One other personal strife is worthy of notice. When visiting London in 1813, he made the acquaintance of Byron. “Is Southey magnanimous?” Byron asked Rogers, remembering how he had tried his wit in early days on _Thalaba_ and _Madoc_. Rogers could answer for Southey’s magnanimity, and the two poets met, Southey finding in Byron very much more to like than he had expected, and Byron being greatly struck by Southey’s “epic appearance.” “To have that poet’s head and shoulders,” he said, “I would almost have written his Sapphics.” And in his diary he wrote:—“Southey’s talents are of the first order. His prose is perfect.... He has probably written too much of poetry for the present generation; posterity will probably select; but he has passages equal to anything.” At a later date Byron thought Southey’s _Roderick_ “the first poem of the time.” But when about to publish _Don Juan_, a work “too free for these very modest days,” what better mode of saucily meeting public opinion, and getting a first laugh on his side, than to dedicate such a poem to a virtuous Laureate, and show that he and his fellows, who had uttered nothing base, were yet political turncoats, not entitled by any superfine morality to assume airs of indignation against him and his reprobate hero? The dedication was shown about and laughed over though not yet printed. Southey heard of these things, and felt released from that restraint of good feeling which made him deal tenderly in his writings with every one to whom he had once given his hand. An attack upon himself would not alone have roused Southey; no man received abuse with more self-possession. Political antagonism would still have left him able to meet a fellow-poet on the common ground of literature. When distress fastened upon Leigh Hunt, whose _Examiner_ and _Liberal_ had never spared the Laureate, Mr. Forster did not hesitate to apply to Southey for assistance, which was declined solely because the circular put forward Leigh Hunt’s political services as those chiefly entitling him to relief. “Those who are acquainted with me,” Southey wrote, “know that I am neither resentful nor intolerant;” and after expressing admiration of Leigh Hunt’s powers, the letter goes on to suggest that his friends should draw up a circular in which, without compromising any of his opinions, the appeal might be made solely upon the score of literary merit, “placing him thus, as it were, within the sacred territory which ought always to be considered and respected as neutral ground.” Wise and admirable words! But there was one offence which was to Southey the unforgivable sin against the holy spirit of a nation’s literature. To entice poetry from the altar, and to degrade her for the pleasure of wanton imaginations, seemed to Southey, feeling as he did the sanctity of the love of husband and wife, of father and child, to be treason against humanity. Southey was, indeed, tolerant of a certain