The great home and haunt of Robert Southey was Keswick. Of the
sixty-nine years that he lived, he spent exactly forty there. He
settled there at the early age of twenty-nine, and commenced a life of
the most unremitting industry, which he pursued till nature gave way,
and the powers of his mind sunk under their taskmaster. There never
was a more thorough fixture as a literary man. It seemed to be the
highest enjoyment of his life to work; and having taken the bent in
time to work on the right side, he avoided the general fate of
literary men, and died in good esteem with the powers that be, and
worth £12,000.
Of the period of Southey's life previous to settling at Keswick, there
is little to be said in this work. No good biography of him exists,
and the materials for his life are still in the hands of his
executors, and not issued in due form to the public. He was born in
Bristol, 1774. His father was a linendraper there,--a most extensive
wholesale linendraper, says a short memoir of him affixed to a French
selection from his poems. This, I suppose, is one of the statements
usually made to take off from the lives of men who have risen to
eminence, the writers think, something of their vulgar origin. But
what care all sensible people what a man's origin was, so that his
career was honorable? Who thinks, because Shakspeare was the son of a
wool-comber; because Ben Jonson was apprenticed to a mason; because
Milton was a schoolmaster; because Sir Walter Scott was the son of an
attorney; because Moore was the son of a grocer and spirit dealer, and
Chatterton was a charity boy, that they are one whit less the genuine
nobles of the land? It is high time that we got rid of this vulgar way
of thinking, and regarded all men, all trades, all origins honorable,
when there has been no moral obliquity about the persons themselves.
Whether Southey's father, then, was "a most extensive linendraper,"
and could say with John Gilpin,
"I am a linendraper bold,
As all the world doth know;"
there is no doubt that he was a retail as well as wholesale trader.
His shop was at the sign of the Golden Key, in Wine-street; and there
the shop still remains in the very same trade, and with the golden key
hanging in front still, as the sign. In this shop Robert used to serve
as a boy. I believe his father was then deceased, and the concern was
in the hands of his uncle, who brought him up. However, he was a gay
youth, and served only of a fashion. At one time he was measuring off
his drapery goods with his yard-wand, at another he was measuring the
fields after the hounds, and used to come in amid all the shop
customers in his splashed boots and scarlet coat. His uncle did not
augur much success in trade from this style of doing business, and
destined him for the Church. His friends and associates were chiefly
dissenters; but young dissenters, caught early and well drilled, make
the stanchest churchmen. He was first educated by a Baptist minister,
Mr. Foote, a very able, but very old man. He was then removed to a
school at Corston, where he remained about two years, and it was
probably at the conclusion of this schooling that it was intended to
put him to the drapery business. On the plan of devoting him to the
Church opening itself, he would naturally be sent to one of the Church
preparatory schools; and accordingly he went to Westminster, in 1787,
where, in 1790, he fell under censure, for his concern in the
rebellion excited against the master, Dr. Vincent. In 1792, he became
a student under Baliol College, Oxford, but Unitarian principles and
the revolutionary mania put an end to that design. So strongly did he
imbibe the new opinions on politics, which the explosion in France had
produced, that he, with his friends Lovell and Coleridge, projected a
plan of settling on the banks of the Susquehannah, in North America,
and there founding a new republic, under the name of the Pantisocracy.
This utopian scheme was soon dissolved for the want of means; and in
1795, Mr. Southey married Miss Fricker. Every one remembers Byron's
lines in Don Juan, when speaking of Coleridge, he says:
"When he and Southey, following the same path,
Espoused two partners, milliners of Bath."
Coleridge and Lovell were townsmen of Southey's, and youthful
companions. Lovell was of a Quaker family, and all were connected with
the dissenters. Soon after his marriage, Southey accompanied his
maternal uncle, the Rev. Dr. Hill, to Portugal, that gentleman being
appointed chaplain to the Factory at Lisbon. In 1810, Southey obtained
the appointment of secretary to the Right Hon. Isaac Corry, chancellor
of the exchequer for Ireland. In retiring from office with his patron,
our author went to reside at Keswick, where also dwelt, under the same
roof, the widow of his friend Lovell, and the wife of Mr. Coleridge,
both which ladies were sisters to Mrs. Southey. Such were the
movements of Southey till he settled down at Keswick, and there, busy
as a bee in its hive, worked out the forty years of his then remaining
life. The mere list of his works attests a wonderful industry:--Joan
of Arc, 4to, 1796. Poems, 1797. Letters from Spain and Portugal, 8vo.
1797. Annual Anthology, edited by him, 2 vols. 1799-1800. Amadis de
Gaul, from a Spanish version, 4 vols. 1803. Edited the works of
Chatterton, 3 vols. 1803. Thalaba, 2 vols. 1804. Madoc, 1805.
Specimens of Latin Poets, 3 vols. 1807. Palmerin of England, from the
Portuguese, 4 vols. 1807. Espriello's Letters, 3 vols. 1807. Edited
the Remains of H. K. White, 2 vols. 1807. The Chronicle of the Cid,
from the Spanish, 1808. The History of Brazil, 3 vols. 1809. The Curse
of Kehama, 1811. Omniana, 3 vols. 1812. Life of Nelson, 2 vols. 1813.
Carmen Triumphale, 1814. Odes to the Allied Sovereigns, 1814.
Roderick, the Last of the Goths, 1814. The Vision of Judgment. The
Life of Bunyan. Morte Arthur, 2 vols. 1817. Life of Wesley, 2 vols.
1820. Expedition of Orsua and Crimes of Aguirre, 1821. All for Love,
or the Sinner Well Saved, 1829. Pilgrimage to Compostella. Tales of
Paraguay, etc. Essays Political and Moral, 2 vols. 1831. Book of the
Church, 2 vols. Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the State of
Society, 2 vols. 1832. Lives of British Admirals, 5 vols. 1839-40.
Vindicia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ. The Doctor, 5 vols.; etc., etc.
This is a striking list of the works of one man, though he took nearly
fifty years of almost unexampled health and industry to complete it.
But this does not include the large amount of his contributions to the
Quarterly and other periodicals; nor does the mere bulk of the work
thrown off convey any idea of the bulk of work gone through. The
immense and patient research necessary for his histories, was scarcely
less than that which he bestowed on the subject matter and
illustrative notes of his poems. The whole of his writings abound with
evidences of learning and laborious reading that have been rarely
equaled. But the variety of talents and humor displayed in his
different writings is equally extraordinary. The love of fun, and the
keenness of satire, which distinguished his smaller poems, are enough
to make a very brilliant reputation. The Devil's Walk, so long
attributed to Porson, but, as testified by themselves, conceived and
written by Southey, with some touches and additions from the hand of
Coleridge; The Old Woman of Berkeley; The Surgeon's Warning; The Pig;
Gooseberry Pie; Ruprecht the Robber; The Cataract of Lodore; Bishop
Hatto; The Pious Painter; St. Antidius, the Pope, and the Devil; The
March to Moscow;--these and others of the like kind would make a
volume, that might be attributed to a man who had lived only for joke
and quiz. Then the wild and wandering imagination of Thalaba and
Kehama; the grave beauty of Madoc; the fine youthful glow of liberty
and love in Joan of Arc; and the vivid fire and vigor of Roderick the
last of the Goths, are little less in contrast to the jocose
productions just mentioned, than they are to the grave judgment
displayed in his histories, or the keenness with which he enters, in
his Book of the Church, the Colloquies, and his critiques, into the
questions and interests of the day, and puts forth all the acumen and
often the acidity of the partisan.
With all our admiration of the genius and varied powers of Southey,
and with all our esteem for his many virtues, and the peculiar
amiability of his domestic life, we can not, however, read him without
a feeling of deep melancholy. The contrast between the beginning and
the end of his career, the glorious and high path entered upon, and so
soon and suddenly quitted for the pay of the placeman and the
bitterness of the bigot, cling to his memory with a lamentable effect.
Without doing as many hastily do, regarding him as a dishonest
renegade; allowing him, on the contrary, all the credence possible for
an earnest and entire change in his views; we can not the less mourn
over that change, or the less elude the consciousness that there was a
moment when this change must have been a matter of calculation. They
who have held the same high and noble views of human life and social
interests, and still hold them, find it impossible to realize to
themselves the process by which such a change in a clear-headed and
conscientious man can be carried through. For a man whose heart and
intellect were full of the inspiration of great sentiments, on the
freedom of man in all his relations as a subject and a citizen as well
as a man, on peace, on religion, and on the oppressions of the poor,
to go round at once to the system and the doctrines of the opposite
character, and to resolve to support that machinery of violence and
oppression which originates all these evils, is so unaccountable as to
tempt the most charitable to hard thoughts. Nothing is so easy of
vindication as a man's honesty, when he changes to his own worldly
disadvantage, and to a more free mode of thinking; but when the
contrary happens, suspicion will lie in spite of all argument. We can
well conceive, for instance, the uncle of the young poet, with whom he
went out to Portugal, a clergyman of the Church of England, saying to
him, "Robert, my dear fellow, these notions and these terrible
democratic poems,--this Wat Tyler, these Botany Bay Eclogues, and the
like, are not the way to flourish in the world. No doubt you want to
live comfortably; then just look about you, and see _how_ you are
to live. Here are church and state, and there are Wat Tyler and the
Botany Bay Eclogues. Here are promotion and comfort, there are poverty
and contempt. Take which you will." We can well conceive the effect of
such representations on a young man who, with all his poetic and
patriotic devotion, did not like poverty and contempt, and did hope to
live comfortably. This idea once taking the smallest root in a young
man having a spice of worldly prudence as well as a great deal of
ambition, we can imagine the youth nodding to himself and
saying,--"True, there is great wisdom in what my uncle says. I must
live, and so no more Wat Tylers, nor Botany Bay Eclogues. I will
adhere to the powers that be, but I will still endeavor to infuse
liberal and generous views into these powers." Very good, but then
comes the transplanting to a new soil, and into new influences. Then
come the hearing of nothing but a new set of opinions, and the feeling
of a very different tone in all around him. Then comes the _facilis
descensus Averni_, and the _sed revocare gradum hoc opus, hic
labor est_. The metamorphosis goes on insensibly--_Nemo repentè
fuit turpissimus_; but the end is not the less such as, if it could
have been seen from the beginning, would have made the startled
subject of it exclaim, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this
thing?"
Allowing Dr. Southey the full benefit of all these operating
influences, so as to clear his conscience in the metamorphosis as much
as possible, yet what a metamorphosis that was! The man who set out in
a career that augured the life of a second Milton, ending as the most
thorough, though probably unconscious tool of tyranny and state
corruption. The writer of Wat Tyler lauding George IV. and
Castlereagh! The author of The Battle of Blenheim, singing hymns to
the allied sovereigns, and hosannas over the most horrible war and
carnage, and for the worst purposes in history. The advocate of the
pauper and the mill operative, supporting the power and the system
which made pauperism universal, and manufacturing oppressive to the
artisan. And last, and worst, the man who justly lashed Lord Byron for
his licentious pen, being subjected to the necessity of slurring over
the debaucheries of such a monster as George IV., and singing his
praises, as a wise, and just, and virtuous prince. While Southey
congratulated himself on never having prostituted his pen to the cause
of vice, he forgot that to prostitute it to the praise of those who
were the most libidinous and vicious characters of their age, was only
the same thing in another form. No greater dishonor could have
befallen a man of Southey's private character, than to have so fully
justified the scarifying strictures of his aristocratic satirist:--
"He said--I only give the heads--he said
He meant no harm in scribbling; 'twas his wa
Upon all topics; 'twas beside his bread,
Of which he buttered both sides; 'twould delay
Too long the assembly, he was pleased to dread,
And take up rather more time than a day,
To name his works--he would but cite a few--
Wat Tyler--Rhymes on Blenheim--Waterloo.
"He had written praises of a regicide;
He had written praises of all kings whatever;
He had written for republics far and wide,
And then against them bitterer than ever:
For pantisocracy he once had cried
Aloud, a scheme less moral than 'twas clever;
Then grew a hearty anti-Jacobin--
Had turned his coat--and would have turned his skin.
"He had sung against all battles, and again
In their high praise and glory; he had called
Reviewing, 'the ungentle craft,' and then
Become as base a critic as e'er crawl'd--
Fed, paid, and pampered by the very men
By whom his muse and morals had been mauled.
He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,
And more of both than any body knows."
BYRON, _The Vision of Judgment_.
Spite of the indecencies of Byron's muse, and the orthodox character
of Southey's, it must be confessed that the former is much less
mischievous than the latter. Everywhere, Byron speaks out boldly his
opinion of men and things. Everywhere, he hates despotism, and laughs
to scorn cant and hypocrisy. If he be too free in some of his
sentiments, he is equally free where he ought to be so. The world will
never have to complain that the liberties of mankind have been
curtailed through the inculcations of Lord Byron; or that he has
endeavored to confound all just sense of morals, by heaping incense on
the vilest of princes. What an impressive contrast is there between
the Laureate's hymning of the bloated George IV. into Dublin, and the
Irish Avater of Byron:--
"Oh, what a joy was there!
In loud huzzas prolonged.
Surge after surge the tide
Of popular welcome rose;
And in the interval alone
Of that tumultuous sound of glad acclaim
Could the deep cannon's voice
Of duteous gratulation, though it spake
In thunder, reach the ear.
From every tower the merry bells rung round,
Peal hurrying upon peal,
Till with the still reverberating din
The walls and solid pavement seem to shake,
And every bosom with the tremulous air
Inhaled a dizzy joy.
Age, that came forth to gaze
That memorable day,
Felt in its quickened veins a pulse like youth;
And lisping babes were taught to bless their king,
And grandsires bade their children treasure up
The precious sight, for it would be a tale,
The which in their old age
Would make their children's children gather round,
Intent all ears to hear."
_Southey's Ode on the King's Visit to Ireland._
Who would not have believed that this was some virtuous monarch, the
father of his people? What had the Irish to bless this king for? What
ears now are intent to hear of this vaunted boon of this great and
good king's visit sung by this paid poet, the pious Southey? What a
much more healthy though terrible truth exists in the Irish Avater, by
Lord Byron!
It is a circumstance that redeems the age, that when despotism was
making its most hardy attempts in England, when too many of our
literary men were disposed to flatter and follow in its train, and
when such a man as Southey was the loudest to hymn the follies and
crimes of the despots, Lord Byron, the very man who was accused of
corrupting the public morals, should still have been the man to
denounce, with all the powers of poetry, wit, and withering sarcasm,
the nefarious attempt. What a fall was that of Southey, from the poet
of liberty to the laudator of crime, tyranny, and carnage! What a
position in which to see him stand, crying for a continuance of
religious slavery, for the slavery of the press, and advancing beyond
all former example of fanatic bigotry, assuming the office of the
Deity himself, and dooming those who differed in opinion from him to
perdition in the next world! If Robert Southey, as he wrote the
epitaph to Algernon Sidney, or the sonnet to Mary Wollstoncraft, could
have been shown himself, writing his Vision of Judgment, representing
Junius as afraid to speak in his own defense, and George IV. lauded as
good, and wise, and "treading in the steps of his father," with what
horror would he have regarded himself. With what shame would he have
seen Lord Byron, like his avenger, ever ready at hand to turn his
solemn adulation to ridicule, and to lash him with a merciless scourge
of immortal indignation.
It is with deepest sorrow that I view Southey in this light; but the
lesson to future poets should never be withheld. Truth is of eternal
interest to mankind, and it can never be too often impressed on youth,
that no temporary favor or emolument can make a millionth part of
amends for the loss of the glorious reputation of the patriot.
Allowing that Southey became sincerely convinced that he was right in
his adopted political creed, his own private opinion can not alter the
eternal nature of things, and the fact is not the less a fact that his
change was a mischievous and an unworthy one. If, while he lived in
dread of public opinion, as evinced in his Colloquies, "First the
Sword governs; then the Laws; next in succession is the government of
Public Opinion. To this we are coming. Already its claims are openly
and boldly advanced ... timidly, and therefore feebly resisted!" (vol.
ii. p. 114) he could have seen to what a pitch this government of
public opinion has now arrived, and how peacefully and beneficially
all advances under it, with what regret must he have looked back on
his own acts and counsels. How much he must have deplored the terms of
factionists, seditionists, schismatics, and "lying slanderers," which
he had heaped on all who dared to utter an independent opinion. See,
especially, his Vision of Judgment. And that the laureate's feelings
were very keen, circumstances always showed; for though he declares in
his Colloquies that his enemies might as well shoot their arrows at a
rhinoceros as at him, yet on every occasion when an able antagonist
adverted to his peculiar career, he writhed and turned in bitterest
resentment; as on William Smith, of Norwich, for his remarks on Wat
Tyler in parliament, and on Lord Byron. That outward policy, and a
regard for the position which he had assumed, tended to make him write
in a more church and state strain than he otherwise would, is rendered
more than probable by the freedom of opinion which he allowed himself
in The Doctor, where he was shielded by his incognito.
Deploring the grand error of Southey's life--for we bear no resentment
to the dead--more especially as England has gone on advancing and
liberalizing, spite of his slavish dogmas, and thus rendered his most
zealous advocacy of narrow notions perfectly innoxious--we would ask,
whether this peculiar change of his original opinions may not have had
a peculiar effect on his poetry? Much and beautifully as he has
written, yet, if I may be allowed the expression, he never seems to be
at home in his poetry, any more than in the country which, with his
new opinions, he adopted. We can read once, especially in our youth,
his poems, even the longest--but it is rarely more than once. We are
charmed, sometimes a little wearied, but we never wish to recur to
them again. There are a few of his smaller poems, as the Penates, the
Bee, Blenheim, and a few others, which are exceptions, with some
exquisite passages, as that often quoted one on love in Kehama. But,
on the whole, we are quite satisfied with one reading. There is a
want, somehow, of _the spiritual_ in his writing. Beautiful
fancy, and tender feeling, and sometimes deep devotion, there are; but
still there lacks that spirit, that essence of the soul which makes
Wordsworth and many of the poems of Lord Byron, a never satiating
aliment and refreshment--a divine substance on which you live and
grow, and by its influence seem to draw nearer to the world of mind
and of eternity. Southey's poetry seems a beautiful manufacture; not a
part of himself. He carries you in it, as in an enchanted cloud, to
Arabia, India, or America; to the celestial Meru, to the dolorous
depths of Padalon, or to the Domdaniel caves under the roots of the
ocean; but he does not seem to entertain you at home; to take you down
into himself. He does not seem to be at rest there, or to have there
"his abiding city."
It is exactly the same as to the country in which he lived. He seemed
to live there as a stranger and a sojourner. That he loved the lakes
and mountains around, there can be no question; but has he linked his
poetry with them? Has he, like Wordsworth, woven his verse into almost
every crevice of every rock? Cast the spell of his enchantment upon
every stream? Made the hills, the waters, the hamlets, and the people,
part and parcel of his life and his fame? We seek in vain for any such
amalgamation. With the exception of the cataract of Lodore, there is
scarcely a line of his poetry which localizes itself in the fairy
region where he lived forty years. When Wordsworth is gone, he will
leave on the mountains, and in all the vales of Cumberland, an
everlasting people of his creation. The Wanderer, and the Clergyman of
the Excursion, Michael, and Matthew, and the Wagoner, and Peter Bell,
Ruth, and many a picturesque vagrant will linger there forever. The
Shepherd Lord will haunt his ancient hills and castles, and the White
Doe will still cross Rylston fells. A thousand associations will start
up in the mind of many a future generation, as they hear the names of
Helvellyn, Blencathra, or Langdale Pikes. But when you seek for
evidences of the poetic existence of Southey in Cumberland, you are
carried at once to Greta-hall at Keswick, and there you remain. I
suppose the phrenologists would say it was owing to his
idiosyncrasy--that he had much imitativeness, but very little
locality. It is most singular, that look over the contents of his
voluminous poems, and you find them connected with almost every region
of the world, and every quarter of these kingdoms, except with the
neighborhood of his abode. He would seem like a man flying from the
face of the world, and brushing out all traces of his retreat as he
goes. In Spain, France, America, India, Arabia, Africa, the West
Indies, in Ireland, Wales, England, and Scotland, you perceive his
poetical habitations and resting-places; but not in Cumberland. He has
commemorated Pultowa, Jerusalem, Alentejo, Oxford, Blenheim, Dreux,
Moscow, the Rhine. He has epitaphs and inscriptions for numbers of
places in England, Spain, and Portugal. In his Madoc, Wales; in his
Roderick, Spain; in his Joan of Arc, France, find abundance of their
localities celebrated. In his Pilgrimage to Waterloo, Flanders has its
commemorations; but Cumberland--no! You would think it was some
district not glorious with mountain, lake, and legend, but some fenny
flat on which a poetic spirit could not dwell.
Almost the only clews that we get at are to be found in the
Colloquies. Here we learn that the poet and his family did sometimes
walk to Skiddaw Dod, Causey Pike, and Watenlath. At page 119 of vol.
i., where these names occur, we find the poet proposing an excursion
to Walla Crag, on the waters of the Derwentwater. "I, who perhaps
would more willingly have sat at home, was yet in a mood to suffer
violence, and making a sort of compromise between their exuberant
activity and my own inclination for the chair and the fireside, fixed
on Walla Crag." Beside this mention, you have in Colloquy XII., pages
59 to 69, an introduction to a long history of the Clifford family, in
which you are introduced to Threlkeld farm and village. This peep into
the mountains makes you wonder that Southey did not give you more of
them; but no, that is all. It is evident that his heart was, as he
hinted just above, "at home in the chair by the fireside." It was in
his library that he really lived, and there is little question that
when his children did get him out on the plea that it was necessary
for his health, his mind was gone off with some Thalaba or Madoc or
other, or with that other favorite hero of his, whose "walk," and
whose exploits with old women, he has described with a gusto that
might have fitly fixed on him the appellation he gave to Lord
Byron--the head of the Satanic school.
To Keswick we must then betake ourselves as the sole haunt of Robert
Southey. My visit there in the summer of 1845 was marked by a
circumstance which may show how well the fame of Dr. Southey, the
laureate of Church and State, and the bard who sung the triumphs of
legitimacy on the occasion of the allied sovereigns coming to England
in 1814, is spread among the nations which are the strictest
maintainers of his favorite doctrines; a fettered press, a law church,
and a government maintained by such statesmen as Castlereagh and
Metternich. I was traveling at that time with four of the subjects of
these allied sovereigns, whom our laureate had so highly lauded; a
Russian, a Cossack, an Austrian, and a Bohemian; the Cossack no other
than the nephew of the Hetman Platoff, and the Bohemian, Count
Wratislaw, the present representative of that very ancient family of
which the queen of our Richard II., "the good Queen Anne," who sent
out Wickliffe's Bible to Huss, and was thus the mother of the
Reformation on the Continent; and, singularly also, still closely
connected with our royal family, his mother being sister to the
Princess of Leiningen, wife to the half-brother of Queen Victoria.
Austrian and Russian nobles are not famous for great reading, but
every one of these were as familiar with Dr. Southey's name as most
people the world over are with those of Scott and Byron. They not only
went over the laureate's house with the greatest interest, but carried
away sprigs of evergreen to preserve as memorials.
Southey's house, which lies at a little distance from the town of
Keswick, on the way to Bassenthwaite water, is a plain stuccoed
tenement, looking as you approach it almost like a chapel, from the
apparent absence of chimneys. Standing upon the bridge over the Greta
which crosses the high-road here, the view all round of the mountains,
those which lie at the back of Southey's house, Skiddaw being the
chief, and those which lie in front, girdling the lake of
Derwentwater, is grand and complete. From this bridge the house lies
at the distance of a croft, or of three or four hundred yards, on an
agreeable swell. In front, that is, between you and the house, ascends
toward it a set of homelike crofts, with their cut hedges and a few
scattered trees. When Southey went there, and I suppose for twenty
years after, these were occupied as a nursery ground, and injured the
effect of the immediate environs of the house extremely. Nothing now
can be more green and agreeable. On the brow of the hill, if it can be
called so, stand two stuccoed houses; the one nearest to the town, and
the largest, being Southey's. Both are well flanked by pleasant trees,
and partly hidden by them, that of Southey being most so. The smaller
house has the air of a good neighbor of lesser importance, who is
proud of being a neighbor. It is at present occupied by a Miss Denton,
daughter of the former vicar of Crosthwaite, the place just below on
the Bassenthwaite road, and where Southey lies buried.
The situation of Southey's house, taking all into consideration, is
exceeded by few in England. It is agreeably distant from the road and
the little town, and stands in a fine, open valley, surrounded by
hills of the noblest and most diversified character. From your stand
on Greta bridge, looking over the house, your eye falls on the group
of mountains behind it. The lofty hill of Latrig lifts its steep,
green back with its larch plantations clothing one edge, and scattered
in groups over the other. Stretching away to the left, rises the still
loftier range and giant masses of Skiddaw, with its intervening dells
and ravines, and summits often lost in their canopy of shadowy clouds.
Between the feet of Skiddaw and Greta bridge, lie pleasant knolls and
fields with scattered villas and cottages, and Crosthwaite Church. On
your right hand is the town, and behind it green swelling fields
again, and the more distant inclosing chain of hills.
If you then turn your back on the house, and view the scene which is
presented from the house, you find yourself in the presence of the
river, hurrying away toward the assemblage of beautifully varied
mountains, which encompass magnificently the lake of Derwentwater.
The vicinity to the lake itself would make this spot as a residence
most attractive. I think I like Derwentwater more than any other of
the lakes. The mountains all round are so bold and so diversified in
form. You see them showing themselves one behind another, many tending
to the pyramidal form, and their hues as varied as their shapes. Some
are of that peculiar tawny, or lion color, which is so singular in its
effect in the Scotch mountains of the south; others so softly and
smoothly green; others so black and desolate. Some are so beautifully
wooded, others so bare. When you look onward to the end of the lake,
the group of mountains and crags there, at the entrance of Borrowdale,
is one of the most beautiful and pictorial things imaginable. If any
artist would choose a scene for the entrance into fairy land, let him
take that. When, again, you turn and look over the town, there soars
aloft Skiddaw in his giant grandeur, with all his slopes, ridges,
dints, ravines, and summits clear in the blue sky, or hung with the
cloud-curtains of heaven, full of magnificent mystery. There is a
perfect pyramid, broad and massy as those of Egypt, standing solemnly
in one of its ascending vales, called Carrsledrum. Then, the
beautifully wooded islands of Derwentwater, eight in number, and the
fine masses of wood that stretch away between the feet of the hills
and the lake, with here and there a villa lighting up the scene, make
it perfect. In all the changes of weather, the changes of aspect must
be full of new beauty; but, in bright and genial summer weather, how
enchanting must it be! As it was at our visit, the deep-black, yet
transparent shadow that lay on some of the huge piles of mountain, and
the soft light that lay on others, were indescribably noble and
poetical, and the strangers exclaimed continually,--"_Prächtig!_"
"_Wunderschön!_" and "_Très beau!_"
When we ascend to the house, it is through a narrow sort of croft or a
wide shrubbery, which you will. The carriage-road goes another way,
and here you have only a single footpath, and on your right hand a
grassy plot scattered with a few flower-beds, and trees and shrubs,
which brings you, by a considerable ascent, to the front of the house,
which is screened almost wholly from view by tall trees, among which
some are fine maples and red beeches. Here, on the left hand, a little
side gate leads to Miss Denton's house, and on the other stretches out
the lawn, screened by hedges of laurel and other evergreens. Behind
this little lawn, on the right hand of the house, lie one or two
kitchen gardens, and passing through these, you come to a wood
descending toward the river, which you again find here sweeping around
the house. Down this wood or copse, which is half-orchard, and half of
forest trees, you see traces of winding footpaths, but all now grown
over with grass. The house is deserted; the spirits which animated the
scene are fled, some one way, and some another; and there is already a
wildness and a desolation about it. The Greta, rushing over its weir
beneath this wood, moans in melancholy sympathy with the rest of the
scene. You see that great pleasure has sometime been taken in this
spot, in these gardens, in this shadowy and steeply descending wood;
and the river that runs on beneath, and the melancholy feeling of the
dreamlike nature and vanity of human things, its fame and happiness
included, seizes irresistibly upon you. A little footpath which runs
along the Greta side toward the town deepens this feeling. Through the
trees, and behind the river, lie deep and grassy meadows with masses
of woodland, having a very Cuyp or Paul Potter look; and, between the
higher branches of the trees you see the huge green bulk of Skiddaw,
soaring up with fine and almost startling effect. You may imagine
Southey walking to and fro along the footpath under the trees, in the
fields leading to the town, by another route, and thinking over his
topics, while he took the air, and had in view a scene of mountain
magnificence, of the effect of which the poet was fully conscious.
"The height and extent of the surrounding objects seem to produce a
correspondent expansion and elevation of mind, and the silence and
solitude contribute to this emotion. You feel as if in another region,
almost in another world."[4] Here, too, you may imagine Coleridge
lying and dreaming under the trees of the wood within sound of the
river. He was here, at one time, a great while.
[4] Colloquies, vol. ii. p. 61.
To return to the house, however. It is a capacious house enough, but
not apparently very well built. The floors of the upper rooms shake
under your tread; and I have heard, that when Southey had these rooms
crowded and piled with books, there was a fear of their coming down.
The house is one of those square houses of which you may count the
rooms without going into them, but at each end is a circular
projection, making each a snug sort of ladies' room. The room on the
right hand as we entered, was said to be the sitting-room, and that on
the left, the library, while the room over it was Southey's
writing-room; and most of these rooms, as well as the entrance-hall,
were all crowded with books. We were told that, after several days'
sale at home, where some books as well as the furniture were sold,
fourteen tuns of books and similar articles were sent off for sale in
London.
If Southey has not told us much about his haunts in the mountains, he
has, however, particularly described that where his heart lay--his
library. To this he has given a whole chapter in his Colloquies; and
in this volume we must, as a matter of course, give a few extracts,
for it is almost the only haunt of Southey, of which he has left us
any glimpse in his writings.
"I was in my library," he says, "making room upon the shelves for some
books which had just arrived from New England, removing to a less
conspicuous station others which were of less value, and in worn
dress, when Sir Thomas entered.
"'You are employed,' said he, 'to your heart's content. Why,
Montesinos, with these books, and the delight you take in their
constant society, what have you to covet or desire more?'
"MONTESINOS.--'Nothing, ... except more books.'
"SIR THOMAS MORE.--'_Crescit, indulgens sibi, dirus hydrops._'
"MONTESINOS.--'Nay, nay, my ghostly monitor, this at least is
no diseased desire! If I covet more, it is for the want I feel, and
the use I should make of them. "Libraries," says my good old friend,
George Dyer, a man as learned as he is benevolent, ... "libraries are
the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed, might
bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for
use." These books of mine, as you well know, are not drawn up here for
display, however much the pride of the eye may be gratified in
beholding them; they are on actual service. Whenever they may be
dispersed, there is not one among them that will ever be more
comfortably lodged, or more highly prized by its possessor; and
generations may pass away before some of them will again find a
reader.... It is well that we do not moralize too much upon such
subjects, ...
"For foresight is a melancholy gift,
Which bears the bald, and speeds the all-too swift."
But the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect or
anticipation, is to me always a melancholy thing.'
"SIR THOMAS MORE.--'How many such dispersions must have taken
place to have made it possible that these books should be thus brought
together here among the Cumberland mountains!'
"MONTESINOS.--'Many, indeed; and in many instances, most disastrous
ones. Not a few of these volumes have been cast up from the wreck of
the family or convent libraries, during the Revolution. Yonder Acta
Sanctorum belonged to the Capuchins, at Ghent. This book of St.
Bridget's Revelations, in which not only all the initial letters are
illuminated, but every capital throughout the volume was colored, came
from the Carmelite nunnery at Bruges. That copy of Alain Chartier,
from the Jesuits' College at Louvain; that _Imago Primi Sæculi
Societatis_, from their college at Ruremond. Here are books from
Colbert's library; here others from the Lamoignon one. And here are
two volumes of a work--Chronicles of the barefooted Franciscans in the
Philippines, China, Japan, etc.--for which I am indebted to my friend
Sir Robert Harry Inglis; a work, not more rare than valuable for its
contents, divorced, unhappily, and it is to be feared forever, from
the volume which should stand between these. They were printed in a
convent at Manilla, and brought from thence when that city was taken
by Sir William Draper. They have given me, perhaps, as many
pleasurable hours, passed in acquiring information which I could not
otherwise have obtained, as Sir William spent years of anxiety and
vexation in vainly soliciting the reward of his conquest.'
"'About a score of the more out-of-the-way works in my possession,
belonged to some unknown person, who seems carefully to have gleaned
the bookstalls a little before and after the year 1790. He marked them
with certain ciphers, always at the end of the volume. They are in
various languages, and I never found his mark in any book that was not
worth buying, or that I should not have bought without that indication
to induce me. All were in ragged condition, and having been dispersed
on the owner's death, probably as of no value, to the stalls they had
returned; and there I found this portion of them, just before my old
haunts as a book-hunter in the metropolis were disforested, to make
room for improvements between Westminster and Oxford-road. I have
endeavored, without success, to discover the name of their former
possessor.' * * * *
"'Yonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Damiam de Goes, and yonder
General History of Spain, by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their
respective authors. The minds of these laborious and useful scholars
are in their works; but you are brought into a more perfect relation
with them when you see the page upon which you know that their eyes
have rested, and the very characters which their hands have traced.
This copy of Casaubon's Epistles was sent to me from Florence by
Walter Landor. He had perused it carefully, and to that perusal we are
indebted for one of the most pleasing of his Conversations. These
letters had carried him in spirit to the age of their writer, and
shown James I. to him in the light in which James was regarded by
cotemporary scholars; and, under the impression thus produced, Landor
has written of him in his happiest mood, calmly, philosophically,
feelingly, and with no more favorable leaning than justice will always
manifest when justice is in good-humor, and in charity with all men.
The book came from the palace library at Milan ... how or when
abstracted I know not; but this beautiful dialogue would never have
been written had it remained there in its place upon the shelf, for
the worms to finish the work which they had begun.' * * * *
"'Here is a book with which Lauderdale amused himself, when Cromwell
kept him prisoner in Windsor Castle. He has recorded his state of mind
during that imprisonment, by inscribing in it, with his name and dates
of time, the Latin word _Durate_, and the Greek [Greek: Oisteou
kai elpisteou]. The date is 22d Oct. 1657. The book is the _Pia
Hilaria Angelini Gazæi_.... Here is a memorial of a different kind,
inscribed in this "Rule of Penance of St. Francis," as it is ordered
for religious women.... "I beseech my dear mother humbly to accept of
this exposition of our holy rule, the better to conceive what your
poor child ought to be who daly beges your blessing. Constantia
Francisco." And here are the Apophthemata, collected by Conrad
Lycosthenes, and published, after drastic expurgation by the Jesuits,
as a commonplace book,--some Portuguese has entered a hearty vow, that
he would never part with the book, nor lend it to any one. Very
different was my poor old Lisbon acquaintance, the abbé, who, after
the old humorous form, wrote in all his books, and he had a rare
collection, _Ex libris Francisci Garnier, et amicorum_.'
"SIR THOMAS MORE.--'How peaceably they stand together.... Papists and
Protestants side by side!'
"MONTESINOS.--'Their very dust reposes not more quietly in
the cemetery. Ancient and modern, Jew and Gentile, Mohammedan and
Crusader, French and English, Spaniards and Portuguese, Dutch and
Brazilians, fighting their old battles silently now upon the shelf;
Fernam Lopez and Pedro de Ayala; John de Laet and Barlæus, with the
historians of Joam Ferandes Vieira; Fox's Martyrs, and the Three
Conversations of Father Persons; Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner;
Dominican and Franciscan; Jesuit and _Philosophe_, equally
misnamed: Churchmen and Sectarians; Roundheads and Cavaliers!
"Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and here
Is nature's secretary, the philosopher;
And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie
The sinews of a city's mystic body;
Here gathering chroniclers; and by them stand
Giddy fantastic poets of each land."--_Donne._
Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, the harvest of so
many generations, laid up in my garners; and when I go to the windows,
there is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the
illimitable sky.'"
* * * * *
This noble collection, of which their possessor might well be proud,
which is said to have included by far the best collection of Spanish
books in England, and the gathering of which together, through many
researches, many inquiries, and many years, had, perhaps, given him
almost as much pleasurable excitement as their perusal, is once more
dispersed into thousands of hands. The house, indeed, at the time we
visited it, was in the act of being repaired, fresh painted and
papered, ready for a new tenant; and, of course, looked desolate
enough. All the old paper had been torn off the walls, or scraped
away; and workmen, with piles of rolls of new paper, and buckets of
paste, were beginning their work of revival. The whole house, outside
and inside, had an air of dilapidation, such as houses in the country
are often allowed to fall into; but, no doubt, when all furnished and
inhabited, would be comfortable and habitable enough.
But death had been there, and the appraiser and auctioneer, and a
crowd of eager sale-attenders after them; and the history of the poet
and the poet's family life was wound up and done there. A populous
dwelling it must have been when Southey and his wife and children, and
Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter, and perhaps other friends, were all
housed in it. And an active and pleasant house it must have been when
great works were going on in it, a Thalaba, a Madoc, an article for
the Quarterly, and news from London were coming in, and letters were
expected of great interest, and papers were sending off by post to
printers and publishers, and correspondents. All that is now passed
over as a dream; the whole busy hive is dispersed many ways, and the
house and grounds are preparing to let at £55 a-year, just as if no
genius had set a greater value on them than on any other premises
around. It is when we see these changes that we really feel the vanity
of human life. But the beauty of the life of genius is, that though
the scene of domestic action and sojourn can become as empty as any
other, the home of the poet's mind becomes thenceforth that of the
whole heart and mind of his nation, and often far beyond that. The
Cossack and the Bohemian--did they not also carry away from it to
their far-off lands tokens of their veneration?
Before quitting Southey's house for his tomb, I can not resist
referring to a little fact connected with his appointment to the
laureateship. It is well known that the post was first offered to
Walter Scott, who declined it, but recommended Southey, who was
chosen. The letters on the whole transaction are given in Lockhart's
Life of Scott (chap. xxvi.), and certainly present one of the most
luxurious bits of human nature imaginable. Scott, who was then only
plain Walter Scott; who was not made Sir Walter for seven years after;
who had published the greater number of his popular poetical romances,
but had not yet published Waverley; felt, however, quite terrified at
the offer of the laureateship. He was quite agonized with shame at the
prospect, and wrote off to the Duke of Buccleugh to ask his advice how
he was to get decently out of the scrape without offending the prince
regent. "I am," says Scott, "very much embarrassed by it. I am, on the
one hand, very much afraid of giving offense, where no one would
willingly offend, and perhaps losing the opportunity of smoothing the
way to my youngsters through life; on the other hand the _offer is a
ridiculous one_; somehow or other, they and I should be well
quizzed," etc. * * * "I feel much disposed to shake myself free of it.
I should make but a bad courtier, and an ode-maker is described by
Pope as a man out of his way, or out of his senses."
Almost by return of post came the duke's answer. "As to the offer of
his royal highness to appoint you laureate, I shall frankly say, that
I should be mortified to see you hold a situation which, by the
general concurrence of the world, is stamped ridiculous. There is no
good reason why it should be so; but it is so. _Walter Scott, Poet
Laureate_, ceases to be Walter Scott, of the Lay, Marmion, etc. Any
future poem of yours would not come forth with the same probability of
a successful reception. The poet laureate would stick to you and your
productions like a piece of _court plaster_. * * * 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 honor, and gentlemen-pensioners! Oh, horrible! thrice
horrible!"
Scott replied, "I should certainly never have survived the recitative
described by your grace; it is a part of the etiquet I was quite
unprepared for, and should have sunk under it."
Such was the horror of Scott, and his great patron Buccleugh, at the
very idea of this most ridiculous of offers, of _this piece of court
plaster_, of this horrible, thrice horrible of all quizzes--Scott
at once declined the _honor_; and though he said he should make a
bad courtier, assuredly no courtier could have done it in better
style, professing that the office was too distinguished for his
merits; that he was by no means adequate to it. Now Scott, all this
time, had but an income of £2,000 a-year, out of all his resources; we
have these calculated and cast up on the very same page, opposite to
his letter to Buccleugh; nay, he is in embarrassments, and in the very
same letter requests the duke to be guaranty for £2,000 for him: and
he thought the laureateship worth £300 or £400 a-year. These facts all
testify to his thorough idea of the ignominy of the office. How rich,
then, is the sequel! This ignominy, this burning shame of an office,
this piece of adhesive _court plaster_, he goes at once and
recommends to Southey! "Hang it," he says to himself, "it would never
do for such a man as me; but, by the by, it will do very well for
Southey!" Well, he writes at once to Southey--tells him that he has
had this offer, but that he has declined it, because he has had
already two pieces of preferment, and, moreover, "my dear Southey, I
had you in my eye." He adds--and now let any one who thinks himself
flattered on any particular occasion, remember this delicious bam--"I
did not refuse it _from any foolish prejudice against the
situation_--otherwise how durst I offer it to you, (ay, how,
indeed!) my elder brother in the muse?--but from a sort of internal
hope that they would give it to you, on whom it would be so much more
worthily conferred. For I am not such an ass as not to know that you
are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time,
the tide of popularity in my favor. I have not time to add the
thousand other reasons, but I only wished to tell you how the matter
was, and to beg you to think before you reject the offer which, I
flatter myself, will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry,
a fellow with two gowns already, _I should have jumped at it like a
cock at a gooseberry_. Ever yours, most truly, WALTER SCOTT."
The whole is too rich to need a remark, except that Southey accepted
it, and Scott wrote him a letter of warmest congratulation on getting
this piece of _court plaster_ clapped on his back, and putting
himself into a position to be "well quizzed;" but was quite confounded
to learn that the honorarium for the "horrible! thrice horrible!" was
not £400 a-year, but only £100 and a butt of wine. I wonder whether
poor Southey lived to read Scott's life!
The present illustrious holder of this post accepted it with a dignity
worthy of his character and fame, declining it till it was stripped of
all its disgusting duties. The next step, it is to be hoped, will be
to abolish an office equally derogatory to monarch and subject. No
poet of reputation should feel himself in a position to pay mercenary
praise; no monarch of this country need purchase praise; to a worthy
occupier of the throne it will be freely accorded from the universal
heart of the nation.
Crosthwaite Church, in whose grave-yard Robert Southey's remains lie,
is about a quarter of a mile from the house, on the Bassenthwaite
water-road. It is a very simple and lowly village church with a low
square tower, but stands finely in the wide open valley, surrounded at
a considerable distance, by the scenery I have described. I suppose it
is nearly a mile from the foot of Skiddaw. From Southey's house the
walks to it, and again from it along the winding lanes, and over the
quiet fields toward Skiddaw, are particularly pleasant. Southey in his
Colloquies speaks of the church and church-yard with much affection.
He quotes the account of an old man who more than fifty years ago
spoke of the oldest and finest yew-trees in the country standing in
this church-yard, and of having seen all the boys of the school-house
near, forty in number, perched at once on the boughs of one of them.
At the northwest comer of the church-yard, stands Southey's tomb. It
is a plain altar-tomb of reddish freestone, covered with a slab of
blue slate, with this inscription,--"Here lies the body of Robert
Southey, LL.D. Poet Laureate; Born August 12, 1774. Died March 26,
1843. Also of Edith his wife, Born May 20, 1774; Died Nov. 16, 1837. I
am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord."
Close in front of the tomb lies the grave of Mrs. Southey; and behind,
and close to the hedge, stands a stone bearing this inscription,--"The
Lord gave and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.
Sacred to the memory of Emma Southey, who departed in May 1809, aged
14 months. And of Herbert Southey, who departed April 17th, 1816, in
the tenth year of his age. Also of George Fricker, their uncle, aged
26, 1814. Also, Isabel Southey, their sister, who departed on the 16th
of July, 1826, aged 13 years. Also of Edith Southey, their mother, who
departed May, 1837, aged 63. Requiescat in pace."
I recollected that there was something peculiar connected with the
death of the son, Herbert. The old clerk said that his disorder could
not be discovered till after his death, but that on opening him, a
human hair was found fast round his heart!
I wished to see the pew where the Southeys used to sit, but I found
the interior of the church, as well as of his house, undergoing the
revolution of repair, or rather of renewal. It seemed as if people had
only waited for Southey's death, to begin and clear off all traces of
his existence here. The church is fine and capacious within, but all
the old pews, all the old seats, pulpit, and every thing belonging to
them, have been cleared away, and the whole replaced by fittings in
the ancient style. There are nothing but open benches, with a single
exception. The benches are of solid oak, with heavy, handsome carving,
and have a very goodly and substantial look. The windows are also
renewed with handsome painted glass, and the tables of the Decalogue,
etc. placed behind the altar, are all painted in the old missal style.
The church will be very handsome, at the same time that it is a sign
of the times. Of course Southey's pew is gone. In the church is an
ancient monument of the Radcliffes, ancestors to the Earl of
Derwentwater; and two of the Brownrigs of Armathwaite, immediate
maternal relations of my wife.
The close of Southey's life was melancholy. His mind gave way,
probably from having been overtasked, and he sunk into a condition of
utter imbecility. Shortly before this event he had married, as his
second wife, his friend of many years' standing, Caroline Bowles, one
of the sweetest and most genuine poetesses of the age. In her early
widowhood she has the satisfaction of reflecting, that, as one of the
tenderest nurses and most assiduous companions, she did all that
mortal power could do to render his last gloomy stage on earth easy
and comfortable. She wrote for him when he could no longer write, read
to him for days, weeks, months, when he was not allowed to read
himself, and watched over him with untiring affection when he was no
longer sensible of the value and devotion of these services. What is
to be deeply regretted is, that we believe her pecuniary sacrifices by
this marriage were as serious as those demanded in the shape of
anxiety, vigilance, and physical exertion, from a mind of the quickest
feeling and a frame never strong; her own personal income being
contingent on such a circumstance. Such a woman, who has adorned the
literature of her country with some of its most exquisite
contributions, and sacrificed every thing to render the last days of
one of its finest writers as serene as possible, ought not to be left
to wear away the remainder of her life in the _res augustæ domi_,
stripped of those simple elegances and enjoyments to which, as a
gentlewoman, she has always been accustomed. Even they who differ most
in opinion from that writer, and most regret the direction which his
mind took on many great questions, still admit most cheerfully the
brilliant services rendered by him to the national literature and
fame, and would desire that the wife of Robert Southey should enjoy
that ease and consideration which his merits, independent of her own,
ought to secure her.
[Illustration: Birthplace at Bristol]