Of Southey, meantime, I had learned, upon this brief and hurried visit, so much in confirmation or in extension of my tolerably just preconceptions with regard to his character and manners, as left me not a very great deal to add, and nothing at all to alter, through the many years which followed of occasional intercourse with his family, and domestic knowledge of his habits. A man of more serene and even temper could not be imagined; nor more uniformly cheerful in his tone of spirits; nor more unaffectedly polite and courteous in his demeanour to strangers; nor more hospitable in his own wrong — I mean by the painful sacrifices which hospitality entailed upon him of time so exceedingly precious that, during his winter and spring months of solitude, or whenever he was left absolute master of its distribution, every half hour in the day had its peculiar duty. In the still “weightier matters of the law,” in cases that involved appeals to conscience and high moral principle, I believe Southey to be as exemplary a man as can ever have lived. Were it to his own instant ruin, I am satisfied that he would do justice and fulfil his duty under any possible difficulties, and through the very strongest temptations to do otherwise. For honour the most delicate, for integrity the firmest, and for generosity within the limits of prudence, Southey cannot well have a superior; and, in the lesser moralities — those which govern the daily habits, and transpire through the manners — he is certainly a better man — that is (with reference to the minor principle concerned), a more amiable man — than Wordsworth. He is less capable, for instance, of usurping an undue share of the conversation; he is more uniformly disposed to be charitable in his transient colloquial judgments upon doubtful actions of his neighbours; more gentle and winning in his condescensions to inferior knowledge or powers of mind; more willing to suppose it possible that he himself may have fallen into an error; more tolerant of avowed indifference towards his own writings (though, by the way, I shall have something to offer in justification of Wordsworth, upon this charge); and, finally, if the reader will pardon a violent instance of anti-climax, much more ready to volunteer his assistance in carrying a lady’s reticule or parasol.
As a more amiable man (taking that word partly in the French sense, partly also in the loftier English sense), it might be imagined that Southey would be a more eligible companion than Wordsworth. But this is not so; and chiefly for three reasons which more than counterbalance Southey’s greater amiability: first, because the natural reserve of Southey, which I have mentioned before, makes it peculiarly difficult to place yourself on terms of intimacy with him; secondly, because the range of his conversation is more limited than that of Wordsworth — dealing less with life and the interests of life — more exclusively with books; thirdly, because the style of his conversation is less flowing and diffusive — less expansive — more apt to clothe itself in a keen, sparkling, aphoristic form — consequently much sooner and more frequently coming to an abrupt close. A sententious, epigrammatic form of delivering opinions has a certain effect of clenching a subject, which makes it difficult to pursue it without a corresponding smartness of expression, and something of the same antithetic point and equilibration of clauses. Not that the reader is to suppose in Southey a showy master of rhetoric and colloquial sword-play, seeking to strike and to dazzle by his brilliant hits or adroit evasions. The very opposite is the truth. He seeks, indeed, to be effective, not for the sake of display, but as the readiest means of retreating from display, and the necessity for display: feeling that his station in literature and his laurelled honours make him a mark for the curiosity and interest of the company — that a standing appeal is constantly turning to him for his opinion — a latent call always going on for his voice on the question of the moment — he is anxious to comply with this requisition at as slight a cost as may be of thought and time. His heart is continually reverting to his wife, viz. his library; and, that he may waste as little effort as possible upon his conversational exercises — that the little he wishes to say may appear pregnant with much meaning — he finds it advantageous, and, moreover, 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; in short, aiming at brevity for the company as well as for himself, by cutting off all opening for discussion and desultory talk through the sudden winding up that belongs to a sententious aphorism. The hearer feels that “the record is closed”; and he has a sense of this result as having been accomplished by something like an oracular laying down of the law ex cathedra: but this is an indirect collateral impression from Southey’s manner, and far from the one he meditates or wishes. An oracular manner he does certainly affect in certain dilemmas of a languishing or loitering conversation; not the peremptoriness, meantime, not the imperiousness of the oracle is what he seeks for, but its brevity, its dispatch, its conclusiveness.
Finally, as a fourth reason why Southey is less fitted for a genial companion than Wordsworth, his spirits have been, of late years, in a lower key than those of the latter. The tone of Southey’s animal spirits was never at any time raised beyond the standard of an ordinary sympathy; there was in him no tumult, no agitation of passion; his organic and constitutional sensibilities were healthy, sound, perhaps strong — but not profound, not excessive. Cheerful he was, and animated at all times; but he levied no tributes on the spirits or the feelings beyond what all people could furnish. One reason why his bodily temperament never, like that of Wordsworth, threw him into a state of tumultuous excitement which required intense and elaborate conversation to work off the excessive fervour, was, that, over and above his far less fervid constitution of mind and body, Southey rarely took any exercise; he led a life as sedentary, except for the occasional excursions in summer (extorted from his sense of kindness and hospitality), as that of a city tailor. And it was surprising to many people, who did not know by experience the prodigious effect upon the mere bodily health of regular and congenial mental labour, that Southey should be able to maintain health so regular, and cheerfulness so uniformly serene. Cheerful, however, he was, in those early years of my acquaintance with him; but it was manifest to a thoughtful observer that his golden equanimity was bound up in a threefold chain, — in a conscience clear of all offence, in the recurring enjoyments from his honourable industry, and in the gratification of his parental affections. If any one cord should give way, there (it seemed) would be an end to Southey’s tranquillity. He had a son at that time, Herbert Southey, a child in petticoats when I first knew him, very interesting even then, but annually putting forth fresh blossoms of unusual promise, that made even indifferent people fear for the safety of one so finely organized, so delicate in his sensibilities, and so prematurely accomplished. As to his father, it became evident that he lived almost in the light of young Herbert’s smiles, and that the very pulses of his heart played in unison to the sound of his son’s laughter. There was in his manner towards this child, and towards this only, something that marked an excess of delirious doating, perfectly unlike the ordinary chastened movements 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 perceived, as if already he had lost him; which, for the latter years of the boy’s life, seemed to poison the blessing of his presence.
A stronger evidence I cannot give of Southey’s trembling apprehensiveness about this child than that the only rude thing I ever knew him to do, the only discourteous thing, was done on his account. A party of us, chiefly composed of Southey’s family and his visitors, were in a sailboat upon the lake. Herbert was one of this party; and at that time not above five or six years old. In landing upon one of the islands, most of the gentlemen were occupied in assisting the ladies over the thwarts of the boat; and one gentleman, merely a stranger, observing this, good-naturedly took up Herbert in his arms, and was stepping with him most carefully from thwart to thwar
t, when Southey, in a perfect frenzy of anxiety for his boy, his “moon” as he used to call him (I suppose from some pun of his own, or some mistake of the child’s upon the equivocal word sun), rushed forward, and tore him out of the arms of the stranger without one word of apology; nor, in fact, under the engrossing panic of the moment, lest an unsteady movement along with the rocking and undulating of the boat should throw his little boy overboard into the somewhat stormy waters of the lake, did Southey become aware of his own exceedingly discourteous action: fear for his boy quelled his very power of perception. That the stranger, on reflection, understood; a race of emotions travelled over his countenance. I saw the whole, a silent observer from the shore. First a hasty blush of resentment mingled with astonishment: then a good-natured smile of indulgence to the naïveté of the paternal feeling as displaying itself in the act, and the accompanying gestures of frenzied impatience; finally, a considerate, grave expression of acquiescence in the whole act; but with a pitying look towards father and son, as too probably destined under such agony of affection to trials perhaps insupportable. If I interpreted aright the stranger’s feelings, he did not read their destinies amiss. Herbert became, with his growing years, a child of more and more hope; but, therefore, the object of more and more fearful solicitude. He read, and read; and he became at last
“A very learned youth” —
to borrow a line from his uncle’s beautiful poem on the wild boy who fell into a heresy whilst living under the patronage of a Spanish grandee, and finally escaped from a probable martyrdom by sailing up a great American river, wide as any sea, after which he was never heard of again. The learned youth of the river Greta had an earlier and more sorrowful close to his career. Possibly from want of exercise, combined with inordinate exercise of the cerebral organs, a disease gradually developed itself in the heart. It was not a mere disorder in the functions, it was a disease in the structure of the organ, and admitted of no permanent relief, consequently of no final hope. He died; and with him died for ever the golden hopes, the radiant felicity, and the internal serenity, of the unhappy father. It was from Southey himself, speaking without external signs of agitation, calmly, dispassionately, almost coldly, but with the coldness of a settled despondency, that I heard, whilst accompanying him through Grasmere on his road homewards to Keswick from some visit he had been paying to Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, his settled feelings and convictions as connected with that loss. For him, in this world, he said, happiness there could be none; for his tenderest affections, the very deepest by many degrees which he had ever known, were now buried in the grave with his youthful and too brilliant Herbert!
SOUTHEY AND THE EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER
De Quincey’s recollection of the Edinburgh Annual Register in connexion with Southey is altogether erroneous. Though there had been a project of some periodical of the kind by the Constable publishing house as early as 1807, the enterprise was not started till 1809, and then not by Constable at all, but actually in opposition to Constable by the new Edinburgh publishing house of John Ballantyne, — or rather, one might say, of Scott and Ballantyne, for Scott (secretly Ballantyne’s partner already for a long while in his printing business) was Ballantyne’s real backer and principal in the whole of this new concern. In a letter of Scott’s to his friend Merritt, of date 14th January 1809, after announcing the great fact that a Quarterly Review was forthcoming to counteract the Edinburgh, he adds:—”Then, sir, to turn the flank of Messrs. Constable and Co., and to avenge myself of certain impertinences which, in the vehemence of their Whiggery, they have dared to indulge in towards me, I have prepared to start against them at Whitsunday first the celebrated printer Ballantyne, with a long purse [‘the purse was, alas! Scott’s own,’ Lockhart notes at this point] and a sound political creed, not to mention an alliance offensive and defensive with young John Murray of Fleet Street, the most enlightened and active of the London trade. By this means I hope to counterbalance the predominating influence of Constable and Co., who at present have it in their power and inclination to forward or suppress any book as they approve or dislike its political tendency. Lastly, I have caused the said Ballantyne to venture upon an Edinburgh Annual Register, of which I send you a prospectus. I intend to help him myself as far as time will admit, and hope to procure him many respectable coadjutors.” In another letter, written just a fortnight previously, Scott had broached the subject of the new Annual Register to his friend Kirkpatrick Sharpe, intimating that, though Ballantyne would be the managing editor, with himself for the real editor in the background, all the more important contributions would be from selected hands, and that, as the historical department was the most important, — a luminous picture of the current events of the world from year to year being “a task for a man of genius,” — they proposed to give their “historian” £300 a year,—”no deaf nuts,” adds Scott, in comment on the sum. A certain eminent person had already been offered the post, Scott proceeds; but, should “the great man” decline, would Kirkpatrick Sharpe himself accept it? The “great man” was Southey; he did accept; and for some years he had the accredited charge of the historical department of the Register. From the first, however, the venture did not pay; and, the loss upon it having gone on for some time at the rate of £1000 a year, Scott, — who had been tending to a reconciliation with Constable on other grounds, — was glad when, in 1813, Constable took a portion of the burden of the concern off his hands. It is possible that this accession of Constable to a share in the management, and some consequent retrenchment of expenses, may have had something to do with Southey’s resignation of his connexion with the Register. Not, however, till 1815, if we may trust Lockhart’s dating, did that resignation take place, — for, in Lockhart’s narrative for the following year, 1816, where he notes that Scott had stepped in for the rescue of the Register by himself undertaking to do its arrears in the historical department, he gives the reasons thus:—”Mr. Southey had, for reasons on which I do not enter, discontinued his services to that work; and it was now doubly necessary, after trying for one year a less eminent hand, that, if the work were not to be dropped altogether, some strenuous exertion should be made to sustain its character.” — From all this it will be seen that De Quincey is wrong in his fancy that the proposal to reduce Southey’s salary (from £400 to £300, he says, but was it not £300 from the first?) was a mere device for getting rid of him because he was an Englishman, and because a Scottish “snob” of the Parliament House could be got to do the work at a cheaper rate; or, at all events, that he is wrong in attributing the shabbiness to Constable and the Whigs in Edinburgh. Southey’s own fellow-Tory Scott was still supreme in the conduct of the Register, though he might take Constable’s advice in all matters of its financial administration; and, if Constable advised, among other things, a reduction of Southey’s salary in the historical department, that was but natural in the circumstances, and Scott probably acquiesced. — In fact, by this time the contributorship to the Edinburgh Annual Register, always a drudgery, must have been of less consequence to Southey than it had been. In November 1813 he had been appointed to the office of Poet-Laureate, then vacant by the death of Henry James Pye; and the salary attached to that sinecure, though small, was something. On the 13th of that month Scott, who had declined the office for himself and had strongly recommended Southey, and who was then still virtually Southey’s paymaster for his services in the Edinburgh Annual Register, had written his congratulations to Southey, with his regrets that the Laureateship was not better worth his while. — D. M.
CHAPTER V. THE LAKE POETS: SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE
A circumstance which, as much as anything, expounded to every eye the characteristic distinctions between Wordsworth and Southey, and would not suffer a stranger to forget it for a moment, was the insignificant place and consideration allowed to the small book-collection of the former, contrasted with the splendid library of the latter. The two or three hundred volumes of Wordsworth occupied a little, homely,
painted book-case, fixed into one of two shallow recesses, formed on each side of the fireplace by the projection of the chimney in the little sitting-room up stairs which he had already described as his half kitchen and half parlour. They were ill bound, or not bound at all — in boards, sometimes in tatters; many were imperfect as to the number of volumes, mutilated as to the number of pages; sometimes, where it seemed worth while, the defects being supplied by manuscript; sometimes not: in short, everything showed that the books were for use, and not for show; and their limited amount showed that their possessor must have independent sources of enjoyment to fill up the major part of his time. In reality, when the weather was tolerable, I believe that Wordsworth rarely resorted to his books (unless, perhaps, to some little pocket edition of a poet which accompanied him in his rambles) except in the evenings, or after he had tired himself by walking. On the other hand, Southey’s collection occupied a separate room, the largest, and every way the most agreeable in the house; and this room was styled, and not ostentatiously (for it really merited that name), the Library. The house itself, Greta Hall, stood upon a little eminence (as I have before mentioned), overhanging the river Greta. There was nothing remarkable in its internal arrangements. In all respects it was a very plain, unadorned family dwelling: large enough, by a little contrivance, to accommodate two, or, in some sense, three families, viz. Mr. Southey and his family, Mr. Coleridge and his, together with Mrs. Lovell, who, when her son was with her, might be said to compose a third. Mrs. Coleridge, Mrs. Southey, and Mrs. Lovell were sisters; all having come originally from Bristol; and, as the different sets of children in this one house had each three several aunts, all the ladies, by turns, assuming that relation twice over, it was one of Southey’s many amusing jests, to call the hill on which Greta Hall was placed the ant-hill. Mrs. Lovell was the widow of Mr. Robert Lovell, who had published a volume of poems, in conjunction with Southey, somewhere about the year 1797, under the signatures of Bion and Moschus. This lady, having only one son, did not require any large suite of rooms; and the less so, as her son quitted her at an early age, to pursue a professional education. The house had, therefore, been divided (not by absolute partition into two distinct apartments, but by an amicable distribution of rooms) between the two families of Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Southey; Mr. Coleridge had a separate study, which was distinguished by nothing except by an organ amongst its furniture, and by a magnificent view from its window (or windows), if that could be considered a distinction in a situation whose local necessities presented you with magnificent objects in whatever direction you might happen to turn your eyes.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 300