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tity. Several circumstances combined to fos- and Crabbe were too astute men of business ter her somewhat morbid passion for seclusion, to accept of such an arrangement; and, acand not the least impulsive of these causes cordingly, obtained from two to three thousand may have been an uneasy consciousness of the guineas a piece for their respective works. want of those personal endowments which she Caroline Bowles realized but little pecuniary so sincerely admired in others, and which she advantage by her writings, if we except, perwas accustomed to consider essential to the haps, her contributions to Blackwood's Magasuccess and even comfort of a woman who, zine. She never looked at a bookseller's acwith whatever intellectual qualifications, ex-count, and had she done so, would hardly pected to make any figure in society. The have understood it. Her private means were ravages of an attack of virulent small-pox in adequate to her simple wants; and she was, her infancy, before Jenner had suggested the therefore, seldom induced to write through means of mitigating the scourge, had some- the ordinary stimulus to literary industry; and what impaired whatever pretensions she might thus selected those themes for her pen which originally have had to beauty of face; and a best harmonized with her tastes. diminutive figure and somewhat eccentric style of dress, by no means conduced to repair the defect.

The cordial friendship which subsisted for more than twenty years, between Caroline Bowles and Robert Southey-a friendship ceTo the solitary condition of her childhood, mented by sympathy of tastes, coincidence of and the love of retirement thereby engen- principles, and, above all, by mutual respect dered, no less than to the feebleness of her and esteem-reached its culminating point in general health, however, may chiefly be as- 1839, when, on the 5th of June of that year, cribed a predilection, which had become for she accepted him as her husband, and they many years a second nature to her. Among were married at Boldre Church, near Keswick. the fast friends who had been attracted to her No sacrifice could have been greater than the by her genius, in the earlier part of her career, one she was induced to make on the occasion. were the poets Southey and Bowles; the It can be placed beyond all doubt, by those former of whom reviewed a volume of her who survive her, that she was fully prepared poems in a highly complimentary manner, be- for the distressing calamity which impended fore he had any personal knowledge of its over both. She could have had no mercenary author, and availed himself of other opportu- motive in the matter, for she resigned a larger nities, in the Quarterly Review and elsewhere, income on her marriage than she knew she of testifying his admiration of her genius. could receive at her husband's death; indeed, The affectionate tone in which Bowles used to the sum bequeathed to her in his will did not write and speak of "Caroline" to his friends, amount to anything like the income she had and the coincidence of name, led to a very sacrificed. She consented to unite herself to general impression that she was his daughter; him, with a sure prevision of the awful conbut, though books of heraldry were consulted, dition of mind to which he would shortly be with no grave intention to examine authorities reduced; with a certain knowledge of the intoo minutely if anything like a kinship could jurious treatment to which she might be exbe traced, no relationship of any kind could posed, from the purest motive that could actuever be established between them. These in-ate a woman in forming such a connectiontimacies restored, in some degree, the elasticity of her mind; and the fame achieved by her Chapters on Churchyards,' by stimulating her literary ambition, helped to mitigate that constitutional melancholy, which had led her to dwell too often and too deeply on her own private ailments and afflictions. Left, by her father, with a modest competence, her authorship was, in the first instance, purely a matter of self-gratification and amusement. Nor was she ever, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, an "author by profession." The booksellers of that period enjoyed a large impunity in their dealings with literary men and women, -and a work published on the terms of a mutual division of profits seldom yielded any remuneration to the author. Wordsworth, Southey, and other popular writers who be- within the last few years, my spirits would hardReduced in number as my family has been came parties to such arrangements, have de-ly recover their habitual and healthful cheerfulclared, from time to time, that they usually ness if I had not prevailed on Miss Bowles to found a very Flemish balance of profit. Moore share my lot for the remainder of our lives.

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namely, the faint hope that her devotedness and zeal might enable her, if not to avert the catastrophe, to acquire at least a legal title to minister to the sufferer's comforts, and watch over the few sad years of existence that might remain to him. In the six volumes of the Memoirs and Correspondence,' edited by his son, three lines dismiss the marriage of his father with Miss Bowles; and the only further mention we find of her in the work is in the following extract from a letter addressed by the poet to his friend, Mr. Lander, bearing date March 31st, 1839, and a reference to Southey's visit to Buckland in December, 1830.

There is just such a disparity of years as is fit- | self personally, I hardly gave it a thought. I ting; we have been acquainted with each other knew that Mr. C. S. would be subject to a revi more than twenty years, and a more perfect con- sion which would not allow any gross insult to formity of disposition could not exist; so that his father's widow to pass through the press. in resolving upon what must be either the weak- The truth is known to many of those among the est or the wisest act of a sexagenarian's life, I most honored and attached of my husband's am well assured that, according to human fore- friends, especially to his and my very dear daughsight, I have judged well and acted wisely, both ter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Warter. The for myself and my remaining daughter. whole of my large correspondence with their father has been open to them, and with other considerable portions of correspondence and valuable papers, etc., will remain with them when I am gone; and they will take care that no injurious imputations shall cleave to the memory of her to whom they have shown the duty and

affection of children-true children of their fa

At the date of the marriage, Southey had been a widower two years; his former wife having been virtually dead to him for many more. On his death, until a pension on the Civil List was so properly conferred upon her, Mrs. Southey-her establishment at Buckland ther. There was not another man living in the having been broken up, and the income which world who could have edited the posthumous enabled her to support it alienated from her-edition of "The Doctor," and "Common Place was left with means insufficient, in her state Books" so well as Mr. Warter:-his peculiar of health, to provide her with the ordinary vein of thought and humor, as well as his princicomforts of life. The following extracts from ples, assimilated so admirably with those of my a letter from her to one of her early friends illustrates very affectingly her feelings and wishes at the period at which it is dated, the 9th of January, 1851 :—

husband. . . . Mr. Warter was hard worked in many ways; but this labor of love for his fatherin-law he could not find it in his heart to refuse. The work has cost him dear (and he will have no pecuniary remuneration); but he does not regret the cost, and you will see how well he has done his work."

Among the correspondence referred to in the above extract, there are, we have been informed, upwards of twelve hundred unpublished letters from the pen of Robert Southey, -a selection from which will doubtless be published hereafter.

The death of Mrs. Southey took place at Buckland, on the 20th ult. The event had long been expected. She seems, indeed, from the above extract from her letter, to have anticipated it more than three

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years ago. The volume which contains Robin Hood' was written by the poet and his wife in conjunction, and contains some of the latest occasional poems of Mrs. Southey. It is dedicated to Edith May Warter, her husband's daughter, in a sonnet which begins :—

What a vision of past years did the sight of your handwriting (immediately recognized), and the perusal of your letter kindle up. My eyes were dimmed by another cause than their natural failure before I got through it. A memorable period to us both has been the last thirteen years. . For your kind remembrance of me, and all your expressions of kindly feeling towards me, accept my cordial thanks. A long, dreary and weary way have I travelled on the downhill road, since I last wrote to you. Sore beset have I been, but not forsaken; and now the end is so near, that I have little more to do in this life, than to leave it in charity with all men-a lesson hard to learn in some cases, and I am such a fallible learner that I humor my infirmity by trying to forget whatever injuries I may have received; and to that end avoid as much as possible all subjects that may tend to rouse the indignant spirit within me, only too ready still to be disturbed, "with sense of intolerable wrong." In pursuance of this system, I made up my mind not to read Mr. Cuthbert Southey's work, nor any notices or reviews of it which might appear in newspapers and magazines. I was well aware that the work must be unsatisfactory; that the editor would have real difficulties to contend with, not being qualified to meet them successfully; that much could not -and is conceived throughout in a spirit of be known to him which he ought to know, and the truest affection. The order of Mrs. Souwhich it behooved a biographer to know; that they's works is as follows: Ellen Fitz Arthur, strong prejudices and partialities as well as in- a Poem' (1820,- The Widow's Tale, and competencies would be stumbling blocks in his other Poems' (1822),- Solitary Hours, Prose way; and in short, that if I were to read the work, I should exclaim at every page, and proand Verse' (1826), Chapters on Churchbably be wound up to a severe pitch before I had yards,' 2 vols. (1829),-Tales of the Facconcluded; and I have not life enough left in tories; and Robin Hood, a Fragment, by the me to risk such excitement when the risking it late Robert Southey and Caroline Bowles; could do no good. As to all that concerns my-with other Poems' (1847).

Daughter and friend! my husband's daughter
dear,
Thou who hast been a very Ruth to me;

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