Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey

by Robert Southey

  Southey was at that time (1807), and has continued ever since, the most industrious of all literary men on record. A certain task he prescribed to himself every morning before breakfast. This could not be a very long one, for he breakfasted at nine, or soon after, and never rose before eight, though he went to bed duly at half-past ten; but, as I have many times heard him say, less than nine hours’ sleep he found insufficient. From breakfast to a latish dinner (about half after five or six) was his main period of literary toil. After dinner, according to the accident of having or not having visitors in the house, he sat over his wine, or he retired to his library again, from which, about eight, he was summoned to tea. But, generally speaking, he closed his literary toils at dinner; the whole of the hours after that meal being dedicated to his correspondence. This, it may be supposed, was unusually large, to occupy so much of his time, for his letters rarely extended to any length. At that period, the post, by way of Penrith, reached Keswick about six or seven in the evening. And so pointedly regular was Southey in all his habits that, short as the time was, all letters were answered on the same evening which brought them. At tea, he read the London papers. It was perfectly astonishing to men of less methodical habits to find how much he got through of elaborate business by his unvarying system of arrangement in the distribution of his time. We often hear it said, in accounts of pattern ladies and gentlemen (what Coleridge used contemptuously to style goody people), that they found time for everything; that business never interrupted pleasure; that labours of love and charity never stood in the way of courtesy and personal enjoyment. This is easy to say — easy to put down as one feature of an imaginary portrait: but I must say that in actual life I have seen few such cases. Southey, however, did find time for everything. It moved the sneers of some people, that even his poetry was composed according to a predetermined rule; that so many lines should be produced, by contract, as it were, before breakfast; so many at such another definite interval. And I acknowledge that so far I went along with the sneerers as to marvel exceedingly how that could be possible. But, if a priori one laughed and expected to see verses corresponding to this mechanic rule of construction, a posteriori one was bound to judge of the verses as one found them. Supposing them good, they were entitled to honour, no matter for the previous reasons which made it possible that they would not be good. And generally, however undoubtedly they ought to have been bad, the world has pronounced them good. In fact, they are good; and the sole objection to them is, that they are too intensely objective — too much reflect the mind, as spreading itself out upon external things — too little exhibit the mind as introverting itself upon its own thoughts and feelings. This, however, is an objection which only seems to limit the range of the poetry — and all poetry is limited in its range: none comprehends more than a section of the human power.

  Meantime, the prose of Southey was that by which he lived. The Quarterly Review it was by which, as he expressed it to myself in 1810, he “made the pot boil.” About the same time, possibly as early as 1808 (for I think that I remember in that Journal an account of the Battle of Vimiera), Southey was engaged by an Edinburgh publisher (Constable, was it not?) to write the entire historical part of the Edinburgh Annual Register, at a salary of £400 per annum. Afterwards, the publisher, who was intensely national, and, doubtless, never from the first cordially relished the notion of importing English aid into a city teeming with briefless barristers and variety of talent, threw out a hint that perhaps he might reduce the salary to £300. Just about this time I happened to see Southey, who said laughingly—”If the man of Edinburgh does this, I shall strike for an advance of wages.” I presume that he did strike, and, like many other “operatives,” without effect. Those who work for lower wages during a strike are called snobs, the men who stand out being nobs. Southey became a resolute nob; but some snob was found in Edinburgh, some youthful advocate, who accepted £300 per annum, and thenceforward Southey lost this part of his income. I once possessed the whole work: and in one part, viz. the Domestic Chronicle, I know that it is executed with a most culpable carelessness — the beginnings of cases being given without the ends, the ends without the beginnings — a defect but too common in public journals. The credit of the work, however, was staked upon its treatment of the current public history of Europe, and the tone of its politics in times so full of agitation, and teeming with new births in every year, some fated to prove abortive, but others bearing golden promises for the human race. Now, whatever might be the talent with which Southey’s successor performed his duty, there was a loss in one point for which no talent of mere execution could make amends. The very prejudices of Southey tended to unity of feeling: they were in harmony with each other, and grew out of a strong moral feeling, which is the one sole secret for giving interest to an historical narration, fusing the incoherent details into one body, and carrying the reader fluently along the else monotonous recurrences and unmeaning details of military movements.

  Well or ill directed, a strong moral feeling, and a profound sympathy with elementary justice, is that which creates a soul under what else may well be denominated, Miltonically, “the ribs of death.” Now this, and a mind already made up even to obstinacy upon all public questions, were the peculiar qualifications which Southey brought to the task — qualifications not to be bought in any market, not to be compensated by any amount of mere intellectual talent, and almost impossible as the qualifications of a much younger man.

  As a pecuniary loss, though considerable, Southey was not unable to support it; for he had a pension from Government before this time, and under the following circumstances: — Charles Wynne, the brother of Sir Watkin, the great autocrat of North Wales — that C. W. who is almost equally well known for his knowledge of Parliamentary usage, which pointed him out to the notice of the House as an eligible person to fill the office of Speaker, and for his unfortunately shrill voice, which chiefly it was that defeated his claim — (in fact, as is universally known, his brother and he, for different defects of voice and utterance, are called Bubble and Squeak) — this C. W. had believed himself to have been deeply indebted to Southey’s high-toned moral example, and to his wise counsels, during the time when both were students at Oxford, for the fortunate direction given to his own wavering impulses. This sense of obligation he endeavoured to express by settling a pension upon Southey from his own funds. At length, upon the death of Mr. Pitt, early in 1806, an opening was made for the Fox and Grenville parties to come into office. Charles Wynne, as a person connected by marriage with the house of Grenville, and united with them in political opinions, shared in the golden shower; he also received a place; and, upon the strength of his improving prospects, he married: upon which it occurred to Southey, that it was no longer right to tax the funds of one who was now called upon to support an establishment becoming his rank. Under that impression he threw up his pension; and upon their part, to express their sense of what they considered a delicate and honourable sacrifice, the Grenvilles placed Southey upon the national pension list.

  What might be the exact colour of Southey’s political creed in this year, 1807, it is difficult to say. The great revolution, in his way of thinking upon such subjects, with which he has been so often upbraided as something equal in delinquency to a deliberate tergiversation or moral apostasy, could not have then taken place; and of this I am sure, from the following little anecdote connected with this visit: — On the day after my own arrival at Greta Hall, came Wordsworth following upon my steps from Penrith. We dined and passed that evening with Mr. Southey. The next morning, after breakfast, previously to leaving Keswick, we were sitting in Southey’s library; and he was discussing with Wordsworth the aspect of public affairs: for my part, I was far too diffident to take any part in such a conversation, for I had no opinions at all upon politics, nor any interest in public affairs, further than that I had a keen sympathy with the national honour, gloried in the name of Englishman, and had been bred up in a frenzied horror of jacobinism. N
ot having been old enough, at the first outbreak of the French Revolution, to participate (as else, undoubtedly, I should have done) in the golden hopes of its early dawn, my first youthful introduction to foreign politics had been in seasons and circumstances that taught me to approve of all I heard in abhorrence of French excesses, and to worship the name of Pitt; otherwise my whole heart had been so steadily fixed on a different world from the world of our daily experience, that, for some years, I had never looked into a newspaper; nor, if I cared something for the movement made by nations from year to year, did I care one iota for their movement from week to week. Still, careless as I was on these subjects, it sounded as a novelty to me, and one which I had not dreamed of as a possibility, to hear men of education and liberal pursuits — men, besides, whom I regarded as so elevated in mind, and one of them as a person charmed and consecrated from error — giving utterance to sentiments which seemed absolutely disloyal. Yet now did I hear — and I heard with an emotion of sorrow, but a sorrow that instantly gave way to a conviction that it was myself who lay under a delusion, and simply because

  — —”from Abelard it came” —

  opinions avowed most hostile to the reigning family; not personally to them, but generally to a monarchical form of government. And that I could not be mistaken in my impression, that my memory cannot have played me false, is evident, from one relic of the conversation which rested upon my ear, and has survived to this day — thirty and two years from the time. It had been agreed, that no good was to be hoped for, as respected England, until the royal family should be expatriated; and Southey, jestingly considering to what country they could be exiled, with mutual benefit for that country and themselves, had supposed the case — that, with a large allowance of money, such as might stimulate beneficially the industry of a rising colony, they should be transported to New South Wales; which project, amusing his fancy, he had, with the readiness and facility that characterizes his mind, thrown extempore into verse; speaking off, as an improvisatore, about eight or ten lines, of which the three last I perfectly remember, and they were these (by the way I should have mentioned that they took the form of a petition addressed to the King): —

  “Therefore, old George, by George we pray Of thee forthwith to extend thy sway Over the great Botanic Bay.”

  The sole doubt I have about the exact words regards the second line, which might have been (according to a various reading which equally clings to my ear) —

  “That thou would’st please to extend thy sway.”

  But about the last I cannot be wrong; for I remember laughing with a sense of something peculiarly droll in the substitution of the stilted phrase—”the great Botanic Bay,” for our ordinary week-day name Botany Bay, so redolent of thieves and pickpockets.

  Southey walked with us that morning for about five miles on our road towards Grasmere, which brought us to the southern side of Shoulthwaite Moss, and into the sweet solitary little vale of Legbesthwaite. And, by the way, he took leave of us at the gate of a house, one amongst the very few (five or six in all) just serving to redeem that valley from absolute solitude, which some years afterwards became, in a slight degree, remarkable to me from two little incidents by which it connected itself with my personal experiences. One was, perhaps, scarcely worth recording. It was simply this — that Wordsworth and myself having, through a long day’s rambling, alternately walked and rode with a friend of his who happened to have a travelling carriage with him, and who was on his way to Keswick, agreed to wait hereabouts until Wordsworth’s friend, in his abundant kindness, should send back his carriage to take us, on our return to Grasmere, distant about eight miles. It was a lovely summer evening; but, as it happened that we ate our breakfast early, and had eaten nothing at all throughout a long summer’s day, we agreed to “sorn” upon the goodman of the house, whoever he might happen to be, Catholic or Protestant, Jew, Gentile, or Mahometan, and to take any bone that he would be pleased to toss to such hungry dogs as ourselves. Accordingly we repaired to his gate; we knocked, and, forthwith it was opened to us by a man-mountain, who listened benignantly to our humble request, and ushered us into a comfortable parlour. All sorts of refreshments he continued to shower upon us for a space of two hours: it became evident that our introducer was the master of the house: we adored him in our thoughts as an earthly providence to hungry wayfarers; and we longed to make his acquaintance. But, for some inexplicable reason, that must continue to puzzle all future commentators on Wordsworth and his history, he never made his appearance. Could it be, we thought, that, without the formality of a sign, he, in so solitary a region, more than twentyfive miles distant from Kendal (the only town worthy of the name throughout the adjacent country), exercised the functions of a landlord, and that we ought to pay him for his most liberal hospitality? Never was such a dilemma from the foundation of Legbesthwaite. To err, in either direction, was damnable: to go off without paying, if he were an innkeeper, made us swindlers; to offer payment if he were not, and supposing that he had been inundating us with his hospitable bounties simply in the character of a natural-born gentleman, made us the most unfeeling of mercenary ruffians. In the latter case we might expect a duel; in the former, of course, the treadmill. We were deliberating on this sad alternative, and I, for my part was voting in favour of the treadmill, when the sound of wheels was heard, and, in one minute, the carriage of his friend drew up to the farmer’s gate; the crisis had now arrived, and we perspired considerably; when in came the frank Cumberland lass who had been our attendant. To her we propounded our difficulty — and lucky it was we did so, for she assured us that her master was an awful man, and would have “brained” us both if we had insulted him with the offer of money. She, however, honoured us by accepting the price of some female ornament.

  I made a memorandum at the time, to ascertain the peculiar taste of this worthy Cumberland farmer, in order that I might, at some future opportunity, express my thanks to him for his courtesy; but, alas! for human resolutions, I have not done so to this moment; and is it likely that he, perhaps sixty years old at that time (1813), is alive at present, twenty-five years removed? Well, he may be; though I think that exceedingly doubtful, considering the next anecdote relating to the same house: — Two, or, it may be, three years after this time, I was walking to Keswick, from my own cottage in Grasmere. The distance was thirteen miles; the time just nine o’clock; the night a cloudy moonlight, and intensely cold. I took the very greatest delight in these nocturnal walks through the silent valleys of Cumberland and Westmoreland; and often at hours far later than the present. What I liked in this solitary rambling was, to trace the course of the evening through its household hieroglyphics from the windows which I passed or saw: to see the blazing fires shining through the windows of houses, lurking in nooks far apart from neighbours; sometimes, in solitudes that seemed abandoned to the owl, to catch the sounds of household mirth; then, some miles further, to perceive the time of going to bed; then the gradual sinking to silence of the house; then the drowsy reign of the cricket; at intervals, to hear church-clocks or a little solitary chapel-bell, under the brows of mighty hills, proclaiming the hours of the night, and flinging out their sullen knells over the graves where “the rude forefathers of the hamlet slept” — where the strength and the loveliness of Elizabeth’s time, or Cromwell’s, and through so many fleeting generations that have succeeded, had long ago sunk to rest. Such was the sort of pleasure which I reaped in my nightly walks — of which, however, considering the suspicions of lunacy which it has sometimes awoke, the less I say, perhaps, the better. Nine o’clock it was — and deadly cold as ever March night was made by the keenest of black frosts, and by the bitterest of north winds — when I drew towards the gate of our huge and hospitable friend. A little garden there was before the house; and in the centre of this garden was placed an arm-chair, upon which arm-chair was sitting composedly — but I rubbed my eyes, doubting the very evidence of my own eyesight — a or the huge man in his shirt-sleeves; yes,
positively not sunning but mooning himself — apricating himself in the occasional moonbeams; and, as if simple star-gazing from a sedentary station were not sufficient on such a night, absolutely pursuing his astrological studies, I repeat, in his shirt-sleeves! Could this be our hospitable friend, the man-mountain? Secondly, was it any man at all? Might it not be a scarecrow dressed up to frighten the birds? But from what — to frighten them from what at that season of the year? Yet, again, it might be an ancient scarecrow — a superannuated scarecrow, far advanced in years. But, still, why should a scarecrow, young or old, sit in an arm-chair? Suppose I were to ask. Yet, where was the use of asking a scarecrow? And, if not a scarecrow, where was the safety of speaking too inquisitively, on his own premises, to a man-mountain? The old dilemma of the duel or the treadmill, if I should intrude upon his grounds at night, occurred to me; and I watched the anomalous object in silence for some minutes. At length the monster (for such at any rate it was, scarecrow or not scarecrow) solemnly raised his hand to his face, perhaps taking a pinch of snuff, and thereby settled one question. But that settled only irritated my curiosity the more upon a second: what hallucination of the brain was it that could induce a living man to adopt so very absurd a line of conduct? Once I thought of addressing him thus: — Might I presume so far upon your known courtesy to wayfaring strangers as to ask — Is it the Devil who prompts you to sit in your shirt-sleeves, as if meditating a camisade, or to woo al fresco pleasures on such a night as this? But, as Dr. Y., on complaining that, whenever he looked out of the window, he was sure to see Mr. X. lounging about the quadrangle, was effectually parried by Mr. X. retorting that, whenever he lounged in the quadrangle, he was sure to see the Doctor looking out of the window, so did I anticipate a puzzling rejoinder from the former, with regard to my own motives for haunting the roads as a nocturnal tramper, without a rational object that I could make intelligible. I thought, also, of the fate which attended the Calendars, and so many other notorious characters in the “Arabian Nights,” for unseasonable questions, or curiosity too vivacious. And, upon the whole, I judged it advisable to pursue my journey in silence, considering the time of night, the solitary place, and the fancy of our enormous friend for “braining” those whom he regarded as ugly customers. And thus it came about that this one house has been loaded in my memory with a double mystery, that too probably never can be explained: and another torment had been prepared for the curious of future ages.