THE LAKE POETS: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND ROBERT SOUTHEY[127]
[127] From _Tait's Magazine_ for July 1839. See explanation in
Editor's Preface to this volume.--M.
That night--the first of my personal intercourse with
Wordsworth--the first in which I saw him face to face--was
(it is little, indeed, to say) memorable: it was marked by a
change even in the physical condition of my nervous system.
Long disappointment--hope for ever baffled (and why should
it be less painful because _self_-baffled?)--vexation and
self-blame, almost self-contempt, at my own want of courage
to face the man whom of all since the Flood I most yearned to
behold:--these feelings had impressed upon my nervous sensibilities
a character of irritation--agitation--restlessness--eternal
self-dissatisfaction--which were gradually gathering into a distinct,
well-defined type, that would, but for youth--almighty youth, and
the spirit of youth--have shaped itself into some nervous complaint,
wearing symptoms _sui generis_ (for most nervous complaints, in minds
that are at all eccentric, will be _sui generis_); and, perhaps,
finally, have been immortalized in some medical journal as the
anomalous malady of an interesting young gentleman, aged twenty-two,
who was supposed to have studied too severely, and to have perplexed
his brain with German metaphysics. To this result things tended;
but, in one hour, all passed away. It was gone, never to return. The
spiritual being whom I had anticipated--for, like Eloisa,
"My fancy framed him of the angelic kind,
Some emanation of the all-beauteous mind"--
this ideal creature had at length been seen--seen "in the flesh"--seen
with fleshly eyes; and now, though he did not cease for years to wear
something of the glory and the _aureola_ which, in Popish legends,
invests the head of superhuman beings, yet it was no longer as a being
to be feared: it was as Raphael, the "affable" angel, who conversed on
the terms of man with man, that I now regarded him.
It was four o'clock, perhaps, when we arrived. At that hour in November
the daylight soon declined; and, in an hour and a half, we were all
collected about the tea-table. This, with the Wordsworths, under the
simple rustic system of habits which they cherished then, and for
twenty years after, was the most delightful meal in the day; just as
dinner is in great cities, and for the same reason--because it was
prolonged into a meal of leisure and conversation. And the reason why
any meal favours and encourages conversation is pretty much the same
as that which accounts for the breaking down of so many lawyers, and
generally their ill-success in the House of Commons. In the courts
of law, when a man is haranguing upon general and abstract topics,
if at any moment he feels getting beyond his depth, if he finds his
anchor driving, he can always bring up, and drop his anchor anew upon
the _terra firma_ of his case: the facts of this, as furnished by his
brief, always assure him of a retreat as soon as he finds his more
general thoughts failing him; and the consciousness of this retreat, by
inspiring confidence, makes it much less probable that they _should_
fail. But, in Parliament, where the advantage of a case with given
facts and circumstances, or the details of a statistical report, does
not offer itself once in a dozen times that a member has occasion to
speak--where he has to seek unpremeditated arguments and reasonings of
a general nature, from the impossibility of wholly evading the previous
speeches that may have made an impression upon the House;--this
necessity, at any rate a trying one to most people, is doubly so to
one who has always walked in the leading-strings of a _case_--always
swum with the help of bladders, in the conscious resource of his
_facts_. The reason, therefore, why a lawyer succeeds ill as a senator
is to be found in the sudden removal of an artificial aid. Now, just
such an artificial aid is furnished to timid or to unready men by
a dinner-table, and the miscellaneous attentions, courtesies, or
occupations which it enjoins or permits, as by the fixed memoranda
of a brief. If a man finds the ground slipping from beneath him in a
discussion--if, in a tide of illustration, he suddenly comes to a pause
for want of matter--he can make a graceful close, a self-interruption,
that shall wear the interpretation of forbearance, or even win the
rhetorical credit of an _aposiopesis_ (according to circumstances), by
stopping to perform a duty of the occasion: pressed into a dilemma by
some political partisan, one may evade it by pressing him to take a
little of the dish before one; or, plagued for a reason which is not
forthcoming, one may deprecate this logical rigour by inviting one's
tormentor to wine. In short, what I mean to say is, that a dinner
party, or any meal which is made the meal for intellectual relaxation,
must for ever offer the advantages of a _palæstra_ in which the weapons
are foils and the wounds not mortal: in which, whilst the interest is
that of a real, the danger is that of a sham fight: in which whilst
there is always an opportunity for swimming into deep waters, there is
always a retreat into shallow ones. And it may be laid down as a maxim,
that no nation is civilized to the height of its capacity until it
_has_ one such meal. With our ancestors of sixty years back, this meal
was supper: with the Athenians and Greeks it was dinner[128] (coena
and [Greek: deipnon]), as with ourselves; only that the hour was a
very early one, in consequence, partly, of the early bedtime of these
nations (which again was occasioned by the dearness of candle-light
to the mass of those who had political rights, on whose account the
forensic meetings, the visits of clients to their patrons, &c., opened
the political day by four hours earlier than with us), and partly in
consequence of the uncommercial habits of the ancients--commerce having
at no time created an aristocracy of its own, and, therefore, having at
no time and in no city (no, not Alexandria nor Carthage) dictated the
household and social arrangements, or the distribution of its hours.
[128] A curious dissertation might be written on this subject.
Meantime, it is remarkable that almost all modern nations have
committed the blunder of supposing the Latin word for supper to be
_coena_, and of dinner _prandium_. Now, the essential definition
of dinner is, that which is the main meal--(what the French call
the he great meal). By that or any test (for example, the _time_,
three P.M.) the Roman coena was dinner. Even Louis XII, whose
death is partly ascribed to his having altered his dinner hour
from nine to eleven A.M. in compliment to his young English bride,
did not _sup_ at three P.M.
I have been led insensibly into this digression. I now resume the
thread of my narrative. That night, after hearing conversation superior
by much, in its tone and subject, to any which I had ever heard
before--one exception only being made in favour of Coleridge, whose
style differed from Wordsworth's in this, that, being far more agile
and more comprehensive, consequently more showy and surprising, it was
less impressive and weighty; for Wordsworth's was slow in its movement,
solemn, majestic. After a luxury so rare as this, I found myself, about
eleven at night, in a pretty bedroom, about fourteen feet by twelve.
Much I feared that this might turn out the best room in the house; and
it illustrates the hospitality of my new friends to mention that it
was. Early in the morning, I was awoke by a little voice, issuing from
a little cottage bed in an opposite corner, soliloquizing in a low
tone. I soon recognized the words--"Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was
crucified, dead, and buried"; and the voice I easily conjectured to be
that of the eldest amongst Wordsworth's children, a son, and at that
time about three years old. He was a remarkably fine boy in strength
and size, promising (which has in fact been realized) a much more
powerful person, physically, than that of his father. Miss Wordsworth
I found making breakfast in the little sitting-room. No urn was there;
no glittering breakfast service; a kettle boiled upon the fire, and
everything was in harmony with these unpretending arrangements. I, the
son of a merchant, and naturally, therefore, in the midst of luxurious
(though not ostentatious) display from my childhood, had never seen so
humble a _ménage_: and, contrasting the dignity of the man with this
honourable poverty, and this courageous avowal of it, his utter absence
of all effort to disguise the simple truth of the case, I felt my
admiration increase to the uttermost by all I saw. This, thought I to
myself, is, indeed, in his own words--
"Plain living, and high thinking."
This is indeed to reserve the humility and the parsimonies of life
for its bodily enjoyments, and to apply its lavishness and its luxury
to its enjoyments of the intellect. So might Milton have lived; so
Marvell. Throughout the day--which was rainy--the same style of modest
hospitality prevailed. Wordsworth and his sister--myself being of the
party--walked out in spite of the rain, and made the circuit of the two
lakes, Grasmere and its dependency Rydal--a walk of about six miles. On
the third day, Mrs. Coleridge having now pursued her journey northward
to Keswick, and having, at her departure, invited me, in her own name
as well as Southey's, to come and see them, Wordsworth proposed that we
should go thither in company, but not by the direct route--a distance
of only thirteen miles: this we were to take in our road homeward; our
outward-bound journey was to be by way of Ulleswater--a circuit of
forty-three miles.
On the third morning after my arrival in Grasmere, I found the whole
family, except the two children, prepared for the expedition across the
mountains. I had heard of no horses, and took it for granted that we
were to walk; however, at the moment of starting, a cart--the common
farmers' cart of the country--made its appearance; and the driver
was a bonny young woman of the vale. Such a vehicle I had never in
my life seen used for such a purpose; but what was good enough for
the Wordsworths was good enough for me; and, accordingly, we were all
carted along to the little town, or large village, of Ambleside--three
and a half miles distant. Our style of travelling occasioned no
astonishment; on the contrary, we met a smiling salutation wherever
we appeared--Miss Wordsworth being, as I observed, the person most
familiarly known of our party, and the one who took upon herself the
whole expenses of the flying colloquies exchanged with stragglers on
the road. What struck me with most astonishment, however, was the
liberal manner of our fair driver, who made no scruple of taking a
leap, with the reins in her hand, and seating herself dexterously upon
the shafts (or, in Westmoreland phrase, the _trams_) of the cart. From
Ambleside--and without one foot of intervening flat ground--begins
to rise the famous ascent of Kirkstone; after which, for three long
miles, all riding in a cart drawn by one horse becomes impossible. The
ascent is computed at three miles, but is, probably, a little more.
In some parts it is almost frightfully steep; for the road, being
only the original mountain track of shepherds, gradually widened and
improved from age to age (especially since the era of tourists began),
is carried over ground which no engineer, even in alpine countries,
would have viewed as practicable. In ascending, this is felt chiefly
as an obstruction and not as a peril, unless where there is a risk of
the horses backing; but in the reverse order, some of these precipitous
descents are terrific: and yet once, in utter darkness, after midnight,
and the darkness irradiated only by continual streams of lightning,
I was driven down this whole descent, at a full gallop, by a young
woman--the carriage being a light one, the horses frightened, and
the descents, at some critical parts of the road, so literally like
the sides of a house, that it was difficult to keep the fore wheels
from pressing upon the hind legs of the horses. Indeed, this is only
according to the custom of the country, as I have before mentioned.
The innkeeper of Ambleside, or Lowwood, will not mount this formidable
hill without four horses. The leaders you are not required to take
beyond the first three miles; but, of course, they are glad if you will
take them on the whole stage of nine miles, to Patterdale; and, in
that case, there is a real luxury at hand for those who enjoy velocity
of motion. The descent into Patterdale is much above two miles; but
such is the propensity for flying down hills in Westmoreland that I
have found the descent accomplished in about six minutes, which is at
the rate of eighteen miles an hour; the various turnings of the road
making the speed much more sensible to the traveller. The pass, at the
summit of this ascent, is nothing to be compared in sublimity with
the pass under Great Gavil from Wastdalehead; but it is solemn, and
profoundly impressive. At a height so awful as this, it may be easily
supposed that all human dwellings have been long left behind: no sound
of human life, no bells of churches or chapels ever ascend so far.
And, as is noticed in Wordsworth's fine stanzas upon this memorable
pass, the only sound that, even in noonday, disturbs the sleep of the
weary pedestrian, is that of the bee murmuring amongst the mountain
flowers--a sound as ancient
"As man's imperial front, and woman's roseate bloom."
This way, and (which, to the sentiment of the case, is an important
point) this way of _necessity_ and _inevitably_, passed the Roman
legions; for it is a mathematic impossibility that any other route
could be found for an army nearer to the eastward of this pass than
by way of Kendal and Shap; nearer to the westward, than by way of
Legbesthwaite and St. John's Vale (and so by Threlkeld to Penrith).
Now, these two roads are exactly twenty-five miles apart; and, since
a Roman cohort was stationed at Ambleside (_Amboglane_), it is pretty
evident that this cohort would not correspond with the more northerly
stations by either of these remote routes--having immediately before
it this direct though difficult pass to Kirkstone. On the solitary
area of tableland which you find at the summit--though, Heaven knows,
you might almost cover it with a drawing-room carpet, so suddenly
does the mountain take to its old trick of precipitous descent, on
both sides alike--there are only two objects to remind you of man
and his workmanship. One is a guide-post--always a picturesque and
interesting object, because it expresses a wild country and a labyrinth
of roads, and often made much more interesting (as in this case) by
the lichens which cover it, and which record the generations of men
to whom it has done its office; as also by the crucifix form, which
inevitably recalls, in all mountainous regions, the crosses of Catholic
lands, raised to the memory of wayfaring men who have perished by
the hand of the assassin. The other memorial of man is even more
interesting:--Amongst the fragments of rock which lie in the confusion
of a ruin on each side of the road, one there is which exceeds the
rest in height, and which, in shape, presents a very close resemblance
to a church. This lies to the left of the road as you are going from
Ambleside; and from its name, Churchstone (Kirkstone), is derived
the name of the pass, and from the pass the name of the mountain.
The guide-post--which was really the work of man--tells those going
southwards (for to those who go northwards it is useless, since, in
that direction, there is no choice of roads) that the left hand track
conducts you to Troutbeck, and Bowness, and Kendal, the right hand to
Ambleside, and Hawkshead, and Ulverstone. The church--which is but a
phantom of man's handiwork--might, however, really be mistaken for
such, were it not that the rude and almost inaccessible state of the
adjacent ground proclaims the truth. As to size, _that_ is remarkably
difficult to estimate upon wild heaths or mountain solitudes, where
there are no leadings through gradations of distance, nor any
artificial standards, from which height or breadth can be properly
deduced. This mimic church, however, has a peculiarly fine effect in
this wild situation, which leaves so far below the tumults of this
world: the phantom church, by suggesting the phantom and evanescent
image of a congregation, where never congregation met; of the pealing
organ, where never sound was heard except of wild natural notes, or
else of the wind rushing through these mighty gates of everlasting
rock--in this way, the fanciful image that accompanies the traveller on
his road, for half a mile or more, serves to bring out the antagonist
feeling of intense and awful solitude, which is the natural and
presiding sentiment--the _religio loci_--that broods for ever over the
romantic pass.
Having walked up Kirkstone, we ascended our cart again; then rapidly
descended to Brothers' Water--a lake which lies immediately below;
and, about three miles further, through endless woods and under the
shade of mighty fells, immediate dependencies and processes of the
still more mighty Helvellyn, we approached the vale of Patterdale,
when, by moonlight, we reached the inn. Here we found horses--by whom
furnished I never asked nor heard; perhaps I owe somebody for a horse
to this day. All I remember is--that through those most romantic woods
and rocks of Stybarren--through those silent glens of Glencoin and
Glenridding--through that most romantic of parks then belonging to
the Duke of Norfolk, viz. Gobarrow Park--we saw alternately, for four
miles, the most grotesque and the most awful spectacles--
"Abbey windows
And Moorish temples of the Hindoos,"
all fantastic, all as unreal and shadowy as the moonlight which created
them; whilst, at every angle of the road, broad gleams came upwards of
Ulleswater, stretching for nine miles northward, but, fortunately for
its effect, broken into three watery chambers of almost equal length,
and rarely visible at once. At the foot of the lake, in a house called
Ewsmere, we passed the night, having accomplished about twenty-two
miles only in our day's walking and riding.
The next day Wordsworth and I, leaving at Ewsmere the rest of our
party, spent the morning in roaming through the woods of Lowther, and,
towards evening, we dined together at Emont Bridge, one mile short of
Penrith. Afterwards, we walked into Penrith. There Wordsworth left me
in excellent quarters--the house of Captain Wordsworth, from which the
family happened to be absent. Whither he himself adjourned, I know
not, nor on what business; however, it occupied him throughout the
next day; and, therefore, I employed myself in sauntering along the
road, about seventeen miles, to Keswick. There I had been directed to
ask for Greta Hall, which, with some little difficulty, I found; for
it stands out of the town a few hundred yards, upon a little eminence
overhanging the river Greta. It was about seven o'clock when I reached
Southey's door; for I had stopped to dine at a little public house in
Threlkeld, and had walked slowly for the last two hours in the dark.
The arrival of a stranger occasioned a little sensation in the house;
and, by the time the front door could be opened, I saw Mrs. Coleridge,
and a gentleman whom I could not doubt to be Southey, standing, very
hospitably, to greet my entrance. Southey was, in person, somewhat
taller than Wordsworth, being about five feet eleven in height, or a
trifle more, whilst Wordsworth was about five feet ten; and, partly
from having slender limbs, partly from being more symmetrically formed
about the shoulders than Wordsworth, he struck one as a better and
lighter figure, to the effect of which his dress contributed; for he
wore pretty constantly a short jacket and pantaloons, and had much the
air of a Tyrolese mountaineer.
On the next day arrived Wordsworth. I could read at once, in the manner
of the two authors, that they were not on particularly friendly,
or rather, I should say, confidential terms. It seemed to me as if
both had silently said--"We are too much men of sense to quarrel
because we do not happen particularly to like each other's writings:
we are neighbours, or what passes for such in the country. Let us
show each other the courtesies which are becoming to men of letters;
and, for any closer connexion, our distance of thirteen miles may
be always sufficient to keep us from _that_." In after life, it is
true--fifteen years, perhaps, from this time--many circumstances
combined to bring Southey and Wordsworth into more intimate terms
of friendship: agreement in politics, sorrows which had happened to
both alike in their domestic relations, and the sort of tolerance for
different opinions in literature, or, indeed, in anything else, which
advancing years and experience are sure to bring with them. But at
this period, Southey and Wordsworth entertained a mutual esteem, but
did not cordially like each other. Indeed, it would have been odd if
they had. Wordsworth lived in the open air: Southey in his library,
which Coleridge used to call his wife. Southey had particularly
elegant habits (Wordsworth called them finical) in the use of books.
Wordsworth, on the other hand, was so negligent, and so self-indulgent
in the same case, that, as Southey, laughing, expressed it to me some
years afterwards, when I was staying at Greta Hall on a visit--"To
introduce Wordsworth into one's library is like letting a bear into
a tulip garden." What I mean by self-indulgent is this: generally it
happens that new books baffle and mock one's curiosity by their uncut
leaves; and the trial is pretty much the same as when, in some town
where you are utterly unknown, you meet the postman at a distance from
your inn, with some letter for yourself from a dear, dear friend in
foreign regions, without money to pay the postage. How is it with you,
dear reader, in such a case? Are you not tempted (_I am_ grievously) to
snatch the letter from his tantalizing hand, spite of the roar which
you anticipate of "Stop thief!" and make off as fast as you can for
some solitary street in the suburbs, where you may instantly effect an
entrance upon your new estate before the purchase money is paid down?
Such were Wordsworth's feelings in regard to new books; of which the
first exemplification I had was early in my acquaintance with him, and
on occasion of a book which (if any could) justified the too summary
style of his advances in rifling its charms. On a level with the eye,
when sitting at the tea-table in my little cottage at Grasmere, stood
the collective works of Edmund Burke. The book was to me an eye-sore
and an ear-sore for many a year, in consequence of the cacophonous
title lettered by the bookseller upon the back--"Burke's Works." I have
heard it said, by the way, that Donne's intolerable defect of ear grew
out of his own baptismal name, when harnessed to his own surname--_John
Donne_. No man, it was said, who had listened to this hideous jingle
from childish years, could fail to have his genius for discord, and the
abominable in sound, improved to the utmost. Not less dreadful than
_John Donne_ was "Burke's Works"; which, however, on the old principle,
that every day's work is no day's work, continued to annoy me for
twenty-one years. Wordsworth took down the volume; unfortunately it was
uncut; fortunately, and by a special Providence as to him, it seemed,
tea was proceeding at the time. Dry toast required butter; butter
required knives; and knives then lay on the table; but sad it was for
the virgin purity of Mr. Burke's as yet unsunned pages, that every
knife bore upon its blade testimonies of the service it had rendered.
Did _that_ stop Wordsworth? Did that cause him to call for another
knife? Not at all; he
"Look'd at the knife that caus'd his pain:
And look'd and sigh'd, and look'd and sigh'd again";
and then, after this momentary tribute to regret, he tore his way into
the heart of the volume with this knife, that left its greasy honours
behind it upon every page: and are they not there to this day? This
personal experience first brought me acquainted with Wordsworth's
habits in that particular especially, with his intense impatience for
one minute's delay which would have brought a remedy; and yet the
reader may believe that it is no affectation in me to say that fifty
such cases could have given me but little pain, when I explain that
whatever could be made good by money, at that time, I did not regard.
Had the book been an old black-letter book, having a value from its
rarity, I should have been disturbed in an indescribable degree; but
simply with reference to the utter impossibility of reproducing that
mode of value. As to the Burke, it was a common book; I had bought the
book, with many others, at the sale of Sir Cecil Wray's library, for
about two-thirds of the selling price: I could easily replace it; and I
mention the case at all, only to illustrate the excess of Wordsworth's
outrages on books, which made him, in Southey's eyes, a mere monster;
for Southey's beautiful library was his estate; and this difference of
habits would alone have sufficed to alienate him from Wordsworth. And
so I argued in other cases of the same nature. Meantime, had Wordsworth
done as Coleridge did, how cheerfully should I have acquiesced in his
destruction (such as it was, in a pecuniary sense) of books, as the
very highest obligation he could confer. Coleridge often spoiled a
book; but, in the course of doing this, he enriched that book with
so many and so valuable notes, tossing about him, with such lavish
profusion, from such a cornucopia of discursive reading, and such a
fusing intellect, commentaries so many-angled and so many-coloured
that I have envied many a man whose luck has placed him in the way of
such injuries; and that man must have been a churl (though, God knows!
too often this churl _has_ existed) who could have found in his heart
to complain. But Wordsworth rarely, indeed, wrote on the margin of
books; and, when he did, nothing could less illustrate his intellectual
superiority. The comments were such as might have been made by anybody.
Once, I remember, before I had ever seen Wordsworth--probably a year
before--I met a person who had once enjoyed the signal honour of
travelling with him to London. It was in a stage-coach. But the person
in question well knew _who_ it was that had been his _compagnon de
voyage_. Immediately he was glorified in my eyes. "And," said I, to
this glorified gentleman (who, _par parenthése_, was also a donkey),
"Now, as you travelled nearly three hundred miles in the company of
Mr. Wordsworth, consequently (for this was in 1805) during two nights
and two days, doubtless you must have heard many profound remarks that
would inevitably fall from his lips." Nay, Coleridge had also been of
the party; and, if Wordsworth _solus_ could have been dull, was it
within human possibilities that these _gemini_ should have been so?
"Was it possible?" I said; and perhaps my donkey, who looked like one
that had been immoderately threatened, at last took courage; his eye
brightened; and he intimated that he _did_ remember something that
Wordsworth had said--an "observe," as the Scotch call it.
"Ay, indeed; and what was it now? What did the great man say?"
"Why, sir, in fact, and to make a long story short, on coming near
to London, we breakfasted at Baldock--you know Baldock? It's in
Hertfordshire. Well, now, sir, would you believe it, though we were
quite in regular time, the breakfast was precisely good for nothing?"
"And Wordsworth?"
"He observed----"
"What did he observe?"
"That the buttered toast looked, for all the world, as if it had been
soaked in hot water."
Ye heavens! "_buttered toast!_" And was it _this_ I waited for? Now,
thought I, had Henry Mackenzie been breakfasting with Wordsworth at
Baldock (and, strange enough! in years to come I _did_ breakfast
with Henry Mackenzie, for the solitary time I ever met him, and at
Wordsworth's house in Rydal), he would have carried off one sole
reminiscence from the meeting--namely, a confirmation of his creed,
that we English are all dedicated, from our very cradle, to the
luxuries of the palate, and peculiarly to this.[129] _Proh pudor!_
Yet, in sad sincerity, Wordsworth's pencil-notices in books were quite
as disappointing. In "Roderick Random," for example, I found a note
upon a certain luscious description, to the effect that "such things
should be left to the imagination of the reader--not expressed." In
another place, that it was "improper"; and, in a third, that "the
principle laid down was doubtful," or, as Sir Roger de Coverley
observes, "that much might be said on both sides." All this, however,
indicates nothing more than that different men require to be roused
by different stimulants. Wordsworth, in his marginal notes, thought
of nothing but delivering himself of a strong feeling, with which
he wished to challenge the reader's sympathy. Coleridge imagined an
audience before him; and, however doubtful that consummation might
seem, I am satisfied that he never wrote a line for which he did
not feel the momentary inspiration of sympathy and applause, under
the confidence, that, sooner or later, all which he had committed
to the chance margins of books would converge and assemble in some
common reservoir of reception. Bread scattered upon the water will
be gathered after many days. This, perhaps, was the consolation that
supported him; and the prospect that, for a time, his Arethusa of
truth would flow underground, did not, perhaps, disturb, but rather
cheered and elevated, the sublime old somnambulist.[130] Meantime,
Wordsworth's habits of using books--which, I am satisfied, would, in
those days, alone have kept him at a distance from most men with fine
libraries--were not vulgar; not the habits of those who turn over the
page by means of a wet finger (though even this abomination I have
seen perpetrated by a Cambridge tutor and fellow of a college; but
then he had been bred up as a ploughman, and the son of a ploughman):
no; but his habits were more properly barbarous and licentious, and in
the spirit of audacity belonging _de jure_ to no man but him who could
plead an income of four or five hundred thousand per annum, and to whom
the Bodleian or the Vatican would be a three years' purchase. Gross,
meantime, was his delusion upon this subject. Himself he regarded as
the golden mean between the too little and the too much of care for
books; and, as it happened that every one of his friends far exceeded
him in this point, curiously felicitous was the explanation which he
gave of this superfluous care, so as to bring it within the natural
operation of some known fact in the man's peculiar situation. Southey
(he was by nature something of an old bachelor) had his house filled
with pretty articles--_bijouterie_, and so forth; and, naturally,
he wished his books to be kept up to the same level--burnished
and bright for show. Sir George Beaumont--this peculiarly elegant
and accomplished man--was an old and most affectionate friend of
Wordsworth's. Sir George Beaumont never had any children; if he had
been so blessed, they, by familiarizing him with the spectacle of
books ill used--stained, torn, mutilated, &c.--would have lowered the
standard of his requisitions. The short solution of the whole case
was--and it illustrated the nature of his education--he had never lived
in a regular family at a time when habits are moulded. From boyhood to
manhood he had been _sui juris_.
[129] It is not known to the English, but it is a fact which I can
vouch for, from my six or seven years' residence in Scotland
[written in 1839], that the Scotch, one and all, believe it to be
an inalienable characteristic of an Englishman to be fond of good
eating. What indignation have I, and how many a time, had occasion
to feel and utter on this subject? But of this at some other time.
Meantime, the Man of Feeling had this creed in excess; and, in
some paper (of _The Mirror_ or _The Lounger_), he describes an
English tourist in Scotland by saying--"I would not wish to be
thought national; yet, in mere reverence for truth, I am bound to
say, and to declare to all the world (let who will be offended),
that the first innkeeper in Scotland under whose roof we met with
genuine buttered toast was an Englishman."
[130] Meantime, if it did not disturb _him_, it ought to disturb
_us_, his immediate successors, who are at once the most likely to
retrieve these _losses_ by direct efforts, and the least likely to
benefit by any casual or indirect retrievals, such as will be
produced by time. Surely a subscription should be set on foot to
recover all books enriched by his marginal notes. I would
subscribe; and I know others who would largely.
* * * * *
Returning to Southey and Greta Hall, both the house and the master
may deserve a few words more of description. For the master, I have
already sketched his person; and his face I profess myself unable to
describe accurately. His hair was black, and yet his complexion was
fair; his eyes I believe to be hazel and large; but I will not vouch
for that fact: his nose aquiline; and he has a remarkable habit of
looking up into the air, as if looking at abstractions. The expression
of his face was that of a very acute and aspiring man. So far, it was
even noble, as it conveyed a feeling of a serene and gentle pride,
habitually familiar with elevating subjects of contemplation. And yet
it was impossible that this pride could have been offensive to anybody,
chastened as it was by the most unaffected modesty; and this modesty
made evident and prominent by the constant expression of reverence for
the great men of the age (when he happened to esteem them such), and
for all the great patriarchs of our literature. The point in which
Southey's manner failed the most in conciliating regard was in all
which related to the external expressions of friendliness. No man could
be more sincerely hospitable--no man more essentially disposed to give
up even his time (the possession which he most valued) to the service
of his friends. But there was an air of reserve and distance about
him--the reserve of a lofty, self-respecting mind, but, perhaps, a
little too freezing--in his treatment of all persons who were not among
the _corps_ of his ancient fireside friends. Still, even towards the
veriest strangers, it is but justice to notice his extreme courtesy in
sacrificing his literary employments for the day, whatever they might
be, to the duty (for such he made it) of doing the honours of the lake
and the adjacent mountains.
Southey was at that time (1807), and has continued ever since, the most
industrious of all literary men on record. A certain task he prescribed
to himself every morning before breakfast. This could not be a very
long one, for he breakfasted at nine, or soon after, and _never_ rose
before eight, though he went to bed duly at half-past ten; but, as I
have many times heard him say, less than nine hours' sleep he found
insufficient. From breakfast to a latish dinner (about half after five
or six) was his main period of literary toil. After dinner, according
to the accident of having or not having visitors in the house, he sat
over his wine, or he retired to his library again, from which, about
eight, he was summoned to tea. But, generally speaking, he closed his
_literary_ toils at dinner; the whole of the hours after that meal
being dedicated to his correspondence. This, it may be supposed, was
unusually large, to occupy so much of his time, for his letters rarely
extended to any length. At that period, the post, by way of Penrith,
reached Keswick about six or seven in the evening. And so pointedly
regular was Southey in all his habits that, short as the time was,
all letters were answered on the same evening which brought them. At
tea, he read the London papers. It was perfectly astonishing to men of
less methodical habits to find how much he got through of elaborate
business by his unvarying system of arrangement in the distribution
of his time. We often hear it said, in accounts of pattern ladies and
gentlemen (what Coleridge used contemptuously to style _goody_ people),
that they found time for everything; that business never interrupted
pleasure; that labours of love and charity never stood in the way
of courtesy and personal enjoyment. This is easy to say--easy to put
down as one feature of an imaginary portrait: but I must say that in
actual life I have seen few such cases. Southey, however, _did_ find
time for everything. It moved the sneers of some people, that even his
poetry was composed according to a predetermined rule; that so many
lines should be produced, by contract, as it were, before breakfast;
so many at such another definite interval. And I acknowledge that so
far I went along with the sneerers as to marvel exceedingly how that
_could_ be possible. But, if _a priori_ one laughed and expected to
see verses corresponding to this mechanic rule of construction, _a
posteriori_ one was bound to judge of the verses as one found them.
Supposing them good, they were entitled to honour, no matter for the
previous reasons which made it possible that they would _not_ be good.
And generally, however undoubtedly they _ought_ to have been bad, the
world has pronounced them good. In fact, they _are_ good; and the sole
objection to them is, that they are too intensely _objective_--too much
reflect the mind, as spreading itself out upon external things--too
little exhibit the mind as introverting itself upon its own thoughts
and feelings. This, however, is an objection which only seems to limit
the range of the poetry--and all poetry _is_ limited in its range: none
comprehends more than a section of the human power.
Meantime, the prose of Southey was that by which he lived. The
_Quarterly Review_ it was by which, as he expressed it to myself in
1810, he "_made the pot boil_."[131] About the same time, possibly
as early as 1808 (for I think that I remember in that Journal an
account of the Battle of Vimiera), Southey was engaged by an Edinburgh
publisher (Constable, was it not?) to write the entire historical part
of the _Edinburgh Annual Register_, at a salary of £400 per annum.
Afterwards, the publisher, who was intensely national, and, doubtless,
never from the first cordially relished the notion of importing
English aid into a city teeming with briefless barristers and variety
of talent, threw out a hint that perhaps he might reduce the salary
to £300. Just about this time I happened to see Southey, who said
laughingly--"If the man of Edinburgh does this, I shall _strike_ for an
advance of wages." I presume that he _did_ strike, and, like many other
"operatives," without effect. Those who work for lower wages during a
strike are called _snobs_,[132] the men who stand out being _nobs_.
Southey became a resolute nob; but some snob was found in Edinburgh,
some youthful advocate, who accepted £300 per annum, and thenceforward
Southey lost this part of his income. I once possessed the whole work:
and in one part, viz. the _Domestic Chronicle_, I know that it is
executed with a most culpable carelessness--the beginnings of cases
being given without the ends, the ends without the beginnings--a defect
but too common in public journals. The credit of the work, however,
was staked upon its treatment of the current public history of Europe,
and the tone of its politics in times so full of agitation, and
teeming with new births in every year, some fated to prove abortive,
but others bearing golden promises for the human race. Now, whatever
might be the talent with which Southey's successor performed his duty,
there was a loss in one point for which no talent of mere execution
could make amends. The very prejudices of Southey tended to unity of
feeling: they were in harmony with each other, and grew out of a strong
moral feeling, which is the one sole secret for giving interest to an
historical narration, fusing the incoherent details into one body, and
carrying the reader fluently along the else monotonous recurrences and
unmeaning details of military movements.
[131] In De Quincey's imperfect reproduction of this paper in his
collective edition, he adds here:--"One single paper, for
instance--viz. a review of Nelson's life, which subsequently was
expanded into his very popular little book on that
subject--brought him the splendid honorarium of £150."--M.
[132] See the Evidence before the House of Commons' Committee. [De
Quincey does not give the date, nor the occasion.--M.]
Well or ill directed, a strong moral feeling, and a profound sympathy
with elementary justice, is that which creates a soul under what
else may well be denominated, Miltonically, "the ribs of death." Now
this, and a mind already made up even to obstinacy upon all public
questions, were the peculiar qualifications which Southey brought to
the task--qualifications not to be bought in any market, not to be
compensated by any amount of mere intellectual talent, and almost
impossible as the qualifications of a much younger man.[133]
[133] See note, _Southey and the Edinburgh Annual Register_,
appended to this chapter.--M.
As a pecuniary loss, though considerable, Southey was not unable to
support it; for he had a pension from Government before this time, and
under the following circumstances:--Charles Wynne, the brother of Sir
Watkin, the great autocrat of North Wales--that C. W. who is almost
equally well known for his knowledge of Parliamentary usage, which
pointed him out to the notice of the House as an eligible person to
fill the office of Speaker, and for his unfortunately shrill voice,
which chiefly it was that defeated his claim[134]--(in fact, as is
universally known, his brother and he, for different defects of
voice and utterance, are called _Bubble and Squeak_)--this C. W. had
believed himself to have been deeply indebted to Southey's high-toned
moral example, and to his wise counsels, during the time when both
were students at Oxford, for the fortunate direction given to his own
wavering impulses. This sense of obligation he endeavoured to express
by settling a pension upon Southey from his own funds. At length, upon
the death of Mr. Pitt, early in 1806, an opening was made for the Fox
and Grenville parties to come into office. Charles Wynne, as a person
connected by marriage with the house of Grenville, and united with them
in political opinions, shared in the golden shower; he also received a
place; and, upon the strength of his improving prospects, he married:
upon which it occurred to Southey, that it was no longer right to tax
the funds of one who was now called upon to support an establishment
becoming his rank. Under that impression he threw up his pension; and
upon _their_ part, to express their sense of what they considered a
delicate and honourable sacrifice, the Grenvilles placed Southey upon
the national pension list.
[134] Sir Watkin, the elder brother, had a tongue too large for
his mouth; Mr. C. Wynne, the younger, had a shrill voice, which at
times rose into a scream. It became, therefore, a natural and
current jest, to call the two brothers by the name of a well-known
dish, viz. _bubble and squeak_.
What might be the exact colour of Southey's political creed in this
year, 1807, it is difficult to say. The great revolution, in his way of
thinking upon such subjects, with which he has been so often upbraided
as something equal in delinquency to a deliberate tergiversation or
moral apostasy, could not have then taken place; and of this I am sure,
from the following little anecdote connected with this visit:--On the
day after my own arrival at Greta Hall, came Wordsworth following
upon my steps from Penrith. We dined and passed that evening with Mr.
Southey. The next morning, after breakfast, previously to leaving
Keswick, we were sitting in Southey's library; and he was discussing
with Wordsworth the aspect of public affairs: for my part, I was far
too diffident to take any part in such a conversation, for I had no
opinions at all upon politics, nor any interest in public affairs,
further than that I had a keen sympathy with the national honour,
gloried in the name of Englishman, and had been bred up in a frenzied
horror of jacobinism. Not having been old enough, at the first outbreak
of the French Revolution, to participate (as else, undoubtedly, I
should have done) in the golden hopes of its early dawn, my first
youthful introduction to foreign politics had been in seasons and
circumstances that taught me to approve of all I heard in abhorrence of
French excesses, and to worship the name of Pitt; otherwise my whole
heart had been so steadily fixed on a different world from the world of
our daily experience, that, for some years, I had never looked into a
newspaper; nor, if I cared something for the movement made by nations
from year to year, did I care one iota for their movement from week
to week. Still, careless as I was on these subjects, it sounded as a
novelty to me, and one which I had not dreamed of as a possibility,
to hear men of education and liberal pursuits--men, besides, whom I
regarded as so elevated in mind, and one of them as a person charmed
and consecrated from error--giving utterance to sentiments which seemed
absolutely disloyal. Yet now did I hear--and I heard with an emotion of
sorrow, but a sorrow that instantly gave way to a conviction that it
was myself who lay under a delusion, and simply because
----"from Abelard it came"--
opinions avowed most hostile to the reigning family; not personally
to them, but generally to a monarchical form of government. And that
I could not be mistaken in my impression, that my memory cannot have
played me false, is evident, from one relic of the conversation which
rested upon my ear, and has survived to this day [1839]--thirty and
two years from the time. It had been agreed, that no good was to be
hoped for, as respected England, until the royal family should be
expatriated; and Southey, jestingly considering to what country they
could be exiled, with mutual benefit for that country and themselves,
had supposed the case--that, with a large allowance of money, such as
might stimulate beneficially the industry of a rising colony, they
should be transported to New South Wales; which project, amusing his
fancy, he had, with the readiness and facility that characterizes his
mind, thrown _extempore_ into verse; speaking off, as an improvisatore,
about eight or ten lines, of which the three last I perfectly remember,
and they were these (by the way I should have mentioned that they took
the form of a petition addressed to the King):--
"Therefore, old George, by George we pray
Of thee forthwith to extend thy sway
Over the great Botanic Bay."
The sole doubt I have about the exact words regards the second line,
which might have been (according to a various reading which equally
clings to my ear)--
"That thou would'st please to extend thy sway."
But about the last I cannot be wrong; for I remember laughing with a
sense of something peculiarly droll in the substitution of the stilted
phrase--"_the great Botanic Bay_," for our ordinary week-day name
_Botany Bay_, so redolent of thieves and pickpockets.
Southey walked with us that morning for about five miles on our road
towards Grasmere, which brought us to the southern side of Shoulthwaite
Moss, and into the sweet solitary little vale of Legbesthwaite. And,
by the way, he took leave of us at the gate of a house, one amongst
the very few (five or six in all) just serving to redeem that valley
from absolute solitude, which some years afterwards became, in a
slight degree, remarkable to me from two little incidents by which
it connected itself with my personal experiences. One was, perhaps,
scarcely worth recording. It was simply this--that Wordsworth and
myself having, through a long day's rambling, alternately walked and
rode with a friend of his who happened to have a travelling carriage
with him, and who was on his way to Keswick, agreed to wait hereabouts
until Wordsworth's friend, in his abundant kindness, should send back
his carriage to take us, on our return to Grasmere, distant about
eight miles. It was a lovely summer evening; but, as it happened that
we ate our breakfast early, and had eaten nothing at all throughout a
long summer's day, we agreed to "sorn" upon the goodman of the house,
whoever he might happen to be, Catholic or Protestant, Jew, Gentile,
or Mahometan, and to take any bone that he would be pleased to toss to
such hungry dogs as ourselves. Accordingly we repaired to his gate;
we knocked, and, forthwith it was opened to us by a man-mountain,
who listened benignantly to our humble request, and ushered us into
a comfortable parlour. All sorts of refreshments he continued to
shower upon us for a space of two hours: it became evident that our
introducer was the master of the house: we adored him in our thoughts
as an earthly providence to hungry wayfarers; and we longed to make his
acquaintance. But, for some inexplicable reason, that must continue
to puzzle all future commentators on Wordsworth and his history, he
never made his appearance. Could it be, we thought, that, without the
formality of a sign, he, in so solitary a region, more than twentyfive
miles distant from Kendal (the only town worthy of the name throughout
the adjacent country), exercised the functions of a landlord, and that
we ought to pay him for his most liberal hospitality? Never was such
a dilemma from the foundation of Legbesthwaite. To err, in either
direction, was damnable: to go off without paying, if he _were_ an
innkeeper, made us swindlers; to offer payment if he were not, and
supposing that he had been inundating us with his hospitable bounties
simply in the character of a natural-born gentleman, made us the most
unfeeling of mercenary ruffians. In the latter case we might expect a
duel; in the former, of course, the treadmill. We were deliberating
on this sad alternative, and I, for my part was voting in favour of
the treadmill, when the sound of wheels was heard, and, in one minute,
the carriage of his friend drew up to the farmer's gate; the crisis
had now arrived, and we perspired considerably; when in came the frank
Cumberland lass who had been our attendant. To her we propounded our
difficulty--and lucky it was we did so, for she assured us that her
master was an awful man, and would have "brained" us both if we had
insulted him with the offer of money. She, however, honoured us by
accepting the price of some female ornament.
I made a memorandum at the time, to ascertain the peculiar taste of
this worthy Cumberland farmer, in order that I might, at some future
opportunity, express my thanks to him for his courtesy; but, alas! for
human resolutions, I have not done so to this moment; and is it likely
that he, perhaps sixty years old at that time (1813), is alive at
present, twenty-five years removed? Well, he _may_ be; though I think
_that_ exceedingly doubtful, considering the next anecdote relating to
the same house:--Two, or, it may be, three years after this time, I
was walking to Keswick, from my own cottage in Grasmere. The distance
was thirteen miles; the time just nine o'clock; the night a cloudy
moonlight, and intensely cold. I took the very greatest delight in
these nocturnal walks through the silent valleys of Cumberland and
Westmoreland; and often at hours far later than the present. What I
liked in this solitary rambling was, to trace the course of the evening
through its household hieroglyphics from the windows which I passed or
saw: to see the blazing fires shining through the windows of houses,
lurking in nooks far apart from neighbours; sometimes, in solitudes
that seemed abandoned to the owl, to catch the sounds of household
mirth; then, some miles further, to perceive the time of going to bed;
then the gradual sinking to silence of the house; then the drowsy
reign of the cricket; at intervals, to hear church-clocks or a little
solitary chapel-bell, under the brows of mighty hills, proclaiming
the hours of the night, and flinging out their sullen knells over
the graves where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet slept"--where
the strength and the loveliness of Elizabeth's time, or Cromwell's,
and through so many fleeting generations that have succeeded, had
long ago sunk to rest. Such was the sort of pleasure which I reaped
in my nightly walks--of which, however, considering the suspicions
of lunacy which it has sometimes awoke, the less I say, perhaps, the
better. Nine o'clock it was--and deadly cold as ever March night was
made by the keenest of black frosts, and by the bitterest of north
winds--when I drew towards the gate of our huge and hospitable friend.
A little garden there was before the house; and in the centre of this
garden was placed an arm-chair, upon which arm-chair was sitting
composedly--but I rubbed my eyes, doubting the very evidence of my own
eyesight--_a_ or _the_ huge man in his shirt-sleeves; yes, positively
not sunning but _mooning_ himself--apricating himself in the occasional
moonbeams; and, as if simple star-gazing from a sedentary station were
not sufficient on such a night, absolutely pursuing his astrological
studies, I repeat, in his shirt-sleeves! Could this be our hospitable
friend, the man-mountain? Secondly, was it any man at all? Might it
not be a scarecrow dressed up to frighten the birds? But from what--to
frighten them from what at that season of the year? Yet, again, it
might be an ancient scarecrow--a superannuated scarecrow, far advanced
in years. But, still, why should a scarecrow, young or old, sit in an
arm-chair? Suppose I were to ask. Yet, where was the use of asking a
scarecrow? And, if not a scarecrow, where was the safety of speaking
too inquisitively, on his own premises, to a man-mountain? The old
dilemma of the duel or the treadmill, if I should intrude upon his
grounds at night, occurred to me; and I watched the anomalous object
in silence for some minutes. At length the monster (for such at any
rate it was, scarecrow or not scarecrow) solemnly raised his hand to
his face, perhaps taking a pinch of snuff, and thereby settled one
question. But that settled only irritated my curiosity the more upon
a second: what hallucination of the brain was it that could induce a
living man to adopt so very absurd a line of conduct? Once I thought of
addressing him thus:--Might I presume so far upon your known courtesy
to wayfaring strangers as to ask--Is it the Devil who prompts you to
sit in your shirt-sleeves, as if meditating a _camisade_, or to woo
_al fresco_ pleasures on such a night as this? But, as Dr. Y., on
complaining that, whenever he looked out of the window, he was sure to
see Mr. X. lounging about the quadrangle, was effectually parried by
Mr. X. retorting that, whenever he lounged in the quadrangle, he was
sure to see the Doctor looking out of the window, so did I anticipate
a puzzling rejoinder from the former, with regard to my own motives
for haunting the roads as a nocturnal tramper, without a rational
object that I could make intelligible. I thought, also, of the fate
which attended the Calendars, and so many other notorious characters
in the "Arabian Nights," for unseasonable questions, or curiosity too
vivacious. And, upon the whole, I judged it advisable to pursue my
journey in silence, considering the time of night, the solitary place,
and the fancy of our enormous friend for "braining" those whom he
regarded as ugly customers. And thus it came about that this one house
has been loaded in my memory with a double mystery, that too probably
never _can_ be explained: and another torment had been prepared for the
curious of future ages.
Of Southey, meantime, I had learned, upon this brief and hurried
visit, so much in confirmation or in extension of my tolerably just
preconceptions with regard to his character and manners, as left me not
a very great deal to add, and nothing at all to alter, through the many
years which followed of occasional intercourse with his family, and
domestic knowledge of his habits. A man of more serene and even temper
could not be imagined; nor more uniformly cheerful in his tone of
spirits; nor more unaffectedly polite and courteous in his demeanour to
strangers; nor more hospitable in his own wrong--I mean by the painful
sacrifices which hospitality entailed upon him of time so exceedingly
precious that, during his winter and spring months of solitude, or
whenever he was left absolute master of its distribution, every half
hour in the day had its peculiar duty. In the still "weightier matters
of the law," in cases that involved appeals to conscience and high
moral principle, I believe Southey to be as exemplary a man as can ever
have lived. Were it to his own instant ruin, I am satisfied that he
would do justice and fulfil his duty under any possible difficulties,
and through the very strongest temptations to do otherwise. For honour
the most delicate, for integrity the firmest, and for generosity within
the limits of prudence, Southey cannot well have a superior; and,
in the lesser moralities--those which govern the daily habits, and
transpire through the manners--he is certainly a better man--that is
(with reference to the minor principle concerned), a more _amiable_
man--than Wordsworth. He is less capable, for instance, of usurping an
undue share of the conversation; he is more uniformly disposed to be
charitable in his transient colloquial judgments upon doubtful actions
of his neighbours; more gentle and winning in his condescensions to
inferior knowledge or powers of mind; more willing to suppose it
possible that he himself may have fallen into an error; more tolerant
of avowed indifference towards his own writings (though, by the way, I
shall have something to offer in justification of Wordsworth, upon this
charge); and, finally, if the reader will pardon a violent instance of
anti-climax, much more ready to volunteer his assistance in carrying a
lady's reticule or parasol.
As a more _amiable_ man (taking that word partly in the French sense,
partly also in the loftier English sense), it might be imagined
that Southey would be a more eligible companion than Wordsworth.
But this is not so; and chiefly for three reasons which more than
counterbalance Southey's greater amiability: _first_, because the
natural reserve of Southey, which I have mentioned before, makes it
peculiarly difficult to place yourself on terms of intimacy with him;
_secondly_, because the range of his conversation is more limited
than that of Wordsworth--dealing less with life and the interests of
life--more exclusively with books; _thirdly_, because the style of his
conversation is less flowing and diffusive--less expansive--more apt to
clothe itself in a keen, sparkling, aphoristic form--consequently much
sooner and more frequently coming to an abrupt close. A sententious,
epigrammatic form of delivering opinions has a certain effect of
_clenching_ a subject, which makes it difficult to pursue it without
a corresponding smartness of expression, and something of the same
antithetic point and equilibration of clauses. Not that the reader
is to suppose in Southey a showy master of rhetoric and colloquial
sword-play, seeking to strike and to dazzle by his brilliant hits or
adroit evasions. The very opposite is the truth. He seeks, indeed, to
be effective, not for the sake of display, but as the readiest means
of retreating from display, and the necessity for display: feeling
that his station in literature and his laurelled honours make him a
mark for the curiosity and interest of the company--that a standing
appeal is constantly turning to him for his opinion--a latent call
always going on for his voice on the question of the moment--he is
anxious to comply with this requisition at as slight a cost as may be
of thought and time. His heart is continually reverting to his wife,
viz. his library; and, that he may waste as little effort as possible
upon his conversational exercises--that the little he wishes to say
may appear pregnant with much meaning--he finds it advantageous, and,
moreover, the style of his mind naturally prompts him, to adopt a
trenchant, pungent, aculeated form of terse, glittering, stenographic
sentences--sayings which have the air of laying down the law without
any _locus penitentiæ_ or privilege of appeal, but are not meant to do
so; in short, aiming at brevity for the company as well as for himself,
by cutting off all opening for discussion and desultory talk through
the sudden winding up that belongs to a sententious aphorism. The
hearer feels that "the record is closed"; and he has a sense of this
result as having been accomplished by something like an oracular laying
down of the law _ex cathedra_: but this is an indirect collateral
impression from Southey's manner, and far from the one he meditates or
wishes. An oracular manner he does certainly affect in certain dilemmas
of a languishing or loitering conversation; not the peremptoriness,
meantime, not the imperiousness of the oracle is what he seeks for, but
its brevity, its dispatch, its conclusiveness.
Finally, as a fourth reason why Southey is less fitted for a genial
companion than Wordsworth, his spirits have been, of late years, in
a lower key than those of the latter. The tone of Southey's animal
spirits was never at any time raised beyond the standard of an ordinary
sympathy; there was in him no tumult, no agitation of passion;
his organic and constitutional sensibilities were healthy, sound,
perhaps strong--but not profound, not excessive. Cheerful he was, and
animated at all times; but he levied no tributes on the spirits or the
feelings beyond what all people could furnish. One reason why his
bodily temperament never, like that of Wordsworth, threw him into a
state of tumultuous excitement which required intense and elaborate
conversation to work off the excessive fervour, was, that, over and
above his far less fervid constitution of mind and body, Southey
rarely took any exercise; he led a life as sedentary, except for the
occasional excursions in summer (extorted from his sense of kindness
and hospitality), as that of a city tailor. And it was surprising to
many people, who did not know by experience the prodigious effect upon
the mere bodily health of regular and congenial mental labour, that
Southey should be able to maintain health so regular, and cheerfulness
so uniformly serene. Cheerful, however, he was, in those early years of
my acquaintance with him; but it was manifest to a thoughtful observer
that his golden equanimity was bound up in a threefold chain,--in a
conscience clear of all offence, in the recurring enjoyments from
his honourable industry, and in the gratification of his parental
affections. If any one cord should give way, there (it seemed) would
be an end to Southey's tranquillity. He had a son at that time,
Herbert[135] Southey, a child in petticoats when I first knew him, very
interesting even then, but annually putting forth fresh blossoms of
unusual promise, that made even indifferent people fear for the safety
of one so finely organized, so delicate in his sensibilities, and so
prematurely accomplished. As to his father, it became evident that
he lived almost in the light of young Herbert's smiles, and that the
very pulses of his heart played in unison to the sound of his son's
laughter. There was in his manner towards this child, and towards this
only, something that marked an excess of delirious doating, perfectly
unlike the ordinary chastened movements of Southey's affections; and
something also which indicated a vague fear about him; a premature
unhappiness, as if already the inaudible tread of calamity could be
perceived, as if already he had lost him; which, for the latter years
of the boy's life, seemed to poison the blessing of his presence.
[135] Why he was called Herbert, if my young readers inquire, I
must reply, that I do not precisely know; because I know of
reasons too many by half why he might have been so called. Derwent
Coleridge, the second son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and first
cousin of Herbert Southey, was so called from the Lake of Keswick,
commonly styled Derwent Water, which gave the title of Earl to the
noble, and the noble-minded, though erring, family of the
Radcliffes, who gave up, like heroes and martyrs, their lives and
the finest estates in England for one who was incapable of
appreciating the service. One of the islands on this lake is
dedicated to St. Herbert, and this _might_ have given a name to
Southey's first-born child. But it is more probable that he
derived this name from Dr. Herbert, uncle to the laureate.
A stronger evidence I cannot give of Southey's trembling
apprehensiveness about this child than that the only rude thing I ever
knew him to do, the only discourteous thing, was done on his account.
A party of us, chiefly composed of Southey's family and his visitors,
were in a sailboat upon the lake. Herbert was one of this party; and at
that time not above five or six years old. In landing upon one of the
islands, most of the gentlemen were occupied in assisting the ladies
over the thwarts of the boat; and one gentleman, merely a stranger,
observing this, good-naturedly took up Herbert in his arms, and was
stepping with him most carefully from thwart to thwart, when Southey,
in a perfect frenzy of anxiety for his boy, his "moon" as he used to
call him (I suppose from some pun of his own, or some mistake of the
child's upon the equivocal word _sun_), rushed forward, and tore him
out of the arms of the stranger without one word of apology; nor,
in fact, under the engrossing panic of the moment, lest an unsteady
movement along with the rocking and undulating of the boat should throw
his little boy overboard into the somewhat stormy waters of the lake,
did Southey become aware of his own exceedingly discourteous action:
fear for his boy quelled his very power of perception. _That_ the
stranger, on reflection, understood; a race of emotions travelled over
his countenance. I saw the whole, a silent observer from the shore.
First a hasty blush of resentment mingled with astonishment: then a
good-natured smile of indulgence to the _naïveté_ of the paternal
feeling as displaying itself in the act, and the accompanying gestures
of frenzied impatience; finally, a considerate, grave expression of
acquiescence in the whole act; but with a pitying look towards father
and son, as too probably destined under such agony of affection to
trials perhaps insupportable. If I interpreted aright the stranger's
feelings, he did not read their destinies amiss. Herbert became, with
his growing years, a child of more and more hope; but, therefore, the
object of more and more fearful solicitude. He read, and read; and he
became at last
"A very learned youth"--
to borrow a line from his uncle's beautiful poem on the wild boy who
fell into a heresy whilst living under the patronage of a Spanish
grandee, and finally escaped from a probable martyrdom by sailing up a
great American river, wide as any sea, after which he was never heard
of again. The learned youth of the river Greta had an earlier and
more sorrowful close to his career. Possibly from want of exercise,
combined with inordinate exercise of the cerebral organs, a disease
gradually developed itself in the heart. It was not a mere disorder
in the functions, it was a disease in the structure of the organ, and
admitted of no permanent relief, consequently of no final hope. He
died[136]; and with him died for ever the golden hopes, the radiant
felicity, and the internal serenity, of the unhappy father. It was from
Southey himself, speaking without external signs of agitation, calmly,
dispassionately, almost coldly, but with the coldness of a settled
despondency, that I heard, whilst accompanying him through Grasmere
on his road homewards to Keswick from some visit he had been paying
to Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, his settled feelings and convictions as
connected with that loss. For _him_, in this world, he said, happiness
there could be none; for his tenderest affections, the very deepest by
many degrees which he had ever known, were now buried in the grave with
his youthful and too brilliant Herbert!
[136] On the 17th of April 1816, aged ten years.--M.
SOUTHEY AND THE _EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER_
De Quincey's recollection of the _Edinburgh Annual Register_ in
connexion with Southey is altogether erroneous. Though there had been
a project of some periodical of the kind by the Constable publishing
house as early as 1807, the enterprise was not started till 1809,
and then not by Constable at all, but actually in opposition to
Constable by the new Edinburgh publishing house of John Ballantyne,--or
rather, one might say, of Scott and Ballantyne, for Scott (secretly
Ballantyne's partner already for a long while in his printing business)
was Ballantyne's real backer and principal in the whole of this new
concern. In a letter of Scott's to his friend Merritt, of date 14th
January 1809, after announcing the great fact that a _Quarterly Review_
was forthcoming to counteract the _Edinburgh_, he adds:--"Then, sir,
to turn the flank of Messrs. Constable and Co., and to avenge myself
of certain impertinences which, in the vehemence of their Whiggery,
they have dared to indulge in towards me, I have prepared to start
against them at Whitsunday first the celebrated printer Ballantyne,
with a long purse ['the purse was, alas! Scott's own,' Lockhart notes
at this point] and a sound political creed, not to mention an alliance
offensive and defensive with young John Murray of Fleet Street, the
most enlightened and active of the London trade. By this means I hope
to counterbalance the predominating influence of Constable and Co.,
who at present have it in their power and inclination to forward or
suppress any book as they approve or dislike its political tendency.
Lastly, I have caused the said Ballantyne to venture upon an _Edinburgh
Annual Register_, of which I send you a prospectus. I intend to help
him myself as far as time will admit, and hope to procure him many
respectable coadjutors." In another letter, written just a fortnight
previously, Scott had broached the subject of the new _Annual Register_
to his friend Kirkpatrick Sharpe, intimating that, though Ballantyne
would be the managing editor, with himself for the real editor in
the background, all the more important contributions would be from
selected hands, and that, as the historical department was the most
important,--a luminous picture of the current events of the world from
year to year being "a task for a man of genius,"--they proposed to
give their "historian" £300 a year,--"no deaf nuts," adds Scott, in
comment on the sum. A certain eminent person had already been offered
the post, Scott proceeds; but, should "the great man" decline, would
Kirkpatrick Sharpe himself accept it? The "great man" was Southey; he
did accept; and for some years he had the accredited charge of the
historical department of the _Register_. From the first, however, the
venture did not pay; and, the loss upon it having gone on for some
time at the rate of £1000 a year, Scott,--who had been tending to a
reconciliation with Constable on other grounds,--was glad when, in
1813, Constable took a portion of the burden of the concern off his
hands. It is possible that this accession of Constable to a share in
the management, and some consequent retrenchment of expenses, may have
had something to do with Southey's resignation of his connexion with
the _Register_. Not, however, till 1815, if we may trust Lockhart's
dating, did that resignation take place,--for, in Lockhart's narrative
for the following year, 1816, where he notes that Scott had stepped
in for the rescue of the _Register_ by himself undertaking to do its
arrears in the historical department, he gives the reasons thus:--"Mr.
Southey had, for reasons on which I do not enter, discontinued his
services to that work; and it was now doubly necessary, after trying
for one year a less eminent hand, that, if the work were not to be
dropped altogether, some strenuous exertion should be made to sustain
its character."--From all this it will be seen that De Quincey is wrong
in his fancy that the proposal to reduce Southey's salary (from £400 to
£300, he says, but was it not £300 from the first?) was a mere device
for getting rid of him because he was an Englishman, and because a
Scottish "snob" of the Parliament House could be got to do the work
at a cheaper rate; or, at all events, that he is wrong in attributing
the shabbiness to Constable and the Whigs in Edinburgh. Southey's own
fellow-Tory Scott was still supreme in the conduct of the _Register_,
though he might take Constable's advice in all matters of its financial
administration; and, if Constable advised, among other things, a
reduction of Southey's salary in the historical department, that was
but natural in the circumstances, and Scott probably acquiesced.--In
fact, by this time the contributorship to the _Edinburgh Annual
Register_, always a drudgery, must have been of less consequence to
Southey than it had been. In November 1813 he had been appointed to the
office of Poet-Laureate, then vacant by the death of Henry James Pye;
and the salary attached to that sinecure, though small, was something.
On the 13th of that month Scott, who had declined the office for
himself and had strongly recommended Southey, and who was then still
virtually Southey's paymaster for his services in the _Edinburgh Annual
Register_, had written his congratulations to Southey, with his regrets
that the Laureateship was not better worth his while.--D. M.