He 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 by him for some years, and the result is an Portugal in 1795, most of the critical jour- illustration of one of his predominant. nals supported the republican doctrines characteristics. When he originally finishwhich pervaded his epic. They praised ed it, he professed that he had done it the poetry for the sake of the principles, thoroughly to his own satisfaction.' and the public, who rejected the principles, commenced revising it in the latter end of accepted the verdict. The sensation his 1803, and found it so faulty that, in his work created was, he says, such as to own language, he pulled it down to build a revive the epomania of which Boileau had better edifice on the same ground. The cured the French a hundred and twenty reconstruction cost him a twelvemonth's years before. The sale proved the success. hard work. While the labour was proHis own receipts from Joan of Arc' and ceeding, he declared that the renovated the little volume of poems were 1387. 12s. portion was fit to be read to Spenser himCottle, the bookseller, had cleared by self if he were upon earth-Spenser being them 2507. up to the middle of 1799, and selected because he just then ranked him he then sold the remainder of the copy- higher than Milton, though he was not alright for 3707. In negotiating, in 1800, the ways steady in this preference. When the sale of Thalaba,' the next of his long poem was published in 1805, he again blew poems which issued from the press, Southey a note of triumph. I am satisfied with it; remarked that, even if it were worthless, and, die when I may, my monument is his name alone would carry it through an made. That I shall one day have a monuedition. Yet the whole of his celebrity ment in St. Paul's is more certain than I was derived at that time from his juvenile should choose to say to everybody.' 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 revolutionary passages which had originally won for him the good word of the reviewers. His literary friends did not assist to enlighten him, if we may infer the opinions of the rest from the excessive but honest admiration of Lamb. "With "Joan of Arc," he wrote to Coleridge at the period when the two great pillars of Pantisocracy were not upon terms, I have been delighted and amazed; I had not presumed to expect anything of such excellence from 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 be,' he said, 'my monument; all else are the defect, nor hardly his best passages. the mere efforts of apprenticeship.' The excessive expansion of language with which he spread out his ideas is one cause why none of his lines have passed into The poem upon which he intended to rest his fame was completed in 1799, and became perceptible to him, and he made up his mind to alter the catastrophe in the next edition. These fluctuations of feeling had equally occurred in the case of Joan of Arc,' and were repeated with every successive poem. The high opinion he entertained of his compositions while they were fresh explains the delight he derived from authorship; and as his calmer judgment of his past pieces never affected his satisfaction with the one in hand, the pleasure was perennial. proverbial use. In his maturity he composed 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 Westbury 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 difficulty 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 mythologies, and his imagination could not dispense with these aids. create an active interest, and the mind is not hurried on by the animation of the nar rative, 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 pub. licity.' 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. 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. He did 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 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 ill health, with that unabated ardour which lous young man,' he says to William Tay- '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. His earliest business during his present and last sojourn was to finish Thalaba.' He forwarded it to London in October, 1800, and sold his first edition of a thousand copies for 1157. He now found, to his astonishment, that neither the merits of the poem itself, nor the name of the author of Joan of Arc,' attracted purchasers, and it was seven years before the edition was exhausted. 'I was once A more extensive labour than the completion of Thalaba' was the collection of materials for his history of Portugal. He searched archives, transcribed manuscripts, pored over chronicles, and visited the scenes of remarkable actions. In the midst of these occupations he received an intimation from Mr. Wynn that there was the chance of procuring him the secretaryship to some Italian legation, and, in obedience to the summons, he hastened to England, where he arrived in July, 1801. The expectation was disappointed. He had now abandoned all idea of the law, and in celebration of his joyful release from bondage he burnt his Blackstone. afraid,' he wrote on the occasion, 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.' But it was not easy to find a substitute. The foreign expedition,' he said, 'that has restored my health has at the same time picked my pocket.' He had sunk a year's labour while abroad amassing stores for future works; he had been at a considerable expense for Portuguese and Spanish books, his journeys had raised his living to a much greater cost than at home, and he made allowances to his mother, his brother Henry, and his cousin Margaret. Unless these circum stances were enumerated we should form a very imperfect idea of his merits, for the brave and cheerful spirit with which he bore his formidable burthens, and the industry which enabled him to support them, are not the common attributes of humanity, but distinguishing traits of this great and admirable man. For a short period fortune seemed to smile upon him and relieve him from his difficulties. He was appointed private secretary to Mr. Corry, the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a salary of about 3501. a year. He went to Dublin in October, 1801, and found the Chancellor absent. What did I,' he says, characteristically, but open Madoc," and commenced the great labour of rebuilding it.' It is by these trifles that his literary ardour is most forcibly illustrated. He might well aver that he would rather leave off eating than poetising.' After spending about a fortnight in Dublin he returned with Mr. Corry to London. The duties at the outset seemed ludicrously light, but it ultimately turned out that the Chancellor, under the name of a secretary, wanted a tutor for his son, and as the poet, notwithstanding the precedent of Milton, declined to turn pedagogue, the engagement came to an end in the summer of 1802. In the meanwhile he had resumed his ancient task-work. Once more he was rhyming for the Morning Post,' reviewing for his old repository the Critical,' and for a new publication, the 'Annual Review,' which was set on foot at the beginning of 1802. When, at the end of 1805, he talked of abandoning this vexatious drudgery, he mentioned that the proceeds had been about 901. a-year. Small as were the profits for the large amount of letterpress he furnished, they were the only satisfaction he derived from it. I take too little pleasure,' he said, and too little pride in such work to do it well. Their honesty is their best part.' Whatever groans he uttered were usually extorted by this portion of his toils. But patience!' he exclaimed: it is, after all, better than pleading in a stinking court of law, or being called up at midnight to a patient; it is better than being a soldier or a sailor-better than calculating profits and loss on a counter-better, in short, than anything but independence.' Other minor employments were all crowded into the year 1802. He undertook to abridge an old version of 'Amadis of Gaul,' and prefix an essay. The work was published in four vols. in 1803; and as he had to retranslate a considerable portion of the book, it proved a laborious undertaking. All this time his main employment was the History of Portugal.' He could have made double the income if he would have devoted his pen exclusively to temporary topics; but he cared more for future fame than for ease or money, and having provided for the hour which was passing over him, he vigorously bestowed every remaining moment on his cherished schemes. He began to find the composition of his history' a greater, quieter, and more continuous pleasure' than poetry itself, and though doomed never to be completed, it made rapid progress during this and the two following years. The political events of 1806 attracted attention to the American part of the subject, and hoping to hoist his sail where there was wind to fill it, he diverted his attention from the mother to 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, would not suffer him to be elevated above the level of tranquillity, and no discouragement could depress him below it. 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.' In His mother died in January, 1802. 1804 he had reason to believe, what proved unfounded, that his eldest brother, an officer in the royal navy, had fallen in battle. On both these occasions he uttered the same reflections-that no one was left with whom he could talk of his early days-that it was a desolating thought to have so many feelings and recollections which not a being on earth could share, and that it seemed to him like the loss of so much of his existence. He spoke of the felicity of his life, and of his desire to complete the great works he had planned, but wished the task done, and the time spent, that he might rejoin in another world the relatives who had passed away. These are the sentiments of a man whose affections were both tender and lasting, who clung with fondness to every kindly association, and felt that to break the links In the execution, as invariably happened with him, the work would greatly have exceeded its projected limits and who in England was to wade through a score of massive quartos upon Portugal? When William Taylor asked him the question, he answered, that one day he should by other means have made such a reputation that it would be thought a thing of course to read them.' His more usual avowal was that the reputation would be won by the history itself. Thus he reasoned in a circle: his history was to get him reputation, and his reputation was to get readers for his history. Neither result ensued. On the publication of the third and last volume of the 'Brazils,' the reception of the former two had destroyed his expectation of present popularity; but, driven from this hope, he took refuge in posterity. 'What effect,' he said, will the book produce? None that will be heard of. To this apparently desponding was to deprive him of a precious part of preface he adds, with inextinguishable buoyancy of sanguine anticipation, that ages hence it will be found among the works which are not destined to perish.' '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 his being. The sorrow was manifested with far greater intensity on the death, in August, 1803, of his eldest child, an infant of a year old. It almost broke his heart; 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 |