Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/272

 and shallow; asserts them with pert, vapid assurance, because he does not see the objections against them; and thinks he must be right in his premises in proportion to the violence and extravagance of his conclusions. Because when he wrote Wat Tyler, he was "impatient of all the oppressions that are done under the sun," he now thinks it his bounden duty to justify them all, with equal impatience of contradiction. Mr. Southey does not know himself so well as we do; and a greater confirmation of his ignorance in this respect cannot well be given than the rest of the above passage. "The subject of Wat Tyler was injudiciously chosen; and it was treated as might be expected by a youth of twenty, in such times, who regarded only one side of the question." [It is Mr. Southey's fault or his misfortune that at all times he regards only one side of a question.]

"There is no other misrepresentation. The sentiments of the historical characters are correctly stated." [What, of the King, the Judge, and the Archbishop?] "Were I now to dramatize the same story, there would be much to add, but little to alter. I should not express those sentiments less strongly, but I should oppose to them more enlarged views of the nature of man. and the progress of society. I should set forth with equal force the oppressions of the feudal system, the excesses of the insurgents, and the treachery of the government," [Doctors doubt that] "and hold up the errors and crimes which were then committed, as a warning for this and for future generations. I should write as a man; not as a stripling; with the same heart, and the same desires, but with a ripened understanding and competent stores of knowledge," p. 15. Let him do it, but he dare not. He would shew by the attempt the hollowness of his boasted independence, the little time-serving meanness of his most enlarged views; in a word, that he has still the same understanding, but no longer the same heart. What are "the ripened discoveries and competent stores of knowledge" which Mr. Southey would bring to this task? Are they the barefaced self-evident sophistries, the wretched shuffling evasions of common sense and humanity