erty, or to effect any changes whatever by violence. A single sentence of Southey's lectures we have met, and this proves what he thought must be the inevitable result of successful violence-"The temple of despotism, like that of the Mexican god, would be rebuilt with human skulls, and more firmly, though in a different order of architecture." In a letter to Grosvenor Bedford (February 8, 1795), he writes of himself, and his prospects, and his opinions -surely anything but revolutionary in the sense imputed to him :— wrong. * * "There is the strangest mixture of cloud and of sunshine! an outcast in the world! an adventurer! living by his wits! yet happy in the full conviction of rectitude, in integrity, and in the affection of a mild and lovely woman; at once the object of hatred and admiration; won. dered at by all; hated by the aristocrats; the very oracle of my own party. Bedford! Bedford ! mine are the principles of peace and non-resist ance; you cannot burst our bonds of affection. Do not grieve that circumstances have made me thus; you ought to rejoice that your friend acts up to his principles, though you think them *I am in treaty with the Telegraph, and hope to be their correspondent. Hireling to a newspaper! 'Sdeath! 'tis an ugly title; but, n'importe, I shall write truth and only truth. You will be melancholy at all this, Bedford; I am so at times; but what can I do? I could not enter the Church, nor had I finances to study physic; for public offices I am too notorious. I have not the gift of making shoes, nor the happy art of mending them. Education has unfitted me for trade, and I must perforce enter the muster-roll of authors. If Coleridge and I can get £150 a year between us, we purpose marrying, and retiring into the country, as our literary business can be carried on there, and practicing agriculture, till we can raise money for America-still the grand object in view." * ** The next letter from which we shall make an extract is dated May 27, 1795. marriage is now determined on: ho! * * His "I asked the question. Grosvenor, you will love your sister, Edith. I look forward with feelings of delight that dim my eyes to the day she will expect you as her brother to visit us. Brown bread, wild Welsh raspberries; heigh, Poetry softens the heart, Grosvenor. No man ever tagged rhyme, without being the better for it. I write but little. The task of correcting Joan [of Arc] is a very great one; but as the plan is fundamentally bad, it is necessary that the poetry should be good. If I could be with you another eight weeks I believe I should write another poem, so essential is it to be happily situated. I shall copy out what I have done of Madoc, and send you ere long. You The plan of Pantisocracy was now formally abandoned. Southey was the first to awake from the wild dream; and some temporary estrangement arose between the friends on this occasion. Southey's giving up the project "disturbed and excited Mr. Coleridge. He manifested, by the vehemence of his language, that he must have felt at the time no common disappointment." Southey's mind was gradually working itself clear of the errors and mistakes of his boyhood. To the effect of Bowles' poems, and to the constant company of Coleridge, he ascribes "the amelioration of his poetical taste." He says of Godwin,-" I read and all but worshiped. I have since seen his fundamental error-that he theorizes for another state, not for the rule of conduct in the present. For religion, I can confute the atheist, and baffle him with his own weapons; and can at least teach the deist, that the arguments in favor of Christianity are not to be despised. Metaphysics I know enough to use them as defensive armor, and to deem them otherwise difficult trifles." * * * His uncle, Mr. Hill, now returned from Lisbon. Southey dreaded a meeting with nephew's advancement or even support in this affectionate man, all whose plans for his life had been so strangely and unexpectedly frustrated. His separation from college his determination not to enter the Churchhis political misbeliefs-his projected marriage-his apparently desperate hope of supporting a family by writing for newspaaudiences as could be collected in places of pers and magazines, and lecturing to such commercial resort-all might well try the temper of a man who looked upon him with love and hope, but who saw only ruin in every one of the plans on which his nephew's heart seemed fixed. To break the bonds between him and his political associates, and if possible to interrupt the marriage project, his uncle determined on getting him out of England. The gods granted half the uncle's wishes; the political bondage was snapped asunder, when the vessel, which conveyed him and his nephew to Lisbon, left the English shore. Before sailing, however, and on the very day of the commencement of his voyage, Southey was married to Edith Fricker-one of whose sisters had been married to Lovell, and another to Coleridge. | the last of the generation so fast passing "Immediately after the ceremony," says away from us. Cuthbert Southey, "they parted. My mother wore her wedding ring hung round her neck, and preserved her maiden name until the report of her marriage had spread abroad." In the next letter, we find Southey in Cornwall, and telling Bedford-"This is a foul country; the tinmen inhabit the most agreeable part of it, for they live under ground. Above it is most dreary, desolate. My sans-culotte, like Johnson's in Scotland, becomes a valuable piece of timber, and I a most dull and sullenly silent fellow; such effects has place." Cuthbert Southey tells us that the sans-culotte was a walking-stick; but thanks to kind-hearted Joseph Cottle, and his book of Recollections, we can tell our readers something more of it : "At the instant Mr. Southey was about to set off on his travels, I observed he had no stick, and lent him a stout holly of my own. In the next year, on his return to Bristol, 'here,' says Mr. S., exciting great surprise, here is the holly you were kind enough to lend me!' I have since then looked with additional respect on my old ligneous traveler, and remitted a portion of his accustomed labor. It was a source of some amusement, when in November of the past year, 1836, Mr. Southey, in his journey to the West, to my great gratification spent a few days with me; and in talking of Spain and Portugal, I showed him his companion, the old holly! Though somewhat bent with age, the servant (after an interval of forty years) was immediately recognized by his master; and with additional interest, as this stick he thought on one occasion had been the means of saving his purse, if not his life, from the sight of so efficient an instrument of defence having intimidated a Spanish robber."-Cottle's Early Recollections, vol. ii. p. 2. Of Southey's rambles in Portugal and Spain we have little mention in his son's work. It is probable that the letters he wrote from abroad were recalled by him, and formed the substance of his travels published within the next year. He returned after a visit of six months, and with his wife fixed himself for a while in lodgings in Bristol. Lovell, his brother-in-law, had died during his absence, and his first letters on his return exhibit him devising plans for the widow's support. "She," says Cuthbert Southey, "who during my father's life found a home with him, and who now, at an advanced age, is a member of my household, is the sole survivor of those whose eager hopes once centred in Pantisocracy, one of VOL. XX. NO. L Southey continued to live in Bristol till the close of the year 1796. He then went to London, entered his name in the books of Gray's Inn, and spoke of studying law; but being engaged with the composition of two poems, Thalaba and Madoc, both of which occupied him simultaneously, and also being employed in writing on subjects of temporary interest in literature and politics for newspapers and magazines, it is not surprising that the only evidence we have of his ever having had law-books is his telling a friend of his hope soon to make a Christmas bonfire of them. Residence in the country appears to have been absolutely necessary for him. There is a pleasing letter in verse to his wife, in which he speaks of it as the one wish of his heart,— "To find some little home, some low retreat, Where the vain uproar of the worthless world Might never reach his ear. * * * he would live To thee and to himself, and to our God. To dwell in that foul city, to endure The common, hollow, cold, lip-intercourse Of life; to walk abroad and never see Green field, or running brook, or setting sun! Will it not wither up my faculties Like some poor myrtle, that in the town air Pines in the parlor window ?" This letter was written from Norfolk, where Southey had just made the acquaintance of William Taylor, the translator of Bürger's Leonore, a writer who was the first to make the English acquainted with the better parts of German literature; and who, with some strange fancies which, if they led him astray, still kept his mind awake and active, produced a very powerful influence on the public mind. We hope that Southey's biographer may find no difficulty of copyright interfering with his giving the correspondence between Southey and Taylor, both parts of which are published in Taylor's Life, and both parts of which might receive valuable illustration from a comparison of the successive editions of Southey's works, and from judicious extracts from Taylor's contributions to the magazines and reviews of the day. Southey fixed his tent for a year at Westbury. The law-books were forgotten, and he never past a year of more happiness. During that year his mind was vigorously at work, and much of the most genial part of his poetry was produced there. 2 An author's life, however, is in his works, and it is impossible by any narrative to give an interest, independent of them, to the outward circumstances with which he may be connected. Of the poems published during the period to which Cuthbert Southey's first volume relates, the most important is "Joan of Arc" and we think it would be desirable, in some future edition of that poem, to note the variations which it underwent since it was first placed before the public. In the first edition a considerable portion of the second book of the poem was supplied by Coleridge. This part was afterward separated from Southey's poem, and, with very considerable additions, was printed by Mr. Coleridge under the title of "The Destiny of Nations." In the poem, as originally conceived, there was a sort of miraculous interference of guardian angels, and epic machinery of the old accredited character. All this was re moved in the new editions, and with Coleridge's part of the work much of Southey's own also went. It is seldom wise to vary the original structure of a poem, and we are averse even to changes of words. The precise state of feeling in which a passage has been written cannot be recalled, and additions made at a differeut time of life seldom entirely harmonize with the color of the original texture. Readers who have admired a poem in its first form are but ill satisfied with an author who impliedly tells them their admiration was misplaced. Scott was, we think, wise, who, when a poem was once given to the world, left it to its fate. The first and second editions of "Joan of Arc are before us, and also the edition of 1837, with his final corrections. In the remarkable scene where the maid proves her divine mission by the grave rendering up to her the consecrated sword, we are prepared for miracle. In the first edition we have the scene described: "A trophied tomb Close to the altar reared its antique bulk; The sleep of death beneath. A massy stone, DEATH dropp'd his ebon rod-the lifted trump * * * The crested helm, the massy bauldrick's strength, In the second edition, the "pointless javelins and the broken sword," distinguishing the fallen warrior's tomb, remain; but Victory with the trump, and Death with the ebon rod, are removed. In the final edition, the pointless javelins and broken sword, and all that in the emblem either pointed to the warrior who slept beneath, or to the delegated maiden, disappear. The grave does not open miraculously at the appointed hour to the blast of, as it would seem, an angelic trumpet; but instead of the legend, which it is not unlikely was popularly believed, and which, at all events, does not make any unreasonable demand on the spirit of willing credulity in which poetry is read, we have with every-day experience, but, if we do not a picture, no doubt, much more consistent greatly mistake, much less so with the probabilities which the occasion requires. assumed fact of the divine mission of the Maid of Orleans is that by which everything else is to be measured; and while, perhaps, the VICTORY and DEATH have not been conceived in a very elevated style of fiction, yet surely they were better than what is substi tuted "In silent wonderment, The The expectant multitude, with eager eye, Gaze listening, as the mattock's heavy stroke Invades the tomb's repose," &c. In the first book of Joan of Arc," are passages which Southey never in after life exceeded-never, indeed, we think quite equaled. Of these passages the germ existed in the first edition; but, perhaps, the necessity of finding, in the influences of human passion excited to the highest state of feeling, a substitute for the miraculous guidance under which he had at first represented his heroine as acting, rendered it desirable to dwell upon which described the passages her communion with outward nature, and the intense enthusiasm which, in the language of St. Teresa, "suspends the Soul in such a sort that she seems to be wholly out of herself." The inspiration of the Maid of Orleans is, in Southey's conception of the character, produced by strong feelings of natural religion, influenced and colored by the legendary tales and traditions of Lorraine. | With the enthusiasm of the Maid of Arc the poet's mind seems more entirely identified | drama. In a letter of 1805 to Mr. Wynn, than with the passions ascribed to any other we have the subject of "Roderick" announof his heroes and heroines. We find in one ced as occupying his thoughts, and an outline of his letters to Taylor something like this of the poem communicated. Of "Madoc," said. He has been speaking of Thalaba with the conception, he tells us, was formed in his at least a parent's love. fourteenth year, though the poem was not published for nineteen years afterward. He writes to his friend Bedford, whose life appears to have been clouded with ennui, and whom Southey was always endeavoring to excite to exertion of some kind :-"The want of a favorite pursuit is your greatest source of discomfort and discontent. It is the pleasure of pursuit that makes every man happy; whether the merchant, or the sportsman, or the collector, or the philobibl, or the readero-bibl, and maker-o-bibl, like me. Pursuit at once supplies employment and hope. This is that I have often preached to you; but perhaps I have never told you what benefit I have derived from resolute employment. When Joan of Arc was in the press, I had as many legitimate causes of unhappiness as any man need have uncertainty for the future, and immediate want, in the literal and plain meaning of the word. I often walked the streets at dinner-time for want of a dinner, when I had not eighteen pence for the ordinary, nor bread and cheese at my lodgings. But do not suppose that I thought of my dinner when I was walking-my head was full of what I was composing. When I lay down at night, I was planning my poem; and when I arose in the morning, the poem was the first thought to which I was awake. The scanty profits of that poem I was then anticipating in my lodging-house bills for tea, bread, and butter, and those little et ceterus which amount to a formidable sum, when a man has no resources; but that poem, faulty as it is, has given me a Baxter's shove into my right place in the world." Never, perhaps, before was there an instance of a man whose profession was literature having past the whole of life in carrying out into distinct realization the projects of his early boyhood. He somewhere speaks of an intention formed. while yet at school, of writing an epic poem on each of the great religious systems that have obtained on earth-and something like this he has done with respect to Mahommedanism, to the Hindoo mythology, and to the forms of Christianity that prevailed on the Continent, and in Spain, at the periods of Joan of Arc, and of Roderick. Thalaba, he tells William Taylor, was meant to embody the more poetical parts of Islam. The poem compares more fairly with Vathek' than with any existing work, and I think may stand by its side for invention. There are parts of the poetry which I cannot hope to surpass. Yet I look with more pride to the truth and the soul that animates Joan of Arc.' There is the individual Robert Southey there, and only his imagination in the enchanted fabric." Indeed, to us the individual Robert Southey is present more in "Joan of Arc" than in any of his after poems. Of Southey's larger poems, it has been truly said, by an English commentator on Goethe, that " the object is to exhibit the position of man in a world which, if considered by itself, is insufficient for him. Freedom and happiness, broken and interrupted by surrounding circumstances, are represented as at last secured. The last best friend is Death.' In Southey the triumph is everywhere anticipated;-of the life, which is to be for immortality, the birth has already commenced; the poet expresses his own faith not alone in the ultimate predominance of Good-for this who can disbelieve?-but in its present predominance; so that the disturbing mysteries of sin and pain, and all that haunts and disquiets us in the contemplation and the experience of life, while they still remain unexplained, seem as if their very existence was but some strange delusion-a something to pass away. The witchcraft of Thalaba is a dream-the faith of the hero is an enduring thing; the thrones of penal fire in Kehama are felt to be but unsubstantial pageantry; but is there not a life, permanent, enduring, eternal, for the constancy of Ladurlad and the love of Kailyal? In all there is the same struggle for life in an element felt not to be the natural one; in all Death comes as the reconciling angel-to every one of his heroes is the same support given--in every one of his poems is the same lesson taught." So similar in conception are his poems, that we are not surprised that he was simultaneously engaged with all. All except "Roderick" are mentioned as subjects with which he was occupied in his correspondence with Taylor; and the story of Count Julian's daughter, on which he afterward framed his poem of Roderick, is the subject of an early mono * Faustus.-A dramatic Mystery from Goethe. Longman, 1835. * * By the blessing of God you will see my hyppogryff touch at Hindostan, fly back to Scandinavia, and then carry me among "Time that matures the intellectual part, Hath tinged my hairs with gray, but left untouched my heart. * * * * Scoff ye who will! but let me, gracious Heaven, It is the generous spirit who when brought Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, strife Or mild concerns of ordinary life-- In his poetry was Southey's great refuge from everything that distressed or afflicted him. Poverty was to him at first a religion; "one overwhelming propensity," he says, 'has formed my destiny, and marred all prospects of rank or wealth, but it has made me happy, and will make me immortal." Madoc was completed on the 12th of July, 1799, at Kingsdown, Bristol. "In those days," says Southey, "I was an early riser. The time so gained was employed in carrying on the poem which I had in hand; and when Charles Danvers"-Southey was on a visit with him-" came down to breakfast, on the morning after Madoc was completed, I had the first hundred lines of Thalaba to show him fresh from the mint." During this period, Southey's means of support were derived almost entirely from the payment which he received for his contributions to Reviews My favored footsteps to the Muses' hill, tread." His health broke down under the continual task-work, and Beddoes ordered him to the south of Europe. He was detained by contrary winds at Falmouth:-"Six days we watched the weather-cock and sighed for north-easters. I walked on the beach, caught soldier-crabs, admired the sea-anemones in |