more, assuredly, would not be required from one to whom so little had been given. He lived about four years after this removal. His brother Edward died a year before him, of pulmonary consumption. This event affected him deeply. He attended the funeral, described the condition of the coffins in the fam on this occasion, stole the veteran quid, and substituted in its place a dead mouse just taken from the trap. Presently the sleeper, half wakening without unclosing his eyes, and half-stupefied, put up his hand, and, taking the mouse with a finger and thumb, in which the discriminating sense of touch had been blunted by coarse work and unclean hab-ily vault in a manner which I well remember, and said its, opened his mouth to receive it, and, with a slow, sleepy tongue, endeavored to accommodate it to its usual station, between the double teeth and the cheek. Happening to put it in headforemost, the hind legs and the tail hung out, and a minute or more was spent in vain endeavors to lick these appendages in, before he perceived, in the substance, consistence, and taste, something altogether unlike tobacco. Roused at the same time by a laugh which could no longer be suppressed, and discovering the trick which had been played, he started up in a furious rage, and, seizing the poker, would have demolished the squire for this practical jest, if he had not provided a retreat by having the doors open, and taking shelter where Thomas could not, or dared not, follow him. The same quiet humor, with exquisite touches of a quiet and deep-felt pathos, are in the notice of this uncle William's death. that his turn would be next. One day, on my return from school at the dinner-hour, going into the summer-house, I found him sitting in the middle of the room and looking wildly. He told me he had been very ill, that he had had a seizure in the head, such as he had never felt before, and that he was certain something very serious ailed him. I gave the alarm; but it passed over; neither he himself, nor any person in the house, knew what such a seizure indicated. The next morning he arose as usual, walked down stairs into the kitchen, and as he was buttoning the knees of his breeches, exclaimed, Lord, have mercy upon me!" and fell from the chair. His nose was bleeding when he was taken up. Immediate assistance was procured, but he was dead before it arrived. 66 Bristol Theatre and its associations, though as We must pass for the present the notices of the pleasant as a fairy tale; and content ourselves with illustrating their effect in a humorous little ancedote. bus et fœminis. He had now got his Dramatis Persone, but he could not tell what to make them say, and then I gave up the business. For one or two years he walked into the heart of the city every Wednesday and Saturday to be shaved, and to purchase his tobacco; he went, also, sometimes to the theatre, which he enjoyed highly. On While this dramatic passion continued, I wished no other occasion did he ever leave the house; and, my friends to partake it; and soon after I went to as inaction, aided, no doubt, by the inordinate use Williams' school, persuaded one of my school-felof tobacco, and the quantity of small beer with lows to write a tragedy. Bellard was his name, which he swilled his inside, brought on a prema- the son of a surgeon at Portbury, a good natured ture old age, even this exercise was left off. As good fellow, with a round face which I have not soon as he rose, and had taken his first pint of beer, seen for seven or eight-and-thirty years, and yet which was his only breakfast, to the summer-house fancy that I could recognize it now, and should be he went, and took his station in the bow-window right glad to see it. He liked the suggestion, and as regularly as a sentinel in a watch-box. Here it agreed to it very readily, but he could not tell what was his whole and sole employment to look at the to write about. I gave him a story. But then anfew people who passed, and to watch the neighbors, other difficulty was discovered; he could not devise with all whose concerns at last he became perfectly names for the personages of the drama. I gave intimate, by what he could thus oversee and over-him a most heroic assortment of propria quæ marihear. He had a nickname for every one of them. In the evening, my aunt and I generally played at five-card loo with him, in which he took an intense interest; and if, in the middle of the day, when I But not only the schoolboys and the schoolcame home to dinner, he could get me to play at marbles in the summer-house, he was delighted. masters live again in these vivid recollections, but The points to which he looked on in the week were even the occasional visitors of the schools, startthe two mornings when Joseph came to shave him;ling and impressive to a boy for their awful familthis poor journeyman barber felt a sort of compas- iarity to his pedagogue, return with all their porsionate regard for him, and he had an insatiable ap- tentous importance once again. The best sketch petite for such news as the barber could communi- of this sort is that of a Bristol breeches-maker in cate. Thus his days past in wearisome uniformity. the days of buckskin, a glorious fellow, Pullen by He had no other amusement, unless in listening to hear a comedy read; he had not, in himself, a single resource for whiling away the time, not even If I could paint a portrait from memory, you that which smoking might have afforded him; and should have his likeness. Alas, that I can only being thus utterly without an object for the present give it words! and that that perfect figure should at or the future, his thoughts were perpetually recur- this hour be preserved only in my recollections! ring to the past. His affections were strong and Sic transit gloria mundi! His countenance exlasting. Indeed, at his mother's funeral his emo-pressed all that could be expressed by human feattions were such as to affect all who witnessed them. That grief he felt to the day of his death. I have also seen tears in his eyes when he spoke of my sisters, Eliza and Louisa, both having died just at that age when he had most delight in fondling them, and they were most willing to be fondled. Whether it might have been possible to have awakened him to any devotional feelings may be doubted; but he believed and trusted simply and implicitly, and name. ures, of thorough-bred vulgarity, prosperity, pride of purse, good living, coarse humor, and boisterous good nature. He wore a white tie-wig. His eyes were of the hue and lustre of scalded gooseberries, or oysters in sauce. His complexion was of the deepest extract of the grape; he owed it to the Methuen treaty; my uncle, no doubt, had seen it growing in his rides from Porto; and heaven knows how many pipes must have been filtered through the Pullenian system, before that fine permanent purple could have been fixed in his cheeks. He appeared always in buckskins of his own making, and in boots. He would laugh at his own jests with a voice like Stentor, supposing Stentor to have been hoarse; and then he would clap old Williams on the back with a hand like a shoulder of mutton for breadth and weight. You may imagine how great a man we thought him. They had probably been boon companions in their youth, and his visits seldom failed to make the old man lay aside the schoolmaster. He was an excellent hand at demanding half a holyday; and when he succeeded always demanded three cheers for his success, in which he joined with all his might and main. If I were a believer in the Romish purgatory, I should make no doubt that every visit that he made to that schoolroom, was carried to the account of his good works. Some such set-off he needed; for he behaved with brutal want of feeling to a son who had offended him, and who, I believe, would have perished for want, if it had not been for the charity of John Morgan's mother; an eccentric but thoroughly good woman, and one of those people whom I should rejoice to meet in the next world. This I learnt from her several years afterwards. At this time Pullen was a widower between fifty and sixty; a hale strong-bodied man, upon whom his wine-merchant might reckon for a considerable annuity, during many years to come. He had chased some lands adjacent to the Leppincott property near Bristol, in the pleasantest part of that fine neighborhood. Sir Henry Leppincott was elected member for the city, at that election in which Burke was turned out. He died soon afterwards; his son was a mere child; and Pullen, the glorious Pullen, in the plenitude of his pride, and no doubt in a new pair of buckskins, called on the widow; introduced himself as the owner of the adjacent estate; and upon that score, without further ceremony, proposed marriage as an arrangement of mutual fitness. Lady Leppincott, of course, rang the bell, and ordered the servants to turn him out of the house. This is a story which would be deemed too extravagant in a novel; and yet you would believe it without the slightest hesitation, if you had ever seen the incomparable breeches-maker. pur In closing this book we have heartily to congratulate Mr. Southey on having opened the biography of his father with a volume of such striking and sterling interest. From the Spectator. THE life of Southey was uneventful; its very occurrences derive their color from his opinions rather than from the nature of the acts, though circumstances have given much publicity to the leading incidents. His early views on politics and religion, and the enthusiasm with which he urged them, excited the hostility of the Pitt tories; the attacks of the Antijacobin giving to his early career a celebrity it would not have attained by itself. When years and experience cooled his enthusiasm and altered his views, and he became linked with men who attacked his old opinions and some of his old associates with a coarseness and fury which were wrongfully attributed to him, he roused the anger of whigs and radicals, as he had formerly done that of their opponents. His life was then assailed for the wide extremes of opinion between Wat Tyler and the Vision of Judgment, or similar strains of loyalty. His quarrels with Byron and the "Satanic School" exposed him to the satirical attacks of Don Juan and the Liberal; and their poetical form embalmed his life and characteristics in a more enduring shape than the political assaults, unless it were the jeux d'esprit of Canning. Hence, the novelty of Southey's biography must be inner rather than outer, and must refer to thoughts rather than deeds. 66 In this point of view it is worth a full exposition, for, independently of his literary eminence, Southey was the head of a class. If Pope set the first example of emancipation from patronage or place, showing that the time had come when a man of genius might reap a sufficient pecuniary reward by his works-and if Goldsmith was the first who really addressed the people-Southey was the original of the modern littérateur, who follows authorship as a regular profession, and holds the pen of a ready writer." Writers, indeed, existed before his time, who were ready enough to undertake anything that was offered to them; but they neither brought knowledge to their labor, nor exercised it conscientiously, nor were able to live by their wits, at least respectably. In all these points Southey was the reverse; for although he had resources apart from literature, (his pension, his salary as Laureate, and, in the outset, 1607. a year allowed him by his schoolfellow, Mr. C. W. W. Wynne,) yet he had family claims upon him through life, and his income from his own labors was sufficient for respectable subsistence. It is desirable to have a full account of the thoughts of such a man, and the gradual changes they underwent. It is also well to be able to trace the acquisition of his knowledge; the economy of time, and the steady industry, by which so much was prepared for and written; the influence that years and outward events exercised upon his opinions and his productions. Whether six full-sized and closely-printed volumes may not partake a little of the "ne quid nimis," will be better told when greater progress is made with the work. As regards the correspondence in the volume before us, the book would have been improved by a somewhat more vigorous excision; by the omission of mere expressions of opinion, or of minor details in reference to other people. As yet, however, the extraneous or unimportant matter is less than might have been imagined. Nearly a half of the volume is occupied by a family history and autobiography, by Southey himself. It was begun in the year 1820, when the writer was six-and-forty, and was addressed in a series of seventeen letters to his friend John May. It brings down the writer's life and reminiscences to the age of fifteen, just before he had to leave Westminster School for a severe jeu d'esprit on flogging, which Dr. Vincent, the head master, took to himself. But this part contains something more than the writer's autobiography. The family history is told at a length rather disproportioned to its interest. The dwellings with the furniture of his parents and immediate relations | ions. We move no longer in the same circles, and are described in a style which partakes of the minutely garrulous. The picture of his own feelings, his mind and its progress, the sketches of the various characters in his own family and at school, are fuller of interest. Even the foreign matters and family genealogy contribute with the biography to form a picture of middle-class life and society such as it existed sixty or seventy years ago; although not altogether free from the using-up habit of the professional littérateur, and not devoid of the "longueurs" which Byron attributed to "Bob Southey." The second half of the volume relates to Southey's life from the age of fifteen to twentyfive, and consists of his correspondence for the no longer see things in the same point of view. I never now write a long letter to those who think with me-it is useless to express what they also feel; and as for reasoning with those who differ from me, I have never seen any good result from argument. I write not in the best of spirits; my mother's state of health depresses me-the more so as I have to make her cheerful. Edith is likewise very unwell; indeed, so declining as to make me somewhat apprehensive for the future. A few months will determine all these uncertainties, and perhaps change my views in life, or rather destroy them. This is the first time that I have expressed the feelings that often will rise. Take no notice of them when you write. It is probable, however, that his health had icence: anxiety, mental exertion, and a sedensomething to do with his greater epistolary ret and the volume closes with medical advice and a partial suspension of his literary labors. of character, which more or less accompanied the The correspondence exhibits some weaknesses author through life; but it also bears witness to the church, in which he had fair prospects, of famhis honesty of purpose and motive. He declined period embraced, with a connecting narrative by his son. Its principal topics are Southey's career at college, his rejection of the church from con-tary life, had begun to produce their usual effects; scientious motives, his struggling uncertainty in regard to a profession, the scheme of Pantisocracy, his literary projects in conjunction with Coleridge and others, and the composition of Joan of Arc and Madoc, with many of his minor poems. Το this period also belong his first marriage, his journey to Spain and Portugal, his appearance before the world as an author, his unsuccessfully consequence to him, because he could not subscribe the Articles. Similar feelings threw him attempt to study for the bar, his final withdrawal upon the world to find his own bread and that of from law and London, and his commencement of literature as the fixed pursuit of his life, in his enthusiasm in politics and social philosophy, it others as he could; while, though not devoid of twenty-fifth year. was, though a youthful, a reasoning, not a head The facts about Pantisocracy are pretty well known from Mr. Cottle's interesting Reminiscences of Coleridge; the history of Southey's epic and other poems have been told by himself in the prefaces to his collected edition; much incidental information about the whole of this period may also be gleaned from various memoirs and the letters of Southey that have been published. The interest of this part lies less in the narrative of the facts than in the pictures of mind and character. To his intimate friends, especially to Mr. Bedford of the Exchequer, Southey pours out himself fully upon all subjects, whether public or personal, with feelings as enthusiastic as might be supposed from a projector of a society, where property should be in common, and literature, science, virtue, and what not, cultivated by all its members, alternately with the cultivation of the earth. His style partakes of his feelings. It is verbose, with a touch of the schoolboy or freshman," sometimes occupied in turning and pointing periods, sometimes declamatorial, and giving little promise of the solidity it afterwards attained, though there is its easy flow. Much of this raw character, however, passed away with his teens; and the call to express his opinions to others left him too. In 1798, when in his twenty-fourth year, he writes thus to Mr. Wynn. 66 You call me lazy for not writing: is it not the same with you? Do you feel the same inclination for filling a folio sheet now s when in '90 and '91 we wrote to each other so fully and so frequently? The inclination is gone from me. I have nothing to communicate-no new feelings-no new opin strong enthusiasm. The critic could see the errors of people on his own side; and it does not seem that his Christianity was ever altogether shaken, though he held a singular kind of Socinianism. The sterling firmness and honesty of Southey Fricker was not in original standing equal to his were shown in his marriage. The family of Miss own, and reverses had overtaken them. Her position is known by the lordly personality of one made acquainted with his plans of emigration and of Byron's couplets; when his aunt Tyler was marriage, she turned him out of doors, on a wet autumn night, leaving him to walk home, a distance of nine miles. His uncle Hill, the Chaplain at Lisbon who had supported him at Oxford after he offered to take him to Portugal for a few his father's failure, was milder, and more politic: months. "im Mr. Hill's object in this was partly to take him out of the arena of political discussion into which him round to more moderate views, and also to wean he had thrown himself by his lectures, and bring him if possible from what he considered an prudent attachment." In the former object he partly succeeded; in attempting to gain the latter, he had not understood my father's character. He was too deeply and sincerely attached to the object of his choice to be lightly turned from it; and the similarity of her worldly circumstances to his own would have made him consider it doubly dishonorable even to postpone the fulfilment of his engagement. * When the day was fixed for the travellers to depart, my father fixed that also for his wedding-day; and on the 14th of November, 1795, was united To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. Nov. 21, 1795, Nan Swithin, near St. Columbs. Grosvenor, what should that necromancer deserve who could transpose our souls for half an hour, and make each the inhabitant of the other's tenement? There are so many curious avenues in mine, and so many closets in yours, of which you have never sent me the key. at Radclift Church, Bristol, to Edith Fricker. English as this. My mother, I believe, never went Immediately after the ceremony they parted. My to any but a dancing-school, and her state was the mother wore her wedding-ring hung round her more gracious. But her half-sister, Miss Tyler, neck, and preserved her maiden name until the re- was placed at one in the neighborhood under a port of the marriage had spread abroad. The fol- Mrs. whom I mention because her history is lowing letters will explain these circumstances, characteristic of those times. Her husband carried and fill up the interval until his return. on the agreeable business of a butcher in Bristol while she managed a school for young ladies about a mile out of the town. His business would not necessarily have disqualified her for this occupation, (though it would be no recommendation,) Kirke White's mother, a truly admirable woman, being in this respect just under like circumstances. But Mrs. might, with more propriety, have been a blacksmith's wife; as in that case, Vulcan might have served for a type of her husband in his fate, but not in the complacency with which he submitted to it, horns sitting as easily on his head as upon the beasts which he slaughtered. She was a handsome woman, and her children were, like the Harleian Miscellany, by different authors. This was notorious; yet her school flourished notwithstanding, and she retired from it at last with a competent fortune, and was visited as long as she lived by her former pupils. This may serve to show a great improvement in the morals of middle life. Here I am, in a huge and handsome mansion, not a finer room in the county of Cornwall than the one in which I write; and yet have I been silent, and retired into the secret cell of my own heart. This day week, Bedford! There is something in the bare name that is now mine, that wakens sentiments I know not how to describe: never did man stand at the altar with such strange feelings as I did. Can you, Grosvenor, by any effort of imagination shadow out my emotion? She returned the pressure of my hand, and we parted in silence.- -Zounds! what have I to do with supper! And again he writes to his friend Cottle. To Joseph Cottle, Esq. The following is Southey's reminiscence of his dancing-days, and his dancing-master, a man of the name of Walters. That poor man was for three years the plague of my life, and I was the plague of his. In some Falmouth, 1795. unhappy mood he prevailed on my mother to let My dear Friend,-I have learnt from Lovel the me learn to dance; persuading himself, as well as news from Bristol, public as well as private, and her, that I should do credit to his teaching. It both of an interesting nature. My marriage is be- must have been for my sins that he formed this opincome public. You know my only motive for wish-ion in an evil hour for himself and for me was it ing it otherwise, and must know that its publicity formed; he would have had much less trouble in can give me no concern. I have done my duty. teaching a bear, and far better success. I do not Perhaps you may hardly think my motives for mar- remember that I set out with any dislike or conrying at that time sufficiently strong. One, and tempt of dancing; but the unconquerable incapacity that to me of great weight, I believe was never which it was soon evident that I possessed, promentioned to you. There might have arisen feel-duced both, and the more he labored to correct an ings of an unpleasant nature at the idea of receiving support from one not legally a husband; and (do not show this to Edith) should I perish by ship wreck, or any other casualty, I have relations whose prejudices would then yield to the anguish of affection, and who would love, cherish, and yield all possible consolation to my widow. Of such an evil there is but a possibility but against possibility it was my duty to guard. Farewell. Yours sincerely, ROBERT SOUTHEY. We will close the present notice with a few gleanings from what after all is the most interesting part of the volume-the autobiography. This was the state of female education and middle-class morals some eighty years ago. Female education was not much regarded in her [his mother's] childhood. The ladies who kept boarding-schools in those days did not consider it necessary to possess any other knowledge themselves than that of ornamental needlework. Two sisters, who had been mistresses of the most fashionable school in Herefordshire, fifty years ago, used to say when they spoke of a former pupil," Her went to school to we;" and the mistress of what some ten years later, was thought the best school near Bristol, (where Mrs. Siddons sent her daughter,) spoke, to my perfect recollection, much such incorrigible awkwardness, the more awkwardly of course I performed. I verily believe the fiddlestick was applied as much to my head as to the fiddlestrings when I was called out. But the rascal had a worse way than that of punishing me. He would take my hands in his, and lead me down a dance: and then the villain would apply his thumb-nail against the flat surface of mine, in the middle, and press it till he left the mark there: this species of torture I suppose to have been his own invention; and so intolerable it was, that at last whenever he had recourse to it I kicked his shins. Luckily for me he got into a scrape by beating a boy unmercifully at another school, so that he was afraid to carry on this sort of contest; and, giving up at last all hope of ever making me a votary of the Graces or of the dancing Muse, he contented himself with shaking his head and turning up his eyes in hopelessness whenever he noticed my performance. "The child is father of the man." Southey's earliest effort at prose (he began to compose verse as early as he could remember) was the type of much of his future writing, a skilful reproduction of other people's matter. Sometimes, when Williams was in good humor, he suspended the usual business of the school and exercised the boys in some uncommon manner. For example, he would bid them all take their What myriads have died Their woe and agony the demon's mirth! IV. Oh fools! my brethren dear, slates, and write as he should dictate. This was to try their spelling; and I remember he once began with this sentence-" As I walked out to take the air, I met a man with red hair, who was heir to a good estate, and was carrying a hare in his hand." Another time he called upon all of a certain standing to write a letter, each upon any subject that he pleased. You will perhaps wonder to hear that no task ever perplexed me so wofully as this. I had never in my life written a letter, except a formal one at Corston before the holydays, every word of which was of the master's dictation, and which used to begin "Honored Parents." Some of the boys produced compositions of this stamp others, who were a little older and more ambitious, wrote in a tradesmanlike style, soliciting orders, or acknowledging them, or sending in an account. For my part I actually cried for perplexity and vexation. Had I been a blockhead this would have provoked Williams; but he always looked upon me with a favorable eye, and, expressing surprise rather than anger, he endeavored both to encourage and shame me to the attempt. To work I fell at last, and presThey looked on all the horrors of the fray, ently presented him with a description of Stone- Or tried to guage the depth of crime, henge, in the form of a letter, which completely When men on piles of brothers' bones to glory filled the slate. I had laid hands not long before upon the Salisbury Guide, and Stonehenge had appeared to me one of the greatest wonders in the world. The old man was exceedingly surprised, and not less delighted; and I well remember how much his astonishment surprised me, and how much I was gratified by his praise. I was not conscious of having done anything odd or extraordinary, but the boys made me so; and to the sort of envy which it excited among them I was indebted for a wholesome mortification. The gun, sword, spear and shield, V. For truly war 's a game,* Which frenzied kings no longer here would play Or if with open eyes climb! |