4. _That Mr. Southey did not express his real opinions, even at that time, in Wat Tyler, which is a dramatic poem, in which mob-orators and rioters figure, with appropriate sentiments, as Jack Cade may do in Shakespear._
_Answer._ This allusion to the dramatic characters of Shakespear is certainly unfortunate, and Mr. Coleridge himself hints as much. Rioters and mob-preachers are not the only persons who appear in ‘the _Wat Tyler_.’ The King and the Archbishop come forward in their own persons, according to Mr. Coleridge, with appropriate sentiments, labelled and put into their mouths. For example:—
_Philpot._ Every moment brings Fresh tidings of our peril.
_King._ It were well To yield them what they ask.
_Archbishop._ Aye, that my liege Were politic. Go boldly forth to meet them, Grant all they ask—however wild and ruinous;— Meantime, the troops you have already summoned Will gather round them. Then my Christian power Absolves you of your promise.
_Walworth._ Were but their ringleaders cut off, the rabble Would soon disperse.
The very burden of _The Courier_ all last week, and for many weeks last past and to come.
5. Mr. Coleridge sums up his opinion of the ultimate design and secret origin of ‘the _Wat Tyler_’ in these remarkable words:—‘We should have seen that the vivid, yet indistinct images in which he had painted the evils of war and the hardships of the poor, proved that neither the forms nor the feelings were the result of real observation. The product of the poet’s own fancy, they’—[_viz._ the evils of war and the hardships of the poor]—‘were impregnated, therefore, with _that pleasurable fervour which is experienced in all energetic exertion of intellectual power_. But as to any serious wish, akin to reality,’ [that is, to remove these evils] ‘as to any real persons or events designed or expected, we should think it just as wise and just as charitable, to believe that Quevedo or Dante would have been glad to realise the horrid phantoms and torments of _imaginary_ oppressors, whom they beheld in the infernal regions—_i.e._ on the slides of their own magic lanthorn.’
_Answer._ The slides of the guillotine, excited (as we have been told) the same pleasurable fervour in Mr. Southey’s mind: and Mr. Coleridge seems to insinuate, that the 5,800,000 lives which have been lost to prove mankind the property of kings, by divine right, have been lost ‘on the slides of a magic lanthorn’; the evils of war, like all other actual evils, being ‘the products of a fervid imagination.’ So much for the sincerity of poetry.