I should be of cancelling the boyish com position which gave occasion to it. Wat Tyler is full of errors,.. but they are the errors of youth and ignorance; they bear no indication of an ungenerous spirit, or of a malevolent heart.

For the book itself, I deny that it is a seditious performance; for it places in the mouths of the personages who are introduced nothing more than a correct statement of their real principles. That it is a mischievous publication, I know; the errors which it contains being especially dangerous at this time. Therefore I came forward without hesitation to avow it, to claim it as my own property, which had never been alienated, and to suppress it. And I am desirous that my motives in thus acting should not be misunderstood. The piece was written under the influence of opinions which I have long since outgrown, and repeatedly dis

claimed, but for which I have never affected to feel either shame or contrition; they were taken up conscientiously in early youth, they were acted upon in disregard of all worldly considerations, and they were left behind in the same straight-forward course, as I advanced in years. It was written when republicanism was confined to a very small number of the educated classes; when those who were known to entertain such opinions were exposed to personal danger from the populace; and when a spirit of Anti-jacobinism was predominant, which I cannot characterize more truly than by saying, that it was as unjust and intolerant, though not quite as ferocious, as the Jacobinism of the present day. Had the poem been published during any quiet state of the public mind, the act of dishonesty in the publisher would have been the same; but I should have left it unnoticed, in full

confidence that it would have been forgotten as speedily as it deserved. But in these times, it was incumbent upon me to come forward as I have done. It became me to disclaim whatever had been erroneous and intemperate in my former opinions, as frankly and as fearlessly as I once maintained them. And this I did, not as one who felt himself in any degree disgraced by the exposure of the crude and misdirected feelings of his youth, (feelings right in themselves, and wrong only in their direction,) but as one whom no considerations have ever deterred from doing what he believed to be his duty.

When, therefore, Mr. William Smith informed the House of Commons that the author of Wat Tyler thinks no longer upon certain points as he did in his youth, he informed that legislative assembly of nothing more than what the author has shown during very many years, in the

course of his writings; .. that while events have been moving on upon the great theatre of human affairs, his intellect has not been stationary. But when the Member for Norwich asserts (as he is said to have asserted) that I impute evil motives to men merely for holding now the same doctrines which I myself formerly professed, and when he charges me (as he is said to have charged me) with the malignity and baseness of a Renegade, the assertion and the charge are as false, as the language in which they are conveyed is coarse and insulting.

Upon this subject I must be heard farther. The Edinburgh Review has spoken. somewhere of those vindictive and jealous writings in which Mr. Southey has brought forward his claims to the approbation of the public. This is one of those passages for which the Editor of that Review has merited an abatement in heraldry; ..

no

such writings ever have been written; and indeed by other like assertions of equal veracity, the Gentleman has richly entitled himself to bear a gore sinister tenné in his escutcheon. Few authors have obtruded themselves upon the public in their individual character less than I have done. My books have been sent into the world with no other introduction than an explanatory preface as brief as possible, arrogating nothing, vindicating nothing; and then they have been left to their fate. None of the innumerable attacks which have been made upon them has ever called forth on my part a single word of reply, triumphantly as I might have exposed my assailants, not only for their ignorance and inconsistency, but frequently for that moral turpitude which is implied in wilful and deliberate mis-statement. The unprovoked insults which have been levelled at me both in prose and rhyme never in