Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/87

professed to hate mankind in a mass, though he loved individuals; and, in short, held that everybody, except Southey, had gone mad. The 'misanthropy' was shallow enough, and did not for a moment diminish his buoyancy, his interest in life and in books, or his delight in his friends and family. It only meant that, for the time, there was no party to which he could swear unreserved allegiance, and for one who is by nature a partisan that is an intolerable position. His dislike of 'that wretched Pitt,' that 'coxcombly, insolent, empty-headed, long-winded braggadocio' (phrases used on occasion of Pitt's death, but representing his permanent view), gradually developed into hatred, not of the tyrant but of the incompetent War Minister. The patriotism becomes more permanent than the republicanism. When the Peninsular War began he had at last a cause to swear by. Jeffrey had criticised Thalaba, and tried to crush Wordsworth ('as well try to crush Skiddaw,' said Southey), and now Jeffrey and his clique were preaching that England must be beaten by Napoleon. This cowardice (so they thought it) roused Southey as it roused Scott. The Quarterly Review, afterwards Southey' s mainstay, was started to give expression to the new sentiment.