author (that will hardly bear translation) or a vamper-up of vapid cantos and Odes set to music, were to turn pander to prescription and palliater of every dull, incorrigible abuse, it would not be much to be wondered at or even regretted.  But in Mr. Southey it was a lamentable falling-off.  It is indeed to be deplored, it is a stain on genius, a blow to humanity, that the author of Joan of Arc—­that work in which the love of Liberty is exhaled like the breath of spring, mild, balmy, heaven-born, that is full of tears and virgin-sighs, and yearnings of affection after truth and good, gushing warm and crimsoned from the heart—­should ever after turn to folly, or become the advocate of a rotten cause.  After giving up his heart to that subject, he ought not (whatever others might do) ever to have set his foot within the threshold of a court.  He might be sure that he would not gain forgiveness or favour by it, nor obtain a single cordial smile from greatness.  All that Mr. Southey is or that he does best, is independent, spontaneous, free as the vital air he draws—­when he affects the courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a constraint upon himself, to hold in his breath, he loses his genius, and offers a violence to his nature.  His characteristic faults are the excess of a lively, unguarded temperament:—­oh! let them not degenerate into cold-blooded, heartless vices!  If we speak or have ever spoken of Mr. Southey with severity, it is with “the malice of old friends,” for we count ourselves among his sincerest and heartiest well-wishers.  But while he himself is anomalous, incalculable, eccentric, from youth to age (the Wat Tyler and the Vision of Judgment are the Alpha and Omega of his disjointed career) full of sallies of humour, of ebullitions of spleen, making jets-d’eaux, cascades, fountains, and water-works of his idle opinions, he would shut up the wits of others in leaden cisterns, to stagnate and corrupt, or bury them under ground—­

  “Far from the sun and summer gale!”

He would suppress the freedom of wit and humour, of which he has set the example, and claim a privilege for playing antics.  He would introduce an uniformity of intellectual weights and measures, of irregular metres and settled opinions, and enforce it with a high hand.  This has been judged hard by some, and has brought down a severity of recrimination, perhaps disproportioned to the injury done.  “Because he is virtuous,” (it has been asked,) “are there to be no more cakes and ale?” Because he is loyal, are we to take all our notions from the Quarterly Review?  Because he is orthodox, are we to do nothing but read the Book of the Church?  We declare we think his former poetical scepticism was not only more amiable, but had more of the spirit of religion in it, implied a more heartfelt trust in nature and providence than his present bigotry.  We are at the same time free to declare that we think his articles in the Quarterly Review, notwithstanding