JE are glad to meet Dr. Southey

WE at last. We began to despair of him, since he has been so long on the road. not that we were altogether ignorant of the causes of delay. From time to time strange rumours have reached us of feuds, and strifes, and heart-burnings, and unseemly contentions, over the good man's literary ashes. These things are painful to hear or speak of. However, the Poet now returns to us in that intellectual form and fashion, in which he was always most likely to gain friends, and to keep them. We rejoice to welcome him in that winning shape. He-the high-souled, bright-minded, troubled, worn-out man-rests from his many sadnesses and toils. Peace be with him. If he were visibly and bodily present in this solemn home of literature, where we are writing, or in his own green haunts by the musical Lodore, he might have wondrous stories to tell, lovelier and more gorgeous than the cloudy richness of Thalaba; stories,

Brought from a pensive though a happy place.

Of all that is most beauteous, imaged

there

In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And

fields invested with purpureal gleams;

Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day

Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey. But he stands now before us in his earthly dress, and again we say that we rejoice to see him. Writing in his twenty-second year to one of his earliest and dearest friends, Mr. Southey said:

No man ever retained a more perfect knowledge of the history of his own mind than I have done. I can trace the developement of my character from infancy-for developed it has been, not changed. I look forward to the writing of this history, as the most pleasing and most useful employment I shall ever undertake.

We have a specimen of the in

tended narrative in the first 157 pages of the first volume. It is contained in a series of letters to his friend Mr. John May, and gives a familiar and most particular account of his family and himself, their sayings and doings, chances and changes, up to the period of his school days at Westminster in his fifteenth year. At that interesting epoch the history breaks off. It might have been hardly possible to continue it with equal minuteness, as it wound into the diversified labours and business of his maturer life.

It was in the summer of 1820 that he sat down in the room, which he had peopled with the noblest spirits of all lands, to relate the story of his struggles and victories. He was then a ripe scholar of fortysix years it was dark weather in a season of sunshine; a lonesome and showery evening had closed a cloudy and ungenial day. Perhaps a mind like Cowper's, ever forecasting the fashion of uncertain sorrows, might have seen something ominous in the coincidence. But the poet felt no sadness or apprehension. Living in the sunshine, he still looked forward with hope.

Many of our readers will recollect that charming essay on a man's writing memoirs of himself, for which we are indebted to one of the deepest thinkers of the earlier part of this century. He suggests the sensation of surprise, that would startle a reflective man in advanced age, on discovering at the bottom of an old chest an account of himself, which he had written fifty years before. The web of feeling would be curiously woven of various colours and patterns; light and shadow intermingled. One great beauty of the tale would be its reality; a garland of flowers all gathered in the fresh morning of life, with the dew and bloom on the leaves. What misty, uncertain, glimmering shapes would come thronging into the me

mory; perplexed and intricate, like the moonbeams on curtains, which shine and break up into gloom, as the wind rustles them with a sudden gust. The old man wonders at himself. It is like looking into a glass once in half a century. He forgets what manner of man he was. The vernal fancies are faded; the merryspeaking thoughts are silent. They died like the singing-birds of that time which sing no more. Nothing is as it was. All is changed. Eve's garden was not more defaced, when the slime of the deluge had passed over it. The life which we then had, now seems almost as if it could not have been our own. We are like a man returning, after the absence of many years, to visit the embowered cottage where he passed the morning of his life, and finding only a relic of its ruins.'

Opinions will always differ as to the becoming style of these autobiographies. The most famous performer need not keep us very long. In a general way, the expenditure of time may be set down in a short column. We want only an entry of the gold coins; the copper may be left out. It was pleasantly remarked of many popular biographies in modern times, that a chronicle of the coats a man has worn, with the colour and date of each, might, for every useful purpose, be as well called his life. We have few examples in our language. Cowley, Bishop Hall, and Walter Scott, have given specimens, slighter or graver, in three opposite ways. Perhaps no memoir written by one's self could equal the truthfulness of letters, flowing out of the fulness of a loving heart; like those from Cowper, to Lady Hesketh, and Shenstone to Mr. Jago.

Johnson affirmed that the life of no literary man had ever been properly composed. An author's own pen is unlikely to fill up the blank. He will supply part, not a whole. The pleasantest illustrations of genius have been picked up by accident. In this light letters are invaluable, when they are sincere. That is seldom. Pope wrote for effect. So did Cowper sometimes: compare his correspondence with Newton and Hill. The writer can scarcely be identified. Horace Walpole made

himself up for the Post, as for a theatre. You see at once that he is padded. The shape of his thoughts is always artificial. Gray's crowquill was an emblem of his manner. Byron imitated the worst style of Walpole and Gray. He is not himself for a hundred pages together. From this fault the letters of Southey appear to be remarkably free. They give the man, the Pantisocrat, the enthusiast, the self- opinionated. Each is there. He sits before a glass and paints himself.

The Recollections have much of the grace and ease of his latest and happiest prose. Perhaps there is a slight excess of garrulity, and a disposition to enlarge upon trifles, that might, as he suggested, if carefully cultivated, have ripened him into a correspondent of Mr. Urban. But we confess to liking the minuteness of his description. We are not indisposed to hear of the migration from the blue bed to the brown. He gives us a domestic interior, as real and startling as the Apothecary's Shop of Mieris, with its one bewildering crack in the counter. The things and persons may be worth nothing in themselves, but they derive interest and value from the describer; like the wicker basket, or string of onions, in pictures by Teniers or Ostade. The stream of his family did not lead him into very ancient times. He was unable to trace it beyond 1696. Wellington, in Somersetshire, was the well-head. In the church registers the Southeys are styled yeomen or farmers. His grandfather's wife was a Locke, of the same family as the philosopher (so called) of that name,' who, we are pleasantly informed, 'is still held in more estimation than he deserves.' Their descendant was willing to reckon them of gentle blood, as using armorial bearings in an age when they were very rarely assumed without a title. The arms had a religious character, and he was anxious to believe that one of his 'ancestors had served in the crusades, or made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.'

His grandfather was bred a Dissenter, but afterwards came over to the Church. Marrying at forty-five, he had two daughters and three sons, of whom the second was Robert, the poet's father, who was an

enthusiast in all country pleasures. Having been placed with a grocer in London, he gave a curious proof of the strength of the passion. As he was standing at the shop door, 'a porter went by carrying a hare. This brought his favourite sport so forcibly to his mind, that he could not help crying at the sight.' The circumstance was the anticipation, as well as the fulfilment, of Wordsworth's reverie of Susan. In after years, and to preserve the impression, he took a hare for his commercial crest, and had it painted upon the window on each side the door, and engraved in the shop bills. Upon his master's death he was removed to a linendraper's in Bristol, where he continued for twelve or fourteen years.

Robert Southey was born August 1, 1773. The twilight of his recollection began with his third year. He was gifted with the sensibility of the poetical mind, and shed tears at the tale of Chevy Chase. His first school was presided over by a dame, with intolerable features and no eyelashes. Under her rule he remained, with occasional intervals of absence, until his sixth year. The Utopiamania was already strong in him. With two schoolfellows he formed a plan of going to an island and living by themselves. The military taste also showed itself in a walk with a neighbouring barber, who promised him a sword. But it speedily retreated before the prompt and liberal application of the horsewhip. Many of his holydays were spent with his aunt, Miss Tyler, who occupied a house in what was then an agreeable suburb of Bath. It looked into a garden abounding in fruit trees, and the parlour steps were embowered by jessamine. This was a favourite seat of the child-poet. The furniture was old and picturesque. In the parlour hung the lady's portrait, by Gainsborough, with a curtain before it to keep off the flies. Among the most curious articles were a cabinet of ivory, ebony, and tortoiseshell, and an arm-chair made of cherry-wood, which seems to have had a particular interest attached to it; if any visitor who was not in her especial favour sat thereon, the leathern cushion was always sent into the garden, to be aired and purified,

before she would use it again." A confidential man-servant was as odd as his mistress, and every night fed the crickets. In this strange garden-house the larger portion of four years glided away-to a child heavily enough. He had no playmates, was kept inviolate from dust, and slept with his aunt. This was the severest chapter of the lesson. Miss Tyler was a late riser; and the little Robert did not dare to make the slightest movement for fear of disturbing her. During those wearisome hours his wits were at work, 'fancying figures and combinations of forms in the curtains, wondering at the motes in the slant sunbeam, and watching the light from the crevices of the window shutters. By degrees the progress of the shadow stood him in the stead of a clock.

At two years of age he was inoculated, and attributed his subsequent thinness to the preparatory regimen. His aunt had one friend whose name will ever possess a kind of juvenile celebrity,-this was the wife of Mr. F. Newberry, of St. Paul's. As soon as he could read, the Bib liopole presented him with a settwenty in number-of those astonishing productions, which have so often amazed the slumbers of three years. To this gift he traced some of his literary tastes; but other circumstances helped them forward. The Bath theatre was then in its zenith. The players divided the week between it and Bristol. Miss

Tyler was generally supplied with orders, and always availed herself of them. Her talk was dramatic. Her nephew soon caught the tone of expression, and once, returning from church on Sunday morning, called down an angry rebuke by saying that it had been a very full house. Healthier aids to reflection were not wanting. He delighted in fieldwalks, and the ferry-boat at Walcot was a great resource. The first distinction of life came slowly npon the poet. He saw his sixth year before he was 'breeched' in a complete suit of forester's green. He was then sent as a day-scholar to a school at Bristol, kept by a Baptist minister, an old man and cruel. However, he died in twelve months, and was succeeded by a Socinian, of more learning and heresy. But the poet reaped

no advantage from the change. His father, for some cause unexplained, removed him to Corston, about nine miles from Bristol :

The stage was to drop me at the public-house, and my father to accompany it on horseback, and consign me to the master's care. When the time for our departure drew nigh I found my mother weeping in her chamber; it was the first time I had ever seen her shed tears. The room (that wherein I was born), with all its furniture, and her position and look at that moment, are as distinct in my memory as if the scene had occurred but yesterday; and I can call to mind with how strong and painful an effort it was that I subdued my own emotions. I allude to this in the Hymn to the Penates, as

The first grief I felt, And the first painful smile that clothed my front

With feelings not its own.

What follows also is from the life :-
Sadly at night

I sat me down beside a stranger's hearth,
And when the lingering hour of rest was

come,

First wet with tears my pillow.

The school-house was noticeable for its staircase of black oak, and rooms hung with faded tapestry; its shady garden, summer-house, gatepillars, surmounted with huge stone balls, a paddock, orchard, and walnuttrees. The master was a mathematician, who usually lived in the stars. The desk disenchanted him. Not that the scholastic promises were large: they only embraced writing and arithmetic. But twice in the

week a French teacher from Bristol instructed a few ambitious students, of whom the poet was one, in Latin. Penmanship was the great fact of Corston; it was excellent, including what is called the Italian, engrossing,

and some varieties of German text. Mr. Flower, that was the name of the pedagogue, had other instruments of confusion besides his orrery. With the reckless wisdom of 'fifty' he had married his housemaid. Of course, everything went wrong under the guidance of astronomy, folly, and fire-water. Some brighter streaks diversify the picture. We have already mentioned the orchard; the boys were the appointed gatherers; and their labour was lightened and recommended by a very liberal per

mission to eat of the produce. They were also allowed to

Squail at the bannets, that is, being interpreted, to throw at his walnuts when it was time to bring them down: there were four or five fine trees on the hill-side above the brook. I was too little to bear a part in this, which required considerable strength; but for many days afterwards I had the gleaning among the leaves and broken twigs with which the ground was covered, and the fragrance of these leaves, in their incipient decay, is one of those odours which I can smell at will, and which, whenever it occurs, brings with it the vivid remembrances of past times.

But even these orchard gatherings had a constant cheque and contrast in the Sunday evenings, when the astronomer collected his youthful congregation into the hall, and read a dreary sermon, or a scarcely less alarming chapter from Stackhouse's History of the Bible. The poet's seat was at the extremity of a long form, within the faintest gleam of the fire. All troubles come to an end. So did those at Corston; an intestine commotion, resulting in the flight of the master and the discoloured eyes of his son, unexpectedly turned all the pupils adrift.

While the father of Southey was casting his eyes round in search of another school, he took up his abode with his relatives at Bedminster, a dirty village of colliers. The house had been built by his grandfather. 'It stood in a lane. You ascended

by several circular steps into a flower-garden. The porch was in great part lined, as well as covered, with white jessamine.' Here he often sat with his sister, threading fallen blossoms upon grass stalks. We think that the following description of the interior might have won the praise of Richardson :

On the right hand was the parlour, which had a brown or black boarded floor, covered with a Lisbon mat, and a handsome timepiece over the fireplace; on the left was the best kitchen, in which the family lived. The best kitchen is an apartment that belongs to other days, and is now no longer to be seen, except in houses which, having remained unaltered for the last half century, are inhabited by persons a degree lower in society than their former possessors. The one which I am now calling to mind after an interval of more

On

than forty years, was a cheerful room, with an air of such country comfort about it, that my little heart was always gladdened when I entered it during my grandmother's life. It had a stone floor, which I believe was the chief distinction between a best kitchen and a parlour. The furniture consisted of a clock, a large oval oak table with two flaps (over which two or three fowling-pieces had their place), a round tea-table of cherry wood, Windsor chairs of the same, and two large armed ones of that easy make (of all makes it is the easiest), in one of which my grandmother always sat." one side of the fireplace the china was displayed in a buffet—that is, a cupboard with glass doors; on the other were closets for articles less ornamental, but more in use. The room was wainscotted and ornamented with some old maps, and with a long looking-glass over the chimney-piece, and a tall one between the windows, both in white frames. The windows opened into the fore-court, and were as cheerful and fragrant in the season of flowers as roses and jessamine, which grew luxuriantly without, could make them. There was a passage between this apartment and the kitchen, long enough to admit of a large airy pantry, and a larder on the left hand, the windows of both opening into the barton, as did those of the kitchen; on the right was a door into the back court. There was rack in the kitchen well furnished with bacon, and a mistletoe bush always suspended from the middle of the ceiling.

Over

The green room, which was my uncle Edward's, was over the parlour. the hall was a smaller apartment, which had been my grandfather's office, and still contained his desk and his pigeonholes I remember it well, and the largepatterned, dark, flock paper, with its faded ground. The yellow room, over the best kitchen, was the visitor's chamber; and this my mother occupied whenever she slept there. There was no way to my grandmother's, the blue room over the kitchen, but through this and an intervening passage, where, on the left, was a store-room. The blue room had a thorough light, one window looking into the barton, the other into the back court. The squire slept in the garret; his room was on one side, the servants' on the other: and there was a large open space between, at the top of the stairs, used for lumber and stores.

A door from the hall, opposite to the entrance, opened upon the cellar-stairs, to which there was another door from the back court. This was a square, having the house on two sides, the washhouse and brewhouse on the third, and

walled on the fourth. A vine covered one side of the house here, and grew round my grandmother's window, out of which I have often reached the grapes. Here also was the pigeon-house, and the pump, under which the fatal dipping was performed. The yard or barton was of considerable size; the entrance to it was from the lane, through large folding-gates, with a horse-chestnut on each side. And here another building fronted you, as large as the house, containing the dairy and laundry, both large and excellent in their kind, seed-rooms, stable, haylofts, &c. The front of this outhouse was almost clothed with yew, clipt to the shape of the windows. Opposite the one gable-end were the coal and stick houses; and on the left side of the barton was a shed for the cart, and while my grandfather lived, for an open carriage, which after his death was no longer kept. Here too was the horseblock, beautifully overhung with ivy, from an old wall against which it was placed. The other gable-end was COvered with fruit trees, and at the bottom was a raised camomile bed.

The garden-ground was in the old English fashion, combining use and pleasure in its sunny walls, green with cherry, peach, and nectarine trees; grassy walks, espaliers, and flowers.

An apricot tree grew in the fore-court, and a barberry bush by the orchard-gate. We have seen Southey's love and quick perception of rural odours; but we were not acquainted with Wordsworth's singular privation of that delightful faculty. His friend tells us, that ‘once, and once only in his life, the dormant sense awakened. It was called forth by a bed of stocks in full bloom, at a house which he inhabited in Dorsetshire some five-and-twenty years ago. He it was like a vision of Parasays dise to him; but it lasted only a few minutes, and the faculty has continued torpid since that time.' Coleridge resembled Southey in his quick perception and enjoyment of perfumes; and we think of him at this moment sitting at his cottage-door, in Clevedon, and saying to Sara,-How exquisite the scents Snatch'd from yon bean-field! In this quiet home young Southey found many pleasures. Beauty of scenery was not; but he had stillness, light and shadow, green lanes, country sounds, and flowers. He passed most of his time in the garden, and knew where to look for every