And so we see him spending long hours, long years, among his books, hoping for lasting fame from his poems, and meantime earning with his prose food for hungry little mouths, shoes for nimble little feet, with just a trifle over for books, and still more books.  For Southey loved books, and his big library was lined with them.  There were thousands there, many in beautiful bindings, glowing in soft coloring, gleaming with pale gold, for he loved to clothe his treasures in fitting garments.  When a new box of books comes he rejoices.  “I shall be happier,” he says, “than if his Majesty King George IV were to give orders that I should be clothed in purple, and sleep upon gold, and have a chain about my neck, and sit next him because of my wisdom and be called his cousin.”

We think of Southey first as a poet, but it is perhaps as a prose writer that his fame will last longest, and above all as a biographer, that is a writer of people’s lives.  During the busy years at Greta Hall he wrote about a hundred books, several of them biographies—­among them a life of Nelson, which is one of the best short lives ever written.  Some day I hope you will read it, both for the sake of Southey’s clear, simple style, and for the sake of the brave man of whom he writes.  You might also, I think, like his lives of Bunyan and Cowper, both of whom you have heard of in this book.

Another book which Southey wrote is called The Doctor.  This is a whimsical, rambling jumble, which can hardly be called a story; a mixture of quotations and original work, of nonsense and earnest.  And in the middle of it what do you think you come upon?  Why our old nursery friend, The Three Bears.  Southey trusts that this book will suit every one, “that the lamb may wade in it, though the elephant may swim, and also that it will be found ’very entertaining to the ladies.’” Indeed he flatters himself that it will be found profitable for “old and young, for men and for women, the married and the single, the idle and the studious, the merry and the sad; and that it may sometimes inspire the thoughtless with thought, and sometimes beguile the careful of their cares.”  But if it is to be quite perfect it must have a chapter for children—­

    “Prick up your ears then,
    My good little women and men;

And ye who are neither so little nor no good, favete linguis,* for here follows the story of the Three Bears.”  So there it is.  “One of them was a Little, Small, Wee Bear; and one was a Middle-sized Bear, and the other was a Great, Huge Bear”—­and from the way it is told, I think we may be sure that Uncle Robert or comical papa often told stories with a circle of eager, bright faces round him.  For he says—­

Be silent.

    “And ’twas in my vocation
    For their recreation
    That so I should sing;
    Because I was Laureate
    To them and the King.”