Edeer 7881.860, 140 Harvard University, TRANSFERRED TO HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Copyright, 1895, by SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF NELSON. M. I INTRODUCTION. Of Never was ROBERT SOUTHEY, the author of this Life of Nelson, was born August 12, 1774. His father was a linen draper of Bristol. his mother Southey says in his "Recollections": any human being blessed with a sweeter temper or a happier disposition. She had an excellent understanding, and a readiness of apprehension which I have rarely known surpassed. In quickness of capacity, in the kindness of her nature, and in that kind of moral magnetism which wins the affections of all within its sphere, I never knew her equal." His earliest years were spent with his aunt, Miss Tyler, who had a house in Bath, and a walled garden wherein grew "fragrant herbs" and "fine fruit trees" and lilies of the valley, and also Robert Southey's love for the beauty of nature. "Miss Tyler," he says, was considered as an amateur and patroness of the stage. . . . She was thrown also into the company of dramatic writers at Mr. Palmer's, who resided then about a mile from Bath, on the upper Bristol road, at a house called West Hall. she became acquainted with Coleman and Sheridan and Cumberland and Holcroft. . . . Sophia Lee was Mrs. Palmer's most intimate friend. She was then in high reputation for the first volume of 'The Recess,' and for the 'Chapter of Accidents.' 5 Here You will not wonder that, hearing, as I continually did, of living authors, and seeing in what estimation they were held, I formed a great notion of the dignity attached to their profession. Perhaps in no other circle could this effect so surely have been produced as in a dramatic one, where ephemeral productions excite an intense interest while they last. Superior as I thought actors to all other men, it was not long before I perceived that authors were still a higher class. "Though I have not become a dramatist, my earliest dreams of authorship were, as might be anticipated from such circumstances, of a dramatic form; and the notion which I had formed of dramatic composition was not inaccurate. 'It is the easiest thing in the world to write a play!' said I to Miss Palmer, as we were in a carriage on Redcliffe Hill one day, returning from Bristol to Bedminster. 'Is it, my dear?' was her reply. 'Yes,' I continued, 'for, you know, you have only to think what you would say if you were in the place of the characters, and to make them say it.' "My grandmother died in 1782; and, either in the latter end of that year or the ensuing January, I was placed at poor old Williams's, whom, as that expression indicates, I remember with feelings of good will. I had commenced poetry before this,—at how early an age I cannot call to mind. . . . The discovery that I could write rhymes gave me great pleasure, which was in no slight degree heightened when I perceived that my mother was not only pleased with what I produced, but proud of it. . . . Nothing could be more propitious for me, considering my aptitudes and tendency of mind, than Miss Tyler's predilection-I might almost call it passion-for the theater. Owing to this, Shakespeare was in my hands as soon as I could read; and it was long before I had any other knowledge of the history of England than what I gathered from his plays." After a boy's experience at two or three schools, he was sent in 1788 to Westminster. He remained there four years. It would have been longer had he not undertaken, in a schoolboys' paper called "The Flagellant," to prove from the church fathers and the ancients that flogging was an invention of the devil. He was privately expelled. An uncle befriended him now, and Southey entered Balliol College. His father had died a little before. "I left Westminster in a perilous state,” he wrote years afterwards,—“ a heart full of feeling and poetry, a head full of Rousseau and Werther, and my religious principles shaken by Gibbon. Many circumstances tended to give me a wrong bias, none to lead me right, except adversity, the wholesomest of all discipline. . . A severe system of stoical morality came to its aid. I made Epictetus, for many months, literally my manual. The French Revolution was then in its full career. I went to Oxford in January, 1793, a stoic and republican. Seward, whose death was the first of those privations which have, Here I became intimate with Edmund He con in great measure, weaned my heart from the world. firmed in me all that was good. Time and reflection, the blessings and the sorrows of life, and, I hope I may add with unfeigned humility, the grace of God, have done the rest." At Oxford he met Coleridge. Both were poets, young, ambitious, sympathetic; and both had formed schemes. "In March," Southey wrote his brother in 1794, "we [about sixteen enthusiasts] depart for America. My aunt knows nothing as yet of my intended plan; it will surprise her, but not very agreeably. . Coleridge was with us nearly five weeks, and made good use of his time. We preached pantisocracy and aspheterism everywhere. These, Tom, are two new words, the first signifying the equal government of all, and the other the generalization of individual property,—words well understood in the city of Bristol." The scheme failed, and Southey earned his living for a time by lecturing on history. He had already written his poem "Joan of Arc." Not long after this he married Edith Fricker, and spent six months with his uncle in Portugal. Returning, he took up the study of law. "I love study-devotedly I love it," he wrote an old friend in 1799; “but in legal studies it is only the subtlety of the mind that is exercised. I am not indolent-I loathe indolence; but, indeed, reading law is laborious indolence; it is thrashing straw. I have read and read and read; but the devil a bit can I remember. I have given all possible attention, and attempted to command volition. No! the eyes read, the lips pronounced, I understood and reread it; it was very clear; I remembered the page, the sentence,—but close the book and all was gone!" He became private secretary; and finally in 1803, after much tossing hither and thither, he settled at Greta Hall, Keswick, and entered upon his life of literary labor. Here Coleridge, his wife's brother-in-law, was his neighbor; and not far away lived Wordsworth, by whose writings that entire region, familiarly known as the "Lake Country," has ever since been colored with the ineffable light of poetry. "Three Southey was one of the most industrious of men. pages of history after breakfast," he wrote, "(equivalent to five in small quarto printing); these to transcribe and copy for the press, or to make my selections and biographies [for 'Specimens of the English Poets'], or what else suits my humor, till dinner |