Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/53

 great a trial as this, and Motherwell was not the man to affect to undergo it. He entered into the strife with all his soul, and whatever difference of opinion may have formerly prevailed as to his style of defence, it will not be denied by his bitterest political enemies (for I would persuade myself that, personally, he had and could have none), that he conducted his case for many years against frightful odds, with exemplary zeal, courage, and fidelity. It would be easy, no doubt, to select from his writings at that time passages which might appear to be objectionable, but the same remark would apply equally to his opponents; and those only who have had some experience of a controversial life, and of the perplexities which beset a writer for the public press in a provincial town, can form an adequate conception of the difficulties with which Motherwell was at that juncture surrounded. The public mind is now comparatively cool; it was then at a boiling heat, and in the fierce contest of parties, passions were evoked which overmastered reason and laid judgment prostrate in the dust. That in such a tumult he, a man of warm and impetuous temperament, should have stood erect and looked down with complacent indifference on the scene below was impossible; nor did he make the attempt. He defended his principles from the assaults daily and hourly made upon them, and it was his duty to do so; but if, in the execution of that duty he transgressed the established laws of political warfare, or outraged any of the conventional