"July 6, 1842.
To the Rev. John Foster,
My dear Sir,—I sympathize with you on the comparatively recent loss of so large a proportion of your early friends and acquaintance. I can, to a great extent, participate in similar feelings. Yourself and Mr. Wordsworth are the only two survivors, of all with whom in early life I joined in familiar intercourse, for poor dear Southey since I last wrote to you concerning him, is worse than dead. Mr. W., who dined with me last summer, told me that he does not now know his own children. He said, he had a short time previously called upon him, and he fancied that a slight glimpse of remembrance crossed his mind, when, in a moment, he silently passed to his library, and taking down a book, (from mechanical habit) turned over the pages, without reading, or the power of reading. Pardon prolixity, where the heart is so full. Surely the world does not present a more melancholy, or a more humiliating sight, than the prostration of so noble a mind as that of my old and highly-prized friend, Robert Southey. When I first knew him, he had all that Westminster and Oxford could give him. He was, as the Mores said, to whom I had introduced him, 'brimfull of literature:' decisive and enthusiastic in all his sentiments, and impetuous in all his feelings, whether of approval or dislike. I never knew one more uncompromising in what he believed either to be right, or wrong; thereby marking the integrity of his mind, which ever shrunk from the most distant approximation to duplicity or meanness.
This disposition manifested itself almost in infancy, for his mother, an acute and very worthy woman, told me, in the year 1798, that whenever any mischief or accident occurred amongst the children, which some might wish to conceal, she always applied to Robert, who never hesitated, or deviated from the truth, though he himself might have been implicated. And in after life, whatever sentiments he avowed, none who knew the confirmed fidelity of his mind, could possibly doubt that they were the genuine dictates of his heart.
There was in Southey, alas! his sun is set!—I must, write in the third person!—one other quality which commands admiration; an habitual delicacy in his conversation, evidencing that cheerfulness and wit might exist without ribaldry, grossness, or profanation. He neither violated decorum himself, nor tolerated it in others. I have been present when a trespasser of the looser class, has received, a rebuke, I might say a castigation, well deserved, and not readily forgotten. His abhorrence also of injustice, or unworthy conduct, in its diversified shapes, had all the decision of a Roman censor; while this apparent austerity was associated, when in the society he liked, with so bland and playful a spirit, that it abolished all constraint, and rendered him one of the most agreeable, as well as the most intelligent of companions.
It must occasionally have been exemplified in your experience, that some writers who have acquired a transient popularity, perchance, more from adventitious causes, than sterling merit, appear at once to occupy an increased space, and fancy that he who fills his own field of vision, occupies the same space in the view of others. This disposition will almost invariably be found in those who most readily depreciate those whom they cannot excel; as if every concession to the merits of another subtracted from their own claims. Southey was eminently exempt from this little feeling. He heartily encouraged genius, wherever it was discoverable; whether, 'with all appliances,' the jewel shone forth from academic bowers, or whether the gem was incrusted with extraneous matter, and required the toil of polishing; indifferent to him, it met with the encouraging smile, and the fostering care.
It may be truly said, Mr. Southey exacted nothing, and consequently his excellencies were the more readily allowed; and this merit was the greater, since, as Mr. Coleridge remarked, "he had written on so many subjects, and so well on all." Although his company was sought by men of the first rank and talent, from whom he always received that acknowledgment, if not deference, which is due to great attainments and indisputable genius, yet such honours excited no plebeian pride. It produced none of that morbid inflation, which, wherever found, instinctively excites a repulsive feeling. It was this unassuming air, this suavity of deportment, which so attached Southey to his friends, and gave such permanence to their regard.
It seems almost invidious to single out one distinguishing quality in his mind, when so many deserve notice, but I have often been struck with the quickness of his perception; the promptitude with which he discovered whatever was good or bad in composition, either in prose or verse. When reading the production of another, the tones of his voice became a merit-thermometer, a sort of Aeolian-harp-test; in the flat parts his voice was unimpassioned, but if the gust of genius swept over the wires, his tones rose in intensity, till his own energy of feeling and expression kindled in others a sympathetic impulse, which the dull were forced to feel, whilst his animated recitations threw fresh meaning into the minds of the more discerning.
What an emblem of human instability! The idea of Robert Southey's altered state can hardly force itself on my imagination. The image of one lately in full vigour, who appeared, but as yesterday, all thought and animation, whose mind exhibited a sort of rocky firmness, and seemed made almost for perpetuity; I say it is hard to conceive of faculties so strong and richly matured, reduced now even to imbecility! The image of death I could withstand, for it is the lot of mortals, but the spectacle of such a mind associated with living extinction, appears incongruous, and to exceed the power of possible combination. Those who witnessed the progressive advances of this mournful condition were prepared for the event by successive changes, but with my anterior impressions, if in his present state I were to be abruptly presented to Robert Southey, and met the vacant and cold glance of indifference, the concussion to my feelings would so overwhelm, that—merciful indeed would be the power which shielded me from a like calamity.
Southey spent a week with me, four or five years ago, when he manifested the same kind and cordial behaviour, which he had uniformly displayed for nearly half a century, and which had never during that long period been interrupted for a moment. Nor was steadfastness in friendship one of his least excellencies. From the kindliness of his spirit, he excited an affectionate esteem in his friends, which they well knew no capriciousness on his part would interrupt: to which, it might be added, his mind was well balanced, presenting no unfavourable eccentricities, and but few demands for the exercise of charity. Justly also, may it be affirmed, that he was distinguished for the exemplary discharge of all the social and relative virtues; disinterestedly generous, and scrupulously conscientious, presenting in his general deportment, courteousness without servility, and dignity without pride. There was in him so much kindliness and sincerity, so much of upright purpose, and generous feeling, that the belief is forced on the mind, that, through the whole range of biographical annals, few men, endowed with the higher order of intellect, have possessed more qualities commanding esteem than Robert Southey; who so happily blended the great with the amiable, or whose memory will become more permanently fragrant to the lovers of genius, or the friends of virtue. Nor would Southey receive a fair measure of justice by any display of personal worth, without noticing the application of his talents. His multifarious writings, whilst they embody such varied excellence, display wherever the exhibition was demanded, or admissible, a moral grandeur, and reverence of religion, which indirectly reflects on some, less prodigally endowed, who do, and have, corrupted by their prose, or disseminated their pollutions through the sacred, but desecrated medium of song.