Will he allow of nothing short of the utmost intolerance of jacobinism or anti-jacobinism? Or will he tolerate this intolerance in nobody but himself? This seems to be his feeling: and it also seems to be Mr. Coleridge's opinion, whose maudlin methodistical casuistry leads him to clothe Mr. Southey's political sins with apostacy as with a garment, and to plead one excess of folly and indecency as a competent set-off against another. To be a renegado, is, with him, to be virtuous. The greater the sinner the greater the saint, says The Courier. Mr. Southey's Muse is confessedly not a vestal; but then she is what is much better, a Magdalen. Now a Magdalen is a person who has returned to her first habits and notions of virtue: but Mr. Southey's laurelled Muse is at present in high court-keeping, and tosses up her nose at the very mention of reform. Nor do we think Mr. Southey has a fairer claim to the degree of respectability good-naturedly assigned him by his friends, that of a pickpocket or highwayman turned thief-taker or king's evidence; for he in fact belies his own character to blacken every honest principle, and takes the government reward for betraying better men than himself. There are, as The Courier observes, youthful indiscretions; but there are also riper and more deliberate errors. A woman is more liable to prostitute her person at nineteen—a man is more likely to prostitute his understanding at forty. We do not see the exact parallel which The Courier sets up between moral repentance and political profligacy. A man, says The Courier, may surely express an abhorrence of his past vices, as of drunkenness. Yes; and he may also express a great abhorrence of his present vices, because his own opinion, as well as that of all impartial persons, condemns his conduct; but it would be curious if a man were to express a great abhorrence of his present opinions, and it is only a less degree of absurdity for a man to express a great abhorrence of his past opinions; for if he was not a hypocrite, he must have held those opinions, as he holds his present ones, because he thought them right. A man is at liberty to condemn his errors in practice as much as he pleases: it is a point agreed upon.
