The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 03 (of 12)Hazlitt, William
General
The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 03 (of 12)
Hazlitt, William
English essays -- 19th century
The best thing for Mr. Southey (if we might be allowed to advise) would
be for his friends to say nothing about him, and for him to say nothing
about other people. We have nothing to do with Mr. Southey ‘the man,’ or
even with Mr. Southey the apostate; but we have something to do with Mr.
Southey the spy and informer. Is it not a little strange, that while
this gentleman is getting an injunction against himself as the author of
_Wat Tyler_, he is recommending gagging bills against us, and the making
up by force for his deficiency in argument! There is a want of keeping
in this; but Mr. Southey and his friends delight in practical and
speculative contradictions. What are we to think of a man who is ‘now a
flagitious incendiary,’ (to use the epithets which Mr. Southey applies
to the Editor of the _Examiner_) ‘a palliater of murder, insurrection,
and treason,’ and anon a pensioned scribbler of court poetry and court
politics? If the writer of the article on Parliamentary Reform thinks
the Editor of this Paper ‘a flagitious incendiary,’ ‘a palliater of
murder, insurrection, and treason,’ what does the Quarterly Reviewer
think of the author of _Wat Tyler_? What, on the other hand, does the
author of _Wat Tyler_ think of the Quarterly Reviewer? What does Mr.
Southey, who certainly makes a very aukward figure between the two,
think of himself? Mr. Coleridge indeed steps in to the assistance of his
friend in this dilemma, and says (unsaying all that he says besides)
that the ultra-jacobinical opinions advanced in _Wat Tyler_ were ‘more
an honour to the writer’s heart than an imputation on his
understanding?’ Be it so. The Editor of this Paper will, we dare say,
agree to this statement from disinterested motives, (for he is not
answerable for any ultra-jacobinical opinions) as we suppose Mr. Southey
will accede to it from pure self-love. He hardly thinks that he was ‘a
knave and fool’ formerly, as he calls all those who formerly agreed or
now differ with him: he only thinks with Mr. Coleridge and _The
Courier_, that he was not quite so ‘wise and virtuous’ then, as he is at
present! Why then not extend the same charitable interpretation to those
who have held a middle course between his opposite extravagances? We are
sure, that to be thought _a little less wise and virtuous_ than that
celebrated person thinks himself, would content the ambition of any
moderate man. Will he allow of nothing short of the utmost intolerance
of jacobinism or anti-jacobinism? Or will he tolerate this intolerance
in nobody but himself? This seems to be his feeling: and it also seems
to be Mr. Coleridge’s opinion, whose maudlin methodistical casuistry
leads him to clothe Mr. Southey’s political sins with apostacy as with a
garment, and to plead one excess of folly and indecency as a competent
set-off against another. To be a renegado, is, with him, to be virtuous.
The greater the sinner the greater the saint, says _The Courier_. Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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