Giddy fantastic poets of each land."—Donne.

Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, the harvest of so many generations, laid up in my garners; and when I go to the windows, there is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the illimitable sky.'"

This noble collection, of which their possessor might well be proud, which is said to have included by far the best collection of Spanish books in England, and the gathering of which together, through many researches, many inquiries, and many years, had, perhaps, given him almost as much pleasurable excitement as their perusal, is once more dispersed into thousands of hands. The house, indeed, at the time we visited it, was in the act of being repaired, fresh painted and papered, ready for a new tenant; and, of course, looked desolate enough. All the old paper had been torn off the walls, or scraped away; and workmen, with piles of rolls of new paper, and buckets of paste, were beginning their work of revival. The whole house, outside and inside, had an air of dilapidation, such as houses in the country are often allowed to fall into; but, no doubt, when all furnished and inhabited, would be comfortable and habitable enough.

But death had been there, and the appraiser and auctioneer, and a crowd of eager sale-attenders after them; and the history of the poet and the poet's family life was wound up and done there. A populous dwelling it must have been when Southey and his wife and children, and Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter, and perhaps other friends, were all housed in it. And an active and pleasant house it must have been when great works were going on in it, a Thalaba, a Madoc, an article for the Quarterly, and news from London were coming in, and letters were expected of great interest, and papers were sending off by post to printers and publishers, and correspondents. All that is now passed over as a dream; the whole busy hive is dispersed many ways, and the house and grounds are preparing to let at £55 a-year, just as if no genius had set a greater value on them than on any other premises around. It is when we see these changes that we really feel the vanity of human life. But the beauty of the life of genius is, that though the scene of domestic action and sojourn can become as empty as any other, the home of the poet's mind becomes thenceforth that of the whole heart and mind of his nation, and often far beyond that. The Cossack and the Bohemian—did they not also carry away from it to their far-off lands tokens of their veneration?

Before quitting Southey's house for his tomb, I can not resist referring to a little fact connected with his appointment to the laureateship. It is well known that the post was first offered to Walter Scott, who declined it, but recommended Southey, who was chosen. The letters on the whole transaction are given in Lockhart's Life of Scott (chap. xxvi.), and certainly present one of the most luxurious bits of human nature imaginable. Scott, who was then only plain Walter Scott; who was not made Sir Walter for seven years after; who had published the greater number of his popular poetical romances, but had not yet published Waverley; felt, however, quite terrified at the offer of the laureateship. He was quite agonized with shame at the prospect, and wrote off to the Duke of Buccleugh to ask his advice how he was to get decently out of the scrape without offending the prince regent. "I am," says Scott, "very much embarrassed by it. I am, on the one hand, very much afraid of giving offense, where no one would willingly offend, and perhaps losing the opportunity of smoothing the way to my youngsters through life; on the other hand the offer is a ridiculous one; somehow or other, they and I should be well quizzed," etc. * * * "I feel much disposed to shake myself free of it. I should make but a bad courtier, and an ode-maker is described by Pope as a man out of his way, or out of his senses."

Almost by return of post came the duke's answer. "As to the offer of his royal highness to appoint you laureate, I shall frankly say, that I should be mortified to see you hold a situation which, by the general concurrence of the world, is stamped ridiculous. There is no good reason why it should be so; but it is so. Walter Scott, Poet Laureate, ceases to be Walter Scott, of the Lay, Marmion, etc. Any future poem of yours would not come forth with the same probability of a successful reception. The poet laureate would stick to you and your productions like a piece of court plaster. * * * Only think of being chanted and recitatived by a parcel of hoarse and squeaking choristers, on a birthday, for the edification of the bishops, pages, maids of honor, and gentlemen-pensioners! Oh, horrible! thrice horrible!"

Scott replied, "I should certainly never have survived the recitative described by your grace; it is a part of the etiquet I was quite unprepared for, and should have sunk under it."

Such was the horror of Scott, and his great patron Buccleugh, at the very idea of this most ridiculous of offers, of this piece of court plaster, of this horrible, thrice horrible of all quizzes—Scott at once declined the honor; and though he said he should make a bad courtier, assuredly no courtier could have done it in better style, professing that the office was too distinguished for his merits; that he was by no means adequate to it. Now Scott, all this time, had but an income of £2,000 a-year, out of all his resources; we have these calculated and cast up on the very same page, opposite to his letter to Buccleugh; nay, he is in embarrassments, and in the very same letter requests the duke to be guaranty for £2,000 for him: and he thought the laureateship worth £300 or £400 a-year. These facts all testify to his thorough idea of the ignominy of the office. How rich, then, is the sequel! This ignominy, this burning shame of an office, this piece of adhesive court plaster, he goes at once and recommends to Southey! "Hang it," he says to himself, "it would never do for such a man as me; but, by the by, it will do very well for Southey!" Well, he writes at once to Southey—tells him that he has had this offer, but that he has declined it, because he has had already two pieces of preferment, and, moreover, "my dear Southey, I had you in my eye." He adds—and now let any one who thinks himself flattered on any particular occasion, remember this delicious bam—"I did not refuse it from any foolish prejudice against the situation—otherwise how durst I offer it to you, (ay, how, indeed!) my elder brother in the muse?—but from a sort of internal hope that they would give it to you, on whom it would be so much more worthily conferred. For I am not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favor. I have not time to add the thousand other reasons, but I only wished to tell you how the matter was, and to beg you to think before you reject the offer which, I flatter myself, will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with two gowns already, I should have jumped at it like a cock at a gooseberry. Ever yours, most truly, Walter Scott."

The whole is too rich to need a remark, except that Southey accepted it, and Scott wrote him a letter of warmest congratulation on getting this piece of court plaster clapped on his back, and putting himself into a position to be "well quizzed;" but was quite confounded to learn that the honorarium for the "horrible! thrice horrible!" was not £400 a-year, but only £100 and a butt of wine. I wonder whether poor Southey lived to read Scott's life!