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A Graybeard’s Gossip about his Literary Acquaintance. No. XNew Monthly MagazineSmith, Horace, 1779-1849LondonDecember 184781124415-24
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NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. A GRAYBEARD’S GOSSIP ABOUT HIS LITERARY ACQUAINTANCE.No. X.Forsan et hæc olim meminisse
juvabit.
John Scott, Editor of The Champion Newspaper—Notice of his Works. His
Imputations upon Blackwood’s
Magazine lead to his receiving a Challenge, of which the Particulars
are detailed—The Combatants Fight by Moonlight, and Scott is
mortally wounded—Barnes, Editor of The Times Newspaper, his Night Bivouac in the Snow on
Sydenham Common—His Preparations for writing Literary Essays in Early
Life—Barron Field—His successful Emendation of a
Passage in Shakspeare—Accompanies the Writer to the
Lakes—Mr. Wordsworth—Southey
and his Mode of Living at Keswick—his Mental Alienation.
“Memory,” says Fuller, “is like a purse; if it be over-full, that it cannot
shut, all will drop out of it. Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will
carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles, than when it lies untowardly
flapping and hanging about his shoulders.” Be this my excuse for the
methodical manner in which I follow out the parties enumerated on the muster-roll of the
visitants to Sydenham. Next upon the record stands a name to which I can never refer
without a heartfelt pang—that of poor John
Scott! For those who have lived out Nature’s allotted lease, and who,
by extending their term, only become subject to a heavy claim for dilapidations; for him
whom infirmities have reduced to a mere pabulum
Acherontis, “his withered fist still knocking at death’s
door,” I mourn with a due resignation when they fall in ripeness from the
tree of life; rather grateful to Heaven that they were not sooner snatched away, than
vainly murmuring that they were no longer spared. But to the memory of John
Scott, whom in the prime of manhood, and the rich blossoming of his yet
undeveloped fame, subita rapuit mors et violenta
Parca; who fell in that most barbarous relic of the darkest ages—a
duel, what bosom will refuse the tribute of a deep and enduring regret, rendered the more
poignant by the knowledge that his premature and cruel death was altogether unnecessary? In
the wide circle of my literary friends, I know not that I could mention one whose society I
found more uniformly welcome. He did not set himself up for a wag or jester, or a pleasant
fellow, but he was something much better—he was invariably pleasing. In manner,
appearance, deportment, mind, he was a perfect gentleman. Though cheerfully ready to chat
upon the frivolities of the day, he abounded in solid information, which he communicated
with an easy, lucid, and unpremeditated eloquence.
Scott came from Aberdeen, having received his education, if I mistake not, at
the Marischal College of that town. His earliest connexion with the periodical press, was
the editorship of The Stamford
News. In 1813, he tilled the same situation in Drakard’s Newspaper, a Weekly Political and Literary
Journal, which, in the following year, changed its name to The Champion. In this
journal, the principal writers were, the editor, John Hamilton
Reynolds, Horace Smith, and T. Barnes, (subsequently editor of The Times,) of whom, and of his admirable contributions, I shall
speak more fully in the present paper. The writer of these notices
purchased a share of The Champion, which brought him into closer
communion with the editor; but it did not prove a very thriving concern, and, in 1816, the
whole was sold to Mr. J. Clayton Jennings, who had
been Fiscal at Demerara and Essequibo, in which capacity he considered himself to have been
aggrieved by the tyrants of Downing-street; and wanting some weapon wherewith he might blow
the foreign secretary to atoms, he purchased The Champion for the
accomplishment of his benevolent purpose. His long and heavy charges eventually caused the
instrument to explode, dismally shattering its owner’s purse, and leaving the foreign
secretary undemolished!
While Scott was still editor of this
paper, he published “A Visit to Paris in
1814,” and “Paris
Revisited in 1815,” works which, from the intense interest and masterly
treatment of the subject, proved eminently successful. In 1817, appeared “The House of Mourning,” by
John Scott; a beautiful and pathetic poem, commemorating the death
of a beloved child, and dedicated to a friend equally eminent for his professional skill
and the kindness of his heart—Dr. Darling. As
it is little known, our readers will not object to the following short extract, describing
the approach of death, as felt by the parents, when sitting at midnight beside the bed of
their expiring child.
“At last it came,—and something told its coming! As midnight drew, we heard or felt a humming, As if on muffled wheels approach’d a Power That could dismay our souls, and blot the hour! We knew a fatal Presence in the room, And knew that it was come to take our boy; From shadowy wings there seem’d to spread a gloom To make existence pant, and smother joy: A freezing instinct told us Death was near; Our hearts shriek’d inwardly in mortal fear; Yet we were mute,—and on the sufferer’s bed We threw ourselves, and held his breathing head;— Held him, as one who drowns holds to the sand, That crumbles as he clings, and falls about his hand.”
This poem was written in Paris, Scott
being at that time on his way to Italy, respecting which country he had engaged to furnish
a volume of travels for the eminent publishing firm of Longman and Co. He proceeded, I
believe, as far as Naples, and remained several months abroad, but from some unexplained
cause the travels never appeared; a circumstance much to be regretted, for it may safely be
predicated that they would have been “wide as the poles asunder,” from those of
Sir John Carr, whereof we quoted a specimen in a
former paper. In January, 1820, he started the London Magazine, “a work intended to combine the
principles of sound philosophy in questions of taste, morals, and politics, with the
entertainment and miscellaneous information expected from a public journal;” which
object was fully and faithfully carried out, notwithstanding the proverbial frangibility of
prospectus pledges. In the number for November of that year, the editor wrote a long and
elaborate article, entitled “Blackwood’s Magazine,” beginning with the following paragraph:
“With a strong conviction that what we are about to do, ought to be
done—that, in fact, it is discreditable to the character of the literary censorship
of the country, that it has remained so long undone—we, nevertheless, take the
instrument of justice in our hands with considerable reluctance, and
(unaffectedly we say it) with a regret, caused rather by a sense of the heaviness of the
offences we are about to chastise, than any notion of difficulty or danger attending, in
this instance, the task of retribution.”
The serious and heavy charges brought forward, sustained as they appeared to
be by confirmatory evidence, afforded a justifiable warrant for the vigour and severity of
the style employed; but the accuser seems to have travelled out of the record, as defined
by his title, when, after a glowing and exalted eulogium on Sir
Walter Scott, he expresses his regret that one of his works should have
formed the archetype, at least in title, to a production by another writer, of which
latter publication he then speaks in terms which I shall not repeat, for in these papers I
am most anxious to avoid every thing that might give offence to a single individual who may
come under my cursory notice. Reference, however, having been made to Sir Walter
Scott, I may state, en passant,
that in a letter written to myself, and which I shall give to the public, when I come to
speak of that great and good man, he expresses his disapprobation of what he extenuatingly
terms “the horse play” of the writers in Blackwood. In a still longer, still more vigorous, and still more
home-thrusting article, entitled “The
Mohock Magazine,” John Scott renewed his onslaught
upon Blackwood in his December number; and the coming year was
destined to afford painful evidence that his blows had been too well directed, and had
created too great and too wide a sensation, to allow them to be either parried or passed
over.
At a late hour of the night, my friend Scott, after surprising me by a visit at my then residence in the
neighbourhood of London, startled me infinitely more by its object when he inquired whether
I would become his second should he be implicated in a duel, arising from his articles
impugning the conduct and character of Blackwood’s Magazine. I told him that I was one of
the very last persons to whom he should have preferred such a request: first, because I
despised the practice of duelling for its gross folly, while I abhorred it for its
wickedness; secondly, because I was utterly ignorant of all the forms, punctilios, and
practical details necessary for the proper conduct of such affairs. That rival editors,
instead of confining themselves to their appropriate battle-field, their respective
Magazines, should “change their pens for pistols, ink for blood,”
appeared to me, as I frankly confessed, a species of Quixotism totally inconsistent with
their calling; and I reminded my visitant of the general ridicule lavished upon Moore and Jeffrey,
when they fought a duel in consequence of an obnoxious article in the Edinburgh Review. “Your charges,” I
continued, “are either false or true. If the former, you must instantly give the
satisfaction required by publicly retracting all that you have erroneously asserted, and by
making a full, frank, unequivocal apology. If the latter, I ask you whether, as a rational
being, you are warranted in inclining the chance of being murdered, or of murdering a
fellow-creature, both of you husbands and fathers, because you have spoken the truth, such
being at all times your duty, and a duty, moreover, which you have exercised upon the
present occasion from a conscientious conviction, that by so doing you were consulting the
best interests of society, and endeavouring to purify our literature from a contaminating
abuse.”
“You appeal to me as a rational being,” was the reply, “but
in affairs of honour, am I not, in that capacity, placed out of court?”
“Perhaps so, nay, certainly so, in my opinion; but if your charges be
true, as you doubtless believe, or you would never have advanced them, is not your opponent
placed out of court, and deprived of his right of challenge?”
Scott promised to weigh this question in his mind,
as well as all my other objections to his going out; and, after a long conversation, we
parted, though not until I had repeatedly and distinctly expressed my opinions just
recorded, and had as often apprised him that I would not be a party, under any
circumstances, to a hostile meeting, though I would eagerly render him my best services as
a mediator with a view to an amicable adjustment of the affair. Eventually, the challenge
was declined, upon grounds fully set forth by Scott, in a statement,
which, from various notices of it, seemed to receive the sanction of public approbation.
Most unfortunately, his adversary’s intended second publicly gave vent
to some expressions which Scott considered
intentionally offensive to his feelings; and as he was naturally brave, and eager to show
that in his recent conduct he had been governed by much higher motives than any
considerations of personal liability, he rashly sent him an immediate challenge. So eager
was he for the encounter—probably to prevent the intervention of cooler-headed
friends—that the combatants met on the same night, Friday, February 16, and fought by
moonlight, when Scott received the wound of which he died, after a few days of great
suffering. When I last called at Chalk Farm, where he was lying, sanguine hopes were
entertained of his recovery, but unfavourable symptoms supervened, and the next
intelligence I received was that of his death! In performance of the last sad offices of
friendship, I followed his body to its final resting-place in the vaults of St.
Martin’s Church, and joined a committee, consisting of Sir James Mackintosh, Mr. Chantrey,
Dr. Darling, and two or three others, to receive
subscriptions from the public, “on behalf of the helpless family of a man of
ability and virtue, who had only just reached the point where he had a near prospect of
securing the comfort of those who were dear to him.”
Not long before this dreadful occurrence, I remember saying to Scott, “How healthy and how happy you looked when I
met you yesterday, riding with your wife!” “And well I might,” was his
reply, “for I consider a man, when mounted on a good horse, and riding with such a
wife as mine, to be as near to Heaven as the conditions of humanity will allow.” Oh!
what a quick and awful contrast between the delighted equestrian and the dying
duellist—between the happy wife and the heart-stricken widow!
Before I quit this painful subject, let me allude to the following paragraph
in Mr. Cyrus Redding’s “Memoir of Thomas Campbell.”*
“Campbell declared to me that
Hazlitt had been a means of irritating John Scott to such a degree, that it was one cause of his
going out in the duel where he fell.”
Campbell was too prone to believe whatever he might
hear in disparagement of Hazlitt, and in this
instance I have reason to think that he had been misinformed.
My next brief notice will be devoted to Thomas
Barnes, one of my literary acquaintance, whose name will probably be quite
unknown to the
* In the New Monthly Magazine for April, 1847, p. 427.
reader, though his writings, I suspect, have been much more
extensively read than those of any author whom I have already mentioned, or may hereafter
introduce, for he became for many years one of the editors of the Times newspaper, and may claim, I believe,
the very questionable honour of being the old and original “Salmoneus,” or
Birmingham “thunderer,” of that journal. Well educated, a good classical
scholar, possessing a clear and vigorous intellect, with a ready command of nervous
language, he would have been eminently qualified for his office, if his prejudices, his
petulance, and his want of refinement, as well as of consistent political principle, had
not betrayed him into tergiversations, which he endeavoured to defend by vulgar and violent
invective. It was said of Dr. Johnson, that when his
pistol missed fire, he knocked you down with the butt-end; and it might have been urged
against Barnes, that, when his arguments failed to make a hit, he
betook himself to brickbats and bludgeons. Readers there are, who, when perusing such
ruffian sallies, will sapiently exclaim, “What power, what strength, what command
of language!” but they might always witness similar displays, and in a still
higher perfection, by betaking themselves to Billingsgate.
Initiation into the old Egyptian and Eleusinian mysteries, and even into the
modern tomfoolery of Freemasonry, has been always understood to involve some peril to the
probationer; but few, I suspect, ever paid more dearly than did Barnes for his inauguration as a member of the Sydenham confraternity. At
that time he was a man of intemperate habits, ever willing to pronounce Macbeth’s malediction upon the wine-bibber who
“first cries hold—enough!” and loving to wind up the night
with rummers of brandy-and-water, as exuberantly filled as if He still would have the liquor swim An inch or two above the brim. Thus had he indulged one night, until a very late hour, when he bade us adieu, and
retired, as we thought, to the village inn, where a bed had been engaged for him, our
host’s cottage being quite full. Half an hour had elapsed, when a boy came from the
hostelry, to inquire whether they were to sit up any longer for the gentleman, who had
never made his appearance, and might not, perhaps, intend to do so, as such a heavy snow
had fallen. Not less alarmed than surprised at this intelligence, our kind-hearted host and
his servant, each provided with a lantern, immediately sallied forth in search of our
missing friend, and were fortunately enabled to track his footsteps past the inn, to a
drift beneath a bush upon the open common, where they found him lying down, endeavouring to
pull the snow over his body, and indistinctly muttering, “I can’t get the
counterpane over me!—I can’t get the counterpane over me!” Sober
as he had seemed when he quitted the cottage, the cold night-air must have produced a
sudden and complete intoxication, the result of which might have proved fatal, had he not
been rescued in the nick of time from his perilous predicament. Dearly, however, as we have
already intimated, did he pay for this most inauspicious first appearance at Sydenham. A
frightful attack of rheumatism crippled him for several months, and as many years elapsed
before he fully shook off the effects of this Bacchanalian bivouac.
Severe, however, as was the lesson, it did not correct his addiction to deep
potations. While I was part proprietor of the Champion weekly newspaper, he was
engaged to write a series of critical essays on our leading poets and novelists, which he
did, under the appropriate signature of “Strada,” with whose “Prolusiones” the scholastic reader will not be unfamiliar. The series embraced
most of the eminent bards, living and dead, from Campbell and Rogers back to Milton, Shakspeare,
and Spencer: but of the novelists the list was
scanty, beginning and ending, if I mistake not, with Mrs.
Opie and Miss Edgeworth. These papers
displayed great acumen as well as a delicate taste; and though the writer, entertaining
very decided opinions as to the merits of the different authors, expressed them with a
correspondent frankness, his unfavourable verdicts were free from the rude dogmatism and
scurrility that disgraced his angry ebullitions when he became “the thunderer.”
As these papers excited a good deal of attention, and were deemed highly
advantageous to the paper, it became a matter of importance to secure their regular
appearance, an object not easily attained with a writer whose habits were rarely temperate
and never methodical. After several complaints of his irregularity, he himself suggested a
scheme by which we might be guaranteed against future disappointment; and it proved
perfectly successful, though it did not at first present a very promising appearance.
Writing materials were placed upon a table by his bed-side, together with some volumes of
the author whom he was to review, for the purpose of quotations, for he was already fully
imbued with the characteristics, and conversant with the works of all our great writers. At
his customary hour he retired to rest, sober or not, as the case might be, leaving orders
to be called at four o’clock in the morning, when he arose with a bright, clear, and
vigorous intellect, and, immediately applying himself to his task, achieved it with a
completeness and rapidity that few could equal, and which none, perhaps, could have
surpassed. Be it recorded, to his infinite praise, that in later life he must have totally
conquered all the bad habits to which I have alluded, for perhaps there is no human
occupation which requires more incessant industry and rigorous temperance than that of
editor of the Times.
Eventually he became one of the shareholders of that stupendous journal, and died, as I
have heard, in the possession of a handsome fortune. If my memory fail me not, I first met
him at a tenter-ground in Southwark, kept by a relation of Mr.
Alsager, who subsequently became associated with him, as contributor of the
city article to the Times, and whose
melancholy end will be fresh in the recollection of my readers.
With none of the Sydenham associates of my early life did I maintain so long
and so intimate a friendship as with Barron Field,
our intercourse being constant while he remained at the bar in England, and our
correspondence being uninterrupted during the many years that he resided abroad in the
exercise of his judicial functions. Honourable and upright in the discharge of his public
duties, steadfast and cordial in his attachments, this kind-hearted and intelligent man
occasionally impaired the effect of his many good qualities by a certain dogmatism, the
natural result of his long residence among a colonial population, where his superiority
both of rank and information, justified, and perhaps necessitated, some assumption of
superiority, and some imperiousness of manner. In this instance, as in several others, I
have noticed that a lengthened expatriation, tending to place a man in the position of a
foreigner, not only leaves him in ignorance of much that has recently occupied public attention, and so far disqualifies him for general conversation, but
renders an adaptation to the different tone of social manners in England exceedingly
difficult, by engendering a colonial rusticity, if the phrase may be allowed, which does
not easily harmonise with metropolitan urbanity. My friend’s claims to be enrolled
among my literary acquaintance were not very extensive. He prepared
and edited the “Memoirs of James Hardy
Vaux,” a notorious London thief, whose adventures, related by himself,
formed a very interesting, and by no means uninstructive, narrative. In the year 1825 were
published, “Geographical Memoirs of
New South Wales,” containing a valuable body of statistical and general
information, part of which was supplied, and the whole edited by Barren
Field. In 1843, he printed, for private distribution, a few pieces in verse,
entitled, “Spanish
Sketches,” suggested by his travels in that country; and as truth is my
friend, even more than Plato, I must confess my regret
that he did not suppress them, for the gods had not made him poetical, his ear appearing to
have been absolutely insensible to the requisite rhythm of verse. When I add that he was an
enthusiastic admirer of Shakspeare and Wordsworth, it will be seen that a man may possess a pure
taste and ardent love, without a particle of genius for poetry. So profound was his
admiration of Wordsworth, that for many years he had diligently
prepared materials for his literary life, and as I know that the manuscript had been
revised and corrected by the laureate himself, I trust that so valuable and authentic a
memoir will have been preserved. He himself was a careful, though not very discriminating
hoarder of manuscripts, for at his death it was found that he had garnered up a mass of my
letters, extending over more than a quarter of a century, which his executor, at my
request, kindly committed to tho flames.
As a worshipper of our great national bard, Field not only published a most ingenious essay upon his sonnets, in
illustration of his private life, but became a member of the Shakspeare Society, editing
several of their republications, more especially an old collegiate play of “Richard the Third,” in Latin,
which, from the various contractions used in the original, he had no little trouble in
deciphering. His last editorial task was, “Fortune by Land and Sea; a Tragi-comedy, by Thomas Heywood
and William Rowley.” In attempted emendations of Shakspeare’s text, where the obscurity of that
usually lucid writer suggested the probability of some omission or typographical error,
Field took great delight, and I never remember to have seen him in
such a state of excitement as when he had discovered a new, and certainly a most happy
reading, in the last act of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It will be recollected that in the
interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the clowns, Snug,
the joiner, apprehensive that the lion’s hide in which he is attired might frighten
some of the female spectators, thus considerately addresses them— You, ladies, you whose gentle hearts do fear The smallest monstrous moose that creeps on floor, May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here, When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar- Then know that I, one Snug, the joiner, am A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam.
That after thus expressly repudiating his leonine character he should
proclaim himself “a lion fell,” involves a contradiction, which immediately
disappears if, at Field’s felicitous
suggestion, we add a single letter, and read—“a
lion’s fell,” the latter word, in Shakspeare’s time, being currently used for a hide, and being still
retained in our term of fellmonger for a skinner. For this emendation its suggester firmly
believed that his name would be carried down to posterity among the fortunate annotators,
and I am most happy to give him a month’s lift on the journey by recording his
discovery in the pages of the New
Monthly Magazine!
In the summer of 1827 my friend accompanied me on an excursion to the
English Lakes and Edinburgh, a trip which has impressed upon my mind many pleasant and
indelible reminiscences, though it commenced rather inauspiciously, for on arriving at
Rydal Mount we had the great mortification of finding that Mr.
Wordsworth was absent from home. Two summers ago I was more fortunate, for
the patriarch of our literature passed a few days at Leamington, where I was then residing,
and kindly honoured me with two long and most interesting visits, albo lapide notandi. Oh! how truly venerable, I had
almost said how sublime, is the green old age of a virtuous and enlightened man! Who that
had listened to his discourse, who that has marked his hale and animated aspect, who that
had noticed his upright carriage and vigorous gait, could have surmised that he was so
deeply stricken in years? Most gratifying was it to hear from his own mouth that he still
walked out every day, regardless of weather, and that he could stroll six or eight miles
without fatigue. When I saw him thus starting from his home, apparently unconscious of the
pouring rain, he reminded me of Bacon, who, upon
similar occasions, would take off his hat, that he might feel the spirit of the universe
descending upon him. Not so far did the laureate carry his homage to the great goddess; but
it did seem to me that his life-long and profound sympathy with nature had rendered him.
impervious to her changeful visitations, or that the universal mother refused to exercise
any baleful and unbenign influence upon so devoted a son. Long may he live to prove that
genius and goodness can shake off the usual concomitants of senility—“like
dew-drops from the lion’s mane!”
From the residence of the present laureate we proceeded to that of his
distinguished and lamented predecessor, the late Dr.
Southey, at Keswick. Not without a respectful emotion did I push back the
swing-gate, giving access to the large rambling garden in which his house was situated; not
without a reverent curiosity did I gaze upon the books, of which his collection was so
large that they overflowed their appropriate receptacles, and thickly lined the sides of
the stairs up which we ascended. What array of powdered lacqueys, what parade of glittering
soldiers, what saluting flourish of drums and trumpets half so honouring or half so grand,
as thus to be silently ushered into the presence of the intellectually crowned laureate,
through a double column of sages, philosophers, and poets, gathered from every age and from
every clime? Truly this was a dignified reception, but it rather tended to make my spirit
quail at the thought of maintaining a conversation with a man whose naturally exuberant
mind was replenished from so many additional fountains.
In a handsome apartment, forming both a library and sitting room, we found
the laureate, surrounded by a portion of his charming family. Of trivial events I never
retain the specific date, but the honour of an introduction to so distinguished a writer
will excuse my recording that it occurred on the first day of July. I have not forgotten
his telling me that I had chosen too early a period for visiting the Lakes, as the weather
was seldom propitious at that season; and fully did the skies confirm his assertions, for it rained almost incessantly during the whole of my
stay at Keswick. No clouds or mists, however, intercepted my sight of the laureate, and
nothing could be more cordial than the reception I experienced. His quick eye and sharp
intelligent features might have enabled him to pass for a younger man than he really was,
had not his partially grizzled hair betrayed the touches of age. His limbs, too, seemed to
share the activity of his mind, for the course of our conversation requiring reference to
some particular book, he ran with agility up the rail-steps which he had rapidly pushed
before him for the purpose, and instantly pounced upon it. One of his daughters assured me
that he knew the exact position of every volume in his library, extensive as it was. That
he possessed few, if any, which he had not consulted, is evident from the multifarious
reading displayed in “The
Doctor,” the volumes of which are but so many common-place books of uncommon
reading.
We passed the following evening at his house, the conversation generally
taking a literary turn, and though I cannot recall its particular subjects, I remember to
have brought away with me an impression—perhaps an erroneous, perhaps a presumptuous
one—that he betrayed occasionally more party spirit than was quite becoming. If I had
not been too diffident, in such a presence, to disclose my own opinions, he might, perhaps,
have reciprocated the thought. Old age has taught me to abjure all dogmatism; to distrust
my own sentiments; to respect those of others wherever they are sincerely entertained. That
so good, so kindhearted a man as Southey should
write with so much acrimony, not to say bitterness, whenever he became subject to a
political or religious bias, has excited surprise in many persons who did not reflect that
his residence in a remote country town, surrounded by a little coterie of admirers, whose
ready and submissive assent confirmed him in all his prejudices and bigotted notions, must
have had a perpetual tendency to arrest his mind and to prevent its moving forward with the
general march of intellect and liberality. As a public writer, for such might he be deemed
from his intimate connexion with the Quarterly Review, he should have resided in the
metropolis. I have already noticed the injurious effect of a long expatriation upon
manners; and though Southey never left England, his self-banishment
from London imparted a degree of rigid austerity to his mind, and literally accounted for
its want of urbanity. Wordsworth, all whose
sympathies are with nature, rather than with towered cities and the busy haunts of men, is
in his proper element among lakes and mountains; but a critic and a writer, whose business
it is “to catch the manners living as they rise,” should always reside
in a capital city.
Southey made another and a still more unfortunate
mistake when he appropriated to himself the device of in labore
quies—when he maintained and acted upon the theory, that
change of mental labour is equivalent to rest, and that if he alternated between history,
poetry, and criticism, he would not require any relaxation or repose. For any man this
would have been a perilous error, but for one whose sequestered life, however charming
might have been his domestic circle, admitted little other social enjoyment and allowed
hardly any varieties of amusement, a long course of such monotonous labour could not fail
to prove doubly hazardous. But a few more years had been thus passed when the whole
sympathising world had occasion to deplore the truly melancholy results produced by this unmitigated over-exertion of the intellectual faculties; when, to use
the words of his widow, the fiat had gone forth, and “all was in the dust!”
In 1828, long before this calamity, I forwarded him a little work, of which
he immediately acknowledged the reception in a truly gratifying letter. Most justifiably
might I present a copy of it to the reader upon the sole ground that every unpublished
writing from such a pen must be acceptable; but I will frankly confess that I have an
additional motive, and that laudari à laudato
viro is an honour which I cannot consent to forego, when I have such an
excusable opportunity for claiming it.
“Keswick, 6 Nov., 1828.
“Dear Sir,—The book which your obliging letter of the 28th
last announced, arrived yesterday afternoon, and having this morning finished
the perusal, I can thank you for it more satisfactorily than if the
gratification were still an expected one. You have completely obviated every
objection that could be made to the choice of scriptural scenes and manners,
and you must have taken great pains as well as great pleasure in making
yourself so well acquainted with both. In power of design and execution this
book has often reminded me of Martin’s pictures, who has succeeded in more daring
attempts than ever artist before him dreamt of. I very much admire the whole
management of the love story.
“The only fault which I have felt was a want of repose.
How it could have been introduced I know not, but it would have been a relief.
There is a perpetual excitement of scenery and circumstances even when the
story is at rest, and the effect of this upon me has been something like that
of the first day in London, after two or three years at Keswick. Young readers
will not feel this, but as we advance in life, we learn to like repose even in
our pleasures.
“Do me the favour to accept a copy of my ‘Colloquies,’ when they
shall be published, (as I expect,) in January. Though they contain some things
which possibly may not accord with your opinions, there is I think much more
with which you will find yourself in agreement, and the prints and descriptive
portions may remind you of a place which I am glad to remember that you have
visited.
“My wife and daughters thank you for what will be their
week’s evening pleasure. So does my pupil and play-fellow, Cuthbert, who, I am glad to say, feeds upon
books as voraciously as I did at his age.
“Believe me, dear sir, “Yours, with sincere respect, “ROBERT SOUTHEY.”
When all England was plunged into grief by the intelligence that one of its
finest minds had fallen into ruin, the writer of these notices published “A Dirge for a living Poet,” the first
stanza of which he will take the liberty of repeating as an appropriate termination to the
present paper— What! shall the mind of bard—historian—sage, Be prostrate laid upon oblivion’s bier? Shall darkness quench the beacon of our age “Without the meed of one melodious tear?” Will none, with genius like his own, Mourn the fine intellect o’erthrown That died in giving birth to deathless heirs? Are worthier voices mute?—then I, The Muse’s humblest votary, Will pour my wailful dirge and sympathising prayers.