Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey Part 42

P.S. "I saw Wordsworth on my way, and mentioned your wish about engraving his portrait. He referred it entirely to my opinion of its likeness."[104]

On his arrival, Mr. Southey deliberately re-read the whole of my MS., and objected alone to a few trifles, which were expunged. He read the series of _opium letters_ with a mind evidently affected, but no part did he interdict. He now arrived at, and read the solemn _Testamentary Letter_,(p. 394 [Letter dating "Bristol, June 26th, 1814. Transcriber.]).

I said to him, "Southey shall I, or shall I not, omit this letter." He paused for a few moments, and then distinctly said. "You must print it.

It is your authority for what you have done." He then continued, "You must print it also, for the sake of faithful biography, and for the beneficial effect this, and the other opium letters must inevitably produce." This unqualified approval determined me to publish the whole of the opium letters.

I here give the next letter I received from Mr. Southey, when he had returned home, after his long excursion to Bristol, and the West of England, by which it will be perceived that no after inclination existed in Mr. S.'s mind to alter the opinion he had given.

"Keswick, May 9, 1837.

My dear Cottle,

It is scarcely possible that a day should pa.s.s, in which some circ.u.mstance, some object, or train of recollection, does not bring you to my mind. You may suppose then how much I thought of you during the employment I recently got through of correcting "_Joan of Arc_" for the last time....

Our journey, after we left your comfortable house, was as prosperous as it could be at that time of the year. We have reason, indeed, to be thankful, that travelling so many hundred miles, in all sorts of ways, and over all kinds of roads, we met with no mischief of any kind; nor any difficulties greater than what served for matter of amus.e.m.e.nt. During the great hurricane, we were at Dawlish, in a house on the beach, from which we saw the full effect of its force on the sea.

The great snow-storm caught us at Tavistock, and rendered it impossible for us to make our intended excursion on Dartmoor. Cuthbert and I parted company at my friend, Miss Caroline Bowles's, near Lymington, he going to his brother-in-law, (at Terring, where he is preparing for the University,) I, the next day, to London. I joined him again at Terring, three weeks afterward; and, after a week, made the best of my way home.

The objects of my journey were fully accomplished. Cuthbert has seen most of the spots which I desired to show him, and has been introduced to the few old friends whom I have left in the West of England. I had much pleasure, but not unmingled with pain, in visiting many places which brought back vividly the remembrance of former days; but to Cuthbert, all was pure pleasure.

G.o.d bless you, my dear old friend,

Yours affectionately,

Robert Southey."

In a previous letter Mr. Southey had said in a contemplative mood,

"... Little progress is made in my 'Life of George Fox' but considerable preparation. This, and some sketches of Monastic history, will probably complete the ecclesiastical portion of my labours. Alas! I have undertaken more than there is any reasonable likelihood of completing. My head will soon be white, and I feel a disposition to take more thought for the morrow than I was wont to do; not as if distrusting providence, which has. .h.i.therto supported me, _but my own powers of exertion!_"

I pa.s.s over the intervening period between this, and my old friend's mental affliction, as more properly belonging to Mr. Southey's regular biographer, but this much I may observe.

Having heard, with the deepest concern, that Mr. Southey's mind was affected, I addressed a kind letter to him, to inquire after his health, and requested only one line from him, to relieve my anxiety, if only the signing of his name. I received a letter in reply, from his kindest friend, of which the following is an extract.

"... With deep and affectionate interest he read and re-read your letter, and many times in the course of the evening he received it I observed tears in his eyes. 'I will write to Cottle,' he has often repeated since, but alas! the purpose remains unfulfilled, and from me, dear sir, you must receive the explanation of his silence...."

On communicating this melancholy intelligence to my old and valued friend, Mr. Foster, he thus replied.

"My dear sir,

I am obliged for your kind note, and the letter, which I here return. I can well believe that you must feel it a mournful communication. A friend in early life: a friend ever since; a man highly, and in considerable part, meritoriously conspicuous in the literature of the age; and now at length prostrated, and on the borders of the grave; for there can be no doubt the bodily catastrophe will soon follow the mental one. It is a most wonderful career that he has run in literary achievement, and it is striking to see such a man disabled at last, even to write a letter to an old friend! It is interesting to myself, as it must be to every one accustomed to contemplate the labours and productions of mind, to see such a spirit finally resigning its favourite occupations, and retiring from its fame!..."

Mr. Foster, referring to the death of his friends, thus afterwards wrote.

"Stapleton, June 22, 1842.

My dear sir,

... How our old circle is narrowing around us. Going back just three years and a-half, I was recounting yesterday eleven persons departed within that s.p.a.ce of time; three-fourths of those who had formed, till then, the list of my old friends and acquaintance, leaving just a few, how few, of those who are my coevals, or approaching to that standard.

You are within one, and he at a great distance, whom I may never see again, the oldest in both senses, of the almost solitary remainder. Our day is not far off. Oh, may we be prepared to welcome its arrival...."

The following is an extract from another letter of Mr. Foster's containing the same train of thought.

"My dear sir,

... My thoughts are often pensively turning on the enumeration of those I may call my coevals; and many of them of long acquaintance who have been called away within these few years. An old, and much valued friend at Worcester, Mr. Stokes, from whose funeral I returned little more than in time to attend that of our estimable friend, your brother-in-law, Mr.

Hare; since then, your excellent sister Mary. Mr. Coles, of Bourton, known and esteemed almost forty years. Mr. Addington. Lately in Scotland, the worthy Mr. Dove; and now last of all, so unexpectedly, Mr. Roberts. I dined with him at Mr. Wade's, perhaps not more than ten days before his death....

With friendly regards, I remain, my dear sir,

Most truly yours,

John Foster."

A letter of mine to Mr. Foster, referring chiefly to Mr. Southey, may not inappropriately be here introduced.

"July 6, 1842.

To the Rev. John Foster,

My dear Sir,--I sympathize with you on the comparatively recent loss of so large a proportion of your early friends and acquaintance. I can, to a great extent, partic.i.p.ate in similar feelings. Yourself and Mr.

Wordsworth are the only two survivors, of all with whom in early life I joined in familiar intercourse, for poor dear Southey since I last wrote to you concerning him, is worse than dead. Mr. W., who dined with me last summer, told me that he does not now know his own children. He said, he had a short time previously called upon him, and he fancied that a slight glimpse of remembrance crossed his mind, when, in a moment, he silently pa.s.sed to his library, and taking down a book, (from mechanical habit) turned over the pages, without reading, or the power of reading. Pardon prolixity, where the heart is so full. Surely the world does not present a more melancholy, or a more humiliating sight, than the prostration of so n.o.ble a mind as that of my old and highly-prized friend, Robert Southey. When I first knew him, he had all that Westminster and Oxford could give him. He was, as the Mores said, to whom I had introduced him, 'brimfull of literature:' decisive and enthusiastic in all his sentiments, and impetuous in all his feelings, whether of approval or dislike. I never knew one more uncompromising in what he believed either to be right, or wrong; thereby marking the integrity of his mind, which ever shrunk from the most distant approximation to duplicity or meanness.

This disposition manifested itself almost in infancy, for his mother, an acute and very worthy woman, told me, in the year 1798, that whenever any mischief or accident occurred amongst the children, which some might wish to conceal, she always applied to Robert, who never hesitated, or deviated from the truth, though he himself might have been implicated.

And in after life, whatever sentiments he avowed, none who knew the confirmed fidelity of his mind, could possibly doubt that they were the genuine dictates of his heart.

There was in Southey, alas! his sun is set!--I must, write in the third person!--one other quality which commands admiration; an habitual delicacy in his conversation, evidencing that cheerfulness and wit might exist without ribaldry, grossness, or profanation. He neither violated decorum himself, nor tolerated it in others. I have been present when a trespa.s.ser of the looser cla.s.s, has received, a rebuke, I might say a castigation, well deserved, and not readily forgotten. His abhorrence also of injustice, or unworthy conduct, in its diversified shapes, had all the decision of a Roman censor; while this apparent austerity was a.s.sociated, when in the society he liked, with so bland and playful a spirit, that it abolished all constraint, and rendered him one of the most agreeable, as well as the most intelligent of companions.

It must occasionally have been exemplified in your experience, that some writers who have acquired a transient popularity, perchance, more from advent.i.tious causes, than sterling merit, appear at once to occupy an increased s.p.a.ce, and fancy that he who fills his own field of vision, occupies the same s.p.a.ce in the view of others. This disposition will almost invariably be found in those who most readily depreciate those whom they cannot excel; as if every concession to the merits of another subtracted from their own claims. Southey was eminently exempt from this little feeling. He heartily encouraged genius, wherever it was discoverable; whether, 'with all appliances,' the jewel shone forth from academic bowers, or whether the gem was incrusted with extraneous matter, and required the toil of polishing; indifferent to him, it met with the encouraging smile, and the fostering care.

It may be truly said, Mr. Southey exacted nothing, and consequently his excellencies were the more readily allowed; and this merit was the greater, since, as Mr. Coleridge remarked, "he had written on so many subjects, and so well on all." Although his company was sought by men of the first rank and talent, from whom he always received that acknowledgment, if not deference, which is due to great attainments and indisputable genius, yet such honours excited no plebeian pride. It produced none of that morbid inflation, which, wherever found, instinctively excites a repulsive feeling. It was this una.s.suming air, this suavity of deportment, which so attached Southey to his friends, and gave such permanence to their regard.

It seems almost invidious to single out one distinguishing quality in his mind, when so many deserve notice, but I have often been struck with the quickness of his perception; the prompt.i.tude with which he discovered whatever was good or bad in composition, either in prose or verse. When reading the production of another, the tones of his voice became a _merit-thermometer_, a sort of _Aeolian-harp-test_; in the flat parts his voice was unimpa.s.sioned, but if the gust of genius swept over the wires, his tones rose in intensity, till his own energy of feeling and expression kindled in others a sympathetic impulse, which the dull were forced to feel, whilst his animated recitations threw fresh meaning into the minds of the more discerning.

What an emblem of human instability! The idea of Robert Southey's altered state can hardly force itself on my imagination. The image of one lately in full vigour, who appeared, but as yesterday, all thought and animation, whose mind exhibited a sort of rocky firmness, and seemed made almost for perpetuity; I say it is hard to conceive of faculties so strong and richly matured, reduced now even to imbecility! The image of death I could withstand, for it is the lot of mortals, but the spectacle of such a mind a.s.sociated with living extinction, appears incongruous, and to exceed the power of possible combination. Those who witnessed the progressive advances of this mournful condition were prepared for the event by successive changes, but with my anterior impressions, if in his present state I were to be abruptly presented to Robert Southey, and met the vacant and cold glance of indifference, the concussion to my feelings would so overwhelm, that--merciful indeed would be the power which shielded me from a like calamity.