Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/267

 his contemporaries, Jacobin or anti-Jacobin! No one can come up to him at all points. "The lovely Marcia towers above her sex!"

The Letter-writer goes on to say:—"When therefore Mr. Smith informed the House of Commons that the author of Wat Tyler thinks no longer upon certain points as he did in his youth, he informed that legislative assembly of nothing more than what the author has shown during very many years, in the course of his writings..... that while events have been moving on upon the great theatre of human affairs, his intellect has not been stationary."—[Mr. S. here confounds a change of opinions with the progress of intellect, a mistake which we shall correct presently.]—"But when the Member for Norwich asserts that I impute evil motives to men merely for holding the same doctrines" [No, only a tenth part of the same doctrines] "which I myself formerly professed, and when he charges me with the malignity and baseness of a Renegade, the assertion and the charge are as false, as the language in which they are conveyed is coarse and insulting." p. 9.

Now we know of no writings of Mr. Southey's, in the course of which he had shewn for many years the change or progress of his opinions, but in the Quarterly Review and other anonymous publications. We suppose he will hardly say that his Birth-day Odes, the Carmen Nuptiale, &c. have shewn the progress of his intellect. But in the same anonymous writings, in which the public would find, to Mr. Southey's credit, that his intellect had not been stationary, the Member for Norwich would find what was not so much to his credit, but all that was wanting to make good the charge—that Mr. Southey's moderation and charity to those whose intellects had been stationary, did not keep pace with the progress of his own—for in the articles in the Quarterly, which he claims or disclaims as he pleases, he, the writer of the Inscription on Old Sarum, describes "a Reformer as no better than a housebreaker:" he, the writer of the Inscription at Chepstow Castle, calls all those who do not bow their necks to