Lay rotting in the sun.
But things like that, you know, must be,
After a famous Victory.
Great praise the Duke of Marlboro’ won
And our good Prince Eugene;
‘Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!’
Said little Wilhelmine.
‘Nay—nay—my little girl,’ quoth he,
‘It was a famous Victory.’”
Almost everybody has encountered these Southeyan verses, and that other, about Mary the “Maid of the Inn,” in some one or other of the many “collections” of drifting poetry. There are very few, too, who have not, some day, read that most engaging little biography of Admiral Nelson, which tells, in most straightforward and simple and natural way, the romantic story of a life full of heroism, and scored with stains. I do not know, but—with most people—a surer and more lasting memory of Southey would be cherished by reason of those unpretending writings already named, and by knowledge of his quiet, orderly, idyllic home-life among the Lakes of Cumberland—tenderly and wisely provident of the mixed household committed to his care—than by the more ambitious things he did, or by the louder life he lived in the controversialism and politics of the day.