This may be very true, but not so proper to be spoken in this place. Mr. Southey may think himself a greater man than the Prince Regent, but he need not go to Carlton-House to tell him so. He endeavours to prove that the Prince Regent and the Duke of Wellington (put together) are greater than Bonaparte, but then he is by his own rule greater than all three of them. We have here perhaps the true secret of Mr. Southey’s excessive anger at the late Usurper. If all his youthful thought was of his own inborn superiority to conquerors or kings, we can conceive that Bonaparte’s fame must have appeared a very great injustice done to his pretensions; it is not impossible that the uneasiness with which he formerly heard the names of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Wagram, of Friedland, and of Borodino, may account for the industrious self-complacency with which he harps upon those of Busaco, Vimiera, Salamanca, Vittoria, Thoulouse, and Waterloo; and that the Iron Crown of Italy must have pressed upon his (Mr. Southey’s) brows, with a weight most happily relieved by the light laureate-wreath! We are justified in supposing Mr. Southey capable of envying others, for he supposes others capable of envying him. Thus he sings of himself and his office:— ‘Yea in this now, while malice frets her hour, Is foretaste given me of that meed divine; Here undisturbed in this sequestered bower, The friendship of the good and wise is mine; And that green wreath which decks the Bard when dead, That laureate garland crowns my living head. That wreath which in Eliza’s golden days My master dear, divinest Spenser, wore, That which rewarded Drayton’s learned lays, Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel[17] bore ... Grin, Envy, through thy ragged mask of scorn! In honour it was given, with honour it is worn!’