button to main menu  Gents Mag 1850 part 2 p.258

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Gentleman's Magazine 1850 part 2 p.258
kind." As Mr. Southey stood in the foremost ranks of those who denunciated all such doctrines as totally subversive of government, and law, and order, and even of general security and liberty, and as he never desisted from speaking boldly what he strongly felt, and using terms fitted to the necessities of the occasion, he was marked out for peculiar enmity, and, as the hatred of party is not conducted or guided by any principles but such as will best effect its immediate purpose, so the means were now adopted of annoying his feelings, injuring his character, and if possible neutralising the effect of his writings by evidence of his inconsistency and want of principle, by the republication of a youthful work called Wat Tyler, written in 1794. The whole affair was disgraceful only to those who schemed it; it gave Southey some uneasiness; it caused a temporary excitement; and it died away, leaving no path behind it; but no less than 60,000 copies were sold at the time. Such is the disposition of society to batten upon unwholesome food. Among whom these copies went it would be curious to enquire. Mr. William Smith, the member for Norwich, went out of his way to attack him in the House of Commons, and, with Mr. Southey's animated reply, the matter may be said to close. In the autumn of 1817 he took a tour on the continent, visiting Switzerland and the Italian lakes. On his return he writes:
"The Life of Wesley is my favourite employment just now, and a very curious book it will be, looking at Methodism abroad as well as at home, and comprehending our religious history for the last hundred years. I am sure I shall treat the subject with moderation. I hope I come to it with a sober judgment, a mature mind, and perfect freedom from all unjust prepossessions of any kind. There is no party which I am desirous of pleasing, none which I am fearful of offending; nor am I aware of any possible circumstance which might tend to bear me one way or the other from the straight line of impartial truth. For the bigot I shall be far too philosophical, for the libertine far too serious. the ultra-Churchman will think me little better than a Methodist, and the Methodists will wonder what I am. "Αγια άγίοις" will be my motto."
Poor laws, police, and politics, and the libels of the press seemed to have occupied at this time most of Southey's attention. He declined the office of Librarian to the Advocates Library at Edinburgh, with a salary of 400l. a-year, because he disliked great cities, and was free, as he supposed, from pecuniary anxieties. His picture of Mr. Wilberforce and his family, as he met them about this time, is amusing:-
"Wilberforce has been here with all his household; and such a household! The principle of the family seems to be, that, provided the servants have faith, good works are not to be expected from them, and the utter discord that prevails in consequence is truly farcical. The old coachman would figure upon the stage. Upon making some complaint about the horses, he told his master and mistress that since they had been in this country they had been so lake, and river, and mountain, and valley mad, that they had thought of nothing which they ought to think of. I have seen nothing in such pell-mell, topsy-turvy, and chaotic confusion as Wilberforce's apartments, since I used to see a certain breakfast table in Skeleton Corner. His wife sits in the midst of it like Patience on a monument, and he frisks about as if every vein in his body was filled with quicksilver; but withal there is such constant hilarity in every look and motion, such a sweetness in all his tones, such a benignity in all his thoughts, words, and actions, that all sense of his grotesque appearance is presently overcome, and you can feel nothing but love and admiration for a creature of so happy and blessed a nature."
In a letter dated in 1808 to his friend Mr. May, he mentions his being expelled Westminster School for the fifth number of a periodical paper he wrote against flogging, "proving it to be an invention of the devil, and therefore unfit to be practised at schools;" and on the same account he was refused admission at Christchurch, where otherwise he would not have been refused a studentship. He seemed, however, to retain more enmity to his old master, Dr. Vincent, than the latter did to him; or at least to believe that the pedagogue looked at the matter more as a personal offence, than as a breach of discipline which could not be overlooked. We knew Dr. Vincent sufficiently to vouch for the amiableness of his temper, and the liberality of his opinions. We shall now close
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