_Examiner_, _July 7, 1816_. The dog which his friend Launce brought as a present to Madam Silvia in lieu of a lap-dog, was something like ‘The Lay of the Laureate,’ which Mr. Southey has here offered to the Princess Charlotte for a Nuptial Song. It is ‘a very currish performance, and deserves none but currish thanks.’ Launce thought his own dog, Crab, better than any other; and Mr. Southey thinks his own praises the fittest compliment for a lady’s ear. His Lay is ten times as long, and he thinks it is therefore ten times better than an Ode of Mr. Pye’s. Mr. Southey in this poem takes a tone which was never heard before in a drawing-room. It is the first time that ever a Reformist was made a Poet-laureate. Mr. Croker was wrong in introducing his old friend, the author of ‘Joan of Arc,’ at Carlton-House. He might have known how it would be. If we had doubted the good old adage before, ‘Once a Jacobin and always a Jacobin,’ since reading ‘The Lay of the Laureate,’ we are sure of it. A Jacobin is one who would have his single opinion govern the world, and overturn every thing in it. Such a one is Mr. Southey. Whether he is a Republican or a Royalist,—whether he hurls up the red cap of liberty, or wears the lily, stained with the blood of all his old acquaintance, at his breast,—whether he glories in Robespierre or the Duke of Wellington—whether he pays a visit to Old Sarum, or makes a pilgrimage to Waterloo,—whether he is praised by _The Courier_, or parodied by Mr. Canning,—whether he thinks a King the best or the worst man in his dominions,—whether he is a Theophilanthropist or a Methodist of the church of England,—whether he is a friend of Universal Suffrage and Catholic Emancipation, or a Quarterly Reviewer,—whether he insists on an equal division of lands, or of knowledge,—whether he is for converting infidels to Christianity, or Christians to infidelity,—whether he is for pulling down the kings of the East or those of the West,—whether he sharply sets his face against all establishments, or maintains that whatever is, is right,—whether he prefers what is old to what is new, or what is new to what is old,—whether he believes that all human evil is remediable by human means, or makes it out to himself that a Reformer is worse than a housebreaker,—whether he is in the right or the wrong, poet or prose-writer, courtier or patriot,—he is still the same pragmatical person—every sentiment or feeling that he has is nothing but the effervescence of incorrigible overweening self-opinion. He not only thinks whatever opinion he may hold for the time infallible, but that no other is even to be tolerated, and that none but knaves and fools can differ with him. ‘The friendship of the good and wise is his.’ If any one is so unfortunate as to hold the same opinions that he himself formerly did, this but aggravates the offence by irritating the jealousy of his self-love, and he vents upon them a double portion of