variety of grass blossom. Forty years afterwards he remembered with particular love three flowers of those early days, — the syringa, the everlasting pea, and the evening prim

rose.

At length another academy was found, and he was placed a dayboarder at Bristol, under one Williams, a Welshman, who professed to teach little, and kept his promise. But the poet was unconsciously educating himself. He had already dabbled in rhyme, and Shakspeare was his poetical primer. Beaumont and Fletcher he read through before he was eight years old, mindful only of the story, but gradually tuning his ear, and acquiring that wonderful facility of versification which soon enabled him to pour out Joan of Arc and Madoc. What he saw and heard of literary people increased his growing veneration for the craft. Sophia Lee, then in the full glow of her Recess, was an acquaintance of his aunt. His school lessons, too, had more of literature, for he was taught Latin every day.

In one of his holyday absences a friend presented him with Hoole's translation of Tasso. His curiosity had been previously excited by versified fragments of the story in Mrs. Rowe; but he supposed the original to be in the Hebrew tongue, as it related to Jerusalem. Hoole was not quite the author whom the future singer of Thalaba might be expected to honour. But it was water in a dry place. The boy read and reread; nor did forty years and the treasures of European imagination in any degree extinguish the remembrance of his delight. In the paternal home poetry and prose were very humbly represented. A small cupboard in the back parlour contained the glasses and library. But there lived in the town a bookseller, named Bull, who lent out volumes; a chance discovery among the miscellanies of his counter first conducted young Southey to Spenser and the Faerie Queene-an author and a poem that have probably influenced, in a greater or less degree, the finest minds in English literature. He realized the truthful saying of Pope about Spenser's truthfulness:

The delicious landscapes which b

luxuriates in describing brought everything before my eyes. I could fancy such scenes as his lakes, and forests, and gardens, and fountains presented; and I felt, though I did not understand, the truth and purity of his feelings, and that love of the beautiful and the good which pervades his poetry.

One of Robert's earliest anticipations of authorship appeared at Williams's academy, in the shape of an extempore letter on Stonehenge, written on a slate. It procured for him a high reputation among his companions, which an untoward accident soon melted away. A conspiracy was formed to dethrone the new monarch, and it succeeded in this manner. Some half-dozen of the seniors confronted him, one morning, with the question, 'What the letters i. e. stood for?' The future historian, not at all terrified by the cabalistic nature of the inquiry, immediately replied that he supposed they represented John the Evangelist.

Between his twelfth and thirteenth years, in addition to more epical visions, he wrote three heroic letters in rhyme, and translated passages of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. He also tried his hand in a different and homelier style, and produced two descriptive sketches on the model of Cunningham. A grander effort was the exhibition of the Trojan war, of which the fourth book was advancing to completion when the author went to Westminster; but, like an equally magnificent undertaking of Pope at nearly the same age, it was finally burnt. He set out for Westminster school in the February of 1788, and arrived after a journey of three days. His want of skill in making Latin verses was a considerable obstacle to distinction, and prevented him from climbing into a higher form than the fourth. However, the atmosphere had something in it bracing and stimulating, and unlike any he had breathed at Corston. Following the example of Eton, the Westminster boys had got up a periodical paper called The Trifler, which expired in its fortieth number. The poet became a candidate for admission under the signature of 'B.' His elegy was acknowledged, but never published. At this period the autobiography abruptly ends, and the son of the

poet takes up the thread. The repulse from The Trifler did not discourage him. In conjunction with several friends he started The Flagellant, which might have prospered, if its growth had not been stopped, in the ninth number, by the indignation of the head-master, who considered the constitution of Pedagogism to be insulted and endangered by an attack upon flogging. The writer was Southey, and the result his dismissal; the mildest shape, we suppose, of expulsion. This catastrophe happened in the spring of 1792. The remainder of that year he spent with his aunt at Bristol. But his escapade at Westminster was not forgotten. Its fame preceded him to Oxford; and Dr. Jackson, the imperial Dean of Christ Church, refused to receive him into the college. He accordingly entered himself of Balliol, and began to reside in January 1793. Perhaps no student ever kept a term, with a mind or temper less suited to the genius of the place. The history of his academic career is gathered from letters addressed to his friend Mr. Bedford, and written in a style which cannot be more accurately described than by saying, that it is deficient in every quality for which he afterwards became conspicuous. The following letter gives a picture of his feelings at this time :

April 4, 1793.

Far,

My dear Grosvenor,-My philosophy, which has so long been of a kind peculiar to myself-neither of the school of Plato, Aristotle, Westminster, or the Miller is at length settled: I am become a peripatetic philosopher. however, from adopting the tenets of any self-sufficient cynic or puzzling sophist, my sentiments will be found more enlivened by the brilliant colours of fancy, nature, and Rousseau, than the positive dogmas of the Stagyrite, or the metaphysical refinements of his antagonist. I aspire not to the honorary titles of subtle disputant or divine doctor, I wish to found no school, to drive no scholars mad: ideas rise up with the scenes I view; some pass away with the momentary glance, some are engraved upon the tablet of memory, and some impressed upon the heart. You have told me what philosophy is not, and I can give you a little more information upon the subject. It is not reading Johannes Secundus because he may have some poetical lines; it is not wearing the hair undressed, in opposition to custom per

haps (this I feel the severity of, and blush for); it is not rejecting Lucan lest he should vitiate the taste, and reading without fear what may corrupt the heart; it is not clapt on with a wig, or communicated by the fashionable hand of the barber. It had nothing to do with Watson when he burnt his books; it does not sit upon a woolsack; honour cannot bestow it, persecution cannot take it away. It illumined the prison of Socrates, but fled the triumph of Octavius : it shrank from the savage murderer, Constantine; it dignified the tent of Julian. It has no particular love for colleges; in crowds it is alone, in solitude most engaged; it renders life agreeable, and death enviable..... I have lately read the Man of Feeling: if you have never yet read it, do now from my recommendation; few works have ever pleased me so painfully or so much. It is very strange that man should be delighted with the highest pain that can be produced. I even begin to think that both pain and pleasure exist only in idea. But this must not be affirmed; the first twinge of the toothache, or retrospective glance, will undeceive me with a vengeance.

Purity of mind is something like snow, best in the shade. Gibraltar is on a rock, but it would be imprudent to defy her enemies, and call them to the charge. My heart is equally easy of impression with Rousseau, and perhaps more tenacious of it. Refinement I adore, but to me the highest delicacy appears so intimately connected with it, that the union is like body and soul.

In some of his college letters we pick up a few fragments of criticism, not without relish. Glover's Leonidas was a favourite book which he often read, but liked chiefly for its subject, more interesting, he thought, than any poet's, except Milton. Southey was now twenty years old; of his years, and out of Spain, the swiftest rhymer on record. The catalogue of his metrical labours shews the prodigious amount of 10,000 verses, burnt or lost; 15,000 put aside as worthless; and 10,000 preserved.

These were assuredly symptoms of the disease in its most malignant and confluent form. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the producer of such heaps of couplets was extremely selfwilled, indifferently furnished with graver learning, and a holder of all deep scholarship in considerable scorn. Every blade of grass and every atom of matter' he thought

'worth all the Fathers.' This feeling was the more unfortunate, as the Church was the destination which his uncle, Mr. Hill, had marked out for him. This gentleman, then chaplain to the British Factory at Lisbon, provided for the University expenses of his nephew. He seems to have borne the disappointment of his plans with much kindness and consideration. Medicine was to supply the vacancy left by theology. But the dissecting-room proved quite as unsavoury as the Critici Sacri. He was all at sea, driving hither and thither, and wanting nothing but love to complete the unsettlement of his mind. It came at his call, in the pleasing face of Miss Edith Fricker. His desire of a small independence and the cottage--he had the occupant already grew every day stronger. But where was he to find it? Certainly not in the advice and example of the remarkable person with whom he now established a lasting friendship, and whose name, for praise and censure, has been so often blended with his own. There happened to be residing at Jesus College, Cambridge, an undergraduate, not then known to fame. This young man, going up in 1791, soon displayed the powers and oddities of his wide-reaching intellect. He won a gold medal, stood for the Craven,' wrote again for the Greek ode, got into debt, fell in love, proposed, was rejected, became desperate, quitted the University, went to London, enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons under the rather Puritanical name of Mr. Silas Tomken Cumberbatch, could not rub down his horse, dismayed his officers with a Latin exclamation and Greek criticism, and was at last released by his friends from the regiment at Hounslow, April 1794. speak of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the summer of that year he visited Oxford, and fell in with Southey. The congenial spirits took to each other. Southey wrote of his new friend with enthusiasm:-' He is of uncommon merit, of the strongest genius, the clearest judgment, the best heart.'

We

Such an alliance was peculiarly favourable to the emigration project. It revived under the euphonious title of Pantisocracy. Nothing could be simpler than the outline.

A society was to be formed - the larger the better-having money and labour in common; each member taking his allotment of toil; and ladies for bachelors were excluded -discharging the domestic duties and cookery.

The Pantisocratists were likewise Aspheteists; two words of which the chief hierophant has favoured us with a definition. Pantisocracy signified the equal government of all; and Aspheteism, the generalization of individual property. Everybody remembers the marvellous items of bloom-coloured coats and crimson continuations, which Mr. Prior disinterred from the buried ledgers of Goldsmith's tailor; but we imagine that the 'outfit' of a Pantisocratist and Aspheteist will be scarcely less surprising and interesting. We have a list of the necessary articles, in the letter from Southey to his brother, who was to be the admiral of the expedition :

What do your common blue trousers cost? Let me know, as I shall get two or three pairs for my winter workingdress, and as many jackets, either blue or grey; so my wardrobe will consist of two good coats, two cloth jackets, four linen ones, six brown holland pantaloons, and two nankeen ditto for dress.

The last touch about dressing for dinner is quite as daring as anything in Kehama.

For a time Fortune smiled on the forlorn hope. The numbers increased. Twenty-five Pantisocrats waited, axe in hand, for the descent on the backsettlements. Their thoughts by day and visions by night centered in America. The Castle of Indolence was a log-hut, and the true Genii were the Squatters. There was only one difficulty between the conception of this magnificent vision and its fulfilment the want of money. The whole force of Pantisocracy could not club ten pounds. There was an enormous breadth of sail, but not a breath of air even to flutter it. At this moment a storm broke out which threatened to sweep Pantisocracy from the face of the earth. Southey's aunt-the lady of the cherry arm-chair with the aired cushion was in a frenzy at the discovery of the combined horrors of Aspheteism and Matrimony. Miss Tyler's anger continued after 'Pantisocracy had died a natural

death, and the marriage had taken place.' 'The aunt and nephew never met again.'

The poet was now without a home; full of hope, intellect, and love, but altogether destitute of any support more solid. America began to recede into blue distance, before the unmistakeable reality of a purse with nothing in it. But Pantisocracy was not abandoned. Wales seemed to offer an easier site for an experiment than the Alleghany Mountains. But the new scheme did not prosper more than the old. Even Coleridge began to open his eyes. For God's sake, my dear fellow,' he wrote, tell me what we are to gain by taking a Welsh farm. Supposing that we have found the preponderating utility of our aspheterising in Wales, let us by our speedy and united inquiries discover the sum of money necessary. Whether such a farm with so very large a house is to be procured, without launching our frail and unpiloted bark on a rough sea of anxieties? How much money will be necessary for furnishing such a house? How much necessary for the maintenance of so large a family-eighteen people -for a year at least ?'

The head of the Pantisocratists was not in a condition to reply convincingly. His accomplishments and capabilities may be collected from his letters of this period. He could sing eight songs, was deep in poetry, lived by his wits, was happy in the full assurance of integrity, and in the affection of a mild and lovely woman; at once the object of hatred and admiration; wondered at by all; hated by the aristocrats; the very oracle of his own party.' But that was all.

6

He had now ceased to reside at Oxford. Having abandoned the Church and Physic, without the gift of making shoes, or the happy art of mending them,' his hopes turned to the great metropolis of suffering, glory, and shame. The point is,' he wrote, where can I best subsist? London is certainly the place for all who, like me, are on the world.' A fair face mingled with his sad thoughts. Enough! this state of suspense must soon be over; I am worn and wasted with anxiety; and, if not at rest in a short time, shall be disabled from exertion, and sink to a

long repose. Poor Edith! Almighty God protect her!"

But he did not sink without a struggle. A course of public lectures at Bristol was considered to be the likeliest and easiest method of replenishing the very empty pockets of himself and Mr. Coleridge. No trace of the lectures is preserved, but they were said to have been largely attended and admired: their delivery occupied several months. To his brother he wrote:

I am giving a course of historical lectures at Bristol, teaching what is right by shewing what is wrong. My company, of course, is sought by all who love good Republicans and odd characters. Coleridge and I are daily engaged. John Scott has got me a place of a guinea and a-half per week for writing in The Citizen, of what kind I know not, save that it accords with my principles of this I daily expect to hear more. If Coleridge and I can get 1507. between us we purpose marrying, and retiring into the country, as our literary business can be carried on there, and practising agriculture, till we can raise money for America. Still the grand object in view. So I have cut my cable, and am drifting on the ocean of life; the wind is fair, and the port of happiness, I hope, in view.— P. 235.

The prospectus of these lectures, we think, is printed in Mr. Cottle's Recollections of Coleridge. In the same work an amusing and characteristic anecdote is told of Coleridge's offer, to deliver a lecture for Southey upon a subject included in the scheme of the latter, viz. the progress of the Roman Empire. The day came and the hour, but not the lecturer. He was probably a thousand leagues at sea with the Ancient Mariner; or with Cristabel, where the dying embers shot up into that marvellous flame which showed the shield of Sir Leoline, and the eye of the mysterious Lady.

The first stone of his poetical reputation was now about to be laid. Joan of Arc, written in the summer of 1793, had long been waiting for a printer. That adventurous person was found in Mr. Cottle, a name familiar to most of our readers, who purchased the copyright for fifty guineas, in addition to fifty copies for subscribers. Every author knows the effect of type on a stanza or paragraph. Joan, set up,' looked fright

ful: a thorough revision was evidently required. About half the first book was left in its original state; the rest of the poem was recast and recomposed while the printing went on. This occupied six months.' His three models of poetical style were the Bible, Homer, and Ossian; but he said that his taste had been much meliorated by Bowles.' That amiable poet has related with touching simpleness, in Scenes and Shadows of Days Departed, how a particularly pleasing and handsome youth, lately from Westminster School,' called on the printer in Bath and commended the recently published Sonnets of Bowles; and how some forty years afterwards he had the delight of receiving the same person, as author of Thalaba and the Life of Nelson, in his own beautiful vicarage of Bremhill.

Mr. Hill, abandoning all hope of overcoming his nephew's clerical prejudices, invited him to go to Lisbon for a few months, and then return to England in order to qualify himself for entering the legal profession." The breaking-off of what he deemed an imprudent attachment was another reason for the journey. But Southey, if he did not love wisely, was sure to love well. He pours out his heart very freely and warmly to Mr. Bedford in a letter,

Oct. 23, 1795.

And where, Grosvenor, do you suppose the fates have condemned me for the next six months?-to Spain and Portugal! Indeed, my heart is very heavy. I would have refused, but I was weary of incessantly refusing all my mother's wishes, and it is only one mode of wearing out a period that must be unpleasant to me anywhere.

I now know neither when I go, nor where, except that we cross to Coruña, and thence by land to Lisbon. Cottle is delighted with the idea of a volume of travels. My Edith persuades me to go, and then weeps that I am going, though she would not permit me to stay. It is well that my mind is never unemployed. I have about 900 lines and half a preface yet to compose, and this I am resolved to finish by Wednesday night next. It is more than probable that I shall go in a fortnight.

Then the advantageous possibility of being captured by the French, or the still more agreeable chance of going to Algiers.... Then to give my inside to

the fishes on the road, and carry my outside to the bugs on my arrival; the luxury of sleeping with the mules, and if they should kick in the night. And to travel, Grosvenor, with a lonely heart!.. When I am returned I shall be glad that I have been. The knowledge of two languages is worth acquiring, and perhaps the climate may agree with me, and counteract a certain habit of skelatonisation, that though I do not apprehend it will hasten me to the worms, will, if it continues, certainly cheat them of their supper.. We will write a good opera; my expedition will teach me the costume of Spain.

By the bye I have made a discovery respecting the story of the Mysterious Mother. Lord O. tells it of Tillotson: the story is printed in a work of Bishop Hall's, 1652; he heard it from Perkins (the clergyman whom Fuller calls an excellent chirurgeon at jointing a broken soul he would pronounce the word 'damn' with such an emphasis as left a doleful echo in his auditors' ears a good while after. Warton-like I must go on with Perkins, and give you an epigram. He was lame of the right hand: the Latin is as blunt as a good-humoured joke need be:—

Dextera quantumvis fuerat tibi manca, docendi

Pollebas mirâ dexteritate tamen ; Though Nature thee of thy right hand bereft,

Right well thou writest with thy hand that's left:

and all this in a parenthesis). Hall adds, that he afterwards discovered the story in two German authors, and that it really happened in Germany. If you have not had your transcription of the tragedy bound, there is a curious piece of information to annex to it. . . .. I hope to become master of the two languages, and to procure some of the choicest authors; from their miscellanies and collections that I cannot purchase, I shall transcribe the best or favourite pieces, and translate, for we have little literature of those parts, and these I shall request some person fond of poetry to point out, if I am fortunate enough to find one. Mais, hélas! J'en doute, as well as you, and fear me I shall be friendless for six months!

Grosvenor, I am not happy. When I get to bed reflection comes with solitude, and I think of all the objections to the journey; it is right, however, to look at the white side of the shield. The Algerines, if they should take me, it might make a very pretty subject for a chapter in my Memoirs; but of this I am very sure, that my biographer would like it better than I should.