Since Mr. Southey went to court, he has changed his tone. Asinos asinina decent. Is that Mr. Coleridge's political logic?[1]
4. That Mr. Southey did not express his real opinions, even at that time, in Wat Tyler, which is a dramatic poem, in which mob-orators and rioters figure, with appropriate sentiments, as Jack Cade may do in Shakespear.
Answer. This allusion to the dramatic characters of Shakespear is certainly unfortunate, and Mr. Coleridge himself hints as much. Rioters and mob-preachers are not the only persons who appear in "the Wat Tyler." The King and the Archbishop come forward in their own persons, according to Mr. Coleridge, with appropriate sentiments, labelled and put into their mouths. For example:—
Philpot. Every moment brings
Fresh tidings of our peril.
King. It were well
To yield them what they ask.
Archbishop, Aye, that my liege
Were politic. Go boldly forth to meet them.
Grant all they ask—however wild and ruinous;—
Meantime, the troops you have already summoned
Will gather round them. Then my Christian power
Absolves you of your promise.
Walworth. Were but their ringleaders cut off, the rabble
Would soon disperse.
- ↑ Of the three persons that Mr. Coleridge, by a most preposterous anachronism, has selected to compose his asinine auditory, Mr. Hunt was at the time in question a boy at school, not a stripling bard of nineteen or nine and twenty, but a real school-boy "declaiming on the patriotism of Brutus." As to Mr. Cobbett, he would at that time, had they come in his way, with one kick of his hard hoofs, have made a terrible crash among "the green corn" of Mr. Southey's Jacobin Pan's-pipe, and gone near to knock out the musician's brains into the bargain. The second person in this absurd trinity, who certainly thinks it "a robbery to be made equal to the other two," was the only hearer present at the rehearsal of Mr. Southey's overtures to Liberty and Equality, and to that "long-continued asinine bravura," which rings in Mr. Coleridge's ears, but which certainly was not unaccompanied, for he himself was present; and those who know this gentleman, know that on these occasions he performs the part of a whole chorus.
