Espoused two partners, milliners of Bath."
Coleridge and Lovell were townsmen of Southey's, and youthful companions. Lovell was of a Quaker family, and all were connected with the dissenters. Soon after his marriage, Southey accompanied his maternal uncle, the Rev. Dr. Hill, to Portugal, that gentleman being appointed chaplain to the Factory at Lisbon. In 1810, Southey obtained the appointment of secretary to the Right Hon. Isaac Corry, chancellor of the exchequer for Ireland. In retiring from office with his patron, our author went to reside at Keswick, where also dwelt, under the same roof, the widow of his friend Lovell, and the wife of Mr. Coleridge, both which ladies were sisters to Mrs. Southey. Such were the movements of Southey till he settled down at Keswick, and there, busy as a bee in its hive, worked out the forty years of his then remaining life. The mere list of his works attests a wonderful industry:—Joan of Arc, 4to, 1796. Poems, 1797. Letters from Spain and Portugal, 8vo. 1797. Annual Anthology, edited by him, 2 vols. 1799-1800. Amadis de Gaul, from a Spanish version, 4 vols. 1803. Edited the works of Chatterton, 3 vols. 1803. Thalaba, 2 vols. 1804. Madoc, 1805. Specimens of Latin Poets, 3 vols. 1807. Palmerin of England, from the Portuguese, 4 vols. 1807. Espriello's Letters, 3 vols. 1807. Edited the Remains of H. K. White, 2 vols. 1807. The Chronicle of the Cid, from the Spanish, 1808. The History of Brazil, 3 vols. 1809. The Curse of Kehama, 1811. Omniana, 3 vols. 1812. Life of Nelson, 2 vols. 1813. Carmen Triumphale, 1814. Odes to the Allied Sovereigns, 1814. Roderick, the Last of the Goths, 1814. The Vision of Judgment. The Life of Bunyan. Morte Arthur, 2 vols. 1817. Life of Wesley, 2 vols. 1820. Expedition of Orsua and Crimes of Aguirre, 1821. All for Love, or the Sinner Well Saved, 1829. Pilgrimage to Compostella. Tales of Paraguay, etc. Essays Political and Moral, 2 vols. 1831. Book of the Church, 2 vols. Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the State of Society, 2 vols. 1832. Lives of British Admirals, 5 vols. 1839-40. Vindicia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ. The Doctor, 5 vols.; etc., etc.
This is a striking list of the works of one man, though he took nearly fifty years of almost unexampled health and industry to complete it. But this does not include the large amount of his contributions to the Quarterly and other periodicals; nor does the mere bulk of the work thrown off convey any idea of the bulk of work gone through. The immense and patient research necessary for his histories, was scarcely less than that which he bestowed on the subject matter and illustrative notes of his poems. The whole of his writings abound with evidences of learning and laborious reading that have been rarely equaled. But the variety of talents and humor displayed in his different writings is equally extraordinary. The love of fun, and the keenness of satire, which distinguished his smaller poems, are enough to make a very brilliant reputation. The Devil's Walk, so long attributed to Porson, but, as testified by themselves, conceived and written by Southey, with some touches and additions from the hand of Coleridge; The Old Woman of Berkeley; The Surgeon's Warning; The Pig; Gooseberry Pie; Ruprecht the Robber; The Cataract of Lodore; Bishop Hatto; The Pious Painter; St. Antidius, the Pope, and the Devil; The March to Moscow;—these and others of the like kind would make a volume, that might be attributed to a man who had lived only for joke and quiz. Then the wild and wandering imagination of Thalaba and Kehama; the grave beauty of Madoc; the fine youthful glow of liberty and love in Joan of Arc; and the vivid fire and vigor of Roderick the last of the Goths, are little less in contrast to the jocose productions just mentioned, than they are to the grave judgment displayed in his histories, or the keenness with which he enters, in his Book of the Church, the Colloquies, and his critiques, into the questions and interests of the day, and puts forth all the acumen and often the acidity of the partisan.
With all our admiration of the genius and varied powers of Southey, and with all our esteem for his many virtues, and the peculiar amiability of his domestic life, we can not, however, read him without a feeling of deep melancholy. The contrast between the beginning and the end of his career, the glorious and high path entered upon, and so soon and suddenly quitted for the pay of the placeman and the bitterness of the bigot, cling to his memory with a lamentable effect. Without doing as many hastily do, regarding him as a dishonest renegade; allowing him, on the contrary, all the credence possible for an earnest and entire change in his views; we can not the less mourn over that change, or the less elude the consciousness that there was a moment when this change must have been a matter of calculation. They who have held the same high and noble views of human life and social interests, and still hold them, find it impossible to realize to themselves the process by which such a change in a clear-headed and conscientious man can be carried through. For a man whose heart and intellect were full of the inspiration of great sentiments, on the freedom of man in all his relations as a subject and a citizen as well as a man, on peace, on religion, and on the oppressions of the poor, to go round at once to the system and the doctrines of the opposite character, and to resolve to support that machinery of violence and oppression which originates all these evils, is so unaccountable as to tempt the most charitable to hard thoughts. Nothing is so easy of vindication as a man's honesty, when he changes to his own worldly disadvantage, and to a more free mode of thinking; but when the contrary happens, suspicion will lie in spite of all argument. We can well conceive, for instance, the uncle of the young poet, with whom he went out to Portugal, a clergyman of the Church of England, saying to him, "Robert, my dear fellow, these notions and these terrible democratic poems,—this Wat Tyler, these Botany Bay Eclogues, and the like, are not the way to flourish in the world. No doubt you want to live comfortably; then just look about you, and see how you are to live. Here are church and state, and there are Wat Tyler and the Botany Bay Eclogues. Here are promotion and comfort, there are poverty and contempt. Take which you will." We can well conceive the effect of such representations on a young man who, with all his poetic and patriotic devotion, did not like poverty and contempt, and did hope to live comfortably. This idea once taking the smallest root in a young man having a spice of worldly prudence as well as a great deal of ambition, we can imagine the youth nodding to himself and saying,—"True, there is great wisdom in what my uncle says. I must live, and so no more Wat Tylers, nor Botany Bay Eclogues. I will adhere to the powers that be, but I will still endeavor to infuse liberal and generous views into these powers." Very good, but then comes the transplanting to a new soil, and into new influences. Then come the hearing of nothing but a new set of opinions, and the feeling of a very different tone in all around him. Then comes the facilis descensus Averni, and the sed revocare gradum hoc opus, hic labor est. The metamorphosis goes on insensibly—Nemo repentè fuit turpissimus; but the end is not the less such as, if it could have been seen from the beginning, would have made the startled subject of it exclaim, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?"
Allowing Dr. Southey the full benefit of all these operating influences, so as to clear his conscience in the metamorphosis as much as possible, yet what a metamorphosis that was! The man who set out in a career that augured the life of a second Milton, ending as the most thorough, though probably unconscious tool of tyranny and state corruption. The writer of Wat Tyler lauding George IV. and Castlereagh! The author of The Battle of Blenheim, singing hymns to the allied sovereigns, and hosannas over the most horrible war and carnage, and for the worst purposes in history. The advocate of the pauper and the mill operative, supporting the power and the system which made pauperism universal, and manufacturing oppressive to the artisan. And last, and worst, the man who justly lashed Lord Byron for his licentious pen, being subjected to the necessity of slurring over the debaucheries of such a monster as George IV., and singing his praises, as a wise, and just, and virtuous prince. While Southey congratulated himself on never having prostituted his pen to the cause of vice, he forgot that to prostitute it to the praise of those who were the most libidinous and vicious characters of their age, was only the same thing in another form. No greater dishonor could have befallen a man of Southey's private character, than to have so fully justified the scarifying strictures of his aristocratic satirist:—
"He said—I only give the heads—he said
He meant no harm in scribbling; 'twas his wa
Upon all topics; 'twas beside his bread,
Of which he buttered both sides; 'twould delay
Too long the assembly, he was pleased to dread,