was a -strangeness in the great quiet of the place. But in that quiet Southey -could observe each day the growth of the pile of manuscript containing -his version of _Amadis of Gaul_, for which Longman and Rees promised -him a munificent sixty pounds. He toiled at his _History of Portugal_, -finding matter of special interest in that part which was concerned with -the religious orders. He received from his Lisbon collection precious -boxes folio-crammed. “My dear and noble books! Such folios of saints! -dull books enough for my patience to diet upon, till all my flock be -gathered together into one fold.” Sixteen volumes of Spanish poetry are -lying uncut in the next room; a folio yet untasted jogs his elbow; two -of the best and rarest chronicles coyly invite him. He had books enough -in England to employ three years of active industry. And underlying all -thoughts of the great Constable Nuño Alvares Pereyra, of the King D. -Joaõ I., and of the Cid, deeper than the sportsman pleasure of hunting -from their lair strange facts about the orders Cistercian, Franciscan, -Dominican, Jesuit, there was a thought of that new-comer whom, says -Southey, “I already feel disposed to call whelp and dog, and all those -vocables of vituperation by which a man loves to call those he loves -best.” - -In September, 1802, was born Southey’s first child, named Margaret -Edith, after her mother and her dead grandmother; a flat-nosed, -round-foreheaded, grey-eyed, good-humoured girl. “I call Margaret,” -he says, in a sober mood of fatherly happiness, “by way of avoiding -all commonplace phraseology of endearment, a worthy child and a most -excellent character. She loves me better than any one except her mother; -her eyes are as quick as thought; she is all life and spirit, and as -happy as the day is long; but that little brain of hers is never at rest, -and it is painful to see how dreams disturb her.” For Margery and her -mother and the folios a habitation must be found. Southey inclined now -towards settling in the neighbourhood of London—now towards Norwich, -where Dr. Sayers and William Taylor would welcome him—now towards -Keswick; but its horrid latitude, its incessant rains! On the whole, his -heart turned most fondly to Wales; and there, in one of the loveliest -spots of Great Britain, in the Vale of Neath, was a house to let, by name -Maes Gwyn. Southey gave his fancy the rein, and pictured himself “housed -and homed” in Maes Gwyn, working steadily at the _History of Portugal_, -and now and again glancing away from his work to have a look at Margery -seated in her little great chair. But it was never to be; a difference -with the landlord brought to an end his treaty for the house, and in -August the child lay dying. It was bitter to part with what had been so -long desired—during seven childless years—and what had grown so dear. -But Southey’s heart was strong; he drew himself together, returned to -his toil, now less joyous than before, and set himself to strengthen and -console his wife. - -Bristol was henceforth a place of mournful memories. “Edith,” writes -Southey, “will be nowhere so well as with her sister Coleridge. She has -a little girl some six months old, and I shall try and graft her into -the wound while it is yet fresh.” Thus Greta Hall received its guests -(September, 1803). At first the sight of little Sara Coleridge and her -baby cooings caused shootings of pain on which Southey had not counted. -Was the experiment of this removal to prove a failure? He still felt -as if he were a feather driven by the wind. “I have no symptoms of -root-striking here,” he said. But he spoke, not knowing what was before -him; the years of wandering were indeed over; here he had found his home. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -WAYS OF LIFE AT KESWICK, 1803-1839. - - -The best of life with Southey was yet to come; but in what remains there -are few outstanding events to chronicle; there is nowhere any splendour -of circumstance. Of some lives the virtue is distilled, as it were, into -a few exquisite moments—moments of rapture, of vision, of sudden and -shining achievement; all the days and years seem to exist only for the -sake of such faultless moments, and it matters little whether such a -life, of whose very essence it is to break the bounds of time and space, -be long or short as measured by the falling of sandgrains or the creeping -of a shadow. Southey’s life was not one of these; its excellence was -constant, uniform, perhaps somewhat too evenly distributed. He wrought in -his place day after day, season after season. He submitted to the good -laws of use and wont. He grew stronger, calmer, more full-fraught with -stores of knowledge, richer in treasure of the heart. Time laid its hand -upon him gently and unfalteringly: the bounding step became less light -and swift; the ringing voice lapsed into sadder fits of silence; the -raven hair changed to a snowy white; only still the indefatigable eye ran -down the long folio columns, and the indefatigable hand still held the -pen—until all true life had ceased. When it has been said that Southey -was appointed Pye’s successor in the laureateship, that he received an -honorary degree from his university, that now and again he visited the -Continent, that children were born to him from among whom death made -choice of the dearest; and then we add that he wrote and published books, -the leading facts of Southey’s life have been told. Had he been worse -or a weaker man, we might look to find mysteries, picturesque vices, -or engaging follies; as it is, everything is plain, straightforward, -substantial. What makes the life of Southey eminent and singular is -its unity of purpose, its persistent devotion to a chosen object, its -simplicity, purity, loyalty, fortitude, kindliness, truth. - -The river Greta, before passing under the bridge at the end of Main -Street, Keswick, winds about the little hill on which stands Greta Hall; -its murmur may be heard when all is still beyond the garden and orchard; -to the west it catches the evening light. “In front,” Coleridge wrote -when first inviting his friend to settle with him, “we have a giants’ -camp—an encamped army of tent-like mountains, which by an inverted arch -gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the -wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite; and on our left Derwentwater and -Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale. Behind us -the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a tent-like -ridge in the larger.” Southey’s house belongs in a peculiar degree to -his life: in it were stored the treasures upon which his intellect drew -for sustenance; in it his affections found their earthly abiding-place; -all the most mirthful, all the most mournful, recollections of Southey -hang about it; to it in every little wandering his heart reverted like -an exile’s; it was at once his workshop and his playground; and for a -time, while he endured a living death, it became his antechamber to the -tomb. The rambling tenement consisted of two houses under one roof, the -larger part being occupied by the Coleridges and Southeys, the smaller -for a time by Mr. Jackson, their landlord. On the ground-floor was the -parlour which served as dining-room and general sitting-room, a pleasant -chamber looking upon the green in front; here also were Aunt Lovell’s -sitting-room, and the mangling-room, in which stood ranged in a row the -long array of clogs, from the greatest even unto the least, figuring in a -symbol the various stages of human life. The stairs to the right of the -kitchen led to a landing-place filled with bookcases; a few steps more -led to the little bedroom occupied by Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter. -“A few steps farther,” writes Sara Coleridge, whose description is here -given in abridgment, “was a little wing bedroom—then the study, where -my uncle sat all day occupied with literary labours and researches, but -which was used as a drawing-room for company. Here all the tea-visiting -guests were received. The room had three windows, a large one looking -down upon the green with the wide flower-border, and over to Keswick Lake -and mountains beyond. There were two smaller windows looking towards -the lower part of the town seen beyond the nursery-garden. The room was -lined with books in fine bindings; there were books also in brackets, -elegantly lettered vellum-covered volumes lying on their sides in a heap. -The walls were hung with pictures, mostly portraits.... At the back of -the room was a comfortable sofa, and there were sundry tables, beside -my uncle’s library table, his screen, desk, etc. Altogether, with its -internal fittings up, its noble outlook, and something pleasing in its -proportions, this was a charming room.” Hard by the study was Southey’s -bedroom. We need not ramble farther through passages lined with books, -and up and down flights of stairs to Mr. Jackson’s organ-room, and Mrs. -Lovell’s room, and Hartley’s parlour, and the nurseries, and one dark -apple-room supposed to be the abode of a bogle. Without, greensward, -flowers, shrubs, strawberry-beds, fruit-trees, encircled the house; -to the back, beyond the orchard, a little wood stretched down to the -river-side. A rough path ran along the bottom of the wood; here, on a -covered seat, Southey often read or planned future work, and here his -little niece loved to play in sight of the dimpling water. “Dear Greta -Hall!” she exclaims; “and oh, that rough path beside the Greta! How much -of my childhood, of my girlhood, of my youth, were spent there!” - -Southey’s attachment to his mountain town and its lakes was of no sudden -growth. He came to them as one not born under their influence; that -power of hills to which Wordsworth owed fealty, had not brooded upon -Southey during boyhood; the rich southern meadows, the wooded cliffs of -Avon, the breezy downs, had nurtured his imagination, and to these he -was still bound by pieties of the heart. In the churchyard at Ashton, -where lay his father and his kinsfolk, the beneficent cloud of mingled -love and sorrow most overshadowed his spirit. His imagination did not -soar, as did Wordsworth’s, in naked solitudes; he did not commune with -a Presence immanent in external nature: the world, as he viewed it, was -an admirable habitation for mankind—a habitation with a history. Even -after he had grown a mountaineer, he loved a humanized landscape, one -in which the gains of man’s courage, toil, and endurance are apparent. -Flanders, where the spade has wrought its miracles of diligence, where -the slow canal-boat glides, where the _carillons_ ripple from old spires, -where sturdy burghers fought for freedom, and where vellum-bound quartos -might be sought and found, Flanders, on the whole gave Southey deeper -and stronger feelings than did Switzerland. The ideal land of his dreams -was always Spain: the earthly paradise for him was Cintra, with its -glory of sun, and a glow even in its depths of shadow. But as the years -went by, Spain became more and more a memory, less and less a hope; and -the realities of life in his home were of more worth every day. When, -in 1807, it grew clear that Greta Hall was to be his life-long place of -abode, Southey’s heart closed upon it with a tenacious grasp. He set -the plasterer and carpenter to work; he planted shrubs; he enclosed the -garden; he gathered his books about him, and thought that here were -materials for the industry of many years; he held in his arms children -who were born in this new home; and he looked to Crosthwaite Churchyard, -expecting, with quiet satisfaction, that when toil was ended he should -there take his rest. - -“I don’t talk much about these things,” Southey writes; “but these lakes -and mountains give me a deep joy for which I suspect nothing elsewhere -can compensate, and this is a feeling which time strengthens instead -of weakening.” Some of the delights of southern counties he missed; -his earliest and deepest recollections were connected with flowers; -both flowers and fruits were now too few; there was not a cowslip to -be found near Keswick. “Here in Cumberland I miss the nightingale and -the violet—the most delightful bird and the sweetest flower.” But for -such losses there were compensations. A pastoral land will give amiable -pledges for the seasons and the months, and will perform its engagements -with a punctual observance; to this the mountains hardly condescend, but -they shower at their will a sudden largess of unimagined beauty. Southey -would sally out for a constitutional at his three-mile pace, the peaked -cap slightly shadowing his eyes, which were coursing over the pages of a -book held open as he walked; he had left his study to obtain exercise, -and so to preserve health; he was not a laker engaged in view-hunting; -he did not affect the contemplative mood which at the time was not and -could not be his. But when he raised his eyes, or when, quickening his -three-mile to a four-mile pace, he closed the book, the beauty which lay -around him liberated and soothed his spirit. This it did unfailingly; -and it might do more, for incalculable splendours, visionary glories, -exaltations, terrors, are momentarily possible where mountain, and -cloud, and wind, and sunshine meet. Southey, as he says, did not talk -much of these things, but they made life for him immeasurably better -than it would have been in city confinement; there were spaces, vistas, -an atmosphere around his sphere of work, which lightened and relieved -it. The engagements in his study were always so numerous and so full of -interest that it needed an effort to leave the table piled with books and -papers. But a May morning would draw him forth into the sun in spite of -himself. Once abroad, Southey had a vigorous joy in the quickened blood, -and the muscles impatient with energy long pent up. The streams were his -especial delight; he never tired of their deep retirement, their shy -loveliness, and their melody; they could often beguile him into an hour -of idle meditation; their beauty has in an especial degree passed into -his verse. When his sailor brother Thomas came and settled in the Vale -of Newlands, Southey would quickly cover the ground from Keswick at his -four-mile pace, and in the beck at the bottom of Tom’s fields, on summer -days, he would plunge and re-plunge and act the river-god in the natural -seats of mossy stone. Or he would be overpowered some autumn morning by -the clamour of childish voices voting a holiday by acclamation. Their -father must accompany them; it would do him good, they knew it would; -they knew he did not take sufficient exercise, for they had heard him -say so. Where should the scramble be? To Skiddaw Dod, or Causey Pike, or -Watenlath, or, as a compromise between their exuberant activity and his -inclination for the chair and the fireside, to Walla Crag? And there, -while his young companions opened their baskets and took their noonday -meal, Southey would seat himself—as Westall has drawn him—upon the -bough of an ash-tree, the water flowing smooth and green at his feet, -but a little higher up broken, flashing, and whitening in its fall; and -there in the still autumn noon he would muse happily, placidly, not now -remembering with overkeen desire the gurgling tanks and fountains of -Cintra, his Paradise of early manhood.[7] - -On summer days, when the visits of friends, or strangers bearing letters -of introduction, compelled him to idleness, Southey’s more ambitious -excursions were taken. But he was well aware that those who form -acquaintance with a mountain region during a summer all blue and gold, -know little of its finer power. It is October that brings most often -those days faultless, pearl-pure, of affecting influence, - - “In the long year set - Like captain jewels in the carcanet.” - -Then, as Wordsworth has said, the atmosphere seems refined, and the sky -rendered more crystalline, as the vivifying heat of the year abates; -the lights and shadows are more delicate; the colouring is richer and -more finely harmonized; and, in this season of stillness, the ear being -unoccupied, or only gently excited, the sense of vision becomes more -susceptible of its appropriate enjoyments. Even December is a better -month than July for perceiving the special greatness of a mountainous -country. When the snow lies on the fells soft and smooth, Grisedale Pike -and Skiddaw drink in tints at morning and evening marvellous as those -seen upon Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau for purity and richness. - -“Summer,” writes Southey, “is not the season for this country. Coleridge -says, and says well, that then it is like a theatre at noon. There are -no _goings on_ under a clear sky; but at other seasons there is such -shifting of shades, such islands of light, such columns and buttresses -of sunshine, as might almost make a painter burn his brushes, as the -sorcerers did their books of magic when they saw the divinity which -rested upon the apostles. The very snow, which you would perhaps think -must monotonize the mountains, gives new varieties; it brings out their -recesses and designates all their inequalities; it impresses a better -feeling of their height; and it reflects such tints of saffron, or fawn, -or rose-colour to the evening sun. _O Maria Santissima!_ Mount Horeb, -with the glory upon its summit, might have been more glorious, but not -more beautiful than old Skiddaw in his winter pelisse. I will not quarrel -with frost, though the fellow has the impudence to take me by the nose. -The lake-side has such ten thousand charms: a fleece of snow or of the -hoar-frost lies on the fallen trees or large stones; the grass-points, -that just peer above the water, are powdered with diamonds; the ice on -the margin with chains of crystal, and such veins and wavy lines of -beauty as mock all art; and, to crown all, Coleridge and I have found out -that stones thrown upon the lake when frozen make a noise like singing -birds, and when you whirl on it a large flake of ice, away the shivers -slide, chirping and warbling like a flight of finches.” This tells of -a February at Keswick; the following describes the _goings on_ under -an autumn sky:—“The mountains on Thursday evening, before the sun was -quite down or the moon bright, were all of one dead-blue colour; their -rifts and rocks and swells and scars had all disappeared—the surface -was perfectly uniform, nothing but the outline distinct; and this even -surface of dead blue, from its unnatural uniformity, made them, though -not transparent, appear transvious—as though they were of some soft or -cloudy texture through which you could have passed. I never saw any -appearance so perfectly unreal. Sometimes a blazing sunset seems to steep -them through and through with red light; or it is a cloudy morning, and -the sunshine slants down through a rift in the clouds, and the pillar of -light makes the spot whereon it falls so emerald green, that it looks -like a little field of Paradise. At night you lose the mountains, and the -wind so stirs up the lake that it looks like the sea by moonlight.” - -If Southey had not a companion by his side, the solitude of his ramble -was unbroken; he never had the knack of forgathering with chance -acquaintance. With intellectual and moral boldness, and with high -spirits, he united a constitutional bashfulness and reserve. His retired -life, his habits of constant study, and, in later years, his shortness of -sight, fell in with this infirmity. He would not patronize his humbler -neighbours; he had a kind of imaginative jealousy on behalf of their -rights as independent persons; and he could not be sure of straightway -discovering, by any genius or instinct of good-fellowship, that common -ground whereon strangers are at home with one another. Hence—and Southey -himself wished that it had been otherwise—long as he resided at Keswick, -there were perhaps not twenty persons of the lower ranks whom he knew -by sight. “After slightly returning the salutation of some passer-by,” -says his son, “he would again mechanically lift his cap as he heard some -well-known name in reply to his inquiries, and look back with regret that -the greeting had not been more cordial.” - -If the ice were fairly broken, he found it natural to be easy and -familiar, and by those whom he employed he was regarded with affectionate -reverence. Mrs. Wilson—kind and generous creature—remained in Greta -Hall tending the children as they grew up, until she died, grieved -for by the whole household. Joseph Glover, who created the scarecrow -“Statues” for the garden—male and female created he them, as the reader -may see them figured toward the close of _The Doctor_—Glover, the artist -who set up Edith’s fantastic chimney-piece (“Well, Miss Southey,” -cried honest Joseph, “I’ve done my Devils”), was employed by Southey -during five-and-twenty years, ever since he was a ’prentice-boy. If -any warm-hearted neighbour, known or unknown to him, came forward with -a demand on Southey’s sympathies, he was sure to meet a neighbourly -response. When the miller, who had never spoken to him before, invited -the laureate to rejoice with him over the pig he had killed—the finest -ever fattened—and when Southey was led to the place where that which had -ceased to be pig and was not yet bacon, was hung up by the hind feet, he -filled up the measure of the good man’s joy by hearty appreciation of a -porker’s points. But Cumberland enthusiasm seldom flames abroad with so -prodigal a blaze as that of the worthy miller’s heart. - -Within the charmed circle of home, Southey’s temper and manners were -full of a strong and sweet hilarity; and the home circle was in itself a -considerable group of persons. The Pantisocratic scheme of a community -was, after all, near finding a fulfilment, only that the Greta ran by in -place of the Susquehanna, and that Southey took upon his own shoulders -the work of the dead Lovell, and of Coleridge, who lay in weakness -and dejection, whelmed under the tide of dreams. For some little time -Coleridge continued to reside at Keswick, an admirable companion in -almost all moods of mind, for all kinds of wisdom, and all kinds of -nonsense. When he was driven abroad in search of health, it seemed as if -a brightness were gone out of the air, and the horizon of life had grown -definite and contracted. “It is now almost ten years,” Southey writes, -“since he and I first met in my rooms at Oxford, which meeting decided -the destiny of both.... I am perpetually pained at thinking what he ought -to be, ... but the tidings of his death would come upon me more like a -stroke of lightning than any evil I have ever yet endured.” - -Mrs. Coleridge, with her children, remained at Greta Hall. That quaint -little metaphysician, Hartley—now answering to the name of Moses, now to -that of Job, the oddest of all God’s creatures—was an unceasing wonder -and delight to his uncle: “a strange, strange boy, ‘exquisitely wild,’ an -utter visionary, like the moon among thin clouds, he moves in a circle -of his own making. He alone is a light of his own. Of all human beings -I never saw one so utterly naked of self.” When his father expressed -surprise that Hartley should take his pleasure of wheel-barrow-riding so -sadly, “The pity is”—explained little Job—“the pity is, _I’se_ always -thinking of my thoughts.” “‘I’m a boy of a very religious turn,’ he says; -for he always talks of himself and examines his own character, just as -if he were speaking of another person, and as impartially. Every night -he makes an extempore prayer aloud; but it is always in bed, and not -till he is comfortable there and got into the mood. When he is ready, he -touches Mrs. Wilson, who sleeps with him, and says, ‘Now listen!’ and off -he sets like a preacher.” Younger than Hartley was Derwent Coleridge, a -fair, broad-chested boy, with merry eye and roguish lips, now grown out -of that yellow frock in which he had earned his name of Stumpy Canary. -Sara Coleridge, when her uncle came to Keswick after the death of his own -Margery, was a little grand-lama at that worshipful age of seven months. -A fall into the Greta, a year and a half later, helped to change her to -the delicate creature whose large blue eyes would look up timidly from -under her lace border and mufflings of muslin. No feeling towards their -father save a reverent loyalty did the Coleridge children ever learn -under Southey’s roof. But when the pale-faced wanderer returned from -Italy, he surprised and froze his daughter by a sudden revelation of that -jealousy which is the fond injustice of an unsatisfied heart, and which a -child who has freely given and taken love finds it hard to comprehend. “I -think my dear father,” writes Sara Coleridge, “was anxious that I should -learn to love him and the Wordsworths and their children, and not cling -so exclusively to my mother and all around me at home.” Love him and -revere his memory she did; to Wordsworth she was conscious of owing more -than to any other teacher or inspirer in matters of the intellect and -imagination. But in matters of the heart and conscience the daily life of -Southey was the book in which she read; he was, she would emphatically -declare, “upon the whole, the best man she had ever known.” - -But the nepotism of the most “nepotious” uncle is not a perfect -substitute for fatherhood with its hopes and fears. May-morning of the -year 1804 saw “an Edithling very, very ugly, with no more beauty than a -young dodo,” nestling by Edith Southey’s side. A trembling thankfulness -possessed the little one’s father; but when the Arctic weather changed -suddenly to days of genial sunshine, and groves and gardens burst into -living greenery, and rang with song, his heart was caught into the -general joy. Southey was not without a presentiment that his young dodo -would improve. Soon her premature activity of eye and spirits troubled -him, and he tried, while cherishing her, to put a guard upon his heart. -“I did not mean to trust my affections again on so frail a foundation—and -yet the young one takes me from my desk and makes me talk nonsense as -fluently as you perhaps can imagine.” When Sara Coleridge—not yet five -years old, but already, as she half believed, promised in marriage to -Mr. De Quincey—returned after a short absence to Greta Hall, she saw her -baby cousin, sixteen months younger, and therefore not yet marriageable, -grown into a little girl very fair, with thick golden hair, and round, -rosy cheeks. Edith Southey inherited something of her father’s looks and -of his swift intelligence; with her growing beauty of face and limbs a -growing excellence of inward nature kept pace. At twenty she was the -“elegant cygnet” of Amelia Opie’s album verses, - - “’Twas pleasant to meet - And see thee, famed Swan of the Derwent’s fair tide, - With that elegant cygnet that floats by thy side”— - -a compliment her father mischievously would not let her Elegancy forget. -Those who would know her in the loveliness of youthful womanhood may turn -to Wordsworth’s poem, _The Triad_, where she appears first of the three -“sister nymphs” of Keswick and Rydal; or, Hartley Coleridge’s exquisite -sonnet, _To a lofty beauty, from her poor kinsman_: - - “Methinks thy scornful mood, - And bearing high of stately womanhood— - Thy brow where Beauty sits to tyrannize - O’er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee: - For never sure was seen a royal bride, - Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride— - My very thoughts would tremble to be near thee, - But when I see thee by thy father’s side - Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee.” - -But it is best of all to remember Southey’s daughter in connexion with -one letter of her father’s. In 1805 he visited Scotland alone; he had -looked forward to carrying on the most cherished purpose of his life—the -_History of Portugal_—among the libraries of Lisbon. But it would be -difficult to induce Mrs. Southey to travel with the Edithling. Could he -go alone? The short absence in Scotland served to test his heart, and so -to make his future clear:— - - “I need not tell you, my own dear Edith, not to read my letters - aloud till you have first of all seen what is written only - for yourself. What I have now to say to you is, that having - been eight days from home, with as little discomfort, and as - little reason for discomfort, as a man can reasonably expect, - I have yet felt so little comfortable, so great sense of - solitariness, and so many homeward yearnings, that certainly I - will not go to Lisbon without you; a resolution which, if your - feelings be at all like mine, will not displease you. If, on - mature consideration, you think the inconvenience of a voyage - more than you ought to submit to, I must be content to stay - in England, as on my part it certainly is not worth while to - sacrifice a year’s happiness; for though not unhappy (my mind - is too active and too well disciplined to yield to any such - criminal weakness), still, without you I am not happy. But - for your sake as well as my own, and for little Edith’s sake, - I will not consent to any separation; the growth of a year’s - love between her and me, if it please God that she should live, - is a thing too delightful in itself, and too valuable in its - consequences, both to her and me, to be given up for any light - inconvenience either on your part or mine. An absence of a year - would make her effectually forget me.... But of these things we - will talk at leisure; only, dear, dear Edith, we must not part.” - -Such wisdom of the heart was justified; the year of growing love bore -precious fruit. When Edith May was ten years old her father dedicated to -her, in verses laden with a father’s tenderest thoughts and feelings, his -_Tale of Paraguay_. He recalls the day of her birth, the preceding sorrow -for his first child, whose infant features have faded from him like a -passing cloud; the gladness of that singing month of May; the seasons -that followed during which he observed the dawning of the divine light in -her eyes; the playful guiles by which he won from her repeated kisses: -to him these ten years seem like yesterday; but to her they have brought -discourse of reason, with the sense of time and change:— - - “And I have seen thine eyes suffused in grief - When I have said that with autumnal grey - The touch of old hath mark’d thy father’s head; - That even the longest day of life is brief, - And mine is falling fast into the yellow leaf.” - -Other children followed, until a happy stir of life filled the house. -Emma, the quietest of infants, whose voice was seldom heard, and whose -dark-grey eyes too seldom shone in her father’s study, slipped quietly -out of the world after a hand’s-breadth of existence; but to Southey she -was no more really lost than the buried brother and sister were to the -cottage girl of Wordsworth’s _We are seven_. “I have five children,” he -says in 1809; “three of them at home, and two under my mother’s care -in heaven.” Of all, the most radiantly beautiful was Isabel; the most -passionately loved was Herbert. “My other two are the most perfect -contrast you ever saw. Bertha, whom I call Queen Henry the Eighth, from -her likeness to King Bluebeard, grows like Jonah’s gourd, and is the very -picture of robust health; and little Kate hardly seems to grow at all, -though perfectly well—she is round as a mushroom-button. Bertha, the -bluff queen, is just as grave as Kate is garrulous; they are inseparable -playfellows, and go about the house hand in hand.” - -Among the inmates of Greta Hall, to overlook Lord Nelson and Bona -Marietta, with their numerous successors, would be a grave delinquency. -To be a cat, was to be a privileged member of the little republic to -which Southey gave laws. Among the fragments at the end of _The Doctor_ -will be found a Chronicle History of the Cattery of Cat’s Eden; and some -of Southey’s frolic letters are written as if his whole business in -life were that of secretary for feline affairs in Greta Hall. A house, -he declared, is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there -is in it a child rising three years old and a kitten rising six weeks; -“kitten is in the animal world what the rosebud is in the garden.” Lord -Nelson, an ugly specimen of the streaked-carroty or Judas-coloured -kind, yet withal a good cat, affectionate, vigilant, and brave, was -succeeded by Madame Bianchi, a beautiful and singular creature, white, -with a fine tabby tail; “her wild eyes were bright, and green as the -Duchess de Cadaval’s emerald necklace.” She fled away with her niece -Pulcheria on the day when good old Mrs. Wilson died; nor could any -allurements induce the pair to domesticate themselves again. For some -time a cloud of doom seemed to hang over Cat’s Eden. Ovid and Virgil, -Othello the Moor, and Pope Joan perished miserably. At last Fortune, -as if to make amends for her unkindness, sent to Greta Hall almost -together the never-to-be-enough-praised Rumpelstilzchen (afterwards -raised for services against rats to be His Serene Highness the Archduke -Rumpelstilzchen), and the equally-to-be-praised Hurly-burlybuss. With -whom too soon we must close the catalogue. - -The revenue to maintain this household was in the main won by Southey’s -pen. “It is a difficult as well as a delicate task,” he wrote in the -_Quarterly Review_, “to advise a youth of ardent mind and aspiring -thoughts in the choice of a profession; but a wise man will have no -hesitation in exhorting him to choose anything rather than literature. -Better that he should seek his fortune before the mast, or with a musket -on his shoulder and a knapsack on his back; better that he should follow -the plough, or work at the loom or the lathe, or sweat over the anvil, -than trust to literature as the only means of his support.” Southey’s -own bent towards literature was too strong to be altered. But, while -he accepted loyally the burdens of his profession as a man of letters, -he knew how stout a back is needed to bear them month after month and -year after year. Absolutely dependent on his pen he was at no time. His -generous friend Wynn, upon coming of age, allowed him annually 160_l._, -until, in 1807, he was able to procure for Southey a Government pension -for literary services amounting, clear of taxes, to nearly the same -sum. Southey had as truly as any man the pride of independence, but he -had none of its vanity; there was no humiliation in accepting a service -from one whom friendship had made as close as a brother. Men, he says, -are as much better for the good offices which they receive as for those -they bestow; and his own was no niggard hand. Knowing both to give and -to take, with him the remembrance that he owed much to others was among -the precious possessions of life which bind us to our kind with bonds -of sonship, not of slavery. Of the many kindnesses which he received he -never forgot one. “Had it not been for your aid,” he writes to Wynn, -forty years after their first meeting in Dean’s Yard, “I should have -been irretrievably wrecked when I ran upon the shoals, with all sail -set, in the very outset of my voyage.” And to another good old friend, -who from his own modest station applauded while Southey ran forward in -the race:—“Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten those true and -most essential acts of friendship which you showed me when I stood most -in need of them? Your house was my house when I had no other. The very -money with which I bought my wedding-ring and paid my marriage-fees was -supplied by you. It was with your sisters I left Edith during my six -months’ absence, and for the six months after my return it was from -you that I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till -I was enabled to live by other means. It is not the settling of a cash -account that can cancel obligations like these. You are in the habit of -preserving your letters, and if you were not, I would entreat you to -preserve _this_, that it might be seen hereafter.... My head throbs and -my eyes burn with these recollections. Good-night! my dear old friend and -benefactor.” - -Anxiety about his worldly fortunes never cost Southey a sleepless night. -His disposition was always hopeful; relying on Providence, he says, I -could rely upon myself. When he had little, he lived upon little, never -spending when it was necessary to spare; and his means grew with his -expenses. Business habits he had none; never in his life did he cast up -an account; but in a general way he knew that money comes by honest toil -and grows by diligent husbandry. Upon Mrs. Southey, who had an eye to all -the household outgoings, the cares of this life fell more heavily. Sara -Coleridge calls to mind her aunt as she moved about Greta Hall intent on -house affairs, “with her fine figure and quietly commanding air.” Alas! -under this gracious dignity of manner the wear and tear of life were -doing their work surely. Still, it was honest wear and tear. “I never -knew her to do an unkind act,” says Southey, “nor say an unkind word;” -but when stroke followed upon stroke of sorrow, they found her without -that elastic temper which rises and recovers itself. Until the saddest -of afflictions made her helpless, everything was left to her management, -and was managed so quietly and well, that, except in times of sickness -and bereavement, “I had,” writes her husband, “literally no cares.” Thus -free from harass, Southey toiled in his library; he toiled not for bread -alone, but also for freedom. There were great designs before him which, -he was well aware, if ever realized, would make but a poor return to -the household coffer. To gain time and a vantage-ground for these, he -was content to yield much of his strength to work of temporary value, -always contriving, however, to strike a mean in this journeyman service -between what was most and least akin to his proper pursuits. When a -parcel of books arrived from the _Annual Review_, he groaned in spirit -over the sacrifice of time; but patience! it is, after all, better, he -would reflect, than pleading in a court of law; better than being called -up at midnight to a patient; better than calculating profit and loss at -a counter; better, in short, than anything but independence. “I am a -quiet, patient, easy-going hack of the mule breed”—he writes to Grosvenor -Bedford—“regular as clock-work in my pace, sure-footed, bearing the -burden which is laid on me, and only obstinate in choosing my own path. -If Gifford could see me by this fireside, where, like Nicodemus, one -candle suffices me in a large room, he would see a man in a coat ‘still -more threadbare than his own,’ when he wrote his ‘Imitation,’ working -hard and getting little—a bare maintenance, and hardly that; writing -poems and history for posterity with his whole heart and soul; one daily -progressive in learning, not so learned as he is poor, not so poor as -proud, not so proud as happy. Grosvenor, there is not a lighter-hearted -nor a happier man upon the face of this wide world.” When these words -were written, Herbert stood by his father’s side; it was sweet to work -that his boy might have his play-time glad and free. - -The public estimate of Southey’s works as expressed in pounds, shillings, -and pence, was lowest where he held that it ought to have been highest. -For the _History of Brazil_, a work of stupendous toil, which no one in -England could have produced save Southey himself, he had not received, -after eight years, as much as for a single article in the _Quarterly -Review_. _Madoc_, the pillar, as he supposed, on which his poetical fame -was to rest; _Madoc_, which he dismissed with an awed feeling, as if in -it he were parting with a great fragment of his life, brought its author, -after twelve months’ sales, the sum of 3_l._ 17_s._ 1_d._ On the other -hand, for his _Naval Biography_, which interested him less than most of -his works, and which was undertaken after hesitation, he was promised -five hundred guineas a volume. Notwithstanding his unwearied exertions, -his modest scale of expenditure, and his profitable connexion with the -_Quarterly Review_—for an important article he would receive 100_l._—he -never had a year’s income in advance until that year, late in his life, -in which Sir Robert Peel offered him a baronetcy. In 1818, the lucky -payment of a bad debt enabled him to buy 300_l._ in the Three-per-cents. -“I have 100_l._ already there,” he writes “and shall then be worth 12_l._ -per annum.” By 1821 this sum had grown to 625_l._, the gatherings of -half a life-time. In that year his friend John May, whose acquaintance -he had made in Portugal, and to whose kindness he was a debtor, suffered -the loss of his fortune. As soon as Southey had heard the state of -affairs, his decision was formed. “By this post,” he tells his friend, “I -write to Bedford, desiring that he will transfer to you 625_l._ in the -Three-per-cents. I wish it was more, and that I had more at my command in -any way. I shall in the spring, if I am paid for the first volume of my -History as soon as it is finished. One hundred I should, at all events, -have sent you then. It shall be as much more as I receive.” And he goes -on in cheery words to invite John May to break away from business and -come to Keswick, there to lay in “a pleasant store of recollections which -in all moods of mind are wholesome.” One rejoices that Southey, poor of -worldly goods, knew the happiness of being so simply and nobly generous. - -Blue and white china, mediæval ivories, engravings by the Little Masters, -Chippendale cabinets, did not excite pining desire in Southey’s breast; -yet in one direction he indulged the passion of a collector. If, with -respect to any of “the things independent of the will,” he showed a want -of moderation unworthy of his discipleship to Epictetus, it was assuredly -with respect to books. Before he possessed a fixed home, he was already -moored to his folios; and when once he was fairly settled at Keswick, -many a time the carriers on the London road found their riding the larger -by a weighty packet on its way to Greta Hall. Never did he run north or -south for a holiday, but the inevitable parcel preceded or followed his -return. Never did he cross to the Continent but a bulkier bale arrived -in its own good time, enclosing precious things. His morality, in all -else void of offence, here yielded to the seducer. It is thought that -Southey was in the main honest; but if Dirk Hatteraick had run ashore -a hundred-weight of the Acta Sanctorum duty-free, the king’s laureate -was not the man to set the sharks upon him; and it is to be feared that -the pattern of probity, the virtuous Southey himself, might in such -circumstances be found, under cover of night, lugging his prize landwards -from its retreat beneath the rocks. Unquestionably, at one time certain -parcels from Portugal—only of such a size as could be carried under the -arm—were silently brought ashore to the defrauding of the revenue, and -somehow found their way, by-and-by, to Greta Hall. “We maintain a trade,” -says the Governor of the Strangers’ House in Bacon’s philosophical -romance, “not for gold, silver, or jewels, nor for silks, nor for spices, -nor any other commodity of matter, but only for God’s first creature, -which was _light_.” Such, too, was Southey’s trade, and he held that -God’s first creature is free to travel unchallenged by revenue-cutter. - -“Why, Montesinos,” asks the ghostly Sir Thomas More in one of Southey’s -_Colloquies_, “with these books and the delight you take in their -constant society, what have you to covet or desire?” “Nothing,” is the -answer, “ ... except more books.” When Southey, in 1805, went to see -Walter Scott, it occurred to him in Edinburgh that, having had neither -new coat nor hat since little Edith was born, he must surely be in want -of both; and here, in the metropolis of the North, was an opportunity of -arraying himself to his desire. “Howbeit,” he says, “on considering the -really respectable appearance which my old ones made for a traveller—and -considering, moreover, that as learning was better than house or land, -it certainly must be much better than fine clothes—I laid out all my -money in books, and came home to wear out my old wardrobe in the winter.” -De Quincey called Southey’s library his wife, and in a certain sense -it was wife and mistress and mother to him. The presence and enjoying -of his books was not the sole delight they afforded; there was also -the pursuit, the surprisal, the love-making or wooing. And at last, in -his hours of weakness, once more a little child, he would walk slowly -round his library, looking at his cherished volumes, taking them down -mechanically, and when he could no longer read, pressing them to his -lips. In happier days the book-stalls of London knew the tall figure, the -rapid stride, the quick-seeing eye, the eager fingers. Lisbon, Paris, -Milan, Amsterdam, contributed to the rich confusion that, from time to -time, burdened the floors of library and bedrooms and passages in Greta -Hall. Above all, he was remembered at Brussels by that best of bookmen, -Verbeyst. What mattered it that Verbeyst was a sloven, now receiving his -clients with gaping shirt and now with stockingless feet? Did he not duly -honour letters, and had he not 300,000 volumes from which to choose? -If in a moment of prudential weakness one failed to carry off such a -treasure as the _Monumenta Boica_ or Colgar’s _Irish Saints_, there was -a chance that in Verbeyst’s vast store-house the volume might lurk for -a year or two. And Verbeyst loved his books, only less than he loved -his handsome, good-natured wife, who for a liberal customer would fetch -the bread and burgundy. Henry Taylor dwelt in Robert Southey’s heart of -hearts; but let not Henry Taylor treasonably hint that Verbeyst, the -prince of booksellers, had not a prince’s politeness of punctuality. -If sundry books promised had not arrived, it was because they were not -easily procured; moreover, the good-natured wife had died—_bien des -malheurs_, and Verbeyst’s heart was fallen into a lethargy. “Think ill of -our fathers which are in the Row, think ill of John Murray, think ill of -Colburn, think ill of the whole race of bibliopoles, except Verbeyst, who -is always to be thought of with liking and respect.” And when the bill of -lading, coming slow but sure, announced that saints and chroniclers and -poets were on their way, “by this day month,” wrote Southey, “they will -probably be here; then shall I be happier than if his Majesty King George -the Fourth were to give orders that I should be clothed in purple, and -sleep upon gold, and have a chain upon my neck, and sit next him because -of my wisdom, and be called his cousin.” - -Thus the four thousand volumes, which lay piled about the library when -Southey first gathered his possessions together, grew and grew, year -after year, until the grand total mounted up to eight, to ten, to -fourteen thousand. Now Kirke White’s brother Neville sends him a gift of -Sir William Jones’s works, thirteen volumes, in binding of bewildering -loveliness. Now Landor ships from some Italian port a chest containing -treasures of less dubious value than the Raffaelles and Leonardos, with -which he liberally supplied his art-loving friends. Oh, the joy of -opening such a chest; of discovering the glorious folios; of glancing -with the shy amorousness of first desire at title-page and colophon; of -growing familiarity; of tracing out the history suggested by book-plate -or autograph; of finding a lover’s excuses for cropped margin, or -water-stain, or worm-hole! Then the calmer happiness of arranging his -favourites on new shelves; of taking them down again, after supper, in -the season of meditation and currant-rum; and of wondering for which -among his father’s books Herbert will care most when all of them shall -be his own. “It would please you,” Southey writes to his old comrade, -Bedford, “to see such a display of literary wealth, which is at once -the pride of my eye, and the joy of my heart, and the food of my mind; -indeed, more than metaphorically, meat, drink, and clothes for me and -mine. I verily believe that no one in my station was ever so rich before, -and I am very sure that no one in any station had ever a more thorough -enjoyment of riches of any kind or in any way.” - -Southey’s Spanish and Portuguese collection—if Heber’s great library -be set aside—was probably the most remarkable gathering of such books -in the possession of any private person in this country. It included -several manuscripts, some of which were displayed with due distinction -upon brackets. Books in white and gold—vellum or parchment bound, with -gilt lettering in the old English type which Southey loved—were arranged -in effective positions pyramid-wise. Southey himself had learned the -mystery of book-binding, and from him his daughters acquired that art; -the ragged volumes were decently clothed in coloured cotton prints; -these, presenting a strange patch-work of colours, quite filled one room, -which was known as the Cottonian Library. “Paul,” a book-room on the -ground-floor, had been so called because “Peter,” the organ-room, was -robbed to fit it with books. “Paul is a great comfort to us, and being -dressed up with Peter’s property, makes a most respectable appearance, -and receives that attention which is generally shown to the youngest -child. The study has not actually been Petered on Paul’s account, but -there has been an exchange negotiated which we think is for their mutual -advantage. Twenty gilt volumes, from under the ‘Beauties of England and -Wales,’ have been marched down-stairs rank and file, and their place -supplied by the long set of Lope de Vega with green backs.” - -Southey’s books, as he assures his ghostly monitor in the _Colloquies_, -were not drawn up on his shelves for display, however much the pride -of the eye might be gratified in beholding them; they were on actual -service. Generations might pass away before some of them would again find -a reader; in their mountain home they were prized and known as perhaps -they never had been known before. Not a few of the volumes had been cast -up from the wreck of family or convent libraries during the Revolution. -“Yonder Acta Sanctorum belonged to the Capuchines at Ghent. This book of -St. Bridget’s Revelations, in which not only all the initial letters are -illuminated, but every capital throughout the volume was coloured, came -from the Carmelite Nunnery at Bruges.... Here are books from Colbert’s -library; here others from the Lamoignon one.... Yonder Chronicle History -of King D. Manoel, by Damiam de Goes; and yonder General History of -Spain, by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their respective authors.... -This Copy of Casaubon’s Epistles was sent to me from Florence by Walter -Landor. He had perused it carefully, and to that perusal we are indebted -for one of the most pleasing of his Conversations.... Here is a book -with which Lauderdale amused himself, when Cromwell kept him in prison -in Windsor Castle.... Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, -the harvest of many generations, laid up in my garners: and when I go to -the window, there is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the -illimitable sky.” - -Not a few of his books were dead, and to live among these was like living -among the tombs; “Behold, this also is vanity,” Southey makes confession. -But when Sir Thomas questions, “Has it proved to you ‘vexation of -spirit’ also?” the Cumberland mountain-dweller breaks forth: “Oh no! for -never can any man’s life have been passed more in accord with his own -inclinations, nor more answerably to his desires. Excepting that peace -which, through God’s infinite mercy, is derived from a higher source, -it is to literature, humanly speaking, that I am beholden, not only for -the means of subsistence, but for every blessing which I enjoy; health -of mind and activity of mind, contentment, cheerfulness, continual -employment, and therefore continual pleasure. _Suavissima vita indies -sentire se fieri meliorem_; and this, as Bacon has said and Clarendon -repeated, is the benefit that a studious man enjoys in retirement.” Such -a grave gladness underlay all Southey’s frolic moods, and in union with -a clear-sighted acceptance of the conditions of human happiness—its -inevitable shocks, its transitory nature as far as it belongs to man’s -life on earth—made up part of his habitual temper. - -Southey coursed from page to page with a greyhound’s speed; a tiny _s_ -pencilled in the margin served to indicate what might be required for -future use. Neatness he had learnt from Miss Tyler long ago; and by -experience he acquired his method. On a slip of paper which served as -marker he would note the pages to which he needed to return. In the -course of a few hours he had classified and arranged everything in a book -which it was likely he would ever want. A reference to the less important -passages sufficed; those of special interest were transcribed by his -wife, or one of his daughters, or more frequently by Southey himself; -finally, these transcripts were brought together in packets under such -headings as would make it easy to discover any portion of their contents. - -Such was his ordinary manner of eviscerating an author, but it was -otherwise with the writers of his affection. On some—such as Jackson -and Jeremy Taylor—“he _fed_,” as he expressed it, “slowly and -carefully, dwelling on the page, and taking in its contents, deeply -and deliberately, like an epicure with his wine ‘searching the subtle -flavour.’” Such chosen writers remained for all times and seasons -faithful and cherished friends:— - - “With them I take delight in weal, - And seek relief in woe; - And while I understand and feel - How much to them I owe, - My cheeks have often been bedewed - With tears of thankful gratitude.” - -“If I were confined to a score of English books,” says Southey, “Sir -Thomas Browne would, I think, be one of them; nay, probably it would be -one if the selection were cut down to twelve. My library, if reduced -to those bounds, would consist of Shakspeare, Chaucer, Spenser, and -Milton; Jackson, Jeremy Taylor, and South; Isaac Walton, Sidney’s -Arcadia, Fuller’s Church History, and Sir Thomas Browne; and what a -wealthy and well-stored mind would that man have, what an inexhaustible -reservoir, what a Bank of England to draw upon for profitable thoughts -and delightful associations, who should have fed upon them!” It must -have gone hard with Southey, in making out this list, to exclude -Clarendon, and doubtless if the choice were not limited to books written -in English, the Utopia would have urged its claim to admission. With -less difficulty he could skip the whole of the eighteenth century. From -_Samson Agonistes_ to _The Task_, there was no English poem which held -a foremost place in his esteem. Berkeley and Butler he valued highly; -but Robert South seemed to him the last of the race of the giants. An -ancestral connection with Locke was not a source of pride to Southey; he -respected neither the philosopher’s politics nor his metaphysics; still, -it is pleasant, he says, to hear of somebody between one’s self and Adam -who has left a name. - -Four volumes of what are called Southey’s _Commonplace Books_ have been -published, containing some three thousand double-column pages; and -these are but a selection from the total mass of his transcripts. It is -impossible to give a notion of a miscellany drawn from so wide-ranging -a survey of poetry, biography, history, travels, topography, divinity, -not in English alone, but also in Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, -Portuguese. Yet certain main lines can be traced which give some -meaning to this huge accumulation. It is easy to perceive that the -collector wrought under an historical bias, and that social, literary, -and ecclesiastical history were the directions in which the historical -tendency found its play. Such work of transcribing, though it did not -rest Southey’s hand, was a relief to his mind after the excitement of -composition, and some of it may pass for a kind of busy idleness; but -most of his transcripts were made with a definite purpose—that of -furnishing materials for work either actually accomplished or still in -prospect, when at last the brain grew dull and the fingers slack. “I -am for ever making collections,” he writes, “and storing up materials -which may not come into use till the Greek Calends. And this I have been -doing for five-and-twenty years! It is true that I draw daily upon my -hoards, and should be poor without them; but in prudence I ought now to -be working up those materials rather than adding to so much dead stock.” -When Ticknor visited him in 1819, Southey opened for the young American -his great bundles of manuscript materials for the _History of Portugal_, -and the _History of the Portuguese East Indies_. Southey had charmed him -by the kindness of his reception; by the air of culture and of goodness -in his home; by his talk, bright and eager, “for the quickness of his -mind expresses itself in the fluency of his utterance; and yet he is -ready upon almost any subject that can be proposed to him, from the -extent of his knowledge.” And now, when Ticknor saw spread before him -the evidence of such unexampled industry, a kind of bewilderment took -possession of him. “Southey,” he writes in his diary, “is certainly an -extraordinary man, one of those whose characters I find it difficult -to comprehend, because I hardly know how such elements can be brought -together, such rapidity of mind with such patient labour and wearisome -exactness, so mild a disposition with so much nervous excitability, and -a poetical talent so elevated with such an immense mass of minute, dull -learning.” - -If Ticknor had been told that this was due to Epictetus, it might have -puzzled him still more; but it is certain that only through the strenuous -appliance of will to the formation of character could Southey have -grown to be what he was. He had early been possessed by the belief -that he must not permit himself to become the slave or the victim of -sensibility, but that in the little world of man there are two powers -ruling by a Divine right—reason and conscience, in loyal obedience to -which lies our highest freedom. Then, too, the circumstances of his life -prompted him to self-mastery and self-management. That he should every -day overtake a vast amount of work, was not left to his choosing or -declining—it was a matter of necessity; to accomplish this, he must get -all possible advantage out of his rapidity of intellect and his energy -of feeling, and at the same time he must never put an injurious strain -on these. It would not do for Southey to burn away to-day in some white -flame of excitement the nerve which he needed for use to-morrow. He -could not afford to pass a sleepless night. If his face glowed or his -brain throbbed, it was a warning that he had gone far enough. His very -susceptibility to nervous excitement rendered caution the more requisite. -William Taylor had compared him to the mimosa. Hazlitt remembered him -with a quivering lip, a hectic flush upon his cheek, a roving fire in -his eye, a falcon glance, a look at once aspiring and dejected. Crabb -Robinson found in him a likeness to Shelley. Humphry Davy had proved -the fineness of his sensibility by that odd neurometer, the nitrous -oxide. “The truth is,” writes Southey, “that though some persons, whose -knowledge of me is scarcely skin-deep, suppose I have no nerves, because -I have great self-control as far as regards the surface, if it were not -for great self-management, and what may be called a strict intellectual -regimen, I should very soon be in a deplorable state of what is called -nervous disease, and this would have been the case any time during the -last twenty years.” And again: “A man had better break a bone, or even -lose a limb, than shake his nervous system. I, who never talk about my -nerves (and am supposed to have none by persons who see as far into me as -they do into a stone wall), know this.” Southey could not afford to play -away his health at hazard, and then win it back in the lounge of some -foreign watering-place. His plan, on the contrary, was to keep it, and to -think about it as little as possible. A single prescription sufficed for -a life-time—_In labore quies._ “I think I may lay claim,” he says, “to -the praise of self-management both in body and mind without paying too -much attention to either—exercising a diseased watchfulness, or playing -any tricks with either.” It would not have been difficult for Southey, -with such a temperament as his, to have wrecked himself at the outset -of his career. With beautiful foiled lives of young men Southey had a -peculiar sympathy. But the gods sometimes give white hairs as an aureole -to their favoured ones. Perhaps, on the whole, for him it was not only -more prudent but also more chivalrous to study to be quiet; to create a -home for those who looked to him for security; to guard the happiness of -tender women; to make smooth ways for the feet of little children; to -hold hands in old age with the friends of his youth; to store his mind -with treasures of knowledge; to strengthen and chasten his own heart; -to grow yearly in love for his country and her venerable heritage of -manners, virtue, laws; to add to her literature the outcome of an adult -intellect and character; and having fought a strenuous and skilful fight, -to fall as one whose sword an untimely stroke has shattered in his hand. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -WAYS OF LIFE AT KESWICK, 1803-1839 (_continued_). - - -The texture of Southey’s life was so uniform, the round from morning -till night repeated itself with so much regularity, that one day may -stand as representative of a thousand. We possess his record of how the -waking hours went by when he was about thirty years old, and a similar -record written when he was twice that age. His surroundings had changed -in the mean time, and he himself had changed; the great bare room which -he used from the first as a study, fresh plastered in 1804, with the -trowel-lines on the ceiling pierced by the flaws of winter, containing -two chairs and a little table—“God help me!” he exclaims, “I look in -it like a cock-robin in a church”—this room had received, long before -1834, its lining of comely books, its white and gold pyramids, its -brackets, its cherished portraits. The occupant of the study had the -same spare frame, the same aspect of lightness and of strength, the -same full eyebrows shadowing the dark-brown eyes, the same variously -expressive muscular mouth; the youthful wildness in his countenance had -given place to a thoughtful expression, and the abundant hair still -clustering over his great brow was snowy white. Whatever had changed, -his habits—though never his tyrants—remained, with some variations in -detail, the same. “My actions,” he writes to a friend not very long -after his arrival in Keswick, “are as regular as those of St. Dunstan’s -quarter-boys. Three pages of history after breakfast (equivalent to five -in small quarto printing); then to transcribe and copy for the press, or -to make my selections and biographies, or what else suits my humour till -dinner-time; from dinner to tea I read, write letters, see the newspaper, -and very often indulge in a siesta—for sleep agrees with me.... After tea -I go to poetry, and correct, and rewrite, and copy till I am tired, and -then turn to anything else till supper; and this is my life—which, if it -be not a very merry one, is yet as happy as heart could wish.” “See how -the day is disposed of!” begins the later record; “I get out of bed as -the clock strikes six, and shut the house-door after me as it strikes -seven.[8] After two hours with Davies, home to breakfast, after which -Cuthbert engages me till about half-past ten, and when the post brings -no letters that either interest or trouble me (for of the latter I have -many), by eleven I have done with the newspaper, and can then set about -what is properly the business of the day. But letters are often to be -written, and I am liable to frequent interruptions; so that there are not -many mornings in which I can command from two to three unbroken hours at -the desk. At two I take my daily walk, be the weather what it may, and -when the weather permits, with a book in my hand; dinner at four, read -about half an hour; then take to the sofa with a different book, and -after a few pages get my soundest sleep, till summoned to tea at six. -My best time during the winter is by candle-light; twilight interferes -with it a little; and in the season of company I can never count upon an -evening’s work. Supper at half-past nine, after which I read an hour, and -then to bed. The greatest part of my miscellaneous work is done in the -odds and ends of time.” - -It was part of Southey’s regimen to carry on several works at once; -this he found to be economy of time, and he believed it necessary for -the preservation of his health. Whenever one object entirely occupied -his attention, it haunted him, oppressed him, troubled his dreams. The -remedy was simple—to do one thing in the morning, another in the evening. -To lay down poetry and presently to attack history seems feasible, and -no ill policy for one who is forced to take all he can out of himself; -but Southey would turn from one poetical theme to another, and could -day by day advance with a pair of epics. This was a source of unfailing -wonder to Landor. “When I write a poem,” he says, “my heart and all my -feelings are upon it.... High poems will not admit flirtation.” Little -by little was Southey’s way, and so he got on with many things. “Last -night,” he writes to Bedford, “I began the Preface [to _Specimens of -English Poets_]—huzza! And now, Grosvenor, let me tell you what I have to -do. I am writing—1. _The History of Portugal_; 2. _The Chronicle of the -Cid_; 3. _The Curse of Kehama_; 4. _Espriella’s Letters_. Look you, all -these _I am_ writing.... By way of interlude comes in this preface. Don’t -swear, and bid me do one thing at a time. I tell you I can’t afford to -do one thing at a time—no, nor two neither; and it is only by doing many -things that I contrive to do so much: for I cannot work long together -at anything without hurting myself, and so I do everything by heats; -then, by the time I am tired of one, my inclination for another is come -round.” A strong, deliberate energy, accordingly, is at the back of all -Southey’s work; but not that blind creative rapture which will have its -own way, and leaves its subject weak but appeased. “In the day-time -I laboured,” says Landor, “and at night unburdened my soul, shedding -many tears. My _Tiberius_ has so shaken me at last that the least thing -affects me violently.” Southey shrank back from such agitations. A great -Elizabethan poet is described by one of his contemporaries as one standing - - “Up to the chin in the Pierian flood.” - -Southey did not wade so far; he stepped down calmly until the smooth -waters touched his waist; dipped seven times, and returned to the bank. -It was a beautiful and an elevating rite; but the waves sing with lyric -lips only in the midmost stream; and he who sings with them, and is swift -as they, need not wonder if he sink after a time, faint, breathless, -delighted. - -Authorship, it must be remembered, was Southey’s trade, the business -of his life, and this, at least, he knew how to conduct well. To be a -prophet and call down flame from heaven, and disappear in a whirlwind -and a chariot of fire, is sublime; but prophets can go in the strength -of a single meal for more days and nights than one would choose to name -in this incredulous age, and, if they eat, there are ravens to bring -them food. No ravens brought loaves to Greta Hall; and Southey had an -unprophet-like craving for the creature comforts of beef and bread, for -wine if it might be had, and at supper for one meditative tumbler of -punch or black-currant rum. Besides, what ravens were ever pledged to -feed a prophet’s sisters-in-law, or his nephews and nieces? Let it be -praise enough for much of Southey’s performance that he did good work in -workmanlike fashion. To shift knowledge into more convenient positions -is to render no unimportant service to mankind. In the gathering of -facts, Southey was both swift and patient in an extraordinary degree; -he went often alone, and he went far; in the art of exposition he was -unsurpassed; and his fine moral feeling and profound sympathy with -elementary justice created, as De Quincey has observed, a soul under what -else might well be denominated, Miltonically, “the ribs of death.” From -the mending of his pens to the second reading aloud of his proof-sheets, -attending as he read to the fall of each word upon the ear, Southey -had a diligent care for everything that served to make his work right. -He wrote at a moderate pace; re-wrote; wrote a third time if it seemed -desirable; corrected with minute supervision. He accomplished so much, -not because he produced with unexampled rapidity, but because he worked -regularly, and never fell into a mood of apathy or ennui. No periods of -tempestuous vacancy lay between his periods of patient labour. One work -always overlapped another—thus, that first idle day, the begetter of so -many idle descendants, never came. But let us hear the craftsman giving a -lesson in the knack of authorship to his brother, Dr. Henry Southey, who -has a notion of writing something on the Crusades: - - “Now then, supposing that you will seriously set about the - _Crusades_, I will give you such directions in the art of - historical book-keeping as may save time and facilitate labour. - - “Make your writing-books in foolscap quarto, and write on - only one side of a leaf; draw a line down the margin, marking - off space enough for your references, which should be given - at the end of every paragraph; noting page, book, or chapter - of the author referred to. This minuteness is now demanded, - and you will yourself find it useful; for, in transcribing or - in correcting proofs, it is often requisite to turn to the - original authorities. Take the best author; that is to say, - the one that has written most at length of all the _original_ - authors, upon the particular point of time on which you are - employed, and draw up your account from him; then, on the - opposite page, correct and amplify this from every other who - has written on the same subject. This page should be divided - into two columns, one of about two-thirds of its breadth, the - other the remaining one. You are thus enabled to _add_ to your - _additions_. - - “One of these books you should have for your geography; that - is to say, for collecting descriptions of all the principal - scenes of action (which must be done from books of travels), - their situation, their strength, their previous history, and - in the notes, their present state. [Another book—he adds in a - subsequent letter—you must keep for the bibliography of your - subject.] - - “These descriptions you can insert in their proper places when - you transcribe. Thus, also, you should collect accounts of - the different tribes and dynasties which you have occasion to - mention. In this manner the information which is only to be got - at piecemeal, and oftentimes incidentally, when you are looking - for something else, is brought together with least trouble, and - almost imperceptibly. - - “All relative matter not absolutely essential to the subject - should go in the form of supplementary notes, and these you - may make as amusing as you please, the more so, and the more - curious, the better. Much trouble is saved by writing them - on separate bits of paper, each the half of a quarter of a - foolscap sheet—numbering them, and making an index of them; in - this manner they are ready for use when they are wanted. - - “It was some time before I fell unto this system of - book-keeping, and I believe no better can be desired. A Welsh - triad might comprehend all the rules of style. Say what you - have to say as _perspicuously_ as possible, as _briefly_ as - possible, and as _rememberably_ as possible, and take no other - thought about it. Omit none of those little circumstances which - give life to narration, and bring old manners, old feelings, - and old times before your eyes.” - -Winter was Southey’s harvest season. Then for weeks no visitor knocked at -Greta Hall, except perhaps Mr. Wordsworth, who had plodded all the way -from Rydal on his indefatigable legs. But in summer interruptions were -frequent, and Southey, who had time for everything, had time to spare not -only for friends but for strangers. The swarm of lakers was, indeed, not -what it is now-a-days, but to a studious man it was, perhaps, not less -formidable. By Gray’s time the secret of the lakes had been found out; -and if the visitors were fewer, they were less swift upon the wing, and -their rank or fame often entitled them to particular attention. Coroneted -coaches rolled into Keswick, luggage-laden; the American arrived -sometimes to make sure that Derwentwater would not be missed out of Lake -Michigan, sometimes to see King George’s laureate; and cultured Americans -were particularly welcome to Southey. Long-vacation reading-parties -from Oxford and Cambridge—known among the good Cumberland folk as the -“cathedrals”—made Keswick a resort. Well for them if, provided with an -introduction, they were invited to dine at Greta Hall, were permitted to -gaze on the choice old Spaniards, and to converse with the laureate’s -stately Edith and her learned cousin. Woe to them if, after the -entanglements of a Greek chorus or descriptions of the temperate man and -the magnanimous man, they sought to restore their tone by a cat-worrying -expedition among the cottages of Keswick. Southey’s cheek glowed, his -eye darkened and flashed, if he chanced to witness cruelty; some of the -Cambridge “cathedrals” who received a letter concerning cats in July, -1834, may still bear the mark of its leaded thong in their moral fibre, -and be the better for possessing Southey’s sign-manual. - -A young step-child of Oxford visited Keswick in the winter of 1811-12, -and sought the acquaintance of the author of _Thalaba_. Had Southey -been as intolerant or as unsympathetic as some have represented him, -he could not have endured the society of one so alien in opinion and -so outspoken as Shelley. But courtesy, if it were nothing more, was at -least part of Southey’s self-respect; his intolerance towards persons -was, in truth, towards a certain ideal, a certain group of opinions; -when hand touched hand and eye met eye, all intolerance vanished, and -he was open to every gracious attraction of character and manner. There -was much in Shelley that could not fail to interest Southey; both loved -poetry, and both felt the proud, secluded grandeur of Landor’s verse; -both loved men, and thought the world wants mending, though their plans -of reform might differ. That Shelley was a rebel expelled from Oxford did -not shock Southey, who himself had been expelled from Westminster and -rejected at Christ Church. Shelley’s opinions were crude and violent, -but their spirit was generous, and such opinions held by a youth in his -teens generally mean no more than that his brain is working and his heart -ardent. Shelley’s rash marriage reminded Southey of another marriage, -celebrated at Bristol some fifteen years ago, which proved that rashness -is not always folly. The young man’s admiration of _Thalaba_ spoke well -for him; and certainly during the earlier weeks of their intercourse -there was on Shelley’s part a becoming deference to one so much his -superior in years and in learning, deference to one who had achieved -much while Shelley still only dreamed of achievement. Southey thought -he saw in the revolutionary enthusiast an image of his former self. -“Here,” he says, “is a man at Keswick who acts upon me as my own ghost -would do. He is just what I was in 1794. His name is Shelley, son to the -member for Shoreham.... At present he has got to the Pantheistic stage of -philosophy, and in the course of a week I expect he will be a Berkeleyan, -for I have put him upon a course of Berkeley. It has surprised him a good -deal to meet, for the first time in his life, with a man who perfectly -understands him and does him full justice. I tell him that all the -difference between us is that he is nineteen and I am thirty-seven; and -I daresay it will not be very long before I shall succeed in convincing -him that he may be a true philosopher and do a great deal of good with -6000_l._ a year; the thought of which troubles him a great deal more at -present than ever the want of sixpence (for I have known such a want) -did me.” There were other differences between Robert Southey and the -inconstant star that passed by Greta Hall than that of years. Southey had -quickly learned to put a bound to his desires, and within that bound to -work out for himself a possession of measureless worth. It seemed to him -part of a man’s virtue to adhere loyally to the bond signed for each of -us when we enter life. Is our knowledge limited—then let us strive within -those limits. Can we never lay hands on the absolute good—then let us -cherish the good things that are ours. Do we hold our dearest possessions -on a limited tenure—that is hard, but is it not in the bond? How faint a -loyalty is his who merely yields obedience perforce! let us rather cast -in our will, unadulterated and whole, with that of our divine Leader; -_sursum corda_—there is a heaven above. But Shelley—the nympholept of -some radiant ante-natal sphere—fled through his brief years ever in -pursuit of his lost lady of light; and for him loyalty to the bond of -life seemed to mean a readiness to forget all things, however cherished, -so soon as they had fulfilled their service of speeding him on towards -the unattainable. It could not but be that men living under rules so -diverse should before long find themselves far asunder. But they parted -in 1812 in no spirit of ill-will. Southey was already a state-pensioner -and a champion of the party of order in the _Quarterly Review_; this did -not prevent the young apostle of liberty and fraternity from entering -his doors, and enjoying Mrs. Southey’s tea-cakes. Irish affairs were -earnestly discussed; but Southey, who had written generously of Emmett -both in his verse and in the _Quarterly_, could not be hostile to one -whose illusions were only over-sanguine; and while the veritable Southey -was before Shelley’s eyes, he could not discern the dull hireling, the -venomous apostate, the cold-blooded assassin, of freedom conjured up by -Byron and others to bear Southey’s name. - -Three years later Shelley presented his _Alastor_ to the laureate, -and Southey duly acknowledged the gift. The elder poet was never slow -to recognize genius in young men, but conduct was to him of higher -importance than genius; he deplored some acts in Shelley’s life which -seemed to result directly from opinions professed at Keswick in -1811—opinions then interpreted as no more than the disdain of checks -felt by every spirited boy. Southey heard no more from him until a -letter came from Pisa inquiring whether Shelley’s former entertainer at -Keswick were his recent critic of the _Quarterly Review_, with added -comments, courteous but severe, on Southey’s opinions. The reply was -that Southey had not written the paper, and had never in any of his -writings alluded to Shelley in any way. A second letter followed on each -side, the elder man pleading, exhorting, warning; the younger justifying -himself, and returning to the attack. “There the correspondence ended. -On Shelley’s part it was conducted with the courtesy which was natural -to him; on mine, in the spirit of one who was earnestly admonishing a -fellow-creature.” - -Much of Southey’s time—his most valued possession—was given to his -correspondents. Napoleon’s plan of answering letters, according to -Bourrienne, was to let them lie unopened for six weeks, by which time -nine out of ten had answered themselves, or had been answered by -history. Coleridge’s plan—says De Quincey—was shorter; he opened none, -and answered none. To answer all forthwith was the habit of Southey. -Thinking doubtless of their differences in such minor moralities of life, -Coleridge writes of his brother-in-law:—“Always employed, his friends -find him always at leisure. No less punctual in trifles than steadfast in -the performance of highest duties, he inflicts none of those small pains -which irregular men scatter about them, and which in the aggregate so -often become formidable obstacles both to happiness and utility; while, -on the contrary, he bestows all the pleasures and inspires all that ease -of mind on those around or connected with him, which perfect consistency -and (if such a word might be framed) absolute _reliability_, equally in -small as in great concerns, cannot but inspire and bestow; when this, -too, is softened without being weakened by kindness and gentleness.” -Odd indeed wore some of the communications for which the poet-laureate, -the Tory reformer, and the loyal son of the Church was the mark. Now -a clergyman writes to furnish him with Scriptural illustrations of -_Thalaba_; now another clergyman favours him with an ingenious parallel -between Kehama and Nebuchadnezzar; now some anonymous person seriously -urges on Southey his duty of making a new version of the Psalms, and -laying it before the King to be approved and appointed to be sung in -churches; now a lunatic poet desires his brother to procure for his -title-page the names of Messrs. Longman and Rees; now a poor woman, -wife to a blind Homer, would have him led carefully to the summit of -Parnassus; now a poor French devil volunteers to translate _Roderick_ if -the author will have the goodness to send him a copy—even a defective -copy—which he pledges himself religiously to return; now a Yankee, who -keeps an exhibition at Philadelphia, modestly asks for Southey’s painted -portrait, “which is very worthy a place in my collection;” now a herdsman -in the vale of Clwyd requests permission to send specimens of prose and -verse—his highest ambition is the acquaintance of learned men; now the -Rev. Peter Hall begs to inform Southey that he has done more harm to -the cause of religion than any writer of the age; now a lover requests -him to make an acrostic on the name of a young lady—the lover’s rival -has beaten him in writing verses; enclosed is the honorarium. Southey’s -amiability at this point gave way; he did not write the acrostic, and -the money he spent on blankets for poor women in Keswick. A society for -the suppression of albums was proposed by Southey; yet sometimes he was -captured in the gracious mood. Samuel Simpson, of Liverpool, begs for -a few lines in his handwriting “to fill a vacancy in his collection -of autographs, without which his series must remain for ever most -incomplete.” The laureate replies: - - “Inasmuch as you Sam, a descendant of Sim, - For collecting handwritings have taken a whim, - And to me, Robert Southey, petition have made, - In a civil and nicely-penned letter—post-paid— - That I to your album so gracious would be - As to fill up a page there appointed for me, - Five couplets I send you, by aid of the Nine— - They will cost you in postage a penny a line: - At Keswick, October the sixth, they were done, - One thousand eight hundred and twenty and one.” - -Some of Southey’s distractions were of his own inviting. Soon after his -arrival at Keswick, a tiny volume of poems entitled _Clifton Grove_, -attracted his attention; its author was an undergraduate of Cambridge. -The _Monthly Review_ having made the discovery that it rhymed in one -place _boy_ and _sky_, dismissed the book contemptuously. Southey could -not bear to think that the hopes of a lad of promise should be blasted, -and he wrote to Henry Kirke White, encouraging him, and offering him help -towards a future volume. The cruel dulness of the reviewer sat heavily -on the poor boy’s spirits, and these unexpected words of cheer came with -most grateful effect. It soon appeared, however, that Southey’s services -must be slight, for his new acquaintance was taken out of his hands by -Mr. Simeon, the nursing-father of Evangelicalism. At no time had Southey -any leanings towards the Clapham Sect; and so, while he tried to be of -use to Kirke White indirectly, their correspondence ceased. When the -lad, in every way lacking pith and substance, and ripening prematurely -in a heated atmosphere, drooped and died, Southey was not willing that -he should be altogether forgotten; he wrote offering to look over -whatever papers there might be, and to give an opinion on them. “Down -came a box-full,” he tells Duppa, “the sight of which literally made -my heart ache and my eyes overflow, for never did I behold such proofs -of human industry. To make short, I took the matter up with interest, -collected his letters, and have, at the expense of more time than such -a poor fellow as myself can very well afford, done what his family are -very grateful for, and what I think the world will thank me for too. Of -course I have done it gratuitously.... That I should become, and that -voluntarily too, an editor of Methodistical and Calvinistic letters, -is a thing which, when I think of, excites the same sort of smile that -the thought of my pension does.” A brief statement that his own views -on religion differed widely from those of Kirke White sufficed to save -Southey’s integrity. The genius of the dead poet he overrated; it was an -error which the world has since found time to correct. - -This was but one of a series of many instances in which Southey, stemming -the pressure of his own engagements, asserted the right to be generous of -his time and strength and substance to those who had need of such help -as a sound heart and a strong arm can give. William Roberts, a Bristol -bank-clerk, dying of consumption at nineteen, left his only possession, -some manuscript poems, in trust to be published for the benefit of a -sister whom he passionately loved. Southey was consulted, and at once -bestirred himself on behalf of the projected volume. Herbert Knowles, -an orphan lad at school in Yorkshire, had hoped to go as a sizar to St. -John’s; his relations were unable to send him; could he help himself by -publishing a poem? might he dedicate it to the laureate? The poem came to -Southey, who found it “brimful of power and of promise;” he represented -to Herbert the folly of publishing, promised ten pounds himself, and -procured from Rogers and Earl Spencer twenty more. Herbert Knowles, in -a wise and manly letter, begged that great things might not be expected -of him; he would not be idle, his University career should be at least -respectable:—“Suffice it, then, to say, _I thank you from my heart_; -let time and my future conduct tell the rest.” Death came to arbitrate -between his hopes and fears. James Dusautoy, another schoolboy, one of -ten children of a retired officer, sent specimens of his verse, asking -Southey’s opinion on certain poetical plans. His friends thought the -law the best profession for him; how could he make literature help him -forward in his profession? Southey again advised against publication, -but by a well-timed effort enabled him to enter Emanuel College. -Dusautoy, after a brilliant promise, took fever, died, and was buried, in -acknowledgment of his character and talents, in the college cloisters. -When at Harrogate in the summer of 1827, Southey received a letter, -written with much modesty and good feeling, from John Jones, an old -serving-man; he enclosed a poem on “The Redbreast,” and would take the -liberty, if permitted, to offer other manuscripts for inspection. Touches -of true observation and natural feeling in the verses on the little -bird with “look oblique and prying head and gentle affability” pleased -Southey, and he told his humble applicant to send his manuscript book, -warning him, however, not to expect that such poems would please the -public—“the time for them was gone by, and whether the public had grown -wiser in these matters or not, it had certainly become less tolerant -and less charitable.” By procuring subscribers and himself contributing -an Introductory Essay on the lives and works of our Uneducated Poets, -Southey secured a slender fortune for the worthy old man, who laid the -table none the less punctually because he loved Shakespeare and the -Psalter, or carried in his head some simple rhymes of his own. It pleased -Southey to show how much intellectual pleasure and moral improvement -connected with such pleasure are within reach of the humblest; thus a -lesson was afforded to those who would have the March of Intellect beaten -only to the tune of _Ça ira_. “Before I conclude”—so the Introduction -draws to an end—“I must, in my own behalf, give notice to all whom it may -concern that I, Robert Southey, Poet-laureate, being somewhat advanced -in years, and having business enough of my own fully to occupy as much -time as can be devoted to it, consistently with a due regard to health, -do hereby decline perusing or inspecting any manuscript from any person -whatsoever, and desire that no application on that score may be made -to me from this time forth; this resolution, which for most just cause -is taken and here notified, being, like the laws of the Medes and the -Persians, not to be changed.” - -It was some time after this public announcement that a hand, which may -have trembled while yet it was very brave and resolute, dropped into -the little post-office at Haworth, in Yorkshire, a packet for Robert -Southey. His bold truthfulness, his masculine self-control, his strong -heart, his domestic temper sweet and venerable, his purity of manners, a -certain sweet austerity, attracted to him women of fine sensibility and -genius who would fain escape from their own falterings and temerities -under the authority of a faithful director. Already Maria del Occidente, -“the most impassioned and most imaginative of all poetesses,” had -poured into his ear the tale of her slighted love. Newly come from -Paris, and full of enthusiasm for the Poles, she hastened to Keswick -to see in person her sympathetic adviser; she proved, says Southey, a -most interesting person of the mildest and gentlest manners. With him -she left, on returning to America, her _Zophiel_ in manuscript, the -publication of which he superintended. “_Zophiel_, Southey says, is by -some Yankee woman”—Charles Lamb breaks forth—“as if there ever had been -a woman capable of anything so great!” Now, in 1837, a woman of finer -spirit, and capable of higher things than _Zophiel_, addressed a letter -to Robert Southey, asking his judgment of her powers as disclosed in -the poems which she forwarded. For some weeks Charlotte Brontë waited, -until almost all hope of a reply was lost. At length the verdict came. -Charlotte Brontë’s verse was assuredly written with her left hand; her -passionate impulses, crossed and checked by fiery fiats of the will, -would not mould themselves into little stanzas; the little stanzas must -be correct, therefore they must reject such irregular heavings and swift -repressions of the heart. Southey’s delay in replying had been caused -by absence from home. A little personal knowledge of a poet in the -decline of life might have tempered her enthusiasm; yet he is neither a -disappointed nor a discontented man; she will never hear from him any -chilling sermons on the text. All is vanity; the faculty of verse she -possesses in no inconsiderable degree; but this, since the beginning of -the century, has grown to be no rare possession; let her beware of making -literature her profession, check day-dreams, and find her chief happiness -in her womanly duties; then she may write poetry for its own sake, not -in a spirit of emulation, not through a passion for celebrity; the -less celebrity is aimed at, the more it is likely to be deserved. “Mr. -Southey’s letter,” said Charlotte Brontë, many years later, “was kind -and admirable, a little stringent, but it did me good.” She wrote again, -striving to repress a palpitating joy and pride in the submission to her -director’s counsel, and the sacrifice of her cherished hopes; telling him -more of her daily life, of her obedience to the day’s duty, her efforts -to be sensible and sober: “I had not ventured,” she says, “to hope for -such a reply—so considerate in its tone, so noble in its spirit.” Once -more Southey wrote, hoping that she would let him see her at the Lakes: -“You would then think of me afterwards with the more good-will, because -you would perceive that there is neither severity nor moroseness in the -state of mind to which years and observation have brought me.... And now, -madam, God bless you. Farewell, and believe me to be your sincere friend, -Robert Southey.” It was during a visit to the Lakes that Charlotte -Brontë told her biographer of these letters. But Southey lay at rest in -Crosthwaite churchyard. - -“My days among the dead are past”—Southey wrote, but it is evident -that the living, and not those of his own household alone, claimed no -inconsiderable portion of his time. Indeed, it would not be untrue to -assert that few men have been more genuinely and consistently social, -that few men ever yielded themselves more constantly to the pleasures of -companionship. But the society he loved best was that of old and chosen -friends, or if new friends, one at a time, and only one. Next to romping -with my children, he said, I enjoy a _tête-à-tête_ conversation with -an _old_ friend or a _new_. “With one I can talk of familiar subjects -which we have discussed in former years, and with the other, if he have -any brains, I open what to me is a new mine of thought.” Miscellaneous -company to a certain extent disordered and intoxicated him. He felt no -temptation to say a great deal, but he would often say things strongly -and emphatically, which were better left unsaid. “In my hearty hatred of -assentation I commit faults of the opposite kind. Now I am sure to find -this out myself, and to get out of humour with myself; what prudence I -have is not ready on demand; and so it is that the society of any except -my friends, though it may be sweet in the mouth, is bitter in the belly.” -When Coleridge, in their arguments, allowed him a word, Southey made up -in weight for what was wanting in measure; he saw one fact quickly, and -darted at it like a greyhound. De Quincey has described his conversation -as less flowing and expansive than that of Wordsworth—more apt to clothe -itself in a keen, sparkling, aphoristic form; consequently sooner coming -to an abrupt close; “the style of his mind naturally prompts him to adopt -a trenchant, pungent, aculeated form of terse, glittering, stenographic -sentences—sayings which have the air of laying down the law without any -_locus penitentiæ_ or privilege of appeal, but are not meant to do so.” -The same manner, tempered and chastened by years, can be recognized in -the picture of Southey drawn by his friend Sir Henry Taylor:— - - “The characteristics of his manner, as of his appearance, - were lightness and strength, an easy and happy composure as - the accustomed mood, and much mobility at the same time, so - that he could be readily excited into any degree of animation - in discourse, speaking, if the subject moved him much, with - extraordinary fire and force, though always in light, laconic - sentences. When so moved, the fingers of his right hand - often rested against his mouth and quivered through nervous - susceptibility. But excitable as he was in conversation, he - was never angry or irritable; nor can there be any greater - mistake concerning him than that into which some persons have - fallen when they have inferred, from the fiery vehemence with - which he could give utterance to moral anger in verse or prose, - that he was personally ill-tempered or irascible. He was, in - truth, a man whom it was hardly possible to quarrel with or - offend personally, and face to face.... He was averse from - argumentation, and would commonly quit a subject, when it - was passing into that shape, with a quiet and good-humoured - indication of the view in which he rested. He talked most, - and with most interest, about books and about public affairs; - less, indeed hardly at all, about the characters and qualities - of men in private life, In the society of strangers or of - acquaintances, he seemed to take more interest in the subjects - spoken of than in the persons present, his manner being that of - natural courtesy and general benevolence without distinction of - individuals. Had there been some tincture of social vanity in - him, perhaps he would have been brought into closer relations - with those whom he met in society; but though invariably kind - and careful of their feelings, he was indifferent to the - manner in which they regarded him, or (as the phrase is) to - his _effect_ in society; and they might, perhaps, be conscious - that the kindness they received was what flowed naturally and - inevitably to all, that they had nothing to give in return - which was of value to him, and that no individual relations - were established.” - -How deep and rich Southey’s social nature was, his published -correspondence, some four or five thousand printed pages, tells -sufficiently. These letters, addressed, for the most part, to good old -friends, are indeed genial, liberal of sympathy, and expecting sympathy -in return; pleasantly egotistic, grave, playful, wise, pathetic, with -a kind of stringent pathos showing through checks imposed by the wiser -and stronger will. Southey did not squander abroad the treasures of his -affection. To lavish upon casual acquaintance the outward and visible -signs of friendship seemed to him a profaning of the mystery of manly -love. “Your feelings,” he writes to Coleridge, “go naked; I cover mine -with a bear-skin; I will not say that you harden yours by your mode, but -I am sure that mine are the warmer for their clothing.” With strangers a -certain neutral courtesy served to protect his inner self like the low -leaves of his own holly-tree: - - “Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen - Wrinkled and keen; - No grazing cattle through their prickly round - Can reach to wound;” - -but to those of whose goodness and love he was well assured, there were -no protecting spines: - - “Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be, - Like the high leaves upon the Holly-tree.” - -“Old friends and old books,” he says, “are the best things that this -world affords (I like old wine also), and in these I am richer than -most men (the wine excepted).” In the group of Southey’s friends, what -first strikes one is, not that they are men of genius—although the group -includes Wordsworth, and Scott, and Henry Taylor—but that they are good -men. No one believed more thoroughly than Southey that goodness is a -better thing than genius; yet he required in his associates some high -excellence, extraordinary kindness of disposition or strength of moral -character, if not extraordinary intellect. To knit his friends in a -circle was his ardent desire; in the strength of his affections time -and distance made no change. An old College friend, Lightfoot, to visit -Southey, made the longest journey of his life; it was eight-and-twenty -years since they had met. When their hands touched, Lightfoot trembled -like an aspen-leaf. “I believe,” says Southey, “no men ever met more -cordially after so long a separation, or enjoyed each other’s society -more. I shall never forget the manner in which he first met me, nor -the tone in which he said ‘that, having now seen me, he should return -home and die in peace.’” But of all friends he was most at ease with -his dear Dapple, Grosvenor Bedford, who suited for every mood of mirth -and sorrow. When Mrs. Southey had fallen into her sad decay, and the -once joyous house was melancholy and silent, Southey turned for comfort -to Bedford. Still, some of their Rabelaisian humour remained, and all -their warmth of brotherly affection. “My father,” says Cuthbert Southey, -“was never tired of talking into Mr. Bedford’s trumpet.” And in more -joyous days, what noise and nonsense did they not make! “Oh! Grosvenor,” -exclaims Southey, “is it not a pity that two men who love nonsense so -cordially and naturally and _bonâfidically_ as you and I, should be three -hundred miles asunder? For my part, I insist upon it that there is no -sense so good as your honest, genuine nonsense.” - -A goodly company of friends becomes familiar to us as we read Southey’s -correspondence:—Wynn, wherever he was, “always doing something else,” yet -able, in the midst of politics and business, to find time to serve an -old schoolfellow; Rickman, full of practical suggestions, and accurate -knowledge and robust benevolence; John May, unfailing in kindness and -fidelity; Lamb for play and pathos, and subtle criticism glancing amid -the puns; William Taylor for culture and literary theory, and paradox and -polysyllables; Landor for generous admiration, and kindred enthusiasms -and kindred prejudices; Elmsley, and Lightfoot, and Danvers for love and -happy memories; Senhora Barker, the Bhow Begum, for frank familiarities, -and warm, womanly services; Caroline Bowles for rarer sympathy and -sacreder hopes and fears; Henry Taylor for spiritual sonship, as of a -son who is also an equal; and Grosvenor Bedford for everything great and -small, glad and sad, wise and foolish. - -No literary rivalries or jealousies ever interrupted for a moment any -friendship of Southey. Political and religious differences, which -in strangers were causes of grave offence, seemed to melt away when -the heretic or erring statist was a friend. But if success, fashion, -flattery, tested a man, and proved him wanting, as seemed to be the case -with Humphry Davy, his affection grew cold; and an habitual dereliction -of social duty, such as that of Coleridge, could not but transform -Southey’s feeling of love to one of condemning sorrow. To his great -contemporaries, Scott, Landor, Wordsworth, his admiration was freely -given. “Scott,” he writes, “is very ill. He suffers dreadfully, but -bears his sufferings with admirable equanimity.... God grant that he may -recover! He is a noble and generous-hearted creature, whose like we shall -not look upon again.” Of Wordsworth:—“A greater poet than Wordsworth -there never has been, nor ever will be.” “Two or three generations -must pass before the public affect to admire such poets as Milton and -Wordsworth. Of such men the world scarcely produces one in a millennium.” -With indignation crossed by a gleam of humour, he learnt that Ebenezer -Elliott, his pupil in the art of verse, had stepped forward as the lyrist -of radicalism; but the feeling could not be altogether anger with which -he remembered that earnest face, once seen by him at a Sheffield inn, -its pale grey eyes full of fire and meaning, its expression suiting well -with Elliott’s frankness of manner and simplicity of character. William -Taylor was one of the liberals of liberal Norwich, and dangled abroad -whatever happened to be the newest paradox in religion. But neither -his radicalism, nor his Pyrrhonism, nor his paradoxes, could estrange -Southey. The last time the oddly-assorted pair met was in Taylor’s house; -the student of German criticism had found some theological novelty, and -wished to draw his guest into argument; Southey parried the thrusts -good-humouredly, and at last put an end to them with the words, “Taylor, -come and see me at Keswick. We will ascend Skiddaw, where I shall have -you nearer heaven, and we will then discuss such questions as these.” - -In the year 1823 one of his oldest friends made a public attack on -Southey, and that friend the gentlest and sweetest-natured of them all. -In a _Quarterly_ article Southey had spoken of the Essays of Elia as a -book which wanted only a sounder religious feeling to be as delightful -as it was original. He had intended to alter the expression in the -proof-sheet, but no proof-sheet was ever sent. Lamb, already pained -by references to his writings in the _Quarterly_, some of which he -erroneously ascribed to Southey, was deeply wounded. “He might have -spared an old friend such a construction of a few careless flights that -meant no harm to religion.” A long expostulation addressed by Elia to -Robert Southey, Esq., appeared in the _London Magazine_ for October, only -a portion of which is retained in the Elia Essays under the title of “The -Tombs of the Abbey;” for though Lamb had playfully repented Coleridge’s -salutation, “my gentle-hearted Charles,” his heart was indeed gentle, -and could not endure the pain of its own wrath; among the memorials of -the dead in Westminster he finds his right mind, his truer self, once -more; he forgets the grave aspect with which Southey looked awful on his -poor friend, and spends his indignation harmless as summer lightning -over the heads of a Dean and Chapter. Southey, seeing the announcement -of letter addressed to him by Lamb, had expected a sheaf of friendly -pleasantries; with surprise he learnt what pain his words had caused. -He hastened to explain; had Lamb intimated his feelings in private, he -would have tried, by a passage in the ensuing _Quarterly_, to efface the -impression unhappily created; he ended with a declaration of unchanged -affection, and a proposal to call on Lamb. “On my part,” Southey said, -“there was not even a momentary feeling of anger;” he at once understood -the love, the error, the soreness, and the repentance awaiting a being so -composed of goodness as Elia. “Dear Southey”—runs the answer of Lamb—“the -kindness of your note has melted away the mist that was upon me. I have -been fighting against a shadow.... I wish both magazine and review were -at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister -(though innocent) will be still more so, for this folly was done without -her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel -was absent at the time. I will make up courage to see you, however, any -day next week. We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you. That -will be a second mortification; she will hate to see us; but come and -heap embers; we deserve it, I for what I have done, and she for being -my sister. Do come early in the day, by sunlight that you may see my -Milton.... Your penitent C. Lamb.” - -At Bristol, in 1808, Southey met for the first time the man of all others -whom he most desired to see, the only man living, he says, “of whose -praise I was ambitious, of whose censure would have humbled me.” This -was Walter Savage Landor. _Madoc_, on which Southey had build his hope -of renown as a poet, had been published, and had been coldly received; -_Kehama_, which had been begun consequently now stood still. Their -author could indeed, as he told Sir George Beaumont, be contented with -posthumous fame, but it was impossible to be contented with posthumous -bread and cheese. “St. Cecilia herself could not have played the organ -if there had been nobody to blow the bellows for her.” At this moment, -when he turned sadly and bravely from poetry to more profitable work, -he first looked on Landor. “I never saw any one more unlike myself,” -he writes, “in every prominent part of human character, nor any one -who so cordially and instinctively agreed with me on so many of the -most important subjects. I have often said before we met, that I would -walk forty miles to see him, and having seen him, I would gladly walk -fourscore to see him again. He talked of _Thalaba_, and I told him of -the series of mythological poems which I had planned, ... and also told -him for what reason they had been laid aside; in plain English, that I -could not afford to write them. Landor’s reply was, ‘Go on with them, -and I will pay for printing them, as many as you will write, and as -many copies as you please.’” The princely offer stung Southey, as he -says, to the very core; not that he thought of accepting that offer, -but the generous words were themselves a deed, and claimed a return. He -rose earlier each morning to carry on his _Kehama_, without abstracting -time from better-paid task-work; it advanced, and duly as each section -of this poem, and subsequently of his _Roderick_, came to be written, -it was transcribed for the friend whose sympathy and admiration were a -golden reward. To be praised by one’s peers is indeed happiness. Landor, -liberal of applause, was keen in suggestion and exact in censure. Both -friends were men of ardent feelings, though one had tamed himself, -while the other never could be tamed; both often gave their feelings a -vehement utterance. On many matters they thought, in the main, alike—on -the grand style in human conduct, on the principles of the poetic art, -on Spanish affairs, on Catholicism. The secret of Landor’s high-poised -dignity in verse had been discovered by Southey; he, like Landor, -aimed at a classical purity of diction; he, like Landor, loved, as a -shaper of imaginative forms, to embody in an act, or an incident, the -virtue of some eminent moment of human passion, and to give it fixity -by sculptured phrase; only the repression of a fiery spirit is more -apparent in Landor’s monumental lines than in Southey’s. With certain -organic resemblances, and much community of sentiment, there were large -differences between the two, so that when they were drawn together in -sympathy, each felt as if he had annexed a new province. Landor rejoiced -that the first persons who shared his turret at Llanthony were Southey -and his wife; again, in 1817, the two friends were together for three -days at Como, after Southey had endured his prime affliction—the death of -his son:— - - “Grief had swept over him; days darkened round; - Bellagio, Valintelvi smiled in vain, - And Monte Rosa from Helvetia far - Advanced to meet us, wild in majesty - Above the glittering crests of giant sons - Station’d around ... in vain too! all in vain.” - -Two years later the warm-hearted friend writes from Pistoia, rejoicing -in Southey’s joy: “Thank God! Tears came into my eyes on seeing that you -were blessed with a son.” To watch the happiness of children was Landor’s -highest delight; to share in such happiness was Southey’s; and Arnold -and Cuthbert formed a new bond between their fathers. In 1836, when -Southey, in his sixty-third year, guided his son through the scenes of -his boyhood, several delightful days were spent at Clifton with Landor. -I never knew a man of brighter genius or of kinder heart, said Southey; -and of Landor in earlier years:—“He does more than any of the gods of all -my mythologies, for his very words are thunder and lightning—such is the -power and splendour with which they burst out.” Landor responded with a -majestic enthusiasm about his friend, who seemed to him no less noble a -man than admirable a writer: - - “No firmer breast than thine hath Heaven - To poet, sage, or hero given: - No heart more tender, none more just, - To that He largely placed in trust: - Therefore shalt thou, whatever date - Of years be thine, with soul elate - Rise up before the Eternal throne, - And hear, in God’s own voice, ‘Well done!’” - -That “Well done” greeted Southey many years before Landor’s imperial -head was laid low. In the last letter from his friend received by -Southey—already the darkness was fast closing in—he writes, “If any man -living is ardent for your welfare, I am; whose few and almost worthless -merits your generous heart has always overvalued, and whose infinite -and great faults it has been too ready to overlook. I will write to you -often, now I learn that I may do it inoffensively; well remembering that -among the names you have exalted is Walter Landor.” Alas! to reply was -now beyond the power of Southey; still, he held _Gebir_ in his hands -oftener than any other volume of poetry, and, while thought and feeling -lived, fed upon its beauty. “It is very seldom now,” Caroline Southey -wrote at a later date, “that he ever names any person: but this morning, -before he left his bed, I heard him repeating softly to himself, _Landor, -ay, Landor_.” - -“If it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all”—this was ever -present to Southey during the happy days of labour and rest in Greta -Hall. While he was disposing his books so as to make the comeliest show, -and delighting in their goodly ranks; while he looked into the radiant -faces of his children, and loved their innocent brightness, he yet knew -that the day of detachment was approaching. There was nothing in such a -thought which stirred Southey to a rebellious mood; had he not set his -seal to the bond of life? How his heart rested in his home, only his -own words can tell; even a journey to London seemed too long:—“Oh dear; -oh dear! there is such a comfort in one’s old coat and old shoes, one’s -own chair and own fireside, one’s own writing-desk and own library—with -a little girl climbing up to my neck, and saying, ‘Don’t go to London, -papa—you must stay with Edith;’ and a little boy, whom I have taught to -speak the language of cats, dogs, cuckoos, and jackasses, etc., before he -can articulate a word of his own;—there is such a comfort in all these -things, that _transportation_ to London for four or five weeks seems a -heavier punishment than any sins of mine deserve.” Nor did his spirit of -boyish merriment abate until overwhelming sorrow weighed him down:—“I -am quite as noisy as I ever was,” he writes to Lightfoot, “and should -take as much delight as ever in showering stones through the hole of -the staircase against your room door, and hearing with what hearty good -earnest ‘you fool’ was vociferated in indignation against me in return. -Oh, dear Lightfoot, what a blessing it is to have a boy’s heart! it -is as great a blessing in carrying one through this world, as to have -a child’s spirit will be in fitting us for the next.” But Southey’s -light-heartedness was rounded by a circle of earnest acquiescence in -the law of mortal life; a clear-obscure of faith as pure and calm and -grave as the heavens of a midsummer night. At thirty he writes:—“No -man was ever more contented with his lot than I am, for few have ever -had more enjoyments, and none had ever better or worthier hopes. Life, -therefore, is sufficiently dear to me, and long life desirable, that I -may accomplish all which I design. But yet I could be well content that -the next century were over, and my part fairly at an end, having been -gone well through. Just as at school one wished the school-days over, -though we were happy enough there, because we expected more happiness and -more liberty when we were to be our own masters, might lie as much later -in the morning as we pleased, have no bounds and do no exercise—just so -do I wish that my exercises were over.” At thirty-five:—“Almost the only -wish I ever give utterance to is that the next hundred years were over. -It is not that the uses of this world seem to me weary, stale, flat, and -unprofitable—God knows far otherwise! No man can be better contented with -his lot. My paths are paths of pleasantness.... Still, the instability of -human happiness is ever before my eyes; I long for the certain and the -permanent.” “My notions about life are much the same as they are about -travelling—there is a good deal of amusement on the road, but, after -all, one wants to be at rest.” At forty:—“My disposition is invincibly -cheerful, and this alone would make me a cheerful man if I were not so -from the tenor of my life; yet I doubt whether the strictest Carthusian -has the thought of death more habitually in his mind.” - -Such was Southey’s constant temper: to some persons it may seem an -unfortunate one; to some it may be practically unintelligible. But -those who accept of the feast of life freely, who enter with a bounding -foot its measures of beauty and of joy—glad to feel all the while -the serviceable sackcloth next the skin—will recognize in Southey an -instructed brother of the Renunciauts’ rule. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -CHANGES AND EVENTS, 1803-1843. - - -In October, 1805, Southey started with his friend Elmsley for a short -tour in Scotland. On their way northward they stopped three days at -Ashestiel. There, in a small house, rising amid its old-fashioned garden, -with pastoral hills all around, and the Tweed winding at the meadow’s -end, lived Walter Scott. It was the year in which old Border song had -waked up, with ampler echoings, in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and -Scott was already famous. Earlier in the year he had visited Grasmere, -and had stood upon the summit of Helvellyn, with Wordsworth and Davy by -his side. The three October days, with their still, misty brightness, -went by in full enjoyment. Southey had brought with him a manuscript -containing sundry metrical romances of the fifteenth century, on which -his host pored, as far as courtesy and the hours allowed, with much -delight; and the guests saw Melrose, that old romance in stone so dear -to Scott, went salmon-spearing on the Tweed, dined on a hare snapped -up before their eyes by Percy and Douglas, and visited Yarrow. From -Ashestiel they proceeded to Edinburgh. Southey looked coldly on the grey -metropolis; its new city seemed a kind of Puritan Bath, which worshipped -propriety instead of pleasure; but the old town, seen amid the slant -light of a wild red sunset, impressed him much, its vast irregular -outline of roofs and chimneys rising against tumultuous clouds like the -dismantled fragments of a giant’s palace. Southey was prepared to find -himself and his friends of the Lakes persons of higher stature than -the Scotch _literatuli_. Before accepting an invitation to meet him at -supper, Jeffrey politely forwarded the proof of an unpublished review -of _Madoc_; if the poet preferred that his reviewer should not present -himself, Mr. Jeffrey would deny himself the pleasure of Mr. Southey’s -acquaintance. Southey was not to be daunted, and, as he tells it himself, -felt nothing but good-humour on beholding a bright-faced homunculus of -five-foot-one, the centre of an attentive circle, ëënunciating with -North-British ëëlocution his doctrines on taste. The lively little -gentleman, who thought to crush _The Excursion_—he could as easily crush -Skiddaw, said Southey—received from the author of _Madoc_ a courtesy _de -haut en bas_ intended to bring home to his consciousness the fact that he -was—but five-foot-one. The bland lips of the gods who looked down on Auld -Reekie that evening smiled at the magnanimity alike of poet and critic. - -Two years later (1807), differences having arisen between the proprietors -and the editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, it was in contemplation to -alter the management, and Longman wrote requesting Southey to review -him two or three articles “in his best manner.” Southey did not keep -firkins of criticism of first and second brand, but he was not unwilling -to receive ten guineas a sheet instead of seven pounds. When, however, -six months later, Scott urged his friend to contribute, Judge Jeffrey -still sat on the bench of the _Edinburgh Review_, hanging, drawing, and -quartering luckless poets with undiminished vivacity. It was of no use -for Scott to assure Southey that the homunculus, notwithstanding his -flippant attacks on _Madoc_ and _Thalaba_, had the most sincere respect -for their author and his talents. Setting all personal feelings aside, an -irreconcilable difference, Southey declared, between Jeffrey and himself -upon every great principle of taste, morality, and policy, occasioned a -difficulty which could not be removed. Within less than twelve months -Scott, alienated by the deepening Whiggery of the _Review_, and by more -personal causes, had ceased to contribute, and opposite his name in -the list of subscribers Constable had written, with indignant notes of -exclamation, “_Stopt!!!_” John Murray, the young bookseller in Fleet -Street, had been to Ashestiel; in “dern privacie” a bold complot was -laid; why should the Edinburgh clique carry it before them? The spirit of -England was still sound, and would respond to loyalty, patriotism, the -good traditions of Church and State, the temper of gentlemen, courage, -scholarship; Gifford, of the Anti-Jacobin, had surely a sturdier arm than -Jeffrey; George Ellis would remember his swashing-blow; there were the -Roses, and Matthias, and Heber; a rival _Review_ should see the light, -and that speedily; “a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation—an -excellent plot, very good friends.” - -Southey was invited to write on Spanish affairs for the first number of -the _Quarterly_ (February, 1809). His political opinions had undergone -a considerable alteration since the days of Pantisocracy and _Joan of -Arc_. The Reign of Terror had not caused a violent reaction against -the doctrine of a Republic, nor did he soon cease to sympathize with -France. But his hopes were dashed; it was plain that “the millennium -would not come this bout.” Man as he is appeared more greedy, ignorant, -and dangerous than he had appeared before, though man as he may be was -still a being composed of knowledge, virtue, and love. The ideal republic -receded into the dimness of unborn time; no doubt—so Southey maintained -to the end—a republic is the best form of government in itself, as a -sundial is simpler and surer than a time-piece; but the sun of reason -does not always shine, and therefore complicated systems of government, -containing checks and counter-checks, are needful in old countries for -the present; better systems are no doubt conceivable—for better men. -“Mr. Southey’s mind,” wrote Hazlitt, “is essentially sanguine, even to -overweeningness. It is prophetic of good; it cordially embraces it; it -casts a longing, lingering look after it, even when it is gone for ever. -He cannot bear to give up the thought of happiness, his confidence in his -fellow-men, when all else despair. It is the very element where he must -live or have no life at all.’” This is true; we sacrifice too much to -prudence—Southey said, when not far from sixty—and in fear of incurring -the danger or the reproach of enthusiasm, too often we stifle the holiest -impulses of the understanding and the heart. Still, at sixty he believed -in a state of society actually to be realized as superior to English -society in the nineteenth century, as that itself is superior to the -condition of the tattooed Britons, or of the Northern Pirates from whom -we have descended. But the error of supposing such a state of society -too near, of fancying that there is a short road to it, seemed to him a -pernicious error, seducing the young and generous into an alliance with -whatever is flagitious and detestable. - -It was not until the Peace of Amiens (1802) that Southey was restored -in feeling to his own country. From that hour the new departure in his -politics may be said to date. The honour of England became as dear to -him as to her most patriotic son; and in the man who had subjugated -the Swiss Republic, and thrown into a dungeon the champion of Negro -independence, and slaughtered his prisoners at Jaffa, he indignantly -refused to recognize the representative of the generous principles of -1789. To him, as to Wordsworth, the very life of virtue in mankind seemed -to dwell in the struggle against the military despotism which threatened -to overwhelm the whole civilized world. Whatever went along with a -spirited war-policy Southey could accept. It appeared to himself that his -views and hopes had changed precisely because the heart and soul of his -wishes had continued the same. To remove the obstacles which retard the -improvement of mankind was the one object to which, first and last, he -gave his most earnest vows. “This has been the pole-star of my course; -the needle has shifted according to the movements of the state vessel -wherein I am embarked, but the direction to which it points has always -been the same. I did not fall into the error of those who, having been -the friends of France when they imagined that the cause of liberty was -implicated in her success, transferred their attachment from the Republic -to the Military Tyranny in which it ended, and regarded with complacency -the progress of oppression because France was the oppressor. ‘They had -turned their face toward the East in the morning to worship the rising -sun, and in the evening they were looking eastward, obstinately affirming -that still the sun was there.’ I, on the contrary altered my position as -the world went round.”[9] - -Wordsworth has described in memorable words the sudden exaltation of -the spirit of resistance to Napoleon, its change from the temper of -fortitude to enthusiasm, animated by hope, when the Spanish people -rose against their oppressors. “From that moment,” he says, “this -corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.” -Southey had learned to love the people of the Peninsula; he had almost -naturalized himself among them by his studies of Spanish and Portuguese -history and literature. Now there was in him a new birth of passion at -a period of life when ordinarily the crust of custom begins to encase -our free spirits. All his moral ardour flowed in the same current with -his political enthusiasm; in this war there was as direct a contest -between the principles of evil and good as the elder Persians or the -Manicheans imagined in their fables. “Since the stirring day of the -French Revolution,” he writes to John May, “I have never felt half so -much excitement in political events as the present state of Spain has -given me.” Little as he liked to leave home, if the Spaniards would -bury their crown and sceptre, he would gird up his loins and assist at -the ceremony, devout as ever pilgrim at Compostella. A federal republic -which should unite the Peninsula, and allow the internal governments to -remain distinct, was what Southey ardently desired. When news came of the -Convention of Cintra (1808), the poet, ordinarily so punctual a sleeper, -lay awake all night; since the execution of the Brissotines no public -event distressed him so deeply. “How gravely and earnestly used Samuel -Taylor Coleridge”—so writes Coleridge’s daughter—“and William Wordsworth -and my uncle Southey also, to discuss the affairs of the nation, as if it -all came home to their business and bosoms, as if it were their private -concern! Men do not canvass these matters now-a-days, I think, quite in -the same tone.” - -That faith in the ultimate triumph of good which sustains Southey’s -heroine against the persecution of the Almighty Rajah, sustained -Southey himself during the long struggle with Napoleon. A military -despotism youthful and full of vigour, he said, must beat down corrupt -establishments and worn-out governments; but how can it beat down for -ever a true love of liberty and a true spirit of patriotism? When at last -tidings reached Keswick that the Allies were in Paris, Southey’s feelings -were such as he had never experienced before. “The curtain had fallen -after a tragedy of five-and-twenty years.” The hopes, and the ardours, -and the errors, and the struggles of his early life crowded upon his -mind; all things seemed to have worked together for good. He rejoiced -that the whirlwind of revolution had cleared away the pestilence of the -old governments; he rejoiced that right had conquered might. He did not -wish to see the bad Bourbon race restored, except to complete Bonaparte’s -overthrow. And he feared lest an evil peace should be made. Paris taken, -a commanding intellect might have cast Europe into whatever mould it -pleased. “The first business,” says Southey, with remarkable prevision, -“should have been to have reduced France to what she was before Louis -XIV.’s time; the second, to have created a great power in the North of -Germany, with Prussia at its head; the third, to have consolidated Italy -into one kingdom or commonwealth.” - -The politicians of the _Edinburgh Review_ had predicted ruin for all who -dared to oppose the Corsican; they ridiculed the romantic hopes of the -English nation; the fate of Spain, they declared in 1810, was decided; -it would be cruel, they said, to foment petty insurrections; France had -conquered Europe. It was this policy of despair which roused Scott and -Southey. “We shall hoist the bloody flag,” writes the latter, “down -alongside that Scotch ship, and engage her yard-arm to yard-arm.” But -at first Southey, by his own request, was put upon other work than that -of firing off the heavy _Quarterly_ guns. Probably no man in England -had read so many books of travel; these he could review better, he -believed, than anything else; biography and history were also within -his reach; with English poetry, from Spenser onwards, his acquaintance -was wide and minute, but he took no pleasure in sitting in judgment on -his contemporaries; his knowledge of the literary history of Spain and -Portugal was a speciality, which, as often as the readers of the _Review_ -could bear with it, might be brought into use. Two things he could -promise without fail—perfect sincerity in what he might write, without -the slightest pretension of knowledge which he did not possess, and a -punctuality not to be exceeded by Mr. Murray’s opposite neighbour, the -clock of St. Dunstan’s. - -Southey’s essays—literary, biographical, historical, and -miscellaneous—would probably now exist in a collected form, and -constitute a store-house of information—information often obtained -with difficulty, and always conveyed in a lucid and happy style—were -it not that he chose, on the eve of the Reform Bill, to earn whatever -unpopularity he could by collecting his essays on political and social -subjects. Affairs had hurried forward with eager strides; these -_Quarterly_ articles seemed already far behind, and might safely be left -to take a quiet corner in Time’s wallet among the alms for oblivion. -Yet Southey’s political articles had been effective in their day, and -have still a value by no means wholly antiquarian. His home politics had -been, in the main, determined by his convictions on the great European -questions. There was a party of revolution in this country eager to -break with the past, ready to venture every experiment for a future -of mere surmise. Southey believed that the moral sense of the English -people, their regard for conduct, would do much to preserve them from -lawless excess; still, the lesson read by recent history was that order -once overthrown, anarchy follows, to be itself quelled by the lordship -of the sword. Rights, however, were pleaded—shall we refuse to any man -the rights of a man? “Therapeutics,” says Southey, “were in a miserable -state as long as practitioners proceeded upon the gratuitous theory of -elementary complexions; ... natural philosophy was no better, being a -mere farrago of romance, founded upon idle tales or fanciful conjectures, -not upon observation and experiment. The science of politics is just -now in the same stage; it has been erected by shallow sophists upon -abstract rights and imaginary compacts, without the slightest reference -to habits and history.” “Order and improvement” were the words inscribed -on Southey’s banner. Order, that England might not fall, as France had -fallen, into the hands of a military saviour of society; order, that she -might be in a condition to wage her great feud on behalf of freedom with -undivided energy. Order, therefore, first; not by repression alone—though -there were a time and a place for repression also—but order with -improvement as a portion of its very life and being. Southey was a poet -and a moralist, and judged of the well-being of a people by other than -material standards; the wealth of nations seemed to him something other -and higher than can be ascertained by wages and prices, rent and revenue, -exports and imports. “True it is,” he writes, “the ground is more highly -cultivated, the crooked hedge-rows have been thrown down, the fields are -in better shape and of handsomer dimensions, the plough makes longer -furrows, there is more corn and fewer weeds; but look at the noblest -produce of the earth—look at the children of the soil, look at the seeds -which are sown here for immortality!” “The system which produces the -happiest moral effects will be found the most beneficial to the interest -of the individual and the general weal; upon this basis the science of -political economy will rest at last, when the ponderous volumes with -which it has been overlaid shall have sunk by their own weight into the -dead sea of oblivion.” Looking about him, he asked, What do the English -people chiefly need? More wealth? It may be so; but rather wisdom to use -the wealth they have. More votes? Yes, hereafter; but first the light of -knowledge, that men may see how to use a vote. Even the visible beauty -and grace of life seemed to Southey a precious thing, the loss of which -might be set over against some gain in pounds, shillings, and pence. The -bleak walls and barrack-like windows of a manufactory, the long, unlovely -row of operatives’ dwellings, struck a chill into his heart. He contrasts -the old cottages substantially built of native stone, mellowed by time, -taken by nature to herself with a mother’s fondness, the rose-bushes -beside the door, the little patch of flower-garden—he contrasts these -with the bald deformities in which the hands of a great mill are stalled. - -Before all else, national education appeared to Southey to be the need -of England. He saw a great population growing up with eager appetites, -and consciousness of augmented power. Whence were moral thoughtfulness -and self-restraint to come? Not, surely, from the triumph of liberal -opinions; not from the power to read every incentive to vice and -sedition; nor from Religious Tract societies; nor from the portentous -bibliolatry of the Evangelical party. But there is an education which -at once enlightens the understanding and trains the conscience and -the will. And there is that great association for making men good—the -Church of England. Connect the two—education and the Church; the progress -of enlightenment, virtue, and piety, however gradual, will be sure. -Subordinate to this primary measure of reform, national education, many -other measures were advocated by Southey. He looked forward to a time -when, the great struggle respecting property over—for this struggle he -saw looming not far off—public opinion will no more tolerate the extreme -of poverty in a large class of the people than it now tolerates slavery -in Europe; when the aggregation of land in the hands of great owners must -cease, when that community of lands, which Owen of Lanark would too soon -anticipate, might actually be realized. But these things were, perhaps, -far off. Meanwhile how to bring nearer the golden age? Southey’s son -has made out a long list of the measures urged upon the English people -in the _Quarterly Review_, or elsewhere, by his father. Bearing in mind -that the proposer of these measures resisted the Reform Bill, Free Trade, -and Catholic Emancipation, any one curious in such things may determine -with what political label he should be designated:—National education; -the diffusion of cheap and good literature; a well-organized system -of colonization, and especially of female emigration;[10] a wholesome -training for the children of misery and vice in great cities; the -establishment of Protestant sisters of charity, and a better order of -hospital nurses; the establishment of savings-banks in all small towns; -the abolition of flogging in the army and navy, except in extreme cases; -improvements in the poor-laws; alterations in the game-laws; alterations -in the criminal laws, as inflicting the punishment of death in far too -many cases; execution of criminals within prison walls; alterations in -the factory system for the benefit of the operative, and especially as to -the employment of children; national works—reproductive if possible—to -be undertaken in times of peculiar distress; the necessity of doing -away with interments in crowded cities; the system of giving allotments -of ground to labourers; the employment of paupers in cultivating waste -lands; the commutation of tithes; and last, the need for more clergymen, -more colleges, more courts of law. - -“Mr. Southey,” said Hazlitt, “missed his way in Utopia; he has found it -at old Sarum.” To one of Southey’s temper old Sarum seemed good, with -its ordered freedom, its serious aspiration, its habitual pieties, its -reasonable service, its reverent history, its beauty of holiness, its -close where priests who are husbands and fathers live out their calm, -benignant lives—its amiable home for those whose toil is ended, and who -now sleep well. But how Southey found his way from his early deism to -Anglican orthodoxy cannot be precisely determined. Certainly not for -many years could he have made that subscription to the Articles of the -Church of England, which at the first barred his way to taking orders. -The superstition, which seemed to be the chief spiritual food of Spain, -had left Southey, for the rest of his life, a resolute opponent of -Catholicism; and as he read lives of the Saints and histories of the -Orders, the exclamation, “I do well to be angry,” was often on his lips. -For the wisdom, learning, and devotion of the Jesuits he had, however, -a just respect. Geneva, with its grim logic and stark spirituality, -suited nerves of a different temper from his. For a time Southey thought -himself half a Quaker, but he desired more visible beauty and more -historical charm than he could find in Quakerism. Needing a comely home -for his spiritual affections, he found precisely what pleased him built -in the pleasant Anglican close. With growing loyalty to the State, his -loyalty to the Church could not but keep pace. He loved her tolerance, -her culture; he fed upon her judicious and learned writers—Taylor, with -his bright fancies like the little rings of the vine; South, hitting out -straight from the shoulder at anarchy, fanaticism, and licentiousness, -as Southey himself would have liked to hit; Jackson, whose weight of -character made his pages precious as with golden bullion. After all, old -Sarum had some advantages over Utopia. - -The English Constitution consisting of Church and State, it seemed to -Southey an absurdity in politics to give those persons power in the -State whose duty it is to subvert the Church. Admit Catholics, he said, -to every office of trust, emolument, or honour; only never admit them -into Parliament. “The arguments about equal rights are fit only for -a schoolboy’s declamation; it may as well be said that the Jew has -a right to be a bishop, or the Quaker an admiral, as that the Roman -Catholic has a right to a seat in the British Legislature; his opinions -disqualify him.” To call this a question of toleration was impudence; -Catholics were free to practise the rites of their religion; they had -the full and free use of the press; perfect toleration was granted to -the members of that church which, wherever dominant, tolerates no other. -Catholic Emancipation would not conciliate Ireland; the great source of -Irish misery had been, not England’s power, but her weakness, and those -violences to which weakness resorts in self-defence; old sores were not -to be healed by the admission of Catholic demagogues into Parliament. -The measure styled Emancipation would assuredly be followed by the -downfall of the Protestant Establishment in Ireland, and by the spread of -Catholicism in English society. To Pyrrhonists one form of faith might -seem as good or as bad as the other; but the great mass of the English -people had not advanced so far in the march of intellect as to perceive -no important difference between Catholic and Protestant doctrine, or -between Catholic and Protestant morality. By every possible means, better -the condition of the Irish peasantry; give them employment in public -works; facilitate, for those who desire it, the means of emigration; -extend the poor-laws to Ireland, and lay that impost on absentees in such -a proportion as may compensate, in some degree, for their non-residence; -educate the people; execute justice and maintain peace, and the cry of -Catholic Emancipation may be safely disregarded. - -So Southey pleaded in the _Quarterly Review_. With reference to -Emancipation and to the Reform Bill, he and Wordsworth—who, perhaps, -had not kept themselves sufficiently in relation with living men and -the public sentiment of the day—were in their solitude gifted with a -measure of the prophetic spirit, which in some degree explains their -alarms. For the prophet who knows little of expediency and nothing of -the manipulation of parties, nothing of the tangled skein of contending -interests, sees the future in its moral causes, and he sees it in a -vision. But he cannot date the appearances in his vision. Battle, and -garments rolled in blood, and trouble, and dimness of anguish pass -before him, and he proclaims what it is given him to see. It matters not -a little, however, in the actual event, whether the battle be on the -morrow or half a century hence; and the prophet furnishes us with no -chronology, or at best with some vague time and times and half a time. -New forces have arisen before the terrors of his prediction come to pass, -and therefore, when they come to pass, their effect is often altogether -different from that anticipated. Wordsworth and Southey were right in -declaring that a vast and formidable change was taking place in the -England of their day: many things which they, amid incredulous scoffs, -announced, have become actual; others remain to be fulfilled. But the -events have taken up their place in an order of things foreign to the -conceptions of the prophets; the fire from heaven descends, but meanwhile -we, ingenious sons of men, have set up a lightning-conductor. - -Southey and the _Quarterly Review_ were often spoken of as a single -entity. But the _Review_, in truth, never precisely represented his -feelings and convictions. With Gifford he had no literary sympathies. -Gifford’s heart was full of kindness, says Southey, for all living -creatures except authors; _them_ he regarded as Isaac Walton did the -worm. Against the indulgence of that temper Southey always protested; -yet he was chosen to bear the reproach of having tortured Keats, and of -having anonymously glorified himself at the expense of Shelley. Gifford’s -omissions, additions, substitutions, often caused Southey’s article in -the _Review_ to be very unlike the article which he had despatched to -the editor in manuscript. Probably these changes were often made on -warrantable grounds. Southey’s confidence in his own opinions, which -always seemed to him to be based upon moral principles, was high; and he -was not in the habit of diluting his ink. Phrases which sounded well in -the library of Greta Hall had quite another sound in Mr. Murray’s office -in Fleet Street. - -On arriving in London for a short visit in the autumn of 1813, Southey -learnt that the Prince Regent wished to confer on him the Laureateship, -vacant by the death of Pye. Without consulting the Regent, Lord Liverpool -had previously directed that the office should be offered to Walter -Scott. On the moment came a letter from Scott informing Southey that he -had declined the appointment, not from any foolish prejudice against -holding it, but because he was already provided for, and would not -engross emoluments which ought to be awarded to a man of letters who had -no other views in life. Southey hesitated, having ceased for several -years to produce occasional verses; but his friend Croker assured him -that he would not be compelled to write odes as boys write exercises -at stated times on stated subjects; that it would suffice if he wrote -on great public events, or did not write, as the spirit moved him; and -thus his scruples were overcome. In a little, low, dark room in the -purlieus of St. James’—a solitary clerk being witness—the oath was duly -administered by a fat old gentleman-usher in full buckle, Robert Southey -swearing to be a faithful servant to the King, to reveal all treasons -which might come to his knowledge, and to obey the Lord Chamberlain -in all matters of the King’s service. It was Scott’s belief that his -generosity had provided for his poorer brother bard an income of three -or four hundred pounds a year. In reality the emolument was smaller and -the task-work more irksome than had been supposed. The tierce of Canary, -swilled by Ben Jonson and his poetic sons, had been wickedly commuted for -a small sum; the whole net income amounted to 90_l._ But this, “the very -least of Providence’s mercies,” as a poor clergyman said when pronouncing -grace over a herring, secured an important happiness for Southey: he did -not employ it, as Byron puts it, to butter his bread on both sides; he -added twelve pounds to it, and vested it forthwith in an insurance upon -his own life. “I have never felt any painful anxiety about providing for -my family, ...” he writes to Scott; “but it is with the deepest feeling -of thanksgiving that I have secured this legacy for my wife and children, -and it is to you that I am primarily and chiefly indebted.” - -Croker’s assurance was too hastily given. The birthday Ode, indeed, -fell into abeyance during the long malady of George III.; but the -New-Year’s Ode had still to be provided. Southey was fortunate in 1814; -events worthy of celebration had taken place; a dithyramb, or rather an -oration in lines of irregular length, was accordingly produced, and was -forwarded to his musical yoke-fellow, Sir William Parsons. But the sight -of Southey’s page, over which the longs and shorts meandered seemingly -at their own sweet will, shocked the orderly mind of the chief musician. -What kind of ear could Mr. Southey have? His predecessor, the lamented -Mr. Pye, had written his Odes always in regular stanzas. What kind of -action was this exhibited by the unbroken State Pegasus? Duly as each -New Year approached, Southey set himself to what he called his _ode_ous -job; it was the price he paid for the future comfort of his children. -While his political assailants pictured the author of _Joan of Arc_ as -a court-lacquey following in the train of the fat Adonis, he, with grim -cheerfulness, was earning a provision for his girls; and had it not been -a duty to kiss hands on the appointment, His Royal Highness the Prince -Regent would never have seen his poet. Gradually the New-Year’s Ode -ceased to be looked for, and Southey was emancipated. His verse-making as -laureate occasionally rose into something higher than journeyman work; -when public events stirred his heart to joy, or grief, or indignation, -he wrote many admirable periods of measured rhetoric. _The Funeral Song -for the Princess Charlotte_ is of a higher strain; a knell, heavy yet -clear-toned, is tolled by its finely wrought octosyllabics. - -A few months after the battle of Waterloo, which had so deeply moved -Southey, he started with his wife, a rare voyager from Keswick, and his -little daughter Edith May, on a pilgrimage to the scene of victory. -The aunts remained to take care of Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, with the -nine-years-old darling of all, the only boy, Herbert. With Bruges, -“like a city of Elizabeth’s age—you expect to see a head with a ruff -looking from the window,” Southey was beyond measure delighted. At Ghent -he ransacked bookshops, and was pleased to see in the Beguinage the -realization of his own and Rickman’s ideas on Sisterhoods. On a clear -September day the travellers visited the battlefield; the autumnal -sunshine with soft airs, and now and again a falling leaf, while the bees -were busy with the year’s last flowers, suited well with the poet’s mood -of thankfulness, tempered by solemn thought. When, early in December, -they returned with a lading of toys to their beloved lake-country, little -Edith had hardly recovered from an illness which had attacked her at Aix. -It was seven o’clock in the evening by the time they reached Rydal, and -to press forward and arrive while the children were asleep would be to -defraud everyone of the first reward earned by so long absence. “A return -home under fortunate circumstances has something of the character of a -triumph, and requires daylight.” The glorious presence of Skiddaw, and -Derwent bright under the winter sky, asked also for a greeting at noon -rather than at night. A depth of grave and tender thankfulness lay below -Southey’s joy that morning; it was twelve years since he had pitched his -tent here beside the Greta; twelve years had made him feel the touch of -time; but what blessings they had brought! all his heart’s desire was -here—books, children, leisure, and a peace that passeth understanding. -The instant hour, however, was not for meditation but for triumph:— - - “O joyful hour, when to our longing home - The long-expected wheels at length drew nigh! - When the first sound went forth, ‘they come! they come!’ - And hope’s impatience quicken’d every eye! - ‘Never had man whom Heaven would heap with bliss - More glad return, more happy hour than this.’ - - “Aloft on yonder bench, with arms dispread, - My boy stood, shouting there his father’s name, - Waving his hat around his happy head; - And there a younger group his sisters came: - Smiling they stood with looks of pleased surprise - While tears of joy were seen in elder eyes. - - “Soon all and each came crowding round to share - The cordial greeting, the beloved sight; - What welcomings of hand and lip were there! - And when those overflowings of delight - Subsided to a sense of quiet bliss, - Life hath no purer, deeper happiness. - - “The young companion of our weary way - Found here the end desired of all her ills; - She who in sickness pining many a day - Hunger’d and thirsted for her native hills. - Forgetful now of suffering past and pain, - Rejoiced to see her own dear home again. - - “Recovered now the homesick mountaineer - Sate by the playmate of her infancy, - The twin-like comrade,[11]—render’d doubly dear - For that long absence; full of life was she - With voluble discourse and eager mien - Telling of all the wonders she had seen. - - “Here silently between her parents stood - My dark-eyed Bertha, timid as a dove; - And gently oft from time to time she woo’d - Pressure of hand, or word, or look of love, - With impulse shy of bashful tenderness, - Soliciting again the wished caress. - - “The younger twain in wonder lost were they, - My gentle Kate and my sweet Isabel: - Long of our promised coming, day by day, - It had been their delight to hear and tell; - And now when that long-promised hour was come, - Surprise and wakening memory held them dumb. - - ... - - “Soon they grew blithe as they were wont to be; - Her old endearments each began to seek; - And Isabel drew near to climb my knee, - And pat with fondling hand her father’s cheek; - With voice and touch and look reviving thus - The feelings which had slept in long disuse. - - “But there stood one whose heart could entertain - And comprehend the fulness of the joy; - The father, teacher, playmate, was again - Come to his only and his studious boy; - And he beheld again that mother’s eye - Which with such ceaseless care had watched his infancy. - - “Bring forth the treasures now—a proud display— - For rich as Eastern merchants we return! - Behold the black Beguine, the Sister grey, - The Friars whose heads with sober motion turn, - The Ark well filled with all its numerous hives, - Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japhet, and their wives. - - “The tumbler loose of limb; the wrestlers twain; - And many a toy beside of quaint device, - Which, when his fleecy flocks no more can gain - Their pasture on the mountains hoar with ice, - The German shepherd carves with curious knife, - Earning in easy toil the food of frugal life. - - “It was a group which Richter, had he viewed, - Might have deemed worthy of his perfect skill; - The keen impatience of the younger brood, - Their eager eyes and fingers never still; - The hope, the wonder, and the restless joy - Of those glad girls and that vociferous boy. - - “The aged friend[12] serene with quiet smile, - Who in their pleasure finds her own delight; - The mother’s heart-felt happiness the while; - The aunt’s rejoicing in the joyful sight; - And he who in his gaiety of heart, - With glib and noisy tongue performed the showman’s part.” - -It was manifest to a thoughtful observer, says De Quincey, that Southey’s -golden equanimity was bound up in a trinity of chords, a threefold -chain—in a conscience clear of offence, in the recurring enjoyments -from his honourable industry, and in the gratification of his parental -affections. In the light of Herbert’s smiles his father almost lived; -the very pulses of his heart played in unison with the sound of his -son’s laughter. “There was,” De Quincey goes on, “in his manner towards -this child, and towards this only, something that marked an excess of -delirious doating, perfectly unlike the ordinary chastened movement of -Southey’s affections; and something also which indicated a vague fear -about him; a premature unhappiness, as if already the inaudible tread of -calamity could be divined, as if already he had lost him.” As a baby, -while Edith was only “like an old book, ugly and good,” Herbert, in spite -of his Tartar eyes, a characteristic of Southey babyhood, was already -beautiful. At six he was more gentle and more loving, says Southey, than -you can almost conceive. “He has just learnt his Greek alphabet, and -is so desirous of learning, so attentive and so quick of apprehension, -that, if it please God he should live, there is little doubt but that -something will come out of him.” In April, 1809, Southey writes to -Landor, twenty-four hours after an attack of croup which seized his boy -had been subdued: “Even now I am far, very far, from being at ease. There -is a love which passeth the love of women, and which is more lightly -alarmed than the lightest jealousy. Landor, I am not a Stoic at home; I -feel as you do about the fall of an old tree! but, O Christ! what a pang -it is to look upon the young shoot and think it will be cut down! And -this is the thought which almost at all times haunts me; it comes upon me -in moments when I know not whether the tears that start are of love or of -bitterness.” - -The alarm of 1809 passed away, and Herbert grew to the age of nine, -active and bright of spirit, yet too pale, and, like his father, hanging -too constantly over his books; a finely organized being, delicate in his -sensibilities, and prematurely accomplished. Before the snow had melted -which shone on Skiddaw that day when the children welcomed home their -parents, Herbert Southey lay in his grave. His disease was an affection -of the heart, and for weeks his father, palsied by apprehension, and -unable to put hand to his regular work, stood by the bedside, with -composed countenance, with words of hope, and agonized heart. Each day -of trial made his boy more dear. With a trembling pride Southey saw the -sufferer’s behaviour, beautiful in this illness as in all his life; -nothing could be more calm, more patient, more collected, more dutiful, -more admirable. At last, worn with watching, Southey and his wife were -prevailed upon to lie down. The good Mary Barker watched, and it is she -who writes the following lines:—“Herbert!—that sweetest and most perfect -of all children on this earth, who died in my arms at nine years of age, -whose death I announced to his father and mother in their bed, where I -had prayed and persuaded them to go. When Southey could speak, his first -words were, ‘_The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed -be the name of the Lord!_’ Never can I forget that moment” (1816). - -“I am perfectly resigned,” Southey wrote to Bedford on the most mournful -of all days, “and do not give way to grief. Thank God I can control -myself for the sake of others.” But next morning found him weak as a -child, even weaker in body than in mind, for long anxiety had worn him -to the bone, and while he tried to calm and console the rest, his limbs -trembled under him. His first wild wish to fly from Keswick passed away; -it was good to be there near the boy’s grave. Weak as he was, he flung -himself upon his work. “I employ myself incessantly, taking, however, -every day as much exercise as I can bear without injurious fatigue, which -is not much.” “It would surprise you were you to see what I get through -in a day.” “For the first week I did as much every day as would at other -times have seemed the full and overflowing produce of three.” From his -early discipline in the stoical philosophy some help now was gained; -from his active and elastic mind the gain was more; but these would have -been insufficient to support him without a heart-felt and ever-present -faith that what he had lost was not lost for ever. A great change had -indeed come upon him. He set his house in order, and made arrangements -as if his own death were at hand. He resolved not to be unhappy, but the -joyousness of his disposition had received its death-wound; he felt as -if he had passed at once from boyhood to the decline of life. He tried -dutifully to make head against his depression, but at times with poor -success. “I employ myself, and have recovered strength, but in point -of spirits I rather lose ground.” Still, there are hidden springs of -comfort. “The head and flower of my earthly happiness is cut off. But I -am _not_ unhappy.” “When I give way to tears, which is only in darkness -or solitude, they are not tears of unmingled pain.” All beloved ones grew -more precious; the noble fortitude of his wife made her more than ever -a portion of his best self. His uncle’s boy, Edward, he could not love -more than he had loved him before; but, “as far as possible, he will -be to me hereafter,” writes Southey, “in the place of my son.” And in -truth the blessing of Herbert’s boyhood remained with him still; a most -happy, a most beautiful boyhood it had been; he was thankful for having -possessed the child so long; “for worlds I would not but have been his -father.” “I have abundant blessings left; for each and all of these I -am truly thankful; but of all the blessings which God has given me, this -child, who is removed, is the one I _still_ prize the most.” To relieve -feelings which he dared not utter with his lips, he thought of setting -about a monument in verse for Herbert and himself, which might make one -inseparable memory for father and son. A page or two of fragmentary -thoughts in verse and prose for this poetic monument exists, but Southey -could not keep his imagination enough above his heart to dare to go on -with it; to do so would have dissolved his heart anew. One or two of -these holy scriptures of woe, truly red drops of Southey’s life-blood, -will tell enough of this love passing the love of women. - - “Thy life was a day; and sum it well, life is but a week of - such days—with how much storm and cold and darkness! Thine was - a sweet spring day—a vernal Sabbath, all sunshine, hope, and - promise.” - - * * * * * - - “And that name - In sacred silence buried, which was still - At morn and eve the never-wearying theme - Of dear discourse.” - - * * * * * - - “Playful thoughts - Turned now to gall and esil.” - - * * * * * - - “No more great attempts, only a few autumnal flowers like - second primroses, etc.” - - * * * * * - - “They who look for me in our Father’s kingdom - Will look for him also; inseparably - Shall we be remembered.” - - * * * * * - - “Come, then, - Pain and Infirmity—appointed guests, - My heart is ready.” - -From the day of his son’s death Southey began to step down from the -heights of life, with a steadfast foot, and head still held erect. He -recovered cheerfulness, but it was as one who has undergone an amputation -seeks the sunshine. Herbert’s grave anchored him in Keswick. An offer of -2000_l._ a year for a daily article in the _Times_ did not tempt him to -London. His home, his books, his literary work, Skiddaw, Derwentwater, -and Crosthwaite churchyard were too dear. Three years later came the -unlooked-for birth of a second boy; and Cuthbert was loved by his -father; but the love was chastened and controlled of autumnal beauty and -seriousness. - -When the war with France had ended, depression of trade was acutely felt -in England; party spirit ran high, and popular passions were dangerously -roused. In the spring of 1817, the Laureate saw to his astonishment -a poem entitled _Wat Tyler_, by Robert Southey, advertised as just -published. He had written this lively dramatic sketch in the full fervour -of Republicanism twenty-three years previously; the manuscript had passed -into other hands, and he had long ceased to think of it. The skulking -rogue and the knavish publisher who now gave it to the world had chosen -their time judiciously; this rebuke to the apostate of the _Quarterly_ -would be a sweet morsel for gossip-mongers to roll under the tongue, an -infallible pill to purge melancholy with all true children of progress. -No fewer than sixty thousand copies, it is said, were sold. _Wat Tyler_ -suited well with Southey’s nonage; it has a Bright rhetorical fierceness -of humanity. The speech-making radical blacksmith, “still toiling, yet -still poor,” his insulted daughter, her virtuous lover, the communist -priest John Ball, whose amiable theology might be that of Mr. Belsham in -his later days, stand over against the tyrant king, his Archiepiscopal -absolver from oaths, the haughty nobles, and the servile minions of the -law. There was nothing in the poem that could be remembered with shame, -unless it is shameful to be generous and inexperienced at the age of -twenty. But England in 1817 seemed charged with combustibles, and even -so small a spark as this was not to be blown about without a care. The -Prince Regent had been fired at; there were committals for treason; -there were riots in Somersetshire; the swarm of Manchester Blanketeers -announced a march to London; the Habeas Corpus was suspended; before -the year was out, Brandreth and his fellows had been executed at Derby. -Southey applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to restrain -the publication of his poem. It was refused by Lord Eldon, on the ground -that the publication being one calculated to do injury to society, the -author could not reclaim his property in it. There the matter might have -dropped; but it seemed good to Mr. William Smith, representing liberal -Norwich, where Southey had many friends, to take his seat in the House -of Commons one evening with the _Quarterly Review_ in one pocket and -_Wat Tyler_ in the other, and to read aloud contrasted extracts showing -how the malignant renegade could play the parts, as it suited him, of a -seditious firebrand and a servile courtier. Wynn on the spot administered -a well-deserved rebuke; Wilberforce wrote to Southey that, had he been -present, his voice would also have been heard. Coleridge vindicated him -in the _Courier_. Seldom, indeed, was Southey drawn into controversy. -When pelted with abuse, he walked on with uplifted head, and did not turn -round; it seemed to him that he was of a stature to invite bespattering. -His self-confidence was high and calm; that he possessed no common -abilities, was certain: and the amount of toil which went into his -books gave him a continual assurance of their worth which nothing could -gainsay; he had no time for moods of dejection and self-distrust. But -if Southey struck, he struck with force, and tried to leave his mark on -his antagonist. To repel this attack made in the House of Commons, was a -duty. _A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P._, was written, as Wordsworth -wished, with the strength of masculine indignation; blow after blow -is planted with sure effect; no word is wasted; there is skill in the -hard hitting; and the antagonist fairly overthrown, Southey, with one -glance of scorn, turns on his heel, and moves lightly away. “I wish you -joy,” wrote Walter Scott, “of your triumphant answer.... Enough of this -gentleman, who I think will not walk out of the round again to slander -the conduct of individuals.” The concluding sentences of the Letter give -in brief Southey’s fearless review of his unstained career. - - “How far the writings of Mr. Southey may be found to deserve a - favourable acceptance from after-ages, time will decide; but a - name which, whether worthily or not, has been conspicuous in - the literary history of its age, will certainly not perish.... - It will be related that he lived in the bosom of his family, - in absolute retirement; that in all his writings there - breathed the same abhorrence of oppression and immorality, - the same spirit of devotion, and the same ardent wishes for - the melioration of mankind; and that the only charge which - malice could bring against him was, that as he grew older, his - opinions altered concerning the means by which that melioration - was to be effected, and that as he learnt to understand the - institutions of his country, he learnt to appreciate them - rightly, to love, and to revere, and to defend them. It will - be said of him that in an age of personality he abstained - from satire; and that during the course of his literary life, - often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which he ever - condescended to reply was when a certain Mr. William Smith - insulted him in Parliament with the appellation of renegade. - On that occasion, it will be said, he vindicated himself, as - it became him to do, and treated his calumniator with just - and memorable severity. Whether it shall be added that Mr. - William Smith redeemed his own character by coming forward with - honest manliness, and acknowledging but is not of the slightest - importance to me.” - -One other personal strife is worthy of notice. When visiting London in -1813, he made the acquaintance of Byron. “Is Southey magnanimous?” Byron -asked Rogers, remembering how he had tried his wit in early days on -_Thalaba_ and _Madoc_. Rogers could answer for Southey’s magnanimity, -and the two poets met, Southey finding in Byron very much more to like -than he had expected, and Byron being greatly struck by Southey’s “epic -appearance.” “To have that poet’s head and shoulders,” he said, “I would -almost have written his Sapphics.” And in his diary he wrote:—“Southey’s -talents are of the first order. His prose is perfect.... He has probably -written too much of poetry for the present generation; posterity will -probably select; but he has passages equal to anything.” At a later -date Byron thought Southey’s _Roderick_ “the first poem of the time.” -But when about to publish _Don Juan_, a work “too free for these very -modest days,” what better mode of saucily meeting public opinion, and -getting a first laugh on his side, than to dedicate such a poem to a -virtuous Laureate, and show that he and his fellows, who had uttered -nothing base, were yet political turncoats, not entitled by any superfine -morality to assume airs of indignation against him and his reprobate -hero? The dedication was shown about and laughed over though not yet -printed. Southey heard of these things, and felt released from that -restraint of good feeling which made him deal tenderly in his writings -with every one to whom he had once given his hand. An attack upon -himself would not alone have roused Southey; no man received abuse with -more self-possession. Political antagonism would still have left him -able to meet a fellow-poet on the common ground of literature. When -distress fastened upon Leigh Hunt, whose _Examiner_ and _Liberal_ had -never spared the Laureate, Mr. Forster did not hesitate to apply to -Southey for assistance, which was declined solely because the circular -put forward Leigh Hunt’s political services as those chiefly entitling -him to relief. “Those who are acquainted with me,” Southey wrote, “know -that I am neither resentful nor intolerant;” and after expressing -admiration of Leigh Hunt’s powers, the letter goes on to suggest that -his friends should draw up a circular in which, without compromising -any of his opinions, the appeal might be made solely upon the score -of literary merit, “placing him thus, as it were, within the sacred -territory which ought always to be considered and respected as neutral -ground.” Wise and admirable words! But there was one offence which was -to Southey the unforgivable sin against the holy spirit of a nation’s -literature. To entice poetry from the altar, and to degrade her for the -pleasure of wanton imaginations, seemed to Southey, feeling as he did -the sanctity of the love of husband and wife, of father and child, to -be treason against humanity. Southey was, indeed, tolerant of a certain -Rabelaisian freedom in playing with some of the enclosed incidents of -our life. “All the greatest of poets,” he says, “have had a spice of -Pantagruelism in their composition, which I verily believe was essential -to their greatness.” But to take an extravagant fling in costume of a -_sans-culotte_, and to play the part of “pander-general to the youth of -Great Britain,” were different things. In his preface to _A Vision of -Judgment_, Southey deplored the recent fall in the ethical spirit of -English literature, “which for half a century had been distinguished -for its moral purity,” and much of the guilt he laid on the leaders of -“the Satanic School.” In the long-run the interests of art, as of all -high endeavour, are invariably proved to be one with the interest of a -nation’s morality. It had taken many lives of men to lift literature out -of the beast. From prudential virtue and the lighter ethics of Addison -it had risen to the grave moral dignity of Johnson, and from that to the -impassioned spirituality of Wordsworth. Should all this be abandoned, -and should literature now be permitted to reel back into the brute? We -know that the title “Satanic School” struck home, that Byron was moved, -and replied with brilliant play of wit in his _Vision of Judgment_. The -laughers went over to Byron’s side. One who would be witty has certain -advantages, if content to disregard honesty and good manners. To be witty -was not Southey’s concern. “I saw,” he said, many years after, “that -Byron was a man of quick impulses, strong passions, and great powers. I -saw him abuse these powers; and, looking at the effect of his writings on -the public mind, it was my duty to denounce such of them as aimed at the -injury of morals and religion. This was all.” If continental critics find -in what he set down a characteristic example of the bourgeois morality of -England, we note with interest their point of view.[13] - -“Bertha, Kate, and Isabel,” wrote Southey on June 26, 1820, “you have -been very good girls, and have written me very nice letters, with which -I was much pleased. This is the last letter which I can write in return; -and as I happen to have a quiet hour to myself here at Streatham, on -Monday noon, I will employ that hour in relating to you the whole history -and manner of my being ell-ell-deed at Oxford by the Vice-Chancellor.” -Public distinctions of this kind he rated, perhaps, below their true -value. To stand well with Murray and Longman was more to him than any -handle to his name. A similar honour from Cambridge he declined. His -gold medal from the Royal Society of Literature he changed for a silver -coffee-pot for Mrs. Southey. To “be be-doctored and called everything -that ends in issimus,” was neither any harm nor much good; but to take -his seat between such doctors as the Duke of Wellington, and—perhaps—Sir -Walter Scott was a temptation. When his old schoolfellow Phillimore -presented Southey, the theatre rang with applause. Yet the day was, -indeed, one of the heaviest in his life. Never had he stopped for a night -in Oxford since he left it in 1794, intending to bid farewell to Europe -for an Utopia in some back settlement of America. Not one who really -loved him—for Scott could not appear—was present. When in the morning -he went to look at Balliol, no one remembered him except old Adams, who -had attempted to dress his hair as a freshman, and old Mrs. Adams, the -laundress, both now infirm. From the tumultuous theatre Southey strolled -into Christ Church walks alone. What changes time had made! Many of -the friends with whom he had sauntered there were in their graves. So -brooding, he chewed the bitter-sweet of remembrance, until at length -a serious gratitude prevailed. “Little girls,” the letter ends, “you -know it might be proper for me now to wear a large wig, and to be called -Doctor Southey, and to become very severe, and leave off being a comical -papa. And if you should find that ell-ell-deeing has made this difference -in me, you will not be surprised. However, I shall not come down in my -wig, neither shall I wear my robes at home.” - -While in Holland, in the summer of 1826, a more conspicuous honour -was unexpectedly thrust upon Southey. The previous year he had gone -abroad with Henry Taylor, and at Douay was bitten on the foot by Satan, -according to his conjecture, sitting squat at his great toe; at Leyden he -was obliged to rest his inflamed foot, and there it was his good fortune -to be received into the house of the poet Bilderdijk, a delightful -old erudite and enthusiast, whose charming wife was the translator -of _Roderick_. In 1826 he visited his kind friends once more, and at -Brussels received the surprising intelligence that during his absence he -had been elected a member of Parliament. Lord Radnor, an entire stranger, -had read with admiration Southey’s confession of faith concerning Church -and State, in the last paragraph of his _Book of the Church_. By his -influence the poet had been elected for the borough of Downton: the -return, however, was null, for Southey held a pension during pleasure; -and even if this were resigned, where was the property qualification? -This latter objection was met by Sir Robert Inglis, who desired to know -whether Southey would sit in Parliament if an estate of 300_l._ a year -were purchased for him. An estate of 300_l._ a year would be a very -agreeable thing to Robert Lackland; but he had no mind to enter on a new -public sphere for which he was ill qualified by his previous life, to -risk the loss of health by midnight debates, to abandon the education of -his little boy, and to separate himself more or less from his wife and -daughters. He could not be wrong, he believed, in the quiet confidence -which assured him that he was in his proper place. - -Now more than ever before, Edith Southey needed her husband’s sustaining -love. On the day of his return to Keswick, while amused to find himself -the object of mob popularity, he learnt that one of his daughters was -ailing; the illness, however, already seemed to have passed the worst. -This appearance of amendment quickly proved deceptive; and, on a Sunday -evening in mid July, Isabel, “the most radiant creature that I ever -beheld or shall behold,” passed away, while her father was on his knees -in the room below, praying that she might be released from suffering -either by recovery or by death. All that had been gone through ten years -before, renewed itself with dread exactness. Now, as then, the first day -was one of stunned insensibility; now, as then, the next morning found -him weak as a child, and striving in his weakness to comfort those who -needed his support; now, as then, he turned to Grosvenor Bedford for -a heart on which he might lay his own heart prone, letting his sorrow -have its way. “Nothing that has assailed my character, or affected my -worldly fortune, ever gave me an hour’s vexation, or deprived me of an -hour’s rest. My happiness has been in my family, and there only was I -vulnerable; that family is now divided between earth and heaven, and I -must pray to remain with those who are left, so long as I can contribute -to their welfare and comfort, rather than be gathered (as otherwise I -would fain be) to those who are gone.” On that day of which the word -Τετέλεσται is the record, the day on which the body of his bright Isabel -was committed to earth, Southey wrote a letter to his three living -daughters, copied with his own hand for each. It said what he could -not bear to say of consolation and admonishment by word of mouth; it -prepared them for the inevitable partings to come; it urged on them with -measureless tenderness the duty of self-watchfulness, of guarding against -little faults, of bearing and forbearing; it told them of his own grief -to think that he should ever by a harsh or hasty word have given their -dead sister even a momentary sorrow which might have been spared; it -ended with the blessing of their afflicted father. - -Sorrows of this kind, as Southey has truly said, come the heavier when -they are repeated; under such strokes a courageous heart may turn coward. -On Mrs. Southey a weight as of years had been laid; her spirits sank, her -firmness gave way, a breath of danger shook her. Southey’s way of bearing -himself towards the dead is that saddest way—their names were never -uttered; each one of the household had, as it were, a separate chamber -in which the images of their dead ones lay, and each went in alone and -veiled. The truth is, Southey had little native hardihood of temperament; -self-control with him was painfully acquired. In solitude and darkness -his tears flowed; when in his slumbers the images of the dead came to -him, he could not choose but weep. Therefore, all the more among those -whom he wished to lead into the cheerful ways of life, he had need to -keep a guard upon his tenderness. He feared to preserve relics, and did -not like to bear in mind birthdays, lest they should afterwards become -too dangerously charged with remembrance and grief. “Look,” he writes, -“at some verses in the _Literary Souvenir_, p. 113; they are written by -a dear friend of mine on the death of—you will know who”—for his pen -would have trembled in tracing the name Isabel. And yet his habitual -feelings with respect to those who had departed were not bitter; the dead -were absent—that was all; he thought of them and of living friends at a -distance with the same complacency, the same affection, only with more -tenderness of the dead. - -Greta Hall, once resounding with cheerful voices, had been growing -silent. Herbert was gone; Isabel was gone. In 1829 Sara Coleridge went, a -bride, tearful yet glad, her mother accompanying her, to distant London. -Five years later, Edith May Southey became the wife of the Rev. John -Warter. Her father fell back, even more than in former years, upon the -never-failing friends of his library. It was in these darkening years -that he sought relief in carrying out the idea, conceived long before, of -a story which should be no story, but a spacious receptacle for mingled -wit and wisdom, experience and book-lore, wholesome nonsense and solemn -meditation. _The Doctor_, begun in jest after merry talks with Grosvenor -Bedford, grew more and more earnest as Southey proceeded. “He dreamt -over it and brooded over it, laid it aside for months and years, resumed -it after long intervals, and more often, latterly, in thoughtfulness -than in mirth, and fancied at last that he could put into it more of his -mind than could conveniently be produced in any other form.” The secret -of its authorship was carefully kept. Southey amused himself somewhat -laboriously with ascribing it now to this hand and now to that. When -the first two volumes arrived, as if from the anonymous author, Southey -thrust them away with well-assumed impatience, and the disdainful words, -“Some novel, I suppose.” Yet several of his friends had shrewd suspicions -that the manuscript lay somewhere hidden in Greta Hall, and on receiving -their copies wrote to thank the veritable donor; these thanks were -forwarded by Southey, not without a smile in which something of irony -mingled, to Theodore Hook, who was not pleased to enter into the jest. “I -see in _The Doctor_,” says its author, playing the part of an impartial -critic, “a little of Rabelais, but not much; more of Tristram Shandy, -somewhat of Burton, and perhaps more of Montaigne; but methinks the -_quintum quid_ predominates?” The _quintum quid_ is that wisdom of the -heart, that temper of loyal and cheerful acquiescence in the rule of life -as appointed by a Divine Master, which characterizes Southey. - -For the third volume of _The Doctor_, in that chapter which tells of -Leonard Bacon’s sorrow for his Margaret, Southey wrote as follows: - - “Leonard had looked for consolation, where, when sincerely - sought, it is always to be found; and he had experienced - that religion effects in a true believer all that philosophy - professes, and more than all that mere philosophy can perform. - The wounds which stoicism would cauterize, religion heals. - - “There is a resignation with which, it may be feared, most of - us deceive ourselves. To bear what must be borne, and submit to - what cannot be resisted, is no more than what the unregenerate - heart is taught by the instinct of animal nature. But to - acquiesce in the afflictive dispensations of Providence—to make - one’s own will conform in all things to that of our Heavenly - Father—to say to him in the sincerity of faith, when we drink - of the bitter cup, ‘Thy will be done!’—to bless the name of - the Lord as much from the heart when he takes away as when he - gives, and with a depth of feeling of which, perhaps, none but - the afflicted heart is capable—this is the resignation which - religion teaches, this is the sacrifice which it requires.” - -These words, written with no forefeeling, were the last put on paper -before the great calamity burst upon Southey. “I have been parted from -my wife,” he tells Grosvenor Bedford on October 2, 1834, “by something -worse than death. Forty years she has been the life of my life; and I -have left her this day in a lunatic asylum.” - -Southey’s union with his wife had been at the first one of love, and -use and wont had made her a portion of his very being. Their provinces -in the household had soon defined themselves. He in the library earned -their means of support; all else might be left to her with absolute -confidence in her wise contrivance and quiet energy. Beneath the divided -work in their respective provinces their lives ran on in deep and still -accord. Now he felt for the first time shrunk into the limits of a -solitary will. All that had grown out of the past was deranged by a -central disturbance; no branch had been lopped away, but the main trunk -was struck, and seared, and shaken to the roots. “Mine is a strong -heart,” Southey writes; “I will not say that the last week has been the -most trying of my life; but I will say that the heart which could bear -it can bear anything.” Yet, when he once more set himself to work, a -common observer, says his son, would have noticed little change in him, -though to his family the change was great indeed. His most wretched hour -was when he woke at dawn from broken slumbers; but a word of hope was -enough to counteract the mischief of a night’s unrest. No means were -neglected which might serve to keep him in mental and bodily health; he -walked in all weathers; he pursued his task-work diligently, yet not -over-diligently; he collected materials for work of his choice. When, in -the spring of 1835, it was found that the sufferer might return to wear -out the body of this death in her own home, it was marvellous, declares -Cuthbert Southey, how much of his old elasticity remained, and how, -though no longer happy, he could be contented and cheerful, and take -pleasure in the pleasures of others. He still could contribute something -to his wife’s comfort. Through the weary dream which was now her life she -knew him, and took pleasure in his coming and going. - -When Herbert died, Southey had to ask a friend to lend him money to -tide over the short period of want which followed his weeks of enforced -inaction. Happily now, for the first time in his life, his income was -beforehand with his expenses. A bequest of some hundreds of pounds had -come in; his _Naval Biographies_ were paying him well; and during part -of Mrs. Southey’s illness he was earning a respectable sum, intended for -his son’s education, by his _Life of Cowper_—a work to which a painful -interest was added by the study of mental alienation forced upon him -in his own household. So the days passed, not altogether cheerlessly, -in work if possible more arduous than ever. “One morning,” writes his -son, “shortly after the letters had arrived, he called me into his -study. ‘You will be surprised,’ he said, ‘to hear that Sir Robert Peel -has recommended me to the King for the distinction of a baronetcy, and -will probably feel some disappointment when I tell you that I shall not -accept it.’” Accompanying Sir Robert Peel’s official communication came -a private letter asking in the kindest manner how he could be of use -to Southey. “Will you tell me,” he said, “without reserve, whether the -possession of power puts within my reach the means of doing anything -which can be serviceable or acceptable to you; and whether you will -allow me to find some compensation for the many sacrifices which office -imposes upon me, in the opportunity of marking my gratitude, as a public -man, for the eminent services you have rendered, not only to literature, -but to the higher interests of virtue and religion?” Southey’s answer -stated simply what his circumstances were, showing how unbecoming and -unwise it would be to accept the proffered honour: it told the friendly -statesman of the provision made for his family—no inconsiderable one—in -the event of his death; it went on to speak of his recent affliction; how -this had sapped his former confidence in himself; how it had made him an -old man, and forced upon him the reflection that a sudden stroke might -deprive him of those faculties by which his family had hitherto been -supported. “I could afford to die, but not to be disabled,” he wrote in -his first draft; but fearing that these words would look as if he wanted -to trick out pathetically a plain statement, he removed them. Finally, -if such an increase of his pension as would relieve him from anxiety on -behalf of his family could form part of a plan for the encouragement of -literature, it would satisfy all his desires. “Young as I then was,” -Cuthbert Southey writes, “I could not, without tears, hear him read with -his deep and faltering voice, his wise refusal and touching expression -of those feelings and fears he had never before given utterance to, to -any of his own family.” Two months later Sir Robert Peel signed a warrant -adding 300_l._ annually to Southey’s existing pension. He had resolved to -recognize literary and scientific eminence as a national claim; the act -was done upon public grounds, and Southey had the happiness of knowing -that others beside himself would partake of the benefit. - -“Our domestic prospects are darkening upon us daily,” Southey wrote in -July, 1835. “I know not whether the past or the present seems most like -a dream to me, so great and strange is the difference. But yet a little -while, and all will again be at the best.” While Mrs. Southey lived, a -daily demand was made upon his sympathies and solicitude which it was -his happiness to fulfil. But from all except his wife he seemed already -to be dropping away into a state of passive abstraction. Kate and Bertha -silently ministered to his wants, laid the books he wanted in his way, -replenished his ink-bottle, mended his pens, stirred the fire, and -said nothing. A visit to the south-west of England in company with his -son broke the long monotony of endurance. It was a happiness to meet -Landor at Bristol, and Mrs. Bray at Tavistock, and Mrs. Bray’s friend, -the humble poet, Mary Colling, whose verses he had reviewed in the -_Quarterly_. Yet to return to his sorrowful home was best of all; there -is a leap up of the old spirits in a letter to his daughters announcing -his approach. It is almost the last gleam of brightness. In the autumn of -that year (1835) Edith Southey wasted away, growing weaker and weaker. -The strong arm on which she had leaned for two-and-forty years, supported -her down stairs each day and bore her up again at evening. When the -morning of November 16th broke, she passed quietly “from death unto life.” - -From that day Southey was an altered man. His spirits fell to a still -lower range. For the first time he was conscious of the distance which -years had set between him and his children. Yet his physical strength -was unbroken; nothing but snow deterred him from his walk; he could -still circle the lake, or penetrate into Borrowdale on foot. But Echo, -whom he had summoned to rejoice, was not roused by any call of his. -Within-doors it was only by a certain violence to himself that he could -speak. In the library he read aloud his proof-sheets alone; but for this -he might almost have forgotten the sound of his own voice. Still, he was -not wholly abandoned to grief; he looked back and saw that life had been -good; its hardest moral discipline had served to train the heart: much -still remained that was of worth—Cuthbert was quietly pursuing his Oxford -studies; Bertha was about to be united in marriage to her cousin, Herbert -Hill, son of that good uncle who had done so much to shape Southey’s -career. “If not hopeful,” he writes, “I am more than contented, and -disposed to welcome and entertain any good that may yet be in store for -me, without any danger of being disappointed if there should be none.” -Hope of a sober kind indeed had come to him. For twenty years he had -known Caroline Bowles; they had long been in constant correspondence; -their acquaintance had matured into friendship. She was now in her -fifty-second year; he in his sixty-fifth. It seemed to Southey natural -that, without making any breach with his past life, he should accept her -companionship in the nearest way possible, should give to her all he -could of what remained, and save himself from that forlorn feeling which -he feared might render old age miserable and useless. - -But already the past had subdued Southey, and if any future lay before -him it was a cloud lifeless and grey. In the autumn of 1838 he started -for a short tour on the Continent with his old friend Senhouse, his son -Cuthbert, John Kenyon, their master of the horse, Captain Jones, the -chamberlain, and Crabb Robinson, who was intendant and paid the bills. -On the way from Boulogne they turned aside to visit Chinon, for Southey -wished to stand on the spot where his first heroine, Joan of Arc, had -recognized the French king. At Paris he roamed along the quays and hunted -book-stalls. The change and excitement seemed to have served him; he -talked freely and was cheerful. “Still,” writes his son, “I could not -fail to perceive a considerable change in him from the time we had last -travelled together—all his movements were slower, he was subject to -frequent fits of absence, and there was an indecision in his manner and -an unsteadiness in his step which was wholly unusual with him.” He often -lost his way, even in the hotels; then laughed at his own mistakes, -and yet was painfully conscious of his failing memory. His journal -breaks off abruptly when not more than two-thirds of the tour had been -accomplished. In February, 1839, his brother, Dr. Southey—ever a true -comrade—describes him as working slowly and with an abstraction not usual -to him; sometimes to write even a letter seemed an effort. In midsummer -his marriage to Caroline Bowles took place, and with her he returned to -Keswick in August. On the way home his friends in London saw that he was -much altered. “The animation and peculiar clearness of his mind,” wrote -Henry Taylor, “was quite gone, except a gleam or two now and then.... -The appearance was that of a placid languor, sometimes approaching -to torpor, but not otherwise than cheerful. He is thin and shrunk in -person, and that extraordinary face of his has no longer the fire and -strength it used to have, though the singular cast of the features and -the habitual expressions make it still a most remarkable phenomenon.” -Still, his friends had not ceased to hope that tranquillity would restore -mental tone, and he himself was planning the completion of great designs. -“As soon as we are settled at Keswick, I shall resolutely begin upon -the _History of Portugal_, as a duty which I owe to my uncle’s memory. -Half of the labour I consider as done. But I have long since found the -advantage of doing more than one thing at a time, and the _History of the -Monastic Orders_ is the other thing to which I shall set to with hearty -good-will. Both these are works of great pith and moment.” - -Alas! the current of these enterprises was already turned awry. In -August it was not without an occasional uncertainty that he sustained -conversation. “He lost himself for a moment; he was conscious of it, and -an expression passed over his countenance which was very touching—an -expression of pain and also of resignation.... The charm of his manner -is perhaps even enhanced at present (at least when one knows the -circumstances) by the gentleness and patience which pervade it.” Before -long the character of his handwriting, which had been so exquisite, was -changed to something like the laboured scrawl of a child; then he ceased -to write. Still he could read, and, even when he could no longer take -in the meaning of what was before him, his eye followed the lines of -the printed page. At last even this was beyond his power. He would walk -slowly round his library, pleased with the presence of his cherished -possessions, taking some volume down mechanically from the shelf. In 1840 -Wordsworth went over to Greta Hall. “Southey did not recognize me,” he -writes, “till he was told. Then his eyes flashed for a moment with their -former brightness, but he sank into the state in which I had found him, -patting with both hands his books affectionately like a child.” In the -_Life of Cowper_ he had spoken of the distress of one who suffers from -mental disease as being that of a dream—“a dream, indeed, from which the -sufferer can neither wake nor be awakened; but it pierces no deeper, -and there seems to be the same dim consciousness of its unreality.” So -was it now with himself. Until near the end he retained considerable -bodily strength; his snow-white hair grew darker; it was the spirit which -had endured shattering strokes of fate, and which had spent itself in -studying to be quiet. - -After a short attack of fever, the end came on the 21st of March, 1843. -Never was that “Well done!” the guerdon of the good and faithful servant, -pronounced amid a deeper consent of those who attended and had ears -to hear. On a dark and stormy morning Southey’s body was borne to the -beautiful churchyard of Crosthwaite, towards which he had long looked -affectionately as his place of rest. There lay his three children and -she who was the life of his life. Skiddaw gloomed solemnly overhead. A -grey-haired, venerable man who had crossed the hills stood there leaning -on the arm of his son-in-law; these two, Wordsworth and Quillinan, were -the only strangers present. As the words, “ashes to ashes,” were uttered, -a sudden gleam of sunshine touched the grave; the wind dropped, the rain -was over, and the birds had begun their songs of spring. The mourners -turned away thinking of a good man’s life and death with peace— - - “And calm of mind, all passion spent.” - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -SOUTHEY’S WORK IN LITERATURE. - - -Southey’s career of authorship falls into two chief periods—a period -during which poetry occupied the higher place and prose the lower, and a -period during which this order was reversed. His translations of romantic -fiction—_Amadis of Gaul_, _Palmerin of England_, and _The Cid_—connect -the work of the earlier with that of the latter period, and serve to mark -the progress of his mind from legend to history, and from the fantastic -to the real. The poet in Southey died young, or, if he did not die, fell -into a numbness and old age like that of which an earlier singer writes:— - - “Elde that in my spirit dulleth me, - Hath of endyting all the subtilité - Welnyghe bereft out of my remembraunce.” - -After thirty Southey seldom cared to utter himself in occasional verse. -The uniformity of his life, the equable cheerfulness maintained by habits -of regular work, his calm religious faith, his amiable Stoicism, left him -without the material for lyrical poetry; and one so honest and healthy -had no care to feign experiences of the heart which were not his. Still, -he could apply himself to the treatment of large subjects with a calm, -continuous energy; but as time went on his hand grew slack, and wrought -with less ease. Scarcely had he overcome the narrative poet’s chief -difficulty, that of subduing varied materials to an unity of design, when -he put aside verse, and found it more natural to be historian than poet. - -The poetry of sober feeling is rare in lyrical verse. This may be -found admirably rendered in some of Southey’s shorter pieces. Although -his temper was ardent and hopeful, his poems of pensive remembrance, -of meditative calm, are perhaps the most characteristic. Among these -his _Inscriptions_ rank high. Some of those in memory of the dead are -remarkable for their fine poise of feeling, all that is excessive and -transitory having been subdued; for the tranquil depths of sorrow and of -hope which lie beneath their clear, melodious words. - -Southey’s larger poetical works are fashioned of two materials which -do not always entirely harmonize. First, material brought from his own -moral nature; his admiration of something elevated in the character of -man or woman—generosity, gentleness, loyalty, fortitude, faith. And, -secondly, material gathered from abroad; mediæval pomps of religion and -circumstance of war; Arabian marvels, the work of the enchanters and the -genii; the wild beauties and adventure of life amid New-World tribes; -the monstrous mythology of the Brahman. With such material the poet’s -inventive talent deals freely, rearranges details or adds to them; -still Southey is here rather a _finder_ than a _maker_. His diligence -in collecting and his skill in arranging were so great that it was well -if the central theme did not disappear among manifold accessories. One -who knows Southey, however, can recognize his ethical spirit in every -poem. Thalaba, as he himself confessed, is a male Joan of Arc. Destiny -or Providence has marked alike the hero and the heroine from mankind; -the sheepfold of Domremi, and the palm-grove by old Moath’s tent, alike -nurture virgin purity and lofty aspiration. Thalaba, like Joan, goes -forth a delegated servant of the Highest to war against the powers of -evil; Thalaba, like Joan, is sustained under the trials of the way by -the sole talisman of faith. We are not left in doubt as to where Southey -found his ideal. Mr. Barbauld thought _Joan of Arc_ was modelled on the -Socinian Christ. He was mistaken; Southey’s ideal was native to his soul. -“Early admiration, almost adoration of Leonidas; early principles of -Stoicism derived from the habitual study of Epictetus, and the French -Revolution at its height when I was just eighteen—by these my mind was -moulded.” And from these, absorbed into Southey’s very being, came -Thalaba and Joan. - -The word _high-souled_ takes possession of the mind as we think of -Southey’s heroic personages. Poetry, he held, ought rather to elevate -than to affect—a Stoical doctrine transferred to art, which meant that -his own poetry was derived more from admiration of great qualities -than from sympathy with individual men or women. Neither the quick and -passionate tenderness of Burns nor the stringent pathos of Wordsworth -can be found in Southey’s verse. No eye probably ever shed a tear over -the misery of Ladurlad and his persecuted daughter. She, like the lady -in _Comus_, is set above our pity and perhaps our love. In _Kehama_, -a work of Southey’s mature years, the chivalric ardour of his earlier -heroes is transformed into the sterner virtues of fortitude and an almost -despairing constancy. The power of evil, as conceived by the poet, -has grown more despotic; little can be achieved by the light-winged -Glendoveer—a more radiant Thalaba—against the Rajah; only the lidless -eye of Seeva can destroy that tyranny of lust and pride. _Roderick_ -marks a higher stage in the development of Southey’s ethical ideal. -Roderick, too, is a delegated champion of right against force and fraud; -he too endures mighty pains. But he is neither such a combatant, pure -and intrepid, as goes forth from the Arab tent, nor such a blameless -martyr as Ladurlad. He is first a sinner enduring just punishment; then a -stricken penitent; and from his shame and remorse he is at last uplifted -by enthusiasm, on behalf of his God and his people, into a warrior saint, -the Gothic Maccabee. - -_Madoc_ stands somewhat away from the line of Southey’s other narrative -poems. Though, as Scott objected, the personages in _Madoc_ are too -nearly abstract types, Southey’s ethical spirit dominates this poem less -than any of the others. The narrative flows on more simply. The New-World -portion tells a story full of picturesque incident, with the same skill -and grace that belong to Southey’s best prose writings. Landor highly -esteemed _Madoc_. Scott declared that he had read it three times since -his first cursory perusal, and each time with increased admiration of -the poetry. Fox was in the habit of reading aloud after supper to eleven -o’clock, when it was the rule at St. Ann’s Hill to retire; but while -_Madoc_ was in his hand, he read until after midnight. Those, however, -who opened the bulky quarto were few: the tale was out of relation with -the time; it interpreted no need, no aspiration, no passion of the -dawn of the present century. And the mind of the time was not enough -disengaged to concern itself deeply with the supposed adventures of a -Welsh prince of the twelfth century among the natives of America. - -At heart, then, Southey’s poems are in the main the outcome of his moral -nature; this we recognize through all disguises—Mohammedan, Hindoo, or -Catholic. He planned and partly wrote a poem—_Oliver Newman_—which -should associate his characteristic ideal with Puritan principles and -ways of life. The foreign material through which his ethical idea was set -forth went far, with each poem, to determine its reception by the public. -Coleridge has spoken of “the pastoral charm and wild, streaming lights of -the _Thalaba_.” Dewy night moon-mellowed, and the desert-circle girdled -by the sky, the mystic palace of Shedad, the vernal brook, Oneiza’s -favourite kidling, the lamp-light shining rosy through the damsel’s -delicate fingers, the aged Arab in the tent-door—these came with a fresh -charm into English narrative poetry eighty years ago. The landscape and -the manners of Spain, as pictured in _Roderick_, are of marked grandeur -and simplicity. In _Kehama_, Southey attempted a bolder experiment; and -although the poem became popular, even a well-disposed reader may be -allowed to sympathize with the dismay of Charles Lamb among the monstrous -gods: “I never read books of travels, at least not farther than Paris or -Rome. I can just endure Moors, because of their connexion as foes with -Christians; but Abyssinians, Ethiops, Esquimaux, Dervises, and all that -tribe I hate. I believe I fear them in some manner. A Mohammedan turban -on the stage, though enveloping some well-known face, ... does not give -me unalloyed pleasure. I am a Christian, Englishman, Londoner, Templar. -God help me when I come to put off these snug relations, and to get -abroad into the world to come.” - -Though his materials are often exotic, in style Southey aimed at the -simplicity and strength of undefiled English. If to these melody was -added, he had attained all he desired. To conversations with William -Taylor about German poetry—certainly not to Taylor’s example—he ascribes -his faith in the power of plain words to express in poetry the highest -thoughts and strongest feelings. He perceived, in his own day, the rise -of the ornate style, which has since been perfected by Tennyson, and -he regarded it as a vice in art. In early years Akenside had been his -instructor; afterwards he owed more to Landor than to any other master of -style. From _Madoc_ and _Roderick_—both in blank-verse—fragments could -be severed which might pass for the work of Landor; but Southey’s free -and facile manner, fostered by early reading of Ariosto, and by constant -study of Spenser, soon reasserts itself; from under the fragment of -monumental marble, white almost as Landor’s, a stream wells out smooth -and clear, and lapses away, never dangerously swift nor mysteriously -deep. On the whole, judged by the highest standards, Southey’s poetry -takes a midmost rank; it neither renders into art a great body of thought -and passion, nor does it give faultless expression to lyrical moments. -But it is the output of a large and vigorous mind, amply stored with -knowledge; its breath of life is the moral ardour of a nature strong and -generous, and therefore it can never cease to be of worth. - -Southey is at his best in prose. And here it must be borne in mind -that, though so voluminous a writer, he did not achieve his most -important work, the _History of Portugal_, for which he had gathered -vast collections. It cannot be doubted that this, if completed, would -have taken a place among our chief histories. The splendour of story -and the heroic personages would have lifted Southey into his highest -mood. We cannot speak with equal confidence of his projected work of -second magnitude, the _History of the Monastic Orders_. Learned and -sensible it could not fail to be, and Southey would have recognized the -more substantial services of the founders and the brotherhoods; but he -would have dealt by methods too simple with the psychology of religious -emotions; the words enthusiasm and fraud might have risen too often to -his lips; and at the grotesque humours of the devout, which he would have -exhibited with delight, he might have been too prone to smile. - -As it is, Southey’s largest works are not his most admirable. _The -History of Brazil_, indeed, gives evidence of amazing patience, industry, -and skill; but its subject necessarily excludes it from the first rank. -At no time from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century was Brazil a -leader or a banner-bearer among lands. The life of the people crept on -from point to point, and that is all; there are few passages in which -the chronicle can gather itself up, and transform itself into a historic -drama. Southey has done all that was possible; his pages are rich in -facts, and are more entertaining than perhaps any other writer could -have made them. His extraordinary acquaintance with travel gave him -many advantages in narrating the adventures of early explorers; and his -studies in ecclesiastical history led him to treat with peculiar interest -the history of the Jesuit Reductions. - -_The History of the Peninsular War_ suffers by comparison with the great -work of Sir William Napier. That heroic man had himself been a portion of -the strife; his senses, singularly keen, were attuned to battle; as he -wrote, the wild bugle-calls, the measured tramp, the peals of musketry, -the dismal clamour, sounded in his ears; he abandoned himself again to -the swiftness and “incredible fury” of the charge. And with his falcon -eye he could discern amid the shock or formless dispersion, wherever -hidden, the fiery heart of victory. Southey wrought in his library as a -man of letters; consulted sources, turned over manuscripts, corresponded -with witnesses, set his material in order. The passion of justice and an -enthusiasm on behalf of Spain give unity to his work. If he estimated too -highly the disinterestedness and courage of the people of the Peninsula, -the illusion was generous. And it may be that enduring spiritual forces -become apparent to a distant observer, which are masked by accidents of -the day and hour from one who is in their midst. - -History as written by Southey is narrative rendered spiritual by moral -ardour. There are no new political truths, he said. If there be laws of -a nation’s life other than those connected with elementary principles of -morality, Southey did not discover these. What he has written may go only -a little way towards attaining the ultimate ends of historical study, -but so far as it goes it keeps the direct line. It is not led astray by -will-o’-the-wisp, vague-shining theories that beguile night wanderers. -Its method is an honest method as wholesome as sweet; and simple -narrative, if ripe and sound at first, is none the less so at the end of -a century. - -In biography, at least, one may be well pleased with clear and charming -narrative. Here Southey has not been surpassed, and even in this single -province he is versatile; he has written the life of a warrior, of a -poet, and of a saint. His industry was that of a German; his lucidity -and perfect exposition were such as we rarely find outside a French -memoir. There is no style fitter for continuous narrative than the -pedestrian style of Southey. It does not beat upon the ear with hard, -metallic vibration. The sentences are not cast by the thousand in one -mould of cheap rhetoric, nor made brilliant with one cheap colour. -Never dithyrambic, he is never dull; he affects neither the trick of -stateliness nor that of careless ease; he does not seek out curiosities -of refinement, nor caress delicate affectations. Because his style is -natural, it is inimitable, and the only way to write like Southey is to -write well. - -“The favourite of my library, among many favourites;” so Coleridge speaks -of the _Life of Wesley_—“the book I can read for the twentieth time, when -I can read nothing else at all.” And yet the schoolboy’s favourite—the -_Life of Nelson_—is of happier inspiration. The simple and chivalric -hero, his splendid achievements, his pride in duty, his patriotism, -roused in Southey all that was most strong and high; but his enthusiasm -does not escape in lyrical speech. “The best eulogy of Nelson,” he says, -“is the faithful history of his actions; the best history that which -shall relate them most perspicuously.” Only when all is over, and the -captain of Trafalgar lies dead, his passion and pride find utterance:—“If -the chariot and the horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson’s -translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of -glory.” From Nelson on the quarter-deck of the _Victory_, to Cowper -caressing his tame hares, the interval is wide; but Southey, the man of -letters, lover of the fireside, and patron of cats, found it natural to -sympathize with his brother poet. His sketches of literary history in -the _Life of Cowper_ are characteristic. The writer’s range is wide, his -judgment sound, his enjoyment of almost everything literary is lively; as -critic he is kindly yet equitable. But the highest criticism is not his. -Southey’s vision was not sufficiently penetrative; he culls beauties, but -he cannot pluck out the heart of a mystery. - -His translations of romantic fiction, while faithful to their sources, -aim less at literal exactitude than at giving the English reader the -same pleasure which the Spaniard receives from the originals. From the -destruction of Don Quixote’s library Master Nicholas and the curate -spared _Amadis of Gaul_ and _Palmerin of England_. Second to Malory’s -grouping of the Arthur cycle _Amadis_ may well take its place. Its -chivalric spirit, its wildness, its tenderness and beauty, are carefully -preserved by the translator. But Southey’s chief gift in this kind -to English readers is _The Cid_. The poem he supposed, indeed, to be -a metrical chronicle instead of a metrical romance—no fatal error; -weaving together the best of the poem, the ballads and the chronicle, he -produced more than a mere compilation. “I know no work of the kind in our -language,” wrote Coleridge, “none which, uniting the charms of romance -and history, keeps the imagination so constantly on the wing, and yet -leaves so much for after-reflection.” - -Of Southey’s political writings something has been said in a former -chapter. Among works which can be brought under no general head, one -that pleased the public was _Espriella’s Letters_, sketches of English -landscape, life, and manners, by a supposed Spanish traveller. The -letters, giving as they do a lively view of England at the beginning of -the present century, still possess an interest. Apart from Southey’s -other works stands _The Doctor_; nowhere else can one find so much of -his varied erudition, his genial spirits, his meditative wisdom. It asks -for a leisurely reader content to ramble everywhere and no whither, and -still pleased to take another turn because his companion has not yet come -to an end of learning, mirth, or meditation. That the author of a book -so characteristic was not instantly recognized, is strange. “The wit and -humour of _The Doctor_,” says Edgar Poe, a keen critic, “have seldom been -equalled. We cannot think Southey wrote it.” Gratitude is due to Dr. -Daniel Dove from innumerable “good little women and men,” who have been -delighted with his story of _The Three Bears_. To know that he had added -a classic to the nursery would have been the pride of Southey’s heart. -Wide eyes entranced and peals of young laughter still make a triumph for -one whose spirit, grave with a man’s wisdom, was pure as the spirit of a -little child. - -THE END. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] Recollections of Corston, somewhat in the manner of Goldsmith’s -_Deserted Village_, will be found in Southey’s early poem, _The -Retrospect_. - -[2] Carmen Nuptiale: Proem, 18. - -[3] I find in a Catalogue of English Poetry, 1862, the following passage -from an autograph letter of S. T. Coleridge, dated Bristol, July 16, -1814, then in Mr. Pickering’s possession: “I looked over the first five -books of the first (quarto) edition of _Joan of Arc_ yesterday, at -Hood’s request, in order to mark the lines written by me. I was really -astonished—1, at the schoolboy, wretched allegoric machinery; 2, at the -transmogrification of the fanatic Virago into a modern Novel-pawing -proselyte of the Age of Reason, a Tom Paine in petticoats, but so lovely! -and in love more dear! ‘_On her rubied cheek hung pity’s crystal gem_;’ -3, at the utter want of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and the -dead plumb down of the pauses, and of the absence of all bone, muscle, -and sinew in the single lines.” - -[4] See Southey’s article on “Dr. Sayers’s Works,” _Quarterly Review_, -January, 1827. - -[5] Harriet Martineau: Autobiography, i. p. 300. - -[6] See her “History of the Peace,” B. vi. chap. xvi. - -[7] For Westall’s drawing, and the description of Walla Crag, see “Sir -Thomas More:” Colloquy VI. - -[8] _I. e._, to go to Davies’ lodgings; Davies, Dr. Bell’s Secretary, -was engaged in arranging a vast accumulation of papers with a view to -forwarding Southey in his _Life of Bell_. - -[9] The words quoted by Southey are his own, written in 1809. - -[10] “With the Cape and New Holland I would proceed thus:—‘Govern -yourselves, and we will protect you as long as you need protection; -when that is no longer necessary, remember that though we be different -countries, each independent, we are one people.’”—R. S. to W. S. Landor. -Letters, vol. ii. p. 263. - -[11] Sara Coleridge. - -[12] Mrs. Wilson—then aged seventy-two. - -[13] To certain false allegations of fact made by Byron, Southey replied -in _The Courier_, and reprinted his letters in _Essays, Moral and -Political_, vol. ii. pp. 183-205. - - - - -VALUABLE AND INTERESTING WORKS FOR PUBLIC & PRIVATE LIBRARIES, - -PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. - - -☞ _For a full List of Books suitable for Libraries published by HARPER -& BROTHERS, see HARPER’S CATALOGUE, which may be had gratuitously on -application to the publishers personally, or by letter enclosing Ten -Cents in postage stamps._ - -☞ _HARPER & BROTHERS will send their publications by mail, postage -prepaid, on receipt of the price._ - - MACAULAY’S ENGLAND. The History of England from the Accession - of James II. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: Southey - No. 134 of 'Harper's Handy Series', 'English Men of Letters' - -Author: Edward Dowden - -Editor: John Morley - -Release Date: April 30, 2020 [EBook #61983] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTHEY *** - - - - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="fm"> - -<p class="center"><i>No. 134</i><span class="spacer"> </span><i>25 Cts.</i></p> - -<p class="center larger">HARPER’S HANDY SERIES</p> - -<p class="center larger">Issued Weekly</p> - -<table> - <tr> - <td class="tdcov"><p class="center smaller">Copyright, 1885,<br /> - by <span class="smcap">Harper & Brothers</span></p></td> - <td class="tdcov"><p class="center smcap">June 3, 1887</p></td> - <td class="tdcov"><p class="center smaller">Subscription Price<br /> - per Year, 52 Numbers, $15</p></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<div class="black"> - -<p class="center smaller">Entered at the Post-Office at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter</p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="gothic">English Men of Letters</span><br /> -EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY</p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">SOUTHEY</p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br /> -EDWARD DOWDEN</p> - -</div> - -<p><i>Books you may hold readily in your hand are the most useful, after all.</i></p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Dr. Johnson</span></p> - -<p class="titlepage">NEW YORK<br /> -HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS<br /> -1887</p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<h2>HARPER’S HANDY SERIES.<br /> -<span class="smaller"><i>Latest Issues.</i></span></h2> - -<table summary="books and prices"> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">No.</span></td> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">CENTS.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>101.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Chaplain’s Craze.</span> A Novel. By G. Manville Fenn.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>102.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Between Two Loves.</span> A Tale of the West Riding. By Amelia E. Barr.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>103.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">That Winter Night; or, Love’s Victory.</span> A Novel. By Robert Buchanan.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>104.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Bright Star of Life.</span> A Novel. By B. L. Farjeon.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>105.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Guilty River.</span> A Novel. By Wilkie Collins.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>106.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Golden Bells.</span> A Peal in Seven Changes. By R. E. Francillon.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>107.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">The Nine of Hearts.</span> A Novel. By B. L. Farjeon.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>108.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">A Modern Telemachus.</span> A Novel. By Charlotte M. Yonge.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>109.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Cashel Byron’s Profession.</span> A Novel. By George Bernard Shaw.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>110.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Britta.</span> A Shetland Romance. By George Temple. Illustrated.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>111.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">A Child of the Revolution.</span> A Novel. By the Author of “The Atelier du Lys.” Illustrated.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>112.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">A Strange Inheritance.</span> A Novel. By F. M. F. Skene.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>113.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Locksley Hall Sixty Years After</span>, Etc. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>114.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Regimental Legends.</span> By John Strange Winter.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>115.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Yeast.</span> A Problem. By Charles Kingsley.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>116.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Cranford.</span> By Mrs. Gaskell.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>117.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Lucy Crofton.</span> A Novel. By Mrs. Oliphant.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>118.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Mignon’s Secret</span>, and <span class="smcap">Wanted—A Wife</span>. By John Strange Winter.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>119.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Samuel Johnson.</span> By Leslie Stephen.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>120.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Edward Gibbon.</span> By James Cotter Morison.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>121.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott.</span> By Richard H. Hutton.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>122.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Shelley.</span> By John A. Symonds.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>123.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Hume.</span> By Professor Huxley.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>124.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Goldsmith.</span> By William Black.</td> - <td class="tdpg">15</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>125.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Daniel Defoe.</span> By William Minto.</td> - <td class="tdpg">20</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>126.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">She.</span> A History of Adventure. By H. Rider Haggard. Profusely Illustrated.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>127.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Machine Politics and Money in Elections in New York City.</span> By William M. Ivins.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>128.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Robert Burns.</span> By Principal J. C. Shairp.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>129.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Spenser.</span> By R. W. Church.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>130.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Thackeray.</span> By Anthony Trollope.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>131.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Burke.</span> By John Morley.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>132.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Milton.</span> By Mark Pattison.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>133.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Hawthorne.</span> By Henry James, Jr.</td> - <td class="tdpg">20</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>134.</td> - <td><span class="smcap">Southey.</span> By Edward Dowden.</td> - <td class="tdpg">25</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p class="center"><i>Other volumes in preparation.</i></p> - -<p>☞ <i><span class="smcap">Harper & Brothers</span> will send any of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, -to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price.</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>English Men of Letters<br /> -<span class="smaller">EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY</span></h2> - -<hr /> - -<p class="titlepage larger">SOUTHEY</p> - -<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br /> -EDWARD DOWDEN.</p> - -<div class="figcenter titlepage" style="width: 200px;"> -<img src="images/tp.jpg" width="200" height="160" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p class="titlepage">NEW YORK<br /> -HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS<br /> -FRANKLIN SQUARE</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.<br /> -<span class="smcap">Edited by John Morley.</span></h2> - -<table summary="The books in this series"> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Johnson</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Leslie Stephen.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Gibbon</span></td> - <td class="tdr">J. C. Morison.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Scott</span></td> - <td class="tdr">R. H. Hutton.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Shelley</span></td> - <td class="tdr">J. A. Symonds.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Hume</span></td> - <td class="tdr">T. H. Huxley.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Goldsmith</span></td> - <td class="tdr">William Black.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Defoe</span></td> - <td class="tdr">William Minto.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Burns</span></td> - <td class="tdr">J. C. Shairp.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Spenser</span></td> - <td class="tdr">R. W. Church.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Thackeray</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Anthony Trollope.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Burke</span></td> - <td class="tdr">John Morley.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Milton</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Mark Pattison.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Hawthorne</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Henry James, Jr.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Southey</span></td> - <td class="tdr">E. Dowden.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Chaucer</span></td> - <td class="tdr">A. W. Ward.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Bunyan</span></td> - <td class="tdr">J. A. Froude.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Cowper</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Goldwin Smith.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Pope</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Leslie Stephen.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Byron</span></td> - <td class="tdr">John Nichol.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Locke</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Thomas Fowler.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span></td> - <td class="tdr">F. Myers.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Dryden</span></td> - <td class="tdr">G. Saintsbury.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Landor</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Sidney Colvin.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">De Quincey</span></td> - <td class="tdr">David Masson.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Lamb</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Alfred Ainger.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Bentley</span></td> - <td class="tdr">R. C. Jebb.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Dickens</span></td> - <td class="tdr">A. W. Ward.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Gray</span></td> - <td class="tdr">E. W. Gosse.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Swift</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Leslie Stephen.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Sterne</span></td> - <td class="tdr">H. D. Traill.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Macaulay</span></td> - <td class="tdr">J. Cotter Morison.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Fielding</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Austin Dobson.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Sheridan</span></td> - <td class="tdr">Mrs. Oliphant.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Addison</span></td> - <td class="tdr">W. J. Courthope.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Bacon</span></td> - <td class="tdr">R. W. Church.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Coleridge</span></td> - <td class="tdr">H. D. Traill.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Sir Philip Sidney</span></td> - <td class="tdr">J. A. Symonds.</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p class="center">12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume.</p> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Published by</span> HARPER & BROTHERS, <span class="smcap">New York</span>.</p> - -<p>☞ <i>Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part -of the United States, on receipt of the price.</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>NOTE.</h2> - -<p>I am indebted throughout to <cite>The Life and Correspondence -of Robert Southey</cite>, edited by the Rev. C. C. Southey, -six volumes, 1850, and to <cite>Selections from the Letters of -Robert Southey</cite>, edited by J. W. Warter, B.D., four volumes, -1856. Many other sources have been consulted. -I thank Mr. W. J. Craig for help given in examining -Southey manuscripts, and Mr. T. W. Lyster for many valuable -suggestions.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Childhood</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Westminster, Oxford, Pantisocracy, and Marriage</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">19</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Wanderings</span>, 1795-1803</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">44</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ways of Life at Keswick, 1803-1839</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">80</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Ways of Life at Keswick, 1803-1839</span> (<i>continued</i>)</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">112</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Changes and Events, 1803-1843</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">142</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Southey’s Work in Literature</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">187</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<h1>SOUTHEY.</h1> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br /> -<span class="smaller">CHILDHOOD.</span></h2> - -<p>No one of his generation lived so completely in and for -literature as did Southey. “He is,” said Byron, “the -only existing entire man of letters.” With him literature -served the needs both of the material life and of the life -of the intellect and imagination; it was his means of earning -daily bread, and also the means of satisfying his highest -ambitions and desires. This, which was true of Southey -at five-and-twenty years of age, was equally true at forty, -fifty, sixty. During all that time he was actively at work -accumulating, arranging, and distributing knowledge; no -one among his contemporaries gathered so large a store -from the records of the past; no one toiled with such -steadfast devotion to enrich his age; no one occupied so -honourable a place in so many provinces of literature. -There is not, perhaps, any single work of Southey’s the -loss of which would be felt by us as a capital misfortune. -But the more we consider his total work, its mass, its variety, -its high excellence, the more we come to regard it as -a memorable, an extraordinary achievement.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p> - -<p>Southey himself, however, stands above his works. In -subject they are disconnected, and some of them appear -like huge fragments. It is the presence of one mind, one -character in all, easily recognizable by him who knows -Southey, which gives them a vital unity. We could lose -the <cite>History of Brazil</cite>, or the <cite>Peninsular War</cite>, or the <cite>Life -of Wesley</cite>, and feel that if our possessions were diminished, -we ourselves in our inmost being had undergone no -loss which might not easily be endured. But he who -has once come to know Southey’s voice as the voice of a -friend, so clear, so brave, so honest, so full of boyish glee, -so full of manly tenderness, feels that if he heard that -voice no more a portion of his life were gone. To make -acquaintance with the man is better than to study the -subjects of his books. In such a memoir as the present, -to glance over the contents of a hundred volumes, dealing -with matters widely remote, would be to wander upon a -vast circumference when we ought to strike for the centre. -If the reader come to know Southey as he read and wrote -in his library, as he rejoiced and sorrowed among his children, -as he held hands with good old friends, as he walked -by the lake-side, or lingered to muse near some mountain -stream, as he hoped and feared for England, as he thought -of life and death and a future beyond the grave, the end -of this small book will have been attained.</p> - -<p>At the age of forty-six Robert Southey wrote the first -of a series of autobiographic sketches; his spirit was courageous, -and life had been good to him; but it needed -more than his courage to live again in remembrance with -so many of the dead; having told the story of his boyhood, -he had not the heart to go farther. The autobiography -rambles pleasantly into by-ways of old Bath and -Bristol life; at Westminster School it leaves him. So far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> -we shall go along with it; for what lies beyond, a record -of Southey’s career must be brought together from a multitude -of letters, published or still remaining in manuscript, -and from many and massy volumes in prose and verse, -which show how the industrious hours sped by.</p> - -<p>Southey’s father was a linen-draper of Bristol. He had -left his native fields under the Quantock hills to take service -in a London shop, but his heart suffered in its exile. -The tears were in his eyes one day when a porter went by -carrying a hare, and the remembrance suddenly came to -him of his rural sports. On his master’s death he took a -place behind the counter of Britton’s shop in Wine Street, -Bristol; and when, twelve years later, he opened a shop for -himself in the same business, he had, with tender reminiscence, -a hare painted for a device upon his windows. He -kept his grandfather’s sword which had been borne in -Monmouth’s rebellion; he loved the chimes and quarter-boys -of Christ Church, Bristol, and tried, as church-warden, -to preserve them. What else of poetry there may have -been in the life of Robert Southey the elder is lost among -the buried epics of prosaic lives. We cannot suppose that -as a man of business he was sharp and shrewd; he certainly -was not successful. When the draper’s work was -done, he whiled away the hours over Felix Farley’s Bristol -Journal, his only reading. For library some score of books -shared with his wine-glasses the small cupboard in the -back parlour; its chief treasures were the <cite>Spectator</cite>, the -<cite>Guardian</cite>, some eighteenth-century poems, dead even then, -and one or two immortal plays.</p> - -<p>On Sundays Mr. Southey, then a bachelor, would stroll -to Bedminster to dine at the pleasant house of Mrs. Hill—a -substantial house to which Edward Hill, gentleman, -brought his second wife, herself a widow; a house rich in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -old English comfort, with its diamond-tiled garden-way -and jessamine-covered porch, its wainscoted “best kitchen,” -its blue room and green room and yellow room, its grapes -and greengages and nectarines, its sweet-williams and -stocks and syringas. Among these pleasant surroundings -the young draper found it natural, on Sabbath afternoons, -to make love to pleasant Margaret Hill. “Never,” writes -her son Robert Southey—“never was any human being -blessed with a sweeter temper or a happier disposition.” -Her face had been marred by the seams of small-pox, but -its brightness and kindness remained; there was a charm -in her clear hazel eyes, so good a temper and so alert an -understanding were to be read in them. She had not -gone to any school except one for dancing, and “her state,” -declares Southey, “was the more gracious;” her father -had, however, given her lessons in the art of whistling; -she could turn a tune like a blackbird. From a mother, -able to see a fact swiftly and surely, and who knew both -to whistle and to dance, Southey inherited that alertness -of intellect and that joyous temper, without which he could -not have accomplished his huge task-work, never yielding -to a mood of rebellion or <i lang="fr">ennui</i>.</p> - -<p>After the courtship on Sunday afternoons came the -wedding, and before long a beautiful boy was born, who -died in infancy. On the 12th of August, 1774, Mrs. -Southey was again in the pain of childbirth. “Is it a -boy?” she asked the nurse. “Ay, a great ugly boy!” -With such salutation from his earliest critic the future -poet-laureate entered this world. “God forgive me,” his -mother exclaimed afterwards, in relating the event, “when -I saw what a great red creature it was, covered with rolls -of fat, I thought I should never be able to love him.” -In due time the red creature proved to be a distinctively<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -human child, whose curly hair and sensitive feelings made -him a mother’s darling. He had not yet heard of sentiment -or of Rousseau, but he wept at the pathos of romantic -literature, at the tragic fate of the “Children sliding on -the ice all on a summer’s day,” or the too early death of -“Billy Pringle’s pig,” and he would beg the reciters not -to proceed. His mother’s household cares multiplied, and -Southey, an unbreeched boy of three years, was borne -away one morning by his faithful foster-mother Patty to -be handed over to the tender mercies of a schoolmistress. -Ma’am Powell was old and grim, and with her lashless -eyes gorgonized the new pupil; on the seizure of her hand -he woke to rebellion, kicking lustily, and crying, “Take -me to Pat! I don’t like ye! you’ve got ugly eyes! take -me to Pat, I say!” But soft-hearted Pat had gone home, -sobbing.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Southey’s one weakness was that of submitting too -meekly to the tyranny of an imperious half-sister, Miss -Tyler, the daughter of Grandmother Hill by her first marriage. -For this weakness there were excuses; Miss Tyler -was an elder sister by many years; she had property of -her own; she passed for a person of fashion, and was still -held to be a beauty; above all, she had the advantage of a -temper so capricious and violent that to quarrel with her -at all might be to lose her sisterly regard for ever. Her -struggling sister’s eldest son took Aunt Tyler’s fancy; it -was a part of her imperious kindness to adopt or half-adopt -the boy. Aunt Tyler lived in Bath; in no other -city could a gentlewoman better preserve health and good -looks, or enjoy so much society of distinction on easy but -not too ample means; it possessed a charming theatre, and -Miss Tyler was a patron of the drama. To Bath, then, she -had brought her portrait by Gainsborough, her inlaid cabinet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -of ebony, her cherry-wood arm-chair, her mezzotints -after Angelica Kaufmann, her old-maid hoards of this and -of that, the woman servant she had saved from the toils of -matrimony, and the old man, harmless as one of the crickets -which he nightly fed until he died. To Bath Miss Tyler -also brought her nephew; and she purchased a copy of -the new gospel of education, Rousseau’s <cite>Emilius</cite>, in order -to ascertain how Nature should have her perfect work with -a boy in petticoats. Here the little victim, without companions, -without play, without the child’s beatitudes of -dirt and din, was carefully swathed in the odds and ends -of habits and humours which belonged to a maiden lady -of a whimsical, irrational, and self-indulgent temper. Miss -Tyler, when not prepared for company, wandered about the -house—a faded beauty—in the most faded and fluttering -of costumes; but in her rags she was spotless. To preserve -herself and her worldly gear from the dust, for ever -floating and gathering in this our sordid atmosphere, was -the business of her life. Her acquaintances she divided -into the clean and the unclean—the latter class being much -the more numerous. Did one of the unclean take a seat -in her best room, the infected chair must be removed to -the garden to be aired. But did he seat himself in Miss -Tyler’s own arm-chair, pressing his abominable person into -Miss Tyler’s own cushion, then passionate were her dismay -and despair. To her favourites she was gracious and high-bred, -regaling them with reminiscences of Lady Bateman, -and with her views on taste, Shakspeare, and the musical -glasses. For her little nephew she invented the pretty recreation -of pricking play-bills; all capital letters were to be -illuminated with pin-holes; it was not a boisterous nor an -ungenteel sport. At other times the boy would beguile -the hours in the garden, making friends with flowers and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> -insects, or looking wistfully towards that sham castle on -Claverton Hill, seat of romantic mystery, but, alas! two -miles away, and therefore beyond the climbing powers of -a refined gentlewoman. Southey’s hardest daily trial was -the luxurious morning captivity of his aunt’s bed; still at -nine, at ten that lady lay in slumber; the small urchin, -long perked up and broad awake, feared by sound or stir -to rouse her, and would nearly wear his little wits away in -plotting re-arrangements of the curtain-pattern, or studying -the motes at mazy play in the slant sunbeam. His happiest -season was when all other little boys were fast asleep; -then, splendid in his gayest “jam,” he sat beside Miss Tyler -in a front row of the best part of the theatre; when the -yawning fits had passed, he was as open-eyed as the oldest, -and stared on, filling his soul with the spectacle, till the -curtain fell.</p> - -<p>The “great red creature,” Robert Southey, had now -grown into the lean greyhound of his after-life; his long -legs wanted to be stirring, and there were childish ambitions -already at work in his head. Freedom became dearer -to him than the daintiest cage, and when at six he returned -to his father’s house in Wine Street, it was with -rejoicing. Now, too, his aunt issued an edict that the -long-legged lad should be breeched; an epoch of life was -complete. Wine Street, with its freedom, seemed good; -but best of all was a visit to Grandmother Hill’s pleasant -house at Bedminster. “Here I had all wholesome liberty, -all wholesome indulgence, all wholesome enjoyments; and -the delight which I there learnt to take in rural sights and -sounds has grown up with me, and continues unabated to -this day.” And now that scrambling process called education -was to begin. A year was spent by Southey as a -day-scholar with old Mr. Foot, a dissenting minister, whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> -unorthodoxy as to the doctrine of the Trinity was in some -measure compensated by sound traditional views as to the -uses of the cane. Mr. Foot, having given proof on the -back of his last and his least pupil of steadfastness in the -faith according to Busby, died; and it was decided that -the boy should be placed under Thomas Flower, who kept -school at Corston, nine miles from Bristol. To a tender -mother’s heart nine miles seemed a breadth of severance -cruel as an Atlantic. Mrs. Southey, born to be happy herself, -and to make others happy, had always heretofore met -her son with a smile; now he found her weeping in her -chamber; with an effort, such as Southey, man and boy, always -knew how to make on like occasions, he gulped down -his own rising sob, and tried to brighten her sorrow with -a smile.</p> - -<p>A boy’s first night at school is usually not a time of -mirth. The heart of the solitary little lad at Corston -sank within him. A melancholy hung about the decayed -mansion which had once known better days; the broken -gateways, the summer-houses falling in ruins, the grass-grown -court, the bleakness of the schoolroom, ill-disguised -by its faded tapestry, depressed the spirits. Southey’s pillow -was wet with tears before he fell asleep. The master -was at one with his surroundings; he, too, was a piece of -worthy old humanity now decayed; he, too, was falling in -untimely ruins. From the memory of happier days, from -the troubles of his broken fortune, from the vexations of -the drunken maid-servant who was now his wife, he took -refuge in contemplating the order and motions of the -stars. “When he came into his desk, even there he was -thinking of the stars, and looked as if he were out of humour, -not from ill-nature, but because his calculations were -interrupted.” Naturally the work of the school, such as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -it was, fell, for the most part, into the hands of Charley, -Thomas Flower’s son. Both father and son knew the -mystery of that flamboyant penmanship admired by our -ancestors, but Southey’s handwriting had not yet advanced -from the early rounded to the decorated style. His spelling -he could look back upon with pride: on one occasion -a grand spelling tournament between the boys took place; -and little Southey can hardly have failed to overthrow his -taller adversaries with the posers, “crystallization” and -“coterie.” The household arrangements at Corston, as -may be supposed, were not of the most perfect kind; Mrs. -Flower had so deep an interest in her bottle, and poor -Thomas Flower in his planets. The boys each morning -washed themselves, or did not, in the brook ankle-deep -which ran through the yard. In autumn the brook grew -deeper and more swift, and after a gale it would bring -within bounds a tribute of floating apples from the neighbouring -orchard. That was a merry day, also in autumn, -when the boys were employed to pelt the master’s walnut-trees; -Southey, too small to bear his part in the battery, -would glean among the fallen leaves and twigs, inhaling -the penetrating fragrance which ever after called up a vision -of the brook, the hillside, and its trees. One schoolboy -sport—that of “conquering” with snail-shells—seems -to have been the special invention of Corston. The snail-shells, -not tenantless, were pressed point against point until -one was broken in. A great conqueror was prodigiously -prized, was treated with honourable distinction, and was -not exposed to danger save in great emergencies. One -who had slain his hundreds might rank with Rodney, to -see whom the boys had marched down to the Globe inn, -and for whom they had cheered and waved their Sunday -cocked hats as he passed by. So, on the whole, life at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> -Corston had its pleasures. Chief among its pains was the -misery of Sunday evenings in winter; then the pupils -were assembled in the hall to hear the master read a sermon, -or a portion of Stackhouse’s <cite>History of the Bible</cite>. -“Here,” writes Southey, “I sat at the end of a long form, -in sight but not within feeling of the fire, my feet cold, -my eyelids heavy as lead, and yet not daring to close -them—kept awake by fear alone, in total inaction, and -under the operation of a lecture more soporific than the -strongest sleeping dose.” While the boys’ souls were -thus provided for, there was a certain negligence in matters -unspiritual; an alarm got abroad that infection was -among them. This hastened the downfall of the school. -One night disputing was heard between Charley and his -father; in the morning poor Flower was not to be seen, -and Charley appeared with a black eye. So came to an -end the year at Corston. Southey, aged eight, was brought -home, and underwent “a three days’ purgatory in brimstone.”<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p>What Southey had gained of book-lore by his two years’ -schooling was as little as could be; but he was already a -lover of literature after a fashion of his own. A friend of -Miss Tyler had presented him, as soon as he could read, -with a series of Newbery’s sixpenny books for children—<cite>Goody -Twoshoes</cite>, <cite>Giles Gingerbread</cite>, and the rest—delectable -histories, resplendent in Dutch-gilt paper. The true -masters of his imagination, however, were the players and -playwrights who provided amusement for the pleasure-loving -people of Bath. Miss Tyler was acquainted with Colman, -and Sheridan, and Cumberland, and Holcroft; her talk<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -was of actors and authors, and her nephew soon perceived -that, honoured as were both classes, the authors were -awarded the higher place. His first dreams of literary -fame, accordingly, were connected with the drama. “‘It -is the easiest thing in the world to write a play,’ said I to -Miss Palmer (a friend of Aunt Tyler’s), as we were in a -carriage on Redcliffe Hill one day, returning from Bristol -to Bedminster. ‘Is it, my dear?’ was her reply. ‘Yes,’ -I continued, ‘for you know you have only to think what -you would say if you were in the place of the characters, -and to make them say it.’” With such a canon of dramatic -authorship Southey began a play on the continence -of Scipio, and actually completed an act and a half. Shakespeare -he read and read again; Beaumont and Fletcher he -had gone through before he was eight years old. Were -they not great theatrical names, Miss Tyler reasoned, and -therefore improving writers for her nephew? and Southey -had read them unharmed. When he visited his aunt from -Corston, she was a guest with Miss Palmer at Bath; a -covered passage led to the playhouse, and every evening -the delighted child, seated between the two lady-patronesses -of the stage, saw the pageantry and heard the poetry. -A little later he persuaded a schoolfellow to write a tragedy; -Ballard liked the suggestion, but could not invent a -plot. Southey gave him a story; Ballard approved, but -found a difficulty in devising names for the <i lang="la">dramatis personæ</i>. -Southey supplied a list of heroic names: they were -just what Ballard wanted—but he was at a loss to know -what the characters should say. “I made the same attempt,” -continued Southey, “with another schoolfellow, -and with no better success. It seemed to me very odd -that they should not be able to write plays as well as to -do their lessons.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p> - -<p>The ingenious Ballard was an ornament of the school -of William Williams, whither Southey was sent as a day-boarder -after the catastrophe of Corston. Under the care -of this kindly, irascible, little, bewigged old Welshman, -Southey remained during four years. Williams was not -a model schoolmaster, but he was a man of character and -of a certain humorous originality. In two things he believed -with all the energy of his nature—in his own spelling-book -printed for his own school, and in the Church -Catechism. Latin was left to the curate; when Southey -reached Virgil, old Williams, delighted with classical attainments -rare among his pupils, thought of taking the -boy into his own hands, but his little Latin had faded -from his brain; and the curate himself seemed to have -reached his term in the <i lang="la">Tityre tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine -fagi</i>, so that to Southey, driven round and round the -pastoral paddock, the names of Tityrus and Melibœus became -for ever after symbols of <i lang="fr">ennui</i>. No prosody was -taught: “I am,” said Southey, “at this day as liable to -make a false quantity as any Scotchman.” The credit, -however, is due to Williams of having discovered in his -favourite pupil a writer of English prose. One day each -boy of a certain standing was called upon to write a letter -on any subject he pleased: never had Southey written a -letter except the formal one dictated at Corston which began -with “Honoured Parents.” He cried for perplexity -and vexation; but Williams encouraged him, and presently -a description of Stonehenge filled his slate. The old -man was surprised and delighted. A less amiable feeling -possessed Southey’s schoolfellows: a plan was forthwith -laid for his humiliation—could he tell them, fine scholar -that he was, what the letters <i>i. e.</i> stand for? Southey,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -never lacking in courage, drew a bow at a venture: for -John the Evangelist.</p> - -<p>The old Welshman, an original himself, had an odd following -of friends and poor retainers. There was the crazy -rhymester known as “Dr. Jones;” tradition darkly related -that a dose of cantharides administered by waggish boys -of a former generation had robbed him of his wits. “The -most celebrated <i lang="it">improvisatore</i> was never half so vain of his -talent as this queer creature, whose little figure of some -five-feet-two I can perfectly call to mind, with his suit of -rusty black, his more rusty wig, and his old cocked hat. -Whenever he entered the schoolroom he was greeted with -a shout of welcome.” There was also Pullen, the breeches-maker—a -glorious fellow, brimful of vulgarity, prosperity, -and boisterous good-nature; above all, an excellent hand -at demanding a half-holiday. A more graceful presence, -but a more fleeting, was that of Mrs. Estan, the actress, -who came to learn from the dancing-master her <i lang="fr">minuet de -la cour</i> in <cite>The Belle’s Stratagem</cite>. Southey himself had -to submit to lessons in dancing. Tom Madge, his constant -partner, had limbs that went every way; Southey’s limbs -would go no way: the spectacle presented by their joint -endeavours was one designed for the pencil of Cruikshank. -In the art of reading aloud Miss Tyler had herself instructed -her nephew, probably after the manner of the most approved -tragedy queens. The grand style did not please -honest Williams. “Who taught you to read?” he asked, -scornfully. “My aunt,” answered Southey. “Then give -my compliments to your aunt, and tell her that my old -horse, that has been dead these twenty years, could have -taught you as well”—a message which her nephew, with -the appalling frankness of youth, delivered, and which was -never forgotten.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> - -<p>While Southey was at Corston, his grandmother died; -the old lady with the large, clear, brown, bright eyes, seated -in her garden, was no more to be seen, and the Bedminster -house, after a brief occupation by Miss Tyler, was -sold. Miss Tyler spoke of Bristol society with a disdainful -sniff; it was her choice to wander for a while from one -genteel watering-place to another. When Williams gave -Southey his first summer holidays, he visited his aunt at -Weymouth. The hours spent there upon the beach were -the most spiritual hours of Southey’s boyhood; he was -for the first time in face of the sea—the sea vast, voiceful, -and mysterious. Another epoch-making event occurred -about the same time; good Mrs. Dolignon, his aunt’s -friend, gave him a book—the first which became his very -own since that present of the toy-books of Newbery. It -was Hoole’s translation of Tasso’s <cite>Gerusalemme Liberata</cite>; -in it a world of poetical adventure was opened to the boy. -The notes to Tasso made frequent reference to Ariosto; -Bull’s Circulating Library at Bath—a Bodleian to Southey—supplied -him with the version, also by Hoole, of the <cite>Orlando -Furioso</cite>; here was a forest of old romance in which -to lose himself. But a greater discovery was to come; -searching the notes again, Southey found mention made of -Spenser, and certain stanzas of Spenser’s chief poem were -quoted. “Was the <cite>Faerie Queene</cite> on Bull’s shelves?” -“Yes,” was the answer; “they had it, but it was in obsolete -language, and the young gentleman would not understand -it.” The young gentleman, who had already gone through -Beaumont and Fletcher, was not daunted; he fell to with -the keenest relish, feeling in Spenser the presence of something -which was lacking in the monotonous couplets of -Hoole, and charming himself unaware with the music of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> -the stanza. Spenser, “not more sweet than pure, and not -more pure than wise,”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“High-priest of all the Muses’ mysteries,”<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">was henceforth accepted by Southey as his master.</p> - -<p>When Miss Tyler had exhausted her friends’ hospitality, -and had grown tired of lodgings, she settled in a pleasant -suburban nook at Bristol; but having a standing quarrel -with Thomas Southey, her sister’s brother-in-law, she would -never set foot in the house in Wine Street, and she tried -to estrange her nephew, as far as possible, from his natural -home. Her own brother William, a half-witted creature, -she brought to live with her. “The Squire,” as he was -called, was hardly a responsible being, yet he had a sort of -<em>half-saved</em> shrewdness, and a memory stored with old saws, -which, says Southey, “would have qualified him, had he -been born two centuries earlier, to have worn motley, and -figured with a cap and bells and a bauble in some baron’s -hall.” A saying of his, “Curses are like young chickens, -they always come home to roost,” was remembered by -Southey in after-years; and when it was turned into Greek -by Coleridge, to serve as motto to <cite>The Curse of Kehama</cite>, -a mysterious reference was given—Αποφθ. Ανεκ. του Γυλίελ. -του Μητ. With much beer-swilling and tobacco-chewing, -premature old age came upon him. He would sit for -hours by the kitchen fire, or, on warm days, in the summer-house, -his eyes intently following the movements of the -neighbours. He loved to play at marbles with his nephew, -and at loo with Miss Tyler; most of all, he loved to be -taken to the theatre. The poor Squire had an affectionate -heart; he would fondle children with tenderness, and at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -his mother’s funeral his grief was overwhelming. A companion -of his own age Southey found in Shadrach Weekes, -the boy of all work, a brother of Miss Tyler’s maid. Shad -and his young master would scour the country in search -of violet and cowslip roots, and the bee and fly orchis, until -wood and rock by the side of the Avon had grown familiar -and had grown dear; and now, instead of solitary -pricking of play-bills, Southey set to work, with the help -of Shad, to make and fit up such a theatre for puppets as -would have been the pride even of Wilhelm Meister.</p> - -<p>But fate had already pronounced that Southey was to -be poet, and not player. Tasso and Ariosto and Spenser -claimed him, or so he dreamed. By this time he had -added to his epic cycle Pope’s <cite>Homer</cite> and Mickle’s <cite>Lusiad</cite>. -That prose romance, embroidered with sixteenth-century -affectations, but with a true chivalric sentiment -at its heart, Sidney’s <cite>Arcadia</cite>, was also known to him. -He had read Arabian and mock-Arabian tales; he had -spent the pocket-money of many weeks on a Josephus, and -he had picked up from Goldsmith something of Greek -and Roman history. So breathed upon by poetry, and -so furnished with erudition, Southey, at twelve years old, -found it the most natural thing in the world to become an -epic poet. His removal from the old Welshman’s school -having been hastened by that terrible message which Miss -Tyler could not forgive, Southey, before proceeding to -Westminster, was placed for a year under a clergyman, -believed to be competent to carry his pupils beyond Tityrus -and Melibœus. But, except some skill in writing English -themes, little was gained from this new tutor. The -year, however, was not lost. “I do not remember,” -Southey writes, “in any part of my life to have been -so conscious of intellectual improvement ... an improvement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> -derived not from books or instruction, but from -constantly exercising myself in English verse.” “Arcadia” -was the title of his first dream-poem; it was to -be grafted upon the <cite>Orlando Furioso</cite>, with a new hero, -and in a new scene; this dated from his ninth or tenth -year, and some verses were actually composed. The epic -of the Trojan Brutus and that of King Richard III. were -soon laid aside, but several folio sheets of an <cite>Egbert</cite> came -to be written. The boy’s pride and ambition were solitary -and shy. One day he found a lady, a visitor of Miss -Tyler’s, with the sacred sheets of <cite>Egbert</cite> in her hand; her -compliments on his poem were deeply resented; and he -determined henceforth to write his epics in a private -cipher. Heroic epistles, translations from Latin poetry, -satires, descriptive and moral pieces, a poem in dialogue -exhibiting the story of the Trojan war, followed in rapid -succession; last, a “Cassibelan,” of which three books were -completed. Southey, looking back on these attempts, -notices their deficiency in plan, in construction. “It was -long before I acquired this power—not fairly, indeed, -till I was about five or six and thirty; and it was gained -by practice, in the course of which I learnt to perceive -wherein I was deficient.”</p> - -<p>One day in February, 1788, a carriage rumbled out of -Bath, containing Miss Palmer, Miss Tyler, and Robert -Southey, now a tall, lank boy with high-poised head, brown -curling hair, bright hazel eyes, and an expression of ardour -and energy about the lips and chin. The ladies were on -their way to London for some weeks’ diversion, and Robert -Southey was on his way to school at Westminster. -For a while he remained an inconvenient appendage of -his aunt’s, wearying of the great city, longing for Shad -and the carpentry, and the Gloucester meadows and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> -Avon cliffs, and the honest eyes and joyous bark of poor -Phillis. April the first—ominous morning—arrived; -Southey was driven to Dean’s Yard; his name was duly -entered; his boarding-house determined; his tutor chosen; -farewells were said, and he found himself in a strange -world, alone.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.<br /> -<span class="smaller">WESTMINSTER, OXFORD, PANTISOCRACY, AND MARRIAGE.</span></h2> - -<p>Of Southey during his four years at Westminster we know -little; his fragment of autobiography, having brought him -to the school, soon comes to an untimely close; and for -this period we possess no letters. But we know that these -were years which contributed much to form his intellect -and character; we know that they were years of ardour -and of toil; and it is certain that now, as heretofore, his -advance was less dependent on what pastors and masters -did for him than on what he did for himself. The highest -scholarship—that which unites precision with breadth, and -linguistic science with literary feeling—Southey never attained -in any foreign tongue, except perhaps in the Portuguese -and the Spanish. Whenever the choice lay between -pausing to trace out a law of language, or pushing forward -to secure a good armful of miscellaneous facts, Southey -preferred the latter. With so many huge structures of his -own in contemplation, he could not gather too much material, -nor gather it too quickly. Such fortitude as goes to -make great scholars he possessed; his store of patience was -inexhaustible; but he could be patient only in pursuit of -his proper objects. He could never learn a language in -regular fashion; the best grammar, he said, was always the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> -shortest. Southey’s acquaintance with Greek never goes -beyond that stage at which Greek, like fairy gold, is apt -to slip away of a sudden unless kept steadfastly in view, -nearly all the Greek he had learnt at Westminster he forgot -at Oxford. A monkish legend in Latin of the Church -or a mediæval Latin chronicle he could follow with the run -of the eye; but had he at any season of his manhood been -called on to write a page of Latin prose, it would probably -have resembled the French in which he sometimes sportively -addressed his friends by letter, and in which he uttered -himself valiantly while travelling abroad.</p> - -<p>Southey brought to Westminster an imagination stored -with the marvels and the beauty of old romance. He left -it skilled in the new sentiment of the time—a sentiment -which found in Werther and Eloisa its dialect, high-pitched -self-conscious, rhapsodical, and not wholly real. His bias -for history was already marked before he entered the -school; but his knowledge consisted of a few clusters of -historical facts grouped around the subjects of various projected -epics, and dotting at wide distances and almost at -random the vast expanse of time. Now he made acquaintance -with that book which, more than any other, displays -the breadth, the variety, and the independence of the visible -lives of nations. Gibbon’s <cite>Decline and Fall</cite> leaves a -reader cold who cares only to quicken his own inmost being -by contact with what is most precious in man’s spiritual -history; one chapter of Augustine’s <cite>Confessions</cite>, one -sentence of the <cite>Imitation</cite>—each a live coal from off the -altar—will be of more worth to such an one than all the -mass and laboured majesty of Gibbon. But one who can -gaze with a certain impersonal regard on the spectacle of -the world will find the <cite>Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</cite>, -more than almost any other single book, replenish and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -dilate the mind. In it Southey viewed for the first time -the sweep, the splendour, the coils, the mighty movement, -of the stream of human affairs.</p> - -<p>Southey’s ambition on entering Westminster was to have -the friendship of the youths who had acted in the last -Westminster play, and whose names he had seen in the -newspaper. Vain hope! for they, already preparing to tie -their hair in tails, were looking onward to the great world, -and had no glance to cast on the unnoted figures of the -under-fourth. The new-comer, according to a custom of -the school, was for a time effaced, ceasing to exist as an individual -entity, and being known only as “shadow” of the -senior boy chosen to be “substance” to him during his noviciate. -Southey accepted his effacement the more willingly -because George Strachey, his substance, had a good -face and a kindly heart; unluckily—Strachey boarding at -home—they were parted each night. A mild young aristocrat, -joining little with the others, was head of the house; -and Southey, unprotected by his chief, stood exposed to -the tyranny of a fellow-boarder bigger and brawnier than -himself, who would souse the ears of his sleeping victim -with water, or on occasions let fly the porter-pot or the -poker at his head. Aspiring beyond these sallies to a -larger and freer style of humour, he attempted one day to -hang Southey out of an upper window by the leg; the -pleasantry was taken ill by the smaller boy, who offered -an effectual resistance, and soon obtained his remove to another -chamber. Southey’s mature judgment of boarding-school -life was not, on the whole, favourable; yet to Westminster -he owed two of his best and dearest possessions—the -friendship of C. W. W. Wynn, whose generous loyalty -alone made it possible for Southey to pursue literature as -his profession, and the friendship, no less precious, of Grosvenor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -Bedford, lasting green and fresh from boyhood until -both were white-haired, venerable men.</p> - -<p>Southey’s interest in boyish sports was too slight to -beguile him from the solitude needful for the growth of -a poet’s mind. He had thoughts of continuing Ovid’s -Metamorphoses; he planned six books to complete the -Faery Queen, and actually wrote some cantos; already the -subject of <cite>Madoc</cite> was chosen. And now a gigantic conception, -which at a later time was to bear fruit in such -poems as <cite>Thalaba</cite> and <cite>Kehama</cite>, formed itself in his mind -“When I was a schoolboy at Westminster,” he writes -“I frequented the house of a schoolfellow who has continued -till this day to be one of my most intimate and -dearest friends. The house was so near Dean’s Yard that -it was hardly considered as being out of our prescribed -bounds; and I had free access to the library, a well-stored -and pleasant room ... looking over the river. There -many of my truant hours were delightfully spent in reading -Picart’s <cite>Religious Ceremonies</cite>. The book impressed -my imagination strongly; and before I left school I had -formed the intention of exhibiting all the more prominent -and poetical forms of mythology, which have at any time -obtained among mankind, by making each the groundwork -of an heroic poem.” Southey’s huge design was -begotten upon his <i lang="it">pia mater</i> by a folio in a library. A -few years earlier Wordsworth, a boy of fourteen, walking -between Hawkshead and Ambleside, noticed the boughs -and leaves of an oak-tree intensely outlined in black against -a bright western sky. “That moment,” he says, “was -important in my poetical history, for I date from it my -consciousness of the infinite variety of natural appearances -which had been unnoticed by the poets of any age or -country, so far as I was acquainted with them; and I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> -made a resolution to supply in some degree the deficiency.” -Two remarkable incidents in the history of English poetry, -and each with something in it of a typical character.</p> - -<p>At Westminster Southey obtained his first literary profits—the -guerdon of the silver penny to which Cowper alludes -in his <cite>Table-Talk</cite>. Southey’s penny—exchanged -for current coin in the proportion of six to one by the -mistress of the boarding-house—was always awarded for -English composition. But his fame among his schoolfellows -was not of an early or sudden growth. In the year -of Southey’s entrance, some of the senior boys commenced -a weekly paper called <cite>The Trifler</cite>. It imitates, with some -skill, the periodical essay of the post-Johnsonian period: -there is the wide-ranging discussion on the Influence of -Liberty on Genius; there is the sprightly sketch of Amelia, -a learned Lady; there is the moral diatribe on Deists, a -Sect of Infidels most dangerous to Mankind; there are the -letters from Numa and from Infelix; there is the Eastern -apologue, beginning, “In the city of Bassora lived Zaydor, -the son of Al-Zored.” Southey lost no time in sending -to the editor his latest verses; a baby sister, Margaretta, -had just died, and Southey expressed in elegy a grief which -was real and keen. “The Elegy signed B. is received”—so -Mr. Timothy Touchstone announced on the Saturday -after the manuscript had been dropped into the penny -post. The following Saturday—anxiously expected—brought -no poem, but another announcement: “The Elegy -by B. must undergo some Alterations; a Liberty I -must request all my Correspondents to permit me to take.” -“After this,” says Southey, “I looked for its appearance -anxiously, but in vain.” Happily no one sought to discover -B., or supposed that he was one with the curly-headed -boy of the under-fourth.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> - -<p>If authorship has its hours of disappointment, it has -compensating moments of glory and of joy. <cite>The Trifler</cite>, -having lived to the age of ten months, deceased. In 1792 -Southey, now a great boy, with Strachey, his sometime -“substance,” and his friends Wynn and Bedford, planned -a new periodical of ill-omened name, <cite>The Flagellant</cite>. “I -well remember my feelings,” he writes, “when the first -number appeared.... It was Bedford’s writing, but that -circumstance did not prevent me from feeling that I was -that day borne into the world as an author; and if ever -my head touched the stars while I walked upon the earth, -it was then.... In all London there was not so vain, so -happy, so elated a creature as I was that day.” From that -starry altitude he soon descended. The subject of an -early number of <cite>The Flagellant</cite> was flogging; the writer -was Robert Southey. He was full of Gibbon at the time, -and had caught some of Voltaire’s manner of poignant -irony. Rather for disport of his wits than in the character -of a reformer, the writer of number five undertook to -prove from the ancients and the Fathers that flogging was -an invention of the devil. During Southey’s life the devil -received many insults at his hands; his horns, his hoofs, -his teeth, his tail, his moral character, were painfully referred -to; and the devil took it, like a sensible fiend, in -good part. Not so Dr. Vincent; the preceptorial dignity -was impugned by some unmannerly brat; a bulwark of -the British Constitution was at stake. Dr. Vincent made -haste to prosecute the publisher for libel. Matters having -taken unexpectedly so serious a turn, Southey came forward, -avowed himself the writer, and, with some sense of -shame in yielding to resentment so unwarranted and so -dull, he offered his apology. The head-master’s wrath still -held on its way, and Southey was privately expelled.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> - -<p>All Southey’s truant hours were not passed among folios -adorned with strange sculptures. In those days even St. -Peter’s College, Westminster, could be no little landlocked -bay—silent, secure, and dull. To be in London was to be -among the tides and breakers of the world. Every post -brought news of some startling or significant event. Now -it was that George Washington had been elected first President -of the American Republic; now that the States-General -were assembled at Versailles; now that Paris, delivered -from her nightmare towers of the Bastille, breathed -free; now that Brissot was petitioning for dethronement. -The main issues of the time were such as to try the spirits. -Southey, who was aspiring, hopeful, and courageous, did -not hesitate in choosing a side; a new dawn was opening -for the world, and should not his heart have its portion -in that dawn?</p> - -<p>The love of our own household which surrounds us like -the air, and which seems inevitable as our daily meat and -drink, acquires a strange preciousness when we find that -the world can be harsh. The expelled Westminster boy -returned to Bristol, and faithful Aunt Tyler welcomed him -home; Shad did not avert his face, and Phillis looked up -at him with her soft spaniel eyes. But Bristol also had -its troubles; the world had been too strong for the poor -linen-draper in Wine Street; he had struggled to maintain -his business, but without success; his fortune was now -broken, and his heart broke with it. In some respects it -was well for Southey that his father’s affairs gave him definite -realities to attend to; for, in the quiet and vacancy of -the days in Miss Tyler’s house, his heart took unusual heats -and chills, and even his eager verse-writing could not allay -the excitement nor avert the despondent fit. When Michaelmas -came, Southey went up to Oxford to matriculate;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> -it was intended that he should enter at Christ Church, but -the dean had heard of the escapade at Westminster; there -was a laying of big-wigs together over that adventure, and -the young rebel was rejected; to be received, however, by -Balliol College. But to Southey it mattered little at the -time whether he were of this college or of that; a summons -had reached him to hasten to Bristol that he might -follow his father’s body to the grave, and now his thoughts -could not but cling to his mother in her sorrow and her -need.</p> - -<p>“I left Westminster,” says Southey, “in a perilous state—a -heart full of poetry and feeling, a head full of Rousseau -and Werther, and my religious principles shaken by -Gibbon: many circumstances tended to give me a wrong -bias, none to lead me right, except adversity, the wholesomest -of all discipline.” The young republican went up -to chambers in Rat Castle—since departed—near the head -of Balliol Grove, prepared to find in Oxford the seat of -pedantry, prejudice, and aristocracy; an airy sense of his -own enlightenment and emancipation possessed him. He -has to learn to pay respect to men “remarkable only for -great wigs and little wisdom.” He finds it “rather disgraceful -at the moment when Europe is on fire with freedom—when -man and monarch are contending—to sit and -study Euclid and Hugo Grotius.” Beside the enthusiasm -proper in Southey’s nature, there was at this time an enthusiasm -prepense. He had learnt from his foreign masters -the language of hyper-sensibility; his temperament was -nervous and easily wrought upon; his spirit was generous -and ardent. Like other youths with a facile literary talent -before finding his true self, he created a number of artificial -selves, who uttered for him his moralizings and philosophizings, -who declaimed for him on liberty, who dictated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -long letters of sentimental platitudes, and who built up -dream-fabrics of social and political reforms, chiefly for -the pleasure of seeing how things might look in “the brilliant -colours of fancy, nature, and Rousseau.” In this there -was no insincerity, though there was some unreality. “For -life,” he says, “I have really a very strong predilection,” -and the buoyant energy within him delayed the discovery -of the bare facts of existence; it was so easy and enjoyable -to become in turn sage, reformer, and enthusiast. Or -perhaps we ought to say that all this time there was a real -Robert Southey, strong, upright, ardent, simple; and although -this was quite too plain a person to serve the purposes -of epistolary literature, it was he who gave their cues -to the various ideal personages. This, at least, may be affirmed—all -Southey’s unrealities were of a pure and generous -cast; never was his life emptied of truth and meaning, -and made in the deepest degree phantasmal by a secret -shame lurking under a fair show. The youth Milton, with -his grave upbringing, was happily not in the way of catching -the trick of sentimental phrases; but even Milton at -Cambridge, the lady of his College, was not more clean -from spot or blemish than was Southey amid the vulgar -riot and animalisms of young Oxford.</p> - -<p>Two influences came to the aid of Southey’s instinctive -modesty, and confirmed him in all that was good. One -was his friendship with Edmund Seward, too soon taken -from him by death. The other was his discipleship to a -great master of conduct. One in our own day has acknowledged -the largeness of his debt to</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“That halting slave, who in Nicopolis</div> -<div class="verse">Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son</div> -<div class="verse">Clear’d Rome of what most shamed him.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p> - -<p class="noindent">Epictetus came to Southey precisely when such a master -was needed; other writers had affected him through his -imagination, through his nervous sensibility; they had -raised around him a luminous haze; they had plunged -him deeper in illusion. Now was heard the voice of a -conscience speaking to a conscience; the manner of speech -was grave, unfigured, calm; above all, it was real, and the -words bore in upon the hearer’s soul with a quiet resistlessness. -He had allowed his sensitiveness to set up what -excitements it might please in his whole moral frame; he -had been squandering his emotions; he had been indulging -in a luxury and waste of passion. Here was a tonic -and a styptic. Had Southey been declamatory about -freedom? The bondsman Epictetus spoke of freedom -also, and of how it might be obtained. Epictetus, like -Rousseau, told of a life according to nature; he commended -simplicity of manners. But Rousseau’s simplicity, notwithstanding -that homage which he paid to the will, seemed -to heat the atmosphere with strange passion, seemed -to give rise to new curiosities and refinements of self-conscious -emotion. Epictetus showed how life could be simplified, -indeed, by bringing it into obedience to a perfect -law. Instead of a quietism haunted by feverish dreams—duty, -action, co-operation with God. “Twelve years -ago,” wrote Southey in 1806, “I carried Epictetus in my -pocket till my very heart was ingrained with it, as a pig’s -bones become red by feeding him upon madder. And -the longer I live, and the more I learn, the more am I convinced -that Stoicism, properly understood, is the best and -noblest of systems.” Much that Southey gained from -Stoicism he kept throughout his whole life, tempered, indeed, -by the influences of a Christian faith, but not lost. -He was no metaphysician, and a master who had placed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -metaphysics first and morals after would hardly have won -him for a disciple; but a lofty ethical doctrine spoke to -what was deepest and most real in his nature. To trust -in an over-ruling Providence, to accept the disposal of -events not in our own power with a strenuous loyalty to -our Supreme Ruler, to hold loose by all earthly possessions -even the dearest, to hold loose by life itself while putting -it to fullest use—these lessons he first learnt from the -Stoic slave, and he forgot none of them. But his chief -lesson was the large one of self-regulation, that it is a -man’s prerogative to apply the reason and the will to the -government of conduct and to the formation of character.</p> - -<p>By the routine of lectures and examinations Southey -profited little; he was not driven into active revolt, and -that was all. His tutor, half a democrat, surprised him by -praising America, and asserting the right of every country -to model its own forms of government. He added, with -a pleasing frankness which deserves to be imitated, “Mr. -Southey, you won’t learn anything by my lectures, sir; so, -if you have any studies of your own, you had better pursue -them.” Of all the months of his life, those passed -at Oxford, Southey declared, were the most unprofitable. -“All I learnt was a little swimming ... and a little boating.... -I never remember to have dreamt of Oxford—a -sure proof how little it entered into my moral being; of -school, on the contrary, I dream perpetually.” The miscellaneous -society of workers, idlers, dunces, bucks, men of -muscle and men of money, did not please him; he lacked -what Wordsworth calls “the congregating temper that -pervades our unripe years.” One or two friends he chose, -and grappled them to his heart; above all, Seward, who -abridged his hours of sleep for sake of study—whose -drink was water, whose breakfast was dry bread; then,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> -Wynn and Lightfoot. With Seward he sallied forth, in -the Easter vacation, 1793, for a holiday excursion; passed, -with “the stupidity of a democratic philosopher,” the very -walls of Blenheim, without turning from the road to view -the ducal palace; lingered at Evesham, and wandered -through its ruined Abbey, indulging in some passable mediæval -romancing; reached Worcester and Kidderminster. -“We returned by Bewdley. There is an old mansion, once -Lord Herbert’s, now mouldering away, in so romantic a -situation, that I soon lost myself in dreams of days of -yore: the tapestried room—the listed fight—the vassal-filled -hall—the hospitable fire—the old baron and his -young daughter—these formed a most delightful day-dream.” -The youthful democrat did not suspect that -such day-dreams were treasonable—a hazardous caressing -of the wily enchantress of the past; in his pocket he carried -Milton’s <cite>Defence</cite>, which may have been his amulet of -salvation. Many and various elements could mingle in -young brains a-seethe with revolution and romanticism. -The fresh air and quickened blood at least put Southey -into excellent spirits. “We must walk over Scotland; it -will be an adventure to delight us all the remainder of -our lives: we will wander over the hills of Morven, and -mark the driving blast, perchance bestrodden by the spirit -of Ossian!”</p> - -<p>Among visitors to the Wye, in July, 1793, were William -Wordsworth, recently returned from France, and Robert -Southey, holiday-making from Oxford; they were probably -unacquainted with each other at that time even by -name. Wordsworth has left an undying memorial of his -tour in the poem written near Tintern Abbey, five years -later. Southey was drawing a long breath before he uttered -himself in some thousands of blank verses. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -father of his friend Bedford resided at Brixton Causeway, -about four miles on the Surrey side of London; the -smoke of the great city hung heavily beyond an intervening -breadth of country; shady lanes led to the neighbouring -villages; the garden was a sunny solitude where flowers -opened and fruit grew mellow, and bees and birds were -happy. Here Southey visited his friend; his nineteenth -birthday came; on the following morning he planted himself -at the desk in the garden summer-house; morning -after morning quickly passed; and by the end of six -weeks <cite>Joan of Arc</cite>, an epic poem in twelve books, was -written. To the subject Southey was attracted primarily -by the exalted character of his heroine; but apart from -this it possessed a twofold interest for him: England, in -1793, was engaged in a war against France—a war hateful -to all who sympathized with the Republic; Southey’s epic -was a celebration of the glories of French patriotism, a -narrative of victory over the invader. It was also chivalric -and mediæval; the sentiment which was transforming -the word Gothic, from a term of reproach to a word of -vague yet mastering fascination, found expression in the -young poet’s treatment of the story of Joan of Arc. -Knight and hermit, prince and prelate, doctors seraphic -and irrefragable with their pupils, meet in it; the castle -and the cathedral confront one another: windows gleam -with many-coloured light streaming through the rich robes -of saint and prophet; a miracle of carven tracery branches -overhead; upon the altar burns the mystic lamp.</p> - -<p>The rough draft of <cite>Joan</cite> was hardly laid aside when -Southey’s sympathies with the revolutionary movement -in France, strained already to the utmost point of tension, -were fatally rent. All his faith, all his hope, were given -to the Girondin party; and from the Girondins he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -singled out Brissot as his ideal of political courage, purity -and wisdom. Brissot, like himself, was a disciple of Jean -Jacques; his life was austere; he had suffered on behalf -of freedom. On the day when the Bastille was stormed -its keys were placed in Brissot’s hands; it was Brissot -who had determined that war should be declared against -the foreign foes of the Republic. But now the Girondins—following -hard upon Marie Antoinette—were in the -death-carts; they chanted their last hymn of liberty, ever -growing fainter while the axe lopped head after head; and -Brissot was among the martyrs (October 31, 1793). Probably -no other public event so deeply affected Southey. “I -am sick of the world,” he writes, “and discontented with -every one in it. The murder of Brissot has completely -harrowed up my faculties.... I look round the world, -and everywhere find the same spectacle—the strong tyrannizing -over the weak, man and beast.... There is no -place for virtue.”</p> - -<p>After this, though Southey did not lose faith in democratic -principles, he averted his eyes for a time from -France: how could he look to butchers who had shed -blood which was the very life of liberty, for the realization -of his dreams? And whither should he look? -Had he but ten thousand republicans like himself, they -might repeople Greece and expel the Turk. Being but -one, might not Cowley’s fancy, a cottage in America, be -transformed into a fact: “three rooms ... and my only -companion some poor negro whom I have bought on purpose -to emancipate?” Meanwhile he occupied a room in -Aunt Tyler’s house, and, instead of swinging the axe in -some forest primeval, amused himself with splitting a -wedge of oak in company with Shad, who might, perhaps, -serve for the emancipated negro. Moreover, he was very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> -diligently driving his quill: “I have finished transcribing -<cite>Joan</cite>, and have bound her in marble paper with green ribbons, -and am now copying all my remainables to carry to -Oxford. Then once more a clear field, and then another -epic poem, and then another.” Appalling announcement! -“I have accomplished a most arduous task, transcribing -all my verses that appear worth the trouble, except letters. -Of these I took one list—another of my pile of stuff -and nonsense—and a third of what I have burnt and -lost; upon an average 10,000 verses are burnt and lost; -the same number preserved, and 15,000 worthless.” Such -sad mechanic exercise dulled the ache in Southey’s heart; -still “the visions of futurity,” he finds, “are dark and -gloomy, and the only ray that enlivens the scene beams -on America.”</p> - -<p>To Balliol Southey returned; and if the future of the -world seemed perplexing, so also did his individual future. -His school and college expenses were borne by Mrs. Southey’s -brother, the Rev. Herbert Hill, chaplain to the British -Factory at Lisbon. In him the fatherless youth found one -who was both a friend and a father. Holbein’s portrait -of Sir Thomas More in his best years might have passed -for that of Mr. Hill; there was the same benign thoughtfulness -in his aspect, the same earnest calm, the same -brightness and quietness, the same serene and cheerful -strength. He was generous and judicious, learned and -modest, and his goodness carried authority with it. Uncle -Hill’s plan had been that Southey, like himself, should become -an English clergyman. But though he might have -preached from an Unitarian pulpit, Southey could not take -upon himself the vows of a minister of the Church of -England. It would have instantly relieved his mother had -he entered into orders. He longed that this were possible,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> -and went through many conflicts of mind, and not a little -anguish. “God knows I would exchange every intellectual -gift which He has blessed me with, for implicit faith to -have been able to do this;” but it could not be. To bear -the reproaches, gentle yet grave, of his uncle was hard; to -grieve his mother was harder. Southey resolved to go to -the anatomy school, and fit himself to be a doctor. But -he could not overcome his strong repugnance to the dissecting-room; -it expelled him whether he would or no; -and all the time literature, with still yet audible voice, was -summoning him. Might he not obtain some official employment -in London, and also pursue his true calling? -Beside the desire of pleasing his uncle and of aiding his -mother, the Stoic of twenty had now a stronger motive -for seeking some immediate livelihood. “I shall joyfully -bid adieu to Oxford,” he writes, “ ... and, when I know -my situation, unite myself to a woman whom I have long -esteemed as a sister, and for whom I now indulge a warmer -sentiment.” But Southey’s reputation as a dangerous -Jacobin stood in his way; how could his Oxford overseers -answer for the good behaviour of a youth who spoke -scornfully of Pitt?</p> - -<p>The shuttles of the fates now began to fly faster, and -the threads to twist and twine. It was June of the year -1794. A visitor from Cambridge was one day introduced -to Southey; he seemed to be of an age near his own; his -hair, parted in the middle, fell wavy upon his neck; his face, -when the brooding cloud was not upon him, was bright -with an abundant promise—a promise vaguely told in -lines of the sweet full lips, in the luminous eyes, and the -forehead that was like a god’s. This meeting of Southey -and Coleridge was an event which decided much in the -careers of both. In the summer days and in youth, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> -meeting-time of spirits, they were drawn close to one another. -Both had confessions to make, with many points -in common; both were poets; both were democrats; both -had hoped largely from France, and the hopes of both had -been darkened; both were uncertain what part to take in -life. We do not know whether Coleridge quickly grew -so confidential as to tell of his recent adventure as Silas -Titus Comberbatch of the 15th Light Dragoons. But we -know that Coleridge had a lively admiration for the tall -Oxford student—a person of distinction, so dignified, so -courteous, so quick of apprehension, so full of knowledge, -with a glance so rapid and piercing, with a smile so good -and kind. And we know that Coleridge lost no time in -communicating to Southey the hopes that were nearest to -his heart.</p> - -<p>Pantisocracy, word of magic, summed up these hopes. -Was it not possible for a number of men like themselves, -whose way of thinking was liberal, whose characters were -tried and incorruptible, to join together and leave this old -world of falling thrones and rival anarchies, for the woods -and wilds of the young republic? One could wield an -axe, another could guide a plough. Their wants would be -simple and natural; their toil need not be such as the -slaves of luxury endure; where possessions were held in -common, each would work for all; in their cottages the -best books would have a place; literature and science, -bathed anew in the invigorating stream of life and nature, -could not but rise reanimated and purified. Each young -man should take to himself a mild and lovely woman for -his wife; it would be her part to prepare their innocent -food, and tend their hardy and beautiful race. So they -would bring back the patriarchal age, and in the sober -evening of life they would behold “colonies of independence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -in the undivided dale of industry.” All the arguments -in favour of such a scheme could not be set forth -in a conversation, but Coleridge, to silence objectors, would -publish a quarto volume on Pantisocracy and Aspheterism.</p> - -<p>Southey heartily assented; his own thoughts had, with -a vague forefeeling, been pointing to America; the unpublished -epic would serve to buy a spade, a plough, a few -acres of ground; he could assuredly split timber; he knew -a mild and lovely woman for whom he indulged a warmer -sentiment than that of a brother. Robert Lovell, a Quaker, -an enthusiast, a poet, married to the sister of Southey’s -Edith, would surely join them; so would Burnett, his college -friend; so, perhaps, would the admirable Seward. The -long vacation was at hand. Being unable to take orders -or to endure the horrors of the dissecting-room, Southey -must no longer remain a burden upon his uncle; he would -quit the university and prepare for the voyage.</p> - -<p>Coleridge departed to tramp it through the romantic valleys -and mountains of Wales. Southey joined his mother, -who now lived at Bath, and her he soon persuaded—as -a handsome and eloquent son can persuade a loving -mother—that the plan of emigration was feasible; she -even consented to accompany her boy. But his aunt—an -<i lang="fr">esprit borné</i>—was not to hear a breath of Pantisocracy; -still less would it be prudent to confess to her his engagement -to Miss Edith Fricker. His Edith was penniless -and therefore all the dearer to Southey; her father had -been an unsuccessful manufacturer of sugar-pans. What -would Miss Tyler, the friend of Lady Bateman, feel? -What words, what gestures, what acts, would give her feelings -relief?</p> - -<p>When Coleridge, after his Welsh wanderings, arrived in -Bristol, he was introduced to Lovell, to Mrs. Lovell, to Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> -Lovell’s sisters, Edith and Sarah, and Martha and Elizabeth. -Mrs. Lovell was doubtless already a pantisocrat; Southey -had probably not found it difficult to convert Edith; Sarah, -the elder sister, who was wont to look a mild reproof on -over-daring speculations, seriously inclined to hear of pantisocracy -from the lips of Coleridge. All members of the -community were to be married. Coleridge now more than -ever saw the propriety of that rule; he was prepared to -yield obedience to it with the least possible delay. Burnett, -also a pantisocrat, must also marry. Would Miss -Martha Fricker join the community as Mrs. George Burnett? -The lively little woman refused him scornfully; if -he wanted a wife in a hurry, let him go elsewhere. The -prospects of the reformers, this misadventure notwithstanding, -from day to day grew brighter. “This Pantisocratic -scheme,” so writes Southey, “has given me new life, new -hope, new energy; all the faculties of my mind are dilated.” -Coleridge met a friend of Priestley’s. But a few days -since he had toasted the great doctor at Bala, thereby calling -forth a sentiment from the loyal parish apothecary: “I -gives a sentiment, gemmen! May all republicans be gulloteened!” -The friend of Priestley’s said that without doubt -the doctor would join them. An American land-agent told -them that for twelve men 2000<i>l.</i> would do. “He recommends -the Susquehanna, from its excessive beauty and its -security from hostile Indians.” The very name—Susquehanna—sounded -as if it were the sweetest of rippling rivers. -Money, it is true, as Southey admits, “is a huge evil;” -but now they are twenty-seven, and by resolute men this -difficulty can be overcome.</p> - -<p>It was evening of the 17th of October, a dark and gusty -evening of falling rain and miry ways. Within Aunt Tyler’s -house in College Green, Bristol, a storm was bursting;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> -she had heard it all at last—Pantisocracy, America, -Miss Fricker. Out of the house he must march; there -was the door; let her never see his face again. Southey -took his hat, looked for the last time in his life at his aunt -then stepped out into the darkness and the rain. “Why -sir, you ben’t going to Bath at this time of night and in -this weather?” remonstrated poor Shadrach. Even so; and -with a friendly whisper master and man parted. Southey -had not a penny in his pocket, and was lightly clad. At -Lovell’s he luckily found his father’s great-coat; he swallowed -a glass of brandy and set off on foot. Misery makes -one acquainted with strange road-fellows. On the way he -came upon an old man, drunk, and hardly able to stumble -forward through the night: the young pantisocrat, mindful -of his fellow-man, dragged him along nine miles amid -rain and mire. Then, with weary feet, he reached Bath -and there was his mother to greet him with surprise, and -to ask for explanations. “Oh, Patience, Patience, thou -hast often helped poor Robert Southey, but never didst -thou stand him in more need than on Friday, the 17th of -October, 1794.”</p> - -<p>For a little longer the bow of hope shone in the West -somewhere over the Susquehanna, and then it gradually -grew faint and faded. Money, that huge evil, sneered its -cold negations. The chiefs consulted, and Southey proposed -that a house and farm should be taken in Wales -where their principles might be acted out until better days -enabled them to start upon their voyage. One pantisocrat -at least, could be happy with Edith, brown bread, and wild -Welsh raspberries. But Coleridge objected; their principles -could not be fairly tested under the disadvantage of -an effete and adverse social state surrounding them; besides, -where was the purchase-money to come from? how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> -were they to live until the gathering of their first crops? -It became clear that the realization of their plan must be -postponed. The immediate problem was, How to raise -150<i>l.</i>? With such a sum they might both qualify by marriage -for membership in the pantisocratical community. -After that, the rest would somehow follow.</p> - -<p>How, then, to raise 150<i>l.</i>? Might they not start a new -magazine and become joint editors? The <cite>Telegraph</cite> had -offered employment to Southey. “Hireling writer to a -newspaper! ’Sdeath! ’tis an ugly title; but <i lang="fr">n’importe</i>. -I shall write truth, and only truth.” The offer, however, -turned out to be that of a reporter’s place; and his troublesome -guest, honesty, prevented his contributing to <cite>The -True Briton</cite>. But he and Coleridge could at least write -poetry, and perhaps publish it with advantage to themselves; -and they could lecture to a Bristol audience. With -some skirmishing lectures on various political subjects of -immediate interest, Coleridge began; many came to hear -them, and the applause was loud. Thus encouraged, he -announced and delivered two remarkable courses of lectures—one, -<cite>A Comparative View of the English Rebellion -under Charles I. and the French Revolution</cite>; the other, -<cite>On Revealed Religion: its Corruptions and its Political -Views</cite>. Southey did not feel tempted to discuss the origin -of evil or the principles of revolution. He chose as his -subject a view of the course of European history from -Solon and Lycurgus to the American War. His hearers -were pleased by the graceful delivery and unassuming self-possession -of the young lecturer, and were quick to recognize -the unusual range of his knowledge, his just perception -of facts, his ardour and energy of conviction. One lecture -Coleridge begged permission to deliver in Southey’s place—that -on the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Roman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> -Empire. Southey consented, and the room was thronged -but no lecturer appeared; they waited; still no lecturer. -Southey offered an apology, and the crowd dispersed in no -happy temper. It is likely, adds that good old gossip Cottle, -who tells the story, “that at this very moment Mr. -Coleridge might have been found at No. 48 College Street, -composedly smoking his pipe, and lost in profound musing -on his divine Susquehanna.”</p> - -<p>The good Cottle—young in 1795, a publisher, and unhappily -a poet—rendered more important service to the -two young men than that of smoothing down their ruffled -tempers after this incident. Southey, in conjunction with -Lovell, had already published a slender volume of verse. -The pieces by Southey recall his schoolboy joys and sorrows, -and tell of his mother’s tears, his father’s death, his -friendship with “Urban,” his love of “Ariste,” lovely -maid! his delight in old romance, his discipleship to Rousseau. -They are chiefly of interest as exhibiting the diverse -literary influences to which a young writer of genius was -exposed in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Here -the couplet of Pope reappears, and hard by the irregular -ode as practised by Akenside, the elegy as written by Gray, -the unrhymed stanza which Collins’s <cite>Evening</cite> made a fashion, -the sonnet to which Bowles had lent a meditative grace -and the rhymeless measures imitated by Southey from -Sayers, and afterwards made popular by his <cite>Thalaba</cite>. On -the last page of this volume appear “Proposals for publishing -by subscription <cite>Joan of Arc</cite>;” but subscriptions -came slowly in. One evening Southey read for Cottle -some books of <cite>Joan</cite>. “It can rarely happen,” he writes -“that a young author should meet with a bookseller as inexperienced -and as ardent as himself.” Cottle offered to -publish the poem in quarto, to make it the handsomest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> -book ever printed in Bristol, to give the author fifty copies -for his subscribers, and fifty pounds to put forthwith into -his purse. Some dramatic attempts had recently been -made by Southey, <cite>Wat Tyler</cite>, of which we shall hear -more at a later date, and the <cite>Fall of Robespierre</cite>, undertaken -by Coleridge, Lovell, and Southey, half in sport—each -being pledged to produce an act in twenty-four -hours. These were now forgotten, and all his energies -were given to revising and in part recasting <cite>Joan</cite>. In -six weeks his epic had been written; its revision occupied -six months.</p> - -<p>With summer came a great sorrow, and in the end of -autumn a measureless joy. “He is dead,” Southey writes, -“my dear Edmund Seward! after six weeks’ suffering.... -You know not, Grosvenor, how I loved poor Edmund: he -taught me all that I have of good.... There is a strange -vacancy in my heart.... I have lost a friend, and such -a one!” And then characteristically come the words: -“I will try, by assiduous employment, to get rid of very -melancholy thoughts.” Another consolation Southey possessed: -during his whole life he steadfastly believed that -death is but the removal of a spirit from earth to heaven; -and heaven for him meant a place where cheerful familiarity -was natural, where, perhaps, he himself would write -more epics and purchase more folios. As Baxter expected -to meet among the saints above Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym, -so Southey counted upon the pleasure of having long talks -with friends, of obtaining introductions to eminent strangers; -above all, he looked forward to the joy of again embracing -his beloved ones:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Often together have we talked of death;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How sweet it were to see</div> -<div class="verse">All doubtful things made clear;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> -<div class="verse">How sweet it were with powers</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Such as the Cherubim</div> -<div class="verse">To view the depth of Heaven!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">O Edmund! thou hast first</div> -<div class="verse">Begun the travel of eternity.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Autumn brought its happiness pure and deep. Mr. Hill -had arrived from Lisbon; once again he urged his nephew -to enter the church; but for one of Southey’s opinions the -church-gate “is perjury,” nor does he even find church-going -the best mode of spending his Sunday. He proposed -to choose the law as his profession. But his uncle had -heard of Pantisocracy, Aspheterism, and Miss Fricker, and -said the law could wait; he should go abroad for six months, -see Spain and Portugal, learn foreign languages, read foreign -poetry and history, rummage among the books and -manuscripts his uncle had collected in Lisbon, and afterwards -return to his Blackstone. Southey, straightforward -in all else, in love became a Machiavel. To Spain and -Portugal he would go; his mother wished it; Cottle expected -from him a volume of travels; his uncle had but -to name the day. Then he sought Edith, and asked her -to promise that before he departed she would become his -wife: she wept to think that he was going, and yet persuaded -him to go; consented, finally, to all that he proposed. -But how was he to pay the marriage fees and buy -the wedding-ring? Often this autumn he had walked the -streets dinnerless, no pence in his pocket, no bread and -cheese at his lodgings, thinking little, however, of dinner, -for his head was full of poetry and his heart of love. Cottle -lent him money for the ring and the license—and -Southey in after-years never forgot the kindness of his -honest friend. He was to accompany his uncle, but Edith -was first to be his own; so she may honourably accept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> -from him whatever means he can furnish for her support. -It was arranged with Cottle’s sisters that she should live -with them, and still call herself by her maiden name. On -the morning of the 14th of November, 1795—a day sad, -yet with happiness underlying all sadness—Robert Southey -was married in Redcliffe Church, Bristol, to Edith Fricker. -At the church door there was a pressure of hands, and they -parted with full hearts, silently—Mrs. Southey to take up -her abode in Bristol, with the wedding-ring upon her breast, -her husband to cross the sea. Never did woman put her -happiness in more loyal keeping.</p> - -<p>So by love and by poetry, by Edith Fricker and by -Joan of Arc, Southey’s life was being shaped. Powers -most benign leaned forward to brood over the coming -years and to bless them. It was decreed that his heart -should be no homeless wanderer; that, as seasons went by, -children should be in his arms and upon his knees: it was -also decreed that he should become a strong toiler among -books. Now Pantisocracy looked faint and far; the facts -plain and enduring of the actual world took hold of his -adult spirit. And Coleridge complained of this, and did -not come to bid his friend farewell.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.<br /> -<span class="smaller">WANDERINGS, 1795-1803.</span></h2> - -<p>Through pastoral Somerset, through Devon amid falling -leaves, then over rough Cornish roads, the coach brought -Southey—cold, hungry, and dispirited—to Falmouth. No -packet there for Corunna; no packet starting before December -1st. The gap of time looked colourless and dreary, -nor could even the philosophy of Epictetus lift him quite -above “the things independent of the will.” After a comfortless -and stormy voyage, on the fifth morning the sun -shone, and through a mist the barren cliffs of Galicia, with -breakers tumbling at their feet, rose in sight. Who has -not experienced, when first he has touched a foreign soil, -how nature purges the visual nerve with lucky euphrasy? -The shadowy streets, the latticed houses, the fountains, the -fragments of Moorish architecture, the Jewish faces of the -men, the lustrous eyes of girls, the children gaily bedizened, -the old witch-like women with brown shrivelled -parchment for skin, told Southey that he was far from -home. Nor at night was he permitted to forget his -whereabouts; out of doors cats were uttering soft things -in most vile Spanish; beneath his blanket, familiars, bloodthirsty -as those of the Inquisition, made him their own. -He was not sorry when the crazy coach, drawn by six -mules, received him and his uncle, and the journey eastward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> -began to the shout of the muleteers and the clink of -a hundred bells.</p> - -<p>Some eighteen days were spent upon the road to Madrid. -Had Southey not left half his life behind him in -Bristol, those December days would have been almost -wholly pleasurable. As it was, they yielded a large possession -for the inner eye, and gave his heart a hold upon this -new land which, in a certain sense, became for ever after -the land of his adoption. It was pleasant when, having -gone forward on foot, he reached the crest of some mountain -road, to look down on broken waters in the glen, and -across to the little white-walled convent amid its chestnuts, -and back to the dim ocean; there, on the summit, to rest -with the odour of furze blossoms and the tinkle of goats -in the air, and, while the mules wound up the long ascent, -to turn all this into hasty rhymes, ending with the thought -of peace, and love, and Edith. Then the bells audibly approaching, -and the loud-voiced muleteer consigning his -struggling team to Saint Michael and three hundred devils; -and then on to remoter hills, or moor and swamp, or -the bridge flung across a ravine, or the path above a precipice, -with mist and moonlight below. And next day some -walled city, with its decaying towers and dim piazza; some -church, with its balcony of ghastly skulls; some abandoned -castle, or jasper-pillared Moorish gateway and gallery. -Nor were the little inns and baiting-houses without compensations -for their manifold discomforts. The Spanish -country-folk were dirty and ignorant, but they had a courtesy -unknown to English peasants; Southey would join -the group around the kitchen fire, and be, as far as his imperfect -speech allowed, one with the rustics, the carriers, -the hostess, the children, the village barber, the familiar -priest, and the familiar pigs. When chambermaid Josepha<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> -took hold of his hair and gravely advised him never -to tie it or to wear powder, she meant simple friendliness, -no more. In his recoil from the dream of human perfectibility, -Southey allowed himself at times to square accounts -with common-sense by a cynical outbreak; but, in -truth, he was a warm-hearted lover of his kind. Even feudalism -and Catholicism had not utterly degraded the Spaniard. -Southey thanks God that the pride of chivalry is -extinguished; his Protestant zeal becomes deep-dyed in -presence of our Lady of Seven Sorrows and the Holy -Napkin. “Here, in the words of Mary Wollstonecraft,” -he writes, “‘the serious folly of Superstition stares every -man of sense in the face.’” Yet Spain has inherited tender -and glorious memories; by the river Ezla he recalls -Montemayor’s wooing of his Diana; at Tordesillas he -muses on the spot where Queen Joanna watched by her -husband’s corpse, and where Padilla, Martyr of Freedom, -triumphed and endured. At length the travellers, accompanied -by Manuel, the most vivacious and accomplished of -barbers, drew near Madrid, passed the miles of kneeling -washerwomen and outspread clothes on the river banks, -entered the city, put up at the Cruz de Malta, and were -not ill-content to procure once more a well-cooked supper -and a clean bed.</p> - -<p>Southey pursued with ardour his study of the Spanish -language, and could soon talk learnedly of its great writers. -The national theatres, and the sorry spectacle of bullock-teasing, -made a slighter impression upon him than did the -cloisters of the new Franciscan Convent. He had been -meditating his design of a series of poems to illustrate the -mythologies of the world; here the whole portentous history -of St. Francis was displayed upon the walls. “Do -they believe all this, sir?” he asked Mr. Hill. “Yes, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> -a great deal more of the same kind,” was the reply. “My -first thought was ... here is a mythology not less wild -and fanciful than any of those upon which my imagination -was employed, and one which ought to be included -in my ambitious design.” Thus Southey’s attention was -drawn for the first time to the legendary and monastic -history of the Church.</p> - -<p>His Majesty of Spain, with his courtesans and his courtiers, -possibly also with the Queen and her gallants, had -gone westward to meet the Portuguese court upon the -borders. As a matter of course, therefore, no traveller -could hope to leave Madrid, every carriage, cart, horse, mule, -and ass being embargoed for the royal service. The followers -of the father of his people numbered seven thousand, -and they advanced, devouring all before them, neither -paying nor promising to pay, leaving a broad track behind -as bare as that stripped by an army of locusts, with here -a weeping cottager, and there a smoking cork-tree, for a -memorial of their march. Ten days after the king’s departure, -Mr. Hill and his nephew succeeded in finding a -buggy with two mules, and made their escape, taking with -them their own larder. Their destination was Lisbon, and -as they drew towards the royal party, the risk of embargo -added a zest to travel hardly less piquant than that imparted -by the neighbourhood of bandits. It was mid-January; -the mountains shone with snow; but olive-gathering had -begun in the plains; violets were in blossom, and in the -air was a genial warmth. As they drove south and west, -the younger traveller noted for his diary the first appearance -of orange-trees, the first myrtle, the first fence of -aloes. A pressure was on their spirits till Lisbon should -be reached; they would not linger to watch the sad procession -attending a body uncovered upon its bier; they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -left behind the pilgrims to our Lady’s Shrine, pious bacchanals -half naked and half drunk, advancing to the tune -of bagpipe and drum; then the gleam of waters before -them, a rough two hours’ passage, and the weary heads -were on their pillows, to be roused before morning by an -earthquake, with its sudden trembling and cracking.</p> - -<p>Life at Lisbon was not altogether after Southey’s heart. -His uncle’s books and manuscripts were indeed a treasure -to explore, but Mr. Hill lived in society as well as in his -study, and thought it right to give his nephew the advantage -of new acquaintances. What had the author of <cite>Joan -of Arc</cite>, the husband of Edith Southey, the disciple of -Rousseau, of Godwin, the Stoic, the tall, dark-eyed young -man with a certain wildness of expression in his face, -standing alone or discoursing earnestly on Industrial Communities -of Women—what had he to do with the <i lang="la">inania -regna</i> of the drawing-room? He cared not for cards nor -for dancing; he possessed no gift for turning the leaves -on the harpsichord, and saying the happy word at the -right moment. Southey, indeed, knew as little as possible -of music; and all through his life acted on the principle -that the worthiest use of sound without sense had been -long ago discovered by schoolboys let loose from their -tasks; he loved to create a chaos of sheer noise after those -hours during which silence had been interrupted only by -the scraping of his pen. For the rest, the sallies of glee -from a mountain brook, the piping of a thrush from the -orchard-bough, would have delighted him more than all -the trills of Sontag or the finest rapture of Malibran. It -was with some of the superiority and seriousness of a -philosopher just out of his teens that he unbent to the -frivolities of the Lisbon drawing-rooms.</p> - -<p>But if Lisbon had its vexations, the country, the climate,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> -the mountains with their streams and coolness, the odorous -gardens, Tagus flashing in the sunlight, the rough bar glittering -with white breakers, and the Atlantic, made amends. -When April came, Mr. Hill moved to his house at Cintra, -and the memories and sensations “felt in the blood and -felt along the heart,” which Southey brought with him -to England, were especially associated with this delightful -retreat. “Never was a house more completely secluded -than my uncle’s: it is so surrounded with lemon-trees and -laurels as nowhere to be visible at the distance of ten -yards.... A little stream of water runs down the hill -before the door, another door opens into a lemon-garden, -and from the sitting-room we have just such a prospect -over lemon-trees and laurels to an opposite hill as, by -promising a better, invites us to walk.... On one of the -mountain eminences stands the Penha Convent, visible -from the hills near Lisbon. On another are the ruins of -a Moorish castle, and a cistern, within its boundaries, kept -always full by a spring of purest water that rises in it. -From this elevation the eye stretches over a bare and melancholy -country to Lisbon on the one side, and on the -other to the distant Convent of Mafra, the Atlantic bounding -the greater part of the prospect. I never beheld a -view that so effectually checked the wish of wandering.”</p> - -<p>“Lisbon, from which God grant me a speedy deliverance,” -is the heading of one of Southey’s letters; but -when the day came to look on Lisbon perhaps for the last -time, his heart grew heavy with happy recollection. It -was with no regretful feeling, however, that he leaped -ashore, glad, after all, to exchange the sparkling Tagus and -the lemon groves of Portugal for the mud-encumbered -tide of Avon and a glimpse of British smoke. “I intend -to write a hymn,” he says, “to the Dii Penates.” His joy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> -in reunion with his wife was made more rare and tender -by finding her in sorrow; the grief was also peculiarly his -own—Lovell was dead. He had been taken ill at Salisbury, -and by his haste to reach his fireside had heightened -the fever which hung upon him. Coleridge, writing to -his friend Poole at this time, expresses himself with amiable -but inactive piety: “The widow is calm, and amused -with her beautiful infant. We are all become more religious -than we were. God be ever praised for all things.” -Southey also writes characteristically: “Poor Lovell! I -am in hopes of raising something for his widow by publishing -his best pieces, if only enough to buy her a harpsichord.... -Will you procure me some subscribers?” -No idle conceit of serving her; for Mrs. Lovell with her -child, as well as Mrs. Coleridge with her children, at a -later time became members of the Southey household. -Already—though Coleridge might resent it—Southey was -willing to part with some vague enthusiasms which wandered -in the inane of a young man’s fancy, for the sake -of simple loyalties and manly tendernesses. No one was -more boyish-hearted than Southey at fifty; but even at -twenty-two it would not have been surprising to find grey -hairs sprinkling the dark. “How does time mellow down -our opinions! Little of that ardent enthusiasm which so -lately fevered my whole character remains. I have contracted -my sphere of action within the little circle of my -own friends, and even my wishes seldom stray beyond -it.... I want a little room to arrange my books in, and -some Lares of my own.” This domestic feeling was not -a besotted contentment in narrow interests; no man was -more deeply moved by the political changes in his own -country, by the national uprising in the Spanish peninsula, -than Southey. While seated at his desk, his intellect ranged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> -through dim centuries of the past. But his heart needed -an abiding-place, and he yielded to the bonds—strict and -dear—of duty and of love which bound his own life to -the lives of others.</p> - -<p>The ambitious quarto on which Cottle prided himself -not a little was now published (1796). To assign its true -place to <cite>Joan of Arc</cite>, we must remember that narrative -poetry in the eighteenth century was of the slenderest -dimensions and the most modest temper. Poems of -description and sentiment seemed to leave no place for -poems of action and passion. Delicately finished cabinet -pictures, like Shenstone’s <cite>Schoolmistress</cite> and Goldsmith’s -<cite>Deserted Village</cite>, had superseded fresco. The only great -English epic of that century is the prose Odyssey of which -Mr. Tom Jones is the hero. That estimable London merchant, -Glover, had indeed written an heroic poem containing -the correct number of Books; its subject was a lofty -one; the sentiments were generous, the language dignified; -and inasmuch as Leonidas was a patriot and a Whig, -true Whigs and patriots bought and praised the poem. -But Glover’s poetry lacks the informing breath of life. -His second poem, <cite>The Athenaid</cite>, appeared after his death, -and its thirty books fell plumb into the water of oblivion. -It looked as if the narrative poem <i lang="fr">à longue haleine</i> was -dead in English literature. Cowper had given breadth, -with a mingled gaiety and gravity, to the poetry of description -and sentiment; Burns had made the air tremulous -with snatches of pure and thrilling song; the <cite>Lyrical -Ballads</cite> were not yet. At this moment, from a provincial -press, <cite>Joan of Arc</cite> was issued. As a piece of romantic -narrative it belongs to the new age of poetry; in sentiment -it is revolutionary and republican; its garment of -style is of the eighteenth century. Nowhere, except it be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> -in the verses which hail “Inoculation, lovely Maid!” does -the personified abstraction, galvanized into life by printer’s -type and poet’s epithet, stalk more at large than -in the unfortunate ninth book, the Vision of the Maid, -which William Taylor, of Norwich, pronounced worthy of -Dante. The critical reviews of the time were liberal in -politics, and the poem was praised and bought. “Brissot -murdered” was good, and “the blameless wife of Roland” -atoned for some offences against taste; there was also that -notable reference to the “Almighty people” who “from -their tyrant’s hand dashed down the iron rod.” The delegated -maid is a creature overflowing with Rousseauish -sensibility; virtue, innocence, the peaceful cot, stand over -against the wars and tyranny of kings, and the superstition -and cruelty of prelates. Southey himself soon disrelished -the youthful heats and violences of the poem; he -valued it as the work which first lifted him into public -view; and, partly out of a kind of gratitude, he rehandled -the <cite>Joan</cite> again and again. It would furnish an instructive -lesson to a young writer to note how its asperities -were softened, its spasm subdued, its swelling words abated. -Yet its chief interest will be perceived only by readers of -the earlier text. To the second book Coleridge contributed -some four hundred lines, where Platonic philosophy -and protests against the Newtonian hypothesis of æther -are not very appropriately brought into connexion with -the shepherd-girl of Domremi. These lines disappeared -from all editions after the first.<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> - -<p>The neighbourhood of Bristol was for the present -Southey’s home. The quickening of his blood by the -beauty, the air and sun, of Southern Europe, the sense -of power imparted by his achievement in poetry, the joy -of reunion with his young wife, the joy, also, of solitude -among rocks and woods, combined to throw him into a -vivid and creative mood. His head was full of designs -for tragedies, epics, novels, romances, tales—among the -rest, “My Oriental poem of The Destruction of the Dom -Daniel.” He has a “Helicon kind of dropsy” upon him; -he had rather leave off eating than poetizing. He was -also engaged in making the promised book of travel for -Cottle; in what leisure time remained after these employments -he scribbled for <cite>The Monthly Magazine</cite>, and to -good purpose, for in eight months he had earned no less -than “seven pounds and two pair of breeches,” which, as -he observes to his brother Tom, “is not amiss.” He was -resolved to be happy, and he was happy. Now, too, the -foolish estrangement on Coleridge’s part was brought to -an end. Southey had been making some acquaintance -with German literature at second hand. He had read -Taylor’s rendering of Bürger’s <cite>Lenore</cite>, and wondered who -this William Taylor was; he had read Schiller’s <cite>Cabal and -Love</cite> in a wretched translation, finding the fifth act dreadfully -affecting; he had also read Schiller’s <cite>Fiesco</cite>. Coleridge -was just back after a visit to Birmingham, but still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> -held off from his brother-in-law and former friend. A -sentence from Schiller, copied on a slip of paper by Southey, -with a word or two of conciliation, was sent to the -offended Abdiel of Pantisocracy: “Fiesco! Fiesco! thou -leavest a void in my bosom, which the human race, thrice -told, will never fill up.” It did not take much to melt the -faint resentment of Coleridge, and to open his liberal heart. -An interview followed, and in an hour’s time, as the story -is told by Coleridge’s nephew, “these two extraordinary -youths were arm in arm again.”</p> - -<p>Seven pounds and two pair of breeches are not amiss -but pounds take to themselves wings, and fly away: a -poet’s wealth is commonly in the <i lang="la">paulo-post-futurum</i> -tense; it therefore behoved Southey to proceed with his -intended study of the law. By Christmas he would receive -the first instalment of an annual allowance of 160<i>l.</i> -promised by his generous friend Wynn upon coming of -age; but Southey, who had just written his <cite>Hymn to the Penates</cite>—a -poem of grave tenderness and sober beauty—knew -that those deities are exact in their demand for the -dues of fire and salt, for the firstlings of fruits, and for offerings -of fine flour. A hundred and sixty pounds would -not appease them. To London, therefore, he must go, and -Blackstone must become his counsellor. But never did -Sindbad suffer from the tyrannous old man between his -shoulders as Robert Southey suffered from Blackstone. -London in itself meant deprivation of all that he most -cared for; he loved to shape his life in large and simple -lines, and London seemed to scribble over his consciousness -with distractions and intricacies. “My spirits always -sink when I approach it. Green fields are my delight. -I am not only better in health, but even in heart, in the -country.” Some of his father’s love of rural sights and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -sounds was in him, though hare-hunting was not an amusement -of Southey the younger; he was as little of a sportsman -as his friend Sir Thomas More: the only murderous -sport, indeed, which Southey ever engaged in was that of -pistol-shooting, with sand for ammunition, at the wasps in -Bedford’s garden, when he needed a diversion from the wars -of Talbot and the “missioned Maid.” Two pleasures of -a rare kind London offered—the presence of old friends, -and the pursuit of old books upon the stalls. But not -even for these best lures proposed by the Demon of the -place would Southey renounce</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent10">“The genial influences</div> -<div class="verse">And thoughts and feelings to be found where’er</div> -<div class="verse">We breathe beneath the open sky, and see</div> -<div class="verse">Earth’s liberal bosom.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>To London, however, he would go, and would read nine -hours a day at law. Although he pleaded at times against -his intended profession, Southey really made a strenuous -effort to overcome his repugnance to legal studies, and for -a while Blackstone and <cite>Madoc</cite> seemed to advance side by -side. But the bent of his nature was strong. “I commit -wilful murder on my own intellect,” he writes, two -years later, “by drudging at law.” And the worst or the -best of it was that all his drudgery was useless. Southey’s -memory was of that serviceable, sieve-like kind which regains -everything needful to its possessor, and drops everything -which is mere incumbrance. Every circumstance in -the remotest degree connected with the seminary of magicians -in the Dom Daniel under the roots of the sea adhered -to his memory, but how to proceed in the Court of -Common Pleas was always just forgotten since yesterday. -“I am not indolent; I loathe indolence; but, indeed, reading<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> -law is laborious indolence—it is thrashing straw.... -I have given all possible attention, and attempted to command -volition; ... close the book and all was gone.” In -1801 there was a chance of Southey’s visiting Sicily as -secretary to some Italian Legation. “It is unfortunate,” -he writes to Bedford, “that you cannot come to the sacrifice -of one law-book—my whole proper stock—whom I -design to take up to the top of Mount Etna, for the express -purpose of throwing him straight to the devil. Huzza, -Grosvenor! I was once afraid that I should have a deadly -deal of law to forget whenever I had done with it; but -my brains, God bless them, never received any, and I am as -ignorant as heart could wish. The tares would not grow.”</p> - -<p>As spring advanced, impatience quickened within him; -the craving for a lonely place in sight of something green -became too strong. Why might not law be read in Hampshire -under blue skies, and also poetry be written? Southey -longed to fill his eyesight with the sea, and with sunsets -over the sea; he longed to renew that delicious shock -of plunging in salt waves which he had last enjoyed in the -Atlantic at the foot of the glorious Arrabida mountain. -Lodgings were found at Burton, near Christ Church (1797); -and here took place a little Southey family-gathering, for -his mother joined them, and his brother Tom, the midshipman, -just released from a French prison. Here, too, -came Cottle, and there were talks about the new volume -of shorter poems. Here came Lloyd, the friend of Coleridge, -himself a writer of verse; and with Lloyd came -Lamb, the play of whose letters show that he found in -Southey not only a fellow-lover of quaint books, but also -a ready smiler at quips and cranks and twinklings of sly -absurdity. And here he found John Rickman, “the sturdiest -of jovial companions,” whose clear head and stout<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -heart were at Southey’s service whenever they were needed -through all the future years.</p> - -<p>When the holiday at Burton was at an end Southey -had for a time no fixed abode. He is now to be seen -roaming over the cliffs by the Avon, and now casting a -glance across some book-stall near Gray’s Inn. In these -and subsequent visits to London he was wistful for home, -and eager to hasten back. “At last, my dear Edith, I sit -down to write to you in quiet and something like comfort.... -My morning has been spent pleasantly, for it has -been spent alone in the library; the hours so employed -pass rapidly enough, but I grow more and more homesick, -like a spoilt child. On the 29th you may expect me. -Term opens on the 26th. After eating my third dinner, I -can drive to the mail, and thirteen shillings will be well -bestowed in bringing me home four-and-twenty hours earlier: -it is not above sixpence an hour, Edith, and I would -gladly purchase an hour at home now at a much higher -price.”</p> - -<p>A visit to Norwich (1798) was pleasant and useful, as -widening the circle of his literary friends. Here Southey -obtained an introduction to William Taylor, whose translations -from the German had previously attracted his notice. -Norwich, at the end of the last century and the beginning -of the present, was a little Academe among provincial -cities, where the <i lang="fr">belles-lettres</i> and mutual admiration -were assiduously cultivated. Southey saw Norwich -at its best. Among its “superior people” were several -who really deserved something better than that vague distinction. -Chief among them was Dr. Sayers, whom the -German critics compared to Gray, who had handled the -Norse mythology in poetry, who created the English monodrame, -and introduced the rhymeless measures followed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -by Southey. He rested too soon upon his well-earned -reputation, contented himself with touching and retouching -his verses; and possessing singularly pleasing manners, -abounding information and genial wit, embellished and -enjoyed society.<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> William Taylor, the biographer of Sayers, -was a few years his junior. He was versed in Goethe, -in Schiller, in the great Kotzebue—Shakspeare’s immediate -successor, in Klopstock, in the fantastic ballad, in the new -criticism, and all this at a time when German characters -were as undecipherable to most Englishmen as Assyrian -arrow-heads. The whirligig of time brought an odd revenge -when Carlyle, thirty years later, hailed in Taylor the -first example of “the natural-born English Philistine.” In -Norwich he was known as a model of filial virtue, a rising -light of that illuminated city, a man whose extraordinary -range pointed him out as the fit and proper person to be -interrogated by any blue-stocking lady upon topics as remote -as the domestic arrangements of the Chinese Emperor, -Chim-Cham-Chow. William Taylor had a command -of new and mysterious words: he shone in paradox, and -would make ladies aghast by “defences of suicide, avowals -that snuff alone had rescued him from it; information, given -as certain, that ‘God save the King’ was sung by Jeremiah -in the Temple of Solomon;”<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> with other blasphemies borrowed -from the German, and too startling even for rationalistic -Norwich. Dr. Enfield, from whose <cite>Speaker</cite> our -fathers learnt to recite “My name is Norval,” was no -longer living; he had just departed in the odour of dilettantism. -But solemn Dr. Alderson was here, and was now -engaged in giving away his daughter Amelia to a divorced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> -bridegroom, the painter Opie. Just now Elizabeth Gurney -was listening in the Friends’ Meeting-House to that discourse -which transformed her from a gay haunter of country -ball-rooms to the sister and servant of Newgate prisoners. -The Martineaus also were of Norwich, and upon -subsequent visits the author of <cite>Thalaba</cite> and <cite>Kehama</cite> was -scrutinized by the keen eyes of a little girl—not born at -the date of his first visit—who smiled somewhat too early -and somewhat too maliciously at the airs and affectations -of her native town, and whose pleasure in pricking a windbag, -literary, political, or religious, was only over-exquisite. -But Harriet Martineau, who honoured courage, purity, -faithfulness, and strength wherever they were found, reverenced -the Tory Churchman, Robert Southey.<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> - -<p>Soon after his return from Norwich, a small house was -taken at Westbury (1797), a village two miles distant from -Bristol. During twelve happy months this continued to -be Southey’s home. “I never before or since,” he says in -one of the prefaces to his collected poems, “produced so -much poetry in the same space of time.” William Taylor, -by talks about Voss and the German idylls, had set Southey -thinking of a series of English Eclogues; Taylor also -expressed his wonder that some one of our poets had not -undertaken what the French and Germans so long supported—an -Almanack of the Muses, or Annual Anthology of -minor poems by various writers. The suggestion was well -received by Southey, who became editor of such annual -volumes for the years 1799 and 1800. At this period -were produced many of the ballads and short pieces which -are perhaps more generally known than any other of -Southey’s writings. He had served his apprenticeship to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> -the craft and mystery of such verse-making in the <cite>Morning -Post</cite>, earning thereby a guinea a week, but it was not -until <cite>Bishop Bruno</cite> was written at Westbury that he had -the luck to hit off the right tone, as he conceived it, of the -modern ballad. The popularity of his <cite>Mary the Maid of -the Inn</cite>, which unhappy children got by heart, and which -some one even dramatized, was an affliction to its author, -for he would rather have been remembered as a ballad -writer in connexion with <cite>Rudiger</cite> and <cite>Lord William</cite>. -What he has written in this kind certainly does not move -the heart as with a trumpet; it does not bring with it the -dim burden of sorrow which is laid upon the spirit by -songs like those of Yarrow crooning of “old, unhappy, far-off -things.” But to tell a tale of fantasy briefly, clearly, -brightly, and at the same time with a certain heightening -of imaginative touches, is no common achievement. The -spectre of the murdered boy in <cite>Lord William</cite> shone upon -by a sudden moonbeam, and surrounded by the welter of -waves, is more than a picturesque apparition; readers of -good-will may find him a very genuine little ghost, a stern -and sad justicer. What has been named “the lyrical cry” -is hard to find in any of Southey’s shorter poems. In -<cite>Roderick</cite> and elsewhere he takes delight in representing -great moments of life when fates are decided; but such -moments are usually represented as eminences on which -will and passion wrestle in a mortal embrace, and if the -cry of passion be heard, it is often a half-stifled death cry. -The best of Southey’s shorter poems, expressing personal -feelings, are those which sum up the virtue spread over -seasons of life and long habitual moods. Sometimes he is -simply sportive, as a serious man released from thought and -toil may be, and at such times the sportiveness, while genuine -as a schoolboy’s, is, like a schoolboy’s, the reverse of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> -keen-edged; on other occasions he expresses simply a -strong man’s endurance of sorrow; but more often an undertone -of gravity appears through his glee, and in his sorrow -there is something of solemn joy.</p> - -<p>All this year (1799) <cite>Madoc</cite> was steadily advancing, and -<cite>The Destruction of the Dom Daniel</cite> had been already -sketched in outline. Southey was fortunate in finding an -admirable listener. The Pneumatic Institution, established -in Bristol by Dr. Beddoes, was now under the care of a -youth lately an apothecary’s apprentice at Penzance, a -poet, but still more a philosopher, “a miraculous young -man.” “He is not yet twenty-one, nor has he applied to -chemistry more than eighteen months, but he has advanced -with such seven-leagued strides as to overtake everybody. -His name is Davy”—Humphry Davy—“the young chemist, -the young everything, the man least ostentatious, of -first talent that I have ever known.” Southey would walk -across from Westbury, an easy walk over beautiful ground, -to breathe Davy’s wonder-working gas, “which excites all -possible mental and muscular energy, and induces almost a -delirium of pleasurable sensations without any subsequent -dejection.” Pleased to find scientific proof that he possessed -a poet’s fine susceptibility, he records that the nitrous -oxide wrought upon him more readily than upon any -other of its votaries. “Oh, Tom!” he exclaims, gasping -and ebullient—“oh, Tom! such a gas has Davy discovered, -the gaseous oxyde!... Davy has actually invented a new -pleasure for which language has no name. I am going for -more this evening; it makes one strong, and so happy! so -gloriously happy!... Oh, excellent air-bag!” If Southey -drew inspiration from Davy’s air-bag, could Davy do less -than lend his ear to Southey’s epic? They would stroll -back to Martin Hall—so christened because the birds who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -love delicate air built under its eaves their “pendant beds”—and -in the large sitting-room, its recesses stored with -books, or seated near the currant-bushes in the garden, -the tenant of Martin Hall would read aloud of Urien and -Madoc and Cadwallon. When Davy had said good-bye, -Southey would sit long in the window open to the west, -poring on the fading glories of sunset, while about him -the dew was cool, and the swallows’ tiny shrieks of glee -grew less frequent, until all was hushed and another day -was done. And sometimes he would muse how all things -that he needed for utter happiness were here—all things—and -then would rise an ardent desire—except a child.</p> - -<p>Martin Hall was unhappily held on no long lease; its -owner now required possession, and the Southeys, with -their household gods, had reluctantly to bid it farewell. -Another trouble, and a more formidable one, at the same -time threatened. What with Annual Anthologies, Madoc -in Wales, Madoc in Aztlan, the design for a great poem -on the Deluge, for a Greek drama, for a Portuguese tragedy, -for a martyrdom play of the reign of Queen Mary—what -with reading Spanish, learning Dutch, translating and -reviewing for the booksellers—Southey had been too closely -at work. His heart began to take fits of sudden and -violent pulsation; his sleep, ordinarily as sound as a child’s, -became broken and unrefreshing. Unless the disease were -thrown off by regular exercise, Beddoes assured him, it -would fasten upon him, and could not be overcome. Two -years previously they had spent a summer at Burton, in -Hampshire; why should they not go there again? In -June, 1799, unaccompanied by his wife, whose health seemed -also to be impaired, Southey went to seek a house. -Two cottages, convertible into one, with a garden, a fish-pond, -and a pigeon-house, promised a term of quiet and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> -comfort in “Southey Palace that is to be.” Possession -was not to be had until Michaelmas, and part of the intervening -time was very enjoyably spent in roaming among -the vales and woods, the coombes and cliffs of Devon. It -was in some measure a renewal of the open-air delight -which had been his at the Arrabida and Cintra. “I have -seen the Valley of Stones,” he writes: “Imagine a narrow -vale between two ridges of hills somewhat steep; the -southern hill turfed; the vale which runs from east to -west covered with huge stones and fragments of stones -among the fern that fills it; the northern ridge completely -bare, excoriated of all turf and all soil, the very bones and -skeleton of the earth; rock reclining upon rock, stone -piled upon stone, a huge and terrific mass. A palace of -the Preadamite kings, a city of the Anakim, must have -appeared so shapeless and yet so like the ruins of what -had been shaped, after the waters of the flood subsided. -I ascended with some toil the highest point; two large -stones inclining on each other formed a rude portal on the -summit: here I sat down; a little level platform about -two yards long lay before me, and then the eye fell immediately -upon the sea, far, very far below. I never felt -the sublimity of solitude before.”</p> - -<p>But Southey could not rest. “I had rather leave off -eating than poetizing,” he had said; and now the words -seemed coming true, for he still poetized, and had almost -ceased to eat. “Yesterday I finished <cite>Madoc</cite>, thank God! -and thoroughly to my own satisfaction; but I have resolved -on one great, laborious, and radical alteration. It -was my design to identify Madoc with Mango Capac, the -legislator of Peru: in this I have totally failed; therefore -Mango Capac is to be the hero of another poem.” There -is something charming in the logic of Southey’s “therefore;”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> -so excellent an epic hero must not go to waste; -but when, on the following morning, he rose early, it was -to put on paper the first hundred lines, not of Mango Capac, -but of the Dom Daniel poem which we know as <cite>Thalaba</cite>. -A <cite>Mohammed</cite>, to be written in hexameters, was also on -the stocks; and Coleridge had promised the half of this. -Southey, who remembered a certain quarto volume on -Pantisocracy and other great unwritten works, including -the last—a Life of Lessing, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge—knew -the worth of his collaborateur’s promises. However, -it matters little; “the only inconvenience that his dereliction -can occasion will be that I shall write the poem in -fragments, and have to seam them together at last.” “My -Mohammed will be what I believe the Arabian was in the -beginning of his career—sincere in enthusiasm; and it -would puzzle a casuist to distinguish between the belief -of inspiration and actual enthusiasm.” A short fragment -of the <cite>Mohammed</cite> was actually written by Coleridge, and -a short fragment by Southey, which, dating from 1799, -have an interest in connexion with the history of the English -hexameter. Last among these many projects, Southey -has made up his mind to undertake one great historical -work—the History of Portugal. This was no dream-project; -Mango Capac never descended from his father the -Sun to appear in Southey’s poem; Mohammed never -emerged from the cavern where the spider had spread his -net; but the work which was meant to rival Gibbon’s great -history was in part achieved. It is a fact more pathetic -than many others which make appeal for tears, that this -most ambitious and most cherished design of Southey’s -life, conceived at the age of twenty-six, and kept constantly -in view through all his days of toil, was not yet half -wrought out when, forty years later, the pen dropped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> -from his hand, and the worn-out brain could think no -more.</p> - -<p>The deal shavings had hardly been cleared out of the -twin cottages at Burton, when Southey was prostrated by -a nervous fever; on recovering, he moved to Bristol, still -weak, with strange pains about the heart, and sudden -seizures of the head. An entire change of scene was obviously -desirable. The sound of the brook that ran beside -his uncle’s door at Cintra, the scent of the lemon-groves, -the grandeur of the Arrabida, haunted his memory; there -were books and manuscripts to be found in Portugal which -were essential in the preparation of his great history of -that country. Mr. Hill invited him; his good friend Elmsley, -an old schoolfellow, offered him a hundred pounds. -From every point of view it seemed right and prudent to -go. Ailing and unsettled as he was, he yet found strength -and time to put his hand to a good work before leaving -Bristol. Chatterton always interested Southey deeply; -they had this much at least in common, that both had often -listened to the chimes of St. Mary Redcliffe, that both -were lovers of antiquity, both were rich in store of verse, -and lacked all other riches. Chatterton’s sister, Mrs. Newton, -and her child were needy and neglected. It occurred -to Southey and Cottle that an edition of her brother’s -poems might be published for her benefit. Subscribers -came in slowly, and the plan underwent some alterations; -but in the end the charitable thought bore fruit, and the -sister and niece of the great unhappy boy were lifted into -security and comfort. To have done something to appease -the moody and indignant spirit of a dead poet, was well; -to have rescued from want a poor woman and her daughter, -was perhaps even better.</p> - -<p>Early in April, 1800, Southey was once more on his way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> -from Bristol, by Falmouth, to the Continent, accompanied -by his wife, now about to be welcomed to Portugal by the -fatherly uncle whose prudence she had once alarmed. The -wind was adverse, and while the travellers were detained -Southey strolled along the beach, caught soldier-crabs, and -observed those sea-anemones which blossom anew in the -verse of Thalaba. For reading on the voyage, he had -brought Burns, Coleridge’s poems, the Lyrical Ballads, and -a poem, with “miraculous beauties,” called <cite>Gebir</cite>, “written -by God knows who.” But when the ship lost sight of England, -Southey, with swimming head, had little spirit left for -wrestling with the intractable thews of Landor’s early verse; -he could just grunt out some crooked pun or quaint phrase -in answer to inquiries as to how he did. Suddenly, on -the fourth morning, came the announcement that a French -cutter was bearing down upon them. Southey leaped to -his feet, hurriedly removed his wife to a place of safety, -and, musket in hand, took his post upon the quarter-deck. -The smoke from the enemy’s matches could be seen. She -was hailed, answered in broken English, and passed on. A -moment more, and the suspense was over; she was English, -manned from Guernsey. “You will easily imagine,” says -Southey, “that my sensations at the ending of the business -were very definable—one honest, simple joy that I was in -a whole skin!” Two mornings more, and the sun rose behind -the Berlings; the heights of Cintra became visible, -and nearer, the silver dust of the breakers, with sea-gulls -sporting over them; a pilot’s boat, with puffed and flapping -sail, ran out; they passed thankfully our Lady of the -Guide, and soon dropped anchor in the Tagus. An absence -of four years had freshened every object to Southey’s -sense of seeing, and now he had the joy of viewing all familiar -things as strange through so dear a companion’s eyes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mr. Hill was presently on board with kindly greeting; -he had hired a tiny house for them, perched well above the -river, its little rooms cool with many doors and windows. -Manuel the barber, brisk as Figaro, would be their factotum, -and Mrs. Southey could also see a new maid—Maria Rosa. -Maria by-and-by came to be looked at, in powder, straw-coloured -gloves, fan, pink-ribands, muslin petticoat, green -satin sleeves; she was “not one of the folk who sleep on -straw mattresses;” withal she was young and clean. Mrs. -Southey, who had liked little the prospect of being thrown -abroad upon the world, was beginning to be reconciled to -Portugal; roses and oranges and green peas in early May -were pleasant things. Then the streets were an unending -spectacle; now a negro going by with Christ in a glass -case, to be kissed for a petty alms; now some picturesque, -venerable beggar; now the little Emperor of the Holy -Ghost, strutting it from Easter till Whitsuntide, a six-year-old -mannikin with silk stockings, buckles, cocked hat, and -sword, his gentlemen ushers attending, and his servants receiving -donations on silver salvers. News of an assassination, -from time to time, did not much disturb the tranquil -tenor of ordinary life. There were old gardens to loiter in -along vine-trellised walks, or in sunshine where the grey -lizards glanced and gleamed. And eastward from the city -were lovely by-lanes amid blossoming olive-trees or market-gardens, -veined by tiny aqueducts and musical with the -creak of water-wheels, which told of cool refreshment. -There was also the vast public aqueduct to visit; Edith -Southey, holding her husband’s hand, looked down, hardly -discovering the diminished figures below of women washing -in the brook of Alcantara. If the sultry noon in Lisbon -was hard to endure, evening made amends; then -strong sea-winds swept the narrowest alley, and rolled their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> -current down every avenue. And later, it was pure content -to look down upon the moonlighted river, with Almada -stretching its black isthmus into the waters that -shone like midnight snow.</p> - -<p>Before moving to Cintra, they wished to witness the -procession of the Body of God—Southey likes the English -words as exposing “the naked nonsense of the blasphemy”—those -of St. Anthony, and the Heart of Jesus, -and the first bull-fight. Everything had grown into one -insufferable glare; the very dust was bleached; the light -was like the quivering of a furnace fire. Every man and -beast was asleep; the stone-cutter slept with his head upon -the stone; the dog slept under the very cart-wheels; the -bells alone slept not, nor ceased from their importunate -clamour. At length—it was near mid-June—a marvellous -cleaning of streets took place, the houses were hung with -crimson damask, soldiers came and lined the ways, windows -and balconies filled with impatient watchers—not a -jewel in Lisbon but was on show. With blare of music -the procession began; first, the banners of the city and -its trades, the clumsy bearers crab-sidling along; an armed -champion carrying a flag; wooden St. George held painfully -on horseback; led horses, their saddles covered with -rich escutcheons; all the brotherhoods, an immense train -of men in red or grey cloaks; the knights of the orders -superbly dressed; the whole patriarchal church in glorious -robes; and then, amid a shower of rose-leaves fluttering -from the windows, the Pix, and after the Pix, the Prince. -On a broiling Sunday, the amusement being cool and devout, -was celebrated the bull-feast. The first wound sickened -Edith; Southey himself, not without an effort, looked -on and saw “the death-sweat darkening the dun hide”—a -circumstance borne in mind for his <cite>Thalaba</cite>. “I am not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> -quite sure,” he writes, “that my curiosity in once going -was perfectly justifiable, but the pain inflicted by the sight -was expiation enough.”</p> - -<p>After this it was high time to take refuge from the sun -among the lemon-groves at Cintra. Here, if ever in his -life, Southey for a brief season believed that the grasshopper -is wiser than the ant; a true Portuguese indolence -overpowered him. “I have spent my mornings half naked -in a wet room dozing upon the bed, my right hand not -daring to touch my left.” Such glorious indolence could -only be a brief possession with Southey. More often he -would wander by the streams to those spots where purple -crocuses carpeted the ground, and there rest and read. -Sometimes seated sideways on one of the sure-footed <i lang="es">burros</i>, -with a boy to beat and guide the brute, he would jog -lazily on, while Edith, now skilled in “ass-womanship,” -would jog along on a brother donkey. Once and again a -fog—not unwelcome—came rolling in from the ocean, one -huge mass of mist, marching through the valley like a -victorious army, approaching, blotting the brightness, but -leaving all dank and fresh. And always the evenings were -delightful, when fireflies sparkled under the trees, or in -July and August, as their light went out, when the grillo -began his song. “I eat oranges, figs, and delicious pears—drink -Colares wine, a sort of half-way excellence between -port and claret—read all I can lay my hands on—dream -of poem after poem, and play after play—take a siesta of -two hours, and am as happy as if life were but one everlasting -today, and that tomorrow was not to be provided -for.”</p> - -<p>But Southey’s second visit to Portugal was, on the -whole, no season of repose. A week in the southern climate -seemed to have restored him to health, and he assailed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> -folio after folio in his uncle’s library, rising each morning -at five, “to lay in bricks for the great Pyramid of my -history.” The chronicles, the laws, the poetry of Portugal, -were among these bricks. Nor did he slacken in his -ardour as a writer of verse. Six books of <cite>Thalaba</cite> were in -his trunk in manuscript when he sailed from Falmouth; -the remaining six were of a southern birth. “I am busy,” -he says, “in correcting <cite>Thalaba</cite> for the press.... It is a -good job done, and so I have thought of another, and another, -and another.” As with <cite>Joan of Arc</cite>, so with this -maturer poem the correction was a rehandling which doubled -the writer’s work. To draw the pen across six hundred -lines did not cost him a pang. At length the manuscript -was despatched to his friend Rickman, with instructions -to make as good a bargain as he could for the first -thousand copies. By <cite>Joan</cite> and the miscellaneous <cite>Poems</cite> -of 1797, Southey had gained not far from a hundred and -fifty pounds; he might fairly expect a hundred guineas -for <cite>Thalaba</cite>. It would buy the furniture of his long-expected -house. But he was concerned about the prospects -of Harry, his younger brother; and now William Taylor -wrote that some provincial surgeon of eminence would -board and instruct the lad during four or five years -for precisely a hundred guineas. “A hundred guineas!” -Southey exclaims; “well, but, thank God, there is <cite>Thalaba</cite> -ready, for which I ask this sum.” “<cite>Thalaba</cite> finished, all -my poetry,” he writes, “instead of being wasted in rivulets -and ditches, shall flow into the great Madoc Mississippi -river.” One epic poem, however, he finds too little to -content him; already <cite>The Curse of Kehama</cite> is in his head, -and another of the mythological series which never saw -the light. “I have some distant view of manufacturing a -Hindoo romance, wild as <cite>Thalaba</cite>; and a nearer one of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> -Persian story, of which I see the germ of vitality. I take -the system of the Zendavesta for my mythology, and introduce -the powers of darkness persecuting a Persian, one -of the hundred and fifty sons of the great king; an Athenian -captive is a prominent character, and the whole warfare -of the evil power ends in exalting a Persian prince -into a citizen of Athens.” From which catastrophe we -may infer that Southey had still something republican -about his heart.</p> - -<p>Before quitting Portugal, the Southeys, with their friend -Waterhouse and a party of ladies, travelled northwards, encountering -very gallantly the trials of the way; Mafra, its -convent and library, had been already visited by Southey. -“Do you love reading?” asked the friar who accompanied -them, overhearing some remark about the books. “Yes.” -“And I,” said the honest Franciscan, “love eating and -drinking.” At Coimbra—that central point from which -radiates the history and literature of Portugal—Southey -would have agreed feelingly with the good brother of the -Mafra convent; he had looked forward to precious moments -of emotion in that venerable city; but air and exercise -had given him a cruel appetite; if truth must be -told, the ducks of the monastic poultry-yard were more -to him than the precious finger of St. Anthony. “I <em>did</em> -long,” he confesses, “to buy, beg, or steal a dinner.” The -dinner must somehow have been secured before he could -approach in a worthy spirit that most affecting monument -at Coimbra—the Fountain of Tears. “It is the -spot where Inez de Castro was accustomed to meet her -husband Pedro, and weep for him in his absence. Certainly -her dwelling-house was in the adjoining garden; -and from there she was dragged, to be murdered at the -feet of the king, her father-in-law.... I, who have long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> -planned a tragedy upon the subject, stood upon my own -scene.” While Southey and his companions gazed at -the fountains and their shadowing cedar-trees, the gownsmen -gathered round; the visitors were travel-stained and -bronzed by the sun; perhaps the witty youths cheered -for the lady with the squaw tint; whatever offence may -have been given, the ladies’ protectors found them “impudent -blackguards,” and with difficulty suppressed pugilistic -risings.</p> - -<p>After an excursion southwards to Algarve, Southey -made ready for his return to England (1801). His wife -desired it, and he had attained the main objects of his -sojourn abroad. His health had never been more perfect; -he had read widely; he had gathered large material for -his History; he knew where to put his hand on this or -that which might prove needful, whenever he should return -to complete his work among the libraries of Portugal. -On arriving at Bristol, a letter from Coleridge met him. -It was dated from Greta Hall, Keswick; and after reminding -Southey that Bristol had recently lost the miraculous -young man, Davy, and adding that he, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, -had experiences, sufferings, hopes, projects to impart, -which would beguile much time, “were you on a -desert island and I your <em>Friday</em>,” it went on to present -the attractions of Keswick, and in particular of Greta Hall, -in a way which could not be resisted. Taking all in all—the -beauty of the prospect, the roominess of the house, -the lowness of the rent, the unparalleled merits of the -landlord, the neighbourhood of noble libraries—it united -advantages not to be found together elsewhere. “In -short”—the appeal wound up—“for situation and convenience—and -when I mention the name of Wordsworth, -for society of men of intellect—I know no place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> -in which you and Edith would find yourselves so well -suited.”</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Drummond, an M.P. and a translator of Persius, -who was going as ambassador, first to Palermo and -then to Constantinople, was on the look-out for a secretary. -The post would be obtained for Southey by his -friend Wynn, if possible; this might lead to a consulship; -why not to the consulship at Lisbon, with 1000<i>l.</i> a year? -Such possibilities, however, could not prevent him from -speedily visiting Coleridge and Keswick. “Time and absence -make strange work with our affections,” so writes -Southey; “but mine are ever returning to rest upon you. -I have other and dear friends, but none with whom the -whole of my being is intimate.... Oh! I have yet such -dreams. Is it quite clear that you and I were not meant -for some better star, and dropped by mistake into this -world of pounds, shillings, and pence?” So for the first -time Southey set foot in Keswick, and looked upon the -lake and the hills which were to become a portion of his -being, and which have taken him so closely, so tenderly, to -themselves. His first feeling was one not precisely of disappointment, -but certainly of remoteness from this northern -landscape; he had not yet come out from the glow -and the noble <em>abandon</em> of the South. “These lakes,” he -says, “are like rivers; but oh for the Mondego and the -Tagus! And these mountains, beautifully indeed are they -shaped and grouped; but oh for the grand Monchique! -and for Cintra, my paradise!”</p> - -<p>Time alone was needed to calm and temper his sense of -seeing; for when, leaving Mrs. Southey with her sister and -Coleridge, he visited his friend Wynn at Llangedwin, and -breathed the mountain air of his own Prince Madoc, all -the loveliness of Welsh streams and rivers sank into his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -soul. “The Dee is broad and shallow, and its dark waters -shiver into white and silver and hues of amber brown. -No mud upon the shore—no bushes—no marsh plants—anywhere -a child might stand dry-footed and dip his hand -into the water.” And again a contrasted picture: “The -mountain-side was stony, and a few trees grew among its -stones; the other side was more wooded, and had grass on -the top, and a huge waterfall thundered into the bottom, -and thundered down the bottom. When it had nearly -passed these rocky straits, it met another stream. The -width of water then became considerable, and twice it -formed a large black pool, to the eye absolutely stagnant, -the froth of the waters that entered there sleeping upon -the surface; it had the deadness of enchantment; yet was -not the pool wider than the river above it and below it, -where it foamed over and fell.” Such free delight as -Southey had among the hills of Wales came quickly to an -end. A letter was received offering him the position of -private secretary to Mr. Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer -for Ireland, with a salary of four hundred pounds a -year. Rickman was in Dublin, and this was Rickman’s -doing. Southey, as he was in prudence bound to do, accepted -the appointment, hastened back to Keswick, bade -farewell for a little while to his wife, and started for Dublin -in no cheerful frame of mind.</p> - -<p>At a later time, Southey possessed Irish friends whom -he honoured and loved; he has written wise and humane -words about the Irish people. But all through his career -Ireland was to Southey somewhat too much that ideal -country—of late to be found only in the region of humorous-pathetic -melodrama—in which the business of life is -carried on mainly by the agency of bulls and blunder-busses; -and it required a distinct effort on his part to conceive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> -the average Teague or Patrick otherwise than as a -potato-devouring troglodyte, on occasions grotesquely amiable, -but more often with the rage of Popery working in -his misproportioned features. Those hours during which -Southey waited for the packet were among the heaviest -of his existence. After weary tackings in a baffling wind, -the ship was caught into a gale, and was whirled away, -fifteen miles north of Dublin, to the fishing-town of -Balbriggan. Then, a drive across desolate country, which -would have depressed the spirits had it not been enlivened -by the airs and humours of little Dr. Solomon, the unique, -the omniscient, the garrulous, next after Bonaparte the -most illustrious of mortals, inventor of the Cordial Balm -of Gilead, and possessor of a hundred puncheons of rum. -When the new private secretary arrived, the chancellor -was absent; the secretary, therefore, set to work on rebuilding -a portion of his <cite>Madoc</cite>. Presently Mr. Corry -appeared, and there was a bow and a shake of hands; -then he hurried away to London, to be followed by -Southey, who, going round by Keswick, was there joined -by his wife. From London Southey writes to Rickman, -“The chancellor and the scribe go on in the same way. -The scribe hath made out a catalogue of all books published -since the commencement of ’97 upon finance and -scarcity; he hath also copied a paper written by J.R. -[John Rickman] containing some Irish alderman’s hints -about oak-bark; and nothing more hath the scribe done -in his vocation. Duly he calls at the chancellor’s door; -sometimes he is admitted to immediate audience; sometimes -kicketh his heels in the antechamber; ... sometimes -a gracious message emancipates him for the day. -Secrecy hath been enjoined him as to these State proceedings. -On three subjects he is directed to read and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -research—corn-laws, finance, tythes, according to their written -order.” The independent journals meanwhile had -compared Corry and Southey, the two State conspirators, -to Empson and Dudley; and delicately expressed a hope -that the poet would make no false <em>numbers</em> in his new work.</p> - -<p>Southey, who had already worn an ass’s head in one of -Gillray’s caricatures, was not afflicted by the newspaper -sarcasm; but the vacuity of such a life was intolerable; -and when it was proposed that he should become tutor to -Corry’s son, he brought his mind finally to the point of -resigning “a foolish office and a good salary.” His notions -of competence were moderate; the vagabondage between -the Irish and English headquarters entailed by his -office was irksome. His books were accumulating, and -there was ample work to be done among them if he had -but a quiet library of his own. Then, too, there was another -good reason for resigning. A new future was opening -for Southey. Early in the year (1802) his mother died. -She had come to London to be with her son; there she -had been stricken with mortal illness; true to her happy, -self-forgetful instincts, she remained calm, uncomplaining, -considerate for others. “Go down, my dear; I shall sleep -presently,” she had said, knowing that death was at hand. -With his mother, the last friend of Southey’s infancy and -childhood was gone. “I calmed and curbed myself,” he -writes, “and forced myself to employment; but at night -there was no sound of feet in her bedroom, to which I -had been used to listen, and in the morning it was not my -first business to see her.” The past was past indeed. But -as the year opened, it brought a happy promise; before -summer would end, a child might be in his arms. Here -were sufficient reasons for his resignation; a library and a -nursery ought, he says, to be stationary.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p> - -<p>To Bristol husband and wife came, and there found a -small furnished house. After the roar of Fleet Street, -and the gathering of distinguished men—Fuseli, Flaxman, -Barry, Lamb, Campbell, Bowles—there was a strangeness -in the great quiet of the place. But in that quiet Southey -could observe each day the growth of the pile of manuscript -containing his version of <cite>Amadis of Gaul</cite>, for which -Longman and Rees promised him a munificent sixty pounds. -He toiled at his <cite>History of Portugal</cite>, finding matter of -special interest in that part which was concerned with the -religious orders. He received from his Lisbon collection -precious boxes folio-crammed. “My dear and noble -books! Such folios of saints! dull books enough for my -patience to diet upon, till all my flock be gathered together -into one fold.” Sixteen volumes of Spanish poetry are -lying uncut in the next room; a folio yet untasted jogs -his elbow; two of the best and rarest chronicles coyly invite -him. He had books enough in England to employ -three years of active industry. And underlying all thoughts -of the great Constable Nuño Alvares Pereyra, of the King -D. Joaõ I., and of the Cid, deeper than the sportsman -pleasure of hunting from their lair strange facts about the -orders Cistercian, Franciscan, Dominican, Jesuit, there was -a thought of that new-comer whom, says Southey, “I already -feel disposed to call whelp and dog, and all those -vocables of vituperation by which a man loves to call those -he loves best.”</p> - -<p>In September, 1802, was born Southey’s first child, -named Margaret Edith, after her mother and her dead -grandmother; a flat-nosed, round-foreheaded, grey-eyed, -good-humoured girl. “I call Margaret,” he says, in a sober -mood of fatherly happiness, “by way of avoiding all commonplace -phraseology of endearment, a worthy child and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> -a most excellent character. She loves me better than any -one except her mother; her eyes are as quick as thought; -she is all life and spirit, and as happy as the day is long; -but that little brain of hers is never at rest, and it is painful -to see how dreams disturb her.” For Margery and -her mother and the folios a habitation must be found. -Southey inclined now towards settling in the neighbourhood -of London—now towards Norwich, where Dr. Sayers -and William Taylor would welcome him—now towards -Keswick; but its horrid latitude, its incessant rains! On -the whole, his heart turned most fondly to Wales; and -there, in one of the loveliest spots of Great Britain, in the -Vale of Neath, was a house to let, by name Maes Gwyn. -Southey gave his fancy the rein, and pictured himself -“housed and homed” in Maes Gwyn, working steadily at -the <cite>History of Portugal</cite>, and now and again glancing away -from his work to have a look at Margery seated in her -little great chair. But it was never to be; a difference -with the landlord brought to an end his treaty for the -house, and in August the child lay dying. It was bitter -to part with what had been so long desired—during seven -childless years—and what had grown so dear. But -Southey’s heart was strong; he drew himself together, returned -to his toil, now less joyous than before, and set -himself to strengthen and console his wife.</p> - -<p>Bristol was henceforth a place of mournful memories. -“Edith,” writes Southey, “will be nowhere so well as -with her sister Coleridge. She has a little girl some six -months old, and I shall try and graft her into the wound -while it is yet fresh.” Thus Greta Hall received its guests -(September, 1803). At first the sight of little Sara Coleridge -and her baby cooings caused shootings of pain on -which Southey had not counted. Was the experiment of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -this removal to prove a failure? He still felt as if he were -a feather driven by the wind. “I have no symptoms of -root-striking here,” he said. But he spoke, not knowing -what was before him; the years of wandering were indeed -over; here he had found his home.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.<br /> -<span class="smaller">WAYS OF LIFE AT KESWICK, 1803-1839.</span></h2> - -<p>The best of life with Southey was yet to come; but in -what remains there are few outstanding events to chronicle; -there is nowhere any splendour of circumstance. Of -some lives the virtue is distilled, as it were, into a few exquisite -moments—moments of rapture, of vision, of sudden -and shining achievement; all the days and years seem -to exist only for the sake of such faultless moments, and -it matters little whether such a life, of whose very essence -it is to break the bounds of time and space, be long or -short as measured by the falling of sandgrains or the -creeping of a shadow. Southey’s life was not one of -these; its excellence was constant, uniform, perhaps somewhat -too evenly distributed. He wrought in his place day -after day, season after season. He submitted to the good -laws of use and wont. He grew stronger, calmer, more -full-fraught with stores of knowledge, richer in treasure of -the heart. Time laid its hand upon him gently and unfalteringly: -the bounding step became less light and swift; -the ringing voice lapsed into sadder fits of silence; the -raven hair changed to a snowy white; only still the indefatigable -eye ran down the long folio columns, and the indefatigable -hand still held the pen—until all true life had -ceased. When it has been said that Southey was appointed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> -Pye’s successor in the laureateship, that he received an -honorary degree from his university, that now and again -he visited the Continent, that children were born to him -from among whom death made choice of the dearest; and -then we add that he wrote and published books, the leading -facts of Southey’s life have been told. Had he been -worse or a weaker man, we might look to find mysteries, -picturesque vices, or engaging follies; as it is, everything -is plain, straightforward, substantial. What makes the life -of Southey eminent and singular is its unity of purpose, -its persistent devotion to a chosen object, its simplicity, -purity, loyalty, fortitude, kindliness, truth.</p> - -<p>The river Greta, before passing under the bridge at the -end of Main Street, Keswick, winds about the little hill on -which stands Greta Hall; its murmur may be heard when -all is still beyond the garden and orchard; to the west it -catches the evening light. “In front,” Coleridge wrote -when first inviting his friend to settle with him, “we have -a giants’ camp—an encamped army of tent-like mountains, -which by an inverted arch gives a view of another vale. -On our right the lovely vale and the wedge-shaped lake -of Bassenthwaite; and on our left Derwentwater and Lodore -full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale. -Behind us the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, -with two chasms and a tent-like ridge in the larger.” -Southey’s house belongs in a peculiar degree to his life: -in it were stored the treasures upon which his intellect -drew for sustenance; in it his affections found their earthly -abiding-place; all the most mirthful, all the most -mournful, recollections of Southey hang about it; to it in -every little wandering his heart reverted like an exile’s; -it was at once his workshop and his playground; and for -a time, while he endured a living death, it became his antechamber<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> -to the tomb. The rambling tenement consisted -of two houses under one roof, the larger part being occupied -by the Coleridges and Southeys, the smaller for a -time by Mr. Jackson, their landlord. On the ground-floor -was the parlour which served as dining-room and general -sitting-room, a pleasant chamber looking upon the green -in front; here also were Aunt Lovell’s sitting-room, and -the mangling-room, in which stood ranged in a row the -long array of clogs, from the greatest even unto the least, -figuring in a symbol the various stages of human life. -The stairs to the right of the kitchen led to a landing-place -filled with bookcases; a few steps more led to the -little bedroom occupied by Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter. -“A few steps farther,” writes Sara Coleridge, whose -description is here given in abridgment, “was a little wing -bedroom—then the study, where my uncle sat all day occupied -with literary labours and researches, but which was -used as a drawing-room for company. Here all the tea-visiting -guests were received. The room had three windows, -a large one looking down upon the green with the -wide flower-border, and over to Keswick Lake and mountains -beyond. There were two smaller windows looking -towards the lower part of the town seen beyond the nursery-garden. -The room was lined with books in fine bindings; -there were books also in brackets, elegantly lettered -vellum-covered volumes lying on their sides in a heap. -The walls were hung with pictures, mostly portraits.... At -the back of the room was a comfortable sofa, and there -were sundry tables, beside my uncle’s library table, his -screen, desk, etc. Altogether, with its internal fittings up, -its noble outlook, and something pleasing in its proportions, -this was a charming room.” Hard by the study -was Southey’s bedroom. We need not ramble farther<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> -through passages lined with books, and up and down -flights of stairs to Mr. Jackson’s organ-room, and Mrs. -Lovell’s room, and Hartley’s parlour, and the nurseries, and -one dark apple-room supposed to be the abode of a bogle. -Without, greensward, flowers, shrubs, strawberry-beds, -fruit-trees, encircled the house; to the back, beyond the -orchard, a little wood stretched down to the river-side. A -rough path ran along the bottom of the wood; here, on a -covered seat, Southey often read or planned future work, -and here his little niece loved to play in sight of the dimpling -water. “Dear Greta Hall!” she exclaims; “and oh, -that rough path beside the Greta! How much of my -childhood, of my girlhood, of my youth, were spent there!”</p> - -<p>Southey’s attachment to his mountain town and its lakes -was of no sudden growth. He came to them as one not -born under their influence; that power of hills to which -Wordsworth owed fealty, had not brooded upon Southey -during boyhood; the rich southern meadows, the wooded -cliffs of Avon, the breezy downs, had nurtured his imagination, -and to these he was still bound by pieties of the heart. -In the churchyard at Ashton, where lay his father and his -kinsfolk, the beneficent cloud of mingled love and sorrow -most overshadowed his spirit. His imagination did not -soar, as did Wordsworth’s, in naked solitudes; he did not -commune with a Presence immanent in external nature: -the world, as he viewed it, was an admirable habitation for -mankind—a habitation with a history. Even after he had -grown a mountaineer, he loved a humanized landscape, one -in which the gains of man’s courage, toil, and endurance -are apparent. Flanders, where the spade has wrought its -miracles of diligence, where the slow canal-boat glides, -where the <i lang="fr">carillons</i> ripple from old spires, where sturdy -burghers fought for freedom, and where vellum-bound<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> -quartos might be sought and found, Flanders, on the whole -gave Southey deeper and stronger feelings than did Switzerland. -The ideal land of his dreams was always Spain: -the earthly paradise for him was Cintra, with its glory of -sun, and a glow even in its depths of shadow. But as the -years went by, Spain became more and more a memory, -less and less a hope; and the realities of life in his home -were of more worth every day. When, in 1807, it grew -clear that Greta Hall was to be his life-long place of abode, -Southey’s heart closed upon it with a tenacious grasp. He -set the plasterer and carpenter to work; he planted shrubs; -he enclosed the garden; he gathered his books about him, -and thought that here were materials for the industry of -many years; he held in his arms children who were born -in this new home; and he looked to Crosthwaite Churchyard, -expecting, with quiet satisfaction, that when toil was -ended he should there take his rest.</p> - -<p>“I don’t talk much about these things,” Southey writes; -“but these lakes and mountains give me a deep joy for -which I suspect nothing elsewhere can compensate, and -this is a feeling which time strengthens instead of weakening.” -Some of the delights of southern counties he missed; -his earliest and deepest recollections were connected -with flowers; both flowers and fruits were now too few; -there was not a cowslip to be found near Keswick. “Here -in Cumberland I miss the nightingale and the violet—the -most delightful bird and the sweetest flower.” But for -such losses there were compensations. A pastoral land -will give amiable pledges for the seasons and the months, -and will perform its engagements with a punctual observance; -to this the mountains hardly condescend, but they -shower at their will a sudden largess of unimagined beauty. -Southey would sally out for a constitutional at his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> -three-mile pace, the peaked cap slightly shadowing his -eyes, which were coursing over the pages of a book held -open as he walked; he had left his study to obtain exercise, -and so to preserve health; he was not a laker engaged -in view-hunting; he did not affect the contemplative mood -which at the time was not and could not be his. But when -he raised his eyes, or when, quickening his three-mile to a -four-mile pace, he closed the book, the beauty which lay -around him liberated and soothed his spirit. This it did -unfailingly; and it might do more, for incalculable splendours, -visionary glories, exaltations, terrors, are momentarily -possible where mountain, and cloud, and wind, and sunshine -meet. Southey, as he says, did not talk much of -these things, but they made life for him immeasurably -better than it would have been in city confinement; there -were spaces, vistas, an atmosphere around his sphere of -work, which lightened and relieved it. The engagements -in his study were always so numerous and so full of interest -that it needed an effort to leave the table piled with -books and papers. But a May morning would draw him -forth into the sun in spite of himself. Once abroad, -Southey had a vigorous joy in the quickened blood, and -the muscles impatient with energy long pent up. The -streams were his especial delight; he never tired of their -deep retirement, their shy loveliness, and their melody; -they could often beguile him into an hour of idle meditation; -their beauty has in an especial degree passed into -his verse. When his sailor brother Thomas came and settled -in the Vale of Newlands, Southey would quickly cover -the ground from Keswick at his four-mile pace, and in -the beck at the bottom of Tom’s fields, on summer days, -he would plunge and re-plunge and act the river-god in -the natural seats of mossy stone. Or he would be overpowered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> -some autumn morning by the clamour of childish -voices voting a holiday by acclamation. Their father must -accompany them; it would do him good, they knew it -would; they knew he did not take sufficient exercise, for -they had heard him say so. Where should the scramble -be? To Skiddaw Dod, or Causey Pike, or Watenlath, or, -as a compromise between their exuberant activity and his -inclination for the chair and the fireside, to Walla Crag? -And there, while his young companions opened their baskets -and took their noonday meal, Southey would seat -himself—as Westall has drawn him—upon the bough of -an ash-tree, the water flowing smooth and green at his -feet, but a little higher up broken, flashing, and whitening -in its fall; and there in the still autumn noon he would -muse happily, placidly, not now remembering with overkeen -desire the gurgling tanks and fountains of Cintra, his -Paradise of early manhood.<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> - -<p>On summer days, when the visits of friends, or strangers -bearing letters of introduction, compelled him to idleness, -Southey’s more ambitious excursions were taken. But he -was well aware that those who form acquaintance with a -mountain region during a summer all blue and gold, know -little of its finer power. It is October that brings most -often those days faultless, pearl-pure, of affecting influence,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent6">“In the long year set</div> -<div class="verse">Like captain jewels in the carcanet.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Then, as Wordsworth has said, the atmosphere seems refined, -and the sky rendered more crystalline, as the vivifying -heat of the year abates; the lights and shadows are -more delicate; the colouring is richer and more finely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> -harmonized; and, in this season of stillness, the ear being -unoccupied, or only gently excited, the sense of vision -becomes more susceptible of its appropriate enjoyments. -Even December is a better month than July for perceiving -the special greatness of a mountainous country. When -the snow lies on the fells soft and smooth, Grisedale Pike -and Skiddaw drink in tints at morning and evening marvellous -as those seen upon Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau for -purity and richness.</p> - -<p>“Summer,” writes Southey, “is not the season for this -country. Coleridge says, and says well, that then it is like -a theatre at noon. There are no <em>goings on</em> under a clear -sky; but at other seasons there is such shifting of shades, -such islands of light, such columns and buttresses of sunshine, -as might almost make a painter burn his brushes, as -the sorcerers did their books of magic when they saw the -divinity which rested upon the apostles. The very snow, -which you would perhaps think must monotonize the -mountains, gives new varieties; it brings out their recesses -and designates all their inequalities; it impresses a better -feeling of their height; and it reflects such tints of saffron, -or fawn, or rose-colour to the evening sun. <em>O Maria -Santissima!</em> Mount Horeb, with the glory upon its summit, -might have been more glorious, but not more beautiful -than old Skiddaw in his winter pelisse. I will not -quarrel with frost, though the fellow has the impudence -to take me by the nose. The lake-side has such ten thousand -charms: a fleece of snow or of the hoar-frost lies on -the fallen trees or large stones; the grass-points, that just -peer above the water, are powdered with diamonds; the -ice on the margin with chains of crystal, and such veins -and wavy lines of beauty as mock all art; and, to crown -all, Coleridge and I have found out that stones thrown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> -upon the lake when frozen make a noise like singing birds, -and when you whirl on it a large flake of ice, away the -shivers slide, chirping and warbling like a flight of finches.” -This tells of a February at Keswick; the following describes -the <em>goings on</em> under an autumn sky:—“The mountains -on Thursday evening, before the sun was quite down -or the moon bright, were all of one dead-blue colour; their -rifts and rocks and swells and scars had all disappeared—the -surface was perfectly uniform, nothing but the outline -distinct; and this even surface of dead blue, from its unnatural -uniformity, made them, though not transparent, -appear transvious—as though they were of some soft or -cloudy texture through which you could have passed. -I never saw any appearance so perfectly unreal. Sometimes -a blazing sunset seems to steep them through and -through with red light; or it is a cloudy morning, and the -sunshine slants down through a rift in the clouds, and the -pillar of light makes the spot whereon it falls so emerald -green, that it looks like a little field of Paradise. At night -you lose the mountains, and the wind so stirs up the lake -that it looks like the sea by moonlight.”</p> - -<p>If Southey had not a companion by his side, the solitude -of his ramble was unbroken; he never had the knack -of forgathering with chance acquaintance. With intellectual -and moral boldness, and with high spirits, he united a -constitutional bashfulness and reserve. His retired life, -his habits of constant study, and, in later years, his shortness -of sight, fell in with this infirmity. He would not -patronize his humbler neighbours; he had a kind of imaginative -jealousy on behalf of their rights as independent -persons; and he could not be sure of straightway discovering, -by any genius or instinct of good-fellowship, that common -ground whereon strangers are at home with one another.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> -Hence—and Southey himself wished that it had -been otherwise—long as he resided at Keswick, there were -perhaps not twenty persons of the lower ranks whom he -knew by sight. “After slightly returning the salutation -of some passer-by,” says his son, “he would again mechanically -lift his cap as he heard some well-known name in -reply to his inquiries, and look back with regret that the -greeting had not been more cordial.”</p> - -<p>If the ice were fairly broken, he found it natural to be -easy and familiar, and by those whom he employed he was -regarded with affectionate reverence. Mrs. Wilson—kind -and generous creature—remained in Greta Hall tending the -children as they grew up, until she died, grieved for by the -whole household. Joseph Glover, who created the scarecrow -“Statues” for the garden—male and female created -he them, as the reader may see them figured toward the -close of <cite>The Doctor</cite>—Glover, the artist who set up Edith’s -fantastic chimney-piece (“Well, Miss Southey,” cried honest -Joseph, “I’ve done my Devils”), was employed by -Southey during five-and-twenty years, ever since he was a -’prentice-boy. If any warm-hearted neighbour, known or -unknown to him, came forward with a demand on Southey’s -sympathies, he was sure to meet a neighbourly response. -When the miller, who had never spoken to him -before, invited the laureate to rejoice with him over the -pig he had killed—the finest ever fattened—and when -Southey was led to the place where that which had ceased -to be pig and was not yet bacon, was hung up by the hind -feet, he filled up the measure of the good man’s joy by -hearty appreciation of a porker’s points. But Cumberland -enthusiasm seldom flames abroad with so prodigal a -blaze as that of the worthy miller’s heart.</p> - -<p>Within the charmed circle of home, Southey’s temper<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> -and manners were full of a strong and sweet hilarity; and -the home circle was in itself a considerable group of persons. -The Pantisocratic scheme of a community was, -after all, near finding a fulfilment, only that the Greta ran -by in place of the Susquehanna, and that Southey took -upon his own shoulders the work of the dead Lovell, and -of Coleridge, who lay in weakness and dejection, whelmed -under the tide of dreams. For some little time Coleridge -continued to reside at Keswick, an admirable companion -in almost all moods of mind, for all kinds of wisdom, and -all kinds of nonsense. When he was driven abroad in -search of health, it seemed as if a brightness were gone -out of the air, and the horizon of life had grown definite -and contracted. “It is now almost ten years,” Southey -writes, “since he and I first met in my rooms at Oxford, -which meeting decided the destiny of both.... I am perpetually -pained at thinking what he ought to be, ... but -the tidings of his death would come upon me more like -a stroke of lightning than any evil I have ever yet endured.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Coleridge, with her children, remained at Greta -Hall. That quaint little metaphysician, Hartley—now answering -to the name of Moses, now to that of Job, the -oddest of all God’s creatures—was an unceasing wonder -and delight to his uncle: “a strange, strange boy, ‘exquisitely -wild,’ an utter visionary, like the moon among -thin clouds, he moves in a circle of his own making. He -alone is a light of his own. Of all human beings I never -saw one so utterly naked of self.” When his father expressed -surprise that Hartley should take his pleasure of -wheel-barrow-riding so sadly, “The pity is”—explained little -Job—“the pity is, <em>I’se</em> always thinking of my thoughts.” -“‘I’m a boy of a very religious turn,’ he says; for he always -talks of himself and examines his own character, just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> -as if he were speaking of another person, and as impartially. -Every night he makes an extempore prayer aloud; -but it is always in bed, and not till he is comfortable there -and got into the mood. When he is ready, he touches -Mrs. Wilson, who sleeps with him, and says, ‘Now listen!’ -and off he sets like a preacher.” Younger than Hartley -was Derwent Coleridge, a fair, broad-chested boy, with -merry eye and roguish lips, now grown out of that yellow -frock in which he had earned his name of Stumpy Canary. -Sara Coleridge, when her uncle came to Keswick after the -death of his own Margery, was a little grand-lama at that -worshipful age of seven months. A fall into the Greta, a -year and a half later, helped to change her to the delicate -creature whose large blue eyes would look up timidly -from under her lace border and mufflings of muslin. No -feeling towards their father save a reverent loyalty did the -Coleridge children ever learn under Southey’s roof. But -when the pale-faced wanderer returned from Italy, he surprised -and froze his daughter by a sudden revelation of -that jealousy which is the fond injustice of an unsatisfied -heart, and which a child who has freely given and taken -love finds it hard to comprehend. “I think my dear father,” -writes Sara Coleridge, “was anxious that I should -learn to love him and the Wordsworths and their children, -and not cling so exclusively to my mother and all around -me at home.” Love him and revere his memory she did; -to Wordsworth she was conscious of owing more than to -any other teacher or inspirer in matters of the intellect -and imagination. But in matters of the heart and conscience -the daily life of Southey was the book in which -she read; he was, she would emphatically declare, “upon -the whole, the best man she had ever known.”</p> - -<p>But the nepotism of the most “nepotious” uncle is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> -not a perfect substitute for fatherhood with its hopes and -fears. May-morning of the year 1804 saw “an Edithling -very, very ugly, with no more beauty than a young dodo,” -nestling by Edith Southey’s side. A trembling thankfulness -possessed the little one’s father; but when the Arctic -weather changed suddenly to days of genial sunshine, -and groves and gardens burst into living greenery, and -rang with song, his heart was caught into the general joy. -Southey was not without a presentiment that his young -dodo would improve. Soon her premature activity of eye -and spirits troubled him, and he tried, while cherishing -her, to put a guard upon his heart. “I did not mean to -trust my affections again on so frail a foundation—and -yet the young one takes me from my desk and makes -me talk nonsense as fluently as you perhaps can imagine.” -When Sara Coleridge—not yet five years old, but already, -as she half believed, promised in marriage to Mr. De Quincey—returned -after a short absence to Greta Hall, she saw -her baby cousin, sixteen months younger, and therefore -not yet marriageable, grown into a little girl very fair, -with thick golden hair, and round, rosy cheeks. Edith -Southey inherited something of her father’s looks and of -his swift intelligence; with her growing beauty of face -and limbs a growing excellence of inward nature kept -pace. At twenty she was the “elegant cygnet” of Amelia -Opie’s album verses,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent10">“’Twas pleasant to meet</div> -<div class="verse">And see thee, famed Swan of the Derwent’s fair tide,</div> -<div class="verse">With that elegant cygnet that floats by thy side”—</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">a compliment her father mischievously would not let her -Elegancy forget. Those who would know her in the loveliness -of youthful womanhood may turn to Wordsworth’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> -poem, <cite>The Triad</cite>, where she appears first of the three “sister -nymphs” of Keswick and Rydal; or, Hartley Coleridge’s -exquisite sonnet, <cite>To a lofty beauty, from her poor -kinsman</cite>:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent6">“Methinks thy scornful mood,</div> -<div class="verse">And bearing high of stately womanhood—</div> -<div class="verse">Thy brow where Beauty sits to tyrannize</div> -<div class="verse">O’er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee:</div> -<div class="verse">For never sure was seen a royal bride,</div> -<div class="verse">Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride—</div> -<div class="verse">My very thoughts would tremble to be near thee,</div> -<div class="verse">But when I see thee by thy father’s side</div> -<div class="verse">Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">But it is best of all to remember Southey’s daughter in -connexion with one letter of her father’s. In 1805 he -visited Scotland alone; he had looked forward to carrying -on the most cherished purpose of his life—the <cite>History -of Portugal</cite>—among the libraries of Lisbon. But it -would be difficult to induce Mrs. Southey to travel with -the Edithling. Could he go alone? The short absence in -Scotland served to test his heart, and so to make his future -clear:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I need not tell you, my own dear Edith, not to read my -letters aloud till you have first of all seen what is written -only for yourself. What I have now to say to you is, that -having been eight days from home, with as little discomfort, -and as little reason for discomfort, as a man can reasonably -expect, I have yet felt so little comfortable, so great sense of -solitariness, and so many homeward yearnings, that certainly -I will not go to Lisbon without you; a resolution which, if -your feelings be at all like mine, will not displease you. If, -on mature consideration, you think the inconvenience of a -voyage more than you ought to submit to, I must be content -to stay in England, as on my part it certainly is not worth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -while to sacrifice a year’s happiness; for though not unhappy -(my mind is too active and too well disciplined to yield -to any such criminal weakness), still, without you I am not -happy. But for your sake as well as my own, and for little -Edith’s sake, I will not consent to any separation; the growth -of a year’s love between her and me, if it please God that she -should live, is a thing too delightful in itself, and too valuable -in its consequences, both to her and me, to be given up -for any light inconvenience either on your part or mine. An -absence of a year would make her effectually forget me.... -But of these things we will talk at leisure; only, dear, dear -Edith, we must not part.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Such wisdom of the heart was justified; the year of -growing love bore precious fruit. When Edith May was -ten years old her father dedicated to her, in verses laden -with a father’s tenderest thoughts and feelings, his <cite>Tale of -Paraguay</cite>. He recalls the day of her birth, the preceding -sorrow for his first child, whose infant features have faded -from him like a passing cloud; the gladness of that singing -month of May; the seasons that followed during -which he observed the dawning of the divine light in her -eyes; the playful guiles by which he won from her repeated -kisses: to him these ten years seem like yesterday; -but to her they have brought discourse of reason, with the -sense of time and change:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And I have seen thine eyes suffused in grief</div> -<div class="verse">When I have said that with autumnal grey</div> -<div class="verse">The touch of old hath mark’d thy father’s head;</div> -<div class="verse">That even the longest day of life is brief,</div> -<div class="verse">And mine is falling fast into the yellow leaf.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">Other children followed, until a happy stir of life filled -the house. Emma, the quietest of infants, whose voice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> -was seldom heard, and whose dark-grey eyes too seldom -shone in her father’s study, slipped quietly out of the -world after a hand’s-breadth of existence; but to Southey -she was no more really lost than the buried brother and -sister were to the cottage girl of Wordsworth’s <cite>We are -seven</cite>. “I have five children,” he says in 1809; “three -of them at home, and two under my mother’s care in -heaven.” Of all, the most radiantly beautiful was Isabel; -the most passionately loved was Herbert. “My other -two are the most perfect contrast you ever saw. Bertha, -whom I call Queen Henry the Eighth, from her likeness -to King Bluebeard, grows like Jonah’s gourd, and is the -very picture of robust health; and little Kate hardly seems -to grow at all, though perfectly well—she is round as a -mushroom-button. Bertha, the bluff queen, is just as -grave as Kate is garrulous; they are inseparable playfellows, -and go about the house hand in hand.”</p> - -<p>Among the inmates of Greta Hall, to overlook Lord -Nelson and Bona Marietta, with their numerous successors, -would be a grave delinquency. To be a cat, was to be a -privileged member of the little republic to which Southey -gave laws. Among the fragments at the end of <cite>The Doctor</cite> -will be found a Chronicle History of the Cattery of -Cat’s Eden; and some of Southey’s frolic letters are written -as if his whole business in life were that of secretary -for feline affairs in Greta Hall. A house, he declared, is -never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is in -it a child rising three years old and a kitten rising six -weeks; “kitten is in the animal world what the rosebud -is in the garden.” Lord Nelson, an ugly specimen of the -streaked-carroty or Judas-coloured kind, yet withal a good -cat, affectionate, vigilant, and brave, was succeeded by Madame -Bianchi, a beautiful and singular creature, white, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> -a fine tabby tail; “her wild eyes were bright, and green -as the Duchess de Cadaval’s emerald necklace.” She fled -away with her niece Pulcheria on the day when good old -Mrs. Wilson died; nor could any allurements induce the -pair to domesticate themselves again. For some time a -cloud of doom seemed to hang over Cat’s Eden. Ovid and -Virgil, Othello the Moor, and Pope Joan perished miserably. -At last Fortune, as if to make amends for her unkindness, -sent to Greta Hall almost together the never-to-be-enough-praised -Rumpelstilzchen (afterwards raised for -services against rats to be His Serene Highness the Archduke -Rumpelstilzchen), and the equally-to-be-praised Hurly-burlybuss. -With whom too soon we must close the -catalogue.</p> - -<p>The revenue to maintain this household was in the main -won by Southey’s pen. “It is a difficult as well as a delicate -task,” he wrote in the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, “to advise a -youth of ardent mind and aspiring thoughts in the choice -of a profession; but a wise man will have no hesitation in -exhorting him to choose anything rather than literature. -Better that he should seek his fortune before the mast, or -with a musket on his shoulder and a knapsack on his back; -better that he should follow the plough, or work at the -loom or the lathe, or sweat over the anvil, than trust to literature -as the only means of his support.” Southey’s own -bent towards literature was too strong to be altered. But, -while he accepted loyally the burdens of his profession as -a man of letters, he knew how stout a back is needed to -bear them month after month and year after year. Absolutely -dependent on his pen he was at no time. His -generous friend Wynn, upon coming of age, allowed him -annually 160<i>l.</i>, until, in 1807, he was able to procure for -Southey a Government pension for literary services amounting,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> -clear of taxes, to nearly the same sum. Southey had -as truly as any man the pride of independence, but he had -none of its vanity; there was no humiliation in accepting -a service from one whom friendship had made as close as -a brother. Men, he says, are as much better for the good -offices which they receive as for those they bestow; and his -own was no niggard hand. Knowing both to give and -to take, with him the remembrance that he owed much to -others was among the precious possessions of life which -bind us to our kind with bonds of sonship, not of slavery. -Of the many kindnesses which he received he never forgot -one. “Had it not been for your aid,” he writes to Wynn, -forty years after their first meeting in Dean’s Yard, “I -should have been irretrievably wrecked when I ran upon -the shoals, with all sail set, in the very outset of my voyage.” -And to another good old friend, who from his own -modest station applauded while Southey ran forward in -the race:—“Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten -those true and most essential acts of friendship which you -showed me when I stood most in need of them? Your -house was my house when I had no other. The very -money with which I bought my wedding-ring and paid my -marriage-fees was supplied by you. It was with your sisters -I left Edith during my six months’ absence, and for -the six months after my return it was from you that I -received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till I -was enabled to live by other means. It is not the settling -of a cash account that can cancel obligations like these. -You are in the habit of preserving your letters, and if you -were not, I would entreat you to preserve <em>this</em>, that it might -be seen hereafter.... My head throbs and my eyes burn -with these recollections. Good-night! my dear old friend -and benefactor.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> - -<p>Anxiety about his worldly fortunes never cost Southey -a sleepless night. His disposition was always hopeful; -relying on Providence, he says, I could rely upon myself. -When he had little, he lived upon little, never spending -when it was necessary to spare; and his means grew with -his expenses. Business habits he had none; never in his -life did he cast up an account; but in a general way he -knew that money comes by honest toil and grows by diligent -husbandry. Upon Mrs. Southey, who had an eye to -all the household outgoings, the cares of this life fell more -heavily. Sara Coleridge calls to mind her aunt as she -moved about Greta Hall intent on house affairs, “with her -fine figure and quietly commanding air.” Alas! under -this gracious dignity of manner the wear and tear of life -were doing their work surely. Still, it was honest wear -and tear. “I never knew her to do an unkind act,” says -Southey, “nor say an unkind word;” but when stroke -followed upon stroke of sorrow, they found her without -that elastic temper which rises and recovers itself. Until -the saddest of afflictions made her helpless, everything was -left to her management, and was managed so quietly and -well, that, except in times of sickness and bereavement, “I -had,” writes her husband, “literally no cares.” Thus free -from harass, Southey toiled in his library; he toiled not -for bread alone, but also for freedom. There were great -designs before him which, he was well aware, if ever realized, -would make but a poor return to the household coffer. -To gain time and a vantage-ground for these, he was -content to yield much of his strength to work of temporary -value, always contriving, however, to strike a mean in -this journeyman service between what was most and least -akin to his proper pursuits. When a parcel of books arrived -from the <cite>Annual Review</cite>, he groaned in spirit over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> -the sacrifice of time; but patience! it is, after all, better, -he would reflect, than pleading in a court of law; better -than being called up at midnight to a patient; better -than calculating profit and loss at a counter; better, in -short, than anything but independence. “I am a quiet, -patient, easy-going hack of the mule breed”—he writes to -Grosvenor Bedford—“regular as clock-work in my pace, -sure-footed, bearing the burden which is laid on me, and -only obstinate in choosing my own path. If Gifford -could see me by this fireside, where, like Nicodemus, one -candle suffices me in a large room, he would see a man in -a coat ‘still more threadbare than his own,’ when he wrote -his ‘Imitation,’ working hard and getting little—a bare -maintenance, and hardly that; writing poems and history -for posterity with his whole heart and soul; one daily -progressive in learning, not so learned as he is poor, not -so poor as proud, not so proud as happy. Grosvenor, -there is not a lighter-hearted nor a happier man upon the -face of this wide world.” When these words were written, -Herbert stood by his father’s side; it was sweet to -work that his boy might have his play-time glad and free.</p> - -<p>The public estimate of Southey’s works as expressed in -pounds, shillings, and pence, was lowest where he held that -it ought to have been highest. For the <cite>History of Brazil</cite>, -a work of stupendous toil, which no one in England could -have produced save Southey himself, he had not received, -after eight years, as much as for a single article in the -<cite>Quarterly Review</cite>. <cite>Madoc</cite>, the pillar, as he supposed, on -which his poetical fame was to rest; <cite>Madoc</cite>, which he dismissed -with an awed feeling, as if in it he were parting -with a great fragment of his life, brought its author, after -twelve months’ sales, the sum of 3<i>l.</i> 17<i>s.</i> 1<i>d.</i> On the other -hand, for his <cite>Naval Biography</cite>, which interested him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> -less than most of his works, and which was undertaken -after hesitation, he was promised five hundred guineas a -volume. Notwithstanding his unwearied exertions, his -modest scale of expenditure, and his profitable connexion -with the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>—for an important article he -would receive 100<i>l.</i>—he never had a year’s income in advance -until that year, late in his life, in which Sir Robert -Peel offered him a baronetcy. In 1818, the lucky payment -of a bad debt enabled him to buy 300<i>l.</i> in the -Three-per-cents. “I have 100<i>l.</i> already there,” he writes -“and shall then be worth 12<i>l.</i> per annum.” By 1821 -this sum had grown to 625<i>l.</i>, the gatherings of half a -life-time. In that year his friend John May, whose acquaintance -he had made in Portugal, and to whose kindness -he was a debtor, suffered the loss of his fortune. As -soon as Southey had heard the state of affairs, his decision -was formed. “By this post,” he tells his friend, “I write -to Bedford, desiring that he will transfer to you 625<i>l.</i> in -the Three-per-cents. I wish it was more, and that I had -more at my command in any way. I shall in the spring, -if I am paid for the first volume of my History as soon as -it is finished. One hundred I should, at all events, have -sent you then. It shall be as much more as I receive.” -And he goes on in cheery words to invite John May to -break away from business and come to Keswick, there to -lay in “a pleasant store of recollections which in all moods -of mind are wholesome.” One rejoices that Southey, -poor of worldly goods, knew the happiness of being so -simply and nobly generous.</p> - -<p>Blue and white china, mediæval ivories, engravings by -the Little Masters, Chippendale cabinets, did not excite -pining desire in Southey’s breast; yet in one direction -he indulged the passion of a collector. If, with respect to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> -any of “the things independent of the will,” he showed a -want of moderation unworthy of his discipleship to Epictetus, -it was assuredly with respect to books. Before he -possessed a fixed home, he was already moored to his folios; -and when once he was fairly settled at Keswick, -many a time the carriers on the London road found their -riding the larger by a weighty packet on its way to Greta -Hall. Never did he run north or south for a holiday, -but the inevitable parcel preceded or followed his return. -Never did he cross to the Continent but a bulkier bale arrived -in its own good time, enclosing precious things. His -morality, in all else void of offence, here yielded to the -seducer. It is thought that Southey was in the main honest; -but if Dirk Hatteraick had run ashore a hundred-weight -of the Acta Sanctorum duty-free, the king’s laureate -was not the man to set the sharks upon him; and it -is to be feared that the pattern of probity, the virtuous -Southey himself, might in such circumstances be found, -under cover of night, lugging his prize landwards from its -retreat beneath the rocks. Unquestionably, at one time -certain parcels from Portugal—only of such a size as -could be carried under the arm—were silently brought -ashore to the defrauding of the revenue, and somehow -found their way, by-and-by, to Greta Hall. “We maintain -a trade,” says the Governor of the Strangers’ House -in Bacon’s philosophical romance, “not for gold, silver, or -jewels, nor for silks, nor for spices, nor any other commodity -of matter, but only for God’s first creature, which -was <em>light</em>.” Such, too, was Southey’s trade, and he held -that God’s first creature is free to travel unchallenged by -revenue-cutter.</p> - -<p>“Why, Montesinos,” asks the ghostly Sir Thomas More -in one of Southey’s <cite>Colloquies</cite>, “with these books and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> -delight you take in their constant society, what have you -to covet or desire?” “Nothing,” is the answer, “ ... except -more books.” When Southey, in 1805, went to see -Walter Scott, it occurred to him in Edinburgh that, having -had neither new coat nor hat since little Edith was born, -he must surely be in want of both; and here, in the metropolis -of the North, was an opportunity of arraying himself -to his desire. “Howbeit,” he says, “on considering -the really respectable appearance which my old ones made -for a traveller—and considering, moreover, that as learning -was better than house or land, it certainly must be -much better than fine clothes—I laid out all my money -in books, and came home to wear out my old wardrobe -in the winter.” De Quincey called Southey’s library his -wife, and in a certain sense it was wife and mistress and -mother to him. The presence and enjoying of his books -was not the sole delight they afforded; there was also the -pursuit, the surprisal, the love-making or wooing. And at -last, in his hours of weakness, once more a little child, he -would walk slowly round his library, looking at his cherished -volumes, taking them down mechanically, and when -he could no longer read, pressing them to his lips. In -happier days the book-stalls of London knew the tall figure, -the rapid stride, the quick-seeing eye, the eager fingers. -Lisbon, Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, contributed to -the rich confusion that, from time to time, burdened the -floors of library and bedrooms and passages in Greta Hall. -Above all, he was remembered at Brussels by that best -of bookmen, Verbeyst. What mattered it that Verbeyst -was a sloven, now receiving his clients with gaping shirt -and now with stockingless feet? Did he not duly honour -letters, and had he not 300,000 volumes from which -to choose? If in a moment of prudential weakness one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> -failed to carry off such a treasure as the <cite>Monumenta Boica</cite> -or Colgar’s <cite>Irish Saints</cite>, there was a chance that in -Verbeyst’s vast store-house the volume might lurk for a -year or two. And Verbeyst loved his books, only less -than he loved his handsome, good-natured wife, who for -a liberal customer would fetch the bread and burgundy. -Henry Taylor dwelt in Robert Southey’s heart of hearts; -but let not Henry Taylor treasonably hint that Verbeyst, -the prince of booksellers, had not a prince’s politeness of -punctuality. If sundry books promised had not arrived, -it was because they were not easily procured; moreover, -the good-natured wife had died—<i lang="fr">bien des malheurs</i>, and -Verbeyst’s heart was fallen into a lethargy. “Think ill of -our fathers which are in the Row, think ill of John Murray, -think ill of Colburn, think ill of the whole race of -bibliopoles, except Verbeyst, who is always to be thought -of with liking and respect.” And when the bill of lading, -coming slow but sure, announced that saints and chroniclers -and poets were on their way, “by this day month,” -wrote Southey, “they will probably be here; then shall I -be happier than if his Majesty King George the Fourth -were to give orders that I should be clothed in purple, and -sleep upon gold, and have a chain upon my neck, and sit -next him because of my wisdom, and be called his cousin.”</p> - -<p>Thus the four thousand volumes, which lay piled about -the library when Southey first gathered his possessions -together, grew and grew, year after year, until the grand -total mounted up to eight, to ten, to fourteen thousand. -Now Kirke White’s brother Neville sends him a gift of -Sir William Jones’s works, thirteen volumes, in binding -of bewildering loveliness. Now Landor ships from some -Italian port a chest containing treasures of less dubious -value than the Raffaelles and Leonardos, with which he liberally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> -supplied his art-loving friends. Oh, the joy of -opening such a chest; of discovering the glorious folios; -of glancing with the shy amorousness of first desire at -title-page and colophon; of growing familiarity; of tracing -out the history suggested by book-plate or autograph; -of finding a lover’s excuses for cropped margin, or water-stain, -or worm-hole! Then the calmer happiness of arranging -his favourites on new shelves; of taking them -down again, after supper, in the season of meditation and -currant-rum; and of wondering for which among his father’s -books Herbert will care most when all of them shall -be his own. “It would please you,” Southey writes to his -old comrade, Bedford, “to see such a display of literary -wealth, which is at once the pride of my eye, and the joy -of my heart, and the food of my mind; indeed, more than -metaphorically, meat, drink, and clothes for me and mine. -I verily believe that no one in my station was ever so rich -before, and I am very sure that no one in any station had -ever a more thorough enjoyment of riches of any kind or -in any way.”</p> - -<p>Southey’s Spanish and Portuguese collection—if Heber’s -great library be set aside—was probably the most remarkable -gathering of such books in the possession of any -private person in this country. It included several manuscripts, -some of which were displayed with due distinction -upon brackets. Books in white and gold—vellum or -parchment bound, with gilt lettering in the old English -type which Southey loved—were arranged in effective positions -pyramid-wise. Southey himself had learned the -mystery of book-binding, and from him his daughters acquired -that art; the ragged volumes were decently clothed -in coloured cotton prints; these, presenting a strange -patch-work of colours, quite filled one room, which was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> -known as the Cottonian Library. “Paul,” a book-room on -the ground-floor, had been so called because “Peter,” the -organ-room, was robbed to fit it with books. “Paul is -a great comfort to us, and being dressed up with Peter’s -property, makes a most respectable appearance, and receives -that attention which is generally shown to the youngest -child. The study has not actually been Petered on Paul’s -account, but there has been an exchange negotiated which -we think is for their mutual advantage. Twenty gilt volumes, -from under the ‘Beauties of England and Wales,’ -have been marched down-stairs rank and file, and their -place supplied by the long set of Lope de Vega with green -backs.”</p> - -<p>Southey’s books, as he assures his ghostly monitor in -the <cite>Colloquies</cite>, were not drawn up on his shelves for display, -however much the pride of the eye might be gratified -in beholding them; they were on actual service. Generations -might pass away before some of them would again -find a reader; in their mountain home they were prized -and known as perhaps they never had been known before. -Not a few of the volumes had been cast up from the wreck -of family or convent libraries during the Revolution. -“Yonder Acta Sanctorum belonged to the Capuchines at -Ghent. This book of St. Bridget’s Revelations, in which -not only all the initial letters are illuminated, but every -capital throughout the volume was coloured, came from -the Carmelite Nunnery at Bruges.... Here are books -from Colbert’s library; here others from the Lamoignon -one.... Yonder Chronicle History of King D. Manoel, by -Damiam de Goes; and yonder General History of Spain, -by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their respective authors.... -This Copy of Casaubon’s Epistles was sent to -me from Florence by Walter Landor. He had perused it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> -carefully, and to that perusal we are indebted for one of -the most pleasing of his Conversations.... Here is a book -with which Lauderdale amused himself, when Cromwell -kept him in prison in Windsor Castle.... Here I possess -these gathered treasures of time, the harvest of many generations, -laid up in my garners: and when I go to the -window, there is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, -and the illimitable sky.”</p> - -<p>Not a few of his books were dead, and to live among -these was like living among the tombs; “Behold, this also -is vanity,” Southey makes confession. But when Sir Thomas -questions, “Has it proved to you ‘vexation of spirit’ -also?” the Cumberland mountain-dweller breaks forth: -“Oh no! for never can any man’s life have been passed -more in accord with his own inclinations, nor more answerably -to his desires. Excepting that peace which, -through God’s infinite mercy, is derived from a higher -source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, that I am beholden, -not only for the means of subsistence, but for -every blessing which I enjoy; health of mind and activity -of mind, contentment, cheerfulness, continual employment, -and therefore continual pleasure. <i lang="la">Suavissima vita indies -sentire se fieri meliorem</i>; and this, as Bacon has said and -Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious man enjoys -in retirement.” Such a grave gladness underlay all -Southey’s frolic moods, and in union with a clear-sighted -acceptance of the conditions of human happiness—its inevitable -shocks, its transitory nature as far as it belongs to -man’s life on earth—made up part of his habitual temper.</p> - -<p>Southey coursed from page to page with a greyhound’s -speed; a tiny <i>s</i> pencilled in the margin served to indicate -what might be required for future use. Neatness he had -learnt from Miss Tyler long ago; and by experience he acquired<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> -his method. On a slip of paper which served as -marker he would note the pages to which he needed to return. -In the course of a few hours he had classified and -arranged everything in a book which it was likely he -would ever want. A reference to the less important passages -sufficed; those of special interest were transcribed -by his wife, or one of his daughters, or more frequently -by Southey himself; finally, these transcripts were brought -together in packets under such headings as would make it -easy to discover any portion of their contents.</p> - -<p>Such was his ordinary manner of eviscerating an author, -but it was otherwise with the writers of his affection. On -some—such as Jackson and Jeremy Taylor—“he <em>fed</em>,” as -he expressed it, “slowly and carefully, dwelling on the -page, and taking in its contents, deeply and deliberately, -like an epicure with his wine ‘searching the subtle flavour.’” -Such chosen writers remained for all times and -seasons faithful and cherished friends:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“With them I take delight in weal,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And seek relief in woe;</div> -<div class="verse">And while I understand and feel</div> -<div class="verse indent1">How much to them I owe,</div> -<div class="verse">My cheeks have often been bedewed</div> -<div class="verse indent1">With tears of thankful gratitude.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">“If I were confined to a score of English books,” says -Southey, “Sir Thomas Browne would, I think, be one of -them; nay, probably it would be one if the selection were -cut down to twelve. My library, if reduced to those -bounds, would consist of Shakspeare, Chaucer, Spenser, -and Milton; Jackson, Jeremy Taylor, and South; Isaac -Walton, Sidney’s Arcadia, Fuller’s Church History, and -Sir Thomas Browne; and what a wealthy and well-stored<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> -mind would that man have, what an inexhaustible reservoir, -what a Bank of England to draw upon for profitable -thoughts and delightful associations, who should have fed -upon them!” It must have gone hard with Southey, in -making out this list, to exclude Clarendon, and doubtless -if the choice were not limited to books written in English, -the Utopia would have urged its claim to admission. With -less difficulty he could skip the whole of the eighteenth -century. From <cite>Samson Agonistes</cite> to <cite>The Task</cite>, there was -no English poem which held a foremost place in his esteem. -Berkeley and Butler he valued highly; but Robert -South seemed to him the last of the race of the giants. -An ancestral connection with Locke was not a source of -pride to Southey; he respected neither the philosopher’s -politics nor his metaphysics; still, it is pleasant, he says, to -hear of somebody between one’s self and Adam who has -left a name.</p> - -<p>Four volumes of what are called Southey’s <cite>Commonplace -Books</cite> have been published, containing some three -thousand double-column pages; and these are but a selection -from the total mass of his transcripts. It is impossible -to give a notion of a miscellany drawn from so wide-ranging -a survey of poetry, biography, history, travels, topography, -divinity, not in English alone, but also in Latin, -French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese. Yet certain main -lines can be traced which give some meaning to this huge -accumulation. It is easy to perceive that the collector -wrought under an historical bias, and that social, literary, -and ecclesiastical history were the directions in which the -historical tendency found its play. Such work of transcribing, -though it did not rest Southey’s hand, was a relief -to his mind after the excitement of composition, and -some of it may pass for a kind of busy idleness; but most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> -of his transcripts were made with a definite purpose—that -of furnishing materials for work either actually accomplished -or still in prospect, when at last the brain grew dull -and the fingers slack. “I am for ever making collections,” -he writes, “and storing up materials which may not come -into use till the Greek Calends. And this I have been doing -for five-and-twenty years! It is true that I draw daily -upon my hoards, and should be poor without them; but -in prudence I ought now to be working up those materials -rather than adding to so much dead stock.” When Ticknor -visited him in 1819, Southey opened for the young -American his great bundles of manuscript materials for the -<cite>History of Portugal</cite>, and the <cite>History of the Portuguese -East Indies</cite>. Southey had charmed him by the kindness -of his reception; by the air of culture and of goodness in -his home; by his talk, bright and eager, “for the quickness -of his mind expresses itself in the fluency of his utterance; -and yet he is ready upon almost any subject that can be -proposed to him, from the extent of his knowledge.” And -now, when Ticknor saw spread before him the evidence -of such unexampled industry, a kind of bewilderment took -possession of him. “Southey,” he writes in his diary, “is -certainly an extraordinary man, one of those whose characters -I find it difficult to comprehend, because I hardly -know how such elements can be brought together, such rapidity -of mind with such patient labour and wearisome exactness, -so mild a disposition with so much nervous excitability, -and a poetical talent so elevated with such an immense -mass of minute, dull learning.”</p> - -<p>If Ticknor had been told that this was due to Epictetus, -it might have puzzled him still more; but it is certain that -only through the strenuous appliance of will to the formation -of character could Southey have grown to be what he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> -was. He had early been possessed by the belief that he -must not permit himself to become the slave or the victim -of sensibility, but that in the little world of man there are -two powers ruling by a Divine right—reason and conscience, -in loyal obedience to which lies our highest freedom. -Then, too, the circumstances of his life prompted -him to self-mastery and self-management. That he should -every day overtake a vast amount of work, was not left to -his choosing or declining—it was a matter of necessity; to -accomplish this, he must get all possible advantage out of -his rapidity of intellect and his energy of feeling, and at -the same time he must never put an injurious strain on -these. It would not do for Southey to burn away to-day -in some white flame of excitement the nerve which he -needed for use to-morrow. He could not afford to pass -a sleepless night. If his face glowed or his brain throbbed, -it was a warning that he had gone far enough. His -very susceptibility to nervous excitement rendered caution -the more requisite. William Taylor had compared him -to the mimosa. Hazlitt remembered him with a quivering -lip, a hectic flush upon his cheek, a roving fire in his -eye, a falcon glance, a look at once aspiring and dejected. -Crabb Robinson found in him a likeness to Shelley. -Humphry Davy had proved the fineness of his sensibility -by that odd neurometer, the nitrous oxide. “The truth -is,” writes Southey, “that though some persons, whose -knowledge of me is scarcely skin-deep, suppose I have no -nerves, because I have great self-control as far as regards -the surface, if it were not for great self-management, and -what may be called a strict intellectual regimen, I should -very soon be in a deplorable state of what is called nervous -disease, and this would have been the case any time during -the last twenty years.” And again: “A man had better<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> -break a bone, or even lose a limb, than shake his nervous system. -I, who never talk about my nerves (and am supposed -to have none by persons who see as far into me as they do -into a stone wall), know this.” Southey could not afford -to play away his health at hazard, and then win it back in -the lounge of some foreign watering-place. His plan, on -the contrary, was to keep it, and to think about it as little -as possible. A single prescription sufficed for a life-time—<i lang="la">In -labore quies.</i> “I think I may lay claim,” he says, -“to the praise of self-management both in body and mind -without paying too much attention to either—exercising a -diseased watchfulness, or playing any tricks with either.” -It would not have been difficult for Southey, with such a -temperament as his, to have wrecked himself at the outset -of his career. With beautiful foiled lives of young men -Southey had a peculiar sympathy. But the gods sometimes -give white hairs as an aureole to their favoured -ones. Perhaps, on the whole, for him it was not only -more prudent but also more chivalrous to study to be -quiet; to create a home for those who looked to him for -security; to guard the happiness of tender women; to -make smooth ways for the feet of little children; to hold -hands in old age with the friends of his youth; to store -his mind with treasures of knowledge; to strengthen and -chasten his own heart; to grow yearly in love for his -country and her venerable heritage of manners, virtue, -laws; to add to her literature the outcome of an adult intellect -and character; and having fought a strenuous and -skilful fight, to fall as one whose sword an untimely stroke -has shattered in his hand.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.<br /> -<span class="smaller">WAYS OF LIFE AT KESWICK, 1803-1839 (<i>continued</i>).</span></h2> - -<p>The texture of Southey’s life was so uniform, the round -from morning till night repeated itself with so much regularity, -that one day may stand as representative of a -thousand. We possess his record of how the waking -hours went by when he was about thirty years old, and -a similar record written when he was twice that age. His -surroundings had changed in the mean time, and he himself -had changed; the great bare room which he used -from the first as a study, fresh plastered in 1804, with the -trowel-lines on the ceiling pierced by the flaws of winter, -containing two chairs and a little table—“God help me!” -he exclaims, “I look in it like a cock-robin in a church”—this -room had received, long before 1834, its lining of -comely books, its white and gold pyramids, its brackets, -its cherished portraits. The occupant of the study had -the same spare frame, the same aspect of lightness and of -strength, the same full eyebrows shadowing the dark-brown -eyes, the same variously expressive muscular mouth; -the youthful wildness in his countenance had given place -to a thoughtful expression, and the abundant hair still -clustering over his great brow was snowy white. Whatever -had changed, his habits—though never his tyrants—remained, -with some variations in detail, the same. “My<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -actions,” he writes to a friend not very long after his arrival -in Keswick, “are as regular as those of St. Dunstan’s -quarter-boys. Three pages of history after breakfast -(equivalent to five in small quarto printing); then to -transcribe and copy for the press, or to make my selections -and biographies, or what else suits my humour till -dinner-time; from dinner to tea I read, write letters, see -the newspaper, and very often indulge in a siesta—for -sleep agrees with me.... After tea I go to poetry, and -correct, and rewrite, and copy till I am tired, and then -turn to anything else till supper; and this is my life—which, -if it be not a very merry one, is yet as happy as -heart could wish.” “See how the day is disposed of!” -begins the later record; “I get out of bed as the clock -strikes six, and shut the house-door after me as it strikes -seven.<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> After two hours with Davies, home to breakfast, -after which Cuthbert engages me till about half-past ten, -and when the post brings no letters that either interest -or trouble me (for of the latter I have many), by eleven I -have done with the newspaper, and can then set about -what is properly the business of the day. But letters -are often to be written, and I am liable to frequent interruptions; -so that there are not many mornings in which -I can command from two to three unbroken hours at the -desk. At two I take my daily walk, be the weather what -it may, and when the weather permits, with a book in my -hand; dinner at four, read about half an hour; then take -to the sofa with a different book, and after a few pages -get my soundest sleep, till summoned to tea at six. My -best time during the winter is by candle-light; twilight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -interferes with it a little; and in the season of company -I can never count upon an evening’s work. Supper at -half-past nine, after which I read an hour, and then to -bed. The greatest part of my miscellaneous work is done -in the odds and ends of time.”</p> - -<p>It was part of Southey’s regimen to carry on several -works at once; this he found to be economy of time, and -he believed it necessary for the preservation of his health. -Whenever one object entirely occupied his attention, it -haunted him, oppressed him, troubled his dreams. The -remedy was simple—to do one thing in the morning, another -in the evening. To lay down poetry and presently -to attack history seems feasible, and no ill policy for one -who is forced to take all he can out of himself; but -Southey would turn from one poetical theme to another, -and could day by day advance with a pair of epics. This -was a source of unfailing wonder to Landor. “When I -write a poem,” he says, “my heart and all my feelings are -upon it.... High poems will not admit flirtation.” Little -by little was Southey’s way, and so he got on with -many things. “Last night,” he writes to Bedford, “I began -the Preface [to <cite>Specimens of English Poets</cite>]—huzza! -And now, Grosvenor, let me tell you what I have to -do. I am writing—1. <cite>The History of Portugal</cite>; 2. <cite>The -Chronicle of the Cid</cite>; 3. <cite>The Curse of Kehama</cite>; 4. <cite>Espriella’s -Letters</cite>. Look you, all these <em>I am</em> writing.... By -way of interlude comes in this preface. Don’t swear, -and bid me do one thing at a time. I tell you I can’t -afford to do one thing at a time—no, nor two neither; -and it is only by doing many things that I contrive to do -so much: for I cannot work long together at anything -without hurting myself, and so I do everything by heats; -then, by the time I am tired of one, my inclination for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> -another is come round.” A strong, deliberate energy, accordingly, -is at the back of all Southey’s work; but not -that blind creative rapture which will have its own way, -and leaves its subject weak but appeased. “In the day-time -I laboured,” says Landor, “and at night unburdened -my soul, shedding many tears. My <cite>Tiberius</cite> has so shaken -me at last that the least thing affects me violently.” -Southey shrank back from such agitations. A great Elizabethan -poet is described by one of his contemporaries as -one standing</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Up to the chin in the Pierian flood.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Southey did not wade so far; he stepped down calmly -until the smooth waters touched his waist; dipped seven -times, and returned to the bank. It was a beautiful and -an elevating rite; but the waves sing with lyric lips only -in the midmost stream; and he who sings with them, and -is swift as they, need not wonder if he sink after a time, -faint, breathless, delighted.</p> - -<p>Authorship, it must be remembered, was Southey’s trade, -the business of his life, and this, at least, he knew how to -conduct well. To be a prophet and call down flame from -heaven, and disappear in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire, -is sublime; but prophets can go in the strength of a single -meal for more days and nights than one would choose -to name in this incredulous age, and, if they eat, there are -ravens to bring them food. No ravens brought loaves to -Greta Hall; and Southey had an unprophet-like craving -for the creature comforts of beef and bread, for wine if it -might be had, and at supper for one meditative tumbler -of punch or black-currant rum. Besides, what ravens -were ever pledged to feed a prophet’s sisters-in-law, or his -nephews and nieces? Let it be praise enough for much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -of Southey’s performance that he did good work in workmanlike -fashion. To shift knowledge into more convenient -positions is to render no unimportant service to mankind. -In the gathering of facts, Southey was both swift -and patient in an extraordinary degree; he went often -alone, and he went far; in the art of exposition he was -unsurpassed; and his fine moral feeling and profound -sympathy with elementary justice created, as De Quincey -has observed, a soul under what else might well be denominated, -Miltonically, “the ribs of death.” From the mending -of his pens to the second reading aloud of his proof-sheets, -attending as he read to the fall of each word upon -the ear, Southey had a diligent care for everything that -served to make his work right. He wrote at a moderate -pace; re-wrote; wrote a third time if it seemed desirable; -corrected with minute supervision. He accomplished so -much, not because he produced with unexampled rapidity, -but because he worked regularly, and never fell into a -mood of apathy or ennui. No periods of tempestuous -vacancy lay between his periods of patient labour. One -work always overlapped another—thus, that first idle day, -the begetter of so many idle descendants, never came. -But let us hear the craftsman giving a lesson in the knack -of authorship to his brother, Dr. Henry Southey, who has -a notion of writing something on the Crusades:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Now then, supposing that you will seriously set about -the <cite>Crusades</cite>, I will give you such directions in the art of historical -book-keeping as may save time and facilitate labour.</p> - -<p>“Make your writing-books in foolscap quarto, and write -on only one side of a leaf; draw a line down the margin, -marking off space enough for your references, which should -be given at the end of every paragraph; noting page, book, -or chapter of the author referred to. This minuteness is now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> -demanded, and you will yourself find it useful; for, in transcribing -or in correcting proofs, it is often requisite to turn to -the original authorities. Take the best author; that is to -say, the one that has written most at length of all the <em>original</em> -authors, upon the particular point of time on which you are -employed, and draw up your account from him; then, on the -opposite page, correct and amplify this from every other who -has written on the same subject. This page should be divided -into two columns, one of about two-thirds of its breadth, -the other the remaining one. You are thus enabled to <em>add</em> -to your <em>additions</em>.</p> - -<p>“One of these books you should have for your geography; -that is to say, for collecting descriptions of all the principal -scenes of action (which must be done from books of travels), -their situation, their strength, their previous history, and in -the notes, their present state. [Another book—he adds in a -subsequent letter—you must keep for the bibliography of -your subject.]</p> - -<p>“These descriptions you can insert in their proper places -when you transcribe. Thus, also, you should collect accounts -of the different tribes and dynasties which you have occasion -to mention. In this manner the information which is only -to be got at piecemeal, and oftentimes incidentally, when you -are looking for something else, is brought together with least -trouble, and almost imperceptibly.</p> - -<p>“All relative matter not absolutely essential to the subject -should go in the form of supplementary notes, and these you -may make as amusing as you please, the more so, and the -more curious, the better. Much trouble is saved by writing -them on separate bits of paper, each the half of a quarter of -a foolscap sheet—numbering them, and making an index of -them; in this manner they are ready for use when they are -wanted.</p> - -<p>“It was some time before I fell unto this system of book-keeping, -and I believe no better can be desired. A Welsh -triad might comprehend all the rules of style. Say what you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> -have to say as <em>perspicuously</em> as possible, as <em>briefly</em> as possible, -and as <em>rememberably</em> as possible, and take no other thought -about it. Omit none of those little circumstances which -give life to narration, and bring old manners, old feelings, -and old times before your eyes.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Winter was Southey’s harvest season. Then for weeks -no visitor knocked at Greta Hall, except perhaps Mr. -Wordsworth, who had plodded all the way from Rydal on -his indefatigable legs. But in summer interruptions were -frequent, and Southey, who had time for everything, had -time to spare not only for friends but for strangers. The -swarm of lakers was, indeed, not what it is now-a-days, but -to a studious man it was, perhaps, not less formidable. By -Gray’s time the secret of the lakes had been found out; -and if the visitors were fewer, they were less swift upon -the wing, and their rank or fame often entitled them to -particular attention. Coroneted coaches rolled into Keswick, -luggage-laden; the American arrived sometimes to -make sure that Derwentwater would not be missed out of -Lake Michigan, sometimes to see King George’s laureate; -and cultured Americans were particularly welcome to -Southey. Long-vacation reading-parties from Oxford and -Cambridge—known among the good Cumberland folk as -the “cathedrals”—made Keswick a resort. Well for -them if, provided with an introduction, they were invited -to dine at Greta Hall, were permitted to gaze on the -choice old Spaniards, and to converse with the laureate’s -stately Edith and her learned cousin. Woe to them if, -after the entanglements of a Greek chorus or descriptions -of the temperate man and the magnanimous man, they -sought to restore their tone by a cat-worrying expedition -among the cottages of Keswick. Southey’s cheek glowed, -his eye darkened and flashed, if he chanced to witness cruelty;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> -some of the Cambridge “cathedrals” who received -a letter concerning cats in July, 1834, may still bear the -mark of its leaded thong in their moral fibre, and be the -better for possessing Southey’s sign-manual.</p> - -<p>A young step-child of Oxford visited Keswick in the -winter of 1811-12, and sought the acquaintance of the -author of <cite>Thalaba</cite>. Had Southey been as intolerant or -as unsympathetic as some have represented him, he could -not have endured the society of one so alien in opinion -and so outspoken as Shelley. But courtesy, if it were -nothing more, was at least part of Southey’s self-respect; -his intolerance towards persons was, in truth, towards a -certain ideal, a certain group of opinions; when hand -touched hand and eye met eye, all intolerance vanished, -and he was open to every gracious attraction of character -and manner. There was much in Shelley that could not -fail to interest Southey; both loved poetry, and both felt -the proud, secluded grandeur of Landor’s verse; both loved -men, and thought the world wants mending, though their -plans of reform might differ. That Shelley was a rebel -expelled from Oxford did not shock Southey, who himself -had been expelled from Westminster and rejected at -Christ Church. Shelley’s opinions were crude and violent, -but their spirit was generous, and such opinions held by -a youth in his teens generally mean no more than that -his brain is working and his heart ardent. Shelley’s rash -marriage reminded Southey of another marriage, celebrated -at Bristol some fifteen years ago, which proved that rashness -is not always folly. The young man’s admiration of -<cite>Thalaba</cite> spoke well for him; and certainly during the -earlier weeks of their intercourse there was on Shelley’s -part a becoming deference to one so much his superior in -years and in learning, deference to one who had achieved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> -much while Shelley still only dreamed of achievement. -Southey thought he saw in the revolutionary enthusiast -an image of his former self. “Here,” he says, “is a man -at Keswick who acts upon me as my own ghost would do. -He is just what I was in 1794. His name is Shelley, son -to the member for Shoreham.... At present he has got -to the Pantheistic stage of philosophy, and in the course -of a week I expect he will be a Berkeleyan, for I have put -him upon a course of Berkeley. It has surprised him a -good deal to meet, for the first time in his life, with a man -who perfectly understands him and does him full justice. -I tell him that all the difference between us is that he is -nineteen and I am thirty-seven; and I daresay it will not -be very long before I shall succeed in convincing him that -he may be a true philosopher and do a great deal of good -with 6000<i>l.</i> a year; the thought of which troubles him a -great deal more at present than ever the want of sixpence -(for I have known such a want) did me.” There were -other differences between Robert Southey and the inconstant -star that passed by Greta Hall than that of years. -Southey had quickly learned to put a bound to his desires, -and within that bound to work out for himself a possession -of measureless worth. It seemed to him part of a -man’s virtue to adhere loyally to the bond signed for each -of us when we enter life. Is our knowledge limited—then -let us strive within those limits. Can we never lay -hands on the absolute good—then let us cherish the good -things that are ours. Do we hold our dearest possessions -on a limited tenure—that is hard, but is it not in the -bond? How faint a loyalty is his who merely yields obedience -perforce! let us rather cast in our will, unadulterated -and whole, with that of our divine Leader; <i lang="la">sursum corda</i>—there -is a heaven above. But Shelley—the nympholept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> -of some radiant ante-natal sphere—fled through his brief -years ever in pursuit of his lost lady of light; and for him -loyalty to the bond of life seemed to mean a readiness to -forget all things, however cherished, so soon as they had -fulfilled their service of speeding him on towards the unattainable. -It could not but be that men living under -rules so diverse should before long find themselves far -asunder. But they parted in 1812 in no spirit of ill-will. -Southey was already a state-pensioner and a champion of -the party of order in the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>; this did not -prevent the young apostle of liberty and fraternity from -entering his doors, and enjoying Mrs. Southey’s tea-cakes. -Irish affairs were earnestly discussed; but Southey, who -had written generously of Emmett both in his verse and -in the <cite>Quarterly</cite>, could not be hostile to one whose illusions -were only over-sanguine; and while the veritable -Southey was before Shelley’s eyes, he could not discern -the dull hireling, the venomous apostate, the cold-blooded -assassin, of freedom conjured up by Byron and others to -bear Southey’s name.</p> - -<p>Three years later Shelley presented his <cite>Alastor</cite> to the -laureate, and Southey duly acknowledged the gift. The -elder poet was never slow to recognize genius in young -men, but conduct was to him of higher importance than -genius; he deplored some acts in Shelley’s life which -seemed to result directly from opinions professed at Keswick -in 1811—opinions then interpreted as no more than -the disdain of checks felt by every spirited boy. Southey -heard no more from him until a letter came from Pisa inquiring -whether Shelley’s former entertainer at Keswick -were his recent critic of the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, with added -comments, courteous but severe, on Southey’s opinions. -The reply was that Southey had not written the paper, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> -had never in any of his writings alluded to Shelley in any -way. A second letter followed on each side, the elder -man pleading, exhorting, warning; the younger justifying -himself, and returning to the attack. “There the correspondence -ended. On Shelley’s part it was conducted with -the courtesy which was natural to him; on mine, in the -spirit of one who was earnestly admonishing a fellow-creature.”</p> - -<p>Much of Southey’s time—his most valued possession—was -given to his correspondents. Napoleon’s plan of answering -letters, according to Bourrienne, was to let them -lie unopened for six weeks, by which time nine out of ten -had answered themselves, or had been answered by history. -Coleridge’s plan—says De Quincey—was shorter; -he opened none, and answered none. To answer all forthwith -was the habit of Southey. Thinking doubtless of -their differences in such minor moralities of life, Coleridge -writes of his brother-in-law:—“Always employed, his -friends find him always at leisure. No less punctual in -trifles than steadfast in the performance of highest duties, -he inflicts none of those small pains which irregular men -scatter about them, and which in the aggregate so often -become formidable obstacles both to happiness and utility; -while, on the contrary, he bestows all the pleasures and inspires -all that ease of mind on those around or connected -with him, which perfect consistency and (if such a word -might be framed) absolute <em>reliability</em>, equally in small as -in great concerns, cannot but inspire and bestow; when -this, too, is softened without being weakened by kindness -and gentleness.” Odd indeed wore some of the communications -for which the poet-laureate, the Tory reformer, and -the loyal son of the Church was the mark. Now a clergyman -writes to furnish him with Scriptural illustrations of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> -<cite>Thalaba</cite>; now another clergyman favours him with an -ingenious parallel between Kehama and Nebuchadnezzar; -now some anonymous person seriously urges on Southey -his duty of making a new version of the Psalms, and laying -it before the King to be approved and appointed to -be sung in churches; now a lunatic poet desires his brother -to procure for his title-page the names of Messrs. Longman -and Rees; now a poor woman, wife to a blind Homer, -would have him led carefully to the summit of Parnassus; -now a poor French devil volunteers to translate <cite>Roderick</cite> -if the author will have the goodness to send him a copy—even -a defective copy—which he pledges himself religiously -to return; now a Yankee, who keeps an exhibition -at Philadelphia, modestly asks for Southey’s painted portrait, -“which is very worthy a place in my collection;” -now a herdsman in the vale of Clwyd requests permission -to send specimens of prose and verse—his highest ambition -is the acquaintance of learned men; now the Rev. -Peter Hall begs to inform Southey that he has done more -harm to the cause of religion than any writer of the age; -now a lover requests him to make an acrostic on the name -of a young lady—the lover’s rival has beaten him in writing -verses; enclosed is the honorarium. Southey’s amiability -at this point gave way; he did not write the acrostic, -and the money he spent on blankets for poor women -in Keswick. A society for the suppression of albums was -proposed by Southey; yet sometimes he was captured in -the gracious mood. Samuel Simpson, of Liverpool, begs -for a few lines in his handwriting “to fill a vacancy in his -collection of autographs, without which his series must remain -for ever most incomplete.” The laureate replies:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Inasmuch as you Sam, a descendant of Sim,</div> -<div class="verse">For collecting handwritings have taken a whim,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And to me, Robert Southey, petition have made,</div> -<div class="verse">In a civil and nicely-penned letter—post-paid—</div> -<div class="verse">That I to your album so gracious would be</div> -<div class="verse">As to fill up a page there appointed for me,</div> -<div class="verse">Five couplets I send you, by aid of the Nine—</div> -<div class="verse">They will cost you in postage a penny a line:</div> -<div class="verse">At Keswick, October the sixth, they were done,</div> -<div class="verse">One thousand eight hundred and twenty and one.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Some of Southey’s distractions were of his own inviting. -Soon after his arrival at Keswick, a tiny volume of poems -entitled <cite>Clifton Grove</cite>, attracted his attention; its author -was an undergraduate of Cambridge. The <cite>Monthly Review</cite> -having made the discovery that it rhymed in one -place <em>boy</em> and <em>sky</em>, dismissed the book contemptuously. -Southey could not bear to think that the hopes of a lad of -promise should be blasted, and he wrote to Henry Kirke -White, encouraging him, and offering him help towards a -future volume. The cruel dulness of the reviewer sat heavily -on the poor boy’s spirits, and these unexpected words -of cheer came with most grateful effect. It soon appeared, -however, that Southey’s services must be slight, for his new -acquaintance was taken out of his hands by Mr. Simeon, -the nursing-father of Evangelicalism. At no time had -Southey any leanings towards the Clapham Sect; and so, -while he tried to be of use to Kirke White indirectly, their -correspondence ceased. When the lad, in every way lacking -pith and substance, and ripening prematurely in a heated -atmosphere, drooped and died, Southey was not willing -that he should be altogether forgotten; he wrote offering -to look over whatever papers there might be, and to give -an opinion on them. “Down came a box-full,” he tells Duppa, -“the sight of which literally made my heart ache and -my eyes overflow, for never did I behold such proofs of human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> -industry. To make short, I took the matter up with -interest, collected his letters, and have, at the expense of -more time than such a poor fellow as myself can very well -afford, done what his family are very grateful for, and what -I think the world will thank me for too. Of course I -have done it gratuitously.... That I should become, and -that voluntarily too, an editor of Methodistical and Calvinistic -letters, is a thing which, when I think of, excites the -same sort of smile that the thought of my pension does.” -A brief statement that his own views on religion differed -widely from those of Kirke White sufficed to save Southey’s -integrity. The genius of the dead poet he overrated; -it was an error which the world has since found time to -correct.</p> - -<p>This was but one of a series of many instances in which -Southey, stemming the pressure of his own engagements, -asserted the right to be generous of his time and strength -and substance to those who had need of such help as a -sound heart and a strong arm can give. William Roberts, -a Bristol bank-clerk, dying of consumption at nineteen, left -his only possession, some manuscript poems, in trust to be -published for the benefit of a sister whom he passionately -loved. Southey was consulted, and at once bestirred himself -on behalf of the projected volume. Herbert Knowles, -an orphan lad at school in Yorkshire, had hoped to go -as a sizar to St. John’s; his relations were unable to send -him; could he help himself by publishing a poem? might -he dedicate it to the laureate? The poem came to Southey, -who found it “brimful of power and of promise;” he represented -to Herbert the folly of publishing, promised ten -pounds himself, and procured from Rogers and Earl Spencer -twenty more. Herbert Knowles, in a wise and manly -letter, begged that great things might not be expected of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> -him; he would not be idle, his University career should be -at least respectable:—“Suffice it, then, to say, <em>I thank you -from my heart</em>; let time and my future conduct tell the -rest.” Death came to arbitrate between his hopes and -fears. James Dusautoy, another schoolboy, one of ten children -of a retired officer, sent specimens of his verse, asking -Southey’s opinion on certain poetical plans. His friends -thought the law the best profession for him; how could -he make literature help him forward in his profession? -Southey again advised against publication, but by a well-timed -effort enabled him to enter Emanuel College. Dusautoy, -after a brilliant promise, took fever, died, and was -buried, in acknowledgment of his character and talents, in -the college cloisters. When at Harrogate in the summer -of 1827, Southey received a letter, written with much modesty -and good feeling, from John Jones, an old serving-man; -he enclosed a poem on “The Redbreast,” and would -take the liberty, if permitted, to offer other manuscripts -for inspection. Touches of true observation and natural -feeling in the verses on the little bird with “look oblique -and prying head and gentle affability” pleased Southey, -and he told his humble applicant to send his manuscript -book, warning him, however, not to expect that such poems -would please the public—“the time for them was gone by, -and whether the public had grown wiser in these matters -or not, it had certainly become less tolerant and less charitable.” -By procuring subscribers and himself contributing -an Introductory Essay on the lives and works of our -Uneducated Poets, Southey secured a slender fortune for -the worthy old man, who laid the table none the less punctually -because he loved Shakespeare and the Psalter, or carried -in his head some simple rhymes of his own. It pleased -Southey to show how much intellectual pleasure and moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -improvement connected with such pleasure are within reach -of the humblest; thus a lesson was afforded to those who -would have the March of Intellect beaten only to the tune -of <cite>Ça ira</cite>. “Before I conclude”—so the Introduction -draws to an end—“I must, in my own behalf, give notice -to all whom it may concern that I, Robert Southey, Poet-laureate, -being somewhat advanced in years, and having -business enough of my own fully to occupy as much time -as can be devoted to it, consistently with a due regard to -health, do hereby decline perusing or inspecting any manuscript -from any person whatsoever, and desire that no application -on that score may be made to me from this time -forth; this resolution, which for most just cause is taken -and here notified, being, like the laws of the Medes and the -Persians, not to be changed.”</p> - -<p>It was some time after this public announcement that -a hand, which may have trembled while yet it was very -brave and resolute, dropped into the little post-office at -Haworth, in Yorkshire, a packet for Robert Southey. His -bold truthfulness, his masculine self-control, his strong -heart, his domestic temper sweet and venerable, his purity -of manners, a certain sweet austerity, attracted to him -women of fine sensibility and genius who would fain escape -from their own falterings and temerities under the -authority of a faithful director. Already Maria del Occidente, -“the most impassioned and most imaginative of all -poetesses,” had poured into his ear the tale of her slighted -love. Newly come from Paris, and full of enthusiasm for -the Poles, she hastened to Keswick to see in person her -sympathetic adviser; she proved, says Southey, a most -interesting person of the mildest and gentlest manners. -With him she left, on returning to America, her <cite>Zophiel</cite> -in manuscript, the publication of which he superintended.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -“<cite>Zophiel</cite>, Southey says, is by some Yankee woman”—Charles -Lamb breaks forth—“as if there ever had been -a woman capable of anything so great!” Now, in 1837, -a woman of finer spirit, and capable of higher things than -<cite>Zophiel</cite>, addressed a letter to Robert Southey, asking his -judgment of her powers as disclosed in the poems which -she forwarded. For some weeks Charlotte Brontë waited, -until almost all hope of a reply was lost. At length the -verdict came. Charlotte Brontë’s verse was assuredly -written with her left hand; her passionate impulses, crossed -and checked by fiery fiats of the will, would not mould -themselves into little stanzas; the little stanzas must be -correct, therefore they must reject such irregular heavings -and swift repressions of the heart. Southey’s delay in replying -had been caused by absence from home. A little -personal knowledge of a poet in the decline of life might -have tempered her enthusiasm; yet he is neither a disappointed -nor a discontented man; she will never hear from -him any chilling sermons on the text. All is vanity; the -faculty of verse she possesses in no inconsiderable degree; -but this, since the beginning of the century, has grown to -be no rare possession; let her beware of making literature -her profession, check day-dreams, and find her chief happiness -in her womanly duties; then she may write poetry -for its own sake, not in a spirit of emulation, not through -a passion for celebrity; the less celebrity is aimed at, the -more it is likely to be deserved. “Mr. Southey’s letter,” -said Charlotte Brontë, many years later, “was kind and -admirable, a little stringent, but it did me good.” She -wrote again, striving to repress a palpitating joy and pride -in the submission to her director’s counsel, and the sacrifice -of her cherished hopes; telling him more of her daily -life, of her obedience to the day’s duty, her efforts to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -sensible and sober: “I had not ventured,” she says, “to -hope for such a reply—so considerate in its tone, so noble -in its spirit.” Once more Southey wrote, hoping that she -would let him see her at the Lakes: “You would then -think of me afterwards with the more good-will, because -you would perceive that there is neither severity nor moroseness -in the state of mind to which years and observation -have brought me.... And now, madam, God bless -you. Farewell, and believe me to be your sincere friend, -Robert Southey.” It was during a visit to the Lakes that -Charlotte Brontë told her biographer of these letters. But -Southey lay at rest in Crosthwaite churchyard.</p> - -<p>“My days among the dead are past”—Southey wrote, -but it is evident that the living, and not those of his own -household alone, claimed no inconsiderable portion of his -time. Indeed, it would not be untrue to assert that few -men have been more genuinely and consistently social, -that few men ever yielded themselves more constantly to -the pleasures of companionship. But the society he loved -best was that of old and chosen friends, or if new friends, -one at a time, and only one. Next to romping with my -children, he said, I enjoy a <i lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> conversation with an -<em>old</em> friend or a <em>new</em>. “With one I can talk of familiar -subjects which we have discussed in former years, and with -the other, if he have any brains, I open what to me is a -new mine of thought.” Miscellaneous company to a certain -extent disordered and intoxicated him. He felt no -temptation to say a great deal, but he would often say -things strongly and emphatically, which were better left -unsaid. “In my hearty hatred of assentation I commit -faults of the opposite kind. Now I am sure to find this -out myself, and to get out of humour with myself; what -prudence I have is not ready on demand; and so it is that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -the society of any except my friends, though it may be -sweet in the mouth, is bitter in the belly.” When Coleridge, -in their arguments, allowed him a word, Southey -made up in weight for what was wanting in measure; he -saw one fact quickly, and darted at it like a greyhound. -De Quincey has described his conversation as less flowing -and expansive than that of Wordsworth—more apt to -clothe itself in a keen, sparkling, aphoristic form; consequently -sooner coming to an abrupt close; “the style of -his mind naturally prompts him to adopt a trenchant, pungent, -aculeated form of terse, glittering, stenographic sentences—sayings -which have the air of laying down the law -without any <i lang="la">locus penitentiæ</i> or privilege of appeal, but are -not meant to do so.” The same manner, tempered and -chastened by years, can be recognized in the picture of -Southey drawn by his friend Sir Henry Taylor:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“The characteristics of his manner, as of his appearance, -were lightness and strength, an easy and happy composure -as the accustomed mood, and much mobility at the same -time, so that he could be readily excited into any degree of -animation in discourse, speaking, if the subject moved him -much, with extraordinary fire and force, though always in -light, laconic sentences. When so moved, the fingers of his -right hand often rested against his mouth and quivered -through nervous susceptibility. But excitable as he was in -conversation, he was never angry or irritable; nor can there -be any greater mistake concerning him than that into which -some persons have fallen when they have inferred, from the -fiery vehemence with which he could give utterance to moral -anger in verse or prose, that he was personally ill-tempered -or irascible. He was, in truth, a man whom it was hardly -possible to quarrel with or offend personally, and face to -face.... He was averse from argumentation, and would commonly -quit a subject, when it was passing into that shape,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> -with a quiet and good-humoured indication of the view in -which he rested. He talked most, and with most interest, -about books and about public affairs; less, indeed hardly at -all, about the characters and qualities of men in private life, -In the society of strangers or of acquaintances, he seemed to -take more interest in the subjects spoken of than in the persons -present, his manner being that of natural courtesy and -general benevolence without distinction of individuals. Had -there been some tincture of social vanity in him, perhaps he -would have been brought into closer relations with those -whom he met in society; but though invariably kind and -careful of their feelings, he was indifferent to the manner in -which they regarded him, or (as the phrase is) to his <em>effect</em> in -society; and they might, perhaps, be conscious that the kindness -they received was what flowed naturally and inevitably to -all, that they had nothing to give in return which was of value -to him, and that no individual relations were established.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>How deep and rich Southey’s social nature was, his published -correspondence, some four or five thousand printed -pages, tells sufficiently. These letters, addressed, for the -most part, to good old friends, are indeed genial, liberal of -sympathy, and expecting sympathy in return; pleasantly -egotistic, grave, playful, wise, pathetic, with a kind of stringent -pathos showing through checks imposed by the wiser -and stronger will. Southey did not squander abroad the -treasures of his affection. To lavish upon casual acquaintance -the outward and visible signs of friendship seemed -to him a profaning of the mystery of manly love. “Your -feelings,” he writes to Coleridge, “go naked; I cover mine -with a bear-skin; I will not say that you harden yours by -your mode, but I am sure that mine are the warmer for -their clothing.” With strangers a certain neutral courtesy -served to protect his inner self like the low leaves of his -own holly-tree:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Wrinkled and keen;</div> -<div class="verse">No grazing cattle through their prickly round</div> -<div class="verse indent2">Can reach to wound;”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">but to those of whose goodness and love he was well assured, -there were no protecting spines:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be,</div> -<div class="verse">Like the high leaves upon the Holly-tree.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">“Old friends and old books,” he says, “are the best things -that this world affords (I like old wine also), and in these -I am richer than most men (the wine excepted).” In the -group of Southey’s friends, what first strikes one is, not -that they are men of genius—although the group includes -Wordsworth, and Scott, and Henry Taylor—but that they -are good men. No one believed more thoroughly than -Southey that goodness is a better thing than genius; yet -he required in his associates some high excellence, extraordinary -kindness of disposition or strength of moral character, -if not extraordinary intellect. To knit his friends -in a circle was his ardent desire; in the strength of his -affections time and distance made no change. An old -College friend, Lightfoot, to visit Southey, made the longest -journey of his life; it was eight-and-twenty years -since they had met. When their hands touched, Lightfoot -trembled like an aspen-leaf. “I believe,” says Southey, -“no men ever met more cordially after so long a separation, -or enjoyed each other’s society more. I shall -never forget the manner in which he first met me, nor -the tone in which he said ‘that, having now seen me, he -should return home and die in peace.’” But of all -friends he was most at ease with his dear Dapple, Grosvenor -Bedford, who suited for every mood of mirth and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> -sorrow. When Mrs. Southey had fallen into her sad decay, -and the once joyous house was melancholy and silent, -Southey turned for comfort to Bedford. Still, some of -their Rabelaisian humour remained, and all their warmth -of brotherly affection. “My father,” says Cuthbert Southey, -“was never tired of talking into Mr. Bedford’s trumpet.” -And in more joyous days, what noise and nonsense -did they not make! “Oh! Grosvenor,” exclaims Southey, -“is it not a pity that two men who love nonsense so -cordially and naturally and <em>bonâfidically</em> as you and I, -should be three hundred miles asunder? For my part, I -insist upon it that there is no sense so good as your honest, -genuine nonsense.”</p> - -<p>A goodly company of friends becomes familiar to us as -we read Southey’s correspondence:—Wynn, wherever he -was, “always doing something else,” yet able, in the midst -of politics and business, to find time to serve an old schoolfellow; -Rickman, full of practical suggestions, and accurate -knowledge and robust benevolence; John May, unfailing -in kindness and fidelity; Lamb for play and pathos, -and subtle criticism glancing amid the puns; William -Taylor for culture and literary theory, and paradox and -polysyllables; Landor for generous admiration, and kindred -enthusiasms and kindred prejudices; Elmsley, and -Lightfoot, and Danvers for love and happy memories; -Senhora Barker, the Bhow Begum, for frank familiarities, -and warm, womanly services; Caroline Bowles for rarer -sympathy and sacreder hopes and fears; Henry Taylor -for spiritual sonship, as of a son who is also an equal; and -Grosvenor Bedford for everything great and small, glad -and sad, wise and foolish.</p> - -<p>No literary rivalries or jealousies ever interrupted for a -moment any friendship of Southey. Political and religious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> -differences, which in strangers were causes of grave -offence, seemed to melt away when the heretic or erring -statist was a friend. But if success, fashion, flattery, tested -a man, and proved him wanting, as seemed to be the case -with Humphry Davy, his affection grew cold; and an habitual -dereliction of social duty, such as that of Coleridge, -could not but transform Southey’s feeling of love to one of -condemning sorrow. To his great contemporaries, Scott, -Landor, Wordsworth, his admiration was freely given. -“Scott,” he writes, “is very ill. He suffers dreadfully, -but bears his sufferings with admirable equanimity.... -God grant that he may recover! He is a noble and generous-hearted -creature, whose like we shall not look upon -again.” Of Wordsworth:—“A greater poet than Wordsworth -there never has been, nor ever will be.” “Two or -three generations must pass before the public affect to -admire such poets as Milton and Wordsworth. Of such -men the world scarcely produces one in a millennium.” -With indignation crossed by a gleam of humour, he learnt -that Ebenezer Elliott, his pupil in the art of verse, had -stepped forward as the lyrist of radicalism; but the feeling -could not be altogether anger with which he remembered -that earnest face, once seen by him at a Sheffield -inn, its pale grey eyes full of fire and meaning, its expression -suiting well with Elliott’s frankness of manner and -simplicity of character. William Taylor was one of the -liberals of liberal Norwich, and dangled abroad whatever -happened to be the newest paradox in religion. But neither -his radicalism, nor his Pyrrhonism, nor his paradoxes, -could estrange Southey. The last time the oddly-assorted -pair met was in Taylor’s house; the student of German -criticism had found some theological novelty, and wished -to draw his guest into argument; Southey parried the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> -thrusts good-humouredly, and at last put an end to them -with the words, “Taylor, come and see me at Keswick. -We will ascend Skiddaw, where I shall have you nearer -heaven, and we will then discuss such questions as these.”</p> - -<p>In the year 1823 one of his oldest friends made a public -attack on Southey, and that friend the gentlest and -sweetest-natured of them all. In a <cite>Quarterly</cite> article -Southey had spoken of the Essays of Elia as a book which -wanted only a sounder religious feeling to be as delightful -as it was original. He had intended to alter the expression -in the proof-sheet, but no proof-sheet was ever -sent. Lamb, already pained by references to his writings -in the <cite>Quarterly</cite>, some of which he erroneously ascribed -to Southey, was deeply wounded. “He might have spared -an old friend such a construction of a few careless flights -that meant no harm to religion.” A long expostulation -addressed by Elia to Robert Southey, Esq., appeared in -the <cite>London Magazine</cite> for October, only a portion of which -is retained in the Elia Essays under the title of “The -Tombs of the Abbey;” for though Lamb had playfully repented -Coleridge’s salutation, “my gentle-hearted Charles,” -his heart was indeed gentle, and could not endure the pain -of its own wrath; among the memorials of the dead in -Westminster he finds his right mind, his truer self, once -more; he forgets the grave aspect with which Southey -looked awful on his poor friend, and spends his indignation -harmless as summer lightning over the heads of a -Dean and Chapter. Southey, seeing the announcement of -letter addressed to him by Lamb, had expected a sheaf -of friendly pleasantries; with surprise he learnt what pain -his words had caused. He hastened to explain; had -Lamb intimated his feelings in private, he would have -tried, by a passage in the ensuing <cite>Quarterly</cite>, to efface the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> -impression unhappily created; he ended with a declaration -of unchanged affection, and a proposal to call on Lamb. -“On my part,” Southey said, “there was not even a momentary -feeling of anger;” he at once understood the love, -the error, the soreness, and the repentance awaiting a being -so composed of goodness as Elia. “Dear Southey”—runs -the answer of Lamb—“the kindness of your note -has melted away the mist that was upon me. I have been -fighting against a shadow.... I wish both magazine and -review were at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed -to see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still -more so, for this folly was done without her knowledge, -and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel -was absent at the time. I will make up courage to see -you, however, any day next week. We shall hope that you -will bring Edith with you. That will be a second mortification; -she will hate to see us; but come and heap embers; -we deserve it, I for what I have done, and she for -being my sister. Do come early in the day, by sunlight -that you may see my Milton.... Your penitent C. Lamb.”</p> - -<p>At Bristol, in 1808, Southey met for the first time the -man of all others whom he most desired to see, the only -man living, he says, “of whose praise I was ambitious, of -whose censure would have humbled me.” This was Walter -Savage Landor. <cite>Madoc</cite>, on which Southey had build -his hope of renown as a poet, had been published, and had -been coldly received; <cite>Kehama</cite>, which had been begun -consequently now stood still. Their author could indeed, -as he told Sir George Beaumont, be contented with posthumous -fame, but it was impossible to be contented with -posthumous bread and cheese. “St. Cecilia herself could -not have played the organ if there had been nobody to -blow the bellows for her.” At this moment, when he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> -turned sadly and bravely from poetry to more profitable -work, he first looked on Landor. “I never saw any one -more unlike myself,” he writes, “in every prominent part -of human character, nor any one who so cordially and instinctively -agreed with me on so many of the most important -subjects. I have often said before we met, that I -would walk forty miles to see him, and having seen him, -I would gladly walk fourscore to see him again. He talked -of <cite>Thalaba</cite>, and I told him of the series of mythological -poems which I had planned, ... and also told him for -what reason they had been laid aside; in plain English, -that I could not afford to write them. Landor’s reply was, -‘Go on with them, and I will pay for printing them, as -many as you will write, and as many copies as you -please.’” The princely offer stung Southey, as he says, -to the very core; not that he thought of accepting that -offer, but the generous words were themselves a deed, -and claimed a return. He rose earlier each morning to -carry on his <cite>Kehama</cite>, without abstracting time from better-paid -task-work; it advanced, and duly as each section -of this poem, and subsequently of his <cite>Roderick</cite>, came to -be written, it was transcribed for the friend whose sympathy -and admiration were a golden reward. To be -praised by one’s peers is indeed happiness. Landor, liberal -of applause, was keen in suggestion and exact in censure. -Both friends were men of ardent feelings, though -one had tamed himself, while the other never could be -tamed; both often gave their feelings a vehement utterance. -On many matters they thought, in the main, alike—on -the grand style in human conduct, on the principles of -the poetic art, on Spanish affairs, on Catholicism. The -secret of Landor’s high-poised dignity in verse had been -discovered by Southey; he, like Landor, aimed at a classical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> -purity of diction; he, like Landor, loved, as a shaper -of imaginative forms, to embody in an act, or an incident, -the virtue of some eminent moment of human passion, and -to give it fixity by sculptured phrase; only the repression -of a fiery spirit is more apparent in Landor’s monumental -lines than in Southey’s. With certain organic resemblances, -and much community of sentiment, there were large differences -between the two, so that when they were drawn together -in sympathy, each felt as if he had annexed a new -province. Landor rejoiced that the first persons who shared -his turret at Llanthony were Southey and his wife; again, -in 1817, the two friends were together for three days at -Como, after Southey had endured his prime affliction—the -death of his son:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Grief had swept over him; days darkened round;</div> -<div class="verse">Bellagio, Valintelvi smiled in vain,</div> -<div class="verse">And Monte Rosa from Helvetia far</div> -<div class="verse">Advanced to meet us, wild in majesty</div> -<div class="verse">Above the glittering crests of giant sons</div> -<div class="verse">Station’d around ... in vain too! all in vain.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Two years later the warm-hearted friend writes from -Pistoia, rejoicing in Southey’s joy: “Thank God! Tears -came into my eyes on seeing that you were blessed with -a son.” To watch the happiness of children was Landor’s -highest delight; to share in such happiness was Southey’s; -and Arnold and Cuthbert formed a new bond between -their fathers. In 1836, when Southey, in his sixty-third -year, guided his son through the scenes of his boyhood, -several delightful days were spent at Clifton with Landor. -I never knew a man of brighter genius or of kinder heart, -said Southey; and of Landor in earlier years:—“He does -more than any of the gods of all my mythologies, for his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> -very words are thunder and lightning—such is the power -and splendour with which they burst out.” Landor responded -with a majestic enthusiasm about his friend, who -seemed to him no less noble a man than admirable a -writer:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“No firmer breast than thine hath Heaven</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To poet, sage, or hero given:</div> -<div class="verse">No heart more tender, none more just,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To that He largely placed in trust:</div> -<div class="verse">Therefore shalt thou, whatever date</div> -<div class="verse">Of years be thine, with soul elate</div> -<div class="verse">Rise up before the Eternal throne,</div> -<div class="verse">And hear, in God’s own voice, ‘Well done!’”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">That “Well done” greeted Southey many years before -Landor’s imperial head was laid low. In the last letter -from his friend received by Southey—already the darkness -was fast closing in—he writes, “If any man living is ardent -for your welfare, I am; whose few and almost worthless -merits your generous heart has always overvalued, and -whose infinite and great faults it has been too ready to -overlook. I will write to you often, now I learn that I -may do it inoffensively; well remembering that among -the names you have exalted is Walter Landor.” Alas! to -reply was now beyond the power of Southey; still, he held -<cite>Gebir</cite> in his hands oftener than any other volume of poetry, -and, while thought and feeling lived, fed upon its beauty. -“It is very seldom now,” Caroline Southey wrote at -a later date, “that he ever names any person: but this -morning, before he left his bed, I heard him repeating -softly to himself, <cite>Landor, ay, Landor</cite>.”</p> - -<p>“If it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all”—this -was ever present to Southey during the happy days -of labour and rest in Greta Hall. While he was disposing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> -his books so as to make the comeliest show, and delighting -in their goodly ranks; while he looked into the radiant -faces of his children, and loved their innocent brightness, -he yet knew that the day of detachment was approaching. -There was nothing in such a thought which stirred Southey -to a rebellious mood; had he not set his seal to the -bond of life? How his heart rested in his home, only his -own words can tell; even a journey to London seemed too -long:—“Oh dear; oh dear! there is such a comfort in -one’s old coat and old shoes, one’s own chair and own fireside, -one’s own writing-desk and own library—with a little -girl climbing up to my neck, and saying, ‘Don’t go to -London, papa—you must stay with Edith;’ and a little boy, -whom I have taught to speak the language of cats, dogs, -cuckoos, and jackasses, etc., before he can articulate a word -of his own;—there is such a comfort in all these things, -that <em>transportation</em> to London for four or five weeks seems -a heavier punishment than any sins of mine deserve.” -Nor did his spirit of boyish merriment abate until overwhelming -sorrow weighed him down:—“I am quite as noisy -as I ever was,” he writes to Lightfoot, “and should -take as much delight as ever in showering stones through -the hole of the staircase against your room door, and hearing -with what hearty good earnest ‘you fool’ was vociferated -in indignation against me in return. Oh, dear Lightfoot, -what a blessing it is to have a boy’s heart! it is as -great a blessing in carrying one through this world, as -to have a child’s spirit will be in fitting us for the next.” -But Southey’s light-heartedness was rounded by a circle -of earnest acquiescence in the law of mortal life; a clear-obscure -of faith as pure and calm and grave as the heavens -of a midsummer night. At thirty he writes:—“No man -was ever more contented with his lot than I am, for few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> -have ever had more enjoyments, and none had ever better -or worthier hopes. Life, therefore, is sufficiently dear to -me, and long life desirable, that I may accomplish all which -I design. But yet I could be well content that the next -century were over, and my part fairly at an end, having -been gone well through. Just as at school one wished the -school-days over, though we were happy enough there, because -we expected more happiness and more liberty when -we were to be our own masters, might lie as much later in -the morning as we pleased, have no bounds and do no exercise—just -so do I wish that my exercises were over.” -At thirty-five:—“Almost the only wish I ever give utterance -to is that the next hundred years were over. It is -not that the uses of this world seem to me weary, stale, -flat, and unprofitable—God knows far otherwise! No -man can be better contented with his lot. My paths are -paths of pleasantness.... Still, the instability of human -happiness is ever before my eyes; I long for the certain -and the permanent.” “My notions about life are much -the same as they are about travelling—there is a good deal -of amusement on the road, but, after all, one wants to be -at rest.” At forty:—“My disposition is invincibly cheerful, -and this alone would make me a cheerful man if I -were not so from the tenor of my life; yet I doubt whether -the strictest Carthusian has the thought of death more -habitually in his mind.”</p> - -<p>Such was Southey’s constant temper: to some persons -it may seem an unfortunate one; to some it may be practically -unintelligible. But those who accept of the feast -of life freely, who enter with a bounding foot its measures -of beauty and of joy—glad to feel all the while the serviceable -sackcloth next the skin—will recognize in Southey -an instructed brother of the Renunciauts’ rule.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.<br /> -<span class="smaller">CHANGES AND EVENTS, 1803-1843.</span></h2> - -<p>In October, 1805, Southey started with his friend Elmsley -for a short tour in Scotland. On their way northward -they stopped three days at Ashestiel. There, in a small -house, rising amid its old-fashioned garden, with pastoral -hills all around, and the Tweed winding at the meadow’s -end, lived Walter Scott. It was the year in which old -Border song had waked up, with ampler echoings, in the -<cite>Lay of the Last Minstrel</cite>, and Scott was already famous. -Earlier in the year he had visited Grasmere, and had stood -upon the summit of Helvellyn, with Wordsworth and -Davy by his side. The three October days, with their -still, misty brightness, went by in full enjoyment. Southey -had brought with him a manuscript containing sundry -metrical romances of the fifteenth century, on which his -host pored, as far as courtesy and the hours allowed, with -much delight; and the guests saw Melrose, that old romance -in stone so dear to Scott, went salmon-spearing on -the Tweed, dined on a hare snapped up before their eyes -by Percy and Douglas, and visited Yarrow. From Ashestiel -they proceeded to Edinburgh. Southey looked coldly -on the grey metropolis; its new city seemed a kind of -Puritan Bath, which worshipped propriety instead of pleasure; -but the old town, seen amid the slant light of a wild<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> -red sunset, impressed him much, its vast irregular outline -of roofs and chimneys rising against tumultuous clouds -like the dismantled fragments of a giant’s palace. Southey -was prepared to find himself and his friends of the -Lakes persons of higher stature than the Scotch <i lang="la">literatuli</i>. -Before accepting an invitation to meet him at supper, -Jeffrey politely forwarded the proof of an unpublished review -of <cite>Madoc</cite>; if the poet preferred that his reviewer -should not present himself, Mr. Jeffrey would deny himself -the pleasure of Mr. Southey’s acquaintance. Southey -was not to be daunted, and, as he tells it himself, felt nothing -but good-humour on beholding a bright-faced homunculus -of five-foot-one, the centre of an attentive circle, -ëënunciating with North-British ëëlocution his doctrines -on taste. The lively little gentleman, who thought to -crush <cite>The Excursion</cite>—he could as easily crush Skiddaw, -said Southey—received from the author of <cite>Madoc</cite> a courtesy -<i lang="fr">de haut en bas</i> intended to bring home to his consciousness -the fact that he was—but five-foot-one. The -bland lips of the gods who looked down on Auld Reekie -that evening smiled at the magnanimity alike of poet and -critic.</p> - -<p>Two years later (1807), differences having arisen between -the proprietors and the editor of the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, -it was in contemplation to alter the management, and Longman -wrote requesting Southey to review him two or three -articles “in his best manner.” Southey did not keep -firkins of criticism of first and second brand, but he was -not unwilling to receive ten guineas a sheet instead of -seven pounds. When, however, six months later, Scott -urged his friend to contribute, Judge Jeffrey still sat on -the bench of the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite>, hanging, drawing, and -quartering luckless poets with undiminished vivacity. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> -was of no use for Scott to assure Southey that the homunculus, -notwithstanding his flippant attacks on <cite>Madoc</cite> and -<cite>Thalaba</cite>, had the most sincere respect for their author and -his talents. Setting all personal feelings aside, an irreconcilable -difference, Southey declared, between Jeffrey and -himself upon every great principle of taste, morality, and -policy, occasioned a difficulty which could not be removed. -Within less than twelve months Scott, alienated by the -deepening Whiggery of the <cite>Review</cite>, and by more personal -causes, had ceased to contribute, and opposite his name in -the list of subscribers Constable had written, with indignant -notes of exclamation, “<em>Stopt!!!</em>” John Murray, the -young bookseller in Fleet Street, had been to Ashestiel; -in “dern privacie” a bold complot was laid; why should -the Edinburgh clique carry it before them? The spirit -of England was still sound, and would respond to loyalty, -patriotism, the good traditions of Church and State, the -temper of gentlemen, courage, scholarship; Gifford, of the -Anti-Jacobin, had surely a sturdier arm than Jeffrey; -George Ellis would remember his swashing-blow; there -were the Roses, and Matthias, and Heber; a rival <cite>Review</cite> -should see the light, and that speedily; “a good plot, good -friends, and full of expectation—an excellent plot, very -good friends.”</p> - -<p>Southey was invited to write on Spanish affairs for the -first number of the <cite>Quarterly</cite> (February, 1809). His political -opinions had undergone a considerable alteration since -the days of Pantisocracy and <cite>Joan of Arc</cite>. The Reign of -Terror had not caused a violent reaction against the doctrine -of a Republic, nor did he soon cease to sympathize -with France. But his hopes were dashed; it was plain -that “the millennium would not come this bout.” Man -as he is appeared more greedy, ignorant, and dangerous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> -than he had appeared before, though man as he may be -was still a being composed of knowledge, virtue, and love. -The ideal republic receded into the dimness of unborn -time; no doubt—so Southey maintained to the end—a -republic is the best form of government in itself, as a sundial -is simpler and surer than a time-piece; but the sun -of reason does not always shine, and therefore complicated -systems of government, containing checks and counter-checks, -are needful in old countries for the present; better -systems are no doubt conceivable—for better men. -“Mr. Southey’s mind,” wrote Hazlitt, “is essentially sanguine, -even to overweeningness. It is prophetic of good; -it cordially embraces it; it casts a longing, lingering look -after it, even when it is gone for ever. He cannot bear -to give up the thought of happiness, his confidence in his -fellow-men, when all else despair. It is the very element -where he must live or have no life at all.’” This is true; -we sacrifice too much to prudence—Southey said, when -not far from sixty—and in fear of incurring the danger -or the reproach of enthusiasm, too often we stifle the holiest -impulses of the understanding and the heart. Still, -at sixty he believed in a state of society actually to be -realized as superior to English society in the nineteenth -century, as that itself is superior to the condition of the -tattooed Britons, or of the Northern Pirates from whom -we have descended. But the error of supposing such a -state of society too near, of fancying that there is a short -road to it, seemed to him a pernicious error, seducing the -young and generous into an alliance with whatever is flagitious -and detestable.</p> - -<p>It was not until the Peace of Amiens (1802) that -Southey was restored in feeling to his own country. -From that hour the new departure in his politics may be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> -said to date. The honour of England became as dear to -him as to her most patriotic son; and in the man who -had subjugated the Swiss Republic, and thrown into a -dungeon the champion of Negro independence, and -slaughtered his prisoners at Jaffa, he indignantly refused -to recognize the representative of the generous principles -of 1789. To him, as to Wordsworth, the very life of -virtue in mankind seemed to dwell in the struggle against -the military despotism which threatened to overwhelm the -whole civilized world. Whatever went along with a spirited -war-policy Southey could accept. It appeared to himself -that his views and hopes had changed precisely because -the heart and soul of his wishes had continued the -same. To remove the obstacles which retard the improvement -of mankind was the one object to which, first and -last, he gave his most earnest vows. “This has been the -pole-star of my course; the needle has shifted according -to the movements of the state vessel wherein I am embarked, -but the direction to which it points has always -been the same. I did not fall into the error of those -who, having been the friends of France when they imagined -that the cause of liberty was implicated in her success, -transferred their attachment from the Republic to -the Military Tyranny in which it ended, and regarded -with complacency the progress of oppression because -France was the oppressor. ‘They had turned their face -toward the East in the morning to worship the rising sun, -and in the evening they were looking eastward, obstinately -affirming that still the sun was there.’ I, on the contrary -altered my position as the world went round.”<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p> - -<p>Wordsworth has described in memorable words the -sudden exaltation of the spirit of resistance to Napoleon,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> -its change from the temper of fortitude to enthusiasm, -animated by hope, when the Spanish people rose against -their oppressors. “From that moment,” he says, “this -corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal put on -immortality.” Southey had learned to love the people -of the Peninsula; he had almost naturalized himself -among them by his studies of Spanish and Portuguese -history and literature. Now there was in him a new birth -of passion at a period of life when ordinarily the crust of -custom begins to encase our free spirits. All his moral -ardour flowed in the same current with his political enthusiasm; -in this war there was as direct a contest between -the principles of evil and good as the elder Persians or -the Manicheans imagined in their fables. “Since the -stirring day of the French Revolution,” he writes to John -May, “I have never felt half so much excitement in political -events as the present state of Spain has given me.” -Little as he liked to leave home, if the Spaniards would -bury their crown and sceptre, he would gird up his loins -and assist at the ceremony, devout as ever pilgrim at Compostella. -A federal republic which should unite the Peninsula, -and allow the internal governments to remain distinct, -was what Southey ardently desired. When news -came of the Convention of Cintra (1808), the poet, ordinarily -so punctual a sleeper, lay awake all night; since -the execution of the Brissotines no public event distressed -him so deeply. “How gravely and earnestly used Samuel -Taylor Coleridge”—so writes Coleridge’s daughter—“and -William Wordsworth and my uncle Southey also, to discuss -the affairs of the nation, as if it all came home to -their business and bosoms, as if it were their private concern! -Men do not canvass these matters now-a-days, I -think, quite in the same tone.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p> - -<p>That faith in the ultimate triumph of good which sustains -Southey’s heroine against the persecution of the Almighty -Rajah, sustained Southey himself during the long -struggle with Napoleon. A military despotism youthful -and full of vigour, he said, must beat down corrupt establishments -and worn-out governments; but how can it beat -down for ever a true love of liberty and a true spirit of -patriotism? When at last tidings reached Keswick that -the Allies were in Paris, Southey’s feelings were such as -he had never experienced before. “The curtain had fallen -after a tragedy of five-and-twenty years.” The hopes, and -the ardours, and the errors, and the struggles of his early -life crowded upon his mind; all things seemed to have -worked together for good. He rejoiced that the whirlwind -of revolution had cleared away the pestilence of the -old governments; he rejoiced that right had conquered -might. He did not wish to see the bad Bourbon race -restored, except to complete Bonaparte’s overthrow. And -he feared lest an evil peace should be made. Paris taken, -a commanding intellect might have cast Europe into whatever -mould it pleased. “The first business,” says Southey, -with remarkable prevision, “should have been to have reduced -France to what she was before Louis XIV.’s time; -the second, to have created a great power in the North of -Germany, with Prussia at its head; the third, to have consolidated -Italy into one kingdom or commonwealth.”</p> - -<p>The politicians of the <cite>Edinburgh Review</cite> had predicted -ruin for all who dared to oppose the Corsican; they ridiculed -the romantic hopes of the English nation; the fate -of Spain, they declared in 1810, was decided; it would be -cruel, they said, to foment petty insurrections; France had -conquered Europe. It was this policy of despair which -roused Scott and Southey. “We shall hoist the bloody<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> -flag,” writes the latter, “down alongside that Scotch ship, -and engage her yard-arm to yard-arm.” But at first -Southey, by his own request, was put upon other work -than that of firing off the heavy <cite>Quarterly</cite> guns. Probably -no man in England had read so many books of travel; -these he could review better, he believed, than anything -else; biography and history were also within his reach; -with English poetry, from Spenser onwards, his acquaintance -was wide and minute, but he took no pleasure in sitting -in judgment on his contemporaries; his knowledge of -the literary history of Spain and Portugal was a speciality, -which, as often as the readers of the <cite>Review</cite> could bear -with it, might be brought into use. Two things he could -promise without fail—perfect sincerity in what he might -write, without the slightest pretension of knowledge which -he did not possess, and a punctuality not to be exceeded by -Mr. Murray’s opposite neighbour, the clock of St. Dunstan’s.</p> - -<p>Southey’s essays—literary, biographical, historical, and -miscellaneous—would probably now exist in a collected -form, and constitute a store-house of information—information -often obtained with difficulty, and always conveyed -in a lucid and happy style—were it not that he chose, on -the eve of the Reform Bill, to earn whatever unpopularity -he could by collecting his essays on political and social -subjects. Affairs had hurried forward with eager strides; -these <cite>Quarterly</cite> articles seemed already far behind, and -might safely be left to take a quiet corner in Time’s wallet -among the alms for oblivion. Yet Southey’s political -articles had been effective in their day, and have still a -value by no means wholly antiquarian. His home politics -had been, in the main, determined by his convictions on -the great European questions. There was a party of -revolution in this country eager to break with the past,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> -ready to venture every experiment for a future of mere -surmise. Southey believed that the moral sense of the -English people, their regard for conduct, would do much -to preserve them from lawless excess; still, the lesson read -by recent history was that order once overthrown, anarchy -follows, to be itself quelled by the lordship of the sword. -Rights, however, were pleaded—shall we refuse to any man -the rights of a man? “Therapeutics,” says Southey, “were -in a miserable state as long as practitioners proceeded -upon the gratuitous theory of elementary complexions; ... -natural philosophy was no better, being a mere farrago of -romance, founded upon idle tales or fanciful conjectures, -not upon observation and experiment. The science of -politics is just now in the same stage; it has been erected -by shallow sophists upon abstract rights and imaginary -compacts, without the slightest reference to habits and -history.” “Order and improvement” were the words inscribed -on Southey’s banner. Order, that England might -not fall, as France had fallen, into the hands of a military -saviour of society; order, that she might be in a condition -to wage her great feud on behalf of freedom with undivided -energy. Order, therefore, first; not by repression -alone—though there were a time and a place for repression -also—but order with improvement as a portion of -its very life and being. Southey was a poet and a moralist, -and judged of the well-being of a people by other than -material standards; the wealth of nations seemed to him -something other and higher than can be ascertained by -wages and prices, rent and revenue, exports and imports. -“True it is,” he writes, “the ground is more highly cultivated, -the crooked hedge-rows have been thrown down, -the fields are in better shape and of handsomer dimensions, -the plough makes longer furrows, there is more corn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> -and fewer weeds; but look at the noblest produce of the -earth—look at the children of the soil, look at the seeds -which are sown here for immortality!” “The system -which produces the happiest moral effects will be found -the most beneficial to the interest of the individual and -the general weal; upon this basis the science of political -economy will rest at last, when the ponderous volumes -with which it has been overlaid shall have sunk by their -own weight into the dead sea of oblivion.” Looking -about him, he asked, What do the English people chiefly -need? More wealth? It may be so; but rather wisdom -to use the wealth they have. More votes? Yes, hereafter; -but first the light of knowledge, that men may see -how to use a vote. Even the visible beauty and grace of -life seemed to Southey a precious thing, the loss of which -might be set over against some gain in pounds, shillings, -and pence. The bleak walls and barrack-like windows of -a manufactory, the long, unlovely row of operatives’ dwellings, -struck a chill into his heart. He contrasts the old -cottages substantially built of native stone, mellowed by -time, taken by nature to herself with a mother’s fondness, -the rose-bushes beside the door, the little patch of flower-garden—he -contrasts these with the bald deformities in -which the hands of a great mill are stalled.</p> - -<p>Before all else, national education appeared to Southey -to be the need of England. He saw a great population -growing up with eager appetites, and consciousness of -augmented power. Whence were moral thoughtfulness -and self-restraint to come? Not, surely, from the triumph -of liberal opinions; not from the power to read every -incentive to vice and sedition; nor from Religious Tract -societies; nor from the portentous bibliolatry of the -Evangelical party. But there is an education which at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> -once enlightens the understanding and trains the conscience -and the will. And there is that great association -for making men good—the Church of England. Connect -the two—education and the Church; the progress of enlightenment, -virtue, and piety, however gradual, will be sure. -Subordinate to this primary measure of reform, national -education, many other measures were advocated by Southey. -He looked forward to a time when, the great struggle -respecting property over—for this struggle he saw looming -not far off—public opinion will no more tolerate the -extreme of poverty in a large class of the people than it -now tolerates slavery in Europe; when the aggregation -of land in the hands of great owners must cease, when -that community of lands, which Owen of Lanark would -too soon anticipate, might actually be realized. But these -things were, perhaps, far off. Meanwhile how to bring -nearer the golden age? Southey’s son has made out a -long list of the measures urged upon the English people -in the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, or elsewhere, by his father. -Bearing in mind that the proposer of these measures resisted -the Reform Bill, Free Trade, and Catholic Emancipation, -any one curious in such things may determine with -what political label he should be designated:—National -education; the diffusion of cheap and good literature; a -well-organized system of colonization, and especially of female -emigration;<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> a wholesome training for the children -of misery and vice in great cities; the establishment of -Protestant sisters of charity, and a better order of hospital<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> -nurses; the establishment of savings-banks in all small -towns; the abolition of flogging in the army and navy, -except in extreme cases; improvements in the poor-laws; -alterations in the game-laws; alterations in the criminal -laws, as inflicting the punishment of death in far too many -cases; execution of criminals within prison walls; alterations -in the factory system for the benefit of the operative, -and especially as to the employment of children; national -works—reproductive if possible—to be undertaken in -times of peculiar distress; the necessity of doing away -with interments in crowded cities; the system of giving -allotments of ground to labourers; the employment of -paupers in cultivating waste lands; the commutation of -tithes; and last, the need for more clergymen, more colleges, -more courts of law.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Southey,” said Hazlitt, “missed his way in Utopia; -he has found it at old Sarum.” To one of Southey’s -temper old Sarum seemed good, with its ordered freedom, -its serious aspiration, its habitual pieties, its reasonable -service, its reverent history, its beauty of holiness, its close -where priests who are husbands and fathers live out their -calm, benignant lives—its amiable home for those whose -toil is ended, and who now sleep well. But how Southey -found his way from his early deism to Anglican orthodoxy -cannot be precisely determined. Certainly not for -many years could he have made that subscription to the -Articles of the Church of England, which at the first barred -his way to taking orders. The superstition, which -seemed to be the chief spiritual food of Spain, had left -Southey, for the rest of his life, a resolute opponent of -Catholicism; and as he read lives of the Saints and histories -of the Orders, the exclamation, “I do well to be angry,” -was often on his lips. For the wisdom, learning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> -and devotion of the Jesuits he had, however, a just respect. -Geneva, with its grim logic and stark spirituality, suited -nerves of a different temper from his. For a time Southey -thought himself half a Quaker, but he desired more -visible beauty and more historical charm than he could -find in Quakerism. Needing a comely home for his spiritual -affections, he found precisely what pleased him built -in the pleasant Anglican close. With growing loyalty to -the State, his loyalty to the Church could not but keep -pace. He loved her tolerance, her culture; he fed upon -her judicious and learned writers—Taylor, with his bright -fancies like the little rings of the vine; South, hitting -out straight from the shoulder at anarchy, fanaticism, and -licentiousness, as Southey himself would have liked to -hit; Jackson, whose weight of character made his pages -precious as with golden bullion. After all, old Sarum had -some advantages over Utopia.</p> - -<p>The English Constitution consisting of Church and -State, it seemed to Southey an absurdity in politics to -give those persons power in the State whose duty it is to -subvert the Church. Admit Catholics, he said, to every office -of trust, emolument, or honour; only never admit them -into Parliament. “The arguments about equal rights are -fit only for a schoolboy’s declamation; it may as well be -said that the Jew has a right to be a bishop, or the Quaker -an admiral, as that the Roman Catholic has a right to -a seat in the British Legislature; his opinions disqualify -him.” To call this a question of toleration was impudence; -Catholics were free to practise the rites of their -religion; they had the full and free use of the press; perfect -toleration was granted to the members of that church -which, wherever dominant, tolerates no other. Catholic -Emancipation would not conciliate Ireland; the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> -source of Irish misery had been, not England’s power, but -her weakness, and those violences to which weakness resorts -in self-defence; old sores were not to be healed by -the admission of Catholic demagogues into Parliament. -The measure styled Emancipation would assuredly be followed -by the downfall of the Protestant Establishment in -Ireland, and by the spread of Catholicism in English society. -To Pyrrhonists one form of faith might seem as -good or as bad as the other; but the great mass of the -English people had not advanced so far in the march of -intellect as to perceive no important difference between -Catholic and Protestant doctrine, or between Catholic and -Protestant morality. By every possible means, better the -condition of the Irish peasantry; give them employment -in public works; facilitate, for those who desire it, the -means of emigration; extend the poor-laws to Ireland, -and lay that impost on absentees in such a proportion as -may compensate, in some degree, for their non-residence; -educate the people; execute justice and maintain peace, -and the cry of Catholic Emancipation may be safely disregarded.</p> - -<p>So Southey pleaded in the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>. With -reference to Emancipation and to the Reform Bill, he and -Wordsworth—who, perhaps, had not kept themselves sufficiently -in relation with living men and the public sentiment -of the day—were in their solitude gifted with a measure -of the prophetic spirit, which in some degree explains -their alarms. For the prophet who knows little of expediency -and nothing of the manipulation of parties, nothing -of the tangled skein of contending interests, sees the -future in its moral causes, and he sees it in a vision. But -he cannot date the appearances in his vision. Battle, and -garments rolled in blood, and trouble, and dimness of anguish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> -pass before him, and he proclaims what it is given -him to see. It matters not a little, however, in the actual -event, whether the battle be on the morrow or half a century -hence; and the prophet furnishes us with no chronology, -or at best with some vague time and times and -half a time. New forces have arisen before the terrors of -his prediction come to pass, and therefore, when they come -to pass, their effect is often altogether different from that -anticipated. Wordsworth and Southey were right in declaring -that a vast and formidable change was taking place -in the England of their day: many things which they, -amid incredulous scoffs, announced, have become actual; -others remain to be fulfilled. But the events have taken -up their place in an order of things foreign to the conceptions -of the prophets; the fire from heaven descends, but -meanwhile we, ingenious sons of men, have set up a lightning-conductor.</p> - -<p>Southey and the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite> were often spoken -of as a single entity. But the <cite>Review</cite>, in truth, never precisely -represented his feelings and convictions. With Gifford -he had no literary sympathies. Gifford’s heart was -full of kindness, says Southey, for all living creatures except -authors; <em>them</em> he regarded as Isaac Walton did the -worm. Against the indulgence of that temper Southey -always protested; yet he was chosen to bear the reproach -of having tortured Keats, and of having anonymously glorified -himself at the expense of Shelley. Gifford’s omissions, -additions, substitutions, often caused Southey’s article -in the <cite>Review</cite> to be very unlike the article which he -had despatched to the editor in manuscript. Probably -these changes were often made on warrantable grounds. -Southey’s confidence in his own opinions, which always -seemed to him to be based upon moral principles, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> -high; and he was not in the habit of diluting his ink. -Phrases which sounded well in the library of Greta Hall -had quite another sound in Mr. Murray’s office in Fleet -Street.</p> - -<p>On arriving in London for a short visit in the autumn -of 1813, Southey learnt that the Prince Regent wished to -confer on him the Laureateship, vacant by the death of -Pye. Without consulting the Regent, Lord Liverpool had -previously directed that the office should be offered to -Walter Scott. On the moment came a letter from Scott -informing Southey that he had declined the appointment, -not from any foolish prejudice against holding it, but because -he was already provided for, and would not engross -emoluments which ought to be awarded to a man of letters -who had no other views in life. Southey hesitated, -having ceased for several years to produce occasional verses; -but his friend Croker assured him that he would not be -compelled to write odes as boys write exercises at stated -times on stated subjects; that it would suffice if he wrote -on great public events, or did not write, as the spirit moved -him; and thus his scruples were overcome. In a little, low, -dark room in the purlieus of St. James’—a solitary clerk -being witness—the oath was duly administered by a fat -old gentleman-usher in full buckle, Robert Southey swearing -to be a faithful servant to the King, to reveal all treasons -which might come to his knowledge, and to obey the -Lord Chamberlain in all matters of the King’s service. It -was Scott’s belief that his generosity had provided for his -poorer brother bard an income of three or four hundred -pounds a year. In reality the emolument was smaller -and the task-work more irksome than had been supposed. -The tierce of Canary, swilled by Ben Jonson and his poetic -sons, had been wickedly commuted for a small sum;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> -the whole net income amounted to 90<i>l.</i> But this, “the -very least of Providence’s mercies,” as a poor clergyman -said when pronouncing grace over a herring, secured an -important happiness for Southey: he did not employ it, -as Byron puts it, to butter his bread on both sides; he -added twelve pounds to it, and vested it forthwith in an -insurance upon his own life. “I have never felt any painful -anxiety about providing for my family, ...” he writes -to Scott; “but it is with the deepest feeling of thanksgiving -that I have secured this legacy for my wife and children, -and it is to you that I am primarily and chiefly -indebted.”</p> - -<p>Croker’s assurance was too hastily given. The birthday -Ode, indeed, fell into abeyance during the long malady of -George III.; but the New-Year’s Ode had still to be provided. -Southey was fortunate in 1814; events worthy -of celebration had taken place; a dithyramb, or rather an -oration in lines of irregular length, was accordingly produced, -and was forwarded to his musical yoke-fellow, Sir -William Parsons. But the sight of Southey’s page, over -which the longs and shorts meandered seemingly at their -own sweet will, shocked the orderly mind of the chief -musician. What kind of ear could Mr. Southey have? -His predecessor, the lamented Mr. Pye, had written his -Odes always in regular stanzas. What kind of action -was this exhibited by the unbroken State Pegasus? Duly -as each New Year approached, Southey set himself to what -he called his <em>ode</em>ous job; it was the price he paid for the -future comfort of his children. While his political assailants -pictured the author of <cite>Joan of Arc</cite> as a court-lacquey -following in the train of the fat Adonis, he, with grim -cheerfulness, was earning a provision for his girls; and had -it not been a duty to kiss hands on the appointment, His<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> -Royal Highness the Prince Regent would never have seen -his poet. Gradually the New-Year’s Ode ceased to be -looked for, and Southey was emancipated. His verse-making -as laureate occasionally rose into something higher -than journeyman work; when public events stirred his -heart to joy, or grief, or indignation, he wrote many admirable -periods of measured rhetoric. <cite>The Funeral Song -for the Princess Charlotte</cite> is of a higher strain; a knell, -heavy yet clear-toned, is tolled by its finely wrought octosyllabics.</p> - -<p>A few months after the battle of Waterloo, which had -so deeply moved Southey, he started with his wife, a rare -voyager from Keswick, and his little daughter Edith May, -on a pilgrimage to the scene of victory. The aunts remained -to take care of Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, with the -nine-years-old darling of all, the only boy, Herbert. With -Bruges, “like a city of Elizabeth’s age—you expect to see -a head with a ruff looking from the window,” Southey was -beyond measure delighted. At Ghent he ransacked bookshops, -and was pleased to see in the Beguinage the realization -of his own and Rickman’s ideas on Sisterhoods. On a -clear September day the travellers visited the battlefield; -the autumnal sunshine with soft airs, and now and again a -falling leaf, while the bees were busy with the year’s last -flowers, suited well with the poet’s mood of thankfulness, -tempered by solemn thought. When, early in December, -they returned with a lading of toys to their beloved lake-country, -little Edith had hardly recovered from an illness -which had attacked her at Aix. It was seven o’clock in the -evening by the time they reached Rydal, and to press forward -and arrive while the children were asleep would be to -defraud everyone of the first reward earned by so long absence. -“A return home under fortunate circumstances has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> -something of the character of a triumph, and requires daylight.” -The glorious presence of Skiddaw, and Derwent -bright under the winter sky, asked also for a greeting at -noon rather than at night. A depth of grave and tender -thankfulness lay below Southey’s joy that morning; it was -twelve years since he had pitched his tent here beside the -Greta; twelve years had made him feel the touch of time; -but what blessings they had brought! all his heart’s desire -was here—books, children, leisure, and a peace that passeth -understanding. The instant hour, however, was not for -meditation but for triumph:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“O joyful hour, when to our longing home</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The long-expected wheels at length drew nigh!</div> -<div class="verse">When the first sound went forth, ‘they come! they come!’</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And hope’s impatience quicken’d every eye!</div> -<div class="verse">‘Never had man whom Heaven would heap with bliss</div> -<div class="verse">More glad return, more happy hour than this.’</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Aloft on yonder bench, with arms dispread,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My boy stood, shouting there his father’s name,</div> -<div class="verse">Waving his hat around his happy head;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And there a younger group his sisters came:</div> -<div class="verse">Smiling they stood with looks of pleased surprise</div> -<div class="verse">While tears of joy were seen in elder eyes.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Soon all and each came crowding round to share</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The cordial greeting, the beloved sight;</div> -<div class="verse">What welcomings of hand and lip were there!</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And when those overflowings of delight</div> -<div class="verse">Subsided to a sense of quiet bliss,</div> -<div class="verse">Life hath no purer, deeper happiness.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The young companion of our weary way</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Found here the end desired of all her ills;</div> -<div class="verse">She who in sickness pining many a day</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Hunger’d and thirsted for her native hills.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> -<div class="verse">Forgetful now of suffering past and pain,</div> -<div class="verse">Rejoiced to see her own dear home again.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Recovered now the homesick mountaineer</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Sate by the playmate of her infancy,</div> -<div class="verse">The twin-like comrade,<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>—render’d doubly dear</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For that long absence; full of life was she</div> -<div class="verse">With voluble discourse and eager mien</div> -<div class="verse">Telling of all the wonders she had seen.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Here silently between her parents stood</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My dark-eyed Bertha, timid as a dove;</div> -<div class="verse">And gently oft from time to time she woo’d</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Pressure of hand, or word, or look of love,</div> -<div class="verse">With impulse shy of bashful tenderness,</div> -<div class="verse">Soliciting again the wished caress.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The younger twain in wonder lost were they,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My gentle Kate and my sweet Isabel:</div> -<div class="verse">Long of our promised coming, day by day,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">It had been their delight to hear and tell;</div> -<div class="verse">And now when that long-promised hour was come,</div> -<div class="verse">Surprise and wakening memory held them dumb.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">...</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Soon they grew blithe as they were wont to be;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Her old endearments each began to seek;</div> -<div class="verse">And Isabel drew near to climb my knee,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And pat with fondling hand her father’s cheek;</div> -<div class="verse">With voice and touch and look reviving thus</div> -<div class="verse">The feelings which had slept in long disuse.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“But there stood one whose heart could entertain</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And comprehend the fulness of the joy;</div> -<div class="verse">The father, teacher, playmate, was again</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Come to his only and his studious boy;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> -<div class="verse">And he beheld again that mother’s eye</div> -<div class="verse">Which with such ceaseless care had watched his infancy.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“Bring forth the treasures now—a proud display—</div> -<div class="verse indent1">For rich as Eastern merchants we return!</div> -<div class="verse">Behold the black Beguine, the Sister grey,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The Friars whose heads with sober motion turn,</div> -<div class="verse">The Ark well filled with all its numerous hives,</div> -<div class="verse">Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japhet, and their wives.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The tumbler loose of limb; the wrestlers twain;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And many a toy beside of quaint device,</div> -<div class="verse">Which, when his fleecy flocks no more can gain</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Their pasture on the mountains hoar with ice,</div> -<div class="verse">The German shepherd carves with curious knife,</div> -<div class="verse">Earning in easy toil the food of frugal life.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“It was a group which Richter, had he viewed,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Might have deemed worthy of his perfect skill;</div> -<div class="verse">The keen impatience of the younger brood,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Their eager eyes and fingers never still;</div> -<div class="verse">The hope, the wonder, and the restless joy</div> -<div class="verse">Of those glad girls and that vociferous boy.</div> -</div> -<div class="stanza"> -<div class="verse">“The aged friend<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> serene with quiet smile,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Who in their pleasure finds her own delight;</div> -<div class="verse">The mother’s heart-felt happiness the while;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">The aunt’s rejoicing in the joyful sight;</div> -<div class="verse">And he who in his gaiety of heart,</div> -<div class="verse">With glib and noisy tongue performed the showman’s part.”</div> -</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It was manifest to a thoughtful observer, says De Quincey, -that Southey’s golden equanimity was bound up in a -trinity of chords, a threefold chain—in a conscience clear -of offence, in the recurring enjoyments from his honourable -industry, and in the gratification of his parental affections.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> -In the light of Herbert’s smiles his father almost -lived; the very pulses of his heart played in unison with -the sound of his son’s laughter. “There was,” De Quincey -goes on, “in his manner towards this child, and towards -this only, something that marked an excess of delirious -doating, perfectly unlike the ordinary chastened movement -of Southey’s affections; and something also which indicated -a vague fear about him; a premature unhappiness, -as if already the inaudible tread of calamity could be divined, -as if already he had lost him.” As a baby, while -Edith was only “like an old book, ugly and good,” Herbert, -in spite of his Tartar eyes, a characteristic of Southey -babyhood, was already beautiful. At six he was more gentle -and more loving, says Southey, than you can almost -conceive. “He has just learnt his Greek alphabet, and is -so desirous of learning, so attentive and so quick of apprehension, -that, if it please God he should live, there is little -doubt but that something will come out of him.” In -April, 1809, Southey writes to Landor, twenty-four hours -after an attack of croup which seized his boy had been -subdued: “Even now I am far, very far, from being at -ease. There is a love which passeth the love of women, -and which is more lightly alarmed than the lightest jealousy. -Landor, I am not a Stoic at home; I feel as you -do about the fall of an old tree! but, O Christ! what a -pang it is to look upon the young shoot and think it will -be cut down! And this is the thought which almost at all -times haunts me; it comes upon me in moments when I -know not whether the tears that start are of love or of -bitterness.”</p> - -<p>The alarm of 1809 passed away, and Herbert grew to -the age of nine, active and bright of spirit, yet too pale, -and, like his father, hanging too constantly over his books;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> -a finely organized being, delicate in his sensibilities, and -prematurely accomplished. Before the snow had melted -which shone on Skiddaw that day when the children welcomed -home their parents, Herbert Southey lay in his -grave. His disease was an affection of the heart, and for -weeks his father, palsied by apprehension, and unable to -put hand to his regular work, stood by the bedside, with -composed countenance, with words of hope, and agonized -heart. Each day of trial made his boy more dear. With -a trembling pride Southey saw the sufferer’s behaviour, -beautiful in this illness as in all his life; nothing could -be more calm, more patient, more collected, more dutiful, -more admirable. At last, worn with watching, Southey -and his wife were prevailed upon to lie down. The good -Mary Barker watched, and it is she who writes the following -lines:—“Herbert!—that sweetest and most perfect -of all children on this earth, who died in my arms at nine -years of age, whose death I announced to his father and -mother in their bed, where I had prayed and persuaded -them to go. When Southey could speak, his first words -were, ‘<em>The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away. -Blessed be the name of the Lord!</em>’ Never can I forget that -moment” (1816).</p> - -<p>“I am perfectly resigned,” Southey wrote to Bedford -on the most mournful of all days, “and do not give way -to grief. Thank God I can control myself for the sake of -others.” But next morning found him weak as a child, -even weaker in body than in mind, for long anxiety had -worn him to the bone, and while he tried to calm and console -the rest, his limbs trembled under him. His first wild -wish to fly from Keswick passed away; it was good to be -there near the boy’s grave. Weak as he was, he flung -himself upon his work. “I employ myself incessantly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> -taking, however, every day as much exercise as I can bear -without injurious fatigue, which is not much.” “It would -surprise you were you to see what I get through in a day.” -“For the first week I did as much every day as would at -other times have seemed the full and overflowing produce -of three.” From his early discipline in the stoical philosophy -some help now was gained; from his active and elastic -mind the gain was more; but these would have been -insufficient to support him without a heart-felt and ever-present -faith that what he had lost was not lost for ever. -A great change had indeed come upon him. He set his -house in order, and made arrangements as if his own -death were at hand. He resolved not to be unhappy, but -the joyousness of his disposition had received its death-wound; -he felt as if he had passed at once from boyhood -to the decline of life. He tried dutifully to make head -against his depression, but at times with poor success. “I -employ myself, and have recovered strength, but in point -of spirits I rather lose ground.” Still, there are hidden -springs of comfort. “The head and flower of my earthly -happiness is cut off. But I am <em>not</em> unhappy.” “When I -give way to tears, which is only in darkness or solitude, -they are not tears of unmingled pain.” All beloved ones -grew more precious; the noble fortitude of his wife made -her more than ever a portion of his best self. His uncle’s -boy, Edward, he could not love more than he had loved -him before; but, “as far as possible, he will be to me hereafter,” -writes Southey, “in the place of my son.” And in -truth the blessing of Herbert’s boyhood remained with him -still; a most happy, a most beautiful boyhood it had been; -he was thankful for having possessed the child so long; -“for worlds I would not but have been his father.” “I -have abundant blessings left; for each and all of these I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> -am truly thankful; but of all the blessings which God has -given me, this child, who is removed, is the one I <em>still</em> prize -the most.” To relieve feelings which he dared not utter -with his lips, he thought of setting about a monument in -verse for Herbert and himself, which might make one inseparable -memory for father and son. A page or two of -fragmentary thoughts in verse and prose for this poetic -monument exists, but Southey could not keep his imagination -enough above his heart to dare to go on with it; -to do so would have dissolved his heart anew. One or two -of these holy scriptures of woe, truly red drops of Southey’s -life-blood, will tell enough of this love passing the -love of women.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Thy life was a day; and sum it well, life is but a week of -such days—with how much storm and cold and darkness! -Thine was a sweet spring day—a vernal Sabbath, all sunshine, -hope, and promise.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent10">“And that name</div> -<div class="verse">In sacred silence buried, which was still</div> -<div class="verse">At morn and eve the never-wearying theme</div> -<div class="verse">Of dear discourse.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent6">“Playful thoughts</div> -<div class="verse">Turned now to gall and esil.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“No more great attempts, only a few autumnal flowers like -second primroses, etc.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“They who look for me in our Father’s kingdom</div> -<div class="verse">Will look for him also; inseparably</div> -<div class="verse">Shall we be remembered.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent10">“Come, then,</div> -<div class="verse">Pain and Infirmity—appointed guests,</div> -<div class="verse">My heart is ready.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p> - -<p>From the day of his son’s death Southey began to step -down from the heights of life, with a steadfast foot, and -head still held erect. He recovered cheerfulness, but it -was as one who has undergone an amputation seeks the -sunshine. Herbert’s grave anchored him in Keswick. An -offer of 2000<i>l.</i> a year for a daily article in the <cite>Times</cite> did -not tempt him to London. His home, his books, his -literary work, Skiddaw, Derwentwater, and Crosthwaite -churchyard were too dear. Three years later came the -unlooked-for birth of a second boy; and Cuthbert was -loved by his father; but the love was chastened and controlled -of autumnal beauty and seriousness.</p> - -<p>When the war with France had ended, depression of -trade was acutely felt in England; party spirit ran high, -and popular passions were dangerously roused. In the -spring of 1817, the Laureate saw to his astonishment a -poem entitled <cite>Wat Tyler</cite>, by Robert Southey, advertised -as just published. He had written this lively dramatic -sketch in the full fervour of Republicanism twenty-three -years previously; the manuscript had passed into other -hands, and he had long ceased to think of it. The skulking -rogue and the knavish publisher who now gave it to -the world had chosen their time judiciously; this rebuke -to the apostate of the <cite>Quarterly</cite> would be a sweet morsel -for gossip-mongers to roll under the tongue, an infallible -pill to purge melancholy with all true children of progress. -No fewer than sixty thousand copies, it is said, were sold. -<cite>Wat Tyler</cite> suited well with Southey’s nonage; it has a -Bright rhetorical fierceness of humanity. The speech-making -radical blacksmith, “still toiling, yet still poor,” his insulted -daughter, her virtuous lover, the communist priest -John Ball, whose amiable theology might be that of Mr. -Belsham in his later days, stand over against the tyrant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> -king, his Archiepiscopal absolver from oaths, the haughty -nobles, and the servile minions of the law. There was -nothing in the poem that could be remembered with -shame, unless it is shameful to be generous and inexperienced -at the age of twenty. But England in 1817 seemed -charged with combustibles, and even so small a spark -as this was not to be blown about without a care. The -Prince Regent had been fired at; there were committals -for treason; there were riots in Somersetshire; the swarm -of Manchester Blanketeers announced a march to London; -the Habeas Corpus was suspended; before the year was -out, Brandreth and his fellows had been executed at Derby. -Southey applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction -to restrain the publication of his poem. It was -refused by Lord Eldon, on the ground that the publication -being one calculated to do injury to society, the author -could not reclaim his property in it. There the matter -might have dropped; but it seemed good to Mr. William -Smith, representing liberal Norwich, where Southey -had many friends, to take his seat in the House of Commons -one evening with the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite> in one pocket -and <cite>Wat Tyler</cite> in the other, and to read aloud contrasted -extracts showing how the malignant renegade could -play the parts, as it suited him, of a seditious firebrand -and a servile courtier. Wynn on the spot administered a -well-deserved rebuke; Wilberforce wrote to Southey that, -had he been present, his voice would also have been heard. -Coleridge vindicated him in the <cite>Courier</cite>. Seldom, indeed, -was Southey drawn into controversy. When pelted with -abuse, he walked on with uplifted head, and did not turn -round; it seemed to him that he was of a stature to invite -bespattering. His self-confidence was high and calm; -that he possessed no common abilities, was certain: and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> -the amount of toil which went into his books gave him a -continual assurance of their worth which nothing could -gainsay; he had no time for moods of dejection and self-distrust. -But if Southey struck, he struck with force, -and tried to leave his mark on his antagonist. To repel -this attack made in the House of Commons, was a duty. -<cite>A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P.</cite>, was written, as -Wordsworth wished, with the strength of masculine indignation; -blow after blow is planted with sure effect; no -word is wasted; there is skill in the hard hitting; and -the antagonist fairly overthrown, Southey, with one glance -of scorn, turns on his heel, and moves lightly away. “I -wish you joy,” wrote Walter Scott, “of your triumphant -answer.... Enough of this gentleman, who I think will -not walk out of the round again to slander the conduct of -individuals.” The concluding sentences of the Letter give -in brief Southey’s fearless review of his unstained career.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“How far the writings of Mr. Southey may be found to deserve -a favourable acceptance from after-ages, time will decide; -but a name which, whether worthily or not, has been -conspicuous in the literary history of its age, will certainly -not perish.... It will be related that he lived in the bosom -of his family, in absolute retirement; that in all his writings -there breathed the same abhorrence of oppression and immorality, -the same spirit of devotion, and the same ardent wishes -for the melioration of mankind; and that the only charge -which malice could bring against him was, that as he grew -older, his opinions altered concerning the means by which -that melioration was to be effected, and that as he learnt to -understand the institutions of his country, he learnt to appreciate -them rightly, to love, and to revere, and to defend them. -It will be said of him that in an age of personality he abstained -from satire; and that during the course of his literary -life, often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> -he ever condescended to reply was when a certain Mr. William -Smith insulted him in Parliament with the appellation -of renegade. On that occasion, it will be said, he vindicated -himself, as it became him to do, and treated his calumniator -with just and memorable severity. Whether it shall be added -that Mr. William Smith redeemed his own character by -coming forward with honest manliness, and acknowledging -but is not of the slightest importance to me.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>One other personal strife is worthy of notice. When -visiting London in 1813, he made the acquaintance of -Byron. “Is Southey magnanimous?” Byron asked Rogers, -remembering how he had tried his wit in early days -on <cite>Thalaba</cite> and <cite>Madoc</cite>. Rogers could answer for Southey’s -magnanimity, and the two poets met, Southey finding -in Byron very much more to like than he had expected, -and Byron being greatly struck by Southey’s “epic appearance.” -“To have that poet’s head and shoulders,” he -said, “I would almost have written his Sapphics.” And -in his diary he wrote:—“Southey’s talents are of the first -order. His prose is perfect.... He has probably written -too much of poetry for the present generation; posterity -will probably select; but he has passages equal to anything.” -At a later date Byron thought Southey’s <cite>Roderick</cite> -“the first poem of the time.” But when about to -publish <cite>Don Juan</cite>, a work “too free for these very modest -days,” what better mode of saucily meeting public opinion, -and getting a first laugh on his side, than to dedicate -such a poem to a virtuous Laureate, and show that he and -his fellows, who had uttered nothing base, were yet political -turncoats, not entitled by any superfine morality to assume -airs of indignation against him and his reprobate -hero? The dedication was shown about and laughed over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> -though not yet printed. Southey heard of these things, -and felt released from that restraint of good feeling which -made him deal tenderly in his writings with every one to -whom he had once given his hand. An attack upon himself -would not alone have roused Southey; no man received -abuse with more self-possession. Political antagonism -would still have left him able to meet a fellow-poet -on the common ground of literature. When distress fastened -upon Leigh Hunt, whose <cite>Examiner</cite> and <cite>Liberal</cite> had -never spared the Laureate, Mr. Forster did not hesitate to -apply to Southey for assistance, which was declined solely -because the circular put forward Leigh Hunt’s political -services as those chiefly entitling him to relief. “Those -who are acquainted with me,” Southey wrote, “know that -I am neither resentful nor intolerant;” and after expressing -admiration of Leigh Hunt’s powers, the letter goes on to -suggest that his friends should draw up a circular in which, -without compromising any of his opinions, the appeal -might be made solely upon the score of literary merit, -“placing him thus, as it were, within the sacred territory -which ought always to be considered and respected as -neutral ground.” Wise and admirable words! But there -was one offence which was to Southey the unforgivable -sin against the holy spirit of a nation’s literature. To entice -poetry from the altar, and to degrade her for the pleasure -of wanton imaginations, seemed to Southey, feeling as -he did the sanctity of the love of husband and wife, of father -and child, to be treason against humanity. Southey -was, indeed, tolerant of a certain Rabelaisian freedom in -playing with some of the enclosed incidents of our life. -“All the greatest of poets,” he says, “have had a spice of -Pantagruelism in their composition, which I verily believe -was essential to their greatness.” But to take an extravagant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> -fling in costume of a <i lang="fr">sans-culotte</i>, and to play the part -of “pander-general to the youth of Great Britain,” were -different things. In his preface to <cite>A Vision of Judgment</cite>, -Southey deplored the recent fall in the ethical spirit of -English literature, “which for half a century had been distinguished -for its moral purity,” and much of the guilt he -laid on the leaders of “the Satanic School.” In the long-run -the interests of art, as of all high endeavour, are invariably -proved to be one with the interest of a nation’s -morality. It had taken many lives of men to lift literature -out of the beast. From prudential virtue and the -lighter ethics of Addison it had risen to the grave moral -dignity of Johnson, and from that to the impassioned spirituality -of Wordsworth. Should all this be abandoned, -and should literature now be permitted to reel back into -the brute? We know that the title “Satanic School” -struck home, that Byron was moved, and replied with brilliant -play of wit in his <cite>Vision of Judgment</cite>. The laughers -went over to Byron’s side. One who would be witty -has certain advantages, if content to disregard honesty and -good manners. To be witty was not Southey’s concern. -“I saw,” he said, many years after, “that Byron was a -man of quick impulses, strong passions, and great powers. -I saw him abuse these powers; and, looking at the effect -of his writings on the public mind, it was my duty to denounce -such of them as aimed at the injury of morals and -religion. This was all.” If continental critics find in -what he set down a characteristic example of the bourgeois -morality of England, we note with interest their point of -view.<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p> - -<p>“Bertha, Kate, and Isabel,” wrote Southey on June 26, -1820, “you have been very good girls, and have written -me very nice letters, with which I was much pleased. -This is the last letter which I can write in return; and as -I happen to have a quiet hour to myself here at Streatham, -on Monday noon, I will employ that hour in relating to -you the whole history and manner of my being ell-ell-deed -at Oxford by the Vice-Chancellor.” Public distinctions of -this kind he rated, perhaps, below their true value. To -stand well with Murray and Longman was more to him -than any handle to his name. A similar honour from -Cambridge he declined. His gold medal from the Royal -Society of Literature he changed for a silver coffee-pot for -Mrs. Southey. To “be be-doctored and called everything -that ends in issimus,” was neither any harm nor much -good; but to take his seat between such doctors as the -Duke of Wellington, and—perhaps—Sir Walter Scott was -a temptation. When his old schoolfellow Phillimore -presented Southey, the theatre rang with applause. Yet -the day was, indeed, one of the heaviest in his life. Never -had he stopped for a night in Oxford since he left it in -1794, intending to bid farewell to Europe for an Utopia -in some back settlement of America. Not one who really -loved him—for Scott could not appear—was present. -When in the morning he went to look at Balliol, no one -remembered him except old Adams, who had attempted -to dress his hair as a freshman, and old Mrs. Adams, the -laundress, both now infirm. From the tumultuous theatre -Southey strolled into Christ Church walks alone. What -changes time had made! Many of the friends with whom -he had sauntered there were in their graves. So brooding, -he chewed the bitter-sweet of remembrance, until at length -a serious gratitude prevailed. “Little girls,” the letter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> -ends, “you know it might be proper for me now to wear -a large wig, and to be called Doctor Southey, and to become -very severe, and leave off being a comical papa. -And if you should find that ell-ell-deeing has made this -difference in me, you will not be surprised. However, I -shall not come down in my wig, neither shall I wear my -robes at home.”</p> - -<p>While in Holland, in the summer of 1826, a more conspicuous -honour was unexpectedly thrust upon Southey. -The previous year he had gone abroad with Henry Taylor, -and at Douay was bitten on the foot by Satan, according -to his conjecture, sitting squat at his great toe; -at Leyden he was obliged to rest his inflamed foot, and -there it was his good fortune to be received into the house -of the poet Bilderdijk, a delightful old erudite and enthusiast, -whose charming wife was the translator of <cite>Roderick</cite>. -In 1826 he visited his kind friends once more, and at -Brussels received the surprising intelligence that during -his absence he had been elected a member of Parliament. -Lord Radnor, an entire stranger, had read with admiration -Southey’s confession of faith concerning Church and State, -in the last paragraph of his <cite>Book of the Church</cite>. By his -influence the poet had been elected for the borough of -Downton: the return, however, was null, for Southey held -a pension during pleasure; and even if this were resigned, -where was the property qualification? This latter objection -was met by Sir Robert Inglis, who desired to know -whether Southey would sit in Parliament if an estate of -300<i>l.</i> a year were purchased for him. An estate of 300<i>l.</i> -a year would be a very agreeable thing to Robert Lackland; -but he had no mind to enter on a new public sphere -for which he was ill qualified by his previous life, to risk -the loss of health by midnight debates, to abandon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> -education of his little boy, and to separate himself more -or less from his wife and daughters. He could not be -wrong, he believed, in the quiet confidence which assured -him that he was in his proper place.</p> - -<p>Now more than ever before, Edith Southey needed her -husband’s sustaining love. On the day of his return to Keswick, -while amused to find himself the object of mob popularity, -he learnt that one of his daughters was ailing; the -illness, however, already seemed to have passed the worst. -This appearance of amendment quickly proved deceptive; -and, on a Sunday evening in mid July, Isabel, “the most -radiant creature that I ever beheld or shall behold,” passed -away, while her father was on his knees in the room below, -praying that she might be released from suffering -either by recovery or by death. All that had been gone -through ten years before, renewed itself with dread exactness. -Now, as then, the first day was one of stunned insensibility; -now, as then, the next morning found him -weak as a child, and striving in his weakness to comfort -those who needed his support; now, as then, he turned to -Grosvenor Bedford for a heart on which he might lay -his own heart prone, letting his sorrow have its way. -“Nothing that has assailed my character, or affected my -worldly fortune, ever gave me an hour’s vexation, or deprived -me of an hour’s rest. My happiness has been in -my family, and there only was I vulnerable; that family -is now divided between earth and heaven, and I must pray -to remain with those who are left, so long as I can contribute -to their welfare and comfort, rather than be gathered -(as otherwise I would fain be) to those who are -gone.” On that day of which the word Τετέλεσται is the -record, the day on which the body of his bright Isabel -was committed to earth, Southey wrote a letter to his three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> -living daughters, copied with his own hand for each. It -said what he could not bear to say of consolation and -admonishment by word of mouth; it prepared them for -the inevitable partings to come; it urged on them with -measureless tenderness the duty of self-watchfulness, of -guarding against little faults, of bearing and forbearing; -it told them of his own grief to think that he should ever -by a harsh or hasty word have given their dead sister -even a momentary sorrow which might have been spared; -it ended with the blessing of their afflicted father.</p> - -<p>Sorrows of this kind, as Southey has truly said, come -the heavier when they are repeated; under such strokes -a courageous heart may turn coward. On Mrs. Southey -a weight as of years had been laid; her spirits sank, -her firmness gave way, a breath of danger shook her. -Southey’s way of bearing himself towards the dead is that -saddest way—their names were never uttered; each one -of the household had, as it were, a separate chamber in -which the images of their dead ones lay, and each went -in alone and veiled. The truth is, Southey had little native -hardihood of temperament; self-control with him -was painfully acquired. In solitude and darkness his -tears flowed; when in his slumbers the images of the -dead came to him, he could not choose but weep. Therefore, -all the more among those whom he wished to lead -into the cheerful ways of life, he had need to keep a guard -upon his tenderness. He feared to preserve relics, and -did not like to bear in mind birthdays, lest they should -afterwards become too dangerously charged with remembrance -and grief. “Look,” he writes, “at some verses in -the <cite>Literary Souvenir</cite>, p. 113; they are written by a dear -friend of mine on the death of—you will know who”—for -his pen would have trembled in tracing the name Isabel.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> -And yet his habitual feelings with respect to those -who had departed were not bitter; the dead were absent—that -was all; he thought of them and of living friends -at a distance with the same complacency, the same affection, -only with more tenderness of the dead.</p> - -<p>Greta Hall, once resounding with cheerful voices, had -been growing silent. Herbert was gone; Isabel was gone. -In 1829 Sara Coleridge went, a bride, tearful yet glad, her -mother accompanying her, to distant London. Five years -later, Edith May Southey became the wife of the Rev. John -Warter. Her father fell back, even more than in former -years, upon the never-failing friends of his library. It was -in these darkening years that he sought relief in carrying -out the idea, conceived long before, of a story which should -be no story, but a spacious receptacle for mingled wit and -wisdom, experience and book-lore, wholesome nonsense and -solemn meditation. <cite>The Doctor</cite>, begun in jest after merry -talks with Grosvenor Bedford, grew more and more earnest -as Southey proceeded. “He dreamt over it and brooded -over it, laid it aside for months and years, resumed it after -long intervals, and more often, latterly, in thoughtfulness -than in mirth, and fancied at last that he could put into it -more of his mind than could conveniently be produced in -any other form.” The secret of its authorship was carefully -kept. Southey amused himself somewhat laboriously -with ascribing it now to this hand and now to that. -When the first two volumes arrived, as if from the anonymous -author, Southey thrust them away with well-assumed -impatience, and the disdainful words, “Some novel, I suppose.” -Yet several of his friends had shrewd suspicions -that the manuscript lay somewhere hidden in Greta Hall, -and on receiving their copies wrote to thank the veritable -donor; these thanks were forwarded by Southey, not without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> -a smile in which something of irony mingled, to Theodore -Hook, who was not pleased to enter into the jest. -“I see in <cite>The Doctor</cite>,” says its author, playing the part of -an impartial critic, “a little of Rabelais, but not much; -more of Tristram Shandy, somewhat of Burton, and perhaps -more of Montaigne; but methinks the <i lang="la">quintum quid</i> -predominates?” The <i lang="la">quintum quid</i> is that wisdom of the -heart, that temper of loyal and cheerful acquiescence in the -rule of life as appointed by a Divine Master, which characterizes -Southey.</p> - -<p>For the third volume of <cite>The Doctor</cite>, in that chapter -which tells of Leonard Bacon’s sorrow for his Margaret, -Southey wrote as follows:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“Leonard had looked for consolation, where, when sincerely -sought, it is always to be found; and he had experienced -that religion effects in a true believer all that philosophy -professes, and more than all that mere philosophy can perform. -The wounds which stoicism would cauterize, religion heals.</p> - -<p>“There is a resignation with which, it may be feared, most -of us deceive ourselves. To bear what must be borne, and -submit to what cannot be resisted, is no more than what the -unregenerate heart is taught by the instinct of animal nature. -But to acquiesce in the afflictive dispensations of Providence—to -make one’s own will conform in all things to that of our -Heavenly Father—to say to him in the sincerity of faith, when -we drink of the bitter cup, ‘Thy will be done!’—to bless -the name of the Lord as much from the heart when he takes -away as when he gives, and with a depth of feeling of which, -perhaps, none but the afflicted heart is capable—this is the -resignation which religion teaches, this is the sacrifice which -it requires.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>These words, written with no forefeeling, were the last -put on paper before the great calamity burst upon Southey. -“I have been parted from my wife,” he tells Grosvenor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> -Bedford on October 2, 1834, “by something worse -than death. Forty years she has been the life of my life; -and I have left her this day in a lunatic asylum.”</p> - -<p>Southey’s union with his wife had been at the first one -of love, and use and wont had made her a portion of his -very being. Their provinces in the household had soon -defined themselves. He in the library earned their means -of support; all else might be left to her with absolute confidence -in her wise contrivance and quiet energy. Beneath -the divided work in their respective provinces their lives -ran on in deep and still accord. Now he felt for the first -time shrunk into the limits of a solitary will. All that -had grown out of the past was deranged by a central disturbance; -no branch had been lopped away, but the main -trunk was struck, and seared, and shaken to the roots. -“Mine is a strong heart,” Southey writes; “I will not say -that the last week has been the most trying of my life; -but I will say that the heart which could bear it can bear -anything.” Yet, when he once more set himself to work, -a common observer, says his son, would have noticed little -change in him, though to his family the change was great -indeed. His most wretched hour was when he woke at -dawn from broken slumbers; but a word of hope was -enough to counteract the mischief of a night’s unrest. No -means were neglected which might serve to keep him in -mental and bodily health; he walked in all weathers; he -pursued his task-work diligently, yet not over-diligently; -he collected materials for work of his choice. When, in -the spring of 1835, it was found that the sufferer might return -to wear out the body of this death in her own home, -it was marvellous, declares Cuthbert Southey, how much of -his old elasticity remained, and how, though no longer happy, -he could be contented and cheerful, and take pleasure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> -in the pleasures of others. He still could contribute something -to his wife’s comfort. Through the weary dream -which was now her life she knew him, and took pleasure in -his coming and going.</p> - -<p>When Herbert died, Southey had to ask a friend to -lend him money to tide over the short period of want -which followed his weeks of enforced inaction. Happily -now, for the first time in his life, his income was beforehand -with his expenses. A bequest of some hundreds of -pounds had come in; his <cite>Naval Biographies</cite> were paying -him well; and during part of Mrs. Southey’s illness he was -earning a respectable sum, intended for his son’s education, -by his <cite>Life of Cowper</cite>—a work to which a painful interest -was added by the study of mental alienation forced -upon him in his own household. So the days passed, not -altogether cheerlessly, in work if possible more arduous -than ever. “One morning,” writes his son, “shortly after -the letters had arrived, he called me into his study. ‘You -will be surprised,’ he said, ‘to hear that Sir Robert Peel -has recommended me to the King for the distinction of -a baronetcy, and will probably feel some disappointment -when I tell you that I shall not accept it.’” Accompanying -Sir Robert Peel’s official communication came a private -letter asking in the kindest manner how he could be -of use to Southey. “Will you tell me,” he said, “without -reserve, whether the possession of power puts within -my reach the means of doing anything which can be serviceable -or acceptable to you; and whether you will allow -me to find some compensation for the many sacrifices -which office imposes upon me, in the opportunity of marking -my gratitude, as a public man, for the eminent services -you have rendered, not only to literature, but to the higher -interests of virtue and religion?” Southey’s answer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> -stated simply what his circumstances were, showing how -unbecoming and unwise it would be to accept the proffered -honour: it told the friendly statesman of the provision -made for his family—no inconsiderable one—in the event -of his death; it went on to speak of his recent affliction; -how this had sapped his former confidence in himself; -how it had made him an old man, and forced upon him -the reflection that a sudden stroke might deprive him of -those faculties by which his family had hitherto been supported. -“I could afford to die, but not to be disabled,” -he wrote in his first draft; but fearing that these words -would look as if he wanted to trick out pathetically a -plain statement, he removed them. Finally, if such an increase -of his pension as would relieve him from anxiety -on behalf of his family could form part of a plan for the -encouragement of literature, it would satisfy all his desires. -“Young as I then was,” Cuthbert Southey writes, “I could -not, without tears, hear him read with his deep and faltering -voice, his wise refusal and touching expression of those -feelings and fears he had never before given utterance to, -to any of his own family.” Two months later Sir Robert -Peel signed a warrant adding 300<i>l.</i> annually to Southey’s -existing pension. He had resolved to recognize literary -and scientific eminence as a national claim; the act was -done upon public grounds, and Southey had the happiness -of knowing that others beside himself would partake of -the benefit.</p> - -<p>“Our domestic prospects are darkening upon us daily,” -Southey wrote in July, 1835. “I know not whether the -past or the present seems most like a dream to me, so -great and strange is the difference. But yet a little while, -and all will again be at the best.” While Mrs. Southey -lived, a daily demand was made upon his sympathies and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> -solicitude which it was his happiness to fulfil. But from -all except his wife he seemed already to be dropping away -into a state of passive abstraction. Kate and Bertha silently -ministered to his wants, laid the books he wanted in -his way, replenished his ink-bottle, mended his pens, stirred -the fire, and said nothing. A visit to the south-west -of England in company with his son broke the long monotony -of endurance. It was a happiness to meet Landor -at Bristol, and Mrs. Bray at Tavistock, and Mrs. Bray’s -friend, the humble poet, Mary Colling, whose verses he -had reviewed in the <cite>Quarterly</cite>. Yet to return to his sorrowful -home was best of all; there is a leap up of the -old spirits in a letter to his daughters announcing his approach. -It is almost the last gleam of brightness. In -the autumn of that year (1835) Edith Southey wasted -away, growing weaker and weaker. The strong arm on -which she had leaned for two-and-forty years, supported -her down stairs each day and bore her up again at evening. -When the morning of November 16th broke, she -passed quietly “from death unto life.”</p> - -<p>From that day Southey was an altered man. His spirits -fell to a still lower range. For the first time he was -conscious of the distance which years had set between him -and his children. Yet his physical strength was unbroken; -nothing but snow deterred him from his walk; he could -still circle the lake, or penetrate into Borrowdale on foot. -But Echo, whom he had summoned to rejoice, was not -roused by any call of his. Within-doors it was only by a -certain violence to himself that he could speak. In the -library he read aloud his proof-sheets alone; but for this -he might almost have forgotten the sound of his own voice. -Still, he was not wholly abandoned to grief; he looked -back and saw that life had been good; its hardest moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> -discipline had served to train the heart: much still remained -that was of worth—Cuthbert was quietly pursuing his -Oxford studies; Bertha was about to be united in marriage -to her cousin, Herbert Hill, son of that good uncle who -had done so much to shape Southey’s career. “If not -hopeful,” he writes, “I am more than contented, and disposed -to welcome and entertain any good that may yet be -in store for me, without any danger of being disappointed -if there should be none.” Hope of a sober kind indeed -had come to him. For twenty years he had known Caroline -Bowles; they had long been in constant correspondence; -their acquaintance had matured into friendship. -She was now in her fifty-second year; he in his sixty-fifth. -It seemed to Southey natural that, without making -any breach with his past life, he should accept her -companionship in the nearest way possible, should give to -her all he could of what remained, and save himself from -that forlorn feeling which he feared might render old age -miserable and useless.</p> - -<p>But already the past had subdued Southey, and if any -future lay before him it was a cloud lifeless and grey. In -the autumn of 1838 he started for a short tour on the -Continent with his old friend Senhouse, his son Cuthbert, -John Kenyon, their master of the horse, Captain Jones, the -chamberlain, and Crabb Robinson, who was intendant and -paid the bills. On the way from Boulogne they turned -aside to visit Chinon, for Southey wished to stand on the -spot where his first heroine, Joan of Arc, had recognized -the French king. At Paris he roamed along the quays -and hunted book-stalls. The change and excitement seemed -to have served him; he talked freely and was cheerful. -“Still,” writes his son, “I could not fail to perceive a considerable -change in him from the time we had last travelled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> -together—all his movements were slower, he was subject -to frequent fits of absence, and there was an indecision -in his manner and an unsteadiness in his step which -was wholly unusual with him.” He often lost his way, -even in the hotels; then laughed at his own mistakes, and -yet was painfully conscious of his failing memory. His -journal breaks off abruptly when not more than two-thirds -of the tour had been accomplished. In February, 1839, -his brother, Dr. Southey—ever a true comrade—describes -him as working slowly and with an abstraction not usual -to him; sometimes to write even a letter seemed an effort. -In midsummer his marriage to Caroline Bowles took place, -and with her he returned to Keswick in August. On the -way home his friends in London saw that he was much altered. -“The animation and peculiar clearness of his mind,” -wrote Henry Taylor, “was quite gone, except a gleam or -two now and then.... The appearance was that of a -placid languor, sometimes approaching to torpor, but not -otherwise than cheerful. He is thin and shrunk in person, -and that extraordinary face of his has no longer the fire -and strength it used to have, though the singular cast of -the features and the habitual expressions make it still a -most remarkable phenomenon.” Still, his friends had not -ceased to hope that tranquillity would restore mental tone, -and he himself was planning the completion of great designs. -“As soon as we are settled at Keswick, I shall resolutely -begin upon the <cite>History of Portugal</cite>, as a duty -which I owe to my uncle’s memory. Half of the labour -I consider as done. But I have long since found the advantage -of doing more than one thing at a time, and the -<cite>History of the Monastic Orders</cite> is the other thing to which -I shall set to with hearty good-will. Both these are works -of great pith and moment.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p> - -<p>Alas! the current of these enterprises was already turned -awry. In August it was not without an occasional uncertainty -that he sustained conversation. “He lost himself -for a moment; he was conscious of it, and an expression -passed over his countenance which was very touching—an -expression of pain and also of resignation.... The charm -of his manner is perhaps even enhanced at present (at -least when one knows the circumstances) by the gentleness -and patience which pervade it.” Before long the character -of his handwriting, which had been so exquisite, was -changed to something like the laboured scrawl of a child; -then he ceased to write. Still he could read, and, even -when he could no longer take in the meaning of what was -before him, his eye followed the lines of the printed page. -At last even this was beyond his power. He would walk -slowly round his library, pleased with the presence of his -cherished possessions, taking some volume down mechanically -from the shelf. In 1840 Wordsworth went over to -Greta Hall. “Southey did not recognize me,” he writes, -“till he was told. Then his eyes flashed for a moment -with their former brightness, but he sank into the state in -which I had found him, patting with both hands his books -affectionately like a child.” In the <cite>Life of Cowper</cite> he had -spoken of the distress of one who suffers from mental -disease as being that of a dream—“a dream, indeed, from -which the sufferer can neither wake nor be awakened; but -it pierces no deeper, and there seems to be the same dim -consciousness of its unreality.” So was it now with himself. -Until near the end he retained considerable bodily -strength; his snow-white hair grew darker; it was the -spirit which had endured shattering strokes of fate, and -which had spent itself in studying to be quiet.</p> - -<p>After a short attack of fever, the end came on the 21st<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> -of March, 1843. Never was that “Well done!” the guerdon -of the good and faithful servant, pronounced amid a -deeper consent of those who attended and had ears to -hear. On a dark and stormy morning Southey’s body was -borne to the beautiful churchyard of Crosthwaite, towards -which he had long looked affectionately as his place of -rest. There lay his three children and she who was the -life of his life. Skiddaw gloomed solemnly overhead. A -grey-haired, venerable man who had crossed the hills stood -there leaning on the arm of his son-in-law; these two, -Wordsworth and Quillinan, were the only strangers present. -As the words, “ashes to ashes,” were uttered, a sudden -gleam of sunshine touched the grave; the wind dropped, -the rain was over, and the birds had begun their songs -of spring. The mourners turned away thinking of a good -man’s life and death with peace—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“And calm of mind, all passion spent.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.<br /> -<span class="smaller">SOUTHEY’S WORK IN LITERATURE.</span></h2> - -<p>Southey’s career of authorship falls into two chief periods—a -period during which poetry occupied the higher place -and prose the lower, and a period during which this order -was reversed. His translations of romantic fiction—<cite>Amadis -of Gaul</cite>, <cite>Palmerin of England</cite>, and <cite>The Cid</cite>—connect -the work of the earlier with that of the latter period, and -serve to mark the progress of his mind from legend to -history, and from the fantastic to the real. The poet in -Southey died young, or, if he did not die, fell into a -numbness and old age like that of which an earlier singer -writes:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent2">“Elde that in my spirit dulleth me,</div> -<div class="verse">Hath of endyting all the subtilité</div> -<div class="verse">Welnyghe bereft out of my remembraunce.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>After thirty Southey seldom cared to utter himself in -occasional verse. The uniformity of his life, the equable -cheerfulness maintained by habits of regular work, his -calm religious faith, his amiable Stoicism, left him without -the material for lyrical poetry; and one so honest and -healthy had no care to feign experiences of the heart -which were not his. Still, he could apply himself to the -treatment of large subjects with a calm, continuous energy; -but as time went on his hand grew slack, and wrought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> -with less ease. Scarcely had he overcome the narrative -poet’s chief difficulty, that of subduing varied materials to -an unity of design, when he put aside verse, and found it -more natural to be historian than poet.</p> - -<p>The poetry of sober feeling is rare in lyrical verse. This -may be found admirably rendered in some of Southey’s -shorter pieces. Although his temper was ardent and -hopeful, his poems of pensive remembrance, of meditative -calm, are perhaps the most characteristic. Among these -his <cite>Inscriptions</cite> rank high. Some of those in memory of -the dead are remarkable for their fine poise of feeling, all -that is excessive and transitory having been subdued; for -the tranquil depths of sorrow and of hope which lie beneath -their clear, melodious words.</p> - -<p>Southey’s larger poetical works are fashioned of two -materials which do not always entirely harmonize. First, -material brought from his own moral nature; his admiration -of something elevated in the character of man or -woman—generosity, gentleness, loyalty, fortitude, faith. -And, secondly, material gathered from abroad; mediæval -pomps of religion and circumstance of war; Arabian marvels, -the work of the enchanters and the genii; the wild -beauties and adventure of life amid New-World tribes; the -monstrous mythology of the Brahman. With such material -the poet’s inventive talent deals freely, rearranges details -or adds to them; still Southey is here rather a <em>finder</em> -than a <em>maker</em>. His diligence in collecting and his skill -in arranging were so great that it was well if the central -theme did not disappear among manifold accessories. One -who knows Southey, however, can recognize his ethical -spirit in every poem. Thalaba, as he himself confessed, -is a male Joan of Arc. Destiny or Providence has marked -alike the hero and the heroine from mankind; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> -sheepfold of Domremi, and the palm-grove by old Moath’s -tent, alike nurture virgin purity and lofty aspiration. Thalaba, -like Joan, goes forth a delegated servant of the Highest -to war against the powers of evil; Thalaba, like Joan, -is sustained under the trials of the way by the sole talisman -of faith. We are not left in doubt as to where Southey -found his ideal. Mr. Barbauld thought <cite>Joan of Arc</cite> -was modelled on the Socinian Christ. He was mistaken; -Southey’s ideal was native to his soul. “Early admiration, -almost adoration of Leonidas; early principles of -Stoicism derived from the habitual study of Epictetus, -and the French Revolution at its height when I was just -eighteen—by these my mind was moulded.” And from -these, absorbed into Southey’s very being, came Thalaba -and Joan.</p> - -<p>The word <em>high-souled</em> takes possession of the mind as -we think of Southey’s heroic personages. Poetry, he held, -ought rather to elevate than to affect—a Stoical doctrine -transferred to art, which meant that his own poetry was -derived more from admiration of great qualities than from -sympathy with individual men or women. Neither the -quick and passionate tenderness of Burns nor the stringent -pathos of Wordsworth can be found in Southey’s verse. -No eye probably ever shed a tear over the misery of Ladurlad -and his persecuted daughter. She, like the lady -in <cite>Comus</cite>, is set above our pity and perhaps our love. In -<cite>Kehama</cite>, a work of Southey’s mature years, the chivalric -ardour of his earlier heroes is transformed into the sterner -virtues of fortitude and an almost despairing constancy. -The power of evil, as conceived by the poet, has grown -more despotic; little can be achieved by the light-winged -Glendoveer—a more radiant Thalaba—against the Rajah; -only the lidless eye of Seeva can destroy that tyranny of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> -lust and pride. <cite>Roderick</cite> marks a higher stage in the development -of Southey’s ethical ideal. Roderick, too, is a -delegated champion of right against force and fraud; he -too endures mighty pains. But he is neither such a combatant, -pure and intrepid, as goes forth from the Arab -tent, nor such a blameless martyr as Ladurlad. He is first -a sinner enduring just punishment; then a stricken penitent; -and from his shame and remorse he is at last uplifted -by enthusiasm, on behalf of his God and his people, into -a warrior saint, the Gothic Maccabee.</p> - -<p><cite>Madoc</cite> stands somewhat away from the line of Southey’s -other narrative poems. Though, as Scott objected, -the personages in <cite>Madoc</cite> are too nearly abstract types, -Southey’s ethical spirit dominates this poem less than any -of the others. The narrative flows on more simply. The -New-World portion tells a story full of picturesque incident, -with the same skill and grace that belong to Southey’s -best prose writings. Landor highly esteemed <cite>Madoc</cite>. -Scott declared that he had read it three times since his -first cursory perusal, and each time with increased admiration -of the poetry. Fox was in the habit of reading aloud -after supper to eleven o’clock, when it was the rule at St. -Ann’s Hill to retire; but while <cite>Madoc</cite> was in his hand, he -read until after midnight. Those, however, who opened -the bulky quarto were few: the tale was out of relation -with the time; it interpreted no need, no aspiration, no -passion of the dawn of the present century. And the -mind of the time was not enough disengaged to concern itself -deeply with the supposed adventures of a Welsh prince -of the twelfth century among the natives of America.</p> - -<p>At heart, then, Southey’s poems are in the main the -outcome of his moral nature; this we recognize through -all disguises—Mohammedan, Hindoo, or Catholic. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> -planned and partly wrote a poem—<cite>Oliver Newman</cite>—which -should associate his characteristic ideal with Puritan -principles and ways of life. The foreign material -through which his ethical idea was set forth went far, -with each poem, to determine its reception by the public. -Coleridge has spoken of “the pastoral charm and wild, -streaming lights of the <cite>Thalaba</cite>.” Dewy night moon-mellowed, -and the desert-circle girdled by the sky, the -mystic palace of Shedad, the vernal brook, Oneiza’s favourite -kidling, the lamp-light shining rosy through the -damsel’s delicate fingers, the aged Arab in the tent-door—these -came with a fresh charm into English narrative poetry -eighty years ago. The landscape and the manners -of Spain, as pictured in <cite>Roderick</cite>, are of marked grandeur -and simplicity. In <cite>Kehama</cite>, Southey attempted a bolder -experiment; and although the poem became popular, even -a well-disposed reader may be allowed to sympathize with -the dismay of Charles Lamb among the monstrous gods: -“I never read books of travels, at least not farther than -Paris or Rome. I can just endure Moors, because of their -connexion as foes with Christians; but Abyssinians, Ethiops, -Esquimaux, Dervises, and all that tribe I hate. I believe -I fear them in some manner. A Mohammedan turban -on the stage, though enveloping some well-known -face, ... does not give me unalloyed pleasure. I am a -Christian, Englishman, Londoner, Templar. God help me -when I come to put off these snug relations, and to get -abroad into the world to come.”</p> - -<p>Though his materials are often exotic, in style Southey -aimed at the simplicity and strength of undefiled English. -If to these melody was added, he had attained all he desired. -To conversations with William Taylor about German -poetry—certainly not to Taylor’s example—he ascribes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> -his faith in the power of plain words to express in -poetry the highest thoughts and strongest feelings. He -perceived, in his own day, the rise of the ornate style, -which has since been perfected by Tennyson, and he regarded -it as a vice in art. In early years Akenside had -been his instructor; afterwards he owed more to Landor -than to any other master of style. From <cite>Madoc</cite> and <cite>Roderick</cite>—both -in blank-verse—fragments could be severed -which might pass for the work of Landor; but Southey’s -free and facile manner, fostered by early reading of Ariosto, -and by constant study of Spenser, soon reasserts itself; -from under the fragment of monumental marble, -white almost as Landor’s, a stream wells out smooth and -clear, and lapses away, never dangerously swift nor mysteriously -deep. On the whole, judged by the highest -standards, Southey’s poetry takes a midmost rank; it neither -renders into art a great body of thought and passion, -nor does it give faultless expression to lyrical moments. -But it is the output of a large and vigorous mind, amply -stored with knowledge; its breath of life is the moral -ardour of a nature strong and generous, and therefore it -can never cease to be of worth.</p> - -<p>Southey is at his best in prose. And here it must be -borne in mind that, though so voluminous a writer, he did -not achieve his most important work, the <cite>History of Portugal</cite>, -for which he had gathered vast collections. It cannot -be doubted that this, if completed, would have taken a -place among our chief histories. The splendour of story -and the heroic personages would have lifted Southey into -his highest mood. We cannot speak with equal confidence -of his projected work of second magnitude, the -<cite>History of the Monastic Orders</cite>. Learned and sensible it -could not fail to be, and Southey would have recognized<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> -the more substantial services of the founders and the -brotherhoods; but he would have dealt by methods too -simple with the psychology of religious emotions; the -words enthusiasm and fraud might have risen too often to -his lips; and at the grotesque humours of the devout, -which he would have exhibited with delight, he might -have been too prone to smile.</p> - -<p>As it is, Southey’s largest works are not his most admirable. -<cite>The History of Brazil</cite>, indeed, gives evidence of -amazing patience, industry, and skill; but its subject necessarily -excludes it from the first rank. At no time -from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century was Brazil a -leader or a banner-bearer among lands. The life of the -people crept on from point to point, and that is all; there -are few passages in which the chronicle can gather itself -up, and transform itself into a historic drama. Southey -has done all that was possible; his pages are rich in facts, -and are more entertaining than perhaps any other writer -could have made them. His extraordinary acquaintance -with travel gave him many advantages in narrating the -adventures of early explorers; and his studies in ecclesiastical -history led him to treat with peculiar interest the -history of the Jesuit Reductions.</p> - -<p><cite>The History of the Peninsular War</cite> suffers by comparison -with the great work of Sir William Napier. That -heroic man had himself been a portion of the strife; his -senses, singularly keen, were attuned to battle; as he wrote, -the wild bugle-calls, the measured tramp, the peals of musketry, -the dismal clamour, sounded in his ears; he abandoned -himself again to the swiftness and “incredible -fury” of the charge. And with his falcon eye he could -discern amid the shock or formless dispersion, wherever -hidden, the fiery heart of victory. Southey wrought in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> -his library as a man of letters; consulted sources, turned -over manuscripts, corresponded with witnesses, set his material -in order. The passion of justice and an enthusiasm -on behalf of Spain give unity to his work. If he estimated -too highly the disinterestedness and courage of the -people of the Peninsula, the illusion was generous. And -it may be that enduring spiritual forces become apparent -to a distant observer, which are masked by accidents of -the day and hour from one who is in their midst.</p> - -<p>History as written by Southey is narrative rendered -spiritual by moral ardour. There are no new political -truths, he said. If there be laws of a nation’s life other -than those connected with elementary principles of morality, -Southey did not discover these. What he has written -may go only a little way towards attaining the ultimate -ends of historical study, but so far as it goes it keeps the -direct line. It is not led astray by will-o’-the-wisp, vague-shining -theories that beguile night wanderers. Its method -is an honest method as wholesome as sweet; and simple -narrative, if ripe and sound at first, is none the less so at -the end of a century.</p> - -<p>In biography, at least, one may be well pleased with -clear and charming narrative. Here Southey has not been -surpassed, and even in this single province he is versatile; -he has written the life of a warrior, of a poet, and of a -saint. His industry was that of a German; his lucidity -and perfect exposition were such as we rarely find outside -a French memoir. There is no style fitter for continuous -narrative than the pedestrian style of Southey. It does -not beat upon the ear with hard, metallic vibration. The -sentences are not cast by the thousand in one mould of -cheap rhetoric, nor made brilliant with one cheap colour. -Never dithyrambic, he is never dull; he affects neither the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> -trick of stateliness nor that of careless ease; he does not -seek out curiosities of refinement, nor caress delicate affectations. -Because his style is natural, it is inimitable, and -the only way to write like Southey is to write well.</p> - -<p>“The favourite of my library, among many favourites;” -so Coleridge speaks of the <cite>Life of Wesley</cite>—“the book I -can read for the twentieth time, when I can read nothing -else at all.” And yet the schoolboy’s favourite—the <cite>Life -of Nelson</cite>—is of happier inspiration. The simple and -chivalric hero, his splendid achievements, his pride in duty, -his patriotism, roused in Southey all that was most strong -and high; but his enthusiasm does not escape in lyrical -speech. “The best eulogy of Nelson,” he says, “is the -faithful history of his actions; the best history that which -shall relate them most perspicuously.” Only when all is -over, and the captain of Trafalgar lies dead, his passion and -pride find utterance:—“If the chariot and the horses of -fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson’s translation, he could -scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory.” From -Nelson on the quarter-deck of the <i>Victory</i>, to Cowper caressing -his tame hares, the interval is wide; but Southey, -the man of letters, lover of the fireside, and patron of -cats, found it natural to sympathize with his brother poet. -His sketches of literary history in the <cite>Life of Cowper</cite> are -characteristic. The writer’s range is wide, his judgment -sound, his enjoyment of almost everything literary is lively; -as critic he is kindly yet equitable. But the highest -criticism is not his. Southey’s vision was not sufficiently -penetrative; he culls beauties, but he cannot pluck out the -heart of a mystery.</p> - -<p>His translations of romantic fiction, while faithful to -their sources, aim less at literal exactitude than at giving -the English reader the same pleasure which the Spaniard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> -receives from the originals. From the destruction of Don -Quixote’s library Master Nicholas and the curate spared -<cite>Amadis of Gaul</cite> and <cite>Palmerin of England</cite>. Second to -Malory’s grouping of the Arthur cycle <cite>Amadis</cite> may well -take its place. Its chivalric spirit, its wildness, its tenderness -and beauty, are carefully preserved by the translator. -But Southey’s chief gift in this kind to English readers is -<cite>The Cid</cite>. The poem he supposed, indeed, to be a metrical -chronicle instead of a metrical romance—no fatal error; -weaving together the best of the poem, the ballads and the -chronicle, he produced more than a mere compilation. “I -know no work of the kind in our language,” wrote Coleridge, -“none which, uniting the charms of romance and -history, keeps the imagination so constantly on the wing, -and yet leaves so much for after-reflection.”</p> - -<p>Of Southey’s political writings something has been said -in a former chapter. Among works which can be brought -under no general head, one that pleased the public was -<cite>Espriella’s Letters</cite>, sketches of English landscape, life, and -manners, by a supposed Spanish traveller. The letters, giving -as they do a lively view of England at the beginning -of the present century, still possess an interest. Apart -from Southey’s other works stands <cite>The Doctor</cite>; nowhere -else can one find so much of his varied erudition, his genial -spirits, his meditative wisdom. It asks for a leisurely -reader content to ramble everywhere and no whither, and -still pleased to take another turn because his companion -has not yet come to an end of learning, mirth, or meditation. -That the author of a book so characteristic was not -instantly recognized, is strange. “The wit and humour -of <cite>The Doctor</cite>,” says Edgar Poe, a keen critic, “have seldom -been equalled. We cannot think Southey wrote -it.” Gratitude is due to Dr. Daniel Dove from innumerable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> -“good little women and men,” who have been delighted -with his story of <cite>The Three Bears</cite>. To know that -he had added a classic to the nursery would have been the -pride of Southey’s heart. Wide eyes entranced and peals -of young laughter still make a triumph for one whose -spirit, grave with a man’s wisdom, was pure as the spirit -of a little child.</p> - -<p class="titlepage">THE END.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Recollections of Corston, somewhat in the manner of Goldsmith’s -<cite>Deserted Village</cite>, will be found in Southey’s early poem, <cite>The -Retrospect</cite>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Carmen Nuptiale: Proem, 18.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> I find in a Catalogue of English Poetry, 1862, the following -passage from an autograph letter of S. T. Coleridge, dated Bristol, -July 16, 1814, then in Mr. Pickering’s possession: “I looked over -the first five books of the first (quarto) edition of <cite>Joan of Arc</cite> yesterday, -at Hood’s request, in order to mark the lines written by me. -I was really astonished—1, at the schoolboy, wretched allegoric machinery; -2, at the transmogrification of the fanatic Virago into a -modern Novel-pawing proselyte of the Age of Reason, a Tom Paine -in petticoats, but so lovely! and in love more dear! ‘<cite>On her rubied -cheek hung pity’s crystal gem</cite>;’ 3, at the utter want of all rhythm in -the verse, the monotony and the dead plumb down of the pauses, and -of the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew in the single lines.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See Southey’s article on “Dr. Sayers’s Works,” <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, -January, 1827.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Harriet Martineau: Autobiography, i. p. 300.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See her “History of the Peace,” B. vi. chap. xvi.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> For Westall’s drawing, and the description of Walla Crag, see -“Sir Thomas More:” Colloquy VI.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>I. e.</i>, to go to Davies’ lodgings; Davies, Dr. Bell’s Secretary, was -engaged in arranging a vast accumulation of papers with a view to -forwarding Southey in his <cite>Life of Bell</cite>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The words quoted by Southey are his own, written in 1809.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> “With the Cape and New Holland I would proceed thus:—‘Govern -yourselves, and we will protect you as long as you need protection; -when that is no longer necessary, remember that though we -be different countries, each independent, we are one people.’”—R. S. -to W. S. Landor. Letters, vol. ii. p. 263.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Sara Coleridge.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Mrs. Wilson—then aged seventy-two.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> To certain false allegations of fact made by Byron, Southey replied -in <cite>The Courier</cite>, and reprinted his letters in <cite>Essays, Moral and -Political</cite>, vol. ii. pp. 183-205.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<h2>VALUABLE AND INTERESTING WORKS<br /> -<span class="smaller">FOR</span><br /> -PUBLIC & PRIVATE LIBRARIES,</h2> - -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.</span></p> - -<p>☞ <i>For a full List of Books suitable for Libraries published by <span class="smcap">Harper & -Brothers</span>, see <span class="smcap">Harper’s Catalogue</span>, which may be had gratuitously -on application to the publishers personally, or by letter enclosing Ten -Cents in postage stamps.</i></p> - -<p>☞ <i><span class="smcap">Harper & Brothers</span> will send their publications by mail, postage prepaid, -on receipt of the price.</i></p> - -<div class="hanging"> - -<p>MACAULAY’S ENGLAND. 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