Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/260

 Mr. Southey was made Poet-laureate.] "What I may have said or thought in any part of my life, no more concerns that journal than it does you or the House of Commons." [What Mr. Southey has said publicly any where in any part of his life, concerns the public and every man in it, unless Mr. Southey means to say that his opinions are utterly worthless and contemptible, a piece of modesty of which we cannot suspect him,] "What I have written in it is a question which you, Sir, have no right to ask, and which certainly I will not answer. As little right have you to take that for granted which you cannot possibly know." Now mark. In the very paragraph before the one in which he skulks from the responsibility of the "Quarterly Review," and with pert vapid assurance repels every insinuation implying a breach of his inviolability as an anonymous writer, he makes an impudent, unqualified, and virulent attack on Mr. Brougham as an Edinburgh Reviewer, "This was not necessary in regard to Mr. Brougham ....he only earned the quarrels as well as the practices of the Edinburgh Review into the House of Commons. But as calumny, Sir, has not been your vocation, it may be useful, even to yourself, if I comment upon your first attempt."—p. 3. Such a want of common logic is to our literal capacities quite inexplicable: it is "in the third tier of wonders above wonders."

In page 5, Mr. Southey calls the person who published "Wat Tyler" "a skulking scoundrel," with his characteristic delicacy and moderation in the use of epithets; and says that it was published, "for the avowed purpose of insulting him, and with the hope of injuring him if possible." Perhaps one object was to prevent Mr. Southey from insulting and injuring other people. It was supposed that "Wat Tyler" might prove an antidote to the "Quarterly Review:" that, "the healing might come from the same weapon that gave the wound;" and in this instance it has turned out so. He adds, "You knew that the transaction bore upon its face every character of baseness and malignity. You knew that it must have been effected either by robbery, or by breach of trust. These things, Mr. William Smith, you knew!" [Mr.