"
Then, turning to business, the writer proceeds to apply his creed to
Southey and all his works, not forgetting the works also of his friends.
"The author belongs to a sect of poets that has established itself in
this country within these ten or twelve years"--it would be hard to
say for whose benefit in particular this date was taken--"and is looked
upon as one of its chief champions and apostles". "The doctrines of
this sect"--the Reviewer continues, with an eye upon the Alien Act--"are
of German origin, or borrowed from the great apostle of Geneva".
Rousseau is then "named" for expulsion, together with a miscellaneous
selection of his following: Schiller and Kotzebue (the next number
includes Kant under the anathema), Quarles and Donne, Ambrose Phillips
and Cowper--perhaps the most motley crew that was ever brought together
for excommunication. It is not, however, till the end of the essay
that the true root of bitterness between the critic and his victims
is suffered fully to appear. "A splenetic and idle discontent with the
existing institutions of society seems to be at the bottom of all their
serious and peculiar sentiments.
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