Southey at least knows no such thing, but he is here in his glory; putting a false statement into epigrammatic phraseology; bristling with horror at antithetical enormities of his own fabricating, and concluding with that formidable and significant repetition of the title, Christian and surname of Mr. William Smith.] The above paragraph concludes thus, with the author's usual logical precision and personal modesty. "And knowing them as you did, I verily believe, that if it were possible to revoke what is irrevocable, you would at this moment be far more desirous of blotting from remembrance the disgraceful speech which stands upon record in your name, than I should be of cancelling the boyish composition which gave rise to it. "Wat Tyler" is full of errors . . . . . . . but they are the errors of youth and ignorance; they bear no indication of an ungenerous spirit, or of a malevolent heart." p. 6. It seems by this passage that any attempt to fix disgrace on Mr. Southey only recoils upon the head of his accuser. "Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit." He says that Mr. W. Smith's disgraceful speech was occasioned by "Wat Tyler." That is not true. It was occasioned by "Wat Tyler" coupled with the "Quarterly Review." He says, "'Wat Tyler' is full of errors." So is the article in the "Quarterly Review;" but they are not "the errors of youth and ignorance; they bear strong indications of an ungenerous spirit and a malignant heart." Let not Mr. Southey mistake. It is not the indiscreet and romantic extravagance of the boy which has brought the man into this predicament: it is the deliberate and rancorous servility of the man that has made those who were the marks of his slanderous and cowardly invectives, rake up the errors of his youth against him.
Mr. Southey next proceeds to a defence of himself for writing "the Wat Tyler." He argues that "it is not seditious, because it is dramatic." We deny that it is dramatic. He acknowledges that it is mischievous, and particularly so, at the present time. To the last part of the proposition we cannot assent. When this poem was written, there was a rage of speculation which might be dangerous: the danger at present arises from the rage of hunger.
