My master dear, divinest Spenser, wore,
That which rewarded Drayton’s learned lays,
Which thoughtful Ben and gentle Daniel[[17]] bore ...
Grin, Envy, through thy ragged mask of scorn!
In honour it was given, with honour it is worn!’
Now we do assure Mr. Southey, that we do not envy him this honour. Many people laugh at him, some may blush for him, but nobody envies him. As to Spenser, whom he puts in the list of great men who have preceded him in his office, his laureateship has been bestowed on him by Mr. Southey; it did not ‘crown his living head.’ We all remember his being refused the hundred pounds for his ‘Fairy Queen.’ Poets were not wanted in those days to celebrate the triumphs of princes over the people. But why does he not bring his list down nearer to his own time—to Pye and Whitehead and Colley Cibber? Does Mr. Southey disdain to be considered as the successor even of Dryden? That green wreath which decks our author’s living head, is so far from being, as he would insinuate, an anticipation of immortality, that it is no credit to any body, and least of all to Mr. Southey. He might well have declined the reward of exertions in a cause which throws a stigma of folly or something worse on the best part of his life. Mr. Southey ought not to have received what would not have been offered to the author of ‘Joan of Arc.’
Mr. Southey himself maintains that his song has still been ‘to Truth and Freedom true’; that he has never changed his opinions; that it is the cause of French liberty that has left him, not he the cause. That may be so. But there is one person in the kingdom who has, we take it, been at least as consistent in his conduct and sentiments as Mr. Southey, and that person is the King. Thus the Laureate emphatically advises the Princess:—
‘Look to thy Sire, and in his steady way,
As in his Father’s he, learn thou to tread.’
Now the question is, whether Mr. Southey agreed with his Majesty on the subject of the French Revolution when he published ‘Joan of Arc.’ Though Mr. Southey ‘as beseems him well’ congratulates the successes of the son, we do not recollect that he condoled with the disappointments of the father in the same cause. The King has not changed, therefore Mr. Southey has. The sun does not turn to the sun-flower; but the sun-flower follows the sun. Our poet has thoughtlessly committed himself in the above lines. He may be right in applauding that one sole purpose of his Majesty’s reign which he formerly condemned: that he can be consistent in applauding what he formerly condemned, is impossible. That his majesty King George III. should make a convert of Mr. Southey rather than Mr. Southey of George III. is probable for many reasons. The King by siding with the cause of the people could not, like King William, have gained a crown: Mr. Southey, by deserting it, has got a hundred pounds a-year. A certain English ambassador, who had a long time resided at the court of Rome, was on his return introduced at the levee of Queen Caroline. This lady, who was almost as great a prig as Mr. Southey, asked him why in his absence he did not try to make a convert of the Pope to the Protestant religion. He answered, ‘Madam, the reason was that I had nothing better to offer his Holiness than what he already has in his possession.’ The Pope would no doubt have been of the same way of thinking. This is the reason why kings, from sire to son, pursue ‘their steady way,’ and are less changeable than canting cosmopolites.