Had you perused his writings, you could not have mistaken them; and I am willing to believe that if you had done this, and formed an opinion for yourself, instead of retailing that of wretches who are at once the panders of malice and the pioneers of rebellion, you would neither have been so far forgetful of your parliamentary character, nor of the decencies between man and man, as so wantonly, so unjustly, and in such a place, to have attacked one who had given you no provocation. Did you imagine that I should sit down quietly under the wrong, and treat your attack with the same silent contempt as I have done all the abuse and calumny with which, from one party or the other, Antijacobins or Jacobins, I have been assailed in daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications, since the year 1796, when I first became known to the public? The place where you made the attack, and the manner of the attack, prevent this. How far the writings of Mr. Southey may be found to deserve a favourable acceptance from after-ages, time will decide; but a name, which, whether worthily or not, has been conspicuous in the literary history of its age, will certainly not perish. Some account of his life will always be prefixed to his works, and transferred to literary histories, and to the biographical dictionaries, not only of this, but of other countries. There it will be related, that he lived in the bosom of his family, in abso lute retirement; that in all his writings there breathed the same abhorrence of oppression and immorality, the same spirit of devotion, and the same ardent wishes for the melioration of mankind; and that the only charge which malice could bring against him was, that as he grew older, his opinions altered concerning the means by which that melioration was to be effected; and that as he learned to understand the institutions of his country, he learned to appreciate them rightly, to love, and to revere, and to defend them. It will be said of him, that in an age of personality, he abstained from satire; and that during the course of his literary life, often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which he ever condescended to reply, was, when a certain Mr. William Smith insulted him in Parlia ment with the appellation of renegade. On that occasion, it will be said, that he vindicated himself, as it became him to do, and treated his calumniator with just and memorable severity. Whether it shall be added, that Mr. William Smith redeemed his own character, by coming forward with honest manliness and acknowledging that he had spoken rashly and unjustly, concerns himself, but is not of the slightest importance to me. ROBERT SOUTHEY. STANZAS. (1) ["COULD LOVE FOR EVER."] I. COULD Love for ever Run like a river, And Time's endeavour Be tried in vain No other pleasure With this could measure; And like a treasure We'd hug the chain. But since our sighing Ends not in dying, And, form'd for flying, Love plumes his wing; Then for this reason Let's love a season; But let that season be only Spring. (1) [A friend of Lord Byron's, who was with him at Ravenna when he wrote these Stanzas, says," They were composed, like many others, with no view of publication, but merely to relieve himself in a moment of suffering. He had been painfully excited by some circumstances which appeared to make it necessary that he should immediately quit Italy; and in the day and the hour that he wrote the song was labouring under an access of fever."-E] II. When lovers parted A few years older, Ah! how much colder They pluck Love's feather From out his wing He'll stay for ever, But sadly shiver Without his plumage, when past the Spring. (1) |