The Poet Robert Southey — A Look At His Character

1874

Character of Southey

Southey went rarely into society; scarcely knew by sight any of the country-people living near him; never rode on horseback; took no outdoor exercise save that of walking, and this often from a mere sense of duty, and with a book in his hand; and, although living in one of the loveliest spots in England, and not insensible to charms, preferred the shelves of his library to the finest prospect in the world. He found his relaxation where he found his daily labor, within the walls of his study. "I can't afford," wrote, "to do one thing at a time; no, nor two neither; and it is only by doing many things that I contrive to do much; for I cannot work long at any thing without hurting myself, and I do every thing by heats; then, by the time I am tired of one, my inclination for another is at hand."

Southey was an affectionate husband and a fond father; and whenever, in his correspondence, he alludes to his home happiness, it is with a tenderness and warmth of feeling that are eminently beautiful. Moreover, he was a constant, and, at all times, noble friend, ready even when in straits himself to help with money or with his pen those who were more straitened. No one ever acted better the part of the good Samaritan, and while he never forgot a benefit received, it would seem as if his own magnanimous charity had no place in his memory. The story of his life abounds in instances of the most generous self-denial, and of a steadfast goodness of heart which never shrunk from the demands made upon it. Heavily burdened as he was with work, he was continually accepting fresh literary labor in order to benefit others; nor was this all, for he received, under his own roof, his wife's widowed sister, Mrs. Lovell; and when Coleridge, in that strange waywardness of mood which his vice of opium-eating can alone explain, deserted his wife and children, it was with Southey that they found home. There is a beautiful anecdote given by Lockhart of a poor music-master offering Scott all his savings in the hour of his adversity; a similar story may be told of Southey, who, when his friend May, an early benefactor of the poet, fell into difficulties, sent him more than six hundred pounds, which was all the money he possessed.

If the poet had strong and generous affections he was also a good hater, but this feeling was shown to principles rather than to persons, and if, which was not seldom, political animosity led him to write bitterly against his antagonists, there was not one of them for whom, after the moment of writing, he retained an unkindly feeling. It is said that he seldom spoke harshly of any man with whom he had once conversed; he had too large a heart for petty animosities, and he was wholly free from envy. At the time when a whole year's sale of a ponderous epic failed to produce the poet five pounds, Scott was gaining his thousands, but not a word of bitterness falls from Southey on this score; and the praise he bestowed on his contemporaries, a few of them more distinguished than himself, but the larger number men of far inferior power, is frequently more generous than just.

Although not, as we have said, a sociable man, he had the good fortune to know intimately most of the illustrious authors who made the early part of this century so famous, and, long before Wordsworth had received the public recognition which was his due as the greatest poet of the age, Southey, like Coleridge, expressed his admiration of his friend and neighbor in no niggard terms. This noble triumvirate, by-the-way, reminds us that probably not since Shakespeare's day have three men of equal mark lived together on terms of intimacy and affection. Landor called them "three towers of one castle," and, as all the world knows, they have been absurdly classed together as forming a school of poetry.

Southey had but little ear for harmony, and it was therefore all the more unfortunate for his fame that he elected to write his "Thalaba" in a novel metre, which is without the dignity of heroic blank verse, or the soothing, satisfying charm of rhyme. Landor saw his friend's mistake in this respect, and observed, very justly: "Are we not a little too fond of novelty and experiment, and is it not reasonable to prefer those kinds of versification which the best poets have adopted and the best judges have cherished for the longest time?" But Southey, on the contrary, was well pleased with his experiment, thinking that, while it gave the poet a wider range of expression, it satisfied the ear of the reader. So far is this from being the case, that no one familiar with the lovely harmony of Shelley's verse, or with the delicate music of Coleridge, to say nothing of earlier and later poets, is likely to gain delight from the strange and fitful, and sometimes jarring notes of Southey. But there is strength in his verse, if not harmony, and "Thalaba," while it has its wildernesses and arid deserts, can also boast, as indeed all Southey's epics may, many a fair scene of richness and beauty. Splendor of diction and felicity of description occur frequently, but frequently also the action halts, the verse drags, and the reader feels inclined to resign himself to slumber. On the whole, perhaps, the erudition lavished on the poem is more striking than its poetical wealth, and it is sometimes a relief to turn aside from the text to the curious and highly-entertaining notes which serve to illustrate it.

Southey himself judged "Roderick" to be the finest of all his poems, and Landor, in writing to him, said: "There is no poem in existence that I shall read so often." Charles Lamb, however, an admirable judge, and Wordsworth also, preferred "The Curse of Kehama," and, without endeavoring to compare the value of the two works, there can be no doubt that they are the poet's greatest and least wearisome efforts. It is singular that in none of Southey's epics are there passages which lay hold of the memory, and become, as it were, a part of one's life. No doubt, the first consideration of the poet should be to have a worthy action, and the more he strives after this object, the less will he concern himself with the beauty of particular passages, but the lack of what may be called "beauties" in Southey's poetry is due, we think, less to the severity of his taste than to the diffusiveness of his style, which has, as it were, no points for the memory to lay hold of. With all their deficiencies, however, the student of English poetry can never pass by with indifference these elaborate productions but he is not likely to agree with Macaulay that Southey's poems, taken in the mass, rank far higher than his prose works. — Cornhill Magazine.