1. The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey. Edited by his Son, the Rev. CHARLES CUTHBERT SOUTHEY, M.A. Vol. 1. 1849.* 2. Memoir of the Life and Writings of the late William Taylor of Norwich. J. W. ROBBERDS. 1843. 3. Early Recollections. By JOSEPH COTTLE. FOR a period of more than fifty years the writings of Southey were among those which, in England, most contributed to create or to modify public opinion. His first published poem was written in the year 1791; and from the date of its publication till the close of his life, there was not, we believe, a year in which he did not hold communication with the minds of others, in almost every form which a retired student can employ. Literature was not alone his one absorbing passion, but it was also his professional occupation. Southey, when speaking of Spenser, describes him as 1837. By served. It may seem to be regretted, that they who serve the altar have to live by the altar; but to the necessity in which he found himself, of working out a livelihood by unwearied industry in the occupations to which the higher instincts of his nature called him, we no doubt owe much of what is most genial in the works of this true poet. To this alone-such, at least, seems the probabilitywas it owing that he became a prose writer at all, for none of his prose writings have that unity of purpose and design which distinguishes the works of pure imagination; and yet there can be no doubt that, as a prose writer, he is one of the most graceful in our language. It is, however, as a poet that we think Southey must be most remembered. It is not depreciating Goldsmith's a poet he takes highest rank. unequaled prose works to say, that it is as Had he not been a poet, he could not have written those prose works, and so with Southey. Dispose, however, of this question as the reader may, the earlier portion of his biography with 1 which we have to deal will compel us rather to think of him in that character in which he first appeared before the public. Through both his poems and his prose works, his individual character so distinctly appears, that it would be scarce possible to mistake a page of his writing for that of any other man. He has not avoided imitation. On the contrary, his early poems are too often echoes of Cowper and Akenside: and the quaintnesses which appear more conspicuously in his prose works, are in kind identical with those of Fuller and Sir Thomas Browne. We feel that he is writing in the midst of his books; and that his essays on topics of present interest are always affected by his throwing his mind into the way of thinking of an age that has passed away. Still there is every where a definiteness and decision of purpose, which is that which constitutes true originality; and his thoughts it is which are expressed in a dialect which he feels to be common property, and of which he as little remembers how each particular phrase or cadence has been formed, as we can determine how we have learned the words of the language we speak. Everywhere, even in his earliest writings, his own mind makes itself distinctly felt. Of this the strongest evidence is, that where its expression is not subdued by the higher tones of elevated poetry, we have always an under-current of quiet humor that exhibits a man happy himself, or, if unhappiness comes, who feels himself blameless for what he cannot avert, and who is disposed at all times to view surrounding things in a spirit of kindliness. How such a mind was originally formed, and how it was not spoiled by the wear and tear of life-how the purity and singlemindedness of childhood was preserved through manhood and to age, and this by a man frequently writing on the most exciting political topics, is surely a subject well worth studying, with such aids as we can find. connected, and elucidated by some interspersed narrative, carries us on to the poet's twenty-fifth year, and concludes the first volume of the work-the only part yet published. The "Life of William Taylor of Norwich" supplies us with another very interesting series of his letters, which, it so happens, commencing just where the other closes, enables us to trace the progress of the poet for seventeen years more-and those the years in which his greatest works were written. This part of Southey's correspondence was published with his own sanction, by Mr. Robberds, the biographer of Taylor. The Reminiscences of Mr. Cottle, of Bristol, give us some further help in bringing Southey distinctly before the mind at the period of early manhood. We feel, therefore, that while to ourselves it would be pleasant to forbear writing on the subject till the completion of Mr. Cuthbert Southey's book, there is no reasonable ground for such delay. Of Southey's paternal ancestors we are told, in the autobiography, that the Southeys were a numerous tribe in Somersetshire, one of whom, the sixth in the ascending line from the poet, a great clothier in Wellington, had eleven sons, who peopled that part of the country with Southeys. The poet infers from their having armorial bearings, that they were of gentle birth. "I should like," says he, when describing the chevron and crosslets on his paternal shield, "to believe that one of my ancestors had served in the crusades, or made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem." "In If such fancy were founded in fact, the fact has escaped the chroniclers. Few persons were so well read in the class of books where it would be likely to be found as the poet; and he says he never met the name in a printed book. Family tradition represented one of them as a great soldier. the great rebellion, I guess, it must have been, but I neither know his name nor on Among those aids we find a series of which side he fought." Another was out letters written by Southey in the forty-sixth with Monmouth: his sword was preserved or forty-seventh year of his age, in which till the time of Southey's father. An uncle he relates all he can remember of the first of Southey's grandfather was an attorney fifteen years of his life. With these letters, at Taunton, and was registrar of the Archhis "Life and Correspondence, edited by his deaconry. He married an heiress, and son, the Reverend Cuthbert Southey," opens. Southey's grandfather settled on the estate They were addressed to Mr. May, an old in the parish of Lydiard St. Lawrence, friend. Their publication at some future about ten miles from Taunton, under the time was no doubt contemplated by the Quantock hills. What is family tradition? writer. About half a volume of the work Of his grandfather, Southey can find no is filled by this autobiography. A selection record, except that he was a subscriber for of such of his letters as could be recovered," Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy," from which he infers that he had some regard for | Tyler, introduced him to Tyler's connections. books, and was of a right way of thinking. There is danger of losing our way in the A maiden sister lived in her brother's house. wilderness of first cousins, and uncles and She had a small estate held on lives. Two half-uncles, to whom we are now presented, dropped, and the last, when he knew the and we shall get out of the jungle as fast old lady's means of livelihood depended on as we can. Among the persons to whom his continuing to live, determined never to Tyler introduced his friend, was Mrs. Marwork more, but extort his support from her. garet Hill. Bradford was her maiden name. Southey says the story is worth insertion in She had been first married to a brother of a treatise on English tenures. Cases have Tyler's, and afterward to Edward Hill of occurred in Ireland where murders have Bedminster. She was now again a widow, been committed to terminate estates so held. and living in the same house with her were Cases have also occurred where a juror has Tylers and Hills, collaterals or descendants. refused to concur in a conviction, because Of the Tylers, uncle William was a fool,* a criminal's life was one on which a lease or something not unlike it; and uncle Eddepended. We have known an incident ward was not a very wise man. From the not unlike that mentioned by Southey:-A Tylers the poet passes on to the Hills. But profligate fellow proposed to a gentleman we must hasten on to his mother. Bedminwho had some property depending on his ster was but a half hour's walk from Bristol. life, that he should share the property with Edward Tyler and his friend were constant him, or in the event of that not being ac- visitors, and the latter, who had in partnerceded to, that he would go abroad and ship with a brother, opened a shop in Brisnever more be heard of. He kept his word. tol in the year 1772, married Miss Hill. For a few years, in spite of his efforts for Signs were then common over shops, and concealment, traces of him sufficient for the true to his old sportsman instincts, Southey purposes of those whose estate depended on ornamented his window with a hare as his his life were found. At last he succeeded device. The poet was the second child of so far in baffling all inquiry, that it was this marriage, and born on the 12th of Authought more desirable to abandon the prop- gust, 1774. erty than continue to occupy it on such a tenure. Southey's grandfather had been a dissenter, but his residence in a lonely hamlet brought him away from the hotbeds of dissent. If dissent, however, did him no other harm than that which the poet records, we think he is not warranted in speaking as he does of the "essential acid of Puritanism." "Aunt Hannah frequently chastised her niece, Mary, for going into the fields with her playmates of a Sunday. She, and her brothers and sisters, she said, had never been suffered to go out of the house on the Sabbath, except to meetings." We return to the Tylers. Miss Tyler, the half-sister of Southey's mother, passed the earlier part of her life at Shobdon in Herefordshire, residing in the house of a maternal uncle. Bradford was in orders, and resided on a curacy ;-he had, however, some private property. He appears to have been a generous man, for from him Southey's uncle, Hill, derived the means of support at Oxford. On his death he gave the greater part of his property to Miss Tyler, who then began to " live at large, and frequent watering-places." A fashionable physician ordered her to Lisbon. She went, taking with her her half-brother, Herbert Hill, who had lately gone into orders. From this accidental visit arose Hill's connection with Lisbon, as chaplain of the British factory, and Southey's own in after years. But of this hereafter. His grandfather's children. were three sons, John, Robert, and Thomas, and two daughters. John, the eldest son, became an attorney, at Taunton. Robert, the father of the poet, found himself behind the counter of a grocer in London. His heart was in the country, however, and in the rural *This is too harshly said. Southey speaks of sports in which his boyhood had been past. this uncle with great affection, both in his AutobiHis attachment to field sports was an abso-ography and in The Doctor. "It is common with the country people when they speak of such persons, lute passion. Seeing a porter one day with to point significantly to the head, and say, 'tis not all a hare in his hand, he could not help shed- there,-words denoting a sense of the mysteriousding tears at the sight. His master died, ness of our nature, which perhaps they feel more and he was removed to Bristol, and placed William's was not a case of fatuity;—though all deeply on this than on any other occasion. there with a linen-draper. An acquaint- was not there, there was a great deal. He was what anceship with a young man of the name of is called half saved."-The Doctor, vol. i. p. 115. * * * She past but a year in Lisbon, and on her return settled in the neighborhood of Bath. was "The house was in Walcot parish, in which five-and-forty years ago were the skirts of the city. It stood alone in a walled garden, and the entrance was from a lane. The situation was thought a bad one, because of the approach, and because the nearest houses were of a mean description; in other respects it a very desirable residence. The house had been quite in the country when it was built. One of its fronts looked into the garden, the other into a lower garden and over other garden grounds to the river, Bathwick Fields, which are now covered with trees, and Claverton Hill, with a grove of firs along its brow, and a sham castle in the midst of their long, dark line. I have not a stronger desire to see the pyramids than I had to visit that sham castle during the first years of my life. There was a sort of rural freshness about the place. The dead wall of a dwellinghouse (the front of which was in Walcot-street) formed one side of the garden enclosure, and was covered with fine fruit-trees; the way from the garden door to the house was between that long house wall and a row of espaliers, behind which was a grass plat, interspersed with standard trees and flower-beds, and having one of those green rotatory garden seats shaped like a tub, where the contemplative person within may, like Diogenes, be as much in the sun as he likes. "There was a descent by a few steps to another garden, which was chiefly filled with fragrant herbs, and with a long bed of lilies of the valley. Ground-rent had been of little value when the house was built. The kitchen looked into the garden, and opened into it; and near the kitchen door was a pipe supplied from one of the fine springs with which the country about Bath abounds, and a little stone cistern beneath. The parlor door also opened into the garden; it was bowered with jessamine, and there I often took my seat upon the stone steps. 66 'My aunt, who had an unlucky taste for such things, fitted up the house at a much greater expense than she was well able to afford. She threw two small rooms into one, and thus made a good parlor, and built a drawing-room over the kitchen. The walls of that drawing-room were covered with a plain green paper, the floor with a Turkey carpet; there hung her own portrait by Gainsborough, with a curtain to preserve the frame from the flies, and the colors from the sun; and there stood one of the most beautiful pieces of old furniture I ever saw,-a cabinet of ivory, ebony, and tortoise-shell, in an ebony frame. It had been left her by a lady of the Spenser family, and was said to have belonged to the great Marlborough. I may mention as a part of the parlor furniture, a square screen with a foot-board and a little shelf, because I have always had one of the same fashion myself, for its convenience; a French writing-table, because of its peculiar shape, which was that of a cajou-nut, or a kidney,-the writer sat in the concave, and had a drawer on each side; an arm-chair made of fine cherry wood, which had been Mr. Bradford's, and in which he always sat,-mentionable, because if any visitor who was not in her especial favor sat therein, the leathern cushion was always sent into the garden to be aired, before she would use it again; a mezzotinto print of Pope's Eloisa, in an oval black frame, because of its supposed likeness to herself; two prints in the same kind of engraving, from pictures by Angelica Kauffman; one of Hector and Andromache; the other of Telemachus at the court of Menelaus; these I notice, because they were in frames of Brazilian wood; and the great print of Pombal, o grande Marquez, in a similar frame, because this was the first portrait of an illustrious man with which I became familiar. The establishment consisted of an old manservant and a maid-servant, both from Shobdon. The old man used every night to feed the crickets. He died at Bath in her service."—Life of Southey, vol. i. pp. 32-34. The Here Southey chiefly lived from the age of two years till six, with many indulgences, but more privations. The privations were such as do a child most mischief. maiden aunt was above all things afraid of his soiling his clothes, and healthy exercise and play were out of the question. The child slept with his aunt, and as her hour of rising was late, the poor little fellow was obliged to lie in bed till she chose to be broad awake, afraid to stir lest she should be disturbed. Here he lay fancying combinations of figures in the folds of the curtains, watching from daybreak the increasing gleams of light from the window-shutters, and perhaps already creating the habit of thought which distinguishes the poet from other men. Her acquaintances were numerous; a friend of hers was married to Francis Newberry, son of the Newberry who published Goody Two-Shoes and Giles Gingerbread. Goody Two-Shoes has acquired a new interest since Mr. Godwin's conjecture of its having been written by Goldsmith,--a conjecture, to the truth of which Mr. Foster, the highest authority on any subject connected with Goldsmith, is disposed to assent. The flowered Dutch paper and gilding in which the little books were issued had for the child a greater charm than any author's name could give. Newberry gave him, as soon as he could read, a set of these books, more than twenty in number. To this rich present Southey traces his love of books, and decided determination to literature. We are glad the incident is recorded; but we do not attach much value to the poet's speculation on its effect. Had the present never been made, to some other circumstance equally accident al would have been given the credit of creating the bias. It is in vain to look for outward accidents to explain what must ultimately be resolved into the original constitution of the mind. It is quite as likely, that the circumstances which Southey regards as injurious -- his being a lonely boy without play-fellows, or proper companionship, may have had more to do with the early awakening of his powers than Mr. Newberry's sixpenny books. Injurious, no doubt, all this must have been to his general health: but in unhealthy childhood disease seems a sort of hotbed in which talents are often almost preternaturally developed. It was fortunate for the health of the boy that he was by other circumstances compelled to look to the world without. Miss Tyler was acquainted with the proprietors of the Bristol and Bath theatres, and had tickets of free admission. At four years old the child was a constant play-goer. He soon acquired a keen relish for the stage; but his heart was in the fields; and a walk beyond his usual bounds was his greatest luxury. There were three points he had most desire of reaching, the sham castle on Claverton Hill, a summer-house on Beechen Cliffs,and the grave of a young man who had been killed in a duel. His aunt's fears, however, predominated. The points to which his imagination was directed were, she thought, too far for a walk, and it was a long while before he had the opportunity of experiencing, what we all sooner or later experience, how different the Yarrow of reality is from that of imagination. Poor child, his aunt's habits kept him an uneasy prisoner when with her, and he delighted in the occasional release which a summons to his father's house at Bristol gave. He there had some liberty; Though the house was among crowded streets, he got more often into the fields than when with his aunt. His grandmother was stll living; and he was much at Bedminster. stll living; and he was much at Bedminster. Kingsdown, Brandon Hill, and Clifton, were among his more frequent walks. An important era is approaching; he is now actually in breeches; a young man six years of age. In nothing has the fashion of dress been so much improved even since our boyhood as in boys' clothing; but the present dress of boys, compared with that of Southey's time, seems absolutely to change the identity of the young animal, so utterly grotesque was the one, so graceful is the other. At six years old we find the young poet "in a fantastic tunic of nankeen for high days and holidays, trimmed with green fringe, it was called a vest and tunic, or a jam; and this he now changed for a coat, waistcoat, and breeches, of forester's green. No intermediate dress had been yet invented for the juvenile world. If it was not for the color, the little man, in spite of his long-attenuated limbs, might be taken for a Dutchman. He is sent to school-a day-school in Bristol. "Knee breeches are ta'en down to whip the scholar." At this school he tells us that he learned little, owing to his master's severity - his master dies when he has been about a year there the establishment passes into better hands, but for some reason or other his father now placed him at a boarding-school. His new abode was in the neighborhood of Corston, a village about nine miles from Bristol. Southey's school recollections were accompanied with painful feelings. In his Hymn to the Penates, he tells us of his removal to school. year. There In the Retrospect, another of his youthful poems, the place itself is described in lines cast more in the manner of Goldsmith and Rogers, than any other of Southey's poems. The poet was at the time of its composition in his nineteenth or twentieth is no peculiar poetic power indicated in any part of this little copy of verses, but at no period of his life did Southey produce anything more graceful, or anything of which the sober coloring so perfectly suited the subject. A letter of Southey's describes the place. It was the old manorial residence of of what it had been-walled gardens, gate some decayed family, and retained vestiges pillars, surmounted with huge stone ballseverything indicated former opulence; within doors a black oaken staircase leading from the hall was distinctly remembered by the poet, and the school-room-such it now became-hung with faded tapestry, "behind which we used to hide our hoard of crabs." "Yet is remembrance sweet, though well I know The days of childhood are but days of woe; |