ion, government, public abuses or
private morals, in the same sweeping clause of ban and anathema, do all
they can to combine all parties in a common cause against them, and to
prevent every one else from advancing one step farther in the career of
practical improvement than they do in that of imaginary and unattainable
perfection.

Besides, all this untoward heat and precocity often argues rottenness
and a falling-off. I myself remember several instances of this sort of
unrestrained license of opinion and violent effervescence of sentiment
in the first period of the French Revolution. Extremes meet: and the
most furious anarchists have since become the most barefaced apostates.
Among the foremost of these I might mention the present poet-laureate
and some of his friends. The prose-writers on that side of the
question--Mr. Godwin, Mr. Bentham, etc.--have not turned round in this
extraordinary manner: they seem to have felt their ground (however
mistaken in some points), and have in general adhered to their first
principles. But 'poets (as it has been said) have _such seething
brains,_ that they are disposed to meddle with everything, and mar all.
They make bad philosophers and worse politicians.(1) They live, for the
most part, in an ideal world of their own; and it would perhaps be
as well if they were confined to it. Their flights and fancies are
delightful to themselves and to everybody else: but they make strange
work with matter of fact; and if they were allowed to act in public
affairs, would soon turn the world the wrong side out. They indulge only
their own flattering dreams or superstitious prejudices, and make idols
or bugbears of whatever they please, caring as little for history or
particular facts as for general reasoning. They are dangerous leaders
and treacherous followers. Their inordinate vanity runs them into all
sorts of extravagances; and their habitual effeminacy gets them out of
them at any price. Always pampering their own appetite for excitement,
and wishing to astonish others, their whole aim is to produce a dramatic
effect, one way or other--to shock or delight the observers; and they
are apparently as indifferent to the consequences of what they write as
if the world were merely a stage for them to play their fantastic
tricks on, and to make their admirers weep. Not less romantic in their
servility than their independence, and equally importunate candidates
for fame or infamy, they require onl