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SOUTHEY, ROBERT. 



SOUTHEY, ROBERT. 



ell 



Balliol College, his uncle's intention being that he should enter the 

 Church. But the treatment he met with from those in authority was 

 little adapted to fit him for a college life ; and it was almost unavoid- 

 able that his enthusiastic temperament should precipitate him into 

 the so-called liberal opinions both in religion and politics which the 

 French revolution, yet in its morning of promise, had spread both in 

 France and in this country. He went to the extreme of free-thinking 

 on both subjects; and in 1794 he left Oxford, with neither the disci- 

 pline nor the learning of which he was very favourably impressed. 

 "Two things only," he used to say, "he learned at Oxford to row and 

 to swim." But he worked hard and read much while there, and if he 

 derived little from his tutors he gained much from his own labours. 

 He had moreover already become a most indefatigable writer of verse. 

 In one of his letters, written during a temporary absence from college, 

 in December 1793 (some time after the completion of 'Joan of Arc'), 

 he says " I have accomplished a most arduous task, transcribed all my 



verses that appear worth the trouble, except letters Upon 



an average 10,000 verses are burnt and lost, the same number pre- 

 served, and 15,000 worthless." He had already at least commenced 

 the course of almost unparalleled industry which he maintained as 

 long as his faculties lasted. But the future was dark before him. 

 With his present sentiments he could not enter the Church, and he 

 could not expect much farther aid from his uncle. His strong 

 political opinions shut him out from any public employment, and 

 from indulging the hope of much success in any profession. It was 

 in these circumstances that the ' pantisocratic ' scheme was started. 

 He ;md a fellow-townsman, a young Quaker named Robert Lovell, 

 published in this same year a volume of poems, under the names 

 of Bion and Moschus. It was just before this too that South ey 

 became acquainted with Coleridge. Lovell had married a Miss 

 Fricker of Bristol; and in November 1795 Southey and Coleridge 

 on the same day united themselves to her two sisters. The three, 

 with two college friends of Southey, had formed a plan to go out 

 together to the wilds of North America, and there to set up what 

 they called a ' Pantisocracy,' in which they were to live without either 

 kings or priests, or any of the other evils of Old World society, and to 

 renew the patriarchal or the golden age. But this fancy was never 

 even attempted to be practically carried into effect. The friends were 

 without money, and their grand scheme necessarily came to an abrupt 

 close. For awhile Southey supported himself by delivering public 

 lectures on history in Bristol. Cottle the bookseller gave him 50 

 guineas for his unpublished ' Joan of Arc,' and he set hard to work to 

 compose more verses, by which he now calculated he should be able 

 to maintain himself according to his present modest hopes. A visit 

 of his uncle to England removed Southey from his precarious position. 

 On his return to Portugal Mr. Hill took Southey with him ; but after 

 a stay of six months he came back to England, his uncle having found 

 it impossible to alter his resolution against entering the Church, 

 though he seems by this time to have become reconciled to her 

 doctrines. His journey however had been the means of turning the 

 current of his thoughts, and it had enabled him to lay the foundation of 

 his knowledge of the language and literature of Spain and Portugal, 

 which afterwards proved of so much value to him. 



He returned to Bristol in the summer of 1796, and having stayed 

 there long enough to prepare for the press his volume of ' Letters 

 from Spain and Portugal,' he, in the following February, removed 

 to London, and entered himself a student of Qray's-inn. For a little 

 while he fancied that he should make a lawyer, but he did not for a 

 day relinquish his poetic studies. We find him (March 1797) writing 

 to his friend Cottle, " I advance with sufficient rapidity in Blackstone 

 and Marloc. I hope to finish my poem and begin my practice in about 

 two years." In little more than two years he had finished his poem, 

 but all of law he ever acquired had been ended long before. After 

 about a year's trial he gave up the pursuit as utterly impracticable, 

 and he began to think seriously of literature as his occupation. His 

 uncle however invited him to make another visit, with his wife, to 

 Lisbon, and he made good use of his stay there in extending his 

 acquaintance with the literature of the south. Meanwhile his friends 

 had been trying to find some official appointment for him, and shortly 

 after his return to England in 1801 Mr. Rickman obtained him the 

 post of private secretary to Mr. Corry, at that time chancellor of the 

 exchequer for Ireland, with a salary of about 350?. a year, of which 

 half was specified as travelling expenses. His office required his 

 presence in Dublin, but its duties were extremely light, and after 

 awhile Mr. Corry proposed to add as a make-weight the tuition of 

 his son ; but as this was an employment for which he had not bargained 

 and had little inclination, Southey threw up, after holding it in all 

 little over six months, what he called " a foolish office and a good 

 salary," and determined to trust to literature for his support. From 

 the booksellers he now found little difficulty in obtaining employment 

 enough, in reviewing and the like, to enable him to satisfy his still 

 modest wants, and to assist the relatives who w f re even less pros- 

 perous than himself. He about this time too collected and edited an 

 edition of Chatterton's works, for the purpose of providing a fund for 

 Chatterton's sister, Mrs. Newton, who, with her family, was in very 

 distressed circumstance?. The edition was published by Southey's 

 friend Cottle in three volumes at the close of 1802, and the friends 

 had the delight of knowing that Mrs. Newton obtained 300?. through 



their generous labours. This was however only one of a long list of 

 noble yet thoroughly unostentatious services of a similar kind which 

 Southey willing rendered, when he thought that labour and effort 

 would be usefully bestowed. 



In 1804 he established himself at Greta Hall, near Keswick, Cum- 

 berland, and there he spent the remaining forty years of his life. 

 Coleridge was already living with his family at Greta Hall, and Words- 

 worth at Rydale, near Ambleside, some fourteen miles distant ; whence 

 the three poets came to be for many a year commonly spoken of as 

 the Lake poets though their poetry had in truth not much in 

 common. Coleridge however after a very irregular residence even- 

 tually left Keswick in September 1803, never to return,* though his 

 wife and children remained under Southey'a hospitable roof j which 

 also sheltered his wife's other sister, Mrs. Lovell, who had recently 

 been left a widow, and who remained an inmate of Southey's house 

 till his death. 



Long before this time Southey had abandoned his democratic creed, 

 and taken up with one diametrically opposite. For all the rest of his 

 life, as is well known, he was an ardent, uncompromising, and some- 

 what intolerant monarchist and churchman, promulgating and main- 

 taining doctrines, both ecclesiastical and political, which were in some 

 respects even something beyond conservative. 



Having now fairly adopted literature as his profession, he devoted 

 himself to it with a resolute and untiring industry, of which in the 

 biography of English literary men there is scarcely a parallel. He 

 says, writing about this time to a friend : "My actions are as regnlar 

 as those of St. Ducstau's quarter-boys. Three pages of history [of 

 Portugal] after breakfast (equivalent to five in small quarto printing) ; 

 then to transcribe and copy for the press, or to make my selections 

 and biographies [for 'Specimens of the English Poets '], or what else 

 suits my humour till dinner-time ; from dinner-time till tea I read, 

 write letters, see the newspaper, and very often indulge in a siesta. 

 .... After tea, I go to poetry [he was now writing the ' Curse of 

 Kehama'], and correct and rewrite and copy till I am tired, and then 

 turn to anything else to supper. And this is my life." And such his 

 life continued to be, " finding his highest pleasure and his recreation 

 in the pursuits necessary for earning his daily bread " as long as he 

 could guide a pen. The following list of his publications shows the 

 result of this steady unbroken diligence, to make the list complete, 

 we have included those which he wrote prior to his settlement at 

 Keswick, though some of them have been already mentioned : 



In 1794, ' Poems,' in conjunction with his friend Lovell, 1 vol. 8vo. 

 1795, 'Joan of Arc/ an Epic Poem, 4to. 1797, ' Minor Poems,' 2 vols. 

 8vo ; ' Letters written during a short residence in Spain and Portugal,' 



1 vol. 8vo. 1799 and 1800, 'The Annual Anthology' (a miscellaneous 

 collection of poetry, of which he was the editor and principal writer), 



2 vols. 8vo. 1801, 'Thalaba the Destroyer, a Metrical Romance,' 2 

 vols. 12mo. 1803, 'Amadis de Gaul' (a prose translation from the 

 Spanish version by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo of that romance, 

 which Southey contends to have been originally written in Portuguese 

 by Vasco deLobeira), 4 vols. 12 mo. ; the works of Thomas Chatterton 

 ^in conjunction with Mr. Amos Cottle, the 'Life,' originally printed in 

 the second edition of the ' Biographia Britannica," being by Dr. G. 

 Gregory), 3 vols. 8vo. 1805, 'Metrical Tales and other Poems,' 8vo; 

 'Madoc,' a Poem, in Two Parts, 4to. 1807, 'Specimens of the Later 

 English Poets, with Preliminary Notices,' 3 vols. 8vo; 'Palmerin of 

 England," translated from the Portuguese, 4 vols. 8vo ; ' Letters from 

 England ' by Don Manuel Velasquez Espriella (pseudonymous), 3 vols. 

 12mo ; ' Remains of Henry Kirke White, with an account of his Life,' 2 

 vols. 8vo. 1808, ' The Chronicle of the Cid, Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, 

 from the Spanish,' 4to. 1810, 'The Curse of Kehama,' a poem, 4to. ; 

 ' The History of Brazil,' vol. i. 4to. 1812, ' Omniana,' 2 vols. 8vo. 

 1813, 'Life of Nelson,' 2 vols. 8vo. 1814, 'Carmen Triumphale for 

 the commencement of the year 1814, and Carmina Aulica,' ' Odes to 

 the Prince Regent, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia,' 1 

 vol. 4to; 'Roderick, the last of the Goths,' 4to. 1815, 'Minor Poems,' 

 (re-arranged, &c.) 3 vols. 1816, ' The Lay of the Laureate ;' ' Carmen 

 Nuptiale' (a poem on the marriage of the Princess Charlotte), 12 mo ; 

 ' A Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo,' 8vo ; ' Specimens of Later British 

 Poets.' 1817, 'Wat Tyler, a Dramatic Poem" (written in a vein of 

 ultra- Jacobinism, in 1794, and now surreptitiously published), 12mo. ; 

 ' A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P.' (on the subject of the pre- 

 ceding publication), 8vo ; ' Morte d' Arthur (a reprint of Sir Thomas 

 Malory's prose romance), with Introduction and Notes,' 2 vols. 8vo ; 

 'History of Brazil,' vol. ii. 4to. 1819, 'History of Brazil,' vol. iii. 4to. 

 '1820, Life of John Wesley,' 2 vols. 8vo. 1821, ' A Vision of 

 Judgment ' (a poem in English hexameters), 4to ; ' The Expedition of 

 Orsua and the Crimes of Aguirre' (partially printed in 1812, in the 

 Second Part of the Third Volume of the ' Edinburgh Annual Register,' 

 (for 1810), 12mo. 1822, 'Remains of Henry Kirke White,' vol. iii. 8vo. 

 ' History of the Peninsular War,' vol. i. 4to (an expansion of what had 

 been originally published in the 'Edinburgh Annual Register,' 1810, 

 &c.). 1824, 'The Book of the Church,' 2 vols. 8vo. 1825, < A Tale of 

 Paraguay' (a poem), 12mo. 1826, ' Vindicise Ecclesiae Anglicanae,' &c., 

 8vo. 1827, 'History of the Peninsular War,' vol. ii. 4to. 1829.. 'Sir 

 Thomas More; or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of 

 Society/ &c., 2 vols. 8vo ; ' All for Love, or the Sinner Well Saved ; 

 and 'The Pilgrim to Compostella, or A Legend of a Cock and a Hen,, 



