Wordsworth could presently look back and criticise his Godwinian phase as that of A proud and most presumptuous confidence In the transcendent wisdom of the age And its discernment.

[Footnote: Excursion, Book ii.] He and Southey became conservative pillars of the state.

Yet Southey, reactionary as he was in politics, never ceased to believe in social Progress.

[Footnote: See his Colloquies; and Shelley, writing in 1811, says that Southey "looks forward to a state when all shall be perfected and matter become subjected to the omnipotence of mind" (Dowden, Life of Shelley, i.p.

212).