Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/384

370 In "The Quarterly Review," established shortly afterwards, Southey found a more congenial field of employment. For a long series of years, he wrote regularly for its pages, and contributed more than any other individual writer to its permanent popularity and success. Nevertheless, his equanimity had to submit to the most vexatious trials. Gifford applied the editorial knife with slashing and imperturbable severity, and the spectacle of his mutilated phrases and opinions, touched him to the quick. He expostulated likewise against the harshness with which occasionally authors were treated, who were dragged before the editorial tribunal, as likewise on the disparaging tone assumed by the "Review" on matters pertaining to America; but his sentiments on such topics were unknown to or overlooked by the public at large, and as a prominent contributor he underwent much personal abuse for the very blemishes which he had anxiously endeavoured to remove.

In the summer of 1809, he received a severe shock by the sudden death of one of his daughters. His eldest boy had been dangerously ill, and had barely recovered before another child was struck. In relating the circumstance to a friend, he writes: "We lost Emma yesternight. I have five children; three of them at home, and two under my mother's care in heaven." As his expenses increased, he found it incumbent on him to think less of futurity, and more of the present hour; and periodical writing encroached upon the time he would otherwise have alloted to his more ambitious efforts. In 1808, Ballantyne the publisher had projected an " Annual Register," and requested Southey's co-operation. In 1809, Ballantyne again wrote, asking him to write the history of the Spanish affairs for that year; and afterwards, on being disappointed in one of his contributors, entrusted to him the historical department generally, with an