615 



SOUTHEY, ROBERT. 



SOUTHWELL, ROBERT. 



C16 



12mo. 1830, 'Life of John Bunyan,' prefixed to an edition of the 

 'Pilgrim's Progress.' 1831, 'Attempts in Verse by John Jones; with 

 Introductory Essay on the Lives and Works of our Uneducated 

 Poets,' 8vo; 'Selections from the Poems of Robert Southey, Esq. 

 LL.D.,' 12mo; 'Select Works of British Poets, from Chaucer to 

 Jonson, edited with Biographical Notices,' 1 vol. royal 8vo. 1832, 

 'Essays, Moral, and Political,' 2 vols. 8vo; 'Selections from Southey,' 

 Prose 12mo; 'History of the Peninsular War,' vol. iiL 4to. 1833, 

 'Naval History of England,' vol. i. 12mo. (in Lardner's 'Cabinet 

 Cyclopaedia'), completed in 5 vols. 1840. 1834, 'Dr. Watts's Poems, 

 with a life of the Author' (in Cattermole's 'Sacred Classics'), 12mo ; 

 ' The Doctor' (anonymous), vols. i. and ii. 8vo. 1835, ' The Doctor,' 

 vol. iii. 8vo ; ' The Works of William Cowper, with a Life of the 

 Author,' vol. i. 12mo, completed, in 15 vols, in 1837 and 1838. 1837, 

 1 The Poetical Works of Robert Southey,' collected by himself, 10 vols. 

 12mo ; ' The Doctor,' vols. iv. and v., 8vo. 



To these works, making in all above a hundred volumes of various 

 sizes, are to be added numerous papers (his son gives a list of 126) 

 upon history, biography, politics, morals, and general literature, pub- 

 lished in the ' Quarterly Review,' to which he was a constant con- 

 tributor from its establishment in 1809, till head and hand would 

 work no longer. He also wrote for some years the historical portion 

 of the ' Edinburgh Annual Register,' and contributed other matter 

 to that work, which began to be published in 1810, and was discon- 

 tinued in 1824. He likewise wrote 52 papers in the first four volumes 

 (1802-5) of the 'Critical Review,' and three in the ' Foreign Quarterly.' 

 After his death there appeared ' The Doctor,' vols. 6 and 7, edited by 

 his son-in-law the Rev. J. Wood Warter, who has likewise edited a 

 reprint of that work in 1 vol. 8vo, 1847 ; ' Oliver Newman, and other 

 Fragments,' edited by his son-in-law the Rev. H. Hill, 1 vol. 8vo, 1845; 

 'Robin Hood,' a fragment, published by his widow in 1847; and the 

 first volume of the ' Life of Dr. Andrew Bell,' completed by his son 

 in three volumes. He was besides one of the most regular and volumi- 

 nous of letter- writers. Of the large collections formed by his friends, 

 some appeared in Robberd's ' Memoirs of the Life and Writings of 

 William Taylor, of Norwich,' 2 vols. 8vo, 1843 ; and a very large number 

 more were embodied in Southey's ' Life and Correspondence ; ' but a 

 still more complete collection has been undertaken by Mr. Warter, of 

 which four volumes appeared in 1856 under the title of ' Selections of 

 the Letters of Robert Southey,' &c. To complete the idea of his won- 

 derful literary industry however it is necessary to mention that not only 

 was he a most regular and omnivorous reader, but that he used to make 

 extracts from all he read with the diligence of the dullest of collectors. 

 From these voluminous collections (which he had already largely 

 employed in the notes to his poems, his ' Oinniana,' and still more pro- 

 fusely in the mosaic pages of his ' Doctor '), Mr. Warter has formed and 

 published four thick volumes (sq. 8vo, double columns), under the title 

 of ' Southey's Commonplace Books,' consisting of vol. i., ' Choice Pas- 

 sages ; ' ii, ' Special Collections ; ' iii., ' Analytical Readings ; ' and iv., 

 ' Original Memoranda.' 



In 1807 Southey received a pension for literary services, amounting 

 to 160Z. a year clear, which he set aside to meet the premiums on an 

 insurance which he now effected on his life. In November 1813, on 

 the death of Mr. Pye, Southey was appointed poet-laureate ; and in 

 1821 he received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Oxford. 

 In 1835 a pension of 300. a year was bestowed upon him by the 

 government of Sir Robert Peel. Sir Robert had offered him a 

 baronetcy ; but his circumstances did not permit him to accept of it, 

 and for the same reason he had also more than once declined being 

 brought into parliament. Indeed till he received his last pension, 

 with all his industry he had only been able, as he expressed it, " to 

 live from hand to mouth." He lost his first wife in 1837, she having 

 been for many years suffering from mental alienation ; and he con- 

 tracted a second marriage on the 4th of June 1839, with Miss Caroline 

 Bowles, a lady long well known in the literary world, and of whom 

 a brief notice will be found below. But soon after this bis hitherto 

 incessantly active and probably overtasked mental faculties began to 

 give way, and he sank into a condition which gradually became one 

 of deeper unconsciousness till death removed him, on March 21, 

 1843. He left a son and three daughters. His valuable library, 

 in its way almost unrivalled, was afterwards disposed of by auction 

 in London. 



As a poet, Southey can hardly be placed in the first rank even of 

 the poets of his own time. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shelley and 

 Keats, Byron and Scott, Mooro and Crabbe, and Campbell, whatever 

 differences of opinion there may be as to their relative merits or their 

 positions in reference to one another, will be generally admitted to 

 have each and all evinced more or less of a mens divinior which was 

 wanting in him. The light which was original and self-sustained in 

 them, seemed, even when it shone the strongest, to be only reflected 

 light in him. In mere fertility he was equal to any of them ; but his 

 mind, although a teemiog, was not an inventive or creative one. It 

 returned manifold the seed deposited in it, but communicated to it 

 comparatively little of any new nature or quality. His imagination 

 might even be said to be both opulent and gorgeous ; still there was 

 wanting the true spirit of life that which distinguishes a real thing 

 from a painted show. No natural human voice coming from the poet 

 hmself animated hia verse ; but rather an artificial sound, as from a 



flute or an organ. Such poetry may be both beautiful and majestic ; 

 but it fails permanently to interest, and will not live ; for there is 

 nothing so alien from and so fatal to poetry as any admixture of the 

 mechanical. It acts like a dead substance imbedded in a living body. 

 Witness such an instance as that of Darwin, who however was almost 

 immeasurably inferior to Southey. There is in truth much rhetorical 

 splendour in parts of Southey's poetry, especially in his ' Curse of 

 Kehama,' and in his ' Roderick ; ' and some of his ballads and other 

 shorter pieces, flowing on as they do in the easiest and purest English, 

 are very happy. 



In his prose writings the great merits of his style show to all advan- 

 tage. It is essentially a prose style, and one unsuited to poetry, at 

 least to poetry of a high order, by some of the very qualities that con- 

 stitute its characteristic excellence. Its facility and fluency, running 

 into some degree of diffuseness ; its limpid perspicuity ; its equability 

 and smoothness ; even its very purity, are unsuited for the passion, 

 the rapidity, the boldness, the novel combinations of poetry. Both in 

 its merits and in its defects Southey's style may be compared to glass, 

 which perfectly transmits the light, but refuses to conduct the light- 

 ning. It does not often rise to any splendour of eloquence ; it has 

 little or no brilliancy of any kind ; but whether for narrative, for 

 exposition, or for animated argumentation, it was perhaps the most 

 effective English style of the time. It combines in a remarkable 

 degree a somewhat lofty dignity with ease and idiomatic vigour, and 

 is equally pliable to the expression of sprightly and playful as of severe 

 and indignant sentiment. 



He certainly was not nearly so great a thinker as he was a writer. 

 He had little subtlety of intellect, and he took rather a passionate 

 than a reasoning view of any subject that greatly interested him. 

 Much of his political and economical speculation is now probably 

 regarded as altogether wrong-headed, even by the most ardent of his 

 admirers. But there can be no question that he was thoroughly honest 

 and in earnest in. whatever opinions he at any time professed. He was, 

 by the universal testimony of those to whom he was best known, of a 

 sincere, generous, high-minded nature, and in all the relations of private 

 life a man worthy of the highest estimation. 



(Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, edited by his son, the 

 Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, M.A., 6 vols., 1849-50; and Southey's 

 Writings.) 



CAROLINE ANNE SOUTHEY (better known as CAROLINE BOWLES), the 

 second wife of Robert Southey, was the only child of Captain Charles 

 Bowie?, of Buckland, near Lymington, Hampshire, where she was born 

 December 6, 1787, and where she spent the whole of her days, with the 

 exception of the four years of her married life. Her early days spent in 

 the comparative solitude of a retired village of the New Forest, and a 

 feeble state of health, induced a morbid shrinking from society, which 

 she never in later life endeavoured to shake off, even when her poems 

 had made her name widely known, and her friendship eagerly sought 

 after. Miss Bowles first appeared before the public as an authoress in 

 1 820, when her poem ' Ellen Fitz- Arthur ' was published, but without 

 her name. Indeed it was not till many years later that any of her 

 works were issued with her name, though their authorship was no secret 

 in literary circles. In 1822 she published ' The Widow's Tale, and other 

 Poems ; ' in 1826 ' Solitary Hours ' (prose and verse) ; and in 1829, in 

 two volumes, ' Chapters on Churchyards,' which had already appeared 

 in ' Blackwood's Magazine,' where they had excited much interest. In 

 June 1839, as already mentioned, Miss Bowles was married at Boldre 

 Church, in the New Forest, to Robert Southey. Some twenty years 

 before, and whilst they were quite unknown to each other, a literary 

 correspondence had commenced between them, and it was* continued 

 with little interruption, their mutual respect gradually strengthening 

 into warm friendship. Their marriage was a melancholy one, at least 

 for the lady. Southey's mental faculties were already beginning to 

 fail, and they soon gave way altogether. But she never permitted a 

 murnmr to escape her at her heavy lot. During his few remaining 

 years she ministered to him with unwearying devotion, and her devoted- 

 ness deserved a somewhat different notice than the ungenerous reference 

 made to it in Mr. Cuthbert Southey's life of his father. She survived 

 her husband somewhat over ten years, but her health had entirely 

 broken down under her affliction, and her last years were years of 

 constant suffering. She found at first occupation in completing a 

 poem on Robin Hood, commenced by Soutkey, which she published 

 in 1847, and afterwards in collecting her husband's letters, which have 

 since been edited by Mr. Warter. The poetry of Caroline Bowles is of 

 a kind that will always give pleasure to persons of a reflective turn of 

 mind, but is scarcely fitted for continuous popularity. It is tender, 

 graceful, and, though somewhat melancholy, pervaded by a fine 

 moral tone ; but it is diffuse, and wanting in strength of thought and 

 passion. 



SOUTHWELL, NATHANIEL, became a Jesuit in 16 2 4, and twenty, 

 four years afterwards was made secretary to the general of the Order, 

 which office he held during seventeen years. He died at Rome in 

 1676, in which year he published his continuation of the Jesuits' 

 1 Library,' ' Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Jesu, Opus inchoatum a 

 R.P. Petro Ribadeneira, et productum ad Annum 1609 ; continuatum 

 a Philippe Alegambe ad Annum 1G43; recoguitum et productum ad 

 Annum 1675, & Nathan aelo Sotwello,' Rome, folio, 1676. Southwell's 

 continuation is considered inferior to that of Alegambe. The work 



