his recreation in the very pursuits necessary for earning his daily bread, he was, probably, more continually employed than any other writer of his generation. My actions,' he writes about this time to a friend, 'are as regular as those of St. Dunstan's quarterboys. Three pages of history after breakfast, (equivalent to five in small quarto printing;) then to transcribe and copy for the press, or to make my selections and biographies, or what else suits my humor, till dinner-time; from dinner to tea I read, write letters, see the newspaper, and very often indulge in a siesta for sleep agrees with me, and I have a good, substantial theory to prove that it must; for as a man who walks much requires to sit down and rest himself, so does the brain, if it be the part most worked, require its repose. Well, after tea I go to poetry, and correct, and re-write, and copy till I am tired, and then turn to any thing else till supper; and this is my life—which, if it be not a very merry one, is yet as happy as heart could wish. At least, I should think so if I had not once been happier; and I do think so, except when that recollection comes upon me. And then, when I cease to be cheerful, it is only to become contemplative to feel at times a wish that I was in that state of existence which passes not away; and this always ends in a new impulse to proceed, that I may leave some durable monument and some efficient good behind me." p. 199.

The following gives some idea of the variety of occupation with which he was constantly provided.

"But I have not been absolutely idle, only comparatively so. I have made ready about five sheets of the Peninsular War for the press, (the main part, indeed, was transcription,) and William Nicol will have it as soon as the chapter is finished. I have written an account of Derwent Water for Westall's Views of the Lakes. I have begun the Book of the Church, written half a dialogue between myself and Sir Thomas More, composed seventy lines for Oliver Newman, opened a Book of Collections for the Moral and Literary History of England, and sent to Longman for materials for the Life of George Fox and the Origin and Progress of Quakerism, a work which will be quite as curious as the Wesley, and about half the length. Make allowances for letter writing, (which consumes far too great a portion of my time,) and for the interruptions of the season, and this account of the month will not be so bad as to subject me to any very severe censure of my stewardship." p. 390.

Though Southey's spirits never flagged from the constant pressure of his literary avocations and the never ending demands upon his time and intellect, there were times when he 2

VOL. LXXIII.-NO. 152.

cast a saddened and anxious glance into the future for himself and his family. The following, which is taken from a letter to a friend, written in 1818, is in a far more desponding tone than was usual with him. He had prefaced it by saying, "that though some persons, whose knowledge of me is scarcely skin deep, suppose I have no nerves, because I have great self-control so far as regards the surface, if it were not for great self-management, and what may be called a strict intellectual regimen, I should very soon be in a deplorable state of what is called nervous disease; and this would have been the case any time during the last twenty years." His intellectual regimen, it is true, was good; but he was less indebted to it than to the happy frame of spirits with which he was endowed by nature, for his ordinary freedom from depression and anxiety.

"I want now to provide against that inability which may any day or any moment overtake me. You are not mistaken in thinking that the last three years have considerably changed me; the outside remains pretty much the same, but it is far otherwise within. If hitherto the day has been sufficient for the labor, as well as the labor for the day, I now feel that it can not always, and possibly may not long be so. Were I dead, there would be a provision for my family, which, though not such as I yet hope to make it, would yet be a respectable one. But if I were unable to work, half my ways and means would instantly be cut off, and the whole of them are needed. Such thoughts did not use to visit me. My spirits retain their strength, but they have lost their buoyancy, and that forever. I should be the better for travelling, but that is not in my power. At present, the press fetters me, and if it did not, I could not afford to be spending money when I ought to be earning it. But I shall work the harder to enable me so to do." p. 370.

His friends were numerous and active; and not unfrequently he had hopes of obtaining some situation which would relieve him from all enforced exercise of the pen, and from constant dependence on the favor of the public, which, at the best, never shone warmly on his labors. But one accident after another defeated every project of this sort. There was an intrinsic difficulty in finding a post which would answer his wants, and not conflict with his long established tastes and habits. He was chivalrously independent in his feelings and opinions; he would not purchase immunity from care by the

smallest sacrifice of his intellectual or moral integrity. Mere dignity of office he did not prize; he would have been as content as his friend Wordsworth was, to owe his livelihood for many years to so petty an office as that of Commissioner or Distributor of Stamps. But while thus employed, had he received such an intimation from head-quarters, as Wordsworth did, "requiring him to employ persons to purchase soda powders when sold without a stamp, and then lay an information against the vendors," he would instantly have resigned his office in disgust. The author of the Excursion probably evaded the difficulty by paying no heed to the order. "It seems," wrote Southey, "as if they were resolved so to reduce the emolument in the public services, and connect such services with them, that no one with the habits and feelings of a gentleman shall enter or continue in office."

It was not easy to find employment in government's salaried corps for one thus nice in feeling and peculiar in his tastes. Early in life, when his fortunes were at the lowest ebb, he was appointed private secretary to an Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, an office of little or no labor, which gave him £300 a year, and opened a fair prospect of something better. But he resigned it in less than a twelvemonth, either because he scrupled to receive pay without work, or because the Chancellor, thinking his secretary had nothing else to do, asked him to become tutor to his children. Subsequently, he had a hope of being appointed steward to the Derwentwater estates, which belonged to Greenwich Hospital, an office more than twice as lucrative as the one just mentioned; but after spending some time and effort in solicitation, he ascertained that the duties of the office were of a practical nature, which would task the powers and absorb most of the time of one educated to business; and he immediately withdrew his pretensions. When Fox came into power for the last time, he expressed a willingness to provide for him. "There were two things in Portugal," wrote Southey, "which I could hold, the consulship, or the secretaryship of legation. The former was twice given away; but that, Fox said, was too good a thing for me; the latter he promised if an opportunity occurred of promoting Lord Strangford, and that never took place." Lastly, the poet hoped to be appointed Royal Historiographer for England, an office then held by

poor old Dutens, with a salary of £400 a year; and there was something like an engagement by the ministry that he should have it on the decease of the present incumbent. Dutens died, and the title was given in hot haste to J. S. Clarke, librarian to the Prince Regent, and author, we believe, of a ponderous Life of Nelson, which will be read when Southey's is forgotten, but not before. The fates seem to have decreed that the author of Thalaba should not become a placeman. To prevent misapprehension, it should be stated, that these applications for office, if such they may be called, were scattered over a long period of years, and that most of them were rather made by Southey's friends than by Southey himself. Foremost among these generous sympathizers with his position and his claims was Walter Scott, who never wasted an opportunity for an act of kindness to a literary brother, and to whom Southey was finally indebted for the Laureateship.

Since Queen Anne's time, when literary taste and patronage were fashionable at court, the English government has turned a very deaf ear to the claims of literature and science for encouragement from the state. Yet the examples of France and some of the powers of Germany, often wisely liberal in this respect, have not been wholly lost upon a few British statesmen. Fox, Canning, and Brougham more frequently lacked opportunity than willingness to throw a few crumbs from the official table to the poorer members of a profession to which they were themselves indebted for a portion of their honors. But the aristocratic structure of English society and politics gives a vast preponderance to the claims of family or hereditary privilege; while the personal tastes of the last half a dozen sovereigns who have occupied the British throne have not fostered the aristocracy of intellect with even a hope of royal favor. Projects have been started which indicate a consciousness that this state of things is not honorable to the English nation; but as they have mostly come from the parties who were to be benefited by them, or from those who were suspected of wishing to enhance their political honors by their literary pretensions, they have all resulted in failure. There is a curious correspondence in this work between Brougham and Southey, when the former was Lord Chancellor, and wished to indicate, even if he did not really feel, a

disposition to patronize literary merit. He showed frankness, if not magnanimity, in asking Southey's advice upon the subject, as they had long held opposite views in politics, and neither had spared the other when occasion served. The time when this correspondence took place was not a favorable one for smoothing over old political dissensions; for the Reforın Bill was in agitation, and even the throne tottered while that storm blew. Southey either felt more strongly than his lordship, or was not so able to disguise his feelings; for he answered Brougham's very civil letter more gruffly than he was wont to write to any one. He tells him plainly, that the administration to which he belonged "have raised the devil who is now raging through the land, and it is their business to lay him if they can. He added, what was probably true, that the government could not have leisure then to attend to such a project; for "the time seems not far distant when the cares of war and expenditure will come upon it once more with their all engrossing importance."

"But when better times shall arrive, (whoever may live to see them,) it will be worthy the consideration of any government whether the institution of an Academy, with salaries for its members (in the nature of literary or lay benefices) might not be the means of retaining in its interests, as connected with their own, a certain number of influential men of letters, who should hold those benefices, and a much greater number of aspirants who would look to them in their turn. A yearly grant of £10,000 would endow ten such appointments of £500 each for the elder class, and twenty-five of £200 each for younger men; these latter eligible of course, and preferably, but not necessarily, to be elected to the higher benefices as those fell vacant, and as they should have approved themselves." p. 498.

He states briefly and strongly his reason for believing that letters would gain by more avowed and active encouragement from the state.

"There are literary works of national importance which can only be performed by coöperative labor, and will never be undertaken by that spirit of trade which at present preponderates in literature. The formation of an English Etymological Dictionary is one of those works; others might be mentioned; and in this way, literature might gain much by receiving national encouragement; but government would gain a great deal more by bestowing it. Revolutionary governments understand this; I should