312    THE EARLY LIFE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY
forward the study of English literature. The historical
studies by which he sought to verify his preconceived
ideals and to disseminate the learning that he loved he
vainly tried to consummate in his vastly planned works
upon the history of Portugal. Finally his passionate devo-
tion to those ideals thus fortified by erudition he labored
to express for all time in a great epic poem. Until the hand
of death was upon him, he never was freed from poverty
to serve his ambitions with all his powers but he kept
his courage through long years of struggle and deferred
hope by unflinching faith in the rectitude of his own pur-
poses and in his own ability to achieve them. If he had
succeeded, he would have become one of the standing
examples of the sublime self-confidence of great genius.
That his name became, instead, a by-word for renegade in
life, and for a vanished reputation after death, is an irony
acute enough to give any man pause in his pride. But
it was a life worth living and worth remembering because,
if for no other reason, of the spirit in which it was lived,
a spirit that cannot in conclusion be better expressed than
in the words of Thalaba on the way to the Dom-Daniel
Caverns:
"If from my childhood up, I have looked on
With exultation to my destiny,
If, in the hour of anguish, I have felt
The justice of the hand that chastened me,
If, of all selfish passions purified,
I go to work thy will, and from the world
Root up the ill-doing race,
Lord! let not thou the weakness of mine arm
Make vain the enterprise!"