one whom she accounted unclean; all who were not her favorites were included in that class. A chair in which an unclean person had sat was put out in the garden to be aired; and I never saw her more annoyed than on one occasion when a man, who called upon business, seated himself in her own chair; how the cushion was ever again to be rendered fit for her use, she knew not! On such occasions, her fine features assumed a character either fierce or tragic; her expressions were vehement even to irreverence; and her gesticulations those of the deepest and wildest distress, hands and eyes uplifted, as if she was in hopeless misery, or in a paroxysm of mental anguish." We looked with anxiety to the letters which describe his recollections of Westminster school. They are in every respect unimportant. He remained too short a time there to have his stay produce much effect in one way or other. His passion for early authorship was encouraged by the remuneration of which Cowper speaks: "At Westminster, where little poets strive pence, I was a poet too." It would have been well if Southey had been contented, like Cowper, "with seeing his exercise sent from form to form for the admiration of all who were able to understand it; " but Southey was born in a later day, and this description of publication was not sufficient for the spreading ambition of the ardent boy. He would be an author on a larger scale, and so he published some numbers of a periodical called the Flagel themselves flagellated, and so they commenced actions of libel against the publishers, and compelled Southey, who acknowledged himself the writer of a paper on corporal punishment, which gave them offence, to leave the school. At this time the affairs of his father were so involved that bankruptcy became inevitable. Southey went to Oxford, was refused admission at Christ Church on account of the Flagellant affair, and was admitted at Balliol. Never was there a more ill-regulated mind than that of this haughty spinster. Her temper was violent. To her servants she was capriciously indulgent and tyrannical. They did not dislike her, nor do such persons in general dislike passionate masters and mistresses. Faults of this kind in their superiors assist servants in the process of self-justification in which the half-educated moral being is forever occupied. They were disposed to bear a great deal, too, from their mistress, because she often let them go to the play-being able to do so for nothing-lant, in which the masters feared to see and because her perpetual altercations with them were more palatable than the stately reserve which would seem to deny servants the rights of a common nature with their masters. She herself had a theory not very uncommon, that "a bad temper was connected with a good understanding and a commanding mind," and so she was on very good terms with herself. She was parsimonious at the same time that she lived beyond her means. Her nephew, from whom we have this account of her oddities, seems to remember her in spite of them with affection. The elastic spirit of childhood resisted the worst effects of this strange tyranny; but Miss Tyler had in Miss Palmer, and in Southey's mother, passive natures, which dared not to give battle. Miss Tyler, fortunately for the peace of the rest of the family, fell out with a brother of Southey's, and so she never entered the door of Southey's father. Southey, who lived with his aunt, was under her control, and could only get to his father's in short and hurried visits. Her horror at the thought of his soiling his clothes prevented him from having any proper play-fellow. In these circumstances, he and his aunt's servant boy were constant companions. They worked together in the garden, flew kites, went into the country to look for flowers, and, greatest work of all, actually constructed a theatre for puppets. At last, Southey goes to Westminster. 66 ex Of his college life the records are few and unimportant. The letters preserved of this period are described by his son as ercises in composition." There is not much evidence of his having pursued the prescribed studies of his college, nor any of irregularities or rebellion against discipline. He would wear his hair in flowing ringlets, in proud opposition to the paste and pomatum which the fashion of the day required; and in spite of academic regulations which forbade boots, he appears to them. It was in 1793 that he entered college, and he past the August of that year at Brixton Causeway, four miles on the Surrey side of London, with his friend Grosvenor Bedford,-the friend to whom, some thirty years afterward, his "Roderick" was dedicated. Before this visit he had commenced the poem of Joan of Arc; and here, on the day on which he entered his twentieth have worn year, he resumed, and in six weeks com- | strongly expressed, perhaps ardently conpleted the work. ceived. "My progress," says Southey," would not have been so rapid, had it not been for the opportunity of retirement which I enjoyed there, and the encouragement I received. In those days, London had not extended in that direction farther than Kennington, beyond which place the scene suddenly changed, and there was an air and appearance of country which might now be sought in vain at a far greater distance from town. There was nothing, indeed, to remind one that London was so near, except the smoke which overhung it. "Mr. Bedford's residence was situated upon the edge of a common, on which shady lanes opened leading to neighboring villages, (for such they were then,) Camberwell, Dulwich, and Clapham, and to Norwood. The view in front was bounded by the Surrey hills. Its size and structure showed it to be one of those good houses built in the early part of the last century, by persons who, having realized a respectable fortune in trade, were wise enough to be contented with it, and retire to pass the evening of their lives in the enjoyment of leisure and tranquillity. "Tranquil indeed the place was, for the neighborhood did not extend beyond half a dozen families, and the London style and habits of visiting had not obtained among them. Uncle Toby himself might have enjoyed his rood and a half of ground there, and not have it known. A forecourt separated the house from the footpath and the road in front, behind there was a large and well-stocked garden with other spacious premises, in which utility and ornament were in some degree combined. At the extremity of the garden, and under the shade of four linden trees, was a summer-house looking on an ornamented grass-plot, and fitted up as a conveniently habitable room,that summer-house was allotted to me, and there my mornings were passed at the desk. Whether it exists now or not I am ignorant. The property has long since passed into other hands. The common is enclosed and divided by rectangular hedges and palings; rows of brick houses have supplanted the shade of oaks and elms; the brows of the Surrey hills bear a parapet of modern villas, and the face of the whole district is changed." In Southey's letters of 1793, we find strong expressions of sympathy with republican feelings. But the fervor is that of a boy inspired by his classics rather than by the newspapers of the day. Of modern books, Glover's Leonidas was now his favorite; and the contrast of Greece in the days of old and its then degradation-"What a republic!-What a province !"-awakes a wish * Southey's Collected Works, vol. i.-Preface to Joan of Arc. "If this world did but contain 10,000 people of both sexes, visionary as myself, how delightfully we would repeople Greece and turn out the Moslem. I would turn crusader, and make a pilgrimage to Parnassus at the head of my republicans, and there reinstate the Muses in their original splendor. We would build a temple to Eleutherian Jove from the quarries of Paros, replant the grove of Academus-ay, and the garden of Epicurus, where your brother and I wou 1 commence teachers." But in all Southey's visions of the future, domestic comfort finds its place, and we have him, at the close of his letter to Horace Bedford, from which we are quoting, building his house in the prettiest Doric style-planting his garden, and managing his family group, "when here comes a rascal, crying, 'hare skins and rabbit skins,' and my poor house, which was built in the air, falls to pieces and leaves me, like most visionary projectors, staring at disappointment. * It was the favorite intention of Cowley to retire with books to a cottage in America, and seek that happiness in solitude which he could not find in society. My asylum there would be sought for different reasons, (and no prospect in life gives me half the pleasure this visionary one affords.) I should be pleased to reside in a country where men's abilities would ensure respect; where society was on a proper footing, and man was considered more valuable than money; and where I could till the earth and provide by honest industry the meat which my wife would dress with pleasing care."* In another letter (December 14, 1793) he says, "The wants of man are so very few, that they must be attainable somewhere, and whether here or in America matters little. I have long learnt to look on the world as my country. Now, if you are in the mood for a revery, fancy me only in America; imagine my ground uncultivated since the creation, and see me wielding the axe, now nestled in it. Then see me grubbing up the roots, to cut down the tree, and now the snakes that and building a nice, snug little dairy with them: three rooms in my cottage, and my only companion some poor negro whom I have bought on purpose to emancipate. After a hard day's toil, see me sleep upon rushes; and in very bad weather take out my casette, and write to you; for you shall positively write to me in America. Do not imagine that I shall leave rhyming or philosophizing; so thus your friend will realize the romance of Cowley, and even outdo the seclusion * November 13, 1798. of Rousseau; till at last comes an ill-looking In- | sake of this, his room (the ground-floor room dian with a tomahawk, and scalps me." In another letter of the same year, he says "The more I see of this strange world, the more I am convinced that society requires desperate remedies. The friends I have (and you know me to be cautious in choosing them) are many of them struggling with obstacles which never could happen were man what nature intended him. A torrent of ideas bursts into my mind when I reflect on this subject. In the hours of sanguine expectation, these reveries are agreeable, but more frequently the visions are dark and gloomy, and the only ray that enlivens the scene beams on America." On religious subjects, Southey's notions were confused. It is scarcely just to designate opinions so vague as his, by classing him with any sect, but it became impossible for him to continue to entertain the thought of taking orders in the Church of England, and thus the object with which he came to Oxford was altogether frustrated. In devising means of support, some clerkship in one of the Government offices occurred to him, and he wrote to a friend on the subject; but here his Republicanism was an insuperable bar. He attended a few lectures on chemistry and anatomy, and soon found that medicine was not the thing for him. At this time he became acquainted with Coleridge. Coleridge was a student at Jesus College, Cambridge. In his first year he obtained the distinction of a gold medal for a Greek ode on the slave-trade. He is described by his contemporaries as desirous of college honors; but his strength was in classics; and the condition of being even examined for classical honors, was having attained some knowledge of mathematics; and this Coleridge never attained. While Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, was at college, he and Coleridge appear to have studied together. Middleton belonged to Pembroke Čollege, and Coleridge read at Middleton's rooms. They had been at Christ's Hospital together; and Middleton, the elder boy, was both at school and afterward at the university-to use Coleridge's own language-his "patron and protector." Middleton failed in obtaining a Fellowship at Pembroke, and left the place. With him went all Coleridge's industry and college hopes. Coleridge was," we are told, "very studious; but his reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise; was always ready to unbend his mind in conversation; and for the on the right hand of the staircase facing the versation-loving friends. I will not call them great gate) was a constant rendezvous of conloungers," says the writer from whom we quote, "for they did not call to kill time, but to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little suppers, or sizings as they were called, have I enjoyed!"* These were the days of political trials, and the French revolution, and Burke's pamphlets, all. This could not but have ended in disand Coleridge night and day declaimed on traction and debt. In a state of mind bordering on madness, he left Cambridge for London, and listed in a dragoon regiment. He was popular among his fellow-soldiers; and if he could not clean his horse, he could be of use in writing letters; so he wrote the love-letters of the regiment, and his brothers-in-arms did most of his duties. He had changed his name, and his friends for some five or six months knew nothing of him. At last he was recognized, and his discharge obtained through their friendly intervention. He returned to Cambridge. A minute account of this passage in Coleridge's life is given by Mr. Bowles, who adds to his narrative,-"It should be mentioned, that by far the most correct, sublime, chaste, and beautiful of his poems, meo judicio, the Religious Musings' was written non inter sylvas Academi, but in the tap-room at Reading: a fine subject for a painting by Wilkie." There is some confusion of dates in the account of this poem; Coleridge's own date of the poem is Christmas, 1794. Mr. Cottle refers its production to the June of the following year. Bowles's account of its having been written while he was serving in Elliot's dragoons is irreconcilable with either Coleridge's or Cottle's account. The date of Coleridge's enlistment was December 3, 1793, and of his discharge 10th of April, 1794.† Coleridge's stay at Cambridge was not long. In June, 1794, he went to Oxford on a visit to an old school-fellow, and there became acquainted with Southey. They were each attracted by the other; and their participation in the same views of society, and *We transcribe from a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine for December, 1834, signed CERGIEL, i. e., LE GRICE.-Gillman describes the author as a first form boy with Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; his statement we may therefore assume to be accurate, and also his fellow-students at the University. as Middleton and Coleridge were his school-fellows, From the War-Office Books.-Gillman's Life of Coleridge, p. 61. very much, too, of religion, became a strong bond of union. Southey, we have seen, had already determined against taking orders; and Coleridge must, we think, be regarded as having little hope of doing anything through his college. To neither did the sacrifice appear a severe one, of leaving their respective universities without waiting for degrees. England did not seem to promise them means of support; and emigration to America, which had been, as we have seen, long before Southey's mind as an object, became the subject of their thoughts and conversation;-of their conversation rather than their thoughts, if we are to judge of the matter by the account which Mr. Gillman gives in his Life of Coleridge; but in this account, we think, he underrates the feelings by which Coleridge and the young friend whom he chiefly influenced were actuated. "Much," says Gillman, "has been written on the proposed scheme of settling in the wilds of America; the spot chosen was the Susquehannah;-this spot, Coleridge has often said, was selected on account of the name being pretty and metrical; indeed, he could never forbear a smile when relating the story. This day-dream was a subject in which it is doubtful whether he or Mr. Southey were really in earnest at the time it was planned." We think the evidence decisive of their having been perfectly in earnest. "Their plan," says Cuthbert Southey, "was to collect as many brother adventurers as they could, and to establish a community in the New World on the most thoroughly social basis. Land was to be purchased by their common contributions, and to be cultivated by their common labor. Each was to have his portion of work assigned him; and they calculated that a large part of their time would still remain for social converse and literary pursuits. The females of the party, for all were to be married men,-were to work and perform all domestic offices; and having gone so far as to plan the architecture of their cottages and the form of their settlement, they had pictured as pleasant an Utopia as ever entered an ardent mind. To this scheme of emigration they gave the euphonious name of Pantisocracy." Coleridge, in his published works, now and then speaks of the plan-never as one that he and his friends did not do what they could to realize at the time it was contemplated-and to it and the speculations on government, which the administration of the projected colony suggested, he regarded himself as owing his clearest insight into "the nature of individual man"-his views of "social relations-of the true uses of trade and commerce, and how far the wealth and relative power of nations promote or impede their welfare and inherent strength." In imagination they were the rulers of an empire an empire in which they, too, were the sole laborers. Coleridge had a theme for perpetual argumentation, and it is not improbable that the discipline of defending their project against all assailants gave him some readiness in the use of language as an instrument. Coleridge left Oxford for Wales, and in the winter of that year we find him and Southey at Bristol. From Mr. Cottle we have an account of their Bristol life and plans. Cottle was established as a bookseller in Bristol-an accomplished and an amiable man, the author of some very pleasing poems. Some time toward the close of the year 1794, Robert Lovell, a young Quaker, who had lately married a Bristol young lady, called on Cottletold him of the plan of emigration proposed by Southey and Coleridge. Their project, he said, was to have entire community of property. None were to be admitted into the proposed colony but persons of incorruptible virtue. Some two hours of labor would be sufficient for each to produce his share of the common store. Ample time would thus remain for study and the production of literary works. It might not be possible to remove from the first generation -the settlers from Europe-all the evils attending their vicious education; but in the second generation, children born in the colony, who could only hear of "war and crime in Transatlantic story," would combine the "innocence of the patriarchal age with the knowledge and genuine refinements of European culture." Was it a real knowledge of Cottle's kindliness of nature that made them propose to him to become one of the founders of the new society? or was it that the "sires of empire yet to be" did after all think of themselves as communicating with the world around and beyond them chiefly through their literary productions, and imagined the new colony could not do without its bookseller? Was Cottle to be introduced into their paradise in the character of the cormorant sitting on the tree of knowledge ?* Cottle was lost in amazement; the splendor of the plan, as well as its simplicity, left *"The devil peeped into a publisher's shop, Quoth he, we are both of one college, For I sate myself like a cormorant once Upon the tree of Knowledge.”—Devil's Walk. him for a while without a word-at last he asks the young Quaker, “How do you go?" -“We freight a ship, carrying with us ploughs and all other implements of husbandry." At this time Lovell and three others had joined in the adventure-Coleridge from Cambridge, Southey and Burnett from Oxford. Lovell was a poet; his verses, like those of Southey and Cottle, were an echo of Cowper and Hurdis. They were not unpleasing-but he came as the herald of Coleridge and Southey, and delighted the young and ardent bookseller by quotations from the poems of his friends. A live poet was then something to look at,—and in a short time after Lovell came again, bringing Southey with him. "Never," says Cottle, "will the impression be effaced. Tall, dignified, possessing great suavity of manners, an eye piercing, with a countenance full of genius, kindliness, and intelligence, I gave him at once the right hand of friendship, and to the present moment never has it been withdrawn." In a few days after Coleridge rose in the eye of the delighted bookseller. Cottle formed parties where Pantisocracy was discussed, objections started, objections obviated, and quarto volumes announced as forthcoming to advance arguments too recondite for conversation. Still no ship was engaged -no preparation made for the actual vogage; Cottle had a prophetic misgiving that the scheme was about to be abandoned. He was unable, to be sure, to interpose a word in the torrents of argument that forever flowed from the eloquent lips of the future patriarchs, but he found himself at night sleepless with anxiety at men of such genius throwing themselves away in pursuit of what he regarded as a delusion. Of their pecuniary means he as yet knew nothing, nor till he was asked for the loan of a few pounds to discharge their lodging-bill, had he any notion of there being difficulties of that kind in their way. Cottle was a generous man, and gave Southey and Coleridge thirty guineas each for the copyright of their poems. Coleridge had in vain tried to sell his in London. To Southey also he gave fifty guineas for Joan of Arc, and gave him fifty copies for himself. "It can rarely happen," says Southey, in a preface to a late reprint of the poem, "that a young author should meet with a bookseller as inexperienced and as ardent as himself, and it would be still more extraordinary if such mutual indiscretion did not bring with it cause of regret to both. But this transaction was the commencement of an intimacy which has continued without the slightest shade of displeasure at any time on either side to the present day." The expedition to America was not yet abandoned in thought by the adventurous poets, and Coleridge and Southey delivered lectures in Bristol, in order to raise the necessary funds. Southey's lectures were on history: they were greatly admired. Cottle tells us of the graceful self-possession of the lecturer. The subject of emigration for a while continues to occupy Southey's letters. In one to his brother Thomas Southey, he tells of two new associates, Favell and Le Griceand quotes a poem of Favell's, on the subject of the intended colony. "No more my visionary soul shall dwell On joys that were; no more endure to weigh And dancing to the moonlight roundelay, Tears of doubt-mingled joy, as those who start From precipices of distemper'd sleep, And see the rising sun, and find it dart "This is," says Southey, "a very beautiful piece of poetry; and we may form a very fair opinion of Favell from it." With respect to this sonnet, there is somehow or other a mistake, as the first eight lines are printed as his own in Coleridge's monody on the death of Chatterton. Could Southey have made some mistake? and is the poem Coleridge's? In the monody on the death of Chatterton, the eighth line is— "The wizard passions weave a holy spell," which is no doubt the true reading, though something of meaning can also be forced out of the other. Of Southey's lectures, we regret that his son has been unable to find any trace. Ardent and enthusiastic as he was, and hoping too much from change in the institutions of society, we have no doubt that they would altogether disprove the charges made against him of wishing to disturb the rights of prop |