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Title: Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin

Editor: Charles Edmonds

Contributor: George Canning

Earl of Frederick Howard Carlisle

George Ellis

John Hookham Frere

William Gifford

William Pitt

Marquess Richard Wellesley Wellesley

Release date: November 15, 2020 [eBook #63778]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN ***

Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

The GIANT FACTOTUM amusing himself

POETRY

OF

THE ANTI-JACOBIN:

COMPRISING THE CELEBRATED

POLITICAL AND SATIRICAL POEMS,

OF

THE RT. HONS. G. CANNING, JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE, W. PITT, THE MARQUIS WELLESLEY, G. ELLIS, W. GIFFORD, THE EARL OF CARLISLE, AND OTHERS.

EDITED, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES, ETC.

BY

CHARLES EDMONDS,

EDITOR OF THE “PYTCHLEY HUNT, PAST AND PRESENT,” ETC., ETC.

THIRD EDITION, CONSIDERABLY ENLARGED, WITH SIX ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES GILLRAY.

NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS.

LONDON: SAMPSON LOW & CO., Limited.

1890.

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

The fate which usually attends political and satirical writings that owe their origin to passing events, has in no way affected the POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN, which, after a lapse of more than ninety years, still continues to interest and amuse. Public opinion never fails, sooner or later, to arrive at a just conclusion as to the merits both of individuals and actions; and though it may often neglect to preserve a meritorious work, never perpetuates a worthless one. Poetry which lashed with so remorseless a hand the patriotic proceedings, and held up to ridicule the persons and habits, of the most distinguished Whig leaders, must have possessed no common merit to have won the encomiums of such liberal politicians and such critics as MACKINTOSH and JEFFREY, MOORE and BYRON.

MOORE, in his Life of Sheridan, observes: “The Rolliad and The Anti-Jacobin may, on their respective sides of the question, be considered as models of that style of political satire whose lightness and vivacity give it the appearance of proceeding rather from the wantonness of wit than of ill-nature, and whose very malice, from the fancy with which it is mixed up, like certain kinds of fire-works, explodes in sparkles”. This criticism might be applied to some of his own political squibs.

As the poems refer to occurrences long since past, a rapid glance at the state of events at that time (1797–8) may render them more intelligible to the generality of readers.

The affairs of England were then in a critical position. The ministry of PITT was carrying on a fierce war with republican France, the necessity for which had split the public into two great parties. The liberal party alleged, that “the whole misfortunes of Europe and all the crimes of France had arisen from the iniquitous coalition of kings to overturn its infant freedom;—that, if its government had been left alone, it would neither have stained its hands with innocent blood at home nor pursued plans of aggrandizement abroad; and that the Republic, relieved from the pressure of external danger, and no longer roused by the call of patriotic duty, would have quietly turned its swords into pruning-hooks, and, renouncing the allurements of foreign conquests, thought only of promoting the internal felicity of its citizens”.

These sentiments, though supported by the extraordinary eloquence of FOX, SHERIDAN, ERSKINE, and others, had but little weight with the minister or the great body of the public. It was impossible to deny that the power of the French Republic was daily increasing, and threatened the subjugation of the greater part of Europe. BUONAPARTE had overrun Italy, and broken the power of Austria, which, by the treaty of Leoben, was compelled to cede the Netherlands to France, allow the free navigation of the Rhine, and recognise the independence of the newly-erected Italian republics. Spain, also, had declared war against Britain, which was thus left to contend singly against the power of France; for the Directory had refused the basis of peace proposed by LORD MALMESBURY, that of a mutual restitution of conquests. To add to these embarrassments, during the year 1797 credit became affected, and the Bank of England suspended cash payments; mutinies broke out in the fleets at Spithead and the Nore; and Ireland was on the verge of rebellion. But the talents of PITT were equal to the occasion, and his power rose higher than ever, when his prognostications were shortly after (in December, 1797) confirmed by the unprovoked attack upon Switzerland by the French. The impolicy of this proceeding was equal to its infamy; for nothing ever done by the revolutionary government contributed so powerfully to cool the ardour of its partisans in Europe, and to open the eyes of the intelligent and respectable classes in every other country to its ultimate designs. Its effect on the friends of freedom in England may be judged of from the indignant protest of SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, himself once a warm admirer of the French Revolution, who, in his defence of JEAN PELTIER, in 1803, for a libel on BUONAPARTE, declared, “the invasion and destruction of Switzerland an act, in comparison with which all the deeds of rapine and blood perpetrated in the world are innocence itself”. Even before this, the true character of the revolution had been detected by the democratic COLERIDGE, who gave public utterance to his feelings of horror and disgust in that noble Ode to France written in February, 1797. In a word, to say nothing of her other conquests, France, at the beginning of 1798, had three affiliated republics at her side, the Batavian, Cisalpine, and the Ligurian; before its close she had organized three more, the Helvetic, the Roman, and the Parthenopeian.

PITT’S influence was further increased by the threatened invasion of Great Britain by the French, a proceeding which, as it affected every class in the country, raised the national enthusiasm to the highest pitch, inflamed as it already was by the recent glorious victories off Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown. That they were likely to be in earnest had been already shown by their expeditions to Bantry Bay and Pembrokeshire, and BUONAPARTE’S boast at Geneva, that “he would democratize England in three months,” proved how much he relied upon the support of the malcontents both in Great Britain and Ireland. The estimates and preparations for defence were, enormous; taxes, to an extent utterly unknown before, were laid on; the Volunteer Bill was passed (SHERIDAN assisting), by which, in addition to the regular army, a hundred and fifty thousand volunteers were, in a few weeks, in arms; THE KING was authorized by another bill, in the event of an invasion, to call out the levy, en masse, of the population; the Alien Bill was reenacted; and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act continued for another year.

But the genius of one man, however great, can effect but little, unless suitably supported by others. The sagacious mind of PITT had long seen that his party in Parliament were, with very few exceptions, no match for his numerous opponents, powerful both in talent and social position; among whom were FOX, SHERIDAN, ERSKINE, HORNE TOOKE, WHITBREAD, NICHOLLS, COURTENAY, FITZPATRICK, the DUKES of NORFOLK and BEDFORD, LORD STANHOPE, the DUCHESS of DEVONSHIRE, and others. He was always anxious, therefore, to secure whatever available talent presented itself, and immediately on their appearance enlisted under his banners CANNING, JENKINSON, HUSKISSON, and CASTLEREAGH, all men of the same standing, for the first three were born in 1770, and the last in 1769.

The important assistance of CANNING was immediately felt, for he was, in the words of BYRON, “a genius—almost a universal one; an orator, a wit, a poet, a statesman”. Though he entered Parliament at the early age of 23 (in 1793), and attained the post of Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Department two years after, he was by no means inexperienced either as a writer or as an orator; for while a student at Eton he had won distinction by his contributions to The Microcosm, a weekly paper published by the more advanced Etonians, and also in the discussions of their Debating Society, which were conducted with strict regard to parliamentary usages. And afterwards, while studying for the law, he took an active part in the proceedings of the debating societies of the metropolis, in which he achieved so much reputation as to lead to his introduction to PITT, whose party he unhesitatingly joined.

CANNING early saw the necessity of the Government’s possessing some literary engine, which, like the Whig Rolliad, published some years before, should carry confusion into the ranks of its enemies. In a lucky hour he conceived the idea of The Anti-Jacobin, a weekly newspaper, interspersed with poetry, the avowed object of which was to expose the vicious doctrines of the French Revolution, and to turn into ridicule and contempt the advocates of that event, and the sticklers for peace and parliamentary reform. The editor was WILLIAM GIFFORD, whose vigorous and unscrupulous pen had been already shown in his Baviad and Mæviad; and among the regular writers were: JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE, JENKINSON (afterwards EARL OF LIVERPOOL), GEORGE ELLIS (who had previously contributed to the Whig Rolliad), LORD CLARE, LORD MORNINGTON (afterwards MARQUIS WELLESLEY), LORD MORPETH (afterwards EARL OF CARLISLE), BARON MACDONALD, and others. These gentlemen entered upon their task with no common spirit. Their purpose was to blacken their adversaries, and they spared no means, fair or foul, in the attempt. Their most distinguished countrymen, whose only fault was their being opposed to government, were treated with no more respect than their foreign adversaries, and were held up to public execration as traitors, blasphemers, and debauchees. So alarmed, however, became WILBERFORCE and others of the more moderate supporters of ministers at the boldness of the language employed, that PITT was induced to interfere, and, after an existence of eight months, The Anti-Jacobin (in its original form) ceased to exist.

The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin is not exclusively political. The Loves of the Triangles, a parody on DR. DARWIN’S Loves of the Plants, is, in the opinion of a celebrated critic (Lord Jeffrey) of the highest degree of merit; as is also The Progress of Man, a parody on PAYNE KNIGHT’S Progress of Civil Society; and The Rovers, a burlesque on the German dramas then in vogue, the extraordinary plots of which, as well as their language, alternately ultrasentimental and domestically bathotic, well marked them out for ridicule, is distinguished by sharp wit and broad humour of the happiest kind. CANNING and his coadjutors in this piece did a real service to literature, and assisted in a purification which GIFFORD, by his demolition of the Della Cruscan school of poetry, had so well begun. Of The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder it is unnecessary to speak; perhaps no lines in the English language have been more effective, or oftener quoted.

But CANNING’S greatest power is shown in New Morality, which, being the last of the series, seems to have been reserved as a concentrating medium for his pent-up scorn and contempt of the Whigs and their adherents. So that their blows fall thick (for he was powerfully seconded by Frere, Gifford, and Ellis), they care little who suffer from them, and the modern reader is surprised to find CHARLES LAMB and other non-intruders into politics, figuring as congenial conspirators with TOM PAINE!

It is somewhat difficult to regard PITT in the character of a Wit and a Poet, as from the narrative of most of his biographers, he might be considered as uniformly cold, stiff, and unbending; but his intimate friend WILBERFORCE, in his Memoirs, thus describes him: “PITT, when free from shyness, and amongst his intimate companions, was the very soul of merriment and conversation. He was the wittiest man I ever knew, and what was quite peculiar to himself, had at all times his wit under entire controul. Others appeared struck by the unwonted association of brilliant images; but every possible combination of ideas seemed always present to his mind, and he could at once produce whatever he desired. I was one of those who met to spend an evening in memory of Shakespeare, at the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap. Many professed wits were present, but PITT was the most amusing of the party, the readiest and most apt in the required allusions.” It is not, therefore, at all unlikely, that he now and then contributed witty verses to The Anti-Jacobin, in addition to those which the Editor has, on probable grounds, ascribed to him in the present volume.

“Critical commentary,” says a critic of the previous edition, “on the merits of The Anti-Jacobin, would be superfluous. Its satire is distinguished for the terse language of its poignant personality, which was often excessively stinging, but seldom offensively coarse. Its best contributors, CANNING and FRERE, were not mere pamphleteers in verse, like the writers for The Rolliad. They had poetical inspiration and a sprightly joyousness springing from a genial play of the mental faculties. They were ‘Conservatives’ not only in their politics but in their loyal adherence to the ordinances and traditions of classical English literature. False sentiment, tumid diction, mawkish cant, were chastised by them with exemplary efficacy. On the fourth edition of the complete work (1799, 2 Vols. 8vo, containing both prose and poetry), they placed the epigraph, Sparsosque recolligit ignes; and in the very last paper (No. 36), the motto on discontinuance was exquisitely happy:—

“‘We shall miss thee;

But yet thou shalt have freedom.

So to the elements

Be free; and fare thou well!’

“And these lines, taken from The Tempest (probably by CANNING), have been prophetic of the popularity of their witty verse, still quoted and admired by all lovers of the genius that is airily elegant and strong.”

CHARLES EDMONDS.

WATER ORTON, BIRMINGHAM.

ADDITIONS TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

Numerous new Biographical and other Notes.

Additions and Corrections to the List of presumed AUTHORS of “THE POETRY”.

Selections from the PROSE portion of the work, written by the RT. HON. G. CANNING and his coadjutors.

Account of the various EDITIONS of The Anti-Jacobin, and its successors.

Enlarged articles on the opposition NEWSPAPERS abused by The Anti-Jacobin writers.

The curious ABUSIVE AND SATIRICAL INDEX to The Anti-Jacobin; and specimens of a similar Index to The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine.

Selections from The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine—the successor to The Anti-Jacobin—showing that though written by a different body of Authors, both works were animated by the same spirit.

EDITIONS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN;

AND ITS SUCCESSORS.

THE ANTI-JACOBIN, or WEEKLY EXAMINER. Sparsosque recolligit ignes. From Nov. 20, 1797, to July 9, 1798. 4to.

London.

Nos. 1 to 36; with a Prospectus (complete).

—— The Same. Second and third editions, in 4to.

—— The Same. Fourth edition, revised and corrected. 2 vols. 8vo.

London, 1799.

Every Number contained Poetry, the presumed Names of the Authors of which will be found in the Table of Contents of the present volume.

THE POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN. 4to.

London, 1801.

This volume includes the whole of the POETRY contained in the original Anti-Jacobin, with a few verbal corrections. Previous to its publication, it was announced that it would be illustrated by 40 plates expressly designed by GILLRAY; but they never appeared. Numerous editions in 12mo subsequently appeared, but without any additions, till those mentioned below.

THE POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN. A New Edition, with Explanatory Notes by CHARLES EDMONDS. 12mo.

London, 1852.

—— The Same. Second edition, by CHARLES EDMONDS; with additional Notes, the original Prospectus (by the Rt. Hon. G. CANNING), and a complete List of the Authors. Illustrated by six etchings after the designs of JAS. GILLRAY. 12mo.

London, 1854.

THE ANTI-JACOBIN REVIEW AND MAGAZINE; or Monthly Political and Literary Censor. From the commencement in July, 1798, to its close in 1821. (The first few vols. contain engravings by Gillray and others, and much POETRY is scattered through the volumes.) 61 vols. 8vo.

London, 1798–1821.

For reasons stated on a previous page, CANNING and other political friends of PITT thought it prudent to withdraw themselves from the original Anti-Jacobin, but by a preconcerted arrangement it was determined that the spirit which had pervaded that work, and which had had so powerful an effect on the popular mind, and thereby, in connection with Gillray’s caricatures, so undoubtedly strengthened the hands of the Ministry, should not die, if it could be kept alive by other and congenial writers. In the words of MR. FOX BOURNE (in his valuable work on English Newspapers, 1887): “Though The Anti-Jacobin made its last appearance on July 9, 1798, there was started a few days before a monthly Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine of the same politics, but much less brilliant, and more ponderous. Strange to say, it also was edited by a GIFFORD, or one who so called himself. JOHN RICHARDS GREEN was a bold and versatile adventurer, who, having to fly from his creditors in 1782, returned from France in 1788, as JOHN GIFFORD, and was connected with several newspapers [including the establishment of The British Critic], besides editing The Anti-Jacobin Review. [He also wrote a History of France, and other works.] Befriended in many ways by PITT, he wrote a four-volume pamphlet [3 vols. 4to, and also 6 vols. 8vo, both dated 1809], styled the Life of William Pitt, after his patron’s death. JAMES MILL, the friend and associate of JEREMY BENTHAM, was glad to earn money in his struggling days by writing non-political articles for The Anti-Jacobin Review. WILLIAM GIFFORD, it is hardly necessary to state, besides editing Ben Jonson’s Works, and other useful occupations, was the first editor of The Quarterly Review in 1809.”

In the British Museum are two copies of The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine. In one of them the first six vols. contain the Names of the Authors of most of the articles, among whom are the REV. JOHN WHITAKER, author of The History of Manchester, the REV. SAM. HENSHALL, author of works on Domesday Book, the REV. C. E. STEWART, a copious poetaster, etc., and many other clergymen.

THE NEW ANTI-JACOBIN REVIEW. Delenda est Carthago.

Nos. 1 to 3 seem to be all that were published, and appeared May 6, June 9, and June 23, 1827; price two shillings each.

No. 2 includes what is called a Patriot Portrait Exhibition, which is continued in No. 3. In the latter No. is also an article entitled Canningiana. Published by Saunders and Otley.

THE NEW ANTI-JACOBIN; a Monthly Magazine of Politics, Commerce, Science, Literature, Art, Music, and the Drama.

Consists of only Nos. 1 and 2. Published by Smith, Elder, & Co., and Carpenter & Son; dated respectively April and May, 1833.

No. 2 contains Horace in Parliament; an Ode to William Cobbett; being a Parody on Horace—In Barinen, Ode 4, Lib. 2. It is accompanied by a full-length portrait of Cobbett.

The above two works, in accordance with their titles, advocate high Tory principles; but though written with great spirit they had but a very short existence. Copies of both will be found in the British Museum.

ENGLISH ACTORS IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND EYE-WITNESSES OF THE SAME.

The most complete details hitherto furnished on these interesting subjects will be found in the Nos. for October, 1887, and July, 1888, of The Edinburgh Review, the work of MR. JOHN G. ALGER, the Paris correspondent of The Times. They have since been published in a volume. (Englishmen in the French Revolution: Low & Co., 1889.)

CONTENTS OF THE POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN,

WITH THE NAMES OF THE AUTHORS.

The following notices of the writers of the POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN are derived from the copies mentioned below, and each name is authenticated by the initials of the authority upon which each piece is ascribed to particular persons:—

C.

CANNING’S own copy of the Poetry.

B.

LORD BURGHERSH’S copy.

W.

WRIGHT the publisher’s copy.

U.

Information of W. UPCOTT, amanuensis.

[Although many of the pieces in the following list are attributed to wrong authors, it has been thought more convenient to reprint them as they stood in the previous edition, in order to insert any corrections, as far as FRERE is concerned. These are derived from the information of FRERE himself given to his nephews, who afterwards edited his works in 1872. They are therefore placed beneath the Title of the piece—between brackets.

The pieces, printed in Italics—between brackets—appear for the first time in an edition of The Poetry.—ED.]

PAGE.

AUTHORS.

P   ROSPECTUS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN

1

Canning.

Introduction

12

Canning.

Inscription for the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Marten, the Regicide, was imprisoned thirty years

16

Southey.

Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg, the Prentice-cide, was confined previous to her execution

16

Canning, C.

Frere, C.

The Friend of Humanity and the Knife Grinder

23

Frere, C.

Canning, C.

The Invasion; or, the British War Song

25

Hely Addington, W.

La Sainte Guillotine: a New Song, attempted from the French

29

Canning, C.

Frere, C.

Hammond, B.

[By Canning and Frere only.]

[Meeting of the Friends of Freedom   ]

32

Claimed by Frere.

The Soldier’s Friend

38

Canning, C.

Frere, C.

Ellis, B.

[By Canning and Frere only.]

Sonnet to Liberty.

39

Lord Carlisle, B.

Quintessence of all the Dactylics that ever were, or ever will be, written

41

Canning, B.

Gifford, W.

Latin Verses, written immediately after the Revolution of the Fourth of September

43

Marq. Wellesley, U.

Translation of the above

45

Frere, B.

[PEARCE, in his Memoirs of the Marquis Wellesley, gives the credit of this translation to the sixth EARL of CARLISLE.]

The Choice; imitated from The Battle of Sabla   , in Carlyle’s Specimens of Arabian Poetry

48

G. Ellis, B.

The Duke and the Taxing Man

52

Bar. Macdonald, C., B.

Epigram on the Paris Loan, called the Loan upon England

54

Frere, B.

[Not claimed by Frere.]

Ode to Anarchy

55

Lord Morpeth, B.

Song, recommended to be sung at all convivial    meetings convened for the purpose of opposing the Assessed Tax Bill

58

Frere, B.

[By Canning, Ellis, and Frere.]

Lines written at the close of the year 1797

61

Translation of the New Song of The Army of England

63

Epistle to the Editors of The Anti-Jacobin

68

[This Epistle is now known to have been written by the HON. WM. LAMB, (afterwards second VISCOUNT MELBOURNE, and Prime Minister). He was then only in his nineteenth year.]

To the Author of the Epistle to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin

71

Canning, C.

Hammond, B.

Ode to Lord Moira

78

G. Ellis, C., B.

A Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox

83

G. Ellis, C.

Frere, B.

Acme and Septimius; or, the Happy Union.

88

G. Ellis, C.

[Mr. Fox’s Birth-Day   ]

90

To the Author of the Anti-Jacobin

95

Mr. Bragge, afterwards Bathurst.

Lines written under the Bust of Charles Fox at the Crown and Anchor

99

Frere, B.

Lines written by a Traveller at Czarco-zelo under the Bust of a certain Orator, once placed between those of Demosthenes and Cicero

99

G. Ellis, B.

[JAS. BOSWELL, jun., asserts, on the authority of the nephew of the great statesman, that the above lines were written by PITT. This is not improbable: see Note on page 101.]

The Progress of Man. Didactic Poem

102

Canning, C.

Gifford, W.

Frere, B.

[Cantos 1 and 2 by Canning only; and Canto 23 by Canning and Frere only.]

The Progress of Man, continued

107

Canning, C.

Hammond, B.

Imitation of Bion. Written at St. Anne’s Hill

111

G. Ellis, B.

Gifford, W.

The New Coalition: Imitation of Horace, Lib. 3, Carm. 9

114

[The Honey-Moon of Fox and Tooke, another version of the same by the REV. C. E. STEWART; published in the Anti-Jacobin Review   , vol. i.]

116

Imitation of Horace, Lib. 3, Carm. 25

119

Canning, C.

Chevy Chase

125

Bar. Macdonald, C., B.

Ode to Jacobinism

129

The Progress of Man, continued

133

Canning, C.

Frere, C.

G. Ellis, B.

The Jacobin

141

Nares, W.

The Loves of the Triangles. A Mathematical and Philosophical Poem

150

Frere, C.

Canning, B.

[All but the last three lines Frere’s.]

The Loves of the Triangles, continued

158

G. Ellis, C., W.

Canning, B.

[Down to “Twine round his struggling heart,” by Ellis. From “Thus, happy France,” to “And folds the parent-monarch,” by Canning, Ellis, and Frere. The next twelve lines, which were not in the first edition, 1798, were added by Canning.]

Brissot’s Ghost

165

Frere, B.

[Not claimed by Frere.]

The Loves of the Triangles, continued

170

Canning B., W., C.

Gifford C.

Frere C.

[By Canning, Ellis, and Frere.]

A Consolatory Address to his Gun-Boats. By Citizen Muskein

182

Lord Morpeth, B.

Elegy on the Death of Jean Bon St. André

185

Canning, B., C.

Gifford, C.

Frere, C.

[By Canning, Ellis, and Frere.]

Ode to my Country, MDCCXCVIII

193

Frere, C.

B. B., C.

Hammond, B.

[This is not claimed by Frere.]

Ode to the Director Merlin

199

Lord Morpeth, B.

The Rovers; or, the Double Arrangement

205

Frere, C.

Gifford, C.

G. Ellis, C.

Canning B., C.

[Act 1, Sc. 1 and 2, by Frere—Song by Canning and Ellis; Act 2, Sc. 1 and 3, and Act 3, by Canning; Act 2, Sc. 2, and Act 4, by Frere. The preliminary prose by Frere and Canning.]

The Rovers; or, the Double Arrangement, continued

224

Frere B., C.

Gifford C.

Ellis, C.

Canning, C.

An Affectionate Effusion of Citizen Muskein to Havre-de-Grace

236

Lord Morpeth, B.

Translation of a Letter from Bawba-dara-adul-phoola, to Neek-awl-aretchid-kooez

242

Gifford, C., B.

Ellis, C., B.

Canning, C., B.

Frere, C., B.

[By Canning, Ellis, and Frere.]

[Buonaparte’s Letter to the Commandant at Zante   ]

248

Ode to a Jacobin

251

Ballynahinch; A New Song

255

Canning, C.

De Navali Laude Britanniæ

257

Canning, B.

[Translation of the above

260

The late A. F. Westmacott.]

[Valedictory Address   ]

263

New Morality

271

Canning, B. C.

Frere, C.

Gifford, C.

G. Ellis, C.

LINE.

1

From Mental Mists

Frere, W.

15

Yet venial Vices, &c.

Canning, W.

29

Bethink thee, Gifford, &c. These lines were written by CANNING some years before he had any personal acquaintance with G   IFFORD.

71

Awake! for shame!

Canning, W.

158

Fond Hope!

Frere, W.

168

Such is the liberal Justice

Canning, W.

249

O! Nurse of Crimes!

Frere, W.

Canning, W.

G. Ellis, W.

261

See Louvet

Canning, W.

287

But hold, severer Virtue

Frere, W.

Canning, W.

302

To thee proud Barras bows

Frere, W.

Canning, W.

Ellis, W.

318

Ere long, perhaps

Gifford, W.

Ellis, W.

328

Couriers and Stars

Frere, W.

Canning, W.

356

Britain, beware

Canning, W.

372

So thine own Oak

attributed to W. Pitt.

“WRIGHT, the publisher of the Anti-Jacobin, lived at 169, Piccadilly, and his shop was the general morning resort of the friends of the ministry, as DEBRETT’S was of the oppositionists. About the time when the Anti-Jacobin was contemplated, OWEN, who had been the publisher of BURKE’S pamphlets, failed. The editors of the Anti-Jacobin took his house, paying the rent, taxes, &c., and gave it up to WRIGHT, reserving to themselves the first floor, to which a communication was opened through WRIGHT’S house. Being thus enabled to pass to their own rooms through WRIGHT’S shop, where their frequent visits did not excite any remarks, they contrived to escape particular observation.”

“Their meetings were most regular on Sundays, but they not unfrequently met on other days of the week, and in their rooms were chiefly written the poetical portions of the work. What was written was generally left open upon the table, and as others of the party dropped in, hints or suggestions were made; sometimes whole passages were contributed by some of the parties present, and afterwards altered by others, so that it is almost impossible to ascertain the names of the authors. Where, in the above notes, a piece is ascribed to different authors, the conflicting statements may arise from incorrect information, but sometimes they arise from the whole authorship being assigned to one person, when, in fact, both may have contributed. If we look at the references, 167, 185, we shall see CANNING naming several authors, whereas LORD BURGHERSH assigns all to one author. CANNING’S authority is here more to be relied upon. New Morality CANNING assigns generally to the four contributors. WRIGHT has given some interesting particulars by appropriating to each his peculiar portion.”

“GIFFORD was the working editor, and wrote most of the refutations and corrections of the Lies, Mistakes, and Misrepresentations.”

“The papers on finance were chiefly by PITT: the first column was frequently kept for what he might send; but his contributions were uncertain, and generally very late, so that the space reserved for him was sometimes filled up by other matter. He only once met the editors at WRIGHT’S.”

“W. UPCOTT, who was at the time assistant in WRIGHT’S shop, was employed as amanuensis, to copy out for the printer the various contributions, that the author’s handwriting might not be detected.”—E. Hawkins.

“THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE CANNING AS A MAN OF LETTERS.”

[The following is part of a review, under the above title, of the present editor’s previous edition of The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, and appeared in The Edinburgh Review of July, 1858. It is reprinted in the Biographical and Critical Essays of A. HAYWARD, Esq., Q.C., 2 vols., 8vo., 1873. It is introduced here as throwing some additional light on the Writers of the various pieces.]

“... We can hardly say of CANNING’S satire what was said of SHERIDAN’S, that—

“‘His wit in the combat, as gentle as bright,

Never carried a heart-stain away on its blade’.

But its severity was redeemed by its buoyancy and geniality, whilst the subjects against which it was principally aimed gave it a healthy tone and a sound foundation. Its happiest effusions will be found in The Anti-Jacobin, set on foot to refute or ridicule the democratic rulers of revolutionary France and their admirers or apologists in England, who, it must be owned, were occasionally hurried into a culpable degree of extravagance and laxity by their enthusiasm....”

“We learn from MR. EDMONDS that almost all his authorities practically resolve themselves into one, the late MR. W. UPCOTT, and that he never saw either of the alleged copies on which his informant relied. As regards the principal one, CANNING’S own, after the fullest inquiries amongst his surviving relatives and friends, we cannot discover a trace of its existence at any period. LORD BURGHERSH (the late EARL OF WESTMORELAND) was under fourteen years of age during the publication of The Anti-Jacobin; and we very much doubt whether either the publisher or the amanuensis (be he who he may) was admitted to the complete confidence of the contributors, or whether either the prose or poetry was composed as stated. In a letter to the late MADAME DE GIRARDIN, à propos of her play, L’École des Journalistes, JULES JANIN happily exposes the assumption that good leading articles ever were, or ever could be, produced over punch and broiled bones, amidst intoxication and revelry. Equally untenable is the belief that poetical pieces, like the best of The Anti-Jacobin, were written in the common rooms of the confraternity, open to constant intrusion, and left upon the table to be corrected or completed by the first comer. The unity of design discernible in each, the glowing harmony of the thoughts and images, and the exquisite finish of the versification, tell of silent and solitary hours spent in brooding over, maturing, and polishing a cherished conception; and young authors, still unknown to fame, are least of all likely to sink their individuality in this fashion. We suspect that their main object in going to WRIGHT’S was to correct their proofs and see one another’s articles in the more finished state. Their meetings, if for these purposes, would be most regular on Sundays, because the paper appeared every Monday morning. The extent to which they aided one another may be collected from a well-authenticated anecdote. When FRERE had completed the first part of The Loves of the Triangles, he exultingly read over the following lines to CANNING, and defied him to improve upon them:—

“‘Lo, where the chimney’s sooty tube ascends,

The fair TROCHAIS from the corner bends!

Her coal-black eyes upturned, incessant mark

The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark;

Mark with quick ken, where flashing in between,

Her much-loved Smoke-Jack glimmers through the scene;

Mark, how his various parts together tend,

Point to one purpose,—in one object end;

The spiral grooves in smooth meanders flow,

Drags the long chain, the polished axles glow,

While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below:’

“CANNING took the pen and added—

“‘The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns,

Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns’.

“These two lines are now blended with the original text, and constitute, we are informed on the best authority, the only flaw in FRERE’S title to the sole authorship of the First Part. The Second and Third Parts were by CANNING.

“By the kindness of [the late] LORD HATHERTON, we have now before us a bound volume containing all the numbers of The Anti-Jacobin as they originally appeared, eight pages quarto, with double columns, price sixpence. On the fly-leaf is inscribed: ‘This copy belonged to the Marquess Wellesley, and was purchased at the sale of his library after his death, January, 1842. H.’ On the cover is pasted an engraved label of the arms and name of a former proprietor, CHARLES WILLIAM FLINT, with the pencilled addition of ‘Confidential Amanuensis’. In this copy CANNING’S name is subscribed to (amongst others) the following pieces, which are also assigned to him (along with a large share in the most popular of the rest) by the most trustworthy rumours and traditions:—Inscription for the Door of the Cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg, the Prenticide, was confined previous to her execution; The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder; the lines addressed To the Author of the Epistle to the Editors of The Anti-Jacobin; The Progress of Man (all three parts); and New Morality.[1]

“With the single exception of The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder, no piece in the collection is more freshly remembered than the Inscription for the Cell of Mrs. Brownrigg, who

“‘Whipp’d two female ’prentices to death,

And hid them in the coal-hole’.

“The Answer to The Author of the Epistle to the Editors of The Anti-Jacobin is less known, and it derives a fresh interest from the fact, recently [c. 1854] made public, that The Epistle (which appeared in The Morning Chronicle of January 17, 1798) was the composition of WILLIAM LORD MELBOURNE. The beginning shows that the veil of incognito had been already penetrated.

“‘Whoe’er ye are, all hail!—whether the skill

Of youthful CANNING guides the ranc’rous quill;

With powers mechanic far above his age,

Adapts the paragraph and fills the page;

Measures the column, mends whate’er’s amiss,

Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS;

Or HAMMOND, leaving his official toil,

O’er this great work consume the midnight oil—

Bills, passports, letters, for the Muses quit,

And change dull business for amusing wit.’

“After referring to ‘the poetic sage, who sung of Gallia in a headlong rage,’ The Epistle proceeds:—

“‘I swear by all the youths that MALMESBURY chose,[2]

By ELLIS’ sapient prominence of nose—

By MORPETH’S gait, important, proud and big—

By Leveson Gower’s crop-imitating wig,

That, could the pow’rs which in those numbers shine,

Could that warm spirit animate my line,

Your glorious deeds which humbly I rehearse—

Your deeds should live immortal as my verse;

And, while they wonder’d whence I caught my flame,

Your sons should blush to read their fathers’ shame’.

“Happily the eminent and accomplished sons of these fathers will smile, rather than blush, at this allusion to their sires, and smile the more when they remember from which side the attack proceeded. It is clear from the Answer, that, whilst the band were not a little ruffled, they had not the remotest suspicion that their assailant was a youth in his nineteenth year. Amongst other prefatory remarks they say:—

“‘We assure the author of the epistle, that the answer which we have here the honour to address to him, contains our genuine and undisguised sentiments upon the merits of the poem.

“‘Our conjectures respecting the authors and abettors of this performance may possibly be as vague and unfounded as theirs are with regard to the EDITORS of The Anti-Jacobin. We are sorry that we cannot satisfy their curiosity upon this subject—but we have little anxiety for the gratification of our own.

“‘It is only necessary to add, what is most conscientiously the truth, that this production, such as it is, is by far the best of all the attacks that the combined wits of the cause have been able to muster against The Anti-Jacobin.’

“The Answer opens thus:—

“‘BARD of the borrow’d lyre! to whom belong

The shreds and remnants of each hackney’d song;

Whose verse thy friends in vain for wit explore,

And count but one good line, in eighty-four!

Whoe’er thou art, all hail! Thy bitter smile

Gilds our dull page, and cheers our humble toil!’

“The ‘one good line’ was ‘By Leveson Gower’s crop-imitating wig,’ but the Epistle contains many equally good and some better. The speculations as to its authorship afforded no slight amusement to the writer and his friends....

“New Morality is commonly regarded as the master-piece of The Anti-Jacobin; and, with the exception of a few lines, the whole of it is by CANNING. It appeared in the last number, and he is said to have concentrated all his energies for a parting blow. The reader who comes fresh from DRYDEN or POPE, or even CHURCHILL, will be disappointed on finding far less variety of images, sparkling antithesis, or condensed brilliancy of expression. The author exhibits abundant humour and eloquence, but comparatively little wit; i.e., if there be any truth in SYDNEY SMITH’S doctrine ‘that the feeling of wit is occasioned by those relations of ideas which excite surprise, and surprise alone’. We are commonly prepared for what is coming, and our admiration is excited rather by the justness of the observations, the elevation of the thoughts, and the vigour of the style, than by a startling succession of flashes of fancy. If, as we believe, the same might be said of JUVENAL, and the best of his English imitators, JOHNSON, we leave ample scope for praise; and New Morality contains passages which have been preserved to our time and bid fair to reach posterity. How often are the lines on Candour quoted in entire ignorance or forgetfulness of their author....

“The drama of The Rovers, or Double Arrangement, was written to ridicule the German Drama, then hardly known in this country, except through the medium of bad translations of some of the least meritorious of SCHILLER’S, GOETHE’S, and KOTZEBUE’S productions. The parody is now principally remembered by Rogero’s song, of which, Mr. Edmonds states, the first five stanzas were by CANNING. “Having been accidentally seen, previously to its publication, by PITT, he was so amused with it that he took a pen and composed the last stanza on the spot....”

“CANNING’S reputed share in The Rovers excited the unreasoning indignation, and provoked the exaggerated censure, of a man who has obtained a world-wide reputation by his historical researches, most especially by his skill in separating the true from the fabulous, and in filling up chasms in national annals by a process near akin to that by which CUVIER inferred the entire form and structure of an extinct species from a bone. The following passage is taken from NIEBUHR’S History of the Period of the Revolution (published from his Lectures, in two volumes, in 1845):—

“‘CANNING was at that time (1807) at the head of foreign affairs in England. History will not form the same judgment of him as that formed by contemporaries. He had great talents, but was not a great Statesman; he was one of those persons who distinguish themselves as the squires of political heroes. He was highly accomplished in the two classical languages, but without being a learned scholar. He was especially conversant with Greek writers. He had likewise poetical talent, but only for Satire. At first he had joined the leaders of opposition against PITT’S ministry: LORD GREY, who perceived his ambition, advised him, half in joke, to join the ministers, as he would make his fortune. He did so, and was employed to write articles for the newspapers and satirical verses, which were often directed against his former benefactors.

“‘Through the influence of the ministers he came into Parliament. So long as the great eloquence of former times lasted, and the great men were alive, his talent was admired; but older persons had no great pleasure in his petulant, epigrammatic eloquence and his jokes, which were often in bad taste. He joined the Society of the Anti-Jacobins, which defended everything connected with existing institutions. This society published a journal, in which the most honoured names of foreign countries were attacked in the most scandalous manner. German literature was at that time little known in England, and it was associated there with the ideas of Jacobinism and revolution. CANNING then published in The Anti-Jacobin the most shameful pasquinade which was ever written against Germany, under the title of Matilda Pottingen. Göttingen is described in it as the sink of all infamy; professors and students as a gang of miscreants; licentiousness, incest, and atheism as the character of the German people. Such was CANNING’S beginning: he was at all events useful, a sort of political Cossack’ (Geschichte des Zeitalters der Revolution, vol. ii., p. 242).

“‘Here am I,’ exclaimed RALEIGH, after vainly trying to get at the rights of a squabble in the courtyard of the Tower, ‘employed in writing a true history of the world, when I cannot ascertain the truth of what happens under my own window.’ Here is the great restorer of Roman history—who, by the way, prided himself on his knowledge of England—hurried into the strangest misconception of contemporary events and personages, and giving vent to a series of depreciatory misstatements, without pausing to verify the assumed groundwork of his patriotic wrath. His description of ‘the most shameful pasquinade,’ and his ignorance of the very title, prove that he had never seen it. If he had, he would also have known that the scene is laid at Weimar, not at Göttingen, and that the satire is almost exclusively directed against a portion of the dramatic literature of his country, which all rational admirers must admit to be indefensible. The scene in The Rovers, in which the rival heroines, meeting for the first time at an inn, swear eternal friendship and embrace, is positively a feeble reflection of a scene in GOETHE’S Stella; and no anachronism can exceed that in SCHILLER’S Cabal und Liebe, when Lady Milford, after declaring herself the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk who rebelled against Queen Elizabeth, is horrified on finding that the jewels sent her by the Grand Duke have been purchased by the sale of 7000 of his subjects to be employed in the American war.[3]

“Amongst the prose contributions to The Anti-Jacobin, there is one in which, independently of direct evidence, the peculiar humour of CANNING is discernible,—the pretended report of the meeting of the Friends of Freedom at the Crown and Anchor Tavern.[4] The plan was evidently suggested by TICKELL’S Anticipation, in which the debate on the Address at the opening of the Session was reported beforehand with such surprising foresight, that some of the speakers, who were thus forestalled, declined to deliver their meditated orations.

“At the meeting of the Friends of Freedom, ERSKINE, whose habitual egotism could hardly be caricatured, is made to perorate as follows, &c.... A long speech is given to MACKINTOSH, who, under the name of Macfungus, after a fervid sketch of the Temple of Freedom which he proposes to construct on the ruins of ancient establishments, proceeds with kindling animation, &c....[5]

“The wit and fun of these imitations are undeniable, and their injustice is equally so. ERSKINE, with all his egotism, was, and remains, the greatest of English advocates. He stemmed and turned the tide which threatened to sweep away the most valued of our free institutions in 1794; and (we say with LORD BROUGHAM) ‘Before such a precious service as this, well may the lustre of statesmen and orators grow pale’. MACKINTOSH was pre-eminently distinguished by the comprehensiveness and moderation of his views; nor could any man be less disposed by temper, habits, or pursuits towards revolutionary courses. His lectures on The Law of Nature and Nations were especially directed against the new morality in general, and GODWIN’S Political Justice in particular.

“At a long subsequent period (1807) CANNING, when attacked in Parliament for his share in The Anti-Jacobin, declared that ‘he felt no shame for its character or principles, nor any other sorrow for the share he had had in it than that which the imperfection of his pieces was calculated to inspire’. Still, it is one of the inevitable inconveniences of a connection with the Press that the best known writers should be made answerable for the errors of their associates; and the license of The Anti-Jacobin gave serious and well-founded offence to many who shared its opinions and wished well to its professed object. In WILBERFORCE’S Diary for May 18, 1799, we find ‘PITT, CANNING, and PEPPER ARDEN came in late to dinner. I attacked CANNING on indecency of Anti-Jacobin.’ COLERIDGE, in his Biographia Literaria, complains bitterly of the calumnious accounts given by The Anti-Jacobin of his early life, and asks with reason, ‘Is it surprising that many good men remained longer than perhaps they otherwise would have done adverse to a party which encouraged and openly rewarded the authors of such atrocious calumnies?’

“Mr. Edmonds says that PITT got frightened, and that the publication was discontinued at the suggestion of the Prime Minister. It is not unlikely that CANNING, now a member of the House of Commons and Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, found his connection with it embarrassing, as his hopes rose and his political prospects expanded. Indeed, it may be questioned whether a Parliamentary career can ever be united with that of the daily or weekly journalist without compromising one or both. At all events, the original Anti-Jacobin closed with the number containing New Morality, and CANNING had nothing to do with the monthly review started under the same name.”

THE ANTI-JACOBIN AS AN AID TO GOVERNMENT.

[Considering The Anti-Jacobin from a national as well as a literary point of view, we cannot do better than use a portion of an Essay on English Political Satires by the late JAS. HANNAY, in the Quarterly Review, April, 1857.]

“... In the case of The Anti-Jacobin, what are we to say? A hundred opinions may be adopted respecting the French Revolution. Some hate it with unmitigated hatred. Some regret it, but accept its consequences as beneficial to mankind on the whole. Some cherish its memory as a new political revelation of which they hope to see still further results. But a candid man of any of these persuasions must remember that the aim of The Anti-Jacobin was to keep Britain from revolution during 1797–8. It was therefore necessary to fight as our soldiers afterwards did in Spain—to wage such a literary war as suited the agitated spirit of Europe. While we blame CANNING, therefore, for speaking as he did of MADAME ROLAND, we must not forget the indecorum of her Memoirs, or that it was from persons of her party that vile aspersions were cast upon the character of MARIE ANTOINETTE. There were men quite ready to begin the same work over here that had been done in France, and that in a spirit of vulgar imitation, and under quite different circumstances. They had to be shot down like mad dogs; for a cur, though contemptible in ordinary cases, becomes tragic when he has hydrophobia.

“For The Anti-Jacobin must be claimed an honour which can be claimed for scarce one of the works we have passed under review. Let us waive the question how much we may have owed it for helping to inspire that unity and stout insular self-confidence which carried us through the great war,—whole within and impervious without. Let us consider it only in a literary point of view, and we shall find it enjoying the rare distinction that its best Satires live in real popular remembrance. The Knife-Grinder, with his

“‘Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir,’

is almost as widely known as our nursery rhymes.

“But if The Anti-Jacobin excels all similar works in popularity, and in the eminence of its contributors, it also excels them in another important particular. It contains on the whole a greater number of really good things than any one of them. The Loves of the Triangles, in which,

“‘Th’ obedient Pulley strong Mechanics ply,

And wanton Optics roll the melting eye!’

is an irresistible parody, and likely to keep the original of Darwin [Loves of the Plants] in remembrance. Gray’s Odes have survived the burlesques of Colman; and the Country and City Mouse of Prior and Montague is neglected by nine-tenths of those who read with admiration the Hind and the Panther. But Darwin’s case is peculiar. Other poems live in spite of ridicule; and his Loves of the Plants in consequence of it. The Attic salt of his enemies has preserved his reputation.

“There is always a purpose in The Anti-Jacobin’s view something more important than the mere persiflage that teases individuals. Like the blade of Damascus, which has a verse of the Koran engraved on it, its fine wit glitters terribly in the cause of sacred tradition.”

DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.

THE GIANT FACTOTUM AMUSING HIMSELF.

(FRONTISPIECE.)

PITT, with his right hand is playing at cup and ball; the latter being a globe to denote his influence over foreign countries as well as at home. His right foot is supported by DUNDAS and WILBERFORCE, and is extended to be submissively kissed by his ministerial followers, foremost of whom is C   ANNING. With his left foot he has crushed the Opposition. On the same side is a document labelled “Resources for supporting the War,” with a collection of coin, evidently destined for foreign subsidies. On his right side are various official returns of volunteers, seamen, regulars, and militia. He is thus prepared to carry on the war abroad, and maintain tranquillity at home.

THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER.

Page 23

Scene, the Borough of Southwark, with a portrait of GEORGE TIERNEY, its able and radical representative. Published Dec. 4, 1797, as a graphic illustration of the Parody of Southey’s poem, The Widow   .

LORD LONGBOW, THE ALARMIST, DISCOVERING THE MISERIES OF IRELAND.

Page 78

A characteristic portrait of the gallant and excellent EARL OF MOIRA, afterwards M   ARQUIS OF HASTINGS, and Governor-General of India. The engraving is in ridicule of his complaint, in the House of Lords, of the cruelties exercised by the Government troops on the Irish Rebels. In the distance is seen Moll Coggin, an Irish witch, mounted on a black Ram with a blue tail, and on the hill an Oak-boy, carrying an uprooted oak, on the branches of which are numerous swans—in allusion to the unfounded nature of his charges.

THE LOYAL TOAST.

Page 94

Representing the DUKE OF NORFOLK giving at a dinner at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in honour of the birth-day of FOX his famous toast, “Our Sovereign’s Health—The Majesty of the People”. On the left is JOHN NICHOLLS, Member for Tregony; next to him is the DUKE OF BEDFORD; on the other side of the table are SHERIDAN and F   OX.

DESIGN FOR THE NEW GALLERY OF BUSTS AND PICTURES.

Page 99

The statue of FOX was placed between those of Demosthenes and Cicero, by the EMPRESS CATHERINE OF RUSSIA, as a compliment to him for having successfully opposed the sending of the armament prepared by PITT, in conjunction with Prussia and Holland, to compel her to give up Ockzakow which she had seized. As this caricature, including the verses, was originally published in March, 1793, the latter in The Anti-Jacobin    must have been suggested by them.

THE REPUBLICAN RATTLESNAKE FASCINATING THE BEDFORD SQUIRREL.

Page 285

In allusion to the influence exercised by FOX over FRANCIS, fifth D   UKE OF BEDFORD, who had become one of the most zealous of the popular party.

PROSPECTUS

OF

THE ANTI-JACOBIN;

OR,

WEEKLY EXAMINER,

The FIRST NUMBER of which will be published on MONDAY, the 20th of NOVEMBER, 1797, to be continued every Monday during the sitting of Parliament. Price 6d.

——Possit quid vivida virtus

Experiare, licet: nec longe scilicet hostes

Quærendi.

At a moment, when whatever may be the habits of inquiry and the anxiety for information upon subjects of public concern diffused among all ranks of people, the vehicles of intelligence are already multiplied in a proportion nearly equal to this encreased demand, and to the encreased importance and variety of matter, some apology may perhaps be necessary for the obtrusion of a new Paper upon the World; and some account may reasonably be expected of the views and principles on which it founds its pretensions to notice, before it can hope to make its way through the crowd of competitors which have gotten the start of it in the race for public favour.

[As this Prospectus was written by MR. CANNING, and it has been prefixed only to the former edition of the Poetry by the present Editor, it is again considered an interesting addition to the present one.]

The grounds upon which such pretensions have usually been rested by those who have engaged in undertakings of this kind, are accuracy, variety, and priority of Intelligence, connections at home, correspondence abroad, and, above all, a profession of impartial and unprejudiced attention to all opinions, and to all parties and descriptions of men.

On none of these Topicks is it Our intention to enlarge.

Of Our means of information, and of the use which We make of them, our readers will, after a very short trial, be enabled to form their own opinion. And to that trial We confidently commit ourselves: professing, however, at the same time, that if the only advantage which We were desirous of holding out to our Readers, were that of having it in our power to apprize them an hour or a day sooner than those Journals, which are already in their hands, of any event however important—We should bring to the undertaking much less anxiety for success, and should state our claims on public attention with much less boldness, than We are disposed to do in the consciousness of higher purposes, and more beneficial views.

Novelty indeed We have to announce. For what so new in the present state of the daily and weekly PRESS (We speak generally, though there are undoubtedly exceptions which we may have occasion to point out hereafter) as THE TRUTH? To this object alone it is that Our labours are dedicated. It is the constant violation, the disguise, the perversion of the Truth, whether in narrative or in argument, that will form the principal subject of our WEEKLY EXAMINATION: and it is by a diligent and faithful discharge of this duty—by detecting falsehood, and rectifying error, by correcting misrepresentation, and exposing and chastising malignity—that We hope to deserve the reception which We solicit, and to obtain not only the approbation of the Country to our attempt, but its thanks for the motives which have given birth to it.

These are strong words. But We are conscious of intending in earnest what they profess. How far the execution of our purpose may correspond with the design, it is for others to determine. It is ours to state that design fairly, and in the spirit in which we conceive it.

Of the utility of such a purpose, if even tolerably executed, there can be little doubt, among those persons (a very large part of the community) who must have found themselves, during the course of the last few years, perplexed by the multiplicity of contradictory accounts of almost every material event that has occurred in that eventful and tremendous period; and who must anxiously have wished for some public channel of information on which they could confidently rely for forming their opinion.

But before We can expect sufficient credit from persons of this description, to enable us to supply such a defect, and to assume an office so important, it is natural that they should require some profession of our principles as well as of our purposes; in order that they may judge not only of our ability to communicate the information which We promise, but of our intention to inform them aright.

To that freedom from partiality and prejudice, of which We have spoken above, by the profession of which so many of our Contemporaries recommend themselves, We make little pretension—at least in the sense in which those terms appear now too often to be used.

We have not arrived (to our shame perhaps we avow it) at that wild and unshackled freedom of thought, which rejects all habit, all wisdom of former times, all restraints of ancient usage, and of local attachment; and which judges upon each subject, whether of politicks or morals, as it arises, by lights entirely its own, without reference to recognized principle, or established practice.

We confess, whatever disgrace may attend such a confession, that We have not so far gotten the better of the influence of long habits and early education, not so far imbibed that spirit of liberal indifference, of diffused and comprehensive philanthropy, which distinguishes the candid character of the present age, but that We have our feelings, our preferences, and our affections, attaching on particular places, manners, and institutions, and even on particular portions of the human race.

It may be thought a narrow and illiberal distinction—but We avow ourselves to be partial to the COUNTRY in which we live, notwithstanding the daily panegyricks which we read and hear on the superior virtues and endowments of its rival and hostile neighbours. We are prejudiced in favour of her Establishments, civil and religious; though without claiming for either that ideal perfection, which modern philosophy professes to discover in the other more luminous systems which are arising on all sides of us.

The safety and prosperity of these kingdoms, however unimportant they may seem in abstract contemplation when compared with the more extensive, more beautiful, and more productive parts of the world, do yet excite in our minds a peculiar interest and anxiety; and will probably continue to occupy a share of our attention by no means justified by the proportional consequence which speculative reasoners may think proper to assign to them in the scale of the universe.

We should be averse to hazarding the smallest part of the practical happiness of this Country; though the sacrifice should be recommended as necessary for accomplishing throughout the world an uniform and beautiful system of theoretical liberty: and We should at all times exert our best endeavours for upholding its constitution, even with all the human imperfections which may belong to it, though We were assured that on its ruins might be erected the only pillar that is yet wanting to complete the “most glorious fabrick which the Integrity and Wisdom of man have raised since the Creation”.

If, as Philosopher MONGE[6] avers, in his eloquent and instructive address to the Directory, “The Government of England and the French Republick cannot exist together,” We do not hesitate in our choice; though well aware that in that choice we may be much liable, in the opinion of many critics of the present day, to the imputation of a want of candour or of discernment.

Admirers of military heroism, and dazzled by military success in common with other men, We are yet even here conscious of some qualification and distinction in our feelings: We acknowledge ourselves apt to look with more complacency on bravery and skill, when displayed in the service of our Country, than when We see them directed against its interests or its safety; and, however equal the claims to admiration in either case may be, We feel our hearts grow warmer at the recital of what has been atchieved by HOWE, by JERVIS, or by DUNCAN, than at the “glorious victory of Jemappe,” or “the immortal battle of the bridge of Lodi”.

In MORALS We are equally old-fashioned. We have not yet learned the modern refinement of referring in all considerations upon human conduct, not to any settled and preconceived principles of right and wrong, not to any general and fundamental rules which experience, and wisdom, and justice, and the common consent of mankind have established, but to the internal admonitions of every man’s judgment or conscience in his own particular instance.

We do not dissemble,—that We reverence LAW,—We acknowledge USAGE,—We look even upon PRESCRIPTION without hatred or horror. And we do not think these, or any of them, less safe guides for the moral actions of men, than that new and liberal system of ETHICS, whose operation is not to bind but to loosen the bands of social order; whose doctrine is formed not on a system of reciprocal duties, but on the supposition of individual, independent, and unconnected rights; which teaches that all men are pretty equally honest, but that some have different notions of honesty from others, and that the most received notions are for the greater part the most faulty.

We do not subscribe to the opinion, that a sincere conviction of the truth of no matter what principle, is a sufficient defence for no matter what action; and that the only business of moral enquiry with human conduct is to ascertain that in each case the principle and the action agree. We have not yet persuaded ourselves to think it a sound, or a safe doctrine, that every man who can divest himself of a moral sense in theory, has a right to be with impunity and without disguise a scoundrel in practice. It is not in our creed, that ATHEISM is as good a faith as CHRISTIANITY, provided it be professed with equal sincerity; nor could We admit it as an excuse for MURDER, that the murderer was in his own mind conscientiously persuaded that the murdered might for many good reasons be better out of the way.

Of all these and the like principles, in one word, of JACOBINISM in all its shapes, and in all its degrees, political and moral, public and private, whether as it openly threatens the subversion of States, or gradually saps the foundations of domestic happiness, We are the avowed, determined, and irreconcileable enemies. We have no desire to divest ourselves of these inveterate prejudices; but shall remain stubborn and incorrigible in resisting every attempt which may be made either by argument or (what is more in the charitable spirit of modern reformers) by force, to convert us to a different opinion.

It remains only to speak of the details of our PLAN.

It is our intention to publish Weekly, during the Session of Parliament, a Paper, containing,

First, An Abstract of the important events of the week, both at home and abroad.

Secondly, Such Reflections as may naturally arise out of them: and,

Thirdly, A contradiction and confutation of the falsehoods and misrepresentations concerning these events, their causes, and their consequences, which may be found in the Papers devoted to the cause of SEDITION and IRRELIGION, to the pay or principles of FRANCE.

This last, as it is by far the most important, will in all probability be the most copious of the three heads; and is that to which, above all others, We wish to direct the attention of our Readers.

We propose diligently to collect, as far as the range of our own daily reading will enable us, and We promise willingly to receive, from whatever quarter they may come, the several articles of this kind which require to be thus contradicted or confuted; which will naturally divide themselves into different classes, according to their different degrees of stupidity or malignity.

There are, for instance (to begin with those of the highest order), the LIES of the Week; the downright, direct, unblushing falsehoods, which have no colour or foundation whatever, and which must at the very moment of their being written, have been known to the writer to be wholly destitute of truth.

Next in rank come MISREPRESENTATIONS which, taking for their groundwork facts in substance true, do so colour and distort them in description, as to take away all semblance of their real nature and character.

Lastly, The most venial, though by no means the least mischievous class, are MISTAKES; under which description are included all those Hints, Conjectures, and Apprehensions, those Anticipations of Sorrow and Deprecations of Calamity, in which Writers who labour under too great an anxiety for the Public Welfare are apt to indulge; and which, when falsified by the event, they are generally too much occupied to find leisure to retract or disavow:—A trouble which We shall have great pleasure in taking off these Gentlemen’s hands.

To each of these several articles We shall carefully affix the name and date of the Publication from which We may take the liberty of borrowing it.

With regard to the PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT, We shall not fail to mark to Our Readers the progress of the public business; though it does not enter into our Plan to give a regular detail of the Debates: nor would the limits of our Paper allow of it.

We have a further reason for not occupying this province, which will equally account for our determination, not to receive Advertisements—our earnest desire not to lessen the circulation of any existing Public Print.

It is obvious upon every ground of fairness and of policy, that We must entertain this desire very strongly with regard to the respectable Papers which are directed by principles and attachments like our own: an attachment (We have no wish to disguise it) to the cause of a GOVERNMENT, with whose support, whose popularity and consequent means of exertion, the circumstances of the present times have essentially connected the existence of THIS COUNTRY as an independent Nation.

As little should we wish to circumscribe the sale of those JOURNALS, upon whose errors or perverseness, upon whose false statements and pernicious doctrines We reckon for the main support, as they have been the principal cause of our undertaking. These We would entreat to proceed with fresh vigour and increased activity. It is our wish to be seen together, and to be compared with them. Every week of misrepresentation will be followed by its weekly comment; and with this corrective faithfully administered, the longest course of MORNING CHRONICLES or MORNING POSTS, of STARS or COURIERS, may become not only innocent but beneficial.

With these views then We commence our undertaking. Whatever may be the success or the merit of its execution in our hands, the want of something like it has so long been felt and deplored by all thinking and honest men, that We cannot doubt of the approbation and encouragement with which the attempt will be received.

We claim the support, and We invite the assistance, of ALL, who think with US that the circumstances and character of the age in which We live require every exertion of every man, who loves his COUNTRY in the old way, in which till of late years the LOVE of one’s COUNTRY was professed by most men, and by none disclaimed or reviled; of ALL who think that the PRESS has been long enough employed principally as an engine of destruction, and who wish to see the experiment fairly tried whether that engine, by which many of the States which surround us have been overthrown, and others shaken to their foundations, may not be turned into an instrument of defence for the one remaining COUNTRY which has ESTABLISHMENTS to protect, and a GOVERNMENT with the spirit, and the power, and the wisdom to protect them; of ALL who look with respect to public honour, and with attachment to the decencies of private life; of ALL who have so little deference for the arrogant intolerance of JACOBINISM as still to contemplate the OFFICE and the PERSON of a KING with veneration, and to speak reverently of RELIGION, without apologizing for the singularity of their opinions; of ALL who think the blessings which we enjoy valuable, and who think them in danger; and who, while they detest and despise the principles and the professors of that NEW FAITH by which the foundations of all those blessings are threatened to be undermined, lament the lukewarmness with which its propagation has hitherto been resisted, and are anxious, while there is yet time, to make every effort in the cause of their COUNTRY.

Published by J. WRIGHT, No. 169, opposite Old Bond Street, Piccadilly: by whom Orders for the Papers, and all Communications of Correspondents, addressed to the Editor of the ANTI-JACOBIN, or WEEKLY EXAMINER, will be received. Sold also by all the Booksellers and Newsmen in Town and Country.

POETRY

OF

THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

No. I.

INTRODUCTION.

Nov. 20, 1797.

In our anxiety to provide for the amusement as well as information of our readers, we have not omitted to make all the inquiries in our power for ascertaining the means of procuring poetical assistance. And it would give us no small satisfaction to be able to report that we had succeeded in this point precisely in the manner which would best have suited our own taste and feelings, as well as those which we wish to cultivate in our readers.

But whether it be that good Morals, and what we should call good Politics, are inconsistent with the spirit of true Poetry—whether “the Muses still with freedom found” have an aversion to regular governments, and require a frame and system of protection less complicated than king, lords, and commons:—

“Whether primordial nonsense springs to life[7]

In the wild war of democratic strife,”

and there only—or for whatever other reason it may be, whether physical, or moral, or philosophical (which last is understood to mean something more than the other two, though exactly what, it is difficult to say), we have not been able to find one good and true Poet, of sound principles and sober practice, upon whom we could rely for furnishing us with a handsome quantity of sufficient and approved verse—such verse as our readers might be expected to get by heart, and to sing; as the worthy philosopher MONGE describes the little children of Sparta and Athens singing the songs of Freedom, in expectation of the coming of the Great Nation.

In this difficulty we have had no choice but either to provide no poetry at all—a shabby expedient—or to go to the only market where it is to be had good and ready made, that of the Jacobins—an expedient full of danger, and not to be used but with the utmost caution and delicacy.

To this latter expedient, however, after mature deliberation, we have determined to have recourse; qualifying it at the same time with such precautions as may conduce at once to the safety of our readers’ principles, and to the improvement of our own poetry.

For this double purpose, we shall select from time to time from among those effusions of the Jacobin Muse which happen to fall in our way, such pieces as may serve to illustrate some one of the principles on which the poetical as well as the political doctrine of the NEW SCHOOL is established—prefacing each of them, for our readers’ sake, with a short disquisition on the particular tenet intended to be enforced or insinuated in the production before them—and accompanying it with an humble effort of our own, in imitation of the poem itself, and in further illustration of its principle.

By these means, though we cannot hope to catch “the wood-notes wild” of the Bards of Freedom, we may yet acquire, by dint of repeating after them, a more complete knowledge of the secret in which their greatness lies than we could by mere prosaic admiration; and if we cannot become poets ourselves, we at least shall have collected the elements of a Jacobin Art of Poetry for the use of those whose genius may be more capable of turning them to advantage.

It might not be unamusing to trace the springs and principles of this species of poetry, which are to be found, some in the exaggeration, and others in the direct inversion of the sentiments and passions which have in all ages animated the breast of the favourite of the Muses, and distinguished him from the “vulgar throng”.

The poet in all ages has despised riches and grandeur.

The Jacobin poet improves this sentiment into a hatred of the rich and the great.

The poet of other times has been an enthusiast in the love of his native soil.

The Jacobin poet rejects all restriction in his feelings. His love is enlarged and expanded so as to comprehend all human kind. The love of all human kind is without doubt a noble passion: it can hardly be necessary to mention that its operation extends to freemen, and them only, all over the world.

The old poet was a warrior, at least in imagination; and sung the actions of the heroes of his country in strains which “made Ambition Virtue,” and which overwhelmed the horrors of war in its glory.

The Jacobin poet would have no objection to sing battles too—but he would take a distinction. The prowess of Buonaparte, indeed, he might chant in his loftiest strain of exultation. There we should find nothing but trophies and triumphs and branches of laurel and olive, phalanxes of Republicans shouting victory, satellites of despotism biting the ground, and geniuses of Liberty planting standards on mountain-tops.

But let his own country triumph, or her allies obtain an advantage: straightway the “beauteous face of war” is changed; the “pride, pomp, and circumstance” of victory are kept carefully out of sight, and we are presented with nothing but contusions and amputations, plundered peasants, and deserted looms. Our poet points the thunder of his blank verse at the head of the recruiting serjeant, or roars in dithyrambics against the lieutenants of pressgangs.

But it would be endless to chase the coy Muse of Jacobinism through all her characters. Mille habet ornatus. The Mille decenter habet is perhaps more questionable. For in whatever disguise she appears, whether of mirth or of melancholy, of piety or of tenderness; under all disguises, like Sir John Brute in woman’s clothes, she is betrayed by her drunken swagger and ruffian tone.

In the poem which we have selected for the edification of our readers and our own imitation this day, the principles which are meant to be inculcated speak so plainly for themselves, that they need no previous introduction.

INSCRIPTION[8]

For the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Marten, the Regicide, was imprisoned thirty years.

For thirty years secluded from mankind

Here MARTEN lingered. Often have these walls

Echoed his footsteps, as with even tread

He paced around his prison: not to him

Did Nature’s fair varieties exist;

He never saw the sun’s delightful beams,

Save when through yon high bars he pour’d a sad

And broken splendour. Dost thou ask his crime?

He had REBELL’D AGAINST THE KING, AND SAT

IN JUDGMENT ON HIM; for his ardent mind

Shaped goodliest plans of happiness on earth,

And peace and liberty. Wild dreams! but such

As Plato loved; such as with holy zeal

Our Milton worshipp’d. Blessed hopes! awhile

From man withheld, even to the latter days

When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill’d!

IMITATION.

INSCRIPTION

For the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg, the ’Prentice-cide, was confined previous to her Execution.

For one long term, or e’er her trial came,

Here BROWNRIGG linger’d. Often have these cells

Echoed her blasphemies, as with shrill voice

She screamed for fresh Geneva. Not to her

Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street,

St. Giles, its fair varieties expand;

Till at the last, in slow-drawn cart she went

To execution. Dost thou ask her crime?

SHE WHIPP’D TWO FEMALE ’PRENTICES TO DEATH,

AND HID THEM IN THE COAL-HOLE. For her mind

Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage schemes!

Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine

Of the Orthyan goddess he bade flog

The little Spartans; such as erst chastised

Our Milton when at college. For this act

Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws! But time shall come

When France shall reign, and laws be all repeal’d!

[HENRY MARTEN was one of the most interesting and remarkable of the Regicides, not only from his abilities and consistent honesty, but from the elegance of his manners, his wit, and the fascinating gaiety of his conversation; and, moreover, from his humane disposition and generosity to fallen foes. His private life, however, was disgraced by the most reckless debauchery, which might seem more appropriate in such libertines as Rochester and Sedley than in a coadjutor of the strict Puritan party. But from a note in Grey’s edition of Hudibras, pt. ii., ch. i., p. 313, it would appear that the general opinion at that time was that profligacy of a pronounced character was indulged in privately by more than a few of that sanctimonious sect.

He was the son of Sir Henry Marten, LL.D., a loyal Judge of the Admiralty. After receiving a learned education at Oxford, he entered one of the Inns of Court, and travelled in France. Having a stake in Berkshire—for he inherited a property of £3000 a year, besides several thousand pounds in money—he was elected, 1640, one of the members for the county in the last two Parliaments of King Charles I. His chief seat was at Becket, in the parish of Shrivenham. He afterwards obtained a grant of £1000 a year to him and his heirs out of the forfeited estates of the Duke of Buckingham. His early marriage with a rich widow, selected by his father, but not affected by himself, also benefited his finances.

From the commencement of the Civil Wars he was a violent Republican; and as early as 1643 openly expressed his opinion of the desirability of the destruction of the King and his children, for which rather premature advice he was expelled from the House of Commons, and underwent a short imprisonment in the Tower. He was appointed by the House of Commons a Colonel of Horse and Governor of Reading, but made less mark as a soldier than as a rapacious spoiler of the adherents of the King, which earned him the opprobrious nickname of “Plunder-master General”.

Being empowered to dispose of the Regalia and royal trappings, he once invested GEORGE WITHER—who had been made one of Cromwell’s Major-Generals—with them, and so accoutred induced the old Poet to strut up and down Westminster Abbey to the scandal of right-thinking people.

To him also were referred the alterations in the public arms, the Great Seal, and the legends upon the money. Upon the latter was a shield bearing the cross of St. George, encircled by a palm and olive branch, and inscribed The Commonwealth of England, and on the reverse, God with us, 1648; which occasioned the remark “that God and the Commonwealth were not on the same side”.

Nothing apparently could damp the ill-timed jocosity too often prevalent in those troublous times, for at MARTEN’S trial, 16th October, 1660, Ewer, who had been his servant, swore that “at the signing of the warrant for the King’s execution he did see a pen in Mr. CROMWELL’S hand, and he marked Mr. MARTEN in the face with it, and Mr. MARTEN did the like to him”. But many of his excesses were condoned in the eyes of both his friends and enemies by his generous and humane spirit.

D’ISRAELI, in his Commentaries on the life and Reign of Charles I., describes the ingenious way in which MARTEN saved the life of DAVID JENKINS, a loyal and obstinate Welsh judge, who, when brought to the bar of the House of Commons to answer for imprisoning several persons for bearing arms against the King, peremptorily disowned their jurisdiction, and defied them in the following bold terms: “‘But, Mr. Speaker, since you and this House have renounced your allegiance to your Sovereign, and are become a den of thieves, should I bow myself in this House of Rimmon the Lord would not pardon me’. The whole House were electrified.... He was voted guilty of high treason without any trial. The day of execution was then debated. HARRY MARTEN, who had not yet spoken, rose, not to dissent from the vote of the House, he observed, but he had something to say about the time of the execution. ‘Mr. Speaker,’ said he, ‘everyone must believe that this old gentleman here is fully possessed in his head resolved to die a martyr in his cause, for otherwise he would never have provoked the House by such biting expressions. If you execute him, you do precisely that which he hopes for, and his execution will have a great influence over the people, since he is condemned without a jury. I therefore move that we should suspend the day of execution, and in meantime force him to live in spite of his teeth.’ The drollery of the motion put the House into better humour, and he was reprieved. After being kept in various prisons for eleven years, he was released by Cromwell, and died in 1663, aged eighty-one.”

Another instance may be given of MARTEN’S felicitous humour and humane temper. When the Commons had rid themselves of the Sovereign, they voted the Lords to be dangerous and useless. But MARTEN proposed an amendment in their favour; namely, that they were useless, but not dangerous.

His speeches in the House were represented to have been not long, “but wondrous poynant, pertinent, and witty. He was exceedingly apt in apt instances; he alone hath sometimes turned the whole House.”

He wrote several tracts on parliamentary subjects, and Verses on the Death of his Nephew, Charles Edmonds, 7th July, 1661, æt. 30. But the most amusing of the publications bearing his name is one entitled Familiar Letters to his Lady of Delight; also her kinde Returnes: with his Rivall R. Pettingall’s Heroicall Epistles. Printed by Edmundus de Speciosâ Villâ [i.e., EDMUND GAYTON]. Bellositi Dobunorum [Oxford], 1662 and 1663, 4to. Another edition, with additions, appeared in 1685. “These epistles,” says D’ISRAELI, “paint to the life the loose habits and espiègleries of this witty profligate; and I think they have been referred to by some inconsiderate writers as a genuine correspondence.” They were probably altogether concocted by GAYTON. He was severely attacked in various scurrilous lampoons, some of which are printed among the Rump Songs, 1662.

On his trial he was found guilty and sentenced to death; but the good feeling created among many who had in his prosperous days enjoyed his society and hospitality, and even among many of his former opponents by his generous treatment of them when in danger, stood him in good stead, and it was by a well-timed and humorous appeal to the Judges—such as he himself might have used—that his life was saved. Henry, fourth Viscount FALKLAND, whose virtuous and heroic father fell at the first Battle of Newbury while fighting for the King, said to the Judges: “Gentlemen, ye talk here of making a sacrifice: it was old law that all sacrifices were to be without spot or blemish; and now you are going to make an old rotten rascal a sacrifice”. This piece of wit pleased his Judges, and his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. He was confined in Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire, for twenty years, and died in September, 1680, aged seventy-eight.

He must have felt some contrition for his vicious life, for some time before his death he made this epitaph, by way of acrostic, on himself:

H ere, or elsewhere (all’s one to you, to me),

E arth, air, or water gripes my ghostly dust,

N one knowing when brave fire shall set it free.

R eader, if you an oft tryed rule will trust,

Y ou’ll gladly do and suffer what you must.

M y life was worn with serving you and you,

A nd now death’s my pay, it seems, and welcome too.

R evenge destroying but itself, while I

T o birds of prey leave my old cage, and fly.

E xamples preach to the eye, care (then mine says)

N ot how you end, but how you spend your days.

“In Cromwell’s time CHEPSTOW CASTLE served as a place of imprisonment for Jeremy Taylor; and, after the Restoration, it received a less illustrious occupant in the person of HARRY MARTEN, the Regicide, whose imprisonment here has attracted more than its share of notice in consequence of the foolish lines written by SOUTHEY in his days of republicanism and pantisocracy, but which are as untrue in fact as they are mischievous in sentiment. As to the fact, it is notorious that MARTEN—at all events after the first few years of his imprisonment—was little more than a prisoner on parole; allowed to visit the neighbouring gentry, and occupying at Chepstow Castle, with his family and servants, spacious and comfortable apartments in the tower which still bears his name. As to the sentiment, the lines received their best antidote in the clever parody of Canning and Frere in The Anti-Jacobin.”—Annals of Chepstow Castle, by J. F. Marsh, 1883; 4to.]

[Mrs. Elizabeth Brownrigg was executed at Tyburn on Monday, 14th Sept., 1767, for murdering one of her apprentices, Mary Clifford.—ED.]

No. II.

Nov. 27, 1797.

In the specimen of JACOBIN POETRY which we gave in our last number was developed a principle, perhaps one of the most universally recognised in the Jacobin creed; namely, “that the animadversion of human law upon human actions is for the most part nothing but gross oppression; and that, in all cases of the administration of criminal justice, the truly benevolent mind will consider only the severity of the punishment, without any reference to the malignity of the crime”. This principle has of late years been laboured with extraordinary industry, and brought forward in a variety of shapes, for the edification of the public. It has been inculcated in bulky quartos, and illustrated in popular novels. It remained only to fit it with a poetical dress, which had been attempted in the INSCRIPTION for CHEPSTOW CASTLE, and which (we flatter ourselves) was accomplished in that for MRS. BROWNRIGG’S CELL.

Another principle, no less devoutly entertained, and no less sedulously disseminated, is the natural and eternal warfare of the POOR and the RICH. In those orders and gradations of society, which are the natural result of the original difference of talents and of industry among mankind, the Jacobin sees nothing but a graduated scale of violence and cruelty. He considers every rich man as an oppressor, and every person in a lower situation as the victim of avarice, and the slave of aristocratical insolence and contempt. These truths he declares loudly, not to excite compassion, or to soften the consciousness of superiority in the higher, but for the purpose of aggravating discontent in the inferior orders.

A human being, in the lowest state of penury and distress, is a treasure to the reasoner of this cast. He contemplates, he examines, he turns him in every possible light, with a view of extracting from the variety of his wretchedness new topics of invective against the pride of property. He, indeed (if he is a true Jacobin), refrains from relieving the object of his compassionate contemplation; as well knowing that every diminution from the general mass of human misery must proportionably diminish the force of his argument.

This principle is treated at large by many authors. It is versified in sonnets and elegies without end. We trace it particularly in a poem by the same author [SOUTHEY] from whom we borrowed our former illustration of the Jacobin doctrine of crimes and punishments. In this poem, the pathos of the matter is not a little relieved by the absurdity of the metre. We shall not think it necessary to transcribe the whole of it, as our imitation does not pretend to be so literal as in the last instance, but merely aspires to convey some idea of the manner and sentiment of the original. One stanza, however, we must give, lest we should be suspected of painting from fancy, and not from life.

The learned reader will perceive that the metre is SAPPHIC, and affords a fine opportunity for his scanning and proving, if he has not forgotten them.

Cōld wăs thē nīght wīnd; drĭftĭng fāst thĕ snōws fĕll;

Wīde wĕre thē dōwns, ānd shĕltĕrlēss ănd nākēd:

Whēn ă poōr wānd’rēr strŭgglĕd ōn hĕr joūrnĕy,

Wēāry ănd wāy-sōre.[9]

This is enough; unless the reader should wish to be informed how

Fāst o’ĕr thē blēāk hēāth răttlĭng drōve ă chārīōt;

Or how, not long after,

Loūd blĕw thē wīnd, ūnhēārd wăs hēr cŏmplāinĭng—

Ōn wĕnt thĕ hōrsemān.

We proceed to give our IMITATION, which is of the Amœbæan or Collocutory kind.

SAPPHICS.

THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER.

FRIEND OF HUMANITY.[10]

“Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going?

Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order—

Bleak blows the blast; your hat has got a hole in’t,

So have your breeches!

“Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones,

Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-

-road what hard work ’tis crying all day “Knives and

Scissars to grind O!”

“Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives?

Did some rich man tyrannically use you?

Was it the squire? or parson of the parish?

Or the attorney?

“Was it the squire, for killing of his game? or

Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?

Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little

All in a lawsuit?

“(Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine?)

Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,

Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your

Pitiful story.”

KNIFE-GRINDER.

“Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir,

Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,

This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were

Torn in a scuffle.

“Constables came up for to take me into

Custody; they took me before the justice;

Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish-

-Stocks for a vagrant.

“I should be glad to drink your Honour’s health in

A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;

But for my part, I never love to meddle

With politics, sir.”

FRIEND OF HUMANITY.

“I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first—

Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance—

Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,

Spiritless outcast!”

[Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.]

No. III.

Nov. 30, 1797.

We have received the following from a loyal correspondent, and we shall be very happy at any time to be relieved, by communications of a similar tendency, from the drudgery of Jacobinical imitations.

THE INVASION;[11]

OR, THE BRITISH WAR SONG.

To the Tune of “Whilst happy in my native land”.

I.

Whilst happy in our native land,

So great, so famed in story,

Let’s join, my friends, with heart and hand

To raise our country’s glory:

When Britain calls, her valiant sons

Will rush in crowds to aid her—

Snatch, snatch your muskets, prime your guns,

And crush the fierce invader!

Whilst every Briton’s song shall be,

“O give us Death—or Victory!”

II.

Long had this favour’d isle enjoy’d

True comforts, past expressing,

When France her hellish arts employ’d

To rob us of each blessing:

These from our hearths by force to tear

(Which long we’ve learned to cherish)

Our frantic foes shall vainly dare;

We’ll keep ’em or we’ll perish—

And every day our song shall be,

“O give us Death—or Victory!”

III.

Let France in savage accents sing

Her bloody Revolution;

We prize our country, love our king,

Adore our constitution;

For these we’ll every danger face,

And quit our rustic labours;

Our ploughs to firelocks shall give place;

Our scythes be changed to sabres;

And clad in arms, our song shall be,

“O give us Death—or Victory!”

IV.

Soon shall the proud invaders learn,

When bent on blood and plunder,

That British bosoms nobly burn

To brave their cannon’s thunder:

Low lie those heads, whose wily arts

Have plann’d the world’s undoing!

Our vengeful blades shall reach those hearts

Which seek our country’s ruin;

And night and morn our song shall be,

“O give us Death—or Victory!”

V.

When, with French blood our fields manured,

The glorious struggle’s ended,

We’ll sing the dangers we’ve endured,

The blessings we’ve defended:

O’er the full bowl our feats we’ll tell,

Each gallant deed reciting;

And weep o’er those who nobly fell

Their country’s battle fighting—

And ever thence our song shall be,

“’Tis VALOUR leads to VICTORY”.

[The following Song which furnished the hints for the one above was written by MILES PETER ANDREWS, M.P. for Bewdley, and a dealer in gunpowder; but his Plays, Prologues, Verses, &c., by no means resemble so active a composition. He, with other members of the “Della Crusca,” was savagely attacked and extinguished by W. Gifford in “The Baviad”. His song was set to music by Sir HENRY BISHOP. He died in 1814.

I.

Whilst happy in my native land

I boast my country’s charter,

I’ll never basely lend my hand

Her liberties to barter.

The noble mind is not at all

By poverty degraded;

’Tis guilt alone can make us fall,

And well am I persuaded,

Each free-born Briton’s song should be,

“Oh! give me Death or Liberty!”

II.

Though small the pow’r which Fortune grants,

And few the gifts she sends us,

The lordly hireling often wants

That freedom which defends us.

By law secur’d from lawless strife,

Our house is our castellum;

Thus, blessed with all that’s dear in life,

For lucre shall we sell ’em?

No,—ev’ry Briton’s song should be,

“Oh! give me Death or Liberty!”

ED.]

No. IV.

Dec. 4, 1797.

We have been favoured with the following specimen of Jacobin Poetry, which we give to the world without any comment or imitation. We are informed (we know not how truly) that it will be sung at the meeting of the Friends of Freedom; an account of which is anticipated in our present paper.[12]

LA SAINTE GUILLOTINE.

A New Song.

ATTEMPTED FROM THE FRENCH.

Tune—“O’er the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France”.

I.

From the blood-bedew’d valleys and mountains of France,

See the Genius of Gallic INVASION advance!

Old ocean shall waft her, unruffled by storm,

While our shores are all lined with the “Friends of Reform”.[13]

Confiscation and Murder attend in her train,

With meek-eyed Sedition, the daughter of PAINE;[14]

While her sportive Poissardes with light footsteps are seen

To dance in a ring round the gay Guillotine.[15]

II.

To London, “the rich, the defenceless”[16] she comes—

Hark! my boys, to the sound of the Jacobin drums!

See Corruption, Prescription, and Privilege fly,

Pierced through by the glance of her blood-darting eye.

While patriots, from prison and prejudice freed,

In soft accents shall lisp the Republican creed,

And with tri-colour’d fillets, and cravats of green,

Shall crowd round the altar of Saint Guillotine.

III.

See the level of Freedom sweeps over the land—

The vile Aristocracy’s doom is at hand!

Not a seat shall be left in a House that we know,

But for Earl BUONAPARTE and Baron MOREAU.

But the rights of the Commons shall still be respected,

Buonaparte himself shall approve the elected;

And the Speaker shall march with majestical mien,

And make his three bows to the grave Guillotine.

IV.

Two heads, says the proverb, are better than one,

But the Jacobin choice is for Five Heads or none.

By Directories only can Liberty thrive;

Then down with the ONE, Boys! and up with the FIVE!

How our bishops and judges will stare with amazement,

When their heads are thrust out at the National Casement![17]

When the National Razor[17] has shaved them quite clean,

What a handsome oblation to Saint Guillotine!

[The following Lines were written by an ardent reformer, W. ROSCOE, the accomplished author of the “Life of Leo X.,” and other works, to commemorate the taking of the Bastille (14th July, 1789), and the publication by the National Assembly (on 20th August following) of the famous “Declaration of Rights”—a manifesto which became the creed of the Revolution, and which promulgated, as the basis of social government, the specious but impracticable doctrines of liberty, equality, and the sovereignty of the people exercised by universal suffrage. How the hopes and anticipations of moderate reformers, as embodied in these lines, were falsified by the spoliations and massacres which rapidly followed are but too well known.

When, therefore, the Anti-Jacobin was established to combat the principles of the Revolution, these Lines were, for party purposes, maliciously referred to, and significantly recommended to be “recited on the anniversary of the 14th August”. To make this allusion more clear, it must be remembered that on the 10th August, 1792, after frightful massacres, the Hotel de Ville was seized and the Tuileries stormed. On the 13th the king and family were imprisoned in the Temple. His deposition, the dismissal of the Ministers, and the formation of a National Convention, on more popular principles than the Legislative Assembly, were decreed by the victors. On the 14th Le Brun became Minister for Foreign Affairs, Danton for Justice, and Monge for Marine; while the Girondist Ministers, Roland, Servan, and Clavière, resumed their former functions as Ministers of the Interior, War, and Finance respectively.

The Song, La Sainte Guillotine, was evidently written as a Contrast, and not as a Parody—a few lines at the beginning only excepted, which serve as an introduction to verses on another promised phase of the Revolution, the invasion of England.—ED.]

LINES.

Written for the purpose of being recited on the Anniversary of the 14th of August. By WILLIAM ROSCOE, Esq.

O’er the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France,

See the day-star of liberty rise;

Through the clouds of detraction unsullied advance,

And hold its new course through the skies!

An effulgence so mild, with a lustre so bright,

All Europe with wonder surveys;

And, from deserts of darkness and dungeons of night,

Contends for a share of the blaze.

Ah! who ’midst the horrors of night would abide,

That can breathe the pure breezes of morn?

Or who, that has drunk the pure crystalline tide,

To the feculent flood would return?

When the bosom of Beauty the throbbing heart meets,

Ah, who can the transport decline?

Or who, that has tasted of Liberty’s sweets,

The prize but with life would resign?

Let Burke like a bat from its splendour retire,

A splendour too strong for his eyes;

Let pedants and fools his effusions admire,

Entrapt in his cobwebs like flies.

Shall insolent Sophistry hope to prevail

Where Reason opposes her weight,

When the welfare of millions is hung in the scale,

And the balance yet trembles with fate?

But ’tis over—high Heaven the decision approves,

Oppression has struggled in vain,

To the hell she has form’d Superstition removes,

And Tyranny bites his own chain.

In the records of Time a new era unfolds,

All nature exults in its birth;

His creation benign the Creator beholds,

And gives a new charter to earth.

Oh! catch the high import, ye winds, as ye blow;

Oh! hear it, ye waves, as ye roll,

From regions that feel the sun’s vertical glow,

To the farthest extremes of the Pole.

Equal rights, equal laws, to the nations around,

Peace and friendship its precepts impart,

And wherever the footsteps of man shall be found,

He shall bind the decree on his heart.

[The Account of what was “anticipated to take place at the Meeting of the Friends of Freedom”—alluded to on page 29—duly appeared in The Anti-Jacobin, but has never hitherto formed a part of the collection of its Poetry. As it is marked by much ability, and has been often quoted, it appears to the editor desirable to introduce some portion of it into the present edition of the Poetry.

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM.

The House of Russell being given, LORD JOHN and LORD WILLIAM both rose at once.

LORD JOHN made a very neat, and LORD WILLIAM a very appropriate speech.

ALDERMAN COOMBE made a very impressive speech.

MR. TIERNEY made a very pointed speech.

MR. GREY made a very fine speech. He described the ministers as “bold bad men”—their measures he repeatedly declared to be not only “weak, but wicked”.

MR. BYNG said a few words.

GENERAL TARLETON and the Electors of Liverpool being given, the General, after an eulogium on Mr. Fox, begged to anticipate their favourite concluding toast, and to give “The Cause of Freedom all over the World”. This toast unfortunately gave rise to an altercation which threatened to disturb the harmony of the evening. Olaudah Equiano, the African, and Henry Yorke, the mulatto, insisted upon being heard; but as it appeared that they were entering upon a subject which would have entirely altered the complexion of the Meeting, they were, though not without some difficulty, withheld from proceeding further.

MR. ERSKINE rose, in consequence of some allusions which had been made to Trial by Jury. He professed himself to be highly flattered by the encomiums which had been lavished upon him; at the same time he was conscious that he could not, without some degree of reserve, consent to arrogate to himself those qualities which the partiality of his friends had attributed to him. He had, on former occasions, declared himself to be clothed with the infirmities of man’s nature; and he now begged leave in all humility to reiterate that confession; he should never cease to consider himself as a feeble, and with respect to the extent of his faculties in many respects, a finite being—he had ever borne in mind, and he hoped he should ever continue to bear in mind, those words of the inspired Penman, “Thou hast made him less than the angels, to crown him with glory and honour”. These lines were indeed applicable to the state of man in general, but of no man more than himself; they appeared to him pointed and personal, and little less than prophetic; they were always present to his mind; he could wish to wear them in his breast as a sort of amulet against the enchantment of public applause, and the witcheries of vanity and self-delusion; yet if he were indeed possessed of those superhuman powers—all pretensions to which he again begged leave most earnestly to disclaim—if he were endowed with the eloquence of an angel, and with all those other faculties which we attribute to angelic natures, it would be impossible for him to do justice to the eloquence with which the Honourable Gentleman who opened the meeting had defended the Cause of Freedom, identified as he conceived it to be with the persons and government of the DIRECTORY. In his present terrestrial state he could only address it as a prayer to God and as counsel to Man that the words which they had heard from that Honourable Gentleman might work inwardly in their hearts, and in due time, produce the fruit of Liberty and Revolution.

He had not the advantage of being personally acquainted with any of the Gentlemen of the DIRECTORY; he understood, however, that one of them (MR. MERLIN) previous to the last change, had stood in a situation similar to his own—he was, in fact, nothing less than a leading Advocate and Barrister in the midst of a free, powerful and enlightened people.

The conduct of the DIRECTORY with regard to the exiled Deputies had been objected to by some persons on the score of a pretended rigour. For his part he should only say that having been, as he had been, both a Soldier and a Sailor, if it had been his fortune to have stood in either of those two relations to the DIRECTORY—as a Man and as a Major-General he should not have scrupled to direct his artillery against the National Representation:—as a Naval Officer he would undoubtedly have undertaken for the removal of the Exiled Deputies; admitting the exigency, under all its relations, as it appeared to him to exist, and the then circumstances of the times, with all their bearings and dependencies, branching out into an infinity of collateral considerations, and involving in each a variety of objects political, physical, and moral; and these again under their distinct and separate heads, ramifying into endless subdivisions which it was foreign to his purpose to consider.

Having thus disposed of this part of his subject, MR. ERSKINE passed in a strain of rapid and brilliant allusions over a variety of points characteristic of the conduct and disposition of the present Ministry; Mr. Burke’s metaphor of “the Swinish Multitude,” Mr. Reeves’ metaphor of the “Tree of Monarchy,” “the Battle of Tranent,” “the March to Paris,” the phrase of “Acquitted Felons,” and the exclamation of “Perish Commerce”—which last expression he declared he should never cease to attribute to Mr. Windham; so long, at least, as it should please the Sovereign Dispenser to continue to him the power of utterance and the enjoyment of his present faculties. He condemned the expedition to Quiberon, he regretted the “Fate of Messrs. Muir and Palmer,” he exulted in the “Acquittal of Citizens Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, Holcroft and others,” and he blessed that Providence to which (as it had been originally allotted to him (Mr. Erskine) the talents which had been exerted in their defence) the preservation of those Citizens might perhaps be indirectly attributed. He then descanted on the captivity of La Fayette, and the Dividend on the Imperial Loan.

After fully exhausting these subjects, MR. ERSKINE resumed a topic on which he had only slightly glanced before. In a most delicate and sportive vein of humour he contended, that if the people were a Swinish Multitude, those who represented them must necessarily be a Swinish Representation. It would be in vain to attempt to do justice to the polite and easy pleasantry which pervaded this part of MR. ERSKINE’S speech. Suffice it to say that the taste of the Audience showed itself in complete unison with the genius of the Orator, and the whole of this passage was crowned with loud and reiterated plaudits. After a speech of unexampled exertion, MR. ERSKINE now began to enter much at length into a recital of select passages from our most approved English authors, concluding with a copious extract from the several Publications of the late MR. BURKE; but such were the variety and richness of his quotations which he continued to an extent far exceeding the limits of this paper, that we found ourselves under the necessity, either of considerably abridging our original matter, or omitting them altogether, which latter alternative we adopted the more readily as the greater part of these brilliant citations have already passed through the ordeal of a public and patriotic auditory; and as there is every probability that the circumstances of the times will again call them forth on some future emergency.

MR. ERSKINE concluded by recapitulating, in a strain of agonizing and impressive eloquence, the several more prominent heads of his speech:—He had been a Soldier and a Sailor, and had a son at Winchester school—He had been called by Special Retainers, during the summer, into many different and distant parts of the country—travelling chiefly in Post-chaises—He felt himself called upon to declare that his poor faculties were at the service of his Country—of the free and enlightened part of it at least—He stood here as a Man—He stood in the Eye, indeed in the Hand of GOD—to whom (in the presence of the Company and Waiters) he solemnly appealed—He was of Noble, perhaps, Royal Blood—He had a house at Hampstead—was convinced of the necessity of a thorough and radical Reform—His Pamphlet had gone through Thirty Editions—skipping alternately the odd and even numbers—He loved the Constitution, to which he would cling and grapple—And he was clothed with the infirmities of man’s nature—He would apply to the present French Rulers (particularly BARRAS and REUBEL) the words of the poet:—

“Be to their Faults a little blind;

“Be to their Virtues very kind,

“Let all their ways be unconfin’d,

“And clap the Padlock on their mind!”

And for these reasons, thanking the Gentlemen who had done him the honour to drink his Health, he should propose “MERLIN, the late Minister of Justice, and Trial by Jury!” MR. ERSKINE here concluded a speech which had occupied the attention and excited the applause of his Audience during a space of little less than three hours, allowing for about three quarters of an hour, which were occupied by successive fits of fainting, between the principal subdivisions of his discourse.—MR. ERSKINE descended from the Table, and was conveyed down stairs by the assistance of his friends. On arriving at the corner of the Piazzas, they were surprized by a very unexpected embarrassment. MR. ERSKINE’S horses had been taken from the carriage, and a number of able Chairmen engaged to supply their place; but these fellows having contrived to intoxicate themselves with the money which the Coachman had advanced to them on account, were become so restive and unruly, so exorbitant in their demands (positively refusing to abide by their former engagement) that MR. ERSKINE deemed it unsafe to trust himself in their hands, and determined to wait the return of his own more tractable and less chargeable animals. This unpleasant scene continued for above an hour.

MR. SHERIDAN’S health was now drunk in his absence and received with an appearance of general approbation;—when in the midst of the applause MR. FOX arose, in apparent agitation, and directed the attention of the Company to the rising, manly virtues of MR. MACFUNGUS.

MR. MACFUNGUS declared that to pretend he was not elated by the encomiums with which MR. FOX had honoured him was an affectation which he disdained;—such encomiums would ever form the proudest recompense of his patriotic labours—he confessed they were cheering to him—he felt them warm at his heart—and while a single fibre of his frame preserved its vibration, it would throb in unison to the approbation of that Honourable Gentleman. The applause of the Company was no less flattering to him—he felt his faculties invigorated by it, and stimulated to the exertion of new energies in the race of mind. Every other sensation was obliterated and absorbed by it; for the present, however, he would endeavour to suppress his feelings, and concentre his energies for the purpose of explaining to the Company why he assisted now for the first time at the celebration of the Fifth Revolution which had been effected in regenerated France. The various and extraordinary talents of the Right Hon. Gentleman—his vehement and overpowering perception, his vigorous and splendid intuition would for ever attract the admiration of all those who were in any degree endowed with those faculties themselves or capable of estimating them in others; as such, he had ever been among the most ardent admirers, and on many occasions, among the most ardent supporters of the Right Hon. Gentleman—he agreed with him in many points—in his general love of Liberty and Revolution; in his execration of the War; in his detestation of Ministers; but he entertained his doubts, and till those doubts were cleared up, he could not, consistently with his principles, attend at the celebration of any Revolution whatever.

These doubts, however, were now satisfactorily done away. A pledge had been entered into for accomplishing an effectual radical Revolution; not for the mere overthrow of the present System, nor for the establishment of any other in its place; but for the effecting such a series of Revolutions as might be sufficient for the establishment of a Free System.

MR. MACFUNGUS continued he was incapable of compromising with first principles, of acquiescing in short-sighted temporary palliative expedients: if such had been his temper he should assuredly have rested satisfied with the pledge which that Right Hon. Gentleman had entered into about six months ago on the subject of Parliamentary Reform, in which pledge he considered the promise of that previous and preliminary Revolution, to which he had before alluded, as essentially implicated.

“Whenever this Reform takes place,” exclaimed MR. MACFUNGUS, “the present degraded and degrading system must fall into dissolution; it must sink and perish with the corruptions which have supported it. The national energies will awake, and shaking off their lethargy as their fetters drop from them, they will follow the Angel of their Revolution, while the Genius of Freedom soaring aloft beneath the orb of Gallic Illumination will brush away as with the wing of an Eagle all the cobwebs of Aristocracy. But before the Temple of Freedom can be erected in their place, the surface which they have occupied must be smoothed and levelled—it must be cleared by repeated Revolutionary Explosions from all the lumber and rubbish with which Aristocracy and Fanaticism will endeavour to encumber it, and to impede the progress of the holy work.—The sacred level, the symbol of Fraternal Equality, must be passed over the whole.—The completion of the Edifice will indeed be the more tardy, but it will not be the less durable for having been longer delayed—Cemented with the blood of tyrants, and the tears of the Aristocracy, it will rise a monument for the astonishment and veneration of future ages. The remotest posterity, with our children yet unborn, and the most distant portions of the Globe, will crowd around its Gates and demand admission into its Sanctuary.—The Tree of Liberty will be planted in the midst of it, and its branches will extend to the ends of the Earth, while the Friends of Freedom meet and fraternize and amalgamate under its consolatory shade. There our Infants shall be taught to lisp in tender accents the Revolutionary Hymn—there with wreaths of myrtle, and oak, and poplar, and vine and olive and cypress and ivy; with violets and roses and daffodils and dandelions in our hands we will swear respect to childhood and manhood and old age, and virginity and womanhood and widowhood; but above all to the Supreme Being.—There we will decree and sanction the Immortality of the Soul.—There pillars and obelisks, and arches and pyramids, will awaken the love of Glory and of our Country.—There Painters and Statuaries, with their chisels and colours, and Engravers with their engraving tools will perpetuate the interesting features of our Revolutionary Heroes; while our Poets and Musicians, with an honourable emulation, strive to immortalize their memory. Their bones will be entombed in the Vault below, while their sacred Shades continue hovering over our Heads—those venerated Manes which from time to time will require to be appeased by the blood of the remaining Aristocrats.—Then Peace and Freedom, and Fraternity and Equality will pervade the whole Earth—while the Vows of Republicanism, the Alter of Patriotism, and the Revolutionary Pontiff, with the thrilling volcanic Sympathies, whether of Holy Fury or of ardent Fraternal Civism, uniting and identifying, produce as it were an electric Energy.”

MR. MACFUNGUS here paused for a few moments, seemingly overpowered by the excess of Sensibility, and the force of the ideas which he was labouring to convey.—The whole Company appeared to sympathize with his unaffected emotions. After a short interval, he recovered himself from a very impressive silence, and continued as follows:

“These prospects, Fellow-Citizens, may possibly be deferred. The Machiavelism of Governments may for the time prevail, and this unnatural and execrable contest may yet be prolonged; but the hour is not far distant; Persecution will only serve to accelerate it, and the blood of Patriotism streaming from the severing axe will call down vengeance on our oppressors in a voice of Thunder. I expect the contest, and I am prepared for it.—I hope I shall never shrink nor swerve nor start aside wherever duty and inclination may place me. My services, my life itself, are at your disposal—Whether to act or to suffer, I am yours—With HAMPDEN in the field, or with SIDNEY on the scaffold. My example may be more useful to you than my talents: and this head may perhaps serve your cause more effectually, if placed on a pole on Temple Bar, than if it was occupied in organizing your Committees, in preparing your Revolutionary Explosions, and conducting your Correspondence.”

MR. MACFUNGUS said he should give, as an unequivocal test of his sentiments, “BUONAPARTE AND A RADICAL REFORM”.

The conclusion of MR. MACFUNGUS’S speech was followed by a simultaneous burst of rapturous approbation from every part of the room. The applause continued for several minutes, during which MR. MACFUNGUS repeatedly rose to express his feelings.

The conversation now became more mixed and animated; several excellent Songs were sung, and Toasts drank, while the progressive and patriotic festivity of the evening was heightened by the vocal powers of several of the most popular Singers. A new Song written by Captain MORRIS received its sanction in the warmest expression of applause. The whole company joined with enthusiasm in their old favourite Chorus of Bow! Wow!! Wow!!!]

[MACFUNGUS stands for SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, who, after studying medicine in Edinburgh, settled in London, and wrote for the opposition newspapers, particularly the Morning Post, Daniel Stuart, the proprietor, being his father-in-law. The first work that brought him into notice was his Vindiciæ Gallicæ (1791), in reply to Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, which splendid philippic it greatly surpassed in philosophic thought, sound feeling, and common sense. It was enthusiastically received by the Liberal party, whose leaders eagerly sought his acquaintance and co-operation; and when the Association of the Friends of the People was formed, he was appointed Secretary. His subsequent successful career as an Advocate, Indian Judge, Member of Parliament, Minister under Lord Grey, and as an English historian, bore out the promise of his youth. He was born in 1765 and died in 1832.—ED.]

No. V.

Dec. 11, 1797.

We have already hinted at the principle by which the followers of the Jacobinical sect are restrained from the exercise of their own favourite virtue of charity. The force of this prohibition, and the strictness with which it is observed, are strongly exemplified in the following poem. It is the production of the same author [SOUTHEY] whose happy effort in English Sapphics we presumed to imitate; the present effusion is in Dactylics, and equally subject to the laws of Latin Prosody.

THE SOLDIER’S WIFE.

Wēāry̆ wăy-wāndĕrĕr, lānguĭd ănd sĭck ăt hĕart,

Trāvĕllĭng pāinfŭlly̆ ōvĕr thĕ rūggĕd roăd;

Wīld vĭsăg’d wāndĕrĕr—āh fŏr thy̆ hēavy̆ chănce.

We think that we see him fumbling in the pocket of his blue pantaloons; that the splendid shilling is about to make its appearance, and to glitter in the eyes, and glad the heart of the poor sufferer. But no such thing—the bard very calmly contemplates her situation, which he describes in a pair of very pathetical stanzas; and after the following well-imagined topic of consolation, concludes by leaving her to Providence.

Thy husband will never return from the war again;

Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity;

Cold are thy famished babes—God help thee, widow’d one!

We conceived that it would be necessary to follow up this general rule with the particular exception, and to point out one of those cases in which the embargo upon Jacobin bounty is sometimes suspended;[18] with this view we have subjoined the poem of

THE SOLDIER’S FRIEND.

DACTYLICS.

Come, little Drummer Boy, lay down your knapsack here:

I am the soldier’s friend—here are some books for you;

Nice clever books by TOM PAINE, the philanthropist.[19]

Here’s half-a-crown for you—here are some handbills too—

Go to the barracks, and give all the soldiers some.

Tell them the sailors are all in a mutiny.

Exit Drummer Boy, with handbills and half-a-crown.—Manet Soldier’s Friend.

Liberty’s friends thus all learn to amalgamate,

Freedom’s volcanic explosion prepares itself,

Despots shall bow to the fasces of liberty.

Reason, philosophy, “fiddledum diddledum,”

Peace and fraternity, higgledy, piggledy,

Higgledy, piggledy, “fiddledum diddledum”.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

SONNET.—TO LIBERTY.

Just Guardian of man’s social bliss! for thee

The paths of danger gladly would I tread:

For thee! contented, join the glorious dead,

Who nobly scorn’d a life that was not free!

But worse than death it pains my soul to see

The Lord of Ruin, by wild Uproar led,

Hell’s first-born, ANARCHY, exalt his head,

And seize thy throne, and bid us bow the knee!

What though his iron sceptre, blood-imbrued,

Crush half the nations with resistless might;

Never shall this firm spirit be subdued:

In chains, in exile, still the chanted rite,

O LIBERTY! to thee shall be renew’d:

O still be sea-girt ALBION thy delight!    D.

No. VI.

Dec. 18, 1797.

We cannot enough congratulate ourselves on having been so fortunate as to fall upon the curious specimens of classical metre and correct sentiment which we have made the subject of our late Jacobinical imitations.

The fashion of admiring and imitating these productions has spread in a surprising degree. Even those who sympathise with the principles of the writer selected as our model, seem to have been struck with the ridicule of his poetry.

There appeared in the Morning Chronicle of Monday a Sapphic Ode, apparently written by a friend and associate of our author, in which he is however travestied most unmercifully. And to make the joke the more pointed, the learned and judicious editor contrived to print the ode en masse, without any order of lines, or division of stanza; so that it was not discovered to be verse till the next day, when it was explained in a hobbling erratum.

We hardly know which to consider as the greater object of compassion in this case—the original Odist, thus parodied by his friend, or the mortified Parodist thus mutilated by his printer. “Et tu, Brute!” has probably been echoed from each of these worthies to his murderer, in a tone that might melt the hardest heart to pity.

We cordially wish them joy of each other, and we resign the modern Lesbian lyre into their hands without envy or repining.

Our author’s DACTYLICS have produced a second imitation (conveyed to us from an unknown hand), with which we take our leave of this species of poetry also.

THE SOLDIER’S WIFE.[20]

DACTYLICS.

“Wēāry̆ wăy-wāndĕrĕr,” &c. &c.

IMITATION.

DACTYLICS.

Being the quintessence of all the Dactylics that ever were, or ever will be written.

HUMBLY ADDRESSED TO THE AUTHOR OF THE ABOVE.

Wearisome Sonnetteer, feeble and querulous,

Painfully dragging out thy demo-cratic lays—

Moon-stricken Sonnetteer, “ah! for thy heavy chance!”

Sorely thy Dactylics lag on uneven feet:

Slow is the syllable which thou wouldst urge to speed,

Lame and o’erburthen’d, and “screaming its wretchedness!”

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .[21]

Ne’er talk of ears again! look at thy spelling-book;

Dilworth and Dyche[22] are both mad at thy quantities—

DACTYLICS, call’st thou ’em—“God help thee, silly one!”

[The following is the Sapphic Ode alluded to above, which was intended by the poet of the Morning Chronicle as a “retort courteous” to the Friend of Humanity. The printer of that paper, unfortunately, being new to “such branches of learning,” and not dreaming it could be intended for poetry, printed it as below. The mistake seems to have been immediately discovered, for it re-appeared next day (Dec. 12) in the guise of verse.—ED.]

THE COLLECTOR AND THE HOUSEHOLDER.

The Hint taken from the Anti-Jacobin, “Needy Knife-Grinders”

H.

Greedy Collector, whither are you going, thus with your inkhorn in your buttonhole, and ledger so snugly underneath your coat? Say, greedy Collector.

C.

Much I rejoice that I have met you here, friend: turn back, I pri’thee, ’tis with you I want to speak; I am come on business of importance—gentle Householder.

H.

Greedy Collector, well I know your business, ’tis for my taxes you are come to dun me; well! ’tis the last time you will have a right to ask me for money. Buggy, no longer do I drive a smart one; smash went my gig, as long [ago] as Easter; down Highgate hill we tumbled altogether, horse, wife, and I, Sir. One broke his knees, and[23] another broke his collar-bone; there’s an end of pleasuring on Sundays. Take my last payment; there is your two pounds twelve shillings and ninepence.

C.

Gentle householder, much are you mistaken; Order, Religion, Constitution, Laws, and rational freedom, all demand from you a—triple assessment.

H.

Triple Assessment! What beside the old tax?

C.

Certainly: come, deposit, I’m a waiting.

H.

Wait and be damned. What is it you are after?

C.

Ten pounds eleven.

H.

Ten pounds eleven! have I not informed thee gig I have none? I’ve sent it to the hammer; Pay for a gig and not [to] have it!

C.

But you had one at Easter!

H.

Easter is past and gone. I’ll never pay thee.

C.

Gentle Householder, then I must proceed to shew thee a little bit of parchment, called a writ of distringer [for distringas].

[Exit Collector to take possession of the Householder’s bed and furniture.

The verses which we here present to the public were written immediately after the Revolution of the 4th of September. We should be much obliged to any of our classical and loyal correspondents for an English translation of them.

LATIN VERSES

Written immediately after the Revolution of the 4th of September.

Ipsa mali Hortatrix scelerumque uberrima Mater

In se prima suos vertit lymphata furores,

Luctaturque diù secum, et conatibus ægris

Fessa cadit, proprioque jacet labefacta veneno.

Mox tamen ipsius rursúm violentia morbi

Erigit ardentem furiis, ultróque minantem

Spargere bella procul, vastæque incendia cladis,

Civilesque agitare faces, totumque per orbem

Sceptra super Regum et Populorum subdita colla

Ferre pedem, et sanctas Regnorum evertere sedes.

Aspicis! Ipsa sui bacchatur sanguine Regis,

Barbaraque ostentans feralis signa triumphi,

Mole giganteâ campis prorumpit apertis,

Successu scelerum, atque insanis viribus audax.

At quà Pestis atrox rapido se turbine vertit,

Cernis ibi, priscâ morum compage solutâ,

Procubuisse solo civilis fœdera vitæ,

Et quodcunque Fides, quodcunque habet alma verendi

Religio, Pietasque et Legum fræna sacrarum.

Nec spes Pacis adhuc—necdum exsaturata rapinis

Effera Bellatrix, fusove expleta cruore.

Crescit inextinctus Furor, atque exæstuat ingens

Ambitio, immanisque irâ Vindicta renatâ

Reliquias Soliorum et adhuc restantia Regna

Flagitat excidio, prædæque incumbit opimæ.

Una etenim in mediis Gens intemerata ruinis

Libertate probâ, et justo libramine rerum,

Securum faustis degit sub legibus ævum;

Antiquosque colit mores, et jura Parentum

Ordine firma suo, sanoque intacta vigore,

Servat adhuc, hominumque fidem, curamque Deorum.

Eheu! quanta odiis avidoque alimenta furori!

Quanta profanatas inter spoliabitur aras

Victima! si quando versis Victoria fatis

Annuerit scelus extremum, terrâque subactâ

Impius Oceani sceptrum fædaverit Hostis!

No. VII.

Dec. 25, 1797.

We have been favoured with a translation of the Latin verses inserted in our last Number. We have little doubt that our readers will agree with us, in hoping that this may not be the last contribution which we shall receive from the same hand.[24]

Parent of countless crimes, in headlong rage,

War with herself see frantic Gallia wage,

Till worn and wasted by intestine strife,

She falls—her languid pulse scarce quick with life.

But soon she feels through every trembling vein,

New strength collected from convulsive pain:

Onward she moves, and sounds the dire alarm,

And bids insulted nations haste to arm;

Spreads wide the waste of war, and hurls the brand

Of civil discord o’er each troubled land,

While desolation marks her furious course,

And thrones subverted bow beneath her force.

Behold! she pours her Monarch’s guiltless blood,

And quaffs with savage joy the crimson flood;

Then, proud the deadly trophies to display

Of her foul crimes, resistless bursts away,

Unaw’d by justice, unappall’d by fear,

And runs with giant strength her mad career.

Where’er her banners float in barbarous pride,

Where’er her conquest rolls its sanguine tide,

There, the fair fabric of establish’d law,

There social order, and religious awe,

Sink in the general wreck; indignant there

Honour and Virtue fly the tainted air;

Fly the mild duties of domestic life

That cheer the parent, that endear the wife,

The lingering pangs of kindred grief assuage,

Or soothe the sorrows of declining age.

Nor yet can Hope presage th’ auspicious hour,

When Peace shall check the rage of lawless Power;

Nor yet th’ insatiate thirst of blood is o’er,

Nor yet has Rapine ravaged every shore.

Exhaustless Passion feeds th’ augmented flame,

And wild Ambition mocks the voice of Shame;

Revenge, with haggard look and scowling eyes,

Surveys with horrid joy th’ expected prize;

Broods o’er each remnant of monarchic sway,

And dooms to certain death his fancied prey.

For midst the ruins of each falling state,

ONE FAVOUR’D NATION braves the general fate—

One favour’d nation, whose impartial laws

Of sober Freedom vindicate the cause;

Her simple manners, midst surrounding crimes,

Proclaim the genuine worth of ancient times;

True to herself, unconquerably bold,

The rights her valour gain’d she dares uphold;

Still with pure faith her promise dares fulfil,

Still bows submission to th’ Almighty will.

Just Heav’n! how Envy kindles at the sight!

How mad Ambition plans the desperate fight!

With what new fury Vengeance hastes to pour

Her tribes of rapine from yon crowded shore!

Just Heav’n! how fair a victim at the shrine

Of injured Freedom shall her life resign,

If e’er, propitious to the vows of hate,

Unsteady Conquest stamp our mournful fate,

If e’er proud France usurp our ancient reign,

And ride triumphant o’er th’ insulted main!

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Far hence th’ unmanly thought—the voice of Fame

Wafts o’er th’ applauding deep her DUNCAN’S name.

What though the Conqueror of th’ Italian plains

Deem nothing gain’d, while this fair isle remains;

Though his young breast with rash presumption glow,

He braves the vengeance of no vulgar foe:

Conqueror no more, full soon his laurel’d pride

Shall perish—whelm’d in Ocean’s angry tide;

His broken bands shall rue the fatal day,

And scatter’d fleets proclaim BRITANNIA’S sway.

No. VIII.

Jan. 1, 1798.

A correspondent has adapted the beautiful poem of the BATTLE OF SABLA, in “Carlyle’s Specimens of Arabian Poetry,” to the circumstances of the present moment. We shall always be happy to see the poetry of other times and nations so successfully engaged in the service of our country, and of the present order of society.

THE CHOICE.

(FROM THE BATTLE OF SABLA, BY JAAFER BEN ALBA.)

I.

Hast thou not seen th’ insulting foe

In fancied triumphs crown’d?

And heard their frantic rulers throw

These empty threats around?

“Make now YOUR CHOICE! The terms we give,

Desponding Britons, hear!

These fetters on your hands receive,

Or in your hearts the spear.”

Can we forget our old renown;

Resign the empire of the sea;

And yield at once our sovereign’s crown,

Our ancient laws and liberty?

Shall thus the fierce destroyer’s hand

Pass unresisted o’er our native land?

Our country sink, to barb’rous force a prey,

And ransom’d ENGLAND bow to Gallic sway?

II.

“Is then the contest o’er?” we cried,

“And lie we at your feet?

And dare you vauntingly decide

The fortune we shall meet?

A brighter day we soon shall see;

No more the prospect lours;

And Conquest, Peace, and Liberty

Shall gild our future hours.”

Yes! we will guard our old renown;

Assert our empire o’er the sea;

And keep untouch’d our sovereign’s crown,

Our ancient laws and liberty.

Not thus the fierce destroyer’s hand

Shall scatter ruin o’er this smiling land;

No barb’rous force shall here divide its prey;

Nor ransom’d ENGLAND bow to Gallic sway.

III.

The foe advance. In firm array

We’ll rush o’er Albion’s sands—

Till the red sabre marks our way

Amid their yielding bands!

Then as they lie in death’s cold grasp,

We’ll cry, “OUR CHOICE IS MADE!

These hands the sabre’s hilt shall clasp,

Your hearts shall feel the blade”.

Thus Britons guard their ancient fame,

Assert their empire o’er the sea,

And to the envying world proclaim,

One nation still is brave and free—

Resolv’d to conquer or to die,

True to their KING, their LAWS, their LIBERTY:

No barb’rous foe finds here an easy prey—

Un-ransom’d ENGLAND spurns all foreign sway.[25]

The following poem has been transmitted to us, without preface or introduction, by a gentleman of the name of IRELAND.[26] We apprehend from the peculiarities of the style, that it must be the production of a remote period. We are likewise inclined to imagine, that it may contain allusions to some former event in English history. What that event may have been, we must submit to the better judgment and superior information of our readers, from whom we impatiently expect a solution of this interesting question. The editor has been influenced solely by a sense of its poetical merit.

[JA’FAR SON OF ’ULBAH, OF THE BANU-L-HÂRITH.

The Poet, with two companions, went forth to plunder the herds of ’Ukail, a neighbour-tribe, and was beset on his way back by detached parties of that tribe in the valley of Sahbal, whom he overcame and reached home safely.

That even when under Sahbal’s twin peaks upon us drave

the horsemen troop after troop, and the foemen pressed us sore—

They said to us—“Two things lie before you: now must ye choose—

the points of the spears couched at you, or, if ye will not, chains”.

We answered them—“Yea, this thing may fall to you after fight,

when men shall be left on ground, and none shall arise again;

But we know not, if we quail before the assault of Death,

how much may be left of life: the goal is too dim to see”.

We strode to the strait of battle: there cleared us a space around

the white swords in our right hands which the smiths had furbished fair.

To them fell the edge of my blade on that day of Sahbal dale,

and mine was the share thereof whereover my fingers closed.

ED.]

THE DUKE AND THE TAXING-MAN.[27]

Whilome there liv’d in fair Englonde

A Duke of peerless wealth,

And mickle care he took of her

Old Constitution’s health.

Full fifty thousand pounds and more

To him his vassals paid,

But ne to King, ne Countree, he

Would yield th’ assessment made.

The taxing-man, with grim viságe

Came pricking on the way;

The taxing-man, with wrothful words,

Thus to the Duke did say:

“Lord Duke, Lord Duke, thou’st hid from me,

As sure as I’m alive,

Of goodly palfreys seventeen,

Of varlets twenty-five”.

Then out he drew his gray goose quill,

Ydipp’d in ink so black,

And sorely to SURCHARGE the Duke,

I trowe, he was ne slack.

Then ’gan the Duke to looken pale,

And stared as one astound,

Twaie coneynge Clerks[28] eftsoons he spies

Sitting their board around.

“O woe is me,” then cried the Duke,

“Ne mortal wight but errs!

I’ll hie to yon twaie coneynge Clerks,

Yclept Commissioners.”

The Duke he hied him to the board,

And straight ’gan for to say,

“A seely[29] wight I am, God wot,

Ne ken I the right way.

“These varlets twenty-five were ne’er

Liveried in white and red;

Withouten this, what signifie

Wages, and board, and bed?

“And by St. George, that stout horseman,

My palfreys seventeen,

For two years, or perchance for three,

I had forgotten clean.”

“Naie,” quoth the Clerk, “both horse and foot

To hide was thine intent,

Ne seely wight be ye, but didst

With good advisament.[30]

“Surcharge, surcharge, good Taxing-man,

Anon our seals we fix,

Of sterling pounds, Lord Duke, you pay

Three hundred thirty-six.”[31]

EPIGRAM ON THE PARIS LOAN,[32]

CALLED

THE LOAN UPON ENGLAND.

The Paris cits, a patriotic band,

Advance their cash on British freehold land.

But let the speculating rogues beware—

They’ve bought the skin, but who’s to kill the bear?

No. IX.

Jan. 8, 1798.

ODE TO ANARCHY.

BY A JACOBIN.

(BEING AN IMITATION OF HORACE, ODE XXXV. BOOK I.)

O Diva, gratum quæ regis Antium!

Goddess, whose dire terrific power

Spreads from thy much-loved Gallia’s plains

Where’er her blood-stain’d ensigns lower,

Where’er fell Rapine stalks, or barb’rous Discord reigns!

Thou, who canst lift to fortune’s height

The wretch by truth and virtue scorn’d,

And crush with insolent delight,

All whom true merit rais’d, or noble birth adorn’d!

Thee, oft the murd’rous band implores,

Swift darting on its hapless prey:

Thee, wafted from fierce Afric’s shores,

The Corsair Chief invokes to speed him on his way.

Thee, the wild Indian Tribes revere;

Thy charms the roving Arab owns;

Thee, kings, thee tranquil nations fear,

The bane of social bliss, the foe to peaceful thrones.

For, soon as thy loud trumpet calls

To deadly rage, to fierce alarms,

Just Order’s goodly fabric falls,

Whilst the mad people cries, “To arms! to arms!”

With thee Proscription, child of strife,

With Death’s choice implements, is seen,

Her Murderer’s gun, Assassin’s knife,

And, “last not least in love,” her darling Guillotine.

Fond Hope is thine,—the hope of Spoil,

And Faith,—such faith as ruffians keep:

They prosper thy destructive toil,

That makes the Widow mourn, the helpless Orphan weep.

Then false and hollow friends retire,

Nor yield one sigh to soothe despair;

Whilst crowds triumphant Vice admire,

Whilst Harlots shine in robes that deck’d the Great and Fair.

Guard our famed Chief to Britain’s strand!

Britain, our last, our deadliest foe:

Oh, guard his brave associate band!

A band to slaughter train’d, and “nursed in scenes of woe”.

What shame, alas! one little Isle

Should dare its native laws maintain!

At Gallia’s threats serenely smile,

And, scorning her dread power, triumphant rule the main.

For this have guiltless victims died

In crowds at thy ensanguined shrine!

For this has recreant Gallia’s pride

O’erturned Religion’s Fanes, and braved the Wrath Divine!

What Throne, what Altar, have we spared

To spread thy power, thy joys impart?

Ah! then, our faithful toils reward!

And let each falchion pierce some loyal Briton’s heart.

[THE FOLLOWING IS A TRANSLATION, BY DUNCOMBE, OF

HORACE’S ODE TO FORTUNE,

Of which the above Ode is a parody.

O Goddess, whose propitious sway

Thy Antium’s favourite sons obey;

Whose voice from depth of woe recalls

The wretch, and triumphs turns to funerals;

From Thee, rich crops the needy swain

Implores. Thee, sovereign of the main,

The mariner invokes, who braves

In a Bithynian bark the Cretan waves;

Thee, Scythians, wandering far and near,

And unrelenting Dacians, fear:

The warlike sons of Italy;

Cities, and realms, and empires, worship Thee.

Mothers of barbarous monarchs dread,

And purple tyrants, lest thou tread

With spurning foot, and scatter round

The sculptured column on th’ encumbered ground;

And lest the fickle crowd should break

Their bonds; and with loud clamours wake

The peaceful to assert their right

By force of arms, and quell usurping might.

Ruthless necessity prepares

The way for Thee; and ever bears

Huge nails in her strong hands of brass

The wedge, the hook, and lead’s hot molten mass.

Thee Hope and white robed Faith, adore,

So rarely found!—She, when no more

Thou smil’st, attends the fallen great

Stript of his gay attire and stately seat.

But venal crowds and harlots fly:

And, if the flowing casks are dry,

When to the dregs the wine they drink,

From friendship’s yoke the false associates shrink.

Thy aid for Cæsar Rome implores,

Conduct him safe to Britain’s shores,

The limits of the world; and lead

Our new-raised bands against the trembling Mede.

Alas! we mourn our crimes, our scar

And brethren slain in civil wars:

How oft have Roman youth embrued

Their savage hands in streams of social blood!

What has this Iron Age not dared?

What Gods revered? What Altars spared?

O! point again the blunted steel,

And let the Massagete our vengeance feel!—ED.]

The following Song is recommended to be sung at all Convivial Meetings, convened for the purpose of opposing the Assessed-Tax Bill. The correspondent who has transmitted it to us informs us that he has tried it with great success among many of his well-disposed neighbours, who had been at first led to apprehend that the 1–20th part of their income was too great a sacrifice for the preservation of the remainder of their property from French Confiscation.

You have heard of REWBELL,[33]

That demon of hell,

And of BARRAS, his brother Director;

Of the canting LEPAUX,

And that scoundrel MOREAU,

Who betray’d his old friend and protector.

Would you know how these friends,

For their own private ends,

Would subvert our Religion and Throne?—

Do you doubt of their skill

To change Laws at their will?—

You shall hear how they treated their own.

’Twas their pleasure to look,

In a little blue book,

At the Code of their famed legislation,

That with truth they might say,

In the space of one day

They had broke every Law of the Nation.

The first law that they see,

Is “the Press shall be free!”

The next is “the Trial by Jury”:

Then, “the People’s free Choice”;

Then, “the Members’ free Voice”—

When REWBELL exclaim’d in a fury—

“On a method we’ll fall

For infringing them all—

We’ll seize on each Printer and Member:

No period so fit

For a desperate hit,

As our bloody month of September.

“We’ll annul each election

Which wants our correction,

And name our own creatures instead.

When once we’ve our will,

No blood we will spill,

(But let CARNOT be knock’d on the head).

“To Rochefort we’ll drive

Our victims alive,

And as soon as on board we have got ’em,

Since we destine the ship

For no more than one trip,

We can just make a hole in the bottom.

“By this excellent plan,

On the true Rights of Man,

When we’ve founded our fifth Revolution,

Though England’s our foe,

An army shall go

To improve HER corrupt Constitution.

“We’ll address to the Nation

A fine Proclamation

With offers of friendship so warm:

Who can give BUONAPARTE

A welcome so hearty

As the friends of a THOROUGH REFORM?”

No. X.

Jan. 15, 1798.

For the two following poems we are indebted to unknown correspondents. They could not have reached us at a more seasonable period.

The former, we trust, describes the feelings common to every inhabitant of this country. The second, we know too well, is expressive of the sentiments of our enemies.

LINES,

WRITTEN AT THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1797.

Loud howls the storm along the neighbouring shore;

BRITAIN indignant hears the frantic roar:

Her generous sons pour forth on every side,

Firm in their country’s cause—their country’s pride!

See wild Invasion threats this envied land:

Swift to defend her, springs each Social Band:

Her white rocks echoing to their cheerful cry,

“GOD AND OUR KING!”—“ENGLAND AND VICTORY!”

Yes! happy BRITAIN, on thy tranquil coast

No trophies mad Philosophy shall boast!

Though thy disloyal sons, a feeble band,

Sound the loud blast of treason through the land;

Scoff at thy dangers with unnatural mirth,

And execrate the soil which gave them birth;

With jaundiced eye thy splendid triumphs view,

And give to FRANCE the palm to BRITAIN due:

Or,—when loud strains of gratulation ring,[34]

And lowly bending to the ETERNAL KING,

Thy SOVEREIGN bids a nation’s praise arise

In grateful incense to the fav’ring skies—

Cast o’er each solemn scene a scornful glance,

And only sigh for ANARCHY and FRANCE.

Yes! unsupported Treason’s standard falls,

Sedition vainly on her children calls,

While Cities, Cottages, and Camps contend,

Their King, their Laws, their Country to defend.[35]

Raise, BRITAIN, raise thy sea-encircled head;

Round the wide world behold thy glory spread;

Firm as thy guardian oaks thou still shalt stand,

The dread and wonder of each hostile land;

While the dire fiends of discord idly rave,

And, mad with anguish, curse the severing wave.

QUEEN of the OCEAN, lo! she smiles serene,

’Mid the deep horrors of the dreadful scene;

With heartfelt piety to Heav’n she turns—

From Heav’n the flame of British courage burns—

She dreads no power but HIS who rules the ball,

At whose “great bidding” empires rise and fall;

In HIM, on peaceful plain, or tented field,

She trusts, secure in HIS protecting shield—

GALLIA, thy threats she scorns—BRITAIN SHALL NEVER YIELD.

AN ENGLISHWOMAN.

TRANSLATION OF THE NEW SONG

OF THE

“ARMY OF ENGLAND”.

WRITTEN BY THE CI-DEVANT BISHOP OF AUTUN.[36]

WITH NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR.

Good Republicans all,

The Directory’s call

Invites you to visit JOHN BULL;

Oppress’d by the rod

Of a King, and a God,[37]

The cup of his misery’s full.

Old JOHNNY shall see

What makes a man FREE;

Not parchments, nor Statutes on Paper;

And stripp’d of his riches,

Great Charter, and breeches,

Shall cut a FREE Citizen’s caper.

Then away, let us over

To Deal, or to Dover—

We laugh at his talking so big;

He’s pamper’d with feeding,

And wants a sound bleeding—

Par Dieu! he shall bleed like a pig!

JOHN, tied to the stake,

A grand baiting will make,

When worried by mastiffs of France;

What REPUBLICAN FUN,

To see his blood run,

As at Lyons, La Vendée, and Nantz![38]

With grape-shot discharges,

And plugs in his barges,

With National Razors good store,

We’ll pepper and shave him,

And in the Thames lave him—

How sweetly he’ll bellow and roar!

What the villain likes worse,

We’ll vomit his Purse,

And make it the guineas disgorge;

For your RAPHAELS and RUBENS

We would not give two-pence;

Stick, stick to the PICTURES OF GEORGE.

No Venus of stone,

But of good flesh and bone,

Will do for a true Democrat;

When weary with slaughter,

With JOHN’S Wife and Daughter,

We’ll join in a little chit-chat.

The Shop-keeping hoard,

The Tenant and Lord,

And the Merchants,[39] are excellent prey:

At our cannon’s first thunder,

Rape, pillage, and plunder

The Order shall be of the day.

French fortunes and lives,

French daughters and wives,

Have five honest men to defend ’em!

And BARRAS and Co.

When to England we go,

Will kindly take JOHN’S in commendam.

No. XI.

Jan. 22, 1798.

We have said in another part of our paper of this day, “that though we shall never begin an attack, we shall always be prompt to repel it”.

On this principle, we could not pass over in silence the EPISTLE TO THE EDITORS OF THE Anti-Jacobin, which appeared in the Morning Chronicle of Wednesday, and from which we have fortunately been furnished with a motto for this day’s paper.

We assure the author of the epistle, that the answer which we have here the honour to address to him, contains our genuine and undisguised sentiments upon the merits of the poem.

Our conjectures respecting the authors and abettors of this performance may possibly be as vague and unfounded as theirs are with regard to the EDITORS of the Anti-Jacobin. We are sorry that we cannot satisfy their curiosity upon this subject—but we have little anxiety for the gratification of our own.

It is hardly to be expected, that the character of the epistle should be taken on trust from the editors of this volume; it is thought best, therefore, to subjoin the whole performance as it originally appeared—a mode of hostility obviously the most fair, and in respect to the combatants in the cause of Jacobinism, by much the most effectual. They are always best opposed by the arms which they themselves furnish. Jacobinism shines by its own light.

To the respectable names which the author of the following address has thought proper to connect with the “ANTI-JACOBIN,” no apology is made for thus preserving this otherwise perishable specimen of dulness and defamation. He who has been reviled by the enemies of the “ANTI-JACOBIN,” must feel that principles are attributed to him, of which he need not be ashamed: and when the abuse is conveyed in such a strain of feebleness and folly, he must see that those principles excite animosity only in quarters of which he need not be afraid.

It is only necessary to add, what is most conscientiously the truth, that this production, such as it is, is by far the best of all the attacks that the combined wits of the cause have been able to muster against the “ANTI-JACOBIN”.

EPISTLE TO THE EDITORS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.[40]

Hic Niger est; hunc tu, Romane, caveto!

To tell what gen’rals did, or statesmen spoke,

To teach the world by truths, or please by joke;

To make mankind grow bold as they peruse,

Judge on existing things, and—weigh the news;

For this a PAPER first display’d its page,

Commanding tears and smiles through ev’ry age!

Hail, justly famous! who in modern days

With nobler flight aspire to higher praise;

Hail, justly famous! whose discerning eyes

At once detect MISTAKES, MIS-STATEMENTS, LIES;[41]

10

Hail, justly famous! who with fancy blest,

Use fiend-like virulence for sportive jest;

Who only bark to serve your private ends—

Patrons of Prejudice, Corruption’s friends!

Who hurl your venom’d darts at well-earned fame—

Virtue your hate, and Calumny your aim!

Whoe’er ye are, all hail!—whether the skill

Of youthful CANNING guides the ranc’rous quill;

With powers mechanic far above his age,

Adapts the paragraph and fills the page;

20

Measures the column, mends whate’er’s amiss,

Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS;

Or HAMMOND,[42] leaving his official toil,

O’er this great work consume the midnight oil—

Bills, passports, letters, for the Muses quit,

And change dull business for amusing wit:—

His life of labour at one gasp is o’er,

His books forgot—his desk beloved no more!

Proceed to prop the Ministerial cause;

See consequential MORPETH[43] nods applause;

30

In ev’ry fair one’s ears at balls and plays

The gentle GRANVILLE LEVESON[44] whispers praise:

Well-judging Patrons, whom such works can please;

Great works, well worthy Patrons such as these!

Who heard, not raptured, the poetic Sage

Who sung of Gallia in a headlong rage,

And blandly drew with no uncourtly grace

The simple manners of our English race—

Extoll’d great DUNCAN, and, supremely brave,

Whelm’d BUONAPARTE’S pride beneath the wave?

40

I swear by all the youths that MALMESBURY[45] chose,

By ELLIS’[46] sapient prominence of nose,

By MORPETH’S gait, important, proud, and big—

By LEVESON GOWER’S crop-imitating wig,

That, could the pow’rs which in those numbers shine,

Could that warm spirit animate my line,

Your glorious deeds which humbly I rehearse—

Your deeds should live immortal as my verse;

And, while they wonder’d whence I caught my flame,

Your sons should blush to read their fathers’ shame!

50

Proceed, great men!—your office is not done;

Proceed with what you have so well begun:

Load FOX (if you by PITT would be preferr’d),

With ev’ry guilt that KENYON ever heard—

Adult’rer, gamester, drunkard, cheat and knave,

A factious demagogue and pension’d slave!

Loose, loose your cry—with ire satiric flash:

Let all the Opposition feel your lash;

And prove them to these hot and partial times,

A combination of the worst of crimes!

60

But softer numbers softer subjects fit:

In liquid phrases thrill the praise of PITT;

Extol in eulogies of candid truth

The Virgin Minister—the Heav’n-born Youth;

The greatest gift that fate to England gave,

Created to support and born to save;

Prompt to supply whate’er his country lacks—

Skilful to GAG, and knowing how to TAX!

With him companions meet in order stand—

A firm, compact, and well-appointed band;

70

Skill’d to advance or to retreat, DUNDAS,[47]

And bear thick battle on his front of brass;

GRENVILLE with pond’rous head, which match’d we find

By equal ponderosity behind.——

But hold, my Muse; nor farther these pursue!—

Great Editors, we have digress’d from you;

From you, to whom our trivial lays belong,

From you, the sole inspirers of our song!

Proceed:—urge on the same vindictive strain,

To gain the applauses of great MALMESBURY’S train;

80

With jaundiced eyes the noblest patriot scan:

Proceed—be more opprobrious if you can;

Proceed—be more abusive ev’ry hour;

To be more stupid is beyond your power.

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE TO THE EDITORS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

Nostrorum sermonum candide judex!

Bard of the borrow’d lyre! to whom belong

The shreds and remnants of each hackney’d song;

Whose verse thy friends in vain for wit explore,

And count but one good line in eighty-four!

Whoe’er thou art, all hail! Thy bitter smile

Gilds our dull page, and cheers our humble toil!

For yet—though firm and fearless in the cause

Of pure Religion, Liberty, and Laws,—

Though TRUTH approved, though fav’ring VIRTUE smiled,

Some doubts remained: WE yet were unreviled.

10

Thanks to thy zeal! those doubts at length are o’er!

Thy suffrage crowns our wish!—WE ask no more

To stamp with sterling worth each honest line,

Than Censure, cloth’d in vapid Verse like thine!

But say—in full blown honours dost thou sit

’Midst BROOKES’S ELDERS[48] on the BENCH OF WIT,

Where HARE,[49] chief-justice, frames the stern decree,

While with their learned brother, sages three,

FITZPATRICK,[50] TOWNSHEND,[51] SHERIDAN, agree?

Or art thou One—THE PARTY’S flattered fool,[52]

20

Train’d in Debrett’s, or Ridgway’s civic school—

One, who with rant and fustian daily wears,

Well-natured RICHARDSON![53] thy patient ears;—

Who sees nor Taste nor Genius in these times,

Save PARR’S[54] buzz prose,[55] and COURTENAY’S[56] kidnapp’d rhymes?[57]

Or is it he,—the youth,[59] whose daring soul

With half a mission sought the Frozen Pole;—

And then, returning from the unfinish’d work,

Wrote half a letter,—to demolish BURKE?

Studied Burke’s manner,—aped his forms of speech;

30

Though when he strives his metaphors to reach,

One luckless slip his meaning overstrains,

And loads the blunderbuss with BEDFORD’S brains.[60]

Whoe’er thou art—ne’er may thy patriot fire,

Unfed by praise or patronage, expire!

Forbid it, Taste!—with Compensation large

Patrician hands thy labours shall o’ercharge![61]

BEDFORD and WHITBREAD shall vast sums advance,

The Land and Malt of Jacobin Finance!

Whoe’er thou art—before thy feet we lay,

40

With lowly suit, our Number of to-day!

Spurn not our offering with averted eyes!

Let thy pure breath revive the extinguished Lies!

Mistakes, Mis-statements, now so oft o’erthrown,

Rebuild, and prop with nonsense of thy own!

Pervert our meaning, and misquote our text—

And furnish us a motto for the next!

ODE TO LORD MOIRA.

I.

If on your head[62] some vengeance fell,

MOIRA, for every tale you tell,

The listening Lords to cozen;[63]

If but one whisker lost its hue,

Changed (like Moll Coggin’s tail) to blue,

I’d hear them by the dozen.

II.

But still, howe’er you draw your bow,[64]

Your charms improve, your triumphs grow,

New grace adorns your figure;

More stiff your boots, more black your stock,

10

Your hat assumes a prouder cock,

Like Pistol’s (if ’twere bigger).

III.

Tell then your stories, strange and new,[65]

Your Fathers fame[66] shall vouch them true;

So shall the Dublin Papers;

Swear by the stars[67] that saw the sight,

That infant thousands die each night,[68]

While troops blow out their tapers.

IV.

SHUCKBURGH[69][70] shall cheer you with a smile,

MACPHERSON[71][71] simpering all the while,

20

With BASTARD[71][72] and with Bruin:[73]

And fierce NICHOLL,[74] who wields at will

Th’ emphatic stick, or powerful quill,

To prove his country’s ruin.

V.

Each day new followers[75] crowd your board,

And lean expectants hail my Lord

With adoration fervent:

Old THURLOW,[76] though he swore by G—

No more to own a master’s nod,

Is still your humble servant.

30

VI.

Old PULTENEY[77][78] too, your influence feels,

And asks from you th’ Exchequer Seals,

To tax and save the nation:

TOOKE trembles,[79] lest your potent charms

Should lure CHARLES FOX from his fond arms,

To YOUR Administration.[81]

36

[TRANSLATION OF HORACE, BOOK II., ODE VIII.

BY ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM.

Avenger of insulted truth,

Had Heaven, Barine, dimm’d one tooth;

Or bade, in justice bade, thee wail

A speck upon a single nail—

I’d trust thee: but ere well the vow

Has passed those treacherous lips, there glow

New beauties mantling o’er thy cheek;

And thee the youth, thee only seek.

It profits thee to be forsworn

By thy dead mother’s hallowed urn;

By heaven, and each mute nightly sign,

And every deathless power divine.

Yes: Venus laughs well-pleased, and lo!

The gentle Nymphs are laughing too;

And Cupid, who his burning darts

Whets with fresh blood from lovers’ hearts.

Boyhood is rising to thy sway,

Thy train of slaves augments: e’en they,

Who swore thy threshold to forsake,

Hug the fond chain they cannot break.

Thee for their sons pale mothers fear,

The frugal father for his heir:

And plighted maidens, lest thy charms

Keep the false truants from their arms.—ED.]

NOTES TO THE ODE TO LORD MOIRA.

[This Ode, written by GEORGE ELLIS, refers to the wish of a “Third Party” in the House of Commons, who were dissatisfied with the conduct of the war, the embarrassed state of the finances, and the alarming situation of the country, to have an interview with LORD MOIRA, with a view to effect a change of Ministry. The following extracts from a letter from his Lordship to COL. M‘MAHON, dated June 15, 1797, will throw some light on this negotiation. “They requested that I would endeavour, on the assurance of their support, to form an administration, on the principle of excluding persons, who had on either side made themselves obnoxious to the public. I strenuously recommended them to form an alliance with MR. FOX’S party, that might be satisfactory to themselves, and reduce to strict engagement the extent of the measures, which MR. FOX, when brought into office by themselves, would propose. Hitherto nobody has been designated to any particular office but SIR WILLIAM PULTENEY. The gentleman had said that he was the person whom they should be most gratified in seeing CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, and I had professed to them and to him that there was not any person with whom I could act more confidently. I added, the introduction of LORD THURLOW, SIR W. PULTENEY, and myself, into the Cabinet, would not assure the public of a change of system.”—ED.]

No. XII.

Jan. 29, 1798.

The following Ode[A] was dropped into the letterbox in our Publisher’s window. From its title—“A BIT OF AN ODE TO MR. FOX”—we were led to imagine there was some mistake in the business, and that it was meant to have been conveyed to Mr. Wright’s neighbour, Mr. Debrett, whom we recollected to have been the Publisher of the “Half of a Letter” to the same gentleman, which occasioned so much noise (of horse-laughing) in the world. Our politics certainly do not entitle us to the honourable distinction of being made the channel for communicating such a production to the public. But, for our parts, as we are “not at war with genius,” on whatever side we find it, we are happy to give this Poem the earliest place in our Paper; and shall be equally ready to pay the same attention to any future favours of the same kind, and from the same quarter.

The Poem is a free translation, or rather, perhaps, imitation, of the twentieth Ode of the second Book of HORACE. We have taken the liberty to subjoin the passages of which the parallel is the most striking.

A BIT OF AN ODE TO MR. FOX.[82]

I.

On[83] grey goose quills sublime I’ll soar

To metaphors unreach’d before,

That scare the vulgar reader:

With style well form’d from Burke’s best books—

From rules of grammar (e’en HORNE TOOKE’S)

A bold and free Seceder.

II.

I[84] whom, dear Fox, you condescend

To call your “Honourable Friend,”

Shall live for everlasting:

That[85] Stygian Gallery I’ll quit,

Where printers crowd me, as I sit

Half-dead with rage and fasting.

III.

I[86] feel! the growing down descends,

Like goose-skin, to my fingers’ ends—

Each nail becomes a feather:

My cropp’d head[87] waves with sudden plumes,

Which erst (like Bedford’s, or his groom’s)

Unpowder’d, braved the weather.[88]

IV.

I mount, I mount into the sky,

“Sweet[89] bird,” to[90] Petersburg I’ll fly;

Or, if you bid, to Paris;

Fresh missions of the Fox and Goose

Successful Treaties may produce;

Though PITT in all miscarries.

V.

Scotch,[91] English, Irish Whigs shall read

The Pamphlets, Letters, Odes I breed,

Charm’d with each bright endeavour:

Alarmists[92] tremble at my strain,

E’en[93] PITT, made candid by champaign,

Shall hail ADAIR “the clever”.

VI.

Though criticism assail my name,

And luckless blunders blot my fame,[94]

O![95] make no needless bustle;

As vain and idle it would be

To waste one pitying thought on me,

As to[96] “unPLUMB a RUSSELL”.[97]

[LYRICS OF HORACE, BOOK II., ODE XX.

TRANSLATED BY ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM.

Borne on no weak or vulgar wing,

Upward through air, two-form’d, I’ll spring;

Nor longer grovel here, but soar

Where Envy shall pursue no more.

Not I, from humble lineage sprung,

Not I, dear Patron, whom thy tongue

Summons to fame, will fear to die,

Or bound by Styx’s fetters lie.

A rougher skin my legs assume;

My upward limbs the cygnet’s plume

Invests; my shoulders, fingers feel

The feathery softness o’er them steal.

Fleeter than Icarus now I’ll haste,

A tuneful swan, to Libya’s waste,

And heaving sands, where Bospor’s wave

Tosses, or Arctic tempests rave.

Me Colchis, Dacia me shall learn,

Who hides her fear of Marsian stern;

Me Scythia’s hordes, the well-trained son

Of Spain, and he who quaffs the Rhone.

From my mock bier be far away

The loud lament, the funeral lay;

And, tribute to my fancied doom,

Far the vain honours of the tomb!—ED.]

[The charge of FOX’S having sent ADAIR to St. Petersburg, to counteract the measures of PITT’S government, first broached in Mr. Burke’s “Letter on the Conduct of the Minority,” has been vigorously contradicted, yet so late as April, 1854, it was alluded to as a fact by Lord Malmesbury in the House of Peers. It was, however, on this occasion again authoritatively denied by LORD CAMPBELL, who took occasion to observe that SIR ROBERT ADAIR was “now in his 90th year, and for many years had served his country with great assiduity and fidelity. He had been sent by successive ministers [Mr. Fox, Lord Grey, Mr. Canning (who assisted in libelling him so often in the pages of the present work), Lord Wellesley, Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Wellington] to Vienna, to Constantinople, to Brussels, and to Berlin, and had represented the Crown of England upon some occasions of very great importance, in which he had uniformly acquitted himself to the satisfaction of the Government and for the benefit of his country. He believed a more honourable man had not lived in this country at any time.”

The following denial by Sir Robert Adair himself is copied from his autograph statement, prefixed to the Life of Wilberforce, published in 1838:—“This idle story is here accredited by Mr. Wilberforce, and inserted by his sons, without due examination. It was grounded on a journey I made to Vienna and St. Petersburg in 1791. Doctor Prettyman [sic], Bishop of Winchester, in a work entitled The Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt, published by him in 1823, brought forward the fact of my having gone upon this journey as a criminal charge against Mr. Fox, who, as he pretends, sent me upon it with the intent of counteracting some negociations then carrying on between Great Britain and Russia at St. Petersburg. I answered his accusation, I trust successfully, in two letters published by Longman & Co. [Two Letters from Mr. Adair to the Bp. of Winchester, in answer to the charge of a High Treasonable Misdemeanour brought by his Lordship against Mr. Fox and himself in his Life of the Rt. Hon. W. Pitt, 8vo., 1821], and explained the circumstances which induced me in my travels in 1791 to visit the two capitals above mentioned.—ROBERT ADAIR: 1838.”

The “Mission” was, however, firmly believed in, and PITT was urged, but in vain, by the Duke of Richmond and others of the Government, to arrest FOX for high treason.

The following extract from the Political Memoranda of Francis, fifth Duke of Leeds, now first printed from the Originals in the British Museum; edited by Oscar Browning, for the Camden Society, 1884, is an illustration of the rumours current at the time, and many years after.

“Saty. 24 Novr. 1792. LORD ST. HELENS dined with me. After the Ladies were gone upstairs we conversed, for some time on Foreign affairs.... Speaking of the Russian business of last year he reprobated in the strongest terms the conduct of FOX in sending an agent, MR. ADAIR, to Petersburg to counteract the negociations of this Court at that of Russia. He told me he knew for certain that MR. ADAIR had shewn to some English merchants at Petersburg the Empress’ Picture set in diamonds which had been given to him. That it was not one of the sort usually given, but of much greater value, being set round with large Brilliants, and the whole Picture covered with a Table Diamond instead of Chrystal. That this was a present seldom made but on some very particular occasion or to some great favorite (I remember to have seen such a one in the possession of P. Orlow). LD. ST. H. thought it must have been worth six or seven thousand pounds, and of too much value probably to have been meant for MR. ADAIR. The conclusion we both very naturally drew from this circumstance was not very favorable to MR. FOX.”

The following additional particulars relating to the connection between FOX and ADAIR may not be thought out of place here. They are extracted from the highly interesting and important Croker Papers, being the Correspondence and Diaries, 1809–1830, of the Rt. Hon. J. W. CROKER, M.P., Edited by Louis J. Jennings. M.P., 3 vols., 8vo., 1884.

The first is in these terms: “When ADAIR, whose father was a surgeon, went as FOX’S Ambassador to Russia, LORD WHITWORTH, then the King’s Minister, made a good joke, which tended not a little to lower ADAIR, and defeat his object. ‘Est-ce un homme très considérable, ce M. d’Adair?’ asked the EMPRESS. ‘Pas trop, Madame,’ replied Lord Whitworth, ‘quoique son père était grand seigneur [saigneur].’” The other is taken from a very long statement on various matters, made by K. George IV., when Prince of Wales, to Croker personally. Adair’s wife, the Prince said, was a Frenchwoman with whom ANDREOSSI, when here as Buonaparte’s Minister, intrigued. THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE told him—the Prince of Wales—that Mrs. Adair had offered her a bribe of £10,000 down, and as much more whenever she might want it, if she would communicate the Cabinet secrets, with which the French thought she could not fail to be acquainted, through her intimacy with all the leaders of the Government. This caused a breach between FOX and ADAIR. But the former could only tell ADAIR that an obstacle—which he could neither reveal nor overcome, but which did not affect or alter FOX’S personal regard for him—prevented his appointment to be FOX’S Under-Secretary of State.—Croker Papers, i. 293.—ED.]

No. XIII.

Feb. 5, 1798.

ACME AND SEPTIMIUS; OR, THE HAPPY UNION

CELEBRATED AT THE CROWN AND ANCHOR TAVERN.

FOX,[98] with TOOKE to grace his side,

Thus address’d his blooming bride—

“Sweet! should I e’er, in power or place,

Another Citizen embrace;

Should e’er my eyes delight to look

On aught alive save JOHN HORNE TOOKE,

Doom me to ridicule and ruin,

In the coarse hug[99] of Indian Bruin!”

He spoke;[100] and to the left and right,

NORFOLK hiccupp’d with delight.

TOOKE,[101] his bald head gently moving,

On the sweet patriot’s drunken eyes

His wine-empurpled lips applies,

And thus returns in accents loving:

“So, my dear[102] CHARLEY, may success

At length my ardent wishes bless,

And lead, through discord’s low’ring storm,

To one grand RADICAL REFORM!

As, from this hour I love thee more

Than e’er I hated thee before!”

He spoke, and to the left and right,

NORFOLK hiccupp’d with delight.

With this good omen they proceed;[103]

Fond toasts their mutual passion feed;

In FOX’S breast HORNE TOOKE prevails

Before[104] rich Ireland and South Wales;[105]

And FOX (unread each other book),

Is Law and Gospel to HORNE TOOKE.

When were such kindred souls united?

Or wedded pair so much delighted?

[ACME AND SEPTIMIUS. FROM CATULLUS.

SEPTIMIUS said, and fondly prest

The doating ACME to his breast:—

“My Acme, if I prize not thee

With love as warm as love can be,

With passion spurning any fears

Of growing faint in length of years,

Alone may I defenceless stand

To meet, on Lybia’s desert sand,

Or under India’s torrid sky,

The tawny lion’s glaring eye!”

LOVE, before who utter’d still

On the left-hand omens ill,

As he ceased his faith to plight

Laugh’d propitious on the right.

Then ACME gently bent her head,

Kiss’d with those lips of cherry red

The eyes of the delightful boy,

That swam with glistening floods of joy;

And whisper’d as she closely prest—

“SEPTIMIUS, soul of ACME’S breast,

Let all our lives and feelings own

One lord, one sovereign, Love alone!

I yield to love, and yield to thee,

For thou and love are one to me.

Though fond thy fervent heart may beat,

My feelings glow with greater heat,

And madder flames my bosom melt

Than all that thou hast ever felt.”—ED.]

[The following account of the celebration of FOX’S Birth-day, printed in the Anti-Jacobin, has not hitherto appeared in the editions of the Poetry. The Song by Mr. Fox refers to the Subscription raised, after a meeting at the Crown and Anchor, in the summer of 1793, for relieving him in his then present need, and purchasing an Annuity for him. A Caricature by GILLRAY on this meeting was published on the 12th June, 1793.

MR. FOX’S BIRTH-DAY.

The public, distracted with the various accounts of the celebration of Mr. Fox’s Birth-day, naturally turn to us for an authentic detail of that important event—from a recollection of the correct and impartial statement we gave in a former Number, of what passed at a MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM [page 32].

To justify their confidence, we have had recourse to the Morning Post and Morning Chronicle (the Courier being too stupid for our purpose), whose statements we have carefully read, and corrected from the information of several gentlemen who were present. We are thus enabled to lay before our readers a genuine narrative of the whole proceeding, which we defy the tongue of Slander to controvert in any material point.

As Mr. Fox’s reputation had been for some time on the decline, it was thought necessary by the party (who are in great want of a Head) to make as respectable an appearance as possible on the present occasion. It was therefore suggested (at a previous meeting of confidential friends) that if the unfortunate shyness which subsisted between the Whig Club and the Corresponding Society could be opportunely removed by a few unimportant concessions on the part of the former, such a number of citizens might be readily procured from that respectable body as would serve to give the day an éclat it had not experienced since the fatal schism of 1792.

This hint, so reasonable in itself, was immediately adopted, and Sir FRANCIS BURDETT, who was well acquainted with their haunts, was ordered into the neighbourhood of Smithfield with a competent number of tickets. He was on the point of setting out, when the Editor of the Morning Post observed, that forgery[106] was so common at present, that he hardly thought it prudent to admit all who might come with a bit of scribbled paper: on this it was determined to distribute the price of admission amongst a certain number of people to be selected by the Envoy:—these, it was rightly concluded, would not fail to appear, from motives of vanity, as they could have no other possible chance of dining with the Premier Dupe, we would say Duke, in England. It now remained to determine the sum: this, after a short discussion, was fixed at Eight Shillings and Sixpence per head, “which,” said the Editor of the Morning Post, “will shew we cannot he persons of mean rank, since we can afford, in hard times, to give so much for a dinner”;[107] and Citizen BOSVILLE was desired to advance the money upon the credit of the Whig Fund.

Previous to the meeting, the chairman dispatched a note to Sir WILLIAM ADDINGTON, requesting that the Crown and Anchor might be exempted from the visitation of his runners during the morning of the 24th [Jan., 1798]. To this Sir WILLIAM assented, on condition that it should be recommended to the gentlemen, to leave their pocket-books and watches at home, that there might be as little temptation as possible to break the peace. Thus everything was arranged with a precaution that seemed to set accident at defiance.

Before four o’clock the passage to the LARGE ROOM was crammed, when, on a hint that dinner was on the point of being served, one of the head waiters advanced to the great door, and opened a wicket for the admission of the company, as fast as they paid down their money. Two or three had already passed in good order, when Mr. John Nicholls advanced, and instead of 8s. 6d., produced to the astonished receiver, seventeen of his PRINTED SPEECHES, which, valuing them at sixpence a-piece, he contended would make up the sum required. These “assets” however, were absolutely rejected; and a violent dispute was on the point of commencing, when Sir CHRISTOPHER HAWKINS stept forward, and whispering a few words, which we did not hear, obtained leave for his friend to pass. The Speeches were therefore deposited, and Mr. NICHOLLS was already got within the wicket, when the man suddenly pulled him back by the coat, and the dispute recommenced with more violence than ever. Upon inquiry into the cause of this new tumult, we found that a wag (whom we afterwards discovered to be Mr. JEKYLL) had played the member for Tregony a trick; having taken an opportunity, in the crowd, of extracting the genuine speeches from the pocket of the Honourable Member, and replacing them by the same number of the spurious ones, printed for Mr. WRIGHT, the publisher of this Paper. These the waiter very properly refused to receive, alleging, and indeed truly, that instead of six pence a-piece, the whole seventeen were not worth six farthings.

This altercation continued so long, that the company grew impatient; and Mr. BRYAN EDWARDS, a little ashamed of his friend, who still continued obstinate, offered to furnish his quota. Harmony now seemed to be restored, when all at once a cry of astonishment broke forth that beggars all description. On putting his hand into his pocket for the price of admission, Mr. E. suddenly turned pale, and exclaimed, “by G—, gentlemen, some of you have picked my pockets!” A hundred voices instantly repeated the same cry, and a dreadful scene of confusion and uproar took place.

Ardebant cuncta et fracta compage ruebant.

What the consequence would have been, it is impossible to say, had not the waiter, with an air of authority, commanded the doors to be shut at each end of the passage, and every man to exhibit the contents of his pocket. A faint cry of No! No! was over-ruled; and Sir FRANCIS BURDETT produced an old Red Cap from the bosom of his shirt, which he put into the hands of the Duke of BEDFORD, who was appointed collector-general by acclamation. With this his Grace went, from man to man, executing his duty with the utmost fairness and impartiality; and when he had finished, poured out the contents of the cap before them all. These, it must be confessed, were a little heterogeneous, consisting, besides a large sum of money, of a brass knocker (this was immediately claimed by the landlord), a pewter pot squeezed together, a pair of pattens, a pint decanter, a duck ready trussed for dressing, a great quantity of potatoes, and a vinegar cruet. What was most extraordinary was, that though, as his Grace afterwards declared, the money was found in very unequal portions, yet the total sum, which was £222, 5s. 6d., being divided among the company, amounting to 523 persons, produced 8s. 6d. for each individual, with the exception of the Member for Tregony, who brought nothing but his speech, and Capt. MORRIS, who pays for everything with a Song.

Nothing material occurred during the Dinner, which was allowed to be excellent of its kind, and where no such dish as Cow-heel (as maliciously reported in The True Briton) made its appearance.

As soon as the cloth was removed, the Duke of NORFOLK took the Chair amidst repeated plaudits,[108] and addressed the Company in these words:

“Three virtuous Men, Citizens, have stood up in defence of Liberty—MAXIMILIAN ROBESPIERRE, COLLOT D’HERBOIS, and CHARLES JAMES FOX:—The first is guillotined; the second transported to Cayenne; and the third”——Here all eyes were immediately upon Mr. FOX, who now entered the room, supported by Citizens JOHN GALE JONES and JOHN HORNE TOOKE—“As the Right Hon. Gentleman (resumed the Duke, a little peevishly) has mistaken his cue, and appeared sooner than he ought, I shall spare his modesty the panegyric I was preparing, and shortly conclude with proposing the health of CHARLES JAMES FOX.”—This was drank with three times three.

As soon as the clamour had subsided, Mr. FOX arose and said, “That language, at least any which he could boast, was inadequate to the exquisite feelings of gratitude which at once delighted and oppressed him, at the sight of so numerous and so respectable a body of free and independent Citizens, met for a purpose which would make this the proudest and the happiest day of his life”. Having dwelt a little on this idea, Mr. FOX observed, “that he would not interrupt the conviviality of the day by a long Speech: he knew there were several present who came to hear him make a long Speech, but he would not make a long Speech—to what purpose should he do it?—what could he add to the Speech lately delivered by him, and so faithfully recorded in the ANTI-JACOBIN, a contemptible Publication, but one to which the praise of Accuracy could not be denied. The new and extraordinary circumstances of the times called for new and extraordinary measures: he would, therefore, if they pleased, compress what he had to say into a Song—(loud applauses)—One word only.—He owed both the burden and the idea of this Song to the Morning Chronicle. He had yesterday, the 23rd, found there A BEGGING ADDRESS to the Nation, with DATE OBOLUM BELISARIO prefixed to it as a Motto. This had pleased him much, and this morning at breakfast he had endeavoured to adapt it, mutatis mutandis, to his own circumstances: he should now have the honour of giving it.”

SONG BY MR. FOX.

To the Tune of

“Good People of England, and all who love Ale.”

Good People of England, of every degree,

Lords, Commoners, listen, O! listen to me;

Republicans, Royalists, all—mark my ditty—

You’ll find I’ve a number of claims on your pity—

Date Obolum Belisario.

Ye who heard me assert that Lord NORTH, now so mourn’d,

Was a beast to be shunn’d, was a fool to be scorn’d,

Yet who saw me, with real or fancied alarms,

Take the fool to my councils, the beast to my arms,

Date Obolum Belisario.

Ye who heard me declare the SUBSCRIBERS of REEVES

Were a scoundrel collection of cut-throats and thieves,

Yet who saw me immediately after repair,

And SUBSCRIBE at the Long-Room in Hanover Square,

Date Obolum Belisario.

Ye who heard—when Invasion was close at our door,

And Parker and Liberty rul’d at the Nore—

Ye who heard—no; I mean, who DID NOT HEAR me speak,

While SHERIDAN,[109] damn him! affected to squeak,

Date Obolum Belisario.

Ye who heard me repeat that Resistance, at length,

Was reduc’d, by PITT’S Bill, to a question of Strength,

And that prudence alone——

We know not how far Mr. FOX might have proceeded, had he not been interrupted by a jangling of bells from the Side-table which immediately drew all eyes that way. This proceeded from Capt. MORRIS, who had fallen asleep during Mr. FOX’S Song, and was now nodding on his chair, with a large paper Cap on his head, ornamented with gilt tassels and bells, which one of the company had dexterously whipped on unperceived. The first motion was that of indignation; but the stupid stare of the unconscious Captain, who half opened his eyes at every sound of the bells as his head rose or fell, and immediately closed them again, somno vinoque gravatus, had such a powerful effect on the risible faculties of the Company, that they broke, as if by consent, into the most violent and convulsive fits of laughter; Mr. FOX himself not being exempt from the general contagion.

As soon as the Captain was made sensible of the cause of this uproar, he attempted to pull off the Cap, but was prevented by a Citizen from the Corresponding Society, who maintained that the Company had a right to be amused by the Captain in what manner they pleased; and that, as he seemed to amuse them more effectually in that state than in any other, he insisted, for one, on his continuing to wear the Cap. This was universally agreed to, with the exception of the Duke of NORFOLK. The Captain was therefore led to the upper table, with all his “jangling honours loud upon him!” Here, as soon as he was seated, his Noble Friend called upon him for a Song.

The Captain sang the “PLENIPO” in his best manner.

This was received with great applause; and then the Duke gave “The Defenders—of Ireland”—(three times three).

Captain MORRIS then began

“And all the Books of Moses”;—

but was interrupted, before he had finished the first line, by Mr. TIERNEY, who declared he would not sit there and hear anything like ridicule on the Bible.[110]—(Much coughing and scraping.)—Mr. Erskine took God to witness, that he thought the Captain meant no harm;—and a gentleman from Cambridge, whose name we could not learn, said, with great naïveté, that it was no more than was done every day by his acquaintance. Mr. TIERNEY, however, persisted in his opposition to the Song, and Captain MORRIS was obliged to substitute “Jenny Sutton” in the place of it.

But the good humour of the company was already broken in upon, and Mr. TIERNEY soon after left the room (to which he did not return) with greater marks of displeasure in his face than we ever remember to have seen there.

The Duke now gave RADICAL REFORM (three times three, followed by continued shouts of applause).

A Counsellor JACKSON attempted to sing “Paddy Whack,” but was soon silenced, on account of his stupid perversion of the words, and his bad voice.

Citizen GALE JONES then rose and said—that he was no Orator, though he got his living by oratory, being Chairman of a Debating Society. He had also written a book—which he was told had some merit. He did not rise to recommend it, but he thought it right to hint, that those who wished for Constitutional information might be supplied with it at the Bar; the price was trifling—Eighteen-pence was nothing to the majority of the Company;—to himself, indeed—(here Mr. HORNE TOOKE called out Order! Order! with some marks of impatience)—He begged pardon, he would say no more—there was no one whom he valued like Mr. TOOKE, there was no one indeed to whom he was under such obligations; the very shoes he had on were charged by Citizen HARDY to Mr. TOOKE’S account—Mr. TOOKE was also a great friend to a Radical Reform—he loved a Radical Reform himself; the Poor must always love Radical Reforms—he should therefore beg leave to propose the health of Mr. JOHN HORNE TOOKE.—(Three times three.)

Mr. TOOKE rose, and spoke nearly as follows: “You all know, Citizens, in what detestation I once held the Man whose Birth-day we are now met to commemorate. You cannot yet have forgot the ‘TWO PAIR OF PORTRAITS’ I formerly published, nor the glaring light in which I hung up him and his father to the execration of an indignant posterity. You must also be apprized of the charges of Corruption, Insurrection, and Murder (much hissing and applause, the latter predominant) which I brought against him, justly, as I must still think, at a former Election for Westminster. How happens it then, you will say, that I now come forward to do him honour? I will tell you. At the last Election for Westminster, I had still my suspicions of his sincerity; he appeared too anxious to preserve measures with the spruce and powdered Aristocrats who usually attended him to the Hustings; nor was it till the fourth or fifth day before the close of the Poll, that those suspicions were removed. Aware that he was losing ground among the People, he determined to make one great effort to re-establish his popularity. He therefore came forward, and addressed the free and independent Electors in front of the Hustings, in a Speech, of which the remembrance yet warms my heart. From that moment, I marked him as my own! Retractation was impossible; and the panegyric he lately delivered on a Radical Reform, in a House which I despise too much to name, was the natural and inevitable consequence of that day’s declaration. You may remember, that when I addressed my Friends, I only said, ‘Gentlemen, Mr. FOX has spoken my sentiments; he has even gone beyond them—but I thank him’.—What I then said I now repeat, with regard to his Speech on a late occasion—‘I AM MOST PERFECTLY SATISFIED WITH HIS CONDUCT; NOR DO I WISH TO ADVANCE ONE STEP IN THE CAUSE OF REFORM, BEYOND WHAT MR. FOX HAS PLEDGED HIMSELF TO GO!!!’”[111]

Mr. TOOKE then begged leave to propose Mr. FOX’S health for the second time, and sat down amidst a thunder of applause.[112]

The Duke of NORFOLK observed to the Company, that as they had drunk the health of a Man dear to the People, he would now call upon them to drink the health of their Sovereign[113]—here a hiccup interrupted his Grace, and a most violent cry of “No Sovereign! no Sovereign!” resounded through the room, and continued for several minutes, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties of the Duke to be heard. Order was, however, restored at length, when his Grace gently chid the Company for taking advantage of a slight infirmity of nature, to impute a design to him which was wholly foreign from his heart—(loud applause). He augured well, however, of their patriotism, and would now afford them an opportunity of repairing the injury they had done him, by giving the Toast as he intended—“THE HEALTH OF OUR SOVEREIGN—THE MAJESTY OF THE PEOPLE”.[114]—(Loud and incessant shouts of applause.)

A disgusting scene of uproar and confusion followed, which we shall not attempt to detail. The Chairman sank under the table in a state of stupefaction, and the rest of the Company, maddened alike with noise and wine, committed a thousand outrages, till they were literally turned into the streets by the Waiters. As many of them as could speak were conducted home by the watchmen; others were conveyed “in silent majesty” to the Round-house; and not a few of them slept out the remainder of the night upon the steps of the neighbouring houses. The Reporters of the Jacobin Papers were sought out, and conveyed home by the pressmen, devils, &c., and one poor youth, whom we afterwards found to be a Writer in the Morning Chronicle (hired for the day by The True Briton)[115] had his pockets picked of a clean white Handkerchief and a Notebook, after being severely beaten for deserting his former Employers.

No. XIV.

Feb. 12, 1798.

It has been our invariable custom to suppress such of our correspondents’ favours as conveyed any compliments to ourselves; and we have deviated from it in the present instance, not so much out of respect to the uncommon excellence of the Poem before us, as because it agrees so intimately with the general design of our paper—to expose the deformity of the French Revolution, to counteract the detestable arts of those who are seeking to introduce it here, and above all, to invigorate the exertions of our countrymen against every Foe, foreign and domestic, by showing them the immense and inexhaustible resources they yet possess in British Courage and British Virtue!

TO

THE AUTHOR OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

FOE TO THY COUNTRY’S FOES! ’tis THINE to claim

From Britain’s genuine sons a British fame—

Too long French manners our fair isle disgraced;

Too long French fashions shamed our native taste.

Still prone to change, we half-resolved to try

The proffered charms of FRENCH FRATERNITY.

Fair was her form, and FREEDOM’S honour’d name

Conceal’d the horrors of her secret shame:

She claim’d some kindred with that guardian pow’r,

Long worshipp’d here in Britain’s happier hour:

Virtue and Peace, she said, were in her train,

The long-lost blessings of ASTRÆA’S reign—

But soon the vizor dropp’d—her haggard face

Betray’d the FURY lurking in the GRACE—

The false attendants that behind her press’d,

In vain disguised, the latent guilt confess’d:

PEACE dropt her snow-white robe, and shudd’ring show’d

AMBITION’S mantle reeking fresh with blood;

Presumptuous FOLLY stood in REASON’S form,

Pleased with the power to ruin,—not reform;

PHILOSOPHY, proud phantom, undismay’d,

With cold regard the ghastly train survey’d;

Saw PERSECUTION gnash her iron teeth,

While Atheists preach’d the eternal sleep of death;

Saw ANARCHY the social chain unbind,

And DISCORD sour the blood of human kind;

Then talk’d of Nature’s Rights, and Equal Sway;

And saw her system safe—AND STALK’D AWAY!

Foil’d by our ARMS, where’er in ARMS we met,

With ARTS LIKE THESE the foe assails us yet.

Hopeless the fort to storm, or to surprise,

More secret wiles his envious malice tries;

Diseas’d himself, spread wide his own despair,

Pollutes the fount, and taints the wholesome air.

While many a Chief, to glory not unknown,

Alarms each hostile shore, and guards our own,

’Tis THINE, the latent treachery to proclaim;

An humbler warfare, but the cause the same.

In vain had POMPEY crush’d the PONTIC HOST,

And chas’d the pirate swarm from every coast;

The crew that leagu’d their country to o’erthrow;

The base confederates of a GALLIC[116] foe;

Had not the Civic Consul’s watchful eye

Track’d through the windings of conspiracy,

Exposed, confounded, shamed, and forced away,

The “JACOBIN REFORMER[117] of his day”.

’Tis THINE a subtler mischief to pursue,

And drag a deeper, darker, plot to view;

Whate’er its form, still ready to engage,

Detect its malice, or resist its rage;

Whether it whispers low, or raves aloud,

In sneers profane, or blasphemies avow’d;[118]

Insults its King, reviles its Country’s cause,

And, ’scaped from Justice, braves the lenient Laws:

Whate’er the hand in desperate faction bold,

By native hate inspired, or foreign gold;

Traitors absolved, and libellers released,

The recreant Peer, or renegado Priest;[119]

The Sovereign-people’s cringing, crafty slave,

The dashing fool, and instigating knave,

Each claims thy care; nor think the labour vain—

VERMIN HAVE SUNK THE SHIP THAT RULED THE MAIN.

’Tis THINE, with Truth’s fair shield to ward the blow,

And turn the weapon back upon the foe:

To trace the skulking fraud, the candid cheat,

That can retract the falsehood, yet repeat;

To wake the listless, slumb’ring as they lie,

Lapt in th’ embrace of soft security;

To rouse the cold, re-animate the brave,

And shew the cautious all they have to save.

Erect that standard ALFRED first unfurl’d,

Britain’s just pride, the wonder of the world;

Whose staff is Freedom’s spear, whose blazon’d field

Beams with the CHRISTIAN CROSS, the REGAL SHIELD;

That standard which the PATRIOT BARONS bore,

Restored, from RUNIMEDE’S resounding shore;

Which since consign’d to WILLIAM’S guardian hand,

Waved in new splendour o’er a grateful land;

Which oft in vain by force or fraud assail’d,

Has stood the shock of ages—and prevail’d.

Yes! the BRIGHT SUN OF BRITAIN yet shall shine—

The clouds are earth-born, but his fire divine;

That temperate splendour, and that genial heat,

Shall still illume, and cherish Empire’s Seat;

While the red Meteor, whose portentous glare

Shot plagues infectious through the troubled air;

Admired, or fear’d no more, shall melt away,

Lost in the radiance of HIS BRIGHTER DAY!

LINES.

Written under the Bust of Charles Fox at the Crown and Anchor.

I’ll not sell Uncle NOLL, Charles Surface cries;—

I’ll not sell CHARLEY FOX, John Bull replies:

Sell him, indeed! who’ll find me such another?—

Fox is above all price; so hold your pother.

Morning Post, Feb. 6.

To make our readers some amends for this miserable doggrel, we will present them, in our turn, with some lines written under a bust, NOT at the Crown and Anchor, by an ENGLISH TRAVELLER just returned from Petersburgh. We believe they are more just; we are certain they are more poetical.

LINES.

Written by a Traveller at Czarco-zelo under the Bust of a certain Orator, once placed between those of Demosthenes and Cicero.

I.

THE GRECIAN Orator of old,

With scorn rejected PHILIP’S laws,

Indignant spurn’d at foreign gold,

And triumph’d in his country’s cause.

II.

A foe to every wild extreme,

’Mid civil storms, the Roman Sage

Repress’d Ambition’s frantic scheme,

And check’d the madding people’s rage.

III.

Their country’s peace, and wealth and fame,

With patriot zeal their labours sought,

And Rome’s or Athens’ honoured name

Inspired and govern’d every thought.

IV.

Who now, in this presumptuous hour,

Aspires to share the Athenian’s praise?

—The advocate of foreign power,

The Æschines of later days.

V.

What chosen name to Tully’s join’d,

Is thus announced to distant climes?

—Behold, to lasting shame consign’d,

The Catiline of modern times![120]

No. XV.

Feb. 19, 1798.

THE PROGRESS OF MAN.[121]

A Didactic Poem,

IN FORTY CANTOS, WITH NOTES CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY: CHIEFLY OF A PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCY.

DEDICATED TO R. P. KNIGHT, ESQ.

CANTO FIRST.

CONTENTS.—The Subject proposed.—Doubts and Waverings.—Queries not to be answered.—Formation of the stupendous Whole.—Cosmogony; or the Creation of the World:—the Devil—Man—Various Classes of Being:—ANIMATED BEINGS—Birds—Fish—Beasts—the Influence of the Sexual Appetite—on Tigers—on Whales—On Crimpt Cod—on Perch—on Shrimps—on Oysters.—Various Stations assigned to different Animals:—Birds—Bears—Mackerel.—Bears remarkable for their fur—Mackerel cried on a Sunday—Birds do not graze—nor Fishes fly—nor Beasts live in the Water.—Plants equally contented with their lot:—Potatoes—Cabbage—Lettuce—Leeks—Cucumbers.—MAN only discontented—born a Savage; not choosing to continue so, becomes polished—resigns his Liberty—Priest-craft—King-craft—Tyranny of Laws and Institutions.—Savage Life—description thereof:—The Savage free—roaming Woods—feeds on Hips and Haws—Animal Food—first notion of it from seeing a Tiger tearing his prey—wonders if it is good—resolves to try—makes a Bow and Arrow—kills a Pig—resolves to roast a part of it—lights a fire—APOSTROPHE to fires—Spits and Jacks not yet invented.—Digression.—CORINTH—SHEFFIELD.—Love, the most natural desire after Food.—Savage Courtship.—Concubinage recommended.—Satirical Reflections on Parents and Children—Husbands and Wives—against collateral Consanguinity.—FREEDOM the only Morality, &c. &c. &c.

Whether some great, supreme o’er-ruling Power

Stretch’d forth its arm at Nature’s natal hour,

Composed this mighty whole with plastic skill,[122]

Wielding the jarring elements at will?

Or whether, sprung from Chaos’ mingling storm,

5

The mass of matter started into form?

Or Chance o’er earth’s green lap spontaneous fling

The fruits of autumn and the flowers of spring?

Whether material substance unrefined,

Owns the strong impulse of instructive mind,

10

Which to one centre points diverging lines,

Confounds, refracts, invig’rates, and combines?[123]

Whether the joys of earth, the hopes of heaven,

By man to God, or God to man, were given?[124]

If virtue leads to bliss, or vice to woe?

15

Who rules above, or who reside below?[125]

Vain questions all—shall man presume to know?

On all these points, and points obscure as these,

Think they who will,—and think whate’er they please!

Let us a plainer, steadier theme pursue—

20

Mark the grim savage scoop his light canoe;

Mark the dark rook, on pendent branches hung,

With anxious fondness feed her cawing young.—

Mark the fell leopard through the desert prowl,

Fish prey on fish, and fowl regale on fowl;—

25

How Lybian tigers’ chawdrons[126] love assails,

And warms, ’midst seas of ice, the melting whales;—[127]

Cools the crimpt cod, fierce pangs to perch imparts,

Shrinks shrivell’d shrimps, but opens oysters’ hearts;—[128]

Then say, how all these things together tend

30

To one great truth, prime object, and good end?

First—to each living thing, whate’er its kind,

Some lot, some part, some station is assign’d.

The feather’d race with pinions skim the air—[129]

Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear;[130]

35

This roams the wood, carniv’rous for his prey![131]

That with soft roe pursues his watery way:[132]

This, slain by hunters, yields his shaggy hide;[133]

That, caught by fishers, is on Sundays cried.—[134]

But each contented with his humble sphere,

40

Moves unambitious through the circling year;

Nor e’er forgets the fortune of his race,

Nor pines to quit, or strives to change his place.

Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise,

Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies?[135]

45

When did the owl, descending from her bow’r,

Crop, ’midst the fleecy flocks, the tender flow’r;

Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb,

In the salt wave,[136] and fish-like strive to swim?

The same with plants[137]—potatoes ’tatoes breed—[138]

50

Uncostly cabbage springs from cabbage seed;

Lettuce to lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed;

Nor e’er did cooling cucumbers presume

To flow’r like myrtle, or like violets bloom.

—Man, only,—rash, refined, presumptuous man,

55

Starts from his rank, and mars creation’s plan.

Born the free heir of nature’s wide domain,

To art’s strict limits bounds his narrow’d reign;

Resigns his native rights for meaner things,

For faith and fetters—laws, and priests, and kings.

60

(To be continued.)

We are sorry to be obliged to break off here. The remainder of this admirable and instructive Poem is in the press, and will be continued the first opportunity.

THE EDITOR.

[The following is the commencement of Knight’s poem:—

Whether primordial motion sprang to life

From the wild war of elemental strife;

In central chains the mass inert confined,

And sublimated matter into mind:

Or, whether one great all-pervading soul

Moves in each part and animates the whole;

Unnumbered worlds to one great centre draws,

And governs all by pre-established laws:

Whether in fates’ eternal fetters bound,

Mechanic nature goes her endless round:

Or ever varying, acts but to fulfil

The sovereign mandates of Almighty will;—

Let learned folly seek, or foolish pride,

Rash in presumptuous ignorance, decide.—ED.]

[Eminent as Richard Payne Knight was as a classical scholar and archæologist, his poetical powers were not highly appreciated by his literary contemporaries, as is amusingly shown in a letter from Horace Walpole, dated 22nd March, 1796, to the Rev. W. Mason, in which he declares how much he is “offended and disgusted by Mr. Knight’s new, insolent, and self-conceited poem”. He winds up thus: “I send you a parody on two lines of Mr. Knight, which will show you that his poem is seen in its true light by a young man of allowed parts, MR. CANNING, whom I never saw. The originals are the two first lines at the top of page 5:”—

“Some fainter irritations seem to feel,

Which o’er its languid fibres gently steal”.—KNIGHT.

“Cools the crimp’d cod, to pond-perch pangs imparts,

Thrills the shelled shrimps, and opens oysters’ hearts.”—CANNING.

It is evident from this that Canning had thought of parodying the poem immediately after its publication, and that Walpole had seen a specimen in manuscript, nearly two years before its publication in the Anti-Jacobin, in which the two lines (28, 29) are thus altered:—

“Cools the crimpt cod, fierce pangs to perch imparts,

Shrinks shrivell’d shrimps, but opens oysters’ hearts”.

By an oversight, Peter Cunningham, in his edition of Walpole’s Letters, attributes the latter’s attack to a previous production of Knight’s, published in 1794, entitled The Landscape: a didactic Poem in three Books, a work which had excited Walpole’s high indignation by expressing opinions opposed to his own.—ED.]

No. XVI.

Feb. 26, 1798.

The specimen of the poem on the “Progress of Man,” with which we favoured our Readers in our last Number, has occasioned a variety of letters, which we confess have not a little surprised us, from the unfounded, and even contradictory charges they contain. In one, we are accused of Malevolence, in bringing back to notice a work that had been quietly consigned to oblivion;—in another, of Plagiarism, in copying its most beautiful passages;—in a third, of Vanity, in striving to imitate what was in itself inimitable, &c., &c. But why this alarm? has the author of the “Progress of Civil Society” an exclusive patent for fabricating Didactic poems? or can we not write against Order and Government without incurring the guilt of Imitation? We trust we were not so ignorant of the nature of a didactic poem (so called from didaskein, to teach, and poema, a poem; because it teaches nothing, and is not poetical) even before the “Progress of Civil Society” appeared, but that we were capable of such an undertaking.

We shall only say further, that we do not intend to proceed regularly with our Poem; but having the remaining thirty-nine Cantos by us, shall content ourselves with giving, from time to time, such extracts as may happen to suit our purpose.

The following passage, which, as the reader will see by turning to the Contents prefixed to the head of the Poem, is part of the First Canto, contains so happy a deduction of MAN’S present state of Depravity, from the first slips and failings of his Original State, and inculcates so forcibly the mischievous consequences of social or civilized, as opposed to natural society, that no dread of imputed imitation can prevent us from giving it to our readers.

PROGRESS OF MAN.

Lo! the rude savage, free from civil strife,[139]

Keeps the smooth tenour of his guiltless life;

Restrain’d by none, save Nature’s lenient laws,

Quaffs the clear stream, and feeds on hips and haws.

Light to his daily sports behold him rise!

65

The bloodless banquet health and strength supplies.[140]

Bloodless not long—one morn he haps to stray[141]

Through the lone wood—and close beside the way

Sees the gaunt tiger tear his trembling prey;

Beneath whose gory fangs a leveret bleeds,

70

Or pig—such pig as fertile China breeds.[142]

Struck with the sight, the wondering savage stands,

Rolls his broad eyes, and clasps his lifted hands!

Then restless roams—and loaths his wonted food;

Shuns the salubrious stream, and thirsts for blood.

75

By thought matured, and quicken’d by desire,[143]

New arts, new arms, his wayward wants require.

From the tough yew a slender branch he tears,

With self-taught skill the twisted grass[144] prepares;

Th’ unfashioned bow, with labouring efforts bends

80

In circling form, and joins th’ unwilling ends.

Next some tall reed he seeks—with sharp-edg’d stone

Shapes the fell dart, and points with whiten’d bone.[145]

Then forth he fares. Around in careless play,

Kids, pigs, and lambkins unsuspecting stray;

85

With grim delight he views the sportive band,

Intent on blood, and lifts his murderous hand.

Twangs the bent bow—resounds the fateful dart,

Swift-wing’d, and trembles in a porker’s heart.

Ah, hapless porker! what can now avail[146]

90

Thy back’s stiff bristles, or thy curly tail?

Ah! what avail those eyes so small and round,

Long pendent ears, and snout that loves the ground?[147]

Not unreveng’d thou diest!—in after times[148]

From thy spilt blood shall spring unnumber’d crimes.

95

Soon shall the slaught’rous arms that wrought thy woe,

Improved by malice, deal a deadlier blow;[149]

When social man shall pant for nobler game,

And ’gainst his fellow man the vengeful weapon aim.

As love, as gold, as jealousy inspires,[150]

100

As wrathful hate, or wild ambition fires,

Urged by the statesman’s craft, the tyrant’s rage,

Embattled nations endless wars shall wage,

Vast seas of blood the ravaged field shall stain,

And millions perish—that a king may reign!

105

For blood once shed, new wants and wishes rise;[151]

Each rising want invention quick supplies.

To roast his victuals is man’s next desire,

So two dry sticks he rubs, and lights a fire.

Hail fire, &c. &c.

No. XVII.

March 5, 1798.

We are obliged to a learned correspondent for the following ingenious imitation of BION.—We will not shock the eyes of our fair readers with the original Greek, but the following Argument will give them some idea of the nature of the Poem here imitated.

ARGUMENT.

Venus is represented as bringing to the Poet, while sleeping, her son Cupid, with a request that he would teach him Pastoral Poetry—Bion complies, and endeavours to teach him the rise and progress of that art:—Cupid laughs at his instructions, and in his turn teaches his master the Loves of Men and Gods, the Wiles of his Mother, &c.—“Pleased with his lessons,” says BION, “I forgot what I lately taught Cupid and recollect in its stead only what Cupid taught me.”

IMITATION, &c.[152]

WRITTEN AT ST. ANNE’S HILL.

Scarce had sleep my eyes o’erspread,

Ere Alecto sought my bed;

In her left hand a torch she shook,

And in her right led JOHN HORNE TOOKE.

O thou! who well deserv’st the bays,

Teach him, she cried, Sedition’s lays—

She said, and left us; I, poor fool,

Began the wily priest to school;

Taught him how MOIRA sung of lights,

Blown out by troops o’ stormy nights;[153]

How ERSKINE, borne on rapture’s wings,

At clubs and taverns sweetly sings

Of self—while yawning Whigs attend—

Self first, last, midst, and without end;[154]

How BEDFORD piped, ill-fated Bard;[155]

Half-drown’d, in empty Palace-yard;

How LANSDOWNE, nature’s simple child,

At BOWOOD trills his wood-notes wild—[156]

How these and more (a phrenzied choir)

Sweep with bold hand Confusion’s lyre,

Till madding crowds around them storm

“FOR ONE GRAND RADICAL REFORM!”

TOOKE stood silent for a while,

Listening with sarcastic smile;

Then in verse of calmest flow,

Sung of treasons, deep and low,

Of rapine, prisons, scaffolds, blood,

Of war against the great and good;

Of Venice, and of Genoa’s doom,

And fall of unoffending Rome;

Of monarchs from their station hurl’d,

And one waste desolated world.

Charm’d by the magic of his tongue,

I lost the strains I lately sung,

While those he taught, remain impress’d

For ever on my faithful breast.

DORUS.

[BION. IDYLLIUM III. THE TEACHER TAUGHT.

TRANSLATED BY FAWKES.

As late I slumbering lay, before my sight

Bright VENUS rose in visions of the night:

She led young Cupid; as in thought profound

His modest eyes were fixed upon the ground;

And thus she spoke: “To thee, dear swain, I bring

My little son; instruct the boy to sing”.

No more she said; but vanished into air,

And left the wily pupil to my care:

I,—(sure I was an idiot for my pains),

Began to teach him old bucolic strains;

How PAN the pipe, how PALLAS formed the flute,

PHŒBUS the lyre, and MERCURY the lute:

LOVE, to my lessons quite regardless grown,

Sang lighter lays, and sonnets of his own,

Th’ amours of men below, and gods above,

And all the triumphs of the queen of love.

I, sure the simplest of all shepherd swains,

Full soon forgot my old bucolic strains;

The lighter lays of LOVE my fancy caught,

And I remembered all that Cupid taught.—ED.]

Something like the same idea seems to have dictated the following Stanzas, which appear to be a loose imitation of the beautiful Dialogue of Horace and Lydia, and for which, though confessedly in a lower style of poetry, and conceived rather in the slang, or Brentford dialect, than in the classical Doric of the foregoing Poem, we have many thanks to return to an ingenious academical correspondent.

THE NEW COALITION.[157]

I.

FOX.—When erst I coalesced with North

And brought my Indian bantling forth[158]

In place—I smiled at faction’s storm,

Nor dreamt of radical reform.

II.

TOOKE.—While yet no patriot project pushing,

Content I thump’d old Brentford’s cushion,

I pass’d my life so free and gaily;

Not dreaming of that d——d Old Bailey.

III.

FOX.—Well! now my favourite preacher’s Nickle,[159]

He keeps for PITT a rod in pickle;

His gestures fright th’ astonish’d gazers,

His sarcasms cut like Packwood’s razors.

IV.

TOOKE.—Thelwall’s[160] my man for state alarm;

I love the rebels of Chalk Farm;

Rogues that no statutes can subdue,

Who’d bring the French, and head them too.

V.

FOX.—A whisper in your ear, JOHN HORNE,[161]

For one great end we both were born,

Alike we roar, and rant, and bellow—

Give us your hand, my honest fellow.

VI.

TOOKE.—Charles, for a shuffler long I’ve known thee:

But come—for once, I’ll not disown thee;

And since with patriot zeal thou burnest,

With thee I’ll live—or hang in earnest.

[HORACE. BOOK III., ODE IX.

HORACE.—Whilst I was fond, and you were kind,

Nor any dearer youth, reclined

On your soft bosom, sought to rest,

Not Persia’s monarch was so blest.

LYDIA.—Whilst you adored no other face,

Nor loved me in the second place,

Your Lydia’s celebrated fame

Outshone the Roman Ilia’s name.

HORACE.—Me Chloe now possesses whole;

Her voice and lyre command my soul:

Nor would I death itself decline,

Could I redeem her life with mine.

LYDIA.—For me young lovely Calaïs burns,

And warmth for warmth my heart returns.

Twice would I life for him resign,

Could his be ransomed thus with mine.

HORACE.—What if the God, whose bands we broke,

Again should tame us to the yoke!

What if my Chloe cease to reign,

And Lydia her lost power regain!

LYDIA.—Though Phosphor be less fair than he;

Thou wilder than the raging sea;

Lighter than down; yet gladly I

With thee would live, with thee would die.—ED.]

[Another version of this Ode published in the Anti-Jacobin Review, vol. 1, pp. 597–8 (the successor to the Anti-Jacobin), may perhaps not be considered out of place here. It was written by the Rev. C. E. Stewart, a constant contributor to the former journal.

THE HONEY-MOON OF FOX AND TOOKE.

Donec gratus eram tibi.

FOX.—Since Fox of his Tooke is possest,

No sorrows my bosom can harass;

What Director was ever so blest?

I’m greater, far greater than Barras.

TOOKE.—If Fox to his consort is true,

And this blest Coalition sincere,

I’ll engage as a private with you,

Nor envy thy fame, Robespierre.

FOX.—You once were the worst of my foes,

E’en Pitt I detested not more,

When you dar’d my Election oppose,

And eternal antipathy swore.

TOOKE.—Not to you was my hatred confin’d,

Your father I styled “The Defaulter,”

Drew a portrait of both, and consign’d

Both father and son to the halter.

FOX.—Drive these hated reflections away;

For you I would gladly resign.

Jockey Norfolk, big Bedford, and Grey;

But they answer your purpose and mine.

TOOKE.—Whate’er you attempt or intend,

I am yours, and will bring at your call,

Binns, Gurney, Scott, Ferguson, Frend,

Corresponding Society—all.

BOTH.—Thus reconcil’d, fond, and delighted,

Together we’ll ride in the storm,

While Jacobin Clubs, all united,

Make a radical, perfect Reform.—ED.]

No. XVIII.

March 12, 1798.

We are indebted for the following exquisite imitation of one of the most beautiful Odes of Horace, to an unknown hand. All that we can say is, that it came to us in a blank cover sealed with a ducal coronet, and that it appears evidently to be the production of a mind not more classical than convivial.

ODE.

Whither, O Bacchus, in thy train,[162]

Dost thou transport thy votary’s brain

With sudden inspiration?

Where dost thou bid me quaff my wine,

And toast new measures to combine

The Great and Little Nation?

Say, in what tavern I shall raise[163]

My mighty voice in Charley’s praise,

And dream of future glories,

When FOX, with salutary sway

(Terror the Order of the Day),

Shall reign o’er King and Tories?

My mighty feelings must have way![164]

A toast I’ll give—a thing I’ll say,

As yet unsaid by any,—

“OUR SOV’REIGN LORD!”—let those who doubt

My honest meaning, hear me out—

“HIS MAJESTY—THE MANY!”

Plain folks may be surprised, and stare,[165]

As much surprised as BOB ADAIR

At Russia’s wooden houses;

And Russian snows, that lie so thick;[166]

And Russian boors[167] that daily kick,

With barbarous foot, their spouses.

What joy, when drunk, at midnight’s hour,[168]

To stroll through Covent Garden’s bow’r,

Its various charms exploring;

And, ’midst its shrubs and vacant stalls,

And proud Piazza’s crumbling walls,

Hear trulls and watchmen snoring!

Parent of wine, and gin, and beer,[169]

The nymphs of Billingsgate you cheer;

Naiads robust and hearty;

As Brookes’s chairmen fit to wield

Their stout oak bludgeons in the field,

To aid our virtuous party.

Mortals! no common voice you hear;[170]

Militia Colonel, Premier Peer,

Lieutenant of a County!

I speak high things! yet, god of wine,

For thee, I fear not to resign

These gifts of royal bounty.

[HORACE. BOOK III., ODE XXV. TO BACCHUS.

TRANSLATED BY FRANCIS.

Whither in sacred ecstasy,

BACCHUS, when full of thy divinity,

Dost thou transport me? To what glades?

What gloomy caverns, unfrequented shades?

In what recesses shall I raise

My voice to sacred Cæsar’s deathless praise,

Amid the stars to bid him shine,

Ranked in the councils of the powers divine?

Some bolder song shall wake the lyre,

And sounds unknown its trembling strings inspire.

Thus o’er the steepy mountains’ height,

Starting from sleep, thy priestess takes her flight:

Amazed, behold the Thracian snows,

With languid streams where icy Heber flows

Or Rhodopé’s high-towering head,

Where frantic choirs barbarian measures tread.

O’er pathless rocks, through lonely groves,

With what delight my raptured spirit roves!

O thou, who rul’st the Naiad’s breast;

By whom the Bacchanalian maids, possessed

With sacred rage inspired by thee,

Tear from the bursting glebe th’ uprooted tree;

Nothing or low, or mean, I sing,

No mortal sound shall shake the swelling string.

The venturous theme my soul alarms;

But warmed by thee the thought of danger charms.

When vine-crowned Bacchus leads the way,

What can his daring votaries dismay?—ED.]

[The preceding Ode, written in the character of Charles Howard, eleventh DUKE OF NORFOLK, refers to the famous toast, “Our Sovereign’s health—THE MAJESTY OF THE PEOPLE,” proposed by his Grace at a Banquet at the “Crown and Anchor Tavern,” Strand, on the 24th January, 1798, given to celebrate the birth-day of C. J. FOX. For this toast and other sentiments promulgated at the meeting, his Grace a few days after received notice of his dismissal from the Lord-Lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire and his Colonelcy in the Militia, and on the 6th of February Earl Fitzwilliam was gazetted to the former office, vice the Duke of Norfolk, resigned. But sixteen years earlier, this Toast was not considered seditious; for in the General Advertiser of the 13th of April, 1782, then edited by Perry (afterwards the eminent proprietor of the Morning Chronicle), we find an account of a dinner of the electors of Westminster held the preceding day at the Shakespeare Tavern, Earl Fitzwilliam in the chair. The first toast given by his Lordship was, “THE MAJESTY OF THE PEOPLE”. It was drunk by the Earl of Effingham, the Earl of Surrey (afterwards Duke of Norfolk, and the subject of the present remarks), Mr. Secretary Fox, Burke, Windham, Dean Jebb, J. Churchill, Brand Hollis, Dr. Brocklesby, &c. Thus the identical toast was proposed and drunk by the Earl of Fitzwilliam, to whom the Lord-Lieutenancy now taken from the Duke of Norfolk was given. It is not a little remarkable that Lord Fitzwilliam himself was dismissed by his new Tory allies, Oct. 23, 1819, from the same Lord-Lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire, having signed the requisition for the York meeting, at which resolutions were passed condemning the measures of Ministers (Lords Liverpool, Eldon, Bathurst, Castlereagh, Palmerston, &c.), respecting the Manchester Reform Meeting, called by Henry Hunt, on 16th August, at which occurred what is known as the “Peterloo Massacre”.—ED.]

[“THE MAJESTY OF THE PEOPLE,” AS GIVEN ON FOX’S BIRTH-DAY.

The company was a very large one, but the estimated number of 2000 diners is surely an error. The Duke of Norfolk presided, supported by the Duke of Bedford, the Earls of Lauderdale and Oxford, Sheridan, Tierney, Erskine, Capt. Morris (who produced three new songs for the occasion), and Horne Tooke; the latter became reconciled to Fox by the explanation the latter gave of his sentiments on parliamentary reform. On the cloth being removed, he rose and said, “We are met in a moment of most serious difficulty to celebrate the birth of a man dear to the friend of freedom. I shall only recall to your memory that not twenty years ago, the illustrious GEORGE WASHINGTON had not more than two thousand men to rally round him when his country was attacked. America is now free. This day full two thousand men are assembled in this place. I leave the application to you. I propose to you the health of CHARLES JAMES FOX.”

In the course of the evening the Duke’s health was drunk with great enthusiasm. He returned thanks, and concluded his speech with these words, “Give me leave to call on you to drink, Our Sovereign’s health,

“THE MAJESTY OF THE PEOPLE”.

After this toast had been drunk and warmly applauded, the Duke gave successively, “The Rights of the People,” “Constitutional Redress of the Wrongs of the People,” “A speedy and effectual Reform in the Representation of the People in Parliament,” “The genuine Principles of the British Constitution,” “The People of Ireland, and may they be speedily restored to the Blessings of Law and Liberty”.

On the 6th of February, the next monthly meeting of the Whig Club was held at the London Tavern, Ludgate Hill. The DUKE OF NORFOLK presided. He gave as a toast, “The Man who dares be honest in the worst of times—

“CHARLES JAMES FOX”.

FOX returned thanks, and then toasted

“THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE”.

He subsequently proposed the health of the Duke of Norfolk in a most powerful speech. He adverted to the dismissal of the DUKE. “No reason had been officially assigned; it was, however, generally understood that it had arisen from the eulogium pronounced on GENERAL WASHINGTON. Was it to be wondered at, that the noble Duke, who had uniformly opposed the American war, should have done so? What Englishman, what man of any country, whose heart was animated with a love of freedom, did not venerate the name of that illustrious patriot? It seems also “a toast” has given offence—the Majesty of the People. I do not know upon what times we are fallen, but the sovereignty of the people of Great Britain is surely a thing not new to the language, to the feelings, nor the hearts of Englishmen. It is the basis of the whole system of our Government. It is an opinion, which if it be not true, King William was an usurper. By what right did the glorious and immortal King William the Third, whose portrait is placed on our chair, come to the throne of these realms, if not by that of the sovereignty of the people?... The King holds his title by an Act of Parliament. Who called that Parliament? King William the Third. By what right did he obtain it? By a Convention representing the sovereignty of the people. The Convention of Representatives in fact did the thing. It is whimsical enough to deprive the noble Duke of his appointments for an offence which, if he had not committed during the reigns of George I. and George II., would have subjected him to the charge of being a Jacobite, and an adherent of the exiled family.... Of the persons of his Majesty’s Ministers I will not say a word. There are several of them to whom I may fairly say this sentiment is not new. One member of the Cabinet (the Duke of Portland) is still a member of this club; another (Mr. Windham) was a member; and a third (Earl Spencer) long gloried in holding the same tenets. How often with the two first have we drunk the sentiment in this room! What did they mean when they drank the Sovereignty of the People? What, but that they recognised by this approved and customary method a truth which belongs to all people in reality, but is the avowed basis of the Government of England, that the people of every country are its legitimate Sovereign, and that all authority is delegated from and for them? I should be ashamed, on account of my old respect for those persons, if they did not honestly avow this to be their sense of the sentiment.”

While adverting, on this occasion, to the dismissal of the DUKE OF NORFOLK from his Lord-Lieutenancy and Colonelcy of Militia, FOX remarked, “I have nothing the Ministers can take from me. I am still indeed a Privy Councillor, at least I know nothing to the contrary; and if this sentiment entitles the Noble Duke to this animadversion, I shall certainly feel that I am equally entitled to this mark of his Majesty’s displeasure.” This anticipation was verified shortly afterwards.

On the 1st of May following, at the Freemasons’ Tavern, another dinner of the Whig Club took place. FOX was in the chair, and gave, as the first toast—

“THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN”.

The Duke of Norfolk proposed “The Health of the Man who dares be Honest in the worst of Times—

“CHARLES JAMES FOX”.

FOX responded in a most impressive speech. He said: “On any other occasion, he should have contented himself with returning thanks, but in the very peculiar embarrassments in which the country was now plunged, he thought it necessary to say a few words in the only place in which he thought it might be useful for him to deliver his sentiments. The circumstances and events of public affairs of late had induced him and many of his friends to abstain from their usual assiduous attendance in Parliament. Their exertions for the preservation of the Constitution had been of no avail; two years ago they had seen the repeal of the Bill of Rights carried by a triumphant majority; they had seen the functions of the Constitutional Law suspended, on alarm created by the Ministers themselves; and however well-founded the alarm might now be, he scorned the idea that it was necessary for him to attend in his place in the House of Commons, for the purpose only of vindicating himself from the vulgar calumny that he was not an enemy to a foreign invasion. It would be an insult on his whole life if such a declaration could be expected from him. He believed there was not a voice in the assembly he addressed which was not in unison with his own—namely, that every man who heard him was both ready and willing to stand forth in defence of his country, with the spirit that belongs to Englishmen. He found no fault with those who thought it necessary to make these professions elsewhere. Thus much only would he say in this place for himself. The present Government of the country, he had no hesitation in saying, was a Government of Tyranny. They had adopted the principles of Robespierre, and their object was to establish tyranny in England. Look at the situation of the Sister Kingdom; our own will soon be the same. He had no remedy to recommend but that the friends of freedom should be united and firm, and wait for better times. Tyranny was now the order of the day in every country in Europe. Notwithstanding the arbitrary proceedings of our own Ministers, he was persuaded the unanimous feeling of the country, the universal determination of every man in it was to be ready to take the field against a foreign foe; and, indeed, they had a powerful motive to do so, for if they were united, they had a better chance to get rid of the tyranny of their own Ministers than they could possibly have by the success of a foreign invasion. Even in his present retirement he should be ready to come forward, in every constitutional effort, to regain our lost liberties; and he should be in the foremost of the ranks to repel the invasion of a daring enemy.”

This speech led to a most important consequence—the erasing from the Privy Council Book the name of one of the most illustrious statesmen which had ever adorned it. FOX’S name was struck out by the King on the 9th of May.

On the 6th of June, after the dinner at the Whig Club, the DUKE OF BEDFORD proposed “THE HEALTH OF CHARLES FOX,” and remarked in severe terms on Ministers having caused the King to strike his name out of the list of the Privy Council. FOX said: “It would be most unfit for him to say a word respecting the Noble Duke’s allusion to a circumstance personal to himself. Would to God the time of the Ministers had been always employed in such frivolous fooleries as settling who should be Honourable and who Right Honourable, and deliberating on the titles most befitting their friends and supporters.” FOX, with some of his supporters, seceded from Parliament in 1797, and returned to the House of Commons in 1802 to defend the Peace of Amiens, and he was persuaded to continue his parliamentary attendance by the urgent request of friends, with whose wishes he felt himself bound to comply.—ED.]

No. XIX.

March 19, 1798.

For the authenticity of the enclosed Ballad we refer our readers to a volume of MS. Poems discovered upon the removal of some papers, during the late alterations which have taken place at the Tax-office, in consequence of the Reports of the Finance Committee.

It has been communicated to our printer by an ingenious friend of his, who occasionally acts for the Deputy Collector of the Parish of St. Martin in the Fields; but without date, or any other mark, by which we are enabled to guess at the particular subject of the composition.

CHEVY CHASE.[171]

God prosper long our noble king,

Our lives and safeties all:

A woeful story late there did

In Britain’s Isle befall.

DUKE SMITHSON, of NORTHUMBERLAND,

A vow to God did make,

The choicest gifts in fair England,

For him and his to take.

“Stand fast, my merry men,” he cried,

“By MOIRA’S Earl and me,

And we will gain place, wealth and pow’r,

As arm’d neutrality.

“Excise and Customs, Church and Law,

I’ve begg’d from Master ROSE;

The Garter too—but still the Blues

I’ll have, or I’ll oppose.”

“Now God be with him,” quoth the KING,

“Sith ’twill no better be;

I trust we have within our realm

Five hundred good as he.”

The DUKE then join’d with Charley FOX,

A leader ware and tried,

And ERSKINE, SHERIDAN, and GREY

Fought stoutly by his side.

Throughout the English Parliament,

They dealt full many a wound;

But in his king’s and country’s cause,

PITT firmly stood his ground.

And soon a law like arrow keen,

Or spear, or curtal-axe,

Struck poor DUKE SMITHSON to the heart,

In shape of Powder-tax.[172]

Sore leaning on his crutch, he cried,

“Crop, crop, my merry men all;

No guinea for your head I’ll pay,

Though Church and State should fall.”

Again the taxing-man appear’d—

No deadlier foe could be;

A schedule of a cloth-yard long,

Within his hand bore he.

“Yield thee, DUKE SMITHSON, and behold

The assessment thou must pay;

Dogs, horses, houses, coaches, clocks,

And servants in array.”

“Nay,” quoth the DUKE, “in thy black scroll

Deductions I espye—

For those who, poor, and mean, and low,

With children burthen’d lie.

“And though full sixty thousand pounds

My vassals pay to me,

From Cornwall to Northumberland,

Through many a fair countée;

“Yet England’s church, its king, its laws,

Its cause, I value not,

Compar’d with this, my constant text,

A penny sav’d, is got.

“No drop of princely Percy’s blood

Through these cold veins doth run;

With Hotspur’s castles, blazon, name,

I still am poor SMITHSON.

“Let England’s youth unite in arms,

And every liberal hand,

With honest zeal, subscribe their mite,

To save their native land:

“I at St. Martin’s Vestry Board,

To swear shall be content,

That I have children eight, and claim

Deductions ten per cent.”

God bless us all from factious foes,

And French fraternal kiss;

And grant the king may never make

Another Duke like this.[173]

No. XX.

ODE TO JACOBINISM.

March 26, 1798.

I.

Daughter of Hell, insatiate power,

Destroyer of the human race,

Whose iron scourge and madd’ning hour

Exalt the bad, the good debase;

Thy mystic force, despotic sway,

Courage and innocence dismay,

And patriot monarchs vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone!

II.

When first to scourge the sons of earth,

Thy sire his darling child design’d,

Gallia receiv’d the monstrous birth—

VOLTAIRE inform’d thy infant mind;

Well-chosen nurse! his sophist lore

He bade thee many a year explore!

He mark’d thy progress, firm though slow,

And statesmen, princes, leagued with their invet’rate foe.

III.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly

The morals (antiquated brood);

Domestic Virtue, social Joy,

And Faith that has for ages stood:

Swift they disperse, and with them go

The friend sincere, the gen’rous foe.—

Traitors to God and man avow’d,

By thee now rais’d aloft, now crush’d beneath the crowd.

IV.

Revenge, in blood-stain’d robe arrayed,

Immersed in gloomy joy profound;

Ingratitude, by guilt dismay’d,

With anxious eye wild glancing round,

Still on thy frantic steps attend:

With Death, thy victim’s only friend,

Injustice, to the truth severe,

And Anguish, dropping still the life-consuming tear.

V.

Oh swiftly on my country’s head,

Destroyer, lay thy ruthless hand;

Nor yet in Gallic terrors clad,

Nor circled by the Marseilles band,

(As by th’ initiate thou art seen),

With thund’ring cannon, guillotine,

With screaming Horror’s funeral cry,

Fire, Rapine, sword, and chains, and ghastly Poverty.

VI.

Thy sophist veil, dread goddess, wear,

Falsehood insidiously impart;

Thy philosophic train, be there,

To taint the mind, corrupt the heart;

The gen’rous virtues of our isle,

Teach us to hate and to revile;

Our glorious Charter’s faults to scan,

Time-sanction’d truths despise, and preach THY RIGHTS OF MAN.

AN ENGLISH JACOBIN.

[The original poem, of which the above is an imitation, is subjoined:—

HYMN TO ADVERSITY.

BY THOMAS GRAY.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour,

The bad affright, afflict the best!

Bound in thy adamantine chain,

The proud are taught to taste of pain,

And purple tyrants vainly groan,

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth

Virtue, his darling child, designed,

To thee he gave the heavenly birth,

And bade thee form her infant mind,

Stern, rugged nurse! thy rigid lore

With patience many a year she bore:

What sorrow was, thou bad’st her know,

And from her own she learnt to melt at others’ woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing Folly’s idle brood,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,

And leave us leisure to be good.

Light they disperse, and with them go

The summer friend, the flattering foe;

By vain prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom, in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,

And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye that loves the ground,

Still on thy solemn steps attend:

Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

O, gently on thy suppliant’s head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!

Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band

(As by the impious thou art seen),

With thundering voice, and threatening mien,

With screaming Horror’s funeral cry,

Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, O goddess! wear,

Thy milder influence impart,

Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften not to wound my heart.

The generous spark extinct revive;

Teach me to love and to forgive;

Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.—ED.]

No. XXI.

April 2, 1798.

We promised in our Sixteenth Number, that though we should not proceed regularly with the publication of the Didactic Poem, the PROGRESS OF MAN,—a work which, indeed, both from its bulk, and from the erudite nature of the subject, would hardly suit with the purposes of a Weekly Paper,—we should, nevertheless, give from time to time such extracts from it as we thought were likely to be useful to our readers, and as were in any degree connected with the topics or events of the times.

The following extract is from the 23rd Canto of this admirable and instructive Poem;—in which the author (whom, by a series of accidents, which we have neither the space, nor indeed the liberty, to enumerate at present, we have discovered to be MR. HIGGINS, of St. Mary Axe) describes the vicious refinement of what is called civilized society, in respect to marriage; contends with infinite spirit and philosophy against the factitious sacredness and indissolubility of that institution; and paints in glowing colours the happiness and utility (in a moral as well as political view) of an arrangement of an opposite sort, such as prevails in countries which are yet under the influence of pure and unsophisticated nature.

In illustration of his principles upon this subject, the author alludes to a popular production of the German Drama, the title of which is the “REFORMED HOUSEKEEPER” [The Stranger], which he expresses a hope of seeing transfused into the language of this country.

THE PROGRESS OF MAN.

CANTO TWENTY-THIRD.

CONTENTS.

ON MARRIAGE.—Marriage being indissoluble the cause of its being so often unhappy.—Nature’s laws not consulted in this point.—Civilized nations mistaken.—OTAHEITE: Happiness of the natives thereof—visited by Captain Cook, in his Majesty’s Ship Endeavour—Character of Captain Cook.—Address to Circumnavigation.—Description of His Majesty’s Ship Endeavour—Mast, rigging, sea-sickness, prow, poop, mess-room, surgeon’s mate—History of one.—Episode concerning naval chirurgery.—Catching a Thunny Fish.—Arrival at Otaheite—cast anchor—land—Natives astonished.—Love—Liberty—Moral—Natural—Religious—Contrasted with European manners.—Strictness—License—Doctor’s Commons.—Dissolubility of MARRIAGE recommended—Illustrated by a game at Cards—Whist—Cribbage—Partners changed—Why not the same in Marriage?—Illustrated by a River.—Love free.—Priests, Kings.—German Drama.—KOTZEBUE’S “Housekeeper Reformed”.—Moral employments of Housekeeping described—Hottentots sit and stare at each other—Query, WHY?—Address to the Hottentots—History of the Cape of Good Hope.—Resumé of the Arguments against Marriage.—Conclusion.

PROGRESS OF MAN.

EXTRACT.

Hail! beauteous lands[174] that crown the Southern Seas;

Dear happy seats of Liberty and Ease!

Hail! whose green coasts the peaceful ocean laves,

Incessant washing with its watery waves!

Delicious islands! to whose envied shore

Thee, gallant COOK! the ship Endeavour[175] bore.

There laughs the sky, there zephyr’s frolic train,

And light-wing’d loves, and blameless pleasures reign:

There, when two souls congenial ties unite,

No hireling Bonzes chant the mystic rite;

Free every thought, each action unconfin’d,

And light those fetters which no rivets bind.

There in each grove, each sloping bank along,

And flow’rs and shrubs and odorous herbs among,

Each shepherd clasp’d, with undisguis’d delight,

His yielding fair one,—in the Captain’s sight;

Each yielding fair, as chance or fancy led,

Preferr’d new lovers to her sylvan bed.[176]

Learn hence, each nymph, whose free aspiring mind

Europe’s cold laws,[177] and colder customs[178] bind—

O! learn, what Nature’s genial laws decree—

What Otaheite[179] is, let Britain be!

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Of WHIST or CRIBBAGE mark th’ amusing game—

The partners changing, but the SPORT the same.

Else would the gamester’s anxious ardour cool,

Dull every deal, and stagnant every pool.

—Yet must one[180] Man, with one unceasing Wife,

Play the LONG RUBBER of connubial life.

Yes! human laws, and laws esteem’d divine,

The generous passion straiten and confine;

And, as a stream, when art constrains its course,

Pours its fierce torrent with augmented force,

So, Passion[181] narrowed to one channel small,

Unlike the former, does not flow at all.

—For Love then only flaps his purple wings,

When uncontroll’d by priestcraft or by kings.

Such the strict rules, that, in these barbarous climes,

Choke youth’s fair flow’rs, and feelings turn to crimes;

And people every walk of polish’d life[182]

With that two-headed monster, MAN and WIFE.

Yet bright examples sometimes we observe,

Which from the general practice seem to swerve;

Such as presented to Germania’s[183] view,

A KOTZEBUE’S bold emphatic pencil drew:

Such as, translated in some future age,

Shall add new glories to the British stage;

—While the moved audience sit in dumb despair,

“Like Hottentots,[184] and at each other stare”.

With look sedate, and staid beyond her years,

In matron weeds a Housekeeper appears.

The jingling keys her comely girdle deck—

Her ’kerchief colour’d, and her apron check.

Can that be Adelaide, that “soul of whim,”

Reform’d in practice, and in manner prim?

—On household cares intent,[185] with many a sigh

She turns the pancake, and she moulds the pie;

Melts into sauces rich the savoury ham;

From the crush’d berry strains the lucid jam;

Bids brandied cherries,[186] by infusion slow,

Imbibe new flavour, and their own forego,

Sole cordial of her heart, sole solace of her woe!

While, still responsive to each mournful moan,

The saucepan simmers in a softer tone.

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

[The following extracts will give some idea of PAYNE KNIGHT’S poem.

Hail! happy States, that fresh in vigour rise

From Europe’s wrecks beneath Atlantic skies!

Long may ye feel the blessings ye bestow;

Nor e’er your parents’ sickly symptoms know!

But when that parent, crush’d beneath the weight

Of debts and taxes, yields herself to fate;

May you her hapless fugitives receive,

Comfort their sorrows, and their wants relieve!

For come it will—th’ inevitable day,

When Britain must corruption’s forfeit pay,

Beneath a despot’s, or a rabble’s sway.

After a glowing description of the amours of a shepherd and shepherdess, he thus speaks of Marriage:—

Bless’d days of youth, of liberty, and love!

How short, alas! your transient pleasures prove!

Just as we think the sweet delights our own,

We strive to fix them, and we find them flown:—

For fix’d by laws, and limited by rules,

Affection stagnates and love’s fervour cools;

Shrinks like the gather’d flower, which, when possess’d,

Droops in the hand, or withers on the breast:

Feels all its native bloom and fragrance fly,

And death’s pale shadows close its purple dye.

While mutual wishes form love’s only vows,

By mutual interests nursed, the union grows;

Respectful fear its rising power maintains,

And both preserve, when each may break, its chains.

But when in bands indissoluble join’d,

Securely torpid sleeps the sated mind;

No anxious hopes or fears arise, to move

The flagging wings, or stir the fires of love:

Benumb’d, the soul’s best energies repose,

And life in dull unvaried torpor flows;

Or only shakes off lethargy to teaze

Whom once its only pleasure was to please.—ED.]

In illustration of these peculiar doctrines of Love and Marriage, the authors of the present Parody introduced into the first twenty lines of the preceding “Extract,” the very free statements on these subjects which appear in Chapters 8, 12, 14, 16, 17, of the narrative of Cook’s First Voyage to the Pacific in the “Endeavour,” in 1768, derived, by the editor, Dr. John Hawkesworth, from the Diary of Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Banks, who accompanied Captain Cook.—ED.]

[LORD ERSKINE, after dinner, inveighed bitterly against Marriage; and smarting, I suppose, under the recollection of his own unsuccessful choice, concluded by saying that a wife was a tin canister tied to a man’s tail, which very much excited the indignation of Lady Ann Culling Smith, who was of the party. “Monk” Lewis took a sheet of paper, and wrote the following neat epigram on the subject, which he presented to Her Royal Highness [the Duchess of York]:—

“Lord Erskine at marriage presuming to rail,

Says, a wife’s a tin canister tied to ones tail;

And the fair Lady Ann, while the subject he carries on,

Feels hurt at his Lordship’s degrading comparison.

But wherefore degrading? if taken aright,

A tin canister’s useful, and polished, and bright,

And if dirt its original purity hide,

’Tis the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied.”

—Journal of T. Raikes, ii. 56.—ED.]

[RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT, eminent as he was as a classical scholar and archæologist, was not successful as a poet or moralist, and this is shown in an amusing manner in a letter from Horace Walpole to the Rev. W. Mason, dated 22nd March, 1796, in which he declares how much he is offended and disgusted by Knight’s “new insolent and self-conceited poem,” alluding to his Progress of Civil Society,—the former one being “The Landscape, a didactic poem in three books,” 4to, pub. 1794, of which mention has already been made.

In 1816 he was examined before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the proposed purchase by the Government of the Elgin Marbles; but his estimate of their value as works of the highest art was much below that of other artistic witnesses, such as Flaxman, Westmacott, Chantrey, B. West, and others. For these statements he was severely criticised in vol. 14 of the Quarterly Review, and in a squib, reprinted in the New Whig Guide in 1819. He valued the collection at £25,000; Gavin Hamilton’s estimate was £60,800, and Lord Aberdeen’s £35,000; for which latter sum they were obtained by the Government. He bequeathed his collection of ancient Bronzes, Greek Coins, &c.—valued at £50,000—to the British Museum.

He represented Ludlow till 1806. He was a supporter of FOX, upon whom he wrote a Monody. He was never married, and he was succeeded in his fine property, including Downton Castle, near Ludlow, &c., on his death in 1824, by his brother, Thomas Andrew Knight, one of the most scientific of horticulturists, and he in turn was succeeded by his grandson, Andrew Johnes Rouse Boughton, second son of the late Sir W. E. Rouse Boughton, Bart., who added by royal license in 1856 the name of Knight to his patronymic.—ED.]

[The drama (here nicknamed The Reformed Housekeeper), but entitled by the author “Misanthropy and Repentance,” was produced at Drury Lane Theatre, Sheridan being then lessee, as “The Stranger,” on the 24th March, 1798. The following was the cast:—The Stranger, J. P. Kemble; Baron Steinfort, John Palmer; Francis, R. Palmer; Peter, Suett; Tobias, J. Aikin; Solomon, Wewitzer; Count Wintersen, Barrymore; Mrs. Haller, Mrs. Siddons; Countess Wintersen, Mrs. Goodall; Charlotte, Miss Stuart. It was considered by competent authorities as one of Kemble’s finest efforts, and was performed on twenty-six successive nights. Some of our most eminent actors and actresses have essayed the principal parts. Miss O’Neill made her last appearance on the stage in the character of Mrs. Haller, 13th of July, 1818.

The acting version purported to be altered from the German by Benj. Thompson (afterwards Count Rumford), but it is likely that all or most of the alterations came from the skilful hands of Sheridan, assisted by Kemble. The pathetic song introduced, “I have a silent sorrow here,” was written by the former. Two other versions of the drama appeared in the year 1798—one by A. Schinck, and the other by G. Papendick—but neither has been acted.

Kotzebue tells us in his Autobiography that this play of his was acted at the Imperial Palace of The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, under his superintendence while manager of the Imperial Company of German Comedians, and excited visible emotion in the Emperor Paul. He himself saw it acted at Tobolsk during his exile in Siberia. The vast and splendid palace of The Hermitage is now given up to the Arts. It contains the enormous collection of Pictures accumulated by the Russian sovereigns (including the Houghton Gallery formed by Sir Robert Walpole), together with a Gallery of Sculpture, one of the finest assortments of Antique Gems in the world, a museum of Grecian and Etruscan Antiquities, and a library of rare Books and Manuscripts.

An awful event took place during the performance of this play a short time after its production. John Palmer, an eminent comedian, while acting the principal character, at Liverpool, on the 2nd of August, 1798, expired on the stage. He had recently suffered severe domestic bereavements, which are supposed to have given a painful application to some passages in the third act in which he had to utter the words: “There is another and a better world”. In the first scene of the fourth act, his agitation increased; he fell into the arms of the performer of the part of Baron Steinfort, and died without a groan. A narrative of this shocking event, published immediately afterwards, by the same performer, disposes of the generally-received but more emotional tradition that Palmer’s earthly career was terminated while pronouncing the above words. He was in his fifty-seventh year.

This is not the only instance of so impressive an end, for a similar death-stroke overtook Joseph Peterson, an excellent actor, in October, 1758, while representing The Duke in Measure for Measure. In act 3, sc. 1, in reciting the words—

“—Reason thus with life:

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art—”

he dropped into the arms of Moody, who personated Claudio, and never spoke more!—ED.]

[“One other noted character we visited—the one who, according to William Taylor of Norwich, was the greatest of all. This was AUGUST VON KOTZEBUE, the very popular dramatist, whose singular fate it was to live at variance with the great poets of his country, while he was the idol of the mob. He was at one time (about this time (1801) and a little later) a favourite in all Europe. One of his plays, The Stranger, I have seen acted in German, English, Spanish, French, and, I believe, also Italian. He was the pensioner of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The odium produced by this circumstance, and the imputation of being a spy, are assigned as the cause of his assassination by [C. L. Sand] a student of Jena, a few years after our visit [March 3, 1819]. He was living, like Goethe, in a large house and in style. I drank tea with him, and found him a lively little man, with small black eyes. He had the manners of a petit-maître.”—Crabb Robinson’s Diary (1801), i. 115.—ED.]

No. XXII.

April 9, 1798.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

SIR,—I saw, with strong approbation, your specimen of ancient Sapphic measure in English, which I think far surpasses all that Abraham Fraunce, Richard Stanyhurst, or Sir Philip Sidney himself, have produced in that style—I mean, of course, your sublime and beautiful Knife-Grinder, of which it is not too high an encomium to say, that it even rivals the efforts of the fine-eared democratic poet, Mr. Southey. But you seem not to be aware, that we have a genuine Sapphic measure belonging to our own language, of which I now send you a short specimen.

THE JACOBIN.

I am a hearty Jacobin,

Who own no God, and dread no sin,

Ready to dash through thick and thin

For freedom:

And when the teachers of Chalk-Farm

Gave Ministers so much alarm,

And preach’d that kings did only harm,

I fee’d ’em.

By BEDFORD’S cut I’ve trimm’d my locks,

And coal-black is my knowledge-box,

Callous to all, except hard knocks

Of thumpers;

My eye a noble fierceness boasts,

My voice as hollow as a ghost’s,

My throat oft washed by factious toasts

In bumpers.

Whatever is in France, is right;

Terror and blood are my delight;

Parties with us do not excite

Enough rage.

Our boasted laws I hate and curse,

Bad from the first, by age grown worse,

I pant and sigh for univers-[187]

al suffrage.

WAKEFIELD[188] I love—adore HORNE TOOKE,

With pride on JONES[189] and THELWALL[190] look,

And hope that they, by hook or crook,

Will prosper.

But they deserve the worst of ills,

And all th’ abuse of all our quills,

Who form’d of strong and gagging Bills[191]

A cross pair.

Extinct since then each speaker’s fire,

And silent ev’ry daring lyre,[192]

Dum-founded they whom I would hire

To lecture.

Tied up, alas! is ev’ry tongue

On which, conviction nightly hung,[193]

And THELWALL looks, though yet but young,

A spectre.[194]

B. O. B.

No. XXIII.

April 16, 1798.

We cannot better explain to our readers the design of the poem from which the following extracts are taken, than by borrowing the expressions of the author, Mr. HIGGINS, of St. Mary Axe, in the letter which accompanied the manuscript.

We must premise, that we had found ourselves called upon to remonstrate with Mr. H. on the freedom of some of the positions laid down in his other didactic poem, the “Progress of Man”; and had in the course of our remonstrance hinted something to the disadvantage of the new principles which are now afloat in the world, and which are, in our opinion, working so much prejudice to the happiness of mankind. To this Mr. H. takes occasion to reply—[195]

“What you call the new principles are, in fact, nothing less than new. They are the principles of primeval nature, the system of original and unadulterated man.

“If you mean by my addiction to new principles that the object which I have in view in my larger work [meaning the ‘Progress of Man’] and in the several other concomitant and subsidiary didactic poems which are necessary to complete my plan, is to restore this first, and pure simplicity; to rescue and to recover the interesting nakedness of human nature, by ridding her of the cumbrous establishments which the folly, and pride, and self-interest of the worst part of our species have heaped upon her;—you are right. Such is my object. I do not disavow it. Nor is it mine alone. There are abundance of abler hands at work upon it. Encyclopedias, Treatises, Novels, Magazines, Reviews, and New Annual Registers, have, as you are well aware, done their part with activity and with effect. It remained to bring the heavy artillery of a didactic poem to bear upon the same object.

“If I have selected your paper as the channel for conveying my labours to the public, it was not because I was unaware of the hostility of your principles to mine, of the bigotry of your attachment to ‘things as they are,’ but because, I will fairly own, I found some sort of cover and disguise necessary for securing the favourable reception of my sentiments; the usual pretexts of humanity, and philanthropy, and fine feeling, by which we have for some time obtained a passport to the hearts and understandings of men, being now worn out or exploded. I could not choose but smile at my success in the first instance, in inducing you to adopt my poem as your own.

“But you have called for an explanation of these principles of ours, and you have a right to obtain it. Our first principle is, then—the reverse of the trite and dull maxim of Pope—‘Whatever is, is right’. We contend, that ‘Whatever is, is wrong’; that institutions, civil and religious, that social order (as it is called in your cant) and regular government, and law, and I know not what other fantastic inventions, are but so many cramps and fetters on the free agency of man’s natural intellect and moral sensibility; so many badges of his degradation from the primal purity and excellence of his nature.

“Our second principle is, the ‘eternal and absolute perfectibility of man’. We contend, that if, as is demonstrable, we have risen from a level with the cabbages of the field to our present comparatively intelligent and dignified state of existence, by the mere exertion of our own energies; we should, if these energies were not repressed and subdued by the operation of prejudice, and folly, by KING-CRAFT and PRIEST-CRAFT, and the other evils incident to what is called civilized society, continue to exert and expand ourselves in a proportion infinitely greater than anything of which we yet have any notion:—in a ratio hardly capable of being calculated by any science of which we are now masters: but which would in time raise man from his present biped state to a rank more worthy of his endowments and aspirations; to a rank in which he would be, as it were, all MIND; would enjoy unclouded perspicacity and perpetual vitality; feed on oxygene, and never die, but by his own consent.

“But though the poem of the PROGRESS OF MAN alone would be sufficient to teach this system and enforce these doctrines, the whole practical effect of them cannot be expected to be produced, but by the gradual perfecting of each of the sublimer sciences;—at the husk and shell of which we are now nibbling and at the kernel whereof, in our present state, we cannot hope to arrive. These several sciences will be the subjects of the several auxiliary DIDACTIC POEMS which I have now in hand (one of which, entitled THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES, I herewith transmit to you), and for the better arrangement and execution of which, I beseech you to direct your bookseller to furnish me with a handsome Chambers’s Dictionary; in order that I may be enabled to go through the several articles alphabetically, beginning with Abracadabra, under the first letter, and going down to Zodiac, which is to be found under the last.

“I am persuaded that there is no science, however abstruse, nay, no trade or manufacture, which may not be taught by a didactic poem. In that before you, an attempt is made (not unsuccessfully, I hope) to enlist the imagination under the banners of Geometry. Botany I found done to my hands. And though the more rigid and unbending stiffness of a mathematical subject does not admit of the same appeals to the warmer passions, which naturally arise out of the sexual (or, as I have heard several worthy gentlewomen of my acquaintance, who delight much in the poem to which I allude, term it, by a slight misnomer no way difficult to be accounted for—the sensual) system of Linnæus;—yet I trust that the range and variety of illustration with which I have endeavoured to ornament and enlighten the arid truths of Euclid and Algebra, will be found to have smoothed the road of Demonstration, to have softened the rugged features of Elementary Propositions, and, as it were, to have strewed the Asses’ Bridge with flowers.”

Such is the account which Mr. HIGGINS gives of his own undertaking, and of the motives which have led him to it. For our parts, though we have not the same sanguine persuasion of the absolute perfectibility of our species, and are in truth liable to the imputation of being more satisfied with things as they are, than Mr. HIGGINS and his associates;—yet, as we are, in at least the same proportion, less convinced of the practical influence of didactic poems, we apprehend little danger to our readers’ morals from laying before them Mr. HIGGINS’S doctrine in its most fascinating shape. The poem abounds, indeed, with beauties of the most striking kind,—various and vivid imagery, bold and unsparing impersonifications; and similitudes and illustrations brought from the most ordinary and the most extraordinary occurrences of nature—from history and fable—appealing equally to the heart and to the understanding, and calculated to make the subject of which the poem professes to treat rather amusing than intelligible. We shall be agreeably surprised to hear that it has assisted any young student at either University in his mathematical studies.

We need hardly add, that the plates illustrative of this poem (the engravings of which would have been too expensive for our publication) are to be found in Euclid’s Elements, and other books of a similar tendency.

LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.[196]

ARGUMENT OF THE FIRST CANTO.

Warning to the profane not to approach—Nymphs and Deities of Mathematical Mythology—Cyclois of a pensive turn—Pendulums, on the contrary, playful—and why?—Sentimental Union of the Naiads and Hydrostatics—Marriage of Euclid and Algebra.—Pulley the emblem of Mechanics—Optics of a licentious disposition—distinguished by her telescope and green spectacles.—Hyde-Park Gate on a Sunday morning—Cockneys—Coaches.—Didactic Poetry—Nonsensia—Love delights in Angles or Corners—Theory of Fluxions explained—Trochais, the Nymph of the Wheel—Smoke-Jack described—Personification of elementary or culinary Fire.—Little Jack Horner—Story of Cinderella—Rectangle, a Magician, educated by Plato and Menecmus—in love with Three Curves at the same time—served by Gins, or Genii—transforms himself into a Cone—the Three Curves requite his passion—Description of them—Parabola, Hyperbola, and Ellipsis—Asymptotes—Conjugated Axes.—Illustrations—Rewbell, Barras, and Lepaux, the three virtuous Directors—Macbeth and the Three Witches—the Three Fates—the Three Graces—King Lear and his Three Daughters—Derby Diligence—Catherine Wheel.—Catastrophe of Mr. Gingham, with his Wife and Three Daughters overturned in a One-horse Chaise—Dislocation and Contusion two kindred Fiends—Mail Coaches—Exhortation to Drivers to be careful—Genius of the Post-Office—Invention of Letters—Digamma—Double Letters—Remarkable Direction of one—Hippona the Goddess of Hack-horses—Parameter and Abscissa unite to overpower the Ordinate, who retreats down the Axis-Major, and forms himself in a Square—Isosceles, a Giant—Dr. Rhomboides—Fifth Proposition, or Asses’ Bridge—Bridge of Lodi—Buonaparte—Raft and Windmills—Exhortation to the recovery of our Freedom—Conclusion.

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.

A Mathematical and Philosophical Poem,

INSCRIBED TO DR. DARWIN.

CANTO I.

Stay your rude steps, or e’er your feet invade[197]

The Muses’ haunts, ye sons of War and Trade!

Nor you, ye legion fiends of Church and Law,

Pollute these pages with unhallow’d paw!

Debased, corrupted, grovelling, and confined,

5

No DEFINITIONS[198] touch your senseless mind;

To you no POSTULATES[199] prefer their claim,

No ardent AXIOMS[200] your dull souls inflame;

For you no TANGENTS[201] touch, no ANGLES meet,

No CIRCLES[202] join in osculation[203] sweet!

10

For me, ye CISSOIDS,[204] round my temples bend

Your wandering curves; ye CONCHOIDS[205] extend;

Let playful PENDULES quick vibration feel,

While silent CYCLOIS rests upon her wheel;

Let HYDROSTATICS,[206] simpering as they go,

15

Lead the light Naiads on fantastic toe;

Let shrill ACOUSTICS[207] tune the tiny lyre;

With EUCLID sage fair ALGEBRA[208] conspire;

The obedient pulley[209] strong MECHANICS ply,

And wanton OPTICS roll the melting eye!

20

I see the fair fantastic forms appear,

The flaunting drapery, and the languid leer;

Fair sylphish forms[210]—who, tall, erect, and slim,

Dart the keen glance, and stretch the length of limb;

To viewless harpings weave the meanless dance,

25

Wave the gay wreath, and titter as they prance.

Such rich confusion[211] charms the ravish’d sight,

When vernal Sabbaths to the Park invite.

Mounts the thick dust, the coaches crowd along,

Presses round Grosvenor Gate th’ impatient throng;

30

White-muslined misses and mammas are seen,

Linked with gay cockneys, glittering o’er the green:

The rising breeze unnumbered charms displays,

And the tight ankle strikes th’ astonished gaze.

But chief, thou Nurse of the Didactic Muse,

35

Divine NONSENSIA, all thy soul infuse;

The charms of Secants and of Tangents tell,

How Loves and Graces in an Angle[212] dwell;

How slow progressive Points[213] protract the Line,

As pendent spiders spin the filmy twine;

40

How lengthened Lines, impetuous sweeping round,

Spread the wide Plane, and mark its circling bound;

How Planes, their substance with their motion grown,

Form the huge Cube, the Cylinder, the Cone.

Lo! where the chimney’s sooty tube ascends,

45

The fair TROCHAIS[214] from the corner bends!

Her coal-black eyes upturned, incessant mark

The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark;

Mark with quick ken, where flashing in between,

Her much-loved Smoke-Jack glimmers thro’ the scene;

50

Mark, how his various parts together tend,

Point to one purpose,—in one object end;

The spiral grooves in smooth meanders flow,

Drags the long chain, the polished axles glow,

While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below;

55

The conscious fire[215] with bickering radiance burns,

Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns.

So youthful Horner rolled the roguish eye,

Cull’d the dark plum from out his Christmas pie,

And cried, in self-applause—“How good a boy am I”.

60

So she, sad victim of domestic spite,

Fair Cinderella, pass’d the wintry night,

In the lone chimney’s darksome nook immured,

Her form disfigured, and her charms obscured.

Sudden her godmother appears in sight,

65

Lifts the charmed rod, and chants the mystic rite.

The chanted rite the maid attentive hears,

And feels new ear-rings deck her listening ears;[216]

While ’midst her towering tresses, aptly set,

Shines bright, with quivering glance, the smart aigrette;

70

Brocaded silks the splendid dress complete,

And the Glass Slipper grasps her fairy feet.

Six cock-tailed mice[217] transport her to the ball,

And liveried lizards wait upon her call.

Alas! that partial Science should approve

The sly RECTANGLE’S too licentious love!

For three bright nymphs, &c., &c.

(To be continued.)

No. XXIV.

April 23, 1798.

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.

A Mathematical and Philosophical Poem.

(Continued.)

CANTO I.

ALAS! that partial Science should approve

75

The sly RECTANGLE’S[218] too licentious love!

For three bright nymphs the wily wizard burns;—

Three bright-eyed nymphs requite his flame by turns.

Strange force of magic skill! combined of yore

With Plato’s science and Menecmus’ lore.[219]

80

In Afric’s school, amid those sultry sands

High on its base where Pompey’s pillar stands,

This learnt the Seer; and learnt, alas! too well,

Each scribbled talisman, and smoky spell:

What muttered charms, what soul-subduing arts,

85

Fell Zatanai[220] to his sons imparts.

GINS[221]—black and huge! who in Dom-Daniel’s[222] cave

Writhe your scorched limbs on sulphur’s[223] azure wave;

Or, shivering, yell amidst eternal snows,

Where cloud-capp’d Caf[224] protrudes his granite toes;

90

(Bound by his will, Judæa’s fabled king,[225]

Lord of Aladdin’s lamp and mystic ring.)

Gins! ye remember!—for your toil conveyed

Whate’er of drugs the powerful charm could aid;

Air, earth, and sea ye searched, and where below

95

Flame embryo lavas, young volcanoes[226] glow,—

Gins! ye beheld appall’d th’ enchanter’s hand

Wave in dark air th’ Hypothenusal wand;

Saw him the mystic Circle trace, and wheel

With head erect, and far-extended heel;[227]

100

Saw him, with speed that mocked the dazzled eye,

Self-whirled, in quick gyrations eddying fly:

Till done the potent spell—behold him grown

Fair Venus’ emblem—the Phœnician CONE.[228]

Triumphs the Seer, and now secure observes

105

The kindling passions of the rival CURVES.

And first, the fair PARABOLA[229] behold,

Her timid arms, with virgin blush, unfold!

Though, on one focus fixed, her eyes betray

A heart that glows with love’s resistless sway;

110

Though, climbing oft, she strives with bolder grace

Round his tall neck to clasp her fond embrace,

Still ere she reach it, from his polished side

Her trembling hands in devious Tangents glide.

Not thus HYPERBOLA;[230]—with subtlest art

115

The blue-eyed wanton plays her changeful part;

Quick as her conjugated axes move

Through every posture of luxurious love,

Her sportive limbs with easiest grace expand;

Her charms unveiled provoke the lover’s hand;

120

Unveiled, except in many a filmy ray,

Where light Asymptotes[231] o’er her bosom play,

Nor touch her glowing skin, nor intercept the day.

Yet why, ELLIPSIS,[232] at thy fate repine?

More lasting bliss, securer joys are thine.

125

Though to each fair his treacherous wish may stray,

Though each, in turn, may seize a transient sway,

’Tis thine with mild coercion to restrain,

Twine round his struggling heart, and bind with endless chain.

Thus, happy France! in thy regenerate land,

130

Where TASTE with RAPINE saunters hand in hand;

Where, nursed in seats of innocence and bliss,

REFORM greets TERROR with fraternal kiss;

Where mild PHILOSOPHY first taught to scan

The wrongs of PROVIDENCE, and rights of MAN;

135

Where MEMORY broods o’er FREEDOM’S earlier scene,

The Lantern bright, and brighter Guillotine;

Three gentle swains evolve their longing arms,

And woo the young REPUBLIC’S virgin charms;

And though proud Barras with the fair succeed,

140

Though not in vain th’ Attorney Rewbell plead,

Oft doth th’ impartial nymph their love forego,

To clasp thy crooked shoulders, blest Lepaux!

So, with dark dirge athwart the blasted heath,

Three Sister Witches hailed the appalled Macbeth.

145

So, the Three Fates beneath grim Pluto’s roof,

Strain the dun warp, and weave the murky woof;

’Till deadly Atropos with fatal shears

Slits the thin promise of the expected years,

While ’midst the dungeon’s gloom or battle’s din,

150

Ambition’s victims perish, as they spin.

Thus, the Three Graces on the Idalian green

Bow with deft homage to Cythera’s Queen;

Her polished arms with pearly bracelets deck,

Part her light locks, and bare her ivory neck;

155

Round her fair form ethereal odours throw,

And teach th’ unconscious zephyrs where to blow,

Floats the thin gauze, and glittering as they play,

The bright folds flutter in phlogistic day,.

So, with his daughters Three, th’ unsceptered Lear

160

Heaved the loud sigh, and poured the glistering tear:

His daughters Three, save one alone, conspire

(Rich in his gifts) to spurn their generous sire;

Bid the rude storm his hoary tresses drench,

Stint the spare meal, the hundred knights retrench;

165

Mock his mad sorrow, and with altered mien

Renounce the daughter, and assert the queen.

A father’s griefs his feeble frame convulse,

Rack his white head, and fire his feverous pulse;

Till kind Cordelia soothes his soul to rest,

170

And folds the parent-monarch to her breast.

Thus some fair spinster grieves in wild affright,

Vexed with dull megrim, or vertigo light;

Pleased round the fair, Three dawdling doctors stand,

Wave the white wig, and stretch the asking hand,

175

State the grave doubt, the nauseous draught decree,

And all receive, though none deserve, a fee.

So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn,[233] glides

The Derby dilly, carrying Three INSIDES.

One in each corner sits, and lolls at ease,

180

With folded arms, propt back, and outstretched knees;

While the pressed Bodkin, punched and squeezed to death,

Sweats in the midmost place, and scolds, and pants for breath.[234]

(To be continued.)

No. XXV.

April 30, 1798.

BRISSOT’S GHOST.[235]

As at the Shakespeare Tavern dining,

O’er the well replenished board

Patriotic chiefs reclining,

Quick and large libations poured;

While, in fancy, great and glorious,

’Midst the democratic storm,

FOX’S crew, with shout victorious,

Drank to Radical Reform;

Sudden, up the staircase sounding,

Hideous yells and shrieks were heard;

Then, each guest with fear confounding,

A grim train of Ghosts appeared:

Each a head, with anguish gasping,

(Himself a trunk deformed with gore),

In his hand, terrific, clasping,

Stalked across the wine-stained floor.

On them gleamed the lamp’s blue lustre,

When stern BRISSOT’S grizzly shade

His sad bands was seen to muster,

And his bleeding troops arrayed.

Through the drunken crowd he hied him,

Where the chieftain sate enthroned,

There, his shadowy trunks beside him,

Thus in threatening accents groaned:

“Heed, oh heed our fatal story,

(I am BRISSOT’S injured Ghost),

You who hope to purchase glory

In that field where I was lost!

Though dread PITT’S expected ruin

Now your soul with triumph cheers,

When you think on our undoing,

You will mix your hopes with fears.

“See these helpless, headless spectres,

Wandering through the midnight gloom:

Mark their Jacobinic lectures

Echoing from the silent tomb;

These, thy soul with terror filling,

Once were Patriots fierce and bold”—

(Each his head, with gore distilling,

Shakes, the whilst his tale is told).

“Some from that dread engine’s carving

In vain contrived their heads to save—

See BARBAROUX and PÉTION[236] starving

In the Languedocian cave!

See, in a higgler’s[237] hamper buckled,

How LOUVET’S soaring spirit lay!

How virtuous ROLAND,[238] helpless cuckold,

Blew what brains he had away.

“How beneath the power of MARAT,

CONDORCET, blaspheming, fell,

Begged some laudanum of GARAT,[239]

Drank;—and slept,—to wake in hell!

Oh that, with worthier souls uniting,

I in my country’s cause had shone!

Had died my Sovereign’s battle fighting,

Or nobly propp’d his sinking throne!—

“But hold!—I scent the gales of morning—

Covent-Garden’s clock strikes One!

Heed, oh heed my earnest warning,

Ere England is, like France, undone!

To St. Stephen’s quick repairing,

Your dissembled mania end;

And, your errors past forswearing,

Stand at length your Country’s Friend!”

[The preceding ballad is parodied from the one by Glover, entitled—

ADMIRAL HOSIER’S GHOST.

As near Porto-Bello lying

On the gently swelling flood,

At midnight with streamers flying,

Our triumphant navy rode:

There while VERNON sat all-glorious

From the Spaniard’s late defeat,

And his crews, with shouts victorious,

Drank success to England’s fleet:

On a sudden, shrilly sounding,

Hideous yells and shrieks were heard,

Then each heart with fear confounding,

A sad troop of ghosts appeared:

All in dreary hammocks shrouded,

Which for winding-sheets they wore,

And with looks by sorrow clouded,

Frowning on that hostile shore.

On them gleam’d the moon’s wan lustre,

When the shade of HOSIER brave

His pale bands was seen to muster,

Rising from their wat’ry grave:

O’er the glimmering wave he hied him,

Where the Burford rear’d her sail,

With three thousand ghosts beside him,

And in groans did VERNON hail.

Heed, O heed, our fatal story,

I am HOSIER’S injured ghost.

You who now have purchas’d glory,

At this place where I was lost;

Though in Porto-Bello’s ruin

You now triumph free from fears,

When you think on our undoing,

You will mix your joy with tears.

See these mournful spectres sweeping

Ghastly o’er this hated wave,

Whose wan cheeks are stain’d with weeping,

These were English Captains brave.

Mark those numbers pale and horrid,

Those were once my sailors bold,

See each hangs his drooping forehead,

While his dismal tale is told.

I by twenty sail attended

Did this Spanish town affright,

Nothing then its wealth defended

But my orders not to fight.

O! that in this rolling ocean

I had cast them with disdain,

And obey’d my heart’s warm motion

To have quell’d the pride of Spain.

For resistance I could fear none,

But with twenty ships had done

What thou, brave and happy VERNON,

Hast achiev’d with six alone.

Then the Bastimentos never

Had our foul dishonour seen,

Nor the sea the sad receiver

Of this gallant train had been.

Thus, like thee, proud Spain dismaying,

And her galleons leading home,

Though condemned for disobeying,

I had met a traitor’s doom:

To have fallen, my country crying

He has play’d an English part,

Had been better far than dying

Of a griev’d and broken heart.

Unrepining at thy glory,

Thy successful arms we hail;

But remember our sad story,

And let HOSIER’S wrongs prevail.

Sent in this foul clime to languish,

Think what thousands fell in vain,

Wasted with disease and anguish,

Not in glorious battle slain.

Hence with all my train attending

From their oozy tombs below,

Through the hoary foam ascending,

Here I feed my constant woe.

Here the Bastimentos viewing,

We recal our shameful doom,

And our plaintive cries renewing,

Wander through the midnight gloom.

O’er these waves for ever mourning,

Shall we roam deprived of rest,

If to Britain’s shores returning,

You neglect my just request;

After this proud foe subduing,

When your patriot friends you see,

Think on Vengeance for my ruin,

And for England sham’d in me.]

No. XXVI.

May 7, 1798.

LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.

The frequent solicitations which we have received for a continuation of the LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES have induced us to lay before the public (with Mr. Higgins’s permission) the concluding lines of the Canto. The catastrophe of Mr. and Mrs. Gingham, and the episode of Hippona, contained, in our apprehension, several reflections of too free a nature. The conspiracy of Parameter and Abscissa against the Ordinate is written in a strain of poetry so very splendid and dazzling as not to suit the more tranquil majesty of diction which our readers admire in Mr. Higgins. We have therefore begun our extract with the Loves of the Giant Isosceles, and the Picture of the Asses-Bridge, and its several illustrations.

CANTO I.

EXTRACT.

’Twas thine alone, O youth of giant frame,

Isosceles![240] that rebel heart to tame!

In vain coy Mathesis[241] thy presence flies:

Still turn her fond hallucinating[242] eyes;

Thrills with Galvanic fires[243] each tortuous nerve,

Throb her blue veins, and dies her cold reserve.

—Yet strives the fair, till in the giant’s breast

She sees the mutual passion’s flame confessed:

Where’er he moves, she sees his tall limbs trace

Internal Angles[244] equal at the base;

Again she doubts him: but produced at will,

She sees th’ external Angles equal still.

Say, blest Isosceles! what favouring power,

Or love, or chance, at night’s auspicious hour,

While to the Asses-Bridge[245] entranced you strayed,

Led to the Asses-Bridge the enamoured maid?—

The Asses-Bridge, for ages doomed to hear

The deafening surge assault his wooden ear,

With joy repeats sweet sounds of mutual bliss,

The soft susurrant sigh, and gently-murmuring kiss.

So thy dark arches, London Bridge, bestride

Indignant Thames, and part his angry tide,

There oft—returning from those green retreats,

Where fair Vauxhallia decks her sylvan seats;—

Where each spruce nymph, from city compters free,

Sips the froth’d syllabub, or fragrant tea;

While with sliced ham, scraped beef, and burnt champagne,

Her ’prentice lover soothes his amorous pain;—

There oft, in well-trimmed wherry, glide along

Smart beaux and giggling belles, a glittering throng:

Smells the tarr’d rope—with undulation fine

Flaps the loose sail—the silken awnings shine;

“Shoot we the bridge!” the venturous boatmen cry;

“Shoot we the bridge!” the exulting fare[246] reply.

—Down the steep fall the headlong waters go,

Curls the white foam, the breakers roar below.

The veering helm the dexterous steersman stops,

Shifts the thin oar, the fluttering canvas drops;

Then with closed eyes, clenched hands, and quick-drawn breath,

Darts at the central arch, nor heeds the gulf beneath.

Full ’gainst the pier the unsteady timbers knock,

The loose planks, starting, own the impetuous shock;

The shifted oar, dropp’d sail, and steadied helm,

With angry surge the closing waters whelm—

Laughs the glad Thames, and clasps each fair one’s charms,

That screams and scrambles in his oozy arms.

Drench’d each smart garb, and clogged each straggling limb,

Far o’er the stream the Cockneys sink or swim;

While each badged boatman,[247] clinging to his oar,

Bounds o’er the buoyant wave, and climbs the applauding shore.

So, towering Alp! from thy majestic ridge[248]

Young Freedom gazed on Lodi’s blood-stained Bridge;

Saw, in thick throngs, conflicting armies rush,

Ranks close on ranks, and squadrons squadrons crush;

Burst in bright radiance through the battle’s storm,

Waved her broad hands, displayed her awful form;

Bade at her feet regenerate nations bow,

And twined the wreath round BUONAPARTE’S brow.

Quick with new lights, fresh hopes, and altered zeal,

The slaves of despots dropp’d the blunted steel:

Exulting Victory owned her favourite child,

And freed Liguria clapp’d her hands, and smiled.

Nor long the time ere Britain’s shores shall greet

The warrior-sage, with gratulation sweet:

Eager to grasp the wreath of naval fame,

The GREAT REPUBLIC plans the Floating Frame!

O’er the huge plane gigantic Terror stalks,

And counts with joy the close-compacted balks:

Of young-eyed Massacres the Cherub crew,

Round their grim chief the mimic task pursue;

Turn the stiff screw,[249] apply the strengthening clamp,

Drive the long bolt, or fix the stubborn cramp,

Lash the reluctant beam, the cable splice,

Join the firm dove-tail with adjustment nice,

Through yawning fissures urge the willing wedge,

Or give the smoothing adze a sharper edge.

Or group’d in fairy bands, with playful care,

The unconscious bullet to the furnace bear;—

Or gaily tittering, tip the match with fire,

Prime the big mortar, bid the shell aspire;

Applaud, with tiny hands, and laughing eyes,

And watch the bright destruction as it flies.

Now the fierce forges gleam with angry glare—

The windmill[250] waves his woven wings in air;

Swells the proud sail, the exulting streamers fly,

Their nimble fins unnumber’d paddles ply:

Ye soft airs breathe, ye gentle billows waft,

And, fraught with Freedom, bear the expected Raft!

Perch’d on her back, behold the Patriot train,

MUIR, ASHLEY, BARLOW, TONE, O’CONNOR, PAINE!

While TANDY’S hand directs the blood-empurpled rein.

Ye Imps of Murder! guard her angel form,

Check the rude surge, and chase the hovering storm;

Shield from contusive rocks her timber limbs,

And guide the sweet Enthusiast[251] as she swims!

And now, with web-foot oars, she gains the land,

And foreign footsteps press the yielding sand:

The Communes spread, the gay Departments smile,

Fair Freedom’s Plant o’ershades the laughing isle:

Fired with new hopes, the exulting peasant sees

The Gallic streamer woo the British breeze;[252]

While, pleased to watch its undulating charms,

The smiling infant[253] spreads his little arms.

Ye sylphs of DEATH! on demon pinions flit

Where the tall Guillotine is raised for PITT:

To the poised plank tie fast the monster’s back,[254]

Close the nice slider, ope the expectant sack;

Then twitch, with fairy hands, the frolic pin—

Down falls the impatient axe with deafening din;

The liberated head rolls off below,[255]

And simpering Freedom hails the happy blow!

[The following lines of Dr. Darwin’s, in Canto ii., gave great offence to the Government:—

So, borne on sounding pinions to the west,

When tyrant-power had built his eagle nest;

While from his eyry shriek’d the famish’d brood,

Clench’d their sharp claws, and champ’d their beaks for blood,

Immortal FRANKLIN watch’d the callow crew,

And stabb’d the struggling vampires, ere they flew.

—The patriot-flame with quick contagion ran,

Hill lighted hill, and man electris’d man:

Her heroes slain awhile Columbia mourn’d,

And crown’d with laurels Liberty return’d.

The warrior, Liberty, with bending sails,

Helm’d his bold course to fair Hibernia’s vales;

Firm as he steps along the shouting lands,

Lo! Truth and Virtue range their radiant bands;

Sad Superstition wails her empire torn,

Art plies his oar, and Commerce pours her horn.

Long had the giant-form on Gallia’s plains

Inglorious slept, unconscious of his chains;

Round his large limbs were wound a thousand strings

By the weak hands of confessors and kings;

O’er his closed eyes a triple veil was bound,

And steely rivets lock’d him to the ground;

While stern Bastile with iron-cage inthralls

His folded limbs, and hems in marble walls.—ED.]

NOTES TO LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.

[The general features of Dr. Darwin’s extraordinary poems, the “Loves of the Plants,” and the “Economy of Vegetation,” which are so admirably ridiculed in the preceding pages, may be gathered from the following specimens:—

ARGUMENT.

The Genius of the place invites the Goddess of Botany—She descends—is received by Spring and the Elements—Addresses the Nymphs of Fire—Love created the Universe—Chaos explodes—All the Stars revolve—Colours of the Morning and Evening Skies—Exterior Atmosphere of inflammable Air—Fires at the Earth’s Centre—Animal Incubation—Venus visits the Cyclops—Phosphoric Lights in the Evening—Bolognian Stone—Ignis fatuus—Eagle armed with Lightning—Discovery of Fire—Medusa—The Chemical Properties of Fire—Lady in Love—Gunpowder—Steam-engine—Labours of Hercules—Halo round the Heads of Saints—Fairy rings—Death of Professor Richman—Cupid snatches the thunderbolt from Jupiter—The great Egg of Night—Naiad released—Frost assailed—Whale attacked—Ice-Islands navigated into the Tropic Seas—Rainy Monsoons—Elijah on Mount Carmel—Departure of the Nymphs of Fire like sparks from Artificial Fireworks, &c.

“Nymphs! you disjoin, unite, condense, expand,

And give new wonders to the Chemist’s hand;

On tepid clouds of rising steam aspire,

Or fix in sulphur all its solid fire;

With boundless spring elastic airs unfold,

Or fill the fine vacuities of gold;

With sudden flash vitrescent sparks reveal,

By fierce collision from the flint and steel;

Or mark with shining letters Kunkel’s name

In the pale phosphor’s self-consuming flame.

So the chaste heart of some enchanted maid

Shines with insidious light, by love betray’d;

Round her pale bosom plays the young desire,

And slow she wastes by self-consuming fire.”

These poems, produced in that dreary time for English poetry which elapsed between the disappearance of Cowper and Burns and the advent of Scott and Byron, had, in spite of their glaring absurdities, no lack of warm admirers. Miss Seward, in her Life of Dr. Darwin, published in 1804, sets no limits to her admiration:—“We are presented,” she says, “with an highly imaginative and splendidly descriptive poem, whose successive pictures alternately possess the sublimity of Michael Angelo, the correctness and elegance of Raphael, with the glow of Titian; whose landscapes have, at times, the strength of Salvator, and at others the softness of Claude; whose numbers are of stately grace, and artful harmony; while its allusions to ancient and modern history and fable, and its interspersion of recent and extraordinary anecdotes, render it extremely entertaining. * * * Each part is enriched by a number of philosophical notes. They state a great variety of theories and experiments in Botany, Chemistry, Electricity, Mechanics, and in the various species of Air, salubrious, noxious, and deadly,” &c.]

THE SCOTTISH “POLITICAL MARTYRS”.

[THOMAS MUIR, the younger, of Hunter’s Hill, a promising young advocate of the Scottish Bar, and of nigh respectability, was tried at Edinburgh, 30th and 31st of August, 1793, before Lord Justice Clerk (Braxfield), Lords Henderland, Swinton, Dunsinnan, and Abercromby, for Sedition. The weightiest charge against him was that of “lending” a copy of Paine’s Rights of Man to a person who begged a reading of that popular book. He was found guilty, and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation. On the 17th of the ensuing month, the Rev. THOS. FYSHE PALMER, a Unitarian Minister of Dundee, and an ex-fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge, was tried at Perth for publishing a seditious Address, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation. On their arrival at Woolwich, in a revenue cutter, they were put on board separate hulks, and assisted at the common labour on the banks of the river. MUIR, soon after his arrival in New South Wales, effected his escape, in an American vessel, to South America, whence he proceeded to Spain. During this voyage, in an action with a British frigate, he received a wound in the head, from which he recovered; but on his arrival at his destination, he was imprisoned by the Spanish authorities, until, on the application of M. de Talleyrand in the name of the then government of France, he obtained his release. He then went to France, and died at Bourdeaux [or Chantilly] in 1799; aged 33. PALMER served out his seven years, but died on the homeward voyage.

Other Trials soon followed. At the close of December, 1793, MR. SKIRVING, MR. GERRALD, and MR. MARGAROT were tried at Edinburgh on similar charges of seditious practices, and were all sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation. The former two died soon after reaching New South Wales. MAURICE MARGAROT, who appears to have conducted himself throughout with the most abandoned and shameless profligacy, was the only one of these convicts—his fourteen years over—who ever set foot again in Britain.

GERRALD was a man of very superior ability, and a favourite pupil of Dr. Parr’s, as is mentioned by De Quincey in his famous essay on that noted Whig pedagogue.

On the Scottish “political martyrs” Lord Cockburn, in his posthumous Examination of the Trials for Sedition in Scotland, published in 1888, which deals with the twenty-five trials of the above-named five and of thirty-two others, between 1793 and 1849, passes his deliberate verdict, that, with the exception of Muir, not one of them was guiltless. But, like ordinary criminals, they were entitled to a fair and impartial trial; and their trials were, one and all, iniquitous. Of the six judges who presided in the first fourteen (1793–94), five were dull, timid nonentities; the sixth, Lord Justice Clerk Braxfield, was, says Lord Cockburn, “a profound practical lawyer, and a powerful man; coarse and illiterate ... utterly devoid of judicial decorum, and though pure in the administration of civil justice, when he was exposed to no temptation, with no other conception of principle in any political case except that the upholding of his party was a duty attaching to his position. Over the five weak men who sat beside him, this coarse and dexterous ruffian predominated as he chose.” But Jedburgh—no, nor the Bloody Assize itself—could scarcely match one scene in Gerrald’s trial:—“‘After all,’ he was urging in his defence, ‘the most useful discoveries in philosophy, the most important changes in the moral history of man, have been innovations. The Revolution was an innovation, Christianity itself was an innovation.’ Instantly upon this, the following interruption took place:—Lord Braxfield: ‘You would have been stopped long before this, if you had not been a stranger. All that you have been saying is sedition. And now, my Lords, he is attacking Christianity.’ Lord Henderland: ‘I allow him all the benefit of his defence. But ... I cannot sit here as a judge without saying that it is a most indecent defence....’ The juries were packed as never, surely, before, or afterwards.”

With such judges, such juries, and, at least, in two cases, false witnesses, it might seem easy to anticipate the result; but the result transcends anticipation. In almost every case a light sentence would have amply met the requirements of justice; but the judges all shared Lord Swinton’s opinion that “it is impossible to punish Sedition adequately, now that torture has been abolished”. So they strove to supply the deficiency by Transportation, a punishment unwarranted by precedent.

With respect to Margarot’s trial at Edinburgh, the following is a vivid memory of Lord Cockburn’s boyhood:—

“MARGAROT came from the Black Bull [in Leith Street] to be tried, attended by a procession of the populace and his Convention friends, with banners and what was called a tree of liberty. This tree was in the shape of the letter M, about twenty feet high and ten wide. The honour of bearing it up by carrying the two upright poles was assigned to two eminent Conventionalists, and the little culprit walked beneath the circular placard in the centre, which proclaimed liberty and equality, &c. I was looking out of a window in the old Post-Office, which was then the northmost house on the west side of the North Bridge. I think I see the scene yet. The whole North Bridge, from the Tron Church to the Register Office, was quite empty at first; not a single creature venturing on that bit of sand, over which the waves were so soon to break from both ends. The Post-Office and the adjoining houses had been secretly filled with constables, and sailors from a frigate in the roads (I think The Hind, Capt. Cochrane), all armed with sticks and batons. No soldier appeared, it being determined that this civic insurrection should be put down by the civil force, unaided, at least, by scarlet. As soon as the tree, which led the van, emerged from Leith Street, and appeared at the north end of the bridge, Provost Elder and the Magistrates issued from some place they had retired to (I believe the Tron Church), and appeared, all robed, at the south end. The day was good. There was still not one person—I doubt if there was even a dog—on any part of the space, being the whole length of the bridge, between the two parties. But the rear of each was crammed with people, who filled up every inch as those in front moved on. The Magistrates were in a line across the street, with the Provost in the centre, the city officers behind this line, and probably a hundred loyal gentlemen in the rear of the officers. The two parties advanced steadily towards each other, and in perfect silence, till they met just about the Post-Office. The Provost stepped forward about a pace, so that he almost touched the front line of the rebels, when, advancing his cane, he commanded them to retire. This order probably would not have been obeyed; but, at any rate, it could not have been obeyed speedily, from the crowd behind. However, all this was immaterial; for, without waiting one instant to see whether they meant to retire or not, the houses vomited forth their bludgeoned contents, and in almost two minutes the tree was demolished and thrown over the bridge, the street covered with the knocked down, the accused dragged to the bar, and the insurrection was over.”

On February 20th, 1837, a meeting took place at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, for commencing a subscription to erect monuments in London and Edinburgh to the memory of the above five Reformers. Joseph Hume, M.P. was in the chair; Colonel Perronet Thompson, Mr. Dan. Whittle Harvey, and fifteen other members of Parliament were present. A lofty obelisk was erected on the Calton Hill to the memory of the “Scottish Martyrs,” but London did not sympathize with the movement.—ED.]

JOEL BARLOW.

[JOEL BARLOW, born in 1756 in Connecticut, was educated as a Presbyterian minister, but afterwards turned Deist. Before this change he translated the Psalms into metre, and his version is still used in the churches of New England. He now adopted the Law, and engaged in periodicals—one, The Anarchist, which was political in its character, and exercised great influence. In 1788, after visiting England, he went to Paris, where he joined the Girondists. In 1791, he returned to England, where he published the first part of his Advice to the Privileged Orders, in which he assails the whole system of Government pursued in monarchical Europe, the Church establishments, the standing armies, the judicial organisations, and the financial systems which belong to the old governments. In February, 1792, he published a political poem, which he entitled The Conspiracy of Kings; also a Letter to the Convention advising the separation of Church and State. So great did his reputation become that he was fixed on by the London Constitutional Society to present their Address to the Convention. After various political transactions in the interest of France, and also in commercial speculations which made him a rich man, he left Paris in 1805, living on his estate in America till 1811, when he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary to Paris. But Napoleon being on his Russian Expedition, he followed him to Wilna; but the fatiguing journey proved fatal: he died 26th December, 1812. He wrote at an early age a poem, The Vision of Columbus, which acquired great popularity, and which he afterwards enlarged as The Columbiad. Among other works he published (in 1796) a mock-heroic poem, Hasty Pudding, which is generally considered his best work.—ED.]

THEOBALD WOLFE TONE.

[THEOBALD WOLFE TONE, the founder of the ASSOCIATION OF UNITED IRISHMEN, was born in Dublin in 1764, and, after passing through Trinity College, came to London to prosecute his legal studies, which he soon forsook for politics, being induced thereto by the indignation excited in his breast by the persecution of the Irish Catholics, whose cause, although himself a Protestant, he warmly advocated. With the view of getting their grievances redressed, he founded the society of UNITED IRISHMEN, which gave great alarm to the English Government. His liberty being menaced, he went to America, and thence to France, where he arranged with Gen. Hoche the expeditions to Bantry Bay and the Texel. Being appointed Adjutant-General, he served in several of the French armies, and lastly in Gen. Hardi’s expedition to Ireland in October, 1798. The vessel he was aboard of was captured by the English, and he was conveyed to Dublin, tried by a Court-Martial, and sentenced to be hanged. He anticipated his execution, however, by committing suicide in prison, 19th November, 1798.—ED.]

ARTHUR O’CONNOR.

[On the 21st and 22nd May, 1798, ARTHUR O’CONNOR (proprietor of a Dublin newspaper, The Press), JOHN BINNS (an active member of the London Corresponding Society), JOHN ALLEN, JEREMIAH LEARY, and JAS. O’COIGLY, alias Jas. Quigley, alias Jas. John Fivey (a Priest), were tried at Maidstone for High Treason. ROBERT FERGUSSON was counsel for Allen. O’COIGLY only was found Guilty, and was executed 7th June, on Pennenden Heath. After being suspended for ten minutes, he was cut down and his head severed from his body: the disgusting remainder of his sentence was remitted. He met his death with great fortitude, and denying to the last the charge of treasonable correspondence abroad. In the State Trials, vols. 26 and 27, are included the Life of the prisoner; Observations on his Trial; Address to the People of Ireland; and Letters, all written by himself during his confinement in Maidstone Gaol. His real name, he says, was the Rev. Jas. Coigly, and his age 36. “Can you imagine a man more treacherous and profligate than O’COIGLY?” said Sir James Mackintosh to DR. PARR. “Yes, Sir, he might have been worse: he was a parson—he might have been a lawyer; he was a traitor—he might have been an apostate; he was an Irishman—he might have been a Scotchman.” When it is recollected that Mackintosh was a Scotchman and a lawyer, and that he had written in defence of the French Revolution against Burke, these observations of Dr. Parr were both insolent and uncalled for.

A Portrait of “Arthur O’Connor, late Member in the Irish Parliament for Borough of Philipstown, painted by J. Dowling, engraved by W. Ward,” was published in London, 18th April, 1798. Another Portrait in military uniform is to be found in Barrington’s Memoirs of the Union. He figures also in several of GILLRAY’S Caricatures.

In the Birmingham Daily Post of April 2, 1888, it is stated that THE HON. R. E. O’CONNOR, M.A., barrister-at-law, the latest addition to the Legislative Council of New South Wales, is a grandson of ARTHUR O’CONNOR, one of the leaders of the United Irishmen, who died a General in the service of France.

When O’CONNOR was acquitted by the Jury, on the above-named occasion, but before the Judge had given orders for his release, a strange scene occurred in court, an attempt being made, as it was alleged, by SACKVILLE, EARL OF THANET, ROBERT FERGUSSON (in after years known as CUTLAR FERGUSSON, Judge-Advocate-General), and others to facilitate his escape in order to avoid further charges about to be preferred against him, Binns also being implicated for this exploit, which was unsuccessful, but attended with violence. These confederates were tried at the Bar of the Court of King’s Bench, 25th April, 1799. The Counsel for the Crown were Sir John Scott [Lord Eldon], Law [Lord Ellenborough], Sir W. Garrow, Sir C. Abbot, &c., while the defendants had the powerful advocacy of Erskine and others. His Lordship and Mr. Fergusson were found guilty after a long and ingenious defence by the latter, which presaged his future eminence as a Counsel. LORD THANET was ordered to pay a fine of £1000; to be imprisoned in the Tower for a year; and to give security for good behaviour for seven years on the expiration of the sentence; himself in £10,000, and two sureties in £5000 each. FERGUSSON was ordered to pay a fine of £100; to be imprisoned in the King’s Bench prison for one year; to give security for good behaviour for seven years from the expiration of the sentence; himself in £500, and two sureties in £250 each.—See State Trials, vols. 26 and 27.—ED.]

JAMES NAPPER TANDY.

[“A person who afterwards made a considerable figure in the local affairs of Ireland raised himself about this time into considerable notoriety by his patriotic exertions. This was Mr. JAMES NAPPER TANDY, a gentleman in the middle station of life, without talent or natural influence, had become a warm advocate in the corporation of Dublin; he debated zealously in public, he argued strenuously in private, and persevered in both with indefatigable ardour. His person was ungracious—his language neither eloquent nor argumentative—his address neither graceful nor impressive—but he was sincere and persevering—and though in many instances erroneous and violent, he was considered to be honest. His private character furnished no ground to doubt the integrity of his public one—and, like many of those persons who occasionally spring up in revolutionary periods, he acquired celebrity without being able to account for it, and possessed influence without rank or capacity. In 1796, Mr. Tandy lost all his popularity, and nearly his life, by his apparent want of courage in an affair between him and Mr. Toler, then Solicitor-General, afterwards Lord Norbury, and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Mr. Tandy having signified to Mr. Toler his desire to fight him, the Chief Justice readily accepted the offer. Both parties manœuvred very skilfully; but Mr. Tandy delaying his ultimatum too long for the impatience of the Solicitor-General, he brought him before the House of Commons for a breach of privilege, and prosecuted him for sedition. Mr. Tandy escaped to the Continent, entered the French Service, invaded Ireland, was, with his confederates, arrested by the British Envoy at Hamburg, 24 Nov., 1798, contrary to the law of nations: the Minister of France claimed them as French citizens, and the Senate, unwilling to offend either power, came to no decision on the subject. Tandy was thereupon taken to Ireland and condemned to be hanged—was pardoned by Lord Cornwallis, and sent back to France, where he died a French General.”—Barrington’s Memoirs of the Union, vol. 1, where is a portrait of Tandy.—ED.]

No. XXVII.

May 14, 1798.

The gallant defence of the ISLES OF ST. MARCOU would justify a more serious celebration than is attempted in the following poem; and the modest and unassuming manner in which LIEUTENANT PRICE gives the account of services so highly meritorious, adds to the hope which we entertain that he will meet a more solid reward than any verse of ours or of our correspondent’s could bestow.

CITIZEN MUSKEIN, if he understands Horace, and can read English, will be amply rewarded for the victory of which he has, no doubt, by this time, made a pompous report to the Directory, by the perusal of the 14th Ode of the 1st Book, for which we have to return our thanks to a classical correspondent.

A CONSOLATORY ADDRESS TO HIS GUN-BOATS.

BY CITIZEN MUSKEIN.

O navis! referent in mare te novi fluctus.

O gentle Gun-Boats, whom the Seine

Discharged from Havre to the main;

Now leaky, creaking, blood-bespattered,

With rudders broken, canvas shattered—

O tempt the treacherous sea no more,

But gallantly regain the shore.

Scarce could our guardian goddess, Reason,

Ensure your timbers through the season.

Though built of wood from famed Marseilles,

Well-manned from galleys, and from jails,

Though with LEPAUX’S and REWBELL’S aid,

By PLEVILLE’S[256] skill your keel was laid;

Though lovely STAEL, and lovelier STONE,[256]

Have worked their fingers to the bone,

And cut their petticoats to rags

To make your bright three-coloured flags;

Yet sacrilegious grape and ball

Deform the works of STONE and STAEL,

And trembling, without food or breeches,

Our sailors curse the painted ——.[257]

Children of Muskein’s anxious care,

Source of my hope and my despair,

GUN-BOATS—unless you mean hereafter

To furnish food for British laughter—

Sweet GUN-BOATS, with your gallant crew,

Tempt not the rocks of SAINT MARCOU;

Beware the Badger’s bloody pennant,

And that d——d invalid LIEUTENANT!

LYRICS OF HORACE. ODE XIV., BOOK I.

TRANSLATED BY ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM.

O Ship, fresh billows soon again

Shall bear thee to the boisterous main!

Firm, keep the port. See, see thy side,

Without a single oar to guide!

Wounded by tempests is thy mast;

Thy sail-yards groan beneath the blast;

Nor can thy keel, uncabled, brave

The swelling of th’ imperious wave.

Torn are thy sails! nor Gods hast thou,

When danger threats, to hear thy vow.

Though born of noblest wood, ’twas thine

To tower a vigorous Pontic pine;

’Tis vain thy race, thy name, to prize:

Nought on his painted stern relies

The trembling seaman. Storms afar

Thicken to mock thy strength: beware.

Thou, who wast late my anxious fear,

Thou now my fondest, tenderest care:

O shun, dear Ship, those tossing seas

Which part the white-cliff’d Cyclades!

[MUSKEIN was an inhabitant of Antwerp, whom the Directory not only appointed to superintend the construction of the flat-bottomed boats for the invasion of Great Britain (usually called by the French sailors “bateaux à la Muskein”), but made a “capitaine de vaisseau”. An attack was ordered to be made upon the two small islands of SAINT MARCOUF (each not more than 200 yards in length), of which, in July, 1795, SIR SIDNEY SMITH, with the Diamond frigate, had taken unobstructed possession, and which were considered to give to the English great facility in intercepting between the ports of Havre and Cherbourg. The islands are situated off the river Isigny, on the coast of Normandy, and about four miles distant from the French shore. After being garrisoned with about 500 seamen and marines, including a great proportion of invalids, these small islands were placed under the command of LIEUT. CHARLES PAPPS PRICE, of The Badger, a cruiser-converted Dutch hoy, mounting four, or at most six, guns.

On the 8th April, 1798, MUSKEIN, with 33 flat-bottomed boats, with a body of troops on board, and a few gun-brigs, was about to make a combined attack on the two islands, but was driven off by two British frigates, THE DIAMOND, Capt. Sir R. J. Strachan, and THE HYDRA, Capt. Sir Francis Laforey, and stood into Caen river. While there for three weeks, repairing damages, he was joined by seven heavy gun-brigs, and about 40 flat-boats and armed fishing vessels, bringing with them additional troops.

On the 6th May, LIEUT. PRICE received information that an attack was meditated during the night. By 10 p.m., owing to the prevailing calm, the small naval force on the station, consisting of the 50–gun ship, ADAMANT, Capt. Wm. Hotham, 24–gun ship, EURYDICE, Capt. John Talbot, and 18–gun brig-sloop, ORESTES, Capt. W. Haggitt, had not been able to approach nearer to the islands than six miles—precisely what the assailants wanted. The attacking force consisted of 52–gun brigs and flat-bottomed boats, having on board, as was reported, about 6000 men. At day-break, on the 7th, the flotilla was seen drawn up in a line opposite to the south-west front of the western redoubt; and instantly was opened, upon the brigs and flats composing it, a fire from 17 pieces of cannon, consisting of four 4, two 6, and six 24 pounder long guns, and three 24 and two 32–pounder carronades, being all the guns that would bear. The brigs remained at a distance of from 300 to 400 yards, in order to batter the redoubt with their heavy long guns, while the boats, with great resolution, rowed up until within musket-shot of the battery. But the guns of the latter, loaded with round, grape, and canister, soon poured destruction amongst these, cutting several of the boats “into chips,” and compelling all that could keep afloat to seek their safety in flight. Six or seven boats were seen to go down, and one small flat, No. 13, was afterwards towed in, bottom upwards. She appeared, by some pieces of paper found in her, to have had 144 persons on board, including 129 of the second company of the Boulogne battalion.

The loss sustained by the British garrison amounted to one private-marine killed, and two private-marines and two seamen wounded. According to one French account, the invaders lost about 900 in killed or drowned, and between 300 and 400 wounded. As a reward for their conduct on this occasion, Lieutenants PRICE and BOURNE were each promoted to the rank of Commander. The former died a Post Captain, at Hereford, in 1813, aged 62.—James’s Naval History, vol. ii., pp. 128–131: ed. 1886.—ED.]

[M. PLÉVILLE was Minister of Marine, and, shortly after this unsuccessful début of the famous flotilla, was succeeded by Rear-Adm. Bruix, who directed Rear-Adm. La Crosse to take the command, and to make a second attack upon the islands. This, however, the French Government declined to make.—ED.]

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.—[“Among the literary celebrities of the French Revolution was Helen Maria Williams, at whose house were wont to assemble the most distinguished of the liberal writers of France, her own reputation giving considerable éclat to these meetings. She wrote some of the most beautiful hymns in our language, was a prisoner under the reign of terror, and published a work on the French Revolution which is full of the most touching incidents, and adorned with specimens of the ardent and pathetic poetry, the product of French genius under the excitement of those most mysterious days. A. Humboldt was much attached to her, and committed to her care the translation and publication of some of his most elaborate works.

“She had two nephews, ATHANAS and CHARLES COQUEREL, whom she educated, and who both attained considerable fame, one in the theological and the other in the political field. Athanas was for some time the preacher in the Protestant Church at Amsterdam, and married the daughter of a Swiss gentleman, the only person I have ever known on the Continent to adopt the dress and profess the opinions of an English Quaker. Miss Williams maintained intimate relations with her English friends, was familiar with the great lights of the Revolution, and her conversation was most instructive, entertaining, and varied. All her sympathies were on the side of freedom, and though she was not so prominent as to be persecuted by the Emperor, like Madame de Staël, she was the object of a good deal of suspicion and narrowly watched by the police.”—Autobr. Recollections by Sir John Bowring, pp. 353–4.—ED.]

[MISS WILLIAMS, for some years, wrote that portion of the New Annual Register which relates to France. Among many other productions she was the author of the song Evan Banks (to the tune of Savourna Delish), which has often been attributed to Burns; a novel called Julia, and a Tour in Switzerland. Horace Walpole called her in his CORRESPONDENCE a “scribbling trollop”.

She lived for many years, and until the death of that gentleman—in Paris, 1818—under the protection of JOHN HURFORD STONE, a man of letters, who in the early part of the French Revolution had removed with his wife to Paris, where he formed an intimacy with Miss Williams. She was born about 1762, and died in Paris in 1827 as a friend to the Bourbons, and the enemy of the Revolution!

This MR. STONE was born at Tiverton in 1763. While in Paris he was in the confidence of the Directory, and became one of the chief printers there. In 1805, he brought out an edition of the Geneva Bible, and published several English reprints; also Miss Williams’s translation of HUMBOLDT’S Travels. His brother, WM. STONE, was tried in 1796 for High Treason, for holding treasonable correspondence with him.—ED.]

ELEGY

ON THE DEATH OF JEAN BON ST. ANDRÉ.

The following exquisite tribute to the memory of an unfortunate republican is written with such a touching sensibility, that those who can command salt tears must prepare to shed them. The narrative is simple and unaffected; the event in itself interesting; the moral obvious and awful.—We have only to observe, that as this account of the transaction is taken from the French papers, it may possibly be somewhat partial.—The DEY’S own statement of the affair has not yet been received. Every friend of humanity will join with us in expressing a candid and benevolent hope, that this business may not tend to kindle the flames of war between these two unchristian powers; but that, by mutual concession and accommodation, they may come to some point (short of the restoration of JEAN BON’S head on his shoulders, which in this stage of the discussion is hardly practicable) by which the peace of the Pagan world may be preserved. For our part, we pretend not to decide from which quarter the concessions ought principally to be made. It is but candid to allow that there are probably faults on both sides, in this, as in most other cases. For the character of the DEY we profess a sincere respect on the one hand; and on the other, we naturally wish that the head of JEAN BON ST. ANDRÉ should be reserved for his own guillotine.

ELEGY; OR, DIRGE.

I.

All in the town of TUNIS,

In Africa the torrid,

On a Frenchman of rank

Was played such a prank,

As LEPAUX must think quite horrid.

II.

No story half so shocking,

By kitchen fire or laundry,

Was ever heard tell,—

As that which befel

The great JEAN BON ST. ANDRÉ.[258]

III.

Poor John was a gallant Captain,

In battles much delighting;

He fled full soon

On the first of June—

But he bade the rest keep fighting.

IV.

To Paris then returning,

And recovered from his panic,

He translated the plan

Of Paine’s Rights of Man,

Into language Mauritanic.

V.

He went to teach at Tunis—

Where as Consul he was settled—

Amongst other things,

“That the people are kings!”

Whereat the DEY was nettled.

VI.

The Moors being rather stupid,

And in temper somewhat mulish,

Understood not a word

Of the doctrine they heard,

And thought the Consul foolish.

VII.

He formed a Club of Brothers,

And moved some resolutions—

“Ho! ho! (says the DEY),

“So this is the way

“That the French make Revolutions”.

VIII.

The DEY then gave his orders

In Arabic and Persian—

“Let no more be said—

But bring me his head!

These Clubs are my aversion”.

IX.

The Consul quoted WICQUEFORT,

And PUFFENDORF and GROTIUS;

And proved from VATTEL

Exceedingly well,

Such a deed would be quite atrocious.

X.

’Twould have moved a Christian’s bowels

To hear the doubts he stated;—

But the Moors they did

As they were bid,

And strangled him while he prated.

XI.

His head with a sharp-edged sabre

They severed from his shoulders,

And stuck it on high,

Where it caught the eye,

To the wonder of all beholders.

XII.

This sure is a doleful story

As e’er you heard or read of;—

If at Tunis you prate

Of matters of state,

Anon they cut your head off!

XIII.

But we hear the French Directors

Have thought the point so knotty;

That the DEY having shown

He dislikes JEAN BON,

They have sent him BERNADOTTÉ.

On recurring to the French papers to verify our Correspondent’s statement of this singular adventure of JEAN BON ST. ANDRÉ, we discovered, to our great mortification, that it happened at ALGIERS, and not at TUNIS. We should have corrected this mistake, but for two reasons—first, that ALGIERS would not stand in the verse; and, secondly, that we are informed by the young man who conducts the Geographical Department of the Morning Chronicle, that both the towns are in Africa, or Asia (he is not quite certain which), and, what is more to the purpose, that both are peopled by Moors. TUNIS, therefore, may stand.

[MARSHAL BERNADOTTÉ, the French Prince of Monté Corvo, died as CHARLES JOHN XIV., King of Sweden, 8th March, 1844, in his eighty-first year. He married, in 1798, EUGENIA-BERNARDINA-DÉSIRÉE DE CLARY, daughter of a Marseilles merchant, and sister of MADAME JOSEPH BUONAPARTE (Queen of Spain). “She, who was not a common-place person,” says MADAME DE RÉMUSAT, in her valuable Memoirs, “had before her marriage been very much in love with Napoleon, and appears to have always preserved the memory of that feeling! It has been supposed that her hardly extinguished passion caused her obstinate refusal to leave France.” She survived her husband many years, and died in Paris, in the Rue d’Anjou Saint Honoré. Her husband was succeeded on the throne of Sweden by their son, OSCAR I., who married JOSÉPHINE, daughter of EUGÈNE BEAUHARNAIS, Duc de Leuchtenberg, and granddaughter of the EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

BERNADOTTÉ owed his elevation to the throne to the misgovernment of Gustavus IV., who had brought the nation to the verge of ruin, and who was deposed in 1809, when his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, became king as Charles XIII.; and the next year, BERNADOTTÉ was elected Crown Prince, and successor to the throne.

In 1813, he rendered great assistance to the Allies, for, as Crown Prince, he joined the confederacy against France with 30,000 men; and, after defeating Marshal Ney, with great loss, on the 6th September, he, on the 18th October, with the co-operation of Blücher, again defeated him at the decisive Battle of Leipsic; and, on the 19th, the Emperor Alexander, the King of Prussia, and the Crown Prince, entered the great square of Leipsic, amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants. He was a decided democrat, and hated by Napoleon, but was the only sovereign of the revolutionary branch who was permitted to retain his dominions after the great reaction in 1814. The choice made of this great soldier of fortune excited the surprise of all Europe at the time, but the wisdom of it was soon demonstrated by his prudent conduct. He had distinguished himself from all Napoleon’s other marshals by his clemency in victory. For half a century before his accession, Sweden had not known the peace and prosperity in which he left the country on his death.

In T. RAIKES’S Diary will be found some interesting anecdotes of BERNADOTTÉ’S gratitude for services rendered him while a young subaltern. But one is of a more startling nature, as it records his narrow escape from the death intended for him by the widow of the late king, who had purposely prepared a poisoned cup of coffee for him, which she herself presented to him at her own table. Having been suddenly warned, he succeeded in forcing it upon her. She resolutely accepted her fate, and died during the night.—ED.]

No. XXVIII.

May 21, 1798.

We have received the following letter, with the poem that accompanies it, from a gentleman whose political opinions have hitherto differed from our own; but who appears to feel, as every man who loves his country must, that there can be but one sentiment entertained by Englishmen at the present moment.

Were we at liberty, we should be happy to do justice to the author, and credit to ourselves, by mentioning his name.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ANTI-JACOBIN”.

SIR,—However men may have differed on the political or constitutional questions which have of late been brought into discussion—whatever opinions they may have held on the system or conduct of administration—there can surely be now but one sentiment as to the instant necessity of firm and strenuous union for the preservation of our very existence as a people; and if degrees of obligation could be admitted, where the utmost is required from all, it should seem that in this cause the opposers of administration stand doubly pledged; for with what face of consistency can men pretend to stickle for points of constitutional liberty at home, who will not be found amongst the foremost at their posts to defend their country from the yoke of foreign slavery?

That there should be any set of men so infatuated as not to be convinced that the object of the enemy must be the utter destruction of these countries, after making the largest allowance for the effects of prejudice and passion, it is not easy to conceive. Such, however, we are told, there are. They believe, then, that after a long series of outrage, insult, and injury, in the height of their animosity and presumption, these moderate, mild, disinterested conquerors will invade us in arms, out of pure love and kindness, merely for our good, only to make us wiser, and better, and happier, and more prosperous than before!

Future events lie hid in the volume of Fate, but the intentions of men may be known by almost infallible indications. Passion and interest, the two mighty motives of human action, determine the Government of France to attempt the abolition of the British Empire! and if, abandoned by God and our right arm, we should flinch in the conflict, that destruction will be operative to the full of their gigantic and monstrous imaginations!—Harbours filled up with the ruins of their towns and arsenals, the Thames rendered a vast morass, by burying the Imperial City in her bosom—but I will not proceed in the horrible picture.

Are we then, it may be asked, to wage eternal war?—No; a glorious resistance leads to an honourable peace. The French people have been long weary of the war; their spirit has been forced by a system which must end in the failure of the engagement to give them the plunder of this country. They will awake from their dream, and raise a cry for peace, which their government will not dare to resist. The monarchs of Europe must now begin clearly to perceive that their fate hangs on the destiny of England; they will unite to compel a satisfactory peace on a broad foundation; and peace, when war has been tried to the utmost, will probably be permanent. A few years of wise economy and redoubled industry will place us again on the rising scale; and if the pressure of the times may have rendered it necessary sometimes to have cast a temporary veil over the statue of Liberty, she may again safely be shown in an unimpaired lustre.

Of the following verses I have nothing to say: if it should be decided that the greatness of the object cannot bear out the mediocrity of the execution, I will not appeal from the decision.

ODE TO MY COUNTRY.

MDCCXCVIII.

S. 1.

Britons! hands and hearts prepare:

The angry tempest threatens nigh,

Deep-toned thunders roll in air,

Lightnings thwart the livid sky;

Throned upon the wingéd storm,

Fell DESOLATION rears her ghastly form,

Waves her black signal to her Hell-born brood,

And lures them thus with promised blood:

A. 1.

“Drive, my sons, the storm amain!

Lo, the hated, envied land,

Where PIETY and ORDER reign,

And Freedom dares maintain her stand.

Have ye not sworn, by night and hell,

These from the earth for ever to expel?

Rush on, resistless, to your destined prey,

Death and rapine point the way.”

E. 1.

Britons! stand firm! with stout and dauntless heart

Meet unappall’d the threatening boaster’s rage;

Yours is the great, the unconquerable part,

For your loved hearths and altars to engage,

And sacred LIBERTY, more dear than life—

Yours be the triumph in the glorious strife.

Shall theft and murder braver deeds excite

Than honest scorn of shame and heavenly love of right?

S. 2.

Turn the bright historic page!

Still in glory’s tented field,

Albion’s arms, for many an age,

Have taught proud Gallia’s bands to yield.

Are not WE the sons of those

Whose steel-clad sires pursued the insulting foes,

E’en to the centre of their wide domain,

And bowed them to a BRITON’S reign?[259]

A. 2.

Kings, in modest triumph led,

Graced the SABLE VICTOR’S arms:[260]

His conquering lance, the battle’s dread;—

His courtesy the conquered charms.

The lion-heart soft pity knows,

To raise with soothing cares his prostrate foes;

The vanquished head true valour ne’er oppress’d,

Nor shunn’d to succour the distress’d.

E. 2.

Spirit of great ELIZABETH! inspire

High thoughts, high deeds, worthy our ancient fame;

Breathe through our ardent ranks the patriot fire,

Kindled at Freedom’s ever-hallowed flame;

Baffled and scorned, the Iberian tyrant found,

Though half a world his iron sceptre bound,

The gallant Amazon could sweep away,

Armed with her people’s love, the “INVINCIBLE” array.[261]

S. 3.

The BOLD USURPER[262] firmly held

The sword by splendid treasons gained;

And Gallia’s fiery genius quelled,

And Spain’s presumptuous claims restrained:

When lust of sway, by flattery fed,[263]

To venturous deeds the youthful monarch led,

In the full flow of victory’s swelling tide

Britain checked his power and pride.

A. 3.

To the great BATAVIAN’S name[264]

Ceaseless hymns of triumph raise!

Scourge of tyrants, let his fame

Live in songs of grateful praise.

Thy turrets, BLENHEIM,[265] glittering to the sun,

Tell of bright fields from warlike Gallia won;

Tell how the mighty monarch mourned in vain

His impious wish the world to chain.

E. 3.

And ye famed heroes, late retired to heaven,

Whose setting glories still the skies illume,

Bend from the blissful seats to virtue given—

Avert your long-defended country’s doom.

Earth from her utmost bounds shall wondering tell

How victory’s meed ye gained, or conquering fell;

Britain’s dread thunders bore from pole to pole,

Wherever man is found, or refluent oceans roll.

S. 4.

Names embalmed in honour’s shrine,

Sacred to immortal praise,

Patterns of glory, born to shine

In breathing arts or pictured lays:

See WOLFE, by yielding numbers pressed,

Expiring smile, and sink on victory’s breast!

See MINDEN’S plains and BISCAY’S billowy bay

Deeds of deathless fame display.

A. 4.

O! tread with awe the sacred gloom,

Patriot Virtue’s last retreat;

Where Glory, on the trophied tomb,

Joys their merit to repeat;

There CHATHAM lies, whose master-hand

Guided through seven bright years the mighty band,

That round his urn, where grateful Memory weeps,

Each in his hallowed marble sleeps.

E. 4.

Her brand accursed when civil discord hurled,[266]

Britain alone the united world withstood,

RODNEY his fortune-favoured sails unfurled,

And led three nation’s chiefs to Thames’s flood.

Firm on his rock the VETERAN HERO[267] stands;

Beneath his feet unheeded thunders roar;

Smiling in scorn, he sees the glittering bands

Fly with repulse and shame old CALPE’S hopeless shore.

S. 5.

Heirs or partners of their toils,

Matchless heroes still we own;

Crowned with honourable spoils

From the leagued nations won.

On their high prows they proudly stand,

The godlike guardians of their native land;

Lords of the mighty deep triumphant ride,

Wealth and victory at their side.

A. 5.

Loyal, bold, and generous bands,

Strenuous in their country’s cause,

Guard their cultivated lands,

Their altars, liberties, and laws.

On his firm, deep-founded throne,

Great BRUNSWICK sits—a name to fear unknown,

With brow erect commands the glorious strife,

Unawed, and prodigal of life.

E. 5.

Sons of fair Freedom’s long-descended line,

To Gallia’s yoke shall Britons bend the neck?—

No; in her cause though fate and hell combine

To bury all in universal wreck,

Of this fair Isle to make one dreary waste,

Her greatness in her ruins only traced,—

Arts, commerce, arms, sunk in one common grave—

The man who dares to die will never live a slave.

No. XXIX.

May 28, 1798.

In a former number, we were enabled, by the communication of a classical correspondent, to compliment CITIZEN MUSKEIN with an Address to his Gun-boats, imitated from a favourite Ode of Horace. Another (or perhaps the same) hand has obligingly furnished us with a composition, which we have no doubt will be equally acceptable to the citizen to whom it is addressed.

ODE TO THE DIRECTOR MERLIN.

HORACE, B. I., O. V.

Who now from Naples, Rome, or Berlin,

Creeps to thy blood-stained den, O MERLIN,

With diplomatic gold?—to whom

Dost thou give audience en costume?

King Citizen!—How sure each state

That bribes thy love shall feel thy hate;

Shall see the democratic storm

Her commerce, laws, and arts deform.

How credulous, to hope the bribe

Could purchase peace from MERLIN’S tribe!

Whom, faithless as the waves or wind,

No oaths restrain, no treaties bind.

For us—beneath yon SACRED ROOF,

The NAVAL FLAGS and arms of proof,

By British valour nobly bought,

Show how true safety must be sought!

[THIERS, in his History of the French Revolution, frequently asserts the incorruptibility (with the exception of BARRAS) of the French Directory. But ALISON, in his History, exposes the extraordinary conduct of M. DE TALLEYRAND, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, towards the Envoys from the United States of America, who complained that an immense number of American vessels had been seized by the French Government under a decree of Jan., 1798, which directed that all ships having for their cargoes, in whole or in part, any English merchandise, should be held lawful prize, whoever was the proprietor thereof, from the single circumstance of its coming from England or its foreign settlements. The Envoys were told that nothing could be done till their Government had advanced a sum equal to 1,280,000l. as a loan, and 50,000l. as a douceur to the Directors. These terms were, of course, indignantly rejected. The Hanse Towns, too, only obtained licenses to navigate the high seas by the secret payment of 150,000l. to the Republican rulers.—ED.]

[LYRICS OF HORACE. BOOK I., ODE V.

TRANSLATED BY ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM.

What slender youth, all essenced o’er,

In sweet alcove or rosy bower,

Now woos thee, Pyrrha, to be kind?

For whom these tresses dost thou bind,

Thus simply neat? O how shall he,

Poor youth! bewail the boisterous sea,

Rough with black tempests! How accuse

Capricious Gods, and broken vows!

Fond dupe! he hopes—so sweet that kiss—

Thou’lt still be witching, still be his!

What treacherous gales beset his way,

Ah! little knows he! Hapless they,

Who ne’er thy faithless smiles have tried!

—That I have ’scaped the whelming tide,

A tablet and my dripping vest,

Hung up in Neptune’s fane, attest.—ED.]

No. XXX.

June 4, 1798.

Our ingenious correspondent, MR. HIGGINS, has not been idle. The deserved popularity of the extracts which we have been enabled to give from his two didactic poems, the Progress of Man, and the Loves of the Triangles, has obtained for us the communications of several other works which he has in hand, all framed upon the same principle, and directed to the same end. The propagation of the New System of Philosophy forms, as he has himself candidly avowed to us, the main object of all his writings. A system, comprehending not politics only and religion, but morals and manners, and generally whatever goes to the composition or holding together of human society; in all of which a total change and revolution is absolutely necessary (as he contends) for the advancement of our common nature to its true dignity, and to the summit of that perfection which the combination of matter, called MAN, is by its innate energies capable of attaining.

Of this system, while the sublimer and more scientific branches are to be taught by the splendid and striking medium of didactic poetry, or ratiocination in rhyme, illustrated with such paintings and portraitures of essences and their attributes as may lay hold of the imagination while they perplex the judgment;—the more ordinary parts, such as relate to the conduct of common life and the regulation of social feelings, are naturally the subject of a less elevated style of writing; of a style which speaks to the eye as well as to the ear,—in short, of dramatic poetry and scenic representation.

“With this view,” says MR. HIGGINS (for we love to quote the very words of this extraordinary and indefatigable writer),—“with this view,” says he, in a letter dated from his study in St. Mary Axe, the window of which looks upon the parish pump,—“with this view I have turned my thoughts more particularly to the German stage, and have composed—in imitation of the most popular pieces of that country, which have already met with so general reception and admiration in this—a Play; which, if it has a proper run, will, I think, do much to unhinge the present notions of men with regard to the obligations of civil society, and to substitute, in lieu of a sober contentment, and regular discharge of the duties incident to each man’s particular situation, a wild desire of undefinable latitude and extravagance,—an aspiration after shapeless somethings that can neither be described nor understood,—a contemptuous disgust at all that is, and a persuasion that nothing is as it ought to be;—to operate, in short, a general discharge of every man (in his own estimation) from every tie which laws, divine or human, which local customs, immemorial habits, and multiplied examples, impose upon him; and to set them about doing what they like, where they like, when they like, and how they like,—without reference to any law but their own will, or to any consideration of how others may be affected by their conduct.

“When this is done, my dear sir,” continues Mr. H. (for he writes very confidentially)—“you see that a great step is gained towards the dissolution of the frame of every existing community. I say nothing of Governments, as their fall is of course implicated in that of the social system;—and you have long known that I hold every Government (that acts by coercion and restriction—by laws made by the few to bind the many) as a malum in se,—an evil to be eradicated,—a nuisance to be abated,—by force, if force be practicable; if not, by the artillery of reason, by pamphlets, speeches, toasts at club-dinners, and though last, not least, by didactic poems.

“But where would be the advantage of the destruction of this or that Government, if the form of Society itself were to be suffered to continue such as that another must necessarily arise out of it and over it?—Society, my dear sir, in its present state, is a hydra. Cut off one head,—another presently sprouts out, and your labour is to begin again. At best you can only hope to find it a polypus;—where, by cutting off the head, you are sometimes fortunate enough to find a tail (which answers all the same purposes) spring up in its place. This, we know, has been the case in France; the only country in which the great experiment of regeneration has been tried with anything like a fair chance of success.

“Destroy the frame of society,—decompose its parts,—and see the elements fighting one against another,—insulated and individual,—every man for himself (stripped of prejudice, of bigotry, and of feeling for others) against the remainder of his species;—and there is then some hope of a totally new order of things,—of a Radical Reform in the present corrupt system of the world.

“The German Theatre appears to proceed on this judicious plan. And I have endeavoured to contribute my mite towards extending its effect and its popularity. There is one obvious advantage attending this mode of teaching;—that it can proportion the infractions of law, religion, or morality, which it recommends, to the capacity of a reader or spectator. If you tell a student, or an apprentice, or a merchant’s clerk, of the virtue of a Brutus, or of the splendour of a La Fayette, you may excite his desire to be equally conspicuous; but how is he to set about it? Where is he to find the tyrant to murder? How is he to provide the monarch to be imprisoned, and the national guards to be reviewed on a white horse?—But paint the beauties of forgery to him in glowing colours;—show him that the presumption of virtue is in favour of rapine and occasional murder on the highway—and he presently understands you. The highway is at hand—the till or the counter is within reach. These haberdashers’ heroics come home to the business and the bosoms of men.—And you may readily make ten footpads, where you would not have materials nor opportunity for a single tyrannicide.

“The subject of the piece which I herewith transmit to you is taken from common or middling life; and its merit is that of teaching the most lofty truths in the most humble style, and deducing them from the most ordinary occurrences. Its moral is obvious and easy; and is one frequently inculcated by the German dramas which I have had the good fortune to see; being no other than ‘the reciprocal duties of one or more husbands to one or more wives, and to the children who may happen to arise out of this complicated and endearing connection’. The plot, indeed, is formed by the combination of the plots of two of the most popular of these plays (in the same way as Terence was wont to combine two stories of Menander’s). The characters are such as the admirers of these plays will recognise for their familiar acquaintances. There are the usual ingredients of imprisonments, post-houses and horns, and appeals to angels and devils. I have omitted only the swearing, to which English ears are not yet sufficiently accustomed.

“I transmit at the same time a Prologue, which in some degree breaks the matter to the audience. About the song of Rogero, at the end of the first Act, I am less anxious than about any other part of the performance, as it is, in fact, literally translated from the composition of a young German friend of mine, an Illuminé, of whom I bought the original for three-and-sixpence. It will be a satisfaction to those of your readers who may not at first sight hit upon the tune, to learn that it is setting by a hand of the first eminence.—I send also a rough sketch of the plot, and a few occasional notes.—The geography is by the young gentleman of the Morning Chronicle.”

THE ROVERS; OR, THE DOUBLE ARRANGEMENT.

Dramatis Personæ.

PRIOR of the ABBEY OF QUEDLINBURGH, very corpulent and cruel.

ROGERO, a prisoner in the Abbey, in love with MATILDA POTTINGEN.

CASIMERE, a Polish emigrant, in Dembrowsky’s legion, married to CECILIA, but having several children by MATILDA.

PUDDINGFIELD and BEEFINGTON, English noblemen, exiled by the tyranny of King John, previous to the signature of Magna Charta.

RODERIC, Count of SAXE WEIMAR, a bloody tyrant, with red hair, and an amorous complexion.

GASPAR, the minister of the Count—author of ROGERO’S confinement.

YOUNG POTTINGEN, brother to MATILDA.

MATILDA POTTINGEN, in love with ROGERO, and mother to CASIMERE’S children.

CECILIA MÜCKENFELD, wife to CASIMERE.

Landlady, Waiter, Grenadiers, Troubadours, &c., &c.

PANTALOWSKY and BRITCHINDA, children of MATILDA, by CASIMERE.

JOACHIM, JABEL, and AMARANTHA, children of MATILDA, by ROGERO.

CHILDREN OF CASIMERE AND CECILIA, with their respective Nurses.

SEVERAL CHILDREN—fathers and mothers unknown.

The Scene lies in the town of Weimar, and the neighbourhood of the Abbey of Quedlinburgh.

Time from the 12th to the present century.

PROLOGUE.[268]

IN CHARACTER.

Too long the triumphs of our early times,

With civil discord and with regal crimes,

Have stain’d these boards; while Shakespeare’s pen has

shown

Thoughts, manners, men, to modern days unknown.

Too long have Rome and Athens been the rage;

[Applause.

And classic Buskins soil’d a British stage.

To-night our bard, who scorns pedantic rules,

His plot has borrow’d from the German schools;

The German schools—where no dull maxims bind

The bold expansion of the electric mind.

Fix’d to no period, circled by no space,

He leaps the flaming bounds of time and place.

Round the dark confines of the forest raves,

With gentle Robbers[269] stocks his gloomy caves;

Tells how Prime Ministers[270] are shocking things,

And reigning Dukes as bad as tyrant Kings;

How to two swains[271] one nymph her vows may give,

And how two damsels[271] with one lover live!

Delicious scenes!—such scenes our bard displays,

Which, crown’d with German, sue for British, praise.

Slow are the steeds, that through Germania’s roads

With hempen rein the slumbering post-boy goads;

Slow is the slumbering post-boy, who proceeds

Thro’ deep sands floundering on those tardy steeds;

More slow, more tedious, from his husky throat,

Twangs through the twisted horn the struggling note.

These truths confess’d—Oh! yet, ye travell’d few,

Germania’s plays with eyes unjaundiced view!

View and approve!—though in each passage fine

The faint translation[272] mock the genuine line;

Though the nice ear the erring sight belie,

For U twice dotted is pronounced like I;[272] [Applause.

Yet oft the scene shall nature’s fire impart,

Warm from the breast, and glowing to the heart!

Ye travell’d few, attend!—On you our bard

Builds his fond hope! Do you his genius guard!

[Applause.

Nor let succeeding generations say

A British audience damn’d a German play!

[Loud and continued Applauses.

Flash of lightning.—The ghost of PROLOGUE’S GRANDMOTHER by the Father’s side, appears to soft music, in a white tiffany riding-hood. PROLOGUE kneels to receive her blessing, which she gives in a solemn and affecting manner, the audience clapping and crying all the while.—Flash of lightning.—PROLOGUE and his GRANDMOTHER sink through the trap-doors.

THE ROVERS; OR, THE DOUBLE ARRANGEMENT.

ACT I. SCENE I.

Scene represents a room at an inn, at Weimar—On one side of the stage the bar-room, with jellies, lemons in nets, syllabubs, and part of a cold roast fowl, &c.—On the opposite side, a window looking into the street, through which persons (inhabitants of Weimar) are seen passing to and fro in apparent agitation—MATILDA appears in a great coat and riding-habit, seated at the corner of the dinner-table, which is covered with a clean huckaback cloth; plates and napkins, with buck’s-horn-handled knives and forks, are laid as if for four persons.

MAT. Is it impossible for me to have dinner sooner?

LAND. Madam, the Brunswick post-waggon is not yet come in, and the ordinary is never before two o’clock.

MAT. [With a look expressive of disappointment, but immediately recomposing herself.] Well, then, I must have patience. [Exit Landlady.] Oh Casimere!—How often have the thoughts of thee served to amuse these moments of expectation!—What a difference, alas!—Dinner—it is taken away as soon as over, and we regret it not!—It returns again with the return of appetite.—The beef of to-morrow will succeed to the mutton of to-day, as the mutton of to-day succeeded to the veal of yesterday. But when once the heart has been occupied by a beloved object, in vain would we attempt to supply the chasm by another. How easily are our desires transferred from dish to dish!—Love only, dear, delusive, delightful love, restrains our wandering appetites, and confines them to a particular gratification!...

Post-horn blows; re-enter LANDLADY.

LAND. Madam, the post-waggon is just come in with only a single gentlewoman.

MAT. Then show her up—and let us have dinner instantly; [Landlady going] and remember—[after a moment’s recollection, and with great earnestness]—remember the toasted cheese.

[Exit Landlady.

CECILIA enters, in a brown cloth riding-dress, as if just alighted from the post-waggon.

MAT. Madam, you seem to have had an unpleasant journey, if I may judge from the dust on your riding-habit.

CEC. The way was dusty, madam, but the weather was delightful. It recalled to me those blissful moments when the rays of desire first vibrated through my soul.

MAT. [Aside.] Thank Heaven! I have at last found a heart which is in unison with my own. [To Cecilia]—Yes, I understand you—the first pulsation of sentiment—the silver tones upon the yet unsounded harp....

CEC. The dawn of life—when this blossom [putting her hand upon her heart] first expanded its petals to the penetrating dart of love!

MAT. Yes—the time—the golden time, when the first beams of the morning meet and embrace one another!—The blooming blue upon the yet unplucked plum!...

CEC. Your countenance grows animated, my dear madam.

MAT. And yours too is glowing with illumination.

CEC. I had long been looking out for a congenial spirit!—my heart was withered—but the beams of yours have rekindled it.

MAT. A sudden thought strikes me—Let us swear an eternal friendship.

CEC. Let us agree to live together!

MAT. Willingly.

[With rapidity and earnestness.

CEC. Let us embrace.

[They embrace.

MAT. Yes; I too have loved!—you, too, like me, have been forsaken.

[Doubtingly, and as if with a desire to be informed.

CEC. Too true!

BOTH. Ah these men! these men!

LANDLADY enters, and places a leg of mutton on the table, with sour krout and prune sauce; then a small dish of black puddings—CECILIA and MATILDA appear to take no notice of her.

MAT. Oh, Casimere!

CEC. [Aside.] Casimere! that name!—Oh, my heart, how it is distracted with anxiety.

MAT. Heavens! Madam, you turn pale.

CEC. Nothing—a slight megrim—with your leave, I will retire—

MAT. I will attend you.

[Exeunt MATILDA and CECILIA; Manent LANDLADY and WAITER, with the dinner on the table.

LAND. Have you carried the dinner to the prisoner in the vaults of the abbey?

WAITER. Yes—Pease soup, as usual—with the scrag end of a neck of mutton. The emissary of the Count was here again this morning, and offered me a large sum of money if I would consent to poison him.

LAND. Which you refused?

[With hesitation and anxiety.

WAITER. Can you doubt it?

[With indignation.

LAND. [Recovering herself, and drawing up with an expression of dignity.] The conscience of a poor man is as valuable to him as that of a prince....

WAITER. It ought to be still more so, in proportion as it is generally more pure.

LAND. Thou say’st truly, Job.

WAITER. [With enthusiasm.] He who can spurn at wealth when proffered as the price of crime, is greater than a prince.

Post-horn blows.—Enter CASIMERE (in a travelling dress, a light blue great coat with large metal buttons, his hair in a long queue, but twisted at the end; a large Kevenhuller hat; a cane in his hand).

CAS. Here, Waiter, pull off my boots, and bring me a pair of slippers. [Exit Waiter.] And hark’ye, my lad, a basin of water [rubbing his hands] and a bit of soap. I have not washed since I began my journey.

WAITER. [Answering from behind the door.] Yes, Sir.

CAS. Well, Landlady, what company are we to have?

LAND. Only two gentlewomen, Sir.—They are just stept into the next room—they will be back again in a minute.

CAS. Where do they come from?

[All this while the WAITER re-enters with the basin and water; CASIMERE pulls off his boots, takes a napkin from the table, and washes his face and hands.

LAND. There is one of them, I think, comes from Nuremburgh.

CAS. [Aside.] From Nuremburgh! [with eagerness] her name!

LAND. Matilda.

CAS. [Aside.] How does this idiot woman torment me!—What else?

LAND. I can’t recollect.

CAS. Oh, agony!

[In a paroxysm of agitation.

WAITER. See here, her name upon the travelling trunk—Matilda Pottingen.

CAS. Ecstasy! ecstasy!

[Embracing the Waiter.

LAND. You seem to be acquainted with the lady—shall I call her?

CAS. Instantly—instantly—tell her her loved, her long-lost—tell her——

LAND. Shall I tell her dinner is ready?

CAS. Do so—and in the meanwhile I will look after my portmanteau.

[Exeunt severally.

Scene changes to a subterranean vault in the Abbey of Quedlinburgh, with coffins, ’scutcheons, death’s heads and crossbones—toads and other loathsome reptiles are seen traversing the obscurer parts of the stage.—ROGERO appears, in chains, in a suit of rusty armour, with his beard grown, and a cap of a grotesque form upon his head—beside him a crock, or pitcher, supposed to contain his daily allowance of sustenance.—A long silence, during which the wind is heard to whistle through the caverns.—ROGERO rises, and comes slowly forward, with his arms folded.

ROG. Eleven years! it is now eleven years since I was first immured in this living sepulchre—the cruelty of a Minister—the perfidy of a Monk—yes, Matilda! for thy sake—alive amidst the dead—chained—coffined—confined—cut off from the converse of my fellow-men. Soft!—what have we here! [stumbles over a bundle of sticks.] This cavern is so dark that I can scarcely distinguish the objects under my feet. Oh—the register of my captivity. Let me see; how stands the account? [Takes up the sticks, and turns them over with a melancholy air; then stands silent for a few minutes, as if absorbed in calculation.]—Eleven years and fifteen days!—Hah! the twenty-eighth of August! How does the recollection of it vibrate on my heart! It was on this day that I took my last leave of my Matilda. It was a summer evening; her melting hand seemed to dissolve in mine, as I prest it to my bosom. Some demon whispered me that I should never see her more. I stood gazing on the hated vehicle which was conveying her away for ever. The tears were petrified under my eyelids. My heart was crystallized with agony. Anon—I looked along the road. The diligence seemed to diminish every instant; I felt my heart beat against its prison, as if anxious to leap out and overtake it. My soul whirled round as I watched the rotation of the hinder wheels. A long trail of glory followed after her, and mingled with the dust; it was the emanation of Divinity, luminous with love and beauty, like the splendour of the setting sun; but it told me that the sun of my joys was sunk for ever. Yes, here in the depths of an eternal dungeon, in the nursing cradle of hell, the suburbs of perdition, in a nest of demons, where despair in vain sits brooding over the putrid eggs of hope; where agony woos the embrace of death; where patience, beside the bottomless pool of despondency, sits angling for impossibilities. Yet, even here, to behold her, to embrace her! Yes, Matilda, whether in this dark abode, amidst toads and spiders, or in a royal palace, amidst the more loathsome reptiles of a court, would be indifferent to me; angels would shower down their hymns of gratulation upon our heads, while fiends would envy the eternity of suffering love.... Soft, what air was that? it seemed a sound of more than human warblings. Again! [listens attentively for some minutes.] Only the wind; it is well, however; it reminds me of that melancholy air, which has so often solaced the hours of my captivity. Let me see whether the damps of this dungeon have not yet injured my guitar. [Takes his guitar, tunes it, and begins the following air, with a full accompaniment of violins from the orchestra.

[Air, Lanterna Magica.]

SONG.

BY ROGERO.

I.

Whene’er with haggard eyes I view

This dungeon that I’m rotting in,

I think of those companions true

Who studied with me at the U—

—niversity of Gottingen—

—niversity of Gottingen.

[Weeps, and pulls out a blue kerchief, with which he wipes his eyes; gazing tenderly at it, he proceeds—

II.

Sweet kerchief, check’d with heavenly blue,

Which once my love sat knotting in!—

Alas! Matilda then was true!

At least I thought so at the U—

—niversity of Gottingen—

—niversity of Gottingen.

[At the repetition of this line ROGERO clanks his chains in cadence.

III.

Barbs! Barbs! alas! how swift you flew

Her neat post-waggon trotting in!

Ye bore Matilda from my view;

Forlorn I languish’d at the U—

—niversity of Gottingen—

—niversity of Gottingen.

IV.

This faded form! this pallid hue!

This blood my veins is clotting in,

My years are many—they were few

When first I entered at the U—

—niversity of Gottingen—

—niversity of Gottingen.

V.

There first for thee my passion grew,

Sweet! sweet Matilda Pottingen!

Thou wast the daughter of my tu—

—tor, law professor at the U—

—niversity of Gottingen—

—niversity of Gottingen.

VI.

Sun, moon, and thou vain world, adieu,

That kings and priests are plotting in:

Here doomed to starve on water gru—

—el,[273] never shall I see the U—

—niversity of Gottingen—

—niversity of Gottingen.

[During the last stanza ROGERO dashes his head repeatedly against the walls of his prison; and, finally, so hard as to produce a visible contusion; he then throws himself on the floor in an agony. The curtain drops; the music still continuing to play till it is wholly fallen.

[The character of ROGERO is a quiz upon SIR ROBERT ADAIR, who received his education at Göttingen, and fell in love with his tutor’s daughter. His relative, LORD ALBEMARLE, says in his Reminiscences: “Throughout life my kinsman was an enthusiastic admirer of the fair sex, which he generally ‘loved, not wisely, but too well’”. He married, in 1805, Mdlle. Angélique Gabrielle, daughter of the Marquis d’Hazincourt and the Comtesse de Champagne.

ADAIR was the son of Mr. Robert Adair, sergeant-surgeon to K. George III., by his wife LADY CAROLINE KEPPEL, daughter of Wm. Anne, second Earl of Albemarle. He was educated at Westminster School and Göttingen University; called to the Bar, but never practised. He contested Camelford in 1796; and was M.P. for Appleby, 1799–1802, for Camelford, 1802–1812. He was sent by FOX as Minister Plenipotentiary to Vienna in 1806; and by his old adversary CANNING to Constantinople in 1808; and also to Berlin. He was Ambassador to Constantinople, 1809–11, and to Belgium, 1831–5. He was a facile writer, and wrote several spirited pamphlets, including defences of his relatives, Francis, Duke of Bedford, and Admiral Keppel, Fox, and other Whigs. He contributed to the Political Eclogues a poem called Margaret Nicholson, in which George III., Pitt, Jenkinson, &c., were ridiculed, and the Song of Scrutina (on the “Westminster Scrutiny”), in the style of Ossian, in the Probationary Odes for the Laureateship. He was the author also of an account of his Mission to the Court of Vienna; and his Negotiations for the Peace of the Dardanelles: 3 vols., 8vo. For his services in the latter business he was made G.C.B. He was born 24th May, 1763, and died 3rd Oct., 1855.

There is a curious circumstance connected with the composition of this song, the first five stanzas of which were written by CANNING. Having been accidentally seen, previous to its publication, by PITT, who was cognisant of the proceedings of the “Anti-Jacobin” writers, he was so amused with it, that he took up a pen and composed the last stanza on the spot.—ED.]

[This drama was produced at the Haymarket Theatre, July 26, 1811, with alterations and additions, and some introductory matter, which contained smart hits at the Quadrupeds, which then desecrated the stage of Covent Garden Theatre. Liston performed Rogero; Munden, Casimere; Mrs. Glover, Matilda; Mrs. Gibbs, Cecilia. The following Prologue, written by George Colman the younger, in imitation of Pope’s prologue to Cato, was spoken by Elliston:—

To lull the soul by spurious strokes of art,

To warp the genius, and mislead the heart;

To make mankind revere wives gone astray,[274]

Love pious sons who rob on the highway;[275]

For this the foreign muses trod our stage

Commanding German schools to be the rage.

Hail to such schools! Oh, fine false feeling, hail!

Thou badst non-natural nature to prevail;

Through thee, soft super-sentiment arose,

Musk to the mind like civet to the nose;

Till fainting taste (as invalids do wrong),

Snuff’d the sick perfume, and grew weakly strong.

Dear Johnny Bull! you boast much resolution,

With, thanks to Heaven! a glorious Constitution:

Your taste, recovered half from foreign quacks,

Takes airings, now, on English horses’ backs;

While every modern bard may raise his name,

If not on lasting praise, on stable fame.

Think that to Germans you have given no check,

Think how each actor hors’d has risk’d his neck;

You’ve shewn them favour: Oh, then, once more shew it

To this night’s Anglo-German, Horse-Play Poet!—ED.]

No. XXXI.

June 11, 1798.

We have received, in the course of the last week, several long, and to say the truth, dull letters, from unknown hands, reflecting in very severe terms on MR. HIGGINS, for having, as it is affirmed, attempted to pass upon the world, as a faithful sample of the productions of the German theatre, a performance no way resembling any of those pieces which have so late excited, and which bid fair to engross, the admiration of the British public.

As we cannot but consider ourselves as the guardians of MR. HIGGINS’S literary reputation, in respect to every work of his which is conveyed to the world through the medium of our paper (though, what we think of the danger of his principles we have already sufficiently explained for ourselves, and have, we trust, succeeded in putting our readers upon their guard against them)—we hold ourselves bound not only to justify the fidelity of the imitation, but (contrary to our original intention) to give a further specimen of it in our present number, in order to bring the question more fairly to issue between our author and his calumniators.

In the first place we are to observe, that MR. HIGGINS professes to have taken his notion of German plays wholly from the translations which have appeared in our language. If they are totally dissimilar from the originals, Mr. H. may undoubtedly have been led into error; but the fault is in the translators, not in him. That he does not differ widely from the models which he proposed to himself, we have it in our power to prove satisfactorily, and might have done so in our last number, by subjoining to each particular passage of his play the scene in some one or other of the German plays which he had in view when he wrote it. These parallel passages were faithfully pointed out to us by Mr. H. with that candour which marks his character; and if they were suppressed by us (as in truth they were), on our heads be the blame, whatever it may be. Little, indeed, did we think of the imputation which the omission would bring upon Mr. H., as in fact our principal reason for it was the apprehension that, from the extreme closeness of the imitation in most instances, he would lose in praise for invention more than he would gain in credit for fidelity.

The meeting between Matilda and Cecilia, for example, in the first act of The Rovers, and their sudden intimacy, has been censured as unnatural. Be it so. It is taken, almost word for word, from Stella, a German (or professedly a German) piece now much in vogue; from which also the catastrophe of MR. HIGGINS’S play is in part borrowed, so far as relates to the agreement to which the ladies come, as the reader will see by and bye, to share Casimere between them.

The dinner-scene is copied partly from the published translation of The Stranger, and partly from the first scene of Stella. The song of Rogero, with which the first act concludes, is admitted on all hands to be in the very first taste; and if no German original is to be found for it, so much the worse for the credit of German literature.

An objection has been made by one anonymous letter-writer to the names of Puddingfield and Beefington, as little likely to have been assigned to English characters by any author of taste or discernment. In answer to this objection we have, in the first place, to admit, that a small, and we hope not an unwarrantable, alteration has been made by us since the MS. has been in our hands. These names stood originally Puddincrantz and Beefinstern, which sounded to our ears as being liable, especially the latter, to a ridiculous inflection—a difficulty that could only be removed by furnishing them with English terminations. With regard to the more substantial syllables of the names, our author proceeded, in all probability, on the authority of Goldoni, who, though not a German, is an Italian writer of considerable reputation; and who, having heard that the English were distinguished for their love of liberty and beef, has judiciously compounded the two words Runnymede and Beef, and thereby produced an English nobleman, whom he styles Lord Runnybeef.

To dwell no longer on particular passages, the best way perhaps of explaining the whole scope and view of Mr. H.’s imitation will be to transcribe the short sketch of the plot which that gentleman transmitted to us, together with his drama, and which it is perhaps the more necessary to give at length, as, the limits of our paper not allowing of the publication of the whole piece, some general knowledge of its main design may be acceptable to our readers, in order to enable them to judge of the several extracts which we lay before them.

PLOT.

Rogero, son of the late minister of the Count of Saxe Weimar, having while he was at college, fallen desperately in love with Matilda Pottingen, daughter of his tutor, Doctor Engelbertus Pottingen, Professor of Civil Law; and Matilda evidently returning his passion, the Doctor, to prevent ill consequences, sends his daughter on a visit to her aunt in Wetteravia, where she becomes acquainted with Casimere, a Polish Officer, who happens to be quartered near her aunt’s, and has several children by him.

Roderic, Count of Saxe Weimar, a prince of a tyrannical and licentious disposition, has for his Prime Minister and favourite Gaspar, a crafty villain, who had risen to his post by first ruining, and then putting to death, Rogero’s father. Gaspar, apprehensive of the power and popularity which the young Rogero may enjoy at his return to Court, seizes the occasion of his intrigue with Matilda (of which he is apprized officially by Doctor Pottingen) to procure from his master an order for the recall of Rogero from college, and for committing him to the care of the Prior of the Abbey of Quedlinburgh, a priest, rapacious, savage, and sensual, and devoted to Gaspar’s interests—sending at the same time private orders to the Prior to confine him in a dungeon.

Here Rogero languishes many years. His daily sustenance is administered to him through a grated opening at the top of a cavern, by the landlady of the Golden Eagle at Weimar, with whom Gaspar contracts, in the prince’s name, for his support; intending, and more than once endeavouring, to corrupt the waiter to mingle poison with the food, in order that he may get rid of Rogero for ever.

In the meantime, Casimere, having been called away from the neighbourhood of Matilda’s residence to other quarters, becomes enamoured of and marries Cecilia, by whom he has a family; and whom he likewise deserts after a few years’ cohabitation, on pretence of business which calls him to Kamtschatka.

Doctor Pottingen, now grown old and infirm, and feeling the want of his daughter’s society, sends young Pottingen in search of her, with strict injunctions not to return without her; and to bring with her either her present lover Casimere, or, should that not be possible, Rogero himself, if he can find him; the Doctor having set his heart upon seeing his children comfortably settled before his death. Matilda, about the same period, quits her aunt’s in search of Casimere; and Cecilia, having been advertised (by an anonymous letter) of the falsehood of his Kamtschatka journey, sets out in the post-waggon on a similar pursuit.

It is at this point of time the Play opens—with the accidental meeting of Cecilia and Matilda at the Inn at Weimar. Casimere arrives there soon after, and falls in first with Matilda, and then with Cecilia. Successive éclaircissements take place, and an arrangement is finally made, by which the two ladies are to live jointly with Casimere.

Young Pottingen, wearied with a few weeks’ search, during which he has not been able to find either of the objects of it, resolves to stop at Weimar, and wait events there. It so happens that he takes up his lodgings in the same house with Puddingfield and Beefington, two English noblemen, whom the tyranny of King John has obliged to fly from their country; and who, after wandering about the continent for some time, have fixed their residence at Weimar.

The news of the signature of Magna Charta arriving, determines Puddingfield and Beefington to return to England. Young Pottingen opens his case to them, and entreats them to stay to assist him in the object of his search.—This they refuse; but coming to the Inn where they are to set off for Hamburgh, they meet Casimere, from whom they had both received many civilities in Poland.

Casimere, by this time tired of his “DOUBLE ARRANGEMENT,” and having learnt from the waiter that Rogero is confined in the vaults of the neighbouring abbey for love, resolves to attempt his rescue, and to make over Matilda to him as the price of his deliverance. He communicates his scheme to Puddingfield and Beefington, who agree to assist him; as also does young Pottingen. The Waiter of the Inn, proving to be a Knight Templar in disguise, is appointed leader of the expedition. A band of Troubadours, who happen to be returning from the Crusades, and a company of Austrian and Prussian Grenadiers returning from the Seven Years’ War, are engaged as troops.

The attack on the Abbey is made with success. The Count of Weimar and Gaspar, who are feasting with the Prior, are seized and beheaded in the refectory. The Prior is thrown into the dungeon from which Rogero is rescued. Matilda and Cecilia rush in. The former recognises Rogero, and agrees to live with him. The children are produced on all sides—and young Pottingen is commissioned to write to his father, the Doctor, to detail the joyful events which have taken place, and to invite him to Weimar to partake of the general felicity.

THE ROVERS; OR, THE DOUBLE ARRANGEMENT.

ACT II.

Scene, a Room in an ordinary Lodging-house at Weimar—PUDDINGFIELD and BEEFINGTON discovered sitting at a small deal table, and playing at All-fours—Young POTTINGEN, at another table in the corner of the room, with a pipe in his mouth, and a Saxon mug of a singular shape beside him, which he repeatedly applies to his lips, turning back his head, and casting his eyes towards the firmament—at the last trial he holds the mug for some moments in a directly inverted position; then replaces it on the table with an air of dejection, and gradually sinks into a profound slumber—the pipe falls from his hand, and is broken.

BEEF. I beg.

PUDD. [Deals three cards to BEEFINGTON.] Are you satisfied?

BEEF. Enough; what have you?

PUDD. High, low, and the game.

BEEF. D——n! ’Tis my deal. [Deals; turns up a knave.] One for his heels!

[Triumphantly.

PUDD. Is king highest?

BEEF. No. [Sternly] The game is mine. The knave gives it me.

PUDD. Are knaves so prosperous?

BEEF. Aye, marry are they in this world. They have the game in their hands. Your kings are but noddies[276] to them.

PUDD. Ha! ha! ha! Still the same proud spirit, Beefington, which procured thee thine exile from England.

BEEF. England! my native land! when shall I revisit thee?

[During this time PUDDINGFIELD deals, and begins to arrange his hand.

BEEF. [Continues.] Phoo, hang All-fours; what are they to a mind ill at ease? Can they cure the heartache? Can they soothe banishment? Can they lighten ignominy? Can All-fours do this? O, my Puddingfield! thy limber and lightsome spirit bounds up against affliction with the elasticity of a well-bent bow; but mine—O! mine—

[Falls into an agony, and sinks back in his chair. Young POTTINGEN, awakened by the noise, rises, and advances with a grave demeanour towards BEEFINGTON and PUDDINGFIELD. The former begins to recover.

Y. POT. What is the matter, comrades,[277] you seem agitated. Have you lost or won?

BEEF. Lost! I have lost my country.

Y. POT. And I my sister. I came hither in search of her.

BEEF. O, England!

Y. POT. O, Matilda!

BEEF. Exiled by the tyranny of an usurper, I seek the means of revenge, and of restoration to my country.

Y. POT. Oppressed by the tyranny of an Abbot, persecuted by the jealousy of a Count, the betrothed husband of my sister languishes in a loathsome captivity; her lover is fled no one knows whither, and I, her brother, am torn from my parental roof, and from my studies in chirurgery, to seek him and her, I know not where—to rescue Rogero, I know not how. Comrades, your counsel. My search fruitless—my money gone—my baggage stolen! what am I to do? In yonder Abbey—in these dark, dank vaults, there, my friends, there lies Rogero—there Matilda’s heart.

SCENE II.

Enter WAITER.

WAITER. Sir, here is a person who desires to speak with you.

BEEF. [Goes to the door and returns with a letter, which he opens. On perusing it his countenance becomes illuminated, and expands prodigiously.] Ah, my friend, what joy!

[Turning to PUDDINGFIELD.

PUDD. What? tell me—let your Puddingfield partake it.

BEEF. See here.

[Produces a printed paper.

PUDD. What?

[With impatience.

BEEF. [In a significant tone.] A newspaper!

PUDD. Ah, what sayst thou?—A newspaper!

BEEF. Yes, Puddingfield, and see here [shows it partially], from England.

PUDD. [With extreme earnestness.] Its name?

BEEF. The Daily Advertiser.

PUDD. Oh, ecstasy!

BEEF. [With a dignified severity.] Puddingfield, calm yourself—repress those transports—remember that you are a man.

PUDD. [After a pause, with suppressed emotion.] Well, I will be—I am calm—yet tell me, Beefington, does it contain any news?

BEEF. Glorious news, my dear Puddingfield—the Barons are victorious—King John has been defeated—Magna Charta, that venerable immemorial inheritance of Britons, was signed last Friday was three weeks, the third of July, Old Style.

PUDD. I can scarce believe my ears—but let me satisfy my eyes—show me the paragraph.

BEEF. Here it is, just above the advertisements.

PUDD. [Reads.] “The great demand for Packwood’s Razor Straps”—

BEEF. Pshaw!—what, ever blundering!—you drive me from my patience. See here, at the head of the column.

PUDD. [Reads.]

“A hireling print, devoted to the court,

Has dared to question our veracity

Respecting the events of yesterday;

But by to-day’s accounts, our information

Appears to have been perfectly correct.

The Charter of our Liberties received

The royal signature at five o’clock,

When messengers were instantly dispatched

To Cardinal Pandulfo; and their majesties,

After partaking of a cold collation,

Returned to Windsor.”—I am satisfied.

BEEF. Yet here again—there are some further particulars [turns to another part of the paper]. “Extract of a letter from Egham—My dear friend, we are all here in high spirits—the interesting event which took place this morning at Runnymede, in the neighbourhood of this town”—

PUDD. Ah, Runnymede! enough—no more—my doubts are vanished—then are we free indeed!

BEEF. I have, besides, a letter in my pocket from our friend, the immortal Bacon, who has been appointed Chancellor. Our outlawry is reversed!—What says my friend—shall we return by the next packet?

PUDD. Instantly, instantly!

BOTH. Liberty! Adelaide! revenge!

[Exeunt—Young POTTINGEN following and waving his hat, but obviously without much consciousness of the meaning of what has passed.

Scene changes to the outside of the Abbey.—A Summer’s Evening; Moonlight.

Companies of Austrian and Prussian Grenadiers march across the stage confusedly, as if returning from the Seven Years War.—Shouts and martial music.

The Abbey Gates are opened; the Monks are seen passing in procession, with the PRIOR at their head; the choir is heard chanting vespers.—After which a pause; then a bell is heard, as if ringing for supper; soon after, a noise of singing and jollity.

Enter from the Abbey, pushed out of the gates by the PORTER, a TROUBADOUR, with a bundle under his cloak, and a Lady under his arm; TROUBADOUR seems much in liquor, but caresses the FEMALE MINSTREL.

FEM. MIN. Trust me, Gieronimo, thou seemest melancholy. What hast thou got under thy cloak?

TROU. Pshaw! women will be inquiring. Melancholy! not I. I will sing thee a song, and the subject of it shall be the question—“What have I got under my cloak?” It is a riddle, Margaret—I learnt it of an almanac-maker at Gotha—if thou guessest it after the first stanza, thou shalt have never a drop for thy pains. Hear me—and, d’ye mark! twirl thy thingumbob while I sing.

FEM. MIN. ’Tis a pretty tune, and hums dolefully.

[Plays on her balalaika.

TROU.

I bear a secret comfort here,[278]

[Putting his hand on the bundle.

A joy I’ll ne’er impart;

It is not wine, it is not beer,

But it consoles my heart.

FEM. MIN. [Interrupting him.] I’ll be hang’d if you don’t mean the bottle of cherry-brandy that you stole out of the vaults in the abbey cellar.

TROU. I mean!—Peace, wench; thou disturbest the current of my feelings—

[FEM. MIN. attempts to lay hold on the bottle; TROUBADOUR pushes her aside, and continues singing without interruption.

This cherry-bounce, this loved noyau,

My drink for ever be;

But, sweet my love, thy wish forego;

I’ll give no drop to thee!

[Both together.]

T   ROU.

{ This }

cherry-bounce

{ this }

loved noyau,

F. M.

{ That }

{ that }

T   ROU.

{ My }

drink for ever be;

F. M.

{ Thy }

T   ROU. }

But, sweet my love,

{ thy wish forgo!

F. M.    }

{ one drop bestow,

T   ROU.

{ I }

keep it all for

{ me!

F. M.

{ Nor }

{ thee!

[Exeunt struggling for the bottle, but without anger or animosity, the FEM. MIN. appearing by degrees to obtain a superiority in the contest.

END OF ACT II.

ACT THE THIRD—contains the éclaircissements and final arrangement between CASIMERE, MATILDA, and CECILIA; which so nearly resemble the concluding act of Stella, that we forbear to lay it before our readers.

ACT IV.

Scene, the Inn door; Diligence drawn up.—CASIMERE appears superintending the package of his portmanteaus, and giving directions to the PORTERS.

Enter BEEFINGTON and PUDDINGFIELD.

PUDD. Well, Coachey, have you got two inside places?

COACH. Yes, your Honour.

PUDD. [seems to be struck with CASIMERE’S appearance. He surveys him earnestly without paying any attention to the COACHMAN, then doubtingly pronounces] Casimere!

CAS. [turning round rapidly, recognizes PUDDINGFIELD, and embraces him.] My Puddingfield!

PUDD. My Casimere!

CAS. What, Beefington too! [discovering him]—then is my joy complete.

BEEF. Our fellow-traveller, as it seems!

CAS. Yes, Beefington—but wherefore to Hamburgh?

BEEF. Oh, Casimere[279]—to fly—to fly—to return—England—our country—Magna Charta—it is liberated—a new æra—House of Commons—Crown and Anchor—Opposition—

CAS. What a contrast! you are flying to liberty and your home—I, driven from my home by tyranny, and exposed to domestic slavery in a foreign country.

BEEF. How domestic slavery?

CAS. Too true—two wives—[slowly, and with a dejected air—then after a pause]—you knew my Cecilia?

PUDD. Yes, five years ago.

CAS. Soon after that period I went upon a visit to a lady in Wetteravia—my Matilda was under her protection. Alighting at a peasant’s cabin, I saw her on a charitable visit, spreading bread-and-butter for the children, in a light-blue riding-habit. The simplicity of her appearance—the fineness of the weather—all conspired to interest me—my heart moved to hers—as if by magnetic sympathy. We wept, embraced, and went home together: she became the mother of my Pantalowsky. But five years of enjoyment have not stifled the reproaches of my conscience—her Rogero is languishing in captivity—if I could restore her to him!

BEEF. Let us rescue him.

CAS. Will without power[280] is like children playing at soldiers.

BEEF. Courage without power[281] is like a consumptive running footman.

CAS. Courage without power is a contradiction.[282] Ten brave men might set all Quedlinburgh at defiance.

BEEF. Ten brave men—but where are they to be found?

CAS. I will tell you—marked you the waiter?

BEEF. The waiter?

[doubtingly.

CAS. [in a confidential tone]. No waiter, but a Knight Templar. Returning from the Crusade, he found his Order dissolved, and his person proscribed. He dissembled his rank, and embraced the profession of a waiter. I have made sure of him already. There are, besides, an Austrian, and a Prussian grenadier. I have made them abjure their national enmity, and they have sworn to fight henceforth in the cause of freedom. These with young Pottingen, the waiter, and ourselves, make seven—the Troubadour, with his two attendant minstrels, will complete the ten.

BEEF. Now then for the execution.

[With enthusiasm.

PUDD. Yes, my boys—for the execution.

[Clapping them on the back.

WAITER. But hist! we are observed.

TROU. Let us by a song conceal our purposes.

RECITATIVE ACCOMPANIED.[283]

CAS. Hist! hist! nor let the airs that blow

From night’s cold lungs our purpose know!

PUDD. Let Silence, mother of the dumb,

BEEF. Press on each lip her palsied thumb!

WAIT. Let Privacy, allied to sin,

That loves to haunt the tranquil inn—

GREN. } And Conscience start, when she shall view

THOU. } The mighty deed we mean to do!

GENERAL CHORUS—Con spirito.

Then friendship swear, ye faithful bands,

Swear to save a shackled hero!

See where yon abbey frowning stands!

Rescue, rescue, brave Rogero!

CAS. Thrall’d in a monkish tyrant’s fetters

Shall great Rogero hopeless lie?

Y. POT. In my pocket I have letters,

Saying, “Help me, or I die!”

Allegro Allegretto.

CAS. BEEF. PUDD. GREN. TROU. WAITER, AND POT. with enthusiasm   .

} Let us fly, let us fly,

} Let us help, ere he die!

[Exeunt omnes, waving their hats.

Scene, the Abbey Gate, with Ditches, Drawbridges, and Spikes; Time, about an hour before Sunrise.—The conspirators appear as if in ambuscade, whispering and consulting together, in expectation of the signal for attack.—The WAITER is habited as a Knight Templar, in the dress of his Order, with the Cross on his breast, and the scallop on his shoulder.—PUDDINGFIELD and BEEFINGTON armed with blunderbusses and pocket-pistols; the GRENADIERS in their proper uniforms.—The TROUBADOUR with his attendant minstrels bring up the rear; martial music: the conspirators come forward, and present themselves before the Gate of the Abbey.—Alarum; firing of pistols; the Convent appear in Arms upon the Walls; the Drawbridge is let down; a body of choristers and lay-brothers attempt a sally, but are beaten back, and the Verger killed.—The besieged attempt to raise the Drawbridge; PUDDINGFIELD and BEEFINGTON press forward with alacrity, throw themselves upon the Drawbridge, and by the exertion of their weight preserve it in a state of depression; the other besiegers join them, and attempt to force the entrance, but without effect.—PUDDINGFIELD makes the signal for the battering-ram.—Enter QUINTUS CURTIUS and MARCUS CURIUS DENTATUS in their military habits, preceded by the Roman Eagle; the rest of their Legion are employed in bringing forward a battering-ram, which plays for a few minutes to slow time, till the entrance is forced.—After a short resistance, the besiegers rush in with shouts of Victory.

Scene changes to the interior of the Abbey.—The inhabitants of the Convent are seen flying in all directions.

The COUNT OF WEIMAR and the PRIOR, who had been found feasting in the Refectory, are brought in manacled. The COUNT appears transported with rage, and gnaws his chains.—The PRIOR remains insensible, as if stupefied with grief.—BEEFINGTON takes the keys of the Dungeon, which are hanging at the PRIOR’S girdle, and makes a sign for them both to be led away into confinement.—Exeunt PRIOR and COUNT, properly guarded.—The rest of the conspirators disperse in search of the Dungeon where ROGERO is confined.

END OF ACT THE FOURTH.

No. XXXII.

June 18, 1798.

We are indebted for the following imitation of CATULLUS to a literary correspondent. Whether it will remove the doubts we formerly expressed, of CITIZEN MUSKEIN’S acquaintance with the classics, from the minds of our readers, we cannot pretend to say. It is given to us as a faithful translation from the French—as such, we present it to our readers; premising only, that though the Citizen Imitator seems to have Sans-culottized the original in two or three places, yet he everywhere expresses himself with a naïveté and truth in his verse that we seek for in vain in many of his countrymen who have recorded their victories and defeats in very vulgar prose.

AN AFFECTIONATE EFFUSION OF CITIZEN MUSKEIN TO HAVRE-DE-GRACE.

Fairest of cities,[284] which the Seine

Surveys ’twixt Paris and the main,

Sweet HAVRE! sweetest HAVRE, hail!

How gladly with my tatter’d sail,[285]

Yet trembling from this wild adventure,

Do I thy friendly harbour enter!

Well—now I’ve leisure, let me see

What boats are left me; one, two, three—

Bravo! the better half remain;

And all my heroes are not slain.

And if my senses don’t deceive,

I too am safe,[286]—yes, I believe,

Without a wound I reach thy shore

(For I have felt myself all o’er);

I’ve all my limbs, and, be it spoken

With honest triumph, no bone broken.

How pleasing is the sweet transition[287]

From this vile Gun-boat Expedition;

From winds and waves, and wounds and scars,

From British soldiers, British tars,

To his own house, where, free from danger,

MUSKEIN may live at rack and manger;

May stretch his limbs in his own cot,[288]

Thankful he has not gone to pot;

Nor for the bubble Glory strive,

But bless himself that he’s alive!

HAVRE,[289] sweet Havre! hail again,

O! bid thy sons (a frolic train,[290]

Who under CHÉNIER welcomed in,

With dance and song, the Guillotine).

In long procession seek the strand;

For MUSKEIN now prepares to land,

’Scaped, Heav’n knows how, from that cursed crew

That haunt the rocks of SAINT MARCOU.

[TO THE PENINSULA OF SIRMIO.

UPON THE RETURN OF THE POET TO HIS COUNTRY HOUSE THERE.

Translated from CATULLUS.

Sirmio, of all the shores the gem,

The isles where circling Neptune strays;

Whether the vast and boisterous main

Or lake’s more limpid waves they stem,

How gladly on thy waves I gaze!

How blest to visit thee again!

I scarce believe, while rapt I stand,

That I have left the Thynian fields

And all Bithynia far behind,

And safely view my favourite land.

Oh bliss, when care dispersing yields

To full repose the placid mind!

Then when the mind its load lays down;

When we regain, all hazards past,

And with long ceaseless travel tired,

Our household god again our own;

And press in tranquil sleep at last

The well-known bed so oft desired—

This can alone atonement make

For every toil. Hail, Sirmio sweet!

Be gay, thy lord hath ceased to roam!

Ye laughing waves of Lydia’s lake,

Smile all around! thy master greet

With all thy smiles, my pleasant home!—ED.]

No. XXXIII.[291]

June 25, 1798.

After the splendid account of BUONAPARTE’S successes in the East, which our readers will find in another part of this paper,[292] and which they will peruse with equal wonder and apprehension, it is some consolation to us to have to state, not only from authority, but in verse, that our government has not been behindhand with that of France; but that aware of the wise and enterprising spirit of the enemy, and of the danger which might arise to our distant possessions from the export of learning and learned men being entirely in their hands, ministers have long ago determined on an expedition of a similar nature, and have actually embarked at Portsmouth on board one of the East India Company’s ships taken up for that purpose (the ship Capricorn, Mr. Thomas Truman, Commander), several tons of savans, the growth of this country. The whole was conducted with the utmost secrecy and dispatch, and it was not till we were favoured with the following copy of a letter (obligingly communicated to us by the Tunisian gentleman to whom it is addressed) that we had any suspicion of the extent and nature of the design, or indeed of any such design being in contemplation.

The several great names which are combined to render this Expedition the most surprising and splendid ever undertaken, could not indeed have been spared from the country to which they are an ornament for any other purpose than one the most obviously connected with the interests of the empire, and the most widely beneficial to mankind.

The secrecy with which they have been withdrawn from the British public, without being so much as missed or enquired after, reflects the highest honour on the planners of the enterprise. Even the celebrity of DOCTOR PARR has not led to any discovery or investigation: the silent admirers of that great man have never once thought of asking what was become of him; till it is now all at once come to light, that he has been for weeks past on shipboard, the brightest star in the bright constellation of talents which stud the quarter-deck of the Capricorn, Mr. T. Truman (as before mentioned), Commander.

The resignation of the late worthy President of a certain Agricultural Board[293] might indeed have taught mankind to look for some extraordinary event in the world of science and adventure; and those who had the good fortune to see the deportation from his house, of the several wonderful anomalies which had for years formed its most distinguished inmates,—the stuffed ram, the dried boar, the cow with three horns, and other fanciful productions of a like nature, could not but speculate with some degree of seriousness on the purpose of their removal, and on the place of their destination.

It now appears that there was in truth no light object in view. They were destined, with the rest of the savans, on whom this country prides itself (and long may it have reason to indulge the honest exultation), to undertake a voyage of no less grandeur than peril; to counteract the designs of the Directory, and to frustrate or forestal the conquests of Buonaparte.

The young gentleman who writes the following letter to his friend in London is, as may be seen, interpreter to the Expedition. We have understood, further, that he is connected with the young man who writes for the Morning Chronicle, and conducts the Critical, Argumentative, and Geographical departments. Some say it is the young man himself, who has assumed a feigned name, and, under the disguise of a Turkish dress and circumcision, is gone, at the express instigation of his employers, to improve himself in geographical knowledge. We have our doubts upon this subject, as we think we recognise the style of this deplorable young man in an article of last week’s Morning Chronicle, which we have had occasion to answer in a preceding column of our present paper. Be that as it may, the information contained in the following letter may be depended upon.

We cannot take leave of the subject without remarking what a fine contrast and companion the vessel and cargo described in the following poem affords [sic] to the “NAVIS STULTIFERA,” the “SHIPPE OF FOOLES” of the celebrated BARCLAY; and we cannot forbear hoping that the Argenis of an author of the same name may furnish a hint for an account of this stupendous Expedition in a learned language, from the only pen which in modern days is capable of writing Latin with a purity and elegance worthy of so exalted a theme, and that the author of a classical preface[294] may become the writer of a no less celebrated voyage.

TRANSLATION OF A LETTER,

(IN ORIENTAL CHARACTERS)

FROM BAWBA-DARA-ADUL-PHOOLA,[295]

DRAGOMAN TO THE EXPEDITION,

TO NEEK-AWL-ARETCHID-KOOEZ,

SECRETARY TO THE TUNISIAN EMBASSY.

DEAR NEEK-AWL,

You’ll rejoice, that at length I am able,

To date these few lines from the captain’s own table.

Mr. Truman himself, of his proper suggestion,

Has in favour of science decided the question;

So we walk the main-deck, and are mess’d with the captain,

I leave you to judge of the joys we are wrapt in.

At Spithead they embark’d us, how precious a cargo!

And we sail’d before day to escape the embargo.

There was SHUCKBOROUGH,[296] the wonderful mathematician;

And DARWIN, the poet, the sage, and physician;

There was BEDDOES, and BRUIN, and GODWIN, whose trust is,

He may part with his work on Political Justice

To some Iman or Bonze, or Judaical Rabbin;

So with huge quarto volumes he piles up the cabin.

There was great DR. PARR whom we style Bellendenus,

The Doctor and I have a hammock between us.

’Tis a little unpleasant thus crowding together,

On account of the motion and heat of the weather;

Two souls in one berth they oblige us to cram,

And Sir John[297] will insist on a place for his ram.

Though the Doctor, I find, is determined to think

’Tis the animal’s hide that occasions the stink;

In spite of th’ experienced opinion of Truman,

Who contends that the scent is exclusively human.

But BEDDOES and DARWIN engage to repair

This slight inconvenience with oxygen air.

Whither bound? (you will ask). ’Tis a question, my friend,

On which I long doubted; my doubt’s at an end.

To Arabia the Stony, Sabæa the gummy,

To the land where each man that you meet is a mummy;

To the mouths of the Nile, to the banks of Araxes,

To the Red and the Yellow, the White and the Black seas,

With telescopes, globes, and a quadrant and sextant,

And the works of all authors whose writings are extant;

With surveys and plans, topographical maps,

Theodolites, watches, spring-guns and steel-traps,

Phials, crucibles, air-pumps, electric machinery,

And pencils for painting the natives and scenery.

In short, we are sent to oppose all we know

To the knowledge and mischievous arts of the foe,

Who, though placing in arms a well-grounded reliance,

Go to war with a flying artillery of science.

The French savans, it seems, recommended this measure,

With a view to replenish the national treasure.

First, the true Rights of Man they will preach in all places,

But chief (when ’tis found) in the Egyptian Oasis:

And this doctrine, ’tis hoped, in a very few weeks

Will persuade the wild Arabs to murder their cheiks,

And, to aid the Great Nation’s beneficent plans,

Plunder pyramids, catacombs, towns, caravans,

Then enlist under Arcolé’s gallant commander,

Who will conquer the world like his model ISKANDER.

His army each day growing bolder and finer,

With the Turcoman tribes he subdues Asia Minor,

Beats Paul and his Scythians, his journey pursues

Cross the Indus, with tribes of Armenians and Jews,

And Bucharians, and Affghans, and Persians, and Tartars,—

Chokes the wretched Mogul in his grandmother’s garters,

And will hang him to dry in the Luxembourg hall,

’Midst the plunder of Carthage and spoils of Bengal.

Such, we hear, was the plan; but I trust, if we meet ’em,

That savant to savant, our cargo will beat ’em.

Our plan of proceeding I’ll presently tell;—

But soft—I am call’d—I must bid you farewell:

To attend on our savans my pen I resign,

For, it seems, that they duck them on crossing the Line.

We deeply regret this interruption of our oriental poet, and the more so, as the prose letters which we have received from a less learned correspondent do not enable us to explain the tactics of our belligerent philosophers so distinctly as we could have wished. It appears, in general, that the learned Doctor who has the honour of sharing the hammock of the amiable oriental, trusted principally to his superior knowledge in the Greek language, by means of which he hoped to entangle his antagonists in inextricable confusion. DR. DARWIN proposed (as might be expected) his celebrated experiment of the Ice-island,[298] which, being towed on the coast of Africa, could not fail of spoiling the climate, and immediately terrifying and embarrassing the sailors of Buonaparte’s fleet, accustomed to the mild temperature and gentle gales of the Mediterranean, and therefore ill qualified to struggle with this new importation of tempests. DR. BEDDOES was satisfied with the project of communicating to Buonaparte a consumption, of the same nature with that which he formerly tried on himself, but superior in virulence, and therefore calculated to make the most rapid and fatal ravages in the hectic constitution of the Gallic hero. The rest of the plan is quite unintelligible, excepting a hint about Sir J. S.’s intention of proceeding with his ram to the celebrated Oasis, and of bringing away, for the convenience of the Bank, the treasures contained in the temple of Jupiter Ammon.

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE EXTRAORDINARY.[299]

The Priority of Intelligence which has ever distinguished OUR PAPER will, We trust, receive additional lustre from the extraordinary News which We now lay before the Public. We received it by a Neutral Ship, which arrived in the River last night; and feel ourselves much indebted to the attention of our Correspondent, a Currant Merchant at Zanté, for its early communication. Without arrogating to ourselves that merit which is (perhaps) justly our due, We think ourselves justified in asserting that it is not only the earliest, but, if We are not much mistaken, the only account which will appear in the Prints of this Day respecting the Successes of BUONAPARTÉ.

COPY OF A LETTER FROM GENERAL BUONAPARTÉ TO THE COMMANDANT AT ZANTÉ.

“Athens, 18 Prairial.

“CITIZEN GENERAL,

“Victory still attends us. I inclose you a Copy of a Letter which I have this day written to the Directory. Health and Fraternity.

“BUONAPARTÉ.”

“Head-Quarters, Salamis, 18 Prairial.

“Citizens directors,

“The brave Soldiers, who conferred Liberty on Rome, have continued to deserve well of their Country. Greece has joyfully received her Deliverers. The Tree of Liberty is planted on the Piræus. Thirty thousand Janizaries, the Slaves of Despotism, had taken possession of the Isthmus of Corinth. Two Demi-brigades opened us a passage. After ten days’ fighting, we have driven the Turks from the Morea. The Peloponnesus is now free. Every step in my power has been taken to revive the antient spirit of Sparta. The Inhabitants of that celebrated City, seeing black broth of my Troops, and the scarcity of specie to which we have been long accustomed, will, I doubt not, soon acquire the frugal virtues of their Ancestors. As a proper measure of precaution, I have removed all PITT’S gold from the Country.

“Off this Island we encountered the Fleet of the SULTAN. The Mahometan Crescent soon fled before the three-coloured flag. Nine Sail of the Line are the fruits of this Victory. The CAPTAIN PACHA’S Ship, a second rate, struck to a National Corvette. My Aide-de-Camp will present you with the model of a Trireme, which was found among the Archives of Athens. Vessels of this description draw so little water, that our Naval Architects may perhaps think them more eligible than Rafts, for the conveyance of the Army of England. Liberty will be sufficiently avenged, if the ruins of a Grecian City furnish us with the means of transporting the Conquerors of Rome to Britain.

“On landing at this Island, I participated in a Scene highly interesting to Humanity. A poor Fisherman, of the family of THEMISTOCLES, attended by his Wife, a descendant of the virtuous PHRYNE, fell at my feet. I received him with the Fraternal embrace, and promised him the protection of the Republic. He invited me to supper at his Hut, and in gratitude to his Deliverer presented me with a memorable Oyster Shell, inscribed with the Name of his illustrious Ancestor. As this curious piece of antiquity may be of service to some of the DIRECTORY, I have inclosed it in my Dispatches, together with a Marble Tablet, containing the proper form for pronouncing the Sentence of Ostracism on Royalist Athenians.

“KLÉBER, whom I had ordered to Constantinople, informs me that the Capital of Turkey has proved an easy conquest. Santa-Sophia has been converted into a Temple of Reason; the Seraglio has been purified by Theo-Philanthropists, and the liberated Circassians are learning from our Sailors the lessons of Equality and Fraternity. A Detachment has been sent to Troy, for the purpose pf organizing the Department of Mount Ida. The Tomb of ACHILLES has been repaired, and the Bust of BRISEIS (which formed part of the Pedestal) restored to its original state, at the expense of the Female Citizen BUONAPARTÉ.

“The Division of the Fleet destined for Egypt has anchored in the Port of Alexandria. BERTHIER, who commands this Expedition, informs me that this Port will soon be restored to its ancient pre-eminence; and that its celebrated Pharos will soon be fit to receive the Reverbères which have been sent from the Rue St. Honoré.

“BARAGUAY D’HILLIERS, with the Left Wing of the Army of Egypt, has fixed his Head-quarters at Jerusalem. He is charged to restore the Jews to their ancient Rights. Citizens Jacob Jacobs, Simon Levi, and Benjamin Solomons, of Amsterdam, have been provisionally appointed Directors. The Palace of Pontius Pilate is re-building for their residence. All the vestiges of Superstition in Palestine have been carefully destroyed.

“I beg you will ratify a grant which I have made of the Temple of the Sun at Palmyra to a Society of Illuminati from Bavaria. They may be of service in extending our future conquests.

“I have received very satisfactory accounts from DESAIX, who had been sent by BERTHIER with a Demi-brigade into the interior of Africa. That fine Country has been too long neglected by Europeans. In manners and civilization it much resembles France, and will soon emulate our virtues. Already does the Torrid Zone glow with the ardour of Freedom. Already has the Altar of Liberty been reared in the Caffrarian and Equinoctial Republics. Their regenerated inhabitants have sworn eternal amity to us at a Civic Feast, to which a detachment of our Army was invited. This memorable day would have terminated with the utmost harmony, if the CAFFRARIAN COUNCIL of ANCIENTS had not devoured the greatest part of General Desaix’s État-Major for their supper. I hope our Ambassador will be instructed to require that Civic Feasts of this nature be omitted for the future. The Directory of the Equinoctial Republic regret that the scarcity of British Cloth in Africa, and the great heat of the climate, prevent them from adopting our costume.

“We hope soon to liberate the Hottentots, and to drive the perfidious English from the extremities of Africa and of Europe. Asia, too, will soon be free. The three-coloured flag floats on the summit of Caucasus; the Tigrine Republic is established; the Cis and Trans-Euphratean Conventions are assembled; and soon shall Arabia, under the mild influence of French Principles, resume her ancient appellation, and be again denominated ‘the HAPPY’.

“In the course of the next Decade I shall sail to the Canal which is now cutting across the Isthmus of Suez. The Polytechnic School and Corps of Geographical Engineers are employed in devising means for conveying my heavy artillery across the great Desert. Soon shall India hail us as her Deliverers, and those proud islanders, the Tyrants of Calcutta, fall before the Heroes of Arcola.

“The Members of the National Institute who accompanied the Squadron to Egypt, have made a large collection of Antiquities for the use of the Republic. Among the scattered remains of the Alexandrine Library, they have found a curious Treatise, in Arabic, respecting Camels, from which it appears that Human Beings, by proper treatment, may, like those useful animals, be trained to support thirst and hunger without complaining. Many reams of papyrus have been collected, as it is thought that during the present scarcity of linen and old rags in France, it may answer all the purposes of paper. CLEOPATRA’S celebrated Obelisk has been shipped on board the Admiral’s Ship L’Orient, cidevant Sans Culottes: Another man-of-war has been freighted with the Sphinx, which our Engineers removed from Grand Cairo, and which, I trust, will be thought a proper ornament for the Hall of Audience of the Directory.—The cage in which BAJAZET was confined, has been long preserved at Bassora; it will be transmitted to Paris as a proper model for a new Cayenne Diligence.—I beg leave to present to the Director MERLIN, a very curious book, bound in Morocco leather, from Algiers. It is finely illuminated with gold; and contains lists of the various fees usually received by Deys and their Ministers from Foreign Ambassadors. A broken Column will be sent from Carthage. It records the downfall of that Commercial City; and is sufficiently large for an Inscription (if the Directory should think proper to place it on the Banks of the Thames), to inform posterity that it marks the spot where London once stood.

“Health and Respect,

“BUONAPARTÉ.”

No. XXXIV.

July 2, 1798.

ODE TO A JACOBIN.

FROM SUCKLING’S ODE TO A LOVER.

I.

UNCHRISTIAN JACOBIN whoever,

If, of thy God thou cherish ever

One wavering thought; if e’er HIS word

Has from one crime thy soul deterr’d,—

Know this,

Thou think’st amiss;

And to think true,

Thou must renounce Him all, and think anew.

II.

If, startled at the guillotine,

Trembling thou touch the dread machine;

If, leading sainted Louis to it,

Thy steps drew back, thy heart did rue it,—

Know this,

Thou think’st amiss;

And to think true,

Must rise ’bove weak remorse, and think anew.

III.

If, callous, thou dost not mistake,

And murder for mild Mercy’s sake;

And think thou followest Pity’s call,

When slaughtered thousands round thee fall,—

Know this,

Thou think’st amiss;

And to think true,

Must conquer prejudice, and think anew.

IV.

If, when good men are to be slain,

Thou hear’st them plead, nor plead in vain;

Or, when thou answerest, if it be

With one jot of humanity,—

Know this,

Thou think’st amiss;

And to think true,

Must pardon leave to fools, and think anew.

V.

If, when all kings, priests, nobles hated,

Lie headless, thy revenge is sated,

Nor thirsts to load the reeking block

With heads from thine own murd’rous flock,—

Know this,

Thou think’st amiss;

And to think true,

Thou must go on in blood, and think anew.

VI.

If, thus, by love of executions,

Thou provest thee fit for revolutions;

Yet one achieved, to that art true,

Nor wouldst begin to change anew,—

Know this,

Thou think’st amiss;

Deem, to think true,

All constitutions bad, but those bran new.

[The preceding “ODE TO A JACOBIN” is parodied from the following

ODE TO A LOVER,

BY SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

I.

Honest lover whosoever,

If in all thy love was ever

One wav’ring thought; if e’er thy flame

Were not still even, still the same,—

Know this,

Thou lov’st amiss;

And to love true,

Thou must begin again, and love anew.

II.

If, when she appears i’ th’ room,

Thou dost not quake, and art struck dumb;

And, in striving this to cover,

Dost not speak thy words twice over,—

Know this,

Thou lov’st amiss;

And to love true,

Thou must begin again, and love anew.

III.

If, fondly, thou dost not mistake,

And all defects for graces take,

Persuad’st thyself that jests are broken,

When she has little or nothing spoken,—

Know this,

Thou lov’st amiss;

And to love true,

Thou must begin again, and love anew.

IV.

If, when thou appear’st to be within,

Thou let’st not men ask and ask again;

And when thou answer’st, if it be

To what was ask’d thee, properly,—

Know this,

Thou lov’st amiss;

And to love true,

Thou must begin again, and love anew.

V.

If, when thy stomach calls to eat,

Thou cut’st not fingers ’stead of meat;

And with much gazing on her face,

Dost not rise hungry from the place,—

Know this,

Thou lov’st amiss;

And to love true,

Thou must begin again, and love anew.

VI.

If, by this thou dost discover

That thou art no perfect lover;

And desiring to love true,

Thou dost begin to love anew,—

Know this,

Thou lov’st amiss;

And to love true,

Thou must begin again, and love anew.—ED.]

No. XXXV.

July 9, 1798.

The following popular song is said to be in great vogue among the loyal troops in the North of Ireland. The air and the turn of the composition are highly original. It is attributed (as our correspondent informs us) to a fifer in the Drumballyroney Volunteers.

BALLYNAHINCH.[300]

A NEW SONG.

I.

A certain great Statesman[301] whom all of us know,

In a certain assembly, no long while ago,

Declared from this maxim he never would flinch,

“That no town was so loyal as Ballynahinch”.

II.

The great statesman, it seems, had perused all their faces,

And been mightily struck with their loyal grimaces;

While each townsman had sung, like a throstle or finch,

“We are all of us loyal at Ballynahinch”.

III.

The great statesman return’d to his speeches and readings;

And the Ballynahinchers resumed their proceedings;

They had most of them sworn, “We’ll be true to the Frinch,”[302]

So loyal a town was this Ballynahinch!

IV.

Determined their landlord’s fine words to make good,

They hid pikes in his haggard, cut staves in his wood;

And attack’d the king’s troops—the assertion to clinch,

That no town is so loyal as Ballynahinch.

V.

O! had we but trusted the rebels’ professions,

Met their cannon with smiles, and their pikes with concessions;

Tho’ they still took an ell when we gave them an inch,

They would all have been loyal—like Ballynahinch.

VIRI ERUDITI,

Si vobis hocce poematium, de navali laude Britanniæ, paucis annis ante conscriptum, nuperrimè recensitum atque emendatum, forté arrideat, quærite in proximis vestris tabulis locum quendam secretum atque securum, ubi repositum suâ sorte perfruatur. Quod si in me hanc gratiam contuleritis, devinctus vobis ero et astrictus beneficio.

ETONENSIS.

DE NAVALI LAUDE BRITANNIÆ.

Successu si freta brevi, fatisque secundis,

Europæ sub pace vetet requiescere gentes,

Inque dies ruat ulteriús furialibus armis

GALLIA, tota instans à sedibus eruere imis

Fundamenta, quibus cultæ Commercia vitæ

Firmant se subnixa;—tuisne, BRITANNIA, regnis

Ecquid ab hoste times; dum te tua saxa tuentur,

Dum pelagus te vorticibus spumantibus ambit?

Tu medio stabilita mari, atque ingentibus undis

Cincta sedes; nec tu angusto, Vulcania tanquam

Trinacris, interclusa sinu; nec faucibus arctis

Septa freti brevis, impositisque coercita claustris.

Liberiora Tibi spatia, et porrecta sine ullo

Limite regna patent (quanto neque maxima quondam

Carthago, aut Phœnissa Tyros, ditissima tellus

Floruit imperio) confiniaque ultima mundi.

Ergone formidabis adhuc, ne se inferat olim,

Et campis impuné tuis superingruat hostis?

Usque adeone parúm est, quod laté litora cernas

Præruptisturrita jugis, protentaque longo

Circuitu, et tutos passim præbentia portus?

Præsertim australes ad aquas, Damnoniaque arva,

Aut ubi Vecta viret, secessusque insula fidos

Efficit objectu laterum; saxosave Dubris

Velivolum laté pelagus, camposque liquentes

Aeria, adversasque aspectat desuper oras.

Nec levibus sanè auguriis, aut omine nullo

Auguror hinc fore perpetuum per secula nomen:

Dum nautis tam firma tuis, tam prodiga vitæ

Pectora, inexpletâ succensa cupidine famæ,

Nec turpi flectenda metu; dum maxima quercus,

Majestate excelsa suâ, atque ingentibus umbris,

Erigitur, vasto nodosa atque aspera trunco;

Silvarum regina. Hæc formidabilis olim

Noctem inter mediam nimborum, hyemesque sonantes,

Ardua se attollit super æquora; quam neque fluctûs

Spumosi attenuat furor, aut violentia venti

Frangere, et in medio potis est disrumpere ponto.

Viribus his innixa, saloque accincta frementi,

Tu media inter bella sedes; ignara malorum,

Quæ tolerant obsessæ urbes, cúm jam hostica clausas

Fulminat ad portas acies, vallataque circúm

Castra locat, sævisque aditus circumsidet armis.

Talia sunt tibi perpetuæ fundamina famæ,

Ante alias diis cara, BRITANNIA! Prælia cerno

Inclyta, perpetuos testes quid maxima victrix,

Quid possis preclara tuo, maris arbitra, ponto.

Hæc inter, sanctas æternâ laude calendas

Servandas recolo, quibus illa, immane minata

Gentibus excidium, totum grassata per orbem

Ausaque jam imperiis intactum amplectier æquor,

Illa odiis lymphata, et libertate recenti

GALLIA, disjectam ferali funere classem

Indoluit devicta, et non reparabile vulnus.

Tempore quo instructas vidit longo ordine puppes

Rostratâ certare acie, et concurrere ad arma,

Ætheraque impulsu tremere, Uxantisque per undas

Lugubre lumen agi, atque rubentem fulgere fumum.

Cerno triumphatas acies, quo tempore IBERÛM

Disjectos fastus, lacerisque aplustria velis

Horruit Oceanus:—quali formidine Gades

Intremere, ut fractâ classem se mole moventem

Hospitium petere, et portus videre relictos!

Quid referam, nobis quæ nuper adorea risit,

Te rursús superante, die quo decolor ibat

Sanguine BELGARUM Rhenus, fluctusque minores

Volvebat, frustra indignans polluta cruore

Ostia, et Angliaco tremefactas fulmine rupes.

Cerno pias ædes procúl, et regalia quondam

Atria, cæruleis quæ preterlabitur undis

Velivolus Thamesis; materno ubi denique nautas

Excipis amplexu, virtus quoscumque virilis

Per pelagi impulerit discrimina, quælibet ausos

Pro Patriâ. Híc rude donantur, dulcique senescunt

Hospitio emeriti, placidâque quiete potiti

Vulnera præteritos jactant testantia casus.

Macte ideó decus Oceani! macte omne per ævum

Victrix, æquoreo stabilita BRITANNIA regno!

Litoribusque tuis ne propugnacula tantúm

Præsidio fore, nec saxi munimina credas,

Nec tantúm quæ mille acies in utrumque parantur,

Aut patriam tutari, aut non superesse cadenti;

Invictæ quantúm metuenda tonitrua CLASSIS,

Angliacæ CLASSIS;—quæ majestate verendâ

Ultrix, inconcussa, diú dominabitur orbi,

Hostibus invidiosa tuis, et sæpe triumphis

Nobilitata novis, pelagi Regina subacti.

[TRANSLATION OF THE PRECEDING POEM.[303]

By the late A. F. Westmacott, Esq.

MEN OF LEARNING,

If by chance the following little poem, on the naval glory of Britain, written a few years since, and very lately revised and corrected, please you, look in your nearest tablets for some private and secure place, where it may be placed to enjoy its good fortune. Should you confer on me this favour, I shall be bound to you by the obligation of your kindness.

ETONIAN.

ON THE NAVAL GLORY OF BRITAIN.

If buoy’d by short success and fav’ring chance,

Wide Europe’s peace-destroyer, restless France,

Each day still onward rush with fresh alarms,

And threaten ruin with her furious arms;

Ruin to all whereon is based the throne

That life’s sweet charities have made their own;

Fearest thou, Britain, for thy rock-girt realm,

With seas that foam around and whirlpools to o’erwhelm?

Still in the midst of ocean firmly placed,

Circled by mighty waves thy seat is based!

Not by a strait enclosed, as that fair soil

Where Fabled Vulcan plies his fiery toil;

Within no narrow bay thy waters roll,

No yawning gulf, no barrier rocks control.

Wider thy space, thy realm no limit knows,

Not Tyre so rich, not Tyrian Carthage rose.

Wilt thou yet fear, lest here the haughty foe,

Thy fields o’er-run, and still unpunished go!

Is it then nought to view th’ extended strand

O’er which stern crags like beetling turrets stand,

And countless ports in safe embrace expand?

Look to thy southern waves, to Devon’s fields,

Or where green Vectis[304] trusty harbour yields,

Spreading her friendly arms; or Dover’s height

Looks on the sea with widespread canvas white,

And, perched on high, the liquid plain surveys,

And adverse cliffs that bound the wat’ry ways.

Not by vague augury, nor omen slight,

I view thy name through endless ages bright;

While thy firm crews still prodigal of life

Insatiate burn for fame and dare the strife.

No coward fear they know, while stands erect

The mighty oak with boughs umbrageous decked;

Majestic, high, with knotted trunk, the Queen

Of woods! Hereafter, o’er the waters seen

’Mid the dim midnight of the sounding storm

Aloft ’twill rear the terrors of its form;

In vain the roaring surges round it break,

In vain the winds their uncurbed vengeance wreak,

Throned on such pow’rs, surrounded by the sea,

The circling waves have scarce one fear for thee.

Thou know’st not ills that towns besieged await,

When hostile columns thunder at the gate;

Pitch their dread camp with fatal ramparts round,

And with fierce arms enclose the leaguered ground.

Such is to thee the base of lasting fame,

To Heav’n Britannia still the dearest name!

Gladly I view the glories of the fight,

Perpetual witnesses of deathless might,

To show, bright conqueress, nations yet to be,

What dared, what did the mistress of the sea.

’Mid these the day with praise eternal blest

Earns memory’s tribute most, when, direful pest,

Denouncing ruin to the world, while she

Dared grasp the sceptre of the unconquer’d sea,

Wild with new license, mad with hatred’s heat

France, grieved and humbled, viewed her ruined fleet!

Saw how all hopes one fatal wound could mar

When well-manned squadrons armed their prows for war!

When the sky trembled, and o’er Ushant’s tide

Red glared the smoke and sickly light supplied.

I see the conquered lines, what time proud Spain

With tattered sailcloths thickly strewed the main;

How Cadiz quailed when back the shattered fleet

Sought, in the port it left, a safe retreat.

Why should I tell what smile of Vict’ry beamed,

When Rhine’s fair wave with Belgic slaughter gleamed;

When humbled waters tow’rds the sea it sped,

Mad that its mouths with native blood were red,

While England’s thunders rolled above its rocky bed?

I see afar the domes that crown the tide,

Where Thames uncounted sails in triumph glide:

Here, the brave souls whom manly courage drove

Through the deep’s perils in a holy love

Of country, find in thy maternal breast

Their toil rewarded and their daring blest!

Dismissed at length from duty nobly done

They wane in quiet ’neath the noontide sun,

Recal the dangers of their byegone wars,

And boast appealing to their manhood’s scars.

On in thy race of glory, conqueress, on!

For every age thy sea-girt realm is won!

Think not the fortress which thy shores uprear,

Nor thy rock bulwarks shall inspire such fear,

Nor the brave thousands who obey thy call,

With thee to rise, or not survive thy fall,

As the dread thunders of that untamed host:

Thy fleet, Britannia, is thy proudest boast;

Awful, majestic, firm; its flag unfurl’d

Shall long wave lordly o’er the conquered world;

Hateful to foes for triumphs yet to be,

The rightful Sovereign of the subject sea.—ED.]

No. XXXVI.[305]

MONDAY, July 9, 1798.

We shall miss thee;

But yet thou shalt have freedom—

—So! to the Elements

Be free, and fare thou well.

—THE TEMPEST.

We have now completed our Engagement with the Public. The ANTI-JACOBIN has been conducted to the close of the Session in strict conformity with the Principles upon which it was first undertaken.

Its reception with the Public has been highly favourable:—it certainly has been out of proportion to any merit which has appeared in the execution of the Work. This is not said in the mere cant of Authorship. We are sensible that much of our success has been owing to the improved state of the Public mind;—an improvement existing from other causes, and to which, if We have in any degree contributed, it has in return operated to our advantage, by a reaction more than equal to any impression which our exertions could have produced. There is, however, one species of merit to which We lay claim without hesitation:—We mean that of the Spirit and Principles upon which We have acted. That Spirit, We trust We shall leave behind us. The SPELL of Jacobin invulnerability is now broken.[306]

We know from better authority than that of CAMILLE JORDAN, that one of our Daily Papers was, early in the French Revolution, purchased by France, and devoted to the dissemination of tenets, which, at the period to which We allude, seemed necessary to the success of the Ruling Party.

For some time matters went on swimmingly. The Editors of the favoured Prints divided their time and their attention between London and Paris; and the superiority of the governing Party in France, over its Opponents, was as duly, and as strenuously maintained in the English Papers, as in the “Journal du Père de Chène,”[307] “Journal par L’Ami du Peuple,”[308] or any other Journal that issued from the Presses of the Jacobin Society.

As the principles of the Revolution, however, acquired consistency in France, the struggle between the Governing Party and its Opponents became an object of less moment, and the Jacobins had leisure, as they long had had inclination, to turn their views to this Country.

A State, enjoying under a Government which they had proscribed as utterly incapable of producing either, as much freedom and happiness as comport with the nature of Man, was too bitter a satire on the decision of these new SOLONS, to be regarded with patience; and the pens which had been so industriously employed in celebrating the plunderers and perturbators of France, were now engaged in the benevolent design of recommending their principles, and their plans of ameliorating the condition of the human race by Atheism and Plunder, to the serious notice of the People of Great Britain.

Affairs seemed rapidly hastening to a crisis: France saw with delight the numbers seduced by the sophistry of her Writers, and by the alluring prospects of proscription and plunder; and her Agents, who snuffed the scent of blood like Vultures, already anticipated the Revolution which they now believed inevitable; when the Ministry, who had viewed the progress of the evil with an anxious but unterrified eye, roused themselves into unexampled energy, and called on the Nation to rally round the Constitution which they had received from their Forefathers.

The call was gloriously answered;—Thousands and tens of thousands sprung forth in its defence; and the barbarous hordes which so lately threatened its destruction, overawed by their numbers, shrunk from the contest without a struggle, and vanished from the field.

But the nature of a Jacobin is restless. His hatred of all subordination is unbounded, and his thirst of plunder and blood urgent and insatiable. In arms he found himself infinitely too weak to obtain his purpose; he must, therefore, have recourse again to artifice; and by fallacies and lies, endeavoured to subvert and betray the judgment of those he could not openly hope to subdue.

For this purpose, the Press was engaged, and almost monopolized in all its branches: Reviews, Registers, Monthly Magazines, and Morning and Evening Prints, sprung forth in abundance.

Of these last (the only Publications with which We have any immediate concern), it is not too much to say, that they have laboured in the cause of infamy, with a perseverance which no sense of shame could repress, and no dread of punishment overcome. The objects committed to their charge were multifarious. They were to revile all Religions, but particularly the Christian, whose DIVINE FOUNDER was to be blasphemously compared to Bacchus, and represented as equally ideal, or, if real, more bestial and besotted! They were to magnify the power of France, on all occasions; to deny her murders; to palliate her robberies; to suppress all mention of her miseries, and to hold her forth to the unenlightened Englishman as the mirror of justice, and truth, and generosity, and meekness, and humanity, and moderation, and tender forbearance:—and, on the other hand, they were to depreciate the spirit, and the courage, and the resources of England: they were to impede, if possible, and if not, to ridicule and revile, every measure which the honour, the prosperity, or the safety of the Country might imperiously require; they were to represent the Government as insidiously aiming to enslave the Nation, by every attempt to maintain its Independence; and the majority of both Houses, the great body of Proprietors, as anxious to scatter and confound that wealth, which their Patrons alone, the respectable sweepings of Craven-House, and the Crown and Anchor Tavern, were solicitous to augment and preserve.

These, our readers will allow, were no common objects, and if they have looked into the Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, and Courier Journals to which our attention has been chiefly directed, they must have seen that their attainment was sought by no common means; by an invariable course of Falsehood and Misrepresentation—such, at least, was our idea on the first perusal of these Papers, an idea which every succeeding one served to strengthen and confirm.

To detect and expose this Falsehood, and to correct this Misrepresentation, became at length an object of indispensable necessity: a variety of applications of the most malignant nature had obtained currency and credit, from the unblushing impudence with which they were first obtruded on the Public by the Agents of Sedition, and the apathy with which they were suffered to pass uncontradicted by those who despised them for their atrocity, or ridiculed them for their folly:—these were unfortunately operating on the less enlightened part of the Nation; and it was from a full conviction of the pernicious effects they were calculated to produce, that we finally determined to step forth (after patiently waiting to see whether the business would not be taken up by abler hands), and to oppose such antidotes to the evil, as a regard for truth, and a sincere love and veneration for the Constitution under which we have flourished for ages, could supply.

How we have succeeded must be left to the judgment of the Public. If we might venture, indeed, to conjecture from the support which we have experienced, the result would be flattering in an unusual degree. Three complete Editions of our Paper (a circumstance, we believe, as yet without a precedent) have been disposed of, and the demand for them still increases.

But the motives of Profit, as will readily, we believe, be granted to us, have little influence on our minds: we contemplate the extensive circulation of our Paper with pleasure, solely from the consideration of the VAST NUMBERS of our Countrymen whom we have fortified by our animadversions against the profligate attacks of the Agents of Sedition, whether furnished by the Whig Club, the Corresponding Society, or the Directory of France.

Calculation was not originally our delight. Nor was it till after we saw the wonderful effects which it produced in the pages of the Jacobinical Arithmeticians that we were tempted to adopt it. Our first Essay, however, was crowned with the most complete success. In our Seventh Number, we gave (still following the laudable example of the Jacobins, who, when a Ship is to be fitted out, or a Regiment raised, for the purpose of defending our Country from an insolent and barbarous foe, nicely calculate how many idle mouths might be fed by the sums required)—We gave, we say, as accurate a statement as we could form, of the number of People that might be supplied with wholesome food for one day, by the SURCHARGE levied on the DUKE OF BEDFORD—a statement which, we are happy to add, placed the matter in so clear a light that we have since had no occasion to repeat it.

Our Readers will not now be surprised if we again have recourse to Calculation to prove the advantages which (we love to flatter ourselves) have been derived from our Paper. Our Sale (to say nothing of the new Editions which have been disposed of) has regularly amounted to Two Thousand Five Hundred a week; on an average of several Papers, we find the Lies which have been detected to amount to six, and the Misrepresentations and Mistakes to an equal number. This furnishes a total of twelve, which, multiplied by thirty-five, the number of the last ANTI-JACOBIN, gives a total of four hundred and twenty.

If we now take the number of Subscribers (2500) and multiply them by seven, a number of which every one’s family may be reasonably supposed to consist, we shall have a product of 17,500; but as many of these have made a practice, which we highly approve, and cannot too earnestly recommend, of lending our Papers to their poorer Neighbours, We must make our addition to the sum which We evidently take too low at 32,500. We have thus an aggregate of 50,000 People, a most respectable minority of the Readers of the whole Kingdom, who have been put effectually on their guard, by our humble though earnest endeavours, against the artifices of the seditious, and the more open attacks of the profligate and abandoned Foes of their Constitution, their Country, and their God.

Further, if we multiply 50,000, the number of Readers, by 420, the exact number of Falsehoods detected—say 500—for We ought to take in bye-blows, and odd refutations in notes, &c.—the total of Twenty-five Millions will represent the aggregate of Falsehood which We have sent out of the World.

We have more than once repeated that we entered upon this part of our task, not from any vain hope of convincing the Writers themselves. We knew this to be impossible; the forehead of a Jacobin, like the shield of AJAX, is formed of seven bull-hides, and utterly incapable of any impression of shame or remorse—but we are convinced that we have rescued, as we stated above, Fifty Thousand persons from their machinations, and taught them not only a salutary distrust, but a contempt and disbelief, of every laboured article which appears in the Papers of this description.

Nor can We be accused of presumption in this declaration, when it is considered that the conviction on which We so confidently rely is not the effect of a solitary impression on our Readers’ minds, but of one four hundred and twenty times repeated (this being the fair amount of the number of Lies, &c., We have detected)—an agglomeration of impulse which no prejudice could resist and no preconceived partialities weaken or remove.

Here then We rest. We trust We have “done the State some service”;—We have driven the Jacobins from many strongholds to which they most tenaciously held.[309] We have exposed their Principles, detected their Motives, weakened their Authority, and overthrown their Credit. We have shewn them in every instance, ignorant, and designing, and false, and wicked, and turbulent, and anarchical—various in their language, but united in their plans, and steadily pursuing through hatred and contempt, the destruction of their Country.

With this impression on the Minds of our Readers WE TAKE OUR LEAVE of them. Their welfare is in their own hands; if they suffer the Jacobins to regain any of the influence of which We have deprived them, they will compromise their own Safety; but WE shall be blameless—Liberavimus animas nostras.—WE HAVE DONE OUR DUTY.

POETRY.

New Morality.

From mental mists to purge a nation’s eyes;

To animate the weak, unite the wise;

To trace the deep infection that pervades

The crowded town, and taints the rural shades;

To mark how wide extends the mighty waste

O’er the fair realms of Science, Learning, Taste;

To drive and scatter all the brood of lies,

And chase the varying falsehood as it flies;

The long arrears of ridicule to pay,

To drag reluctant dulness back to day;

10

Much yet remains.—To you these themes belong,

Ye favoured sons of virtue and of song!

Say, is the field too narrow? are the times

Barren of folly, and devoid of crimes?

Yet, venial vices, in a milder age,

Could rouse the warmth of POPE’S satiric rage:

The doating miser, and the lavish heir,

The follies and the foibles of the fair,

Sir Job, Sir Balaam, and old Euclio’s thrift,

And Sappho’s diamonds with her dirty shift,

20

Blunt, Charteris, Hopkins,—meaner subjects fired

The keen-eyed Poet; while the Muse inspired

Her ardent child—entwining, as he sate,

His laurel’d chaplet with the thorns of hate.

But say,—indignant does the Muse retire,

Her shrine deserted, and extinct its fire?

No pious hand to feed the sacred flame,

No raptured soul a poet’s charge to claim?

Bethink thee, GIFFORD; when some future age

Shall trace the promise of thy playful page;—

30

“[310]The hand which brushed a swarm of fools away

Should rouse to grasp a more reluctant prey!”—

Think then, will pleaded indolence excuse

The tame secession of thy languid Muse?

Ah! where is now that promise? why so long

Sleep the keen shafts of satire and of song?

Oh! come, with taste and virtue at thy side,

With ardent zeal inflamed, and patriot pride;

With keen poetic glance direct the blow,

And empty all thy quiver on the foe:—

40

No pause—no rest—till weltering on the ground

The poisonous hydra lies, and pierced with many a wound.

Thou too!—the nameless Bard,[311]—whose honest zeal

For law, for morals, for the public weal,

Pours down impetuous on thy country’s foes

The stream of verse, and many-languaged prose;

Thou too! though oft thy ill-advised dislike

The guiltless head with random censure strike,—

Though quaint allusions, vague and undefined,

Play faintly round the ear, but mock the mind;—

50

Through the mix’d mass yet truth and learning shine,

And manly vigour stamps the nervous line;

And patriot warmth the generous rage inspires,

And wakes and points the desultory fires!

Yet more remain unknown:—for who can tell

What bashful genius, in some rural cell,

As year to year, and day succeeds to day,

In joyless leisure wastes his life away?

In him the flame of early fancy shone;

His genuine worth his old companions own;

60

In childhood and in youth their chief confess’d,

His master’s pride, his pattern to the rest.

Now, far aloof retiring from the strife

Of busy talents, and of active life,

As from the loop-holes of retreat he views

Our stage, verse, pamphlets, politics, and news,

He loathes the world,—or, with reflections sad,

Concludes it irrecoverably mad;

Of taste, of learning, morals, all bereft,

No hope, no prospect to redeem it left.

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Awake! for shame! or e’er thy nobler sense

Sink in th’ oblivious pool of indolence!

Must wit be found alone on falsehood’s side,

Unknown to truth, to virtue unallied?

Arise! nor scorn thy country’s just alarms;

Wield in her cause thy long-neglected arms:

Of lofty satire pour th’ indignant strain,

Leagued with her friends, and ardent to maintain

’Gainst Learning’s, Virtue’s, Truth’s, Religion’s foes,

A kingdom’s safety, and the world’s repose.

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If Vice appal thee,—if thou view with awe

Insults that brave, and crimes that ’scape the law;

Yet may the specious bastard brood, which claim

A spurious homage under Virtue’s name,

Sprung from that parent of ten thousand crimes,

The New Philosophy of modern times,—

Yet, these may rouse thee!—With unsparing hand,

Oh, lash the vile impostures from the land!

First, stern PHILANTHROPY:—not she, who dries

The orphan’s tears, and wipes the widow’s eyes;

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Not she, who sainted Charity her guide,

Of British bounty pours the annual tide:—

But French PHILANTHROPY;—whose boundless mind

Glows with the general love of all mankind;—

PHILANTHROPY,—beneath whose baneful sway

Each patriot passion sinks, and dies away.

Taught in her school to imbibe thy mawkish strain,

CONDORCET, filtered through the dregs of PAINE,

Each pert adept disowns a Briton’s part,

And plucks the name of ENGLAND from his heart.

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What! shall a name, a word, a sound, control

Th’ aspiring thought, and cramp th’ expansive soul?

Shall one half-peopled Island’s rocky round

A love, that glows for all creation, bound?

And social charities contract the plan

Framed for thy freedom, UNIVERSAL MAN!

No—through th’ extended globe his feelings run

As broad and general as th’ unbounded sun!

No narrow bigot he;—his reason’d view

Thy interests, England, ranks with thine, Peru!

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France at our doors, he sees no danger nigh,

But heaves for Turkey’s woes th’ impartial sigh;

A steady patriot of the world alone,

The friend of every country—but his own.

Next comes a gentler Virtue.—Ah! beware

Lest the harsh verse her shrinking softness scare.

Visit her not too roughly;—the warm sigh

Breathes on her lips;—the tear-drop gems her eye.

Sweet SENSIBILITY, who dwells enshrined

In the fine foldings of the feeling mind;

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With delicate Mimosa’s sense endued,

Who shrinks instinctive from a hand too rude;

Or, like the Anagallis, prescient flower,

Shuts her soft petals at the approaching shower.

Sweet child of sickly FANCY!—her of yore

From her loved France ROUSSEAU to exile bore;

And, while ’midst lakes and mountains wild he ran,

Full of himself, and shunn’d the haunts of man,

Taught her o’er each lone vale and Alpine steep

To lisp the story of his wrongs, and weep;

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Taught her to cherish still in either eye,

Of tender tears a plentiful supply,

And pour them in the brooks that babbled by;

Taught by nice scale to mete her feelings strong,

False by degrees, and exquisitely wrong;

For the crush’d beetle, first,—the widow’d dove,

And all the warbled sorrows of the grove;

Next for poor suff’ring Guilt; and last of all,

For parents, friends, a king and country’s fall.

Mark her fair votaries, prodigal of grief,

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With cureless pangs, and woes that mock relief,

Droop in soft sorrow o’er a faded flower;

O’er a dead Jack-Ass pour the pearly shower;

But hear, unmoved, of Loire’s ensanguined flood,

Choked up with slain; of Lyons drenched in blood;

Of crimes that blot the age, the world, with shame,

Foul crimes, but sicklied o’er with Freedom’s name;

Altars and thrones subverted; social life

Trampled to earth,—the husband from the wife,

Parent from child, with ruthless fury torn,—

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Of talents, honour, virtue, wit, forlorn,

In friendless exile,—of the wise and good

Staining the daily scaffold with their blood,—

Of savage cruelties, that scare the mind,

The rage of madness with hell’s lusts combined,—

Of hearts torn reeking from the mangled breast,—

They hear,—and hope that ALL IS FOR THE BEST.

Fond hope! but JUSTICE sanctifies the prayer—

JUSTICE! here, Satire, strike! ’twere sin to spare!

Not she in British Courts that takes her stand,

160

The dawdling balance dangling in her hand,

Adjusting punishments to fraud and vice,

With scrupulous quirks, and disquisition nice:

But firm, erect, with keen reverted glance,

Th’ avenging angel of regenerate France,

Who visits ancient sins on modern times,

And punishes the POPE for CÆSAR’S crimes.[312]

Such is the liberal JUSTICE which presides

In these our days, and modern patriots guides;—

JUSTICE, whose blood-stain’d book one sole decree,

170

One statute, fills—“the People shall be Free!”

Free! By what means?—by folly, madness, guilt,

By boundless rapines, blood in oceans spilt;

By confiscation, in whose sweeping toils

The poor man’s pittance with the rich man’s spoils,

Mix’d in one common mass, are swept away,

To glut the short-lived tyrant of the day;—

By laws, religion, morals, all o’erthrown:—

Rouse, then, ye sovereign people, claim your own:

The license that enthrals, the truth that blinds,

180

The wealth that starves you, and the power that grinds!

So JUSTICE bids.—’Twas her enlighten’d doom,

Louis, thy holy head devoted to the tomb!

’Twas JUSTICE claim’d, in that accurséd hour,

The fatal forfeit of too lenient power.

Mourn for the Man we may;—but for the King,—

Freedom, oh! Freedom’s such a charming thing!

“Much may be said on both sides.”—Hark! I hear

A well-known voice that murmurs in my ear,—

The voice of CANDOUR.—Hail! most solemn sage,

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Thou drivelling virtue of this moral age,

CANDOUR, which softens party’s headlong rage.

CANDOUR,—which spares its foes;—nor e’er descends

With bigot zeal to combat for its friends.

CANDOUR,—which loves in see-saw strain to tell

Of acting foolishly, but meaning well;

Too nice to praise by wholesale, or to blame,

Convinced that all men’s motives are the same;

And finds, with keen discriminating sight,

BLACK’S not so black;—nor WHITE so very white.

200

“FOX, to be sure, was vehement and wrong:

But then, PITT’S words, you’ll own, were rather strong.

Both must be blamed, both pardon’d; ’twas just so

With FOX and PITT full forty years ago!

So WALPOLE, PULTENEY;—factions in all times

Have had their follies, ministers their crimes.”

Give me th’ avow’d, th’ erect, the manly foe,

Bold I can meet—perhaps may turn his blow;

But of all plagues, good Heav’n, thy wrath can send,

Save, save, oh! save me from the Candid Friend!

210

“BARRAS loves plunder, MERLIN takes a bribe,—

What then!—shall CANDOUR these good men proscribe?

No! ere we join the loud-accusing throng,

Prove,—not the facts,—but, that they thought them wrong.

“Why hang O’QUIGLEY?—he, misguided man,

In sober thought his country’s weal might plan:

And, while his deep-wrought Treason sapp’d the throne,

Might act from taste in morals, all his own.”

Peace to such Reasoners! let them have their way;

Shut their dull eyes against the blaze of day;

220

PRIESTLEY’S a Saint, and STONE a Patriot still;

And LA FAYETTE a Hero, if they will.

I love the bold uncompromising mind,

Whose principles are fix’d, whose views defined;

Who scouts and scorns, in canting CANDOUR’S spite,

All taste in morals, innate sense of right,

And Nature’s impulse, all uncheck’d by art,

And feelings fine, that float about the heart:

Content, for good men’s guidance, bad men’s awe,

On moral truth to rest, and Gospel law.

230

Who owns, when Traitors feel th’ avenging rod,

Just retribution, and the hand of GOD;

Who hears the groans through Olmütz’ roofs that ring,

Of him who mock’d, misled, betray’d his King—

Hears unappall’d, though Faction’s zealots preach,

Unmov’d, unsoften’d by FITZPATRICK’S Speech.[313]

That Speech on which the melting Commons hung,

“While truths divine came mended from his tongue”;

How loving husband clings to duteous wife,—

How pure Religion soothes the ills of life,—

240

How Popish ladies trust their pious fears

And naughty actions in their chaplains’ ears.—

Half novel and half sermon, on it flow’d;

With pious zeal THE OPPOSITION glow’d;

And as o’er each the soft infection crept,

Sigh’d as he whin’d, and as he whimper’d, wept;—

E’en CURWEN[314] dropt a sentimental tear,

And stout ST. ANDREW yelp’d a softer “Hear!”

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Oh! nurse of crimes and fashions! which in vain

Our colder servile spirits would attain,

250

How do we ape thee, France! but, blundering still,

Disgrace the pattern by our want of skill.

The borrow’d step our awkward gait reveals:

(As clumsy COURTENAY[315] mars the verse he steals.)

How do we ape thee, France!—nor claim alone

Thy arts, thy tastes, thy morals, for our own,

260

But to thy WORTHIES render homage due,

Their[316] “hair-breadth scapes” with anxious interest view;

Statesmen and Heroines whom this age adores,

Though plainer times would call them Rogues and Whores.

260

See LOUVET, patriot, pamphleteer, and sage,

Tempering with amorous fire his virtuous rage.

Form’d for all tasks, his various talents see,

The luscious Novel, the severe Decree.

Then mark him welt’ring in his nasty sty,

Bare his lewd transports to the public eye.

Not his the love in silent groves that strays,

Quits the rude world, and shuns the vulgar gaze.

In LODOISKA’S full possession blest,

One craving void still aches within his breast;

270

Plunged in the filth and fondness of her arms,

Not to himself alone he stints her charms;

Clasp’d in each other’s foul embrace they lie,

But know no joy, unless the World stands by.

The fool of vanity, for her alone

He lives, loves, writes, and dies but to be known.

His widow’d mourner flies to poison’s aid,

Eager to join her LOUVET’S parted shade

In those bright realms where sainted lovers stray,

But harsh emetics tear that hope away.[317]

280

Yet hapless LOUVET! where thy bones are laid,

The easy nymphs shall consecrate the shade.[318]

There in the laughing morn of genial spring,

Unwedded pairs shall tender couplets sing;

Eringoes o’er the hallow’d spot shall bloom,

And flies of Spain buzz softly round the tomb.[319]

But hold, severer virtue claims the Muse—

ROLAND the just, with ribands in his shoes—[320]

And ROLAND’S spouse, who paints with chaste delight

The doubtful conflict of her nuptial night;—

290

Her virgin charms what fierce attacks assail’d,

And how the rigid Minister[321] prevail’d.

And ah! what verse can grace thy stately mien,

Guide of the world, preferment’s golden queen,

NECKAR’S fair daughter,—STAEL the Epicene!

Bright o’er whose flaming cheek and pumple[322] nose

The bloom of young desire unceasing glows!

Fain would the Muse—but ah! she dares no more,

A mournful voice from lone Guyana’s shore,[323]

Sad QUATREMER-the bold presumption checks,

300

Forbid to question thy ambiguous sex.

To thee, proud BARRAS bows;—thy charms control

REWBELL’S brute rage, and MERLIN’S subtle soul;

Rais’d by thy hands, and fashion’d to thy will,

Thy power, thy guiding influence, governs still,

Where at the blood-stain’d board expert he plies,

The lame artificer of fraud and lies;

He with the mitred head and cloven heel;—

Doom’d the coarse edge of REWBELL’S jests to feel;[324]

To stand the playful buffet, and to hear

310

The frequent ink-stand whizzing past his ear;

While all the five Directors laugh to see

“The limping priest so deft at his new ministry”.[325]

Last of th’ ANOINTED FIVE behold, and least,

The Directorial LAMA, Sovereign Priest,—

LEPAUX;—whom atheists worship;—at whose nod

Bow their meek heads the Men without a God.[326]

Ere long, perhaps, to this astonish’d isle,

Fresh from the shores of subjugated Nile,

Shall BUONAPARTE’S victor fleet protect

320

The genuine Theo-Philanthropic sect,—

The sect of MARAT, MIRABEAU, VOLTAIRE,—

Led by their Pontiff, good LA RÉVEILLÈRE.

Rejoiced our CLUBS shall greet him, and install

The holy Hunchback in thy dome, St. Paul!

While countless votaries, thronging in his train,

Wave their red caps, and hymn this jocund strain:—

“Couriers and Stars, Sedition’s evening host,

Thou Morning Chronicle and Morning Post,

Whether ye make the Rights of Man your theme,

330

Your country libel, and your God blaspheme,

Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw,

Still, blasphemous or blackguard, praise LEPAUX!

“And ye five other wandering bards, that move

In sweet accord of harmony and love,

COLERIDGE and SOUTHEY, LLOYD, and LAMB & CO.

Tune all your mystic harps to praise LEPAUX!

“PRIESTLEY and WAKEFIELD, humble, holy men,

Give praises to his name with tongue and pen!

“THELWALL, and ye that lecture as ye go,

340

And for your pains get pelted, praise LEPAUX!

“Praise him each Jacobin, or Fool, or Knave,

And your cropp’d heads in sign of worship wave!

“All creeping creatures, venomous and low,

PAINE, WILLIAMS, GODWIN, HOLCROFT, praise LEPAUX!

“—— and —— with —— join’d,[327]

And every other beast after his kind.

“And thou, Leviathan! on ocean’s brim

Hugest of living things that sleep and swim;

Thou, in whose nose, by BURKE’S gigantic hand

350

The hook was fixed to drag thee to the land,

With ——, ——, and ——, in thy train,

And —— wallowing in the yeasty main,—[328]

Still as ye snort, and puff, and spout, and blow,

In puffing, and in spouting, praise LEPAUX!”

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

BRITAIN, beware; nor let th’ insidious foe,

Of force despairing, aim a deadlier blow;

Thy Peace, thy Strength, with devilish wiles assail,

And when her Arms are vain, by Arts prevail.

True, thou art rich, art powerful!—thro’ thine Isle

360

Industrious skill, contented labour, smile;

Far Seas are studded with thy countless sails;

What wind but wafts them, and what shore but hails!

True, thou art brave!—o’er all the busy land

In patriot ranks embattled myriads stand;

Thy foes behold with impotent amaze

And drop the lifted weapon as they gaze

But what avails to guard each outward part,

If subtlest poison, circling at thy heart,

Spite of thy courage, of thy pow’r, and wealth,

370

Mine the sound fabric of thy vital health?

So thine own Oak, by some fair streamlet’s side,

Waves its broad arms, and spreads its leafy pride,

Tow’rs from the earth, and rearing to the skies

Its conscious strength, the tempest’s wrath defies.

Its ample branches shield the fowls of air,

To its cool shade the panting herds repair.

The treacherous current works its noiseless way,

The fibres loosen, and the roots decay;

Prostrate the beauteous ruin lies; and all

380

That shared its shelter, perish in its fall.

O thou! lamented SAGE! whose prescient scan

Pierc’d through foul Anarchy’s gigantic plan,

Prompt to incredulous hearers to disclose

The guilt of France, and Europe’s world of woes;—

Thou, on whose name each distant age shall gaze,

The mighty sea-mark of these troubled days!

O large of soul, of genius unconfin’d,

Born to delight, instruct, and mend mankind!

BURKE! in whose breast a Roman ardour glow’d;

390

Whose copious tongue with Grecian richness flow’d;

Well hast thou found (if such thy country’s doom),

A timely refuge in the sheltering tomb!

As, in far realms, where eastern kings are laid,

In pomp of death, beneath the cypress shade,

The perfum’d lamp with unextinguish’d light

Flames through the vault, and cheers the gloom of night:

So, mighty BURKE! in thy sepulchral urn,

To Fancy’s view, the lamp of Truth shall burn.

Thither late times shall turn their reverent eyes,

400

Led by thy light, and by thy wisdom wise.

There are, to whom (their taste such pleasures cloy)

No light thy wisdom yields, thy wit no joy.

Peace to their heavy heads, and callous hearts,

Peace—such as sloth, as ignorance imparts!

Pleas’d may they live to plan their country’s good,

And crop with calm content their flow’ry food!

What though thy venturous spirit loved to urge

The labouring theme to Reason’s utmost verge,

Kindling and mounting from th’ enraptur’d sight;

410

Still anxious wonder watch’d thy daring flight!

While vulgar minds, with mean malignant stare,

Gazed up, the triumph of thy fall to share!

Poor triumph! price of that extorted praise,

Which still to daring Genius Envy pays.

Oh! for thy playful smile, thy potent frown,

To abash bold Vice, and laugh pert Folly down!

So should the Muse, in Humour’s happiest vein,

With verse that flowed in metaphoric strain,

And apt allusions to the rural trade,

420

Tell of what wood young JACOBINS are made;

How the skill’d gardener grafts with nicest rule

The slip of coxcomb on the stock of fool;

Forth in bright blossom bursts the tender sprig,

A thing to wonder at—[329] perhaps a Whig:

Should tell, how wise each half-fledged pedant prates

Of weightiest matters, grave distinctions states,

That rules of policy, and public good,

In Saxon times were rightly understood;

That kings are proper, may be useful things,

430

But then, some gentlemen object to kings;

That in all times the minister’s to blame;

That British liberty’s an empty name,

Till each fair burgh, numerically free,

Shall choose its members by the Rule of Three.

So should the Muse, with verse in thunder clothed,

Proclaim the crimes by God and Nature loathed.

Which—when fell poison revels in the veins—

(That poison fell, which frantic Gallia drains

From the crude fruit of Freedom’s blasted tree)

440

Blot the fair records of Humanity.

To feebler nations let proud France afford

Her damning choice,—the chalice or the sword,

To drink or die;—O fraud! O specious lie!

Delusive choice! for if they drink, they die.

The Sword we dread not:—of ourselves secure,

Firm were our strength, our peace and freedom sure.

Let all the world confederate all its powers,

“Be they not backed by those that should be ours,”

High on his rock shall BRITAIN’S GENIUS stand,

450

Scatter the crowded hosts, and vindicate the land.

Guard we but our own Hearts: with constant view

To ancient morals, ancient manners true;

True to the manlier virtues, such as nerv’d

Our fathers’ breasts, and this proud Isle preserv’d

For many a rugged age: and scorn the while

Each philosophic atheist’s specious guile;

The soft seductions, the refinements nice,

Of gay Morality, and easy Vice;

So shall we brave the storm; our ’stablish’d pow’r

Thy refuge, EUROPE, in some happier hour.

461

But, FRENCH in heart, though Victory crown our brow,

Low at our feet though prostrate Nations bow,

Wealth gild our Cities, Commerce crowd our shore,

LONDON MAY SHINE, but ENGLAND is NO MORE!

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE.

In the last Address which We shall have to make to the Public, We would willingly review the whole of what has been advanced by Us under the different Heads of our Paper, and leave behind us a Summary of our Opinions upon the state of each subject as We found it, and as We conceive it to stand at the moment when our labours are concluded.

Upon no point, if We are to speak our sincere opinion, is the task more easily to be executed, or in a less compass, than in what relates to Foreign Politics.

In other times, the relations of States to each other have been matter of great study, and difficulty; have been embarrassed with a diversity of views, and a complication of interests, which it might require much experience to calculate, and much political sagacity to reconcile.

At present, there is but one relation among all the States of Europe:—one, at least, there is so paramount, as to confound and swallow up all inferior considerations.

FRANCE IS BENT ON THE CONQUEST AND RUIN OF THEM ALL. To repel this Conquest, to ward off this ruin, various means are tried, according to the power or the prudence of the different Nations. War, Treaty, Supplication, Bribery, timid Neutrality, implicit Submission, and, finally, an Incorporation into the Map of the Great Republic, are all at this moment exemplified in the conduct of the Countries which surround us.

Our lot, a lot imposed upon us by necessity, but which if it were not so imposed upon us, whoever is not blind, judicially blind to the conduct of France towards us, and every other Country, would claim by choice, is WAR.

The relation in which we may stand to the other States of Europe, or they to each other, is comparatively of little moment. They may reciprocate Missions, and propose Treaties,—the Ligurian Republic may make Peace or War with the Cisalpine; the Cisalpine with the Roman;—either of them with the KING of SARDINIA, with Tuscany, or with Naples; and the greater Powers may mediate, or embroil the quarrel, may offer their protection, and talk of their Dignity:—But the question does not lie there.—France has the power and the will to controul, to oppress them altogether; to limit or extend their Boundaries, as she sees good; to approve or annul their Internal Regulations, as well as their stipulations with each other: And while she has that power, whether it be by strength in herself, or by the sufferance of others; whether she may choose to vex and harass them in mass, or detail; to keep peace between them, or to set them at variance; to work their revolutions by her own arms, or to delegate that sacred office to their neighbours; or, finally, to insist upon their performing it each for themselves;—the result to us is the same. The People of Europe are equally enslaved;—it matters not whether they are manacled separately, or bolted to the links of a long chain which connects and coerces them in a fellowship of misery.

Mortalia corda

Per gentes humilis stravit pavor.

To Us, the relation of these unhappy Powers, is either that of Friends forced into a Foreign Army to fight against us, or placed, hand-cuffed, on the Deck of a Line of Battle Ship to receive our fire—or it is that of a Captive languishing in a Dungeon against which We are making an attack, and who does not dare to acknowledge his Friend, till he can hail him as his Deliverer.

The Contest between Great Britain and France, then, is not for the existence of the former only, but for the Freedom of the World. To look to partial Interests, to talk of partial Successes, as bearing upon the main object and general issue of the War, is to take a narrow and pitiful view of the most momentous and most tremendous subject that ever was brought under the consideration of mankind.

If Great Britain, insensible of what she owes to herself and to the World, flinches (for she cannot fall), in the Contest;—she throws away not herself alone, but the peace and happiness of Nations. If she maintain herself stoutly;—to speculate on the mode, the time, the means by which success adequate to the immensity of the object at stake is to be attained, were, indeed, presumptuous;—but We risk, without apprehension of being thought sanguine in our hopes and expectations, or of being contradicted by the event, the sentiment of the greatest Orator of ancient times—“It is not, it cannot be possible, that an Empire founded on injustice, on rapacity, on perfidy, on the contempt and disregard of everything sacred towards God, or among Men;—it is not possible that such an Empire should endure.”

NOTES TO “NEW MORALITY”.

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, LL.D. (page 278).

“I have read a communication from GEORGE III. to one of his ministers, on the subject of the riots in which PRIESTLEY’S house was burned. HIS MAJESTY says, in his short emphatic way, that the riots must be stopped immediately; that no man’s house must be left in peril; and then he orders the march of certain troops, &c., to restore peace; and concludes with saying that, as the mischief did occur, it was impossible not to be pleased at its having fallen on PRIESTLEY rather than another, that he might feel the wickedness of the doctrines of democracy which he was propagating.”—J. W. Croker (MS.).—[ED.]

MADAME DE STAEL (page 282).

“MADAME DE STAEL was at Mickleham, in Surrey, in 1793, with Talleyrand, Narbonne, Jaucourt, Guibert (who proposed to her), and others. There was not a little scandal about her relations with Narbonne (see Fanny Burney’s Letters). Narbonne’s place was supplied by Benjamin Constant, who had a very great influence over her, as in return she had over him. At Coppet, she found consolation in a young officer of Swiss origin, named Rocca, twenty-three years her junior, whom she married privately in 1811. She had married Baron de Stael in 1786, and in 1797 they separated. He died in 1802; and she in 1817.”—Life of Mad. de Stael, by A. Stevens, 1880.

“On the 28th of January” (says Crabb Robinson in his Diary, 1804), “I first waited on MADAME DE STAEL. I was shown into her bedroom, for which, not knowing Parisian customs, I was unprepared. She was sitting, most decorously, in her bed, and writing. She had her night-cap on, and her face was not made up for the day. It was by no means a captivating spectacle, but I had a very cordial reception, and two bright black eyes smiled benignantly on me. After a warm expression of her pleasure at making my acquaintance, she dismissed me till three o’clock. On my return then I found a very different person——the accomplished Frenchwoman surrounded by admirers, some of whom were themselves distinguished. Among them was the aged WIELAND. There was on this, and, I believe, on almost every other, occasion, but one lady among the guests: in this instance FRAU VON KALB. MADAME DE STAEL did not affect to conceal her preference for the society of men to that of her own sex.”

COUNT D’ORSAY related of MADAME DE STAEL, whose character was discussed, that one day, being on a sofa with MADAME DE RÉCAMIER, one who placed himself between them exclaimed: “Me voilà entre la beauté et l’esprit!” She replied: “That is the first time I was ever complimented for beauty!” MADAME DE RÉCAMIER was thought the handsomest woman in Paris, but was by no means famed for esprit.—Crabb Robinson’s Diary.

“MADAME DE STAEL was a perfect aristocrat, and her sympathies were wholly with the great and prosperous. She saw nothing in England but the luxury, stupidity, and pride of the Tory aristocracy, and the intelligence and magnificence of the Whig aristocracy. The latter talked about truth and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was all as it should be. As to the millions, the people, she never enquired into their situation. She had a horror of the canaille, but anything of sangre azul had a charm for her. When she was dying she said; ‘Let me die in peace; let my last moments be undisturbed’. Yet she ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought to her. Among them was one from the DUC DE RICHELIEU. ‘What!’ exclaimed she, indignantly; ‘what! have you sent away the DUKE? Hurry. Fly after him. Bring him back. Tell him that though I die for all the world, I live for him.’”—Bowring’s Autobr. Recollections, pp. 375–6.

MADAME DE STAEL prepared her bons-mots with elaborate care, some being borrowed.... She was ugly, and not of an intellectual ugliness. Her features were coarse, and the ordinary expression rather vulgar. She had an ugly mouth, and one or two irregularly prominent teeth, which perhaps gave her countenance an habitual gaiety. Her eye was full, dark, and expressive; and when she declaimed, which was almost whenever she spoke, she looked eloquent, and one forgot that she was plain. On the whole, she was singularly unfeminine; and if, in conversation, one forgot she was ugly, one forgot also that she was a woman.—J. W. Croker’s Note-Books.—[ED.]

THE REV. GILBERT WAKEFIELD (page 284).

“It is well known that the French Revolution turned the brains of many of the noblest youths in England. Indeed when such men as COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, caught the infection, no wonder that those who partook of their sensibility, but had a very small portion of their intellect, were carried away. Many were ruined by the errors into which they were betrayed; many also lived to smile at the follies of their youth. ‘I am no more ashamed of having been a Republican,’ said SOUTHEY, ‘than I am of having been a child.’ The opinions held led to many political prosecutions, and I naturally had much sympathy with the sufferers. I find in my journal, Feb. 21, 1799 (says Crabb Robinson): ‘An interesting and memorable day. It was the day on which GILBERT WAKEFIELD was convicted of a seditious libel, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. This he suffered in Dorchester Gaol, which he left only to die. Originally of the Established Church, he became a Unitarian, and Professor at the Hackney College. By profession he was a scholar. His best known work was an edition of Lucretius. He had written against PORSON’S edition of the Hecuba of Euripides.’ It is said that PORSON was at a dinner-party at which toasts were going round, and a name, accompanied by an appropriate sentence from Shakespeare, was required from each of the guests in succession. Before PORSON’S turn came, he had disappeared beneath the table, and was supposed to be insensible to what was going on. This, however, was not the case, for when a toast was required of him, he staggered up and gave: ‘Gilbert Wakefield—what’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?’ WAKEFIELD was a political fanatic. He had the pale complexion and mild features of a Saint, was a most gentle creature in domestic life, and a very amiable man; but when he took part in any religious or political controversy, his pen was dipped in gall. The occasion of the imprisonment before alluded to was a letter in reply to WATSON, Bishop of Llandaff, who had written a pamphlet exhorting the people to loyalty. WAKEFIELD asserted that the poor, the labouring classes; could lose nothing by French conquest. Referring to the fable of the Ass and the Trumpeter, he said: ‘Will the enemy make me carry two panniers?’ and declared that, if the French came, they would find him at his post with the illustrious dead.”—[ED.]

JOHN THELWALL (page 284).

“COLERIDGE and SOUTHEY spoke of THELWALL, calling him merely ‘John’: SOUTHEY said: ‘He is a good-hearted man; besides we ought never to forget that he was once as near as possible being hanged, as there is some merit in that’.”—Crabb Robinson’s Diary.—[ED.]

JEAN PAUL MARAT (page 284).

The following remarkable account of this scientific monster is given in an “Historical Account of the Warrington Academy, an institution in Lancashire,” published in the Monthly Repository, by the Rev. W. Turner, of Wakefield.

“After the departure of DR. REINHOLD FORSTER, various unsuccessful attempts were made to engage a foreigner in the capacity of teacher of the modern languages—a M. FANTIN LA TOUR, a M. LE MAITRE, alias MARA, and a MR. LEWIS GUERY; but none of them continued for any length of time.... There is great reason to believe that LE MAITRE, alias MARA, was the infamous MARAT.... It is known that he was in England about this time [1774], and published in London “A Philosophical Essay on the connection between the Body and the Soul of Man,” and, somewhere in the country, had a principal hand in printing, in quarto, a work of considerable ability, but of a seditious tendency, entitled—‘The Chains of Slavery: a work wherein the clandestine and villainous Attempts of Princes to ruin Liberty are pointed out, and the dreadful Scenes of Despotism disclosed, etc.; London, sold by J. Almon.... T. Payne, and Richardson and Urquhart, 1774.’ MARA, as his name is spelt in the Minutes of the Academy, very soon left Warrington, whence he went to Oxford, robbed the Ashmolean Museum, escaped to Ireland, was apprehended in Dublin, tried and convicted in Oxford, under the name of LE MAITRE, and sentenced to the hulks at Woolwich. Here one of his old pupils at Warrington, a native of Bristol, saw him. He was afterwards a Bookseller in Bristol, and failed; was confined in the gaol of that city, but released by the Society there for the relief of prisoners confined for small sums. One of that society, who had previously relieved him in Bristol Gaol, afterwards saw him in the National Assembly in Paris in 1792.”

Grave doubts have, however, been thrown upon the accuracy of the above statement by HENRY A. BRIGHT, B.A., in a paper published in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 8vo, vol. xi., session 1858–9. Yet it was an establishment that might have attracted such a mind as Marat’s. “At WARRINGTON ACADEMY (says Mr. Bright), were collected some of the noblest literati of their day. Here the free thought of the English Presbyterians first began to crystallize into the Unitarian theology which they have since maintained. Here, for a time, was the centre of the liberal politics and the literary taste of the entire county.... The Academy was founded in 1757, and was closed in 1786. It was visited by John Howard, W. Roscoe, T. Pennant, Currie, the biographer of Burns, &c. The first Tutors appointed were DR. JOHN TAYLOR of Norwich, Tutor in Divinity, MR. HOLT of Kirkdale, Tutor in Natural Philosophy, MR. DYER of London, Tutor in Languages and Polite Literature, whose duties, however, were taken by MR. (afterwards the REV. DR.) AIKIN, father of the celebrated Physician and Mrs. Barbauld. DR. PRIESTLEY succeeded DR. AIKIN.”

DR. PRIESTLEY, who is addressed by COLERIDGE as “Patriot, and Saint, and Sage,” was succeeded by JOHN REINHOLD FORSTER, a German Scholar and Naturalist, who accompanied Captain Cook in his second voyage, DR. ENFIELD, author of The Speaker, and the REV. GILBERT WAKEFIELD, were Tutors. Among the students were MR. SERJEANT HEYWOOD; ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, the Irish rebel; the REV. H. MALTHUS; LORD ENNISMORE; SIR JAMES CARNEGIE of Southesk; MR. HENRY BEAUFOY, etc., all strong Whigs. The name of neither MARA nor LE MAITRE appears on the Minutes of the Academy.

For the latest contribution to the history of MARAT’S sojourn in England we are indebted to the researches of MR. H. MORSE STEPHENS, of Balliol College, Oxford, who, in his elaborate and painstaking History of the French Revolution (1886), which includes facts unknown to Carlyle and earlier historians, gives the following account of that “arch-destroyer”; but, as he calls him, “a much maligned individual”:—

“JEAN PAUL MARAT,” says he, “was born at Boudry, near Neufchatel, in Switzerland, on April 13, 1742. His father, who spelt his name ‘MARA,’ was a physician of some ability, and on being exiled from his native island of Sardinia for abandoning the Roman Catholic religion, had taken up his residence in Switzerland; and married a Swiss Protestant. JEAN PAUL was the eldest of three sons; his next brother settled down as a watchmaker at Geneva, and his youngest brother entered the service of the Empress Catherine, and distinguished himself in the Russian army under the title of the Chevalier de Boudry. JEAN PAUL was from his childhood of an intensely sensitive and excitable disposition, and also so quick at his books that he became a good classical scholar, and acquainted with most modern languages. As his chief taste, however, seemed to be for natural science, he was intended to follow his father’s profession, and was, at the age of eighteen, sent to study medicine at the University of Bordeaux. He there obtained a thorough knowledge of his profession, but devoted himself particularly to the sciences of optics and electricity. From Bordeaux he went to Paris, where he effected a remarkable cure of a disease of the eyes, which had been abandoned as hopeless both by physicians and quacks, by means of electricity. From Paris he went to Amsterdam, and, finally, to LONDON, where he set up in practice in Church Street, Soho, then one of the most fashionable districts in London. He must soon have formed a good practice, for he stopped in London, with occasional visits to Dublin and Edinburgh, for ten years, and only left it to take up an appointment at the French court. While in London he wrote his first book, and in 1772 and 1773, he published the first two volumes of a philosophical and physiological Essay on Man. The point he discussed was the old problem of the relation between body and mind, and he treated it in a very interesting manner from the physiological point of view. He held some extraordinary theory about the existence of some fluid in the veins which acted on the mind; which, however, does not impair the interest of his inquiries into the cause of dreams, or diminish the respect felt for his wide reading and extensive knowledge both of ancient and modern philosophical and medical authors. He shows a wide knowledge of Latin and Greek literature, and while writing in good English freely quotes French, German, Italian, and Spanish writers. In one part of his book he declared that it was ridiculous for any one to make psychical researches without having some knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and openly attacked HELVÉTIUS for despising scientific knowledge in his famous De l’Esprit. VOLTAIRE naturally took the side of HELVÉTIUS, and did the young author the honour of noticing, and very severely criticising, his book. MARAT himself translated it into French, and published it at Amsterdam in 1775. His next work was of a political character. He had got mixed up with some of the popular societies in England, which were striving to obtain a thorough reform of the representation of the people in the House of Commons, and, in 1774, published a work, which he entitled THE CHAINS OF SLAVERY. In this book, which is partly historical and partly political, he begs the electors to take more care in the choice of their representatives. It is written in a very declamatory style, and strikes the note of the responsibility of representatives to their constituents, which is the key-note of all his political ideas. The book is published in quarto, and is printed on fine paper, so that it can hardly have been meant to appeal to the populace, but it, nevertheless, procured him the honorary membership of the popular societies of Newcastle and other great northern cities. Subsequently he again returned to his profession, and after publishing a medical tract in 1775, of which no copy is known to exist, he published An Inquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a singular Disease of the Eyes, in 1776. [See Academy of September 23, 1882.] In this little pamphlet there is no violent language; it describes the disease and the cases he had cured in perfectly simple language, and shows, at least, that he was no mere quack, but a scientific physician. On June 30, 1775, he had, while on a visit to Scotland, received the honorary degree of M.D. from the University of St. Andrews for his eminence as a doctor, and had probably received similar compliments from other Universities, because, on June 24, 1777, JEAN PAUL MARAT, ‘médecin de plusieurs facultés d’Angleterre,’ was appointed, for his good character and high reputation as a doctor, physician to the body-guard of the Comte d’Artois, with a salary of a thousand livres a year and allowances. To take up this court appointment he moved to Paris, and soon acquired a large practice there, and the name of ‘physician of the incurables,’ from the number of hopeless cases he was successful in treating. He also moved in the best society about the court, and won the affections of the Marquise de l’Aubespine for saving her life. For some reason or other, most probably because he had obtained a competent fortune, and desired to satisfy his ambition, he resigned his court appointment in 1783, and devoted himself to science. He had long observed the phenomena of Heat, Light, and Electricity, and in the course of the next five years published the result of his experiments, and presented them to the Academy of Sciences. His hard work won him the friendship of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, but the violence with which he attacked his adversaries, and his audacity in doubting the conclusions of NEWTON, prevented him from obtaining a seat in the Academy of Sciences. When he recognised that this hostility to himself prevented due recognition of his work, he determined to win the approbation of the Academy by concealing his name; and his translation of the Optics of NEWTON, which was covered by the name of M. de Beauzée, and published in 1788, was at once crowned by the very Academy which had rejected him.

“His political work during these years was confined to a treatise, in imitation of BECCARIA, on the subject of Punishments. The approach of the States-General, however, revived his political enthusiasm, and in the March of 1789, when he believed himself to be dying, he published his Offrande à la Patrie, which was followed in quick succession by a supplement and other pamphlets. Of these, distinctly the most able is the Tableau des Vices de la Constitution Anglaise, which he presented to the Assembly in September, 1789. In it he points out what he had learnt in the popular societies of England, that the English people was by no means so well governed as it was supposed to be; that the influence of the king and the ministry was overwhelming through the extent of patronage, and that the rich there bought seats in the House of Commons as they bought estates.

“MARAT then felt that he could not express himself frequently enough in pamphlets, and on September 12 appeared the first number of a journal written entirely by himself, called the JOURNAL DU PEUPLE, which title was changed to that of Ami du Peuple, or The People’s Friend, with the fourth number.

“To understand the man, it is necessary to get rid of preconceived ideas. Suspicious and irritable, excitable and sensitive to an extreme, he attacked everybody, and attacked them all with unaccustomed violence; but with all this, he was in private life a highly educated gentleman. The extent of his attainments appears from his numerous works, and it must be remembered that he could not for years have been a fashionable physician and held a court appointment without being perfectly polite and well-bred. His faults arose from his irritable and suspicious nature, and years of persecution made him half-insane towards the end of his life; but in September, 1789, he was in perfect possession of his senses, and the very popularity of his journal showed how congenial his gospel of suspicion was to the Parisians.”—[ED.]

JEAN PAUL MARAT’S SISTER.

The Right Hon. J. W. Croker, in a letter to John Winter Jones, dated 23rd October, 1854, says that COLIN, who had been Marat’s printer or publisher, “introduced him to Marat’s sister, who was as like her brother, he said—and as from all pictures and busts I readily believed—as ‘deux gouttes d’eau’. She was very small, very ugly, very sharp, and a great politician. Her ostensible livelihood was making watch-springs, but she told me she was pretty easy in her circumstances, and I either gathered from her, or saw cause to suspect, that she had some secret charitable help.”—[ED.]

LARÉVEILLÈRE-LEPAUX (page 283).

LARÉVEILLÈRE-LEPAUX left orders in his will that his Memoirs were to be printed and published. His heirs were not proud of the part the DIRECTOR had played, so, after complying with the terms of his will and printing the Memoirs, they destroyed the whole issue at once; and the only copy extant is the one which, in accordance with the law of France, was sent to the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.

THE THEOPHILANTHROPISTS.

These (Gr. “Lovers of Gods and Men”) were a sect of Deists which appeared in France amid the confusion and disorder of the first Revolution. While the State was indifferent to all forms of Religion, and the Republican Directory was afraid of the Christianity which prevailed in the Church, a felt consciousness of the necessity of some religion led many to adopt a form of worship adapted to Natural Religion.

“This Sect” (says SOUTHEY, in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxviii.) “began with more circumstances in their favour than ever occurred to facilitate the establishment of a religion or of a sect. Many persons of considerable influence and reputation engaged in the project with zeal, and it was patronised by LA RÉVEILLÈRE LÊPAUX, one of the Directory.... His motives for putting himself at the head of the Theophilanthropists are said to have been twofold: if the scheme succeeded, he intended to become their High Priest; and he hated Christianity. Through his means the Theophilanthropists obtained a decree from the Government giving them a right of holding their meetings in the Churches, as national buildings, which were open to any religion, but belonged to none.

“Nearly twenty Churches in Paris were taken possession of; but by occupying so many, they injured themselves.... They took up too extended a position, and had neither numbers nor means answerable to the scale upon which they set out.... Their Service began at noon, and lasted about an hour and a half. It was, they said, a worship for those who had no other, and a moral society for those who had. The Ritual consisted of Prayers, Hymns original or selected from the best French Poets, readings from their Manual, and Discourses. The Hymns were, in general, judicious, and set to good music, and the Prayers well composed; but had their books been stript of all that they had borrowed from the Gospel, and from the works of Christian writers, they would have been meagre indeed. In one part of the Service there was a short pause, during which the congregation were expected to consider each in silence what his own conduct had been since the last of these meetings. A basket of fruit or flowers, according to the season, was placed upon the altar, as a mark of acknowledgment for the bounties of the Creator; and over the altar was the inscription, Nous croyons à l’existence de Dieu, et à l’immortalité de l’âme.... LA RÉVEILLÈRE, in a speech at the Institute, declaiming against Christianity, as being opposed to the liberty of mankind, expressed his wish that a form of religion were adopted, which should have only a couple of articles. He wished also for a religion without priests; and this, it was pleasantly observed, would be like a Directory without a Director.

“This was the Creed of the Theophilanthropists. And on each side of it, the following sentences were inscribed in their temples, to take place of the Decalogue:—

“‘Adore God, cherish your fellow-creatures; render yourselves useful to your

country.

Good is whatever tends to preserve man, or to perfectionate him.

Evil is whatever tends to destroy him, or to deteriorate him.

Children, honour your fathers and mothers; obey them with affection, solace

their old age. Fathers and mothers, instruct your children.

Wives, behold in your husbands the heads of your houses. Husbands, love

your wives, and render yourselves mutually happy.’

“At Marriage the bride and bridegroom were to be coupled with ribands, or garlands of flowers, the ends of which were to be held on each side by the elders of their respective families. The Bride received a ring from her husband, and a medal of union from the head of the family. There was a rite also for infants.... When a member died, the other members of the Society were invited to place a flower upon the urn, and pray the Creator to receive the deceased into his bosom. The Decades and National Holidays were observed by these Anti-Christians, and they had four Holidays of their own, for Socrates, St. Vincent de Paule, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Washington,—oddly assorted names! Two of them, however, stand well together in this kalendar, for the one, who was a Christian, established the Foundling Hospital at Paris; and the other, who was a sentimentalist, a philosopher, and a Theophilanthropist, sent his own children to it....

“LA RÉVEILLÈRE used to take praise to himself for having, in his Directorial character, humbled the Pope and the great Turk. The Anti-Christian language of the Directory, and its persecution of the Clergy, are imputed to him; so far his colleagues were willing to go with him; but his zeal for Deism they regarded as ridiculous.... In the way of pecuniary aid, he could obtain little:—beaucoup d’argent was what the Directory were accustomed to demand, not to give....

“Their Service at Paris was numerously attended while it was a new spectacle, and the subject of conversation; but more than two-thirds of the persons thus assembled were idlers. But this concourse soon abated; there was nothing attractive in the ceremonies, nothing to impose upon the imagination or the senses. A propagandist reported from Montreuil that the readings and orations had been heard by an audience avide de morale, but he had observed with pain that the matériel of the worship was not what it should have been.... It was got up at Bourges in better style; the orator there officiated in a white sash ornamented with blue flowers, before an altar upon which an orange tree was placed: and at the fête des époux, the Theophilanthropists carried two pigeons in procession, as an emblem of conjugal tenderness, and placed them upon the altar of the country!”

[The literary association of LAMB with COLERIDGE and SOUTHEY [says SIR T. N. TALFOURD, in his life of LAMB,] drew upon him the hostility of the young scorners of The Anti-Jacobin, who, luxuriating in boyish pride and aristocratic patronage, tossed the arrows of their wit against all charged with innovation, whether in politics or poetry, and cared little whom they wounded. No one could be more innocent than LAMB of political heresy; no one more strongly opposed to new theories in morality—which he always regarded with disgust. The very first number of The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine [this was, however, a new work, by different hands, but imbued with the same spirit as The Anti-Jacobin] was adorned by a caricature of GILLRAY’S, in which COLERIDGE and SOUTHEY were introduced with asses’ heads, and LLOYD and LAMB as toad and frog. In the number of July, 1798 [of the original Anti-Jacobin] appeared the well-known poem of New Morality, in which all the prominent objects of the hatred of these champions of religion and order were introduced as offering homage to LEPAUX, a French charlatan,—of whose existence LAMB had never even heard. Not content with thus confounding persons of the most opposite opinions and the most various characters in one common libel, the party returned to the charge in their number for September [of The Anti-Jacobin Review], and denounced the young poets in a parody on the Ode to the Passions, under the title of The Anarchists. They are reprinted in the present volume.—ED.]

[The cause of Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb, being thus satirized as persons of the same politics, was the conjoint publication of their works. In the spring of 1796, COLERIDGE published vol. i. of his Juvenile Poems, including three Sonnets by LAMB; in May, 1797, there appeared a new edition, with many poems by LLOYD and LAMB. The Fall of Robespierre, an historic drama, was published Sept. 22, 1794: the first act written by COLERIDGE, the second and third by SOUTHEY. It is not difficult to understand why COLERIDGE was so severely attacked by the Government writers. In 1795, at the early age of 23, he delivered, at Bristol, some public lectures, reflecting in warm terms on the measures of PITT. Three of them were published at Bristol at the end of 1795—the first two together, with the title of Conciones ad Populum; the third as The Plot Discovered. The eloquent passage in conclusion of the first of these addresses was written by SOUTHEY. That he was considered by ministers a dangerous character is proved by his having been for some months watched by a Government spy while residing at Stowey, providing for his scanty maintenance by writing verses for The Morning Post. It was his fortune also to excite the ire of BUONAPARTE, by his anti-gallican writings in the same paper; and a benevolent intimation of his danger by Baron von Humboldt and Cardinal Fesch alone prevented his being arrested while in Italy. (See p. 284.)

SOUTHEY thus alludes to the attack upon him (by GILLRAY, in his famous caricature), in a letter addressed to C. W. W. WYNN, dated Hereford, August 15, 1798:—“I have seen myself Bedfordized, and it has been a subject of much amusement. HOLCROFT’S likeness is admirably preserved. I know not what poor LAMB has done to be croaking there. What I think the worst part of The Anti-Jacobin abuse is the lumping together men of such opposite principles; this was stupid. We should have all been welcoming the Director, not the Theophilanthrope. The conductors of The Anti-Jacobin will have much to answer for in thus inflaming the animosities of this country. They are labouring to produce the deadly hatred of Irish faction; perhaps to produce the same end. Such an address as you mention might probably be of great use; that I could assist you in it is less certain. I do not feel myself at all calculated for anything that requires methodical reasoning; and though you and I should agree in the main object of the pamphlet, our opinions are at root different. The old systems of government, I think, must fall; but in this country the immediate danger is on the other hand,—from an unconstitutional and unlimited power. BURLEIGH saw how a Parliament might be employed against the people, and MONTESQUIEU prophesied the fall of English liberty when the Legislature should become corrupt. You will not agree with me in thinking his prophecy fulfilled. Violent men there undoubtedly are among the democrats, as they are always called; but is there any one among them whom the ministerialists will allow to be moderate?” The Anti-Jacobin certainly speaks the sentiments of Government.’—ED.]

WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY (page 284).

[“The passionate verdicts given, both pro and con, in reference to WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, and SOUTHEY, may now be looked back upon with some wonder, but all three had made themselves obnoxious to the charge of renegadism. WORDSWORTH had accepted the office of stamp-distributor from Lord Lonsdale; SOUTHEY, after attempting to suppress his demagogical drama of Wat Tyler, became a violent Tory, bringing a hot partisanship into the ranks to which he fled; and COLERIDGE, a Tom-Paineite in politics and a preaching Unitarian, ended by adopting all the doctrines of orthodoxy.”—Sir John Bowring.—ED.]

EDMUND BURKE (page 286).

“ADAIR told me a great many things about BURKE, and FOX, and FITZPATRICK, and all the eminent men of that time with whom he lived when he was young. He said ... that FITZPATRICK was the most agreeable of them all, but HARE the most brilliant. BURKE’S conversation was delightful, so luminous and instructive. He was very passionate; and ADAIR said that the first time he ever saw him he unluckily asked him some question about the wild parts of Ireland, when BURKE broke out: ‘You are a fool and a blockhead. There are no wild parts in Ireland.’ ... There was an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between him and FOX, and a meeting for that purpose took place of all the leading men, at Burlington House. BURKE was on the point of yielding when his son suddenly made his appearance unbidden, and, on being told what was going on, he said: ‘My father shall be no party to such a compromise,’ took BURKE aside, and persuaded him to reject the overtures. That son ADAIR described as the most disagreeable, violent, and wrong-headed of men, but the idol of his father, who used to say that he united all his own talents and acquirements with those of FOX and everybody else, &c.”—See The Greville Memoirs, i. 136–7.—[ED.]

[The following remarkable passage occurs in a pamphlet written by TOM PAINE, entitled: Thomas Paine to the People of England, on the Invasion of England; Philadelphia, printed at the Temple of Reason Press, Arch Street, 1804.

“The original plan, formed in the time of the Directory (but now much more extensive) was to build one thousand boats, each sixty feet long, sixteen feet broad, to draw about two feet water, to carry a twenty-four or thirty-six pounder in the head and a field-piece in the stern, to be run out as soon as they touched ground. Each boat was to carry a hundred men, making in the whole one hundred thousand, and to row with twenty or twenty-five oars on a side. Bonaparte was appointed to the command, and by an agreement between him and me, I was to accompany him, as the intention of the expedition was to give the people of England an opportunity of forming a government for themselves, and thereby bring about peace.”—ED.]

THE COURIER.

THE COURIER, in the time of the war, was the great paper; it obtained a large circulation, and consequently exercised considerable influence. It was started by JOHN PARRY in 1792, and he carried it on for some years with tolerable success, till he was ruined in 1799 by a government prosecution for a libel on the Emperor of Russia. It was bought by DANIEL STUART, who left The Morning Post for The Courier in 1803. During three years, says he, at the time of the overthrow of BUONAPARTE, The Courier, by the able management of PETER STREET, who was editor and half-proprietor, sold steadily upwards of 8000 per day; during one fortnight it sold upwards of 10,000 daily. At the end of 1809, S. T. COLERIDGE contributed to it some Essays on the Spaniards; and in 1811 he wrote for it on a salary. At this time the paper was much under ministerial direction. From about the year 1818 till 1829 The Courier was conducted by W. MUDFORD, with whom WILLIAM STEWART was a proprietor. After 1819 D. STUART took no interest in it, and parted with his last share in it in 1822. After the year 1825, JAMES STUART, a Scotch gentleman of great talent and respectability—the same that unfortunately killed SIR ALEXANDER BOSWELL in a duel, and was author of Travels in the United States—became editor. True to his principles, he gave in this capacity every support in his power to the Whig or Liberal party. He was appointed by LORD MELBOURNE to the situation of Factory Inspector, which he held till his death, at the age of 74, in 1849. When JAS. STUART obtained his factory appointment, SAM. LAMAN BLANCHARD became editor. The paper having become, like other evening papers, less profitable than of old, the proprietors sold it to the party they had so long opposed. It took Tory politics; LAMAN BLANCHARD, of course, resigned; and a few short years were sufficient to destroy a journal which had once been the most valuable newspaper property in England. Its last number appeared 6th July, 1842.

It is a curious, but not creditable, circumstance that The Courier was in the habit of re-printing, from year to year, without acknowledgment, the able leading articles from The Liverpool Courier, written by the Rev. Richard Watson, secretary to the Wesleyan Missionary Society, by whom, in conjunction with his friend, Mr. Kaye, this newspaper was established upon loyal and constitutional principles.

“The Courier, in 1814, was supplied by R. Peel, Lord Palmerston, and J. W. Croker, with political squibs and lyrics, resembling in general features The Anti-Jacobin and The Rolliad. The verses are chiefly parodies of Moore’s Irish Melodies, or of Byron’s songs, and are far above the ordinary level of such compositions.... The various pieces were collected and published in 1815, under the title of The New Whig Guide.”—Croker Papers, vol. i., p. 58.

This statement contains several inaccuracies. The pieces forming The New Whig Guide were first collected and published in 1819, and not in 1815, for BYRON’S Fare thee well was not written till April, 1816. The parody on it was entitled The Leader’s Lament. By the Right Hon. George Ponsonby. A. Hayward says in his review of The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, in The Edinburgh Review, 1858—that “CANNING has been traditionally credited with the parody of Moore’s. Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, the gentleman addressed being a distinguished commoner afterwards ennobled (the first LORD METHUEN), who was far from meriting the character [of a foolish fop] thereby fastened on him”. The other parodies were by JOHN CALCRAFT, the Hon. W. H. LYTTELTON, DUDLEY NORTH, M.P., KIRKMAN FINLAY, M.P. for Glasgow, &c. MR. METHUEN, in return, wrote many clever squibs and parodies against the Tories, which were collected, under the title of The New Tory Guide, and reproduced, like its rivals in 1819. “Talking of The Morning Chronicle,” says T. MOORE (Diary, 19th March, 1831), “PAUL METHUEN told us he was the author of almost all those about The Rat Club; which are certainly some of the best.”

THE STAR.

THE STAR, the first London daily Evening Newspaper, was started in 1788 by PETER STUART, brother to DANIEL STUART, of The Morning Post. Its first editor was ANDREW MACDONALD, author of Vimonda, a tragedy, and other works: and after him another Scottish poet, John Mayne, author of The Siller Gun, was editor. ROBERT BURNS was offered an engagement to write poetry for it, at the rate of one guinea an article per week. The arrangement was not completed. It was to PETER STUART that BURNS addressed his “Poem, written to a gentleman who had sent him a Newspaper, and offered to continue it free of expense”. The facetious Bob Allen, of whom Charles Lamb has such pleasant reminiscences, was for many years a contributor to this paper. Subsequently, DR. A. TILLOCH, editor of The Philosophical Magazine, was for many years editor of The Star. After Oct. 15, 1831, The Star became incorporated with The Albion newspaper, under the title of The Albion and Evening Star.

The Star was during many years the leading newspaper on the Whig side, CAMPBELL the poet being one of its writers after 1804, when he was engaged at a salary of four guineas a week. The clear profits of this paper in 1820 were said, on apparently good authority, to amount to £6000.

THE MORNING CHRONICLE.

THE MORNING CHRONICLE was, with one exception (The Public Ledger, which started in 1760), the oldest of the daily papers up to the period of its discontinuance March 19, 1862. The latest number in the British Museum is dated Dec. 31, 1861.

It was established on Whig principles, 28th June, 1769, by WILLIAM WOODFALL, who carried it on with great success till 1789.

Woodfall, in addition to other talents requisite to the success of a newspaper, possessed two, which were of essential service to it, namely, his prodigious memory, which enabled him to report Parliamentary Debates without the aid of notes, and the excellence of his Theatrical Criticisms, which, as MR. FOX BOURNE, in his copious and valuable work on English Newspapers, 2 vols., 8vo., 1887—one to which the editor of the present publication has been under frequent obligations—says, “are a neglected mine of wealth for students of Theatrical History”.

On WOODFALL’S death, in 1803, it was sold to JAMES PERRY, who borrowed £500 from RANSOME & CO., the bankers, and some more from BELLAMY, the wine merchant—who was also caterer and doorkeeper to the House of Commons—and entered into partnership with a Charterhouse schoolmaster named GRAY, who had just received a legacy of £500. With that joint capital, the two bought The Chronicle, the DUKE OF NORFOLK making PERRY a present of a house in the Strand, which he converted into a new publishing office. A few other influential Whigs, also, contributed a further sum, which, as the late SIR ROBERT ADAIR, who is so often satirized in The Anti-Jacobin, and who was a subscriber to the fund, informed the editor of the present work, was £300.

PERRY was on good terms with his contributors, and made The Morning Chronicle a more prosperous and influential journal than had ever before been known in England. GRAY provided the heavy articles, PERRY those of lighter sort; and after GRAY’S death, which happened when he had been part proprietor for only a few years, other writers were employed, among them JAS. MACKINTOSH and SHERIDAN, and in later times T. CAMPBELL and T. MOORE, who contributed verse, and JOHN CAMPBELL, then a young barrister, who was the Theatrical Critic, and was still so in 1810. T. CAMPBELL, on coming to London in 1802, was engaged as a political writer, but this not being his forte, he, with great judgment, confined himself to poetical pieces, among which were Ye Mariners of England, and The Exile of Erin. PERRY had another and equally famous contributor. In Sept., 1793, S. T. COLERIDGE, then aged nineteen, “sent a poem of a few lines to PERRY, soliciting a loan of a guinea for a distressed author,” which prayer was immediately granted. In 1796, he accepted an offer of Perry’s to write in it, but the arrangement was never carried out. In later years, COLERIDGE wrote some other poems for The Morning Chronicle, and his friend CHARLES LAMB was an occasional writer of prose for it.

PERRY continued as the general manager of the paper till his death on 6th Dec., 1821; but before this he had left much of the editing to others, his first assistant after GRAY’S death being ROBERT SPANKIE, ultimately attorney-general of Bengal. The next was JOHN BLACK, who had joined him in 1810; and upon him, when PERRY died, the entire management devolved.

After PERRY’S death the paper was purchased for £42,000, by WILLIAM CLEMENT, by whom it was held till 1834, when it was sold to SIR JOHN EASTHOPE for £16,500.

In 1843, JOHN BLACK was dismissed to make way for ANDREW DOYLE, who had been Foreign Editor, and had married Sir John’s daughter. Black died in 1855.

On 26th July, 1847, SIR JOHN EASTHOPE, who had been carrying on the paper at a loss for some time, sold it to the Duke of Newcastle, W. E. Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, and other influential Peelites. Its new Editor was JOHN DOUGLAS COOK, who had for some time been one of the reporters of The Times, and who gathered round him a brilliant staff of contributors, including George Sydney Smythe, afterwards Lord Strangford, Gilbert Venables, Abraham Hayward, William Vernon Harcourt, and Thackeray. Its business manager was WILLIAM DELANE, the father of the clever young editor of The Times, JOHN THADDEUS DELANE.

The Chronicle lingered on as a would-be Peelite organ till the autumn of 1854, when by a curious arrangement, the paper, with all its plant, was sold to Serjeant GLOVER, for £7500, on the understanding that, if he continued to support in it the Peelite policy, he should have the money back with interest, being paid £3000 a year for three years. That contract soon fell through, as GLOVER preferred to draw a subsidy from LOUIS NAPOLEON, and to make other experiments. At the close of 1854, the circulation of The Morning Chronicle averaged only about 2500, while that of The Morning Post was about 3000, that of The Morning Herald about 3500, that of The Daily News about 5300, that of The Morning Advertiser about 6600, and that of The Times about 55,000.

The last number of The Morning Chronicle appeared March 19, 1862, when what at one time had been the most influential journal in the country altogether ceased to exist.

Of this paper SHERIDAN speaks in The Critic, and to it BYRON addressed a Familiar Epistle. For its columns W. HAZLITT wrote some of the finest criticisms in our own or any other language. Some of the early Sketches by Boz appeared in it, but they were really commenced in the old Monthly Magazine. DICKENS’S father was one of the staff. HAZLITT also contributed to it Parliamentary Reports, as at a later period did C. DICKENS.

Among other distinguished writers in The Morning Chronicle were Lord Brougham, the Duke of Sussex, David Ricardo, Cyrus Redding, Albany Fonblanque, James and John Stuart Mill, John Payne Collier, Eyre Evans Crowe, Charles Buller, Lord Holland, Joseph Parkes, Michael Joseph Quin, George Hogarth, James Fraser, W. Hazlitt, secundus, Lord Melbourne, W. Johnson Fox, Henry Mayhew, Lord Palmerston, A. B. Reach, Alex. and Charles Mackay, Tom Taylor.

THE MORNING POST.

THE MORNING POST, the next daily paper in order of date to The Chronicle, first appeared in 1772, and was probably projected by JOHN BELL. Three years subsequently the REV. HENRY BATE (who took in 1784 the name of Dudley, and was created a baronet in 1816) joined it, and was connected with it till the end of 1780, when he quarrelled with his colleagues, and set up The Morning Herald, the first number of which appeared on Nov. 1 in the same year. In June, 1781, he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for an atrocious libel on the Duke of Richmond. He was (says Horace Walpole, in his Journal of the Reign of George III.), the worst of all the scandalous libellers that had appeared, both on private persons as well as public. His life was dissolute, and he had fought more than one duel. Yet Lord Sandwich had procured for him a good Crown living, and he was believed to be pensioned by the Court. He died in 1824.

After BATE, as editor, came the REV. W. JACKMAN (or JACKSON)—an equally discreditable clergyman,—and he was succeeded by JOHN TAYLOR (author of Monsieur Tonson), for whom PETER PINDAR (DR. JOHN WOLCOT) wrote whimsical verses.

In 1792, MR. TATTERSALL was the responsible proprietor, who, knowing more about horses and sport than about the elegancies of literature, DR. WOLCOT continued to be the chief writer; and who, besides his clever verses, gave much information upon affairs of the prize-ring and kindred amusements. In 1795, TATTERSALL sold the entire copyright, with house and printing materials, for £600. The circulation then was only 350 daily.

The purchaser was MR. DANIEL STUART; and MR. CHRISTIE, the auctioneer, was also a proprietor. Previous to this time, ROBERT BURNS was applied to, to supply poetry, but none was ever sent. DANIEL STUART was not twenty-nine when he bought The Morning Post; and JAMES (afterwards SIR JAS.) MACKINTOSH, who was his brother-in-law, and was a regular contributor, was his senior only by a year.

After 1790, the same ANDREW MACDONALD, who had been editor of The Star, furnished poems, as did WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, C. LLOYD, and other verse writers. At the commencement of 1798, S. T. COLERIDGE—then only twenty-five—was engaged to contribute poetry. The Odes, Fire, Famine, and Slaughter; France; Dejection; and that on The Departing Year; with twenty or thirty other pieces, since included in his Poetical Works, among which was Love—one of the most popular poems of this age—were first published in The Morning Post. To these must be added the first draught of The Devil’s Thoughts, a piece afterwards much altered. About 1800, the paper was supplied with some excellent pieces, in prose, including Fashionable Intelligence, short pungent articles, and jokes, by CHARLES LAMB.

In 1798 its sale was over 2000; and so well had DANIEL STUART managed his property—being exceedingly well served by his principal assistant, GEORGE LANE—that when he left The Morning Post for The Courier, in 1803, the circulation amounted to 4,500. It, therefore, stood higher in point of sale than any other morning paper, the order in respect of numbers from high to low being this: Morning Post, Morning Herald, Morning Advertiser, Times. The amount received for it was about £25,000. According to JOHN TAYLOR, editor of The Sun, in his Records of my Life, The Morning Post was afterwards purchased by Government to silence attacks on the PRINCE REGENT.

Much of the success of The Morning Post was undoubtedly owing to the writings of COLERIDGE. He afterwards declared that he had wasted the prime and manhood of his intellect in writing for The Morning Post and Courier. Among his contributions to the former (March 19, 1800) was his famous character of WILLIAM PITT. The last time he wrote in it was in August, 1802.

A very competent judge, THOMAS DE QUINCEY, thus alludes to COLERIDGE’S political writings:—“Worlds of fine thinking,” he says of the daily press, “lie buried in that vast abyss, never to be disentombed, or restored to human admiration. Like the sea, it has swallowed treasures without end, that no diving-bell will bring up again. But nowhere throughout its shoreless magazines of wealth does there lie such a bed of pearls, confounded with the rubbish and ‘purgamenta’ of ages, as in the political papers of COLERIDGE. No more appreciable monument could be raised to the memory of COLERIDGE, than a re-publication of his Essays in The Morning Post, but still more of those afterwards published in The Courier.” These have since been reprinted under the title of Essays on his own Times.

APPENDIX.

THE ANARCHISTS.—An Ode.

[A Parody on Collins’s Ode to the Passions.]

—Numero plures, virtute et honore minores,

Indocti stolidique et depugnare parati.—Hor.

When Anarchy, sworn foe to Kings,

O’er Gallia wav’d her crimson wings,

Ere yet she spoil’d with iron hand

Fair Europe’s desolated land;

Her offspring here, a spurious brood,

In faction nurs’d, inur’d to blood,

Elate with Hope, perplex’d with Fear,

Would often raise the listening ear;

And all their mother’s wonders tell,

And throng around her secret cell,

Ranting, bribing, whispering, trembling,

Urging, boasting, and dissembling.

By turns they felt the Gallic mind

Enlarg’d, unprejudic’d, refin’d;

Till once, by all the goddess fir’d,

Beyond Discretion rapt, inspir’d;

Seditious, false, and prone to ill,

They eager snatch’d the grey-goose quill.

And as they oft had heard apart

The wonders of Sedition’s art,

Each, for Madness rul’d the hour,

Would prove his own subversive power.

First PAINE his Rights of Man display’d,

But could no more—for falsely cross’d

Ev’n by the friends himself had made,

Enraged he fled to Gallia’s coast.

Next PRIESTLEY tried, to whom ’twas given

Mankind’s free-agency to tell;

Ordain’d to point the road to heaven,

In pure free will he points—to hell!

With meagre visage THELWALL came,

In lectures told his sufferings sore;

Till purple tyrants blush’d with shame

And crowds the suffering saint adore.

But thou, O GODWIN! meek and mild;

Speak thy metaphysic page:

Now it cheer’d a laggard age,

And bade new scenes of joy at distance hail;

When tyrant Kings shall be no more,

When human wants and wars shall fail,

And sleep and death shall quit the hallow’d shore.

’Twas thus he strove to sap the throne.

With borrow’d arts and weapons not his own,

While Gallia clapp’d her hands, and hail’d her favourite child.

And longer had he sung—but, strange to say,

WAKEFIELD, the dragon-fly, rush’d on;

Eager he sought the bold rebellious fray,

And burst with anger and disdain

The web of sophistry in twain

Which GODWIN, patient sage! had spread

To catch the fluttering insects of the land.

Treason upreared her arm to strike,

Rebellion grasped the murd’rous pike,

And though, sometimes, each maddening pause between,

Soft Discretion, joined with Fear,

Whisper’d her councils in his ear,

Still Anarchy upheld the busy scene,

And raised her shield of brass to guard her vot’ry’s head.

Next HOLCROFT vowed in doleful tone

No more to fire a thankless age,

Oblivion marked his labours for her own,

Neglected from the press and damn’d upon the stage.

See! faithful to their mighty dam,

COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, LLOYD, and LAMB,

In splay-foot madrigals of love.

Soft moaning like the widowed dove,

Pour side by side their sympathetic notes.

Of equal rights and civic feasts

And tyrant Kings and knavish Priests

Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats.

And now to softer strains they struck the lyre,

They sung the beetle, or the mole,

The dying kid, or ass’s foal,

By cruel man permitted to expire.

But O, how altered was the sprightlier hour!

When FOX, the Parthian hero, rose to view;

He o’er the rest high-towering like a steeple

Leagued with a “Corresponding” crew,

Pledged in large floods of wine “their Majesties—the People”.

The royal tribe accept the proffered power.

Kings from the forge, dictators from the plough,

Peeping from forth their allies low,

Before the fallen arch-seceder bow;

LEPAUX bade Gallia hail his name,

But old St. Stephen bowed his head for shame.

See NORFOLK last, with BEDFORD roll,

He of Bacchus’ favours proud,

The sovereign mob most eloquent addressed;

But soon he spied the mirth-inspiring bowl,

Whose ruby treasures charmed his soul the best;

They would have thought who heard him speak,

’Twas Falstaff, with his minions at his back,

High primed with valour, turbulence, and sack,

Aping the monarch to a wondr’ing crowd.

While BEDFORD proud his lesson to rehearse,

With studious labours urged the bold reply:

Shouts of applause ran rattling through the sky:

And he, the hero of the day,

Right glad their servile suffrage to repay,

Shook golden bounty from his swelling purse.

O, England! heav’n-defended land!

With power to “threaten and command,”

Say, is thy former spirit broke,

To crouch beneath a foreign yoke,

And listen to the idiot strains

Of slaves thy better sense disdains,

As erst, in many an ardent hour,

You awed an adverse haughty power.

Thy lofty mind, to Freedom true,

May well retain what then it knew.

Where is thy former patriot soul,

Above deceit, above controul?

Arise! as in that happier time

United, fearless, bold, sublime.

’Tis said, and I believe the tale,

Thy efforts then could more avail,

Could more true happiness dispense,

With Order, Morals, virtue, Sense,

Than all that fires with party rage

This boastful philosophic age.

Arise! with manly zeal advance,

To curb the lawless power of France;

O, bid her mad endeavours cease,

And give the willing nations PEACE!

—Fabricius.

THE PASSIONS.

An Ode for Music.

WILLIAM COLLINS.

When Music, heavenly maid, was young,

While yet in early Greece she sung,

The Passions oft, to hear her shell,

Throng’d around her magic cell,

Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,

Possess’d beyond the Muse’s painting;

By turns they felt the glowing mind,

Disturb’d, delighted, rais’d, refin’d,

Till once, ’tis said, when all were fir’d,

Fill’d with fury, rapt, inspir’d,

From the supporting myrtles round

They snatch’d her instruments of sound,

And, as they oft had heard apart

Sweet lessons of her forceful art,

Each, for Madness ruled the hour,

Would prove his own expressive power.

First Fear, his hand, its skill to try,

Amid the chords bewilder’d laid,

And back recoil’d, he knew not why,

Even at the sound himself had made.

Next Anger rush’d his eyes on fire,

In lightnings own’d his secret stings,

In one rude clash he struck the lyre,

And swept with hurried hand the strings.

With woful measures wan Despair

Low sullen sounds his grief beguil’d,

A sullen, strange, and mingled air,

’Twas sad by fits, by starts ’twas wild.

But thou, O HOPE! with eyes so fair,

What was thy delighted measure?

Still it whisper’d promis’d pleasure,

And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail!

Still would her touch the strain prolong,

And from the rocks, the woods, the vale,

She call’d on ECHO still through all the song;

And where her sweetest theme she chose,

A soft responsive voice was heard at every close,

And Hope enchanted smil’d, and wav’d her golden hair.

And longer had she sung,—but, with a frown,

REVENGE impatient rose,

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down,

And, with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took,

And blew a blast so loud and dread,

Were ne’er prophetic sounds so full of woe.

And ever and anon he beat

The doubling drum with furious heat;

And though sometimes, each dreary pause between,

Dejected PITY at his side

Her soul-subduing voice applied;

Yet still he kept his wild unalter’d mien,

While each strain’d ball of sight seem’d bursting from his head,

Thy numbers, JEALOUSY, to nought were fix’d,

Sad proof of thy distressful state!

Of differing themes the veering song was mix’d,

And now it courted LOVE, now raving call’d on HATE.

With eyes upraised, as one inspir’d,

Pale MELANCHOLY sat retir’d,

And from her wild sequester’d seat,

In notes by distance made more sweet,

Pour’d through the mellow horn her pensive soul:

And dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels join’d the sound;

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole,

Or o’er some haunted streams with fond delay,

Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace and lonely musing,

In hollow murmurs died away.

But oh! how alter’d was its sprightlier tone!

When CHEERFULNESS, a nymph of healthiest hue,

Her bow across her shoulders flung,

Her buskins gemm’d with morning dew,

Blew an inspiring air that dale and thicket rung,

The hunter’s call to Faun and Dryad known;

The oak-crown’d Sisters, and their chaste-eyed Queen,

Satyrs and Sylvan boys were seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green;

Brown EXERCISE rejoic’d to hear,

And SPORT leapt up, and seized his beechen spear.

Last came JOY’S ecstatic trial;

He with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand address’d;

But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol,

Whose sweet entrancing voice he lov’d the best.

They would have thought who heard the strain,

They saw in Tempe’s vale her native maids,

Amidst the festal sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing:

While, as his flying fingers kiss’d the strings,

LOVE framed with MIRTH a gay fantastic round,

Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound:

And he, amidst his frolic play.

As if he would the charming air repay,

Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

O MUSIC! sphere-descended maid,

Friend of PLEASURE, WISDOM’S aid,

Why, goddess, why to us denied,

Lay’st thou thy ancient lyre aside?

As in that lov’d Athenian bower,

You learn’d an all-commanding power,

Thy mimic soul, O nymph endear’d,

Can well recall what then it heard.

Where is thy native simple heart,

Devote to virtue, fancy, art?

Arise, as in that elder time,

Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime!

Thy wonders, in that god-like age,

Fill thy recording Sister’s page.

’Tis said, and I believe the tale,

Thy humblest reed could more prevail,

Had more of strength, diviner rage,

Than all which charms this laggard age,

E’en all at once together found

Cecilia’s mingled world of sound.

O bid our vain endeavours cease,

Revive the just designs of Greece;

Return in all thy simple state!

Confirm the tales her sons relate.

THE ANTI-JACOBIN REVIEW AND MAGAZINE

FOR JULY, 1798.

MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PRÆVALEBIT.

Art. 1. The Republican Judge, or the American Liberty of the Press, as exhibited, explained, and exposed, in the base and partial Prosecution of William Cobbett, for a pretended Libel against the King of Spain and his Embassador, before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. With an Address to the People of England.

By Peter Porcupine. 8vo., pp. 96. Price 2s. Wright, London.

The past writings of Mr. William Cobbett, who has assumed the appellation of Peter Porcupine, are too well known in England to require any explanation from us, either of their tendency, or of the author’s principles. Were any doubt entertained on the subject, nothing more would be requisite to dispel it than a mere reference to the comments of all the Jacobin Reviewers; who have, without exception, in defiance alike of decency and of truth, lavished on them the most indiscriminate censure and the most scurrilous abuse. Strange as it may appear, it is indisputably true that the individual exertions of Mr. Cobbett have more essentially contributed to give a proper tone to the public spirit in America than all the efforts of the well-disposed part of the native Americans: for a considerable length of time he combated alone a host of foes, “himself a host”; stemmed the impetuous tide of democracy; and checked the irruptions of French anarchy and atheism, which threatened to overwhelm the American States, and, with the ruins of their confliction, to crush everything for which the Americans, at the period of their revolution, professed to fight, and which they have ever since professed to cherish. The adoption of such a line of conduct was alone sufficient to draw down upon our author the vengeance of all whose treasonable designs his manly efforts were intended to defeat. Accordingly, nothing was spared by the infuriated advocates of anarchy to injure him in the public mind, and, by blasting his reputation, to deprive him of that credit which was indispensably necessary to secure the success of his works. No imputation however base, no lie however atrocious, none of those black and diabolical arts, in short, which, issuing from the bubbling cauldron of democracy, were so skilfully employed to blacken the first and fairest character in France, as a necessary prelude to the establishment of the virtuous republic of the Great Nation, were neglected in the glorious attempt to achieve the ruin of this worthy individual. When these were found to fail of producing the desired effect, recourse was had to personal threats—the coward’s weapon—with the hope of inducing him, by the means of intimidation, to quit a country in which his enemies endeavoured to convince him that his life was daily exposed to most imminent danger. But neither the dread of calumny, nor the fear of assassination, could lead the object of their persecution to forego his laudable design. He manfully persevered, and has at length, though not without infinite difficulty, succeeded in opening the eyes of the Americans to their own interest, and in the infamous machinations of France, and of American traitors in the pay of France—for England is not the ONLY country in which foreign gold is employed as a stimulus to domestic treason.[330] In the course of his exertions to produce this desirable end, honest Peter had occasion to comment on the pusillanimous conduct of the Spanish monarch, in bending the knee to, and forming an alliance with, the base plunderers and assassins of his family, and on the insidious and criminal efforts of the Spanish ambassador to strengthen the hands of the French faction in America. These comments, it seems, excited the indignation of Don Carlos Martinez de Trojo, who determined to bring the author to condign punishment; and it was the very unwarrantable conduct which the latter experienced on the occasion that gave rise to the publication before us.

PETER begins his tract by stating the dangers to which he knew himself exposed, on account of his political principles, when he established his residence in the state of Pennsylvania, “where the government, generally speaking, was in the hands of those who had (and sometimes with great indecency) manifested an uniform partiality for the sans-culotte French, and as uniform an opposition to the ministers and measures of the federal government”. That men should ever be placed in situations of trust and importance, whose principles are avowedly adverse to the constitution whence they derive their subsistence, and which it is their bounden duty to protect, is a circumstance that would excite universal astonishment if it did not, unhappily, so often occur. Still the frequency of its occurrence does not alter its nature, nor should it be allowed to diminish that ample portion of censure which must ever attach to the authors of such appointments. It is such conduct as this that justifies one of the wisest observations that ever fell from the pen of Voltaire—“A GOVERNMENT CAN ONLY PERISH BY SUICIDE”—an observation confirmed by the fate of every country that has been recently reduced beneath the iron yoke of republican France.

Aware of his danger, our author thought the best means of averting it was, by seeking for some standard, as a safe rule for his conduct in respect to the liberty of this press. “The English press was said to be enslaved; but, when I came to consult the practice of this enslaved press, I found it still to be far too free for me to attempt to follow its example. Finally, it appeared to me to be the safest way, to form to myself some rule founded on the liberty exercised by the American press. I concluded that I might without danger go as great lengths in attacking the enemies of the country as others went in attacking its friends: that as much zeal might be shown in defending the general government and administration as in accusing and traducing them: and that as great warmth would be admissible in the cause of virtue, order, and religion, as had been tolerated in the wicked cause of villainy, insurrection, and blasphemy” (p. 21). Alas! Peter, at this time, knew but little of the “spirit and temper,” as MR. BARRISTER ERSKINE would express it, of democracy and Jacobinism. He knew not that the men who profess those principles are for the most part vindictive, malignant, oppressive, and intolerant; and that under the mask of liberty they exercise the most insupportable tyranny over their families and dependents, and that in their general conduct to their inferiors—unless when impelled by interest or urged by ambition, they irritate their passions with toasts and flattery, from a tavern-chair, or influence their minds by seditious discourses and treasonable insinuations, from a tribune or a scaffold—they are supercilious, arrogant, insolent, and overbearing. He knew not, it would seem, that those whose whole duty is to defend the laws often sleep on their posts, while their enemies are ever vigilant, active, and alert; that when the former are attacked, a tardiness of zeal, amounting nearly to torpor, secures, with few exceptions, impunity to the assailant; whereas any exposure of the latter draws forth a malignity of revenge which is the certain fore-runner of persecution. Indeed, the inveteracy of the discontented, of that class which includes all those who aspire to the possession of place and power, and are little scrupulous about the means of attaining them; and all the determined revolutionists or subverters of established institutions, may be traced to a natural source. Unable to support by reason a cause which reason disavows, unable to strengthen by arguments positions which set all argument at defiance, it becomes their business to inflame by passion and to dazzle with sophistry. Hence arises an extreme facility of exposing their weakness and detecting their infamy, and not having the means of resisting such exposure, being wholly destitute of the sentiments which are necessary for a successful reply, they are reduced to the degrading alternative of abandoning the field to a triumphant adversary, or of seeking, by the adoption of violent measures, to punish the opponent whom they did not dare to encounter. This it is that renders revenge an active principle in their minds.

The first step taken by the Spanish ambassador was an application to the federal government to prosecute our author “for certain matters published in his Gazette against himself and that poor, unfortunate, and humbled mortal, Charles IV., King of Spain”. The government consented, and Peter was accordingly bound over to appear in the federal district court before Judge Peters. Don Carlos, however, soon found that his prosecution would be more likely to succeed, if brought in a district where the defendant had more personal enemies, and where the people were more generally disposed to the adoption of revolutionary principles. A memorial was, accordingly, “delivered in to the federal government, requesting that the trial might come on before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, of which Court McKean is Chief Justice”. Of this republican Judge our author gives such an account as must convey to English minds a strange idea of the administration of republican Justice. It is to be found in P. 22—When Britons contemplate the character here delineated, and contrast it with the characters of their own Judges to which even the licentious tongue of faction has not dared to impute the smallest stain, their bosoms must glow with satisfaction of the most exalted kind; they must exult in the superior excellence of that form of government and of those laws which effectually secure them from the evils of a vicious, corrupt, or partial distribution of justice. After giving an historical detail of the proceedings against him, accompanied by copies of the warrant to apprehend him, the imputed libels, the bill of indictment, and the Judge’s charge, Peter exclaims—“This, when it comes to be served up in Britain, will be a dish for a king. The royalists will lick their lips, and the republicans will cry, God bless us! The emigrations for liberty’s sake will cease, and we shall have nothing but the pure unadulterated dregs of Newgate and the Fleet, the candidates for Tyburn and Botany Bay—Blessed cargo! All patriots to the backbone: true philanthropists and universal citizens: fit for any place but England in this world and heaven in the next!”

But, notwithstanding the Judge’s charge, the most partial and scandalous charge, we conceive, that ever was delivered out of France, the Grand Jury refused to find the bill, and the prosecution of course ceased. The Judge, not less disappointed than the prosecutor, on this occasion, took an early opportunity—to his infamy be it recorded!—of declaring from the Bench that the Grand Jury would not do their duty. What would the disaffected in this country say were any British Judge to use such language? The gross imputations cast upon the character of our author by this impartial Judge, have extorted from Peter a tribute of justice to himself which the occasion most amply justifies. As the account here given perfectly accords with all the information we have received from persons of undoubted veracity who know him well, and as it fully corroborates the opinion we ourselves have formed of him, from an attentive perusal of his publications, we shall extract it for the satisfaction of our readers:—“It hardly ever becomes a man to say much of his private character or concerns; but on this occasion I trust I shall be indulged for a moment. I will say, and I will make that saying good, whosoever shall oppose it, that I never attacked any one, whose private character is not, in every light in which it can possibly be viewed as far beneath mine as infamy is beneath honour. Nay, I defy the city of Philadelphia, populous as it is, and respectable as are many of its inhabitants, to produce me a single man who is more sober, industrious, or honest; who is a kinder husband, a tenderer father, a better master, a fonder friend, or (though last not least) a more zealous and faithful subject.

“Most certainly it is unseemly in any one to say this much of himself unless compelled to it by some public outrage on his character; but when the accusation is made notorious so ought the defence; and I do again and again repeat, that I fear not a comparison between my character and that of any man in this city: no, not even with that of the very Judge, who held me as the worst of miscreants. His Honour is welcome, if he please, to carry this comparison into all the actions of our lives, public and domestic, and to extend it beyond ourselves to every branch of our families.

“As to my writing, I never did slander any one, if the promulgation of useful truths be not slander. Innocence and virtue I have often endeavoured to defend, but I never defamed either. I have, indeed, stripped the close-drawn veil of hypocrisy; I have ridiculed the follies, and lashed the vices of thousands, and have done it sometimes perhaps with a rude and violent hand. But these are not the days for gentleness and mercy. Such as is the temper of the foe, such must be that of his opponent. Seeing myself published as a rogue, and my wife a whore; being persecuted with such infamous, such base and hellish calumny in the philanthropic city of Philadelphia, merely for asserting the truth respecting others, was not calculated, I assure you, to sweeten my temper, and turn my ink into honey-dew.

“My attachment to order and good government, nothing but the impudence of Jacobinism can deny. The object not only of my own publications, but also of all those which I have introduced or encouraged, from the first moment that I appeared on the public scene to the present day, has been to lend some aid in stemming the torrent of anarchy and confusion. To undeceive the misguided, by tearing the mask from the artful and ferocious villains who owing to the infatuation of the poor, and the supineness of the rich, have made such fearful progress in the destruction of all that is amiable and good and sacred among men. To the government of this country in particular it has been my constant study to yield all the support in my power. When that government, or the worthy men who administer it have been traduced and vilified, I have stood forward in their defence, and that too, in times when its friends were some of them locked up in silence, and others giving way to the audacious violence of its foes. Not that I am so foolishly vain as to attribute to my illiterate voter a thousandth part of the merit my friends are inclined to allow it. As I wrote the other day to a gentleman who had paid me some compliments on this score, ‘I should never look on my family with a dry eye if I did not hope to outlive my works’. They are mere transitory beings to which the revolutionary storm has given life, and which with that storm will expire. But, what I contend for and what nobody can deny, I have done all that laid in my power, all that I was able by any means to accomplish in order to counteract the nefarious effects of the enemies of the American government and nation.

“With respect to religion, altho’ Mr. M’Kean was pleased to number it among the things that were in danger from the licentiousness of the press, and of course from poor me, I think it would puzzle the devil himself to produce from my writings, a single passage, which could, by all the powers of perversion be twisted into an attack upon it. But it would on the contrary be extremely easy to prove, that I have at all times, when an opportunity offered, repelled the attacks of its enemies, the abominable battalions of Deists and Atheists, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength. The bitterest drop in my pen has ever been bestowed upon them; because, of all the foes of the human race, I look upon them, after the devil, as being the greatest and most dreadful. Not a sacrilegious plunderer from Henry VIII. to Condorcet, and from Condorcet to the impious Sans-culottes of France, has escaped my censure. All those, who have attempted to degrade religion whether by open insults and cruelties to the clergy, by blasphemous publications or by the more dangerous poison of the malignant modern philosophy, I have ranked amongst the most infamous of mankind, and have treated them accordingly.”

In the concluding part of his tract the author clearly convicts the Judge of the most decided and most flagrant partiality. He quotes a number of infamous libels, on religious and political subjects, which had never roused the indignation, nor even excited the censure, of those whose duty it is to preserve the public peace and to enforce a due observance of the laws. If, indeed, we were to judge, from this specimen, of the mode of administring justice in America, in matters of libel, we should conclude, that every degree of licentiousness is allowed to those who seek to debauch the minds of the people, to seduce them from their allegiance, and to dissolve every tie which religion and morality have formed for the happiness of men in a social state, while the upright supporters of virtue, whose labours are directed to the prevention of anarchy and rebellion, by detecting the views and exposing the machinations of their abettors, are the sole objects not merely of prosecution but of persecution.

The abuse bestowed on the mild and beneficent sovereigns of these realms by the Democratic factions in the American Congress, is almost equal in severity to the censures lavished by some members of opposition during the last parliament in the British Senate, on the Kings of Prussia and Hungary, before those monarchs had become allies of France.

The following extracts will, at once, afford a criterion of the political principles of public men, in the State of Pennsylvania, and a curious specimen of republican morality.

“The Governor (Mifflin) attended at a civic festival, when the following toasts were drunk, which were published in most of the newspapers.[331]

“‘Those illustrious citizens sent to Botany Bay. May they be speedily recalled by their country in the day of her regeneration.’

“‘May the spirit of parliamentary reform in Britain and Ireland burst the bonds of corruption, and overwhelm the foes of liberty.’

“‘The sans-culottes of France. May the robes of all the Emperors, Kings, Princes, and Potentates [not excepting the King of Spain] now employed in suppressing the flame of liberty, be cut up to make breeches.’

“This is pretty ‘decent’ in a Governor; but without stopping to remark on the peculiar decency of his toasting a gang of convicts, let us come to another instance of his conduct, full as ‘decent’ as this.

“At the civic festival, held in this city in 1794, to celebrate the dethronement of ‘our great and good ally, Louis XVI.’ there were ‘assembled,’ according to the ‘procès verbal’ which was sent to the Paris convention, ‘the CHIEFS, civil and military’. This procès verbal contains a letter to the convention, in which the following honourable mention is made of the governor. ‘The Governor of Pennsylvania, that ardent friend of the French republic, was present, and partook of all our enthusiasm and all our sentiments.’[332]

“I believe they spoke truth; for the cannons of the State were fired, and military companies, with drums beating and colours flying, attended the execrable fête, one of the ceremonies of which was burning the English flag; and as to the sentiments contained in the oaths and speeches (for there were both) they abounded in insults towards almost all the princes of the earth, but particularly the King of Great Britain.

“A Judge of Pennsylvania, REDMAN, was, in November, 1795, caught thieving in the shop of MR. FOLWELL, the dry-goods merchant in Front Street. MR. FOLWELL detected him, took the money ($300) from him, and kicked him into the street. His friends, among the most intimate of whom was His Excellency the Governor, advised him to retire; and he is still living at his ease about 20 miles from the city. No justice was ever done to him; he was never censured, not even in the newspapers! Such is the cowardly, base, and worthless press of America. Such are republican judges, and such is republican morality! But this is not the worst. I know a Judge who committed murder! wilful murder, and that, too, previous to his appointment by this our republican Governor!

“I only give a sort of hint here. One day or other if it pleases God to spare my life, I will publish such a collection of facts as will shock the universe.

“A Pennsylvania Judge’s wife had, a little while ago, a child, by a man who kept a livery stable. The lady says, the stableman is the best of the two and so has married him, though his Honour is still living. I need not name the parties, for though the cowardly newspapers have never noticed the affair it is notorious enough.

“There are more bastards born annually in the single state of Pennsylvania, than in all the British dominions: and as to cuckoldom, I will only say that every paper teems with advertisements of wives eloped from the bed and board of their husbands. I do not hence insinuate that there are no good people here. There are many. As many as in most countries; but then people will, and do allow, that the morals of the country are approaching fast to that state, which has never yet failed to prove the ruin of every thing held in esteem amongst men.”

In proving the falsehood of the assertion so frequently repeated, as well on this as on the other side of the Atlantic, that “in America the press is free and truth is not a libel,” our author adverts to a letter of DR. PRIESTLEY’S on that subject which he promises hereafter to expose more fully (a promise which we trust he will not forget); and then introduces the following curious anecdote, which we extract for the benefit of the Doctor’s political friends and admirers in Europe. “But since the Doctor wrote that letter it seems experience has changed his opinion. He has suffered the just punishment of his malignancy against his country; he has been cheated, neglected, and scorned. He is now in an obscurity hardly penetrable; he is reduced to poverty and bursting with vexation” (may a restless spirit of innovation, springing from, and nourished by, a bigotted vanity and a turbulent pride ever experience a similar fate)! All this has had an effect; and I will state as a fact, which I call upon him to deny if he can, that he has lately declared “that Republican governments are the most arbitrary in the world”! This MACHIAVEL had said before, and this all unprejudiced men of reading and observation had long since admitted; but, we confess we little expected to hear DOCTOR PRIESTLEY subscribe to the creed of the one, or to the acknowledgments of the other. Adversity, however, is an able advocate in the cause of TRUTH.

The Address to the People of England, which is prefixed to the publication, is short, but pointed and expressive. It breathes the true spirit of a Briton. Of the literary merit of the work, after the ample analysis which we have given of its contents, and the extracts which we have made, little remains to be said. We agree with the publisher, who in the Advertisement says: “The author has been more anxious to strengthen his arguments than to polish his style, to convince the judgment than to flatter the taste,” but those critics must be more “delicate” or fastidious who can reject substantial advantages for fanciful defects. Though Peter aim not at embellishments, he possesses great strength and energy of language, and generally writes with more accuracy than most of the American authors, who, be it observed, have a phraseology peculiar to themselves. This tract contains much important information, and we strenuously recommend it to the serious perusal of our countrymen; particularly to such of them as are disposed to question the superior advantages which they enjoy, over ALL republican states under our own well-poised and limited MONARCHY. The following admonitions with which the author concludes, will, we trust, have a due effect on the minds of those to whom they are addressed. “Such, Britons, is the fruit of republican government here; not among the apish and wolfish French, but among a people descended from the same ancestors as yourselves. When your monarchial government bears such fruits, let it, I say, be hewn down and cast into the fire; but till that disgraceful and dreadful day comes, watch over it with care and defend it to the last drop of your blood, preserve it as you would a golden casket, the apple of your eye, or the last dear gift of your dying parents. With this I conclude, praying the God of our fathers to lead you in the practice of all their virtues, to give wisdom to your minds and strength to your arms, to keep you firm and united, honest and generous, loyal, brave, and free; but above all, to preserve you from the desolating and degrading curse of revolutionary madness and modern republicanism.”

PETER PORCUPINE’S WILL.

[By WILLIAM COBBETT. Published in The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine; or Monthly Political and Literary Censor: from July to December, 1798. Vol. i., pp. 725–8.—ED.]

In the name of Fun, Amen. I PETER PORCUPINE, Pamphleteer and Newsmonger, being (as yet) sound both in body and in mind, do, this fifteenth day of April, in the Year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven, make, declare, and publish, this my LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT, in manner, form, and substance following; to wit:

IN PRIMIS,

I leave my body to Doctor Michael Lieb, a member of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, to be by him dissected (if he knows how to do it) in presence of the Rump of the Democratic Society. In it they will find a heart that held them in abhorrence, that never palpitated at their threats, and that, to its last beat, bade them defiance. But my chief motive for making this bequest is, that my spirit may look down with contempt on their cannibal-like triumph over a breathless corpse.

Item. As I make no doubt that the above said Doctor Lieb (and some other Doctors that I could mention) would like very well to skin me, I request that they, or one of them may do it, and that the said Lieb’s father may tan my skin; after which I desire my Executors to have seven copies of my Works complete, bound in it, one copy to be presented to the Five Sultans of France, one to each of their Divans, one to the Governor of Pennsylvania, to Citizens Maddison, Giles, and Gallatin one each, and the remaining one to the Democratic Society of Philadelphia, to be carefully preserved among their archives.

Item. To the Mayor, Aldermen, and Councils of the City of Philadelphia, I bequeath all the sturdy young hucksters, who infest the market, and who to maintain their bastards, tax the honest inhabitants many thousand pounds annually. I request them to take them into their worshipful keeping; to chasten their bodies for the good of their souls; and moreover to keep a sharp look-out after their gallants; and remind the latter of the old proverb: Touch pot, touch penny.

Item. To T—— J——son, Philosopher, I leave a curious Norway Spider, with a hundred legs and nine pair of eyes; likewise the first black cut-throat general he can catch hold of, to be flead alive, in order to determine with more certainty the real cause of the dark colour of his skin; and should the said T—— J——son survive Banneker the Almanack Maker; I request he will get the brains of said Philomath carefully dissected, to satisfy the world in what respects they differ from those of a white man.

Item. To the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, I will and bequeath a correct copy of Thornton’s plan for abolishing the use of the English language, and for introducing in its stead a republican one, the representative characters of which bear a strong resemblance to pot-hooks and hangers; and for the discovery of which plan, the said society did, in the year 1793, grant to the said language maker 500 dollars premium. It is my earnest desire, that the copy of this valuable performance, which I hereby present, may be shown to all the travelling literati, as a proof of the ingenuity of the author and of the wisdom of the society.

Item. To Doctor Benjamin Rush, I will and bequeath a copy of The Censor for January, 1797; but, upon the express condition, that he does not in anywise or guise, either at the time of my death, or Six months after, pretend to speak, write, or publish an eulogium on me, my calling or character, either literary, military, civil, or political.

Item. To my dear fellow labourer Noah Webster, “gentleman-citizen,” Esq. and News-man, I will and bequeath a prognosticating barometer of curious construction and great utility, by which, at a single glance, the said Noah will be able to discern the exact state that the public mind will be in in the ensuing year, and will thereby be enabled to trim by degrees and not expose himself to detection, as he now does by his sudden lee-shore tacks. I likewise bequeath to the said “gentleman-citizen,” six Spanish milled dollars, to be expended on a new plate of his portrait at the head of his spelling book, that which graces it at present being so ugly that it scares the children from their lessons; but this legacy is to be paid him only upon condition that he leave out the title of ’Squire, at the bottom of said picture, which is extremely odious in an American school-book, and must inevitably tend to corrupt the political principles of the republican babies that behold it. And I do most earnestly desire, exhort and conjure the said ’Squire news-man, to change the title of his paper, The Minerva, for that of The Political Centaur.

Item. To F. A. Mughlenburg, Esq., Speaker of a late house of Representatives of the United States, I leave a most superbly finished statue of Janus.

Item. To Tom the Tinker, I leave a liberty-cap, a tricoloured cockade, a wheel-barrow full of oysters, and a hogshead of grog: I also leave him three blank checks on the bank of Pennsylvania, leaving to him the task of filling them up; requesting him, however, to be rather more merciful than he has shown himself heretofore.

Item. To the Governor of Pennsylvania, and to the late President and Cashier of the Bank of the said State, as to joint Legatees, I will and bequeath that good old proverb: Honesty is the best policy. And this legacy I have chosen for these worthy gentlemen, as the only thing about which I am sure they will never disagree.

Item. To T—— Coxe, of Philadelphia, citizen, I will and bequeath a crown of hemlock, as a recompense for his attempt to throw an odium on the administration of General Washington; and I most positively enjoin my Executors, to see that the said crown be shaped exactly like that which this spindle-shanked legatee wore before Gen. Howe, when he made his triumphal entry into Philadelphia.

Item. To Thomas Lord Bradford (otherwise called Goosy Tom), Bookseller, Printer, News-man, and member of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, I will and bequeath a copy of the peerage of Great Britain, in order that the said Lord Thomas may the more exactly ascertain what probability there is of his succeeding to the seat, which his noble relation now fills in the House of Lords.

Item. To all and singular the authors in the United States, whether they write verse or prose, I will and bequeath a copy of my Life and Adventures; and I advise the said authors to study with particular care the 40th and 41st pages thereof; more especially and above all things, I exhort and conjure them never to publish it together, though the bookseller should be a saint.

Item. To Edmund Randolph, Esq., late Secretary of State, to Mr. J. A. Dallas, Secretary of the State of Pennsylvania, and to His Excellency, Thomas Miffin, Governor of the said unfortunate State, I will and bequeath, to each of them, a copy of the sixteenth paragraph of Fauchet’s intercepted letter.

Item. To Citizen John Swanwick, member of Congress, by the will and consent of the sovereign people, I leave bills of Exchange on London to an enormous amount; they are all protested, indeed, but if properly managed, may be turned to good account. I likewise bequeath to the said John a small treatise by an Italian author, wherein the secret of pleasing the ladies is developed, and reduced to a mere mechanical operation, without the least dependence on the precarious aid of the passions. Hoping that these instances of my liberality will produce, in the mind of the little legislature, effects quite different from those produced therein by the King of Great Britain’s pension to his parents.

Item. To the Editors of the Boston Chronicle, the New York Argus, and the Philadelphia Merchants’ Advertiser, I will and bequeath one ounce of modesty and love of truth, to be equally divided between them.

I should have been more liberal in this bequest, were I not well assured, that one ounce is more than they will ever make use of.

Item. To Franklin Bache, Editor of the Aurora of Philadelphia, I will and bequeath a small bundle of French assignats, which I brought with me from the country of equality. If these should be too light in value for his pressing exigencies, I desire my executors, or any one of them, to bestow on him a second part to what he has lately received in Southwark: and as a further proof of my good will and affection, I request him to accept of a gag and a brand new pair of fetters, which, if he should refuse, I will and bequeath him in lieu thereof—my malediction.

Item. To my beloved countrymen, the people of Old England, I will and bequeath a copy of Doctor Priestley’s Charity Sermon for the benefit of poor Emigrants; and to the said preaching philosopher himself, I bequeath a heart full of disappointment, grief, and despair.

Item. To the good people of France, who remain attached to their sovereign, particularly to those among whom I was hospitably received, I bequeath each a good strong dagger: hoping most sincerely that they may yet find courage enough to carry them to the hearts of their abominable tyrants.

Item. To Citizen M——oe, I will and bequeath my chamber looking-glass. It is a plain but exceeding true mirror; in it he will see the exact likeness of a traitor, who has bartered the honour and interest of his country to a perfidious and savage enemy.

Item. To the Republican Britons, who have fled from the hands of justice in their own country, and who are a scandal, a nuisance, and a disgrace to this, I bequeath hunger and nakedness, scorn and reproach; and I do hereby positively enjoin on my executors to contribute five hundred dollars towards the erection of gallowses and gibbets, for the accommodation of the said imported patriots, when the legislators of this unhappy state shall have the wisdom to countenance such useful establishments.

Item. My friend, J. T. Callender, the runaway from Scotland, is, of course, a partaker in the last mentioned legacy; but as a particular mark of my attention, I will and bequeath him twenty feet of pine plank, which I request my executors to see made into a pillory, to be kept for his particular use, till a gibbet can be prepared.

Item. To Tom Paine, the author of Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, and a Letter to General Washington, I bequeath a strong hempen collar, as the only legacy I can think of that is worthy of him as well as best adapted to render his death in some measure as infamous as his life: and I do hereby direct and order my Executors to send it to him by the first safe conveyance with my compliments, and request that he would make use of it without delay, that the national razor may not be disgraced by the head of such a monster.

Item. To the gaunt outlandish orator, vulgarly called the Political Sinner, who in the just order of things follows next after the last mentioned legatee, I bequeath the honour of partaking in his catastrophe; that in their deaths, as well as in their lives, all the world may exclaim: “See how rogues hang together”.

Item. To all and singular the good people of these States, I leave peace, union, abundance, happiness, untarnished honour, and an unconquerable everlasting hatred to the French Revolutionists and their destructive abominable principles.

Item. To each of my Subscribers I leave a quill, hoping that in their hands it may become a sword against every thing that is hostile to the government and independence of their country.

Lastly. To my three brothers, Paul, Simon, and Dick, I leave my whole estate, as well real as personal (first paying the foregoing legacies) to be equally divided between them, share and share alike. And I do hereby make and constitute my said three brothers the Executors of this my LAST WILL; to see the same performed, according to its true intent and meaning, as far as in their power lies.

PETER PORCUPINE.

Witnesses present,

Philo Fun, }

Jack Jockus. }

THE VISION OF LIBERTY.

Written in the manner of Spenser.

[As the virulent style of political writing prevalent ninety years ago is now but little known, the present edition of The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin seemed a convenient medium for giving some specimens of it which appeared in The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, a work conducted on the same principles, but by different writers, and with the cognizance of the government. Two of them were by W. COBBETT, who, had he been less arrogant and contentious, and more consistent, would have been, in the words of Lord Dalling, “a very great man in the world; as it was he made a great noise in it”. (See pp. 311–319.)

The Vision of Liberty is by C. KIRKPATRICK SHARPE, an author and artist much esteemed by Scottish antiquarians, of which specimens only need be given. Of The Anarchists, the author is not known.]

I.

O wretched man, how long wilt thou refuse

Thy Maker’s favour, and His mercy great?

How long thy worldly happiness abuse,

And growl and grumble at thy present state?

Seeking accursed change both soon and late,

And newest modes allured still to try—

England, beware God’s wrath to aggravate,

For foreign magic blinds thy charmed eye,

And Liberty, sweet Liberty, is now the constant cry.

II.

As on my couch in slumber’s arms I lay,

A vision did my senses entertain;

Of late, me thought in France I miss’d my way,

Amid a columnless deserted plain;

No man or beast upon it did remain,

Swept off by Discord’s wide destroying strife:

Ne planted fence, ne field of waving grain,

Marking the toiling farmer’s busy life,

But ruined huts and castles, brent, were wondrous rife.

III.

Yet on this plain, most goodly to behold,

Saw I a temple tow’ring to the sky,

The dome where of was made of basest gold,

Most false, but yet most lovely to the eye;

And rotting pillars reareth it on high,

Of ghastly human heads, and clotted gore,

With dust, y’mixt the mortar doth supply,

While foulest birds still round this temple soar,

And filthy serpents hiss, and giant hyenas roar.

IV.

Among the heads that did the mass compose,

Three royal skulls were there—one of a king—

Meek saint, who never once revil’d his foes,

His bloody foes that him to scaffold bring;

One of a maid; O heaven! that I could sing

With Spenser’s tongue, her spotless purity,

Her holy zeal, in courts so rare a thing,

By lawless fiends condemn’d she was to die,

And sent, untimely sent, to seek her native sky.

V.

The third I marked with melancholy eyes,

A female head, that once a crown did wear,

Cut off in life’s full bloom, now low she lies,

The loose loves weeping o’er her early bier,

Nor Virtue’s self denies a tender tear;

So young a creature, wonder not she fell,

And left the paths of chastity severe,

Debauched by a court where lust did dwell

Like treach’rous Circe, skill’d in many a witching spell.

VI.

Ah! where are now her gorgeous robes of state,

The glitt’ring gems that did her fairness deck?

The cringing nobles that on her did wait,

The high-born dames that kneeled at her beck?

Alas! a ghastly face, a bloody neck,

A simple winding-sheet is now her share;

Look here, ye proud ones, on this mighty wreck,

And learn what perishable stuff ye are,

From her poor mangled carcase, once so sweet and fair.

VII.

And on the ground there lay a murder’d child,

A piteous sight it was, and full of woe,

Who, when alive, by every art defil’d,

With poison, they at last did overthrow,

Wretches, who never ruth or conscience know;

O lovely flowret cropt by villain hands,

How will thy butchers dread th’ almighty brow,

Arm’d with frowns, when each at judgment stands,

And God the meed of murder from His throne commands.

VIII.

Then o’er the portal was this motto plac’d,

“The house of liberty,” in gold y’writ,

And, vent’ring in, I stood like one amaz’d

Such sights of horror on my heart-strings smit.

There Infidelity, in moody fit,

Hugg’d Suicide—there Rage, and deadly Fears,

There Lechery, with goatish leer did sit,

And Murder, quaffing up his victim’s tears,

With thousand other crimes, too foul for human ears.

IX.

In ’mid the house an image stood in state,

Like to VOLTAIRE in visage and in shape,

Wither’d his heart with fellest rage and hate

Shrivell’d and lean his carcase like an ape

And numerous crowds upon the same did gape,

As he all-naked stood to every eye;

Above an altar covered with crape,

And formed of his books one might descry,

Profane and lewd it was, and cramm’d with many a lie.

X.

And still from ’neath the altar roared he,

As from a bull lowing in cavern deep,

“Come worship me, O men, come worship me;

Spit on the cross, of Jesus take no keep,

I promise you an everlasting sleep;

The soul and body both shall turn to clay;

Ye penitents, why do ye sigh and weep?

Let not damnation’s terrors you affray,

Come learn my lore that drives all foolish fears away”.

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

XIV.

Next came that cursed felon THOMAS PAINE,

Mounted upon a tiger fierce and fell;

And still a shower of blood on him doth rain,

With tears that from the eyes of widows well;

Loud in his ears the cries of orphans yell;

The axe impending o’er his head alway

While devils wait to catch his soul to hell,

The knave is fill’d with anguish and dismay—

And anxious round he looks, even straws do him affray.

XV.

Then saw I mounted on a braying ass

WILLIAM and MARY, sooth, a couple jolly;

Who married, note ye how it came to pass,

Although each held that marriage was but folly.

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

XVIII.

Then came MARIA HELEN WILLIAMS STONE,

Sitting upon a goat with bearded chin;

And she hath written volumes many a one;

Better the idle jade had learned to spin.

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

XIX.

Next mounted on a monster like a louse,

With parchments loaded, came a man of law,[333]

Sprung from an ancient Caledonian house,

Cunningly could he quibble out a flaw;

And this sage man would chatter like a daw,

To prove the moon green cheese, and black, pure white,

Spitting out treason from his greedy maw;

To breed sedition was his chief delight,

And scratch men’s scabs to ulcers still with all his might.

XX.

Then on an Irish bull of skin and bone,

A foul churl[334] rode, who still a harp would strum,

A harp Hibernian, stringless saving one,

Well tun’d to harsh sedition’s growling hum;

He hit the bull on which he had his bum

Full many a bitter pang, nor gave him rest—

Dealing his blows on Teagues that round him come,

Grieving the while for man and brute opprest,

Chaunting the Irish howl, abhorr’d of man and beast.

XXI.

O IRELAND, spot accurs’d—tho’ glorious fair,

Shines there the sun, the flowers enamell’d blow,

And scent, with fragrance sweet, the balmy air,

Rippling the gliding pools that softly flow;

No noxious reptile there to man a foe

Abides, but black revenge with cautious plan,

Cool-blooded cruelty with torments slow,

Springs rank; with weeds the goodly soil’s o’er-ran,

And all the reptile’s venom rankles in the man.

XXII.

Then in a gorgeous car of beaten gold,

Drove on a portly man, of mighty rank,[335]

A person comely, of extraction old;

But, carrion-like, his reputation stank;

Sly was the wight, with crafty quip and crank,

To cram with glittering coin his bursting bags;

Yet whilom taxing-men play’d him a prank,

By catching in their traps some strayed nags,

And eke some livery slaves, in miser’s livery rags.

XXIII.

Then on a turtle came proud London’s Mayor,

Followed by Aldermen, a frowsy crew,

Strong smelling of Cheapside, and luscious fair,

Yet apoplexy made his followers few.

Long antlers on the head of each man grew,

So that they seem’d a host of moving horn;

Anon as on they came they’d mump and chew,

Stuffing their guts from dawning of the morn,

Till shades of evening fell—for eating only born.

XXIV.

On a cock sparrow fed with Spanish flies,

A swilling Captain came, with liquor mellow,

And still the crowd in hideous uproar cries,[336]

“Sing us a bawdy song, thou d——d good fellow”,

Incontinent he sets himself to bellow,

And shouts with all the strength that in him lies;

The Citizets exclaim, “He’s sans pareilly O”;

The Citizens in raptures roll their eyes,

And drink with leathern ears, the fool’s lewd ribaldries.

XXV.

On came these wights, and many more beside,

Thick as the grains of sand upon the shore,

Thick as a swarm of flies in summer tide,

That on a dunghill hive and hover o’er;

Most had their hides all scall’d, their trousers tore;

Many sans breeches, shameless trudg’d along,

And many a noble knave and titled w——e,

With Irish bog-trotters would crowd and throng,

Carolling catches base, and filthy French chanson.

XXVI.

Like roaring waves they cover’d all the plain;

And tho’ equality they still requir’d,

Each cudgell’d sore his breast with might and main,

Each to get foremost ardently desir’d.

Some fell into the dirt, and foul were mir’d,

The rest rode over them and took no heed.

Their yells, with patriotic ardour fired,

So made my flesh to quake with very dread,

That Morpheus left my couch, and all the vision fled.

The insertion of the foregoing poem (which was never printed) into your entertaining and useful publication, will much oblige,

Your humble servant,

C. K.

INDEX TO THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

4th Edition, 1799; 2 vols., 8vo.

A.

Abuse, a new and approved method of conveying, vol. i., p. 502.

Acme and Septimius, or the Happy Union, vol. i., p. 452.

Advertisements: Government strenuously advised to withdraw them from the Jacobin Papers, vol. ii., p. 119.

Advertisements, Government, withdrawn from the Jacobin Papers, vol. ii., pp. 308, 490.

Address of City of Londonderry to Lord Camden, vol. i., p. 356; His Lordship’s Reply, 358.

Ad—r, Mr. Robert, tries to imitate Mr. Burke’s style, vol. i., p. 377—fails egregiously—mistakes a coffin for a corpse—transmutes the head of the house of Russell into lead, p. 378—writes half a letter to Mr. Fox—and puts the world in high good humour, p. 422.

Agricola: his letter on the advantages of a well-regulated economy, vol. i., p. 583.

Anecdotes respecting Lord Duncan’s victory, vol. i., pp. 38, 107.

Appropriate Speech—See Lord William Russell.

Assessed Taxes: benefits arising from trebling them, vol. i., p. 16—horrible effects of, vol. i., pp. 347, 503.

Assessed Taxes evaded by the Duke of Bedford—See Bedford, Duke of.

B.

Bachelor: his letter, vol. i., p. 258—his definition of a patriot, vol. i., p. 261.

Bacchus: a life of him forged by the Morning Chronicle for the diabolical purpose of burlesquing the life and death, and resurrection and ascension of Our BLESSED SAVIOUR, vol. i., p. 220, &c.

Ballynahinch, a loyal town of Lord Moira’s—a meeting of rebel delegates held there, vol. i., p. 83.

Ballynahinch, a new song, vol. ii., p. 603.

Ballynahinchers: loyal countenances of, read by Lord Moira, vol. ii., p. 507—loyal professions of, heard by ditto—rob the king’s stores—debauch his troops—attack them, and are cut to pieces, vol. ii., p. 519.

Bedford, Duke of: his Surcharge of 25 Servants and 17 Horses, vol i., pp. 230, 254.

Bedford, Duke of: justified for evading the Assessed Taxes, by the Morning Post, vol. i., p. 255—and by the Morning Chronicle, p. 297—proved to have gained much honour by evading the Assessed Taxes, by the Morning Post, vol. i., p. 256—cleared from any attempt to evade the Assessed Taxes, by a note of admiration, by the Courier, p. 350.

Beresford, Mr., character of him, vol. ii., p. 556.

Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox, vol. i., p. 422.

Blockade of the Seine, vol. i., pp. 571, 616.

Blasphemy attempted without success by the Morning Post, vol. i., p. 505—and by the Courier—fully succeeded in by the Morning Chronicle, vol. i., p. 325, &c.

Bosville, Mr., Banker to the Corresponding Society, vol. i., p. 409.

Brownrigg, Mrs.: Inscription for the Door of her Cell in Newgate, vol. i., p. 35.

British Merchant, his Letter on the misrepresentations of the Party, with respect to the continuance of the War, vol. i., p. 593.

Brissot’s Ghost, vol. ii., p. 236.

Burdett, Sir Something: his affectionate mention of Mr. Paine at the Shakespeare Tavern, vol. i., p. 136.

Burdett, Sir Francis, runner to the Corresponding Society, vol. i., p. 408.

Buonaparté: his health given by Mr. Macfungus, vol. i., p. 35—his Letter to the Commandant at Zanté, vol. ii., p. 535.

C.

Camille Jordan, asserts that one of our Jacobin Newspapers is in the pay of France, vol. i., pp. 507, 622; vol. ii., pp. 17, 51, 86, 488.

Cambridge Intelligencer, detected and exposed, vol. ii., pp. 263, 296.

Chevy Chase; a Ballad to the Tune of, vol. ii., p. 21.

Choice, The: an Ode, vol. i., p. 263.

Clare, The Earl of, Character of, vol. ii., p. 544.

Clare, Earl of: proposes a question respecting the extent of Lord Moira’s DUPERY, vol. ii., p. 518.

Clever: See Mr. Robert Ad—r, vol. i., p. 422.

Coughing and laughing: See Mr. John Nicholls, vol. i., p. 186.

Courtney, Mr., fully convicted of kidnapping—rhymes, vol. i., p. 376.

Coalition, The New: an Ode, vol. i., p. 599.

Coalition of Kings, vol. ii., p. 546.

Constant Reader: his Letter on the Designs of our foreign and domestic Enemies, vol. i., pp. 544, 597.

Courier, The; a mad—and foolish—and odious—and contemptible paper, passim. Picked up by a Gentleman in the streets, for the sake of its superior information!!! vol. ii., p. 230.

D.

Detector: his Letter on the pretended Treaty of Pavia, vol. i., p. 474—On the Treaty of Pilnitz, vol. ii., p. 37—On the Coalition of Kings, vol. ii., p. 546.

Description of a very extraordinary Plant now growing at Paris, vol. ii., p. 573.

Description of Mr. Fox’s Radical Reform, vol. i., p. 396.

Description of a Scribbler for the Jacobin Papers, vol. i., p. 613.

Description of the Jacobin Prints, vol. ii., p. 119.

Decius Mus: his account of the Secessions in the Roman Common Wealth, vol. i., p. 261.

Dismissal of the Duke of Norfolk, vol. i., p. 429.

Duncan, Lord: Anecdotes relative to his Victory, vol. i., pp. 38, 107.

Duke, The, and the Taxing Man, vol. i., p. 265.

Dupery of Lord Moira, vol. ii., pp. 36, 518, &c., &c.

E.

Edwards, Mr. Bryan: offers to pay for Mr. Nicholls’ dinner at the Crown and Anchor—finds his pockets pick’d—his exclamation thereat, vol. i., p. 410.

Elegy on the Death of Jean Bon Saint André, vol. ii., p. 314.

Epigram on the Loan upon England, vol. i., p. 267.

Epistle, Poetical, to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin, vol. i., p. 371. Reply to ditto, vol. i., p. 371.

Epistle, Poetical, to the Author of the Anti-Jacobin, vol. i., p. 486.

Erskine, Mr.: his definition of Himself at the Meeting of the Friends of Freedom—clothed with the infirmities of man’s nature—in many respects a finite being—disclaims all pretensions to superhuman powers—has been both a soldier and a sailor—has a son at Winchester school—has been called by special retainers into many parts of the country, travelling chiefly in post-chaises—is of Noble, perhaps, Royal Blood—has a house at Hampstead—faints between the subdivisions of his discourse—is conveyed to his carriage—tricked by the chairmen who were hired to draw it—and finally taken home by his own horses, vol. i., p. 125, &c.

Expedition against Ostend, vol. ii., pp. 367, 377, 442, 486, 596.

F.

Finance, vol. i., pp. 16, 44, 85, 143, 212, 244, 313, 391, 607; vol. ii., p. 224.

Foreign Intelligence, vol. i., pp. 41, 73, 105, 138, 170, 206, 238, 267, 305, 339, 382, 424, 453, 491, 528, 560, 600, 629; vol. ii., 23, 57, 101, 136, 174, 206, 239, 280, 318, 346, 389, 430, 461, 499, 540, 577, 608.

Foreign Intelligence Extraordinary, vol. ii., p. 535.

Fox, Mr.: his Speech at the Meeting of the Friends of Freedom, vol. i., p. 92—his Radical Reform described, 396—Celebration of his Nativity at the Crown and Anchor, 408—his Speech, 412—his Song, 413—A Bit of an Ode to, 422—Lines written under a Bust of him, 489—his dismissal from the Privy Council, vol. ii., p. 293.

French Revolution, origin and progress of, vol. i., p. 22.

French Revolution, not to be defended or illustrated by a comparison with the civil wars of this country, vol. ii., p. 17.

Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder, vol. i., p. 71.

Friends of Freedom, Meeting of the, vol. i., pp. 91, 125.

Freemason’s observations on the Duke of Norfolk’s toast, vol. i., p. 587.

Francis, Mr.: his Novel of a Pamphlet grievously abused by the Morning Chronicle, vol. ii., p. 338.

G.

German Stage: see the “Rovers”.

Government Advertisements: see Advertisements.

Guillotine, la Sainte: a new Song attempted from the French, vol. i., p. 136.

H.

Head of the Russells, transmuted into lead, vol. i., p. 377.

Higgins, Mr., of Saint Mary Axe—see “Progress of Man,” “Loves of the Triangles,” the “Rovers,” &c.

How to praise one’s friends, vol. i., p. 397.

Horrible Effects of the Assessed Taxes, vol. i., pp. 347, 503.

Hoche, General: his Instructions to Colonel Tate, vol. i., pp. 480, 498.

I.

Imitation of Horace, lib. iii. carm. xxv., vol. i., p. 627.

Instructions for Colonel Tate, vol. i., pp. 480, 498.

Introduction, The, vol. i., p. 11.

Introduction to the Poetry, vol. i., p. 31.

Invasion, The; or, The British War Song, vol. i., p. 103.

Ingratitude, the characteristic vice of Jacobinism, vol. i., p. 579.

Italicus: his letter on the plunder of the French in Italy, vol. i., p. 367.

J.

Jacobin, The, vol. ii., p. 133.

Jacobin Papers, an epidemic malady among them, vol. ii., p. 120.

L.

Latin Verses, De Navali Laude Britanniæ, vol. ii., p. 604.

Lead—see Head of the Russells.

Letter to Earl Moira on the state of Ireland, vol. i., p. 77, 109, 161.

Letter from Letitia Sourby, vol. i., p. 195—from a Bachelor, p. 258—from Decius Mus, p. 261—from an Irishman, 299—from Italicus, 367—from Monitor, 370—from Adolphus Hicks, 380—from a Constant Reader, 534—from Agricola, 583—from Speculator, 586—from a Freemason, 587—from a Symposiast, 589—from a British Merchant, 593—from a Constant Reader, 597—from Mucius, 623—from Historicus, vol. ii., p. 17—from an Irishman, 35—from a Sucking Whig, 53—from a British Seaman, 93—from an Anti-Catiline, 128—from Samuel Shallow—from a Friend to the Landed Interest, 269—from Historicus, 491—from A. Z., on Original Principles with respect to the French Revolution, 499—from a Calm Observer, 525—from Hibernicus, 554—from Perseus, 558—from a Church of England Man, 561—from Cato, 564—from Hortensius, 573.

Letter from General Buonaparte to the Governor of Zanté, vol. ii., p. 535.

Lies, vol. i., pp. 46, 115, 156, 178, 217, 248, 322, 346, 395, 453, 460, 499, 538, 573, 612; vol. ii., pp. 2, 4, 43, 78, 116, 151, 193, 227, 304, 330, 377, 440, 481, 512.

Lille, translation of a letter from, vol. i., p. 26.

Lines written at the close of the year 1797, vol. i., p. 330.

Lines written under the Bust of Charles Fox at the Crown and Anchor, vol. i., p. 489.

Lines written under the Bust of a certain Orator, not at the Crown and Anchor, vol. i., p. 490.

List of ships and vessels belonging to France, Spain, and Holland, taken, &c., since the commencement of the war, vol. ii., p. 120.

Loves of the Triangles: a Mathematical and Philosophical Poem, vol. ii., pp. 162, 200, 274.

M.

Manners and Character of the Age, vol. ii., p. 564.

Marten, Henry: inscription for his apartment in Chepstow Castle, vol. i., p. 35.

Macfungus, Mr.: his speech at the meeting of the Friends of Freedom, vol. i., p. 131.

Meeting of the Friends of Freedom, vol. i., pp. 91, 125.

Misrepresentations, vol. i., pp. 19, 47, 117, 157, 180, 218, 252, 293, 324, 347, 396, 436, 470, 501, 541, 577, 615; vol. ii., pp. 8, 46, 79, 121, 154, 195, 231, 307, 333, 441, 484, 515 597.

Mistakes, vol. i., pp. 56, 124, 159, 188, 221, 257, 351, 397, 439, 473, 504, 543, 581, 620; vol. ii., pp. 12, 48, 84, 126, 154, 199, 235, 308, 338, 385, 443, 484, 519.

Misapprehension on the subject of the proposed Increase of the Assessed Taxes, vol. i., p. 190.

Moira, Lord: the singularity of his conduct, vol. i., p. 58—his story of the Child and the Rush Light contradicted, p. 188—his weakness, p. 252—lays it down as a general principle, that the liberty of the press is destroyed in Ireland, p. 274—is referred to the Press and the Dublin Evening Post, p. 275—famous for acting a bull, vol. ii., p. 14—duped to an extraordinary degree, p. 86—a great physiognomist, p. 517—a great dupe, p. 518, &c., &c., &c.

Moira, Lord: Letter to, on the State of Ireland, vol. i., pp. 77, 109, 161.

Moira, Lord: Ode to, vol. i., p. 380.

Moira, the late Earl of: his account of the celebrated enchantress, Moll Coggin, vol. i., p. 299.

Moll Coggin: the late Earl of Moira’s account of her, vol. i., p. 299.

Morning Chronicle, calls the Thanksgiving for Lord Duncan’s Victory a Frenchified Farce, vol. i., p. 157—insults the King—maligns the Parliament—belies the Resources—ridicules and reviles the spirit of the Nation—advises unconditional submission to France—declares that our arms are without energy, our hearts without courage, and our sword at the service of every puny whipster, vol. ii., p. 85, &c.

Morning Chronicle: its impiety—its blasphemy—its falsehood—its historical, geographical, and political ignorance—its insolence, baseness, and stupidity—passim, passim.

Morning Chronicle, the editor of: why called the Père du Chène, vol. ii., p. 471.

Muskein, Citizen: his Consolatory Address to his Gun-boats, vol. ii., p. 312—his Affectionate Address to Hâvre de Grace, vol. ii., p. 498.

N.

Narrative of the Riot at Tranent, vol. i., p. 59.

Naval History, vol. i., p. 222.

Neutral Navigation, vol. i., pp. 398, 505.

New Morality, a Poem, vol. ii., p. 623.

New and approved method of conveying abuse, vol. i., p. 502.

Neat Speech—see Lord John Russell.

Nicholls, Mr. John: his faculties confounded by Mr. Pitt’s speech, vol. i., p. 47—treated very unkindly by his associates, vol. i., p. 186—has his pockets picked by Mr. Jekyl of his genuine speech at the Crown and Anchor—offers seventeen of the spurious ones in payment for his dinner at ditto—is refused admittance, vol. i., p. 410.

Nicholls, Mr. John: a great Parliament man, but thought to be very tart and sour by Mrs. Deborah Wigmore, Mr. Wright’s housekeeper, vol. i., p. 553.

Norfolk, Duke of: his speech at the Crown and Anchor, vol. i., pp. 412, 418—his dismissal, vol. i., p. 429—observations on his toast, by a Freemason, vol. i., p. 587—defended by a Symposiast, vol. i., p. 589—curious account of his dismissal from the French Papers, vol. i., p. 614; vol. ii., p. 16.

O.

Ode to Anarchy, by a Jacobin, vol. i., p. 301.

Ode to Lord Moira, vol. i., p. 380.

Ode, a bit of an, to Mr. Fox, vol. i., p. 422.

Ode to Jacobinism, vol. ii., p. 53.

Ode to my Country, 1798, vol. ii., p. 342.

Ode to the Director Merlin, vol. ii., p. 388.

Ode to a Jacobin, vol. ii., p. 576.

Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, vol. i., p. 22.

P.

Pavia, Treaty of, proved to be a Jacobin forgery, vol. i., p. 474.

Père du Chène, appellation of: why given to the editor of The Morning Chronicle, vol. ii., p. 471.

Pilnitz, Treaty of, proved to be a Jacobin forgery, vol. ii., p. 37.

Poetry, vol. i., pp. 31, 69, 103, 168, 199, 236, 263, 301, 329, 371, 421, 452, 486, 524, 556, 597, 620; vol. ii., pp. 21, 53, 95, 133, 162, 200, 236, 274, 312, 339, 387, 415, 446, 497, 528, 576, 603.

Porcupine, Peter, a spirited and instructive writer, vol. i., p. 332.

Prisoners of War, vol. i., pp. 234, 277, 326; vol. ii., p. 310.

Prize of Dullness, vol. i., pp. 421, 448, 522; awarded, vol. i., p. 552.

Progress of Man, a Didactic Poem, vol. i., pp. 524, 558; vol. ii., p. 97.

Proceedings of the Whig Club, vol. ii., p. 260.

Prologue to the Rovers; or, the Double Arrangement, vol. ii., p. 420.

R.

Ram—see Sir John Sinclair.

Review of the proposed plan of Finance, vol. i., p. 143.

Review of the Session, vol. ii., p. 583.

Rovers, the; or, the Double Arrangement, vol. ii., pp. 420, 446.

Russell, Lord John, makes a very neat Speech, vol. i., p. 126.

Russell, Lord William, makes a very appropriate Speech, vol. i., p. 126.

S.

Sale of the Land Tax, vol. ii., p. 1, 269.

Secession of the Opposition, observations on, vol. i., p. 36.

Secret Expedition of British Savans, vol. ii., p. 529.

Sinclair, Sir John, embarks with his Ram in the Capricorn on a secret expedition, vol. ii., p. 532.

Soldier’s Friend: an Ode, vol. i., p. 169.

Song: a new one, appointed to be sung at all Convivial Meetings convened for the purpose of opposing the Assessed Tax Bill, vol. i., p. 303.

Sonnet to Liberty, vol. i., p. 169.

Sourby, Letitia: her letter, vol. i., p. 195.

Speculator: his observations on Cardinal Antici’s letter to Buonaparte, vol. i., p. 586.

Symposiast’s, A, defence of the Duke of Norfolk’s celebrated toast, vol. i., p. 589.

T.

Tate, Colonel; his instructions, vol. i., pp. 480, 498.

Tooke, Horne: his speech at the Crown and Anchor, vol. i., p. 417.

Translation of the Latin verses written after the Revolution of the fourth of September, vol. i., p. 201.

Translation of the new song of the “Army of England,” vol. i., p. 331.

Translation of a letter from Bawba-dara-adul-phoola to Neek-awl-aretchid-kooez, vol. ii., p. 532.

Treaty of Pavia, proved to be a Jacobin forgery, vol. i., p. 474.

Treaty of Pilnitz, proved to be a Jacobin forgery, vol. ii., p. 37.

U.

Unattached Officers, vol. i., p. 362.

Unjust Aggressions, vol. i., pp. 420, 440, 549; vol. ii., pp. 522, 600.

Union Star: extracts from, vol. i., p. 352.

V.

Verses, Latin, written after the Revolution of the fourth of September, vol. i., p. 201; translation, vol. i., p. 236.

Vision, The: written at St. Ann’s Hill, vol. i., p. 598.

Voluntary Contributions, vol. i., pp. 465, 534.

W.

Weekly Examiner, vol. i., pp. 19, 46, 115, 156, 178, 217, 248, 293, 322, 346, 395, 435, 468, 498, 534, 573, 607; vol. ii., pp. 4, 43, 78, 116, 151, 191, 227, 263, 296, 330, 377, 405, 440, 475, 512, 596.

Wickham, Mr.: his note to the Helvetic Body on his recal, vol. i., p. 388—answer to ditto, vol. i., p. 426.

Wigmore, Deborah, housekeeper to Mr. Wright, awards the Prize of Dullness, vol. i., p. 552.

INDEX TO VOL. I.

OF THE

ANTI-JACOBIN REVIEW AND MAGAZINE.

[This Index and the two preceding articles (by W. Cobbett, pp. 311–319) are reprinted in order to show that the same spirit which pervaded The Anti-Jacobin was continued in its successor, The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, although the Editor and Contributors were different.]

- A.

- Alfred—Letters of Ghost of, reviewed, No. 1, p. 62;

- object of, 63;

- opinion concerning Erskine;

- ditto, concerning the acquittals, 1794;

- Letters, Monthly Review of, reviewed, 68.

- Algernon Sidney, an enthusiast in Republicanism, 451;

- illegally condemned, 452.

- Almanack of revolutions, 789;

- illustrates the wild system of innovation, ib.;

- account of Switzerland, 792.

- America, 4;

- infected by French principles;

- Congress of, democratic members abuse our sovereign, 14;

- buildings described, 222.

- American Annual Register, 829;

- composed by Calender, a refugee Scotch democrat;

- assertions, false;

- reasoning, trivial;

- language and manner, coarse and vulgar, 830;

- author tries to be witty on Burke, 833;

- praises Jefferson, Tom Paine, and the French Revolutionists, ib.

- Analytical Review analysed, 3;

- Review of Wakefield’s reply, reviewed, 75;

- idea of the constituents of independence, 76;

- consistently with itself ridicules prayer, 77;

- Analytical Reviewers, not critics, but partisans, 83;

- endeavour to influence juries, 84;

- enraged for the prosecution of Johnson, 85;

- give no account of the books they censure, 86;

- Analytical Reviewer of Godwin’s Memoirs, illustrates his own morals, politics, and religion, 99;

- expects a time when Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s conduct will be admired, ib.;

- asserts the proceedings of the French Directory and English Government to be the same, 182;

- abuses due laws and government, ib.;

- declamatory abuse of Mr. Gifford’s address, 185;

- whom the Analytical think the friends of liberty, 186;

- praises Charlotte Smith’s Delmont, 190;

- attacks Murphy’s Arminius, 193;

- Abuses Bowdler’s Reform of Ruin, 195;

- Invective of, against Peter Porcupine, ib.;

- tries wit, 197;

- blasphemous comparison by, of Godwin, to the Supreme Being, 335;

- God of, not the God of Christians, ib.;

- abuses Peter Porcupine, 342;

- principles of, 344;

- praises of Jones, the itinerant lecturer, 345;

- Gerald, ib.;

- enraged at an allusion to the French faction at home, 448;

- abuses Mr. Noble for praising the gospel, and censuring the English regicides, 449;

- exclaims against the punishment of regicides, 450;

- defends Ludlow, the murderer of his king, 451;

- styles a conspirator the fairest character in English history, 452;

- defends the United Irishmen, 464;

- abuses Mr. Budworth, for praising the answerer of Paine, 465.

- Anarchists, ode to, 365.

- Anecdotes of Republican judges, 15;

- political, 212.

- Annual Register, New, principles of, 150;

- patronised by H. M. Williams, ib.;

- conducted by a dignitary of the Church, hostile to our established institution, 348;

- anecdote of that conductor, 349;

- praise of Oldfield’s Defence of Universal Suffrage, 456;

- high praise of Erskine on the War, 697;

- exposed, 698;

- character of, ib.;

- remarks on, 700.

- Anti-Gallican Spirit commended, 107.

- Anti-Jacobin newspaper praised, 55.

- Anti-Jacobin Review, reason of adopting that title, 1;

- plan of, 3;

- proposes to counteract Jacobinical criticism, 5;

- preface of, to reviewers reviewed, 55;

- object, 56;

- observations of, on the constitution, 60;

- prophesies the destruction of the French fleet by Nelson, 123;

- opinion of, on obedience to constituted authorities, 61;

- opinion of duelling, 153;

- declaration of political principles, 166;

- discusses Locke’s Opinions on Government, 167;

- explains the duty of obedience, 169;

- defines the constitution to be what is actually constituted, 170;

- opinion of, on pulpit politics, 304;

- political creed of, 314;

- illustrated and enforced, ib.;

- states the reciprocal duties of sovereign and subject, ib.;

- principles of, 315;

- exposes the Anti-Christian doctrines of the Monthly Reviewers, 316;

- canvasses the opinions of Dr. Geddes, 318;

- character of La Fayette, 345;

- declares the Letter to the Church of England the text book of its principles, 402;

- recommends to the Bishops to suppress schism among the established clergy, ib.;

- admonishes Mr. Wansey, on his insolent and foolish letter to the Bishop of Salisbury, 415;

- admonishes fathers of families to discountenance Jacobinical writings, 434;

- proves the authenticity of Scriptures against Socinians and Deists, 439;

- abused by the Literary Census, 667;

- reason of the abuse, its support of the Constitution, ib.

- Aristotle, Gillies’s translation of, reviewed, 253;

- fate of his writings, 255;

- life of, 257;

- analysis of his speculative works, 258;

- error of these works, ib.;

- organon, 261;

- misunderstood by the school-men, ib.;

- his zoology, the most perfect of his works, 387;

- sagacious discoveries and comprehensive knowledge, ib.;

- searches too much for efficient causes, 389;

- ethics and politics, part of the same general system, 390;

- analysis of happiness, virtue, and habit, 391;

- application of principles, 392;

- jurisprudence, 393;

- social affection, 394;

- importance of his work at present, 395;

- inculcates the necessity of subordination, 396;

- anticipates Adam Smith, 397;

- demonstrates the absurdity of the levelling system, ib.;

- the folly of hasty innovations, ib. See Gillies.

- His opinions on commerce, 513;

- honoured agriculture more than trade, 516;

- had he lived in Britain, might have thought differently, ib.;

- the SAGE THINKS THE FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION THE FIRST IN DIGNITY, ib.;

- doctrines on education little more than copied by succeeding writers, 517;

- tests of good government, 518;

- refutes the absurd opinion that all men are fitted to govern, 519;

- sentiments on demagogues and faction, ib.;

- illustrated in the Corresponding Societies and Whig Club, 520;

- admirable book on sedition and revolutions, ib.;

- addresses the WILL, as well as the UNDERSTANDING, 523.

- Associations, legal, praised, 137;

- address to. See Gifford.

- Exhortation to, 210.

- B.

- Barras’ motion, concerning, and cause, 144.

- Barristers, Irish, encroach on the office of the Judge, by laying down the law, 540;

- inaccurate, ib.

- Bedford, Duke of, contributions to the State, 20.

- Bisset, Dr., reply of, to a letter in the Monthly Review, 588;

- charges the Priestleyan dissenters with a design to subvert our establishment, 590;

- quotes Priestley’s declaration to that effect, ib.;

- reprobates the metaphysical politics of Priestley’s First Principles of Government; and Price, on Civil Liberty, ib.;

- vindicates Burke, for opposing the repeal of the Test Act, 591;

- his anonymous antagonist, supposed to be Anthony Robinson, linen draper, dissenting preacher, and debating society orator, ib.

- Blasphemy, punishment of, according to Burn. See Geddes.

- Boaden’s Cambro Britons, reviewed, 415;

- just description of invaders and invaded, 416;

- ranting phraseology, ib.;

- farcical strainings after humour, ib.;

- admonished to discontinue writing as soon as a relish for works of genius shall again prevail, 417.

- Boffe, De, publications of, 845.

- Bond, Oliver, testimony of, 300.

- Book clubs, either through ignorance or design, circulate hurtful writings, 475;

- account of one at Maidstone, ib.;

- proposed regulations for rendering them useful, ib.;

- praised by the Monthly Magazine, 476;

- the praise of that performance renders them suspicious, ib.

- Bowles, the champion of the British Constitution, reprobated by the Critical Review, 678.

- Brissot, avowed design to abolish monarchy, 27;

- conformity of French conduct to his declaration, ib.;

- memorable report of, 512.

- British Critic praised, 343;

- abused by the Literary Census, because hostile to atheists and levellers, 667.

- Brothers’s Letters to Miss Cott, a fellow lunatic, 568.

- British public characters, reviewed, 634;

- arrogant dedication to the King, 635;

- strange assortment of characters, ib.;

- imperfect and trifling execution, ib.;

- bungling daub of Mr. Fox, 636;

- sketch of Mr. Pitt less imperfect, but very inadequate to the original, ib.

- Buonaparte, entirely differs from the great Condé, 32;

- expedition of, 123;

- denies the existence of Christ, 372;

- proclaims his veneration for Mahomet, ib.;

- original letters from him and army, 647;

- object of his expedition, ib.;

- legislative talents of, 649;

- campaign of, in Italy, 770.

- C.

- Cambridge Intelligencer abuses the most respectable characters in Ireland, 130.

- Camille Jordan, address from, reviewed, 180;

- unjustly treated by the Analytical, 481.

- See Gifford.

- Catholics, Irish, Grattan’s intrigue with, 39;

- Catholic emancipation a mere pretext, 293.

- Catiline liberality and moderation, cant terms of, 443.

- Cato, of Utica, speech against conspirators who invited the Gallic nation to invade their country, 441.

- Census, Literary, reviewed, 666;

- abuses works and characters friendly to the constitution, 667;

- reviles Messrs. Pitt, Burke, Dundas, and Lawrence, ib.;

- praises Paine, Sheridan, and Fox, ib.;

- reprobates the Anti-Jacobin Reviewers for defending order, morals, religion, and the British constitution, ib.

- Chatham, Earl, conduct, character, measures, and success of, 576;

- contrasted with those of Lord Holland, ib.

- Christian ministers vindicated, 429;

- religion vilified by impious and obscene publications, 435;

- the firmest basis of every virtue, ib.;

- professors of, adjured to discourage Jacobinism, ib.;

- writings in vain plead to Jacobinical Reviewers, 437.

- Clare, Chancellor, speech of, 461;

- wise and able, 462.

- Cléry’s Journal of Louis XVI., 42;

- animated and interesting, 43;

- Lamballe’s head carried about, 44.

- Cobbett, efforts of, in America, 7.

- See Peter Porcupine.

- Committee, Secret. See Ireland and Irish.

- Connor’s, O’, State of Ireland, examined, 463;

- address, ditto, ib.;

- copious extracts from, by the Analytical Reviewers, 464;

- defends the United Irishmen, ib.;

- testimony at Maidstone, 290.

- Considerations on Public Affairs, reviewed, 25;

- author of, anti-Gallican, not anti-Jacobin, 32;

- ditto, 263;

- erroneously considers our contest as with the physical force of France only, 264;

- proposes merely a defensive war, 265;

- dangerous tendency of certain positions, 266;

- affected imitation of Burke, 267;

- inaccuracy of language, 268.

- Conspiracy against Social Order, with the part taken by the Jacobinical Reviews, 591.

- Constitution, British, its principles illustrated, 468;

- antiquity, nature, and excellence, ib.;

- history and principle, epochs, 469;

- Mr. Reeve’s assertion respecting, 470;

- the Duke of Norfolk’s, ditto, ib.;

- Reeve’s principle discussed and defended from English history, 471;

- ditto, from Lord Coke, 472.

- Contributions, voluntary, praised, 135;

- ridiculed by Unitarian dissenters, 136;

- Quakers’, pretence of scruples of conscience shown from their own conduct to be unfounded, ib.;

- proof of loyalty to the king, and attachment to the country, 140.

- Cornwallis, praises the proceedings of his predecessors, 490;

- speech of, 491;

- praises the regulars and militia, ib.

- Courier, abuses the friends of Government, 158;

- conduct of, respecting France, considered, 203;

- justifies the proceedings of France, extols her resources, and abuses England, 204;

- patronised by Lord Moira, 205;

- account of the Report of the Secret Committee, 247;

- endeavours to revive the spirits of Jacobins, 486;

- a disgrace to the English press, 376;

- justifies every enormity of the French, ib.;

- threatens to prosecute the Anti-Jacobin, ib.

- Critical Review of Wakefield’s Reply, reviewed, 73;

- praises Wakefield, 75;

- supports Kingsbury’s address to Dr. Watson, 78;

- inveighs against the Bishop, 79;

- remarks of, resemble those of the French regicides, 81;

- great praise of Edmund Oliver, 179;

- commends those parts of Monboddo’s Metaphysics which ascribe preeminent evil to England, 667.

- D.

- David, a painter, gives the Deity the face of Robespierre, 22.

- Democracy, apostrophe to, 35.

- Derwent Priory, a novel, frivolous and extravagant, 417.

- Directory, French, account of, 8;

- wish to suppress Cléry’s narrative, 51;

- arrogance of, 122;

- policy of, respecting foreign powers, 124;

- motives of, for proscribing the moderate members, 143;

- arts of, 493;

- tyranny of, 494;

- tries to excite dissension in foreign states, ib. See France and History.

- Falsehood, injustice, and violence of, to Switzerland, 505. See Underwald and French.

- Dissenters, political conduct of, 626;

- active members of the Corresponding Society, 631;

- Hardy, the shoemaker, one of their number, ib.;

- preacher of the tribe appeared to his character, ib.;

- chief supporters of Thelwall’s lectures, ib.;

- Paine, once a dissenting preacher, 632:

- Godwin, a dissenting minister, ib.;

- Gilbert Wakefield, ditto;

- conductors of the Monthly, Analytical, and Critical, ditto, ib.;

- conductors of the Chronicle and Courier, ditto;

- abstain from voluntary contributions, ib.;

- fast increasing, 633;

- the designs of their chief apostles discussed and exposed by Dr. Bisset, 590.

- Dissenters, Irish, declared, by Dr. Jackson to be determined Republicans, and friends of the French Revolution, 294.

- Dublin, instructions to citizens of, by Grattan, 38.

- Duigenan’s answer to Grattan, ib.

- E.

- Economists propagate principles inconsistent with the well-being of society, 4.

- Ego, Counsellor, soliloquy, 355.

- Emigrant, a novel, appendix, 741;

- moral, political, and religious tendency of, 742;

- gross and licentious sentiments of, 743;

- supposes the public law of Europe mouldering into ruins, 744;

- proposes the destruction of history to be replaced by romance, 745;

- a vehicle of revolutionary doctrines, 746.

- Emmet’s evidence before the Secret Committee, 299.

- Erskine, supposed author of the Secession from Parliament, 19;

- his egotism disgusting, 20;

- his testimony at Maidstone, 28;

- speech of, at the Whig Club, discussed, 526;

- advances a position contrary to reason and truth, ib.;

- copies the language and rant of Kingsbury, the dissenting minister and razor-maker, ib.;

- his allegations sanctioned by the authority of John Ball, Wat Tyler, and John Cade, 527.

- F.

- Fantoccini, political, 364.

- La Fayette, praised by the Analytical Review, 345.

- Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, transcribes the resolutions of National Committee, 293;

- innocence defended by the Morning Chronicle, 379.

- Fox, secession of, discussed, 17;

- duty as a member of Parliament, 18;

- conduct of, 19;

- proposed plan of ministry under, 20;

- resentment of, for the dismissal of the Duke of Norfolk, 90;

- observation of, in the Whig Club, concerning associations, 138;

- testimony at Maidstone, 285;

- promulgates his political creed at a tavern, 487;

- adopts Gilbert Wakefield’s opinions, 488;

- sentiments of, respecting Ireland, ib.;

- thinks the punishments of traitors cruelty, ib.;

- defence of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, ib.;

- insult to his constituents, 489;

- libel on parliaments, ib.;

- abuse of anticipated taxes, 490;

- letter to, 530;

- attachment of, to the accused, and convicted of sedition and treason, 531;

- reprobated, ib.;

- conduct at Maidstone, considered, 532;

- contrasted with Pitt. See Pitt.

- France, regicides of, find advocates in our metropolis, 2;

- principles and intrigues of, 4;

- not physical force of, formidable, but moral, 25;

- between monarchy and republic of, difference, of contest, 30;

- state of, Jacobinical, capital of, 33;

- internal state of, 122.

- Fraunces, an American Jacobin, 843;

- lends his wife, ib.;

- extorts money from a dupe on account of the loan, ib.;

- conduct of, illustrates Jacobin morality, 844.

- French, a nation of plundering banditti, 124;

- philosophers of, 445;

- Republic, conduct of, to the Venetians, 460;

- to the United Provinces, ib.;

- to the Germans, 461;

- now the time to crush, 495.

- See Directory and History, army, proceedings of, at Berne, 508.

- Friends of the People, recommend Oldfield’s Defence of Universal Suffrage, 456.

- G.

- Geddes, Dr., chiefly known as an arraigner of the Scriptures, 694.

- Gerald, Joseph, praised by the Analytical, 346.

- Geraldina, a novel, reviewed, 668;

- ignorance, frivolity, and folly of, 669.

- Gifford, John, preface to, see Jordan’s Address, 180;

- a zealous and able champion of our laws, religion, and morals, 181;

- abused by the Jacobins, ib.;

- address from, to the loyal associations, 183;

- list of Directory for England, Scotland, and Ireland, 184;

- salutary tendency, and ability of execution, 185;

- Second Letter of, to Mr. Erskine, review of, reviewed, 678;

- as a champion of the constitution, he, according to the Critical Reviewers, deserves no quarter, ib.;

- attacks the legal champion of opposition, surrounded by his army of tropes and figures, misrepresentations, egotism, and anachronism, ib.;

- exposes Mr. Erskine’s falsifications of dates, 679;

- illustrates the wrong conclusions in which the lawyer abounds, 680;

- proves the proceedings of seditious societies and demagogues to have been the causes of the proclamation, 1792;

- forcible extracts from, 681;

- refers Mr. Erskine to the Report of the Irish Committee, ib.

- Godwin, edits the Posthumous Works of his wife, 91;

- inculcates the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, ib.;

- reprobates marriage, 93;

- considers Mary Godwin as a model for female imitation, 94;

- certifies his wife’s constitution to have been amorous, 96;

- memoirs of her, ib.;

- account of his wife’s adventures as a kept mistress, 97;

- celebrates her happiness while the concubine of Imlay, ib.;

- informs the public that she was concubine to himself before she was his wife, 98;

- declares no person in his right senses will frequent places of public worship, ib.;

- morals examined, 331;

- if his principle be granted, his deduction not absurd, 332;

- his principle refuted, 333;

- praised by the Analytical, 335;

- compared to the Supreme Being, ib.

- Government can only perish by suicide, 9.

- See Constitution, Directory.

- Grattan, answer to, 37;

- character and projects of, 38;

- arguments for Catholic emancipation, 40;

- evidence concerning, 298.

- H.

- Hamilton, on the United States, 841;

- an able and staunch advocate for the American government, ib.;

- hostile to France, ib.;

- persecutions by Jacobins, 842.

- Harper, Goodloe, speech of, reviewed, 421;

- divides revolutionists into philosophers, Jacobins, and Sans-Culottes, 422;

- account of the artifices of French agents, 423.

- Hedgehog, Humphrey, abused by the Jacobinical Reviewers, 343;

- causes of their abuse, 344.

- Henshall, strictures of, on the Duke of Leinster’s and Mr. Sheridan’s motions, 300;

- character of, 310;

- treatise on the Saxon and English languages, 381;

- proposes the most effectual means of explaining Anglo-Saxon words, 382;

- proves the Saxon language the spring of pure English, 384;

- marks the changes of the English language, ib.;

- critique on the Diversions of Purley, 385;

- general character of, 386;

- strictures of, on the Gentleman’s Magazine and Analytical Review, 579;

- vindicates his Treatise on Saxon Literature, 580.

- History of politics, foreign and domestic, 119;

- general view of affairs in America and Europe, ib.;

- congress at Rastadt, 120;

- Mr. D’Arnim’s Answer to the King of Prussia, 121;

- discipline and courage of British seamen, 123;

- reflections, 125;

- domestic affairs, 127;

- origin and progress of the Irish rebellion, ib.;

- religion, a mere pretence, 128;

- real cause, Jacobin conspiracy, ib.;

- objects of the rebellion, separation from Britain, 129;

- friends of Government abused by the Jacobin prints, 130;

- an awful crisis, 240;

- congress at Rastadt, ib.;

- general confederacy recommended, 241;

- consequences of the late King of Prussia’s conduct, ib.;

- Russia, ib.;

- Naples, ib.;

- despotic power of the Directory, 243;

- France boasts of her virtue, ib.;

- wretched state of French finance, 245;

- indecision of the Emperor, 363;

- spirit and vigour of Russia and Turkey, ib.;

- inactivity of Prussia, ib.;

- conduct of the French at Milan, 370;

- anarchy of the Cisalpine Republic, ib.;

- objects of the revolutions from French politics, and French power, ib.;

- French, try to exclude British manufactures from the Continent, 374;

- in vain, ib.;

- Nelson’s victory, 483;

- immediate effects of, 484;

- accession of ships to Britain, ib.;

- Nelson’s victory prevents revival of rebellion in Ireland, 485;

- effects of Nelson’s victory, 605;

- proceedings at Rastadt, ib.;

- march of the Russian army, 607;

- internal state of France, 608;

- Erskine’s speech at the Whig Club, 609;

- plan of finance, 610;

- resolutions of merchants and bankers, ib.;

- conduct of opposition, 611;

- political state of Europe, 734;

- French declare war against Naples and Sardinia, 737;

- views of the French government, 738.

- Hoche, General, differs from Turenne, 32;

- life of, dedicated to the eternal Republic, by Rousselin, 754;

- birth and parentage of, 755;

- his father a dog-keeper, himself a groom, ib.;

- learns philosophy from Rousseau and French novels, ib.;

- enters the army, 756;

- a corporal, ib.;

- a commander-in-chief, 758;

- compared to Neptune, ib.;

- put in prison, 759;

- released, 760;

- conquers La Vendée, 761;

- proposes to invade England, 762;

- seized with a disorder in his bowels, 767;

- death and character of, 768.

- Holcroft’s Knave or Not, reviewed, 51;

- literary character of Holcroft, 52;

- novels, ib.;

- object of them, and his play the same, viz., to overturn our constitution and level rank and property, 53;

- execution feeble, ib.;

- an inaccurate observer and superficial reasoner, 54;

- though trifling, calculated to do much mischief, ib.;

- admonished of the inadequacy of his powers and knowledge, ib.

- See Jacobinism, Revolution, &c.

- Holland, Lord, contrasted with Lord Chatham, 576.

- Horsley’s, Dr.—able defence of the Church, 554;

- masterly observation on the political principles of Calvin, 627.

- See Bishop of Rochester.

- J.

- Jacobin, a receipt for making one, 617:

- half-educate him, ib.;

- place him under a dissenting schoolmaster, ib.;

- let him read Dr. Priestley’s writings, ib.;

- initiate him in debating societies, ib.;

- preach in a conventicle, ib.;

- write for the Monthly Magazine or Analytical Review, ib.;

- read Erskine’s Pamphlet, ib.

- See Loan of wives.

- Jacobin, faction exists in this country, 1;

- Jacobins employed in the States at war with France, 27;

- Republic, rapacious spirit of, 29;

- capital, 38;

- catch words of, 76;

- authors of revolutions, 422;

- principles of, adopted by the Annual Register, 458;

- prints and speeches. See Courier, Chronicle, Post, &c.

- Jacobinism, daily, weekly, monthly and annual vehicles of, 2;

- its malignant and intolerant spirit, ib.;

- characterised, 12;

- rise, progress, and effects of, 109;

- promoted by certain Reviews, ib.;

- history of (see Barruel), defined, 223;

- worse than ancient democracy, ib.;

- worse than former levelling principles, 224;

- than Cromwellianism, ib.;

- religious scepticism leads to, 225;

- promoted by visionary metaphysics, 226;

- promoted by Voltaire, D’Alembert, Diderot, 359, 712;

- promoted by Mrs. Macaulay, 713;

- by Price and Priestley, ib.;

- all dissenters not equally favourable to, 716;

- Socinians, Jacobinical, real Presbyterians, loyal, ib.

- Jones, the Lecturer, praised by the Analytical, 346.

- Ireland and Irish, crown and government of, 38;

- rebellion, causes of, 158;

- system of government respecting, 374;

- insurrection, account of, 424;

- barbarities of the rebels, 425;

- state of, 490;

- union with, recommended, 491.

- Irishmen, United, attempts of, to seduce the soldiers, 293;

- connection with the London Corresponding Society, 299.

- K.

- King, parent of the constitution, 471;

- proved from records, ib.;

- from the various parts and instruments of government, 472;

- opinion of Coke on this subject, 473.

- See Constitution and Reeves.

- Kingsbury answers the Bishop of Landaff, 78;

- first a dissenting minister, then a writer on razors, ib.;

- predicts the Irish traitors will be successful, 82.

- Knave or Not, a superficial but dangerous work, 51.

- See Holcroft.

- L.

- Lamballe, Madame, her head carried about to display Jacobin humanity, 44.

- Lashknave, Lawrence—account of the Corresponding Society, 220;

- letter from, 701.

- Lauderdale, Earl of, assertion of, respecting trade, refuted, 336;

- friendship of, with Brissot and his coadjutors, 513.

- Lavater’s Address to the Directory, 280;

- a mixture of adulation and abuse, ib.;

- praises the French Revolution, 282;

- reprobates the invasion of Switzerland, ib.

- Lecturers, Pulpit, in London, often methodistical and ignorant, 399.

- Letter to the Bishop of Salisbury, 409;

- petulant insolence of, 410;

- elegant extracts from, ib.;

- refined phraseology, 411;

- abuse of, 412;

- scandalous insinuation of, against an eminent prelate, 413.

- Letter to The Anti-Jacobin Review on modern Catilines, and the evidence at Maidstone, 593;

- to Mr. Fox, reviewed, 530 (see Fox);

- to the Bishop of Rochester from Mr. Rhys, reviewed, 534;

- position that war is, in all cases, unchristian disproved, ib.;

- no precepts against it delivered by our Saviour, 533.

- Liberality, real, an excellent quality, 440;

- term often misapplied by Jacobins, ib.

- Licentiousness of the press, 1.

- Lloyd’s Edmund Oliver, declamatory abuse of the military profession, 177;

- censures the war with the regicides, 178;

- proposes to level rank and property, 179;

- doctrines praised. See Critical and Analytical.

- Loan of wives, a practice among Jacobins. See Fraunces.

- Louis XVI., Cléry’s journal of confinement and sufferings of, 42;

- persecution of, 43;

- brutal treatment of, 45;

- audacious insolence to, 46;

- abused by newspapers, 47;

- exemplary conduct of, 48;

- monstrous trial of, 49;

- execution of, 50.

- Lovers’ Vows reviewed, 479;

- object, tendency, and character, 480.

- M.

- Mallet du Pan, British Mercury of, reviewed, 403;

- object of the work, ib.;

- throws light on French principles, ib.;

- able and useful advice in the preface, 404;

- gratitude to the British nation, 405;

- analysis and extracts, 406;

- account of Swiss cantons, 407;

- description of a Swiss wedding, 408;

- account of affairs in Italy, 493;

- account of the destruction of Helvetic liberty, 501;

- character of the French Revolutionists, 502;

- effects on other nations, 503;

- state of resources of Switzerland, 504;

- character of Weiss the French partisan, 506;

- conduct of, 507;

- pathetic description of the last efforts of Berne, 509;

- reflections, 511;

- character of Buonaparte, 513;

- British Mercury recommended to all crowned heads, ib.;

- general character of the work, 515.

- Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, reviewed, 91;

- fable, object, and principles of, 92;

- asserts that her friend Jemima’s understanding was sharpened and invigorated by her occupations as a thief and a prostitute, ib.;

- particular description of Maria and her lover, 93;

- restraints on adultery, according to Maria, a flagrant wrong to women, ib.

- See Godwin and Wollstonecraft.

- Martinez’ persecution of Peter Porcupine, 9;

- proceedings of, 10.

- Menard, infamous pretext of, for invading Switzerland, 511.

- Meyers, De, Fragments on Paris, 268;

- criterion of the state of a nation, ib.;

- dress and amusements at Paris, 269;

- extracts from, 270;

- strictures on, 271;

- state of the arts and sciences at Paris, 272;

- his account recommended to votaries of innovation, 273;

- character of his work, 279.

- Mifflin, Governor, republican morality of, 14;

- celebrates the dethronement of Louis XVI., ib.;

- praises the Botany Bay citizens, ib.

- Ministry, proposed plan of, by Mr. Fox, 20.

- Moira, Earl of, patronises the Courier, 204;

- his letter to Colonel Mahon discussed, 206;

- censured, 207;

- unfounded account of Ireland, 294;

- speech in the Irish Parliament, considered, discussed, and censured, 461.

- Monboddo’s Ancient Metaphysics, review of, reviewed, 565.

- See Monthly and Critical Reviews.

- Monroe’s View of the Conduct of the Executive, considered, 824;

- Monroe, of the French faction in America, 825;

- a promoter of Jacobin doctrines, 826.

- Monthly Magazine detected, 198;

- published by a French citizen, ib.;

- patronised by the Directory, 199;

- dialogue from, 327;

- praises book clubs, 476 (see R. Phillips and Jacobin Prints);

- detection of, 570;

- John Thelwall a contributor to, ib.;

- sneers at loyalty, 572;

- abuses Lord Auckland, ib.;

- reviles Lord Carlisle, 573;

- inveighs against Mallet du Pan, ib.;

- reprobates Peter Porcupine, ib.;

- slanders Mr. Harper, ib.;

- all because enemies to Jacobinism, ib.

- Monthly Review, to be reviewed by The Anti-Jacobin, 3;

- dangerous tendency of, 56;

- character and operations of, 58;

- unfriendly to the constitution as actually constituted, 60;

- review of, 68;

- arts of, to prevent the circulation of constitutional works, 71;

- reviewed, 171;

- false statement by, 172;

- curious observation of, ib.;

- examined, 173;

- false and absurd remark of, on Switzerland, 174;

- ignorance of, 175;

- praises the Spirit of the Public Journals, 331;

- asserts Oldfield’s Abuse of Parliament to be demonstration, 453;

- praises his support of universal suffrage, 456;

- praises Lord Moira for apologising for our officers (see Spirit of Public Journals and Jacobin Prints);

- quotes the most exceptionable passages of Monboddo’s Metaphysics, 567;

- ridicules David and Solomon because kings and Scripture characters, 569.

- Moore, Dr., a friend of Brissot, 513.

- Morning Chronicle resembles the Monthly Review, 58;

- dialogue from, 326;

- account of Tierney’s speech, 377;

- extracts from, 378;

- continues its virulence, 379;

- invectives against the saviours of Ireland, 497;

- idea of rebellion, 498.

- See Spirit of Public Journals and Jacobin Prints.

- Morning Post, invectives of, against ministers, 497.

- See Jacobin Prints and Spirit of Public Journals.

- Murphy, venerable literary character of, 191.

- See Arminius.

- N.

- Naples, loyalty and patriotism of, 493.

- See History.

- Nelson, splendid victory of, 483;

- momentous consequences from, 484.

- See History.

- Noble’s Lives of English Regicides, 445;

- extracts from, 446;

- matter excellent, composition reprehensible, 448.

- Norfolk, Duke of, evidence at Maidstone, 289;

- assertions respecting the British constitution refuted, 470;

- doctrine of the sovereignty of the people erroneous, 473.

- P.

- Paine, Thomas, letter of, to the people of France, 21;

- examined, 22;

- praises the French Revolution, 23;

- supposes extraordinary virtues in the number five, 24;

- doctrines of, propagated by the Corresponding Society, 111;

- praises the French Directory, 141;

- reasons like the Analytical Reviewers, ib.;

- a flatterer of tyrants, 142;

- his Rights of Man lead to ruin, 143;

- a member of tyrannical clubs, 145.

- Paris, state of, 272;

- a scene of theft and robbery, 273;

- people of, disaffected to the government, 275;

- corrupted morals of, 277;

- former happiness of, ib.

- Parliament, Irish, report of Committee of, contains an historical sketch of Irish rebellion, 292;

- of means of diffusion, ib.;

- treasonable newspapers, ib.;

- general result of, 295.

- Parry threatens to prosecute The Anti-Jacobin for attacking the Courier, 376;

- challenged to do so, ib.

- Pennsylvania, court of, 11;

- famous for bastards and cuckoldom, 15;

- civic feast in Philadelphia, ib.

- Perry, a brisk, bouncing liquor, wants strength, 248.

- Phillips, R., editor of the Monthly Magazine, 200;

- history of, ib.;

- conduct at Leicester, ib.;

- confined two years for sedition, ib.;

- establishes the Monthly Magazine, ib.;

- other labours of, in the cause, 201;

- praised by the Analytical, ib.;

- the friend of Holcroft, Wakefield, and Godwin, ib.;

- purveyor-general to Jacobins, 325;

- undertakes to TEACH our King, who, of his subjects, deserve reward, 635;

- supposed to be sprung from Paul Phillips, clerk of the parish, and president of an ale-house club for managing the nation in the reign of Queen Anne, ib.

- Pitt, the Right Hon. William, contrasted with Mr. Fox, 575;

- education and juvenile studies, 576;

- honourable election of, ib.;

- addicted neither to gaming nor debauchery, 577;

- political principles and conduct of, ib.;

- risks popularity for the good of his country, 578;

- measures and success of, 579;

- farther contrasted with Mr. Fox, 702.

- Poetry, explanation of the print, 115;

- Progress of Liberty, 116;

- Congratulatory Ode, 117;

- United Irishmen, 118;

- Wanderings of Iapis, 228;

- Address to the Premier Peer in imitation of Horace, 233;

- Jacobin Council, 235;

- sent with a Shilling, 236;

- Ages of Reason, ib.;

- Epistle from Miss Seward to Mr. Lister, 237;

- Anarchists, an Ode, 365;

- Honey Moon of Fox and Tooke in Imitation of Horace and Lydia, 597;

- Lines to Lady Nelson, ib.;

- song on Admiral Nelson’s Victory, 599.

- Polybius, admirable, general principles of government, thinks a mixed constitution the best, 521.

- See Gillies.

- Porcupine, Peter, efforts of, in America, 7;

- Republican Judge, ib.;

- attempts of Spanish Ambassador against, 9;

- examines the justice of the REPUBLICAN JUDGE, 11;

- characterizes republican justice, 12;

- Jacobinism, ib.;

- Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats, 342;

- abused by the Analytical Review, ib.;

- will of, 725;

- Diplomatic Blunderbuss of, ib.;

- excellent tendency and able execution, 836;

- Political Censor of, for January, 1797, 836;

- ditto, for March, 1797, 839;

- eloquence and ability of both, ib.

- Porcupiniana, 479;

- strictures on the Whig Club, ib.;

- on Volney the Atheist, 592;

- on Priestley, ib.

- Portland, Duke of, junction with Mr. Pitt justified, 206;

- obligations of the country to him and friends, 474.

- Price. See Jacobinism and Dissenters.

- Priestley, Dr., reduced state of, 16;

- declares Republican governments to be most arbitrary, ib.;

- Original Letters to, reviewed, 146;

- authority of, referred to, to sanction the abuse of the Church, 476;

- misrepresentations of, 555;

- the firebrand philosopher, 592;

- declared intention to blow up the Church, 626.

- Prints, Jacobin, concur in asserting that the facts, reported by the Secret Committee, were before known to them, 247;

- accuse the Navy Board of inactivity, 377;

- misrepresentations and falsehoods of, noted, 379;

- ditto, 496.

- Prospectus of the Anti-Jacobin Review, 1;

- of the old Englishman, 601.

- Prostitution. See Mary Wollstonecraft.

- Q.

- Quakers, contributed nothing voluntarily to the State, 136;

- pretence of conscience unfounded, 137;

- loyalty of, exposed, 356;

- origin and principles of the sect, 357;

- farther exposed, 709;

- ten commandments of, 711.

- R.

- Reform, a veil for the most dangerous conspiracies, 139.

- Reformers, in unison of counsels with France, 66;

- coincidence traced, ib.

- Regicides, English, Lives of (see Noble);

- French have sworn hatred to the Monarchy, even of the Supreme Being, 446.

- Reviews, democratical, the mere instruments of faction, 2.

- Revolution, French, three classes of friends of, 741;

- proposes to establish universal Pyrrhonism, 743;

- germs, principles, and causes of, 746;

- expressions built upon, 747.

- Rivers’s History and Conduct of the Dissenters, reviewed, 626;

- character of John Knox, 627;

- dissenters inimical to our establishment, ib.;

- character of Price, 629.

- Robespierre praised by republicans and levellers, 22.

- Robinson’s (Mrs.) Walsingham, reviewed, 160;

- literary character of, 161;

- political principles, ib.;

- misrepresents the manners of the great, and state of the poor, 162;

- admonished to read Blair’s Lectures, 163;

- not to go beyond her depth, 164.

- Robinson’s, Anthony, View of the English Wars, 613;

- life and character of the author, 614;

- apprenticed to a dissenting linen-draper, ib.;

- a sectarian preacher, 615;

- an orator in debating societies, ib.;

- his work a mere vehicle of Jacobinism, 617.

- Rousseau, character of, 360;

- doctrine of, 748;

- political, 749.

- S.

- Saint Lambert, principles of morality, 796;

- new catechism, 797.

- Sallust, remarks of, on false moderation towards conspirators, 442.

- Scriptures defended against Socinians and Deists, 439;

- attacks on, give them new force, ib.;

- revilers of (see Geddes).

- Secession. See Fox.

- Seditious meetings, Bill for restraining, praised, 66.

- Shears, Report of Trial of, reviewed, 540.

- Sheridan’s testimony at Maidstone, 286.

- Smith’s (Charlotte) Young Philosopher reviewed, 187;

- she has talents for novel-writing, ib.;

- defects, egotism, and repetition of the same story, ib.;

- politics beyond her reach, 188;

- abuse of kings, ib.;

- blunder about Roman demagogues, ib.;

- frivolous and false remarks, 189;

- praised by the Analytical, 190.

- Social order defended against the principles of the French revolution, by Abbé de Voisin, 772;

- ability of the work, 773;

- principles of Government, 775;

- confutation of the Rights of Man doctrines, 776;

- confutation of the Abbé Sièyes, 779.

- Society, Corresponding, object of, 111 (see Thomas Paine);

- account of. See Lawrence Lashknave.

- Societies, Debating. See Police Magistrates.

- Spirit of the public journals, 324;

- contains the quintessence of Jacobinism, ib.;

- extracts from the most Jacobinical publications, 325;

- address of, to the soldiers, 328.

- See Monthly, Critical, and Analytical Reviews; Courier, Post, Chronicle, Monthly Magazine, and R. Phillips.

- Stiguer, the Swiss patriot, high character of, 503.

- Stonehouse’s Letters to Priestley, 146;

- predict the downfal of every government, 148;

- exhibit every feature of the Jacobin character, ib.;

- praise the new Annual Register, 150.

- Switzerland and Swiss. See Mallet du Pan and History.

- T.

- Talleyrand, Perigord, a friend of Opposition Members, 151.

- Taxation, plan of, on income justified, 487.

- Thanet, Earl of, evidence of, at Maidstone, 290.

- Theatre, 114–248–479.

- See Cambro Britons, Lovers’ Vows, &c.

- Thomas’s Consequences of an English Invasion, reviewed, 459;

- sermon on public worship, 672.

- Toasts, seditious, 69;

- standing of the Corresponding Society and Whig Club, 80.

- See Fox and the Duke of Norfolk.

- Tooke, John Horne—Diversions of Purley considered, 385;

- political anecdotes of, ib.;

- literary merit ascertained, 386 (see Henshall);

- Diversions of Purley, reviewed, 655;

- Portraits by (see Pitt and Fox).

- Turenne, different from Hoche, 32.

- U.

- Underwald, Fall of, reviewed, 663;

- tyranny of the Directory, 664;

- perfidy of, 665.

- V.

- Vaurien, review of, reviewed, 685;

- merit as a satirical performance, ib.;

- exhibits the consequences of Godwin’s Political Justice, 686;

- describes the various modes of seizing on property, 687.

- Voltaire, observations of, concerning government, 9;

- character, 360;

- philosophy, religion, and morality of, 751;

- life of, by Verney, 816.

- Vultures, modern, 812.

- W.

- Wakefield, admonition to, 36;

- Reply to the Bishop of Landaff, 72;

- Letter to the Attorney General, 151;

- scurrilous abuse of Mr. Pitt, 152;

- asserts all human governments to be incorrigibly profligate, 154;

- pretends to control legislature, magistracy, and administration, 155;

- character and motives of, examined, 156;

- letter of, to Mr. Wilberforce, 551.

- Wansey, Letter of, to the Bishop of Salisbury, answered, 542;

- deplorable malady of, 544.

- War, causes of, the French doctrines and revolution, 27.

- Whig Club tends to the subversion of the Constitution, 60 (see Fox and the Duke of Norfolk);

- proceedings of, versified, 303;

- Erskine’s speech at, 609.

- See Fox, Jacobinism, and Corresponding Society.

- Whitbread, evidence of, at Maidstone, 290.

- Williams, Helen Maria, Jacobinical principles of, 146;

- patronizes the New Annual Register, 158.

- Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Mary, Memoirs of, 94;

- keeps her father in awe, ib.;

- lively fancy without knowledge and habits of reasoning, ib.;

- so qualified becomes one of the Analytical Reviewers, ib.;

- undertakes to answer Burke, 95;

- answer such as might have been expected, ib.;

- her constitution testified by her husband to have been amorous, ib.;

- Rights of Woman characterised, ib.;

- her passions inflamed by celibacy, 96;

- falls in love with a married man, ib.;

- at the breaking out of the war betakes herself to our enemies, ib.;

- intimate with the French leaders under Robespierre, 97;

- with Thomas Paine, ib.;

- taken by Imlay into keeping, ib.;

- her husband declares that her soul had panted for that connection, ib.;

- her doctrines, illustrated by her example, not new, ib.;

- as old as prostitution, ib.;

- proposes to elude her creditors, ib.;

- deserted by her keeper, ib.;

- derives particular gratification from Hamilton Rowan, ib.;

- pursues her keeper to England, ib.;

- her great aversion to this country, ib.;

- being without a lover attempts to drown herself, 98;

- appointed kept mistress to the philosopher Godwin, ib.;

- married to the philosopher, ib.;

- does not believe in future punishments, 99;

- from the time she became enlightened discontinued public worship, ib.;

- her life illustrates Jacobin morality and religion, ib.;

- high praises of her life, doctrines, and conduct by the Analytical Reviewers, 101;

- prophetic apostrophe to her by them, 402.

- See Maria, Godwin, Prostitution, and Analytical Review.

THE END.

1. On the subject of the respective authorship of the contributions to The Anti-Jacobin, see The Works of John Hookham Frere, in verse and prose, with Prefatory Memoir. Edited by his Nephews, H. and Sir Bartle Frere, and The Edinburgh Review for April, 1872, p. 476.

2. It will be remembered that these eminent persons were chosen by Lord Malmesbury to accompany him on his mission to Lille and were associated with him in the abortive negotiations for peace.

3. It is surprising that the satirist’s attention was not attracted to the scene in Stella, in which one of the heroines describes the rapid growth of her passion to its object: “I know not if you observed that you had enchained my interest from the first moment of our first meeting. I at least soon became aware that your eyes sought mine. Ah, Fernando, then my uncle brought the music, you took your violin, and, as you played, my eyes rested upon you free from care. I studied every feature of your face; and, during an unexpected pause, you fixed your eyes upon—upon me! They met mine! How I blushed, how I looked away! You observed it, Fernando; for from that moment I felt that you looked oftener over your music-book, often played out of tune, to the disturbance of my uncle. Every false note, Fernando, went to my heart. It was the sweetest confusion I ever felt in my life.”

4. The whole of this jeu d’esprit has been claimed for FRERE, but on unsatisfactory evidence. It is much more in CANNING’S way as a student of oratory, which FRERE was not.

5. [See pages 32, 34.—ED.]

6. [A very eminent Mathematician and Physicist, and the inventor of descriptive geometry; born in 1746. In 1792 he was appointed Minister of Marine; and afterwards took an active part in the equipment of the Army. After founding the École Polytechnique, he was sent into Italy to receive the pictures and statues seized by Buonaparte. He then joined the expedition to Egypt, and rendered great service both in the war operations and in the labours of the Egyptian Institute, the results of which were published by command of Napoleon in that magnificent and extensive work the Description de l’Égypte. He died in 1818.—ED.]

7. [Parodied from Payne Knight’s poem, “The Progress of Civil Society,” which is admirably ridiculed in No. XV. post.—ED.]

8. [By SOUTHEY.—ED.]

9. [The original poem, by Southey, is here subjoined:—

THE WIDOW.

SAPPHICS.

Cold was the night wind; drifting fast the snows fell;

Wide were the downs, and shelterless and naked;

When a poor wand’rer struggled on her journey,

Weary and way-sore.

Drear were the downs, more dreary her reflections;

Cold was the night wind, colder was her bosom:

She had no home, the world was all before her,

She had no shelter.

Fast o’er the heath a chariot rattled by her:

“Pity me!” feebly cried the poor night wanderer.

“Pity me, strangers! lest with cold and hunger

Here I should perish.

“Once I had friends—but they have all forsook me!

Once I had parents—they are now in heaven!

I had a home once—I had once a husband—

Pity me, strangers!

“I had a home once—I had once a husband—

I am a widow, poor and broken-hearted!”

Loud blew the wind, unheard was her complaining;

On drove the chariot.

Then on the snow she laid her down to rest her;

She heard a horseman: “Pity me!” she groaned out.

Loud was the wind, unheard was her complaining;

On went the horseman.

Worn out with anguish, toil, and cold and hunger,

Down sunk the wanderer; sleep had seized her senses:

There did the traveller find her in the morning—

God had released her.]

1796.

10. [GEORGE TIERNEY, M.P. for Southwark, who in early times was among the more forward of the Reformers. “He was,” says Lord Brougham, “an assiduous member of the Society of Friends of the People, and drew up the much and justly celebrated Petition in which that useful body laid before the House of Commons all the more striking particulars of its defective title to the office of representing the people, which that House then, as now, but with far less reason, assumed.” Notwithstanding the above severe verses, Tierney served under Canning as Master of the Mint, during the latter’s short administration in 1827.—ED.]

11. [In Feb., 1797, about 1400 Frenchmen landed at Pembroke, but surrendered without resistance to the country people, whom Lord CAWDOR (who had been elevated to the Peerage in the preceding year) had armed with scythes and pitchforks. He was succeeded by his elder son, who was created Earl Cawdor in 1827, and died 1860.—ED.]

12. [This account will be found on p. 32, et seq.—ED.]

13. See proclamation of the Directory.

14. The “too long calumniated author of the Rights of Man”.—See a Sir Something Burdett’s speech at the Shakspeare, as referred to in the Courier of Nov. 30.

15. The Guillotine at Arras was, as is well known to every Jacobin, painted “Couleur de Rose”.

16. See Weekly Examiner, No. 11. Extract from the Courier.

17. La petite Fenétre, and la Razoire Nationale, fondling expressions applied to the Guillotine by the Jacobins in France, and their pupils here.

18. [The original poem is here subjoined:—

THE SOLDIER’S WIFE.

DACTYLICS.

Weary way-wanderer, languid and sick at heart,

Travelling painfully over the rugged road;

Wild-visaged wanderer! Ah! for thy heavy chance.

Sorely thy little ones drag by thee barefooted,

Cold is the baby that hangs at thy bending back—

Meagre and livid, and screaming its wretchedness.

Woe-begone mother, half anger, half agony,

As over thy shoulder thou lookest to hush the babe,

Bleakly the blinding snow beats in thy haggard face.

Thy husband will never return from the war again;

Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as charity—

Cold are thy famished babes—God help thee, widowed one!]

1795.

19. [“Walked to the Old Bailey to see DAVID ISAAC EATON in the pillory. The mob was decidedly friendly to him. His having published PAINE’S Age of Reason was not an intelligible offence to them.”—Crabb Robinson’s Diary, i. 386.

The Proclamation against Seditious Writings, however, was supported by some influential Whigs. “PITT had previously sent copies of it to several members of the Opposition in both Houses, requesting their advice,” says Lord Malmesbury. Whether PITT desired it or not, no measure could have been more effectual for dividing the Whig party.—ED.]

20. [See p. 38.—ED.]

21. My worthy friend the bellman had promised to supply an additional stanza; but the business of assisting the lamplighter, chimney-sweeper, &c., with complimentary verses for their worthy masters and mistresses, pressing on him at this season, he was obliged to decline it. [A quiz at the third stanza, which was contributed by COLERIDGE.—ED.]

22. [Thomas Dyche was a clergyman, and kept a school at Stratford-le-Bow. He was the author of an English dictionary, a spelling-book, a Latin vocabulary, &c. He died about 1750. Thomas Dilworth, whose educational works were long popular, was for some time his assistant, and then set up a school for himself at Wapping. He died in 1781.—ED.]

23. [and should have been omitted.—ED.]

24. [The Latin Verses, much admired at the time, were written by the Marquis WELLESLEY at Walmer Castle, in 1797, at the desire of PITT, and were published after the author’s departure for India, in the Anti-Jacobin. The beautiful translation of them was by Lord MORPETH, afterwards sixth Earl of CARLISLE, whose mother was the daughter of GRANVILLE LEVESON GOWER, first Marquis of STAFFORD. He died in 1848.]

25. The original poem as translated, or rather paraphrased, by Prof. J. D. Carlyle, is here subjoined:—

THE CHOICE.

Sabla! thou saw’st th’ exulting foe

In fancied triumphs crown’d:

Thou heard’st their frantic females throw

These galling taunts around:

“Make now YOUR CHOICE—the terms we give,

Desponding victims, hear!

These fetters on your hands receive,

Or in your hearts the spear.”

“And is the conflict o’er,” we cried,

And lie we at your feet,

“And dare you vauntingly decide

The fortune we must meet?

“A brighter day we soon shall see,

Tho’ now the prospect lowers,

And Conquest, Peace, and Liberty

Shall gild our future hours.”

The foe advanc’d—in firm array

We rush’d o’er SABLA’S sands,

And the red sabre mark’d our way

Amidst their yielding bands.

Then as they writh’d in death’s cold grasp,

We cried, “OUR CHOICE is made!

These hands the sabre’s hilt shall clasp,

Your hearts shall have the blade!”

As Carlyle’s version is although a spirited not a faithful one, the Editor is induced to present a literal translation, from Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, by C. J. Lyall, 1885, 8vo., p. 10. The contest was not a battle but one of the frequent skirmishes between neighbouring clans. Sabla is Carlyle’s rendering of Sahbal a Wady, in Arabia, overlooked by twin peaks.

26. [W. H. Ireland, the Shakespeare forger.—ED.]

27. [The above ballad refers to an attempt by FRANCIS, fifth DUKE OF BEDFORD, to escape the payment of the Assessed Taxes upon twenty-five of his servants, on the plea that as the Helpers did not wear a Livery, and were engaged by the week, they were not liable to the duty. This defence was, however, unsuccessful.—ED.]

28. Twaie coneynge Clerks.—Coneynge is the participle of the verb to ken or know. It by no means imports what we now denominate a knowing one: on the contrary, twaie coneynge clerks means two intelligent and disinterested clergymen.

29. Seely is evidently the original of the modern word silly. A seely wight, however, by no means imports what is now called a silly fellow, but means a man of simplicity of character, devoid of all vanity, and of any strange, ill-conducted ambition, which, if successful, would immediately be fatal to the man who indulged it.

30. Good advisament means—cool consideration.

31. [FRANCIS, fifth DUKE OF BEDFORD, died after a severe surgical operation, March 2, 1802, at the early age of thirty-six. “The Duke of Bedford’s energetic and capacious mind,” says Lord Ossory, “his enlarged way of thinking, and elevated sentiments, together with the habits and pursuits of his life, peculiarly qualified him for his high station and princely fortune. He was superior to bad education and disadvantages for forming his character, and turned out certainly a first-rate man, though not free from imperfections. His uprightness and truth were unequalled; his magnanimity, fortitude and consideration, in his last moments, taken so unprepared as he was, were astonishing.”

On the 16th March, C. J. Fox, in moving for a new writ for the borough of Tavistock, vacated by Lord John Russell, who had succeeded to the titles and estates of his deceased brother, took occasion to pronounce a beautiful and glowing eulogium on his departed friend and firm supporter.—ED.]

32. [The Anti-Jacobin (in No. 8) thus speaks of the threatened invasion of this country, for which “they have publicly formed, and (as they term it) organized their ARMY OF ENGLAND. Its Advanced Guard is to be formed from a chosen Corps of Banditti, the most distinguished for Massacre and Plunder. It is to be preceded, as it naturally ought, by the Genius of French Revolutionary Liberty, and it will be welcomed, as they tell us, ‘on the ensanguined shores of Britain, by the generous friends of Parliamentary Reform’. In the interval, however, till these golden dreams are realized, it is necessary that this ‘Army of England,’ while it yet remains in France, should be fed, paid, and clothed. For this purpose a new and separate fund is provided (in the same spirit with the rest of their measures), and is to be termed ‘THE LOAN OF ENGLAND,’ to be raised by anticipation on the security and mortgage of all the Lands and Property of this Country. This gasconade, which sounds too extravagant for reality, is nevertheless seriously announced by a message from the Executive Directory; and we are told that the Merchants of Paris are eagerly offering to advance, on such a security, the money which is to defray the expenses of the Expedition against this country.”—ED.]

33. [The above verses refer to the memorable events of the 18th Fructidor, Sept. 4, 1797 (the model of Prince Louis Napoléon’s coup d’état, Dec. 2, 1851), when Rewbell, Barras, and Laréveillère-Lepaux, on the plea that the Republic was in danger, got rid of their fellow-directors, Carnot (grandfather to the present President of the French Republic) and Barthélemy, who were replaced by Merlin and François de Neufchateau, dispersed by military force the members of the Five Hundred and the Ancients, fifty-three of whom were condemned to transportation—banished the editors, &c., of forty-two newspapers—annulled the elections of forty-eight departments—and effected other arbitrary measures without opposition. The springs of the movement were throughout directed by Buonaparte, seconded by Hoche and Augereau. This event was the true era of the commencement of military despotism in France. But THIERS considers “the Directory by these means prevented civil war, and substituted an arbitrary but necessary act of power, carried out with energy, but with all the mildness and moderation that revolutionary times would allow”.—ED.]

34. [Alluding to the National Thanksgiving for the three great naval victories achieved by Lords Howe, St. Vincent, and Duncan. On this occasion the King and Queen, with their family, the Houses of Lords and Commons, &c., went in procession to St. Paul’s, where Divine Service was performed. The Government Papers attributed to the Opposition Press a desire to throw discredit on this proceeding. “The consequence of the Procession to St. Paul’s” (says the Morning Post, of Dec. 25) “was, that one man returned thanks to the Almighty, and one woman was kicked TO DEATH.”—ED.]

35. [Mary Frampton, in her journal (Dec. 20, 1797), gives a lively account of the King’s attendance at St. Paul’s for Duncan’s Victory on the 11th Oct. “The King,” she says, “stopped under the dome, and conversed for some time with Lord Duncan and the sailors; and, to the great scandal of good church-goers, did not hold his tongue for any considerable time together during the service.... Pitt was attacked at Temple Bar by three ruffians, who rushed from the mob and seized upon the door of his carriage undoubtedly with an intent to drag him out, but three of the Light Horse Volunteers rode up, and backing their horses against them, sent them head over heels to the place from whence they came, rather faster than they ventured out.” Page 99.—ED.]

36. [PRINCE TALLEYRAND.—ED.]

37. GENERAL DANICAN, in his Memoirs, tells us, that while he was in command, a felon, who had assumed the name of Brutus, chief of a revolutionary tribunal at Rennes, said to his colleagues, on Good Friday, “Brothers, we must put to death this day, at the same hour the counter-revolutionist Christ died, that young devotee who was lately arrested”: and this young lady was guillotined accordingly, and her corpse treated with every possible species of indecent insult, to the infinite amusement of a vast multitude of spectators.

38. The reader will find in the works of PETER PORCUPINE [W. COBBETT] (a spirited and instructive writer) an ample and satisfactory commentary on this and the following stanza. The French themselves inform us, that by the several modes of destruction here alluded to, upwards of 30,000 persons were butchered at Lyons, and this once magnificent city almost levelled to the ground, by the command of a wretched actor (COLLOT D’HERBOIS), whom they had formerly hissed from the stage. From the same authorities we learn, that at Nantz 27,000 persons, of both sexes, were murdered; chiefly by drowning them in plugged boats. The waters of the Loire became putrid, and were forbidden to be drunk, by the savages who conducted the massacre:—that at Paris 150,000, and in La Vendée 300,000 persons were destroyed.—Upon the whole, the French themselves acknowledge, that TWO MILLIONS of human beings (exclusive of the military) have been sacrificed to the principles of EQUALITY and the RIGHTS OF MAN: 250,000 of these are stated to be WOMEN, and 30,000 CHILDREN. In this last number, however, they do not include the unborn; nor those who started from the bodies of their agonizing parents, and were stuck upon the bayonets of those very men who are now to compose the “ARMY OF ENGLAND,” amidst the most savage acclamations.

[At the beginning of the revolution, some companies of children, called Bonsbons, were dressed and drilled as National Guards, as a compliment to the Dauphin, who to please the Parisians sometimes donned that uniform. Similar companies were afterwards formed in Brittany, and employed to shoot those poor wretches whom the two guillotines could not dispatch in sufficient numbers!—Biog. Univ., art. St. André.—ED.]

39. At Lyons, JABOGUES, the second murderer (the Actor being the first), in his speech to the Democratic Society, used these words—“Down with the edifices raised for the profit or the pleasure of the rich; down with them ALL. COMMERCE and ARTS are useless to a warlike people, and are the destruction of that SUBLIME EQUALITY which France is determined to spread over the globe.” Such are the consequences of RADICAL REFORM! Let any merchant, farmer, or landlord; let any husband or father consider this, and then say, “Shall we or shall we not contribute a moderate sum, IN PROPORTION TO OUR ANNUAL EXPENDITURE, for the purpose of preserving ourselves from the fate of Lyons, La Vendée, and Nantz?”

STYPTIC.

40. [Probably written by the Rt. Hon. John Courtnay.]

41. Line 10.—[One of the distinguishing features of the “ANTI-JACOBIN” was their articles devoted to an exposure of the “Lies, Misrepresentations, and Mistakes” of the Opposition Press.—ED.]

42. Line 23.—[George Hammond, at this time Canning’s colleague as Under-Secretary of State; the latter being succeeded by John Hookham Frere.—ED.]

43. Line 30.—[Lord Morpeth, son of the (fifth) Earl of Carlisle who was satirized by Byron in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”.—ED.]

44. Line 32.—[George Granville Leveson Gower, eldest son of the first Marquis of Stafford, born in 1758, became second Marquis in 1803, and created Duke of Sutherland in 1833. He was one of Canning’s intimate college companions.—ED.]

45. Line 41.—[James Harris, first Earl of Malmesbury, one of the most distinguished of English diplomatists. His “Diaries and Correspondence,” published by his grandson, the third Earl, throw much light on the transactions of the eventful period to which they refer.—ED.]

46. Line 42.—[George Ellis, the accomplished editor of the “Specimens of the Early English Poets, and of Early English Metrical Romances,” &c. In early life he contributed to the Rolliad, being the author of Nos. 1 and 2, in Part I., and Nos. 1 and 2, in Part II. Of the Political Eclogues he wrote the one entitled “Charles Jenkinson”. In the Probationary Odes, he wrote No. II. “Ode on the New Year, by Lord Mulgrave,” and No. XX. “Irregular Ode for the King’s Birth Day, by Sir G. Howard”. Afterwards, however, he became much attached to Pitt, and acted as Secretary to Lord Malmesbury during his unsuccessful negotiations with the French for peace, at Lisle, 1797. Horace Walpole thus alludes to him, in a letter of 24th June, 1783: “English people are in fashion at Versailles. A Mr. Ellis, who wrote some pretty verses at Bath two or three years ago, is a favourite there.” Sir Walter Scott addressed to him Canto V. of “Marmion”. He died in 1815, aged 70.—ED.]

47. Line 71.—[The Rt. Hon. Henry Dundas (afterwards created Viscount Melville), in the Commons, and Lord Grenville in the Lords, were Pitt’s most efficient supporters.—ED.]

48. Line 16.—[Brookes’s Club was the grand rendezvous of the Whigs.—ED.]

49. Line 17.—[JAS. HARE was M.P. for Knaresborough, and one of the most brilliant wits of the Whig Party. At Eton his verses were hung up as specimens of excellence. Great expectations were raised as to his eloquence in the House of Commons. But his timidity was so great that he broke down in his first speech, and this failure, joined with delicate health, prevented a second attempt. Horace Walpole speaks of his “brilliancy and fire,” and of his own inferiority to him. His bons mots were innumerable. He died in 1804. The following is Lord Ossory’s opinion of the social talents of some of the best talkers of his day:—“Horace Walpole was an agreeable, lively man, very affected, always aiming at wit, in which he fell very short of his old friend, GEORGE SELWYN, who possessed it in the most genuine but indescribable degree. HARE’S conversation abounded with wit, and perhaps of a more lively kind; so did BURKE’S, though with much alloy of bad taste; but, upon the whole, my brother the General [FITZPATRICK] was the most agreeable man in society of any of them.”—MS., R. Vernon Smith.—ED.]

50. Line 19.—[General FITZPATRICK was one of Fox’s most attached friends and political supporters. BOSWELL, speaking of a dinner at BEAUCLERK’S, 24th April, 1779, says, on a celebrated wit being mentioned (believed to be Fitzpatrick), “JOHNSON replied, ‘I have been several times in company with him, but never perceived any strong power of wit. He produces a general effect by various means; he has a cheerful countenance and a gay voice. Besides his trade is wit. It would be as wild in him to come into company without merriment, as for a highwayman to take the road without his pistols.’” WALPOLE (in his Journal of the Reign of George III., i. 167, and ii. 560) describes him as “an agreeable young man of parts,” and mentions his “genteel irony and badinage”. He was Lord Shelburne’s brother-in-law, at whose house Johnson might have met him, as well as in Fox’s company. Rogers (Table Talk, p. 104) said that Fitzpatrick was at one time nearly as famous for his wit as Hare. He possessed no mean poetic talents, particularly for compositions of wit, fancy, and satire. To the Rolliad he contributed “Extract from the Dedication”; Nos. v., ix. and xii., in Part I.; and No. v. in Part II. In the Political Eclogues, he wrote “The Liars”; and “Pindaric Ode” (No. xv.)—also, “Incantation for raising a Phantom, imitated from Macbeth,” in the Political Miscellanies.

GENERAL RICHARD FITZPATRICK’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF.

“MY OWN EPITAPH.

“Whose turn is next? This monitory Stone

Replies, vain Passenger, perhaps thy own.

If, idly curious, thou wilt seek to know

Whose relics mingle with the dust below,

Enough to tell thee, that his destin’d span

On Earth he dwelt,—and, like thyself, a Man.

Nor distant far th’ inevitable day

When thou, poor mortal, shalt like him be clay.

Through life he walk’d unemulous of fame,

Nor wish’d beyond it to preserve a name.

Content, if Friendship, o’er his humble bier,

Drop but the heartfelt tribute of a tear;

Though countless ages should unconscious glide,

Nor learn that ever he had liv’d, or died.

“R. F.”

Such is the epitaph placed on a stone sarcophagus in the usual form, in the churchyard at Sunninghill, close to the house where Gen. Fitzpatrick’s friend, G. Ellis, died.—Nichols, Lit. Illustr., vol. vii., pp. 633–4.—ED.]

51. Line 19.—[Lord JOHN TOWNSHEND, the second son of the first Marquis Townshend. He represented Cambridge till ousted by PITT at the general election in 1784. In 1788 he became the colleague of FOX for Westminster. He afterwards represented Knaresborough for twenty-five years: his colleague in 1797 was HARE. He had great powers of wit and satire. In the Political Eclogues (subjoined to The Rolliad), he wrote the one entitled “Jekyll”. To the Probationary Odes for the Laureatship he contributed No. xii., in ridicule of Warren Hastings’s agent, Major John Scott, M.P. Also, the “Dialogue between a certain personage and his Minister,” in imitation of the Ninth Ode of Horace, Book III.—ED.]

52. Line 20.—[Sir FRANCIS BURDETT, then M.P. for Boroughbridge.—ED.]

53. Line 23.—[JOHN RICHARDSON, M.P. for Newport, Cornwall, and one of the proprietors of Drury Lane Theatre. In the Rolliad he was the author, in Part I., of Nos. iv., x., and xi.; and in Part II. of Nos. iii. and iv. He wrote No. iv. of Probationary Odes, in ridicule of Sir R. Hill, Bart.; No. xix. on Viscount Mountmorres, and the concluding prose portion. To the Political Miscellanies he contributed, “This is the House that George Built,” and in conjunction with Tickell, the “Epigrams by Sir Cecil Wray,” “Pretymaniana,” and “Foreign Epigrams”. In the latter Dr. Laurence assisted them. Also “A Tale: At Brookes’s once it so fell out”. “Theatrical Intelligence Extraordinary.” “Epigram: Who shall Expect the Country’s Friend?” “A new Ballad: Billy Eden,” in conjunction with Tickell. “Proclamation.” He died in 1803.—ED.]

54. Line 25.—[The Rev. SAMUEL PARR, LL.D., was not only a great scholar, but an uncompromising Whig, and one of Fox’s most enthusiastic supporters. His conversational powers were great, and his arguments were enforced by boldness, dogmatism, and arrogance, which qualities, however, did not always exempt him from stinging retorts even from the fair sex. The following, among other attacks, appears in Crabb Robinson’s interesting Diary, ii. 457:—

A RECIPE.

To half of BUSBY’S skill in mood and tense

Add BENTLEY’S pleasantry, without his sense:

Of WARBURTON take all the spleen you find,

And leave his genius and his wit behind.

Squeeze CHURCHILL’S rancour from the verse it flows in,

And knead it stiff with JOHNSON’S heavy prosing.

Add all the piety of ST. VOLTAIRE,

Mix the gross compound—Fiat DR. PARR.

His person, in full canonicals, with capacious wig, unfailing tobacco pipe and tankard, is, with the effigies of many other noted politicians of the period, introduced into a spirited bacchanalian scene by Gillray, published in 1801, entitled The Union Club.]

55. BUZZ PROSE.—The learned reader will perceive that this is an elegant metonymy, by which the quality belonging to the outside of the head is transferred to the inside. Buzz is an epithet usually applied to a large wig. It is here used for swelling, burly, bombastic writing.

There is a picture of HOGARTH’S (the Election Ball, we believe), in which there are a number of Hats thrown together in one corner of the room; and it is remarked as a peculiar excellence that there is not a Hat among them of which you cannot to a certainty point out the owner among the figures dancing, or otherwise distributed through the picture.

We remember to have seen an experiment of this kind tried at one of the Universities with the wig and writings here alluded to. A page taken from the most happy and elaborate part of the writings was laid upon a table in a barber’s shop, round which a number of wigs of different descriptions and dimensions were suspended, and among them that of the Author in question. It was required of a young student, after reading a few sentences in the page, to point out among the wigs that which must of necessity belong to the Head in which such sentences had been engendered. The experiment succeeded to a miracle. The learned reader will now see all the beauty and propriety of the metonymy.

56. Line 25.—[JOHN COURTENAY was for many years one of the men of mark in the House of Commons for his ability, independent spirit, erudition, and coarse sarcastic wit. He was born at Carlingford, Ireland, in 1738. Having obtained the patronage of George, Viscount Townshend, Lord-Lieutenant (1767–72), he became the principal writer in the “Batchelor,” a government paper, distinguished by genuine wit and humour, conducted by Simcox, a clergyman; Richard Marlay, afterwards Bishop of Waterford and Lismore; Robert Jephson, a dramatic poet of note; the Rev. Mr. Boroughs, and others. The chief task of these advocates of the Castle was to counteract the “Baratarian Letters,” an Irish imitation of Junius, which, attacking the Lord-Lieutenant’s government, received contributions from Flood, and first published Grattan’s character of Chatham. At the “Coalition,” 1783, he was appointed Surveyor-general of the Ordnance, and henceforward attached himself to FOX. He wrote, among other works, A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1786; The Rape of Pomona, an Elegiac Epistle from the Waiter at Hockrel to the Hon. Mr. Lyttelton, 1773; Philosophical Reflections on the late Revolution in France; and a Biographical Sketch of his own Life. In his Epistles in Rhyme he thus ridicules Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Verses on the two Misses Berry:—

“Who to love tunes his note, with the fire of old age,

And chirps the trim lay in a trim Gothic cage.”

Walpole, however (Correspondence, ix. 434–5), good-naturedly laughed at them, saying that these verses on himself were really some of the best in the whole set. Courtenay was a member of The Literary Club, founded by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and figures in several of Gillray’s caricatures. He it was who, referring to Gay’s Beggars’ Opera, designated the author the Orpheus of Highwaymen. He died 24th March, 1816.—ED.]

57. KIDNAPP’D RHYMES.—Kidnapp’d implies something more than stolen. It is, according to an expression of Mr. Sheridan’s (in the “Critic”), using other people’s “thoughts as gipsies do stolen children—disfiguring them, to make them pass for their own”.

This is a serious charge against an author, and ought to be well supported. To the proof then!

In an Ode of the late LORD NUGENT’S are the following spirited lines:

“Though CATO liv’d—though TULLY spoke—[58]

Though BRUTUS dealt the godlike stroke,

Yet perish’d fated ROME!”

The author above mentioned saw these lines, and liked them—as well he might; and as he had a mind to write about Rome himself, he did not scruple to enlist them into his service; but he thought it right to make a small alteration in their appearance, which he managed thus. Speaking of Rome, he says it is the place

“Where CATO liv’d”:—

A sober truth! which gets rid at once of all the poetry and spirit of the original, and reduces the sentiment from an example of manners, virtue, patriotism, from the vitæ exemplar dedit of LORD NUGENT, to a mere question of inhabitancy. Ubi habitavit Cato—where he was an inhabitant-householder, paying scot and lot, and had a house on the right-hand side of the way, as you go down Esquiline Hill, just opposite to the poulterer’s. But to proceed—

“Where CATO liv’d; where TULLY spoke,

Where BRUTUS dealt the godlike stroke—

—By which his glory rose!!!”

The last line is not borrowed.

We question whether the history of modern literature can produce an instance of a theft so shameless, and turned to so little advantage.]

58. [Horace Walpole, in a letter to Hannah More, quotes one word of these verses incorrectly, writing:—“Though Cato died,” an error which P. Cunningham allows to pass, as also another, that Mr.—instead of Lord—Nugent wrote them.—ED.]

59. Line 26.—[Sir ROBERT ADAIR. Some observations on his alleged mission to St. Petersburgh to counteract the measures of Government will be found on a subsequent page. The publication here satirized is entitled “Part of a Letter from Robert Adair, Esq., to the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox; occasioned by Mr. Burke’s mention of Lord Keppel in a recent publication,” London, Debrett, 1796, and is by no means a contemptible composition. It is called “Part of a Letter,” because it is a portion of a longer one, being only the part devoted to a vindication of the writer’s uncle, Admiral Lord Keppel, and of Fox; with characteristic delineations of Sir G. Saville, the Marquis of Rockingham, Lord North, and George Byng, M.P., on all of whom he passes great compliments.—ED.]

60. And loads the blunderbuss with BEDFORD’S brains.—This line is wholly unintelligible without a note. And we are afraid the note will be wholly incredible, unless the reader can fortunately procure the book to which it refers.

In the “Part of a Letter,” which was published by MR. ROBT. ADAIR, in answer to MR. BURKE’S “Letter to the D. of B.,” nothing is so remarkable as the studious imitation of Mr. Burke’s style.

His vehemence, and his passion, and his irony, his wild imagery, his far-sought illustrations, his rolling and lengthened periods, and the short quick pointed sentences in which he often condenses as much wisdom and wit as others would expand through pages, or through volumes,—all these are carefully kept in view by his opponent, though not always very artificially copied or applied.

But imitators are liable to be led strangely astray; and never was there an instance of a more complete mistake of a plain meaning, than that which this line is intended to illustrate—a mistake no less than that of a coffin for a corpse. This is hard to believe or to comprehend—but you shall hear.

MR. BURKE, in one of his publications, had talked of the French “unplumbing the dead in order to destroy the living,”—by which he intended, without doubt, not metaphorically, but literally, “stripping the dead of their LEADEN COFFINS, and then making them (not the DEAD but the COFFINS) into bullets”. A circumstance perfectly notorious at the time the book was written.

But this does not satisfy our author. He determines to retort MR. BURKE’S own words upon him; and unfortunately “reaching at a metaphor,” where MR. BURKE only intended a fact, he falls into the little mistake above mentioned, and by a stroke of his pen transmutes the illustrious HEAD of the house of RUSSELL into a metal, to which it is not for us to say how near or how remote his affinity may possibly have been. He writes thus—“If MR. BURKE had been content with ‘unplumbing’ a dead Russell, and hewing HIM (observe—not the coffin, but HIM—the old dead Russell himself) into grape and canister, to sweep down the whole generation of his descendants,” &c., &c.

The thing is scarcely credible; but IT IS SO! We write with the book open before us.

61. Qu.—Surcharge?

[62]HORACE, ODE VIII., BOOK II.

IN BARINEM.

Ulla si juris tibi pejerati

Pœna, Barine, nocuisset unquam,

Dente si nigro fieres, vel uno

Turpior ungui,

Crederem. [64]Sed tu simul obligâsti

Perfidum votis caput, enitescis

Pulchrior multo, juvenumque prodis

Publica cura.

[66]Expedit matris cineres opertos

Fallere, et toto [66]taciturna noctis

Signa cum cœlo, gelidâque Divos

Morte carentes.

Ridet hoc, inquam, [67]Venus ipsa; rident

Simplices [69]Nymphæ, ferus et [73]Cupido

Semper ardentes acuens sagittas

Cote cruentâ.

Adde quod pubes tibi crescit omnis,

[74]Servitus crescit nova; [75]nec priores

Impiæ tectum dominæ relinquunt,

Sæpe minati.

Te suis matres metuunt juvencis;

Te [76]senes parci, miseræque [77]nuper

Virgines nuptæ, tua ne retardet

Aura Maritos.

63. Line 3.—[Referring to LORD MOIRA’S complaints against the Government agents, for unnecessary cruelty to the Irish rebels.—ED.]

65. Line 13.—[The following attack upon Lord Moira, “for his patriotic zeal, and the correctness and propriety with which he gave, in the upper House of Parliament, an account of the insurrection upon his estates, and in other parts of Ireland,” is extracted from the “Batchelor”. These observations were there pointed at the father of Lord Moira, but have been adapted by the Author of the Ode and the Artist to the son.

Lord Moira.—“My Lords, I rise to return my thanks to the Noble Lord who spoke last. I can testify the truth of all he has asserted. At the time of the Insurrection in the North, I had frequent and intimate conversations with that celebrated enchanter, Moll Coggin. I have often seen her riding on a black ram with a blue tail. Once I endeavoured to fire at her, but my gun melted in my hand into a clear jelly. This jelly I tasted, and if it had been a little more acid, it would have been most excellent. The Noble Lords may laugh; but I declare the fact upon my veracity, which has never been doubted. Once I pursued this fiend into my ale cellar: she rode instantly out of my sight into the bung-hole of a beer barrel. She was at that time mounted on her black ram with the blue tail. Some time after, my servants were much surprised to find their ale full of blue hairs. I was not surprised, as I knew the blue hairs were the hairs of the ram’s blue tail. Noble Lords may stare, but the fact is as I relate it. This Moll Coggin was the fiend who raised the Oak-boys to rebellion. I was also well acquainted with the two Cow-boys mentioned by the Noble Lord; they were my tenants, and were certainly endowed with supernatural powers. I have known one of them tear up by the roots an Oak two hundred feet high, and bear it upright on his head four miles! his party were on that account called Oak-boys. Noble Lords may laugh, but I speak from certain knowledge. The Oak-tree grew in my garden, and I have often seen five hundred Swans perching on its boughs; these swans were remarkable for destroying all the snipes in the country—they flew faster than any snipe I ever saw, and you may imagine a small bird could make but a feeble resistance in the talons of a swan. I hope, my Lords, you will pardon my wandering a little from the present subject,” &c.—ED.]

68. Line 17.—[“One night after nine o’clock, a party of Soldiers saw a light in a house by the road-side—they went and ordered it to be extinguished immediately: the people of the house begged that the light might be suffered to remain because there was a child belonging to the family in convulsion fits, who must expire for want of help if the people were to be without fire and candle; but this request HAD NO EFFECT.” Lord Moira’s Speech in the House of Lords, November 22, 1797. This statement was, however, satisfactorily disproved. The incident forms a feature in the accompanying engraving. Notwithstanding official denials, it has long been admitted that the conduct of the Soldiery in Ireland was simply infamous. Billeting on Catholics and reputed malcontents of the better class appears to have been invariably as an unlimited licence for robbery, devastation, ravishment, and, in case of resistance, murder. Sir Ralph Abercromby, on assuming the command of the army in Ireland, declared, in general orders, that their habits and discipline were such as to render them “formidable to everybody but the enemy”. The just severity of this phrase was confirmed by the subsequent experience of Lord Cornwallis.—ED.]

70. Line 19.—[Sir George Augustus William Shuckburgh, distinguished by his scientific researches, married the daughter and sole heiress of Jas. Evelyn, Esq. of Felbridge, Surrey, by whom he had an only daughter, Julia, who became, in 1810, the wife of the Earl of Liverpool. Sir George, on the decease of his father-in-law in 1793, assumed the additional surname of Evelyn. He died in 1804, having been five times returned to Parliament for the county of Warwick.—ED.]

71. Line 20.—[Sir John Macpherson, Bart. was M.P. for Horsham, and for a short period Governor-General of India.—ED.]

72. Line 21.—[Col. Bastard was M.P. for Devon. He was returned with Mr. Rolle, the hero of “The Rolliad,” on the Pitt interest.—ED.]

78. Line 31.—[Sir William Pulteney was M.P. for Shrewsbury, and no Member in the House was more looked up to. He was the second son of Sir James Johnstone, Bart., of Westerhall, and brother of Governor Johnstone. He married the cousin of Lt.-Gen. Henry Pulteney, surviving brother of William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, assuming the name of Pulteney. The General left immense wealth, “the fruits of his brother’s virtues!” as Horace Walpole sarcastically phrases it. The greater part of it he bequeathed to the said cousin. Sir William Johnstone Pulteney died in 1805. His daughter was created Countess of Bath.—ED.]

79. The trepidation of Mr. Tooke, though natural, was not necessary; as it appeared from the ever-memorable “Letter to Mr. M‘Mahon” (which was published about this time in the Morning Chronicle, and threw the whole town into paroxysms of laughter), that in the Administration which his Lordship was so gravely employed in forming, Mr. Fox was to have no place!

81. Line 36.—[Of M‘MAHON it is said in T. RAIKES’S Journal (November, 1836):—“George IV. never had any private friends: he selected his confidants from his minions. M‘MAHON was an Irishman of low birth and obsequious manners: he was a little man, his face red, covered with pimples; always dressed in the blue and buff uniform, with his hat on one side, copying the air of his master, to whom he was a prodigious foil, and ready to execute any commissions, which in those days were somewhat complicated.” He was private secretary and keeper of the privy purse to King George IV. when Prince Regent, was sworn of the Privy Council, and created a Baronet, 7th August, 1817, with remainder, in default of male issue, to his brother. SIR JOHN died 12th September, 1817, the title devolving on his brother THOMAS, a distinguished military officer, who was Adjutant-General of Her Majesty’s forces in India, Lieut.-Gov. of Portsmouth, Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Army, &c.

SIR JOHN M‘MAHON left a large personal property, amounting to £90,000. One of his bequests is thus worded: “To THOMAS MARRABLE, a dear and esteemed friend, £2000; and with my last prayers for the glory and happiness of the best-hearted man in the world, the PRINCE REGENT, I bequeath him the said Thomas Marrable, an invaluable servant”. The latter was a member of the household of King George IV., and one of his confidential agents. A full-length portrait of him as one of the procession is given in Sir G. Nayler’s history of the coronation of that monarch.

Among Gillray’s Caricatures is an amusing one, engraved but not designed by him, published in 1804, representing the Heir-Apparent, mounted on a tall horse, with the much smaller person of M‘Mahon consequentially riding on a diminutive steed at his side, passing the gates of Carlton House. The quotation from Burns engraved on it suggests that the Prince might still prove a worthy occupant of the throne.—ED.]

82. [As if written by ROBERT ADAIR, who had previously indited “HALF a Letter to Mr. Fox”.]

[83]Non usitatâ nec tenui ferar

Pennâ biformis per liquidum æthera

Vates.

[84]——Non ego, quem vocas

Dilecte, Mæcenas, obibo,

[85]Nec Stygiâ cohibebor undâ.

[86]Jamjam residunt cruribus asperæ

Pelles, et album mutor in alitem

[87]Supernê, nascunturque leves

Per digitos humerosque plumæ.

Visam gementis littora Bosphori,

Syrtesque Gætulas,[89] canorus

Ales,[90] Hyperboreosque campos.

[91]Me Colchus, et qui[92] dissimulat metum

* * *

* * * me peritus

Discet Iber Rhodanique[93] potor.

Absint[94] inani funere neniæ,

[95]Luctusque turpes et querimoniæ.

[96] —— —— —— sepulchri

Mitte supervacuous honores.

88. [MR. PITT’S Tax upon Hair-powder proved a failure; many of the public declining its use. Those who continued it were called “guinea-pigs,” the tax being a guinea per head.—ED.]

97. [For an explanation of this allusion, see Note at p. 74.—ED.]

[98]Acmen Septimius suos amores

Tenens in gremio, mea, inquit, Acme,

Ni te perdite amo, &c.

[99]Cæsio veniam obvius Leoni.

[100]Hoc ut dixit, Amor sinistram, ut ante

Dextram, sternuit approbationem.

[101]At Acme leviter caput reflectens,

Et dulcis pueri ebrios ocellos

Illo purpureo ore suaviata,

Sic, inquit, mea vita,[102] Septimille, &c.

[103]Nunc ab auspicio bono profecti

Mutuis animis amant, amantur.

Unam Septimius misellus Acmen

Mavult quam[104] Syrias Britanniasque.[105]

105. I.e., The Clerkship of the Pells in Ireland, and Auditorship of South Wales.

106. [On 7th Feb., 1796, a forged French newspaper called L’Eclair, containing false intelligence, was circulated in London for stock-jobbing purposes. On 3rd July a verdict of £100 was given against D. STUART, proprietor of The Morning Post, for sending the above paper to the proprietors of The Telegraph, by which it was discredited; and on the following day, a verdict of £1500 was given against Mr. Dickinson, for falsely accusing Mr. Goldsmid, the money-broker, of forging the above. It announced a peace between Austria and France.—ED.]

107. Morning Post, Jan. 25.

108. Morning Chronicle, Jan. 25.

109. This appears to allude to Mr. SHERIDAN’S conduct during the Mutiny.

110. This is not the first time that we have heard of Mr. TIERNEY’S discouragement of impiety. However we may disapprove of this gentleman’s political principles, we are not insensible to the merit of such conduct.

111. Morning Post, Jan. 25.

112. Morning Chronicle, Jan. 25.

113. Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, Morning Herald, &c.

114. The Company seem to have recollected (had his Grace forgotten?) that the DUKE of NORFOLK has another SOVEREIGN, to whom he has recently, more than once, sworn Allegiance; and under whom he now holds the LIEUTENANCY of the WEST RIDING of the COUNTY OF YORK, and the Command of a REGIMENT of MILITIA.

115. See The True Briton, of Thursday, Jan. 25.

116. Conjuravere Cives nobilissimi Patriam incendere—Gallorum gentem infestissimam nomini Romano in bellum arcessunt—Dux Hostium cum exercitu supra caput est.—ORAT. CATON. ap. SALLUST.

117. Tum Catilina polliceri tabulas novas, proscriptionem locupletium, Magistrates, Sacerdotia, rapinas, alia omnia quæ bellum atque lubido Victorum fert.—SALLUST.

118. [“A Correspondent cautions us against making a profane use of MR. WILBERFORCE’S appearance on Sunday; that gentleman would not have been so ungodly as to gallop there without a sufficient reason—it was the fulfilment of some Prophecy; and the horse he rode might be related to the White Horse of the Revelations.”—Morning Chronicle, Jan. 11, 1798.—ED.]

119. [This refers to Charles Howard, eleventh DUKE OF NORFOLK, (who gave, at a public dinner, the famous toast of “Our Sovereign’s health, the Majesty of the People,”) and to John Horne Tooke, who was a regularly ordained clergyman, and had been tried for High Treason and acquitted.—ED.]

120. [These lines allude to the Empress Catherine’s placing in her gallery the bust of Fox between those of Demosthenes and Cicero, as a token of gratitude for his exertions in defeating the project of PITT, who, in conjunction with Prussia and Holland, had, in 1791, prepared a powerful armament to compel her to give up Ockzakow, which she had seized. The Court party delighted in stigmatizing FOX as the modern Catiline. “But the part which he took in parliament subsequent to 1793, (says Sir N. W. Wraxall), and the eulogiums lavished by him on the French Revolution, soon changed the Empress’s tone. She caused the bust to be removed; and when reproached with such a change in her conduct, she replied, ‘C’étoit Monsieur Fox de Quatre-vingt-onze que j’ai placé dans mon cabinet’.”—Wraxall’s Posthumous Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 435, 436.

“It seems to have escaped general notice, (says Sir James Prior in his Life of Burke), that the misfortunes of Poland in her final partition may be, in some degree, attributed, however undesignedly on their part, to Mr. Fox and the Opposition, in the strong and unusual means made use of to thwart Mr. Pitt in the business of Ockzakow. They lay claim, it is true, to the merit of having prevented war on that occasion. But if war had then taken place with England for one act of violence comparatively trivial, Russia, in all probability, would not have ventured upon a second and still greater aggression, involving the existence of a nation, with the certainty of a second war. Nothing, after all, might have saved Poland from the combination then on foot against her; but it is certain that Mr. Pitt, from recent experience, had little encouragement to make the attempt.”

It is a curious circumstance that, though the plate illustrating these Lines was published, according to its inscription, on the 17th March, 1792, the five stanzas engraved on it are identical with those which appeared in the Anti-Jacobin of 12th Feb., 1798, though these were introduced as written “by an English Traveller just [sic] returned from Petersburgh”.

Assuming the date on the engraving to be correct, we might account for the parachronism on the supposition that the author of the earlier plate-stanzas availed himself of the appearance of the Lines written under the Bust of Charles Fox at the Crown and Anchor to reproduce them—six years afterwards—with a few verbal alterations, to adapt them to a later period—and with an equivocal statement as to the period of their first production.

The following are the alterations in the reprinted version:—

Stanza

2

line

3, frantic for lawless.

„

3

„

1, their country’s for domestic.

„

3

„

1, and wealth and for external.

„

3

„

3, honoured for sacred.

„

4

„

1, now for then.

„

4

„

3, advocate for tool confessed.

„

4

„

4, later for modern.

„

5

„

2, thus for now.

„

5

„

4, Catiline for Cataline.

„

5

„

4, modern for later.—ED.]

121. [Written to ridicule Richard Payne Knight’s Progress of Civil Society, a Didactic Poem, in Six Books. London, 1796, 4to.—ED.]

122. Ver. 3. A modern author of great penetration and judgment observes very shrewdly, that “the cosmogony of the world has puzzled the philosophers of all ages. What a medley of opinions have they not broached upon the creation of the world. Sanconiathon, Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus have all attempted it in vain. The latter has these words—Anarchon ara kai ateleutaion to pan—which imply, that all things have neither beginning nor end.” See Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield; see also Mr. Knight’s Poem on the Progress of Civil Society.

123. Ver. 12. The influence of Mind upon Matter, comprehending the whole question of the Existence of Mind as independent of Matter, or as co-existent with it, and of Matter considered as an intelligent and self-dependent Essence, will make the subject of a larger Poem in 127 Books, now preparing under the same auspices.

124. Ver. 14. See Godwin’s Enquirer; Darwin’s Zoonomia; Paine; Priestley, &c. &c.; also all the French Encyclopædists.

125. Ver. 16. Quæstio spinosa et contortula.

126. Ver. 26. “Add thereto a tiger’s chawdron.”—Macbeth.

127. Ver. 26, 27.

“In softer notes bids Lybian lions roar,

And warms the whale on Zembla’s frozen shore.”

Progress of Civil Society, Book I. ver. 98.

128. Ver. 29. “An oyster may be crossed in love.”—Mr. Sheridan’s Critic.

129. Ver. 34. Birds fly.

130. Ver. 35. But neither fish, nor beasts—particularly as here exemplified.

131. Ver. 36. The bear.

132. Ver. 37. The mackerel—there are also hard-roed mackerel. Sed de his alio loco.

133. Ver. 38. Bear’s grease, or fat, is also in great request; being supposed to have a criniparous, or hair-producing quality.

134. Ver. 39. There is a special Act of Parliament which permits mackerel to be cried on Sundays.

135. Ver. 45 to 49. Every animal contented with the lot which it has drawn in life. A fine contrast to man, who is always discontented.

136. Ver. 49. Salt wave—wave of the sea—“briny wave”.—Poetæ passim.

137. Ver. 50. A still stronger contrast, and a greater shame to man, is found in plants;—they too are contented—he restless and changing. Mens agitat mihi, nec placida contenta quiete est.

138. Ver. 50. Potatoes ’tatoes breed. Elision for the sake of verse, not meant to imply that the root degenerates.—Not so with man—

Mox daturus

Progeniem vitiosiorem.

139. Ver. 61–66. Simple state of savage life—previous to the pastoral, or even the hunter state.

140. Ver. 66. First savages disciples of Pythagoras.

141. Ver. 67, &c. Desire of animal food natural only to beasts, or to man in a state of civilized society. First suggested by the circumstances here related.

142. Ver. 71. Pigs of the Chinese breed most in request.

143. Ver. 76. First formation of a bow. Introduction of the science of archery.

144. Ver. 79. Grass twisted, used for a string, owing to the want, of other materials not yet invented.

145. Ver. 83. Bone—fish’s bone found on the sea-shore, shark’s teeth, &c. &c.

146. Ver. 90. Ah! what avails, &c.—See Pope’s Description of the death of a Pheasant.

147. Ver. 93. “With leaden eye that loves the ground.”

148. Ver. 94. The first effusion of blood attended with the most dreadful consequences to mankind.

149. Ver. 97. Social Man’s wickedness opposed to the simplicity of savage life.

150. Ver. 100, 101. Different causes of war among men.

151. Ver. 106. Invention of fire—first employed in cookery, and produced by rubbing dry sticks together.

152. [Written in the character of C. J. FOX, at his seat, St. Anne’s Hill, near Chertsey, during his secession from Parliament from 1797 to 1802. His fondness for the Greek Poets is well known.—ED.]

153. [Alluded to at page 79.—ED.]

154. [Erskine was noted for his intense vanity, which procured him the nickname of Ego. Sir John Bowring, who knew him well, gives in his Autobiography several instances of this peculiarity, one of which is here inserted. “The master-string of his mind was vanity; its vibrations trembling to the very end of his existence. He said, ‘When the Emperor Alexander came to England, Lord Granville told me that the Emperor wished to see me. I went. He received me with particular attention, and said he was very anxious to make my acquaintance. He spoke English as well as you do. “You are a friend and correspondent,” he said, “of my most valued friend La Harpe?” “Yes, sire.” “Is he a regular correspondent?” “Yes, a very kind one.” “Has he been so of late?” “Well, if your Majesty will cross-examine me, I must own he owes me a letter.” He put his hand into his pocket, and drew forth a letter addressed to me. “Yes, there is his answer. I intercepted it that I might have the pleasure of knowing Lord Erskine.” I gave Alexander all my writings and speeches, which he received with many expressions of satisfaction.’”—ED.]

155. [On April 3, 1797, an open-air meeting of the inhabitants of Westminster was held in Palace Yard, during very inclement weather (Westminster Hall having been shut against them by order of the keeper), to consider of an address to his Majesty to dismiss PITT’S ministry. FOX and the Duke of Bedford took part in the proceedings. Meetings were held about the same time all over the country for the same object.—ED.]

156. [After Lord Shelburne’s resignation of the office of Prime Minister, consequent on the coalition of Fox and Lord North, he was created Marquis of Lansdowne, and withdrew almost entirely from public life, passing his time principally at his magnificent seat, Bowood, near Calne, Wiltshire.—ED.]

157.

NOTES TO THE “NEW COALITION”.

[The Secret History of FOX’S coalition with LORD NORTH, his former adversary,—a proceeding which entailed on him much odium,—was first brought to light by the publication of the “Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox,” begun by the late Lord Holland, and edited by Earl Russell. It was occasioned by his disgust at the conduct of the Earl of Shelburne, for while FOX as one of the Secretaries of State under the Rockingham Administration was treating with Dr. Franklin for peace with the United States through the agent of the Cabinet (Thomas Grenville) Lord Shelburne, the other Secretary of State, was, through his agent Oswald, privately thwarting his measures, and that with the concurrence of the King! The consequence of the Coalition was the fall of Lord Shelburne’s ministry, and Fox and Lord North’s “taking the Treasury by storm”.—ED.]

158. [The India Bill brought in by FOX, shortly after his accession to office, was the signal for his downfall. The Bill passed the House of Commons by large majorities, but when it reached the Lords, the King, who hated FOX, empowered Earl Temple to declare that he would consider everyone who supported the measure as personally his enemy. The Bill was consequently lost on the second reading by a majority of eighty-seven against twenty-nine. The Coalition Ministry resigned, and PITT, then in his 23rd year, became Prime Minister.]

159. [JOHN NICHOLLS, M.P. for Tregony, was blind of one eye, and altogether remarkably ugly. His delivery was ungraceful, and his action generally much too vehement. He wrote Recollections and Reflections during the Reign of George III., 2 vols. 8vo., 1822. His hostile pamphlet on the Income Tax is marked by great ability.—ED.]

160. [On the 14th April, 1794, THELWALL was in the chair at a supper of one of the Divisions of the Reformers, and blowing off the head of a pot of porter said, “This is the way I would have all kings served”.—ED.]

161. [JOHN HORNE TOOKE was educated for the Church, and in 1760 became vicar of New Brentford. Resigning this he studied the Law, but being a clergyman was refused admission to the Bar. At first he supported PITT, then a promising Reformer, publishing in 1788 his “Two Pair of Portraits,” disadvantageously contrasting FOX and his father with Pitt and his father. But Pitt not fulfilling his hopes, he became his bitter opponent and softened his animosity towards FOX. In 1775 he was imprisoned for a libel on the king’s troops in America. In 1790 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Westminster; the other candidates being FOX and Admiral Sir Alan Gardner. In 1794 he was tried, in company with THELWALL and others, for high treason, when all were acquitted. In 1796 he again stood for Westminster, and failed; but in 1801 he obtained a seat in Parliament for Old Sarum, on the nomination of Lord Camelford. A remarkable memoir of him was contributed to the Quarterly Review, vol. 7, by Lord Dudley, Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Canning’s administration, 1827–8.—ED.]

HOR. LIB. III., CARM. XXV.

DITHYRAMBUS.

[162]Quo me, Bacche, rapis, tui

Plenum? quæ nemora, aut quos agor in specus,

Velox mente novâ?

[163]Quibus

Antris egregii Cæsaris audiar

Eternum meditans decus

Stellis inserere, et consilio Jovis?

164.

Dicam insigne, recens, adhuc

Indictum ore alio.

165.

Non secus in jugis

Exsomnis stupet Evias,

Hebrum prospiciens.

166.

et nive candidam

Thracen, ac pede barbaro

Lustratam Rhodopen.

167. There appears to have been some little mistake in the Translator here—Rhodope is not, as he seems to imagine, the name of a woman, but of a mountain, and not in Russia. Possibly, however, the Translator may have been misled by the inaccuracy of the traveller here alluded to.

168.

Ut mihi devio

Rupes, et vacuum nemus

Mirari libet!

[169]O Naiadum potens

Baccharumque valentium

Proceras manibus vertere fraxinos.

[170]Nil parvum, aut humili modo,

Nil mortale loquar. Dulce periculum est,

O Lenæe, sequi deum

Cingentem viridi tempora pampino.

171. [This clever parody has reference to the attempt made by the DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND to evade payment of PITT’S Income-tax. To mitigate the severity of the pressure on persons with large families, a deduction of ten per cent. was allowed to persons who had above a certain number of children. Among others the Duke was not ashamed to avail himself of this clause.—ED.]

172. [See Note at p. 84 in “A Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox,” line 18.—ED.]

173. [SIR HUGH SMITHSON married Lady Eliz. Seymour, great-granddaughter of Joceline, eleventh Earl of Northumberland, who was the last of the male Percies. He was created DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND in 1766. The hero of this Ballad was his son, who died in 1817.—ED.]

174. The ceremony of invocation (in didactic poems especially) is in some measure analogous to the custom of drinking toasts; the corporeal representatives of which are always supposed to be absent, and unconscious of the irrigation bestowed upon their names. Hence it is, that our Author addresses himself to the natives of an island who are not likely to hear, and who, if they did, would not understand him.

175. His Majesty’s ship Endeavour.

176. In justice to our Author we must observe, that there is a delicacy in this picture, which the words, in their common acceptation, do not convey. The amours of an English shepherd would probably be preparatory to marriage (which is contrary to our Author’s principles), or they might disgust us by the vulgarity of their object. But in Otaheite, where the place of a shepherd is a perfect sinecure (there being no sheep on the island), the mind of the reader is not offended by any disagreeable allusion.

177. Laws made by parliaments or kings.

178. Customs voted or imposed by ditto, not the customs here alluded to.

179. M. Bailly and other astronomers have observed, that in consequence of the varying obliquity of the Ecliptic, the climates of the circumpolar and tropical climates may, in process of time, be materially changed. Perhaps it is not very likely that even by these means Britain may ever become a small island in the South Seas. But this is not the meaning of the verse—the similarity here proposed relates to manners, not to local situation.

180. The word one here, means all the inhabitants of Europe (excepting the French, who have remedied this inconvenience), not any particular individual. The Author begs leave to disclaim every allusion that can be construed as personal.

181. As a stream—simile of dissimilitude, a mode of illustration familiar to the ancients.

182. Walks of polished life, see “Kensington Gardens,” a poem.

183. Germania—Germany; a country in Europe, peopled by the Germani: alluded to in Cæsar’s Commentaries, page 1, vol. ii. edit. prin. See also several Didactic Poems.

184. A beautiful figure of German literature. The Hottentots remarkable for staring at each other—God knows why.

185. This delightful and instructive picture of domestic life is recommended to all keepers of boarding-schools, and other seminaries of the same nature.

186. It is a singular quality of brandied cherries that they exchange their flavour for that of the liquor in which they are immersed.—See Knight’s Progress of Civil Society.

187. This division of the word is in the true spirit of the English as well as the ancient Sapphic. See the “Counter-Scuffle,” “Counter-Rat,” and other poems in this style.

188. [The Rev. Gilbert Wakefield wrote several pamphlets against government, of which no notice was taken, until his Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff appeared, when the Attorney-General instituted a prosecution against him. He was found guilty and imprisoned; during which imprisonment a subscription of £3000 among his friends supported his wife and family very comfortably.—ED.]

189. [John Gale Jones was an active political agitator for many years. In 1810, he was the conductor of the debating club, denominated the “British Forum,” which at one of its meetings discussed the propriety of the exclusion of strangers from the House of Commons during the debates on the Walcheren Expedition. For his observations the House, disregarding his apology, committed him to Newgate.—ED.]

190. [“John Thelwall left his shop (that of a silk mercer) to be one of the Reformers of the age. After his acquittal he went about the country lecturing. Sometimes he was attended by numerous admirers, but more frequently hooted and pelted by the mob. In order to escape prosecution for sedition, he took as his subject Greek and Roman history, and had ingenuity enough to give such a colouring to events and characters, as to render the application to living persons and present events an exciting mental exercise. I heard one or two of these lectures, and thought very differently of him then from what I thought afterwards. When, however, he found his popularity on the wane, and more stringent laws had been passed, to which he individually gave occasion, he came to the prudent resolution of abandoning his vagrant habits, and leading a farmer’s life in a beautiful place near Brecon.... He was an amiable man in private life, an affectionate husband, and a fond father. He altogether mistook his talents—he told me without reserve that he believed he should establish his name among the epic poets of England; and it is a curious thing considering his own view’s that he thought the establishment of Christianity, and the British Constitution, very appropriate subjects for his poem.... THELWALL, unlike Hardy, had the weakness of vanity; but he was a perfectly honest man, and had a power of declamation which qualified him to be a mob orator. He used to say that if he were at the gallows with liberty to address the people for half-an-hour, he should not fear the result; he was sure he could excite them to a rescue. I became acquainted with him soon after his acquittal, and never ceased to respect him for his sincerity, though I did not think highly of his understanding.”—Crabb Robinson’s Diary, 1790 and 1799.—ED.]

191. [These “Gagging Bills,” of 1796, required that notice should be given to the magistrate of any public meeting to be held on political subjects; he was authorized to be present, and empowered to seize those guilty of sedition on the spot; and a second offence against the act was punishable with transportation. So exasperated were the Opposition with this measure that Fox and a large part of the minority withdrew altogether for a considerable time from the House.—ED.]

192. There is a doubt, whether this word should not have been written liar.

193. These words, of conviction and hanging, have so ominous a sound, it is rather odd they were chosen.

194. [The hero of the above song was Charles Howard, eleventh Duke of Norfolk, who both as a member of the House of Commons (while Earl of Surrey), and afterwards as a peer, was one of FOX’S most strenuous supporters. SIR N. WRAXALL thus describes him: “Nature, which cast him in her coarsest mould, had not bestowed on him any of the external insignia of high descent. His person, large, muscular, and clumsy, was destitute of grace or dignity, though he possessed much activity. At a time when men of every description wore hair-powder and a queue, he had the courage to cut his hair short, and to renounce powder, which he never used except when going to court. In his youth he led a most licentious life, having frequently passed the whole night in excesses of every kind, and even lain down, when intoxicated, occasionally to sleep in the streets, or on a block of wood. In cleanliness he was negligent to so great a degree that he rarely made use of water for the purpose of bodily refreshment and comfort.” Complaining one day to Dudley North that he was a martyr to the rheumatism, and had ineffectually tried every remedy for its relief, “Pray, my lord,” said he, “did you ever try a clean shirt?” It must not be forgotten, however, that he was a munificent patron of literature, for he defrayed the entire expense of printing Taylor’s Translation of Plato, 5 vols. 4to.; Dallaway’s History of Sussex, 2 vols. 4to.; and Duncumb’s History of Herefordshire, 2 vols. The initials B. O. B. refer to Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Adair, who is often alluded to in these pages.—ED.]

195. [These observations are directed against Godwin’s work on “Political Justice,” which, on its first appearance, excited extraordinary attention. His aim was to represent the whole system of society as radically and essentially wrong, and to extirpate all those principles which uphold its present constitution. The existence of the Deity is spoken of as an hypothesis, and the ethics are worthy of the religion. HOLCROFT reviewed it in the “Monthly Review,” but was doubtful whether to praise or blame it.—ED.]

[“I noticed (says CRABB ROBINSON in 1811) the infinite superiority of GODWIN over the French writers in moral feeling and tendency. I had learned to hate Helvetius and Mirabeau, and yet retained my love for GODWIN. This was agreed to as a just sentiment.”—ED.]

196. [Written in ridicule of Dr. DARWIN’S Loves of the Plants.]

197. Ver. 1–4. Imitated from the introductory couplet to the Economy of Vegetation:

“Stay your rude steps, whose throbbing breasts infold

The legion fiends of glory and of gold”

This sentiment is here expanded into four lines.

198. Ver. 6. Definition—A distinct notion explaining the genesis of a thing.—Wolfius.

199. Ver. 7. Postulate—A self-evident proposition.

200. Ver. 8. Axiom—An indemonstrable truth.

201. Ver. 9. Tangents—So called from touching, because they touch circles, and never cut them.

202. Ver. 10. Circles—See Chambers’s Dictionary, article “Circle”.

203. Ver. 10. Osculation—For the osculation, or kissing of circles and other curves, see Huygens, who has veiled this delicate and inflammatory subject in the decent obscurity of a learned language.

204. Ver. 11. Cissois—A curve supposed to resemble the sprig of ivy, from which it has its name, and therefore peculiarly adapted to poetry.

205. Ver. 12. Conchois, or Conchylis—A most beautiful and picturesque curve; it bears a fanciful resemblance to a conch shell. The conchois is capable of infinite extension, and presents a striking analogy between the animal and mathematical creation—every individual of this species containing within itself a series of young conchoids for several generations, in the same manner as the Aphides and other insect tribes are observed to do.

206. Ver. 15. Hydrostatics—Water has been supposed, by several of our philosophers, to be capable of the passion of love. Some later experiments appear to favour this idea. Water, when pressed by a moderate degree of heat, has been observed to simper, or simmer, as it is more usually called. The same does not hold true of any other element.

207. Ver. 17. Acoustics—The doctrine or theory of sound.

208. Ver. 18. Euclid and Algebra—The loves and nuptials of these two interesting personages, forming a considerable episode in the third canto, are purposely omitted here.

209. Ver. 19. Pulley—So called from our Saxon word to PULL, signifying to pull or draw.

210. Ver. 23. Fair sylphish forms—Vide modern prints of nymphs and shepherds dancing to nothing at all.

211. Ver. 27. Such rich confusion—Imitated from the following genteel and sprightly lines in the first canto of the “Loves of the Plants”:

“So bright its folding canopy withdrawn,

Glides the gilt landau o’er the velvet lawn,

Of beaux and belles displays the glittering throng,

And soft airs fan them as they glide along”.

212. Ver. 38. Angle—Gratus puellæ risus ab Angulo.—Hor.

213. Ver. 39. How slow progressive Points—The Author has reserved the picturesque imagery which the theory of fluxions naturally suggested for his “Algebraic Garden,” where the fluents are described as rolling with an even current between a margin of curves of the higher order over a pebbly channel, inlaid with differential calculi.

In the following six lines he has confined himself to a strict explanation of the theory, according to which lines are supposed to be generated by the motion of points, planes by the lateral motion of lines, and solids from planes, by a similar process.

Quære—Whether a practical application of this theory would not enable us to account for the genesis or original formation of space itself, in the same manner in which Dr. Darwin has traced the whole of the organized creation to his six filaments—Vide Zoonomia. We may conceive the whole of our present universe to have been originally concentred in a single point; we may conceive this primeval point, or punctum saliens of the universe, evolving itself by its own energies, to have moved forward in a right line, ad infinitum, till it grew tired; after which the right line which it had generated would begin to put itself in motion in a lateral direction, describing an area of infinite extent. This area, as soon as it became conscious of its own existence, would begin to ascend or descend, according as its specific gravity might determine it, forming an immense solid space filled with vacuum, and capable of containing the present existing universe.

Space being thus obtained, and presenting a suitable nidus, or receptacle for the generation of chaotic matter, an immense deposit of it would gradually be accumulated; after which, the filament of fire being produced in the chaotic mass by an idiosyncrasy, or self-formed habit, analogous to fermentation, explosion would take place; suns would be shot from the central chaos; planets from suns; and satellites from planets. In this state of things the filament of organization would begin to exert itself in those independent masses which, in proportion to their bulk, exposed the greatest surface to the action of light and heat. This filament, after an infinite series of ages, would begin to ramify, and its viviparous offspring would diversify their forms and habits, so as to accommodate themselves to the various incunabula which Nature had prepared for them. Upon this view of things it seems highly probable that the first effort of Nature terminated in the production of vegetables, and that these, being abandoned to their own energies, by degrees detached themselves from the surface of the earth, and supplied themselves with wings or feet, according as their different propensities determined them in favour of aerial and terrestrial existence. Others, by an inherent disposition to society and civilization, and by a stronger effort of volition, would become men. These, in time, would restrict themselves to the use of their hind feet; their tails would gradually rub off by sitting in their caves or huts, as soon as they arrived at a domesticated state; they would invent language and the use of fire, with our present and hitherto imperfect system of society. In the meanwhile, the Fuci and Algæ, with the Corallines and Madrepores, would transform themselves into fish, and would gradually populate all the submarine portion of the globe.

214. Ver. 46. Trochais—The Nymph of the Wheel, supposed to be in love with Smoke-Jack.

215. Ver. 56. The conscious fire—The sylphs and genii of the different elements have a variety of innocent occupations assigned them; those of fire are supposed to divert themselves with writing Kunkel in phosphorus.—See Economy of Vegetation:

“Or mark, with shining letters, Kunkel’s name

In the pale phosphor’s self-consuming flame”.

216. Ver. 68. Listening ears—Listening, and therefore peculiarly suited to a pair of diamond ear-rings. See the description of Nebuchadnezzar in his transformed state—

“Nor flattery’s self can pierce his pendent ears”.

In poetical diction, a person is said to “breathe the BLUE air,” and to “drink the HOARSE wave!”—not that the colour of the sky or the noise of the water has any reference to drinking or breathing, but because the poet obtains the advantage of thus describing his subject under a double relation, in the same manner in which material objects present themselves to our different senses at the same time.

217. Ver. 73. Cock-tailed mice—Coctilibus Muris. Ovid.—There is reason to believe that the murine, or mouse species, were anciently much more numerous than at the present day. It appears from the sequel of the line, that Semiramis surrounded the city of Babylon with a number of these animals.

Dicitur altam

Coctilibus Muris cinxisse Semiramis urbem.

It is not easy at present to form any conjecture with respect to the end, whether of ornament or defence, which they could be supposed to answer. I should be inclined to believe, that in this instance the mice were dead, and that so vast a collection of them must have been furnished by way of tribute, to free the country from these destructive animals. This superabundance of the murine race must have been owing to their immense fecundity, and to the comparatively tardy reproduction of the feline species. The traces of this disproportion are to be found in the early history of every country.—The ancient laws of Wales estimate a cat at the price of as much corn as would be sufficient to cover her, if she were suspended by the tail with her fore-feet touching the ground.—See Howel Dha.—In Germany, it is recorded that an army of rats, a larger animal of the mus tribe, was employed as the ministers of divine vengeance against a feudal tyrant; and the commercial legend of our own Whittington might probably be traced to an equally authentic origin.

218. Ver. 76. Rectangle—“A figure which has one angle, or more, of ninety degrees”. Johnson’s Dictionary.—It here means a right-angled triangle, which is therefore incapable of having more than one angle of ninety degrees, but which may, according to our author’s Prosopopœia, be supposed to be in love with three, or any greater number of nymphs.

219. Ver. 80. Plato’s and Menecmus’ lore—Proclus attributes the discovery of the conic sections to Plato, but obscurely. Eratosthenes seems to adjudge it to Menecmus. “Neque Menecmeos necesse erit in cono secare ternarios.” (Vide Montucla.) From Greece they were carried to Alexandria, where (according to our author’s beautiful fiction) Rectangle either did or might learn magic.

220. Ver. 86. Zatanai—Supposed to be the same with Satan.—Vide the New Arabian Nights, translated by Cazotte, author of “Le Diable amoureux”.

221. Ver. 87. Gins—the Eastern name for Genii.—Vide Tales of ditto.

222. Ver. 87. Dom-Daniel—a submarine palace near Tunis, where Zatanai usually held his court.—Vide New Arabian Nights.

223. Ver. 88. Sulphur—A substance which, when cold, reflects the yellow rays, and is therefore said to be yellow. When raised to a temperature at which it attracts oxygene (a process usually called burning), it emits a blue flame. This may be beautifully exemplified, and at a moderate expense, by igniting those fasciculi of brimstone matches, frequently sold (so frequently, indeed, as to form one of the London cries) by women of an advanced age, in this metropolis. They will be found to yield an azure, or blue light.

224. Ver. 90. Caf—the Indian Caucasus.—Vide Bailly’s Lettres sur l’Atlantide, in which he proves that this was the native country of Gog and Magog (now resident in Guildhall), as well as of the Peris, or fairies, of the Asiatic romances.

225. Ver. 91. Judæa’s fabled king—Mr. HIGGINS does not mean to deny that Solomon was really king of Judæa. The epithet fabled applies to that empire over the Genii, which the retrospective generosity of the Arabian fabulists has bestowed upon this monarch.

226. Ver. 96. Young volcanoes—The genesis of burning mountains was never, till lately, well explained. Those with which we are best acquainted are certainly not viviparous; it is therefore probable, that there exists, in the centre of the earth, a considerable reservoir of their eggs, which, during the obstetrical convulsions of general earthquakes, produce new volcanoes.

227. Ver. 100. Far-extended heel—The personification of Rectangle, besides answering a poetical purpose, was necessary to illustrate Mr. HIGGINS’S philosophical opinions. The ancient mathematicians conceived that a cone was generated by the revolution of a triangle; but this, as our author justly observes, would be impossible, without supposing in the triangle that expansive nisus, discovered by Blumenbach, and improved by Darwin, which is peculiar to animated matter, and which alone explains the whole mystery of organization. Our enchanter sits on the ground, with his heels stretched out, his head erect, his wand (or hypothenuse) resting on the extremities of his feet and the tip of his nose (as is finely expressed in the engraving in the original work), and revolves upon his bottom with great velocity. His skin, by magical means, has acquired an indefinite power of expansion, as well as that of assimilating to itself all the azote of the air, which he decomposes by expiration from his lungs—an immense quantity, and which, in our present unimproved and uneconomical mode of breathing, is quite thrown away. By this simple process the transformation is very naturally accounted for.

228. Ver. 104. Phœnician Cone—It was under this shape that Venus was worshipped in Phœnicia. Mr. HIGGINS thinks it was the Venus Urania, or Celestial Venus; in allusion to which, the Phœnician grocers first introduced the practice of preserving sugar-loaves in blue or sky-coloured paper—he also believes that the conical form of the original grenadier’s cap was typical of the loves of Mars and Venus.

229. Ver. 107. Parabola—The curve described by projectiles of all sorts, as bombs, shuttlecocks, &c.

230. Ver. 115. Hyperbola—Not figuratively speaking, as in rhetoric, but mathematically; and therefore blue-eyed.

231. Ver. 122. Asymptotes—“Lines, which though they may approach still nearer together till they are nearer than the least assignable distance, yet being still produced infinitely, will never meet”.—Johnson’s Dictionary.

232. Ver. 124. Ellipsis—A curve, the revolution of which on its axis produces an ellipsoid, or solid resembling the eggs of birds, particularly those of the gallinaceous tribe. Ellipsis is the only curve that embraces the cone.

233. [“Romantic Ashbourn.” The road down Ashbourn Hill winds in front of Ashbourn Hall, then the residence of the Rev. Mr. Leigh, who married a relation of CANNING’S, and to whom the latter was a frequent visitor. A clever parodical application of this couplet was made by O’CONNELL to LORD STANLEY’S section of a party of six, who wished to hold the balance of power, during PEEL’S short administration in 1835. He altered it to “The Derby Dilly,” carrying six insides.—See the Greville Memoirs, vol. 3, pp. 236, &c.—ED.]

234. [Thus sings Dr. Darwin of the Loves of the Plants:

“Two brother swains, of Collins’ gentle name,

The same their features, and their forms the same,

With rival love for fair Collinia sigh,

Knit the dark brow, and roll the unsteady eye.

With sweet concern the pitying beauty mourns,

And soothes with smiles the jealous pair by turns.

“Woo’d with long care, Curcuma, cold and shy,

Meets her fond husband with averted eye.

Four beardless youths the obdurate beauty move

With soft attentions of Platonic love.”—ED.]

235. [BRISSOT was one of the first movers in the outbreak of the French Revolution, and with twenty other Girondists suffered death under the guillotine, October 30, 1793. He was one of the most virtuous as well as most accomplished littérateurs of the time.—ED.]

236. Such was the end of these worthies. They were found starved to death in a cave in Languedoc. Vide Barrère’s Rep.

[CHARLES BARBAROUX was one of the most distinguished and energetic of the Girondists. As he opposed the party of Marat and Robespierre, he was, in 1793, proscribed as a Royalist and an enemy of the Republic. He wandered about the country, hiding himself as he best could for thirteen months, when he was taken, and perished by the guillotine, June 25, 1794.—ED.]

[JÉROME PÉTION DE VILLENEUVE was a prominent member of the Jacobin Club, and a great ally of Robespierre. Being elected MAIRE DE PARIS in Bailly’s stead, he encouraged the demonstrations of the lowest classes, and the arming of the populace. He then joined the Girondists. On their defeat by the army of the Convention, he fled in July, 1793, into Bretagne. A short time after the corpses of himself and Buzot were found in a corn-field near St. Emilion, partly devoured by wolves. They were supposed to have died by their own hands. He was extremely virtuous in all his domestic relations; but his public career shows him to have been weak, shallow, ostentatious, and vain.—ED.]

237. See LOUVET’s Récit de mes Périls.

238. This philosophic coxcomb is the idol of those who admire the French Revolution up to a certain point.

239. This little anecdote is not generally known.—It is strikingly pathetic.—GARAT has recorded this circumstance in a very eloquent sentence—“O toi, qui arrêtas la main avec laquelle tu traçais le progrès de l’esprit humain, pour porter sur tes lèvres le breuvage mortel, d’autres pensées et d’autres sentimens out incliné ta volonté vers le tombeau, dans ta dernière délibération.—(GARAT, it seems, did not choose to poison himself.)—Tu as rendu à la liberté éternelle ton âme Républicaine par ce poison qui avait été partagé entre nous comme le pain entre des frères.”

“Oh you, who stayed the hand with which you were tracing the progress of the human mind, to carry the mortal mixture to your lips—it was by other thoughts and other sentiments that your judgment was at length determined in that last deliberated act. You restored your republican spirit to an eternal freedom, by that poison which we had shared together, like a morsel of bread between two brothers.”

240. Isosceles—An equi-crural triangle—It is represented as a Giant, because Mr. HIGGINS says he has observed that procerity is much promoted by the equal length of the legs, more especially when they are long legs.

241. Mathesis—The doctrine of mathematics—Pope calls her mad Mathesis.—Vide Johnson’s Dictionary.

242. Hallucinating—The disorder with which Mathesis is affected is a disease of increased volition, called erotomania, or sentimental love. It is the fourth species of the second genus of the first order and third class; in consequence of which, Mr. Hackman shot Miss Reay in the lobby of the playhouse.—Vide Zoonomia, vol. ii., pp. 363, 365.

243. Galvanic fires—Dr. Galvani is a celebrated philosopher at Turin. He has proved that the electric fluid is the proximate cause of nervous sensibility; and Mr. HIGGINS is of opinion that by means of this discovery, the sphere of our disagreeable sensations may be, in future, considerably enlarged. “Since dead frogs (says he) are awakened by this fluid to such a degree of posthumous sensibility as to jump out of the glass in which they are placed, why not men, who are sometimes so much more sensible when alive? And if so, why not employ this new stimulus to deter mankind from dying (which they so pertinaciously continue to do) of various old-fashioned diseases, notwithstanding all the brilliant discoveries of modern philosophy, and the example of Count Cagliostro?”

244. Internal Angles, &c.—This is an exact versification of Euclid’s fifth theorem.—Vide Euclid in loco.

245. Asses-Bridge—Pons Asinorum—The name usually given to the before-mentioned theorem—though, as Mr. Higgins thinks, absurdly. He says, that having frequently watched companies of asses during their passage of a bridge, he never discovered in them any symptoms of geometrical instinct upon the occasion. But he thinks that with Spanish asses, which are much larger (vide Townsend’s Travels through Spain), the case may possibly be different.

246. Fare—A person, or a number of persons, conveyed in a hired vehicle by land or water.

247. Badged boatman—Boatmen sometimes wear a badge, to distinguish them, especially those who belong to the Watermen’s Company.

248. Alp, or Alps—A ridge of mountains which separate the North of Italy from the South of Germany. They are evidently primeval and volcanic, consisting of granite, toadstone, and basalt, and several other substances, containing animal and vegetable recrements, and affording numberless undoubted proofs of the infinite antiquity of the earth, and of the consequent falsehood of the Mosaic chronology.

249. Turn the stiff screw, &c.—The harmony and imagery of these lines are imperfectly imitated from the following exquisite passage in the Economy of Vegetation:

“Gnomes, as you now dissect, with hammers fine,

The granite rock, the noduled flint calcine;

Grind with strong arm the circling Chertz betwixt,

Your pure Ka—o—lins and Pe—tunt—ses mixt.”

Canto ii. line 297.

250. [The windmill, &c.—This line affords a striking instance of the sound conveying an echo to the sense. I would defy the most unfeeling reader to repeat it over without accompanying it by some corresponding gesture imitative of the action described.—EDITOR.]

251. Sweet Enthusiast, &c.—A term usually applied in allegoric or technical poetry to any person or object to which no other qualifications can be assigned.—Chambers’s Dictionary.

252. [ANNE PLUMPTRE, who made herself known as one of the first introducers of German plays, said: “People are talking about an Invasion. I am not afraid of an Invasion; I believe the country would be all the happier if BUONAPARTE were to effect a landing and overturn the Government. He would destroy the Church and the Aristocracy, and his government would be better than the one we have”. Crabb Robinson’s Diary (1810), i. 298.—ED.]

253. The smiling infant—Infancy is particularly interested in the diffusion of the new principles. See the “Bloody Buoy”. See also the following description and prediction:

“Here Time’s huge fingers grasp his giant mace,

And dash proud Superstition from her base;

Rend her strong towers and gorgeous fanes, &c.

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

While each light moment, as it passes by,

With feathery foot and pleasure-twinkling eye,

Feeds from its baby-hand with many a kiss

The callow-nestlings of domestic bliss.”—Botanic Garden.

254. The monster’s back—Le Monstre Pitt, l’ennemi du genre humain. See Debates of the legislators of the Great Nation, passim.

255. Atque illud prono præceps agitur decursus.—Catullus.

256. STONE.—Better known by the name of WILLIAMS.

257. We decline printing this rhyme at length, from obvious reasons of delicacy; at the same time that it is so accurate a translation of pictis puppibus, that we know not how to suppress it, without doing the utmost injustice to the general spirit of the poem.

258. [Jean Bon St. André, deputy to the Convention for the Department of Lot, during the reign of Terror, rivalled Marat and Robespierre in cruelty. Having been appointed to remodel the Republican Navy, he was present at the action of June 1, 1794, in which he shewed excessive cowardice. He was afterwards Consul at Smyrna, where he was arrested by the Turks, but released on the peace. Napoleon subsequently commissioned him to organise the four departments of the Rhine, in which he succeeded. He was created a Baron, a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and Prefect of Maure. He died in 1813 of a contagious malady caught while performing charitable offices for the sick!—ED.]

259. Henry VI. crowned at Paris.

260. The Black Prince.

261. The Spanish Armada.

262. Oliver Cromwell.

263. Louis XIV.

264. William III.

265. Blenheim, Ramilies, &c., &c.

266. American War.

267. Lord Heathfield.

268. [Parodied from Pope’s Prologue to Cato.—ED.]

269. See The Robbers, a German tragedy [by SCHILLER], in which robbery is put in so fascinating a light, that the whole of a German University went upon the highway in consequence of it.

270. See Cabal and Love, a German tragedy [by SCHILLER], very severe against prime ministers and reigning Dukes of Brunswick. This admirable performance very judiciously reprobates the hire of German troops for the American war in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a practice which would undoubtedly have been highly discreditable to that wise and patriotic princess, not to say wholly unnecessary—there being no American war at that particular time.

271. See The Stranger; or, Reformed Housekeeper, in which the former of these morals is beautifully illustrated; and Stella, a genteel German comedy [by GOETHE], which ends with placing a man bodkin between two wives, like Thames between his two banks in The Critic. Nothing can be more edifying than these two dramas. I am shocked to hear that there are some people who think them ridiculous.

272. These are the warnings very properly given to readers, to beware how they judge of what they cannot understand. Thus if the translation runs, “lightning of my soul, fulgation of angels, sulphur of hell,” we should recollect that this is not coarse or strange in the German language when applied by a lover to his mistress; but the English has nothing precisely parallel to the original Mulychause Archangelichen, which means rather emanation of the archangelic nature—or to Smellmynkern Vankelfer, which, if literally rendered, would signify made of stuff of the same odour whereof the devil makes flambeaux. See Schüttenbrüch on the German idiom.

273. A manifest error, since it appears from the Waiter’s conversation (p. 211) that Rogero was not doomed to starve on water-gruel, but on pease-soup, which is a much better thing. Possibly the length of Rogero’s imprisonment had impaired his memory; or he might wish to make things appear worse than they really were; which is very natural, I think, in such a case as this poor unfortunate gentleman’s.—Printer’s Devil.

274. Vide The Stranger.

275. Lovers’ Vows.

276. This is an excellent joke in German; the point and spirit of which is but ill-Rendered in a translation. A NODDY, the reader will observe, has two significations, the one a knave at All-fours, the other a fool or booby. See the translation by Mr. Render of Count Benyowsky, or the Conspiracy of Kamschatka, a German Tragi-Comi-Comi-Tragedy, where the play opens with a scene of a game at chess (from which the whole of this scene is copied), and a joke of the same point, and merriment about pawns, i.e., boors being a match for kings.

277. This word in the original is strictly fellow-lodgers—“Co-occupants of the same room, in a house let out at a small rent by the week”. There is no single word in English which expresses so complicated a relation, except perhaps the cant term of chum, formerly in use in our Universities.

278. [The above song is a parody on that pathetic one—given below—written by Sheridan, and introduced into Kotzebue’s drama of The Stranger, to be overheard by the latter. It was sung by Mrs. Bland—as Annetta—to a melody by the Duchess of Devonshire, in a manner, it is said, that thrilled every heart.

“I have a silent sorrow here,

A grief I’ll ne’er impart;

It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,

But it consumes my heart.

This cherish’d woe, this lov’d despair,

My lot for ever be;

So my soul’s lord, the pangs I bear

Be never known by thee!

“And when pale characters of death

Shall mark this alter’d cheek;

When my poor wasted trembling breath

My life’s last hope would speak;

I shall not raise my eyes to heaven,

Nor mercy ask for me,

My soul despairs to be forgiv’n,

Unpardon’d, love, by thee!”—ED.]

279. See Count Benyowsky; where Crustiew, an old gentleman of much sagacity, talks the following nonsense:

Crustiew [with youthful energy, and an air of secrecy and confidence]. “To fly, to fly, to the isles of Marian—the island of Tinian—a terrestrial paradise. Free—free—a mild climate—a new-created sun—wholesome fruits—harmless inhabitants—and liberty—tranquillity.”

280. See Count Benyowsky, as before.

281. See Count Benyowsky.

282. See Count Benyowsky again; from which play this and the preceding references are taken word for word. We acquit the Germans of such reprobate silly stuff. It must be the translator’s.

283. We believe this song to be copied, with a small variation in metre and meaning, from a song in Count Benyowsky; or, the Conspiracy of Kamschatka, where the conspirators join in a chorus, for fear of being overheard.

AD SIRMIONEM PENINSULAM.

[284]Peninsularum Sirmio, Insularumque,

Ocelle! quascunque in liquentibus stagnis,

Marique vasto fert uterque Neptunus;

[285]Quam te libenter, quamque lætus inviso,

Vix mi ipse credens Thyniam, atque Bithynos

Liquisse campos,[286] et videre te in tuto.

[287]O quid solutis est beatius curis

Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino

Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum.

[288]Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto?

Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.

[289]Salve! O venusta Sirmio! atque hero gaude;

Gaudete! vosque Lydiæ lacus undæ;

Ridete[290] quicquid est domi cachinnorum!

291. [The following Letter probably alludes to the Association for promoting the Discovery of the interior parts of Africa, of which Sir John Sinclair was the presiding genius. “The result of their labours,” says Hugh Murray, in his Account of African Discoveries, “has thrown new lustre on the British name, and widely extended the boundaries of human knowledge.”—ED.]

292. [Buonaparte’s Bulletin.—ED.]

293. [SIR JOHN SINCLAIR, the celebrated author of the History of the Public Revenue, the Statistical Account of Scotland, and many useful agricultural and other works.—ED.]

294. [Dr. Parr’s noted Latin Preface to his edition of Bellendenus de Statu. T. De Quincey, in his famous dissection of Dr. Parr and his writings, beseeches the “gentle reader” of Bellendenus to pronounce the penultimate syllable short, and not long, as is usually done.—ED.]

295. [I.e., from BOB ADAIR, a dull fool, to NICHOLL [Nicholls], a wretched goose.—ED.]

296. [Sir Geo. Aug. Wm. Shuckburgh, M.P., F.R.S., author of papers in the Phil. Trans.—ED.]

297. [Sir John Sinclair.—ED.]

298. [The following are Dr. Darwin’s instructions for the transportation of Ice Islands:—

“There, Nymphs! alight, array your dazzling powers,

With sudden march alarm the torpid hours;

On ice-built isles expand a thousand sails,

Hinge the strong helms, and catch the frozen gales.

The winged rocks to feverish climates guide,

Where fainting zephyrs pant upon the tide;

Pass, where to Ceuta Calpé’s thunder roars,

And answering echoes shake the kindred shores;

Pass, where with palmy plumes, Canary smiles,

And in her silver girdle binds her isles;

Onward, where Niger’s dusky Naiad laves

A thousand kingdoms with prolific waves,

Or leads o’er golden sands her threefold train

In steamy channels to the fervid main;

While swarthy nations crowd the sultry coast,

Drink the fresh breeze, and hail the floating frost:

Nymphs! veil’d in mist, the melting treasure steer,

And cool with arctic snows the tropic year.”

“If the nations who inhabit this hemisphere of the globe, instead of destroying their seamen and exhausting their wealth in unnecessary wars, could be induced to unite their labours to navigate these immense masses of ice into the more southern oceans, two great advantages would result to mankind, the tropic countries would be much cooled by their solution, and our winters in this altitude would be rendered much milder, for perhaps a century or two, till the masses of ice became again enormous.”—ED.]

[DR. THOMAS BEDDOES, born at Shiffnal in 1760, was a scientific Physician far in advance of his age; his Popular Essay on Consumption, 1779, his tracts entitled Hygeia, 1801, &c., may still be studied with profit. He paid particular attention to the medical use of the permanently Elastic Fluids, and avows that as “one rash experiment on a patient would demolish a plan on which the hope of relieving mankind from much of their misery is founded,” he made preliminary experiments on himself in the case of Oxygene and Consumption, as alluded to in the text, À propos of the artificial distribution of disease, it may be mentioned that in The Batchelor, p. 189, is a method for “discharging the Plague”.

He wrote much on the political topics of the day, always taking the liberal side, and attacking PITT with great virulence and eloquence. The principles of the French Revolution were at first advocated by him with the utmost enthusiasm, but he was soon disgusted by the excesses committed. He was a student of German literature, and much admired by Immanuel Kant. He was also an intimate friend of Darwin’s, whose political opinions he shared, and whose works were intrusted to his revision in manuscript. A few months after the publication of Darwin’s Botanic Garden, its magnificent imagery and harmonious versification inspired some admirers to say that the style of this work was a style sui generis, and that it defied imitation. Dr. Beddoes maintained an opposite opinion. Much as he admired the poem in question, he thought that the Darwinian structure of verse might be imitated by a writer possessed of inferior poetical powers, and in a few days he produced in the same circle part of the manuscript of Alexander’s Expedition to the Indian Ocean as an unpublished work of the author of the Botanic Garden. The deception completely succeeded, and some enthusiastic admirers of the latter work pointed out with triumph “certain passages as proofs of the position that the author in his happier efforts defied imitation”. Beddoes’s success was the more extraordinary, as in the “Introduction” to a considerable extract from his poem which he printed in the Annual Anthology for 1796, he states that he had never before written twice as many lines of verse as the composition under notice consisted of.

As BEDDOES’S imitation of DARWIN is seldom met with, it may not be out of character in a work of the present nature to give a specimen of it.

AN IMITATION OF DARWIN.

“Now the new Lord of Persia’s wide domain,

Down fierce Hydaspes seeks the Indian main;

High on the leading prow the Conqueror stands,

Eyes purer skies and marks diverging strands.

A thousand sails attendant catch the wind,

And yet a thousand press the wave behind;

Two veteran hosts, outstretched on either hand,

Wide wave their wings and sweep the trembling land.

Each serried phalanx Terror stalks beside,

And shakes o’er crested helms his blazing pride;

While Victory, still companion of his way,

Sounds her loud trump and flaunts her banners gay.”

Further on, the Hero’s attention is attracted to the surrounding landscape, which he thus apostrophizes:—

“Ye fields for ever fair! Thou mighty stream!

Bright regions! blessed beyond the muse’s dream!

Thou fruitful womb of ever-teeming earth!

Ye fostering skies that rear each beauteous birth!

Trees, that aloft uprear your stately height,

Whose sombrous branches shed a noontide night!

Groves, that for ever wear the smile of spring!

Gay birds that wave the many-tinted wing!

Of reptiles, fishes, brutes, stupendous forms!

And ye, of nameless insects glittering swarms!

Sons of soft toil, whose shuttle beauty throws,

Whose tints the Graces’ earnest hands dispose,

Whose guileless bosom Care avoid and Crime,

Gay as your groves, and cloudless as your clime!

Primæval piles, that rose in massive pride,

Ere Western Art her first faint efforts tried!

Ye Brachmans old, whom purer æras bore,

Ere Western Science lisped her infant lore!

How will your wonders flush the Athenian sage?

How ray with glory my historic page?”

In a letter to Hannah More, Horace Walpole says: “The poetry is most admirable; the similes beautiful, fine, and sometimes sublime; the author is a great poet, and could raise the passions, and possesses all the requisites of the art.” In another lively epistle to the Misses Berry (28th April, 1789), he says: “I send you the most delicious poem upon earth. I can read this Second Part over and over again for ever; for though it is so excellent, it is impossible to remember anything so disjointed, except you consider it as a collection of short enchanting Poems. ‘The Triumph of Flora,’ beginning at the fifty-ninth line, is most beautifully and enchantingly imagined, and the twelve verses that by miracle describe and comprehend the creation of the universe out of chaos, are, in my opinion, the most sublime passage in any author, or in any of the few languages with which I am acquainted.”—ED.]

[Darwin was acquainted with Rousseau. He was a man of great bodily and intellectual vigour, irascible and imperious, a strong advocate of temperance, and for many years an almost total abstainer. His professional fame was such that George III. said he would take him as his physician if he would come to London. He formed a botanical garden at Lichfield, about which Miss Seward wrote some verses which suggested his Botanic Garden. The Loves of the Plants had a singular success, and was praised in a joint poem by Cowper and Hayley. It was translated into French, Portuguese, and Italian. Darwin himself is said by Edgeworth to have admired the parody (Monthly Magazine, June and Sept., 1802, p. 115). Coleridge (Biographia Literaria, 1817, p. 19) speaks of the impression which it made even upon good judges.

In the Anti-Jacobin Review, vol. i. (1799), pp. 718–721, appear some Latin verses [by Ben. Frere] which are thus introduced: “Among the copies of verses which are annually produced as a public exercise called TRIPOS, at Cambridge, we have selected the following as a beautiful composition. The subject is Dr. BEDDOES’S Factitious Air applied to the Case of Consumptions.”—ED.]

299. [This piece has not hitherto formed a portion of the editions of The Poetry.—ED.]

300. [This spirited song refers to LORD MOIRA’S motion in the Irish House of Commons, 19th of February, 1798, for an address to the Lord Lieutenant, complaining of the excesses committed by the government authorities, civil and military, and recommending that conciliatory measures should be devised. He took occasion to praise the loyalty of his own tenants at BALLYNAHINCH; but, unfortunately for him, shortly after, an insurrection broke out at this very place, and a large number of pikes were found secreted by the peasantry in his own woods. On June 12, General Nugent attacked the rebels, 5000 strong, commanded by Munro, near Ballynahinch, and routed them with great slaughter. This victory quelled the rebellion in the north.—ED.]

301. [The EARL OF MOIRA was a gallant soldier, an eloquent orator, and a sagacious as well as honest statesman. Having early in life achieved much reputation for skill and courage during the American War, and afterwards in Flanders, he subsequently turned his attention to politics, particularly those of Ireland, his native country, which drew on him repeated attacks from the Ministerial press. In 1812 he was appointed Governor-General of India, and created MARQUIS OF HASTINGS. He was the patron of THOMAS MOORE on his arrival in London. He died in 1825.—ED.]

302. Hibernice pro French.

303. [A quite literal translation of this poem would be out of the question. The fact is, the sentiment is superior to the execution. CANNING could write much better if he chose. He might wish to fabricate an ultra-patriotic schoolboy, and so wrote like one; but it is certain that as a schoolboy he has written far better things. Either he wrote in a hurry, or cooked up a school exercise; the introduction looks like it, and the Latin Prose is as prosy as the verse is common-place.—A. F. W.]

304. The Isle of Wight.

305. [This valedictory Address, and the portion entitled FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE which follows the Poem, have never hitherto formed a part of editions of the Poetry.—ED.]

306. We see with some pleasure, that what we anticipated is beginning to take effect. A NEW MAGAZINE and REVIEW is already advertised, under the same Name which We had adopted, and professedly on the same Principles. We have no knowledge of the undertaking, but from report, which speaks favourably of it; but We heartily wish this, and every work of a similar kind, a full and happy success.

307. Published by HÉBERT.

308. Published by MARAT.

309. See the Remarks on the Treaties of Pilnitz and Pavia, &c.; on TATE’S Manifesto; on Neutral Navigation; on the Treatment of Prisoners; on the Continuation of the War for a Spice Island, &c., &c., &c.

310. See the motto prefixed to The Baviad, a satirical poem, by W. Gifford, Esq., unquestionably the best of its kind since the days of Pope:

Nunc in ovilia

Mox in reluctantes dracones.

311. The author of The Pursuits of Literature. [Now known to be T. J. Mathias, editor of various Italian works, and teacher of Italian to the family of K. George III.—ED.]

312. The Manes of Vercengetorix are supposed to have been very much gratified by the invasion of Italy and the plunder of the Roman territory. The defeat of the Burgundians is to be revenged on the modern inhabitants of Switzerland. But the Swiss were a free people, defending their liberties against a tyrant. Moreover, they happened to be in alliance with France at the time. No matter; Burgundy is since become a province of France, and the French have acquired a property in all the injuries and defeats which the people of that country may have sustained, together with a title to revenge and retaliation to be exercised in the present or any future centuries, as may be found most glorious and convenient.

313. The speech of GENERAL FITZPATRICK, on his motion for an Address of the House of Commons to the Emperor of Germany, to demand the deliverance of M. LA FAYETTE from the prison of Olmütz, was one of the most dainty pieces of oratory that ever drew tears from a crowded gallery, and the clerks at the table. It was really quite moving to hear the General talk of religion, conjugal fidelity, and “such branches of learning”. There were a few who laughed indeed, but that was thought hard-hearted, and immoral, and irreligious, and God knows what. Crying was the order of the day. Why will not the OPPOSITION try these topics again? LA FAYETTE indeed (the more’s the pity) is out. But why not a motion for a general gaol-delivery of all state prisoners throughout Europe? [This was FITZPATRICK’S master-speech, and extorted the applauses of PITT himself, who nevertheless resisted its arguments. BURKE said that LA FAYETTE, “instead of being termed an ‘illustrious exile,’ ought always to be considered, as he now was, an outcast of society; who, having no talents to guide or influence the storm which he had laboured to raise, fled like a dastard from the bloodshed and massacre in which he had involved so many thousands of unoffending persons and families”.—ED.]

314. “Now all the while did not this stony-hearted CUR shed one tear.”—Merchant of Venice. [JOHN CURWEN—member for the city of Carlisle, from 1786 till 1812. He was a skilful agriculturist, and his operations may be said to have given a new character to the business of farming. He died in 1828, aged 73.—ED.]

315. See page 72, in the note, for a theft more shameless, and an application of the thing stolen more stupid, than any of those recorded of Irish story-tellers by Joe Miller.

316. See Récit de mes Périls, by LOUVET; Mémoires d’un Détenu, by RIOUFFE, &c. The avidity with which these productions were read, might, we should hope, be accounted for upon principles of mere curiosity (as we read the Newgate Calendar, and the history of the Buccaneers), not from any interest in favour of a set of wretches infinitely more detestable than all the robbers and pirates that ever existed.

317. Every lover of modern French literature, and admirer of modern French characters, must remember the rout which was made about LOUVET’S death and LODOISKA’S poison. The attempt at self-slaughter, and the process of the recovery, the arsenic and the castor oil, were served up in daily messes from the French papers, till the public absolutely sickened.

318. Faciles Napeæ.

319. See Anthologia, passim.

320. Such was the strictness of this minister’s principles, that he positively refused to go to Court in shoe-buckles. See Dumouriez’s Memoirs.

321. See MADAME ROLAND’S Memoirs.—“Rigide Ministre,” Brissot à ses Commettans.

322. The “pumple” nosed attorney of Furnival’s Inn.—“Congreve’s Way of the World.” [... When you liv’d with honest Pumple Nose, the attorney of Furnival’s Inn. Act 3, sc. 1.—ED.]

323. These lines contain the Secret History of QUATREMER’S deportation. He presumed in the Council of Five Hundred to arraign MADAME DE STAEL’S conduct, and even to hint a doubt of her sex. He was sent to Guyana. The transaction naturally brings to one’s mind the dialogue between Falstaff and Hostess Quickly in Shakespeare’s Henry IV.

Fal. Thou art neither fish nor flesh—a man cannot tell where to have thee.

Quick. Thou art an unjust man for saying so—thou or any man knows where to have me.

324. For instance, in the course of a political discussion REWBELL observed to the EX-BISHOP [TALLEYRAND], “that his understanding was as crooked as his legs”—“Vil Emigré, tu n’as pas le sens plus droit que les pieds”—and therewith threw an ink-stand at him. It whizzed along, as we have been informed, like the fragment of a rock from the hand of one of Ossian’s heroes; but the wily apostate shrunk beneath the table, and the weapon passed over him innocuous, and guiltless of his blood or brains.

325. See Homer’s description of Vulcan. First Iliad.

Inextinguibilis vero exoriebatur risus beatis numinibus

Ut viderunt Vulcanum per domos ministrantem.

326. The Men without a God—one of the new sects. Their religion is intended to consist in the adoration of a Great Book, in which all the virtuous actions of the society are to be entered and registered. “In times of civil commotion they are to come forward to exhort the citizens to unanimity, and to read them a chapter out of the Great Book. When oppressed or proscribed, they are to retire to a burying-ground, to wrap themselves up in their great-coats, and wait the approach of death,” &c.

327. The Reader is at liberty to fill up the blanks according to his own opinion, and after the chances and changes of the times. It would be highly unfair to hand down to posterity as followers of Leviathan, the names of men who may, and probably will soon, grow ashamed of their leader.

328.

Though the yeasty sea

Consume and swallow navigation up. Macbeth.

[Applied to S. Whitbread, M.P., the Brewer.—ED.]

329. i.e. Perhaps a member of the WHIG CLUB—a society that has presumed to monopolize to itself a title to which it never had any claim, but from the character of those who have now withdrawn themselves from it. “Perhaps” signifies that even the WHIG CLUB sometimes rejects a candidate whose PRINCIPLES (risum teneatis) it affects to disapprove. [Referring to the secession of the DUKE OF PORTLAND and others from the Whig Club in consequence of their not approving of all the proceedings of Fox and his more violent adherents. SHERIDAN met with so much opposition to his entrance into the Whig Club, that he succeeded in getting admitted only by stratagem.—ED.]

330. “It is notorious that the French Directory have newspapers in their pay, not only in America, but in every country in Europe. That there should exist such MERCENARY TRAITORS AS TO RECEIVE THE PAY OF REGICIDES AND ASSASSINS is still less astonishing than that there should be found men in the different countries, and men of rank, too, so base, so degenerate, and so foolish, as to give encouragement to their treasonable productions” (p. 57). The author speaks truth; there is at least one newspaper of this description in London, which is encouraged—to their shame be it spoken!—by men of rank, and by members of the Legislature—Representans du Peuple Souverain!—who even degrade themselves so far as to associate with the profligate miscreants who compose its inflammatory pages.—REVIEWER.

331. “See BACHE of 11 February, 1795.”

332. The reader will not be surprised to hear that this is the identical governor who wanted a few thousands of dollars from the French minister, FAUCHET, and who drew secretly 15,000 dollars out of the Bank of Pennsylvania!! This man brought a whole litter of bastards home to his virtuous wife. He is a shameless blackguard, a drunkard, and everything that can be named that is vile. Such is a republican governor; a chief magistrate of state, who has infinitely greater powers over life and property than King George has!! And this I have already pointed out on sundry occasions.

333. [Lord Erskine.—ED.]

334. [T. Moore in his early college days.—ED.]

335. [Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford, see Ballad.—ED.]

336. [Capt. Charles Morris.—ED.]

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Pg. 17, changed “he was expelled the House of Commons” to “he was expelled from the House of Commons”.

2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.

3. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.

4. Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.

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Table of Contents

POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN: COMPRISING THE CELEBRATED POLITICAL AND SATIRICAL POEMS, OF The Rt. Hons. G. Canning, John Hookham Frere, W. Pitt, The Marquis Wellesley, G. Ellis, W. Gifford, The Earl of Carlisle, and Others.

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

ADDITIONS TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

EDITIONS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN; AND ITS SUCCESSORS.

CONTENTS OF THE POETRY OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN, WITH THE NAMES OF THE AUTHORS.

“THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE CANNING AS A MAN OF LETTERS.”

THE ANTI-JACOBIN AS AN AID TO GOVERNMENT.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.

PROSPECTUS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN; OR, WEEKLY EXAMINER,

No. I.

INTRODUCTION.

INSCRIPTION[8] For the Apartment in Chepstow Castle, where Henry Marten, the Regicide, was imprisoned thirty years.

IMITATION. INSCRIPTION For the Door of the Cell in Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg, the ’Prentice-cide, was confined previous to her Execution.

No. II.

SAPPHICS. THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY AND THE KNIFE-GRINDER.

No. III.

THE INVASION;[11] OR, THE BRITISH WAR SONG.

No. IV.

LA SAINTE GUILLOTINE. A New Song. ATTEMPTED FROM THE FRENCH.

LINES.

MEETING OF THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM.

No. V.

THE SOLDIER’S WIFE.

THE SOLDIER’S FRIEND. DACTYLICS.

SONNET.—TO LIBERTY.

No. VI.

THE SOLDIER’S WIFE.[20]

THE COLLECTOR AND THE HOUSEHOLDER.

LATIN VERSES Written immediately after the Revolution of the 4th of September.

No. VII.

No. VIII.

THE CHOICE. (FROM THE BATTLE OF SABLA, BY JAAFER BEN ALBA.)

THE DUKE AND THE TAXING-MAN.[27]

EPIGRAM ON THE PARIS LOAN,[32] CALLED THE LOAN UPON ENGLAND.

No. IX.

ODE TO ANARCHY.

No. X.

LINES, WRITTEN AT THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1797.

TRANSLATION OF THE NEW SONG OF THE “ARMY OF ENGLAND”.

No. XI.

EPISTLE TO THE EDITORS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.[40]

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE TO THE EDITORS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

ODE TO LORD MOIRA.

No. XII.

A BIT OF AN ODE TO MR. FOX.[82]

No. XIII.

ACME AND SEPTIMIUS; OR, THE HAPPY UNION CELEBRATED AT THE CROWN AND ANCHOR TAVERN.

MR. FOX’S BIRTH-DAY.

No. XIV.

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

LINES. Written under the Bust of Charles Fox at the Crown and Anchor.

LINES. Written by a Traveller at Czarco-zelo under the Bust of a certain Orator, once placed between those of Demosthenes and Cicero.

No. XV.

THE PROGRESS OF MAN.[121]

CANTO FIRST.

No. XVI.

PROGRESS OF MAN.

No. XVII.

IMITATION, &c.[152]

THE NEW COALITION.[157]

The Honey-Moon of Fox and Tooke.

No. XVIII.

ODE.

No. XIX.

CHEVY CHASE.[171]

No. XX.

ODE TO JACOBINISM.

No. XXI.

THE PROGRESS OF MAN. CANTO TWENTY-THIRD. CONTENTS.

PROGRESS OF MAN. EXTRACT.

No. XXII.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

THE JACOBIN.

No. XXIII.

LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.[196] ARGUMENT OF THE FIRST CANTO.

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES. A Mathematical and Philosophical Poem, INSCRIBED TO DR. DARWIN.

No. XXIV.

THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES. A Mathematical and Philosophical Poem.

No. XXV.

BRISSOT’S GHOST.[235]

No. XXVI.

LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES.

No. XXVII.

A CONSOLATORY ADDRESS TO HIS GUN-BOATS.

ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JEAN BON ST. ANDRÉ.

ELEGY; OR, DIRGE.

No. XXVIII.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ANTI-JACOBIN”.

ODE TO MY COUNTRY. MDCCXCVIII.

No. XXIX.

ODE TO THE DIRECTOR MERLIN. HORACE, B. I., O. V.

No. XXX.

THE ROVERS; OR, THE DOUBLE ARRANGEMENT.

PROLOGUE.[268]

THE ROVERS; OR, THE DOUBLE ARRANGEMENT.

ACT I. SCENE I.

SONG.

No. XXXI.

PLOT.

THE ROVERS; OR, THE DOUBLE ARRANGEMENT.

ACT II.

ACT IV.

No. XXXII.

AN AFFECTIONATE EFFUSION OF CITIZEN MUSKEIN TO HAVRE-DE-GRACE.

[TO THE PENINSULA OF SIRMIO. UPON THE RETURN OF THE POET TO HIS COUNTRY HOUSE THERE.

No. XXXIII.[291]

TRANSLATION OF A LETTER, (IN ORIENTAL CHARACTERS) FROM BAWBA-DARA-ADUL-PHOOLA,[295] DRAGOMAN TO THE EXPEDITION, TO NEEK-AWL-ARETCHID-KOOEZ, SECRETARY TO THE TUNISIAN EMBASSY.

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE EXTRAORDINARY.[299]

COPY OF A LETTER FROM GENERAL BUONAPARTÉ TO THE COMMANDANT AT ZANTÉ.

No. XXXIV.

ODE TO A JACOBIN. FROM SUCKLING’S ODE TO A LOVER.

ODE TO A LOVER,

No. XXXV.

BALLYNAHINCH.[300] A NEW SONG.

DE NAVALI LAUDE BRITANNIÆ.

[TRANSLATION OF THE PRECEDING POEM.[303]

No. XXXVI.[305]

POETRY. New Morality.

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE.

NOTES TO “NEW MORALITY”.

Joseph Priestley, LL.D. (page 278).

Madame de Stael (page 282).

The Rev. Gilbert Wakefield (page 284).

John Thelwall (page 284).

Jean Paul Marat (page 284).

Jean Paul Marat’s Sister.

Laréveillère-Lepaux (page 283).

THE THEOPHILANTHROPISTS.

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey (page 284).

Edmund Burke (page 286).

THE COURIER.

THE STAR.

THE MORNING CHRONICLE.

THE MORNING POST.

APPENDIX.

THE ANARCHISTS.—An Ode.

THE PASSIONS.

THE ANTI-JACOBIN REVIEW AND MAGAZINE

PETER PORCUPINE’S WILL.

THE VISION OF LIBERTY.

INDEX TO THE ANTI-JACOBIN.

INDEX TO VOL. I. OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN REVIEW AND MAGAZINE.

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