Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/243

 with Mr. Southey "the man," or even with Mr. Southey the apostate; but we have something to do with Mr. Southey the spy and informer. Is it not a little strange, that while this gentleman is getting an injunction against himself as the author of Wat Tyler, he is recommending gagging bills against us, and the making up by force for his deficiency in argument! There is a want of keeping in this; but Mr. Southey and his friends delight in practical and speculative contradictions. What are we to think of a man who is "now a flagitious incendiary," (to use the epithets which Mr. Southey applies to the Editor of the Examiner) "a palliater of murder, insurrection, and treason," and anon a pensioned scribbler of court poetry and court politics? If the writer of the article on Parliamentary Reform thinks the Editor of this Paper "a flagitious incendiary," "a palliater of murder, insurrection, and treason," what does the Quarterly Reviewer think of the author of Wat Tyler? What, on the other hand, does the author of Wat Tyler think of the Quarterly Reviewer? What does Mr. Southey, who certainly makes a very aukward figure between the two, think of himself? Mr. Coleridge indeed steps in to the assistance of his friend in this dilemma, and says (unsaying all that he says besides) that the ultra-jacobinical opinions advanced in Wat Tyler were "more an honour to the writer's heart than an imputation on his understanding?" Be it so. The Editor of this Paper will, we dare say, agree to this statement from disinterested motives, (for he is not answerable for any ultra-jacobinical opinions) as we suppose Mr. Southey will accede to it from pure self-love. He hardly thinks that he was "a knave and fool" formerly, as he calls all those who formerly agreed or now differ with him: he only thinks with Mr. Coleridge and The Courier, that he was not quite so "wise and virtuous" then, as he is at present! Why then not extend the same charitable interpretation to those who have held a middle course between his opposite extravagances? We are sure, that to be thought a little less wise and virtuous than that celebrated person thinks himself, would content the ambition of any moderate man.