Chapter XII (5)

Those only who have never thought at all, or who have quite forgotten their past efforts at thinking, will throw blame upon another because the opinions of his his youth were different from those of his manhood. Such difference is almost the necessary attendant upon progress and mental development. The ardour and the candour of Southey's nature made the difference in his case singularly conspicuous. He lived, too, at that epoch when the French Revolution made and unmade so many enthusiasts. This may be thought a sufficient vindication of his memory. But there remains to add one very honourable distinction. Many of those whom the French Revolution had made enthusiasts in the cause of human progress, became cold and dead and utterly indifferent to that cause--selfishly callous, or quite sceptical as to the _possible_ improvements which might be effected in society. Now, Southey changed his opinion on many subjects, but he never deserted the cause of human improvement. He would have promoted very different measures at different periods, but he had the same cause always at heart. He never sank into a cold and selfish indifference; nor was it a mere passive conservatism that he ever advocated. His son has here very justly pointed out that, as a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, in which character he was thought to have consummated his apostasy, it was _the renegade Southey_ who drew attention to the state of the poor, who called on the Government for a scheme of national education, who pointed out the folly of neglecting our great colonial possessions, and the necessity of adopting some large and judicious plan of emigration. Of the topics which occupy reflective and philanthropic men at this moment, pauperism, national education, and emigration are three of the most conspicuous; and in each of these Southey may claim to have led the way, in drawing towards them that public attention which they so eminently deserve. He is always alive to whatever seems to him a feasible scheme for the improvement of society. If he goes abroad, and visits the _Beguinages_ in Belgium, he thinks whether a like institution might not be introduced into Protestant England, for the benefit of a class of women, whether single or widowed, who with difficulty find any active employment--who are not paupers, but whose poverty condemns them to a cheerless, solitary existence. If Robert Owen of Lanark comes across his path, no fear of having his own early dream of Pantisocracy revived before him, of being reproached for an old abandoned faith, (the constant terror of men who feel themselves apostates,) prevents him from expressing the natural interest which such a man, and the projects he _then_ had in view, naturally excited within him. His _Colloquies_ may not earn him a reputation amongst political economists; but no one will deny the philanthropic spirit which they breathe. In his _Life of Wesley_, and all his religious or theological publications, however devoted he may show himself to the Church of England, he never fails to inquire how this great institution may be made still more serviceable to the nation at large, and this, too, by embracing within its pale those very sectaries towards whom he was accused of having so bigoted and unfriendly a feeling.

Those of his opponents who, in the later part of his career, were accustomed to represent Southey as the unscrupulous, drilled, formal advocate of a party in Church and State, ready for his pension and his pay, for court honours and the praise of bishops, to espouse its cause to the utmost, never made a greater mistake in their lives. Innumerable proofs are here before us in his letters, if we did not find them in his works, that he retained to the last a certain bold, erratic, independent manner of thinking, quite his own.

Always was he Robert Southey, and no representative of a party. At one time of his life he contemplated the profession of the law, and studied for the bar. What sort of lawyer he might have made, if he had been able to give up his mind to the study, or what the practice of Westminster Hall might have made of him, there is no saying; but there was never any literary men, earning subsistence by his pen, who had less of the spirit of the retained advocate. A self-willed, untamed, quite individual manner of looking at things, is always breaking out. If he had taken that seat in Parliament which, without any consultation of his wishes, was so strangely bestowed upon him, he would, we are persuaded, have greatly disappointed any party that might have relied upon his steady and unswerving co-operation. He would often have deserted them for the cross benches, and as often perplexed them by his uncompromising zeal. No whipper-in would have been quite sure of him, or kept him steady in the ranks. In that position where he was most subject to restraint--as a writer in the _Quarterly_--it is amusing to see how restive he is, how he rears and plunges at first starting, how he chafes at that harness which each one in such a team must be content to wear, though every steed were a veritable Pegasus, and Apollo himself in the editorial car. He thinks "a sprinkling of my free and fearless way of thinking would win friends" for the _Review_. "It is my nature and my principle," he says, "to speak and write as earnestly, as plainly, and as straight to the mark as I think and feel. If the editor understands his own interest, he will not restrict me." We must confess, judging by the ebullitions he sometimes gives vent to in these letters, that the most indulgent editor must have been occasionally called upon to "restrict" a certain impetuosity of manner, which, it may be observed, would have embarrassed Mr Gifford almost as much as it would have done Mr Jeffrey.

But from this somewhat rash incursion into the very centre of our subject, it would be wise--since we are not, in fact, epic poets--to effect a timely retreat; let us recommence, after the more legitimate manner of prosaic reviewers, with some account of the work immediately before us.

_The Life and Correspondence of Dr Southey_, which is here presented to the public, answers fairly to the description which the author, or editor, himself gives of it in his preface. A number of letters are arranged according to their dates, and are connected together with just such intimations of a biographical nature as enable them to tell their own story. The life of Southey, meaning thereby a skilful narrative and analysis of incident and character, remains, of course, to be written; and a very interesting work it will prove, if it falls into fortunate hands. Meanwhile, this collection of letters, many of them delightful compositions, and perfect models of epistolary style, gives us such an insight into, and appreciation of the man Southey, as was previously impossible to any one who did not know him personally and intimately. The editor has performed his part in a very creditable and judicious manner. It would have been very difficult for the son to conduct a rigid and impartial scrutiny into the literary merits of the father, and he has not attempted it; but it would have been the easiest thing in the world for that son, or for any other editor, to have spoilt such a work as this by intrusive panegyric, by constant controversy with old and hostile criticisms, by perpetual contest for place and pre-eminence for his biographical idol. The mere vanity of authorship, or an officious spirit, might have given a repulsive air to what is now a most agreeable book. There are cases, and this is one of them, where, considering the temptations that beset an editor, the absence of cause for censure becomes no slight ground of commendation.

The letters of Southey are preceded by the fragment of an autobiography. Would it were more than a fragment! The author, we are told, had looked forward to this task as one of a very agreeable nature; and, so far as he proceeded with it, appears to have found it such; for he revels in the reminiscences of childhood and his school-days, and describes the old house in Bristol in which he lived when a boy, with a loving minuteness that is in danger of outrunning the interest which any one but himself could feel in such a locality. But even before his school-days are quite over, he drops the pen. To one who had so much necessary employment for that pen, a supererogatory labour of this description ought to be very attractive, and apparently he found in his task, as he advanced, increasing difficulties and decreasing pleasure.

The reminiscences of childhood, of boyhood, and even of the first entrance into youth, have to almost all men an indescribable charm. Up to this time, we look back upon ourselves with a curious feeling, as if it were not altogether ourselves we were contemplating, but rather some _other being_ who preceded us, and whose thoughts and feelings are the sole remembrance of them we have inherited. We look back upon the frailties of that other self with an unlimited indulgence; we smile at his errors, at his passions, at his griefs; we even sport with his absurdities, and can afford to throw a playful ridicule over all the follies he committed. This child that we are playing with is ourself, but still it is only a child; and we have the fuller right to play with it because it is ourself. No sense of responsibility intervenes to disturb this singular amusement, where the adult is seen toying with and holding in his arms the image of his own infancy. But when this early pre-existent state has passed in review, and the real man is summoned forth upon the scene, we begin to feel that this is indeed ourselves; and we become too implicated and too much involved in the part he performs, to enjoy any longer the position of an imaginary spectator. We are sensitive to the errors, and responsible for the faults, of this other self; we cannot treat him with cavalier indifference; we must be his advocate or his censor. The retrospect assumes a quite different character. Formerly we called up a departed self from some half-fabulous region of the past, and questioned it as to its ways of thinking and acting; we now stand ourselves in the witness-box, and give our testimony; and the best of us must occasionally assume the sullen aspect of an unwilling witness. Formerly we sported with the past absurdity, ridiculed and laughed at it; but now the remembered folly, the sentimental effusion of the youth, the absurd oratorical display, the ridiculous exhibition, of whatever kind it may have been, affords us no amusement. It matters not what the distance of time, the cheek tingles with the reminiscence. What is still more to the purpose, the griefs and afflictions which we have now to summon up are the same in character as those we continue to feel, and their recollection is but a renewal of suffering. The affliction of the child rarely revives an affliction in the man--very often calls up a smile at the idea that so much distress had been felt at so trivial a cause. This is one reason why childhood appears, in our review of human life, so much happier than any other portion of it. We find a mirth in its remembered tears which assuredly we never discovered when they were flowing. But the remembrance of the sorrows of a later period is but sorrow itself, and we only taste again the bitterness of grief.

To Southey, whose disposition rendered him peculiarly susceptible to those domestic losses which death occasions, this last appears to have been one chief reason for the distaste he felt for his task as he proceeded in it. Certainly it soon lost its zest. During the early and playful portions of the biography, he holds on his way with alacrity and delight; he ransacks his memory, and brings out with great glee whatever odd and strange things he finds there; but the Westminster boy has not run his career before the theme has changed its aspect. At all events, it has no longer sufficient interest _to make_ a time and leisure for itself amongst the crowded occupations of the author.

In the record of his childhood which Southey has given us, we have no reason, as we have intimated, to complain of the want of detail. Indeed, some circumstances are related which at first we thought might as well have been passed over in silence. It appeared to us that everything which a person can possibly recollect of his own childhood, cannot be interesting to others, although every such effort of recollection may be extremely amusing to the reminiscent himself; and we were prepared to read a lecture to all future autobiographers, and to remind them that they must distinguish between the pleasure of memory, of rescuing the half-forgotten incident from threatened oblivion--a pleasure which must be exclusively their own--and the value which the rescued fact itself may possess in the estimation of the world at large. But while we were preparing this lecture, a little incident occurred which gave us a lesson ourselves, and induced us to withhold this part of our criticism. Such details as we have alluded to, not only give pleasure to the reminiscent, but occasion exactly the same pleasure to those in whom they call up similar recollections; and we had overlooked the extreme difficulty the critic, or any one reader, must have in determining which of such details is absolutely without this species of interest for other readers. What seems to him as really "too absurd" to be worth mentioning, may awaken vivid emotions in another in whom it calls up a similar remembrance from the all-but-forgotten past: _he_ shares in the very pleasure of the original reminiscent. Whilst we were perusing this autobiography, and our pencil was straying down the margin of a passage we intended to quote as an example of a quite superfluous effort of recollection, a friend called in upon us. We read to him this identical passage. To our astonishment, it had thrown him into a perfect ecstasy of delight. It had recalled an image of his schoolboy days which had never once been revived since he left school, and which he was certain would never again have occurred to him but for the paragraph we had read. Here is the passage:--

"One very odd amusement, which I never saw or heard of
elsewhere, was greatly in vogue at this school. It was
performed with snail shells, by placing them against each
other, point to point, and pressing till the one was broken in,
or sometimes both. This was called conquering; and the shell
that remained unhurt, acquired esteem and value in proportion
to the number over which it had triumphed, an accurate account
being kept. A great conqueror was prodigiously prized and
coveted--so much so indeed, that two of this description
would seldom have been brought to contest the palm, if both
possessors had not been goaded to it by reproaches and taunts.
The victor had the number of its opponent's triumphs added to
its own; thus, when one conqueror of fifty conquered another
which had been as often victorious, it became conqueror of an
hundred and one. Yet, even in this, reputation was sometimes
obtained upon false pretences. I found a boy one day who had
fallen in with a great number of young snails, so recently
hatched that the shells were still transparent, and he was
besmearing his fingers by crushing these poor creatures one
after another against his conqueror, counting away with the
greatest satisfaction at his work. He was a good-natured boy,
so that I, who had been bred up to have a sense of humanity,
ventured to express some compassion for the snails, and to
suggest that he might as well count them and lay them aside
unhurt. He hesitated, and seemed inclined to assent, till it
struck him as a point of honour, or of conscience, and then
he resolutely said, No! that would not do, for he could not
then fairly say he had conquered them. There is a surprising
difference of strength in these shells, and that not depending
on the size or species; I mean whether yellow, brown, or
striped. It might partly be estimated by the appearance of the
point or top, (I do not know what better term to use;) the
strong ones were usually clear and glossy there, and white if
the shell were of the large, coarse, mottled brown kind. The
top was then said to be petrified; and a good conqueror of
this description would triumph for weeks or months. I remember
that one of the greatest heroes bore evident marks of having
once been conquered. It had been thrown away on some lucky
situation, where the poor tenant had leisure to repair his
habitation, or rather where the restorative power of nature
repaired it for him, and the wall was thus made stronger than
it had been before the breach, by an arch of new masonry below.
But in general I should think the resisting power of the shell
depended upon the geometrical nicety of form."--(Vol. i. p. 55.)

This odd amusement, it seems, was not monopolised by young Southey's school. "Oh, I remember it well!" cried my enraptured auditor. "Yes, conqueror was the word. But Southey is wrong! It was the _empty_ shell only that we used. How distinctly I remember it!--and it must be thirty years ago--and never once till this moment have I thought of it since. How strange a thing is memory! You hold the shell, you see, between your forefinger and thumb, the forefinger being bent to receive it. Your adversary did the like with his shell. Then you applied the boss of your little shield to the boss of his--quite fairly, you understand, boss to boss, otherwise the strongest part of one shell would come in contact with the weaker part of the other. Silently, but with all your might, you pressed them together. The one which broke through its antagonist's was, of course, the conqueror. But Southey is wrong! It was only the empty shell we used. Consider, if the animal was there--what a horrible mess!"

We ventured to suggest to our friend, as soon as his impetuosity permitted us, that Southey was describing _his_ school, and no other school whatever; and as to the horrible mess which boys might delight in, it would be difficult to say, in such a matter, what would pass the bounds of credibility.

After this unintentional experiment, we gave up all idea of determining what might or might not be interesting amongst details of such a description. If this story of the snail-shells found its ardent admirer or sympathiser, what other could possibly be pronounced to be superfluous? or down the margin of what other passage could our critical and expurgatorial pencil have safely strayed? To as little purpose, we apprehend, should we undertake to examine such stories on the grave historic ground of their perfect credibility. When "Uncle William," who is half an idiot, plays a trick upon the servant Thomas, and substitutes a dead mouse for his quid of tobacco, the thought did occur to us, that although a mouse is a very small animal, it would surely make an enormous quid--altogether a most extraordinary substitute for a quid--and that the servant Thomas must have been the greatest idiot of the two to have been deceived by it. But such carping criticism, we repeat, would be altogether out of place; and this fragment of autobiography is really too amusing to excite any other feeling than that of regret at its sudden termination.

We learn from it that Southey was born on the 12th August 1774. His father was a linendraper at Bristol, and by no means prosperous in his calling. He passed his childhood, however, for the most part under the roof of a maiden aunt, Miss Tyler, who resided at Bath. To this house at Bath we must, therefore, betake ourselves, if we would learn the circumstances which assisted in forming the mind of the future poet and historian. To be born the son of a linendraper we hold to be no evil; but to have been bred up in the shop at Bristol would have been to Southey a real calamity. From this he was spared. The linendraper's shop may figure on his shield, if the malicious herald is disposed to place it there; it had nothing to do with his head, or his heart, or his manners; he was bred a gentleman. Moreover, he had exactly that sort of breeding which is calculated to foster the imagination, and develop whatever there was of poetry within him. Miss Tyler had two passions--one for order and cleanliness, the other for the theatre. She had, too, a free admission; and young Southey, at an age when other little boys are fain to content themselves with turning over the leaves of the great picture-book, was seated, night after night, in the front row of the boxes, a delighted spectator of the performances of one of the best companies in England. His first library--and this he possessed as soon as he could read--was a whole set, more than twenty in number, "of Mr Newbury's fairy tales, or other wonderful stories; delectable histories in sixpenny books for children, splendidly bound in flowered and gilt Dutch paper, of former days." This library, and free admission to the theatre, and, for the rest, much idleness, few companions, and a world of dreams,--such is the opening scene of Southey's mental history.

"I had seen more plays before I was seven years old," he says, "than I have seen since I was twenty." Miss Tyler, it seems, was living at one time with some ladies whose property was vested in the theatre. From their house--

"A covered passage led to the play-house, and they very rarely
missed a night's performance. I was too old to be put to bed
before the performance began, and it was better that I should
be taken than left with the servants; therefore I was always
of the party; and it is impossible to describe the thorough
delight which I received from this habitual indulgence. No
after-enjoyment could equal or approach it; I was sensible
of no defects either in the dramas or in the representation;
better acting, indeed, could nowhere have been found: Mrs
Siddons was the heroine; Dimond and Murray would have done
credit to any stage; and among the comic actors were Edwin and
Blanchard--and Blisset, who, though never known to a London
audience, was, of all comic actors whom I have seen, the most
perfect. But I was happily insensible to that difference
between good and bad acting, which in riper years takes off so
much from the pleasure of dramatic representation; everything
answered the height of my expectations and desires. And I saw
it in perfect comfort, in a small theatre, from the front row
of a box, not too far from the centre. The Bath theatre was
said to be the most comfortable in England; and no expense was
spared in the scenery and decorations."--(Vol. i. p. 71.)

Frequenting the theatre soon introduced him to far other literature than Mr Newbury's publications. Shakespere was in his hands, he says, as soon as he could read. He went through Beaumont and Fletcher before he was eight years old. What hosts of plays beside he may have devoured, it was probably beyond his power to recall. And he early began to imitate what he read. In one passage he leaves us to gather that his first attempts at _poetry_ were so early, that they went beyond the time of memory.

Miss Tyler had all along intended to give her _protegé_ a systematic education, and for this purpose she had purchased a translation of Rousseau's _Emilius_. The systematic education, however, was never commenced. In 1782 he was placed--for what reason we are not told--as a day-boarder in a school at Bristol. He then necessarily resided with his father. Two years after, Miss Tyler herself removed to Bristol, and again received her nephew. But in this interval of two years, the holidays were always spent with his aunt, wherever she might be. It was in these holidays that his real education was carried on.

At home he was on very short allowance of books. His father read nothing but the _Bristol Journal_. A small glass cupboard in the back parlour, fastened up against the wall, was sufficient to hold the wine-glasses and all the library. But in the holidays he gets back again to Bath, and to Bull's circulating library. He meets, at his aunt's, people who talk about authors--even sees an author or two--learns that they are greater personages even than the players. In one of these holidays a lady gives him a copy of Hoole's translation of the _Jerusalem Delivered_. This led him into a new course of poetical reading; it converted the budding dramatist into an epic poet. The _Tasso_ introduced him to the translation of the _Orlando Furioso_, and this to Spenser's _Fairy Queen_. How he read, how he revelled in these books!

"The copy of Hoole's version (of Tasso) which Mrs Dolignon
sent me, is now," he says, "in my sight upon the shelf, and
in excellent preservation, considering that when a schoolboy
I perused it so often that I had no small portion of it by
heart. Forty years have tarnished the gilding upon its back,
but they have not effaced my remembrance of the joy with which
I received it, and the delight which I found in its repeated
perusal.... Hoole, in his notes, frequently referred to the
_Orlando Furioso_. I saw some volumes thus lettered, on Bull's
counter, and my heart leaped for joy. They proved to be the
original; but the shopman, Mr Cruett, (a most obliging man he
was,) immediately put the translation into my hands; and I do
not think any accession of fortune could now give me so much
delight as I then derived from that vile version of Hoole's.
There, in the notes, I first saw the name of Spenser, and some
stanzas of the _Fairy Queen_. Accordingly, when I returned
the last volume, I asked if that work was in the library. My
friend Cruett replied that they had it, but it was written in
old English, and I should not be able to understand it. This
did not appear to me so much a necessary consequence as he
supposed, and I therefore requested he would let me look at it.
It was the quarto edition of '17, in three volumes, with large
prints folded in the middle, equally worthless (like all the
prints of that age) in design and execution. There was nothing
in the language to impede, for the ear set me right where the
uncouth spelling (orthography it cannot be called) might have
puzzled the eye; and the few words which are really obsolete
were sufficiently explained by the context. No young lady of
the present generation falls to a new novel of Sir Walter
Scott's with keener relish than I did that morning to the
_Fairy Queen_."--(Vol. i. p. 83.)

He had commenced poet, as we have said, at an earlier age than he can call to mind, so that his first rhymes are utterly lost in the oblivion of childhood. He can only remember that this discovery that he could rhyme gave him great pleasure, and that his mother seemed equally gratified, and still more proud of the achievement. When in the habit of reading and witnessing so many plays, he of course wrote dramas. His first subject was "The Continence of Scipio!" Now that Tasso and Ariosto were his great delight, he commenced the epic or the metrical romance. He would graft a story upon the _Orlando Furioso_. _Arcadia_ should be the scene and give the title to the poem. There he would bring the Moors, and there should his hero Astolfo, riding on a Hippogriff, &c. &c. This must have been, he says, when he was between nine and ten, for some verses of it were written on the covers of his _Phædrus_. They were in the heroic couplet.

It is curious to notice that, although writing heroic couplets on the covers of his _Phædrus_, his first task in prose composition was accomplished with extreme difficulty. The master, Mr Williams, would sometimes tell the boys to write a letter upon any subject that they pleased. Nothing had ever perplexed our young poet so much as this task. He actually cried for perplexity and vexation. At last he set to work. A _Salisbury Guide_ had fallen in his way; he wrote a long description of Stonehenge, and his master was not less surprised than delighted with it. He himself was unconscious of having done anything extraordinary, till the envy of his schoolfellows made him aware that he had surpassed them all. On coming to school next morning, some half-dozen of them beset him, and demanded "whether he, with all his learning, could tell what the letters _i. e._ stood for? You have written a description of Stonehenge, now tell us what _i. e._ stands for." Southey dashed at an answer, "John the Evangelist, I suppose." They shouted with triumph.

In after years, when Southey had written _Don Roderick_, there were many pedants disposed to ask him what _i. e._ stands for.

But now his maternal uncle, the Reverend Herbert Hill, always his kind friend and benefactor, determines to send the intelligent lad to Westminster school, and then to the University of Oxford. By way of preparation, he is removed from Mr Williams' academy, and placed under the care and tuition of a clergyman. We have not traced him through the various schools he attended--it would be waste of time; we have seen what was the real process of his education. Here, also, according to his own account, the progress of his mind was very little connected with the formal tuition he received.

"I do not remember," he says, "in any part of my life, to
have been so conscious of intellectual improvement as I was
during the year and a half before I was placed at Westminster;
an improvement derived not from books or instruction, _but
from constantly exercising myself in English verse_; and from
the development of mind which that exercise produced, I can
distinctly trace my progress by help of a list, made thirty
years ago, of all my compositions in verse, which were then in
existence, or which I had at that time destroyed."--(Vol. i. p.
117).

Before entering Westminster, our autobiographer takes a retrospective glance at his home in Bristol, and gives a most graphic description of his aunt, Miss Tyler. That lady has earned an immortality which she little dreamt of, and would have hardly coveted. Already every English reader knows Miss Tyler. She will live for ever as a type of that class of ladies, whether spinsters or married, who let their love of order and cleanliness grow into a disease--ladies who keep the best rooms in their house in such a superstitious neatness, that they are no longer habitable. The disorder usually drives people from their pleasant and spacious drawing-room into close back-parlours, deserving of a visit from the Sanitary Commission. In the case of Miss Tyler, it drove her from the parlour to the kitchen, from the best kitchen into what should have been the scullery. We hope those ladies in whom the disease has not yet attained such a height may take warning by the terrible example of Miss Tyler. For the rest, she was a woman of violent temper, and of a proud imperious disposition.

Of course, in a house kept with so much neatness as Miss Tyler's, _no other boy_ was likely to be admitted; no other specimen of that race whose shoes no quantity of mats or matting could have rendered clean, or afforded sufficient protection against; and who might have even placed his corduroys on the lady's own chair--an offence which, we are assured, would have excited the highest indignation. Young Southey, therefore, had few playmates. _Shad_, a handy lad, kept for all manner of garden or out-of-door work, was his chief companion. He might well say that "few boys were ever less qualified for the discipline of a public school." He had, however, an elastic and buoyant spirit, which, notwithstanding this unsuitable preparation for such a scene, enabled him to meet the trials and the turmoil of Westminster school. It was on the 1st April 1788 that he entered there. A rough apprenticeship to life it seems to have been. One boy holds our epic poet out of window by the leg, to the manifest peril of his skull. Another appoints him, "by the law of fist," to write all his Latin exercises, with the special injunction that they shall be always "bad enough" to pass muster as the composition of the bully and the dunce. We suppose all this has been reformed since Southey's time, and that the following picture is curious only as a record of the past. In this "interior" the Westminster scholars look very much like a buccaneer's crew:--

"Our boarding-house was under the tyranny of W. F----. He
was, in Westminster language, a great beast; that is, in
plain truth, a great brute--as great a one as ever went upon
two legs. But there are two sorts of human brutes; those who
partake of wolf nature, or of pig nature; and F---- was of the
better breed, if it be better to be wolfish than swinish. He
would have made a good prize fighter, a good buccaneer, or,
in the days of Coeur de Lion, or of my Cid, a good knight,
to have cut down the misbelievers with a strong arm and a
hearty good will. Everybody feared and hated him; and yet it
was universally felt that he saved the house from the tyranny
of a greater beast than himself. This was a fellow by name
B----, who was mean and malicious, which F---- was not: I do
not know what became of him; his name has not appeared in the
_Tyburn Calendar_, which was the only place to look for it; and
if he has been hanged, it must have been under an _alias_--an
observation which is frequently made, when he is spoken of by
his schoolfellows. He and F---- were of an age and standing,
the giants of the house; but F---- was the braver, and did us
the good office of keeping him in order. They hated each other
cordially, and the evening before we were rid of 'Butcher
B----,' F---- gave the whole house the great satisfaction of
giving him a good thrashing."--(Vol. i. p. 150.)

Then follow some other and more amusing accounts of his schoolfellows, and of their after position and fortunes in the world, and the fragment concludes. It does not even relate the history of his expulsion from Westminster--apparently a very severe punishment for the offence he had committed. The boys had set up a paper called _The Flagellant_. In one of the numbers, which Southey had written, the subject of corporal punishment was handled in a manner which by no means pleased the headmaster; and for this offence he was, as is here expressed, privately expelled. The first appearance in print of our voluminous author was not fortunate.

With this event, therefore, Mr Cuthbert Southey commences the slight thread of biography on which these letters are strung. How far this expulsion from Westminster, by exasperating the mind of our young author, tended to foster a certain democratic and rebellious mode of thinking, we have no accurate means of judging; we can only guess that it would have some such tendency. He was now to proceed to Oxford; but the expelled of Westminster was rejected at Christ Church, in which college his uncle had particularly wished him to enter. He found refuge at Balliol, where he was admitted Nov. 3, 1792.

We have lost our guide, and the only guide that could have traced for us the course of his reading and the progress of his mind. Southey now somewhat abruptly appears before us as the ardent republican, and something verging on the communist. We left him with Tasso and the _Fairy Queen_, inditing or planning innumerable epics. We find him writing _Wat Tyler_, that poem whose singular history we shall have, by and by, to allude to. From intimations scattered through these letters, we learn that he had dieted rather freely upon Rousseau; that he had "corrected" this diet by a course of Godwin; and that with Godwin he had united Epictetus and Stoic morality. As aunt Tyler had purchased a translation of Rousseau's _Emilie_ in order to educate her pupil, it is probable that he had heard of the philosopher of Geneva at a very early period. Perhaps it was the _Contrat Social_ that first received him when he stepped from poetry to philosophy. At all events, the captivating ideas of perfect liberty and equality, which are there set forth, had taken full possession of his youthful mind.

At college his industry was still of the same vagrant self-directed description that it had hitherto been. He read much, but he did not distinguish himself in the special studies of the place, nor desired to do so. Now his uncle, the Rev. H. Hill, had designed that his nephew should enter the Church, where only he had the means of assisting his future advancement in life. When Southey first came to Oxford, he contemplated this as his future destination, though probably with no very good will. But it is quite evident that his course of reading and thinking has not been fitting him for the Church; and we are not at all surprised to find that this disinclination to take holy orders amounts at length to a decided and unconquerable repugnance. We might be rather surprised to find, as we do, that, throughout this era of the reign of liberty and equality, he retains his fervent and deep-rooted sentiments of piety. What exactly his theological creed had become, we have no distinct evidence before us: probably it was unsettled enough. But it is quite remarkable how strong a faith he has, throughout the whole of his career, in the great fundamental doctrine of religion--a future state of existence. It is no mere doctrinal belief, no dim and shadowy foreboding; it was such a belief as a European has in the existence of the continent of America. No emigrant can have a stronger conviction that he shall reach the new country he has embarked for, or that he shall meet such of his friends as have preceded him on the same voyage, than Southey has in that future world to which we are sailing over the ocean of time.

Mr Cuthbert Southey very wisely refrains from speaking decidedly upon his father's religious opinions. He leaves the impression on our mind that, according to his view, the Unitarian heresy was the utmost limit of his divergence from the orthodox standard. We doubt if Southey, at this time, had formed any doctrinal system full and precise enough to be classed under the name of Unitarianism. However that may be, it was impossible for him, with his relaxed creed, and his high sense of moral rectitude, to think of entering the Church. Such unhappily being the state of his opinions, he very properly abandoned all idea of taking orders. At a subsequent period of his life, we may remark that his repugnance to subscribe the articles of the Church of England may very fairly be attributed far more to the moral feelings than to the religious opinions of the man, far more to an extreme scrupulosity and the reluctance to fetter himself, than to any absolute heresy. This we may have an opportunity of showing as we advance farther in the correspondence.

But the Church being resigned, it was necessary to look out for some other career. He thinks of physic, and studies anatomy for a short time, but the dissecting-room disgusts him. He thinks, as doubtless many others have thought, and are thinking still, that some official appointment which would occupy his mornings with business, and leave his evenings for philosophy and poetry, would be a very suitable position, and he writes to his friend Bedford for his advice and interest in the matter. His friend bids him reflect whether he, with his burning republicanism, was exactly the person most likely to obtain the much sought for patronage of Government. At last he thinks of emigration. Rousseau and Coleridge convert the scheme of emigration into the project of _Pantisocracy_. Here is the provision for life, and liberty, and equality. The scheme is perfect. It will be house and home--it will be philosophy put in action.

The letters of Southey are not at this time the interesting compositions which some may have expected to find them; neither do they give us much insight into the details of this great scheme (though tried on a small scale) of a community of goods. The earlier letters--say those which, immediately succeeding the autobiography, occupy the remaining part of the first volume of the work--are indeed anything but pleasing or agreeable. The editor himself speaks of them in the following manner: "His letters, which at this time seem to have been exercises in composition, give evidence of his industry, and at the same time indicate a mind imbued with heathen philosophy and Grecian republicanism. They are written often in a style of inflated declamation, which, as we shall see, before many years had passed, subsided into a more natural and tranquil tone under the influence of his matured taste." They are the letters of a clever confident youth, and quite as disagreeable as such effusions usually are; full of flippant absurd judgments on men and things, varied with that affected self-disparagement which never fails to form a conspicuous part of such compositions. Their writers are profound philosophers at one moment, and rail at philosophy the next; full of their future fame, yet despising the only occupation that they love. "I am ready," says Southey, "to quarrel with my friends for not making me a carpenter, and with myself for devoting myself to pursuits certainly unimportant, and of no real utility either to myself or to others." One gets nothing from letters of this description. Our account of Pantisocracy we must take from the words of the editor himself:--

"We have seen," he says, "that in one or two of his early
letters my father speaks of emigration to America as having
entered his mind; and the failure of the plans I have just
mentioned now caused him to turn his thoughts more decidedly
in that direction; and the result was a scheme of emigration,
to which those who conceived it gave the euphonious name of
'Pantisocracy.' This idea, it appears, was first originated by
Mr Coleridge and one or two of his friends; and he mentioned it
to my father, on becoming acquainted with him at Oxford. Their
plan was to collect as many brother adventurers as they could,
and to establish a community in the New World upon the most
thoroughly social basis. Land was to be purchased with their
common contributions, and to be cultivated by their common
labour. Each was to have his portion of work assigned him; and
they calculated that a large part of their time would still
remain for social converse and literary pursuits. The females
of the party--for all were to be married men--were to cook, and
perform all domestic affairs; and having even gone so far as to
plan the architecture of their cottages, and the form of their
settlement, they had pictured as pleasant a Utopia as ever
entered an ardent mind."--(P. 211.)

We nowhere gather what provision was made for any other branch of industry than the agricultural. Was each man to be his own tailor, shoemaker, carpenter, &c.? Or was each Pantisocrat to train himself for one special art, to be practised for the benefit of the whole? Or were they to export raw produce, or poetry, the results of their much literary leisure, and so obtain from the old civilised countries the necessary articles for a commodious life? If the last was their plan, their colony, by still being dependent upon other countries, would lose its character as a complete experiment of a new social organisation. The projectors seem to have thought of nothing beyond the cultivation of the soil, (if they had even studied this,) and the building or the architecture of their cottages. Never surely was such a scheme of colonisation devised. Amongst the whole number of emigrants, there were only two who, apparently, had ever handled anything but books. _Shad_, the servant lad, and one "Heath an apothecary!" They were all students, poets, or scholars; if they had ever reached the banks of the Susquehanna, they would have found, on unpacking their boxes, that they had all brought nothing but books.

Southey having had some notions of emigrating before he became a Pantisocrat, is heard now and then to talk about the price of "blue trousers and cloth jackets;" but Coleridge had a fixed idea, that all was to be done--at least all his part was to be done--by irresistible force of argument. "Pantisocracy!" he exclaims, in a letter which is here quoted; "Oh! I shall have such a scheme of it! My head, my heart, are all alive. _I have drawn up my arguments in battle array._" His head and his heart! As to what _hands_ could do, that was to be left to others. He, on the banks of the Susquehanna, would still draw up arguments in battle array. "Up I rose," he says a little further on, speaking of one who had ventured to laugh at their project, "up I rose terrible in reasoning!" We can well believe it; and if terrible reasoning would have founded a colony, he would have been the most successful of emigrants. But it is palpable that in no other way, and by no other labour, would he have assisted the new settlement. Yet when Southey, coming to his senses, relinquished the scheme, Coleridge was grievously offended. He might well, indeed, be the last to resign the project. He would have gloriously defended the little band of zealots to the latest hour of their departure; he would have stood upon the beach, and protected their retreat from every logical assailant; he would have seen the last man safely on board; and still he would have stood, and reasoned, till the vessel was out of sight; then would he have returned home, and triumphed in the great Pantisocratic settlement he had founded in America!

Very absurd, indeed, was this scheme--very like what children plan after reading _Robinson Crusoe_. But we must observe, that there was nothing in it worse than its folly. There was no moral obliquity. If these enthusiasts formed a perilous scheme, they took upon themselves the whole of the peril. In these days, when bold theories of social organisation are more rife than ever, it may be well to remark, that this is the only honest way to put such theories to the test of experiment. It is not fair of the speculative man to sit at home, secure of the enjoyments which the present order of things procures for him, and, from his library-table and his easy-chair, to promulgate doctrines that may be preparing the way for future revolutions of the most disastrous description. Unless he is _quite sure_ of his speculations, such an act is of the nature of a crime. But to go forth, as Southey and Coleridge, and the rest of the fraternal band intended, to the banks of the Susquehanna, and there, unaided and uninterrupted, reduce into practice their own theories, this would be of the nature of heroism. Now, if there are a certain number of thinking intelligent men and women, who have a firm faith in the possibility of a communistic organisation of society, we should much like them to make the experiment in the manner these Pantisocrats designed, but, of course, with vastly better preparations for their undertaking. This would be fair; and the experiment, though it failed, would not be without good result. Let a certain number of such educated men and women, willing and able to work with their hands, as well as with their brains, each one previously trained to some necessary or useful handicraft, club their fortunes together. Let them purchase a track of land on the banks of the Mississippi, or wherever they think fit, and then go forth with all the necessary implements of agriculture and manufacture, and the requisite skill to use them, and abundant store of provision, and there let them put to shame, by their brilliant example of equality and fraternity, the old civilisation of mankind, founded hitherto on the law of individual property and self-reliance. Who would not wish them success? Even those who would prophesy nothing but failure for the experiment, would admire the courage and good faith of those who made it. There are few of us who would not like such an experiment to be made--by others--always presuming, that the worst result to those who embarked in it would be the blundering commencement of a new colony, which would soon mould itself on the pattern of the old societies of Europe.

But to return to the course of our biography. This visionary project, while it lasted, was not without its real results on the career and fortunes of Southey. Funds were to be raised, and _therefore_ a poem was to be written. He composed with redoubled zeal his _Joan of Arc_, his first epic, and the first performance which rendered him famous in the world. It was not, however, published till after the vision of Pantisocracy had vanished into thin air. The history of its publication is well known, and how Joseph Cottle, who generously purchased the copyright, has for ever linked his name with those of Southey and Coleridge, by this and other good services rendered to the young poets, when as yet the world knew nothing of their greatness.

The next result of his project was of a more serious description. All the Pantisocrats were to be married. Whether, in Southey's case, a previous attachment was thus suddenly matured into a formal engagement, or whether he had been engaged to Miss Fricker even before this notable scheme had been set on foot, we nowhere learn. Nothing is said of the early love of the young poet--how it rose and grew and flourished. This momentous chapter of his life is summed up in the following brief sentence. It was all, we suppose, that the son knew of the matter.

"In the course of this month, (August 1794,) Mr Coleridge
having returned from his excursion in Wales, came to Bristol;
and my father, who was then at Bath, having gone over to meet
him, introduced him to Robert Lovell, (a Pantisocrat,) through
whom, it appears, they both, at this time, became known to Mr
Cottle; and here also Mr Coleridge first became acquainted
with his future wife, Sarah Fricker, the eldest of the three
sisters, one of whom was married to Robert Lovell, _the other
having been engaged for some time to my father_. They were
the daughters of Stephen Fricker, who had carried on a large
manufactory of sugar pans or moulds at Westbury, near Bristol,
and who, having fallen into difficulties in consequence of the
stoppage of trade by the American war, had lately died, leaving
his widow and six children wholly unprovided for."

Whatever was the date or progress of the attachment, Southey was now engaged to be married. But there was one person whose opinion had not yet been consulted in all these momentous enterprises. "Hitherto," says Mr Cuthbert Southey, "all had gone on pretty smoothly; the plan of emigration, as well as my father's engagement to Mary, had been carefully concealed from his aunt Miss Tyler, who, he was perfectly aware, would most violently oppose both; and now, when at last she became acquainted with his intentions, her anger knew no bounds." In fact, she turned him instantly--though it was night, and raining hard--out of her house, and shut the door for ever upon him.

We must quote the letter in which Southey gives an account of this terrible denouement. It introduces us at once into the state of affairs, his enthusiastic project, and the associates with whom it was to be carried out. A rather different account, it will be observed, is here given of its origin, than that which we have quoted from Mr Cuthbert Southey--

"TO THOMAS SOUTHEY.
BATH, _Oct. 19, 1794_.