Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/395

Rh of Fortune, we might not inaptly imagine that the faithless Goddess, in her sad irony, had indulged him with this short glimpse of unusual happiness, in bitter mockery of the impending sorrow. He turned his steps homewards about August, hastening to communicate his joy to those whom he knew would be anxious to participate in it; but his spirits fell when he caught the blank aspect of the faces that were waiting to receive him, and he heard with a pang the unexpected tidings that his daughter Isabel was lying dangerously ill. He had lost the elasticity of youth, and grief now took a firmer hold of his frame. Day after day was spent in anxious solicitude; his spirits rose or fell with the flickering malady of his child; and his son records, in an affecting passage, how he paced the garden in uncontrollable anguish, and gathered his household around him to prayer when all was over. Ere her remains were laid in the dust, the sorrowing father addressed a letter to her surviving sisters, in which occurs the following passage:

"And for the dear child who is departed, God knows that I never heard her name mentioned, nor spoke, nor thought of her without affection and delight. Yet this day, when I am about to see her mortal remains committed earth to earth, it is a grief for me to think that I should ever by a harsh or hasty word have given her even a momentary sorrow, which might have been spared."

This was the first serious blow to the happiness of that cheerful circle. The gap was too painfully visible for its effects to be readily effaced, and Mrs. Southey never recovered completely from the shock.

Had Southey regarded literature but as a stepping-stone to worldly consideration, he might have found an opiate for domestic affliction in the excitement of public rivalry. During his absence in Holland, he had been elected,