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 Part 2

Browser: Document,
Events, Interfaces

Ilya Kantor
Built at July 10, 2019
The last version of the tutorial is at https://javascript.info.

We constantly work to improve the tutorial. If you find any mistakes, please write
at our github.
● Document
● Browser environment, specs
●
DOM tree
●
Walking the DOM
● Searching: getElement*, querySelector*
● Node properties: type, tag and contents
● Attributes and properties
● Modifying the document
● Styles and classes
● Element size and scrolling
● Window sizes and scrolling
● Coordinates
● Introduction to Events
● Introduction to browser events
● Bubbling and capturing
● Event delegation
● Browser default actions
● Dispatching custom events
● UI Events
● Mouse events basics
● Moving: mouseover/out, mouseenter/leave
● Drag'n'Drop with mouse events
●
Keyboard: keydown and keyup
● Scrolling
● Forms, controls
● Form properties and methods
● Focusing: focus/blur
●
Events: change, input, cut, copy, paste
● Forms: event and method submit
● Document and resource loading
● Page: DOMContentLoaded, load, beforeunload, unload
 ● Scripts: async, defer
● Resource loading: onload and onerror
● Miscellaneous
● Mutation observer
●
Selection and Range
● Event loop: microtasks and macrotasks
Learning how to manage the browser page: add elements, manipulate their size
and position, dynamically create interfaces and interact with the visitor.

Document
Here we’ll learn to manipulate a web-page using JavaScript.

Browser environment, specs

The JavaScript language was initially created for web browsers. Since then, it has
evolved and become a language with many uses and platforms.

A platform may be a browser, or a web-server, or a washing machine, or another

host. Each of them provides platform-specific functionality. The JavaScript
specification calls that a host environment.
A host environment provides platform-specific objects and functions additional to
the language core. Web browsers give a means to control web pages. Node.js
provides server-side features, and so on.

Here’s a bird’s-eye view of what we have when JavaScript runs in a web-browser:

There’s a “root” object called window . It has two roles:

1. First, it is a global object for JavaScript code, as described in the chapter

Global object.
2. Second, it represents the “browser window” and provides methods to control it.

For instance, here we use it as a global object:

function sayHi() {
alert("Hello");
 }

// global functions are accessible as properties of window

window.sayHi();

And here we use it as a browser window, to see the window height:

alert(window.innerHeight); // inner window height

There are more window-specific methods and properties, we’ll cover them later.

DOM (Document Object Model)

The document object gives access to the page content. We can change or
create anything on the page using it.

For instance:

// change the background color to red

document.body.style.background = "red";

// change it back after 1 second

setTimeout(() => document.body.style.background = "", 1000);

Here we used document.body.style , but there’s much, much more.

Properties and methods are described in the specification:
●
DOM Living Standard at https://dom.spec.whatwg.org 

 DOM is not only for browsers

The DOM specification explains the structure of a document and provides
objects to manipulate it. There are non-browser instruments that use it too.
For instance, server-side tools that download HTML pages and process them
use the DOM. They may support only a part of the specification though.
  CSSOM for styling
CSS rules and stylesheets are not structured like HTML. There’s a separate
specification CSSOM  that explains how they are represented as objects,
and how to read and write them.

CSSOM is used together with DOM when we modify style rules for the
document. In practice though, CSSOM is rarely required, because usually
CSS rules are static. We rarely need to add/remove CSS rules from
JavaScript, so we won’t cover it right now.

BOM (Browser object model)

Browser Object Model (BOM) are additional objects provided by the browser (host
environment) to work with everything except the document.

For instance:
●
The navigator  object provides background information about the browser
and the operating system. There are many properties, but the two most widely
known are: navigator.userAgent – about the current browser, and
navigator.platform – about the platform (can help to differ between
Windows/Linux/Mac etc).
●
The location  object allows us to read the current URL and can redirect the
browser to a new one.

Here’s how we can use the location object:

alert(location.href); // shows current URL

if (confirm("Go to wikipedia?")) {
location.href = "https://wikipedia.org"; // redirect the browser to another URL
}

Functions alert/confirm/prompt are also a part of BOM: they are directly

not related to the document, but represent pure browser methods of
communicating with the user.

BOM is the part of the general HTML specification  .

Yes, you heard that right. The HTML spec at https://html.spec.whatwg.org  is

not only about the “HTML language” (tags, attributes), but also covers a bunch of
objects, methods and browser-specific DOM extensions. That’s “HTML in broad
terms”. Also, some parts have additional specs listed at
https://spec.whatwg.org  .

Summary

Talking about standards, we have:

DOM specification
Describes the document structure, manipulations and events, see
https://dom.spec.whatwg.org  .

CSSOM specification
Describes stylesheets and style rules, manipulations with them and their binding
to documents, see https://www.w3.org/TR/cssom-1/  .

HTML specification
Describes the HTML language (e.g. tags) and also the BOM (browser object
model) – various browser functions: setTimeout , alert , location and so
on, see https://html.spec.whatwg.org  . It takes the DOM specification and
extends it with many additional properties and methods.

Additionally, some classes are described separately at https://spec.whatwg.org/

.

Please note these links, as there’s so much stuff to learn it’s impossible to cover
and remember everything.

When you’d like to read about a property or a method, the Mozilla manual at
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search  is also a nice resource, but the
corresponding spec may be better: it’s more complex and longer to read, but will
make your fundamental knowledge sound and complete.

To find something, it’s often convenient to use an internet search “WHATWG

[term]” or “MDN [term]”, e.g https://google.com?q=whatwg+localstorage  ,
https://google.com?q=mdn+localstorage  .

Now we’ll get down to learning DOM, because the document plays the central role
in the UI.

DOM tree
The backbone of an HTML document are tags.
According to Document Object Model (DOM), every HTML-tag is an object.
Nested tags are called “children” of the enclosing one.
The text inside a tag it is an object as well.

All these objects are accessible using JavaScript.

An example of DOM

For instance, let’s explore the DOM for this document:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>About elks</title>
</head>
<body>
The truth about elks.
</body>
</html>

The DOM represents HTML as a tree structure of tags. Here’s how it looks:

▾ HTML
▾ HEAD
#text ↵␣␣␣␣

▾ TITLE
#text About elks

#text ↵␣␣

#text ↵␣␣

▾ BODY
#text The truth about elks.

Tags are called element nodes (or just elements). Nested tags become children of
the enclosing ones. As a result we have a tree of elements: <html> is at the
root, then <head> and <body> are its children, etc.

The text inside elements forms text nodes, labelled as #text . A text node
contains only a string. It may not have children and is always a leaf of the tree.

For instance, the <title> tag has the text "About elks" .
Please note the special characters in text nodes:
● a newline: ↵ (in JavaScript known as \n )
●
a space: ␣

Spaces and newlines – are totally valid characters, they form text nodes and
become a part of the DOM. So, for instance, in the example above the <head>
tag contains some spaces before <title> , and that text becomes a #text
node (it contains a newline and some spaces only).
There are only two top-level exclusions:
1. Spaces and newlines before <head> are ignored for historical reasons,
2. If we put something after </body> , then that is automatically moved inside
the body , at the end, as the HTML spec requires that all content must be
inside <body> . So there may be no spaces after </body> .

In other cases everything’s straightforward – if there are spaces (just like any
character) in the document, then they become text nodes in DOM, and if we
remove them, then there won’t be any.

Here are no space-only text nodes:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html><head><title>About elks</title></head><body>The truth about elks.</body></h

▾ HTML
▾ HEAD
▾ TITLE
#text About elks

▾ BODY
#text The truth about elks.
  Edge spaces and in-between empty text are usually hidden in tools
Browser tools (to be covered soon) that work with DOM usually do not show
spaces at the start/end of the text and empty text nodes (line-breaks) between
tags.

That’s because they are mainly used to decorate HTML, and do not affect how
it is shown (in most cases).

On further DOM pictures we’ll sometimes omit them where they are irrelevant,
to keep things short.

Autocorrection

If the browser encounters malformed HTML, it automatically corrects it when

making DOM.

For instance, the top tag is always <html> . Even if it doesn’t exist in the
document – it will exist in the DOM, the browser will create it. The same goes for
<body> .

As an example, if the HTML file is a single word "Hello" , the browser will wrap
it into <html> and <body> , add the required <head> , and the DOM will be:

▾ HTML
▾ HEAD
▾ BODY
#text Hello

While generating the DOM, browsers automatically process errors in the

document, close tags and so on.

Such an document with unclosed tags:

<p>Hello
<li>Mom
<li>and
<li>Dad

…Will become a normal DOM, as the browser reads tags and restores the
missing parts:
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 ▾ HTML
▾ HEAD
▾ BODY
▾P
#text Hello

▾ LI
#text Mom

▾ LI
#text and

▾ LI
#text Dad

⚠ Tables always have <tbody>

An interesting “special case” is tables. By the DOM specification they must
have <tbody> , but HTML text may (officially) omit it. Then the browser
creates <tbody> in DOM automatically.

For the HTML:

<table id="table"><tr><td>1</td></tr></table>

DOM-structure will be:

▾ TABLE
▾ TBODY
▾ TR
▾ TD
#text 1

You see? The <tbody> appeared out of nowhere. You should keep this in
mind while working with tables to avoid surprises.

Other node types

Let’s add more tags and a comment to the page:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<body>
The truth about elks.
<ol>
<li>An elk is a smart</li>
<!-- comment -->
<li>...and cunning animal!</li>
</ol>
</body>
</html>

▾ HTML
▾ HEAD
▾ BODY
#text The truth about elks.

▾ OL
#text ↵␣␣␣␣␣␣

▾ LI
#text An elk is a smart

#text ↵␣␣␣␣␣␣

#comment comment

#text ↵␣␣␣␣␣␣

▾ LI
#text ...and cunning animal!

#text ↵␣␣␣␣

#text ↵␣␣↵

Here we see a new tree node type – comment node, labeled as #comment .

We may think – why is a comment added to the DOM? It doesn’t affect the visual
representation in any way. But there’s a rule – if something’s in HTML, then it also
must be in the DOM tree.
Everything in HTML, even comments, becomes a part of the DOM.
Even the <!DOCTYPE...> directive at the very beginning of HTML is also a
DOM node. It’s in the DOM tree right before <html> . We are not going to touch
that node, we even don’t draw it on diagrams for that reason, but it’s there.

The document object that represents the whole document is, formally, a DOM
node as well.

There are 12 node types  . In practice we usually work with 4 of them:

1. document – the “entry point” into DOM.

2. element nodes – HTML-tags, the tree building blocks.
3. text nodes – contain text.
4. comments – sometimes we can put the information there, it won’t be shown,
but JS can read it from the DOM.

See it for yourself

To see the DOM structure in real-time, try Live DOM Viewer  . Just type in the
document, and it will show up DOM at an instant.

In the browser inspector

Another way to explore the DOM is to use the browser developer tools. Actually,
that’s what we use when developing.
To do so, open the web-page elks.html, turn on the browser developer tools and
switch to the Elements tab.
It should look like this:
You can see the DOM, click on elements, see their details and so on.
Please note that the DOM structure in developer tools is simplified. Text nodes are
shown just as text. And there are no “blank” (space only) text nodes at all. That’s
fine, because most of the time we are interested in element nodes.
Clicking the button in the left-upper corner allows to choose a node from the
webpage using a mouse (or other pointer devices) and “inspect” it (scroll to it in
the Elements tab). This works great when we have a huge HTML page (and
corresponding huge DOM) and would like to see the place of a particular element
in it.
Another way to do it would be just right-clicking on a webpage and selecting
“Inspect” in the context menu.
At the right part of the tools there are the following subtabs:
● Styles – we can see CSS applied to the current element rule by rule, including
built-in rules (gray). Almost everything can be edited in-place, including the
dimensions/margins/paddings of the box below.
●
Computed – to see CSS applied to the element by property: for each property
we can see a rule that gives it (including CSS inheritance and such).
●
Event Listeners – to see event listeners attached to DOM elements (we’ll
cover them in the next part of the tutorial).
● …and so on.

The best way to study them is to click around. Most values are editable in-place.

Interaction with console

As we explore the DOM, we also may want to apply JavaScript to it. Like: get a
node and run some code to modify it, to see the result. Here are few tips to travel
between the Elements tab and the console.
●
Select the first <li> in the Elements tab.
●
Press Esc – it will open console right below the Elements tab.

Now the last selected element is available as $0 , the previously selected is $1

etc.
We can run commands on them. For instance, $0.style.background =
'red' makes the selected list item red, like this:

From the other side, if we’re in console and have a variable referencing a DOM
node, then we can use the command inspect(node) to see it in the Elements
pane.
Or we can just output it in the console and explore “at-place”, like
document.body below:
That’s for debugging purposes of course. From the next chapter on we’ll access
and modify DOM using JavaScript.
The browser developer tools are a great help in development: we can explore the
DOM, try things and see what goes wrong.

Summary

An HTML/XML document is represented inside the browser as the DOM tree.

●
Tags become element nodes and form the structure.
●
Text becomes text nodes.
●
…etc, everything in HTML has its place in DOM, even comments.

We can use developer tools to inspect DOM and modify it manually.

Here we covered the basics, the most used and important actions to start with.
There’s an extensive documentation about Chrome Developer Tools at
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools  . The best way to
learn the tools is to click here and there, read menus: most options are obvious.
Later, when you know them in general, read the docs and pick up the rest.
DOM nodes have properties and methods that allow to travel between them,
modify, move around the page and more. We’ll get down to them in the next
chapters.

Walking the DOM

The DOM allows us to do anything with elements and their contents, but first we
need to reach the corresponding DOM object.
All operations on the DOM start with the document object. From it we can
access any node.
Here’s a picture of links that allow for travel between DOM nodes:

Let’s discuss them in more detail.

On top: documentElement and body

The topmost tree nodes are available directly as document properties:

<html> = document.documentElement
The topmost document node is document.documentElement . That’s DOM
node of <html> tag.

<body> = document.body
Another widely used DOM node is the <body> element – document.body .
<head> = document.head
The <head> tag is available as document.head .

⚠ There’s a catch: document.body can be null

A script cannot access an element that doesn’t exist at the moment of running.
In particular, if a script is inside <head> , then document.body is
unavailable, because the browser did not read it yet.
So, in the example below the first alert shows null :

<html>

<head>
<script>
alert( "From HEAD: " + document.body ); // null, there's no <body> yet
</script>
</head>

<body>

<script>
alert( "From BODY: " + document.body ); // HTMLBodyElement, now it exists
</script>

</body>
</html>

 In the DOM world null means “doesn’t exist”

In the DOM, the null value means “doesn’t exist” or “no such node”.

Children: childNodes, firstChild, lastChild

There are two terms that we’ll use from now on:
●
Child nodes (or children) – elements that are direct children. In other words,
they are nested exactly in the given one. For instance, <head> and <body>
are children of <html> element.
●
Descendants – all elements that are nested in the given one, including
children, their children and so on.
For instance, here <body> has children <div> and <ul> (and few blank text
nodes):

<html>
<body>
<div>Begin</div>

<ul>
<li>
<b>Information</b>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>

…And all descendants of <body> are not only direct children <div> , <ul> but
also more deeply nested elements, such as <li> (a child of <ul> ) and <b> (a
child of <li> ) – the entire subtree.

The childNodes collection provides access to all child nodes, including

text nodes.
The example below shows children of document.body :

<html>
<body>
<div>Begin</div>

<ul>
<li>Information</li>
</ul>

<div>End</div>

<script>
for (let i = 0; i < document.body.childNodes.length; i++) {
alert( document.body.childNodes[i] ); // Text, DIV, Text, UL, ..., SCRIPT
}
</script>
...more stuff...
</body>
</html>

Please note an interesting detail here. If we run the example above, the last
element shown is <script> . In fact, the document has more stuff below, but at
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the moment of the script execution the browser did not read it yet, so the script
doesn’t see it.

Properties firstChild and lastChild give fast access to the first and
last children.

They are just shorthands. If there exist child nodes, then the following is always
true:

elem.childNodes[0] === elem.firstChild

elem.childNodes[elem.childNodes.length - 1] === elem.lastChild

There’s also a special function elem.hasChildNodes() to check whether

there are any child nodes.

DOM collections
As we can see, childNodes looks like an array. But actually it’s not an array,
but rather a collection – a special array-like iterable object.
There are two important consequences:

1. We can use for..of to iterate over it:

for (let node of document.body.childNodes) {

alert(node); // shows all nodes from the collection
}

That’s because it’s iterable (provides the Symbol.iterator property, as

required).
2. Array methods won’t work, because it’s not an array:

alert(document.body.childNodes.filter); // undefined (there's no filter method!)

The first thing is nice. The second is tolerable, because we can use
Array.from to create a “real” array from the collection, if we want array
methods:

alert( Array.from(document.body.childNodes).filter ); // now it's there

 ⚠ DOM collections are read-only
DOM collections, and even more – all navigation properties listed in this
chapter are read-only.

We can’t replace a child by something else by assigning childNodes[i] =

... .

Changing DOM needs other methods. We will see them in the next chapter.

⚠ DOM collections are live

Almost all DOM collections with minor exceptions are live. In other words, they
reflect the current state of DOM.
If we keep a reference to elem.childNodes , and add/remove nodes into
DOM, then they appear in the collection automatically.

⚠ Don’t use for..in to loop over collections

Collections are iterable using for..of . Sometimes people try to use

for..in for that.

Please, don’t. The for..in loop iterates over all enumerable properties.
And collections have some “extra” rarely used properties that we usually do
not want to get:

<body>
<script>
// shows 0, 1, length, item, values and more.
for (let prop in document.body.childNodes) alert(prop);
</script>
</body>

Siblings and the parent

Siblings are nodes that are children of the same parent. For instance, <head>
and <body> are siblings:
●
<body> is said to be the “next” or “right” sibling of <head> ,
● <head> is said to be the “previous” or “left” sibling of <body> .

The parent is available as parentNode .

The next node in the same parent (next sibling) is nextSibling , and the
previous one is previousSibling .

For instance:

<html><head></head><body><script>
// HTML is "dense" to evade extra "blank" text nodes.

// parent of <body> is <html>

alert( document.body.parentNode === document.documentElement ); // true

// after <head> goes <body>

alert( document.head.nextSibling ); // HTMLBodyElement

// before <body> goes <head>

alert( document.body.previousSibling ); // HTMLHeadElement
</script></body></html>

Element-only navigation

Navigation properties listed above refer to all nodes. For instance, in

childNodes we can see both text nodes, element nodes, and even comment
nodes if there exist.
But for many tasks we don’t want text or comment nodes. We want to manipulate
element nodes that represent tags and form the structure of the page.
So let’s see more navigation links that only take element nodes into account:

The links are similar to those given above, just with Element word inside:
● children – only those children that are element nodes.
●
firstElementChild , lastElementChild – first and last element
children.
●
previousElementSibling , nextElementSibling – neighbour
elements.
● parentElement – parent element.

 Why parentElement ? Can the parent be not an element?

The parentElement property returns the “element” parent, while

parentNode returns “any node” parent. These properties are usually the
same: they both get the parent.

With the one exception of document.documentElement :

alert( document.documentElement.parentNode ); // document

alert( document.documentElement.parentElement ); // null

In other words, the documentElement ( <html> ) is the root node.

Formally, it has document as its parent. But document is not an element
node, so parentNode returns it and parentElement does not.

This loop travels up from an arbitrary element elem to <html> , but not to
the document :

while(elem = elem.parentElement) {
alert( elem ); // parent chain till <html>
}

Let’s modify one of the examples above: replace childNodes with children .
Now it shows only elements:

<html>
<body>
<div>Begin</div>

<ul>
<li>Information</li>
</ul>

<div>End</div>

<script>
 for (let elem of document.body.children) {
alert(elem); // DIV, UL, DIV, SCRIPT
}
</script>
...
</body>
</html>

More links: tables

Till now we described the basic navigation properties.

Certain types of DOM elements may provide additional properties, specific to their
type, for convenience.
Tables are a great example and important particular case of that.
The <table> element supports (in addition to the given above) these properties:
●
table.rows – the collection of <tr> elements of the table.
●
table.caption/tHead/tFoot – references to elements <caption> ,
<thead> , <tfoot> .
● table.tBodies – the collection of <tbody> elements (can be many
according to the standard).

<thead> , <tfoot> , <tbody> elements provide the rows property:

●
tbody.rows – the collection of <tr> inside.

<tr> :
● tr.cells – the collection of <td> and <th> cells inside the given <tr> .
● tr.sectionRowIndex – the position (index) of the given <tr> inside the
enclosing <thead>/<tbody>/<tfoot> .
● tr.rowIndex – the number of the <tr> in the table as a whole (including
all table rows).

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pleasing manners, abounding information and genial wit,
embellished and enjoyed society.[4] William Taylor, the biographer of
Sayers, was a few years his junior. He was versed in Goethe, in
Schiller, in the great Kotzebue—Shakspeare’s immediate successor, in
Klopstock, in the fantastic ballad, in the new criticism, and all this at
a time when German characters were as undecipherable to most
Englishmen as Assyrian arrow-heads. The whirligig of time brought
an odd revenge when Carlyle, thirty years later, hailed in Taylor the
first example of “the natural-born English Philistine.” In Norwich he
was known as a model of filial virtue, a rising light of that illuminated
city, a man whose extraordinary range pointed him out as the fit and
proper person to be interrogated by any blue-stocking lady upon
topics as remote as the domestic arrangements of the Chinese
Emperor, Chim-Cham-Chow. William Taylor had a command of new
and mysterious words: he shone in paradox, and would make ladies
aghast by “defences of suicide, avowals that snuff alone had rescued
him from it; information, given as certain, that ‘God save the King’
was sung by Jeremiah in the Temple of Solomon;”[5] with other
blasphemies borrowed from the German, and too startling even for
rationalistic Norwich. Dr. Enfield, from whose Speaker our fathers
learnt to recite “My name is Norval,” was no longer living; he had
just departed in the odour of dilettantism. But solemn Dr. Alderson
was here, and was now engaged in giving away his daughter Amelia
to a divorced bridegroom, the painter Opie. Just now Elizabeth
Gurney was listening in the Friends’ Meeting-House to that discourse
which transformed her from a gay haunter of country ball-rooms to
the sister and servant of Newgate prisoners. The Martineaus also
were of Norwich, and upon subsequent visits the author of Thalaba
and Kehama was scrutinized by the keen eyes of a little girl—not
born at the date of his first visit—who smiled somewhat too early
and somewhat too maliciously at the airs and affectations of her
native town, and whose pleasure in pricking a windbag, literary,
political, or religious, was only over-exquisite. But Harriet Martineau,
who honoured courage, purity, faithfulness, and strength wherever
they were found, reverenced the Tory Churchman, Robert Southey.
[6]

Soon after his return from Norwich, a small house was taken at
Westbury (1797), a village two miles distant from Bristol. During
twelve happy months this continued to be Southey’s home. “I never
before or since,” he says in one of the prefaces to his collected
poems, “produced so much poetry in the same space of time.”
William Taylor, by talks about Voss and the German idylls, had set
Southey thinking of a series of English Eclogues; Taylor also
expressed his wonder that some one of our poets had not
undertaken what the French and Germans so long supported—an
Almanack of the Muses, or Annual Anthology of minor poems by
various writers. The suggestion was well received by Southey, who
became editor of such annual volumes for the years 1799 and 1800.
At this period were produced many of the ballads and short pieces
which are perhaps more generally known than any other of
Southey’s writings. He had served his apprenticeship to the craft and
mystery of such verse-making in the Morning Post, earning thereby a
guinea a week, but it was not until Bishop Bruno was written at
Westbury that he had the luck to hit off the right tone, as he
conceived it, of the modern ballad. The popularity of his Mary the
Maid of the Inn, which unhappy children got by heart, and which
some one even dramatized, was an affliction to its author, for he
would rather have been remembered as a ballad writer in connexion
with Rudiger and Lord William. What he has written in this kind
certainly does not move the heart as with a trumpet; it does not
bring with it the dim burden of sorrow which is laid upon the spirit
by songs like those of Yarrow crooning of “old, unhappy, far-off
things.” But to tell a tale of fantasy briefly, clearly, brightly, and at
the same time with a certain heightening of imaginative touches, is
no common achievement. The spectre of the murdered boy in Lord
William shone upon by a sudden moonbeam, and surrounded by the
welter of waves, is more than a picturesque apparition; readers of
good-will may find him a very genuine little ghost, a stern and sad
justicer. What has been named “the lyrical cry” is hard to find in any
of Southey’s shorter poems. In Roderick and elsewhere he takes
delight in representing great moments of life when fates are
decided; but such moments are usually represented as eminences
on which will and passion wrestle in a mortal embrace, and if the cry
of passion be heard, it is often a half-stifled death cry. The best of
Southey’s shorter poems, expressing personal feelings, are those
which sum up the virtue spread over seasons of life and long
habitual moods. Sometimes he is simply sportive, as a serious man
released from thought and toil may be, and at such times the
sportiveness, while genuine as a schoolboy’s, is, like a schoolboy’s,
the reverse of keen-edged; on other occasions he expresses simply a
strong man’s endurance of sorrow; but more often an undertone of
gravity appears through his glee, and in his sorrow there is
something of solemn joy.
All this year (1799) Madoc was steadily advancing, and The
Destruction of the Dom Daniel had been already sketched in outline.
Southey was fortunate in finding an admirable listener. The
Pneumatic Institution, established in Bristol by Dr. Beddoes, was now
under the care of a youth lately an apothecary’s apprentice at
Penzance, a poet, but still more a philosopher, “a miraculous young
man.” “He is not yet twenty-one, nor has he applied to chemistry
more than eighteen months, but he has advanced with such seven-
leagued strides as to overtake everybody. His name is Davy”—
Humphry Davy—“the young chemist, the young everything, the man
least ostentatious, of first talent that I have ever known.” Southey
would walk across from Westbury, an easy walk over beautiful
ground, to breathe Davy’s wonder-working gas, “which excites all
possible mental and muscular energy, and induces almost a delirium
of pleasurable sensations without any subsequent dejection.”
Pleased to find scientific proof that he possessed a poet’s fine
susceptibility, he records that the nitrous oxide wrought upon him
more readily than upon any other of its votaries. “Oh, Tom!” he
exclaims, gasping and ebullient—“oh, Tom! such a gas has Davy
discovered, the gaseous oxyde!... Davy has actually invented a new
pleasure for which language has no name. I am going for more this
evening; it makes one strong, and so happy! so gloriously happy!...
Oh, excellent air-bag!” If Southey drew inspiration from Davy’s air-
bag, could Davy do less than lend his ear to Southey’s epic? They
would stroll back to Martin Hall—so christened because the birds
who love delicate air built under its eaves their “pendant beds”—and
in the large sitting-room, its recesses stored with books, or seated
near the currant-bushes in the garden, the tenant of Martin Hall
would read aloud of Urien and Madoc and Cadwallon. When Davy
had said good-bye, Southey would sit long in the window open to
the west, poring on the fading glories of sunset, while about him the
dew was cool, and the swallows’ tiny shrieks of glee grew less
frequent, until all was hushed and another day was done. And
sometimes he would muse how all things that he needed for utter
happiness were here—all things—and then would rise an ardent
desire—except a child.
Martin Hall was unhappily held on no long lease; its owner now
required possession, and the Southeys, with their household gods,
had reluctantly to bid it farewell. Another trouble, and a more
formidable one, at the same time threatened. What with Annual
Anthologies, Madoc in Wales, Madoc in Aztlan, the design for a great
poem on the Deluge, for a Greek drama, for a Portuguese tragedy,
for a martyrdom play of the reign of Queen Mary—what with reading
Spanish, learning Dutch, translating and reviewing for the
booksellers—Southey had been too closely at work. His heart began
to take fits of sudden and violent pulsation; his sleep, ordinarily as
sound as a child’s, became broken and unrefreshing. Unless the
disease were thrown off by regular exercise, Beddoes assured him, it
would fasten upon him, and could not be overcome. Two years
previously they had spent a summer at Burton, in Hampshire; why
should they not go there again? In June, 1799, unaccompanied by
his wife, whose health seemed also to be impaired, Southey went to
seek a house. Two cottages, convertible into one, with a garden, a
fish-pond, and a pigeon-house, promised a term of quiet and
comfort in “Southey Palace that is to be.” Possession was not to be
had until Michaelmas, and part of the intervening time was very
enjoyably spent in roaming among the vales and woods, the
coombes and cliffs of Devon. It was in some measure a renewal of
the open-air delight which had been his at the Arrabida and Cintra.
“I have seen the Valley of Stones,” he writes: “Imagine a narrow vale
between two ridges of hills somewhat steep; the southern hill turfed;
the vale which runs from east to west covered with huge stones and
fragments of stones among the fern that fills it; the northern ridge
completely bare, excoriated of all turf and all soil, the very bones
and skeleton of the earth; rock reclining upon rock, stone piled upon
stone, a huge and terrific mass. A palace of the Preadamite kings, a
city of the Anakim, must have appeared so shapeless and yet so like
the ruins of what had been shaped, after the waters of the flood
subsided. I ascended with some toil the highest point; two large
stones inclining on each other formed a rude portal on the summit:
here I sat down; a little level platform about two yards long lay
before me, and then the eye fell immediately upon the sea, far, very
far below. I never felt the sublimity of solitude before.”
But Southey could not rest. “I had rather leave off eating than
poetizing,” he had said; and now the words seemed coming true, for
he still poetized, and had almost ceased to eat. “Yesterday I finished
Madoc, thank God! and thoroughly to my own satisfaction; but I
have resolved on one great, laborious, and radical alteration. It was
my design to identify Madoc with Mango Capac, the legislator of
Peru: in this I have totally failed; therefore Mango Capac is to be the
hero of another poem.” There is something charming in the logic of
Southey’s “therefore;” so excellent an epic hero must not go to
waste; but when, on the following morning, he rose early, it was to
put on paper the first hundred lines, not of Mango Capac, but of the
Dom Daniel poem which we know as Thalaba. A Mohammed, to be
written in hexameters, was also on the stocks; and Coleridge had
promised the half of this. Southey, who remembered a certain
quarto volume on Pantisocracy and other great unwritten works,
including the last—a Life of Lessing, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge—
knew the worth of his collaborateur’s promises. However, it matters
little; “the only inconvenience that his dereliction can occasion will
be that I shall write the poem in fragments, and have to seam them
together at last.” “My Mohammed will be what I believe the Arabian
was in the beginning of his career—sincere in enthusiasm; and it
would puzzle a casuist to distinguish between the belief of
inspiration and actual enthusiasm.” A short fragment of the
Mohammed was actually written by Coleridge, and a short fragment
by Southey, which, dating from 1799, have an interest in connexion
with the history of the English hexameter. Last among these many
projects, Southey has made up his mind to undertake one great
historical work—the History of Portugal. This was no dream-project;
Mango Capac never descended from his father the Sun to appear in
Southey’s poem; Mohammed never emerged from the cavern where
the spider had spread his net; but the work which was meant to rival
Gibbon’s great history was in part achieved. It is a fact more pathetic
than many others which make appeal for tears, that this most
ambitious and most cherished design of Southey’s life, conceived at
the age of twenty-six, and kept constantly in view through all his
days of toil, was not yet half wrought out when, forty years later, the
pen dropped from his hand, and the worn-out brain could think no
more.
The deal shavings had hardly been cleared out of the twin
cottages at Burton, when Southey was prostrated by a nervous
fever; on recovering, he moved to Bristol, still weak, with strange
pains about the heart, and sudden seizures of the head. An entire
change of scene was obviously desirable. The sound of the brook
that ran beside his uncle’s door at Cintra, the scent of the lemon-
groves, the grandeur of the Arrabida, haunted his memory; there
were books and manuscripts to be found in Portugal which were
essential in the preparation of his great history of that country. Mr.
Hill invited him; his good friend Elmsley, an old schoolfellow, offered
him a hundred pounds. From every point of view it seemed right and
prudent to go. Ailing and unsettled as he was, he yet found strength
and time to put his hand to a good work before leaving Bristol.
Chatterton always interested Southey deeply; they had this much at
least in common, that both had often listened to the chimes of St.
Mary Redcliffe, that both were lovers of antiquity, both were rich in
store of verse, and lacked all other riches. Chatterton’s sister, Mrs.
Newton, and her child were needy and neglected. It occurred to
Southey and Cottle that an edition of her brother’s poems might be
published for her benefit. Subscribers came in slowly, and the plan
underwent some alterations; but in the end the charitable thought
bore fruit, and the sister and niece of the great unhappy boy were
lifted into security and comfort. To have done something to appease
the moody and indignant spirit of a dead poet, was well; to have
rescued from want a poor woman and her daughter, was perhaps
even better.
Early in April, 1800, Southey was once more on his way from
Bristol, by Falmouth, to the Continent, accompanied by his wife, now
about to be welcomed to Portugal by the fatherly uncle whose
prudence she had once alarmed. The wind was adverse, and while
the travellers were detained Southey strolled along the beach,
caught soldier-crabs, and observed those sea-anemones which
blossom anew in the verse of Thalaba. For reading on the voyage,
he had brought Burns, Coleridge’s poems, the Lyrical Ballads, and a
poem, with “miraculous beauties,” called Gebir, “written by God
knows who.” But when the ship lost sight of England, Southey, with
swimming head, had little spirit left for wrestling with the intractable
thews of Landor’s early verse; he could just grunt out some crooked
pun or quaint phrase in answer to inquiries as to how he did.
Suddenly, on the fourth morning, came the announcement that a
French cutter was bearing down upon them. Southey leaped to his
feet, hurriedly removed his wife to a place of safety, and, musket in
hand, took his post upon the quarter-deck. The smoke from the
enemy’s matches could be seen. She was hailed, answered in broken
English, and passed on. A moment more, and the suspense was
over; she was English, manned from Guernsey. “You will easily
imagine,” says Southey, “that my sensations at the ending of the
business were very definable—one honest, simple joy that I was in a
whole skin!” Two mornings more, and the sun rose behind the
Berlings; the heights of Cintra became visible, and nearer, the silver
dust of the breakers, with sea-gulls sporting over them; a pilot’s
boat, with puffed and flapping sail, ran out; they passed thankfully
our Lady of the Guide, and soon dropped anchor in the Tagus. An
absence of four years had freshened every object to Southey’s sense
of seeing, and now he had the joy of viewing all familiar things as
strange through so dear a companion’s eyes.
Mr. Hill was presently on board with kindly greeting; he had hired
a tiny house for them, perched well above the river, its little rooms
cool with many doors and windows. Manuel the barber, brisk as
Figaro, would be their factotum, and Mrs. Southey could also see a
new maid—Maria Rosa. Maria by-and-by came to be looked at, in
powder, straw-coloured gloves, fan, pink-ribands, muslin petticoat,
green satin sleeves; she was “not one of the folk who sleep on straw
mattresses;” withal she was young and clean. Mrs. Southey, who
had liked little the prospect of being thrown abroad upon the world,
was beginning to be reconciled to Portugal; roses and oranges and
green peas in early May were pleasant things. Then the streets were
an unending spectacle; now a negro going by with Christ in a glass
case, to be kissed for a petty alms; now some picturesque,
venerable beggar; now the little Emperor of the Holy Ghost, strutting
it from Easter till Whitsuntide, a six-year-old mannikin with silk
stockings, buckles, cocked hat, and sword, his gentlemen ushers
attending, and his servants receiving donations on silver salvers.
News of an assassination, from time to time, did not much disturb
the tranquil tenor of ordinary life. There were old gardens to loiter in
along vine-trellised walks, or in sunshine where the grey lizards
glanced and gleamed. And eastward from the city were lovely by-
lanes amid blossoming olive-trees or market-gardens, veined by tiny
aqueducts and musical with the creak of water-wheels, which told of
cool refreshment. There was also the vast public aqueduct to visit;
Edith Southey, holding her husband’s hand, looked down, hardly
discovering the diminished figures below of women washing in the
brook of Alcantara. If the sultry noon in Lisbon was hard to endure,
evening made amends; then strong sea-winds swept the narrowest
alley, and rolled their current down every avenue. And later, it was
pure content to look down upon the moonlighted river, with Almada
stretching its black isthmus into the waters that shone like midnight
snow.
Before moving to Cintra, they wished to witness the procession of
the Body of God—Southey likes the English words as exposing “the
naked nonsense of the blasphemy”—those of St. Anthony, and the
Heart of Jesus, and the first bull-fight. Everything had grown into
one insufferable glare; the very dust was bleached; the light was like
the quivering of a furnace fire. Every man and beast was asleep; the
stone-cutter slept with his head upon the stone; the dog slept under
the very cart-wheels; the bells alone slept not, nor ceased from their
importunate clamour. At length—it was near mid-June—a marvellous
cleaning of streets took place, the houses were hung with crimson
damask, soldiers came and lined the ways, windows and balconies
filled with impatient watchers—not a jewel in Lisbon but was on
show. With blare of music the procession began; first, the banners
of the city and its trades, the clumsy bearers crab-sidling along; an
armed champion carrying a flag; wooden St. George held painfully
on horseback; led horses, their saddles covered with rich
escutcheons; all the brotherhoods, an immense train of men in red
or grey cloaks; the knights of the orders superbly dressed; the whole
patriarchal church in glorious robes; and then, amid a shower of
rose-leaves fluttering from the windows, the Pix, and after the Pix,
the Prince. On a broiling Sunday, the amusement being cool and
devout, was celebrated the bull-feast. The first wound sickened
Edith; Southey himself, not without an effort, looked on and saw
“the death-sweat darkening the dun hide”—a circumstance borne in
mind for his Thalaba. “I am not quite sure,” he writes, “that my
curiosity in once going was perfectly justifiable, but the pain inflicted
by the sight was expiation enough.”
After this it was high time to take refuge from the sun among the
lemon-groves at Cintra. Here, if ever in his life, Southey for a brief
season believed that the grasshopper is wiser than the ant; a true
Portuguese indolence overpowered him. “I have spent my mornings
half naked in a wet room dozing upon the bed, my right hand not
daring to touch my left.” Such glorious indolence could only be a
brief possession with Southey. More often he would wander by the
streams to those spots where purple crocuses carpeted the ground,
and there rest and read. Sometimes seated sideways on one of the
sure-footed burros, with a boy to beat and guide the brute, he would
jog lazily on, while Edith, now skilled in “ass-womanship,” would jog
along on a brother donkey. Once and again a fog—not unwelcome—
came rolling in from the ocean, one huge mass of mist, marching
through the valley like a victorious army, approaching, blotting the
brightness, but leaving all dank and fresh. And always the evenings
were delightful, when fireflies sparkled under the trees, or in July
and August, as their light went out, when the grillo began his song.
“I eat oranges, figs, and delicious pears—drink Colares wine, a sort
of half-way excellence between port and claret—read all I can lay my
hands on—dream of poem after poem, and play after play—take a
siesta of two hours, and am as happy as if life were but one
everlasting today, and that tomorrow was not to be provided for.”
But Southey’s second visit to Portugal was, on the whole, no
season of repose. A week in the southern climate seemed to have
restored him to health, and he assailed folio after folio in his uncle’s
library, rising each morning at five, “to lay in bricks for the great
Pyramid of my history.” The chronicles, the laws, the poetry of
Portugal, were among these bricks. Nor did he slacken in his ardour
as a writer of verse. Six books of Thalaba were in his trunk in
manuscript when he sailed from Falmouth; the remaining six were of
a southern birth. “I am busy,” he says, “in correcting Thalaba for the
press.... It is a good job done, and so I have thought of another, and
another, and another.” As with Joan of Arc, so with this maturer
poem the correction was a rehandling which doubled the writer’s
work. To draw the pen across six hundred lines did not cost him a
pang. At length the manuscript was despatched to his friend
Rickman, with instructions to make as good a bargain as he could
for the first thousand copies. By Joan and the miscellaneous Poems
of 1797, Southey had gained not far from a hundred and fifty
pounds; he might fairly expect a hundred guineas for Thalaba. It
would buy the furniture of his long-expected house. But he was
concerned about the prospects of Harry, his younger brother; and
now William Taylor wrote that some provincial surgeon of eminence
would board and instruct the lad during four or five years for
precisely a hundred guineas. “A hundred guineas!” Southey
exclaims; “well, but, thank God, there is Thalaba ready, for which I
ask this sum.” “Thalaba finished, all my poetry,” he writes, “instead
of being wasted in rivulets and ditches, shall flow into the great
Madoc Mississippi river.” One epic poem, however, he finds too little
to content him; already The Curse of Kehama is in his head, and
another of the mythological series which never saw the light. “I have
some distant view of manufacturing a Hindoo romance, wild as
Thalaba; and a nearer one of a Persian story, of which I see the
germ of vitality. I take the system of the Zendavesta for my
mythology, and introduce the powers of darkness persecuting a
Persian, one of the hundred and fifty sons of the great king; an
Athenian captive is a prominent character, and the whole warfare of
the evil power ends in exalting a Persian prince into a citizen of
Athens.” From which catastrophe we may infer that Southey had still
something republican about his heart.
Before quitting Portugal, the Southeys, with their friend
Waterhouse and a party of ladies, travelled northwards,
encountering very gallantly the trials of the way; Mafra, its convent
and library, had been already visited by Southey. “Do you love
reading?” asked the friar who accompanied them, overhearing some
remark about the books. “Yes.” “And I,” said the honest Franciscan,
“love eating and drinking.” At Coimbra—that central point from which
radiates the history and literature of Portugal—Southey would have
agreed feelingly with the good brother of the Mafra convent; he had
looked forward to precious moments of emotion in that venerable
city; but air and exercise had given him a cruel appetite; if truth
must be told, the ducks of the monastic poultry-yard were more to
him than the precious finger of St. Anthony. “I did long,” he
confesses, “to buy, beg, or steal a dinner.” The dinner must
somehow have been secured before he could approach in a worthy
spirit that most affecting monument at Coimbra—the Fountain of
Tears. “It is the spot where Inez de Castro was accustomed to meet
her husband Pedro, and weep for him in his absence. Certainly her
dwelling-house was in the adjoining garden; and from there she was
dragged, to be murdered at the feet of the king, her father-in-law....
I, who have long planned a tragedy upon the subject, stood upon
my own scene.” While Southey and his companions gazed at the
fountains and their shadowing cedar-trees, the gownsmen gathered
round; the visitors were travel-stained and bronzed by the sun;
perhaps the witty youths cheered for the lady with the squaw tint;
whatever offence may have been given, the ladies’ protectors found
them “impudent blackguards,” and with difficulty suppressed
pugilistic risings.
After an excursion southwards to Algarve, Southey made ready for
his return to England (1801). His wife desired it, and he had attained
the main objects of his sojourn abroad. His health had never been
more perfect; he had read widely; he had gathered large material
for his History; he knew where to put his hand on this or that which
might prove needful, whenever he should return to complete his
work among the libraries of Portugal. On arriving at Bristol, a letter
from Coleridge met him. It was dated from Greta Hall, Keswick; and
after reminding Southey that Bristol had recently lost the miraculous
young man, Davy, and adding that he, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had
experiences, sufferings, hopes, projects to impart, which would
beguile much time, “were you on a desert island and I your Friday,”
it went on to present the attractions of Keswick, and in particular of
Greta Hall, in a way which could not be resisted. Taking all in all—
the beauty of the prospect, the roominess of the house, the lowness
of the rent, the unparalleled merits of the landlord, the
neighbourhood of noble libraries—it united advantages not to be
found together elsewhere. “In short”—the appeal wound up—“for
situation and convenience—and when I mention the name of
Wordsworth, for society of men of intellect—I know no place in
which you and Edith would find yourselves so well suited.”
 Meanwhile Drummond, an M.P. and a translator of Persius, who
was going as ambassador, first to Palermo and then to
Constantinople, was on the look-out for a secretary. The post would
be obtained for Southey by his friend Wynn, if possible; this might
lead to a consulship; why not to the consulship at Lisbon, with
1000l. a year? Such possibilities, however, could not prevent him
from speedily visiting Coleridge and Keswick. “Time and absence
make strange work with our affections,” so writes Southey; “but
mine are ever returning to rest upon you. I have other and dear
friends, but none with whom the whole of my being is intimate....
Oh! I have yet such dreams. Is it quite clear that you and I were not
meant for some better star, and dropped by mistake into this world
of pounds, shillings, and pence?” So for the first time Southey set
foot in Keswick, and looked upon the lake and the hills which were
to become a portion of his being, and which have taken him so
closely, so tenderly, to themselves. His first feeling was one not
precisely of disappointment, but certainly of remoteness from this
northern landscape; he had not yet come out from the glow and the
noble abandon of the South. “These lakes,” he says, “are like rivers;
but oh for the Mondego and the Tagus! And these mountains,
beautifully indeed are they shaped and grouped; but oh for the
grand Monchique! and for Cintra, my paradise!”
Time alone was needed to calm and temper his sense of seeing;
for when, leaving Mrs. Southey with her sister and Coleridge, he
visited his friend Wynn at Llangedwin, and breathed the mountain
air of his own Prince Madoc, all the loveliness of Welsh streams and
rivers sank into his soul. “The Dee is broad and shallow, and its dark
waters shiver into white and silver and hues of amber brown. No
mud upon the shore—no bushes—no marsh plants—anywhere a
child might stand dry-footed and dip his hand into the water.” And
again a contrasted picture: “The mountain-side was stony, and a few
trees grew among its stones; the other side was more wooded, and
had grass on the top, and a huge waterfall thundered into the
bottom, and thundered down the bottom. When it had nearly passed
these rocky straits, it met another stream. The width of water then
became considerable, and twice it formed a large black pool, to the
eye absolutely stagnant, the froth of the waters that entered there
sleeping upon the surface; it had the deadness of enchantment; yet
was not the pool wider than the river above it and below it, where it
foamed over and fell.” Such free delight as Southey had among the
hills of Wales came quickly to an end. A letter was received offering
him the position of private secretary to Mr. Corry, Chancellor of the
Exchequer for Ireland, with a salary of four hundred pounds a year.
Rickman was in Dublin, and this was Rickman’s doing. Southey, as
he was in prudence bound to do, accepted the appointment,
hastened back to Keswick, bade farewell for a little while to his wife,
and started for Dublin in no cheerful frame of mind.
At a later time, Southey possessed Irish friends whom he
honoured and loved; he has written wise and humane words about
the Irish people. But all through his career Ireland was to Southey
somewhat too much that ideal country—of late to be found only in
the region of humorous-pathetic melodrama—in which the business
of life is carried on mainly by the agency of bulls and blunder-
busses; and it required a distinct effort on his part to conceive the
average Teague or Patrick otherwise than as a potato-devouring
troglodyte, on occasions grotesquely amiable, but more often with
the rage of Popery working in his misproportioned features. Those
hours during which Southey waited for the packet were among the
heaviest of his existence. After weary tackings in a baffling wind, the
ship was caught into a gale, and was whirled away, fifteen miles
north of Dublin, to the fishing-town of Balbriggan. Then, a drive
across desolate country, which would have depressed the spirits had
it not been enlivened by the airs and humours of little Dr. Solomon,
the unique, the omniscient, the garrulous, next after Bonaparte the
most illustrious of mortals, inventor of the Cordial Balm of Gilead,
and possessor of a hundred puncheons of rum. When the new
private secretary arrived, the chancellor was absent; the secretary,
therefore, set to work on rebuilding a portion of his Madoc. Presently
Mr. Corry appeared, and there was a bow and a shake of hands;
then he hurried away to London, to be followed by Southey, who,
going round by Keswick, was there joined by his wife. From London
Southey writes to Rickman, “The chancellor and the scribe go on in
the same way. The scribe hath made out a catalogue of all books
published since the commencement of ’97 upon finance and scarcity;
he hath also copied a paper written by J.R. [John Rickman]
containing some Irish alderman’s hints about oak-bark; and nothing
more hath the scribe done in his vocation. Duly he calls at the
chancellor’s door; sometimes he is admitted to immediate audience;
sometimes kicketh his heels in the antechamber; ... sometimes a
gracious message emancipates him for the day. Secrecy hath been
enjoined him as to these State proceedings. On three subjects he is
directed to read and research—corn-laws, finance, tythes, according
to their written order.” The independent journals meanwhile had
compared Corry and Southey, the two State conspirators, to Empson
and Dudley; and delicately expressed a hope that the poet would
make no false numbers in his new work.
Southey, who had already worn an ass’s head in one of Gillray’s
caricatures, was not afflicted by the newspaper sarcasm; but the
vacuity of such a life was intolerable; and when it was proposed that
he should become tutor to Corry’s son, he brought his mind finally to
the point of resigning “a foolish office and a good salary.” His notions
of competence were moderate; the vagabondage between the Irish
and English headquarters entailed by his office was irksome. His
books were accumulating, and there was ample work to be done
among them if he had but a quiet library of his own. Then, too,
there was another good reason for resigning. A new future was
opening for Southey. Early in the year (1802) his mother died. She
had come to London to be with her son; there she had been stricken
with mortal illness; true to her happy, self-forgetful instincts, she
remained calm, uncomplaining, considerate for others. “Go down,
my dear; I shall sleep presently,” she had said, knowing that death
was at hand. With his mother, the last friend of Southey’s infancy
and childhood was gone. “I calmed and curbed myself,” he writes,
“and forced myself to employment; but at night there was no sound
of feet in her bedroom, to which I had been used to listen, and in
the morning it was not my first business to see her.” The past was
past indeed. But as the year opened, it brought a happy promise;
before summer would end, a child might be in his arms. Here were
sufficient reasons for his resignation; a library and a nursery ought,
he says, to be stationary.
To Bristol husband and wife came, and there found a small
furnished house. After the roar of Fleet Street, and the gathering of
distinguished men—Fuseli, Flaxman, Barry, Lamb, Campbell, Bowles
—there was a strangeness in the great quiet of the place. But in that
quiet Southey could observe each day the growth of the pile of
manuscript containing his version of Amadis of Gaul, for which
Longman and Rees promised him a munificent sixty pounds. He
toiled at his History of Portugal, finding matter of special interest in
that part which was concerned with the religious orders. He received
from his Lisbon collection precious boxes folio-crammed. “My dear
and noble books! Such folios of saints! dull books enough for my
patience to diet upon, till all my flock be gathered together into one
fold.” Sixteen volumes of Spanish poetry are lying uncut in the next
room; a folio yet untasted jogs his elbow; two of the best and rarest
chronicles coyly invite him. He had books enough in England to
employ three years of active industry. And underlying all thoughts of
the great Constable Nuño Alvares Pereyra, of the King D. Joaõ I.,
and of the Cid, deeper than the sportsman pleasure of hunting from
their lair strange facts about the orders Cistercian, Franciscan,
Dominican, Jesuit, there was a thought of that new-comer whom,
says Southey, “I already feel disposed to call whelp and dog, and all
those vocables of vituperation by which a man loves to call those he
loves best.”
In September, 1802, was born Southey’s first child, named
Margaret Edith, after her mother and her dead grandmother; a flat-
nosed, round-foreheaded, grey-eyed, good-humoured girl. “I call
Margaret,” he says, in a sober mood of fatherly happiness, “by way
of avoiding all commonplace phraseology of endearment, a worthy
child and a most excellent character. She loves me better than any
one except her mother; her eyes are as quick as thought; she is all
life and spirit, and as happy as the day is long; but that little brain of
hers is never at rest, and it is painful to see how dreams disturb her.”
For Margery and her mother and the folios a habitation must be
found. Southey inclined now towards settling in the neighbourhood
of London—now towards Norwich, where Dr. Sayers and William
Taylor would welcome him—now towards Keswick; but its horrid
latitude, its incessant rains! On the whole, his heart turned most
fondly to Wales; and there, in one of the loveliest spots of Great
Britain, in the Vale of Neath, was a house to let, by name Maes
Gwyn. Southey gave his fancy the rein, and pictured himself “housed
and homed” in Maes Gwyn, working steadily at the History of
Portugal, and now and again glancing away from his work to have a
look at Margery seated in her little great chair. But it was never to
be; a difference with the landlord brought to an end his treaty for
the house, and in August the child lay dying. It was bitter to part
with what had been so long desired—during seven childless years—
and what had grown so dear. But Southey’s heart was strong; he
drew himself together, returned to his toil, now less joyous than
before, and set himself to strengthen and console his wife.
Bristol was henceforth a place of mournful memories. “Edith,”
writes Southey, “will be nowhere so well as with her sister Coleridge.
She has a little girl some six months old, and I shall try and graft her
into the wound while it is yet fresh.” Thus Greta Hall received its
guests (September, 1803). At first the sight of little Sara Coleridge
and her baby cooings caused shootings of pain on which Southey
had not counted. Was the experiment of this removal to prove a
failure? He still felt as if he were a feather driven by the wind. “I
have no symptoms of root-striking here,” he said. But he spoke, not
knowing what was before him; the years of wandering were indeed
over; here he had found his home.
 CHAPTER IV.
WAYS OF LIFE AT KESWICK, 1803-1839.

The best of life with Southey was yet to come; but in what
remains there are few outstanding events to chronicle; there is
nowhere any splendour of circumstance. Of some lives the virtue is
distilled, as it were, into a few exquisite moments—moments of
rapture, of vision, of sudden and shining achievement; all the days
and years seem to exist only for the sake of such faultless moments,
and it matters little whether such a life, of whose very essence it is
to break the bounds of time and space, be long or short as
measured by the falling of sandgrains or the creeping of a shadow.
Southey’s life was not one of these; its excellence was constant,
uniform, perhaps somewhat too evenly distributed. He wrought in
his place day after day, season after season. He submitted to the
good laws of use and wont. He grew stronger, calmer, more full-
fraught with stores of knowledge, richer in treasure of the heart.
Time laid its hand upon him gently and unfalteringly: the bounding
step became less light and swift; the ringing voice lapsed into sadder
fits of silence; the raven hair changed to a snowy white; only still the
indefatigable eye ran down the long folio columns, and the
indefatigable hand still held the pen—until all true life had ceased.
When it has been said that Southey was appointed Pye’s successor
in the laureateship, that he received an honorary degree from his
university, that now and again he visited the Continent, that children
were born to him from among whom death made choice of the
dearest; and then we add that he wrote and published books, the
leading facts of Southey’s life have been told. Had he been worse or
a weaker man, we might look to find mysteries, picturesque vices, or
engaging follies; as it is, everything is plain, straightforward,
substantial. What makes the life of Southey eminent and singular is
its unity of purpose, its persistent devotion to a chosen object, its
simplicity, purity, loyalty, fortitude, kindliness, truth.
The river Greta, before passing under the bridge at the end of
Main Street, Keswick, winds about the little hill on which stands
Greta Hall; its murmur may be heard when all is still beyond the
garden and orchard; to the west it catches the evening light. “In
front,” Coleridge wrote when first inviting his friend to settle with
him, “we have a giants’ camp—an encamped army of tent-like
mountains, which by an inverted arch gives a view of another vale.
On our right the lovely vale and the wedge-shaped lake of
Bassenthwaite; and on our left Derwentwater and Lodore full in
view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale. Behind us the
massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a tent-
like ridge in the larger.” Southey’s house belongs in a peculiar degree
to his life: in it were stored the treasures upon which his intellect
drew for sustenance; in it his affections found their earthly abiding-
place; all the most mirthful, all the most mournful, recollections of
Southey hang about it; to it in every little wandering his heart
reverted like an exile’s; it was at once his workshop and his
playground; and for a time, while he endured a living death, it
became his antechamber to the tomb. The rambling tenement
consisted of two houses under one roof, the larger part being
occupied by the Coleridges and Southeys, the smaller for a time by
Mr. Jackson, their landlord. On the ground-floor was the parlour
which served as dining-room and general sitting-room, a pleasant
chamber looking upon the green in front; here also were Aunt
Lovell’s sitting-room, and the mangling-room, in which stood ranged
in a row the long array of clogs, from the greatest even unto the
least, figuring in a symbol the various stages of human life. The
stairs to the right of the kitchen led to a landing-place filled with
bookcases; a few steps more led to the little bedroom occupied by
Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter. “A few steps farther,” writes Sara
Coleridge, whose description is here given in abridgment, “was a
little wing bedroom—then the study, where my uncle sat all day
occupied with literary labours and researches, but which was used
as a drawing-room for company. Here all the tea-visiting guests were
received. The room had three windows, a large one looking down
upon the green with the wide flower-border, and over to Keswick
Lake and mountains beyond. There were two smaller windows
looking towards the lower part of the town seen beyond the nursery-
garden. The room was lined with books in fine bindings; there were
books also in brackets, elegantly lettered vellum-covered volumes
lying on their sides in a heap. The walls were hung with pictures,
mostly portraits.... At the back of the room was a comfortable sofa,
and there were sundry tables, beside my uncle’s library table, his
screen, desk, etc. Altogether, with its internal fittings up, its noble
outlook, and something pleasing in its proportions, this was a
charming room.” Hard by the study was Southey’s bedroom. We
need not ramble farther through passages lined with books, and up
and down flights of stairs to Mr. Jackson’s organ-room, and Mrs.
Lovell’s room, and Hartley’s parlour, and the nurseries, and one dark
apple-room supposed to be the abode of a bogle. Without,
greensward, flowers, shrubs, strawberry-beds, fruit-trees, encircled
the house; to the back, beyond the orchard, a little wood stretched
down to the river-side. A rough path ran along the bottom of the
wood; here, on a covered seat, Southey often read or planned future
work, and here his little niece loved to play in sight of the dimpling
water. “Dear Greta Hall!” she exclaims; “and oh, that rough path
beside the Greta! How much of my childhood, of my girlhood, of my
youth, were spent there!”
Southey’s attachment to his mountain town and its lakes was of
no sudden growth. He came to them as one not born under their
influence; that power of hills to which Wordsworth owed fealty, had
not brooded upon Southey during boyhood; the rich southern
meadows, the wooded cliffs of Avon, the breezy downs, had
nurtured his imagination, and to these he was still bound by pieties
of the heart. In the churchyard at Ashton, where lay his father and
his kinsfolk, the beneficent cloud of mingled love and sorrow most
overshadowed his spirit. His imagination did not soar, as did
Wordsworth’s, in naked solitudes; he did not commune with a
Presence immanent in external nature: the world, as he viewed it,
was an admirable habitation for mankind—a habitation with a
history. Even after he had grown a mountaineer, he loved a
humanized landscape, one in which the gains of man’s courage, toil,
and endurance are apparent. Flanders, where the spade has
wrought its miracles of diligence, where the slow canal-boat glides,
where the carillons ripple from old spires, where sturdy burghers
fought for freedom, and where vellum-bound quartos might be
sought and found, Flanders, on the whole gave Southey deeper and
stronger feelings than did Switzerland. The ideal land of his dreams
was always Spain: the earthly paradise for him was Cintra, with its
glory of sun, and a glow even in its depths of shadow. But as the
years went by, Spain became more and more a memory, less and
less a hope; and the realities of life in his home were of more worth
every day. When, in 1807, it grew clear that Greta Hall was to be his
life-long place of abode, Southey’s heart closed upon it with a
tenacious grasp. He set the plasterer and carpenter to work; he
planted shrubs; he enclosed the garden; he gathered his books
about him, and thought that here were materials for the industry of
many years; he held in his arms children who were born in this new
home; and he looked to Crosthwaite Churchyard, expecting, with
quiet satisfaction, that when toil was ended he should there take his
rest.
“I don’t talk much about these things,” Southey writes; “but these
lakes and mountains give me a deep joy for which I suspect nothing
elsewhere can compensate, and this is a feeling which time
strengthens instead of weakening.” Some of the delights of southern
counties he missed; his earliest and deepest recollections were
connected with flowers; both flowers and fruits were now too few;
there was not a cowslip to be found near Keswick. “Here in
Cumberland I miss the nightingale and the violet—the most
delightful bird and the sweetest flower.” But for such losses there
were compensations. A pastoral land will give amiable pledges for
the seasons and the months, and will perform its engagements with
a punctual observance; to this the mountains hardly condescend,
but they shower at their will a sudden largess of unimagined beauty.
Southey would sally out for a constitutional at his three-mile pace,
the peaked cap slightly shadowing his eyes, which were coursing
over the pages of a book held open as he walked; he had left his
study to obtain exercise, and so to preserve health; he was not a
laker engaged in view-hunting; he did not affect the contemplative
mood which at the time was not and could not be his. But when he
raised his eyes, or when, quickening his three-mile to a four-mile
pace, he closed the book, the beauty which lay around him liberated
and soothed his spirit. This it did unfailingly; and it might do more,
for incalculable splendours, visionary glories, exaltations, terrors, are
momentarily possible where mountain, and cloud, and wind, and
sunshine meet. Southey, as he says, did not talk much of these
things, but they made life for him immeasurably better than it would
have been in city confinement; there were spaces, vistas, an
atmosphere around his sphere of work, which lightened and relieved
it. The engagements in his study were always so numerous and so
full of interest that it needed an effort to leave the table piled with
books and papers. But a May morning would draw him forth into the
sun in spite of himself. Once abroad, Southey had a vigorous joy in
the quickened blood, and the muscles impatient with energy long
pent up. The streams were his especial delight; he never tired of
their deep retirement, their shy loveliness, and their melody; they
could often beguile him into an hour of idle meditation; their beauty
has in an especial degree passed into his verse. When his sailor
brother Thomas came and settled in the Vale of Newlands, Southey
would quickly cover the ground from Keswick at his four-mile pace,
and in the beck at the bottom of Tom’s fields, on summer days, he
would plunge and re-plunge and act the river-god in the natural
seats of mossy stone. Or he would be overpowered some autumn
morning by the clamour of childish voices voting a holiday by
acclamation. Their father must accompany them; it would do him
good, they knew it would; they knew he did not take sufficient
exercise, for they had heard him say so. Where should the scramble
be? To Skiddaw Dod, or Causey Pike, or Watenlath, or, as a
compromise between their exuberant activity and his inclination for
the chair and the fireside, to Walla Crag? And there, while his young
companions opened their baskets and took their noonday meal,
Southey would seat himself—as Westall has drawn him—upon the
bough of an ash-tree, the water flowing smooth and green at his
feet, but a little higher up broken, flashing, and whitening in its fall;
and there in the still autumn noon he would muse happily, placidly,
not now remembering with overkeen desire the gurgling tanks and
fountains of Cintra, his Paradise of early manhood.[7]
On summer days, when the visits of friends, or strangers bearing
letters of introduction, compelled him to idleness, Southey’s more
ambitious excursions were taken. But he was well aware that those
who form acquaintance with a mountain region during a summer all
blue and gold, know little of its finer power. It is October that brings
most often those days faultless, pearl-pure, of affecting influence,
 “In the long year set
Like captain jewels in the carcanet.”

Then, as Wordsworth has said, the atmosphere seems refined, and

the sky rendered more crystalline, as the vivifying heat of the year
abates; the lights and shadows are more delicate; the colouring is
richer and more finely harmonized; and, in this season of stillness,
the ear being unoccupied, or only gently excited, the sense of vision
becomes more susceptible of its appropriate enjoyments. Even
December is a better month than July for perceiving the special
greatness of a mountainous country. When the snow lies on the fells
soft and smooth, Grisedale Pike and Skiddaw drink in tints at
morning and evening marvellous as those seen upon Mont Blanc or
the Jungfrau for purity and richness.
“Summer,” writes Southey, “is not the season for this country.
Coleridge says, and says well, that then it is like a theatre at noon.
There are no goings on under a clear sky; but at other seasons there
is such shifting of shades, such islands of light, such columns and
buttresses of sunshine, as might almost make a painter burn his
brushes, as the sorcerers did their books of magic when they saw
the divinity which rested upon the apostles. The very snow, which
you would perhaps think must monotonize the mountains, gives new
varieties; it brings out their recesses and designates all their
inequalities; it impresses a better feeling of their height; and it
reflects such tints of saffron, or fawn, or rose-colour to the evening
sun. O Maria Santissima! Mount Horeb, with the glory upon its
summit, might have been more glorious, but not more beautiful than
old Skiddaw in his winter pelisse. I will not quarrel with frost, though
the fellow has the impudence to take me by the nose. The lake-side
has such ten thousand charms: a fleece of snow or of the hoar-frost
lies on the fallen trees or large stones; the grass-points, that just
peer above the water, are powdered with diamonds; the ice on the
margin with chains of crystal, and such veins and wavy lines of
beauty as mock all art; and, to crown all, Coleridge and I have found
out that stones thrown upon the lake when frozen make a noise like
singing birds, and when you whirl on it a large flake of ice, away the
shivers slide, chirping and warbling like a flight of finches.” This tells
of a February at Keswick; the following describes the goings on
under an autumn sky:—“The mountains on Thursday evening,
before the sun was quite down or the moon bright, were all of one
dead-blue colour; their rifts and rocks and swells and scars had all
disappeared—the surface was perfectly uniform, nothing but the
outline distinct; and this even surface of dead blue, from its
unnatural uniformity, made them, though not transparent, appear
transvious—as though they were of some soft or cloudy texture
through which you could have passed. I never saw any appearance
so perfectly unreal. Sometimes a blazing sunset seems to steep
them through and through with red light; or it is a cloudy morning,
and the sunshine slants down through a rift in the clouds, and the
pillar of light makes the spot whereon it falls so emerald green, that
it looks like a little field of Paradise. At night you lose the mountains,
and the wind so stirs up the lake that it looks like the sea by
moonlight.”
If Southey had not a companion by his side, the solitude of his
ramble was unbroken; he never had the knack of forgathering with
chance acquaintance. With intellectual and moral boldness, and with
high spirits, he united a constitutional bashfulness and reserve. His
retired life, his habits of constant study, and, in later years, his
shortness of sight, fell in with this infirmity. He would not patronize
his humbler neighbours; he had a kind of imaginative jealousy on
behalf of their rights as independent persons; and he could not be
sure of straightway discovering, by any genius or instinct of good-
fellowship, that common ground whereon strangers are at home
with one another. Hence—and Southey himself wished that it had
been otherwise—long as he resided at Keswick, there were perhaps
not twenty persons of the lower ranks whom he knew by sight.
“After slightly returning the salutation of some passer-by,” says his
son, “he would again mechanically lift his cap as he heard some
well-known name in reply to his inquiries, and look back with regret
that the greeting had not been more cordial.”
If the ice were fairly broken, he found it natural to be easy and
familiar, and by those whom he employed he was regarded with
affectionate reverence. Mrs. Wilson—kind and generous creature—
remained in Greta Hall tending the children as they grew up, until
she died, grieved for by the whole household. Joseph Glover, who
created the scarecrow “Statues” for the garden—male and female
created he them, as the reader may see them figured toward the
close of The Doctor—Glover, the artist who set up Edith’s fantastic
chimney-piece (“Well, Miss Southey,” cried honest Joseph, “I’ve done
my Devils”), was employed by Southey during five-and-twenty years,
ever since he was a ’prentice-boy. If any warm-hearted neighbour,
known or unknown to him, came forward with a demand on
Southey’s sympathies, he was sure to meet a neighbourly response.
When the miller, who had never spoken to him before, invited the
laureate to rejoice with him over the pig he had killed—the finest
ever fattened—and when Southey was led to the place where that
which had ceased to be pig and was not yet bacon, was hung up by
the hind feet, he filled up the measure of the good man’s joy by
hearty appreciation of a porker’s points. But Cumberland enthusiasm
seldom flames abroad with so prodigal a blaze as that of the worthy
miller’s heart.
Within the charmed circle of home, Southey’s temper and
manners were full of a strong and sweet hilarity; and the home circle
was in itself a considerable group of persons. The Pantisocratic
scheme of a community was, after all, near finding a fulfilment, only
that the Greta ran by in place of the Susquehanna, and that Southey
took upon his own shoulders the work of the dead Lovell, and of
Coleridge, who lay in weakness and dejection, whelmed under the
tide of dreams. For some little time Coleridge continued to reside at
Keswick, an admirable companion in almost all moods of mind, for
all kinds of wisdom, and all kinds of nonsense. When he was driven
abroad in search of health, it seemed as if a brightness were gone
out of the air, and the horizon of life had grown definite and
contracted. “It is now almost ten years,” Southey writes, “since he
and I first met in my rooms at Oxford, which meeting decided the
destiny of both.... I am perpetually pained at thinking what he ought
to be, ... but the tidings of his death would come upon me more like
a stroke of lightning than any evil I have ever yet endured.”
Mrs. Coleridge, with her children, remained at Greta Hall. That
quaint little metaphysician, Hartley—now answering to the name of
Moses, now to that of Job, the oddest of all God’s creatures—was an
unceasing wonder and delight to his uncle: “a strange, strange boy,
‘exquisitely wild,’ an utter visionary, like the moon among thin
clouds, he moves in a circle of his own making. He alone is a light of
his own. Of all human beings I never saw one so utterly naked of
self.” When his father expressed surprise that Hartley should take his
pleasure of wheel-barrow-riding so sadly, “The pity is”—explained
little Job—“the pity is, I’se always thinking of my thoughts.” “‘I’m a
boy of a very religious turn,’ he says; for he always talks of himself
and examines his own character, just as if he were speaking of
another person, and as impartially. Every night he makes an
extempore prayer aloud; but it is always in bed, and not till he is
comfortable there and got into the mood. When he is ready, he
touches Mrs. Wilson, who sleeps with him, and says, ‘Now listen!’
and off he sets like a preacher.” Younger than Hartley was Derwent
Coleridge, a fair, broad-chested boy, with merry eye and roguish lips,
now grown out of that yellow frock in which he had earned his name
of Stumpy Canary. Sara Coleridge, when her uncle came to Keswick
after the death of his own Margery, was a little grand-lama at that
worshipful age of seven months. A fall into the Greta, a year and a
half later, helped to change her to the delicate creature whose large
blue eyes would look up timidly from under her lace border and
mufflings of muslin. No feeling towards their father save a reverent
loyalty did the Coleridge children ever learn under Southey’s roof.
But when the pale-faced wanderer returned from Italy, he surprised
and froze his daughter by a sudden revelation of that jealousy which
is the fond injustice of an unsatisfied heart, and which a child who
has freely given and taken love finds it hard to comprehend. “I think
my dear father,” writes Sara Coleridge, “was anxious that I should
learn to love him and the Wordsworths and their children, and not
cling so exclusively to my mother and all around me at home.” Love
him and revere his memory she did; to Wordsworth she was
conscious of owing more than to any other teacher or inspirer in
matters of the intellect and imagination. But in matters of the heart
and conscience the daily life of Southey was the book in which she
read; he was, she would emphatically declare, “upon the whole, the
best man she had ever known.”
But the nepotism of the most “nepotious” uncle is not a perfect
substitute for fatherhood with its hopes and fears. May-morning of
the year 1804 saw “an Edithling very, very ugly, with no more beauty
than a young dodo,” nestling by Edith Southey’s side. A trembling
thankfulness possessed the little one’s father; but when the Arctic
weather changed suddenly to days of genial sunshine, and groves
and gardens burst into living greenery, and rang with song, his heart
was caught into the general joy. Southey was not without a
presentiment that his young dodo would improve. Soon her
premature activity of eye and spirits troubled him, and he tried,
while cherishing her, to put a guard upon his heart. “I did not mean
to trust my affections again on so frail a foundation—and yet the
young one takes me from my desk and makes me talk nonsense as
fluently as you perhaps can imagine.” When Sara Coleridge—not yet
five years old, but already, as she half believed, promised in
marriage to Mr. De Quincey—returned after a short absence to Greta
Hall, she saw her baby cousin, sixteen months younger, and
therefore not yet marriageable, grown into a little girl very fair, with
thick golden hair, and round, rosy cheeks. Edith Southey inherited
something of her father’s looks and of his swift intelligence; with her
growing beauty of face and limbs a growing excellence of inward
nature kept pace. At twenty she was the “elegant cygnet” of Amelia
Opie’s album verses,
 “’Twas pleasant to meet
And see thee, famed Swan of the Derwent’s fair tide,
With that elegant cygnet that floats by thy side”—

a compliment her father mischievously would not let her Elegancy

forget. Those who would know her in the loveliness of youthful
womanhood may turn to Wordsworth’s poem, The Triad, where she
appears first of the three “sister nymphs” of Keswick and Rydal; or,
Hartley Coleridge’s exquisite sonnet, To a lofty beauty, from her poor
kinsman:

“Methinks thy scornful mood,

And bearing high of stately womanhood—
Thy brow where Beauty sits to tyrannize
O’er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee:
For never sure was seen a royal bride,
Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride—
My very thoughts would tremble to be near thee,
But when I see thee by thy father’s side
Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee.”

But it is best of all to remember Southey’s daughter in connexion

with one letter of her father’s. In 1805 he visited Scotland alone; he
had looked forward to carrying on the most cherished purpose of his
life—the History of Portugal—among the libraries of Lisbon. But it
would be difficult to induce Mrs. Southey to travel with the Edithling.
Could he go alone? The short absence in Scotland served to test his
heart, and so to make his future clear:—

“I need not tell you, my own dear Edith, not to read

my letters aloud till you have first of all seen what is
written only for yourself. What I have now to say to
you is, that having been eight days from home, with as
little discomfort, and as little reason for discomfort, as
a man can reasonably expect, I have yet felt so little
comfortable, so great sense of solitariness, and so
 many homeward yearnings, that certainly I will not go
to Lisbon without you; a resolution which, if your
feelings be at all like mine, will not displease you. If,
on mature consideration, you think the inconvenience
of a voyage more than you ought to submit to, I must
be content to stay in England, as on my part it
certainly is not worth while to sacrifice a year’s
happiness; for though not unhappy (my mind is too
active and too well disciplined to yield to any such
criminal weakness), still, without you I am not happy.
But for your sake as well as my own, and for little
Edith’s sake, I will not consent to any separation; the
growth of a year’s love between her and me, if it
please God that she should live, is a thing too
delightful in itself, and too valuable in its
consequences, both to her and me, to be given up for
any light inconvenience either on your part or mine. An
absence of a year would make her effectually forget
me.... But of these things we will talk at leisure; only,
dear, dear Edith, we must not part.”

Such wisdom of the heart was justified; the year of growing love
bore precious fruit. When Edith May was ten years old her father
dedicated to her, in verses laden with a father’s tenderest thoughts
and feelings, his Tale of Paraguay. He recalls the day of her birth,
the preceding sorrow for his first child, whose infant features have
faded from him like a passing cloud; the gladness of that singing
month of May; the seasons that followed during which he observed
the dawning of the divine light in her eyes; the playful guiles by
which he won from her repeated kisses: to him these ten years
seem like yesterday; but to her they have brought discourse of
reason, with the sense of time and change:—