Down in that valley, just a little to one side of the village, Southey lived for over forty years, and all the visitors he really liked he took to Castle Rigg, to show them as he said, "the kingdoms of the earth." It was a view of which he never tired. Coleridge came up this way first, and took lodgings with a Mr. Johnson, who owned Greta Hall. It is not on record that Coleridge paid any rent, but he was so charmed with the location that he induced Southey to come and visit him. Southey came and liked it so well that he remained. He performed here a life-task that staggers one to contemplate: fifty volumes or more of closely set type are shown you at the Keswick Museum, duly labeled, "The Works of Southey," Charles Lamb's "Works" were the East India ledgers, but he wrote one little book of Essays that are still sweet and fresh as wood-violets—essays written hot from the heart, often in tears; written because he could not help it, or to please Mary—he did not know which. No man ever divided his time up more systematically than Southey. He produced political and theological essays, histories, poems, diatribes, apologies and criticisms, and worked as men work in the Carnegie Consolidated Steel Works. Robert Southey was the precocious son of a Bristol linen-draper. Being rather delicate, his parents did not set him to work in a drygoods-store, but gave him the benefit of Oxford. The thing that brought him first into prominence was an article he wrote for "The Flaggellant," a college paper, wherein he ridiculed the idea of a devil. Now the powers did not like that—the creed called for a "personal devil," and they wanted one. They summoned young Southey before them to account for speaking disrespectfully of the devil. The youth was found guilty and expelled. He was a reckless young man, but recklessness is its own check—in fact, all things in life are self-regulating, everything is limited. Southey's secret marriage with Edith Fricker tamed him. Nothing tames men like marriage; and when babies came, and Coleridge went to Germany, leaving Mrs. Coleridge and young Hartley in his charge, Southey realized he was dealing with a condition, not a theory. Then soon he had the widowed Mrs. Lovell with her brood on his hands, and his old dream of pantisocracy was realized, only not just as he expected. Too much can not be said for the patience and unflinching fidelity shown by Southey in shouldering the burdens that Fate sent him. "Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!" said White Pigeon.