ROBERT SOUTHEY. 163 ROBERT SOUTHEY. CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE life of Robert Southey is a picture the very first sight of which elicits boundless satisfaction; frequent and close inspection qualifies delight; a last and parting look would seem to justify the early admiration. The faults of the subject may therefore be considered secondary and accidental; its merits of the highest order and unimpeachable. So fine a form, perhaps, is seldom disfigured by such uncouth drapery. The vices of Southey's character are the blunderings of the journeyman; its virtues are the perfect work of Nature and of Genius. We may be justly proud of our late Laureate. Literature does not every day present us with so worthy a son; students who forsake the trodden paths of life to earn their difficult crust by patient spinning of the brain cannot find a more illustrious example. The pursuit of letters was the business of Southey's life; it was also the first and last joy of his heart. Rather than not at intervals breathe the pure air and partake of the golden light that await the worshipper on the topmost heights of Parnassus, he condescended to work as a bondman, through winter and summer from year to year, on its barren sides. Literature was his glory, and he her pride. Providence, in its bounty, has granted us poets who have put forth a higher note of enchantment; moralists who have preached a more solemn strain; philosophers who have understood more clearly the force of everlasting truths; but in no age have intellectual power and moral worth and social dignity combined to present a finer instance of the literary man. In early youth Southey took to literature as a profession when he might have adopted a more promising calling, and his stedfast adherence to his craft was masculine and perfect. Some men have given utterance to the craving soul in verse immortal as itself, and been satisfied with the loud expression. Others have stolen brief hours from the stern business of life to enjoy a passing gleam of the poet's happiness. But of such it cannot be affirmed that either the pursuit or the communication of knowledge formed the main object of their lives. Southey educated his mind, became a scholar, devoured books with the sole aim and intention of devoting himself to literary dealings. A loving uncle wished him to enter the Church; he sentenced himself to two years' study of the law; but he could not finally bring himself to grasp either divinity or law as his staff, lest haply literature might prove nothing better than a crutch. He declined the one avocation, forsook the other, yet deliberately entered the profession of his own selection with all the resolution and with quite as much of the sense of responsibility that accompany the most conscientious to the pulpit or the bar. At the age of forty-six Southey began a history of his life. He registered his recollections from earliest HIS SHORT AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 165 childhood, and communicated them in a series of letters to an old friend. His intention had been to carry those recollections down to the hour of writing, but his heart failed him. The exquisite fragment of autobiography ceases already at Westminster School, and when the lad had hardly attained his fifteenth year. Had Southey found courage to persist in his task, he would have left behind him an autobiography unrivalled for personal and general interest and for its grace and genial style. The few precious sheets that remain exhibit the writer in his most charming aspect. Before he had reached his fortieth year he had proved himself a master of prose. The playful fancy, indicating itself in delicate touches; the marvellous memory, evoking almost from the cradle the most affecting incidents of childhood; the faculty of narrating in the simplest terms the simplest doings of a tranquil life, and of winning and rewarding attention by the very absence of effort-all so characteristic of Robert Southey in his happiest moods-are singularly illustrated in the few but valuable pages of which we speak. Unfortunately, because they are so few, the life of Southey has yet to be written; for we cannot accept the contribution of Mr. Southey's son, important as it is, for more than it pretends to be. The six volumes before us furnish materials for a future structure, but are no more that edifice than so many rows of bricks may be said to constitute the building they must help to raise. The work, edited by the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, professes to give the life of his father, but nothing whatever of that life is to be learnt, except what the reader has skill and judgment enough to gather for himself from Robert Southey's Letters, published not unsparingly we grant, but certainly after passing through the hands of one more than ordinarily desirous to present his subject in the fairest light before the world. We will dismiss this portion of our criticism at once, by plainly expressing our regret that the Rev. Mr. Southey has not been spared his delicate and not easy task. We doubt very much whether the son of any man is the fit chronicler of his father's life. We are certain that the son of Robert Southey cannot be just to the public, and not do violence to his own reverential love. We are further convinced that the present biographer, in his very anxiety to reconcile editorial obligations with filial affection, has done great harm to the object that lay nearest his heart. We have to complain in the name of the public, of sins of omission, and of sins of commission on behalf of Robert Southey. At every other page we grow impatient at the absence of all that is required to admit us into recesses which biography undertakes to lay open, and of all comment upon a text that provokes rather than satisfies curiosity, that offers the merest glimpses of matters which it is the chief office of the biographer to bring into the broad day. As frequently are we annoyed by the publication of passages thrown off by their author hastily in early youth-possibly repented of almost as soon as written-often contradicted by passages recurring at a later date, and hardly more essential to a complete understanding of the poet's character than a record of his fractiousness at the interesting time of teething. Robert Southey would have sighed to reperuse the unconsidered utterances of his earlier letters. Why should the HIS EARLY RESIDENCE WITH HIS AUNT. 167 reader smile at them? The voluminous collection of epistles for which we are indebted to the indefatigable zeal of the Rev. Mr. Southey, are, we repeat, admirable raw material, as far as they go, for the astute critic and skilful biographer. They ought never to have been thrown in undigested heaps upon the world; nor would they, had the son of Robert Southey been an older man, a more experienced writer, and blessed with good advisers. Robert Southey was born in the city of Bristol, on the 12th of August, 1774, and was the son of a small tradesman. His childhood, however, was passed, not at home, but in Bath, at the residence of Miss Tyler, his aunt, of whom a speaking portrait is drawn in the biographical fragment. Lament for the ill fortune that induced Southey to cut short that pleasant labour begins as soon as the inimitable Miss Tyler appears upon the scene, and never ceases till the fragment ends. Miss Tyler had a great contempt for Bristol society. She was passionately fond of theatres, and the familiar friend of the great actors who exhibited on the boards of the Bath Theatre-the first establishment of the kind out of London. The gala days of her household were those which found tragedians at her table. Then the lady would assume the appearance and adopt the manners of one who had been bred in the best society, and be equal to her pretensions. Then, too, the best room was opened. At other times Miss Tyler was attired in a bedgown, went about in rags, and lived in the kitchen. But in rags, as well as in kitchen, the lady was scrupulously clean; her hatred of dust was a consuming passion; and her notions of uncleanness |