Tra. Not left him a tatterNot a rag of his present or past reputation, Which they call a disgrace to the age and the nation. Ink. I'm sorry to hear this! for friendship, you know [so. Our poor friend!-but I thought it would terminate Our friendship is such, I'll read nothing to shock it. You don't happen to have the Review in your pocket? Tra. No; I left a round dozen of authors and others (Very sorry, no doubt, since the cause is a brother's) All scrambling and jostling, like so many imps, And on fire with impatience to get the next glimpse. Ink. Let us join them. Tra. What, won't you return to the lecture? Ink. Why, the place is so cramm'd, there's not room for a spectre. Besides, our friend Scamp is to-day so absurd- Tra. I make you! Is that your deduction? Ink. Ink. Say rather an angle. If you and she marry, you'll certainly wrangle. ? I say she's a Blue, man, as blue as the ether. Tra. And is that any cause for not coming together? Ink. Humph! I can't say I know any happy alliance Which has lately sprung up from a wedlock with science. She's so learned in all things, and fond of concerning Herself in all matters connected with learning, That Tra. Ink. What? I perhaps may as well hold my tongue; But there's five hundred people can tell you you're wrong. Tra. You forget Lady Lilac's as rich as a Jew. Ink. Is it miss or the cash of mamma you pursue? Tra. Why, Jack, I'll be frank with you something The girl's a fine girl. [of both. Ink. And you feel nothing loth To her good lady-mother's reversion; and yet Her life is as good as your own, I will bet. Tra. Let her live, and as long as she likes; I demand [hand. Nothing more than the heart of her daughter and Ink. Why, that heart's in the inkstand—that hand on the pen. Tra. A propos— Will you write me a song now and then? Ink. To what purpose? Tra. You know, my dear friend, that in prose My talent is decent, as far as it goes; But in rhyme Ink. You're a terrible stick, to be sure. Tra. I own it; and yet, in these times, there's no lure For the heart of the fair like a stanza or two; Tra. Ink. As sublime !-Mr. Tracy-I've nothing to say. Stick to prose-As sublime !!— but I wish you good [wrong; day. Tra. Nay, stay, my dear fellow-consider-I'm I own it; but, prithee, compose me the song. Ink. As sublime !! Tra. I but used the expression in haste. Ink. That may be, Mr. Tracy, but shows damn'd bad taste. Tra. I own it-I know it-acknowledge it-what Can I say to you more? Ink. I see what you'd be at: You disparage my parts with insidious abuse, [use. Till you think you can turn them best to your own Miss Edgeworth's novels stepping from their covers, Morality's prim personification -- But oh ye lords of ladies intellectual, Why that Tra. And is that not a sign I respect them? To be sure makes a difference. I know what is what: And you, who're a man of the gay world, no less Than a poet of t'other, may easily guess That I never could mean, by a word, to offend Ink. No doubt; you by this time should know what is due but come-let us shake hands. You knew, To a man of {for sale, Had its full share of praise. I myself saw it puff'd in the "Old Girl's Review."2 Ink. What Review? [Trevoux; "3 • Tra. "Tis the English" Journal de A clerical work of our jesuits at home. Have you never yet seen it? Ink. Tra. Make haste then. Ink. Tra. That pleasure's to come. Why so? I have heard people say That it threaten'd to give up the ghost t'other day. Ink. Well, that is a sign of some spirit. Tra. No doubt. Shall you be at the Countess of Fiddlecome's rout? Ink. I've a card, and shall go: but at present, as [the moon As friend Scamp shall be pleased to step down from (Where he seems to be soaring in search of his wits), And an interval grants from his lecturing fits, I'm engaged to the Lady Bluebottle's collation, soon To partake of a luncheon and learn'd conversation: 'Tis a sort of re-union for Scamp, on the days An Apartment in the House of LADY BLUEBOTTLE -A Table prepared. SIR RICHARD BLUEBOTTLE solus. Was there ever a man who was married so sorry? In science and art, I'll be cursed if I know Is the numerous, humourous, backbiting crew Of his lecture, to treat him with cold tongue and But to hear a vile jargon which addles my brains: praise. And I own, for my own part, that 't is not unpleasant. No doubt-to the pocket. Tra. You should rather encourage my passion than shock it. But let us proceed; for I think, by the hum. Ink. Very true; let us go, then, before they can come, Or else we'll be kept here an hour at their levy, [Messrs. Southey and Sotheby.] 2 ["My Grandmother's Review, the British." This heavy journal has since been gathered to its grandmothers.] 3 [The" Journal de Trevoux (in fifty-six volumes) is one of the most curious collections of literary gossip in the world, -and the Poet paid the British Review an extravagant compliment, when he made this comparison.] 4 ["Sotheby is a good man- rhymes well (if not wisely); but is a bore. He seizes you by the button. One night of a rout at Mrs. Ilope's, he had fastened upon me- (something about Agamemnon, or Orestes, or some of his plays) not A smatter and chatter, glean'd out of reviews, Enter LADY BLUEBOTTLE, MISS LILAC, LADY BLUE- Lady Blueb. Ah! Sir Richard, good morning; withstanding my symptoms of manifest distress (for I was in love, and just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the statues of the gallery where we stood at the time. Sotheby, I say, had seized upon me by the button and the heart-strings, and spared neither. William Spencer, who likes fun, and don't dislike mischief, saw rathetically bade me farewell; for,' said he, I see it is all my case, and coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and over with you.' Sotheby then went his way: sic me sernavit Apollo.' Byron Diary, 1821.] Both. And my Lord Seventy-four 2, who protects our dear And who gave him his place, has the greatest regard Scamp. I needs must confess I'm embarrass'd. Ink. Dont call upon Scamp, who's already so harass'd With old schools, and new schools, and no schools, and all schools. Tra. Well, one thing is certain, that some must be fools. I should like to know who. Ink. And I should not be sorry To know who are not: it would save us some worry. Lady Blueb. A truce with remark, and let nothing control This "feast of our reason, and flow of the soul." I wish her much joy on't. [The late Sir George Beaumont- a constant friend of Mr. Wordsworth.] 2 [It was not the present Earl of Lonsdale, but James, the first earl, who offered to build, and completely furnish and man, a ship of seventy-four guns, towards the close of the American war, for the service of his country, at his own expense; hence the soubriquet in the text.] 3 ["We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps ;' We feel, without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes, To show with what complacency he creeps, Of ocean? No, of air; and then he makes Another outcry for a little boat,' And drivels seas to set it well afloat. Both. For God's sake, my Lady Bluebottle, check not This gentle emotion, so seldom our lot Upon earth. Give it way; 't is an impulse which lifts 'Tis the source of all sentiment-feeling's true fountain: 'Tis the Vision of Heaven upon Earth: 'tis the gas Of the soul: 'tis the seizing of shades as they pass, And making them substance: 't is something divine :Ink. Shall I help you, my friend, to a little more wine ? Both. I thank you; not any more, sir, till I dine. Ink. A propos-Do you dine with Sir Humphry 5 to-day? Tra. I should think with Duke Humphry was more in your way. Ink. It might be of yore; but we authors now look To the knight, as a landlord, much more than the Duke. The truth is, each writer now quite at his case is, And (except with his publisher) dines where he pleases. But 'tis now nearly five, and I must to the Park. "Pedlars,' and 'boats,' and waggons !' Oh! ye shades Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss 4 Fact from life, with the words. [The late Sir Humphry Davy, President of the Royal Society.] 6 [The late Miss Lydia White, whose hospitable functions have not yet been supplied to the circle of London artists and literati-an accomplished, clever, and truly amiable, but very eccentric lady. The name in the text could only have been suggested by the jingling resemblance it bears to Lydia.] The Vision of Judgment, BY QUEVEDO redivivus. 1 SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR OF "WAT TYLER. " "A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel ! I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word." PREFACE. "-Pope. Ir hath been wisely said, that "One fool makes many;" and it hath been poetically observed, "That fools rush in where angels fear to tread."— If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not 1 [In 1821, Mr. Southey published a piece, in English hexaand which Lord meters, entitled "A Vision of Judgment; Byron, in criticising it, laughs at as "the Apotheosis of George the Third." In the preface to this poem, after some observations on the peculiar style of its versification, Mr. Southey introduced the following remarks: — Would "I am well aware that the public are peculiarly intolerant of such innovations; not less so than the populace are of any foreign fashion, whether of foppery or convenience. Would that this literary intolerance were under the influence of a sar.er judgment, and regarded the morals more than the manner of a composition; the spirit rather than the form! that it were directed against those monstrous combinations of horrors and mockery, lewdness and impiety, with which English poetry has, in our days, first been polluted! For more than half a century English literature had been distinguished by its moral purity, the effect, and, in its turn, the cause, of an improvement in national manners. A father might, without apprehension of evil, have put into the hands of his children any book which Issued from the press, if it did not bear, either in its title page or frontis. piece, manifest signs that it was intended as furniture for the brothel. There was no danger in any work which bore the name of a respectable publisher, or was to be procured at any respectable hookseller's. This was particularly the case with regard to our poetry. It is now no longer so: and woe to those by whom the offence cometh! The greater the talents of the offender, the greater is his guilt, and the more enduring will be his Whether it be that the laws are in themselves unable to abate an evil of this magnitude, or whether it be that they are remissly administered, and with such injustice that the celebrity of an offender serves as a privilege whereby he obtains impunity, individuals are bound to consider that such pernicious works would neither be published nor written, if they were discouraged as they might, and ought to be, by public feeling: every person, therefore, who purchases such books, or admits them into his house, promotes the mischief, and thereby, as far as in him lies, becomes an aider and abettor of the crime. shame. "The publication of a lascivious book is one of the worst offences which can be committed against the well-being of society. It is a sin, to the consequences of which no limits can be assigned, and those consequences Whatever remorse of no after-repentance in the writer can counteract. conscience he may feel when his hour comes (and come it must!) will be of no avail. The poignancy of a death-bed repentance cannot cancel one copy of the thousands which are sent abroad; and as long as it continues to be read, so long is he the pander of posterity, and so long is he heaping up guilt upon his soul in perpetual accumulation. These remarks are not more severe than the offence deserves, even when applied to those immoral writers who have not been conscious of any evil intention in their writings, who would acknowledge a little levity, a little warmth of colouring, and so forth, in that sort of language with which men gloss over their favourite vices, and deceive themselves. What then should be said of those for whom the thoughtlessness and inebriety of anton youth can no longer be pleaded, but who have written in sober minhood and with deliberate purpose? Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a moral virus ["Summi poetæ in omni poetarum sæculo viri fuerunt probi: in nos. tris id vidimus et videmus; neque alius est error a veritate longiùs quam Secundo plerique magna ingenia magnis necessario corrumpi vitiis. posthabent primum, hi malignitate, illi ignorantià; et quum aliquem inveniunt styli morumque vitiis notatum, nec inficetum tamen nec in libris SI edendis parcum, eum stipant, prædicant, occupant, amplectuntur. mores aliquantulum vellet corrigere, si stylum curare paululum, si fervido ingenio temperare, si moræ tantillum interponere, tum ingens nescio quid Ignorant verò et vere epicum, quadraginta annos natus, procuderat. fel riculis non indicari rires, impatientiam ab imbecillitate non differre: ignorant a levi homine et inconstante multa fortasse scribi posse plusquam -Savagius Landor, De mediocria, nihil compositum, arduum, æternum. "This essay, which is full of fine criCultu atque Usu Latini Sermonis. tical remarks and striking thoughts felicitously express d, reached me from Fisa, while the proof of the present sheet was before me. author (the author of Gebir and Count Ju ian) I will only say in this place, that, to have obtained his approbation as a poet, and possessed his friendship as a man, will be remembered among the honours of my life, when the petty enmities of this generation will be forgotten, and its ephemeral reputations shall have passed away.'-Mr. Southey's note.] Of its have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance and impious cant, of the poem by the author of "Wat Tyler," are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself -containing the quintessence of his own attributes. that eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be called the Satanic school; for though their productions breithe the spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, they are more especially characterised by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of hopelessness wherewith it is allied. "This evil is political as well as moral, for indeed moral and political evils are inseparably connected. Truly has it been affirmed by one of our ablest and clearest reasoners, that the destruction cf governments may be proved and deduced from the general corruption of the subjects' manners, as a direct and natural cause thereof, by a demonstration as certain as any in the mathematics.' There is no maxim more frequently enforced by Machiavelli, than that where the manners of a people are generally cor rupted, there the government cannot long subsist, a truth which all history exemplifies; and there is no means whereby that corruption can be so surely and rapidly diffused, as by poisoning the waters of literature. "Let rulers of the state look to this, in time! But, to use the words of Southey, if our physicians think the best way of curing a disease is to pamper it, the Lord in mercy prepare the kingdom to suffer, what He by miracle only can prevent!' "No apology is offered for these remarks. The subject led to them; and the occasion of introducing them was willingly taken, because it is the duty of every one, whose opinion may have any influence, to expose the drift and aim of those writers who are labouring to subvert the foundations of human virtue and of human happiness." Lord Byron rejoined as follows: "Mr. Southey, in his pious preface to a poem whose blasphemy is as harmless as the sedition of Wat Tyler, because it is equally absurd with that sincere production, calls upon the legislature to look to it,' as the toleration of such writings led to the French Revolution: not such writ ings as Wat Tyler, but as those of the Satanic School. This is not true, and Mr. Southey knows it to be not true. Every French writer of any freedom was persecuted; Voltaire and Rousseau were exiles, Marmontel and Diderot were sent to the Basti e, and a perpetual war was waged with the whole class by the existing despotism. In the next place, the French Revolution was not occasioned by any writings whatsoever, but must have occurred had no such writers ever existed. It is the fashion to attribute every thing to the French Revolution, and the French Revolution to every thing but its real cause. That cause is obvious the government exacted too much, and the people could neither give nor bear more. Without this, the Encyclopedists might have written their fingers off without the occur rence of a single alteration. And the English revolution (the first, I mean) what was it occasioned by? The Puritans were surely as pious and moral as Wesley or his biographer? Acts- acts on the part of government, and not writings against them, have caused the past convulsions, and are tending to the future. "I look upon such as inevitable, though no revolutionist: I wish to see the English constitution restored, and not destroyed. Born an aristocrat, and naturally one by temper, with the greater part of my present property in the funds, what have I to gain by a revolution? Perhaps I have inore to lose in every way than Mr. Southey, with all his places and presents for panegyrics and abuse into the bargain. But that a revolution is inevitable, 1 repeat. The government may esult over the repression of petty tumults; these are but the receding waves repulsed and broken for a moment on the shore, while the great tide is still rolling on and gaining ground with every breaker. Mr. Southey accuses us of attacking the religion of the country; and is he abetting it by writing lives of Wesley? One mode of worship is merely destroyed by another. There never was, nor ever will be, a We shall be told of France again: but it was country without a religion. only Paris and a frantic party, which for a moment upheld their dogmatic nonsense of theo-philanthropy. The church of England, if overthrown, will be swept away by the sectarians and not by the sceptics. People are too wise, too well informed, too certain of their own immense importance in the realms of space, ever to submit to the impiety of doubt. There may be a few such diffident speculators, like water in the pale sunbeam of human reason, but they are very few; and their opinions, without enthusiasm or appeal to the passions, can never gain proselytes-unless, indeed, they are persecuted that, to be sure, will increase any thing. "Mr. Southey, with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated 'death-bed repentance' of the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasantVision of Judgment in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. Southey's sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of existence, neither he nor we can pro tend to decide. In common, I presume, with most men of any reflection, I have not waited for a death-bed to repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the 'diabolical pride' which this pitiful renegado in his ran. cour would impute to those who scorn him. Whether upon the whole the |