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

Of this, his first visit to Lisbon, very little is recorded. His mind underwent no perceptible change. We have only two letters written by him at this period to his friends in England. From the last of them, he appears to have been impatient to return. It is dated thus – "Feb. 24, 1796, Lisbon, from which God grant me a speedy deliverance!"

He returned the same man, and returned to the same perplexities. Full of his poetry, occupied incessantly with literary projects, he has not yet the courage to trust to his pen for the necessary supplies. He will enter the profession of the law. From this he will extract that needful revenue which shall one day establish him in his country house, with his Edith, and amongst books of every description – except the legal.

Here follows a chapter in his history which, we think, is one of the most instructive of the whole; certainly not the less instructive because many others have been, and many others will be, submitted to the same trials. If Southey had fulfilled his design, and completed his own biography, it is probably upon this interval, between his first and his second visit to Lisbon, that he would have thought it necessary to dwell with the greatest minuteness.

"My father," says the son, "continued to reside in Bristol until the close of the year 1796, chiefly employed in working up the contents of his foreign note-books into Letters from Spain and Portugal, which were published in one volume early in the following year. This task completed, he determined to take up his residence in London, and fairly to commence the study of the law, which he was now enabled to do through the true friendship of Mr C. W. W. Wynn, from whom he received, for some years from this time, an annuity of L.160 – the prompt fulfilment of a promise made during their years of college intimacy. This was indeed one of those acts of rare friendship – twice honourable – 'to him that gives and him that takes it;' bestowed with pleasure, received without any painful feelings, and often reverted to as the staff and stay of those years when otherwise he must have felt to the full all the manifold evils of being, as he himself expressed it, 'cut adrift upon the ocean of life.'"

He was fairly to commence the study of the law, but he had not the least idea of renouncing his poetical and other literary labours. If the passion of authorship had been felt by Southey only in a slight degree – if it had been a little book he wanted to write, just to "exhale his soul," and then to sober business – this scheme would have been rational enough; but authorship, with its love of fame, had become the master passion of his mind – his second nature. Of "little books" Southey never thought – all his designs were vast, and they were innumerable. His whole life was already pledged. He was then upon Madoc, with Thalaba looming in the horizon. He is writing to his friend Bedford, just before he proceeds to London to commence the study of the law; and only note the sort of impedimenta he carries up with him, and the very auspicious temper in which he enters on the campaign.

"I want to write my tragedies of 'The Banditti.'

Of 'Sebastian.'

Of 'Iñez de Castro.'

Of 'The Revenge of Pedro.'

My Epic poem, in twenty books, of 'Madoc.'

My novel, in three volumes, of 'Edmund Oliver.'

My romance of 'Ancient History of Alcas.'

My Norwegian tale of ' – Harfagne.'

My Oriental poem of 'The destruction of the Dom Daniel.'

And, in case I adopt Rousseau's system, my ' – Pains of Imagination.'

There, Grosvenor, all these I want to write…

The law will neither amuse me, nor ameliorate me, nor instruct me; but the moment it gives me a comfortable independence – and I have but few wants – then farewell to London. I will get me some little house near the sea, and near a country town, for the sake of the post and the bookseller… And perhaps, Grosvenor, the first Christmas-day you pass with me after I am so settled, we may make a Christmas fire of all my law-books. Amen, so be it."

He goes to London, and is admitted of Gray's Inn, Feb. 7, 1797. A few days afterwards, he writes in a graver mood to his early and staunch friend Joseph Cottle.

"I am now entered on a new way of life, which will lead me to independence. You know that I neither lightly undertake any scheme, nor lightly abandon what I have undertaken…

As to my literary pursuits, after some consideration, I have resolved to postpone every other till I have concluded Madoc. This must be the greatest of all my works. The structure is complete in my mind; and my mind is likewise stored with appropriate images…

On Tuesday we shall be settled; and on Wednesday my legal studies begin in the morning, and I shall begin with Madoc in the evening. Of this it is needless to caution you to say nothing, as I must have the character of a lawyer; and though I can and will unite the two pursuits, no one would credit the possibility of the union."

What follows shows, nevertheless, the folly of attempting to combine things utterly incongruous, and the mischief that may ensue from the attempt. It was very little that Southey could have studied the law, but the effort to force his attention to one subject, while his mind was really absorbed in another, and the perpetually intruding and distracting thought that he ought to be studying the law, was very nearly ruining his health irretrievably, and converting one of the most buoyant hilarious of men into the confirmed hypochondriac.

It was in February he came to London. The spring no sooner appeared than he began to pine for the country; he felt his spirits exhausted; he thought his legal studies could be as well pursued at the sea-side as in the smoke of London; he goes to Burton in Hampshire. There, or elsewhere in the country, he spends the whole summer. In December he returns to London, but "remains there only a very short time." He takes a cottage in the pretty village of Westbury, there to prosecute his legal studies. He stays a twelve-month at Westbury; nor does he again return to London to reside. He had attributed his ill-health to the smoke and confinement of the metropolis, but it is after his escape from London that his health becomes seriously deranged. He had not escaped from his legal studies, or rather from the sense of obligation constantly impending over him to pursue them, and the occasional attempts to compel his attention to the repulsive task.

The law cannot be accused of having encroached seriously on time that would have been else devoted to literature. He took long vacations, when the hated text-book and the detestable reports were banished entirely from his mind. Speaking of his residence at Westbury, he says, "it was one of the happiest portions of his life: he had never before or since produced so much poetry in the same space of time." But still the profession hung over him, urging, from time to time, its distracting obligations. Having escaped from the smoke of London, he now attributes his shattered nerves to the climate of England. But it was as little the climate of England, which his constitution afterwards endured very well in the cold and rainy regions of Cumberland, as it was any fair amount of intellectual labour, that was undermining his health. It was the sense of an unperformed task, and that compulsory and distracted attention, one half hour of which more tries and fatigues the brain than a whole morning spent in willing harmonious effort.

Bearing these observations in mind, the following letter will be read with peculiar interest: —

"TO GROSVENOR C. BEDFORD, ESQ.

Kingsdown, Bristol,

Dec. 21, 1799.

Grosvenor – I think seriously of going abroad. My complaint – so I am told by the opinion of many medical men – is wholly a diseased sensibility, (mind you, physical sensibility,) disordering the functions, now of the heart, now of the intestines, and gradually debilitating me. Climate is the obvious remedy. In my present state, to attempt to undergo the confinement of legal application were actual suicide. I am anxious to be well, and to attempt the profession: much in it I shall never do: sometimes my principles stand in the way, sometimes the want of readiness, which I felt from the first – a want which I always know in company, and never in solitude and silence. Howbeit I will make the attempt; but mark you, if by stage-writing, or any other writing, I can acquire independence, I will not make the sacrifice of happiness it will inevitably cost me. I love the country, I love study – devotedly I love it; but in legal studies it is only the subtlety of the mind that is exercised.

I am not indolent; I loath indolence; but, indeed, reading law is laborious indolence – it is thrashing straw. I have read, and read, and read; but the devil a bit can I remember. I have given all possible attention, and attempted to command volition. No! The eye read, the lips pronounced, I understood and re-read it; it was very clear; I remembered the page, the sentence – but close the book, and all was gone!

I suffer a good deal from illness, and in a way hardly understandable by those in health. I start from sleep as if death had seized me. I am sensible of every pulsation, and compelled to attend to the motion of my heart till that attention disturbs it. The pain in my side is, I think, lessened, nor do I at all think it is consumption: organic affection it could not have been, else it had been constant; and a heart disease would not have been perceived there. I must go abroad, and recruit under better skies." – (Vol. ii. p. 33.)

 

He reads and reads, and he comprehends, but he does not remember. It would have been marvellous if he did, reading always with a divided attention. He never could bring all his mind to this task. "I would rather," he says in one place, "write an epic poem than read a brief." And in the most self-congratulatory moment, when he is the most reconciled, or in the least bad humour with the law, he writes thus: "I advance with sufficient rapidity. Blackstone and Madoc! I hope to finish my poem and begin my practice in about two years. I am clearing a farm; I am painting a landscape that shall rival Claude Lorraine!"

Southey had resolved to be poet and lawyer both. If he had really delighted in both studies – as Sir William Jones seems to have done – he might, like Sir William, have attained a certain degree of excellence in both. We have a living example before us of a judge who has written a far more beautiful poem than half-a-dozen Sir Williams could have indited. But with Southey one of these studies was not only indifferent but intolerable, whilst the other was most delectable. Under these circumstances, the attempt to unite them was ruining one of the best constitutions that a student was ever blest with by nature. We have no doubt that, if he had much longer seriously persisted in this attempt, there would have been a general wreck and ruin of mind and body both.

"My health," he says, writing to Mr May, "fluctuates, and the necessity of changing climate is sadly and sufficiently obvious, lest, though my disease should prove of no serious danger, the worst habits of hypochondriasm fasten upon me, and palsy all intellectual power." He took the wisest resolution the circumstances of the case admitted of – he embarked for Lisbon. He threw off entirely – at all events for a season, perhaps, in secret, for ever – the anxious burden of the law. He gave his whole soul to poetry; rode about in the paradise of Cintra, and wrote the concluding books of his Thalaba. So was he rescued from the fate of a nervous hypochondriac patient.

It is a piece of advice we would give to every man, but especially to the student. Harmonise your labours. If ambition prompt you to mingle two conflicting studies that will not accord, that breed perpetual civil war in the mind, we charge you to fling away ambition. If the higher, and more ambitious, and more beloved study – be it science, or poetry, or philosophy – will not yield, then choose at once for it and poverty, if such must be the alternative. Better anything than a ruined disordered mind; or, if you prefer the expression, than a confirmed cerebral disease.

Very pleasant was the life that Southey led at Lisbon and at Cintra, and very agreeable are the letters that he writes to England during this second visit to the Peninsula.

"You would be amused," he says in one of them, "could you see Edith and myself on ass-back – I sitting sideways, gloriously lazy, with a boy to beat my Bayardo, as well adapted to me as ever that wild courser was to Rinaldo. In this climate there is no walking, a little exercise heats so immoderately; but their cork woods, or fir woods, and mountain glens, and rock pyramids, and ever-flowing fountains, and lemon-groves ever in flower and in fruit, want only society to become a paradise. Could I but colonise Cintra with half-a-dozen families, I should never wish to leave it. As it is, I am comfortable, my health establishing itself, my spirits everlastingly partaking the sunshine of the climate. Yet I do hunger after the bread-and-butter, and the fireside comforts, and the intellect of England." – (Vol. ii. p. 109.)

On his return to England we hear no more of the law, or we hear only that it was entirely abandoned. We find him writing to Bedford (p. 159) about one solitary remaining law-book – "my whole proper stock – whom I design to take up to the top of Mount Etna, for the express purpose of throwing him down straight to the devil."

His sojourn in the Continent had led him to think that some foreign consulship would not be unacceptable. No appointment of this kind, however, offered itself. That of private secretary to Mr Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, was proposed to him, and he accepted it. "This had been brought about," says the Editor, "through his friend Mr Rickman, who was at that time secretary to Mr Abbot, and in consequence residing in Dublin – an additional inducement to my father to accept the appointment, as he would have to reside there himself during half the year."

He went to Dublin to take possession of his new office, but soon after returned to London, where the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer was in the habit of residing during the winter portion of the year. Mr Corry is described as a man of mild unassuming manners; and "the Chancellor and his scribe" got on very well together. But the Chancellor discovered that he had nothing to do for his very clever secretary. Having no sufficient official employment, he proposed to him to undertake the tuition of his son. This "was not in the bond," nor at all suited to Southey's habits and inclinations. To use his own words, he therefore resigned "a foolish office, and a good salary."

This was the last serious attempt he made to obtain the necessary supplies from any other source than his pen. He betook himself steadily to reviewing and other literary work. The Annual Register offered him constant employment till the Quarterly was established. For his residence, he thought first of Richmond, on the Thames; then of the Valley of Neath in Wales; finally, he established himself at Keswick.

We have thus brought down his biography to the period when, his political opinions considerably modified, and his literary avocations clearly defined before him, he takes up his residence at that place which will for ever be associated with his name, and assumes that character and position in which he was so long known and honoured by his contemporaries. Before leaving England, on his second voyage to Lisbon, he had written Madoc, (that is, in its rough state,) and had composed the greater part of Thalaba. The concluding books of Thalaba– that charming episode of Laila– were written amongst the hills and the cork forests of Cintra. The completed manuscript was sent to England, and was published soon after his own return. Madoc there received its last corrections and additions. The time is now come when we can take a glance at these and other poetical works, which were, and still are, the basis of his fame. The author is now himself moored safely in still waters, and his life henceforth is little more than the history of his writings, of his mind, his opinions, and his acts of beneficence; for these last occupy no small space in it. No relative can put in a claim to his assistance but it is granted to the utmost of his power, and often beyond such restrictions as prudence, and a regard to nearer claims, would suggest. He is open to the very enthusiasm of friendship, and prepared for any self-sacrifice that the most romantic sense of duty can demand. Nor is there any young poet struggling with that world which his love of letters has made appear so harsh and cruel, to whom Southey does not extend his sympathy, his guidance, and his aid. But as the remaining portion of our task would occupy more space than we could assign to it, and as we have arrived at a fair halting-place, we will here break off for the present.

THE MINISTRY AND THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST

In the Speech delivered from the Throne at the opening of the present Session of Parliament, the following passage will be found:

"Notwithstanding the large reductions of taxation which have been effected in late years, the receipts of the Revenue have been satisfactory. The state of the Commerce and Manufactures of the United Kingdom has been such as to afford general employment to the labouring classes. I have to lament, however, the difficulties which are still felt by that important body among my people who are owners and occupiers of land; but it is my confident hope that the prosperous condition of other classes of my subjects will have a favourable effect in diminishing those difficulties, and promoting the interests of agriculture."

Without attaching too much importance to the phraseology of this Address, it will, we think, be admitted by every one who recollects the dissensions of last year, that her Majesty's Ministers, by inserting in the royal Address this acknowledgment of the difficulties under which the owners and occupiers of land are labouring, have virtually abandoned their ground; and are not now, as formerly, prepared to maintain that agricultural depression, arising from low prices, is to be considered simply as an accident, and not as the result of legislation. Last year we were told, on high Ministerial authority, that the low prices then current were merely exceptional, and could not continue; and that a signal check had been given to the importation of foreign grain. "Therefore," said Sir Charles Wood, "the farmer need not apprehend that ruin from the operation of Free Trade, which he at present anticipates from prices under 40s. a quarter." But time, more infallible than Sir Charles Wood, or any other Chancellor of the Exchequer, has proved that all these notions are fallacies. The importation continues, and prices droop. During the twelve months which have elapsed, there has been no symptom of rallying; and it is now almost universally admitted, that the depreciation of the value of agricultural produce is permanent, and must so continue in the absence of a protective duty.

We are always glad to see a fallacy cleared out of our path. The idea that high-farming can ever be made an adequate substitute for protection, was exploded last year; and now the efforts of the Whigs to demonstrate that importations cannot continue, have been abandoned. The state of the case is precisely that which we laid before the public in January 1850; and no one thinks of denying it. Even those journals, which, from time to time, have hazarded vaticinations as to rises in the value of produce, are compelled to acknowledge their fallibility, or drop their pretensions to the mantle of the gifted seer.

The matter is, therefore, very materially simplified. We are justified in holding that henceforth, under the system of free ports, the average price of the quarter of wheat in England will not exceed 40s., and may possibly be much lower when the resources of the Continent and America, both aware of their market, are fully developed. In Scotland, the average must necessarily be two or three shillings less. A corresponding fall has taken place, and will continue, in all other kinds of cereal crop and of provisions. If these data are admitted – and a very short period will now suffice to establish or refute their accuracy – the agricultural question may be discussed without any specialities whatever. Every man throughout the country will have the means of forming his judgment upon the actual working of the measure, and its effect, both direct and indirect, upon all branches of British industry. It is most desirable, on every account, that there should be no mistake as to this. Our opponents – perhaps naturally enough exasperated at the prolongation of a combat in which they have been uniformly worsted when the weapons of argument were employed, and being moreover aware, from symptoms which are everywhere, manifested, that the period of delusion is nearly gone by – have over and over again charged the country party and its chiefs with a desire to cut short the experiment, before its results were sufficiently apparent. We need hardly say that the charge is utterly unfounded. We have no wish to precipitate matters, or to effect by a coup-de-main that alteration which never can be permanent unless based on the conviction of the majority of the constituencies of the Empire. We have no desire to take a leaf from the book of recent statesmen, and to induce members of Parliament to act contrary to those declarations on the faith of which they were returned. But we are entitled – nay, we are bound – to watch the experiment as it proceeds, and ever and anon to declare our honest and sincere opinion as to the nature of its working. We cannot shut our eyes to the vast injury which it is causing, and has already caused, to a most important and numerous class of our fellow-countrymen; we cannot reconcile ourselves to the operation of a system which has undoubtedly disappointed the expectations even of its founders. We have, therefore, whenever that was needful, expressed our opinion without any reservation whatever; and we shall continue to do so, not the less confidently because the views which we entertain are now openly adopted and received by many who were heretofore unwilling to disturb a course of legislation which had been deliberately sanctioned by the State.

We beg to assure the Free-Traders that we never, for one moment, underestimated the advantages of their position. At the commencement of this Parliament, they had a majority large enough – supposing that their cause was good, and their boasted experiment successful – to render all idea of a return of protection perfectly futile and hopeless. And, therefore, we were told, day after day, and month after month, that it was in vain for us to struggle against the tide – that a course of policy such as this, once commenced, must be regarded as irrevocable – and that we were merely losing time in demonstrating, what latterly was hardly denied, that the agricultural interest could not maintain itself under the pressure of the growing competition. But those who held such language seemed to have forgotten that the experiment, upon the success of which they had staked their reputation for sagacity, was all the while progressing before the eyes of the nation. Had its progress been successful and satisfactory, the country party must long ere this have dwindled away into nothing. Can our opponents not see that it is the failure of Free Trade alone which constitutes our strength? In the late debate upon Mr Disraeli's motion, Sir James Graham, who is certainly not apt to exaggerate the power of his opponents, spoke as follows: "I see very plainly that we are on the eve of a great and serious struggle. I see a party of gentlemen in this and the other house of Parliament, powerful in numbers, powerful in the respect in which they are held for their personal and hereditary virtues, having great influence in the country, and great possessions. They are an interest which, up to the present moment, has commanded great influence with the Government; and, with the main body of the community at their back, they exercise a power upon any question that is irresistible… With such opponents it behoves us to gird up our loins. I know not whether the watchword, 'Up, guards, and at them!' may not already have been given. It is clear to me that the opponents of protection must prepare for a severe contest. They must stand upon the defensive. They must stand to their arms, and close their ranks, and prepare for a firm, manly, and uncompromising resistance!" Now, considering that not more than two years have elapsed since it was the fashion of the Liberal journals to aver that the country party was all but extinct, helpless in the House of Commons, and unsupported beyond its doors, this estimate of Sir James Graham is undoubtedly remarkable. We are naturally led to inquire how it is that the cause of protection has made so prodigious a stride – why it should now appear so formidable in the eyes of an old and experienced statesman? No other reason can be assigned than the justice of the cause which the country party have maintained, and the failure of the experiment to which their adversaries were pledged. If there are any new "opponents" to Free Trade within the House of Commons, they have either been sent there by constituencies since the present Parliament was summoned, or they have become convinced of the error of their former views, and seceded from the Ministerial ranks. If, beyond the House of Commons, men are changing their opinions to that extent which Sir James Graham indicates, surely that is no argument in favour of the party which still is dominant – no testimony which can be adduced to support the wisdom of their policy. Rather should it be to us a great encouragement to persevere as we have begun, for it conveys a direct acknowledgment of the truth of those arguments which we have all along maintained.

Very absurd indeed is the accusation, that the Protectionists will not allow fair play to the progress of the experiment. Hitherto the promoters of the experiment have had it all their own way, and have been allowed to go on without any check or impediment. They profess themselves to be extremely well satisfied with the result; and yet, singularly enough, whenever a division occurs upon any point arising from their policy, they find their boasted majority becoming less and less. The conduct of the Protectionist party has indeed been marked by an extraordinary degree of forbearance. But the supporters of the cause without the walls of St Stephen's have full reliance on the integrity and the discretion of their champions within. They have not forgotten the distinct announcement of Lord Stanley that, "it is not in the House of Lords, nor in the House of Commons, but in the country at large that the battle must be fought, and the triumph achieved;" and they have no desire, through rash impatience, to endanger the coming victory. But, whilst refraining from a direct attack upon the principles of the Free-Trade system, our representatives in Parliament are by no means oblivious of their duty. The peculiar burdens on land and agricultural property and produce have not been removed, notwithstanding the promises which were made; and as the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that he had a surplus of revenue in hand, the Government very naturally been called upon to consider, whether that surplus should not be applied to the alleviation of the distress among "the owners and occupiers of land," admitted, in the Royal Speech, to exist; and whether, in fact, they have not a righteous claim to a considerable reduction of their burdens?

Such was the tenor of Mr Disraeli's motion, which was negatived, in a crowded house, by a majority of only FOURTEEN. In the proposal itself there was nothing unreasonable – nothing which even faction could lay hold of. The difficulties of one class in the community were admitted by Ministers, and contrasted by them with the general prosperity which was assumed as the condition of all others. It was not denied, but rather stated as matter of exultation, that this general prosperity arose from the same cause which had occasioned the depression – that the same fountain had given forth both sweet and bitter waters, refreshing and enlivening on the one side, whilst, on the other, it spread decay. Under these circumstances, it will not be denied, by any unprejudiced person, that it was the bounden duty of Her Majesty's Ministers – not to come forward voluntarily with any remission to the suffering class, which might be construed as a favour – but seriously to consider whether or not the statement preferred on the part of the agriculturists, that they were unjustly and unequally burdened and restricted, was true; and if it were true, then to accord relief in a fair and equitable manner. Sorry are we, indeed, to say, that neither her Majesty's Ministers, nor such of the supporters of the late Sir Robert Peel as spoke and voted on the motion, had the courage to face openly this question of abstract justice. It was enough for them that the proposition was made by a leader of the country party, and that it was generally supported by those opposed to their commercial policy. These circumstances were of themselves sufficient to secure its rejection, even had the discussion of it not involved points to which no Free-Trader has ever yet ventured to address himself.

What these points are, we shall presently examine. But first let us go back for a little to what are matters of history.

In the first speech which he delivered in the House of Commons, during the eventful Session of 1846, the late Sir Robert Peel, while paving the way for the introduction of his Free-Trade measures, made the following remarks with regard to the peculiar burdens upon land: – "Further, it may be said that the land is entitled to protection on account of some peculiar burdens which it bears. But that is a question of justice, rather than of policy: I have always felt and maintained that the land is subject to peculiar burdens; but you have the power of weakening the force of that argument by the removal of the burden, or making compensation. The first three objections to the removal of protection are objections founded on considerations of public policy. The last is a question of justice, which may be determined by giving some counter-balancing advantage." Further, on the very same evening, the present Premier, Lord John Russell, thought fit to read to the House of Commons a letter which bad been addressed by him to Her Majesty, of which the following is an extract: – "The measures which Sir Robert Peel had in contemplation appear to have been – a present suspension of the duties of corn – a repeal of the Corn Laws at no remote period, preceded by a diminution of duties —relief to the occupiers of land from burdens by which they are peculiarly affected, so far as it may be practicable. Upon full consideration of these proposals, Lord John Russell is prepared to assent to the opening of the ports, and to the fiscal relief which it was intended to afford." On that evening, (22d January 1846,) Lord John was in a peculiarly communicative mood; for, besides the letter of 16th December 1845, of which the foregoing is an extract, he read to the House another epistle, dated the 20th, informing Her Majesty that he had found it impossible to form an Administration. That letter, moreover, contains a sketch of what the noble lord proposed to have done, provided it had been possible to procure the aid of that galaxy of talent with which he is now surrounded. "Lord John Russell would have formed his Ministry on the basis of a complete free trade in corn, to be established at once, without gradation or delay. He would have accompanied that proposal with measures of relief, to a considerable extent, of the occupiers of land, from the burdens to which they are subjected."