... I can
understand Coleridge's abusing me--but how or why _Southey_, whom I had
never obliged in any sort of way, or done him the remotest service,
should go about fibbing and calumniating is more than I readily
comprehend. Does he think to put me down with his _Canting_, not being
able to do it with his poetry? We will try the question. I have read his
review of Hunt, where he has attacked Shelley in an oblique and shabby
manner. Does he know what that review has done? I will tell you; it has
_sold_ an edition of the "Revolt of Islam" which otherwise nobody would
have thought of reading, and few who read can understand, I for one.
Southey would have attacked me too there, if he durst, further than by
hints about Hunt's friends in general, and some outcry about an
"Epicurean System" carried on by men of the most opposite habits and
tastes and opinions in life and poetry (I believe) that ever had their
names in the same volume--Moore, Byron, Shelley, Hazlitt, Haydon, Leigh
Hunt, Lamb. What resemblance do ye find among all or any of these men?
And how could any sort of system or plan be carried on or attempted
amongst them? However, let Mr.
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