Select prose of Robert Southey

III 'i

Class Book

Copyright }l°^

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

SELECT PROSE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY

•The

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

SELECT PROSE OF

ROBERT SOUTHEY

EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

JACOB ZEITLIN, Ph.D.

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

All rights reserved n> ir /k

Copyright, 1916, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1916.

r©

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

Preface

Some one has estimated that Southey's total production in poetry and prose would fill not far from two hundred octavo volumes. All of his writings, Southey himself had no doubt, would be reverently assembled by a grateful posterity as a fitting monument to his genius and industry. More moderate persons believed that at least a dozen volumes of good prose matter could be gathered from his abundant stock. But the passage of time has shown one possibility to be as remote as the other. It is doubtful whether anybody since Southey's death has taken the trouble even to read through all his prose. Of reprints in the last fifty years there have been, aside from the " Life of Nelson," a volume of sketches of English Sea Heroes from the " Naval History of England" and one of selections from "The Doctor." No attempt like the present has ever been made to give a representation of Southey's prose based on a survey of his entire output — reviews and all.

In restricting this selection to a single volume the first consideration had to be its readableness. The aim has been to sustain the remark of Professor Oliver Elton that "there is room for a pleasing and varied anthology from his prose works." Only such passages have been chosen as justify themselves intrinsically. Their representative character has been a secondary consideration, but it has fortunately been possible to give specimens of Southey's prose in a considerable variety of aspects, to suggest nearly all

VI PREFACE

the forms in which he worked, and to give an impression of his mode of Hfe, his opinions, and his character.

In the first selection the reader will have a glimpse of Southey in his favorite environment, letting his mind stray fondly among his cherished books. Then comes a series of descriptions of the lake country which, says Professor Elton, are Southey's best title to be called a "lake poet." Southey's personal feelings and tastes have ample play in these passages, and hardly less in "The Doctor," though this book aims to tell a story and to present character.

In the selections from " The Doctor," which constitute about half the bulk of the volume, considerable liberty has been taken with the arrangement of the chapters for the purpose of bringing into a somewhat closer proximity the episodes of the narrative frame-work. The establishment of something like continuity in the treatment of the events is in the opinion of the editor a decided gain, and it is really the only practicable scheme in a volume of selections. Those chapters whose connection with the general plan is of the slightest, which are introduced merely as the casual opinions and reflections of Dr. Dove or as digressions by the author, are placed at the end. There is enough even in the new arrangement to give an impression of the rambling, desultory vein in which the work was conceived and executed. The rest of the material is expository.

In the choice of historical and biographical passages preference was given, for the sake of freshness, to less familiar themes, even when their composition and style was not up to Southey's highest standard. The " Life of Bayard " has been reproduced from the Quarterly Reviezv with the omission of some characteristic digressions, generally antiquarian in

PREFACE VU

interest, with which Southey is often prone to break up the course of his narrative. It represents his interest in themes of moral and heroic appeal and is a pleasant specimen of the quaint, archaic coloring of his prose. The account of the siege of Zaragoza and of the uprising at Marvam are among the most spirited examples of Southey's narrative style and they have an additional substantive value in reflecting his attitude toward the France of Napoleon.

The description of the Jesuit system in Paraguay will offer as good an illustration as can be given in a brief compass of Southey's skill in treating impartially and attractively a subject which is beset with controversial difficulties and in which he might have been expected to succumb to his strong anti-Catholic prejudices. The passage on the Manufacturing System is to be viewed as an expression of Southey's feelings about crying abuses rather than as a fair statement of existing conditions.

Finally there are added a series of excerpts from the Common-Place Books, detached sentences and paragraphs of miscellaneous observations and reflections on Hfe, literature, and society, sometimes of a sharpness and depth not paralleled in his other writings.

The introduction aims to give — what has not hitherto been available — a systematic account of the external history of Southey's prose writings. It sets forth his position as a writer on political and economic questions and his connection with periodical literature. It sketches the genesis of his undertakings in Spanish literature, history, biography, and informal prose, and describes the fate that overtook his separate ventures.

It is hoped for this volume that it will gain a new hearing for Southey's prose among all lovers of liter-

VUl PREFACE

ature and that it will provide an incentive for the study of Southey in college courses from which he has hitherto been excluded by the want of adequate facilities for presentation.

The following editions have been utilized in making up the text : " Letters of Espriella," second edition, 1808; "Colloquies of Sir Thomas More," second edition, 1831 ; "The Doctor," first edition in seven volumes, 1834-47, ^.nd the one-volume edition by J. W. Warter, 1849; "History of the Peninsular War," quarto edition ; for the " History of Brazil," the " Life of Bayard," and the " Common-Place Book," only a single text exists. The editor has permitted himself an occasional alteration in spelling and punctuation, and has added in footnotes translations of the numerous quotations from foreign languages.

The materials which have been utilized in the introduction are specifically referred to in the footnotes. Chief among them are, of course, the two well-known collections of letters : " The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey," edited by his son, Charles Cuthbert Southey, London, 1849- 18 50, ^^ six volumes (referred to in the footnotes as Life), and the "Select Letters," edited by his son-in-law, J. W. Warter, 1856, in four volumes (referred to as Warter). The editor owes a general debt of encouragement and stimulation in the performance of his task to the pages of discerning appreciation of Southey's prose in Professor Oliver Elton's " Survey of English Literature." To Professor Stuart P. Sherman he wishes to express his thanks for some useful suggestions in regard to the introduction and text.

University of Illinois, January 22, 1916.

Contents

FAGB

Preface v

Introduction 1

Introduction

Few persons have ever found it possible to speak of Southey with any great degree of detachment. The character of "saint" half sneeringly fixed on him by one of his contemporaries almost stands realized in the loving pages of Dowden's biography — the man of exemplary home Hfe, fulfilling perfectly the duties of husband, father, friend, tender and kind and devoted to his own, humane and generous to strangers who called on his resources (already sufficiently strained to meet the needs of a frugal household economy) , a man of impeccable honor unstained by the common worldly corruptions, living a life of bookish industry and self-denial in the pursuit of the highest literary and moral ideals. These admirable and endearing traits fade considerably before the dry light of Leslie Stephen's scrutiny. Though his judgment is not blind to Southey's merits and though he treats his failings with a kindly indulgence, yet the impression left by his sketch is that of a small intellect and a large self-conceit, a narrow vision and an enormous self-complacency, a great activity and an insignificant achievement.^ The difference between Dowden's estimate and that of Sir Leslie is perhaps only a difference of emphasis conditioned by individual points of view, but it is nevertheless suggestive of the mixed feelings which Southey arouses

^ Studies of a Biographer, vol. IV.

in the least biassed readers. Even when it is only a question of the merits of his achievement, the judgments are likely to be as far apart as Thackeray's eulogy when he says of Sou they that "no man has done more for literature by his genius, his labors, and his Ufe," ^ and the extravagant contempt of Bagehot, who pronounces him "an industrious and calligraphic man, who might have earned money as a clerk and yet worked all his days for half a clerk's wages, at occupation much duller and more laborious." ^

That it is the latter verdict toward which posterity leans is proved by the neglect in which practically all of Southey's prose has been allowed to remain. And the result is in a great degree due to the exaggerated claims which Southey himself made for his work. His inability to estimate the nature of its value has provoked his critics to deny him his just measure of recognition. The enormous volume of his output, too, — most of it in service of the occasion — has discouraged students from attempting a detailed appraisal of its entirety and from gleaning those pages that are unspoiled by time as the memorial of a prose style universally admired for its classic purity and grace. The object of the following pages is to survey Southey's activities in prose, to pass in review his numerous contributions, through periodicals and separate publications, on literature, on travels, on history and biography, on poUtics and economics, on church and state. Such a survey will reveal the importance of Southey's work in his own day, will explain the nature of the prestige which he enjoyed, and, while it will fully account for his not being read now (save in his letters and the

^ Works, ed. Trent and Henneman, XXV, 113. 2 Literary Studies, ed. Hutton, I, 50.

INTRODUCTION 3

Life of Nelson), it should at the same time justify the attempt made in the body of this volume to restore to life the pages of entertaining self-portrayal, of spirited narrative, and delightful description which are concealed among his works.

LIFE

Robert Southey was born August 12, 1774, the son of a Bristol linendraper. His early education was conducted at Bath under the eyes of a maiden aunt, Miss Elizabeth Tyler, a lady whose benevolence was qualified by an imperious temper. At her house the boy was allowed to indulge a propensity for omnivorous reading. He first attended certain minor schools and in 1788 was entered at Westminster School. Here he developed very earnest opinions on the subject of flogging and expressed them ironically in the school magazine, The Flagellant. The authorities felt that their dignity had been injured and Southey was privately expelled. He went up to Oxford and on account of his offence was refused admittance at Christ Church College, but accepted by Balliol, November 3, 1792. At Oxford Southey pursued such avocations as he found congenial. He devotedly read Epictetus and began the composition of his first epic, "Joan of Arc." In June, 1794, he met Coleridge and was fired by that poet's scheme for an ideal community which was to be established on the banks of the Susquehanna. Both Coleridge and Southey having been already disappointed in their hopes of the French Revolution, they thought to find the realization of their youthful dreams in a country unspoiled by human institutions. A few hours of labor would suffice to assure them their sustenance and the rest of the time might be spent in intellectual discourse or godlike meditation. Be-

LIFE 5

fore the material details of this plan could be arranged Southey had become engaged to Edith Fricker, and in November, 1795, he definitely abandoned Pantisocracy, to the great displeasure of Coleridge, and married Miss Fricker. It is hard to decide whether he displayed more judgment in abandoning Pantisocracy than rashness in the marriage. He assumed his responsibihty with no apparent means of support and without even the resource of a profession. He had refused to accede to the wishes of his uncle, the Rev. Herbert Hill, at whose expense he had gone to Oxford, that he prepare himself for the ministry. He had Unitarian leanings at this time which prevented him from subscribing conscientiously to the articles of the Church of England. Immediately after the wedding he left his wife in the care of the sisters of Joseph Cottle, the Bristol publisher and patron of men of letters, and sailed with Mr. Hill, who was Chaplain to the British Factory at Lisbon, for a tour of Portugal and Spain. On his return he settled at Bristol and wrote his " Letters from Spain and Portugal."

His immediate wants were now relieved by an annuity of £160 from his friend Charles Wynn, but a profession had to be chosen nevertheless, and so Southey with an unwilling spirit removed to London and applied himself to the study of law. At the same time he established a connection with various newspapers and periodicals, wrote verses for the Morning Post at a guinea a week, contributed miscellaneous articles to the Monthly Magazine and criticism to the Critical Review, and worked rapidly at his long epics "Madoc" and "Thalaba." He had already settled down to his routine of unceasing labor in which he allowed himself no other reUef than to change from one kind of work to another. His health was breaking under the strain and to save himself Southey left England with his wife for a year's stay in Portugal, where the climate restored his spirits. During this stay he began the earnest collection of books and materials for his scholarly labors on the history and literature of the Peninsula. Before he returned to England (May, 1801), "Thalaba" had been published and "The Curse of Kehama" begun, and his mind had become filled with ambitious literary projects, creative and scholarly, which would require a lifetime for their execution. He abandoned all thoughts of law, resumed reviewing, and even accepted an appointment as private secretary to Mr. Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland. This post, however, he held for less than a year.

In 1803 Southey went to visit Coleridge at Greta Hall in Keswick and decided to settle there. In the following year Coleridge virtually abandoned his family to Southey's care and the latter bore the burden uncomplainingly for twenty-five years. At Keswick Southey remained during the rest of his life. It was not long before he became attached to the locality. Here he experienced the domestic joys and sorrows which for him were the heart and center of life. His affections wound themselves about the place with a tenacity of which he was himself hardly aware till there was some occasion for a trip to London or elsewhere, and then he would suffer the most poignant attacks of homesickness and longing for his beloved wife and children. Here he collected the impressive library in which he took a lover's pride and in which he was able to work with but few of those annoying interruptions to which a man of letters is

LIFE 7

subject in the city. From Keswick the flow of his publications in prose and verse, through books and periodicals, went on uninterruptedly : epic poems and occasional verses, translations of some mediaeval romances, new editions of others, historical and biographical works, works on politics and society and religion, critical reviews and anthologies — some composed for glory, some for profit, and not a few from disinterested friendship. His profit was derived almost entirely from the periodicals. He wrote for the Critical Review till 1804 and for the Annual Review from its foundation in 1802 till 1807 or 1808. From 1808 till 18 10 he contributed the historical section to the Edinburgh Annual Register at £400 a year. In 1809 he began his work for the Quarterly Review, which he was instrumental in estab- Hshing as a rival to the Edinburgh Review and for which he wrote without interruption to the end of his life.

In 1807 Sou they received a government pension which netted him about £150, but this he immediately offset by resigning the annuity which he had been enjoying from Wynn. In 18 13, however, his fixed income was augmented by something like £100 when he was created Poet Laureate at the suggestion of Walter Scott, who had declined the honor for himself. This was the entire extent to which Southey profited by his services to the government. Repeatedly during his life he rejected offers of positions having secure and comfortable salaries attached to them — a severe temptation to a man with a large family for whose wants he was never able to provide a year in advance. On two occasions he was asked to found a government journal, in 181 7 he was invited to join in editing The Times at a salary of £2,000 and part of the profits, and in 18 18 he was offered the post of Librarian to the Advocates Library of Edinburgh. Each time Southey deliberately considered the matter in every aspect, weighing his fitness for the work required of him as well as the sacrifice of favorite labors and of independence which he would have to make. His decision was in each case dictated by high principles. He preferred to continue his hand-to-mouth existence, and it was not till 1835 that he was relieved from anxiety on account of his daily bread by a pension of £300 from Sir Robert Peel. The offer of a baronetcy which accompanied this pension was declined by Southey with modest dignity.

Serene as was the course of Southey's life for the most part, it was not altogether untroubled. His unbending opinions and vehement expressions on questions of politics and morality often exposed him to the attacks of his opponents, and on two occasions his experiences were particularly vexatious. The first was in 181 7 and was connected with the surreptitious publication of "Wat Tyler," a youthful poem filled with violent repubhcan sentiments differing glaringly from Southey's maturer views. A certain Member of Parliament, WilHam Smith by name, took advantage of the ludicrous contrast and stood up in the House of Commons with the poem in one hand and in the other a recent number of the Quarterly Review, and proceeded to read parallel passages illustrating the change in Southey's position. Southey made vain efforts to have the poem suppressed and raged eloquently against Wilham Smith but did not succeed in improving his case materially. He was unfortunate a second time in giving provocation to Byron. On the occasion of the death of George

LIFE 9

III Southey fulfilled his Laureate duties by writing a commemorative poem, "The Vision of Judgment," but went to a rather injudicious extreme in representing the apotheosis of that decayed monarch. In a preface to the poem he made a bitter attack on the "Satanic School" of poetry, which led to an exchange of personaHties between Byron and Southey and culminated in Byron's "Vision of Judgment," a parody of such irresistible and merciless wit that it has fixed upon Southey an unfortunate reproach against which the mere Hteral truth is helpless.

But Southey's great sorrows did not spring from such sources. The death of children was his deepest grief. Before 1816 he had lost two infant daughters and in that year he suffered the tragic affliction of his life when his favorite son, Herbert, died in his tenth year. On this boy of extraordinary beauty and promise Southey had lavished his strongest affection and about him he had built a father's fondest dreams. His death shook Southey to the inmost roots of his nature and extinguished the spark of vital ambition. His wonted lightness of spirits from this time forth seemed to give way to a settled apathy. He resolved never again to attach himself too warmly to any object for fear of the pain which he might suffer from its loss. The son, Cuthbert, who was born to him three years later, never held the place in his father's heart which had been filled by Herbert. Domestic distress became Southey's daily companion when, in 1834, his wife became insane and lingered on hopelessly for three years. Under the strain of this ordeal and his incessant mental labor his own brain began to show signs of decay. In 1839 he married CaroHne Bowles, with whom he had carried on a literary correspondence for twenty years. To her lot fell the duty of taking care of the invalid when, soon after their marriage, Southey's mind completely failed him. He lived for nearly four years in a helpless but peaceful and gentle condition. He died March 21, 1843.

There is more than the usual proportion of truth in the popular conception of Southey as a reactionary. He was by temperament a conservative of the conservatives. All his affections and prejudices were firmly rooted in a bygone age. Progress, he thought, was confined to the material and mechanical spheres and held out no prospect of an increase in human happiness. He had begun life in a country blessed with the best form of government the world had ever known, a government which secured to its subjects the greatest degree of liberty compatible with human weakness and which was sanctioned by association with the purest of all Christian churches. Its institutions had fostered the noblest intellects, the greatest poets. Under them the people had dwelt in virtue, happy in the performance of their duty to home and country, secure of the rightful reward which their blessed religion held in store for them. "Happy are they," he exclaims in a lovely passage which deserves to be rescued from a dusty obhvion, "who grow up in the institutions of their country, and share like brethren in the feelings of the great body of their countrymen ! The village spire is that point amid the landscape to which their eye reverts oftenest and upon which it reposes longest and with most delight. They love the music of the Sabbath bells, and walk in cheerfulness along the church path which their fathers trod before them. They are not soured by the sight of flourishing institutions which they think evil, and therefore wish to overthrow; neither are they tempted to seek in the sullen consolations of spiritual pride a recompense for the advantages from which their own error excludes them. Their ways are in light and in sunshine, their paths are pleasantness and peace ! " ^

If men were only wise their single effort would be directed toward making permanent such a state of affairs. But now a disquieting spirit was abroad in the land. The talk was not merely of change, but of revolution. Ruin was threatened to all the noble institutions that made enviable the Kfe of an EngHshman. It was as if the legions of Satan had proclaimed a new war against the Children of Light. Nothing was safe from the assault of the "anarchists." And so he girded his loins to combat in defence of the good old order, and for many years he was honored by his associates as one of their bravest champions. As the new generation grew up and Southey saw the men of his own party carried ahead by the irresistible momentum of the Opposition, he dug his own feet more firmly into the ground, resolved to die standing though the whole world should fly from its base. The figure which he makes in the years after Catho- Uc Emancipation grows more and more pathetic, — all his gods falHng about him, left far behind by his former associates, receiving from friends and enemies alike the kind of respect which is offered to one who has perhaps done much useful work in his day but whose opinions on subjects of importance no longer matter.

In his youth Southey flirted with some current revolutionary principles which later returned to plague him. They procured him the reputation ^ Quarterly Review, x, 139.

of renegade and apostate. The reputation, however, was not altogether deserved. He touched pitch, but the defilement was not serious. His "Wat Tyler" and Pantisocracy were momentary aberrations induced by the infectious ardor of Coleridge's society. He did not permit the poem to see the light and he was the first to abandon the allurements of Utopia on the Susquehanna. The repubhcanism to which he now and then alludes as late as 1807 is of a very intangible quaHty and runs along easily with some High Tory doctrines. Southey vindicated his poHtical change of front by the same argument as Wordsworth and other deeply rooted conservatives. His hopes had soared with the progress of the French Revolution, but the excesses which had followed in its wake disillusioned him of his aspirations. He saw demonstrated the incapacity of the people for self-rule, and even before Napoleon had begun to cast his ominous shadow over France and the rest of Europe, he withdrew to the shelter of estabHshed British institutions. Experience, he says (by this time he must have been twenty- two), has taught him that the improvement of man is a delusion. The best service he could render society was Kke Noah to ascend the ark and cherish his own virtuous life apart, "to preserve a renmant which may become the whole." ^ This is a plain prose version of the ideal of liberty for the individual spirit which Wordsworth and Coleridge chanted in lofty verse in the "Prelude" and "France," and which they tried to imagine was a substitute for the thwarted desire of the masses to enjoy a portion of this world's happiness.

In Southey the process of reaction was accompanied by hardly any of the philosophic enlargement or the spiritual purgation which the views of Coleridge and Wordsworth underwent. Wordsworth withdrew altogether from the turmoil of active poHtics and Coleridge kept discharging hazy speculations over the heads of his dazed admirers. But Southey remained nearer the common level. At first he found comfort for the misfortunes of humanity in the conviction that England was not as bad as other countries. What he saw on his visit to Spain and Portugal made him thank God that he was an Enghshman. But the course of events in Europe provided him with a stronger support for his principles. The growing power of Napoleon, his subjugation of one European state after another, and the apparent extinction of the popular will in France, stimulated in patriotic Englishmen the idea that the conditions of true freedom were to be reahzed only in accordance with the principles of the British constitution and that their country was the natural champion of the Hberties of Europe. "I did not fall into the error of those," says Southey in defending himself against the charge of political apostacy, "who, having been the friends of France when they imagined that the cause of liberty was impKcated in her success, transferred their attachment from the repubhc to the miHtary tyranny in which it ended, and regarded with complacency the progress of oppression because France was the oppressor. They had turned their faces toward the east in the morning to worship the rising sun, and in the evening they were looking eastward still, obstinately affirming that still the sun was there. I, on the contrary, altered my position as the world went round." ^ HazHtt made the sharp

^ Essays, Moral and Political, II, 21.

and ready retort that the Poet Laureate continued to gaze westward long after the sun had risen again in the east. For whatever the arguments which he might discover to account for his opinions, it is clear that they were founded in a set of mental habits with which revolutionary ideas of any kind did not assort.

There is nothing more striking than the precocious fixity of Southey's mental attitude. His earliest letters reveal the moral young prig. At Oxford in his nineteenth year he is shocked by the prevailing looseness of conduct and regards himself too much to run into any of the common vices. "I have not yet been drunk nor mean to be so." It is not recorded of him that he ever was. He sets forth impressively the arguments against atheism and preaches lessons of stoical virtue to his friends. The influence of Epictetus, who is frequently in his mouth, is noticeable in his pure and sober ideals of conduct, though of the exalted austerity of the great stoic there are but vague traces either in the active or the contemplative life of Southey. His ideal of philosophy he found in the British divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His worldly ambition aspired to nothing further than "£200 a year and the comforts of domestic Hfe." While hardly savoring of the inwardness of stoicism, this is sufficiently modest and restrained. In reality his characteristic virtues are those of a good Christian — a warm faithfulness in the performance of his duty to God and man as he understood that duty, a touching patience under the sufferings imposed by God's inscrutable dispensation, and implacable hostility to the Devil and all his earthly agencies. This Christianity clearly colors his political sympathies at a very early period. It is in the year 1793 that he composes an ode to commemorate the death of "Charles the Martyr" and suggests for its motto, "His virtues plead Hke angels, trumpet-tongued, against the deep damnation of his taking off." ^ It would have been strange if with his sensibiKty and his general benevolence he should have escaped altogether the contagion which seized the generous-minded youth of England when Godwin showed them how all evil could be banished from the earth. But he cast the spell off Ughtly and without much trace of mental struggle.