Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/186

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
144

"Such recantation had no charms for him,
"Nor could he brook it."

Nor is it the same consistent person whose deep-toned voice rebellows among the mountain echoes with peals of ideot rage and demon laughter—

"Proud Glaramara northward caught the sound,
"And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head,
"That there was strange commotion in the hills,"—

at the infamy and madness of Sir Robert Wilson's gallant conduct in having rescued one of its victims from the fangs of that Bourbon despotism which that royal fortitude had restored.—Is not that Mr. Southey, with something of the glow on his cheek which he had in writing Joan of Arc, and with the beaked curl of his nose which provoked him to write the Inscription on Old Sarum, returning in disgrace from the Prince's Levee, for having indignantly noticed in one of his Birth-day Odes, Ferdinand's treatment of the Spanish Patriots?—Just yonder, at the corner of Paternoster-row, you may see Mr. Coleridge, the author of the eclogue called Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, who has been to his bookseller's to withdraw his "Lay Sermon," or Statesman's Manual in praise of Fire, Slaughter, and Famine! But who is he "whose grief

"Bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow
"Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
"Like wonder-wounded hearers?"

'Tis the editor of The Times, (poor man, his virtuous indignation must cost him a great deal of pains and trouble!) as hard at it as ever, about liberty and independence without respect of persons; in a most woundy passion, we warrant now, at finding legitimacy at some of its old tricks, caught flagranti delicto, so that the poor gentleman could not hush the matter up, if he would, and would not, if he could, he is a man of such a nice morality, and such high notions of honour;—thrown into daily and hourly cold sweats and convulsions at the mention of daily and hourly acts of