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instead, the place of a reporter. His apparently hopeless engagement with Miss Fricker pressed upon his mind, and hilarious as he was by nature, and self-possessed under difficulties, he became wasted with anxiety, and expected to sink under the trial. In the midst of his misery he exhibited a quality which manifests itself again and again in his life under every variety of circumstance-his intense delight in the mere act of composition, which is so distasteful to most men. 'I often walked the streets at dinner-time for want of a dinner, when I had not eighteen-pence for the ordinary, nor bread and cheese at my lodgings. But do not suppose that I thought of my dinner when I was walking; my head was full of what I was composing; when I lay down at night I was planning my poem, and when I rose up in the morning the poem was the first thought to which I was awake.' But even the luxuries of composition will not for ever supply the place of food, and his literary expedients being completely exhausted by the summer of 1795, he was compelled by want to return to his mother's house at Bath. He communicated his formal abandonment of the American project to his colleague, who received it without remonstrance, and appeared as cordial as ever, but behind his back denounced him for a villain-a term which seems, in the vocabulary of Coleridge, to have been synonymous with a Pantisocratist. A total breach between them ensued, which lasted till the following year, when Southey, on his return to Bristol, sent up a scrap of paper to Coleridge's lodging, on which he had written, from a play of Schiller, the words, Fiesco! Fies co! thou leavest a void in my bosom which the human race thrice told will never fill up.' Upon this they were once more friends, in spite of Pantisocracy.

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The colonial fraternity was dissolved on the secession of Southey; but the delusion is one which will recur at intervals, and it seemed worth while, for the sake of the moral, to construct a connected narrative from the accumulating documents which have filled up former blanks in the history. The particulars were all related or confirmed by the actors themselves, who, immediately the attempt was abandoned, acknowledged it with one consent to have been as wild as it was futile. Southey had been largely influenced by the reveries of Godwin, and, shortly after the bursting of the bubble, he wrote to Bedford, I have since seen his fundamental error, that he theorises for another state, not for the rule of conduct in the present.' This is the fallacious as

sumption in every plan of the kind. Human nature is supposed to be something entirely different from what it is in fact, and an imaginary world is constructed out of imaginary elements. In the excellence of the materials no set of visionaries can hope, on the whole, to surpass, and few can hope to equal, the Bristol Pantisocratists. In general, the projectors are knaves and the rest are dupes. These young men were honest in their zeal, and believed in themselves. Coleridge had genius, and Southey, in addition to rare talents, was blessed with a cheerful disposition a strong will, untiring industry, and the most perfect rectitude. Yet even he was about to carry with him to the banks of the Susquehannah a predominant feeling which was in complete contravention to the first article of their charter. He avowed, twenty years afterwards, that it was impossible to long more dearly than he did at this time for the honours of authorship. Such a craving was only another name for a love of ascendency, a wish to be conspicuous among his fellow men, and, while talking of Pantisocracy, he really worshipped the sole form of aristocracy to which he himself could hope to attainthe aristocracy of talent. The desire for fame and the desire for equality is a contradiction in terms. The want of a home and a profession, a mind dissatisfied with the world because ill at ease with itself, were the main arguments which turned the thoughts of the brother bards to founding a distant state, in the vague notion that the troubles of their lot would be left behind. A slight variation in their circumstances would have given a different direction to their thoughts. In 1799 Southey visited Coleridge at his mother's house at Ottery. Mrs Coleridge was deaf, but seeing her son Samuel, whose speculative aberrations were not to her taste, arguing with his brothers, she took for granted he was wrong, and cried out, Ah, if your poor father had been alive, he'd soon have convinced you.' The sally amused the circle, but the simple lady had touched the primitive source of the evil. A little paternal influence and counsel would have nipped the folly in the bud, or rather, prevented it from budding. Coleridge was beyond the control of a mother, and having exhausted the family bounty, he appeared to his associates, when preaching Pantisoeracy at Bristol, to be without a relative in the world. Southey's father died about the time that his son went to Oxford, and the widow, far from exercising a wholesome restraint, encouraged the American delusion with all her might, and eager, no doubt, to

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This Miss Cottles kept a school, and it was with them that he boarded his wife during his absence. The marriage was rash in everything except the virtues of the young couple, and they had enjoyed unusual opportunities for knowing that in this respect they were not deceived in each other. They had been almost bred up together, and Southey had for years esteemed Miss Fricker as a sister before he was of an age to dream of making her his wife. The attachment, long cherished in silence, was not avowed till the vision of American plenty led him to imagine that a competency was secured, and when all hope of realizing the scenes of pastoral poetry was gone, it was hardly in his power to retrace his steps. The issue vindicated the improvident match. He traced all his happiness to his early union, and when, in 1834, the mind of Mrs. Southey gave way, and it was necessary to remove her to an asylum, he said, in one of the pathetic letters which he wrote on the occasion, that for forty years she had been the life of his life.' On her death, in 1837, he drew her domestic character in a few simple words, which have the soberness of truth, and show that he could not possibly have chosen better. helpmate-no children a more careful mother. No family was ever more wisely ordered, no housekeeping ever conducted with greater prudence or greater comfort. Everything was left to her management, and managed so quietly and so well that, except in times of sickness and sorrow, I had literally no cares."

escape from the pressure of straitened | Bristol had been told the news before night, circumstances, resolved to be of the party. with strict injunctions to let it go no furSouthey remained with his mother at ther. Southey possessed at this time the Bath till the middle of November, chiefly self-denial and endurance of a man, but he employed in remodelling Joan of Arc.' exhibited more than a boyish simplicity in An admirable uncle, the Reverend Herbert his ignorance of the world. Hill, who paid the expenses of his nephew at Oxford, came home in August, on leave of absence from Lisbon, where he was chaplain to the British Factory. He strongly urged Southey to revert to his original destination and enter into orders. For implicit faith to comply with this request he would have given, he said, every intellectual gift he possessed, but it was only by perjury that he could pass in at the door. His uncle next proposed to take him for a few months to Lisbon, with the secret view of weaning him from his hot-brained theories and his attachment to Miss Fricker. The parting from his love was, in his own mind, the objection to the plan. Weary, however, he said, of refusing all his mother's wishes, and conscious that the time must pass unpleasantly anywhere, he consented to go. His exhausted finances had doubtless the principal share in the determination. He paid his debts at Bristol with funds advanced by Cottle for a volume of miscellaneous pooms, which were not yet prepared for the press, and there was no further prospect of profitable employment. One portion of his uncle's intentions he took care to frustrate by uniting himself to Miss Fricker on the very morning he set out on his travels, November 14th, 1795. They shook hands after the ceremony and parted in silence. Such was Southey's poverty at the time that Cottle furnished the money for the ring and fees. It was intended that the marriage should remain a secret, and the bride called herself by her maiden name, and wore her wedding-ring round her neck. When her husband got to Falmouth, a letter from his brother-in-law overtook him, informing him that the intelligence was already public. Considering the sensation which he and Coleridge had excited in Bristol by lectures, conversation, poetry, and Pantisocracy, and that according to his own account he was wondered at by all, hated by the Aristocrats, and was the very oracle of his party,' he might have been sure that the parson and clerk would not permit so notable a marriage to pass unobserved, to say nothing of the numerous whispering channels which were established through Mrs. Fricker and her six daughters, and the two Miss Cottles, and all the confidential friends of each of these ladies. With so many centres of communication, it is probable that the whole of

No man ever had a truer

Southley landed in England May 15, 1796, after an absence of six months. What he considered the principal advantages of his Peninsular residence, the acquaintance with the language, literature, and localities of Spain and Portugal, was, we are persuaded, an unpropitious event, which has been extremely detrimental to his fame. His attention became directed to those countries in an especial degree, and he was led to make them the subject of the voluminous works upon which he relied for the larger part of his reputation with posterity. His scheme for the History of Portugal included its dependencies, and the only portion he completed-the History of Brazil,' -is related with fatal minuteness. Neither the scenes nor the events have much in

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terest for Englishmen, and the bulky re- socratic friends, and the result of the excord lies neglected and almost forgotten. periment might well induce him to mistrust His History of the Peninsular War,' the power of his remedy to regenerate nawhich was another result of the predilec- tions. Above all, he was tasting the sweets tion he acquired in his travels, is equally of domestic life, and, happy in himself, he unread, for no civilian can be an authority had lost his passion for re-modelling the on military movements; and we need not world. His republicanism was virtually at be surprised at the statement of the Duke an end. Total apathy had succeeded to of Wellington, that Southey had signally excitement, and when an interest in public misapprehended his battles and campaigns. affairs was rekindled in him, advancing Had he remained at home during the criti- years and understanding had modified his cal period when his tastes were becoming views. There was, however, a long interfixed, he would have selected an English mediate period, and by his own statement theme for his chief productions; the minute- it was not till he was forty that his opinions ness of his narrative on topics which ap-upon all important subjects were matured pealed to national sympathies would have and settled.' In the subsequent heats of enhanced their value, and, instead of de- party he was frequently stigmatized for a pending for most of his popularity upon the renegade. Never was the imputation less minor writings which he thought unworthy deserved. Mine,' he said truly, has of his powers, his fame would have been been a straight-onward path. Nothing more associated with some standard history of has taken place in me than the ordinary our language and literature. The best-laid process of beer or wine-of fermenting, and schemes sometimes turn out the worst; settling, and ripening.' His youthful errors and the journey to Lisbon was, we believe, were simply those of a warm heart and an in its permanent consequences, the most immature judgment, and every candid perunfortunate step in Southey's life. son will admit the justice of his assertion, that he had no more reason to be ashamed of having been a republican than of having been a boy.

In other respects, change of place and society may have hastened the alteration in his political sentiments which time before long would have effected at home. His uncle, who was struck with his uncommon qualities of head and heart, and said that he had everything except common sense, detected little difference in his notions, for, as in all such cases, he continued formally to profess his creed when it was rapidly losing its hold upon his mind. His letters show that the lessons of experience had not been thrown away upon him. The horrors of the French Revolution, though he endeavoured to separate them from the cause in which they were perpetrated, affected him deeply. In Portugal he blessed himself that he was an Englishman, and came to the conclusion that if his own country was not an El Dorado, it was yet better than any other. He had no sooner got back to it than he exclaimed, How does time mellow down our opinions! Little of that ardent enthusiasm which so lately fevered my whole character remains.' A twelvemonth later (June, 1797), he mentions, that he never saw a newspaper and never thought of one. There was a time,' he wrote a few days afterwards, when I believed in the persuadability of man, and had the mania of man-mending. Experience has taught me better. The ablest physician can do little in the great lazarhouse of society. He acts the wisest part who retires from the contagion.' He had tried his panacea upon a few select Panti

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Southey returned from Portugal with 187. in his pocket, the balance of 30/. which he received for his journey from his uncle. The money for the copyright of Joan of Arc' had been expended on the board of his wife during his absence. He was Cottle's debtor in a volume of miscellaneous poems, for which he had already been paid the stipulated thirty guineas. He had to discharge this obligation and to find ways and means of living till Christmas. He immediately commenced that life of patient literary toil from which he never swerved again while health and intellect remained, and which must be numbered among the most memorable and instructive examples in the annals of authorship. One overwhelming propensity,' he wrote in 1800, has formed my destiny, and marred all prospects of rank and wealth; but it has made me happy, and will make me immortal.' A later retrospect confirms the assertion. I have been,' he said in 1809, 'in as many situations of real suffering as falls to any man's lot between the years of seventeen and twenty-two. But since that time no man's life can have passed more smoothly.' The period from which he dates his felicity had just arrived, and he shut himself up with his newly-restored wife and gave full swing to his literary passion. By the close of the year he had

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completed his poems and a volume of brow-beating methods' employed at the Letters on Spain and Portugal.' Of Common Law bar, partly because he disthese letters Cottle was also the purchaser, and week by week he advanced the author, who had taken a lodging in Bristol, the small sum which sufficed for his frugal wants. He at the same time became a contributor to the Monthly Magazine,' which added no great deal to his finances. The remuneration was only five guineas for sixteen closely-printed pages, and his earnings from it in the first eight months amounted to seven pounds and two pair of breeches. His earliest contributions were chiefly poetical, and he sent such pieces as were not worth printing in a collection of his own. The proceeds of his subscription copies of Joan of Arc' came in aid of

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The new year brought a change. Among the dearest of his school and college intimates was Mr. Wynn, who, though by no means rich, promised, when he was of age and had the control of his inheritance, to allow Southey 1607. a year. The first quarterly payment of this generous annuity commenced in January, 1797. Southey was possessed of lofty independence and a delicate sense of honour and propriety, and nothing could afford more conclusive evidence how free were his friendships from every notion of grovelling selfishness than that, with such a nature, he should have taken, without misgiving, the proffered bounty. A mean man would have been indifferent to the obligation, a proud and worldly man would not have incurred it, and it was only one whose warm affections were without the least alloy of baser motives that could at once have felt the full force of the favour and not have hesitated to accept it. He knew that the friendship which was worthy of the name was not a mercantile transaction; that it kept no debtor and creditor account; and that noble natures gave and received with no other sentiments than those which appertain to the heart. Had the money, he said, been his own, he would have retired from the world, and lived without one wish unsatisfied; but, endowed with youth, energy, and talents, he justly considered that the proper use to be made of the gift was to employ it in a way which would enable him to dispense with it. In this design he determined to study the law.

In February, 1797, he entered at Gray's Inn, and shortly after took a lodging at No. 20, Prospect Place, Newington Butts. His intention was to practise in Chancery, partly because he shrunk from the 'coarse,

But

covered from conversational contests that he was easily disconcerted by a confident adversary, was deficient in quickness, and could not hit at the moment upon the right answer to a bad argument; but chiefly he selected equity because he could not take any share in prosecuting a capital case without the entire sacrifice of his peace of mind. People were then hanged for such trivial offences that humane mnen might well refuse to countenance the system; and Sir Arthur Pigott, when he had risen to the top of his profession, declared that he never would accept a seat on the bench, from his invincible objection to act as a criminal judge. Southey's scruples were of a more sweeping kind. Were I,' he says, 'to be instrumental in bringing a murderer to the gallows, I should ever after feel that I had become a murderer myself.' That this was then a principle, and not the mere tenderness of a sensitive heart, is probable both from the notion having been common among the partisans of the French Revolution, and from his eagerness, in later life, to refute the Quaker dogma of the unlawfulness of resistance and of putting any man to death. He planned and commenced a poem, with a Quaker for the hero, and the main purpose of the story was to bring him into a position in which his conscience would oblige him to kill a villain on the spot. There could have been no peculiar force in this method of arguing the question, for it would have been the conscience of Southey, and not the conscience of the imaginary Quaker, which would have, compelled the deed; but that the Laureate should have constructed such elaborate machinery for so trivial a purpose is a sure sign that the doctrine once had had a strong hold on his mind. It was frequently objected to him, in his calmer days, that he wrote with unwonted bitterness against the principles which he himself had formerly entertained. This of all the descriptions of intolerance is held to be the worst; but, though it is a temper to be discouraged, there is a redeeming motive for it. The errors which a man has experienced in his own person are those of which he has the greatest knowledge, and which, from that very circumstance, appear to himself to be the most pernicious.

While Southey was weighing the comparative advantages of Common Law and Equity, it must have been evident to any sagacious acquaintance that he would never become a lawyer at all. He entered upon

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the study with aversion and contempt. He teous gravity. When the stranger had finsaid it was a horrid jargon, a quibbling ished her meal, she asked what she had to collection of voluminous nonsense. He had pay. Nothing, ma'am,' said Mrs. Southey, no desire to attain distinction in it, nor any senior. Nothing! why, how is this?' intention of attempting to rise above a third- I don't know how it is, but so it is,' rate practitioner. His wishes were bounded replied her hostess. What! don't you by 500l. a year, of which he hoped to hoard keep a public?' said the intruder. There half, that he might be in a position, before were not a few peculiar parallels in the his life was far spent, to throw aside the history of the Lake Poets. When Wordswig and gown altogether. He resolved, in worth went to reside at Grasmere, the the meanwhile, that poetry should secretly house he hired was the 'Dove and Olive share the time with Coke and Blackstone, Branch.' The year which Southey spent the only legal works he ever possessed; in the Westbury 'public' was always reand of this slender provision the Coke was membered by him as one of the happiest borrowed. I commit wilful murder,' he portions of his life. It was one also of the wrote to Coleridge, on my own intellect busiest. I never,' he said in 1838, 'beby drudging at law; but trust the guilt is fore or since produced so much poetry in partly expiated by the candle-light hours the same space of time.' allotted to Madoc.' In such a temper he From the commencement of his legal naturally studied with an averted mind, training he had done much more in literawhich was impatient to get to its favourite ture than steal to 'Madoc' in the evening. pursuit; and the dry technicalities passed, In March, 1797, he was translating from hour after hour, over his closed understand the French the second volume of Necker ing without being suffered to penetrate it. on the Revolution, at the rate of sixteen The eye read, the lips pronounced, I un-printed pages a-day. At the same period derstood and re-read it, it was very clear; he was drawing up a series of Essays for I remembered the page, the sentence, but the Monthly Magazine,' on Spanish and close the book and all was gone.' He cal- Portuguese poetry. In April, 1798, he led it thrashing straw; and that very con- agreed to furnish the Morning Post' with viction prevented his getting at the grain. occasional verses for a guinea a-week. An additional trial was the obligation im- December of the preceding year he became posed upon him to live in London; for an a regular contributor to the Critical Reunconquerable heaviness oppressed him as view;' and though he avowedly bestowed often as he breathed its atmosphere; and no pains upon his accounts of books, the he was continually fretted by the vices, mere penmanship absorbed a vast amount follies, and miseries which met his eye. of time. His motive for performing this For the country he had a passion. Here ungrateful task-work was not to add to his every object of nature appealed to his own annuity, which sufficed for his wants, fine sensibilities, and filled him with joy. but to enable him to assist his needy relaHe made his escape from his first town tives. He had his younger brothers to esresidence in the beginning of June, 1797, tablish in the world; his mother was in and took a lodging at Burton, near Christ- straitened circumstances; his mother-in-law church. The autumn was spent with his was poorer still. He had a cousin, Mar. mother at Bath; and in the end of Novem- garet, who was an object of his bounty; ber he returned to keep his terms; but the and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell, was now following February he had fled again to the a widow, and destitute. To answer every West on account of the ill-health of his call of beneficence which grew out of famiwife; and after a few visits among his ly ties was to him as natural as to breathe. friends, he removed with his mother at the He welcomed the duty without a hesitation Midsummer of 1798 to the village of West- or a murmer, and surrounded by a circle bury, near Bristol, where he took a house of connexions less prosperous than himself, for a twelvemonth. to his honour be it spoken, he remained to the last a Pantisocratist in his home.

The abode they selected had been previously an inn, and the new-comers were expected to sell beer. Just as they had assembled one morning, a respectable woman, in a silk gown, walked into their apartment, and laying down her muff, and seating herself by the fire, said, 'I am come to take a little breakfast.' Southey was obliged to leave the room to laugh; but his wife and mother entertained their guest with cour

VOL. XCVIII.

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The multifarious compositions which he threw off to maintain his charities did not, however, any more than the law engage the principal part of his attention. His mind was bent on the elaboration of some poem which the world would not let die; and the world had given him greater encouragement to indulge the expectation than we should at present suppose, if we

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