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Ink.

That whatever he means won't alloy what he says. Both. Sir!

Ink. Pray be content with your portion of praise; 'Twas in your defence.

Both.

If you please, with submission,

I can make out my own. Ink.

It would be your perdition. While you live, my dear Botherby, never defend Yourself or your works; but leave both to a friend. A propos-Is your play then accepted at last? Both. At last?

Ink. Why I thought—that's to say - there had pass'd

A few green-room whispers, which hinted-you know,

That the taste of the actors at best is so so.3

Both. Sir, the green-room's in rapture, and so's the committee.

Ink. Ay-yours are the plays for exciting our "pity

And fear," as the Greek says: for " mind,"

purging the

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However, to save my friend Botherby trouble,
I'll do what I can, though my pains must be double.
Tra. Why so?
Ink.

To do justice to what goes before.
Both. Sir, I'm happy to say, I have no fears on
that score.
Your parts, Mr. Inkel, are-

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Ink. Yes, ma'am; and a fugitive reader sometimes. On Wordswords, for instance, I seldom alight, Or on Mouthey, his friend, without taking to flight. Lady Bluem. Sir, your taste is too common: but time and posterity

[Mr. Wordsworth is collector of stamps for Cumberland and Westmoreland.]

2 Grange is or was a famous pastry-cook and fruiterer in Piccadilly.

3 ["When I belonged to the Drury Lane Committee, the number of plays upon the shelves were about five hundred.

Mr. Sotheby obligingly offered us ALL his tragedies, and I pledged myself, and-notwithstanding many squabbles with my committee brethren-did get Ivan accepted, read, and the parts distributed. But lo! in the very heart of the matter, upon some tepid-ness on the part of Kean, or warmth on that of the author, Sotheby withdrew his play "-Byron Diary, 1821.]

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So I'm not of the party to take the infection. Lady Blueb. Perhaps you have doubts that they ever will take?

Ink. Not at all; on the contrary, those of the lake Have taken already, and still will continue

To take what they can, from a groat to a guinea,
Of pension or place-but the subject 's a bore.
Lady Bluem. Well, sir, the time's coming.
Ink.

Scamp! don't you feel sore?

What say you to this?
Scamp.
They have merit, I own;
Though their system's absurdity keeps it unknown.
Ink. Then why not unearth it in one of your
lectures?

Scamp. It is only time past which comes under my strictures.

Lady Blueb. Come, a truce with all tartness:the joy of my heart

Is to see Nature's triumph o'er all that is art.
Wild Nature!-Grand Shakspeare!

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Lady Bluem. Sir George' thinks exactly with Lady Bluebottle;

And my Lord Seventy-four, who protects our dear
Bard,

And who gave him his place, has the greatest regard
For the poet, who, singing of pedlers and asses,*
Has found out the way to dispense with Parnassus.
Tra. And you, Scamp!-
Scamp.

I needs must confess I'm embarrass'd.

Ink. Don't call upon Scamp, who 's already so harass'd

With old schools, and new schools, and no schools,

and all schools.

Tra. Well, one thing is certain, that some must be fools.

I should like to know who.
Ink.
And I should not be sorry
To know who are not:-it would save us some
worry.

Lady Blueb. A truce with remark, and let nothing control

This "feast of our reason, and flow of the soul."
Oh! my dear Mr. Botherby! sympathize!—I
Now feel such a rapture, I'm ready to fly,
I feel so elastic-" so buoyant—so buoyant !”
Ink. Tracy! open the window.
Tra.

I wish her much joy on't.

Both. For God's sake, my Lady Bluebottle, check

not

This gentle emotion, so seldom our lot
Upon earth. Give it way; 'tis an impulse which lifts
Our spirits from earth; the sublimest of gifts;
For which poor Prometheus was chain'd to his moun-
tain;

"Tis the source of all sentiment-feeling's true fountain:

"Tis the Vision of Heaven upon Earth; 'tis the gas Of the soul: 'tis the seizing of shades as they pass, And making them substance: 'tis something divine:Ink. Shall I help you, my friend, to a little more wine?

Both. I thank you; not any more, sir, till I dine. Ink. A propos-Do you dine with Sir Humphry to-day?

Tra. I should think with Duke Humphry was

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The late Sir George Beaumont-a constant friend of Mr. Wordsworth.]

[It was not the present Earl of Lonsdale, but James, the first earl, who offered to build, and completely furnish and man, a ship of seventy-four guns, towards the close of the American war, for the service of his country, at his own expense-hence the soubriquet in the text.]

["We learn from Horace, 'Homer sometimes sleeps :' We feel, without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,

To show with what complacency he creeps,
With his dear wagoners,' around his lakes.
He wishes for a boat' to sail the deeps-

Of ocean-No, of air; and then he makes

Another outcry for a little boat,'
And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

"Pedlers,' and 'boats,' and 'wagons! Oh! ye shades
Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?
That trash of such sort not alone evades
Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss
Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades
Of sense and song above your graves may hiss-
The 'little boatman' and his Peter Bell'
Can sneer at him who drew Achitophel!"
Don Juan, Canto iii.]

4 Fact from life, with the words. [The late Sir Humphry Davy, President of the Royal Society.]

[The late Miss Lydia White, whose hospitable functions have not yet been supplied to the circle of London artists and literati-an accomplished, clever, and truly amiable, but very eccentric lady. The name in the text could only have been suggested by the jingling resemblance it bears to Lydia.]

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[In 1821, Mr. Southey published a piece, in English hexameters, entitled "A Vision of Judgment ;" and which Lord Byron, in criticising it, laughs at as "the Apotheosis of George the Third." In the preface to this poem, after some observations on the peculiar style of its versification, Mr. Southey introduced the following remarks:

"I am well aware that the public are peculiarly intolerant of such innovations; not less so than the populace are of any foreign fashion, whether of foppery or convenience. Would that this literary intolerance were under the influence of a saner judgment, and regarded the morals more than the manner of a composition; the spirit rather than the form! Would that it were directed against those monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery, lewdness and impiety, with which English poetry has, in our days, first been polluted! For more than half a century English literature had been distinguished by its moral purity, the effect, and, in its turn, the cause, of an improvement in national manners. A father might, without apprehension of evil, have put into the hands of his children any book which issued from the press, if it did not bear, either in its title-page or frontispiece, manifest signs that it was intended as furniture for the brothel. There was no danger in any work which bore the name of a respectable publisher, or was to be procured at any respectable bookseller's. This was particularly the case with regard to our poetry. It is now no longer so: and wo to those by whom the offence cometh! The greater the talents of the offender, the greater is his guilt, and the more enduring will be his shame. Whether it be that the laws are in themselves unable to abate an evil of this magnitude, or whether it be that they are remissly administered, and with such injustice that the celebrity of an offender serves as a privilege whereby he obtains impunity, individuals are bound to consider that such pernicious works would neither be published nor written, if they were discouraged as they might, and ought to be, by public feeling: every person, therefore, who purchases such books, or admits them into his house, promotes the mischief, and thereby, as far as in him lies, becomes an aider and abettor of the crime.

"The publication of a lascivious book is one of the worst offences which can be coinmitted against the well-being of society. It is a sin, to the consequences of which no limits can be assigned, and those consequences no after-repentance in the writer can counteract. Whatever remorse of conscience he may feel when his hour comes, (and come it must!) will be of no avail. The poignancy of a death-bed repentance cannot cancel one copy of the thousands which are sent abroad; and as long as it continues to be read, so long is he the pander of posterity, and so long is he heaping up guilt upon his soul in perpetual accumulation.

"These remarks are not more severe than the offence deserves, even when applied to those immoral writers who have not been conscious of any evil intention in their writings, who would acknowledge a little levity, a little warmth of coloring, and so forth, in that sort of language with which men gloss over their favorite vices, and deceive themselves. What then should be said of those for whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of wanton youth can no longer be pleaded, but who have written in sober manhood and with deliberate purpose 1-Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labor to make others as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a moral virus

• ["Summi poetæ in omni poetarum sæculo viri fuerunt probi: in nostris id vidimus et videmus; neque alius est error a veritate longiùs quàm magna ingenia magnis necessario corrumpi vitiis. Secundo plerique posthabent primum, bi maliguitate, illi ignorantia; et quum aliquem inveniunt styli morumque vitiis notatum, nec inficetum tamen nec in libris edendis parcum, eum stipant, prædicant, occupant, amplectuntur. Si mores aliquantulum vellet corrigere, si stylum curare paululum, si fervido ingenio temperare, si moræ tantillum interponere, tum ingens nescio quid et verè epicum, quadraginta annos natus, procuderat. Ignorant verò febriculis non indicari vires, impatientiam ab imbecillitate non differre; ignorant a levi homine et inconstante multa fortasse scribi posse plusquam mediocria, nihil compositum, arduum, æternum."-Savagios Landor, De Cultu atque Usu Latini Sermonis. "This essay, which is full of fine critical remarks and striking thoughts felicitously expressed, reached me from Pisa, while the proof of the present sheet was before me. Of its author (the author of Gebir and Count Julian) I will only say in this place, that, to have obtained his approbation as a poet, and possessed his friendship as a man, will be remembered among the honors of my life, when the petty enmities of this generation will be forgotten, and its ephemeral reputations shall have passed away."-Mr. Southey's note.]

have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any ¦

species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance and impious cant, of the poem by the author of "Wat Tyler," are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself-containing the quintessence of his own attributes.

that eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may pri perly he called the Satanic school; for though their productions breathe the pref Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Melech in those. De he me images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, they are more especially characterized by a Satanic spirit of pride and ablacuta impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of hopelessness wherewich it is allied.

This evil is political as well as moral, for indeed moral and paral evils are inseparably connected. Truly has it been afrued by vie of ar ablest and clearest reasoners, that the destruction of goverments may be proved and deduced from the general corruption of the subjects" manners, na a direct and natural cause thereof, by a demonstration as Certain as BUY 2 the mathematics.' There is no maxim more frequently enforced by Marhaavelli, than that where the manners of a people are generally corrupted, there the government cannot long subsist, a truth which sú bourj exemplifies; and there is no means whereby that corruption can be so sure y and rapidly diffused, as by poisoning the waters of literature.

"Let rulers of the state look to this, in time! But, to use the words of Southey, if our physicians think the best way of curing a diseases 18 pamper it,the Lord in mercy prepare the kingdom to suffer, waat He by miracle only can prevent!

and

"No apology is offered for these remarks. The subject led to them; the occasion of introducing them was willingly taken, because it is the Cay of every one, whose opinion may have any influence, to expose the drift and i aim of those writers who are laboring to subvert the foundations of human virtue and of human happiness."

Lord Byron rejoined as follows:

"Mr. Southey, in his pious preface to a poem whose Hasphemy is as harmless as the sedition of Wat Tyler, because it is equally absurd with that sincere production, calls upon the legislature to look to it,' as the toleration of such writings led to the French Revolution: nor work w as Wat Tyler, but as those of the Satanic School.' This is Lettres, and Mr. Southey knows it to be not true. Every French writer of are freedom was persecuted; Voltaire and Rousseau were exiles, Mamerti and Diderot were sent to the Bastile, and a perpetual war wat wared wi the whole class by the existing despotism. In the next place, the Fresca Revolution was not occasioned by any writings whatsoever, but raust have occurred had no such writers ever existed. It is the fasion t attrice every thing to the French Revolution, and the French Revcution 1 te T thing but its real cause. That cause is obvious- the government exacted too much, and the people could neither gire nor bear mure. With at th the Encyclopedists might have written their fingers off without tie ocenite rence of a single alteration. And the English revolution—he first, I mean-what was it occasioned by The Puritans were surely as pousad moral as Wesley or his biographer 1 Acts-acts on the part of overenent, and not writings against theni, have caused the past convulsions, and are tending to the future.

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"I look upon such as inevitable, though no revolutionist: I wel, to me the English constitution restored, and not destroyed. Born an anoch', 1 and naturally one by temper, with the greater part of my present property in the funds, what have I to gain by a revolution? Perhaps I have mies to lose in every way than Mr. Southey, with all his places and presets panegyrics and abuse into the bargain. But that a revolution is inevitable, I repeat. The government may exult over the repression of petty tunnels, these are but the receding waves repulsed and broken for a inaner! shore, while the great tide is still rolling on and gaining ground work every breaker. Mr. Southey accuses us of attacking the religion of the ears; and is he abetting it by writing lives of Wesley? One mode of wuniv♫ is merely destroyed by another. There never was, nor ever country without a religion. We shall be told of France again; bat so wha only Paris and a frantic party, which for a moment upheld their sigraatt nonsense of theo-philanthropy. The church of England, if owalcowe, will be swept away by the sectarians and not by the skeptics. People ve too wise, too well informed, too certam of their own minense PaperALS in the realms of space, ever to submit to the impiety of doubt. There List be a few such diffident speculators, like water in the pale sunbeam of imman reason, but they are very few; and their opinions, without enthusiasm or ap peal to the passions, can never gam proselytes--unless, indeed, they are ] persecuted that, to be sure, will increase any thing.

"Mr. Southey, with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated death-bed repentance' of the objects of his dislike and indulges kimse ! in a pleasantVision of Judgment in prose as well as verse, fu'r of 15pious impudence. What Mr. Southey's sensations or ours may be in tür awful moment of leaving this state of existence, neither he nor we ese pre- i tend to decide. In common, I presume, with most men of any

I have not waited for a death-bed' to repent of many of my actions, ecte withstanding the diabolical pride' which this proful renegado in bra rancor would impute to those who scorn him. Whether upon the whole the

So much for his poem-a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the picture of a supposed "Satanic School," the which he doth recommend to the notice of the legislature; thereby adding to his other laurels the ambition of those of an informer. If there

good or ev of my deeds may preponderate is not for me to ascertain; but is my eas and opportunities have been greater, I shall limit my present dalente to an assertion, (asily proved, if necessary,) that 1, in my degree,' hae de more real good in any one given year, since I was twenty, than Mr. Suthey in the whole course of his shilling and turncoat existence. There are several actions to which I can look back with an honest pride, not te damped by the calumutes of a hireling. There are others to which I ery with sorrow and repentance, but the only act of my life of which Mr. Southey can have any real knowledge, as it was one which brought me in count wih a near connection of his own, [Mr. Coleridge,] did no dishonor that connection nor to me.

"I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, keng them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Baterland against me and others, they have done him no good in this wond, and u jus creed be the right one, they will do him less in the next. West Als death-bed' may be, it is not my province to predicate; let him sette in with his Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at arce dirrcus and blasphemous in this arregant scribbler of all work sitting

to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat Tyler, the Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin Ceregicide, all abufled together in bis writing-desk. One of his consola1 appears to be a Latin note from a work of a Mr. Landor, the author of "Gelir," whose friendship for Robert Southey will, it seems, be an bacz to him when the ephemeral disputes and ephemeral reputations of The day are forgotten.' I for one neither envy him the friendship,' nor the 【ery a reversion which is to acerue from it, like Mr. Thelusson's fortune, in

hand and fourth generation. This friendship will probably be as meto talle mains own epics, which (as I quoted to bim ten or twelve years ago l'Eglish Barde') Person said would be remembered wheu Homer and Vigu de forgotten, and not till then.' For the present I leave him."

Mr. Southey was not disposed to let this pass unanswered. He, on the 5th of January, 1822, addressed to the Editor of the London Courier a letter, of which we shall quote all that is of importance :

"I tre at once to his Lordship's charge against me, lowing away the me with which it is frothed, and evaporating a strong acid in which it is spede. The residuom then appears to be, that Mr. Southey, on his turn from Switzerland, (in 1817,) scattered abroad calumnies, knowing thea to be such, against Lord Byron and others. To this I reply with a Bont end positice denial.

"if had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk, er Mark of La Trappe, that he had furnished a harem, or endowed an Esra', i might have thought the account, whichever it had been, pos

ad repeated it accordingly; passing it, as it had been taken, in the Mall charge of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this anner 1 ught have spoken of him, na of Baron Geramb, the Green Mr the hidian Juggers, or any other figurante of the time being. There was no reason for any particular delicacy on my part in speaking of is Lorde p: and, indeed, I should have thought any thing which might be reported of hire, would have injured his character as little as the story which greatly moved Lord Keeper Guildford, that he had ridden a rhinoceros. He say rule a ramnocercs, and though everybody would stare, no one would wder. But making no inquiry concerning him when I was abroad, beCause I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends and acquaintance on iny return, it was of fying-tree at Alpnacht, and the eleven thousand virgins at Cologne-not Laid Byron. Leught for no staler subject than St. Ursula. "Dare, and only once, in connection with Switzerland, I have alluded to has Lordship, and, as the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportacey resturing 1. In the Quarterly Review,' speaking incidentally the Lingfrau, I said, it was the scene where Lord Byron's Manfred met Be Devil and bulled him-though the Devil must have won his cause before any tritonal in this world, or the next, if he had not pleaded more key for himself than his advocate, in a cause of canonization, ever pleaded for him."

With regard to the others, whom his Lordship accuses me of ca. Caniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends, whose names I found written in the Album at Mont-Anvert, with an avowal of Atheism annexed, in Greek, and an indignant comment in the same language, unweneath : Those names, with that avowal and the comment, I tranribed in my note-book, and spoke of the circumstance on my return. hal published it, the gentleman in question would not have thought himsan ere, by having that recorded of him which he has so often recorded of himself.

If

"The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed pence, I leave, as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon

How easily in a noble spirit discern'd

From bareh and sulphurous matter that flies out

In contumelies, makes a noise, and stinks!-B. Jonson.

But I am accustomed to such things; and, so far from irritating me are the enemies who use such weapous, that, when I hear of their attacks, it see satisiaction to think they have thus employed the malignity which i have been employed somewhere, and could not have been directed against any person whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The viper, wever venomoue in purpose, is harmless in effect, while it is biting at the file. It is seblom, indeed, that I waste a word, or a thought, upon those who are perpetually assailing me. But abborring, as I do, the perNantes which disgrace our current literature, and averse from controversy as I am, both by principle and inclination, I make no profession of

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exists anywhere, excepting in his imagination, such a School, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is, that there are certain writers whom Mr. S. imagines, like Scrub, to have "talked of him; for they laughed consumedly."

non-resistance. When the offence and the offender are such as to call for the whip and the branding-iron, it has been both seen and felt that I can inflict them. "Lord Byron's present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind-not by hearsay reports of my conversation, four years ago, transmitted him from England. The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic school of poetry, contained a my preface to the Vision of Judgment. Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings, with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, and parents es pecially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the brand. ing-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that honorable feeling by which his criticisins are so peculiarly dis tinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part. I give him, in this instance, full credit for sincerity: I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse; and as I have never condescended to expose, in any instance, his pitiful malevolence, I thank him for having, in this, stripped it bare himself, and exhibited it in its bald, naked, and undisguised deformity. "Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventured to bring the matter of those animadversions into view. He conceals the fact, that they are directed against the authors of blasphemous and lascivious books; against men who, not content with indulging their own vices, labor to make others the slaves of sensuality, like themselves; against public panders, who, mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, and to carry profanation and pollution into private families, and into the hearts of individuals.

His Lordship has thought it not unbecoming in him to call me a scribbler of all work. Let the worl scribbler pass, it is an appellation which will not stick, like that of the Satanic school. But, if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? I will tell Lord Byron what I have not scribbled- what kind of work I have not done. I have never published labels upon my friends and acquaintance, expressed my sorrow for those libels, and called them in during a mood of better mind-and then reissued them, when the evil spirit, which for a time had been cast out, had returned and taken possession, with seven others, more wicked than himself. I have never abused the power, of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character of a man, or the heart of a woman. I have never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare to affix my name; or which I feared to claim in a court of justice, if it were pirated by a knavish bookseller. I have never manufactured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I done; none of the foul work by which literature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My bands are clean; there is no damned spot' upon them-no taint, which all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.' "Of the work which I have done, it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic School, and its Coryphæus, the author of Don Juan. I have held up that school to public detestation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and the domestic morals of the country. I have given them a designation to which their founder and leader answers. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead. I have fastened his name upon the gibbet, for reproach and ignominy, as long as it shall endure. Take it down who can!

"One word of advice to Lord Byron before I conclude.- When he attacks me again, let it be in rhyme. For one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper should be olddiged to keep tune. And while he may still indulge in the same rankness and virulence of insult, the metre will, in some degree, seem to lessen its vulgarity."

Lord Byron, without waiting for the closing hint of the foregoing letter, had already "attacked" Mr. Southey "in rhyme." On October 1, 1821, he says to Mr. Moore,

"I have written about sixty stanzas of a poem, in octave stanzas, (in the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by WhistlecraftIt is as old as the hills, in Italy,) called The Vision of Judgment,' by Quevedo Redivivus. In this it is my intention to put the said George's Apotheosis in a Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate, for his preface and bis other demerits."

Lord Byron had proceeded some length in the performance thus announced, before Mr. Southey's letter to the "Courier" fell into his hands. On seeing it, his Lordship's feelings were so excited, that he could not wait for revenge in ink-shed, but on the instant dispatched a cartel of mortal defiance to the Poet Laureate, through the medium of Mr. Douglas Kinnaird,-to whom he thus writes, February 6, 1822:

"I have got Southey's pretended reply: what remains to be done is to call him out. The question is, would he come for, if he would not, the whole thing would appear ridiculous, if I were to take a long and expensive Journey to no purpose. You must be my second, and, as such, I wish to consult you. I apply to you as one well versed in the duello, or monomachie. Of course I shall come to England as privately as possible, and leave it (supposing that I was the survivor) in the same manner; having no other object which could bring me into that country except to settle quarrels accumulated during my absence."

Mr. Kinnaird, justly appreciating the momentary exacerbation under which Lord Byron had written the challenge which this letter enclosed, and fully aware how absurd the whole business would seem to his distant friend after the lapse of such a period as must intervene before the return of post from Keswick to Ravenna, put Lord Byron's warlike missive aside; and it never was heard of by Mr. Southey until after the death of its author. Meantime Lord Byron had continued his "attack in rhyme"-and his "Vision of Judgment," after ineffectual negotiations with various publishers in London, at length saw the light in 1822, in the pages of the unfortunate " Liberal."]

I think I know enough of most of the writers to whom he is supposed to allude, to assert, that they, in their individual capacities, have done more good, in the charities of life, to their fellow-creatures in any one year, than Mr. Southey has done harm to himself by his absurdities in his whole life; and this is saying a great deal. But I have a few questions to ask. 1stly, Is Mr. Southey the author of "Wat Tyler?" 2dly, Was he not refused a remedy at law by the highest judge of his beloved England, because it was a blasphemous and seditious publication?1 3dly, Was he not entitled by William Smith, in full parliament, "a rancorous renegado?"""

4thly, Is he not poet laureate, with his own lines on Martin the regicide staring him in the face?3

And, 5thly, Putting the four preceding items together, with what conscience dare he call the attention of the laws to the publications of others, be they what they may?

I say nothing of the cowardice of such a proceed ing; its meanness speaks for itself; but I wish to touch upon the motive, which is neither more nor less than that Mr. S. has been laughed at a little in some recent publications, as he was of yore in the " Anti-jacobin" by his present patrons. Hence all this "skimble-scamble stuff" about "Satanic," and so forth., However, it is worthy of him—“ qualis ab incepto."

gets opposition. In whatever manner he may be spoken of in this new "Vision," his public career will not be more favorably transmitted by history. Of his private virtues (although a little expensive to the nation) there can be no doubt.

With regard to the supernatural personages treated of, I can only say that I know as much about them, and (as an honest man) have a better right to talk of them, than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate, deals about his judgments in the next world, is like his own judgment in this. If it was not completely ludicrous, it would be something worse. I don't think that there is much more to say at present. QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS.

in these objectionable times, to the freedom with P. S.-It is possible that some readers may object, in this "Vision." which saints, angels, and spiritual persons discourse But, for precedents upon such

points, I must refer him to Fielding's "Journey from

this World to the next," and to the Visions of myself, reader is also requested to observe, that no doctrinal the said Quevedo, in Spanish or translated. The of the Deity is carefully withheld from sight, which tenets are insisted upon or discussed; that the person

thought proper to make him talk, not " is more than can be said for the Laureate, who hath like a school divine," but like the unscholarlike Mr. Southey. The Chaucer's Wife of Bath, Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, whole action passes on the outside of heaven; and Swift's Tale of a Tub, and the other works above referred to, are cases in point of the freedom with which saints, &c., may be permitted to converse in works Q. R.

If there is any thing obnoxious to the political opinions of a portion of the public in the following poem, they may thank Mr. Southey. He might have written hexameters, as he has written every thing else, for aught that the writer cared-had they been upon another subject. But to attempt to canonize a monarch, who, whatever were his household virtues, was neither a successful nor a patriot king,- inasmuch as several years of his reign passed in war with America and Ireland, to say nothing of the aggression upon Mr. Southey being, as he says, a good ChrisFrance,-like all other exaggeration, necessarily be- tian and vindictive, threatens, I understand, a reply to

[In 1821, when Mr. Southey applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to restrain the publication of "Wat Tyler," Lord Chancellor Eldon pronounced the following judgment:-"I have looked into all the affidavits, and have read the book itself. The bill goes the length of stating, that the work was composed by Mr. Southey in the year 1794; that it is his own production, and that it has been published by the defendants without his sanction or authority; and therefore seeking an account of the profits which have arisen from, and an injunction to restrain, the publication. I have examined the cases that I have been able to meet with containing precedents for injunctions of this nature, and I find that they all proceed upon the ground of a title to the property in the plaintiff. On this head a distinction has been taken, to which a considerable weight of authority attaches, supported, as it is, by the opinion of Lord Chief Justice Eyre, who has expressly laid it down, that a person cannot recover in damages for a work which is, in its nature, calculated to do injury to the public. Upon the same principle this court refused an injunction in the case of Walcot" (Peter Pindar) "v. Walker, inasmuch as he could not have recovered damages in an action. After the fullest consideration, I remain of the same opinion as that which I entertained in deciding the case referred to. Taking all the circumstances into my consideration, it appears to me, that I cannot grant this injunction, until after Mr. Southey shall have established his right to the property by action."-Injunction refused.]

2 [Mr. William Smith, M. P. for Norwich, made a virulent attack on Mr. Southey in the House of Commons on the 14th of March, 1817, and the Laureate replied by a letter in the Courier.]

3 [Among the effusions of Mr. Southey's juvenile muse, we find this

"Inscription for the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Martin, the Regicide, was imprisoned thirty

years.

"For thirty years secluded from mankind

Here Martín linger'd. Often have these walls

not intended to be serious.

Echo'd his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison. Not to him
Did Nature's fair varieties exist;

He never saw the sun's delightful beams;
Save when through yon high bars he pour'd a sad
And broken splendor. Dost thou ask his crime !
He had rebell'd against the King, and sat
In judgment on him; for his ardent mind
Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth,
And peace and liberty. Wild dreams! but such
As Plato loved; such as, with holy zeal,
Our Milton worshipp'd. Blessed hopes! awhile
From man withheld, even to the latter days,
When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill'd."]

4[The following imitation of the Inscription on the Regicide's Apartment, written by Mr. Canning, appeared in the "Anti-jacobin:"

"Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg, the 'Prentice-cide was confined, previous to her execution.

"For one long term, or ere her trial came,
Here Brownrigg linger'd. Often have these cells
Echo'd her blasphemies, as with shrill voice
She scream'd for fresh geneva. Not to her
Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street,
St. Giles, its fair varieties expand;

Till at the last in slow-drawn cart she went
To execution. Dost thou ask her crime?
She whipp'd two female 'prentices to death,
And hid them in the coal-hole. For her mind
Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage schemes!
Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine
Of the Orthyan goddess he bade flog

The little Spartans; such as erst chastised
Our Milton, when at college. For this act
Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws! But time shall

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