The above passage is, we fear, written in the style of Aretin, which Mr. Southey condemns in the Quarterly. It is at least a very sincere style: Mr. Southey will never write so, till he can keep in the same mind for three and twenty years together. Why should not one make a sentence of a page long, out of the feelings of one's whole life? The early Protestant Divines wrote such prodigious long sentences from the sincerity of their religious and political opinions. Mr. Coleridge ought not to imitate them.
A Letter to William Smith, Esq. M. P. from Robert Southey, Esq. John Murray, Albemarle-street. 1817. Price 2s.
"What word hath passed thy lips, Adam severe?"
Has Mr. Murray turned Quaker, that he styles himself John Murray ("Mark you his absolute John?") in the title-page? Or has Mr. Southey resigned his place and his pretensions, that he omits in the same page his honorary titles of Poet-Laureate and Member of the Royal Spanish Academy? We cannot tell; but we should think it some sign of grace, if, without a hint from the Lord Chamberlain, he had for a while laid by his tattered laurel and spattered birth-day suit: if, as the Commander in Chief retired after the droll affair of Mrs. Clarke (we are not such rigid moralists as Mr. Southey) the Poet Laureate had thought proper to veil his blushing court favours during the dramatic representation of Wat Tyler, and did not consider it either prudent or becoming to be seen going to or coming from Carlton-house with the mob, "the reading rabble," at his heels, and with a shower of two-penny pamphlets sticking to the skirts of his turned coat. Poor Morgan, the honest Welchman in Roderic Random, reeking with the fumes of tobacco and garlic, was not more
