HE MARRIES AGAIN.

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that belonged to the spirit and flesh of Robert Southey. As the party proceeded on their journey the signs of mental decrepitude became more painful. He would continually lose his way in the most familiar places, and, being narrowly watched by his child in consequence, would now smile at his errors as if to cloak their origin, and now openly confess an affecting consciousness of his revealed infirmities. We have omitted to say that, in addition to his other writings, Southey invariably kept a minute record of all that he saw on his travels. What he did not do in the way of composition it is difficult, in truth, to say. We half suspect, from an intimation in the volumes before us, that he even kept faithful copies of his countless letters. His last journal, containing an account of the tour of which we speak, is but too accurate an index of the condition of mind under which it was composed. It breaks off abruptly when about two-thirds of the tour were completed, and shows a gradual but perceptible change in the handwriting-" a change which, as his malady crept on, became more and more marked, until in some of the last notes he ever wrote the letters are formed like the early efforts of a child." The continental journey, as we have said, took place in 1838. At the close of that year we find the shaken man, then in his sixty-fifth year, residing for a time with Mr. Bowles. In 1839, and on the 5th of June, Southey married Mr. Bowles' daughter. The biographer contents himself with a simple announcement of the fact. We follow his example.

On his way home to Keswick, after his marriage, Southey passed a few days in London. No doubt

any longer existed of his melancholy decline. The vigour of his faculties was gone. His body was thin and shrunk, his animated face had lost its fire, his intellect had no vestige of its former clearness. A friend who visited him noticed, in the course of conversation, an obvious confusion of ideas. "He lost. himself for a moment; he was conscious of it, and an expression passed over his countenance which was exceedingly touching-an expression of pain and also of resignation." The friends of the poet attributed his ailments to repeated attacks of influenza, from which he had repeatedly suffered. Nearly half a century of incessant mental toil could give a more rational solution of the utter wreck. The candle had burnt to the socket-the brain was exhausted-the intellectual fibre was utterly worn out. He soon ceased to work at all; and for Southey to cease from labour, was to be deprived of reason, strength, and life. What else should keep that eager soul and body from its blissful occupations?. And, in very truth, when reason had taken its last and everlasting leave, when the body had become inert, and when life itself hung by the slenderest thread, the shadow of things påst remained, and the temple was not wholly unconscious of the glories that were once enshrined there. While one spark of reason lingered Southey would still talk of work that could no longer be done, of the resumption of labours, that had been laid aside for ever; and even when the black night came at last, and memory, utterly extinguished, could no longer brood upon its pleasures, the poor bereft scholar would still walk round his library, gaze intently on his darling books, take them down

mechanically, affect to read them, and put them back again unread. For one sad year there was an utter blank-and then he died. He fell asleep on the 21st of March, 1843, and he lies in Crosthwaite churchyard with his children who preceded him, and with their mother, his own faithful Edith. "One circumstance," says his son, "connected with the last years of his life deserves to be noticed as very singular. His hair, which was previously almost snowy white, grew perceptibly darker, and I think, if anything, increased in thickness and a disposition to curl." The livery of toil had been thrown off in the solemn hour of mental blindness and repose.

The reader will have remarked that we have endeavoured to place before him, in the whole course of our narrative, the representation of Southey the man, rather than of Southey, poet, philosopher, and politician. It is not without deliberation that we have hitherto included in the picture the private rather than the public aspect of this great character. When Sir Robert Peel informed Southey of his having "advised the King to adorn the distinction of baronetage with a name the most eminent in literature," he truly added, that the name "had claims to respect and honour which literature alone can never confer," and that it was the minister's aim to mark his gratitude "for eminent services rendered, not only to literature, but to the higher interests of virtue and religion." Southey by his life adorned the literary profession, and for the sake of literature let his great example persuade the world to judge more tenderly of its gifted teachers, and induce the instructors to merit public respect and approbation by the practice of

virtues that embellish the lowliest pursuits and give grace to the highest. True nobility dwelt in the quiet retreat among the Cumberland mountains. No English gentleman ever fulfilled the duties of his station more perfectly than the humble master of Greta-hall. It could not be said that the literary man was without status in society so long as Southey lived to prove that patient drudgery is still consistent with the daily exercise of all domestic virtues. Who should deny his social position, or refuse to acknowledge as an equal, the man who in learning and genius was superior to thousands, and in the ordinary relations of life was inferior to none?

We have already adverted to the style and character of Southey's poetical compositions. His protracted epics will certainly not assume the high classical place of which he believed them worthy. Beauties they have, which the intelligent will not be slow to appreciate; but they lack the divine element which alone enables human thoughts to take root for ever in the souls of the multitude. They were poured forth too easily, too rapidly, too voluminously, too much at the will of the writer, who never waited for the bidding of the Muse, but constituted himself her remorseless master. Southey's notions of rhythm, too, stood always in the way of popularity. Verse he contended should adapt itself to the requirements of the narrative, and in his adaptations he not seldom bewildered and distressed his readers. The violence of his transitions is sometimes wholly insupportable. Again, the subjects of Southey's principal metrical compositions were as unfavourable to success as his peculiar rhythmical views. They were foreign to the

sympathies of his readers, and no amount of genius could bring them home to their hearts. At one period of his life he made the fearful resolution to render every mythology which had extended itself widely and powerfully influenced the human mind the basis of a narrative poem. Fortunately for himself, he was prevented so dreary an undertaking. As it is, his unpleasant heathenish discourses excite no living interest in the mind, and indicate nothing so much as his own utter ignorance of the machinery that constitutes the moving springs of passion in the people. The minor compositions of Southey are here and there of exquisite beauty, though even among these prolixity becomes too often a fault. Where prolixity is absent the short poetical effusions are perfect.

The remarks that apply to his poems may be extended to Southey's prose. His shortest productions are his best. The Life of Nelson will be cherished by his countrymen long after his interminable histories will be forgotten by all the world. Charming as his prose style unquestionably is—clear, masculine, and to the point-it is too often thrown away on subjects of little or no interest to the public, and, like his verse, becomes diffuse from the vastness of the writer's knowledge and his abiding inability or unwillingness to keep back his acquisitions and to exhibit the results of his great learning rather than the learning itself. We have a notable instance of this infirmity in the most entertaining and characteristic of all his works. The Doctor, full of quiet, delicious humour, most agreeable in style and manner, and overflowing with quaint learning of every kind, too