ndship, and to a proposed joint poem on
Robin Hood, not, however, carried out, and eventually to her becoming the
poet's second wife. She wrote various other works, including _Chapters on
Churchyards_ and _Tales of the Factories_.

SOUTHEY, ROBERT (1774-1843).--Poet, biographer, etc., _s._ of an
unsuccessful linen-draper in Bristol, where he was _b._, was sent to
Westminster School, and in 1792 went to Oxf. His friendship with
Coleridge began in 1794, and with him he joined in the scheme of a
"pantisocracy" (_see_ Coleridge). In 1795 he _m._ his first wife, Edith
Fricker, and thus became the brother-in-law of Coleridge. Shortly
afterwards he visited Spain, and in 1800 Portugal, and laid the
foundations of his thorough knowledge of the history and literature of
the Peninsula. Between these two periods of foreign travel he had
attempted the study of law, which proved entirely uncongenial; and in
1803 he settled at Greta Hall, Keswick, to which neighbourhood the
Coleridges had also come. Here he set himself to a course of
indefatigable literary toil which only ended with his life. _Thalaba_
had appeared in 1801, and there followed _Madoc_ (1805), _The Curse of
Kehama_ (1810), _Roderic, the Last of the Goths_ (1814), and _A Vision of
Judgment_ (1821); and in prose a _History of Brazil_, Lives of Nelson
(1813), Wesley (1820), and Bunyan (1830), _The Book of the Church_
(1824), _History of the Peninsular War_ (1823-32), _Naval History_, and
_The Doctor_ (1834-37). In addition to this vast amount of work he had
been from 1808 a constant contributor to the _Quarterly Review_. In 1839
when he was failing both in body and mind he _m._, as his second wife,
Miss Caroline Ann Bowles, who had for 20 years been his intimate friend,
and by whom his few remaining years were soothed. Though the name of S.
still bulks somewhat largely in the history of our literature, his works,
with a few exceptions, are now little read, and those of them (his longer
poems, _Thalaba_ and _Kehama_) on which he himself based his hopes of
lasting fame, least of all. To this result their length, remoteness from
living interests, and the impression that their often splendid diction is
rather eloquence than true poetry, have contributed. Some of his shorter
poems, _e.g._, "The Holly Tree," and "The Battle of Blenheim" still live,
but his fame now rests on his vigorous prose and especially on his
classic _Life of Nelson_. Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, S. bega