Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/266

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offensive to the sensitive organs of Captain Whiffle, than Mr. Southey must be to the nice feelings of an exalted Personage, reeking with the fumes of Jacobinism, and rolled, as he has been, in the kennel of the newspaper press. A voyage to Italy, a classical quarantine of a year or two, with the Pope's blessing, seems absolutely necessary to wipe out the stains of his Wat Tyler, "as pure as sin with baptism;" and to restore him to the vows of Prince and People as smug as a young novice in a monastery, and sweet as any waiting-gentlewoman.

Mr. Southey says, in continuation of his Defence of Wat Tyler, p. 7, "It was written when republicanism was confined to a very small number of the educated classes:" [Is it more common now among the intended hearers of Mr. Coleridge's Second and Third Lay-Sermons?]—"when those who were known to entertain such opinions were exposed to personal danger from the populace;" [The populace of course were not set on by the higher classes, the clergy or gentry, nor can Mr. S. mean to include the Attorney-General of that day, my Lord Eldon, as one of the populace.] "And when a spirit of anti-jacobinism was predominant, which I cannot characterise more truly than by saying that it was as unjust and intolerant, though not quite as ferocious, as the Jacobinism of the present day"—Why not the anti-jacobinism of the present day? "The collusion holds in the exchange." The business is carried on to the present hour; and though it has changed hands, the principal of the firm is still the same. Mr. Gifford, the present Editor of the Quarterly Review, where Mr. Southey now writes, was formerly the Editor of the Anti-jacobin newspaper, where he was written at. The above passage is however a sly passing hit at Mr. Canning's parodies, who (shame to say it) was as wise and as witty three and twenty years ago as he is now, and has not been making that progressive improvement ever since, on which Mr. Southey compliments himself, congratulates his friends, and insults over his enemies! How nicely this gentleman differences himself from all