character. Byron, in certain collateral attacks on Southey, no doubt showed his own meaner side; but it is curious to note that his 'Vision' has an amazing superiority not only in wit—which goes without saying—but in reverence. Southey gives one of the quaintest of all illustrations of the occasional transition of intense respectability into something very like blasphemy. A devout Christian might be expected to reflect that on the Day of Judgment the political squabbles of the day would lose some of their importance. Southey might even have taken a hint from Swift's famous vision. 'Jove's' startling declaration, 'I damn such fools!' is not, I suppose, exactly orthodox, and it is certainly misanthropical. But at least it implies that the Deity should not be made a Tory partisan, and that Byron's view that on that day George III. would appear as a stupid, obstinate, well-meaning human being is less shocking than Southey's calm assumption that the old king is still to wear his crown in heaven, and Wilkes and 'Junius' be sent straight to hell. A loyal dedication to George IV., as the providentially appointed inheritor of the merits of his race, adds a specially grotesque touch when we remember that just at this moment that monarch's domestic
