In a civil and nicely-penned letter—post-paid—
That I to your album so gracious would be
As to fill up a page there appointed for me,
Five couplets I send you, by aid of the Nine—
They will cost you in postage a penny a line:
At Keswick, October the sixth, they were done,
One thousand eight hundred and twenty and one.”
Some of Southey’s distractions were of his own inviting. Soon after his arrival at Keswick, a tiny volume of poems entitled Clifton Grove, attracted his attention; its author was an undergraduate of Cambridge. The Monthly Review having made the discovery that it rhymed in one place boy and sky, dismissed the book contemptuously. Southey could not bear to think that the hopes of a lad of promise should be blasted, and he wrote to Henry Kirke White, encouraging him, and offering him help towards a future volume. The cruel dulness of the reviewer sat heavily on the poor boy’s spirits, and these unexpected words of cheer came with most grateful effect. It soon appeared, however, that Southey’s services must be slight, for his new acquaintance was taken out of his hands by Mr. Simeon, the nursing-father of Evangelicalism. At no time had Southey any leanings towards the Clapham Sect; and so, while he tried to be of use to Kirke White indirectly, their correspondence ceased. When the lad, in every way lacking pith and substance, and ripening prematurely in a heated atmosphere, drooped and died, Southey was not willing that he should be altogether forgotten; he wrote offering to look over whatever papers there might be, and to give an opinion on them. “Down came a box-full,” he tells Duppa, “the sight of which literally made my heart ache and my eyes overflow, for never did I behold such proofs of human industry. To make short, I took the matter up with interest, collected his letters, and have, at the expense of more time than such a poor fellow as myself can very well afford, done what his family are very grateful for, and what I think the world will thank me for too. Of course I have done it gratuitously.... That I should become, and that voluntarily too, an editor of Methodistical and Calvinistic letters, is a thing which, when I think of, excites the same sort of smile that the thought of my pension does.” A brief statement that his own views on religion differed widely from those of Kirke White sufficed to save Southey’s integrity. The genius of the dead poet he overrated; it was an error which the world has since found time to correct.
This was but one of a series of many instances in which Southey, stemming the pressure of his own engagements, asserted the right to be generous of his time and strength and substance to those who had need of such help as a sound heart and a strong arm can give. William Roberts, a Bristol bank-clerk, dying of consumption at nineteen, left his only possession, some manuscript poems, in trust to be published for the benefit of a sister whom he passionately loved. Southey was consulted, and at once bestirred himself on behalf of the projected volume. Herbert Knowles, an orphan lad at school in Yorkshire, had hoped to go as a sizar to St. John’s; his relations were unable to send him; could he help himself by publishing a poem? might he dedicate it to the laureate? The poem came to Southey, who found it “brimful of power and of promise;” he represented to Herbert the folly of publishing, promised ten pounds himself, and procured from Rogers and Earl Spencer twenty more. Herbert Knowles, in a wise and manly letter, begged that great things might not be expected of him; he would not be idle, his University career should be at least respectable:—“Suffice it, then, to say, I thank you from my heart; let time and my future conduct tell the rest.” Death came to arbitrate between his hopes and fears. James Dusautoy, another schoolboy, one of ten children of a retired officer, sent specimens of his verse, asking Southey’s opinion on certain poetical plans. His friends thought the law the best profession for him; how could he make literature help him forward in his profession? Southey again advised against publication, but by a well-timed effort enabled him to enter Emanuel College. Dusautoy, after a brilliant promise, took fever, died, and was buried, in acknowledgment of his character and talents, in the college cloisters. When at Harrogate in the summer of 1827, Southey received a letter, written with much modesty and good feeling, from John Jones, an old serving-man; he enclosed a poem on “The Redbreast,” and would take the liberty, if permitted, to offer other manuscripts for inspection. Touches of true observation and natural feeling in the verses on the little bird with “look oblique and prying head and gentle affability” pleased Southey, and he told his humble applicant to send his manuscript book, warning him, however, not to expect that such poems would please the public—“the time for them was gone by, and whether the public had grown wiser in these matters or not, it had certainly become less tolerant and less charitable.” By procuring subscribers and himself contributing an Introductory Essay on the lives and works of our Uneducated Poets, Southey secured a slender fortune for the worthy old man, who laid the table none the less punctually because he loved Shakespeare and the Psalter, or carried in his head some simple rhymes of his own. It pleased Southey to show how much intellectual pleasure and moral improvement connected with such pleasure are within reach of the humblest; thus a lesson was afforded to those who would have the March of Intellect beaten only to the tune of Ça ira. “Before I conclude”—so the Introduction draws to an end—“I must, in my own behalf, give notice to all whom it may concern that I, Robert Southey, Poet-laureate, being somewhat advanced in years, and having business enough of my own fully to occupy as much time as can be devoted to it, consistently with a due regard to health, do hereby decline perusing or inspecting any manuscript from any person whatsoever, and desire that no application on that score may be made to me from this time forth; this resolution, which for most just cause is taken and here notified, being, like the laws of the Medes and the Persians, not to be changed.”
It was some time after this public announcement that a hand, which may have trembled while yet it was very brave and resolute, dropped into the little post-office at Haworth, in Yorkshire, a packet for Robert Southey. His bold truthfulness, his masculine self-control, his strong heart, his domestic temper sweet and venerable, his purity of manners, a certain sweet austerity, attracted to him women of fine sensibility and genius who would fain escape from their own falterings and temerities under the authority of a faithful director. Already Maria del Occidente, “the most impassioned and most imaginative of all poetesses,” had poured into his ear the tale of her slighted love. Newly come from Paris, and full of enthusiasm for the Poles, she hastened to Keswick to see in person her sympathetic adviser; she proved, says Southey, a most interesting person of the mildest and gentlest manners. With him she left, on returning to America, her Zophiel in manuscript, the publication of which he superintended. “Zophiel, Southey says, is by some Yankee woman”—Charles Lamb breaks forth—“as if there ever had been a woman capable of anything so great!” Now, in 1837, a woman of finer spirit, and capable of higher things than Zophiel, addressed a letter to Robert Southey, asking his judgment of her powers as disclosed in the poems which she forwarded. For some weeks Charlotte Brontë waited, until almost all hope of a reply was lost. At length the verdict came. Charlotte Brontë’s verse was assuredly written with her left hand; her passionate impulses, crossed and checked by fiery fiats of the will, would not mould themselves into little stanzas; the little stanzas must be correct, therefore they must reject such irregular heavings and swift repressions of the heart. Southey’s delay in replying had been caused by absence from home. A little personal knowledge of a poet in the decline of life might have tempered her enthusiasm; yet he is neither a disappointed nor a discontented man; she will never hear from him any chilling sermons on the text. All is vanity; the faculty of verse she possesses in no inconsiderable degree; but this, since the beginning of the century, has grown to be no rare possession; let her beware of making literature her profession, check day-dreams, and find her chief happiness in her womanly duties; then she may write poetry for its own sake, not in a spirit of emulation, not through a passion for celebrity; the less celebrity is aimed at, the more it is likely to be deserved. “Mr. Southey’s letter,” said Charlotte Brontë, many years later, “was kind and admirable, a little stringent, but it did me good.” She wrote again, striving to repress a palpitating joy and pride in the submission to her director’s counsel, and the sacrifice of her cherished hopes; telling him more of her daily life, of her obedience to the day’s duty, her efforts to be sensible and sober: “I had not ventured,” she says, “to hope for such a reply—so considerate in its tone, so noble in its spirit.” Once more Southey wrote, hoping that she would let him see her at the Lakes: “You would then think of me afterwards with the more good-will, because you would perceive that there is neither severity nor moroseness in the state of mind to which years and observation have brought me.... And now, madam, God bless you. Farewell, and believe me to be your sincere friend, Robert Southey.” It was during a visit to the Lakes that Charlotte Brontë told her biographer of these letters. But Southey lay at rest in Crosthwaite churchyard.