‘It is no tale, but if you think,
Perhaps a tale you’ll make it.’
In this view it is a tale indeed, not ‘of other times,’ but of these.
[31]. During the retreat, the king was ever seen where the danger was greatest. Foremost in the ranks, he continually charged the Austrians in person. When his affairs grew desperate, it became evident that he sought for death in the field. At the head of a few of his cavalry, whom he constantly preceded, he often charged the enemy to their very cannons’ mouth. How he escaped amidst so many dangers appears miraculous. He might well say that ‘he had sought death, but had not been able to find it.’
[32]. Let no country go about to enslave another with impunity. For out of the very dregs of rottenness and debasement will arise a low creeping fog of servility, a stench of corruption to choak the life of liberty, wherever it comes—a race of fortune-hunting, dastard, busy, hungry, heartless slaves and blood-suckers, eager to fawn upon power and trample upon weakness, with no other pretensions than want of principle, and a hatred of those who possess what they want. Ireland has given us Castlereagh, Wellington, Burke. Is she not even with us? Let her smile now from her hundred hills, let her shake with laughter through her thousand bogs! Ireland, last of the nations, repose in peace upon thy green western wave! Thou and the world are quits.
[33]. Here the reader may, if he pleases, read over again the last note.
[34]. Encore un coup. This Duke is an Irishman. Pray, suppose the Allies were to declare the Protestant succession illegitimate, and the King of Sardinia, not the Prince Regent, the hereditary proprietor of the English throne and people in perpetuity and in a right line, would this annul the validity of his Grace’s grants?
[35]. 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 plays the part of a whole chorus.
[36]. A sarcastic writer, like Mr. Southey, might here ask, whether it was a disappointment in sharing the estate of some rich landed proprietor that made Mr. Southey turn short round to a defence of sinecures and pensions? We do not know, but here follows a passage, which ‘some skulking scoundrel’ in the Quarterly Review appears to have aimed at Mr. Southey’s early opinions and character:—‘As long as the smatterer in philosophy confines himself to private practice, the mischief does not extend beyond his private circle—his neighbour’s wife may be in some danger, and his neighbour’s property also; if the distinctions between meum and tuum should be practically inconvenient to the man of free opinions. But when he commences professor of moral and political philosophy for the benefit of the public—the fables of old credulity are then verified, his very breath becomes venomous, and every page which he sends abroad carries with it poison to the unsuspicious reader.’ Such is the interpretation given by the anonymous writer to the motives of smatterers in philosophy; this writer could not be Mr. Southey, for ‘he never imputes evil motives to men merely for holding the opinions he formerly held,’ such as the evils of the inequality of property, &c.
[37]. Not the Editor of this Paper, but the writer of this Article.