Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 425, March, 1851

SOUTHEY.²⁵

So good, so estimable, so eminent a man as Southey – one whose moral character was perhaps as near to perfection as it is given to humanity to attain, and whose literary works, if not of the very highest order of genius, fall short only when compared with those few which are of the very highest – such a man as Southey, it was not likely we should allow to pass from amongst the living without some tribute bestowed upon his memory, or some attempt made, to appreciate the value of his long and illustrious labours. We have been somewhat tardy, it maybe thought, in fulfilling this duty. But we do not regret the delay. Our topic is not one of an ephemeral nature, and the delay may perhaps have instructed us in those points of view in which it is most needful that our subject should be placed.

There is nothing, for instance, so well known of Southey – if we may be allowed to anticipate a little, and to plunge, like the epic poets, in medias res– nothing so notorious as the change which his political and social opinions underwent; the sentiments of his youth upon government, and the organisation of society, being almost diametrically opposed to those of his maturer years. The contrast is great between the young republican, the ardent communist, the bold experimenter in Pantisocracy, the author of the Book of the Church, and the celebrated champion of Conservative principles in the Quarterly Review. But often as the contrast has been held up to notice, the time has only just arrived when it can be surveyed in the right spirit. The whole life of the man is now before us; and, contradictory as the parts may have appeared as the long picture was slowly unrolled to the eyes of contemporaries, it now becomes possible for us to see the real coherence that existed between the several parts, and to trace throughout their very inconsistencies a unity, and an honourable unity, of character. The enthusiasm of the youth enables us to understand whatever was peculiar in the maturer man. The earlier mind of Southey throws light, we think, upon the later. It was the same mind, it was the same man, young and old.

We learn from the biography before us, that the imagination of Southey had been early and too exclusively developed; and whether from this circumstance, or from natural temperament, a close, systematic, scientific mode of reasoning was the mental quality or mental exercise in which, throughout life, he least distinguished himself. His affections were ardent and generous, his moral sentiments invariably pure and noble, his piety unalterable; his judgment, wherever abstract and general principles were to be dealt with, was, to the last, often hasty, incomplete, vague, uncertain. But if his reasoning was never that "dry light" of which Bacon speaks, it never, in his case, was mingled with other passions or feelings than those which did honour to his nature. Above all, there was throughout his career the utmost sincerity in the expression of his opinion; no taint of hypocrisy, no reserve, no timidity – a want sometimes of caution, never that prudence which is the disguise of cowardice, – you had at all times the genuine unaffected utterance of the man. He was not even the least apprehensive of ridicule. He would have borne martyrdom before a host of jesters, which some have thought to be not the lightest species of martyrdom. If astrology had found favour in his sight, he would have expressed his belief in it before the whole conclave of the Royal Society. Whatever seemed truth to him, had its clear, manly, unhesitating avowal. Of an ardent disposition, impatient of slow thinking or of long and intricate reasoning, eager, confident, somewhat too self-relying, his was not the mind peculiarly fitted for expounding abstract principles; – we note no extraordinary deficiency in this respect, but we can easily conceive of minds better trained and disciplined for the discovery of great elementary truths; – but few men in our age and generation have manifested a warmer or more generous attachment to whatever assumed to them the shape of truth. For this he was ready to do battle to the utmost. No crusader could be more valiant, or go forth with fuller faith, or be more resolved at all hazards to drive out the infidel, and take possession of the Holy City. His geography was once at fault, or the territory and scene curiously shifted, and his Jerusalem was at one time due west, and at another due east; but it was the same devoted uncompromising knight that was seen marching towards it.

Those only who have never thought at all, or who have quite forgotten their past efforts at thinking, will throw blame upon another because the opinions of his his youth were different from those of his manhood. Such difference is almost the necessary attendant upon progress and mental development. The ardour and the candour of Southey's nature made the difference in his case singularly conspicuous. He lived, too, at that epoch when the French Revolution made and unmade so many enthusiasts. This may be thought a sufficient vindication of his memory. But there remains to add one very honourable distinction. Many of those whom the French Revolution had made enthusiasts in the cause of human progress, became cold and dead and utterly indifferent to that cause – selfishly callous, or quite sceptical as to the possible improvements which might be effected in society. Now, Southey changed his opinion on many subjects, but he never deserted the cause of human improvement. He would have promoted very different measures at different periods, but he had the same cause always at heart. He never sank into a cold and selfish indifference; nor was it a mere passive conservatism that he ever advocated. His son has here very justly pointed out that, as a writer in the Quarterly Review, in which character he was thought to have consummated his apostasy, it was the renegade Southey who drew attention to the state of the poor, who called on the Government for a scheme of national education, who pointed out the folly of neglecting our great colonial possessions, and the necessity of adopting some large and judicious plan of emigration. Of the topics which occupy reflective and philanthropic men at this moment, pauperism, national education, and emigration are three of the most conspicuous; and in each of these Southey may claim to have led the way, in drawing towards them that public attention which they so eminently deserve. He is always alive to whatever seems to him a feasible scheme for the improvement of society. If he goes abroad, and visits the Beguinages in Belgium, he thinks whether a like institution might not be introduced into Protestant England, for the benefit of a class of women, whether single or widowed, who with difficulty find any active employment – who are not paupers, but whose poverty condemns them to a cheerless, solitary existence. If Robert Owen of Lanark comes across his path, no fear of having his own early dream of Pantisocracy revived before him, of being reproached for an old abandoned faith, (the constant terror of men who feel themselves apostates,) prevents him from expressing the natural interest which such a man, and the projects he then had in view, naturally excited within him. His Colloquies may not earn him a reputation amongst political economists; but no one will deny the philanthropic spirit which they breathe. In his Life of Wesley, and all his religious or theological publications, however devoted he may show himself to the Church of England, he never fails to inquire how this great institution may be made still more serviceable to the nation at large, and this, too, by embracing within its pale those very sectaries towards whom he was accused of having so bigoted and unfriendly a feeling.

Those of his opponents who, in the later part of his career, were accustomed to represent Southey as the unscrupulous, drilled, formal advocate of a party in Church and State, ready for his pension and his pay, for court honours and the praise of bishops, to espouse its cause to the utmost, never made a greater mistake in their lives. Innumerable proofs are here before us in his letters, if we did not find them in his works, that he retained to the last a certain bold, erratic, independent manner of thinking, quite his own.

Always was he Robert Southey, and no representative of a party. At one time of his life he contemplated the profession of the law, and studied for the bar. What sort of lawyer he might have made, if he had been able to give up his mind to the study, or what the practice of Westminster Hall might have made of him, there is no saying; but there was never any literary men, earning subsistence by his pen, who had less of the spirit of the retained advocate. A self-willed, untamed, quite individual manner of looking at things, is always breaking out. If he had taken that seat in Parliament which, without any consultation of his wishes, was so strangely bestowed upon him, he would, we are persuaded, have greatly disappointed any party that might have relied upon his steady and unswerving co-operation. He would often have deserted them for the cross benches, and as often perplexed them by his uncompromising zeal. No whipper-in would have been quite sure of him, or kept him steady in the ranks. In that position where he was most subject to restraint – as a writer in the Quarterly– it is amusing to see how restive he is, how he rears and plunges at first starting, how he chafes at that harness which each one in such a team must be content to wear, though every steed were a veritable Pegasus, and Apollo himself in the editorial car. He thinks "a sprinkling of my free and fearless way of thinking would win friends" for the Review. "It is my nature and my principle," he says, "to speak and write as earnestly, as plainly, and as straight to the mark as I think and feel. If the editor understands his own interest, he will not restrict me." We must confess, judging by the ebullitions he sometimes gives vent to in these letters, that the most indulgent editor must have been occasionally called upon to "restrict" a certain impetuosity of manner, which, it may be observed, would have embarrassed Mr Gifford almost as much as it would have done Mr Jeffrey.

But from this somewhat rash incursion into the very centre of our subject, it would be wise – since we are not, in fact, epic poets – to effect a timely retreat; let us recommence, after the more legitimate manner of prosaic reviewers, with some account of the work immediately before us.

The Life and Correspondence of Dr Southey, which is here presented to the public, answers fairly to the description which the author, or editor, himself gives of it in his preface. A number of letters are arranged according to their dates, and are connected together with just such intimations of a biographical nature as enable them to tell their own story. The life of Southey, meaning thereby a skilful narrative and analysis of incident and character, remains, of course, to be written; and a very interesting work it will prove, if it falls into fortunate hands. Meanwhile, this collection of letters, many of them delightful compositions, and perfect models of epistolary style, gives us such an insight into, and appreciation of the man Southey, as was previously impossible to any one who did not know him personally and intimately. The editor has performed his part in a very creditable and judicious manner. It would have been very difficult for the son to conduct a rigid and impartial scrutiny into the literary merits of the father, and he has not attempted it; but it would have been the easiest thing in the world for that son, or for any other editor, to have spoilt such a work as this by intrusive panegyric, by constant controversy with old and hostile criticisms, by perpetual contest for place and pre-eminence for his biographical idol. The mere vanity of authorship, or an officious spirit, might have given a repulsive air to what is now a most agreeable book. There are cases, and this is one of them, where, considering the temptations that beset an editor, the absence of cause for censure becomes no slight ground of commendation.

The letters of Southey are preceded by the fragment of an autobiography. Would it were more than a fragment! The author, we are told, had looked forward to this task as one of a very agreeable nature; and, so far as he proceeded with it, appears to have found it such; for he revels in the reminiscences of childhood and his school-days, and describes the old house in Bristol in which he lived when a boy, with a loving minuteness that is in danger of outrunning the interest which any one but himself could feel in such a locality. But even before his school-days are quite over, he drops the pen. To one who had so much necessary employment for that pen, a supererogatory labour of this description ought to be very attractive, and apparently he found in his task, as he advanced, increasing difficulties and decreasing pleasure.

The reminiscences of childhood, of boyhood, and even of the first entrance into youth, have to almost all men an indescribable charm. Up to this time, we look back upon ourselves with a curious feeling, as if it were not altogether ourselves we were contemplating, but rather some other being who preceded us, and whose thoughts and feelings are the sole remembrance of them we have inherited. We look back upon the frailties of that other self with an unlimited indulgence; we smile at his errors, at his passions, at his griefs; we even sport with his absurdities, and can afford to throw a playful ridicule over all the follies he committed. This child that we are playing with is ourself, but still it is only a child; and we have the fuller right to play with it because it is ourself. No sense of responsibility intervenes to disturb this singular amusement, where the adult is seen toying with and holding in his arms the image of his own infancy. But when this early pre-existent state has passed in review, and the real man is summoned forth upon the scene, we begin to feel that this is indeed ourselves; and we become too implicated and too much involved in the part he performs, to enjoy any longer the position of an imaginary spectator. We are sensitive to the errors, and responsible for the faults, of this other self; we cannot treat him with cavalier indifference; we must be his advocate or his censor. The retrospect assumes a quite different character. Formerly we called up a departed self from some half-fabulous region of the past, and questioned it as to its ways of thinking and acting; we now stand ourselves in the witness-box, and give our testimony; and the best of us must occasionally assume the sullen aspect of an unwilling witness. Formerly we sported with the past absurdity, ridiculed and laughed at it; but now the remembered folly, the sentimental effusion of the youth, the absurd oratorical display, the ridiculous exhibition, of whatever kind it may have been, affords us no amusement. It matters not what the distance of time, the cheek tingles with the reminiscence. What is still more to the purpose, the griefs and afflictions which we have now to summon up are the same in character as those we continue to feel, and their recollection is but a renewal of suffering. The affliction of the child rarely revives an affliction in the man – very often calls up a smile at the idea that so much distress had been felt at so trivial a cause. This is one reason why childhood appears, in our review of human life, so much happier than any other portion of it. We find a mirth in its remembered tears which assuredly we never discovered when they were flowing. But the remembrance of the sorrows of a later period is but sorrow itself, and we only taste again the bitterness of grief.

To Southey, whose disposition rendered him peculiarly susceptible to those domestic losses which death occasions, this last appears to have been one chief reason for the distaste he felt for his task as he proceeded in it. Certainly it soon lost its zest. During the early and playful portions of the biography, he holds on his way with alacrity and delight; he ransacks his memory, and brings out with great glee whatever odd and strange things he finds there; but the Westminster boy has not run his career before the theme has changed its aspect. At all events, it has no longer sufficient interest to make a time and leisure for itself amongst the crowded occupations of the author.

In the record of his childhood which Southey has given us, we have no reason, as we have intimated, to complain of the want of detail. Indeed, some circumstances are related which at first we thought might as well have been passed over in silence. It appeared to us that everything which a person can possibly recollect of his own childhood, cannot be interesting to others, although every such effort of recollection may be extremely amusing to the reminiscent himself; and we were prepared to read a lecture to all future autobiographers, and to remind them that they must distinguish between the pleasure of memory, of rescuing the half-forgotten incident from threatened oblivion – a pleasure which must be exclusively their own – and the value which the rescued fact itself may possess in the estimation of the world at large. But while we were preparing this lecture, a little incident occurred which gave us a lesson ourselves, and induced us to withhold this part of our criticism. Such details as we have alluded to, not only give pleasure to the reminiscent, but occasion exactly the same pleasure to those in whom they call up similar recollections; and we had overlooked the extreme difficulty the critic, or any one reader, must have in determining which of such details is absolutely without this species of interest for other readers. What seems to him as really "too absurd" to be worth mentioning, may awaken vivid emotions in another in whom it calls up a similar remembrance from the all-but-forgotten past: he shares in the very pleasure of the original reminiscent. Whilst we were perusing this autobiography, and our pencil was straying down the margin of a passage we intended to quote as an example of a quite superfluous effort of recollection, a friend called in upon us. We read to him this identical passage. To our astonishment, it had thrown him into a perfect ecstasy of delight. It had recalled an image of his schoolboy days which had never once been revived since he left school, and which he was certain would never again have occurred to him but for the paragraph we had read. Here is the passage: —

"One very odd amusement, which I never saw or heard of elsewhere, was greatly in vogue at this school. It was performed with snail shells, by placing them against each other, point to point, and pressing till the one was broken in, or sometimes both. This was called conquering; and the shell that remained unhurt, acquired esteem and value in proportion to the number over which it had triumphed, an accurate account being kept. A great conqueror was prodigiously prized and coveted – so much so indeed, that two of this description would seldom have been brought to contest the palm, if both possessors had not been goaded to it by reproaches and taunts. The victor had the number of its opponent's triumphs added to its own; thus, when one conqueror of fifty conquered another which had been as often victorious, it became conqueror of an hundred and one. Yet, even in this, reputation was sometimes obtained upon false pretences. I found a boy one day who had fallen in with a great number of young snails, so recently hatched that the shells were still transparent, and he was besmearing his fingers by crushing these poor creatures one after another against his conqueror, counting away with the greatest satisfaction at his work. He was a good-natured boy, so that I, who had been bred up to have a sense of humanity, ventured to express some compassion for the snails, and to suggest that he might as well count them and lay them aside unhurt. He hesitated, and seemed inclined to assent, till it struck him as a point of honour, or of conscience, and then he resolutely said, No! that would not do, for he could not then fairly say he had conquered them. There is a surprising difference of strength in these shells, and that not depending on the size or species; I mean whether yellow, brown, or striped. It might partly be estimated by the appearance of the point or top, (I do not know what better term to use;) the strong ones were usually clear and glossy there, and white if the shell were of the large, coarse, mottled brown kind. The top was then said to be petrified; and a good conqueror of this description would triumph for weeks or months. I remember that one of the greatest heroes bore evident marks of having once been conquered. It had been thrown away on some lucky situation, where the poor tenant had leisure to repair his habitation, or rather where the restorative power of nature repaired it for him, and the wall was thus made stronger than it had been before the breach, by an arch of new masonry below. But in general I should think the resisting power of the shell depended upon the geometrical nicety of form." – (Vol. i. p. 55.)

This odd amusement, it seems, was not monopolised by young Southey's school. "Oh, I remember it well!" cried my enraptured auditor. "Yes, conqueror was the word. But Southey is wrong! It was the empty shell only that we used. How distinctly I remember it! – and it must be thirty years ago – and never once till this moment have I thought of it since. How strange a thing is memory! You hold the shell, you see, between your forefinger and thumb, the forefinger being bent to receive it. Your adversary did the like with his shell. Then you applied the boss of your little shield to the boss of his – quite fairly, you understand, boss to boss, otherwise the strongest part of one shell would come in contact with the weaker part of the other. Silently, but with all your might, you pressed them together. The one which broke through its antagonist's was, of course, the conqueror. But Southey is wrong! It was only the empty shell we used. Consider, if the animal was there – what a horrible mess!"

We ventured to suggest to our friend, as soon as his impetuosity permitted us, that Southey was describing his school, and no other school whatever; and as to the horrible mess which boys might delight in, it would be difficult to say, in such a matter, what would pass the bounds of credibility.

After this unintentional experiment, we gave up all idea of determining what might or might not be interesting amongst details of such a description. If this story of the snail-shells found its ardent admirer or sympathiser, what other could possibly be pronounced to be superfluous? or down the margin of what other passage could our critical and expurgatorial pencil have safely strayed? To as little purpose, we apprehend, should we undertake to examine such stories on the grave historic ground of their perfect credibility. When "Uncle William," who is half an idiot, plays a trick upon the servant Thomas, and substitutes a dead mouse for his quid of tobacco, the thought did occur to us, that although a mouse is a very small animal, it would surely make an enormous quid – altogether a most extraordinary substitute for a quid – and that the servant Thomas must have been the greatest idiot of the two to have been deceived by it. But such carping criticism, we repeat, would be altogether out of place; and this fragment of autobiography is really too amusing to excite any other feeling than that of regret at its sudden termination.

We learn from it that Southey was born on the 12th August 1774. His father was a linendraper at Bristol, and by no means prosperous in his calling. He passed his childhood, however, for the most part under the roof of a maiden aunt, Miss Tyler, who resided at Bath. To this house at Bath we must, therefore, betake ourselves, if we would learn the circumstances which assisted in forming the mind of the future poet and historian. To be born the son of a linendraper we hold to be no evil; but to have been bred up in the shop at Bristol would have been to Southey a real calamity. From this he was spared. The linendraper's shop may figure on his shield, if the malicious herald is disposed to place it there; it had nothing to do with his head, or his heart, or his manners; he was bred a gentleman. Moreover, he had exactly that sort of breeding which is calculated to foster the imagination, and develop whatever there was of poetry within him. Miss Tyler had two passions – one for order and cleanliness, the other for the theatre. She had, too, a free admission; and young Southey, at an age when other little boys are fain to content themselves with turning over the leaves of the great picture-book, was seated, night after night, in the front row of the boxes, a delighted spectator of the performances of one of the best companies in England. His first library – and this he possessed as soon as he could read – was a whole set, more than twenty in number, "of Mr Newbury's fairy tales, or other wonderful stories; delectable histories in sixpenny books for children, splendidly bound in flowered and gilt Dutch paper, of former days." This library, and free admission to the theatre, and, for the rest, much idleness, few companions, and a world of dreams, – such is the opening scene of Southey's mental history.

"I had seen more plays before I was seven years old," he says, "than I have seen since I was twenty." Miss Tyler, it seems, was living at one time with some ladies whose property was vested in the theatre. From their house —

"A covered passage led to the play-house, and they very rarely missed a night's performance. I was too old to be put to bed before the performance began, and it was better that I should be taken than left with the servants; therefore I was always of the party; and it is impossible to describe the thorough delight which I received from this habitual indulgence. No after-enjoyment could equal or approach it; I was sensible of no defects either in the dramas or in the representation; better acting, indeed, could nowhere have been found: Mrs Siddons was the heroine; Dimond and Murray would have done credit to any stage; and among the comic actors were Edwin and Blanchard – and Blisset, who, though never known to a London audience, was, of all comic actors whom I have seen, the most perfect. But I was happily insensible to that difference between good and bad acting, which in riper years takes off so much from the pleasure of dramatic representation; everything answered the height of my expectations and desires. And I saw it in perfect comfort, in a small theatre, from the front row of a box, not too far from the centre. The Bath theatre was said to be the most comfortable in England; and no expense was spared in the scenery and decorations." – (Vol. i. p. 71.)

Frequenting the theatre soon introduced him to far other literature than Mr Newbury's publications. Shakespere was in his hands, he says, as soon as he could read. He went through Beaumont and Fletcher before he was eight years old. What hosts of plays beside he may have devoured, it was probably beyond his power to recall. And he early began to imitate what he read. In one passage he leaves us to gather that his first attempts at poetry were so early, that they went beyond the time of memory.

Miss Tyler had all along intended to give her protegé a systematic education, and for this purpose she had purchased a translation of Rousseau's Emilius. The systematic education, however, was never commenced. In 1782 he was placed – for what reason we are not told – as a day-boarder in a school at Bristol. He then necessarily resided with his father. Two years after, Miss Tyler herself removed to Bristol, and again received her nephew. But in this interval of two years, the holidays were always spent with his aunt, wherever she might be. It was in these holidays that his real education was carried on.

At home he was on very short allowance of books. His father read nothing but the Bristol Journal. A small glass cupboard in the back parlour, fastened up against the wall, was sufficient to hold the wine-glasses and all the library. But in the holidays he gets back again to Bath, and to Bull's circulating library. He meets, at his aunt's, people who talk about authors – even sees an author or two – learns that they are greater personages even than the players. In one of these holidays a lady gives him a copy of Hoole's translation of the Jerusalem Delivered. This led him into a new course of poetical reading; it converted the budding dramatist into an epic poet. The Tasso introduced him to the translation of the Orlando Furioso, and this to Spenser's Fairy Queen. How he read, how he revelled in these books!

"The copy of Hoole's version (of Tasso) which Mrs Dolignon sent me, is now," he says, "in my sight upon the shelf, and in excellent preservation, considering that when a schoolboy I perused it so often that I had no small portion of it by heart. Forty years have tarnished the gilding upon its back, but they have not effaced my remembrance of the joy with which I received it, and the delight which I found in its repeated perusal… Hoole, in his notes, frequently referred to the Orlando Furioso. I saw some volumes thus lettered, on Bull's counter, and my heart leaped for joy. They proved to be the original; but the shopman, Mr Cruett, (a most obliging man he was,) immediately put the translation into my hands; and I do not think any accession of fortune could now give me so much delight as I then derived from that vile version of Hoole's. There, in the notes, I first saw the name of Spenser, and some stanzas of the Fairy Queen. Accordingly, when I returned the last volume, I asked if that work was in the library. My friend Cruett replied that they had it, but it was written in old English, and I should not be able to understand it. This did not appear to me so much a necessary consequence as he supposed, and I therefore requested he would let me look at it. It was the quarto edition of '17, in three volumes, with large prints folded in the middle, equally worthless (like all the prints of that age) in design and execution. There was nothing in the language to impede, for the ear set me right where the uncouth spelling (orthography it cannot be called) might have puzzled the eye; and the few words which are really obsolete were sufficiently explained by the context. No young lady of the present generation falls to a new novel of Sir Walter Scott's with keener relish than I did that morning to the Fairy Queen." – (Vol. i. p. 83.)

He had commenced poet, as we have said, at an earlier age than he can call to mind, so that his first rhymes are utterly lost in the oblivion of childhood. He can only remember that this discovery that he could rhyme gave him great pleasure, and that his mother seemed equally gratified, and still more proud of the achievement. When in the habit of reading and witnessing so many plays, he of course wrote dramas. His first subject was "The Continence of Scipio!" Now that Tasso and Ariosto were his great delight, he commenced the epic or the metrical romance. He would graft a story upon the Orlando Furioso. Arcadia should be the scene and give the title to the poem. There he would bring the Moors, and there should his hero Astolfo, riding on a Hippogriff, &c. &c. This must have been, he says, when he was between nine and ten, for some verses of it were written on the covers of his Phædrus. They were in the heroic couplet.