"Tom Thumb," instantly brings all the dead to life, and up they jump. This leads to 3. "THE AWAKENING." The author spies the King under a cloud, who begins to say his prayers, till interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Perceval! The King asks the news, how the "hope of the family" behaved, and whether the people were contented and quiet? Perceval gives courtly answers to all questions but the last, on which head he expresses his fears that some mischief is brewing, as he sees (not Wat TYLER, who was become a sinecurist, perhaps, but) the ghosts of Robespierre, Danton, and Co., in consultation with those of Despard and Guy Faux ! "Whether France or Britain be threatened, Soon will the issue show; or, if both at once are endangered: For with the ghosts obscene of Robespierre, Danton, and Hebert, Faux and Despard I saw!" Another flight brings the author to. 4. "THE GATE OF HEAVEN," which, from St. Augustin's "De civitate Dei," we see decked out with towers, cupolas, gold, pyropus, diamonds coruscant, adamant, &c.; and an angel (the Crier of the Court). "Ho!" he exclaim'd, "King George of England cometh to judgment ! Hear Heaven! Ye Angels, hear! souls of the good and wicked, Whom it concerns, attend !” VISION OF JUDGMENT. 95 Now come 5. "THE ACCUSERS," The Spirit of Sedition, Jack Wilkes, and Junius, who are dumb-founded, and swept off the stage by the scene-shifter, to make way for 6. "THE ABSOLVERS," who are also abashed, all but "General Washington," who absolves the King. (Is Mr. Southey a papist, that he deals in absolution?-if so, pray to mercy that somebody may absolve him for his folly!) After Priest Washington's absolution, the King, of course, receives 7. "THE BEATIFICATION," but if he returned thanks for it in the words that Mr. Southey puts into his mouth, he little deserved it; he then becomes rejuvenescent, and is introduced to 8. "THE SOVEREIGNS," King William, King Charles, Queen Elizabeth, Kings Edward, Richard I., and Alfred (a queer chronological classification !). These royal phantoms are shown off in strains borrowed seemingly from the exhibitors of the wax-work figures in Westminster Abbey, or those other more eloquent members of society, the puppet-show folks. The new-comer is then welcomed by 9. "THE ELDER WORTHIES," Bede, Bacon, Wickliffe, Chaucer, Cranmer, Cecil, 96 THE DREAM FINISHED. Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Taylor, Marlborough, Newton, and Berkeley. These make way for 10. "THE WORTHIES OF THE GEORGIAN AGE,” Wolfe, Cook, Handel, Reynolds, Hogarth, Wesley, Lord Mansfield, Burke, Hastings, Cowper, and Nelson. Next in order of procession arrive 11. "THE YOUNG SPIRITS," at the head of whom he places Chatterton! and lastly, gives us 12. "THE MEETING:" in which the King rejoins his grand-daughter, the late Princess Charlotte of Wales, his royal spouse, his daughter Amelia (not a syllable about the late queen, his daughter-in-law! She, perhaps, was tabooed in heaven as well as on earth!) The Poet Laureate, too, in the throng, and bustle, and joy of merry-meeting, had the impudence to attempt to thrust his nose into royal company, "I, too, press'd forward to enter;— But the weight of body withheld me." No wonder, it was all lead, like his poetry; "I fell, precipitate. Starting, Then I awoke, and beheld the mountains in twilight before me, Dark and distinct; and instead of the rapturous sound of ho sannahs, Heard the bell of the tower-toll!-toll!" It is a pity he ever awoke out of his doldrum; THE GRINNERS AWAKE. 97 at least such was the opinion of his royal master, who was so disgusted with this specimen of Bartholomew fair slang, that he ordered the Laureate to" hang up his fiddle" in future, as he was only fit to play at brawls, hops, wakes, or fairs, to the bumpkins and blowzalinds of " Keswick." Now, reader, was it possible for a man of genius, spirit, and genuine humour-was it possible for Lord Byron, seeing himself, his friends, and their writings so virulently attacked, in the preface to such a Grub-street farrago of nonsense, to refrain from taking aim at so fair a mark? I see their joyful looks, as they read the precious production, and hear them as they Ingeminant tremulos naso crispante cachinnos." In the twinkling of an eye out came "The Vision of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus, suggested by the composition so entitled by the author of Wat Tyler." “A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel! Preface.* "It hath been wisely said, that one fool *In the preface to the second volume of "The Liberal," the public are informed, that had the preface (to Lord Byron's Vision of Judgment), entrusted to Mr. Murray, been sent to the new publisher, as it ought to have been, much of the unintended part of the effect produced upon weak minds, would have been explained away at once. 98 PREFACE TO BYRON'S makes many;' and it hath been poetically observed, • That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' POPE. "If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant of the poem, by the author of Wat Tyler,' are something so stupendous, as to form the sublime of himself, containing the quintessence of his own attributes. "So much for his poem: a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the picture of a supposed Satanic school,' the which he doth recommend to the notice of the Legislature, thereby adding to his other laurels the ambition of those of an informer. If there exists any where, excepting in his imagi nation, such a school, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is, that there are certain writers whom Mr. S. imagines, like Scrub, to have talked of him, for they laughed consumedly.' "I think I know enough of most of the writers to whom he is supposed to allude, to assert that they, in their individual capacities, have done more |