The Project Gutenberg EBook of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No.
8, January, 1851, by Various

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Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851

Author: Various

Release Date: March 1, 2010 [EBook #31455]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer
errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other
inconsistencies are as in the original.

HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. VIII.--JANUARY, 1851.--VOL. II.

[Illustration: Robert Southey]

PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND HABITS OF ROBERT SOUTHEY.

BY HIS SON.[1]

Being the youngest of all his children, I had not the privilege of
knowing my father in his best and most joyous years, nor of remembering
Greta Hall when the happiness of its circle was unbroken. Much labor and
anxiety, and many sorrows, had passed over him; and although his natural
buoyancy of spirit had not departed, it was greatly subdued, and I
chiefly remember its gradual diminution from year to year.

In appearance he was certainly a very striking looking person, and in
early days he had by many been considered almost the _beau ideal_ of a
poet. Mr. Cottle describes him at the age of twenty-two as "tall,
dignified, possessing great suavity of manners, an eye piercing, a
countenance full of genius, kindliness, and intelligence;" and he
continues, "I had read so much of poetry, and sympathized so much with
poets in all their eccentricities and vicissitudes, that to see before
me the realization of a character which in the abstract so much absorbed
my regards, gave me a degree of satisfaction which it would be difficult
to express." Eighteen years later Lord Byron calls him a prepossessing
looking person, and, with his usual admixture of satire, says, "To have
his head and shoulders I would almost have written his Sapphics;" and
elsewhere he speaks of his appearance as "Epic," an expression which may
be either a sneer or