Conciones ad Populum
(1795), which the Government considered seditious; and, according to Poole (
Thomas Pools and his Friends
, vol. i. chap, vi.), wavered "between Deism and Atheism." He became a champion of monarchical principles and of religious orthodoxy, and attacked the views, which he had once held and expressed in
Wat Tyler
(written in 1794, and piratically published in 1817), with the bitterness of a reactionary. He had also, as Byron believed, circulated, if not invented, a report that Byron and Shelley had formed "a league of incest" at Geneva, in 1816-17, with "two girls," Mary Godwin (Mrs. Shelley) and Jane Clairmont. Byron not only denied the charge, but retorted upon him, in his "Observations upon an Article in
Blackwood's Magazine
" (March 15, 1820), as the author of
Wat Tyler
and poet laureate, the man who "wrote treason and serves the King," the ex-pantisocrat who advocated "all things, including women, in common." Southey's