He then falls foul of the Monthly, and other Dissenting Reviews, for praising his Joan of Arc, and makes it the subject of a sneer at Mr. W. Smith, that his Minor Poems were praised by the same critical authorities on their first appearance. We might ask here, Did not Mr. Southey himself write in these Reviews at one time? But he might refuse to answer the question. "In these productions, Joan of Arc" &.c. Mr. Southey observes, and observes truly, that Mr. W. Smith "might have seen expressed an enthusiastic love of liberty," (not a cold-blooded recommendation to extinguish the liberty of the press) "a detestation of tyranny in whatever form," (legitimate or illegitimate, not a palliation of all its most inveterate and lasting abuses) "an ardent abhorrence of all wicked ambition," (particularly of that most wicked ambition which would subject mankind, as a herd of cattle, to the power and pride of Kings) "and a sympathy not less ardent with those who were engaged in war for the defence of their country, and in a righteous cause"—to wit, the French!
Mr. Southey, however, vindicates with still more self-complacency and success, the purity of his religious and moral character. "For while I imbibed the Republican opinions of the day, I escaped the atheism and leprous immorality which generally accompanied them. I cannot, therefore, join with Beattie in blessing
——'The hour when I escap'd the wrangling crew,
From Pyrrho's maze, and Epicurus' sty;'
for I was never lost in the one, nor defiled in the other. My progress was of a different kind." And Mr. Southey then tells a story, not so good as the story of Whittington and his Cat, how he was prevented from setting off for America to set up the Pantisocracy scheme, and turned back, "from building castles in the air, and founding Christian Commonwealths," to turn Poet Laureate, and write in the Quarterly Review. The above extract is a fine specimen of character. Mr. Southey there thanks God that he is not, and was not, like other men. He was proof against
