logue. Bristol theatres; and thus Southey, at this | there could be any difficulty in finding diasusceptible age, had the opportunity of frequent visits to the theatre. He was too old to be put to bed before the play began, and was taken to the theatre as something better than being left to the servants. "It is impossible to describe the thorough delight which I felt from this habitual indulgence. No after enjoyment could equal or approach it. I was sensible of no defects either in the dramas or 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 ever 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 repsesentation; 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." Miss Tyler was regarded as a patroness of the theatre, and was acquainted with all the stars. It was something to a schoolboy to be intimate with people whose names were in everybody's mouth-with people who personated kings and queens,-as Crabbe says, "'twas feeling like a king." But it was soon found that the actors themselves, superior as they were to ordinary mortals, were of an inferior class to authors. Many a work which, had Southey's intimacies been with any other set of people, would never have been heard of by him, was the subject of perpetual conversation during its day of notoriety. The ephemeral in literature had here its one bright day of glittering life. Southey had already begun to write verses; and now that the passion of authorship was awakened by the players, it is no marvel that he began to write dramas. Whatever he read for awhile was sure to represent itself in a dramatic shape. The Continence of Scipio was his first attempt. The characters were planned to suit the actors and actresses on the Bath stage. How this was managed we are not told. The Wife of Bath-had our young dramatist been a reader of Chaucer-would have done better for some of the ladies. When he went to school he endeavored to persuade more than one of his school-fellows to write tragedies, and could not understand how, subject and situation being supplied, The peculiarities of Miss Tyler's temper were trying to her friends, and Miss Palmer adopted sullenness in self-defence, and used to sit for days with an apron over her face. "You will injure your eyes by this, Miss Palmer,' said I; you know that everything gets out of order if it is not used; a book, if it is not opened, becomes damp and mouldy; and a key, if never turned in the lock, gets rusty.' My aunt entered the room. 'Do you know what this child has been saying?' said Miss Palmer. He has been comparing my eyes to a rusty key and a mouldy book.' Miss Palmer seems to have engaged the young poet's imagination in a very remarkable degree; the earliest night-dream he could in after years bring to his memory related to her. "I thought I was sitting with her in her drawing-room, (chairs, carpet, and everything are now visibly present to my mind's eye,) when the devil was introduced as a morning visitor. Such an appearance, for he was in full costume of horns, black bat-wings, tail, and cloven feet, put me in ghostly and bodily fear; but she received him with perfect politeness, called him dear Mr. Devil, desired the servant to give him a chair, and expressed her delight at being favored with a call." There is no author in whose works, both and verse, we have the devil so often prose portrayed. The pious Painter, and the Old Woman of Berkeley, and the Devil's Walk, but in some dozens of ballads, less known, are in the memory of half our readers; and in every form of allusion through his prose works, Southey has again and again worked the hoofs and horns into rhyme or rant, and described the tail curling like the tendrils of the vine, or wagging like a dog's. Satan of Milton, or the Mephistopheles of His devil is the old nursery devil, not the Goethe; and we suspect that his aunt and Miss Palmer sometimes rose up in his mind when he was describing his witches, whom "power had made haughty," and the feebler natures which could not resist their sorceries. This would imply no want of proper respect and affection for either lady, for his witches him. In the last edition of the Devil's Walk, and their slaves are manifestly favorites with we find something to confirm this notion. "A lady drove by in her pride, In whose face an expression he [the devil] spied, For which he could have kissed her; Such a flourishing fine clever creature was she, I kind to express a difference of opinion with With an eye as wicked as wicked could be, I should take her for my aunt, says he, If my dam had had a sister" His holidays were sometimes passed at Weymouth. Here he first saw the sea, and here he first read Tasso in Hoole's version, and here he became acquainted with the Fairy Queen. In a year or two after, he met with Mickle's Lusiad and Pope's Homer. His play-going habits had led him at an earlier day to read Beaumont and Fletcher, and Shakespeare. Chatterton's story was then fresh in the recollection of every one in Bristol; and the Rowley poems were among Southey's early studies. A circulating library gave him Hoole's Ariosto, and then his epic ambition awoke. It would be tedious to tell of all the heroes he meant to immortalize-in blank verse, chosen, "not because it was easier than rhyme, for rhyme was easy enough, but because I felt in it a greater freedom and range of language." The passion for fame was strong enough to give character and color to his dreams. In a dream he once saw the great epic poets assembled-Fame came hurrying by, with her arm full of laurels, which he reached at, and in the act of grasping awoke. Southey, but we think that through the Orlando Furioso as distinct a thread of purpose can be traced connecting the several adventures as in the Iliad or Odyssee, though the suddenness with which the heroes and heroines reappear, at times when they are least expected, produces an effect on the reader's mind as if the author was moving capriciously, or as if his course was varied by every breath of accident, while further examination of the poem shows in every particular subdivision of it a design never absent from the writer's mind. The length of these poems has prevented their being the subject of study, except in fragments, and this has led to what we regard as Southey's mistake. With the Italian poets, anxious as was their execution of details, and exquisitely wrought out as these details are, the general conception of the story, and the adjustment of its parts in symmetrical relation to each other and to the whole, was felt to be the poet's most important work. The constructive talent was that which distinguished the poet more than all else. So much was this the case, that in all these poems the class of incidents-the temptations which the hero resisted or to which he yielded-were almost common property. The originality of the poet was much more shown in the structure of his poem than in the details. In the classical models, the lucid arrangement of incident, and the apparent simplicity of the design, was the chief grace aimed at. The successive adventures of a single hero in removing the obstacles to some pre-appointed purpose are exhibited by the classic poet. This is the unity at which he aims. contemporaneous adventures of many heroes whose adventures are connected by their relation to some common object, form, for the most part, the theme of the romantic poet. The fact of contemporaneity could scarcely be exhibited, except by those sudden surprises and abruptnesses which disturb the inexperienced reader of the Italian poets; and as each hero is consciously, or unconfore-sciously, to contribute his share to the final event, the poet can scarcely allow any of the streams of narrative to be seen approaching its destined termination till he is prepared to take the spectator to a point of view in which he can contemplate all as they flow to one central point, toward which, through their whole course, they have been tending. most patient reader will, however, at times, refuse to be the slave of the romancer. will cease to follow, and then, of course, all One of his juvenile efforts was a drama on the Trojan war. The scene was in Elysium, and the spirits of the heroes related their adventures on earth. He tells of others of his heroic poems. He was now thirteen years of age. One of his manuscripts had, on some accidental visit, been found by a visitor of his aunt's, and read. This incident set him upon inventing a cipher for the purpose of concealing what he might write. At school he had no opportunity of continuing to practice the use of his cabalistical characters, and finding a difficulty in deciphering what he had written, he burned his manuscripts in vexation. He tells us that at this period he had no conception of the arrangement of plot or purpose in these narrative poems. Incidents rose up unexpectedly, and without any thought or consideration of their effect with reference to any general plan; and his impression is, that in the Italian romantic poems the same defect of constructive talent is observable, and that many of their most ambitious works were composed with as little premeditation as the dream-poems of a schoolboy's childhood. In the Spanish and Portuguese poets he speaks of the same defect. It would be rash on a subject of this The The He that he has read of such a poem will appear | ful, as far as any face can be called beautiful purposeless and accidental-an abuse of per- in which the indications of a violent temper verted power. are strongly marked." We have already seen her at Bedminster and at Weymouth. When she finally fixed at Bristol, "she brought with her a proud contempt of Bristol society." She declined all acquaintanceships except with the occasional visitors of Clifton and the theatrical folk. When any The constructive talent, which Southey tells us he knew nothing of at first, was afterward that which most distinguished him. He was proud of it, and he well might, for he certainly possessed it in a very eminent degree. "The progress of my own mind toward attaining it (so far as I may be thought to have attained it) I am able to trace distinctly, not merely by the works themselves, and by my own recollections of the views with which they were undertaken and composed, but by the various sketches and memoranda for four long narrative poems, made during their progress from the first conception of each till its completion. At present the facility and pleasure with which I can plan an heroic poem, a drama, a biographical and historical work, however comprehensive, is even a temptation to me. It seems as if I caught the bearings of a subject at first sight, just as Telford sees from an eminence with a glance in which direction his road must be carried. But it was long before I acquired this power—not fairly, indeed, till I was about five or six-and-thirty; and it was gained by practice, in the course of which I learnt to per ceive wherein I was deficient." The notes to Southey's poems show with what diligence he labored to acquire whatever information could be had from any source within his reach that might be of service to his purposes; and tastes that otherwise would have only led to an indulgence in desultory reading-the most vicious and debilitating mischief to which young men of talents expose themselves, from not having any perception of its danger-this became, when directed to a particular object, the means of invigorating the mind. Everything that Southey in any way learned was, in some shape or other, reproduced in his verses, and the necessity of studying all that bore on a particular subject gave a fixed direction to what would otherwise have been the sport of every idle accident. The next change in Southey's life is his being placed at Westminster school; but before we accompany him thither, we must let our readers see more of Miss Tyler, the aunt under whose especial care he appears to have been till then. The first appearance of Miss Tyler occurs in the antenatal portion of the biography. It was then the visit to Lisbon occurred which we have before described. At the time of the poet's birth Miss Tyler was thirty-four. "She was remarkably beauti stranger dined with her, or when she went out, Miss Tyler's manners and appearance were those of a woman accustomed to the as best society. Caught by a visitor in her ordinary apparel she was as confused “ Diana when Acteon came on her bathingplace," and with almost as much reason, for she was always in a bed-gown, and in rags. She wore her old clothes till they seemed to be a part of herself, but she was scrupulously clean in them. The whole business of her household was keeping the house clean: Dust was what above all things she abhorred. eccentricities made her very troublesome to everybody. The only thing about her that was allied to good was this abhorrence of dust, but her scrupulosity on the subject was not unlike insanity. Her "The discomfort which Miss Tyler's passion for cleanliness produced to herself as well as to her little household was truly curious; to herself, indeed, it was a perpetual torment; to the two servants a perpetual vexation,-and so it would have been to me if nature had not blessed me with an innate hilarity of spirit which nothing but real affliction can overcome. That the better rooms might be kept clean she took possession of the kitchen, sending the servants to one which was under ground; and in this little, dark, confined place, with a rough stone floor and a sky-light, (for it must not be supposed that it intended to be, a comfortable sitting-room-this was a best kitchen, which was always, as it was was more like a scullery,) we always took our meals, and generally lived. The best room was never opened but for company, except now and then on a fine day to be aired and dusted, if dust could be detected there. In the other parlor I was allowed sometimes to read, and she wrote her letters there, for she had many correspond ents; and we sat there sometimes in summer, when a fire was not needed, for fire produced ashes, and ashes occasioned dust, and dust, visible or invisible, was the plague of her life. I have seen her order the tea-kettle to be emptied and refilled because some one had passed across the hearth while it was on the fire preparing for her breakfast. She had iudulged these humors till she had formed for herself notions of upcleanness almost as irrational and inconvenient as those of the Hindoos. She had a cup once buried for six weeks, to purify it from the lips of one whom she accounted unclean; all who were not her favorites were included in that class. A chair in which an unclean person had sat was put out in the garden to be aired; and I never saw her more annoyed than on one occasion when a man, who called upon business, seated himself in her own chair; how the cushion was ever again to be rendered fit for her use, she knew not! On such occasions, her fine features assumed a character either fierce or tragic; her expressions were vehement even to irreverence; and her gesticulations those of the deepest and wildest distress, hands and eyes uplifted, as if she was in hopeless misery, or in a paroxysm of mental anguish." We looked with anxiety to the letters which describe his recollections of Westminster school. They are in every respect unimportant. He remained too short a time there to have his stay produce much effect in one way or other. His passion for early authorship was encouraged by the remuneration of which Cowper speaks: "At Westminster, where little poets strive I was a poet too." It would have been well if Southey had been contented, like Cowper, "with seeing his exercise sent from form to form for the admiration of all who were able to understand it; but Southey was born in a later day, and this description of publication was not sufficient for the spreading ambition of the ardent boy. He would be an author on a larger scale, and so he published some numbers of a periodical called the Flagel in which the masters feared to see themselves flagellated, and so they commenced actions of libel against the publishers, and compelled Southey, who acknowledged himself the writer of a paper on corporal punishment, which gave them offence, to leave the school. At this time the affairs of his father were so involved that bankruptcy became inevitable. went to Oxford, was refused admission at Christ Church on account of the Flagellant affair, and was admitted at Balliol. Southey Never was there a more ill-regulated mind than that of this haughty spinster. Her temper was violent. To her servants she was capriciously indulgent and tyrannical. They did not dislike her, nor do such persons in general dislike passionate masters and mistresses. Faults of this kind in their superiors assist servants in the process of self-justification in which the half-educated moral being is forever occupied. They were disposed to bear a great deal, too, from their mistress, because she often let them go to the play-being able to do so for nothing-lant, and because her perpetual altercations with them were more palatable than the stately reserve which would seem to deny servants the rights of a common nature with their masters. She herself had a theory not very uncommon, that "a bad temper was connected with a good understanding and a commanding mind," and so she was on very good terms with herself. She was parsimonious at the same time that she lived beyond her means. Her nephew, from whom we have this account of her oddities, Of his college life the records are few seems to remember her in spite of them with and unimportant. The letters preserved of affection. The elastic spirit of childhood this period are described by his son as "exresisted the worst effects of this strange ercises in composition." There is not much tyranny; but Miss Tyler had in Miss Palmer, evidence of his having pursued the preand in Southey's mother, passive natures, scribed studies of his college, nor any of which dared not to give battle. Miss Tyler, for- irregularities or rebellion against discipline. tunately for the peace of the rest of the family, He would wear his hair in flowing ringlets, fell out with a brother of Southey's, and so she in proud opposition to the paste and pomanever entered the door of Southey's father. tum which the fashion of the day required; Southey, who lived with his aunt, was under and in spite of academic regulations which her control, and could only get to his father's forbade boots, he appears to have worn in short and hurried visits. Her horror at the them. It was in 1793 that he entered colthought of his soiling his clothes prevented him lege, and he past the August of that year from having any proper play-fellow. In these at Brixton Causeway, four miles on the circumstances, he and his aunt's servant boy Surrey side of London, with his friend Groswere constant companions. They worked to- venor Bedford,-the friend to whom, some gether in the garden, flew kites, went into the thirty years afterward, his "Roderick" was country to look for flowers, and, greatest work dedicated. Before this visit he had comof all, actually constructed a theatre for pup-menced the poem of Joan of Arc; and here, pets. At last, Southey goes to Westminster. on the day on which he entered his twentieth year, he resumed, and in six weeks com- | strongly expressed, perhaps ardently con- "If this world did but contain 10,000 people of both sexes, visionary as myself, how delightfully we would repeople Greece and turn out the Moslem. I would turn crusader, and make a pilgrimage to Parnassus at the head of my republicans, and there reinstate the Muses in their oriap-ginal splendor. We would build a temple to Eleutherian Jove from the quarries of Paros, replant the grove of Academus-ay, and the garden of Epicurus, where your brother and I would commence teachers." "My progress," says Southey,* "would not have been so rapid, had it not been for the opportunity of retirement which I enjoyed there, and In those days, the encouragement I received. London had not extended in that direction farther than Kennington, beyond which place the scene suddenly changed, and there was an air and pearance of country which might now be sought in vain at a far greater distance from town. There was nothing, indeed, to remind one that London was so near, except the smoke which overhung it. "Mr. Bedford's residence was situated upon the edge of a common, on which shady lanes opened leading to neighboring villages, (for such they were then,) Camberwell, Dulwich, and The view in front Clapham, and to Norwood. Its size and was bounded by the Surrey hills. structure showed it to be one of those good houses built in the early part of the last century, by persons who, having realized a respectable fortune in trade, were wise enough to be contented with it, and retire to pass the evening of their lives in the enjoyment of leisure and tranquillity. 66 But in all Southey's visions of the future, domestic comfort finds its place, and we have him, at the close of his letter to Horace Bedford, from which we are quoting, building his house in the prettiest Doric style-planting his garden, and managing his family group,― "when here comes a rascal, crying, 'hare skins and rabbit skins,' and my poor house, which was built in the air, falls to pieces and leaves me, like most visionary projectors, staring at disappoint ** *It was the favorite intention of Cowley to retire with books to a cottage in America, and seek that happiness in solitude which he could not find in society. My asylum there would be sought for different reasons, (and no prospect in life gives me half the pleasure this visionary one affords.) I should be pleased to reside in a country where men's abilities would ensure respect; where society was on a proper footing, and man was considered more valuable than money; and where I could till the earth and provide by honest industry the meat which my wife would dress with pleasing care."* Tranquil indeed the place was, for the neigh-ment. borhood did not extend beyond half a dozen families, and the London style and habits of visiting had not obtained among them. Uncle Toby himself might have enjoyed his rood and a half of ground there, and not have it known. A forecourt separated the house from the footpath and the road in front, behind there was a large and well-stocked garden with other spacious premises, in which utility and ornament were in some degree combined. At the extremity of the garden, and under the shade of four linden trees, was a summer-house looking on an ornamented grass-plot, and fitted up as a conveniently habitable room,that summer-house was allotted to me, and there my mornings were passed at the desk. Whether it exists now or not I am ignorant. The property has long since passed into other hands. The common is enclosed and divided by rectangular hedges and palings; rows of brick houses have supplanted the shade of oaks and elms; the brows of the Surrey hills bear a parapet of modern villas, and the face of the whole district is changed." In Southey's letters of 1793, we find strong expressions of sympathy with republican feelings. But the fervor is that of a boy inspired by his classics rather than by the of the day. Of modern books, newspapers Glover's Leonidas was now his favorite; and the contrast of Greece in the days of old and its then degradation-" What a republic -What a province !"-awakes a wish *Southey's Collected Works, vol. i,-Preface to Joan of Arc. In another letter (December 14, 1793) he says, "The wants of man are so very few, that they must be attainable somewhere, and whether here or in America matters little. I have long learnt to look on the world as my country. Now, if you are in the mood for a revery, fancy me only in America; imagine my ground uncultivated since the creation, and see me wielding the axe, now to cut down the tree, and now the snakes that nestled in it. Then see me grubbing up the roots, and building a nice, snug little dairy with them: three rooms in my cottage, and my only companion some poor negro whom I have bought on purpose to emancipate. After a hard day's toil, see me sleep upon rushes; and in very bad weather take out my casette, and write to you; for you shall positively write to me in America. Do not imagine that I shall leave rhyming or philosophizing; so thus your friend will realize the romance of Cowley, and even outdo the seclusion * November 18, 1793. |