Return to Table of Contents

Some of the critics of 'Robert the Rhymer, who lived at the lakes,' seem to be of opinion, that his 'humour' is to be classed with such nonentities as the philosopher's stone, pigeon's milk, and other apocryphal myths and unknown quantities. In analysing the character of his intellect, they would assign to the 'humorous' attribute some such place as Van Troil did to the snaky tribe in his work on Iceland, wherein the title of chapter xv. runs thus: 'Concerning Snakes in Iceland' and the chapter itself thus: 'There are no snakes in Iceland.' Accordingly, were they to have the composition of this article, they would abbreviate it to the one terse sentence: 'Robert Southey had no humour.' Now, we have no inclination to claim for the Keswick bard any prodigious or pre-eminent powers of fun, or to give him place beside the rollicking jesters and genial merry-makers, whose humour gives English literature a distinctive character among the nations. But that he is so void of the comic faculty as certain potent authorities allege, we persistently doubt. Mr Macaulay affirms that Southey may be always read with pleasure, except when he tries to be droll; that a more insufferable jester never existed; and that, often as he attempts to be humorous, he in no single occasion has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. Another reviewer warned the author of the Doctor, that there is no greater mistake than that which a grave person falls into, when he fancies himself humorous; adding, as a consolatory corollary to this proposition, that unquestionably the doctor himself was in this predicament. But Southey was not so rigorously grave a person as his graver writings might seem to imply. 'I am quite as noisy as ever I was,' he writes to an old Oxford chum, when in sober manhood. 'Oh, dear Lightfoot, what a blessing it is to have a boy's heart! it is as great a blessing in carrying one through this world, as to have a child's spirit will in fitting us for the next.' On account of this boyish-heartedness, he is compared by Justice Talfourd to Charles Lamb himself: 'In a certain primness of style, bounding in the rich humour which overflowed it, they were nearly akin; both alike reverenced childhood, and both had preserved its best attributes unspotted from the world.' In the fifty-fifth year of his age, he characterised himself as a man

No one can dip into the Doctor without being convinced of this buoyancy of spirit, quickness of fancy, and blitheness of heart. It even vents its exuberance in bubbles of levity and elaborate trifling, so that all but the very light-hearted are fain to say: Something too much of this. Compared with our standard humorists—the peerage, or Upper House, who sit sublimely aloft, like 'Jove in his chair, of the sky my lord mayor'—Southey may be but a dull commoner, one of the third or fourth estate. But for all that, he has a comfortable fund of the vis comica, upon which he rubs along pleasantly enough, hospitably entertaining not a few congenial spirits who can put up with him as they find him, relish his simple and often racy fare, and enjoy a decent quantum of jokes of his own growing, without pining after the brilliant banquets of comedy spread by opulent barons of the realm.

To support this apology for the worthy doctor by plenary proof, would involve a larger expenditure of space and letter-press than befits the economy of a discreet hebdomadal journal. We can but allude, and hint, and suggest, and illustrate our position in an 'off-at-a-tangent' sort of way. Look, for instance, at his ingenious quaintness in the matter of onomatology. What a name, he would say, is Lamb for a soldier, Joy for an undertaker, Rich for a pauper, or Noble for a tailor; Big for a lean or little person, and Small for one who is broad in the rear and abdominous in the van; Short for a fellow six feet without his shoes, or Long for him whose high heels barely elevate him to the height of five; Sweet for one who has either a vinegar face, or a foxy complexion; Younghusband for an old bachelor; Merryweather for any one in November or February, a black spring, a cold summer, or a wet autumn; Goodenough for a person no better than he should be; Toogood for any human creature; and Best for a subject who is perhaps too bad to be endured. Amusing, too, are the doctor's reasons for using the customary alias of female Christian names—never calling any woman Mary, for example, though Mare, being the sea, was, he said, too emblematic of the sex; but using a synonyme of better omen, and Molly therefore was to be preferred as being soft. 'If he accosted a vixen of that name in her worst mood, he mollified her. Martha he called Patty, because it came pat to the tongue. Dorothy remained Dorothy, because it was neither fitting that women should be made Dolls nor Idols. Susan with him was always Sue, because women were to be sued; and Winifred Winny, because they were to be won.' Or refer to that pleasant bit of erudite trifling upon the habits of rats, beginning with the remark, that wheresoever Man goes Rat follows or accompanies him, town or country being equally agreeable to him; entering upon your house as a tenant-at-will—his own, not yours—working out for himself a covered-way in your walls, ascending by it from one storey to another, and leaving you the larger apartments, while he takes possession of the space between floor and ceiling, as an entresol for himself. 'There he has his parties, and his revels, and his gallopades—merry ones they are—when you would be asleep, if it were not for the spirit with which the youth and belles of Rat-land keep up the ball over your head. And you are more fortunate than most of your neighbours, if he does not prepare for himself a mausoleum behind your chimney-piece or under your hearthstone, retire into it when he is about to die, and very soon afford you full proof that though he may have lived like a hermit, his relics are not in the odour of sanctity. You have then the additional comfort of knowing, that the spot so appropriated will thenceforth be used as a common cemetery or a family-vault.' In the same vein, homage is paid to Rat's imitation of human enterprise: shewing how, when the adventurous merchant ships a cargo for some foreign port, Rat goes with it; how, when Great Britain plants a colony at the antipodes, Rat takes the opportunity of colonising also; how, when ships are sent out on a voyage of discovery, Rat embarks as a volunteer; doubling the stormy Cape with Diaz, arriving at Malabar with Gama, discovering the New World with Columbus, and taking possession of it at the same time, and circumnavigating the globe with Magellan, and Drake, and Cook.

Few that have once read will forget the Doctor's philological contributions towards an amended system of English orthography. Assuming the propriety of discarding all reference to the etymology of words, when engaged in spelling them, and desirous, as a philological reformer, to establish a truly British language, he proposes introducing a distinction of genders, in which the language has hitherto been defective. Thus, in anglicising the orthography of chemise, he resolves that foreign substantive into the home-grown neologisms, masculine and feminine, of Hemise and Shemise. Again, in letter-writing, every person, he remarks, is aware that male and female letters have a distinct sexual character; they should, therefore, be generally distinguished thus—Hepistle and Shepistle. And as there is the same marked difference in the writing of the two sexes, he proposes Penmanship and Penwomanship. Erroneous opinions in religion being promulgated in this country by women as well as men, the teachers of such false doctrines he would divide into Heresiarchs and Sheresiarchs. That troublesome affection of the diaphragm, which every person has experienced, is, upon the same principle, to be called, according to the sex of the patient, Hecups and Shecups; which, upon the above principle of making our language truly British, is better than the more classical form of Hiccups and Hoeccups; and then in its objective use we have Hiscups and Hercups; and in like manner Histerics should be altered into Herterics, the complaint never being masculine.

None but a 'humorist' would have announced the decease of a cat in such mingled terms and tones of jest and earnest as the following:—'Alas! Grosvenor,' writes Southey to his friend Mr Bedford (1823), 'this day poor old Rumpel was found dead, after as long and happy a life as cat could wish for, if cats form wishes on that subject. His full titles were: "The Most Noble the Archduke Rumpelstiltzchen, Earl Tomlemagne,[3] Baron Raticide, Waowhler and Skaratch." There should be a court mourning in Catland; and if the Dragon [a cat of Mr Bedford's] wear a black ribbon round his neck, or a band of crape À la militaire round one of the fore-paws, it will be but a becoming mark of respect.... I believe we are, each and all, servants included, more sorry for this loss than any of us would like to confess. I should not have written to you at present had it not been to notify this event.' The notification of such events, in print too, appears to some thinkers too absurd. Others find a special interest in these 'trifles light as air,' because presenting 'confirmation strong' of the kindly nature of the man, taking no unamiable or affected part in the presentment of Every Man in His Humour. His correspondence is, indeed, rich in traits of quiet humour, if by that word we understand a 'humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence'—the very 'juice of the mind oozing from the brain, and enriching and fertilising wherever it falls'—and seldom far removed from its kindred spirit, pathos, with which, however, it is not too closely akin to marry; for pathos is bound up in mysterious ties with humour—bone of its bone, and flesh of its flesh.

Nor can we assent to the assertion, that in his ballads, metrical tales, and rhyming jeux-d'esprit, Southey's essay to be comic results in merely 'quaint and flippant dulness.' Smartly enough he tells the story of the Well of St Keyne, whereof the legend is, that if the husband manage to secure a draught before his good dame, 'a happy man henceforth is he, for he shall be master for life.' But if the wife should drink of it first—'God help the husband then!' The traveller to whom a Cornishman narrates the tradition, compliments him with the assumption that he has profited by it in his matrimonial experience:—

And with all their extravagances of expression and questionable taste, the numerous stories which Southey delighted to versify on themes demoniac and diabolical, from the Devil's Walk to the True Ballad of St Antidius, are fraught with farcical import, and have an individual ludicrousness all their own. That he could succeed tolerably in the mock-heroic vein, may be seen in his parody on Pindar's ariston men hydor, entitled Gooseberry Pie, and in some of the occasional pieces called Nondescripts. Nor do we know any one of superior ingenuity in that overwhelming profusion of epithets and crowded creation of rhymes, which so tickle the ear and the fancy in some of his verses, and of which we have specimens almost unrivalled in the celebrated description of the cataract of Lodore, and the vivaciously ridiculous chronicle of Napoleon's march to Moscow.