Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/80

 The Doctor, indeed, shows the limitations of Southey's intellect, which have led critics to condemn him as a mere fossil in politics and his enemies to denounce him as a renegade and a timeserver. Few men were more bitterly abused than the 'ultra-servile, sack-guzzling laureate' (to quote one flower of speech). Southey, of course, took this as a compliment. 'There is no man,' he says in 1816, 'whom the Whigs and Anarchists hate more inveterately, because there is none whom they fear so much.' That is the secret. They tremble at his logic and his eloquence and writhe under his satire. When Mr. William Smith—a very excellent Unitarian and a conspicuous supporter of Wilberforce and Clarkson—called Southey a renegade, Southey retorted 'by branding him on the forehead with the name of slanderer.' 'Salve the mark as you will, sir, it is ineffaceable! You must bear it with you to your grave, and the remembrance will outlast your epitaph.' The pamphlet in which this occurs was considered by Southey and his friends as a triumphant and dignified vindication of his fame; and ends by a 'scathing' passage in which Southey sees by anticipation his own life in a biographical dictionary, and 'a certain Mr.