Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/128

 This quaint effusion of poetical fanaticism is divided into four parts, the Proem, the Dream, the Epilogue, and L'Envoy. The Proem opens thus:—

"There was a time when all my youthful thought Was of the Muse; and of the Poet's fame, How fair it flourisheth and fadeth not, ..... Alone enduring, when the Monarch's name Is but an empty sound, the Conqueror's bust Moulders and is forgotten in the dust."

This may be very true, but not so proper to be spoken in this place. Mr. Southey may think himself a greater man than the Prince Regent, but he need not go to Carlton-House to tell him so. He endeavours to prove that the Prince Regent and the Duke of Wellington (put together) are greater than Bonaparte, but then he is by his own rule greater than all three of them. We have here perhaps the true secret of Mr. Southey's excessive anger at the late Usurper. If all his youthful thought was of his own inborn superiority to conquerors and kings, we can conceive that Bonaparte's fame must have appeared a very great injustice done to his pretensions: it is not impossible that the uneasiness with which he formerly heard the names of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Wagram, of Friedland, and of Borodino, may account for the industrious self-complacency with which he harps upon those of Busaco, Vimiera, Salamanca, Vittoria, Thoulouse, and Waterloo; and that the Iron Crown of Italy must have pressed upon his (Mr. Southey's) brows, with a weight most happily relieved by the light laureate-wreath! We are justified in supposing Mr. Southey capable of envying others, for he supposes others capable of envying him. Thus he sings of himself and his office:—

"'Yea in this now, while malice frets her hour, Is foretaste given me of that meed divine; Here undisturbed in this sequestered bower, The friendship of the good and wise is mine;"