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out of the fulness of a loving heart; like those from Cowper to Lady Hesketh, and Shenstone to Mr. Jago.

favorite sport so forcibly to his mind, that he could not help crying at the sight." The circumstance was the anticipation, as well as the fulfilment, Johnson affirmed that the life of no literary man of Wordsworth's reverie of Susan. In after had ever been properly composed. An author's years, and to preserve the impression, he took own pen is unlikely to fill up the blank. Hea hare for his commercial crest, and had it painted will supply part, not a whole. The pleasantest upon the window on each side the door, and illustrations of genius have been picked up by ac- engraved in the shop bills. Upon his master's cident. In this light letters are invaluable, when death he was removed to a linen-draper's in Bristhey are sincere. That is seldom. Pope wrote tol, where he continued for twelve or fourteen for effect. So did Cowper sometimes compare years. his correspondence with Newton and Hill. The Robert Southey was born August 1, 1773. The writer can scarcely be identified. Horace Wal- twilight of his recollection began with his third pole made himself up for the Post, as for a theatre. year. He was gifted with the sensibility of You see at once that he is padded. The shape the poetical mind, and shed tears at the tale of of his thoughts is always artificial. Gray's crow- Chevy Chase. His first school was presided over quill was an emblem of his manner. Byron imi- by a dame, with intolerable features and no eyetated the worst style of Walpole and Gray. He is lashes. Under her rule he remained, with occanot himself for a hundred pages together. From sional intervals of absence, until his sixth year. this fault the letters of Southey appear to be|The Utopia mania was already strong in him. remarkably free. They give the man, the Pan- With two schoolfellows he formed a plan of going tisocrat, the enthusiast, the self-opinionated. Each to an island and living by themselves. The miliis there. He sits before a glass and paints him-tary taste also showed itself in a walk with a self.

neighboring barber, who promised him a sword. The Recollections have much of the grace and But it speedily retreated before the prompt and ease of his latest and happiest prose. Perhaps liberal application of the horsewhip. Many of there is a slight excess of garrulity, and a dispo- his holydays were spent with his aunt, Miss sition to enlarge upon trifles, that might, as he Tyler, who occupied a house in what was then suggested, if carefully cultivated, have ripened him an agreeable suburb of Bath. It looked into a into a correspondent of Mr. Urban. But we con- garden abounding in fruit trees, and the parlor fess to liking the minuteness of his description. steps were embowered by jessamine. This was We are not indisposed to hear of the migration from a favorite seat of the child-poet. The furniture the blue bed to the brown. He gives us a domes- was old and picturesque. In the parlor hung the tic interior, as real and startling as the Apotheca- lady's portrait, by Gainsborough, with a curtain ry's Shop of Mieris, with its one bewildering before it to keep off the flies. Among the most crack in the counter. The things and persons curious articles were a cabinet of ivory, ebony, may be worth nothing in themselves, but they and tortoise shell, and an arm-chair made of cherryderive interest and value from the describer; like wood, which seems to have had a particular inthe wicker basket, or string of onions, in pictures terest attached to it; "if any visitor who was by Teniers or Ostade. The stream of his family not in her especial favor sat thereon, the leathern did not lead him into very ancient times. He was cushion was always sent into the garden, to be unable to trace it beyond 1696. Wellington, in aired and purified, before she would use it again." Somersetshire, was the well-head. In the church A confidential man-servant was as odd as his misregisters the Southeys are styled yeomen or far-tress, and every night fed the crickets. In this mers. His grandfather's wife was a Locke, of the strange garden-house the larger portion of four same family as the philosopher (so called) of that name," who, we are pleasantly informed, " is still held in more estimation than he deserves." Their descendant was willing to reckon them of gentle blood, as using armorial bearings in an age when they were very rarely assumed without a title. The arms had a religious character, and he was anxious to believe that one of his "ancestors had served in the crusades, or made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem."

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years glided away-to a child heavily enough. He had no playmates, was kept inviolate from dust, and slept with his aunt. This was the severest chapter of the lesson. Miss Tyler was a late riser; and the little Robert did not dare to make the slightest movement for fear of disturbing her. During those wearisome hours his wits were at work, "fancying figures and combinations of forms in the curtains, wondering at the motes in the slant sunbeam, and watching the light from the crevices of the window shutters." By degrees the progress of the shadow stood him in the stead of a clock.

His grandfather was bred a dissenter, but afterwards came over to the church. Marrying at forty-five, he had two daughters and three sons, of whom the second was Robert, the poet's father, who was an enthusiast in all country pleasures. Having been placed with a grocer in London, he gave a curious proof of the strength of the passion. As he was standing at the shop door, "a porter rity-this was the wife of Mr. F. Newberry, went by carrying a hare. This brought his of St. Paul's. As soon as he could read the

At two years of age he was inoculated, and attributed his subsequent thinness to the preparatory regimen. His aunt had one friend whose name will ever possess a kind of juvenile celeb

Bibliopole presented him with a set-twenty in number of those astonishing productions, which have so often amazed the slumbers of three years. To this gift he traced some of his literary tastes; but other circumstances helped them forward. The Bath theatre was then in its zenith. The players divided the week between it and Bristol. Miss Tyler was generally supplied with orders, and always availed herself of them. Her talk was dramatic. Her nephew soon caught the tone of expression, and once, returning from church on Sunday morning, called down an angry rebuke by saying that it had been a very full house. Healthier aids to reflection were not wanting. He delighted in fieldwalks, and the ferryboat at Walcot was a great resource. The first distinction of life came slowly upon the poet. He saw his sixth year before he was "breeched" in a complete suit of forester's green. He was then sent as a day-scholar to a school at Bristol, kept by a Baptist minister, an old man and cruel. However, he died in twelve months, and was succeeded by a Socinian, of more learning and heresy. But the poet reaped no advantage from the change. His father, for some cause unexplained, removed him to Corston, about nine miles from Bristol :The stage was to drop me at the public house, and my father to accompany it on horseback, and consign me to the master's care. When the time for our departure drew nigh, I found my mother weeping in her chamber; it was the first time I had ever seen her shed tears. The room, (that wherein I was born,) with all its furniture, and her position and look at that moment, are as distinct in my memory as if the scene had occurred but yesterday; and I can call to mind with how strong and painful an effort it was that I subdued my own emotions. I allude to this in the Hymn to the Penates, as

The first grief I felt,

And the first painful smile that clothed my front
With feelings not its own.

What follows also is from the life :

Sadly at night

:

I sat me down beside a stranger's hearth,
And when the lingering hour of rest was come,
First wet with tears my pillow.

folly, and fire-water. Some brighter streaks diversify the picture. We have already mentioned the orchard; the boys were the appointed gatherers; and their labor was lightened and recommended by a very liberal permission to eat of the produce. They were also allowed to

Squail at the bannets, that is, being interpreted, to throw at his walnuts when it was time to bring them down; there were four or five fine trees on the hill-side above the brook. I was too little to bear a part in this, which required considerable gleaning among the leaves and broken twigs with strength; but for many days afterwards I had the which the ground was covered, and the fragrance of these leaves, in their incipient decay, is one of those odors which I can smell at will, and which, whenever it occurs, brings with it the vivid remembrances of past times.

But even these orchard gatherings had a constant check and contrast in the Sunday evenings, when the astronomer collected his youthful congregation into the hall, and read a dreary sermon, or a scarcely less alarming chapter from Stackhouse's History of the Bible. The poet's seat was at the extremity of a long form, within the faintest gleam of the fire. All troubles come to an end. So did those at Corston; an intestine commotion,

resulting in the flight of the master and the discolored eyes of his son, unexpectedly turned all the pupils adrift.

While the father of Southey was casting his eyes round in search of another school, he took up his abode with his relatives at Bedminster, a dirty village of colliers. The house had been built by his grandfather. "It stood in a lane. You ascended by several circular steps into a flower garden. The porch was in great part lined, as well as covered, with white jessamine." Here he often sat with his sister, threading fallen blossoms upon grass stalks. We think that the following description of the interior might have won the praise of Richardson :

On the right hand was the parlor, which had a brown or black boarded floor, covered with a Lisbon mat, and a handsome timepiece over the fireplace; on the left was the best kitchen, in which The school-house was noticeable for its staircase the family lived. The best kitchen is an apartof black oak, and rooms hung with faded tapestry; longer to be seen, except in houses which, having ment that belongs to other days, and is now no its shady garden, summer-house, gate-pillars, sur- remained unaltered for the last half century, are mounted with huge stone balls, a paddock, orchard, inhabited by persons a degree lower in society and walnut-trees. The master was a mathemati- than their former possessors. The one which ] cian, who usually lived in the stars. The desk am now calling to mind after an interval of more disenchanted him. Not that the scholastic prom-than forty years, was a cheerful room, with an air ises were large; they only embraced writing and of such country comfort about it, that my little arithmetic. But twice in the week a French heart was always gladdened when I entered it durteacher from Bristol instructed a few ambitious which I believe was the chief distinction between a ing my grandmother's life. It had a stone floor. students, of whom the poet was one, in Latin. best kitchen and a parlor. The furniture consisted Penmanship was the great fact of Corston; it was of a clock, a large oval oak table with two flaps, excellent, including what is called the Italian, (over which two or three fowling-pieces had their engrossing, and some varieties of German text. place,) a round tea-table of cherry wood, Windsor Mr. Flower, that was the name of the pedagogue, chairs of the same, and two large armed ones of that had other instruments of confusion besides his easy make, (of all makes it is the easiest,) in one of which my grandmother always sat. On one side orrery. With the reckless wisdom of "fifty" he of the fireplace the china was displayed in a buffet had married his housemaid. Of course, everything-that is, a cupboard with glass doors; on the went wrong under the guidance of astronomy, other were closets for articles less ornamental, but

more in use. The room was wainscotted and orna-mant sense awakened. It was called forth by a mented with some old maps, and with a long look-bed of stocks in full bloom, at a house which he ing-glass over the chimney-piece, and a tall one inhabited in Dorsetshire some five-and-twenty between the windows, both in white frames. The windows opened into the fore-court, and were as dise to him; but it lasted only a few minutes, years ago. He says it was like a vision of Paracheerful and fragrant in the season of flowers as roses and jessamine, which grew luxuriantly with- and the faculty has continued torpid since that out, could make them. There was a passage be-time." Coleridge resembled Southey in his quick tween this apartment and the kitchen, long enough perception and enjoyment of perfumes; and we to admit of a large airy pantry, and a larder on the think of him at this moment sitting at his cottageleft hand, the windows of both opening into the door, in Clevedon, and saying to Sarabarton, as did those of the kitchen; on the right was a door into the back court. There was a rack in the kitchen well furnished with bacon, and a mistletoe bush always suspended from the middle of the ceiling.

How exquisite the scents
Snatched from yon bean-field!

In this quiet home young Southey found many pleasures. Beauty of scenery was not; but he The green room, which was my uncle Edward's, had stillness, light and shadow, green lanes, counwas over the parlor. Over the hall was a smaller try sounds, and flowers. He passed most of his apartment, which had been my grandfather's office, time in the garden, and knew where to look for and still contained his desk and his pigeon-holes ; I remember it well, and the large-patterned, dark, every variety of grass blossom. Forty years afterflock paper, with its faded ground. The yellow wards he remembered with particular love three room, over the best kitchen, was the visitor's flowers of those early days-the syringa, the everchamber; and this my mother occupied whenever lasting pea, and the evening primrose. she slept there. There was no way to my grand- At length another academy was found, and he mother's, the blue room over the kitchen, but was placed a day-boarder at Bristol, under one through this and an intervening passage, where, Williams, a Welshman, who professed to teach on the left, was a store-room. The blue room had

a thorough light, one window looking into the bar-little, and kept his promise. But the poet was ton, the other into the back court. The squire unconsciously educating himself. He had already slept in the garret; his room was on one side, the servants' on the other; and there was a large open space between, at the top of the stairs, used for lumber and stores.

dabbled in rhyme, and Shakspeare was his poetical
primer. Beaumont and Fletcher he read through
before he was eight years old, mindful only of the
story, but gradually tuning his ear, and acquiring
that wonderful facility of versification which soon
enabled him to pour out Joan of Arc and Madoc.
What he saw and heard of literary people in-
creased his growing veneration for the craft.
phia Lee, then in the full glow of her Recess, was
an acquaintance of his aunt. His school lessons,
too, had more of literature, for he was taught
Latin every day.

So

A door from the hall, opposite to the entrance, opened upon the cellar stairs, to which there was another door from the back court. This was a square, having the house on two sides, the washhouse and brewhouse on the third, and walled on the fourth. A vine covered one side of the house here, and grew round my grandmother's window, out of which I have often reached the grapes. Here also was the pigeon-house, and the pump, under which the fatal dipping was performed. In one of his holyday absences a friend presentThe yard or barton was of considerable size; the His entrance to it was from the lane, through large ed him with Hoole's translation of Tasso. folding-gates, with a horse-chestnut on each side. curiosity had been previously excited by versified And here another building fronted you, as large as fragments of the story in Mrs. Rowe; but he the house, containing the dairy and laundry, both supposed the original to be in the Hebrew tongue, large and excellent in their kind, seed-rooms, as it related to Jerusalem. Hoole was not quite stable, haylofts, &c. The front of this outhouse the author whom the future singer of Thalaba was almost clothed with yew, clipt to the shape of the windows. Opposite the oue gable-end were the coal and stick houses; and on the left side of the barton was a shed for the cart, and, while my grandfather lived, for an open carriage, which after his death was no longer kept. Here too was the horse-block, beautifully overhung with ivy, from an old wall against which it was placed. The other gable-end was covered with fruit trees, and at the bottom was a raised camomile bed.

The garden-ground was in the old English fashion, combining use and pleasure in its sunny walls, green with cherry, peach, and nectarine trees; grassy walks, espaliers, and flowers. An apricot tree grew in the fore-court, and a barberry bush by the orchard-gate. We have seen Southey's love and quick perception of rural odors; but we were not acquainted with Wordsworth's singular privation of that delightful faculty. His friend tells once, and once only in his life, the dor

us, that "

might be expected to honor. But it was water in a dry place. The boy read and re-read; nor did forty years and the treasures of European imagination in any degree extinguish the remembrance of his delight. In the paternal home poetry and prose were very humbly represented. A small cupboard in the back parlor contained the glasses and library. But there lived in the town a bookseller, named Bull, who lent out volumes; a chance discovery among the miscellanies of his counter first conducted young Southey to Spenser and the Faërie Queene-an author and a poem that have probably influenced, in a greater or less degree, the finest minds in English literature. He realized the truthful saying of Pope about Spenser's truthfulness :

The delicious landscapes which he luxuriates in describing brought everything before my eyes. I could fancy such scenes as his lakes, and forests,

and gardens, and fountains presented; and I felt, | place. The history of his academic career is though I did not understand, the truth and purity gathered from letters addressed to his friend, Mr. of his feelings, and that love of the beautiful and the good which pervades his poetry.

One of Robert's earliest anticipations of authorship appeared at Williams' academy, in the shape of an extempore letter on Stonehenge, written on a slate. It procured for him a high reputation among his companions, which an untoward accident soon melted away. A conspiracy was formed to dethrone the new monarch, and it succeeded in this manner. Some half-dozen of the seniors confronted him, one morning, with the question, "What the letters i. e. stood for?" The future historian, not at all terrified by the cabalistic nature of the inquiry, immediately replied that he supposed they represented John the Evangelist.

Between his twelfth and thirteenth years, in addition to more epical visions, he wrote three heroic letters in rhyme, and translated passages of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. He also tried his hand in a different and homelier style, and produced two descriptive sketches on the model of Cunningham. A grander effort was the exhibition of the Trojan war, of which the fourth book was advancing to completion when the author went to Westminster; but, like an equally magnificent undertaking of Pope at nearly the same age, it was finally burnt. He set out for Westminster school in the February of 1788, and arrived after a journey of three days. His want of skill in making Latin verses was a considerable obstacle to distinction, and prevented him from climbing into a higher form than the fourth. However, the atmosphere had something in it bracing and stimulating, and unlike any he had breathed at Corston. Following the example of Eton, the Westminster boys had got up a periodical paper called The Trifler, which expired in its fortieth number. The poet became a candidate for admission under the signature of "B." His elegy was acknowledged, but never published.

At this period the autobiography abruptly ends, and the son of the poet takes up the thread. The repulse from The Trifler did not discourage him. In conjunction with several friends he started The Flagellant, which might have prospered, if its growth had not been stopped, in the ninth number, by the indignation of the head-master, who considered the constitution of Pedagogism to be insulted and endangered by an attack upon flogging. The writer was Southey, and the result his dismissal; the mildest shape, we suppose, of expulsion. This catastrophe happened in the spring of 1792. The remainder of that year he spent with his aunt at Bristol. But his escapade at Westminster was not forgotten. Its fame preceded him to Oxford; and Dr. Jackson, the imperial Dean of Christ Church, refused to receive him into the college. He accordingly entered himself of Balliol, and began to reside in January, 1793. Perhaps no student ever kept a term, with a mind or temper less suited to the genius of the

Bedford, and written in a style which cannot be more accurately described than by saying, that it is deficient in every quality for which he afterwards became conspicuous. The following letter gives a picture of his feelings at this time :

:

April 4, 1793.

My dear Grosvenor,-My philosophy, which has of the school of Plato, Aristotle, Westminster, or so long been of a kind peculiar to myself-neither the Miller-is at length settled; I am become a peripatetic philosopher. Far, however, from adopting the tenets of any self-sufficient cynic or puzzling sophist, my sentiments will be found more enlivened by the brilliant colors of fancy, nature, and Rousseau, than the positive dogmas of the Stagyrite, or the metaphysical refinements of his antagonist. I aspire not to the honorary titles of subtle disputant or divine doctor; I wish to found no school, to drive no scholars mad; ideas rise up with the scenes I view; some pass away with the momentary glance, some are engraved upon the tablet of memory, and some impressed upon the and I can give you a little more information upon heart. You have told me what philosophy is not, the subject. It is not reading Johannes Secundus because he may have some poetical lines; it is not wearing the hair undressed, in opposition to custom perhaps (this I feel the severity of, and blush for); it is not rejecting Lucan lest he should vitiate the taste, and reading without fear what may corrupt the heart; it is not clapt on with a wig, or communicated by the fashionable hand of the barber. It had nothing to do with Watson when he burnt his books; it does not sit upon a woolsack; honor cannot bestow it, persecution cannot take it away. It illumined the prison of Socrates, but fled the triumph of Octavius; it shrank from the savage murderer, Constantine: it dignified the tent of Julian. It has no particular love for colleges; in crowds it is alone, in solitude most engaged; it renders life agreeable, and death enviable.* I have lately read the Man of Feeling; if you have never yet read it, do now from my recommendation; few works have ever pleased me so painfully or so much. It is very strange that man should be de

lighted with the highest pain that can be produced. I even begin to think that both pain and pleasure exist only in idea. But this must not be affirmed; the first twinge of the toothache, or retrospective glance, will undeceive me with a vengeance.

Purity of mind is something like snow, best in the shade. Gibraltar is on a rock, but it would be imprudent to defy her enemies, and call them to the charge. My heart is equally easy of impresof it. Refinement I adore, but to me the highest sion with Rousseau, and perhaps more tenacious delicacy appears so intimately connected with it, that the union is like body and soul.

In some of his college letters we pick up a few fragments of criticism, not without relish. Glover's Leonidas was a favorite book which he often read, but liked chiefly for its subject, more interesting, he thought, than any poet's, except Milton. Southey was now twenty years old; of his years, and out of Spain, the swiftest rhymer on record. The catalogue of his metrical labors shows the prodigious amount of 10,000 verses burnt or lost;

15,000 put aside as worthless; and 10,000 pre- the generalization of individual property. Everyserved.

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body remembers the marvellous items of bloomcolored coats and crimson continuations, which Mr. Prior disinterred, from the buried ledgers of Goldsmith's tailor; but we imagine that the

be scarcely less surprising and interesting. We have a list of the necessary articles, in the letter from Southey to his brother, who was to be the admiral of the expedition :

What do your common blue trousers cost? Let me know, as I shall get two or three pairs for my winter working-dress, and as many jackets, either blue or gray; so my wardrobe will consist of two good coats, two cloth jackets, four linen ones, six brown holland pantaloons, and two nankeen ditto for dress.

The last touch about dressing for dinner is quite as daring as anything in Kehama.

These were assuredly symptoms of the disease in its most malignant and confluent form. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the producer of such heaps of couplets was extremely self-willed," outfit" of a Pantisocratist and Aspheteist will indifferently furnished with graver learning, and a holder of all deep scholarship in considerable scorn. Every blade of grass and every atom of matter" he thought "worth all the Fathers." This feeling was the more unfortunate, as the church was the destination which his uncle, Mr. Hill, had marked out for him. This gentleman, then chaplain to the British Factory at Lisbon, provided for the university expenses of his nephew. He seems to have borne the disappointment of his plans with much kindness and consideration. Medicine was to supply the vacancy left by theology. But the dissecting-room proved quite as unsavory as the Critici Sacri. He was all at sea, For a time Fortune smiled on the forlorn hope. driving hither and thither, and wanting nothing The numbers increased. Twenty-five Pantisobut love to complete the unsettlement of his mind. crats waited, axe in hand, for the descent on the It came at his call, in the pleasing face of Miss back settlements. Their thoughts by day and Edith Fricker. His desire of a small independ-visions by night centred in America. The Castle ence and the cottage-he had the occupant already of Indolence was a log-hut, and the true genii -grew every day stronger. But where was he to find it? Certainly not in the advice and example of the remarkable person with whom he now established a lasting friendship, and whose name, for praise and censure, has been so often blended with his own. There happened to be residing at Jesus College, Cambridge, an undergraduate, not then known to fame. This young man, going up in 1791, soon displayed the powers and oddities of his wide-reaching intellect. He won a gold medal, stood for the "Craven," wrote again for the Greek ode, got into debt, fell in love, proposed, was rejected, became desperate, quitted the university, went to London, enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons under the rather Puritanical name of Mr. Silas Tomken Cumberbatch, could not rub down his horse, dismayed his officers with a Latin exclamation and Greek criticism, and was at last released by his friends from the regiment at Hounslow, April, 1794. We speak of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the summer of that year he visited Oxford, and fell in with Southey. The congenial spirits took to each other. Southey wrote of his new friend with enthusiasm :-" He is of uncommon merit, of the strongest genius, the clearest judgment, the best heart."

Such an alliance was peculiarly favorable to the emigration project. It revived under the euphonious title of Pantisocracy. Nothing could be simpler than the outline. A society was to be formed the larger the better-having money and labor in common; each member taking his allotment of toil; and ladies-for bachelors were excluded-discharging the domestic duties and

cookery.

The Pantisocratists were likewise Aspheteists; two words of which the chief hierophant has favored us with a definition. Pantisocracy signified the equal government of all; and Aspheteism,

were the squatters. There was only one difficulty between the conception of this magnificent vision and its fulfilment-the want of money. The whole force of Pantisocracy could not club ten pounds. There was an enormous breadth of sail, but not a breath of air even to flutter it. At this moment a storm broke out which threatened to sweep Pantisocracy from the face of the earth. Southey's aunt—the lady of the cherry arm-chair with the aired cushion-was in a frenzy at the discovery of the combined horrors of Aspheteism and Matrimony. Miss Tyler's anger continued after "Pantisocracy had died a natural death, and the marriage had taken place." "The aunt and nephew never met again."

The poet was now without a home; full of hope, intellect, and love, but altogether destitute of any support more solid. America began to recede into blue distance, before the unmistakable reality of a purse with nothing in it. But Pantisocracy was not abandoned. Wales seemed to offer an easier site for an experiment than the Alleghany Mountains. But the new scheme did not prosper more than the old. Even Coleridge began to open his eyes. "For God's sake, my dear fellow," he wrote, "tell me what we are to gain by taking a Welsh farm. Supposing that we have found the preponderating utility of our aspheterizing in Wales, let us by our speedy and united inquiries discover the sum of money necessary. Whether such a farm with so very large a house is to be procured, without launching our frail and unpiloted bark on a rough sea of anxieties? How much money will be necessary for furnishing such a house? How much necessary for the maintenance of so large a family-eighteen people for a year at least?"

The head of the Pantisocratists was not in a condition to reply convincingly. His accomplish

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