ROBERT SOUTHEY. 
By THE VERY REv. A. P. STANLEY, D.D., F.R.S., 
DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. 
(Lecture delivered at Keswick, March 31st, 1879.) 
In choosing the subject of Robert Southey as the one on 
which I am to address you this evening, you were, I believe, 
influenced by having heard from some one the admiration which I 
had expressed for his poetry. 
It is true that in this respect he was, I may say, my earliest 
love. I can remember, even at this moment, the feeling of delight 
with which I read, one after the other, the poems of ‘“ Thalaba,” 
“ Kehama,” ‘‘ Madoc,” and “ Roderick.” Not even the novels of 
Sir Walter Scott had, for me; a keener attraction. The prospect 
of visiting the scenes of any of these poems filled me with enthusi- 
asm ; and although in later years that enthusiasm may have cooled 
down, yet it was only three years ago it led me indirectly into 
making a visit to the otherwise somewhat uninviting kingdom of 
Portugal, that I might see some of the spots hallowed in my 
memory by the closing scenes of “ Roderick.” And, even now, I 
sometimes feel as if I should not die happy until I had explored 
the locality of the crisis of that poem “Covadonga,” in the 
_ Asturias. But this predilection would not have been sufficient 
to warrant my yielding to your request, if it were not that it 
seemed to me a useful framework for various wholesome 
reflections. 
Southey is one of those poets who has now fallen almost into 
oblivion in the great outside world. Here and there you meet 
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