Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/82

 Radical Press. 'I would have the Anarchists under weigh for Botany Bay or in prison within a month after the meeting of Parliament,' he says; and in the Quarterly Review he did his utmost to stimulate the fears of the Tory rulers. He urged the amiable Wilberforce to take the side of severity. In his own opinion he is quite consistent, because the persons who now advocate his old principles are diabolical miscreants, seeking to ruin society and initiating the most dangerous conspiracies. When he was a revolutionist, revolutionists were all good men. Things have altered now. The alteration was not so obvious to Mr. William Smith. He and his friends failed to see that they were scoundrels who ought not to be allowed even to open their mouths. On such matters, however, Southey knew himself to be infallible. He was just as certain that he could blast the fame of Byron as that he could indelibly brand the forehead of Mr. William Smith. Byron and his crew were the 'Satanic School'—as he took occasion to point out incidentally, by way of preface to his Vision of Judgment. Few people, probably, read Southey's 'Vision,' unless in illustration of Byron's most cutting satire; but it is worth a glance in illustration of Southey's own