WAT TYLER; a Dramatic Poem. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW: Article, "On Parliamentary Reform."
"So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man:
So shall it be when I grow old and die.
The child's the father of the man:
Our years flow on
Link'd each to each by natural piety."—Wordsworth.
March 9, 1817.
According to this theory of personal continuity, the author of the Dramatic Poem, to be here noticed, is the father of Parliamentary Reform in the Quarterly Review. It is said to be a wise child that knows its own father; and we understand Mr. Southey (who is in this case reputed father and son) utterly disclaims the hypostatical union between the Quarterly Reviewer and the Dramatic Poet, and means to enter an injunction against the latter, as a bastard and impostor. Appearances are somewhat staggering against the legitimacy of the descent, yet we perceive a strong family-likeness remaining, in spite of the lapse of years and alteration of circumstances. We should not, indeed, be able to predict that the author of Wat Tyler would ever write the article on Parliamentary Reform; nor should we, either at first or second sight, perceive that the Quarterly Reviewer had ever written a poem like that which is before us: but if we were told that both performances were literally and bonâ fide by the same person, we should have little hesitation in saying to Mr. Southey, "Thou art the man." We know no other person in whom "fierce extremes" meet with such mutual self-complacency: whose opinions change so much without any change in the author's mind; who lives so entirely in the "present ignorant thought," without the smallest "discourse of reason looking before or after." Mr. Southey is a man incapable of reasoning connectedly on any
