This is the time to notice the man who was Byron's and Shelley's worst
enemy and Coleridge's best friend, and who, inferior as his productions
are to those of his friend, deserves also to have his name coupled with
Coleridge's as a famous English Romanticist.
Robert Southey, born in Bristol in 1774, was the son of a linen-draper
there, and to the end of his life a man who produced the impression
that he had been born in narrow circumstances, in a corner of the world
with a narrow spiritual horizon. After studying a short time at Oxford,
he, like the other poets of the Lake School, became infected by the
spirit of the Revolution. In 1794 he wrote an extremely Jacobinical
poem, _Wat Tyler_. About the same time he composed the following
inscription for the room in which Martin, the regicide, had been
confined:--
"For thirty years secluded from mankind
Here Martin linger'd. Often have these walls
Echo'd his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison. Not to him
Did Nature's fair varieties exist;
He never saw the sun's delightful beams,
Save when through yon high bars he pour'd a sad
And broken splendour. Dost thou ask his crime?
_He had rebell'd against the King, and sat_
_In judgment on him_; for his ardent mind
Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth,
And peace and liberty. Wild dreams! but such
As Plato lov'd...."
The following rather clever parody was inserted by Mr. Canning in the
_Anti-Jacobin_:--
"INSCRIPTION FOR THE DOOR OF THE CELL IN NEWGATE, WHERE MRS. BROWNRIGG,
THE 'PRENTICE-CIDE, WAS CONFINED, PREVIOUS TO HER EXECUTION.
"For one long term, or ere her trial came,
Here Brownrigg linger'd. Often have these cells
Echo'd her blasphemies, as with shrill voice
She scream'd for fresh geneva. Not to her
Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street,
St. Giles, its fair varieties expand;
Till at the last in slow-drawn cart she went
To execution. Dost thou ask her crime?
_She whipp'd two female 'prentices to death,_
_And hid them in the coal-hole._ For her mind
Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage schemes!
Such as Lycurgus taught...."
After Southey, too, had given up his project of emigration and won
the hand of _his_ Miss Fricker, he settled in London, in 1797. From
1807 onwards the Government granted him an annual allowance of £150,
and after Pye's death he became Poet Laureate, with a salary of £300.
This post, which entailed the obligation to compose a poem on the
occasion of every special event in the royal family, had first been
offered by the Prince Regent to Scott, who asked his friend and patron,
the Duke of Buccleuch, for advice in the matter. The Duke wrote:
"Only think of being chanted and recitatived by a parcel of hoarse
and squeaking choristers on a birthday, for the edification of the
bishops, pages, maids of honour, and gentlemen-pensioners! Oh horrible!
thrice horrible!" &c., &c. Scott declined the proffered honour, and
suggested Southey, a loyal and needy poet, as a fit recipient. For the
greater part of his life Southey was obliged to live by his pen, and
consequently often wrote under compulsion. Industrious, economical, a
model of all the domestic virtues, he amassed a capital of £12,000.
With him, as with the Germans, Romanticism, instead of precluding the
bourgeois virtues, throve along with them. It had, after all, so little
connection with real life. His respectable Philistinism did not forbid
of his allowing his imagination to take the wildest Oriental flights.
During the first, the liberal-minded, stage of Southey's career, we are
conscious of a sympathetic ardour in his writing. He possessed both
enthusiasm and courage. His epic, _Joan of Arc_, published in 1797, is
a poem inspired by as fervent an admiration for the heroine of France
as that displayed by Schiller five years later in his _Jungfrau von
Orleans_. Southey's work is, like Schiller's, of an exactly opposite
character to Voltaire's _Pucelle_, which, the English poet in his
preface informs his readers, is a book he has "never been guilty of
looking into." In _Joan of Arc_ Southey is not yet the Romanticist.
Once or twice he projects his vision as far as his own day. In the
Third Book he extols Madame Roland as "the martyred patriot," in the
Tenth he refers to Lafayette's as "the name that Freedom still shall
love." And in his representation of Jeanne's exploits we have not, as
in Schiller, any reference to witchcraft. At a decisive moment, when
the Maid is being questioned as to her beliefs, she (and through her,
her poet) makes such a frank confession of her faith in nature that
we feel satisfied that in Southey's case too, the Naturalism which
dominates the English poetry of the day is the foundation upon which
everything rests.
"Woman," says a priest to Joan of Arc,--
"Woman, thou seem'st to scorn
The ordinances of our holy Church;
And, if I rightly understand thy words,
Nature, thou say'st, taught thee in solitude
Thy feelings of religion, and that now
Masses and absolution and the use
Of the holy wafer, are to thee unknown.
But how could Nature teach thee true religion,
Deprived of these? Nature doth lead to sin,
But 'tis the priest alone can teach remorse,
Can bid St. Peter ope the gates of Heaven,
And from the penal fires of purgatory
Set the soul free."