‘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 regular scholastic education,’—[The Greek and Roman history is as good as the history of rotten boroughs or the reign of George III.]—‘when my heart was full of poetry and romance,—[Is it so no longer?]—‘and Lucan and Akenside were at my tongue’s end.’—[Instead of the red book and the court calendar]—‘_I fell into_ the political opinions which the French Revolution was then scattering throughout Europe:’ [We have here a pretty fair account of the origin and genealogy of the opinions of the French Revolution, which opinions of liberty, truth, and justice, neither the French Revolution shall destroy, nor those who destroyed _it_, because it was produced by and gave birth to those opinions; and does Mr. Southey suppose that the suppression of _Wat Tyler_ is to suppress those opinions, and that a lying article in the _Quarterly Review_ is to persuade us that they who made war on those opinions from the beginning (and by so doing, produced all the evils of those opinions, produced them purposely, in the malice of their hearts and the darkness of their minds produced them to destroy all liberty, truth, and justice, and to keep mankind their slaves in perpetuity by right divine) were right from the beginning, that they deserved well of mankind, that their boasted triumph, the triumph of kings over the species, is ours and Mr. Southey’s triumph? Or would he persuade us that the Greek and Roman History has become obsolete, because Mr. Southey left school three and twenty years ago; that poetry and romance were banished from the human heart when he took a place and pension; that Lucan and Akenside will not live as long as _Wat Tyler_, or the _Quarterly Review_!—We broke off in an interesting part. Mr. Southey proceeds:]—‘Following those opinions with ardour wherever they led.’ [This is an old trick of the author, he is a keen sportsman;] ‘I soon perceived that inequalities of rank were a light evil compared to the inequalities of property,[36] 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 their 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.”’ [Here we must make another full stop.] Mr. Southey is incapable of forming any other opinions but from his feelings: he never had any other opinions, he never will have any others, worth a rush. When the opinions he professes ceased to be the dictates of his heart, they became the dictates of his vanity and interest; they became good for nothing. When the first ebullition of youthful ardour was over, his understanding was not competent to maintain its independence against the artifices of sophistry, aided by the accumulating force of ‘worldly