Footprints of Famous Men: Designed as Incitements to Intellectual Industry

by John G. Edgar

His aunt, Miss Tyler, took a small house near Bristol; and he was once more handed over to her care. A brother of the restless spinster also went to live with her—a strange, half-witted man, whose enormous consumption of ale and tobacco astonished his young kinsman, and brought on himself a premature old age. He had a strong affection for Southey, and loved well to have a game at marbles with him when an opportunity presented itself; though apparently, he was better pleased to smoke a pipe and drink beer in the shady arbor during summer, or by the kitchen chimney in colder and less agreeable seasons. Some of his wise, old-world saws, his nephew did not soon forget.

During his twelfth and thirteenth years Southey, ever eager in his beloved pursuit, exercised his poetic powers with much industry and enthusiastic perseverance. When writing, he searched and labored diligently to make himself master of the necessary historic facts and information relating to the particular subject with which he happened, from inclination, to be occupied. Even at this date he was fitting and accomplishing himself, by solitary and unaided study, and by practice in the coining and structure of sentences, for the career which circumstances and a genuine love of such matters led and incited him to select; and which he afterward did follow with an ardor, patience, and resolution in the highest degree creditable to himself, though rarely if ever equaled, and never surpassed by others. It was perfectly natural that the members of his family and their relations should experience a very justifiable elation at talents which were thus, perhaps, a little too precociously displayed; and Miss Tyler, flushed with pride at the acquirements of her clever nursling, insisted on his being educated to one of the learned professions. In this proposal she was, luckily, supported by Southey’s maternal uncle, a clergyman, who handsomely offered to defray the expenses which this otherwise satisfactory scheme would entail. Accordingly, in the spring of 1788, it was resolved that the young prodigy should be sent to Westminster School. His gayly-disposed aunt was rejoiced at so favorable an opportunity for going to London—then no such easy business as at present; and he was conveyed thither under her protecting wing.

After a short time spent in visiting some of the imperious lady’s friends and acquaintances he was duly entered, and soon after had the task of writing some Latin verses from Thomson’s “Seasons,” which was a process quite new to him, and productive of some trouble and perplexity. However, he surmounted the difficulties, and even practiced himself so far as to produce about fifty verses on the “Death of Fair Rosamond” from choice. But that classical effort satisfied his ambition, and he never afterward strove to excel save in his native tongue. At this period the success of the “Microcosm,” and the reputation it won for its institutors, the Eton boys, set the ambition of the Westminster scholars on fire, and a weekly paper, entitled the “Trifler,” was speedily commenced among them. In this little periodical Southey requested the insertion of some verses of his on the death of a dear sister, but he was balked in his wish by a mortifying neglect. He next, in conjunction with several of his new associates, projected a paper bearing the title of the “Flagellant,” which only reached nine numbers, when a fierce attack on corporal punishments annoyed and enraged the head-master of Westminster so highly that he commenced a prosecution for libel against the more responsible parties. Southey at once confessed himself to be the author of the obnoxious article, and he was, in consequence, compelled to leave the school. In the age of boy-periodicals this was certainly a most provoking consequence of his first effort at furnishing contributions, and misfortunes, according to the proverb, seldom come singly. His expulsion from Westminster was speedily followed by circumstances still more adverse and distressing. His father who, behind the counter, had languished, like an animal transplanted to an uncongenial climate, became bankrupt and died.

Southey was now sent to matriculate at Oxford. It had been intended that he should enter at Christ Church, and his name had accordingly been put down there. But the Westminster mishap having reached the dean’s ears, that dignitary, alarmed at the idea of insubordination, refused him admittance, and he consequently entered at Balliol College in 1792. His views and opinions, in regard to the forms and discipline of the place, were not such as to favor his profiting much by his residence there; and, though destined by his well-meaning relations for the Church, he seems never to have cherished the prospect of clerical honors with any degree of mental satisfaction. Yet, with all his eccentric tenets and sentiments, he was staid and decorous in demeanor, and meritoriously refrained from the excesses which he too frequently witnessed.

Southey was, by this time, animated and deluded by all the too sanguine credulity and glowing enthusiasm which so often mark and cloud the morning of genius, and lead its possessor astray. While in a state of intellectual fever and political excitement he made the acquaintance of Coleridge, with whom he soon devised the fanciful and bubble-like scheme since known and ridiculed as “Pantisocracy.” This consisted of fantastic plans for collecting a number of discontented youths, as brother-adventurers, and forming a colony in the New World, on a thoroughly social basis. Southey wasted much time and care on this chimerical idea; and it was decided that the aspirants to perfect earthly content and felicity should commence operations by purchasing, with their common contributions, a quantity of land, which they were all to spend their labor in cultivating. Each was to have a fair share of work assigned to him, while it was arranged that the female emigrants—for one important regulation provided that they were, without exception, to be married men—should manage all domestic matters. Southey luxuriated in golden dreams and visionary anticipations; his ardent spirit swelled and rose high. All obstacles disappeared before his enthusiastic gaze, and he engaged the hand and affections of a dowerless but captivating damsel in his native place, who rejoiced in the very romantic name of Edith, and had no insuperable objections to accompany him to the land of promise, which lay sweetly, as his fancy pictured it, ready to receive them on the banks of the Susquehannah River, flowing with milk and honey. So far all went as smoothly with Southey as a total inexperience of the real world, and full and entire confidence in his own untried powers of action, could render matters to a strong imagination. But there was yet a lioness of no ordinary ferocity in the way. Miss Tyler had still to be informed, and the startling intelligence that her hopeful nephew had, without consulting her wishes, selected a partner for life, was instantly productive of one most inconvenient result. It brought upon him the sudden and rebounding torrents of her wrath. The night was rainy, but she was cut to the heart; and, mercilessly turning him out of doors, she never condescended to see his face again. This was a sufficiently portentous commencement for the Pantisocratic form of society; and the scheme, as might have been foreseen, proving utterly impracticable, the day-dream vanished into thin air when the most distant effort was made to realize it.

Southey was now, for the first time, thrown entirely on his own resources, and that struggle for existence by exertion, which invigorates the mind and influences the understanding, began in earnest. Under no circumstances could his ambitious spirit have been still at this date. The stream was still near its rise, and fretted itself into foam against each opposing rock; but the time was approaching when its course was to be more smooth, and its waters not less clear. His first step was to arrange with Mr. Cottle, of Bristol, for the publication of “Joan of Arc,” with which he had been for a considerable time occupied, and the next to deliver a course of historical lectures, which were numerously attended. Nevertheless, it appears that his pecuniary affairs were not by any means in a flourishing condition at this crisis.

In 1794 he had, in conjunction with his friend Mr. Lovell, under the names of Moschus and Bion, published a volume of poems; and about the same period Southey, then glowing with revolutionary zeal, composed his “Wat Tyler.” It is spoken of as a production of no merit, and utterly harmless from its weakness. Long after the author had recanted his early heresies, it was published surreptitiously to annoy him, and he, in self-defense, applied for an injunction against the printers. But the Chancellor refused to interfere in the matter, on the ground of the peculiarly objectionable principles which the book contained. The writer of this hapless—and, as it turned out, perplexing—revolutionary brochure, in after life thus accounted for its unwelcome existence:

“In my youth, when my stock of knowledge consisted of such an acquaintance with Greek and Roman history as is acquired in the course of a scholastic education, when my heart was full of poetry and romance, and Lucan and Akenside were at my tongue’s end, I fell into the political opinions which the French revolution was then scattering throughout Europe; and, following those opinions with ardor, wherever they led, I soon perceived that inequalities of rank were a light evil compared to the inequalities of property, and those more fearful distinctions which the want of moral and intellectual culture occasions between man and man. At that time, and with those opinions, or rather feelings (for the root was in the heart, and not in the understanding), I wrote ‘Wat Tyler,’ as one who was impatient of all the oppressions that are done under the sun. The subject was injudiciously chosen; and it was treated as might be expected by a youth of twenty, in such times, who regarded only one side of the question. Were I to dramatize the same story now, there would be much to add, but little to alter; I should write as a man, not as a stripling; with the same heart and the same desires, but with a ripened understanding, and competent stores of knowledge.”

Next year, while “Joan of Arc” was still in the press, Southey was, with a view to his welfare, urged and persuaded to accompany his uncle, Mr. Hill, to Lisbon, where that gentleman was chaplain to the factory. Consequently, when the epic poem appeared, its author had left the country; but not until he had contracted a matrimonial alliance, under circumstances so romantic as to put to shame the inventive faculty of novelists, and furnish another instance of truth being often stranger than fiction. His reverend friend and patron was under the impression that a change of scene and society would effectually dissipate and banish all fine visions of love, emigration, and social perfection on the banks of a North American river: but Southey clung to the object of his affection with poetic indiscretion and disinterestedness, and took a very conclusive precaution that the first part of this anticipation should be falsified. On the eve of departure for the continental excursion, he took the bold and irretrievable course of privately leading the adored Edith to the altar, where he received her hand as his bride, and united their earthly fortunes forever. It is stated that they parted immediately after their marriage, at the portico of the church; and the bridegroom set off on his travels. Doubtless, in subsequent years he had no cause to repent of having thus baffled the well-meant designs of his relative, anxious as the latter unquestionably was to promote his interests; and many, as well as Southey, who have, after a similar fashion, defied the fears of the wise, and rushed desperately on matrimony, have found in the duties which attend it, the best incitements to exertion, and the elements of honorable success in life. Yet early marriages in circumstances like his are extremely unsafe to stand upon; and Southey’s kinsman was quite justified in telling him to beware.

In the year 1796 Southey joyfully returned to England where his poem had in his absence been published; and he began to form the notes he had made while abroad into “Letters from Spain and Portugal.” He found it necessary to accept the fulfillment of an old promise of pecuniary assistance from a very intimate college friend; and then he proceeded to London, with the grand intention of studying and accomplishing himself in the laws of the realm. He was duly entered as a student at Gray’s Inn, and made an attempt to combine legal studies with poetical prepossessions; but this, as might have been expected, proved quite futile. Law and poetry—the perusal of Blackstone and the writing of “Madoc”—were not very harmonious conjunctions, as he soon discovered, to the neglect of the former.