by him for some years, and the result is an illustration of one of his predominant characteristics. When he originally finished it, he professed that he had done it thoroughly to his own satisfaction.' commenced revising it in the latter end of 1803, and found it so faulty that, in his own language, he pulled it down to build a better edifice on the same ground. The reconstruction cost him a twelvemonth's hard work. While the labour was proceeding, he declared that the renovated portion was fit to be read to Spenser himself if he were upon earth-Spenser being selected because he just then ranked him higher than Milton, though he was not always steady in this preference. When the poem was published in 1805, he again blew a note of triumph. I am satisfied with it; and, die when I may, my monument is made. That I shall one day have a monument in St. Paul's is more certain than I should choose to say to everybody.'

Yet

were to judge by the works he had hither- Coleridge advised him to give it to the to produced. The cause of this has been world without delay. He resolved instead, explained by himself. When Joan of to follow the advice of Horace, and keep it Arc' was published during his absence in Portugal in 1795, most of the critical journals supported the republican doctrines which pervaded his epic. They praised the poetry for the sake of the principles, and the public, who rejected the principles, accepted the verdict. The sensation his work created was, he says, such as to revive the epomania of which Boileau had cured the French a hundred and twenty years before. The sale proved the success. His own receipts from Joan of Arc' and the little volume of poems were 1387. 12s. Cottle, the bookseller, had cleared by them 2507. up to the middle of 1799, and he then sold the remainder of the copyright for 3701. In negotiating, in 1800, the sale of Thalaba,' the next of his long poems which issued from the press, Southey remarked that, even if it were worthless, his name alone would carry it through an edition. Yet the whole of his celebrity was derived at that time from his juvenile epic, and so little was he aware of the the work had only been a few months source of its popularity that he pruned before the world, when the faults again from the second edition many of the revo- became perceptible to him, and he made lutionary passages which had originally up his mind to alter the catastrophe in the won for him the good word of the review- next edition. These fluctuations of feeling ers. His literary friends did not assist to had equally occurred in the case of Joan enlighten him, if we may infer the opinions of Arc,' and were repeated with every of the rest from the excessive but honest successive poem. The high opinion he admiration of Lamb. • With "Joan of entertained of his compositions while they Arc," he wrote to Coleridge at the period were fresh explains the delight he derived when the two great pillars of Pantisocracy from authorship; and as his calmer judg were not upon terms, 'I have been delight- ment of his past pieces never affected his ed and amazed; I had not presumed to ex- satisfaction with the one in hand, the pleapect anything of such excellence from sure was perennial. Southey. On the whole I expect him one Southey's mention of the quantity of day to rival Milton; I already deem him poetry which he produced at Westbury equal to Cowper, and superior to all living brings before us another of his habits. The poets besides.' Notwithstanding such enormous number of bad pieces which he tributes, Southey soon became conscious of had penned from childhood upwards taught the literary defects of his first attempt to him, he said, to write better. It may be emulate the Homers and Miltons: and we doubted rather whether it did not teach find him, in October, 1799, writing to him a dangerous facility. There have William Taylor, If I live, I may, and been persons, such as Lord Byron, who believe I shall, make a good workman; have combined strength with rapidity, and but at present I am only a promising one." whose violent emotions seemed almost Judging, therefore, from the flattering spontaneously to assume the form of reception of what he was aware was a crude passionate verse. Southey's effusions were and imperfect performance, he naturally of a tamer kind. His delight in his own inferred that better pieces would secure conceptions did not call up a correspondhim still greater renown. 'Madoc' was ing force of expression, but when he wrote the grand theme which, in this expectation, fast he was betrayed into languid diffuseengaged his care at Westbury. It shall ness. His best poems are not free from the defect, nor hardly his best passages. The excessive expansion of language with which he spread out his ideas is one cause why none of his lines have passed into

be,' he said, 'my monument; all else are the mere efforts of apprenticeship.'

The poem upon which he intended to rest his fame was completed in 1799, and

proverbial use. In his maturity he com-
posed with greater deliberation and care;
but, accustomed, when he was incapable of
higher excellences, to consider metre as
identical with poetry, he never quite threw
off the pernicious practice he then acquired
of putting commonplace particulars into
tedious verse.
If his successive revisions
had been chiefly confined to correction and
condensation, he would have done much to
diminish the evil, but he was less inclined
to polish than to cut away by wholesale
and engraft a new, and usually a larger
limb. The fresh insertion was thus liable
to the same defects as the part which had
been removed; and when we can compare
the different versions, it is evident that the
poem seldom gained, and sometimes lost,
by the process.
After his propensity to
diffuseness had been pointed out to him he
could not perceive it. During his West-
bury residence he projected a tragedy.
The difficulty,' he wrote to Mr. Wynn,
'which I find in every subject that has
occurred to me, is to make enough of it. I
cannot wiredraw a story. This will seem
odd to you who think me prolix and dilated.'
What he mistook for conciseness was
a want of fertility of invention. The diffi-
culty in conducting a story is to keep it
alive with incident and movement, and this
was an art in which he was peculiarly de
ficient. His fancy chiefly displayed itself
in description. His poems were always
based upon chronicles, travels, and mytho-
logies, and his imagination could not dis-
pense with these aids.

create an active interest, and the mind is not hurried on by the animation of the narrative, or often detained by the transcendent charm of isolated beauties.

But we are still at the period when, full of hope and energy, he believed that he had the power to scale the heights of Parnassus. In addition to Madoc,' he poured forth a profusion of lesser pieces. He published a second volume of Minor Poems,' with Cottle, and in the beginning of 1799 prepared a volume of Miscellanies at the suggestion of William Taylor of Norwich, under the title of the Annual Anthology.' It proved only a biennial. This collection contained contributions from several hands, but with a preponderance of pieces from the prolific editor under various signatures. He had not abandoned his intention of being called to the bar, and he wished to conceal his service to the Muse from attornies jealous of a divided duty. His secret was necessarily entrusted to many, and his name was given in some of the journals by thoughtless critics eager to communicate any fragment of literary gossip to the public. In reviewing anonymous works myself, when I have known the authors,' said Southey on the occasion, I have never mentioned them, taking it for granted they had sufficient motives for avoiding the publicity.' The perpetual violation of this rule of propriety in the present day makes it desirable that the sentiments of a man should be known whose fine perception of honourable conduct was among his most conspicuous qualities. The tasks we have enumerated would have occupied the lifetime of slower or lazier bards. They were insufficient to fill up Southey's year. He planned a work in three volumes, to be called the Kalendar,' in which every day that had some distinguishing characteristic was to be the subject of a poem. not advance far in the scheme, which no skill could have redeemed from insufferable dulness. The greatest mistake of Southey's literary career was to have wasted his strength upon ill-chosen topics.

He did

It was another defect that his sense of harmony was imperfect, and here again the facility with which the boy-poet was satisfied had contributed, we suspect, to render him less exacting than if he had commenced later, or had composed more sparingly when he was young. He acknowledged himself that he was a very negligent versifier. Mine is an easy, good-natured ear, tickled at sounds which would jar that of any other person.' His general estimation of his poetical labours suffered some abatement in his later years, and he cer- Southey numbered it among the happiest tainly in the end was inclined to rest the recollections of Westbury that it was the larger share of his fame upon his prose period at which he became intimate with compositions. Me judice,' he said in 1805, Davy. This surprising youth had come to I am a good poet, but a better historian; Bristol in 1798, when he was hardly twenty because, though I read other poets and am years of age, to superintend an establishhumbled, I read other historians with a ment called the Pneumatic Institution,' very different feeling.' Apart from oc- which had just been founded by Dr. Bedcasional fits of reviving fondness for his does. Southey immediately detected the poetic offspring, this was his settled opi- extraordinary powers of his new associate. nion. The public has hitherto confirmed You shall see Davy,' he writes to Bedford, his judgment. Great as is the talent dis-the young chemist, the young everything, played in his verse, it fails on the whole to the man least ostentatious of first talent

that I have ever known.' 'He is a miracu- Southey's health broke down under the lous young man,' he says to William Tay- multiplicity of his employments. Sedenlor, whose talent I can only wonder at. tary habits brought on a nervous affection I have never witnessed such indefatigable towards the close of 1798. It went on activity in any other person, nor ardour increasing, and ended, in the autumn of regulated by so cool a judgment.' He was the following year, in a nervous fever. then experimenting upon the effects on the He abandoned his task-work, but rest human system of inhaling gases, and in did not restore him, and his physicians spite of the panegyric on the coolness of advised him to go abroad. The prescriphis judgment, his scientific enthusiasm was tion fell in with his wishes. He longed to abundantly mingled with rashness. He continue his researches into the political nearly killed himself by breathing carbu- and literary history of Portugal, and in retted hydrogen gas, and the first faint April, 1800, he once again bent his course words he uttered to his alarmed assistant, to Lisbon. The morning after he finished as consciousness began to return, were, I'Madoc' he began Thalaba,' in spite of don't think I shall die.' He permanently ill health, with that unabated ardour which injured his health by these daring efforts to was one of his remarkable characteristics, get at the secrets of nature. But what and completed a hundred lines before breakSouthey hailed with especial satisfaction fast. Eight books were wound off by the was the discovery of the properties of the time he started, and it was his original nitrous oxide, which hitherto had been intention to sell the copyright to pay the deemed irrespirable. He was affected by expenses of his journey, but his old schoola smaller quantity than anybody else. It fellow, Elmsley, saved him by the gift of produced in him an idiotic laughter, a de- 1007. from the necessity of hurrying his lirium of pleasurable sensations. The very poem through the press. Southey never tips and toes of his fingers seemed to courted favours, and the spontaneous libelaugh in concert and his teeth to vibrate rality of his friends testifies of itself in the with delight. His hilarity was increased strongest manner to the impression made throughout the day, and no dejection en- upon them by his worth and talents. The sued when the agreeable effects had passed Lisbon packet was detained six days at away. The results varied with the dispo- Falmouth by contrary winds, and Southey sition of the subject. His own was joyous, seized the opportunity to compose half a and his natural cheerfulness was exalted book of Thalaba. Ill and at an inn surby the stimulus. Others were rendered rounded by bustle and waiting with anxious pugnacious, and one young lady, after in- expectation to depart, the author predomihaling the gas, rushed impetuously down nated over all, and the process of versethe street and leaped over a large dog making went ceaselessly on. which stood in her path. Davy was a poet, and it was in Southey's Anthology' that those juvenile pieces appeared which, though they have the faults of undisciplined genius, show that if he had not been absorbed by science he would have been famous in literature. He heard and applauded Madoc' at Westbury, and Southey was a constant visitor at the Pneumatic Institution, where he seldom failed to regale himself with the wonder-working gas. Few things in life can be conceived more delightful than the constant intercourse between these two gifted and ardent men, both brimful of talent and knowledge, and both luxuriating in that early feeling of conscious power and eager inquiry which, like many other early pleasures, can never be renewed in its pristine strength.

'The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth.'

It was not merely climate,' Southey wrote from Cintra, July 25, 1800, that I wished to seek as medicinal-it was the plunging into new scenes, the total abandonment of all irksome thoughts and employments. It has succeeded.' The palpitations of the heart, the nervous fears, the troubled nights, were exchanged for the extremest health and spirits. He continued for some years after he came home to dwell with delight upon the perpetual exhilaration of a climate that not merely, as he said, prolonged life, but gave him double the life while it lasted. The mere act of breathing was a positive pleasure. The principal drawback was the want of a friend, which he numbered among the necessaries of existence as essential almost as air and water.' Yet even this he would have foregone for the sake of the enjoyment of a southern atmosphere, and when he got back to England, his fondest hope, never to be realized, was that he might obtain a situation in Lisbon which would enable him to return and make it his adopted country.

the dependent country, and in twelve | sons who had been treated with comparayears succeeded in finishing the History tive neglect. He got to believe that the of the Brazils,' in three vols. 4to. I fame which, like Jonah's gourd, had shot leave nothing to be gleaned after me,' he up rapidly, would, like the gourd, wither exclaimed exultingly, regardless of the rapidly away, and that if his own was of maxim of Voltaire, Woe be to him who slow, it would be of permanent, growth. says everything upon a subject that can This doctrine reconciled him to his abortive be said.' It was the more ill-advised that plans and bootless toil, and enabled him to Southey acknowledged that, though the persevere in what to more diffident men country was fine, its history was not. But would have been a disheartening course. bulky as was his work on Brazil, it sinks He continued, in short, to defy the indifinto insignificance by the side of the entire ference of the public because he was a scheme for the History of Portugal, which public to himself. No work of mine,' he was sketched by him as follows in 1804 :- said, after experience had taught him how little he was to expect from an unwise generation, could possibly occasion less. sensation in its appearance than it does on me. Then my solicitude ends-the brood is fledged, and has left its nest.' It would have been otherwise if his books had been looked for with impatience and read with avidity. Their cold reception, as it was,

1. History of Portugal-the European part 3 vols. 2. History of the Portuguese Empire in Asia, 2 or 3 vols. 3. History of Brazil. 4. History of the Jesuits in Japan. 5. Literary History of Spain and Portugal, 2 vols. 6. History of Monachism. In all, ten, eleven, or twelve quarto volumes; and you cannot easily imagine with what pleasure I look at all the labour before me.'

would not suffer him to be elevated above the level of tranquillity, and no discourageIn the execution, as invariably hap-ment could depress him below it. pened with him, the work would greatly His mother died in January, 1802. have exceeded its projected limits-and 1804 he had reason to believe, what proved who in England was to wade through a unfounded, that his eldest brother, an score of massive quartos upon Portugal? officer in the royal navy, had fallen in When William Taylor asked him the battle. On both these occasions he utquestion, he answered, that one day he tered the same reflections-that no one should by other means have made such was left with whom he could talk of his a reputation that it would be thought a early days-that it was a desolating thought thing of course to read them.' His more to have so many feelings and recollections usual avowal was that the reputation would which not a being on earth could share, and be won by the history itself. Thus he that it seemed to him like the loss of so reasoned in a circle: his history was to much of his existence. He spoke of the get him reputation, and his reputation was felicity of his life, and of his desire to comto get readers for his history. Neither plete the great works he had planned, but result ensued. On the publication of the wished the task done, and the time spent, third and last volume of the 'Brazils,' the that he might rejoin in another world the reception of the former two had destroyed relatives who had passed away. These his expectation of present popularity; but, are the sentiments of a man whose affecdriven from this hope, he took refuge in tions were both tender and lasting, who posterity. What effect,' he said, will clung with fondness to every kindly asthe book produce? None that will be sociation, and felt that to break the links heard of. To this apparently desponding was to deprive him of a precious part of preface he adds, with inextinguishable his being. The sorrow was manifested buoyancy of sanguine anticipation, that with far greater intensity on the death, in ages hence it will be found among the August, 1803, of his eldest child, an infant works which are not destined to perish.' of a year old. It almost broke his heart; 'With regard to "Kehama,' ," he wrote in and when in less than a twelvemonth after a similar frame of mind, I was perfectly another little girl supplied her place, he, aware that I was planting acorns, while my who thought it a duty not needlessly to contemporaries were setting Turkey beans. foster feelings which might again be laceThe oak will grow, and though I may nev-rated, determined to love her with the er sit under its shade, my children will.' Vanity was his principal foible, and his self-exaltation was rendered doubly offensive by his envious disparagement of his most celebrated contemporaries. His highest eulogiums were reserved for per

wary wisdom of one who had tasted the bitterness of the anguish. The attempt to stifle emotions which were lurking within him could not long be successful, and he was later drawn into a deeper love than his first, and suffered a still more over