ADVERTISEMENT.

SOUTHEY'S POETICAL WORKS are here reprinted from the standard English edition in ten volumes. That edition embraces, besides the poems collected and edited in 1837 by Southey himself, the unfinished tale of Oliver Newman and other fragments, published in 1845, two years after the author's death.

The Biographical Preface which opens the First Volume is the contribution of Henry T. Tuckerman, Esq.

APRIL, 1860.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

ROBERT SOUTHEY was born at Bedminster, near Bristol, Aug. 12, 1774. After an excellent domestic and country-school education, he was placed at Westminster at the age of fourteen; and in 1792 transferred to Baliol College, Oxford. For some years after completing his academic studies, he hesitated in the adoption of a profession; having originally designed to enter the Church. Circumstances subsequently induced him to accept a diplomatic secretaryship at Lisbon; but a strong natural predilection for literature, decided political opinions, and, in early life, a romantic disposition, gradually won him to the exclusive pursuit of authorship. His pure character, patient industry, and skill as a writer, soon won him distinction and prosperity. His poem of "Joan of Arc," written in 1793, first established his reputation. Three years after, he went to London to study law,

but soon abandoned the vocation for the more congenial one of letters; and eventually settled at Keswick, in Cumberland, where, with the exception of occasional visits to the metropolis, two or three excursions to the Continent and different parts of England, he continued to reside for the remainder of his life.

Southey was twice married, Nov. 14, 1795, to Edith Fricker, a sister of the wife of Coleridge, who died in 1837; and on the 5th of June, 1839, to Caroline Bowles, the poetess. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1813. He declined both a seat in Parliament and a baronetcy. His "Life and Correspondence," by his son, the Rev. Cuthbert Southey, contains many interesting letters from his pen, illustrative of his career and opinions, which are connected by an ample and detailed narrative both of his private and literary career. The features of Southey have been adequately bequeathed by the pencil of Sir Thomas Lawrence and the chisel of Chantrey; and his conscientious spirit and varied services as a writer, as well as his worth as a man, are fitly recorded in a sonnet by Wordsworth, the friend both of his early and his mature years. The latter were clouded by a slow decay of cerebral vigor; and on the 21st of March, 1843, Robert Southey died, leaving one of the most unsullied names on the roll of modern English authors; and works, that, by their number, utility, and originality, attest the conscientious de

votion of high powers to worthy ends. The following estimate of his character, life, and abilities, will supersede a more minute account of the man and the poet; for which the reader is referred to the Memoir by his son, previously noticed.*

The character of Southey, as revealed in his biography, is essentially that of a man of letters. Perhaps the annals of English literature furnish no more complete example of the kind, in the most absolute sense of the term. His taste for books was of the most general description. He sought every species of knowledge, and appears to have been equally contented to write history, reviews, poems, and letters. Indeed, for more than twenty years, his life at Keswick was systematically divided between these four departments of writing.

No man, having any pretension to genius, ever succeeded in reducing literature to so methodical and sustained a process. It went on with the punctuality and productiveness of a cotton-mill or a nail-factory; exactly so much rhyming, collating, and proof-reading, and so much of chronicle and correspondence, in the twenty-four hours. We see Robert Southey, as he paints himself, seated at his desk, in an old black coat, long worsted pantaloons and gaiters in one, and a green shade; and we feel the truth of his own declaration, that this is his

*What follows has been already printed in "Essays, Biographical and Critical," by Henry T. Tuckerman.