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?
2ndly, Was he not refused a remedy at law by the highest judge of his beloved England, because it was a blasphemous and seditious publication? [decimal 1]
3rdly, Was he not entitled by William Smith, in full parliament, "a rancorous renegado?"[decimal 2]
4thly, Is he not poet laureate, with his own lines on Martin the regicide staring him in the face?[decimal 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?
- ↑ These were not the expressions employed by Lord Eldon. The Chancellor laid down the principle that "damages cannot be recovered for a work which is in its nature calculated to do an injury to the public." and assuming Wat Tyler to be of this description, he refused the injunction until Southey should have established his right to the property by an action. Wat Tyler was written at the age of nineteen, when Southey was a republican. and was entrusted to two booksellers, Messrs. Ridgeway and Symonds, who agreed to publish it, but never put it to press. The MS. was not returned to the author, and in February. 1817, at the interval of twenty-two years, when his sentiments were widely different, it was printed, to his great annoyance, by W. Benhow (see his Scourge for the Laureate (1825). p. 14), Sherwood, Neely and Jones, John Fairburn, and others. It was reported that 60,000 were sold (see Life and Correspondence of R. Southey. 1850, iv. 237, 241, 249, 252).
- ↑ William Smith, M.P. for Norwich, attacked Southey in the House of Commons on the 14th of March, 1817, and the Laureate replied by a letter in the Courier, dated March 17, 1817, and by a leter "To William Smith, Esq., M.P." (see Essays Moral and Political, by R. Southey, 1832, ii. 7-32). The exact words used were, "the determined malignity of a renegade" (see Hansard's Parl. Debates, xxxv. 1088).
- ↑ One of Southey's juvenile poems is an "Inscription for the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Martin, the Regicide was imprisoned thirty years" (see Southey's Poems, 1797, p. 59). Canning parodied it in the Anti-jacobin (see his well-known "Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg, the 'Prentice-cide, was confined, previous to her Execution," Poetry of the Anti-jacobin, 1828, p. 6).
they laughed consumedly."—Farquhar, The Beaux' Stratagem, act iii. sc. 2.
