Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/81

 William Smith' just dragged in at the tail of the article as the retailer of a preposterous calumny. Both of them have, in fact, obtained admission to such a work; but the allusion to their conflict does not quite confirm Southey's prophetic view. The characteristic thing is the way in which Southey unconsciously evades the point. The occasion of the controversy was the republication, by an enemy, of Wat Tyler, a performance of the early days in which he had sympathised with the French Revolution. Southey maintains—what no one will now dispute—that a man of over forty may have honestly changed opinions held at twenty. What he fails to see is that a convert should be charitably disposed to the unconverted. A Protestant may become a Catholic without reproach, but he is hardly the proper person to propose that all Protestants should be sent to the stake. That gave the real edge to Smith's indignation. Radicals were reviving the doctrines of Wat Tyler; they were met by the suspension of the 'Habeas Corpus,' the 'Six Acts,' and all the old machinery of suppression. The loudest advocate for applying the scourge was precisely the author of Wat Tyler. His letters are full of the wrath roused by Cobbett and 'orator Hunt' and the