So is it now I am a man:
So shall it be when I grow old and die.
The child’s the father of the man:
Our years flow on
Link’d each to each by natural piety.’—Wordsworth.
March 9, 1817.
According to this theory of personal continuity, the author of the Dramatic Poem, to be here noticed, is the father of Parliamentary Reform in the Quarterly Review. It is said to be a wise child that knows its own father: and we understand Mr. Southey (who is in this case reputed father and son) utterly disclaims the hypostatical union between the Quarterly Reviewer and the Dramatic Poet, and means to enter an injunction against the latter, as a bastard and impostor. Appearances are somewhat staggering against the legitimacy of the descent, yet we perceive a strong family-likeness remaining, in spite of the lapse of years and alteration of circumstances. We should not, indeed, be able to predict that the author of Wat Tyler would ever write the article on Parliamentary Reform; nor should we, either at first or second sight, perceive that the Quarterly Reviewer had ever written a poem like that which is before us: but if we were told that both performances were literally and bonâ fide by the same person, we should have little hesitation in saying to Mr. Southey, ‘Thou art the man.’ We know no other person in whom ‘fierce extremes’ meet with such mutual self-complacency: whose opinions change so much without any change in the author’s mind; who lives so entirely in the ‘present ignorant thought,’ without the smallest ‘discourse of reason looking before or after.’ Mr. Southey is a man incapable of reasoning connectedly on any subject. He has not strength of mind to see the whole of any question; he has not modesty to suspend his judgment till he has examined the grounds of it. He can comprehend but one idea at a time, and that is always an extreme one; because he will neither listen to, nor tolerate any thing that can disturb or moderate the petulance of his self-opinion. The woman that deliberates is lost. So it is with the effeminate soul of Mr. Southey. Any concession is fatal to his consistency; and he can only keep out of one absurdity by the tenaciousness with which he stickles for another. He calls to the aid of his disjointed opinions a proportionate quantity of spleen; and regularly makes up for the weakness of his own reasons, by charging others with bad motives. The terms knave and fool, wise and good, have undergone a total change in the last twenty years: the former he applies to all those who agreed with him formerly—the latter to all those who agree with him now. His public spirit was then a prude and a scold; and ‘his poor virtue,’ turned into a literary prostitute, is grown more abusive than ever. Wat Tyler and the Quarterly Review are an illustration of these remarks. The author of Wat Tyler was an Ultra-jacobin; the author of Parliamentary Reform is an Ultra-royalist; the one was a frantic demagogue; the other is a servile court-tool: the one maintained second-hand paradoxes; the other repeats second-hand common-places: the one vented those opinions which gratified the vanity of youth; the other adopts those prejudices which are most conducive to the convenience of age: the one saw nothing but the abuses of power; the other sees nothing but the horrors of resistance to those abuses: the one did not stop short of general anarchy; the other goes the whole length of despotism; the one vilified kings, priests, and nobles; the other vilifies the people: the one was for universal suffrage and perfect equality; the other is for seat-selling, and the increasing influence of the Crown: the one admired the preaching of John Ball; the other recommends the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and the putting down of the Examiner by the sword, the dagger, or the thumb-screw; for the pen, Mr. Southey tells us, is not sufficient. We wonder that in all this contempt which our prose-poet has felt at different times for different persons and things, he has never felt any dissatisfaction with himself, or distrust of his own infallibility. Our differing from others sometimes staggers our confidence in our own conclusions: if we had been chargeable with as many contradictions as Mr. Southey, we suppose we should have had the same senseless self-sufficiency. A changeling is your only oracle. Those who have undergone a total change of sentiment on important questions, ought certainly to learn modesty in themselves, and moderation towards others; on the contrary, they are generally the most violent in their own opinions, and the most intolerant towards others; the reason of which we have shewn elsewhere, to the satisfaction of the proprietor of the Old Times. Before we have done, we shall, perhaps, do the same thing to the satisfaction of the publisher of the Quarterly Review; for the Mr. Murrays and the Mr. Walters, the patrons of the band of gentlemen-pensioners and servile authors, have ‘a sort of squint’ in their understanding, and look less to the dirty sacrifices of their drudges, or the dirtier they are ready to make, than to their standing well with that great keeper, the public, for purity and innocence. The band of gentlemen-pensioners and servile authors do not know what to make of this, and hardly believe it: we shall in time convince them.
But to proceed to our extracts:—
Morceau I.
Wat Tyler. Hob—I have only six groats in the world,