rd that Coleridge paid any rent, but he was so charmed with the
location that he induced Southey to come and visit him. Southey came and
liked it so well that he remained. He performed here a life-task that
staggers one to contemplate: fifty volumes or more of closely set type are
shown you at the Keswick Museum, duly labeled, "The Works of Southey,"
Charles Lamb's "Works" were the East India ledgers, but he wrote one
little book of Essays that are still sweet and fresh as
wood-violets--essays written hot from the heart, often in tears; written
because he could not help it, or to please Mary--he did not know which.

No man ever divided his time up more systematically than Southey. He
produced political and theological essays, histories, poems, diatribes,
apologies and criticisms, and worked as men work in the Carnegie
Consolidated Steel Works.

Robert Southey was the precocious son of a Bristol linen-draper. Being
rather delicate, his parents did not set him to work in a drygoods-store,
but gave him the benefit of Oxford. The thing that brought him first into
prominence was an article he wrote for "The Flaggellant," a college paper,
wherein he ridiculed the idea of a devil. Now the powers did not like
that--the creed called for a "personal devil," and they wanted one. They
summoned young Southey before them to account for speaking disrespectfully
of the devil. The youth was found guilty and expelled.

He was a reckless young man, but recklessness is its own check--in fact,
all things in life are self-regulating, everything is limited. Southey's
secret marriage with Edith Fricker tamed him. Nothing tames men like
marriage; and when babies came, and Coleridge went to Germany, leaving
Mrs. Coleridge and young Hartley in his charge, Southey realized he was
dealing with a condition, not a theory. Then soon he had the widowed Mrs.
Lovell with her brood on his hands, and his old dream of pantisocracy was
realized, only not just as he expected.

Too much can not be said for the patience and unflinching fidelity shown
by Southey in shouldering the burdens that Fate sent him.

"Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!" said White
Pigeon.

"True," said I, "and next in importance to the person who originates a
good thing is the one who quotes it." Men weighted with responsibilities
fight for the established order. Southey's pension and his steady income
came from the men in power, and he made it his business not