PAGE SIR AUBREY DE VERE (1788-1846) Mackenzie Bell 507 (The True Basis of Power). SONNETS- 508 510 ADONAIS: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats 559 Το 577 I. Prometheus defying Jupiter 581 II. The Gifts of Prometheus to Mankind 583 Robert Southey. 1774-1843. ROBERT SOUTHEY, poet, essayist, and historian, was born at Bristol on the 12th of August, 1774. His father, who was a linendraper, gave him such advantages as local schools afforded, until the year 1788, when his uncle, the Rev. Herbert Hill, sent him to Westminster School. Here he remained four years, and made several friends who were useful to him in after life, and in conjunction with whom he started a school periodical called The Flagilant, in which he distinguished himself by denouncing the brutal and demoralizing administration of corporal punishment that obtained in his time, for which offence he was expelled the school in 1792. Proceeding to Oxford in the following year he entered Balliol College, where his study does not seem to have profited him much. "All I learnt," he said himself, "6 was a little swimming"-" and a little boating."-"I never remember to have dreamt of Oxford,- -a sure proof how little it entered into my moral being; of school, on the contrary, I dream perpetually." In 1794 Coleridge was introduced to him at Oxford, and formed with him an enthusiastic friendship. At this time Southey was much disturbed as to his future career, and was thinking seriously of emigration, when Coleridge breathed into his willing ear the idea of the Pantisocracy, a scheme of a humanitarian and socialistic character, for the founding of a new state, on communistic lines, under the free skies of the western republic. This rosy fancy kept possession of their minds for some time, and a number of adherents were secured including Robert Lovell, a college companion of Southey's, and the poetic partner of his first volume. Want of capital, however, proved a supreme difficulty, and the Pantisocracy, like so many other dreams of the enthusiastic, faded naturally away. In 1795 Southey's first volume appeared under the title of "Poems," etc., "by Robert Lovell and Robert Southey, of Balliol College." This was followed in 1796 by "Joan of Arc," which, like his "Wat Tyler," written in 1794, and surreptitiously published in 1817, was largely fired by the excitement of the French Revolution; and in 1797 by a volume of miscellaneous poems. The poet's future now became the serious consideration. His uncle, who had generously borne the cost of his education, desired him to enter the Church, but for conscientious reasons he felt bound to decline this course. Surgery was proposed, but "the horrors of the dissecting room were beyond endurance, and this idea was also abandoned. The law was next thought of, but at this juncture the poet's uncle proposed that he should go abroad for six months, learn something of the literature and languages, the poetry and history of Europe, and then return to the study of the law. This opportunity timed well with Southey's necessities. His means were now of the slenderest description, and dinnerless days and supperless nights were no uncommon experience with him. Here was six |