72     THE EARLY LIFE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY
he immediately says, "It is very strange that man should
be delighted with the highest pain that can be produced. I
even begin to think that both pain and pleasure exist only
in idea. But this must not be affirmed; the first twinge of
the toothache, or retrospective glance, will undeceive me
with a vengeance." It is evident from much of this that
the young man's reading was now extending itself widely
among other philosophers, and he mentions enough con-
cerning not only Epictetus, but Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus,
Seneca, Plotinus, to show that he had formed some ac-
quaintance with them. How all this was to affect his
poetry and his plans of life will appear very soon.
For poetry was by no means neglected in the midst of all
this active reading. In December of 1793 the poet calcu-
lated that he had composed up to that time about 35,000
lines of verse, of which 10,000 had been burnt or lost,
another 10,000 preserved, and 15,000 more kept but thought
worthless; this count excluded letters of great length writ-
ten in doggerel. It included notably one long narrative
poem, Joan of Arc, and a host of minor pieces, most of
them written during Southey's school and college years.
This activity culminated in the publication of a volume of
shorter poems with Robert Lovell at the beginning of 1795,
and of Joan of Arc at the end of the same year. Yet it is
noticeable that the facility shown in all this output was
nearly equaled by its feebleness; the interest for the
modern reader lies almost solely in the sensitiveness shown
by the young writer to all the swarming new ideas in the
life and literature of the time. Hardly a single poetic
experiment was being attempted by any versifier of the day
which Southey, in his exuberant youth, did not initiate,
or share, or join. Hardly a new view of life or a feeling
of the coming generation escaped some expression in his
copious scribbling. He made use of all the notable new
verse forms of the day as rapidly as they appeared; the