upon a revolutionary movement to which some of the purest hopes of
earnest youth had given impulse, drove him, as it drove Wordsworth,
into dread of everything that sought with passionate energy
immediate change of evil into good. But in his own way no man ever
strove more patiently than Southey to make evil good; and in his own
home and his own life he gave good reason to one to whom he was as a
father, and who knew his daily thoughts and deeds, to speak of him
as "upon the whole the best man I have ever known."

In the days when this book was written, Southey lived at Greta Hall,
by Keswick, and had gathered a large library about him. He was Poet
Laureate. He had a pension from the Civil List, worth less than 200
pounds a year, and he was living at peace upon a little income
enlarged by his yearly earnings as a writer. In 1818 his whole
private fortune was 400 pounds in consols. In 1821 he had added to
that some savings, and gave all to a ruined friend who had been good
to him in former years. Yet in those days he refused an offer of
2,000 pounds a year to come to London and write for the Times. He
was happiest in his home by Skiddaw, with his books about him and
his wife about him.

Ten years after the publishing of these Colloquies, Southey's wife,
who had been, as Southey said, "for forty years the life of his
life," had to be placed in a lunatic asylum. She returned to him to
die, and then his gentleness became still gentler as his own mind
failed. He died in 1843. Three years before his death his friend
Wordsworth visited him at Keswick, and was not recognised. But when
Southey was told who it was, "then," Wordsworth wrote, "his eyes
flashed for a moment with their former brightness, but he sank into
the state in which I had found him, patting with both his hands his