Southey was now, for the first time, thrown entirely on his own resources, and that struggle for existence by exertion, which invigorates the mind and influences the understanding, began in earnest. Under no circumstances could his ambitious spirit have been still at this date. The stream was still near its rise, and fretted itself into foam against each opposing rock; but the time was approaching when its course was to be more smooth, and its waters not less clear. His first step was to arrange with Mr. Cottle, of Bristol, for the publication of “Joan of Arc,” with which he had been for a considerable time occupied, and the next to deliver a course of historical lectures, which were numerously attended. Nevertheless, it appears that his pecuniary affairs were not by any means in a flourishing condition at this crisis. In 1794 he had, in conjunction with his friend Mr. Lovell, under the names of Moschus and Bion, published a volume of poems; and about the same period Southey, then glowing with revolutionary zeal, composed his “Wat Tyler.” It is spoken of as a production of no merit, and utterly harmless from its weakness. Long after the author had recanted his early heresies, it was published surreptitiously to annoy him, and he, in self-defense, applied for an injunction against the printers. But the Chancellor refused to interfere in the matter, on the ground of the peculiarly objectionable principles which the book contained. The writer of this hapless――and, as it turned out, perplexing――revolutionary _brochure_, in after life thus accounted for its unwelcome existence: “In my youth, when my stock of knowledge consisted of such an acquaintance with Greek and Roman history as is acquired in the course of a scholastic education, when my heart was full of poetry and romance, and Lucan and Akenside were at my tongue’s end, I fell into the political opinions which the French revolution was then scattering throughout Europe; and, following those opinions with ardor, wherever they led, I soon perceived that inequalities of rank were a light evil compared to the inequalities of property, and those more fearful distinctions which the want of moral and intellectual culture occasions between man and man. At that time, and with those opinions, or rather feelings (for the root was in the heart, and not in the understanding), I wrote ‘Wat Tyler,’ as one who was impatient of all the oppressions that are done under the sun. The subject 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. Were I to dramatize the same story now, there would be much to add, but little to alter; 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.”