SOUTHEY'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH CAROLINE BOWLES.*
TEE world has long been in possession of a large portion of Southey's correspondence, and at the first blush the publication of these hitherto inedited letters may seem a literary work of supererogation ; but it has two justifications, either of which cannot but be considered adequate. The first of these is found in the fact that it is the fulfilment of a wish felt and put into, writing by Southey himself, and heartily concurred in by 'Caro- line Bowles; the secodd, in the real interest of the letters them- selves, which, though they in no way alter our estimate of Southey's personality, do much to define and intensify our most vivid impressions of it. In his letters to the woman who, beginning as one of his many literary admirers, became, first, a valued acquaintance, then a dear friend, and finally, during his last sad years, a devoted wife, there could hardly fail to be a larger infusion of the purely personal element—the unconscious expression of nature and character— than in that other part of his correspondence which was neces- sarily more external and less vital, because addressed in large measure to people with whom he had only this or that point of contact. When the writer is a man of knowledge or ability, there is always an interest in a letter of special subject or pur- pose—the " topical " letter, as we might call it, had not a use- ful adjective been vulgarised as soon as invented—but there is a different, a wider, and a deeper interest in a letter which has no more subject or purpose than a spring flower or a bird's song, which exists for its own sake, and justifies its existence by such revelation as it can give of the personality behind it. The letters in this volume are wholly of this latter kind, though, in thus describing them, we do not mean to imply that they are deficient in matter, but only to indicate the peculiar quality of their charm. While telling us much of what Southey thought, they tell us more of what he was; and any additional unveiling of a nature which, whatever its limitations, was so large and harmonious, so transparently simple and so sweet in its strength, • The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowies; to which are added Correspondents with Shelley, and Southey's Dreams. Edited, with an Introduction, by Edward Dowden, LL.D. London : Longmans, Green, and Co.
So untiringly constant in its devotion to high ideals, cannot fail to be stimulating and refreshing.
We are grateful to Professor Dowden for providing us with such an interesting collection of Southey relics, and our debt to him is indefinitely increased by the manner in which he has performed a task which, though doubtless a labour of love, must also have been a labour of difficulty. Only about half of the material entrusted to him is printed here; but he has had to go through the whole of the correspondence, in order to weed from Southey's half of it letters largely identical with those already published, and from Caroline Bowles's those letters which served to beguile the dull hours of pain and weakness, but which lack the kind of interest that appeals to the outside public. The correspondence is prefaced by a very charmingly written introduction, devoted mainly to the less dis- tinguished of the correspondents. Professor Dowden, as readers of various portions of his previous work well know, has a gularly pleasant gift of narration ; and it would be hard to tell more winningly than he has told it the story of a life which, while entirely devoid of the interest of incident, is redeemed from vacuity by a certain idyllic graciousness, like that of an exquisite pastoral poem. The critical portion of the introduc- tion is, if we may venture upon a conceit, slight, but not slight- ing. The writer of it has said elsewhere that the best criticism is that which comes "not of profound cogitation, but of im- mense enjoyment;" and he himself has that happiest of critical endowments, a quick sensibility to the presence of any enjoyable quality, so that his estimate of Caroline Bowles's contribution to literature, though in nowise undiscriminating, is full of that kindliest, and, we think, truest discrimination which stamps upon the mind a sharper impression of a writer's achievements and possibilities, than of his failures and his limitations.
The fullest criticism we could. give of this correspondence would be little more than an amplification of what has been already said concerning its value as an aid to the fuller com- prehension of Southey. The woman's part in it concerns us less than the man's, not because it is less intrinsically interest- ing, but because it is less individual. Her letters are subsidiary to his ; he, and not she, gives the correspondence its form and character. She had an individuality, but here it seems somewhat overborne by the massiveness of Southey's nature ; one might also say that in the little drama he is the protagonist, and. she the chorus. A curious illustration of this temporary eclipse of separate personality is furnished by the fact that, as the intimacy progresses, her style, both of thought and. expression, approximates so closely to that of her corre- spondent that unless the reader is very careful, he will .sometimes find himself Tinder the humiliating necessity of turning back a page, to see whose letter he happens at the moment to be reading. In the earlier pages the somewhat too insistent feminine homage is a sufficiently recognisable identification ; but when the relations of the two become sufficiently easy to allow of the homage being quietly taken for granted on both sides, there is left little to preserve the dramatic character of the intercourse.
The best, indeed the only, way to give any definite notion of the quality of a correspondence is by copious quotation, but to such a method of treatment this book does not readily lend itself, for its interest is diffused, not concentrated ; it is, as it were, in solution, and does not crystallise in fine passages.
Many sentences and paragraphs are interesting enough in the letters where they appear, but to tear them irom -their context and exhibit them alone would, in almost every instance, accentuate the triviality which gives so great a charm to the familiar interchange of thought and emotion. Curiously enough, and rather unluckily, the passages which seem the most promising candidates for the honour of quotation are those which exhibit Southey's weakness rather than his strength. Like many men who have changed their opinions, his grasp of the latest set was notably tenacious, and though we have no blame for a mental attitude which, in such circumstances, seems inevit- able, Southey was clearly at fault when, in spite of his experience of his own fallibility, he not merely assumed an unmistakably infallible tone, but acquired the habit of regarding possible intellectual error as identical with actual moral depravity. It would be unfair to Southey to quote as really characteristic of his true self, such passages as that in which he brings against Hallam the monstrous charge of "malevolence ;" but all our genuine admiration for so noble and so really kindly a man is insufficient to restrain us from a protest against what seems to us the terrible outrage upon the inward spirit of Christianity dis- played in the painfully interesting correspondence with Shelley, given in the appendix. The correspondence consists of five letters ; the first from Shelley, presenting Southey with a copy of Alastor, expressing his admiration for Southey's work and respect for his character, and indulging the hope that disagreement in opinion might not interfere with mutual regard. The second, also from Shelley, consists of an inquiry whether Southey were the author of an article in the Quarterly which had reflected with much bitterness upon Shelley's character and circumstances,. the writer affirming at the same time his perfect confidence in. Southey's innocence, and distinctly stating that he wrote only that he might be able to give an authoritative contradiction to the report ; the third, from Sonthey,.disclaims the authorship of the article, but avows his sympathy with what seems to have been its general tone ; the fourth and fifth, from Shelley and. Southey respectively, are written with increasing warmth on both sides, but on Southey's side with an almost brutal savagery of contemptuous denunciation, which stands in painful contrast to the courtesy which Shelley, even in the warmest passages of his indignant and. sorrowful protest, never forgets to observe. Readers of this journal do not need to be told that in the points at issue between the two controversialists our sympathies are wholly with Southey ; but on this very account we regret all the more that his tone is such as to prejudice his cause in the minds of those who are more impartial than we can pretend to be. We could not, without the most painful apprehensions, place the correspondence in the hands of any clever youth with a turn for scepticism ; and though Professor Dowden knows and loves Southey so well that he almost always seems to say just the right thing concerning him, we should be sorry tt acknowledge the justice of his declaration that these letters are really characteristic of the true man.
But we are glad to turn away from a theme that we feet painful, to a portion of the volume which has greater pleasant- ness and equal interest, though of another kind. We cannot recall anything in literature exactly resembling Southey's curious record of some of the extraordinary dreams by which he was visited. Some of De Quincey's opium visions are more striking, but these dreams owe most of their interest to the fact that they are the outcome of a presumably normal physical and mental condition—at any rate, of a condition of freedom from artificial stimulus. If the theory of Alexander Smith, that the poet betrays himself in his sleep, be really a sound one, these dreams undoubtedly establish Southey's poetic claims. We give one example, which happens to come first in the record, and was, therefore, probably the dream which sug- gested the idea of keeping it :—
" A certain kin.. had a precious cup, gifted with some magical property, of such exceeding value that he suffered no person to see it, its loss would have been so great an evil. A model, however, was in his daughter's keeping, and by winning her love he who coveted the original obtained sight of this, which was doing much, for though the real cup could not be stolen nor won by any unworthy means (such was the spell), it Ives attainable by intensity of desire and fixedness of mind, as the Fakeers obtain beatitude, and Mainandul pretended to heal diseases at a distance. Thus far had I got in the dream, when the child awoke me. I was sensible that it was a fairy tale, and yet the story seemed to be acting before me."
There is here a decided. suggestion of a motive for a poem of the "Curse of Kehanfa" order, and. other dreams are equally rich in poetical hints. Some of them are very grotesque—
indeed, grotesqueness is the prevailing characteristic of by far the greater number of them ; and a writer like Mr. Julian Haw- thorne might find them suggestive. Though they cannot be said to throw any new light upon the genesis of dreams, they have a certain psychological interest, for Southey's emo-
tional fervour betrays itself more clearly in them than in his letters or his ordinary literary work, and. Professor Dowden is certainly right in thinking them worthy of preservation. The appendix also contains another curiosity of literature, the imperfect draft of Shelley's "satire upon satire," which has never before been printed, but which is alluded to in a letter to Leigh Hunt, published in Mr. Buxton Forman's edition of Shelley's Prose TVorks. Mr. Richard Garnett is the discoverer of this interesting relic of Shelley, and he also con- tributes one or two interesting notes upon the Shelley cone- spoifdence and the dream record. It will be seen that the. volume is one of varied interest, and Professor Dowden must be thanked for a really valuable contribution to the literary history of the first half of the century.
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