Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/249

 much the greater part of what Mr. Wordsworth has done best in poetry was done about the same period; and if what these persons have done in poetry, in indulging the "pleasing fervour of a lively imagination," gives no weight to their political opinions at the time they did it, what they have done since in science or philosophy to establish their authority, is more than we know. All the authority that they have as poets and men of genius must be thrown into the scale of Revolution and Reform. Their Jacobin principles indeed gave rise to their Jacobin poetry. Since they gave up the first, their poetical powers have flagged, and been comparatively or wholly "in a state of suspended animation." Their genius, their style, their versification, every thing down to their spelling, was revolutionary. Their poetical innovations unhappily did not answer any more than the French Revolution. As their ambition was baulked in this first favourite direction, it was necessary for these restless persons to do something to get into notice; as they could not change their style, they changed their principles; and instead of writing popular poetry, fell to scribbling venal prose.—Mr. Southey's opinion, like Mr. Wordsworth's or Mr. Coleridge's, is of no value, except as it is his own, the unbiassed, undepraved dictate of his own understanding and feelings; not as it is a wretched, canting, reluctant echo of the opinion of the world. Poet-laureates are courtiers by profession; but we say that poets are naturally Jacobins. All the poets of the present day have been so, with a single exception, which it would be invidious to mention. If they have not all continued so, this only shews the instability of their own characters, and that their natural generosity and romantic enthusiasm, "their lofty, imaginative, and innocent spirits," have not been proof against the incessant, unwearied importunities of vulgar ambition. The poets, we say then, are with us, while they are worth keeping. We take the sound part of their heads and hearts, and make Mr. Croker and the Courier a present of the rest. What the philosophers are, let the dreaded name of modern philosophy answer!