a strenuously satirical and powerful organ of Conservative opinion in prose and verse, begun in November 1797, and carried on-in dead earnest even when at its wittiest-till the July of next year. Canning was the master-spirit, but he had Gifford for editor, and amongst his principal collaborators George Ellis and Hookham Frere; Pitt, too, may have lent a hand. The Whig Rolliad had been rollicking, broadly humorous, at times coarse and offensively personal; but it aimed more at fun than at the destruction of error and the dissemination of truth. These were distinctly amongst the aims of the Anti-Jacobin, and there is therefore some excuse for a measure of bitterness and even ferocity both in defence and assault, which cannot be attributed solely to Gifford. The Anti-Jacobin stood up for the English constitution against all foes, domestic and foreign, especially against French republicans and their friends; for Christianity and the Church of England against innovators, freethinkers, Dissenters, and atheists; for common-sense against the poetry and philosophy of Erasmus Darwin; for English humour and taste against the false and feeble sentiment, silly rodomontade, lax morality, pointless dramatic construction, and general imbecility the Tory wits (from imperfect knowledge) conceived to be characteristically German. The management was sometimes, as might be expected, undiscriminating and unfair in the selection of persons to be attacked. Thus 'Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd and Lamb and Co.,' are invoked, along with 'Paine, Williams, Godwin, Holcroft,' and 'all creeping creatures venomous and low,' to worship the revolutionary Lepaux. It is not singular that Southey should at this time have been denounced as an incendiary, or that Helen Maria Williams should have been very disrespectfully alluded to. Coleridge never admitted that he was fairly treated in these references, and even when a high Tory, continued to resent the inclusion in this connection of poor Charles Lamb's name.

In the Anti-Jacobin for 1802 there is a commendatory notice of the poem called The Infidel and Christian Philosopher, contrasting the deathbeds of Voltaire and Addison; the long extract on Voltaire's end begins thus

View yon pale wretch who late with haughty pride
Like you his Saviour and his God deny'd.
Mark how his fiery eyeballs, glaring roll,
And shew the anguish of his tortur'd soul;

and Voltaire is made to bewail his blasphemies and in abject terror implore the sovereign mercy which he scorned before.

The same number, reviewing a volume of poetry 'by the author of Gebir,' repudiates 'all knowledge of the former productions of this notable bard' named on the title (including The Phoceans and Chrysaor), but pronounces this 'the most arrant doggrell as ever poor critic was compelled to regard. In short, worse lines and worse prin

ciples were seldom if ever united in one poor volume. . . . This fustian probably comes from one of the dissenting manufactories at Warwick.'

A good deal of difficulty has been found in fixing the authorship of the various contributions to the Anti-Jacobin, which were of course anonymously published; many of the best were the joint work of two or more of the band. Some of the very best were undoubtedly wholly or almost wholly Canning's work. Amongst these are generally reckoned the prospectus; the inscription for the cell of Mrs Brownrigg, the murderer; the second and third parts of The Loves of the Triangles; The Needy Knife-Grinder; the second and third parts of The Progress of Man; and The New Morality. Canning shared with Ellis and Frere in the play of The Rovers (with its English heroes Puddingfield

and Beefington), meant to ridicule German plays generally, though in truth it has little relevance to any actual German work; and the 'Song of Rogero' is apparently his, though it is said Pitt added the last verse.

The Brownrigg poem caricatured Southey's inscription for the cell of Henry Marten, the parliamentarian regicide, at Chepstow; the 'Friend of Humanity' was the Irish Whig M.P., Tierney; the Progress of Man satirised Payne Knight's Progress of Civil Society; and the Loves of the Triangles was the too amazingly effective caricature of Erasmus Darwin's Loves of the Plants-it killed Darwin's poem and blasted his laurels. Indeed, it might be argued that the Anti-Jacobin helped greatly to put all didactic poetry out of fashion, and so, in spite of its politics and literary principles, to promote a new era in literature

and a taste diametrically opposed to that of the eighteenth century.

From the New Morality come the oftenquoted lines

Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe;
Bold I can meet, perhaps may turn his blow;

But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend! as also the couplet—

A steady Patriot of the World alone,

The Friend of every Country-but his own.

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 ere 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!

From 'The Progress of Man.'

Lo! the rude savage, free from civil strife,
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!
The bloodless banquet health and strength supplies.
Bloodless not long-one morn he haps to stray
Through the lone wood—and close beside the way
Sees the gaunt tiger tear his trembling prey;
Beneath whose gory fangs a leveret bleeds,
Or pig-such pig as fertile China breeds.

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.
By thought matur'd, and quicken'd by desire,
New arts, new arms, his wayward wants require.
From the tough yew a slender branch he tears,
With self-taught skill the twisted grass prepares;
Th' unfashion'd bow with labouring efforts bends
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.
Then forth he fares. Around in careless play,
Kids, pigs, and lambkins unsuspecting stray.
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 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?

Not unreveng'd thou diest !—In after times From thy spilt blood shall spring unnumber'd crimes. Soon shall the slaught'rous arms that wrought thy woe, Improv'd by malice, deal a deadlier blow; When social Man shall pant for nobler game, And 'gainst his fellow man the vengeful weapon aim.

As love, as gold, as jealousy inspires,

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 fields shall stain,
And millions perish-that a King may reign!

For blood once shed, new wants and wishes rise; 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.

From 'The Loves of the Triangles.'
And first, the fair Parabola behold,
Her timid arms with virgin blush unfold!
Though on one focus fix'd, her eyes betray
A heart that glows with love's resistless sway,
Though, climbing oft, she strive with bolder grace
Round his tall neck to clasp her fond embrace,
Still ere she reach it, from his polish'd side
Her trembling hands in devious Tangents glide.

In The Friend of Humanity and the Knifegrinder, generally called, from the first line, The Needy Knife-grinder, Canning ridicules the youthful Jacobin effusions of Southey, in which, he says, it was sedulously inculcated that there was a natural and eternal warfare between the poor and the rich. The Sapphic rhymes of Southey afforded a tempting subject for ludicrous parody, and lest he should be suspected of painting from fancy, Canning quoted the following stanza : Cold was the night-wind: drifting fast the snows fell; Wide were the downs, and shelterless and naked; When a poor wanderer struggled on her journey, Weary and way-sore.

The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder. F. of H. Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going? Rough is your 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
Scissors to grind O!'

Tell me, Knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives?
Did some rich man tyrannically use you?
Was it the squire, or parson of the parish,

Or the attorney?

[At the repetition of this line, Rogero clanks his chains in cadence.] Barbs! barbs! alas! how swift you flew

Her neat post-wagon trotting in!
Ye bore Matilda from my view;
Forlorn I languished at the U-

niversity of Gottingen,
niversity of Gottingen.

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.

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.

Sun, moon, and thou vain world, adieu,
That kings and priests are plotting in:
Here doomed to starve on water gru-
el, 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.]

There is a Memoir prefixed to Canning's Speeches edited by Therry (6 vols. 1828); A. Stapelton's Political Life of Canning (1831) and George Canning and his Times (1859) are perhaps too eulogistic; there is a masterly sketch in Lord Dalling's Historical Characters (1867). See also the short Life by Frank H. Hill (1887), and his Official Correspondence, edited by E. J. Stapleton (2 vols. 1887). The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin was separately published in 1801; and, with explanatory notes, by Charles Edmonds in 1852 (3rd ed. 1890).

John Hookham Frere (1769-1846) was born in London of a good old East Anglian family, was the son of an accomplished antiquary, and was educated at Eton and Caius College, Cambridge. He next entered the Foreign Office, and from 1796 to 1802 was member for the Cornish pocket-borough of West Looe. Along with his old schoolfellow Canning, he gave steady support to Pitt's Government, and contributed to the Anti-Jacobin (1797-98), whose editor was Gifford, and many of whose best pieces were the conjoint work of Canning and Frere, sometimes also of Ellis. Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1799), Frere was appointed envoy to Portugal (1800), and then twice Minister to Spain (1802-4; 1808-9), where he was much blamed for his conduct to Sir John Moore. He was recalled after the retreat to Corunna, and renounced public life, twice refusing the offer of a peerage. By his father's death in 1807 he succeeded to the Roydon property near Diss; in 1816 he married the Dowager-Countess of Erroll; and in 1818, for her health's sake, they settled at Malta. She died there in 1831 (ten months before Scott's well-known meeting with Frere); and Frere himself fifteen years later. In 1817 Mr Murray published a small poetical volume under the eccentric title of Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers. Intended to comprise the most Interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table. The world was surprised to find, under this odd disguise, a happy effort further to naturalise in English the gay ottava rima of Berni, Casti, and their imitators in Italian. The brothers Whistlecraft formed, it was quickly seen, but the mask of some scholarly wit belonging to the higher circles of society. To two cantos published in 1817 a third and fourth were added the following year. The description of Arthur and his knights at Carlisle shows the characteristic vein :

They looked a manly generous generation; Beards, shoulders, eyebrows, broad, and square, and thick, Their accents firm and loud in conversation, Their eyes and gestures eager, sharp, and quick,

Shewed them prepared, on proper provocation,
To give the lie, pull noses, stab and kick ;
And for that very reason, it is said,
They were so very courteous and well-bred.

In a wild valley near Carlisle, poetically described, lived a race of giants. The giants having attacked and carried off some ladies on their journey to court, the knights deem it their duty to set out in pursuit; and having overcome the oppressors, they relieve the captives from durance:

The ladies?—They were tolerably well,

At least as well as could have been expected :
Many details I must forbear to tell;
Their toilet had been very much neglected;
But by supreme good-luck it so befell,
That when the castle's capture was effected,
When those vile cannibals were overpowered,
Only two fat duennas were devoured.

Near the valley of the giants was an abbey, containing fifty friars, 'fat and good,' long on good terms with their neighbours. The giants, naturally fond of music, would sometimes approach the sacred pile:

And oft that wild untutored race would draw,
Led by the solemn sound and sacred light,
Beyond the bank, beneath a lonely shaw,
To listen all the livelong summer night,
Till deep, serene, and reverential awe
Environed them with silent calm delight,
Contemplating the minster's midnight gleam,
Reflected from the clear and glassy stream.

But chiefly, when the shadowy moon had shed
O'er woods and waters her mysterious hue,
Their passive hearts and vacant fancies fed
With thoughts and aspirations strange and new,
Till their brute souls with inward working bred
Dark hints that in the depths of instinct grew
Subjective-not from Locke's associations,
Nor David Hartley's doctrine of vibrations.
Unhappily this happy state of things is broken
up by the introduction of a ring of bells into the
abbey, a kind of music to which the giants had an
insurmountable aversion:

Meanwhile the solemn mountains that surrounded
The silent valley where the convent lay,
With tintinnabular uproar were astounded
When the first peal burst forth at break of day :
Feeling their granite ears severely wounded,
They scarce knew what to think or what to say;
And-though large mountains commonly conceal
Their sentiments, dissembling what they feel,

Yet-Cader-Gibbrish from his cloudy throne
To huge Loblommon gave an intimation
Of this strange rumour, with an awful tone,
Thundering his deep surprise and indignation ;
The lesser hills, in language of their own,
Discussed the topic by reverberation;
Discoursing with their echoes all day long,
Their only conversation was, 'ding-dong.'

These giant mountains inwardly were moved,
But never made an outward change of place;

Not so the mountain giants (as behoved

A more alert and locomotive race);

Hearing a clatter which they disapproved,
They ran straight forward to besiege the place,
With a discordant universal yell,

Like house-dogs howling at a dinner-bell.

Meanwhile a monk, Brother John by name, who had opposed the introduction of the bells, has gone, in a fit of disgust with his brethren, to amuse himself with the rod at a neighbouring stream:

A mighty current, unconfined and free,
Ran wheeling round beneath the mountain's shade,
Battering its wave-worn base; but you might see
On the near margin many a watery glade,
Becalmed beneath some little island's lee,
All tranquil and transparent, close embayed;
Reflecting in the deep serene and even

Each flower and herb, and every cloud of heaven;

The painted kingfisher, the branch above her,
Stand in the steadfast mirror fixed and true;
Anon the fitful breezes brood and hover,
Freshening the surface with a rougher hue;
Spreading, withdrawing, pausing, passing over,
Again returning to retire anew:

So rest and motion in a narrow range,
Feasted the sight with joyous interchange.

Brother John becomes aware of the approach of the giants in time to run home and give the alarm ; and after stout resistance by the monks, the giants at length withdraw from the scene of action. It finally appears that the pagans have retired in order to make the attack upon the ladies, which had formerly been described. The ottava rims had already been used by the Scottish poet Tennant in his Anster Fair; but it was Whistlecraft's clever combination of absurdity and sense, burlesque and real poetry in the measure, that showed Byron what an admirable instrument it was. He wrote Beppo in imitation of Frere's work, and imitated much more than the verse; and Don Juan was a still more masterly development of the same method and measure.

His friends credit him with writing the greater part of The Loves of the Triangles in the AntiJacobin (see page 673), and with a share in Th Knife-grinder as well as in The Rovers. His translation of The Battle of Brunanburk (1801 for Ellis's Specimens was a foretaste of his wonderful skill in this way. But Frere's most serious and permanent contribution to English literature was made in his masterly translations of the 'Frogs,' 'Acharnians,' 'Knights,' and 'Birds' of Aristophanes, privately printed at Malta in 1834 but first made known through an article by Sr G. Cornewall Lewis in the Classical Museum for 1847. It is universally admitted that these renderings-free versions rather than strict translations -are masterpieces of a difficult art, and in a specially difficult department-the transfusion into modern English verse, somewhat of the original type, of ancient Greek wit, humour, satire, racy

phraseology, ringing rhythms, and verbal felicities innumerable.

Scene from the 'Acharnians.'

Enter a MEGARIAN with his two little girls.
Megarian. Ah, there's the Athenian market! Heaven
I say; the welcomest sight to a Megarian. [bless it,
I've look'd for it, and long'd for it, like a child
For its own mother. You, my daughters dear,
Disastrous offspring of a dismal sire,

List to my words; and let them sink impress'd
Upon your empty stomachs; now's the time
That you must seek a livelihood for yourselves.
Therefore resolve at once, and answer me;
Will you be sold abroad, or starve at home?

Both. Let us be sold, papa!-Let us be sold.

Meg. I say so too; but who do ye think will purchase Such useless mischievous commodities?

However, I have a notion of my own,

A true Megarian scheme ;-I mean to sell ye
Disguised as pigs, with artificial pettitoes.
Here, take them, and put them on.

Remember now,

Show yourselves off; do credit to your breeding,
Like decent pigs; or else, by Mercury,

If I'm obliged to take you back to Megara,
There you shall starve far worse than heretofore.
-This pair of masks too-fasten 'em on your faces,
And crawl into the sack there on the ground.
Mind ye- Remember-you must squeak and whine,
And racket about like little roasting pigs.
--And I'll call out for Dicæopolis.

Hoh Dicæopolis, Dicæopolis!

I say, would you please to buy some pigs of mine?

Dicaopolis. What's there? a Megarian?
Meg. [sneakingly].

Yes-we 're come to market.

Dic. How goes it with you?

Dic.

No truly, it does not seem so.

Meg. Did you ever hear the like? Such an unacSuspicious fellow! it is not a pig, he says! [countable But I'll be judged; I'll bet ye a bushel of salt, It's what we call a natural proper pig.

Dic. Perhaps it may, but it's a human pig.

Meg. Human! I'm human; and they're mine, that's all. Whose should they be, do ye think? so far they're human. But come, will you hear 'em squeak? Dic.

With all my heart.

Meg.

Remember what I

Ay, yes, by Jove,

Come now, pig! now's the time : told ye-squeak directly!

Squeak, can't ye? Curse ye, what's the matter with ye?
Squeak when I bid you, I say; by Mercury
I'll carry you back to Megara if you don't.
Daughter. Wee wée.

It will have a tail in time, like all the rest.
But feel this other, just the fellow to it;
With a little further keeping, it would serve
For a pretty dainty sacrifice to Venus.

Dic. You warrant 'em wean'd? they'll feed without the mother?

Meg. Without the mother or the father either.

Dic. But what do they like to eat?
Meg.

You may ask 'em if you will.

Dic.

I Daughter.

Just what ye give 'em ;

Pig, pig!

Wee wée.

Wee wee wee wée.

Dic. Pig, are ye fond of peas? I Daughter.

Dic. Are ye fond of figs?

I Daughter.

Wee wee wee wee wee wée.

Dic. You little one, are you fond of figs? 2 Daughter.

Wee wée. ravenous for [the figs;

Dic. What a squeak was there! they're Go somebody, fetch out a parcel of figs For the little pigs! Heh, what, they 'll eat, I warrant. Lawk there, look at 'em racketing and bustling! How they do munch and crunch! in the name of heaven, Why, sure they can't have eaten 'em already!

Meg. [sneakingly]. Not all, there's this one here, I took myself.

Dic. Well, faith, they're clever comical animals.
What shall I give you for 'em? What do ye ask?
Meg. I must have a gross of onions for this here ;
And the other you may take for a peck of salt.
Dic. I'll keep 'em; wait a moment.
Meg.
O blessed Mercury, if I could but manage
To make such another bargain for my wife,
I'd do it to-morrow, or my mother either.

[Exit. Heaven be praised!

The Works of Frere in Verse and Prose were published, with a Memoir by his nephew, Sir Bartle Frere, in 1871.