Part 22

"In 1842, his Pilgrim of Glencoe, and other Poems, appeared, dedicated to his friend and physician. Dr. William Beattie, whom he also named one of his executors; Mr. William Moxon, of the Middle Temple, brother of Mr. Edward Moxon, his publisher, being the other. He also wrote a Life of Petrarch, and a year or two before his death he edited the Life of Frederic the Great, published by Colburn. In this year, that is, in 1842, he again visited Germany. On one occasion, in the writer's presence, he expressed a strong desire to go to Greece; but he never carried that intention into effect, probably from the want of a companion. On his return from Germany, with which he was now become familiar, he took a house at No. 8, Victoria-square, Pimlico, and devoted his time to the education of his niece, Miss Mary Campbell, a Glasgow lady, whom he took to live with him. But his health, which had long been in a declining state, began to give way rapidly. He was no longer the man he was; the energy of his body and mind was gone, and in the summer of 1843 he retired to Boulogne, where at first he derived benefit from the change of air and scene. But this did not continue long, and he gradually grew feebler; he seldom went into society, and for some months before his death he corresponded but little with his friends in this country. A week before his decease Dr. Beattie was sent for from London, and on his arrival at Boulogne he found him much worse than he had anticipated. The hour was approaching when the spirit of the poet of Hope was to quit this transitory scene, and return to God who gave it. On Saturday afternoon, the 15th June, 1844, he breathed his last, in the presence of his niece, his friend Dr. Beattie, and his medical attendants. His last hours were marked by calmness and resignation. The Rev. Mr. Hassell, an English clergyman, was also with Mr. Campbell at the time of his death.

"Campbell's funeral," continues this able writer, "was worthy of his fame. He was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey, on Wednesday, July 3, 1844. The funeral was attended by a large body of noblemen and gentlemen, and by several of the most eminent authors of the day. Mr. Alexander Campbell and Mr. Wiss, two nephews of the deceased poet, with his executors, were the chief mourners; and the pall was borne by Sir Robert Peel, the Earl of Aberdeen, the Duke of Argyle, Lord Morpeth, Lord Brougham, Lord Campbell, Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart, and Lord Leigh. The corpse was followed by a large number of members of parliament and other distinguished gentlemen. The following interesting account of the funeral was written by an American, who was present among the crowd of spectators, on the mournful occasion:--

"'At twelve o'clock the procession, which had been formed in the Jerusalem Chamber, adjoining the abbey, came in sight, as you looked through the length of the abbey toward the western door. All you could see, at first, at this immense distance, was a dark mass; and so slowly did the procession advance, that it scarcely seemed to move. As it came near, every voice was hushed, and, beside the solemn tramp of the procession, the only voice audible was the voice of the clergyman echoing along the vaulted passages, "I am the resurrection and the life." Borne before the coffin were a number of mourning plumes, so arranged as to correspond with it in shape. When the procession halted, and the coffin was laid upon the temporary scaffold before the desk, the plumes were placed upon it. There was no other attempt at splendor. All was as simple as in the most ordinary funeral solemnity. It was a grand spectacle, and such as I never expect to see again. Not merely the nobles of the land, but its ablest men, who, from day to day, are directing the destinies of the mightiest monarchy on the globe, and whose names will live in after-times, were bearing the remains of the departed poet to the hallowed palace of the dead. Among the pall-bearers were Lord Brougham, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Aberdeen; among the mourners, Macaulay, D'Israeli, Lockhart, and many others known to fame. I had hoped to see Wordsworth, and, perhaps, Carlyle, but neither of them were there. The burial-service was read by the Rev. Dr. Milman [canon of Westminster, and rector of St. Margaret's], author of The Siege of Jerusalem, History of the Jews, and other works. At the close of the service, the plumes were taken from the coffin, and the body lowered into the grave. As the mourners gathered around the opening, the sound of what seemed distant thunder called my attention to the windows. It was a dull, dark day, and I supposed, for a moment, that a storm was at hand, till the sweet strain of a beautiful melody, from the organ in the choir, in the rear, undeceived me. Then followed again the rumbling of thunder, like the marching of mighty masses of the dead, varied occasionally by snatches of harmony, and conveying an impression of unutterable solemnity. It was the Dead March in Saul.

"'There was one part of the ceremony more impressive still. A deputation from the Polish Association was present, in addition to the Poles who attended as mourners; and when the officiating clergyman arrived at that portion of the ceremony in which dust is consigned to dust, one of the number (Colonel Szyrma) took a handful of dust, brought for the occasion from the tomb of Kosciusko, and scattered it upon the coffin. It was a worthy tribute to the memory of him who has done so much to immortalize the man and the cause; and not the less impressive because so perfectly simple. At the conclusion of the service, the solemn peals of the organ again reverberated for some minutes through the aisles of the abbey, and the procession retired as it came.

"'The barrier with iron spikes, which protected the mourners from the jostling of the crowd, was then removed, and there was a rush to get a sight of the coffin. After waiting a little while, I succeeded in looking into the grave, and read the inscription on the large gilt plate:--

THOMAS CAMPBELL, LL.D. AUTHOR OF THE PLEASURES OF HOPE, Died June 15, 1844. Aged 67.

"'On visiting the abbey the next day, I found the stone over the grave so carefully replaced, that a stranger would never suspect there had been a recent interment. To those who may hereafter visit the spot, it may be interesting to know that it is situated between the monument of Addison and the opposite pillar, not far from that of Goldsmith, and closely adjoining that of Sheridan. His most Christian wish is accomplished. He lies in the Poet's Comer, surrounded by the tombs and monuments of kings, statesmen, warriors, and scholars, in the massy building guarded with religious care, and visited from all parts of the land with religious veneration.'"

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

The great home and haunt of Robert Southey was Keswick. Of the sixty-nine years that he lived, he spent exactly forty there. He settled there at the early age of twenty-nine, and commenced a life of the most unremitting industry, which he pursued till nature gave way, and the powers of his mind sunk under their taskmaster. There never was a more thorough fixture as a literary man. It seemed to be the highest enjoyment of his life to work; and having taken the bent in time to work on the right side, he avoided the general fate of literary men, and died in good esteem with the powers that be, and worth £12,000.

Of the period of Southey's life previous to settling at Keswick, there is little to be said in this work. No good biography of him exists, and the materials for his life are still in the hands of his executors, and not issued in due form to the public. He was born in Bristol, 1774. His father was a linendraper there,--a most extensive wholesale linendraper, says a short memoir of him affixed to a French selection from his poems. This, I suppose, is one of the statements usually made to take off from the lives of men who have risen to eminence, the writers think, something of their vulgar origin. But what care all sensible people what a man's origin was, so that his career was honorable? Who thinks, because Shakspeare was the son of a wool-comber; because Ben Jonson was apprenticed to a mason; because Milton was a schoolmaster; because Sir Walter Scott was the son of an attorney; because Moore was the son of a grocer and spirit dealer, and Chatterton was a charity boy, that they are one whit less the genuine nobles of the land? It is high time that we got rid of this vulgar way of thinking, and regarded all men, all trades, all origins honorable, when there has been no moral obliquity about the persons themselves. Whether Southey's father, then, was "a most extensive linendraper," and could say with John Gilpin,

"I am a linendraper bold, As all the world doth know;"

there is no doubt that he was a retail as well as wholesale trader. His shop was at the sign of the Golden Key, in Wine-street; and there the shop still remains in the very same trade, and with the golden key hanging in front still, as the sign. In this shop Robert used to serve as a boy. I believe his father was then deceased, and the concern was in the hands of his uncle, who brought him up. However, he was a gay youth, and served only of a fashion. At one time he was measuring off his drapery goods with his yard-wand, at another he was measuring the fields after the hounds, and used to come in amid all the shop customers in his splashed boots and scarlet coat. His uncle did not augur much success in trade from this style of doing business, and destined him for the Church. His friends and associates were chiefly dissenters; but young dissenters, caught early and well drilled, make the stanchest churchmen. He was first educated by a Baptist minister, Mr. Foote, a very able, but very old man. He was then removed to a school at Corston, where he remained about two years, and it was probably at the conclusion of this schooling that it was intended to put him to the drapery business. On the plan of devoting him to the Church opening itself, he would naturally be sent to one of the Church preparatory schools; and accordingly he went to Westminster, in 1787, where, in 1790, he fell under censure, for his concern in the rebellion excited against the master, Dr. Vincent. In 1792, he became a student under Baliol College, Oxford, but Unitarian principles and the revolutionary mania put an end to that design. So strongly did he imbibe the new opinions on politics, which the explosion in France had produced, that he, with his friends Lovell and Coleridge, projected a plan of settling on the banks of the Susquehannah, in North America, and there founding a new republic, under the name of the Pantisocracy. This utopian scheme was soon dissolved for the want of means; and in 1795, Mr. Southey married Miss Fricker. Every one remembers Byron's lines in Don Juan, when speaking of Coleridge, he says:

"When he and Southey, following the same path, 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, And take up rather more time than a day, To name his works--he would but cite a few-- Wat Tyler--Rhymes on Blenheim--Waterloo.

"He had written praises of a regicide; He had written praises of all kings whatever; He had written for republics far and wide, And then against them bitterer than ever: For pantisocracy he once had cried Aloud, a scheme less moral than 'twas clever; Then grew a hearty anti-Jacobin-- Had turned his coat--and would have turned his skin.

"He had sung against all battles, and again In their high praise and glory; he had called Reviewing, 'the ungentle craft,' and then Become as base a critic as e'er crawl'd-- Fed, paid, and pampered by the very men By whom his muse and morals had been mauled. He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose, And more of both than any body knows."

BYRON, _The Vision of Judgment_.

Spite of the indecencies of Byron's muse, and the orthodox character of Southey's, it must be confessed that the former is much less mischievous than the latter. Everywhere, Byron speaks out boldly his opinion of men and things. Everywhere, he hates despotism, and laughs to scorn cant and hypocrisy. If he be too free in some of his sentiments, he is equally free where he ought to be so. The world will never have to complain that the liberties of mankind have been curtailed through the inculcations of Lord Byron; or that he has endeavored to confound all just sense of morals, by heaping incense on the vilest of princes. What an impressive contrast is there between the Laureate's hymning of the bloated George IV. into Dublin, and the Irish Avater of Byron:--

"Oh, what a joy was there! In loud huzzas prolonged. Surge after surge the tide Of popular welcome rose; And in the interval alone Of that tumultuous sound of glad acclaim Could the deep cannon's voice Of duteous gratulation, though it spake In thunder, reach the ear. From every tower the merry bells rung round, Peal hurrying upon peal, Till with the still reverberating din The walls and solid pavement seem to shake, And every bosom with the tremulous air Inhaled a dizzy joy.

Age, that came forth to gaze That memorable day, Felt in its quickened veins a pulse like youth; And lisping babes were taught to bless their king, And grandsires bade their children treasure up The precious sight, for it would be a tale, The which in their old age Would make their children's children gather round, Intent all ears to hear."

_Southey's Ode on the King's Visit to Ireland._

Who would not have believed that this was some virtuous monarch, the father of his people? What had the Irish to bless this king for? What ears now are intent to hear of this vaunted boon of this great and good king's visit sung by this paid poet, the pious Southey? What a much more healthy though terrible truth exists in the Irish Avater, by Lord Byron!